Gone Cold

by Douglas Corleone

  I stared at Kati’s message again. Finder, open the two attachments and call me right away.

  I was confused. I lined the two images up side by side on the screen and compared. One looked nothing like the other. Nothing at all.

  Except maybe the nose.

  I lifted the laptop and held the monitor a few inches in front of my face.

  Just the nose.

  But no, there was more. The chin, maybe? The distance between the eyes? Since the second image was somewhat grainy—probably captured by a closed-circuit camera, then enhanced and magnified—it was difficult to tell.

  I set the laptop down and decided to call Kati after all, the hell with the time.

  The BlackBerry died as soon as I pulled it from the charger. I cursed then thought maybe I could make the call while the phone was still plugged in.

  I was speechless when Kati answered on the first ring.

  “Simon?” she said in the voice of someone who had clearly been awake. It was the first time she’d ever used my real name over the phone.

  “Kati,” I said quietly.

  “Have you seen the pictures?”

  “Just now. Kati, what is this?”

  I endured a silence that lasted an eternity.

  Then: “Simon, don’t you see?”

  My eyes remained glued to the screen. I felt stunned even though I was in no way convinced. My mouth became dry. So dry that I couldn’t speak.

  “Simon, I know this sounds crazy. But the geometrical features in the two images are nearly identical. Bottom line: I’d bet my life that the girl in that picture—the girl wanted for murder in Ireland—is Hailey Fisk.”

  Chapter 3

  TWELVE YEARS AGO

  Let’s see. Got four pairs of jeans, six T-shirts, eight pairs of socks, an inordinate number of boxer shorts—Thank you, Tasha, very much. Backup shoes, shaving kit, toothpaste, and toothbrush.

  “You have everything,” Tasha says as she blows through the door into our bedroom. She’s wearing a light cotton dress, one of my favorites, with a multicolor knit cardigan covering her milky shoulders and bare upper arms.

  I pull her close to me, breathe in the floral scent of her shampoo, say, “Everything, huh?”

  “I packed a jacket in your duffel.” She pecks me on the lips, adds, “You are cleared for takeoff, Marshal Fisk.”

  I brush aside a handful of her shimmering blond locks and find the sweet spot on her elongated neck and nuzzle. Feel her shiver in my arms, the gooseflesh quickly advancing upward from her wrists.

  Still does it for her, I think with a thrill.

  Next through the doorway with a unicorn backpack on her head is Princess Hailey.

  “Mommy says if I wear this over my face, I can sew away.”

  “Stow away,” Tasha corrects her.

  I pull the backpack from atop her tiny noggin and toss it on the bed, drop to one knee and wrap my arms around her tightly, then press her shoulders back just a bit to take in those fresh and inviting big brown eyes.

  In my periphery Tasha parts her lips, most likely to remind me of something, but defers when Hailey shoots her a look that says, you know better than to interrupt our Daddy-daughter ritual.

  I pull Hailey even closer and, squirming, she giggles and says, “Let me go,” as she always does, and I hold her to me even tighter, say, “Never, baby. Never,” as I always do.

  Alas, no hug lasts forever, but this is a particularly good one, and as she finally pulls away I’m satisfied that I’ve got enough of her in my lungs to carry me through the next few days, until I fly back from Romania.

  “You gonna catch the bad guy?” Hailey says.

  Still on my haunches, I say, “Yes, of course. You know that. Your daddy always gets his man.”

  I stand, take my wife, Tasha, into my arms and give her a PG-13 kiss on the lips, my tongue tempted to carry the embrace much further.

  “And his woman,” I add, if for no other reason than to give my lips a much needed distraction.

  “We’re gonna miss you,” Hailey complains. “Why can’t we come with you?”

  “Budgetary issues,” I say. “Besides, you don’t want to go to Bucharest. Romania’s a nation in transition. They rid themselves of a cruel dictator just a decade and a half ago, and civilization hasn’t quite caught up yet.”

  A horn honks in our driveway.

  “That would be your ride to the airport,” Tasha says.

  “What would I do without you, babe?”

  I grab my navy suitcase and heave it onto my shoulder so that I can carry it down the carpeted stairs without taking a vicious spill.

  “Call us,” Tasha says.

  “Call me,” Hailey says.

  When I hit the bottom of the stairs I lift my royal blue duffel off the marble floor in the foyer and hang it over my arm. Dragging my suitcase behind me, I open the door and step outside. Nod at the driver who’s leaning against his black Lincoln with his hands in his pockets, staring up at the high window.

  One last look behind me at the massive house, paid for by the in-laws so that their daughter can continue to look like money, even though she’s married to a broke federal cop.

  Christ, I resent that house. Probably always will.

  But hey, the house makes Tasha happy, and that’s what truly matters, right?

  Her and Hailey.

  Long as I have them I’ve everything in the world.

  Chapter 4

  Hours after speaking with Kati, I was seated in coach on an Aer Lingus flight bound for Dublin. I’d boarded the plane at Dulles at dawn but it took nearly an hour for the wings to de-ice. During the downtime I tried to doze, but was repeatedly slapped back to consciousness by the squawk of the PA, the pilot seeing fit to advise us every six minutes that he’d received no further news regarding our impending departure.

  Luckily, I had the aisle. Next to me sat a tiny, silver-haired woman who’d kept her face buried in a worn copy of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold until takeoff. I typically avoided chatting with strangers on planes, but there was a warmness coming off this old woman the likes of which you hardly found anymore. So when she turned to me and said, “Are you traveling on business?” I replied, “The business of my life, I suppose you could say.”

  She set her book down and looked up at me. Said, “My name’s Edie,” and offered her hand. She possessed a lovely British accent, not much heavier than my own.

  “Simon,” I told her.

  “I hope you don’t mind my saying so, Simon, but you look like a man carrying the weight of the universe. May I ask why you’re heading to Ireland? Or is Ireland home?”

  Sometimes it takes the sound of another’s voice to realize just how lonely you are. It occurred to me then that the only person I’d regularly kept in touch with over the past few years was Kati Sheffield, and my relationship with Kati was pure business. There was Casey, of course, but he worked for tips, and I’d never once seen him outside Terry’s. I sometimes wondered whether he slept there.

  “I’m looking for my daughter,” I said.

  “Oh, dear.” She paused. “Has she run off?”

  “She was taken twelve years ago, when she was six years old.”

  Edie flinched as though I’d made a fist. Her eyes fell away, her jaw hung open. A look I’d seen countless times before.

  “Abducted?” The word emanated from somewhere deep in her chest. Pushed past her dentures like a puff of smoke. She leaned back in her seat, raised her fingers to her forehead as though to cross herself, then lowered them and shook her head as if to clear cobwebs. “I sometimes forget I broke away from the Church long ago.”

  I nodded but said nothing.

  “So, tell me about…”

  “Hailey,” I said.

  I told her. Told her what I’d told so few people over the past eleven months. Told her how I’d returned to D.C. one day a dozen years ago after chasing down a United States fugitive in Bucharest and learned that my daughter, Hailey, had been
taken from our Georgetown home. Told her about my wife, Tasha, poor Tasha, how she’d looked, eyes enveloped in scarlet spiderwebs, hair a fright, spew dripping from her lips, mucous running from her nose; how she’d sounded; how she’d broken down over the following weeks and ultimately taken her own life.

  But mostly I told Edie about Hailey herself, how she’d been the most perfect little girl, always worrying about others’ feelings more than her own. I told her about the beauty she’d been, the hints of brilliance she’d shown. Told her how Hailey’s disappearance left a crack in my world that nothing could repair, a gaping hole that nothing and no one could ever refill.

  And, of course, I told her about the search. The early days when the FBI made a home in our home and instructed me to sit by the phone in case the kidnappers called. To sit there and wait, do nothing but think and wait and think and wait until something happened. Told her that nothing ever did. One day, there were simply fewer feds hanging around our house, the next day fewer still, and so on and so on, until there were none. Like Hailey’s favorite nursery rhyme, the one about the ten little Indians.

  Then Tasha was gone. Overdosed on prescription pills. Painkillers, muscle relaxers, tranqs. The works.

  I told Edie about the business I subsequently went into, searching the globe for children kidnapped by their estranged parents; how I circumvented foreign laws, and brought those children home. How always, no matter where in the world I was, I searched for Hailey.

  Then this past year.

  And finally ending with my call to Kati a few hours ago.

  “The world can be terrible sometimes,” Edie said.

  She said it in such a way that I knew she meant it. She’d witnessed the world’s terribleness firsthand. I asked her about it and she didn’t hesitate. Described for me in great detail how she’d lost her son in a senseless shooting at a Burger King in downtown Baltimore forty years ago. The killer took off with $267 and was cornered by police in an abandoned warehouse four hours following the armed robbery. Eleven months later he was convicted and sentenced to die in Maryland’s gas chamber. Thanks largely to Edie, however, the killer’s sentence was eventually reduced to life without the possibility of parole. Edie had spent the years since then traveling the country, fighting the death penalty in states such as Virginia, Georgia, Florida, and Texas. She was now seventy-eight years old and still going strong.

  * * *

  “What are you going to do?” Edie said roughly halfway through the flight. “Once we land in Dublin, how are you going to go about finding your daughter?”

  I winced. In my head, I’d been referring to the wanted woman as the girl because I didn’t quite know who I was thinking about, my daughter or some nameless stranger, some murderous nameless stranger.

  “I spoke to the authorities,” I said. “An officer graciously offered to meet me at the airport in Dublin, then take me directly to the crime scene.”

  After phoning the Garda and being shuffled from one unit to the next, I was finally given a man who, very much unlike the others, seemed anxious to speak with me.

  “This is Detective Chief Inspector Damon Ashdown of the National Crime Agency,” he’d said.

  “Britain’s National Crime Agency?” I asked, incredulous. “Not to sound ungrateful, Detective, but why in hell am I speaking to you? Unless Her Majesty quietly annexed the Republic of Ireland in the past twenty-four hours, the crime I’m calling about falls well out of your jurisdiction.”

  “I’m a liaison,” he said evenly. “I was told you’re a British citizen.”

  “Dual citizenship,” I said. “U.S. and the UK.”

  “And you say you’re the girl’s father?” He had a gruff voice, the voice of a cop who’d spent much of his life on mean city streets.

  “I can’t say that for certain,” I told him. “I haven’t seen my daughter in twelve years.”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the line and I thought I’d lost him. But then he said, “Tell me if I have this right, Mr. Fisk. You were born in London but moved to the States with your father as a child?”

  I froze. That was something I didn’t recall telling anyone in the past half hour and it sent a sudden chill through me. Was I wanted somewhere in the EU? Was this all a ruse? Was this going to go down the way it had in Paris two years ago?

  But then, maybe I had told someone earlier. After all, I was exhausted, on no food and little sleep. The Irish coffee had gone straight to my head. Sure, Kati’s e-mail had spurred me into action but much of the past hour was still a blur.

  “That’s right,” I finally said.

  “And your father’s name?”

  “Alden Fisk.”

  I could hear him scratching something down on a pad then tapping away at a keyboard.

  “Your mother’s maiden name?”

  I allowed a bit of edge into my voice. “I’m sorry, Detective, but this is relevant how exactly?”

  “Please, sir, bear with me just a little longer.” He paused. “Any siblings?”

  “A sister.”

  “Her name?”

  I sighed, long and loudly. “Tuesday. Like the day of the week.”

  “Please hold.”

  I held. I held for a damn long while, wondering whether this entire evening was a setup. I couldn’t imagine Kati taking part in any plot against me. But then, I hadn’t asked her how she’d obtained this photo of the wanted girl; I’d been too taken with its possible meaning. And even if she wasn’t in on it, it was fathomable that someone had discovered I was working with her. Maybe even her husband, the detective in Connecticut. Who knew what connections he had in Europe? It’s a small world after all. And getting smaller by the minute.

  Was Interpol running the show?

  Had a Red Notice been issued for me?

  Did this have something to do with the mess I left at the gangster Kazmer Chudzik’s lake house in Poland two years back?

  My mind took me down several possible roads, each darker than the last. Ashdown seemed to know about my childhood, something I rarely volunteered. I wasn’t so much brought to the United States by my father as I was taken. Taken from my mother, Tatum, and my sister, Tuesday, neither of whom I’d seen or heard from since.

  Had I uttered something about my background to one of the Irish cops I’d spoken to previously? Had the information been passed on down the line to Detective Chief Inspector Ashdown? Or was Ashdown reading from an exhaustive investigative file on me and my overseas activities?

  In the end, I knew it didn’t matter. Any chance I had of finding Hailey—or even discovering what happened to her—inevitably passed the test of risk versus reward.

  Finally Ashdown reappeared on the line.

  “All right, then. Let’s plan on meeting as soon as you arrive.”

  “I’ll catch a taxi to Garda Headquarters,” I told him. “Are the Guards still located off North Road in Phoenix Park?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” he said. “Just provide me your flight information. I’ll meet you direct at Dublin Airport as soon as you land.”

  Chapter 5

  Seven and a half hours after takeoff our 777 touched down in Dublin. As we sluggishly taxied toward the terminal, I kept my head down, my belt buckled, did my damnedest to remain calm.

  I was seated in the rear of the plane. Soon as we reached the gate, I watched dozens of passengers spill into the aisles and open overhead bins to retrieve luggage that should have been checked. I remained seated, my breathing quickening, pulse racing, legs shaking as if there were a band. Edie slipped me a page torn from her book.

  “My mobile,” she said. “I’ll be three days in Dublin visiting friends then retiring to my flat in London. Do please contact me if there’s anything in the world I can do.”

  I thanked her. Folded the page and stuffed it in my wallet.

  When the aisles finally cleared I stood and raced toward the front of the plane, knowing damn well there might be a pair of handcuffs waiting for me
in the terminal. It was a risk I’d often calculated and had always been willing to take.

  But when we emptied into the terminal I found no uniforms waiting.

  I swept the area to get my bearings. Dublin Airport had been a frequent stop these past twelve years, but rarely a final destination.

  After a few moments, I followed the crowd. The airport was clean and modern and bustling as usual. During the day this terminal was brimming with sunlight (or at least what passed for sunlight here in Ireland). But due to the time difference and the seven-and-a-half-hour flight, it was already full dark when we arrived, and the artificial light felt unusually harsh on my eyes. I was still tired, I realized; in fact, I was downright exhausted.

  As I approached Customs, I pulled my weathered passport from my pocket. Stepped to the back of the line and prepared for another grueling wait.

  Soon as I did I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned ninety degrees and found a single man in a heavy black overcoat. He looked to be around forty, though I was a hell of a poor judge when it came to guessing the age of adults.

  “Mr. Fisk,” he said without flashing identification, “I’m Detective Chief Inspector Damon Ashdown.”

  Neither of us extended a hand. I at least for good reason; I was half expecting Ashdown to produce a set of cuffs to take me in.

  He had a hard face framed by dark hair, his mouth a narrow straight line, the kind you can’t imagine ever turning up at the corners. He stared at me with piercing blue eyes, as if challenging me to speak.

  I scanned the masses moving around Customs but didn’t peg anyone else for a cop.

  “I’m alone,” Ashdown said.

  I didn’t believe him, not for one second. It made no sense that he was alone.

  “Why?” I asked him.

  “Because if we officially involve the National Crime Agency to any extent, we’d have to bring her in as soon as we found her, whether it was here or in the UK.”

  Not so, I thought. My plan was to find her first, get her out of the European Union as quickly as possible, and make for a country like Moldova, where we wouldn’t have to worry much about extradition. I needed information, but once I had it, I intended on ditching Ashdown and finding the girl myself.