140914383X

by Raymond Khoury

  “The two of you, get your butts out to Reilly’s house,” Gallo barked at him and Deutsch as he concluded the debriefing. “I don’t want to see you back here unless he’s with you. Preferably with him wearing the handcuffs this time.”

  It was understandable that the last thing Lendowski needed right now was to have another bodily orifice drilled into him. But it was unavoidable. Failing to make the call would only make things worse.

  As they stepped out of the elevator and made their way to the garage, he told Deutsch, “I’ll see you down there in a minute. I need to use the john.”

  He watched her disappear out of the lobby, angled away from the flow of people coming in and out of the building, then pulled out his replacement BlackBerry and dialed the number.

  The familiar voice picked up after four rings. “Congratulations,” the man said, his dry tone heavy with sarcasm.

  “Fuck off,” Lendowski replied.

  “Oh, feeling a bit precious, are we?”

  “He got the jump on me,” the agent spat back. “It wouldn’t have happened if that useless bitch they’ve got me with knew what she was doing.”

  “The thing is, it did happen, and I need to know what’s being done about it.”

  “We’re going to stake out his house, but he won’t show, of course. He’s not that dumb.”

  “A fair assumption.”

  “We’re up on his cell, but he’s not going to use it. We’re putting up a van outside their house as we speak, in case he makes contact some other way.”

  “No all points then?”

  “No.”

  This seemed to please the man. He said, “They want to keep it under wraps.”

  “Seems that way,” Lendowski replied. “Not that it makes any fucking sense. We should have every last pair of eyes looking for his mug out there. Must have been those two Agency dickheads’ doing.”

  “I’m sure your boss’s bosses don’t want this hitting the news channels either. It’s not exactly something you want to advertise. You should be grateful for that. You’d be the one on center stage.”

  The comment didn’t pass unnoticed. The man had never said who he was working for, but he seemed well in tune with the community’s internal politics. “You think I give a shit?” Lendowski countered. “I just want to see that dickhead locked up.”

  “In one piece?”

  The question caught the agent out. He paused, wondering about that. “I’m easy on that one.”

  “All right. You’d better get out there. How long’s your shift?”

  “Open-ended,” Lendowski said with a self-mocking grunt.

  “Find him,” the voice said. “And let me know the second you do.”

  Deutsch waited for Tess to pick up her phone while keeping an eye on the garage elevator.

  “Come on,” she whispered. “Pick up!”

  It wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have with Lendowski anywhere near her.

  Tess picked up.

  “Tess? Annie Deutsch. Can you talk?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “So you haven’t heard from him yet?” Deutsch asked, listening carefully for clues in the response.

  She thought she heard a sharp little intake of breath in the brief pause before Tess answered.

  “Heard from Sean? What do you mean?”

  “He gave us the slip last night.”

  The intake, and the break, were more significant.

  “How?”

  Deutsch wondered about that question. Was Tess Chaykin genuinely surprised? Or was she just playing the part? Given what she knew about Tess, given what she knew about what she and Reilly had been through, it wouldn’t surprise her if Tess had something to do with his escape. She’s been to see him, after all—although under Deutsch’s supervision. It would reflect even worse on Deutsch, she knew, if Tess had used that meet to somehow help Reilly pull it off.

  She filled Tess in on what happened, briefly, then, aware that Lendowski might appear at any moment, got down to the reason for her call.

  “He’s going to call you, Tess. You know it and I know it. Somehow, he’s going to make contact. And I can’t stress enough how important it is that you do the right thing here. You need to try to convince him to hand himself in—”

  “You know he’s never going to do that,” Tess interjected.

  “I know. But you have to try. Hard. And you have to be seen to be trying, Tess. We’re talking aiding, abetting—you know the drill. I want to keep him safe. But I want to keep you safe too. I also want you to put me in touch with him. Just me. Tell him to call me. Give me a chance to talk to him, see what he wants. Maybe broker a deal for him to come in. Will you do that for me?”

  Standing by the counter in the kitchen of her house in Mamaroneck, Tess went quiet as she chewed over Deutsch’s words.

  “I can tell him,” she finally offered. “I don’t think it’ll do much good.”

  “You have to try,” Deutsch said. “Please. For his sake. Get him to talk to me.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Good. You have my number.”

  After she ended the call, Tess steadied herself against the counter. She felt a dizzying cocktail of elation and dread as the ramifications of what had happened sank in.

  Reilly was out. He was free again, which, on its own and unencumbered by the bigger picture, was a huge relief—only the bigger picture was massively worrying. He was a fugitive, a suspected murderer, with all the considerable resources of law enforcement on his trail.

  Her legs felt like she’d just run a marathon, but she still found herself padding through to the front of the house and tilting the slats of the plantation-style shutters so she could peer out the living room window at the street outside.

  It was quiet. This early in the morning, especially on a crisp cold day like today, was when Westchester County was—for her—at its peaceful best. She took in the deserted lane, quite a change from the ERT circus it had hosted the day before. Stalwart patches of snow dotted the front lawn while a thin dusting of it clung obstinately to the bare branches of the big oak tree by the driveway.

  The surveillance team was, no doubt, on their way.

  She stood there in silence, enjoying the calm before the storm. The kids and Tess’s mom were asleep—no school on Saturday—blissfully unaware of the drama the day would inevitably bring. She’d need to tell them, of course; she’d need to look at their faces and watch as each word she uttered chipped away at their innocence and replaced it with fear and worry.

  As she watched a lone starling hop along a low branch, she became aware of a ball of anger inside her gut, and she could feel it growing at an alarming rate no matter how tightly she tried to subdue it.

  The anger she was fighting right now felt oddly similar to what she had experienced when her marriage to Doug—Kim’s father—had first begun to unravel, even before the inevitability of his subsequent affair and the divorce that quickly followed. You didn’t need your partner to screw someone else in order to feel betrayed, and the way she felt about Reilly’s total inability to let go of the past, or at least be honest with her about the intensity with which it was consuming him, was uncomfortably mirroring how she’d felt about Doug, back when she still cared.

  It was a bizarre irony of human nature that only love could underpin such extreme feelings of anger and betrayal, and that was the big difference in the two situations. By the time she found out about Doug’s affair, she had already fallen out of love with him, his deception simply providing the end of a chapter and the promise of new horizons, rather than the beginning of a chapter filled with circular resentment and claustrophobic bitterness. This was very different. Despite the anger, she was more in love with Reilly than ever, which only made all the conflicting feelings churning inside her harder to calm.

  She wondered where he was, how he was doing, and what he was thinking right now.

  Yes, he’d definitely be in touch.

  And she cou
ldn’t wait to see him.

  27

  By the time I first became aware of a semblance of daylight around me, I had no idea where I was or what time of day it was. All I knew was that I was shivering. A lot.

  I had the vague, disturbing conviction that I was in the cellar of El Brujo’s hacienda in Mexico, where I’d been held and force-fed a drug that was meant to extinguish my soul for all of eternity. That was quickly dismissed in favor of our house in Mamaroneck and then for my old bachelor pad in the city. My mind—struggling for handholds on a sheer climb—finally settled on a West Hollywood hotel room in which I’d spent two weeks the summer I turned nineteen. I’d taken a Greyhound to Los Angeles and, within a few hours of arriving, I’d been struck down by a flu that was so virulent that I’d had to find myself a bed and spent all the money I’d saved for three months in California on two weeks in the Econo Lodge on Vine. I barely ate for a week and couldn’t move for almost ten days. A pretty young Mexican maid named Rosita had taken pity on the poor sick guy from Chicago, checking on me at the beginning and end of every shift to ensure I was still alive and bringing me bottles of water and left-behind pizza slices. When my fever finally broke, I was so exhausted that I’d had to spend another three days in the hotel recuperating. Finally feeling well enough to venture out, I’d summoned up the courage to ask Rosita to dinner. She’d smiled kindly and told me she was engaged, though still waiting for her betrothed to save up for the ring she’d chosen.

  I’d had enough dollars left to catch a Metro bus to the Greyhound terminal, from where I took the first bus back east.

  My mother never asked what had happened and I’d never shared it with her. Instead, I got a summer job as a clerk at the Forty-second Precinct of the Chicago Police Department before moving to Indiana to begin my law studies at Notre Dame.

  As I lay there between sleep and waking, feeling nineteen but knowing I’d traveled a very long way from who I was back then, it struck me that even though I rarely thought of that connection, those three months on Addison were probably instrumental in my later decision to apply to the Bureau. There was something about the camaraderie and sense of moral purpose at the precinct that was deeply satisfying, the idea that not only could you intend to make a difference—however small—but that you actually could make society a better and safer place.

  As the Bureau came into my head, so did everything else. Clarity gradually seeped back into my mind and my surroundings fell into focus. I wasn’t at the hacienda or chewing on leftover pizza. I was curled up on myself in the car I’d stolen, wrapped up in Lendowski’s parka and using his suit as a makeshift blanket, and I realized that the shivering was simply from the cold, which was reaching me with little resistance since I’d smashed one of the car’s windows. I rubbed my arms as I tilted myself up, slowly, hesitantly, my eyes stinging, my fingertips buzzing with a mild electrical current, my head pounding like someone had pimped out my skull with a subwoofer.

  I’d never taken psychedelics like LSD or any hard drugs for that matter, so I didn’t know if I was experiencing a normal comedown. If it was, I couldn’t imagine how people actually got a kick from doing these kinds of psychoactive drugs. The endless, mind-numbing all-nighters we’d pulled last week outside Daland’s place were suddenly a fond, idyllic memory by comparison.

  I stepped out of the Caprice and looked around. I realized I was in the East Village, on Third Street, close to its intersection with Avenue C. I needed to get something hot inside me, ideally something loaded with caffeine. I pulled up the collar on Lendowski’s parka, then remembered it said FBI on its front breast pocket and across its back, so I quickly shrugged it off, turned it inside out, and pulled it back on. A couple of minutes later, I was basking in the warmth of a small coffee shop, my hands toasting on a big mug of heaven. Each sip seemed to jump-start a bundle of neurons in my frazzled brain, and once the egg platter started working its magic, I was starting to think maybe I’d got away with this. My body seemed to have ducked any permanent damage from the drug, though it would take years before I’d know for sure if my mind was as lucky. For now, at least, I was a reasonably sentient being once again. Which wasn’t ideal, given that the events of last night, and the bigger picture, came galloping back. I think I might have preferred to stay in wonderland.

  I needed to get in touch with Tess, let her know I was OK. I also needed her to help me with a couple of things, but I had to figure out how to contact her safely. I was sure the Bureau would have a Stingray van parked outside the house, and besides not wanting to be caught, I didn’t want to get her into trouble. I thought about it while I worked on a second mug of coffee, then came up with what I thought was a halfway decent plan. I’d need to buy myself a cheap phone and a couple of prepaid SIM cards.

  To say my options were narrow would be a gross understatement, but while I was still out and alive, I figured I had an advantage. I already knew more about Corrigan than made him comfortable and there was a good chance that thanks to Kurt or Kirby or my elusive deep throat, I might have some information I was as yet unaware of—information he didn’t want me to have. I thought of Kurt and how all his paranoid fieldcraft suddenly seemed not quite so crazy. In fact, along with my unwillingness to share any details with Tess, it had probably saved his—and Gigi’s—life.

  On the other hand, I wondered if it had all cost Nick his life. The thought hit me like a black hole of sadness, consuming me from the inside. I raised my mug slightly and gave my dead buddy a silent toast.

  “I’m sorry,” I said under my breath.

  As I set the mug down and stared into its murkiness, one thing was clear. There was no way I was going to prove that I was innocent. Not without signed confessions from the perpetrators. My only course of action was to find the man pulling the strings and secure evidence that I’d been framed.

  I nodded to myself, slowly. Nothing had changed when it came to the big picture. It was still brutally simple.

  I had to find Corrigan.

  Sandman ground over the curious text message as he stared at himself in the mirror while he shaved.

  He’d spent the night at a hotel, thinking he would take the time to recharge. He’d been on the go ever since the whole affair had gone into overdrive: flying up to Boston to take care of the doc, then back to the city to pick up Reilly’s trail at Times Square, following him down to DC and on to Kirby’s, then the altercation at the CIA analyst’s house after which he’d lost Reilly. He’d spent a sleepless night staking out the agent’s home, only to then discover the agent had turned up in FBI custody. Shortly after, however, he’d had to take care of the agent’s partner but failed to retrieve the laptop. He’d welcomed the night’s break to have a shower, a decent meal, and a hard think about what his next move would be, knowing Reilly was locked away in federal custody and beyond his reach.

  And then the encrypted message had come in, informing him Reilly had escaped.

  Kudos, he thought. Impressive move, all the more since Sandman still didn’t know how Reilly had managed to pull it off. The information he’d received was still sketchy—Reilly had somehow faked being sick convincingly enough to be taken to a hospital.

  Sandman wondered if Reilly had had inside help. He’d need to look into it, find out who had been escorting him at the time of his escape. Perhaps that thread might lead back to Reilly now that he was in the wind—if the thread that had popped up on his screen in the form of a cryptic text message didn’t pan out, a text message that had been sent to Tess Chaykin’s iPhone and snagged by the Stingray van that was now parked near Reilly and Chaykin’s house.

  The FBI had been using Stingray technology for years. The system, which mimics a cell phone tower, was fitted inside an unmarked van and was able to pinpoint the exact location of all mobile devices within its range and intercept all conversations and data coming in and out of any targeted phone. The Bureau didn’t need a wire tapping warrant to deploy Stingray; instead, they used it under the authority of “pen regis
ter” orders—otherwise known as “tap and trace” orders—which were very easily granted by the courts since they only required “probable cause” under the Fourth Amendment. These orders were only supposed to allow investigators to collect metadata such as a list of the numbers communicating with a suspect’s phone. The fact that Stingray could also eavesdrop on conversations and read message traffic was an innocent, but fortunate, bonus.

  The SMS had come in from a throwaway and the SIM was no longer in use. It didn’t have a history to mine, either. It had come to life for less than a minute, just enough time to type in Chaykin’s phone number, add in the short message, and hit send. The SIM would be under heavy watch, but it was pretty evident to Sandman that it would never be used again.

  The meaning of the message, on the other hand, was far from evident.

  I’M OUT AND OK. NEED U TO BRING SURV PACK. TONIGHT @ MONASTERY

  Sandman was intrigued.

  Surely Reilly had to know Chaykin’s phone would be under watch, her SMS messages monitored? And asking her to bring him his “survival pack” would risk getting her picked up and charged—assuming they could prove that she knew the message came from him and that she actually met up with him.

  The question was: what did Reilly mean? Where was he telling Tess Chaykin to come meet him?

  The FBI team watching the house was still working on figuring it out, but so far they didn’t have a conclusive answer. It was too vague and could refer to too many places. It wasn’t a priority for them anyway. All they’d need to do was follow Chaykin when she left the house. She’d lead them straight to Reilly.