140914383X

by Raymond Khoury

  I ended up back at the trendy eatery across the street from their apartment, with more time to think, mull, grind, process—though all it did was put me in an even worse mood than when I first sat down an hour earlier.

  Kurt had managed to hack into Rossetti’s home broadband connection and pull up his online search history. He’d put both documents on a small Vaio laptop that now sat on the table in front of me, goading me. I hadn’t yet taken a look. The coffee next to it—my third—was already stone cold, the life-altering cheesecake barely defaced. I’d been through everything in my mind, turning over each piece of information like it was part of some demonically unsolvable Rubik’s Cube, hoping that with each turn, something new would reveal itself.

  Nothing came. I had reached a dead end.

  Every stream of information had turned to ice. We had three guys who all seemed to be part of some CIA covert assassination unit, but they were now all dead. We had the deeply unsettling notion that my dad was part of that noble group. And we had Corrigan and Fullerton’s faces from thirty years ago, but no one who could ID them.

  All I could do was wait and see if someone in Daland’s underworld recognized either of them and stepped forward. Obviously, there was a strong chance that wouldn’t happen at all. Then what?

  Deflated, weary, and missing being home with my family—a lot—I powered up the laptop, clicked the browser open and pulled up Rossetti and his editor’s web histories that Kurt had put on it.

  They were long, running to several pages each. I suppose their careers made them use Google far more than your average Internet surfer.

  I was trawling through it when Theo, Gigi’s comedian-waiter friend, passed near me and noticed the untouched coffee. He pointed at it and said, “Call me psychic, but it seems to me like you’re ready for something with a bit more of a kick, right?”

  “What do you recommend?” I asked.

  He picked my cup up off the table. “My barman has this amazing Reposada tequila he brings in from Mexico. Guaranteed to push those demons away.”

  I wasn’t sure I was keen on the idea of a Mexican potion messing with my mind, not after my recent experiences down there, but I still said, “OK.” Then I asked him, “Any news on that audition?”

  His face beamed with pride, his crazy eyes taking on an even more manic look. “I got it. A bit part on Louie, can you believe it? I’ve got two small scenes with the man himself.”

  I nodded, bittersweet. “That’s terrific news, man. Terrific.”

  Things were clearly working out for Theo. Maybe I’d catch a break too.

  I halfheartedly dragged my eyes back at the screen to scan a second page of Rossetti’s web search history when three words skewered my attention:

  THE OCTOBER SURPRISE

  My spine went ramrod straight as I clicked on the link and started reading.

  Sandman eased himself soundlessly down the rope onto the small terrace at the back of the loft and quickly dropped to a crouch.

  It was cold enough for the insubstantial but steady fall of snow to accumulate where it landed. Already there was at least an inch covering everything that didn’t have traffic moving across it.

  He took a moment to let his eyes adjust to the low light emanating from inside the loft, scanning the interior for any signs of activity. He saw none. He crept up to the French doors and, with gloved hands, pulled against the handle gently. They weren’t locked, it being fair to assume that this high up there was little risk of any burglars gaining access that way. A stream of warm air hit him from inside the loft. Clearly, Miss Decker had no problem heating the huge space, given that both her checking and savings accounts had very healthy balances, and those were just the accounts in her name. Her sloth of a boyfriend seemed to have nabbed himself a pretty sweet catch.

  Something else was drifting out into the freezing cold. The unmistakable sound of a woman reaching her climax. Sandman smiled inwardly. This was going to make things even easier. For a brief moment, he wondered about what he could hear. Was it at all possible that Reilly was scoring with his hostess behind her boyfriend’s back? Unlikely. It had to be the costumed freaks that were at it. Which meant Reilly was elsewhere in the loft, if he was in at all.

  The visit to the nightclub had paid off, big time. He hadn’t needed CCTV footage to see them get into a taxi and have to trace the cab’s number to find out where he’d dropped them off. The floor manager he’d spoken to didn’t know who the guy in the blue cape was, but he knew Gigi Decker, who was a regular at the club and liked to splurge on good champagne. Sandman had left little doubt in the floor manager’s mind that any attempt to forewarn Miss Decker of his enquiries would incur the harshest of consequences.

  He slipped inside.

  The overhead lights were off. A couple of oversized standing lamps that were replicas of old Hollywood searchlights cast a dim, warm hue over the space. The painted floorboards creaked slightly as he moved carefully through the loft, but he knew it was highly unlikely the pair in the bedroom would hear anything.

  He focused his attention and ran it around the loft. The large living room was empty. Unless Reilly was asleep, he didn’t think the FBI agent or anyone else was around. He advanced further and found a small stack of clothes and personal possessions beside a neatly-made futon in one corner. They had to be Reilly’s, so his target was—as he’d surmised—out.

  Sandman systematically searched them for a sidearm and found the holdall with the Glocks in them. Which meant that Reilly had probably gone out unarmed. He hid them deep under the mattress and stepped back into the large space.

  As he reached the closed bedroom door, there was a shriek of such intensity that he had to hover for a moment until it subsided. They were both laughing now, the woman giggling hysterically like a teenager. There was no way either of them was going to offer any kind of defense.

  Sandman pulled out his handgun, suppressor already in place, turned the door handle and entered the bedroom.

  Jaegers saw him first, eyes immediately filling with unfiltered terror as he recoiled upright and back against the headboard.

  “Shit!”

  Decker followed the boyfriend’s alarmed look to Sandman and flinched, pulling the sheet up to cover her. “Kurt!”

  Sandman just stood there, knowing there was no benefit in stepping further into the room and offering one of them a target.

  “Get dressed. Move.”

  They both did, quickly. Jaegers pulled on a pair of dark green leather trousers and a matching hooded jerkin while the girl slipped on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, which got caught on the gold diadem in her hair. She let out an annoyed groan and reached up, disentangled her hair and finished pulling on the tee.

  Sandman waved his gun, herding them out of the room.

  “Let’s go.”

  He took a couple of steps back as Jaegers walked out of the bedroom first, obscuring the inside for the briefest of moments. The girl followed, holding out the diadem.

  “Here, you have it. It’s not fucking working anyway.”

  Just as Sandman instinctively stuck out his left hand to take the gold band, he knew she’d tricked him. The heavy lamp base she’d concealed behind her back under cover of Jaegers exiting the room was already arcing toward the side of his head. He moved fast, whipping his head away as the lamp slammed into his shoulder with surprising force, but before the pain hit him, he jabbed the butt of his gun into the girl’s head and sent her crashing to the floor.

  Jaegers was moving toward him—he’d spun around the second he heard the approach from behind—but Sandman was too quick, swinging his left elbow up and back into the guy’s face. He heard Jaegers’ nose break and the accompanying wail of agony as he turned and aimed a vicious kick just below the guy’s knee—not enough to break more bone, but enough to open up an additional well of excruciating pain.

  Jaegers bounced off the wall and crumpled to the floor.

  “Enough of this bullshit,” Sandman barked,
his gun leveled at the hacker’s head, his intention beyond doubt.

  Jaegers removed the blood-covered hands from his nose and held them up, palms out. “OK, OK. Just—please, don’t hurt her again.”

  His eyes, wide with fear and worry, bounced from Sandman to his girlfriend and back, then, hesitantly, his palms held open by his face, his lips quivering, his whole face pleading in silence for permission, he crawled over to Decker, slowly.

  “Gigi? Gigi!”

  She wasn’t moving.

  Sandman watched him lean in to listen to her breath, then turn to look at him. “She’s breathing,” he said, then he repeated it before he started to sob.

  Sandman looked down on him. “Can I take it you’re going to behave from here on?”

  Jaegers just nodded as he wiped the blood and the snot that were streaming out of his nostrils.

  51

  The October Surprise.

  I knew about it already, of course. Not just as a concept, but in terms of its most notorious occurrence—specifically, from the Reagan-Carter election year.

  1980.

  The expression referred to any major, unexpected news event that could—deliberately—affect the outcome of the presidential election, which takes place in early November. In the days before both the 1968 and 1972 elections, claims that the end of the war in Vietnam was in sight were used to boost popularity, but those were minor instances of it. The expression really referred to the conspiracy that was thought to have taken place in 1980 to secure Ronald Reagan’s defeat of the incumbent, Jimmy Carter.

  The facts were that, almost a year to the day before the election, fifty-two Americans had been taken hostage in Iran. This had been a major trauma for the nation and was on every voter’s mind. Heavy negotiations were ongoing to win their release, with the Carter administration correctly hoping for their own “October Surprise”: bringing the hostages home just before the election, which would provide an immense boost to Carter’s re-election prospects. The hostages weren’t released and Reagan won the election. They were eventually released, on the day of his inauguration. Not just on the day, but—literally—five minutes after Reagan took his oath of office.

  Suspicions soon arose of a secret arms-for-hostages deal brokered by Reagan’s men—a deal designed to delay the release of the hostages until after the election, to help ensure Carter’s defeat.

  The suspicions were dismissed until the Iran-Contra affair exploded five years later, during Reagan’s second term. It transpired that senior administration officials had arranged for Iran to secretly receive American weapons—an illegal act, given that it was subject to an arms embargo. Iran would pay for the weapons in two ways: in cash, which would then be funneled to the Contras in Nicaragua—another illegal act, given that funding the Contras had been banned by Congress—and in influencing the release of seven American hostages who were being held hostage in Lebanon.

  The Iran-Contra affair firmly established the links between the Reagan administration and the Iranians and underlined the former’s readiness to play dirty and break the law. This revived suspicions about what had happened during the 1980 campaign. After increased media scrutiny, both the Senate and Congress eventually held inquiries to look into the allegations. Both failed to produce an indictment. However, in the years since, several senior figures who were in positions of power at the time including Abulhassan Benisadr, the former President of Iran, Yitzhak Shamir, the former Israeli Prime Minister, and Barbara Honegger, a former Reagan campaign and White House staffer, have all confirmed the allegation.

  My mind raced back to my chat with Faye, my dad’s—I cringe at the word—mistress. What had she said? That she felt the whole country was under his watch, that he took it all to heart.

  Was there more to it than that?

  Was he aware of what was going on in the shadows? Was he fretting about getting the hostages out in time—and did he know about some dirty tricks that were going on behind the scenes?

  My dad was a registered Republican. He was a fan of Reagan’s. Which could mean he might have been killed to silence him about exposing the truth, if he’d found out about it and wanted to blow the whistle—or simply to keep him quiet, if he knew about it by virtue of being part of the dirty plot.

  I knew I was grasping at straws—but something felt right, like gears that had meshed into position and were now propelling my mind forward.

  I didn’t have much time to dwell on it, though. I was slamming back a shot of that tequila Theo brought me when my phone buzzed in my pocket.

  It was Kurt.

  Kurt sat with his back slumped against the bedroom wall. Gigi lay on the floor in front of him, still out cold. The intruder had bound them both with plastic cuffs, wrists and ankles, and had just finished ensuring there was nothing within reach that they could use to free themselves. Apart from a soft glow from the bedroom and some faint ambient light from outside, the loft was dark.

  His heart sank as he watched Gigi’s chest rise and fall slightly as she breathed. At least they were both still alive, he thought, which meant there was hope. Separate from the throbbing pain, which had spread across the center of his face, he felt a piercing ache in his chest so intense that he knew it had to be what people referred to as love. It had taken Gigi being cold-cocked into unconsciousness to trigger the feeling, but he knew exactly what it meant—he would do anything, anything at all, to keep her alive.

  The intruder stepped back, visibly satisfied that Kurt and Gigi were secure. “Reilly. Call him.”

  Even though he suspected it would be ultimately fruitless, he knew he had to try lying. “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The intruder let out a cold, dry chortle. “You really want to play it that way?”

  Kurt felt his chest cave in as the bastard just stared at him. “No,” he said meekly.

  “Good. Where’s your phone?”

  “I think—I’m not sure. Maybe in the bedroom?”

  The intruder walked off and disappeared out of view, leaving Kurt to try and focus his mind.

  He needed to buy some time. There was no way Reilly could help them unless he knew they were in trouble. Added to that, from what Reilly had told him and Gigi, the agent had already out-thought and out-gunned the sadistic motherfucker who held them captive. They’d helped Reilly at every turn, ignoring the risk to themselves. It was time for him to help them. But what if Reilly did come back? Wouldn’t the guy just get what he needed and kill all three of them anyway?

  The intruder was going to kill him and Gigi either way. And without them around to help Reilly, it was probably only a matter of time before he wound up dead himself. At least this way they had a chance, however small.

  The intruder appeared again, holding two phones. “Which one’s yours?”

  Kurt pointed it out.

  “It’s one half of a secure pair, right?” the man asked.

  “Yes. I hacked them. Reilly has the other.”

  “OK.” He held out the phone, but before Kurt could take it, the intruder held it just out of reach. He aimed the gun that was in his other hand straight at Kurt’s eyes. “Tell me exactly what you’re going to say.”

  “What am I going to say? ‘Reilly? It’s Kurt. We just got a hit. You need to get back here.’ That’s it.” Kurt said it without thinking, but as he said it, he knew it would work, even if it risked unraveling their plan to unmask Corrigan.

  That wasn’t the priority any more.

  “‘A hit?’ On what?”

  “We’ve been helping Reilly with something.” He hesitated, then added, “We posted a couple of mug shots on some forums. Asked if anyone knew them. We haven’t got anything back yet. And probably won’t. But that’s what he’s waiting for.”

  The bastard nodded to himself, then smiled. “You mean the sketches?”

  Kurt’s mouth went dry. They’d known all along that it was just as likely that an ex-CIA agent or asset who recognized Corrigan or Fullerton would wa
rn them as it was for someone with a grudge to give them up. There was little point in denying it.

  “Yes. But we haven’t had a hit.”

  “I know you haven’t,” the intruder said. “OK. Make the call”.

  “Reilly? This is Kurt.” He paused for a moment, then said, “We just got a hit. You need to get back here.”

  A rush of elation consumed me—then it was instantly flushed away by the feeling that a yawning chasm had blown open beneath me.

  Something was wrong.

  Very wrong.

  Kurt had never, ever referred to himself as Kurt in any of our communications. It was part of his extreme paranoia about the heavily surveilled world we lived in. He’d used Mrs. Takahashi, Cid Raines, Green Arrow, Snake of course, Crown Prince Arthas Menethil and even once, when he was particularly excited, Lord Humungus, his hacker name from before he got himself onto the FBI’s cybercrime watch list in a commendable seventh spot.

  But never Kurt.

  I needed to buy some time. Fast.

  “Fantastic, man. I’ll head on back, I’ve walked all the way up the park.”

  “Central Park?” Kurt asked.

  “Yeah. I lost track of time. I’ll hop in a cab. Should be back in twenty minutes or so.” I tried to sound as enthused as possible. “Great work, Curtis. Really great.”

  I hung up, pretty sure that I’d managed to keep the doubt from my voice and hoping he’d got my little hidden counter-message, but as I ended the call, the rush of elation had been replaced by a crushing avalanche of dread.

  Kurt’s brilliantly hidden-in-plain-sight message could only mean one thing. Baseball Cap was there—and he had Kurt and Gigi.