The Whole Truth

by David Baldacci

  She was close enough to catch snatches of what the men were saying. The tall man from the Balmoral was a drug buyer, that much was clear. This surprised her because of the man she had seen with him at the chapel. The fellow had sported a tattoo Katie had only known Delta Special Forces to have carved on their skin. Yet even such men can go bad, she thought. The other men were selling. The drugs were in the soccer balls and they had been discussing money when the machine guns came out.

  Katie had contemplated using her cell phone to call the police, but now she’d decided to change her tactics. With the sudden appearance of the guns she was instead going to run. She’d started to back away when a sound froze her.

  To her extreme far right it was like a wave of black moving through the forest. She dropped to the dirt and tried to burrow in. When the guns started firing she tried to dig in even deeper. Yet something, perhaps her journalistic instincts, made her look through her binoculars in time to see two of the dealers riddled with machine-gun fire, their bodies literally opening up with holes awash in blood. They dropped to the ground dead without having uttered a sound.

  As she continued to watch, the tall man managed to wrestle the submachine gun from one of the giants and then, with a nimbleness that belied his size, he landed a kick to the gut and then the head of the larger man, felling him. He turned and held the gun up, as though in surrender, but as machine-gun fire hit all around him he seemed to think better of this.

  The other drug dealers had taken up cover behind the truck. They were shooting at whatever was coming their way, while the wave that had passed Katie was laying down walls of intense fire. And the tall man was caught right in the middle.

  “He’s dead,” Katie whispered fearfully to herself.

  Shaw dodged behind the Mercedes as another blast of fire missed him by centimeters. The Tajiks were shooting at him from his rear flank and his own men were doing the same from the front. What, had Frank failed to mention to the strike team that they were supposed to leave at least one man standing? Him.

  He got off a burst of submachine fire at the Tajiks and then slid into the front seat of the Benz. He cranked the engine and slammed it in gear. Another bullet blast from the rear took out his back window.

  He crushed the accelerator and the S600 leaped forward, gravel firing off the tires and spraying the truck. Holding the MP5 out the window, he emptied his clip at the truck, catching one of the Tajiks flush in the face and ending his career in international drug dealing.

  Shots pinged all over the car like hail, and water and oil started spraying from under the hood. He slid the car into reverse, burned down the gravel strip backwards, and spun the wheel, whipping the Benz into a J-turn. He came out of the one-eighty, slammed down the gas, and hurtled forward, hitting a hundred on the straightaway and getting almost clear of the trees when the engine started vomiting black smoke and the car died. His gaze swept over the car’s interior, before coming to rest on the SIG nine-millimeter partially stuck under the passenger floor mat. He grabbed it, kicked the door open, and ran.

  And he wasn’t the only one.

  He changed course, rounding the bend, his long legs eating up chunks of ground, and caught up to her right as she was climbing in the car, a black Mini Cooper.

  “Let me go!” Katie screamed as he grabbed her arm.

  “Give me the keys!” he yelled back.

  He ripped them from her fingers and opened the car door, sliding his big body into the small space.

  “Get in!” he cried out, because she was just standing there.

  “No!”

  “If they find you here, they’ll kill you.”

  “You mean you’ll kill me.” She eyed his gun.

  “If I were going to do that, you’d already be dead. I wouldn’t be offering you a ride.”

  “A ride to a hostage, you mean.”

  “These guys don’t give a shit about hostages. Now get in.”

  In the near distance they could both hear something coming their way.

  “Your last chance!” he said in a voice that clearly meant it.

  The truck exploded out from the treeline fifty feet from their location. It was the cargo truck and it was being driven by one of the big Tajiks. The small man with the wicked grin who didn’t accept credit cards or checks was sitting next to him. His gaze suddenly found them and his smile widened as he rolled down the window and took careful aim.

  “Look out!” Shaw exclaimed.

  His eyes had seen what Katie’s hadn’t. He grabbed her arm, yanked her through the open window and into the car, and hit the gas all in seemingly the same motion. Seconds later the ground that Katie had been standing on was obliterated by an RPG.

  Shaw pushed Katie to the floorboard and gunned the engine. He shifted gears and wound the engine way past the manufacturer’s maximum RPM range. And it still might not be enough.

  Machine-gun fire came at their rear like a swarm of bees with fifty-caliber stingers. He pushed Katie down to the floor again as she tried to sit up. “Keep down!”

  Shaw checked the mirror. He thought about veering off the road and taking his chances racing through the green fields. The only problem was the shoulders of the road were simply deep ruts the Cooper would never make it over. And even if it did, the land was so rough here that only a four-wheel drive could manage it.

  The Cooper was far more agile than the truck, but on straightaways Shaw couldn’t get out of the range of another RPG strike. Any second now he expected one right up his ass. He thought he could see the big teeth of the little Tajik as he smiled, no doubt thinking he was in the driver’s seat. And he was, actually, but that was about to change.

  “Hold on!” Shaw yelled to Katie. He whipped the wheel around, did another one-eighty, and mashed the gas to the floor. Now they were rocketing right at the truck.

  Katie sat up in time to see this. “What the hell are you doing?” she screamed.

  The game of chicken was five seconds from its conclusion as the big truck and little car bore down on each other. Katie closed her eyes and gripped the dash.

  As the headlights drew closer, the Tajiks glanced at each other, apparently unable to believe what was happening. If they collided with the car it might disable the truck. And with the men in the woods coming for them they needed their wheels.

  And that was exactly why Shaw had pointed his ride at them.

  The big Tajik cut the wheel to the left. It would be his last evasive driving maneuver.

  Shaw’s pistol fired and three bullet holes appeared in the windshield on the driver’s side of the truck. The little man’s smile disappeared along with his wheelman’s life. Shaw cut the car hard to the right and whipped around the truck, the Cooper’s wheels digging an inch-wide gouge in the top layer of the dirt shoulder before regaining firm traction and racing on.

  The driverless truck kept going for another five hundred feet, slipped off the road, hit the rough shoulder, kicked up a wedge of dirt and grass, and slid over on its side.

  Only then did Katie James open her eyes.

  CHAPTER 24

  WHEN THEY WERE TEN MILES AWAY from where their deaths should have occurred, Shaw slowed the Mini, rolled his window down, and took a long breath. Even for him that had been close.

  For the first time Katie noticed the red patch near his shoulder. “You’ve been shot!”

  He glanced at the wound with little interest, his mind racing through what had just happened. “Just a nick, bullet didn’t go in.”

  “Look if you let me go I promise I won’t say anything.”

  “You watch too many movies.”

  “You mean you’re really just going to let me go?”

  “Well, I sure as hell don’t want to hang around with you.”

  “Who were the men all dressed in black doing the shooting?”

  “I gave you a lift, I’m not delivering testimony.”

  She looked at him curiously. “You’re not a drug dealer, are you?”

  �
��Met many, have you?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I have.”

  “What were you doing back there anyway?” His features turned grim as he suddenly recognized her. “I bumped into you at the Balmoral. And you were at the yacht. You’ve been following me!” He grabbed her by the shoulder. “Why? Who put you up to it?”

  She gripped his hand. “You’re hurting me. Please.”

  With one final squeeze he finally let go. “What were you doing back there?”

  “It was an accident.”

  “Lying makes me very unhappy.”

  “Okay, okay, you were acting suspiciously and I followed you.”

  “Why? Are you a cop?”

  “No. I’m a… I’m a reporter.”

  “A reporter? Investigating drug dealers in Scotland?”

  “No, I…”

  “Tell me the truth or I might change my mind about letting you go.”

  “I was in Scotland doing a special obit piece on the death of Andrew MacDougal,” she said in a rush.

  “Which paper?”

  “The New York Tribune.”

  He paused and then said, “You’re Katie James?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I read the obit piece on MacDougal. It had your byline on it. But MacDougal died in Glasgow. What are you doing in Edinburgh?”

  “On vacation. Reporters do get those from time to time.”

  “Snooping around in stuff that doesn’t concern you part of your vacation plans?”

  “I wish it wasn’t.”

  “Guess you screwed up somehow to get stuck on the obit page before you turned seventy.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “I’ve actually been to hell. It’s just as bad as people think it is.”

  He said this so matter-of-factly that even the seasoned journalist could only stare at him before stammering, “What do you mean by that?”

  “If you have to ask, then you wouldn’t understand the answer.”

  Actually, Katie thought she knew exactly what he meant, yet she chose to say nothing. They drove on in silence. Thirty minutes later the Cooper pulled up next to the Balmoral.

  Shaw turned to Katie. “Okay, now get out of town as fast as you can.”

  “How about you? They were shooting at you.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  She reached over and grabbed his hand as he started to climb out. “What’s your name?”

  “I’ve followed your work over the years, so I know you’re not that dumb.”

  “Can you at least tell me what happened back there?”

  He hesitated.

  “I’m not going to write the story, if that’s what you think. I don’t know enough to write it anyway.”

  “If you do write the story, you’ll ruin a lot of hard work and help the bad guys.”

  “I’ve never been into helping the bad guys.”

  He paused, studying her closely. “It was a drug transaction. We’re trying to keep cash out of the hands of terrorists. There, now you know all.”

  “Good guys don’t open fire like that.”

  “I know,” Shaw admitted. “I don’t know why they started shooting.”

  His candor seemed to melt away most of Katie’s doubts. She added in a cautious tone, “But then why were your own people shooting at you?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to find out.” He leveled his gaze directly at her. “And get out of Edinburgh. You survived tonight. It’d be a shame to waste it.”

  In a few seconds he’d disappeared.

  Katie sat back into the leather of the Mini. She’d seen much death in her career, heartbreaking stuff that you never really got over. But there had been something about tonight… And she had never met anyone quite like this guy.

  Had everything he’d told her been a complete lie? As a veteran journalist she often found that to be the case. But he had let her go. And he had saved her life. She realized a little guiltily that she hadn’t even thanked him for that. If not for him she would’ve been bits of flesh scattered across Scotland.

  Katie snagged her bag from the backseat and drew out a notepad and a pen. Before she’d switched to journalism, she’d been an art major. She flipped open the pad and quickly sketched a drawing of Shaw. She also jotted down notes.

  She talked to herself as she wrote. “Dark hair, about six foot five, two-forty. Shoulders the size of Nebraska. Amazing blue eyes.” She put down her pen. Amazing blue eyes? Where did that come from?

  It didn’t matter. The odds of her ever seeing him again…

  She climbed over into the driver’s side, drove down an alley, left the car, and ducked back in the Balmoral through the delivery entrance.

  CHAPTER 25

  SHAW DIDN’T BOTHER to get his clothes from the hotel. He’d placed any personal items he had with him in a storage locker at the train station. He called Frank as soon as he was safely away from the hotel. The man waited until the fourth ring to answer.

  “What the hell game are you playing?” Shaw barked into the phone.

  “You should be celebrating another successful mission. We got the drugs, the bad guys didn’t get any cash, and we got one guy left standing who’s talking like a mynah bird as we speak. I’ve personally already popped the champagne.”

  “Your guys opened fire unprovoked.”

  “Wow! Really?”

  “Yeah, really. What happened to you have the right to remain silent and keep the blood in your veins?”

  “So we took out some of the Tajiks, so what? You know how much those suckers can eat? And my budget is strained as it is.”

  “And your guys were shooting at me.”

  “Then maybe you should pay attention.”

  “Pay attention to what?”

  “We don’t like retirees, Shaw. You go when we say you can, if ever.”

  “My deal-”

  “Your deal is shit. Your deal has always been shit, but you never wanted to face up to it. Well, tonight was your wake-up call, my friend. Your only one. Next time maybe they don’t miss. And consider yourself lucky. Oh, by the way, your orders for Heidelberg are waiting at the airport. Chartered jet, wheels up in two hours. Man will meet you at the front entrance of the airport. Meanwhile, enjoy the rest of your evening in lovely Scotland.”

  Frank clicked off and Shaw simply stood there on Princes Street in the middle of the ancient city of Edinburgh with thousands of people all around him.

  He had never felt more alone.

  Katie took an empty notebook from her bag, inserted something in it, and walked into the lobby of the Balmoral. The receptionist on duty was a tall, thin young man. Katie strode up to him and held up the notebook.

  “A man dropped this in the lobby. There’s no name in it, but he may be staying at the hotel. He got in a cab before I could stop him.” She described Shaw in detail.

  “Yes, he is staying here, miss,” said the young Scotsman. “A Mr. Shaw. I’ll put it in his box here.”

  She watched as he placed the notebook in the slot for room 505. When he turned back around she’d skittered away.

  God bless the Scots, she thought. If she’d tried that stunt in New York they would’ve thrown the book in her face, wrestled her to the floor, and then called the cops.

  She waited for two hours in the lobby, her gaze flitting to the front desk from time to time as she sipped a Coke and chewed her nails till they bled. She stirred when the young Scot turned his position over to a middle-aged woman whom Katie had never seen before. As soon as the man