Will no longer felt tough. A knife? The thought of a blade puncturing his body until he quit breathing? The limo driver’s screams displaced everything in his head. He could hear the man begging, then screaming in rhythm with Will’s boots as he ran across the field of rank grass and horse pies.
That’s when he noticed the headlights: a car beyond the ridge, invisible until it crested the hill, its lights now teetering downhill, illuminating poles and gravel road, dust boiling behind as it accelerated toward the ranch house-a black Chrysler.
The Cubans.
Will ran harder, still favoring his rib, not sure if he could get to the house and bang on the door before the Cubans turned in to the driveway
Should he keep running or hide?
Will was thinking, It’s going to be close.
8
At midnight, I heard Barbara Hayes-Sorrento’s fingernails on my door. I checked the peephole, then flipped the bolt.
The woman said, “What a night,” as she slipped into the room, nodding over her shoulder to someone in the hall. I got a glimpse of her chief of staff, his face illustrating patient disapproval. Maybe because he recognized me, he rolled his eyes: I can’t control her.
I knew better than to try, not just because Barbara was a political star. Women perfect the subtleties of control-how to deflect, when to pressure-long before the small percentage of males who finally understand that control is acquired through skillful restraint, not won through confrontation.
“Were you asleep?” Barbara’s shoulder brushed my ribs as she passed me, and I felt her tremble as I turned the dead bolt.
I said, “I was on the computer.” I didn’t add that a car was picking me up in five hours. Harrington had arranged a direct flight to the municipal airport in Fort Myers.
“If I’m interrupting, I can-”
“No,” I told her, “I was researching the kid’s background. I found the place where he grew up. It was in Oklahoma. The reservation’s not as bad as some. And the little town, Wewoka?-I’m not sure how to pronounce it-it looks like a nice place. A good high school rodeo team.”
We were in the room where I’d used the phone earlier. I had spoken with Harrington again, twice. It was a room, not a suite. I slipped my arm into Barbara’s and led her to the desk where my laptop was open, the lights of neighboring offices showing through the window, snow crested on the windowsill.
I wore Navy-issue swim shorts, khaki with brass rings for a buckle, no shirt and wire-rimmed glasses tied around my neck on fishing line as always. She was in the same business suit she’d worn at the briefing, the charcoal jacket on but not buttoned. It gave the impression she wasn’t going to stay. Or that she had stopped, hoping I would invite her to come back after she had showered and changed.
Gesturing to my computer, I said, “The boy’s foster parents, Otto and Ruth Guttersen, right?”
“They’re not adopting, it’s temporary. He’s been in Minnesota for eighteen months.”
“Otto Guttersen-there can’t be many guys with that name-he was a pro wrestler. Not real wrestling, the soap opera stuff. Ten years on the Great Lakes circuit, shows in Minneapolis, Keokuk, Cleveland, Davenport. Small-time. Take a look.”
Barbara was sitting at the desk. I leaned over her to retrieve a fifteen-year-old photo from the St. Paul Pioneer. A wide-bodied man, overstuffed in his hairless body, biceps and big belly flexed, showing the camera a crazed grin. He wore chaps, boots with spurs and a black cowboy hat. The caption read, “Outlaw Bull Gutter vs. Bobo Godzilla Tonight, Civic Auditorium.” I said, “Minnesota has cowboys, too.”
Sounding weary, Barbara laughed. “An Indian kid living with a make-believe cowboy… I don’t know if it’s sad or funny.”
“Ironic anyway.”
“Or maybe it’s worked out. Half an hour it took us, from the airport to Midtown, and Will hardly said a word. But he took off his hat when we met. Shy but polite, you know? ‘Very nice to meet you, ma’am.’ That type. And he loved riding in a limo. But I could tell he was… different, somehow.”
“Oh?”
“I expected a scholar, I guess. A nerd with glasses… No offense.”
I said, “None taken,” thinking about the kid’s vocabulary.
“Maybe I understand now, one foster home after another. Tonight, he was reserved because he was overwhelmed-flying in at night, his first look at New York City, skyscrapers and all those lights. But he loosened up by the time we got to the Explorers Club. In fact, he asked if I wanted to get together later for a drink.”
“An adolescent boy?”
“That’s what I’m saying. It was unexpected. A boy without a male role model. No one permanent anyway. Maybe thinking that’s what men in the big city say to women. A line he heard in a movie.”
“Have a drink, as in have a drink -coming on to you?”
She shook her head. “Of course not. At fourteen? He was trying to fit in. His whole life, Will has probably been trying to fit in. Dressing like a cowboy after a year with Outlaw Bull Gutter. He wears whatever costume it takes.”
I was thinking twelve years on an Oklahoma reservation was a more likely explanation as I opened the courtesy bar. “I have bottled water, beer… wine, too. But I might have to call room service for a corkscrew…”
Barbara said, “No need to do that for me,” meaning the shirt I’d grabbed, not the corkscrew. Her staff had delivered my things from the Explorers Club and my hotel.
I put the shirt on anyway but left it unbuttoned, as the woman said, “Let’s talk about this,” then explained that one glass of wine wouldn’t help. It was impossible to sleep after what had happened.
“When I’m this wired, there are only a couple of things that relax me. But I have to be with someone I can trust.”
I didn’t know what that meant. Because she saw me look at the clock radio, she added, “Plus, there’s something personal I’d like to discuss.”
I’d hoped to get five hours of sleep, but maybe the car Harrington was sending would be late.
I said, “Anything you want.”
She said, “Don’t volunteer before you know the mission,” a line she’d probably heard at some military briefing, giving it an inflection that made me think, Uh-oh! “I’ll be back in a minute.”
I was buttoning my shirt as she went out the door.
Now she was sitting at the desk, sipping wine from a water tumbler, a half-empty bottle of red next to my laptop. She had closed the computer and rearranged the desk before using the corkscrew-a woman accustomed to taking charge.
She was wearing jeans and a green denim blouse, no makeup, her hair still wet from the shower. Barefoot, I noticed, as if she’d dressed in a rush, the emotional overload showing. I sat and listened, hoping she would burn adrenaline by talking.
The boy wasn’t the only thing on her mind.
Her in-laws were flying in from Chicago, she told me. She was talking about her late husband’s parents. Favar Sorrento had been an entertainment mogul before he went into politics and married Barbara, a TV anchor who was twenty-five years younger than the wife he’d just divorced.
Barbara said, “His mother’s bearable in a passive-aggressive sort of way, but the father’s a bastard. He’s old-school Castilian Spanish. Left Havana just before Castro took power and still thinks a woman’s place is on her back when she’s wearing shoes and in the kitchen when she’s not.” The woman folded her hands behind her head and leaned back in the chair. “When Favar was alive, Favar Senior tried to undermine my influence in every imaginable way. Now he tries to take advantage of my influence in ways you can’t imagine. He still treats me like a brainless trophy wife. Like the only reason I won the election is because I’m his dead son’s proxy. Next election, I finally drop the hyphen and the Sorrento and run under my own name.”
Mostly, though, Barbara was awake because she was worried about the boy. I stood, took the wine bottle and filled her glass, watching her nervous hands as she drank, her gray-green eye
s showing more color when she turned from the window, saturated with light from the desk lamp. It was touching listening to her fret about a boy she barely knew. She had collected a lot of background and shared it with a harried energy that was symptomatic of guilt.
“Every time I close my eyes, I feel like I can’t get enough air. Like it’s me inside that coffin. When the agent described the convict shoveling dirt, the girl hysterical inside the box… my God, that’s what happens when I start to drift off. I hear dirt hitting the lid”-she touched the palm of her hand to her nose-“this close to my face. God!”
She stood, too agitated to sit, and began to pace and talk.
Her staff still had a hell of a lot to do and was working around the clock. Everything in the cartons the kidnappers wanted was being cataloged and copied. A team had been assigned to arrange for a plane and crew to deliver the cartons-through the military or State Department possibly-hoping Barbara could convince her committee, along with other layers of government, to cooperate with the kidnappers.
“They have to,” she said, but in a wistful way that told me she knew it wasn’t true. “God damn them! They wanted me! Why did they have to take a fourteen-year-old boy?”
I stood and took her hands in mine. Held her, trying to stem an escalating panic that signaled hysteria. “Maybe someone on your staff has a sleeping pill or something. You need rest.”
I was startled by an unexpected mood change. Barbara yanked her hands free and turned her back.
“Are you okay?”
“Ford, I need to ask you something. I want an honest answer.”
“I’ll try.”
“I was hoping for a yes.”
“A maybe is better than starting with a lie.”
“If that’s the way it has to be… The vacation video they were using to blackmail me… you said you discovered it accidentally?”
“Not accidentally. But it wasn’t a priority. I knew there were videos of other people, some powerful.”
“You said you took it because it was the right thing to do. A good deed for a stranger. You wouldn’t accept money and didn’t want anything in return from me.”
I hesitated before putting a hand on her shoulder, thinking she might shrug it away. She didn’t.
I said, “All true. But I was aware there are benefits to having a U.S. senator for a friend. Power radiates. I won’t pretend I didn’t know. You’ve done favors for me that you probably aren’t aware of.”
That’s when she shrugged my hand away. I let it fall from her shoulder as she turned, looking up into my eyes. “I’m aware of more than you realize. Did you know that James Montbard is a British intelligence agent? Covert. He’s been with MI6 for years.”
“I didn’t think the UK was our enemy.”
“If you’re going to play word games, I’m leaving.”
I took a step back. “I’m sorry.” I meant it. Then stupidly tried to add, “But I wasn’t sure that Hooker was-”
The woman cut me off. “If you can’t tell the truth, I’d prefer you said nothing.”
I cleared my throat, said nothing.
Barbara faced the window, the reflection showing her eyes as she stared out, the night air cleaner now that it had stopped snowing. “What about Harrington?”
“You see him more than I do. What are you asking?”
I took a seat on the bed, with a bottle of water, as she said, “I’m curious about your relationship,” then explained that her subcommittee relied on Harrington for information. He was a respected analyst in the world of intelligence gathering-also true. She didn’t know, of course, it provided the perfect cover for Harrington’s covert work.
Barbara said, “When I wanted you checked out, Hal was the person I asked. He gave you full marks. Do you know what strikes me as odd?”
She wasn’t going to wait for an answer so I didn’t offer one.
“I find it odd that you and Montbard, and Harrington, are all here, in New York, the same week I agreed to meet the boy. And only a few days after the court assigned control of the Castro Files to me. My subcommittee, I mean.”
She cut me off when I tried to remind her that we’d made our date weeks before.
“I also find it strange that you know each other. Some might even say that you and Montbard made an effort to ingratiate yourselves. Returning the video, for instance. A coincidence?”
I was tempted to comment on the egocentric slip- my subcommittee- but said instead, “Or saving your life? If that’s currying favor, your friendship bar is pretty high.”
“You know I didn’t mean that.”
“I know you’re making too much of it. Tomlinson’s lecture was booked months ago. When Hooker found out, he decided to visit the Explorers Club while I was in town instead of coming in March. Seeing you was a nice perk, but-”
“Tomlinson,” she said, “is someone else I find oddly suspicious.”
I said, “Who doesn’t?,” unsettled that she’d made the connection, hoping she would smile. She didn’t.
Instead, she got out of the chair, sighing as she stood over me, communicating something-disappointment? suspicion?-then went to the phone on the nightstand. She opened the drawer and took out a palm-sized tape recorder. Surprise! I overcame the urge to sit up straighter.
“This is voice-activated, a common security measure for rooms I book and pay for. When Sir James said he needed a phone, I gave him the key. Have you ever felt like someone is spying on you?”
“As of now.”
“Good. I want you know what it’s like.” Barbara hit FAST REVERSE and waited for the garbled voices to stop. “I haven’t listened yet. Your call, Doc. Should I? You know things about me no one else knows. I find that scary.”
She tossed the recorder onto the bed, stared at me. “Is there something in the Castro Files that scares you? I’ve had a look through those cartons, remember.”
I cleared my throat again.
She sighed, this time communicating I thought so, then sat on the bed close enough to put her hand on my arm but didn’t. I hadn’t earned her approval. “I’ve heard rumors about a covert cell that’s more like a secret society. Clandestino, in Spanish. Wouldn’t that be filed under Cn? If it’s true, how many countries do you think would demand extradition? There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”
I was sitting straighter now, my brain alternately scanning a list of lawyers while reviewing an escape procedure put in place long ago.
Her voice softened but not her tone. “But that’s ancient history. The important thing, Doc, is that we work together. I don’t care what you’ve done or who you’ve worked for, I need your help now.”
I said, “What?,” not trusting the surge of relief I felt. She’d used the same finesse to manipulate the policewoman.
“You think I’m being tricky.”
“Aren’t you?”
“My motive is right up front. It’s an offer. Find Will Chaser. Find him alive and bring him back. I don’t give a goddamn what it takes. I’m halfway through my first term. Three years in a row, my staff expenses were way under budget. I can afford you.” She let that settle a few beats, then added, “Or would you rather barter?”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with-”
“I’m hiring you as a special consultant. At least twice a day, every day, you will report by phone. I’ll give you every piece of information my contacts provide.”
“But the FBI, the New York police-”
“They’ll do a brilliant job… but within the constraints of the law. The boy, if he’s still alive, doesn’t have time for legalities. You’re working for me now, understood?”
I was thinking, Jesus Christ, what about Harrington?
The woman swung her legs onto the bed and leaned in close enough that I could smell her shampoo. “When the FBI agent left the room to take that phone call, it was Ruth Guttersen, Will’s foster mother. Fifty-eight years old, a Minnesota native. Her husband may be a fake cowboy but sh
e’s pure Middle America. When the agent gave her the bad news, know what she said? She said, ‘God help them.’ Can you imagine? Worried about Will, but also the kidnappers, asking God to forgive them.” Barbara’s expression was a mix of admiration and remorse.
“In D.C., it’s easy to forget there are decent people out there. People who follow the rules, who keep their word, people who care even about the jerks of the earth. It’s the America I’d like to believe in, but I don’t. Did you read Will’s essay?”
Yes, the first two pages, but I shook my head no. The writing was feminine, flowery, tough to stomach because of its smug naivete.
“Mrs. Guttersen is only a foster parent, but the boy has the same values. He’s decent. A good kid.”
I was thinking of another way to interpret God help them. That Will Chaser was dangerous-which was ridiculous, unless Ruth Guttersen had somehow anticipated the wrath of Barbara Hayes-Sorrento.
Barbara was back on the subject of the men who’d attacked her, saying, “I don’t give a damn what you do to them. It’s your business as long as my name’s not involved. Bring the boy home, that’s all I care about.” She turned to the window, as if to say, Kill them-whatever-I don’t want to know.
I nodded slowly. Drained the last of my water, thinking about it. “No one can find out.”
The woman looked at me a moment, then smiled-a savvy, knowing smile. “We’ve got a deal.”
“Did you hear what I said? It never leaves this room.”
“There’s not much I don’t understand.” Her smile became recreational, signaling that she was done with business. “This could be the beginning of an interesting friendship. Maybe even beautiful. But I doubt if I’ll ever be able to call you Frenchy.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Don’t worry, Doc.” She stood and fished something from her pocket. A lighter and a cigarette. No… a joint, long and thin. “People like me-people who know what they want-we spend our lives hiding who we really are. You’re among the few who’ve seen the real me.”
“I never watched the video.” How many times had I told her?
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