The Price of Time

by Tim Tigner

  27

  The Naked Truth

  I STEPPED INTO THE ELEVATOR as Tom turned toward his room. Had the killer recognized me? No way to know. He hadn’t reacted, but professionals rarely did.

  Fortunately, I had been standing to the side with my face in my phone. That posture was a defensive measure I’d made a habit after a similar event in the Czech Republic had ended with arterial spray all over the elevator of the Prague Castle Suites.

  Luck had saved my bacon back then.

  Luck and my pet weapon.

  The ceramic stiletto blade secured to my forearm with a custom-made 3D-printed clip had been issued to me months earlier for a special op in Switzerland. Pencil thin and just as light, it was invisible to metal detectors, if not to body scans or pat-downs. Once I discovered that I could propel the blade into my hand if I whipped my arm just right—something I often practiced when bored—it became as integral to my wardrobe as my watch.

  I stroked my sleeve to verify the stiletto’s presence as I rode the elevator down. If Tom had recognized me, he would be running down the stairs at the end of the hall, planning to either flank and eliminate me or make a fast escape.

  Exiting into the grand lobby, I used my peripheral vision to check the hallway to my left. Vincent was walking from that direction, but no one else. Inspired by the sighting, I headed the valet’s way.

  “May I help you, Mister Chase?”

  “Did you just see Tom?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do me a favor, if you’d be so kind. Walk back up the stairs, then all the way to the other side.” I drew a long arc in the air as I spoke. “Then meet me in the lobby and let me know if you see him.”

  “But of course, sir.”

  As Vincent reversed course, I moved to a corner of the lobby and pulled up the GPS tracking app on my phone. Tom’s Mercedes was still in the lot.

  A bit of ruckus in the bar caught my attention, but otherwise the lobby was quiet. Nobody was checking in or out. The receptionist who had given Vincent a sideward glance now gave me a welcoming smile.

  I melted into a corner and pulled a twenty from my increasingly slim wallet while keeping an eye on the doors.

  Vincent completed his circuit in under two minutes. “No sign of him, Mr. Chase.”

  “Anybody else about?”

  He pointed toward the elevator, which pinged as if prompted. An elderly couple emerged and headed toward the restaurant. “Just them.”

  I passed Vincent the twenty in a thank-you shake, then took the stairs up to my room.

  After quietly opening and closing my door, I hooked my cell phone back up to the fiber optic camera. It gave me another surprise. Tom had pushed the soft furniture aside and was now standing naked in the middle of his room.

  It took me a second to recognize the controlled movements of the ancient martial art he was practicing. Memories of Saturday mornings in Hanoi came flooding back as I watched grasp the sparrow’s tail turn to ward-off, and then roll-back morph into gather. I hit RECORD as Tom exhaled into press, while sweat rolled over muscles stretched tight as drumheads.

  People out of the know typically scoffed at the lackadaisical looking exercise, but I understood tai chi’s power. It exercised the entire body, increasing both flexibility and power while improving balance and training the body to remain relaxed during tense situations.

  Watching Tom, I found myself mesmerized by another man’s body for the first time in my life. His fat percentage was clearly down in the single digits, but his scar count wasn’t. I spotted two bullet holes, three knife wounds, and half a dozen smaller disfigurements that resembled claw marks. Most were on his arms, as if acquired during defensive gestures. Given the scene before me now, it was easy to picture the man practicing martial arts against multiple opponents armed with classic blunt and bladed weapons. I cringed at the thought of facing such a master with my tiny knife.

  I kept the recording running as Tom brought hands to heart, then transitioned into calisthenics. He bent forward until his palms were flat on the floor, then slowly shifted his weight and lifted his feet off the ground. He took his legs up through a controlled arc until he was standing vertically on his hands. At this point, Tom’s nakedness became particularly distracting, but I still couldn’t look away.

  It occurred to me that Tom and Skylar would make quite the couple, given their physical fitness fanaticism. If I hadn’t heard them speaking and known they had separate rooms, I’d be second-guessing their relationship at this point.

  Tom launched off his hands into the most impressive gymnastics display I had seen outside an Olympic competition or mixed martial arts cage match. The man didn’t just look healthy, he appeared downright Herculean. I struggled to imagine what it would take to beat him in hand-to-hand combat. What kind of animal I’d have to become to be the one who walked away.

  After Tom completed his fortieth inverted pushup, he sprang to his feet and sauntered to the bathroom. I exhaled when I heard the shower engage. Holy smokes! What had Lars stumbled into?

  Who was Skylar up against?

  Was I crazy for inserting myself?

  Tom emerged from the bathroom five minutes later. He threw a towel onto the desk chair, slipped between the sheets and hit the lights. I found myself half-surprised that the man hadn’t lit a dozen candles and slaughtered a small animal.

  I withdrew the camera carefully so as not to make the slightest sound, then plugged my side of the hole with a sliver of soap. Satisfied that even without overhearing any phone calls or observing a single laptop screen, the $520 I had dropped at The Williamsburg Inn was money well spent, I headed for my BMW. Hopefully I would soon see a lump in Skylar’s bed and hear her snoring.

  28

  Emergency Stop

  SKYLAR ACKNOWLEDGED the wisdom inherent in a twenty-four hour wait. A cooling-off period made sense with decisions as momentous as abandoning one life for another. But she had already lost the only two meaningful things in her old life. Her ability to compete professionally as a triathlete and, as a distant second, her service as a firefighter. Her enthusiasm for the extraordinary new life on offer didn’t waiver, even for a second.

  She slept well, woke excited, and then burned clock by running thirty miles. Her speed was no longer professionally competitive, but it was still a welcome source of pride.

  When at last Tom’s Mercedes pulled into the parking lot, she was waiting with a packed bag and a big grin.

  “You look like someone who knows what she wants,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Purpose, service, and elite company? What’s not to want?”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “So you’re in?” he asked, a knowing look in his eyes.

  She wasn’t about to play hard to get. “I’m in! Take me to HQ.”

  “Excellent,” Tom said, shifting into drive. “This is my favorite part of the job, pulling back the curtain. Prepare to have your mind blown.”

  “Oh, yeah? In what way?”

  “I told you we work outside the bounds of congressional oversight.”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, that requires us to base our operation off the grounds of Camp Peary. But of course, by operating beyond the fence line, we expose ourselves to civilian oversight, so to speak. To minimize the unwelcome intrusions, we hide in plain sight.”

  Skylar understood. “Makes sense. Where do you do that?”

  “You tell me,” Tom said with a sly wink.

  Skylar looked over and saw that he was serious. Given his facial features, he always had a no-nonsense look, but she knew the difference after hours of studying him across tables.

  He clarified without prompting. “The office has to be someplace with minimal car and foot traffic, and yet in a location where people can come and go at all hours of the day and night without raising eyebrows. Someplace with natural privacy, where neighbors aren’t likely to get curious about what’s going on or feel inclined to snoop around. A
ny guesses as to how we accomplish that?”

  Skylar quickly formulated a comfortable guess. “A utility company. Like a power station. Plenty of fences around those, and given the service needs, there would be traffic day and night.”

  “Nice guess, although most of the cars entering and exiting those are white panel vans.” Tom tapped his steering wheel. “We need civilian vehicles to look at home. And we don’t want to walk around in hard hats.”

  “People really pay attention to such things?”

  “You’d be amazed. Spend an evening beside a police dispatcher and you’ll get a feel for just how many bored and shallow people inhabit our country. It’s downright depressing. Next guess?”

  Skylar drew a blank. “Nothing’s leaping to mind. Where?”

  Tom answered by dramatically flipping on the right-turn signal.

  Skylar read the road sign. Good Graces Chapel and Mortuary. “You’re kidding me?”

  “No. It’s actually a functioning funeral home. Not the kind of place where people are prone to do a lot of mingling, so the business adds cover without increasing exposure.”

  “I never would have guessed.”

  “Exactly.”

  As they drove up the drive, a classic colonial building came into view. Its exterior was illuminated with accent lighting, but there was no glow behind the front windows.

  Tom pulled around back and parked near the business entrance. A light over the door was the only sign of life besides half a dozen parked cars.

  Skylar couldn’t believe this was actually happening. She was about to step into a secret CIA headquarters building—as a new employee. Would a palm reader open a hidden elevator door? Would she be scanned for weapons? Would the old lady behind the reception desk have a gun in her lap? Skylar was about to find out.

  “Are you ready for this?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good. You can leave your bag in the trunk. We’ll only be here an hour or so. Then I’ll drop you at your new apartment.”

  My new apartment. That sounded good. Skylar was expecting something more like a fire station bunk room. She slipped her wallet into her pocket and followed Tom with spring in her step.

  He opened the door with a gentlemanly gesture. It appeared to have been unlocked but probably reacted to some transmitter on his person the way luxury cars did these days. There was no reception area, much less a lady behind a desk, but the hallway lights were on.

  “Looks pretty normal, doesn’t it? Other than the metal detector we just passed.”

  Skylar whirled around and saw the device she’d been too excited to notice. It was a two-foot-long gray arch placed about eighteen inches inside the door. She turned back to study the hallway, which was generic. “Remarkably normal.”

  “Hidden in plain sight. It lets car keys and cell phones through, but not guns or knives.”

  The employee atrium was essentially a wide corridor that gave access to administrative facilities on the left, and public facilities on the right. Tom led her past all that to a set of glass double doors at the end. They pushed through them into a covered walkway with glass walls. It extended about forty feet past flowering gardens until another set of double doors deposited them in an outbuilding. That atrium had double doors on every wall as well, an accommodation for caskets, she realized.

  Directly before them was a curtained viewing window. She’d stood before a similar window in a similar building several years back to watch her grandmother’s cremation.

  Now she understood exactly where they were. “I see what you mean about keeping the neighbors from snooping.”

  Tom opened the door to the crematory and motioned for her to enter.

  “Seriously?”

  “No worries. They don’t keep cadavers here.”

  Skylar had never been inside a crematory before. She’d looked through the window, but back then everything either side of the door to the cremation retort had been curtained off.

  The room reminded her of a hospital facility. A government hospital. No frills, just the basics. There was a sink to the left of the cremation retort and a pulverizer to the right. Cardboard coffins lined the left wall. Storage cabinets covered the right. Everything you’d need to turn a body into cremains with dignity.

  What Skylar didn’t see was another door. The entrance to FIFO’s secret headquarters.

  She turned to Tom, her puzzlement undoubtedly apparent. Her excitement mellowed by the macabre.

  Tom’s enthusiasm hadn’t dimmed. “See if you can find the entrance. Pretend you’re a police officer and you got a tip that there’s a meth lab hidden on these premises. It’s not unknown, using funeral homes for that purpose, given the need drug dealers have to camouflage the heat and fumes from cooking.”

  Skylar did a 360-degree survey. The cabinets were an obvious choice. Too obvious. Her gaze halted on the cremation controls. Was one a special lever? Perhaps the big red Emergency Stop. Perhaps when you pressed it the entire cabinet set swung inward like a large door.

  She moved closer to study it.

  Tom followed.

  She felt the needle prick her thigh, but lost consciousness before her combative muscles could react.

  29

  Corrupt Practices

  DESPITE HIS KNOWLEDGE of her athletic background, Tory was surprised by Skylar’s weight as he lifted her unconscious body off the floor and lowered it into a cremation container. Her size-four frame was weighty as a sack of rocks. He automatically adjusted the enclosed pillow but didn’t bother unfolding the blanket. Such acts would surely ring hollow, given the circumstances.

  He’d skipped the box altogether the first time he did this. That was a mistake. Sliding Ries’s replacement into the cremation retort had been unpleasant and awkward. Sleeping bodies weren’t rigid.

  The fact that a cardboard casket was missing might be noted in the morning, given that the stack at the side of the room no longer reached the ceiling. But that didn’t matter. His actions weren’t a secret. He’d offered the owner of the family funeral home $100,000 in cash to incinerate something. All Mr. Murdoch had to do was leave a few lights on and forget to lock the back door. Plausible deniability, and a tax-free hundred grand.

  When concocting the scheme, Tory had accurately anticipated an easy sell. He figured that men who made their living by taking advantage of grieving widows would tend to have a me-first mentality.

  He’d been right.

  The Good Graces Chapel and Mortuary was the fifth funeral home he’d rented. The other owners had all made a show of deliberating before acquiescing with a green light in their eyes, but Murdoch actually made a demand. “No guns.”

  Tory replied with, “Who said anything about guns?”

  Murdoch pushed his thin spectacles up his aquiline nose. “I am anticipating. Anticipation is how problems are avoided. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I would,” Tory said with an appreciative lilt. Cunning was one thing he respected. “No problem.”

  Murdoch responded by standing in silence for a second, then folding his arms across his chest. “Lest you dismiss this as an unenforceable acquiescence and walk into an unforeseen situation, I should inform you that my brother-in-law works in the law enforcement supply business. If you hand me that envelope, I’m going to use some of that cash to install a metal detector—with an alarm.”

  Tory suspected that the business owner was bluffing, but hoped he wasn’t. A metal detector would add a nice touch of credibility to the ruse. Given the location and the success of his CIA-recruitment scam, he anticipated multiple visits. “No problem, Murdoch. Just be sure to set the sensitivity to ignore phones and keys.”

  Murdoch nodded and accepted the envelope stuffed with a thousand Benjamins.

  Having dismissed the threat as a bluff, Tory wore his weapon to Lars’s execution. Fortunately, he spotted the archway in time. He’d mumbled an excuse about forgetting something in the car and run back to deposit his Glock in the glovebox.
/>   The rest of that first op at Murdoch’s Mortuary had gone smoothly, so when Tory used the CIA con for a second time, he approached Murdoch again. That time around, the mortician had been nothing but sunshine and rainbows.

  Tory opened the retort door but paused before pushing the cremation container into the pyre. Staring into the dark hole with its rings of gas nozzles, he shook his head. This machine would create death when it came to life.

  Tory had loved and feared God. Back before the Almighty had taken his wife during childbirth and given the daughter she died for an incurable condition. When his daughter died as well after thirteen difficult years, Tory concluded that if God existed, He had abandoned them. “See what you get when you leave us alone on this rock? We’re stuffing each other into incinerators.”

  With that thought, he shoved Skylar all the way inside. It would take two hours to transform her flesh into four pounds of skeletal remains. He’d have to rake those into the pulverizer to create the cremains that could be dumped into an urn. He hadn’t thought to bring a receptacle the first time he used this disposal method, but the mortician kept a supply of biodegradable cardboard cremains containers in one of the cabinets. More than sufficient for a quick trip to the woods.

  Tory had taken all the ashes to peaceful natural locations rather than toss them into dumpsters. One had to draw the line somewhere, and his conscience had drawn that one.

  His radar pinged as he approached the incinerator control. It wasn’t a sight or a sound. More of a sensation. The presence of another person. Could Skylar be stirring? He checked his watch. No, the antipsychotic would have her out cold for at least another hour. Haldol was serious stuff, thank goodness. What a horror that would be, waking up inside an active oven.

  As it was, Skylar had effectively died in a good mood, a great mood actually, and without ever knowing what hit her. Everyone should be so lucky. His wife and daughter certainly hadn’t been.

  Tory cocked his ears, but heard nothing. He decided that what he’d sensed was someone slipping through the outer door. A series of individually undetectable events that somehow registered when combined. Had Murdoch returned? Had curiosity gotten the better of him? No, not curiosity. If Murdoch had returned, it would be to see if he could wring more money from the man who had so easily coughed up two hundred grand.