The Fourth Rising (Peter Brandt Thrillers Book 3)

by Martin Roy Hill

  We heard C. Gerald MacIntosh before we saw him. His angry mutterings, accompanied by three sets of footsteps, echoed down the hallway. Jo stiffened and slipped her hand into her purse. I knelt as if to tie my shoe and rested my hand on the .25 auto hidden beneath my pants cuff.

  The door opened and MacIntosh bulled in. “Chase, what the hell—”

  He saw me first, halted as if hitting a wall, and demanded, “What the hell are you doing here, Brandt?”

  Two bodyguards followed MacIntosh in. They were big, beefy, and not too bright. They advanced toward me but stopped when they heard Jo’s cold steel voice behind them.

  “Freeze!”

  MacIntosh and his two goons turned and saw Jo. She hadn’t drawn her 9-mil, but everyone understood from the way she held her purse she was armed. While they were distracted, I palmed my little pistol, stood, and slipped it into my coat pocket.

  MacIntosh’s face reddened. His fists clenched and unclenched like the talons of an eagle anticipating breakfast. Then Chase spoke.

  “They have the Zebra—” Chase caught himself and eyed the guards warily. “Um, well, you know what I mean.”

  “What?” The word exploded from MacIntosh’s mouth. He glanced at Sterling, who simply nodded. “Nonsense.”

  I stepped over to Chase’s desk. There was a deep dent in the wood where I dropped my rucksack before and I aimed for it again. The bag landed with a resounding thud.

  “Perhaps you should dismiss your guards, sir,” Sterling said.

  “Yes,” said Chase. “I think we may have some confidential negotiating to do, Mr. MacIntosh.”

  MacIntosh looked at Chase and Sterling nodding their heads, then turned to his two brutes. “Go,” he said. “Wait for me in the car.”

  When the guards had gone, I unzipped the rucksack and, with some ceremony, removed the gold bar, holding it high for all to see.

  MacIntosh eyed the ingot like a man seeing his future in a crystal ball. He raised a hand, but I pulled it away.

  “No touch,” I said. “Look only.”

  MacIntosh snapped out of his trance. “How do we know this is the Zebra gold?” he said. “Or even gold at all?”

  “You recognize the Party emblem,” I said, holding the bar so MacIntosh could see the swastika and eagle.

  “It’s fake,” MacIntosh said. “Fool’s gold.”

  “It was a fool’s gold,” I said. “Frank Crane—aka Franz Kran—found it in a sea cave in Mexico where it was hidden by Kapitän Müller fifty years ago.”

  MacIntosh and the two others exchanged quick, furtive looks.

  “Yes,” Jo said. “We know all about Frank’s real name and what the League really is. And we know how you sent Frank to retrieve the gold.”

  “And about the two skinhead goons Frank left in the sea cave,” I added.

  “How could you?” MacIntosh said.

  “How?” Jo said. “Because I was Frank’s wife, you imbecile. What did you think? That Frank was operating on his own when he hid the gold? Are you that stupid?”

  I thought Jo was overacting a bit. But from the way MacIntosh’s face darkened, along with Chase’s and Sterling’s matching expressions, I figured they were buying it.

  MacIntosh jerked his chin toward me.

  “How’s he figure into it?”

  “You killed Frank,” Jo said. “I needed a new partner.”

  She paused and looked at each of the three men.

  “What? You thought only men could cheat on their marriages?” she said. “I knew all about Frank and his harlots. He had his bad habits and I have mine.”

  I wasn’t too keen on being call a bad habit, but I let it pass.

  “And you expect us to believe you know where Frank hid the gold?” Chase’s little eyes peered at Jo like she was a specimen on a pin.

  “It took three men to pull that gold out of the sea cave and load it on a truck,” I said. “Frank couldn’t have hidden it by himself. He needed help. Jo brought me in as muscle.”

  I never pictured myself as muscle, but the three of them seemed to accept the reasoning. Perhaps it was their misogyny that made them believe a woman—even an ex-army cop like Jo—couldn’t work up a sweat heaving around crates of gold ingot. Whatever the case, MacIntosh nodded and turned to Jo.

  “Fine,” he said. “What do you want, Mrs. Crane?”

  “I want what is mine,” Jo said. She gestured around the office. “This. World-Wide Security. Frank’s company. My company.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” sputtered Sterling. “No one would hire a security company run by a woman.”

  Jo took three steps then planted the tip of her pointy pump into Sterling’s groin. He shrieked and doubled over. MacIntosh and Chase started to move toward Jo, but backed off when I showed them the silver of my little .25.

  Jo grabbed Sterling’s shirt collar. “I was dodging SCUD missiles in Kuwait and Iraq while you bastards were goose stepping safely down Main Street.”

  “MacIntosh, you said yourself that Crane’s murder put a blemish on World-Wide and you would probably sell it,” I said.

  MacIntosh glared at me but he nodded. “Okay. When do we see the rest of the gold?”

  “As soon as you draw up the ownership transfer papers,” Jo said. “We take you to the gold, then you give us the papers.”

  “Very well,” MacIntosh said. “We’ll need forty-eight hours.”

  “You have twenty-four,” said Jo. “You waste any more time than that, then we take a hike and you never see your precious gold.”

  MacIntosh worked his fists again. His brow pinched into an angry scowl. Jo was forcing him to concede to her will, embarrassing him in front of two subordinates. But he had no further move to make. He was checked and mated.

  “Fine,” he said. “Twenty-four hours.”

  CHAPTER 32

  THE SELF-STORAGE FACILITY stood in the shadow of a freeway off-ramp, close to San Diego’s Old Town district. At least it would have been in the off-ramp’s shadow had it been daylight instead of nearly midnight. The storage center was unlit and echoed with the sound of squealing tires and the hollow thumps of vehicles lurching onto the off-ramp. A cyclone fence kept the homeless out of the facility. Instead, they huddled against the fencing, seeking whatever protection the graffiti-covered freeway concrete could give them.

  Jo and I stood inside the dark facility, a flashlight providing our only illumination. We had been there more than an hour, waiting for MacIntosh and the others to arrive with the ownership papers for World-Wide. That morning Jo had called MacIntosh to set up the meeting, following Russo’s plan. Once they arrived, we would exchange the papers for a key to a storage locker supposedly containing the missing Nazi gold. Once the swap was complete, the feds would rush in and arrest MacIntosh and his lackeys.

  It didn’t work that way.

  We set the meet for eleven at night. It was close to midnight, and we were still waiting for MacIntosh to show. Jo was restless, but not as much as I was. By twelve-fifteen I was finished with it. Besides, the damn tape securing the transmitter to my chest was itching.

  “Russo, they’re not going to show,” I said aloud so the mic would pick it up.

  Russo had no way to talk to us, but slowly, one after another, the homeless huddling beneath the freeway rose to their feet. One filthy man in torn clothes and draped by a grimy blanket turned to face us, and made a cutting gesture to his throat with his hand. The message was clear. Russo had radioed to the FBI agents posing as vagrants that the stakeout was over.

  Jo and I left the storage facility and crossed the street to a transit center parking lot where the white van was parked.

  Sanders and the two FBI agents stepped from the rear door as we approached. The looks on their faces matched the disgust and anger in mine.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “They were a no-show,” Russo said. “It happens sometimes.”

  “I know they were a no-show, Russo,” I said. “Why is what I want
to know.”

  “Do you think they knew it was a trap?” Jo asked.

  Russo mulled that over, then shook his head. “I don’t think so. John, what do you think?”

  “I don’t see how,” Fryer said. “Not unless there was a leak.”

  Both FBI agents looked at Sanders.

  “What the fuck you looking at?” Sanders said. “If there was a leak, it was on your side. You got how many people working this case besides you two? Customs has one—me. And I didn’t leak anything.”

  “Oh, my god,” Jo whispered.

  We all looked at her. “What?” I said.

  Jo shook her head and swallowed hard.

  “I forgot,” she said. “I completely forgot.”

  “What?” I said again.

  “World-Wide has an electronic surveillance department,” she said. “They don’t only do surveillance, they do counter-surveillance.”

  “You mean they sweep for listening devices,” Russo said.

  Jo nodded. “And they regularly sweep the World-Wide building for bugs.”

  Russo threw his arms up and did a small three-sixty. Fryer and Sanders both sighed and shook their heads. A groan came from the technician still in the van.

  “That’s just great,” Russo said. “That’s just goddamn great.”

  “What?” I asked. My vocabulary seemed to have become very limited.

  “They may have picked up the transmission from the wire you wore when we met MacIntosh and the others,” Jo said. “They would realize you were bugged and that tonight’s meeting was a set up.”

  It was my turn to sigh and shake my head.

  “So, it’s over,” I said to Russo. “They know about us. You can’t use us anymore as bait.”

  Russo looked at me a long time, then at Fryer, his mouth twisting and puckering the whole time.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said. “Maybe. Or maybe we can salvage something from this. They still want the gold. They need the gold. Maybe we can still work with that.”

  “But they know now that Jo and I are working with the feds, or at least the local PD,” I said.

  “Maybe not,” said the techie in the van. Everyone turned toward him as he leaned out the door. He was short, with shaggy hair and big glasses. “All they know is one of you was wearing a wire. That doesn’t necessarily mean they know who the wire was beaming its transmission to.”

  Jo caught on right away.

  “They know my background in the army and at World-Wide,” she said. “They know I’ve done my share of bugging and wiring. They might think I wired one of us up so we could record the meeting for whatever reason.”

  “Like maybe you were out for revenge for killing your husband,” Russo said. He worked his mouth again as he considered the possibilities. “We’d have to give them reason to think that.”

  “Well,” said the technician, “if I were them—and thinking as a surveillance tech, which I am—I’d mount a counter-surveillance on Mr. Brandt and Miss Rice.”

  “In other words,” Russo said to Jo and me, “while we’ve been freezing our asses off out here tonight, World-Wide and friends have probably been bugging your houses.”

  My first thought was about Jack.

  “Jack! What if they’ve hurt Jack?”

  “Who’s Jack?” Russo said.

  “My cat.”

  “Your cat?” Russo snickered. “Are you kidding me? You’re worried about a goddamn cat?”

  “That cat saved my life the other night, agent,” Jo said. “And I’m worried about him, too.”

  “Don’t worry about the cat, ma’am,” the technician said. “With today’s electronics, they don’t have to get inside your home. They can place bugs on the outside of your windows, or even aim a directional mic at your house from inside a van like this one.”

  “How can we be sure if they’ve bugged their homes?” Sanders said.

  “We set up a counter-surveillance—or a counter-counter-surveillance, if you will,” the tech said. “If they’re transmitting, we scan the frequencies until we isolate those they’re transmitting on. If they’re using a directional mic, it shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  Russo paced around the van, his right hand tugging at his chin. He came back to the rear door and said, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.”

  CHAPTER 33

  I PACED THE FRONT room like an angry tiger trapped in a cage. That wasn’t surprising. I felt trapped by this FBI sting. I didn’t enjoy being used as bait; I enjoyed Jo being used that way even less. I didn’t trust Russo and Fryer. The FBI was well-known for leaving helpful citizens high and dry if it suited the agency’s agenda. I knew Sanders a little better, but only a little. While I didn’t think he’d screw Jo and me the way I suspected Russo and Fryer would, I still found it hard to have warm and fuzzy feelings about him.

  “You’re wearing a hole in the carpet, Peter,” Jo said. She sat on the sofa with Jack on her lap, stroking his fur. “Why don’t you make us a couple drinks?”

  “Fine,” I snapped, and went into the kitchen for glasses and a bottle of Scotch. I made the drinks, handed one to Jo, then started pacing again.

  My earpiece squealed, then I heard Russo’s voice.

  “You’re on the air,” he said. “We’ve isolated three separate transmission frequencies coming from your house, Brandt. That means they’ve got three devices, probably attached to windows in separate rooms.”

  I turned toward Jo. She had stopped petting Jack, much to his annoyance, and held one finger against her right ear. She looked at me and nodded. I reached for the small encrypted radio clipped to my belt and pressed the push-to-talk button twice which sent a double squeal to Russo acknowledging his report.

  Time to put on our show.

  “I can’t help being nervous,” I said. “We shot our wad. I think we should just take the gold and run.”

  Jack nudged Jo’s hand, encouraging her to resume petting him. She obliged.

  “I don’t care about the gold,” she said. “They killed Frank. I want them to pay for that.”

  “Revenge for a husband you didn’t love?” I said. “Where’s the sense in that?”

  “It doesn’t matter whether or not I loved him,” Jo said, rolling her eyes. “He was still my husband. When someone kills your husband, a wife has to do something about it.”

  We worked without a script, just improvising on ideas suggested by Russo. Still, there was something familiar in Jo’s words. I recognized them, smiled, and said, “Who do you think you are, Jo? Sam Spade in ‘The Maltese Falcon’?”

  Jo stifled a laugh and held up a thumb.

  “This isn’t the movies, Jo,” I continued. “You saw what they did to Frank. There’s no reason they wouldn’t do the same to us.”

  “Enough!” Jo said sharply. She stood, kissed Jack before placing him on the couch, then picked up her handbag. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

  “Where are you going?” I said, mustering an angry edge to my voice.

  She removed her earpiece and its transceiver and stuffed them in her purse. “Home,” she said.

  “Fine,” I replied.

  Jo smiled, then gave me a quick kiss on the lips.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said. “If you still have any guts.”

  She walked out the door and down the path to the sidewalk with a visibly irritated step. I watched her disappear into the early morning darkness as fear and despair clenched my chest. Then the earpiece squealed again.

  “Nicely done,” Russo said. “I just may nominate you both for an Academy Award.”

  I took out the earpiece, which doubled as a microphone, and cupped it close to my mouth.

  “Screw you, Russo,” I whispered.

  ☼

  I spent the rest of the night tossing and turning in my bed, so much so Jack smacked me with his paw for disturbing his own slumber. I gave up on sleep, got up, and fed Jack. After showering, I made breakfast and fed Jack again. I sat at the
computer and reviewed notes for the book I was writing. At least I looked at my notes; I don’t remember anything they said. My mind reeled with images of the dangers Jo faced. So, I gave up on the book, too, and paced again.

  Around nine o’clock there was a knock at the door. Before answering, I went into the bedroom and pocketed my .25 auto. It was Dick Sanders. His clothes looked as if he slept in them, but his red-blotched eyes and the dark circles beneath them said he hadn’t slept at all. His blanched face and the nervous tick of his mouth told me something had gone wrong.

  “What?” I demanded.

  Sanders motioned me out the door. I stepped out onto the porch and followed him to the driveway.

  “They may still have your house bugged. We don’t know,” he said, his voice dull and with none of the New York bravado it usually carried. “It’s about your girlfriend, Brandt. She’s disappeared.”

  I tried to say, “What’s that mean,” but managed only a choked croak.

  “We had people following her as she left here as planned,” Sanders continued. “There was an accident on the freeway going north and traffic backed up. Jo managed to get into the right lane and drove along the shoulder to the next exit. Our people weren’t as quick as she was. By the time they got off the freeway, she was gone.”

  I grabbed Sanders by his coat lapels. “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

  Sanders swept his arms up between mine and broke my grip, then stepped away. “She got too far ahead. Her tag team couldn’t locate her. No one was worried at first. We figured she’d just go home and we’d pick her up there. But the surveillance team we had on her house said she never arrived.”

  Sanders paced a small circle, shaking his head.

  “We scoured the area and found her car about three blocks from her house,” he said. “It was empty, left in the middle of the street with the driver door open and the engine still running. Her purse was still inside. They must’ve grabbed her, Brandt. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? What the hell do you mean you’re sorry?” I was nearly screaming. “You’ve got to find her. What the hell are you doing to find her?”