The Sixth Man

by David Baldacci

  “Let’s get inside,” said Michelle, looking around. “I’m not too keen about the surroundings. Sniper heaven.”

  Inside, they found a pantry full of food, wood for the fireplaces, warm coats and boots, flannel shirts, pajamas, and clean sheets on the beds.

  Michelle lifted up one of the coats. “I think I’ll put this on right now. It’s freezing outside and it’s not much better in here.”

  “I’ll get a fire started,” said Sean.

  “I can cook if you want,” said Roy.

  Michelle shot him a glance. “You can cook?”

  “Yes, but if you’d rather do it, that’s fine.”

  “She’d rather not,” said Sean quickly, ignoring a dirty look from Michelle.

  After a meal of pork chops, vegetables, biscuits, and a slice each of a store bought apple pie that Roy had found in the freezer, they settled in front of a blazing fire.

  “Any word from Kelly or Bunting?” asked Michelle.

  Sean said, “Just got a text. They each made contact with their respective targets. And each was apparently very successful.”

  Roy nodded, his eyes on the fire. “They’re playing Quantrell and Foster against each other.”

  Sean said, “Did your sister tell you that was the plan?”

  “No, it’s just the most obvious one. I met Foster twice. She’s clearly a megalomaniac. Mason Quantrell is just greedy and jealous. A lethal combination.”

  Sean put another log on the fire and drew closer to the flames. “Tell me about the bodies in the barn.”

  Roy turned to him. “Why?”

  “We’re investigators. Ted Bergin hired us to help you. That’s what we’re trying to do. In order to do that we need information. And this is the first real chance we’ve had with you.”

  Roy took a moment to rub his glasses lenses clean on his shirt. He settled them back on and said, “I was taking a walk before dinner. I usually did that. I hadn’t been in the barn in a long time. It was just a whim I decided to go in. Everything looked the same until I spotted the disturbed dirt on one side. I grabbed a shovel and started digging, to see what was there. That’s when I saw the face. I was about to call the police when I heard the sirens. They arrested me. I can’t blame them, really. I had the shovel in my hand and the bodies were there. It must’ve looked like I was just burying them instead of trying to dig them up.”

  “And that’s when you went into…?”

  Roy looked embarrassed. “That’s when I retreated into my head, yes.”

  “But you remember everything that went on?” asked Michelle.

  “I never forget anything. I remember the first jail they put me in. Mr. Bergin coming to represent me. He tried very hard. There were times when I thought about talking to him, but I was just scared.” He paused. “I’m very sorry he’s dead. It was because of me, of course.”

  “So Foster and Quantrell put the bodies there in order to frame you.”

  Roy said, “I appreciate the presumption of innocence.”

  “I never presume anything,” replied Sean. “But the timing of everything was too neat, too tidy. If I had to bet I’d say you were being watched, and as soon as you went in that barn, the cops got the call.”

  Michelle added, “And what we know of you, you’re a little too smart to get caught red-handed by the local cops.”

  Sean looked at Roy. “Okay, Quantrell and Foster framed you. They thought they were home free. Now they’ve been turned against each other. What will they do next?”

  Roy didn’t hesitate. “Foster has no history of wrongdoing, while Quantrell’s reputation is far sketchier on that score. Other things being equal, Quantrell will react more calmly to the situation than Foster.”

  “In other words, he’s used to stepping over the line,” said Michelle.

  “Exactly. His innate reaction will be to survive this and perhaps even continue his business. Foster may very well lash out and let the chips fall. Or she might withdraw from the field and do nothing, hoping it goes away.”

  “That option I doubt,” said Michelle. “You don’t get to be the head of DHS by being a wallflower, particularly a woman.”

  “I agree with you,” said Roy. “Which means she will probably be very aggressive in trying to turn the situation around.”

  “So she goes to her allies again, trying to shore up support,” said Sean. “And blacken the well against Quantrell?”

  Roy nodded. “She has the advantage there. She can get a meeting with the president or the FBI director if she needs to. Quantrell can’t. He obviously knows this and will play to his strengths.”

  “Which are?” asked Sean.

  “Operations in the field. Foster never would have used DHS personnel for the murders or my extraction. But private mercenaries are far less picky. They pledge allegiance to whoever’s paying them.”

  “So Quantrell will use his men to do what?” asked Michelle.

  “Find me, kill Bunting and my sister. And if the need arises he may very well hit Foster.”

  “Taking down the DHS head, pretty gutsy,” said Sean.

  “When you have nothing to lose, it doesn’t take that much guts,” replied Roy. “And it doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.”

  CHAPTER

  77

  ELLEN FOSTER SAT at her chair in the bunker underneath DHS headquarters. Above her thousands of public servants went about their tasks of keeping the country safe from all attacks. Normally, Foster would be intimately involved in the strategy that went into this everyday battle. She lived and breathed it, thought of little else outside of it.

  Right now she couldn’t have cared less about it.

  James Harkes stood across from her at semi-attention.

  She had confided in him what Kelly Paul had told her in that bathroom at Lincoln Center. He had asked a few relevant questions but remained mostly silent. She gazed up at him with the look of a person assessing her last, best hope.

  “This changes everything. What can we do?” she asked.

  “What do you want to achieve?”

  “I want to survive, Harkes—isn’t that rather obvious?” she snapped.

  “But there are many ways to survive, Madame Secretary. I just need to know which one you want to pursue.”

  She blinked and saw what he meant. “I want to survive with my career intact, as though nothing had happened. That’s as plain as I can state it.”

  He nodded slowly. “That will be very hard to do,” he said frankly.

  Foster gave a little shiver and wrapped her arms around herself. “But not impossible?”

  “No, not impossible.”

  “Quantrell is trying to work a deal, rat me out, Kelly Paul said.”

  “I wouldn’t doubt that, knowing what sort of person he is. But he has limited access to the people who matter. You don’t.”

  “But the problem is I’ve already been to the president and built the case against Bunting. The president told me to take care of it. He gave me explicit authority to do whatever was necessary.”

  “And to go back to him now with a new story about Quantrell would really make you lose credibility in the president’s eyes?”

  “Exactly. I’ll be like the little boy who cried wolf once too often.”

  “You may have answered your problem with what you’ve already said.”

  She glanced sharply at him. “What do you mean?”

  “The president gave you explicit authority to do what was necessary.”

  “But Quantrell?”

  “Collateral damage. And it’s not as difficult as it sounds. With Quantrell out of the way, your problems are solved. You have left nothing incriminating on the table. He goes, the road ahead is clear.”

  Foster sat there thinking about this. “It might work. But how will the collateral damage thing work?’

  “We’ve blamed everything else on Bunting, why not this too? It’s natural enough. They’re bitter rivals. Everyone knows that. The evidence of Bunt
ing’s obsession with Quantrell will be easy enough to produce.”

  “So we take out Quantrell and frame Bunting for it?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Kelly Paul said he was long gone.”

  “You actually believed everything she told you?”

  “Well… I mean.” She stopped, looked embarrassed. “I’m losing a bit of control here, aren’t I?” she said sheepishly.

  “You’re under a lot of stress. But you need to push through it, Secretary Foster, if you really want to survive this.”

  “Please sit down, James. You look uncomfortable standing there.”

  Harkes sat.

  “How do we go about doing it?” she asked earnestly.

  Harkes said, “Here’s how the playing field shakes out, at least as I see it. Bunting must still be around.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s not the sort to walk away with his tail between his legs. For all we know he’s actually working with Kelly Paul and her crew.”

  “Paul? But why?”

  “Bunting met with Sean King. After that I sat him down and threatened him and his family if he did it again. Then he concocts the fake suicide attempt by his wife and does a bunk. If he were going to flee he would’ve taken his family with him. Even you admitted that he really cares about them.”

  “I guess that does make sense,” conceded Foster.

  “And think about the fact that he’d met with King and then planned this whole subterfuge with his family shortly thereafter.”

  “Not a coincidence?” said Foster.

  “Not even close. The other salient points line up nicely. King and Maxwell are working to help Edgar Roy. They actually visited Cutter’s Rock with Kelly Paul. They’re obviously in this together. And Bunting is in it with them.”

  “And his motivation?”

  “Bluntly put, Madame Secretary, he’s innocent. He knows it and he’s probably convinced them that he is, too. And King and Maxwell now likely know that Roy didn’t kill anybody. Bunting has few options left. Paul and probably King and Maxwell must’ve offered him a way out. What that is I don’t know yet.”

  “I wish we had confirmation of your theory that they’re all working together.”

  “Paul coming to New York was really confirmation of that.”

  “What do you mean?” she said sharply.

  “She used Mrs. Bunting’s ticket to get into the fund-raiser. We knew Paul and King and Maxwell had teamed up and now we have a direct connect between Paul and Bunting: the ticket.”

  “Oh, shit. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”

  “That’s why you have me,” Harkes said.

  She smiled and touched his hand. “Yes, yes it is.”

  “If we had some bait to draw them out. Something that they value. It would go a long way to helping me put this together in the right way.” He looked at her expectantly.

  “I think I might have just what we need,” she said.

  She powered on the electronic tablet in front of her, hit a few keys, and spun the screen around for Harkes to see. It was an image of a room with someone in it.

  “My ace in the hole,” she said.

  The floors and walls were concrete. There was one bunk bed and a toilet in the corner. The person sat on the bed.

  Megan Riley hardly looked herself.

  CHAPTER

  78

  OUTSIDE THE FARMHOUSE the sun had dropped low, throwing shadows through the windows. It would be fully dark soon. Sean put some more wood on the fire and stoked it. When he sat down Roy said, “Kel told you about the E-Program, obviously.”

  “Yes,” said Sean.

  “How about the Wall?”

  “Not really.”

  “The Wall is all the data delivered in one fell swoop. I sit in front of a giant screen for twelve hours a day taking it all in.”

  “When you say all the data, exactly what does that mean?” asked Michelle.

  “It literally means everything collected by US intelligence operations and various allies overseas who share intel with us.”

  “Isn’t that a lot of information?” asked Sean.

  “More than you can imagine, really.”

  “And you look at it and do what?” asked Michelle.

  “I analyze it and then put the pertinent pieces together and give my report. They vet my conclusions, and then it becomes part of the action plan of the United States on all relevant fronts. In fact the actions taken are pretty immediate.”

  “You have a photographic memory,” Sean said. “An eidetic?”

  “Something more than that,” said Roy modestly.

  “How can it be more than photographic?” Michelle commented.

  “True photographic memories are extremely rare. A lot of people can remember many things they’ve seen but not everything. And even for many eidetics the memory eventually fades as others replace it. I can never forget anything.”

  “Never?” Sean said, looking at him skeptically.

  “Unfortunately, people don’t realize that a lot of memories are ones you want to forget.”

  “I can understand that,” said Michelle, drawing a sympathetic glance from Sean.

  Sean said, “Mind if I test you?”

  “I’m used to being tested.”

  “What was the name of the police officer who arrested you in the barn?”

  “Which one? There were five,” replied Roy.

  “The first one to speak to you.”

  “His nameplate said Gilbert,” replied Roy.

  “Badge number?

  “Eight-six-nine-three-four. His weapon was a Sig Sauer 9mm with a twelve-round mag. He had an ingrown nail on his right pinky. I can give you the other officers’ names and badge numbers if you want. And since this is a memory test, over the last two hundred and six miles of the trip we passed one hundred and sixty-eight vehicles. Would you like their license plate numbers starting from first to last? There were nineteen from New York, eleven from Tennessee, six from Kentucky, three from Ohio, seventeen from West Virginia, one each from Georgia, South Carolina, D.C., Maryland, Illinois, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, two from Florida, and the rest from Virginia. I can also tell you the number and descriptions of the occupants of each vehicle. I can break it down by state if you want.”

  Michelle gaped and said, “I can’t even remember what I was doing last week. How do you keep all that in your head?”

  “I can see it in my head. I just have to dial it up.”

  “Like index cards in your mind?”

  “No, more like a DVD. I can see everything flowing. Then I can hit stop, pause, fast-forward, or reverse.”

  Sean still looked skeptical. “Okay, describe the outside of this house, the barn, and the land around it.”

  Roy swiftly did so, finishing with “There are one thousand six hundred and fourteen shingles on the east side of the barn’s roof. The fourth shingle over in the second row from the top is missing, as is the sixteenth one on the ninth row counting from the front. And the hinge on the left front door of the barn is new. There are forty-one trees in the field on the east side of the house. Six are dead and four more are dying; the largest of those is a Southern magnolia. My sister obviously is not into landscape maintenance.”

  “Last four presidents of Uzbekistan?”