The Escape

by David Baldacci

  “I take it Ms. Kirk didn’t want to tell me, though. She waited until you two were alone.”

  “She plays everything close to the vest.”

  “Well, with this I can’t say I blame her.”

  Knox gazed around the bar. It was active, with lots of patrons, some with dates and some looking for companionship at least for one night.

  “What do you intend to do now?”

  Puller slipped out a piece of paper. “I intend to talk to these two people.”

  Knox glanced at the paper. “The pair of witnesses?”

  Puller finished off his beer and nodded. “Susan Reynolds is still in government service but works at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. Niles Robinson works for a private government contractor and is based in Fairfax, Virginia.”

  “So you doing this long-distance or close-up?”

  “I don’t interview people long-distance if I can help it.”

  “Interview or interrogate?” she shot back.

  “That’s largely up to them.”

  “What do you really hope to find?”

  “Answers.”

  “When do you want to leave?”

  “Tomorrow morning. There’s an eight a.m. flight out, gets into Reagan National a couple hours later.”

  He paid the tab and they rose. He hooked her by the arm as they were about to head out. “The witnesses don’t know I’m coming, Knox. I’d like to keep the surprise.”

  “If you’re afraid I’ll call them, you’re free to sleep in my hotel room tonight and keep watch. I got a room here before I met you in the bar.”

  He studied her silently, his gaze taking in every point of her expression worth evaluating.

  “I trust you, Knox.”

  She said angrily, “No, I don’t think you do. So if you don’t want to spend the night in my room, I’ll spend the night in yours. And then we’ll head to the East Coast and see what we see.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “No, you’re wrong. I saw the way you just looked at me. So I do have to do it.”

  “Look, I’ll just get my own room.”

  “I thought you had a room.”

  “I checked out after I left you at the cemetery. My plan was to run down some more leads and then head back to D.C. Obviously, with what happened with Macri and Shireen being here, things changed. We can head back tomorrow morning. I’ll get a room here.”

  “Puller—”

  But he had already walked out of the bar and headed over to the front desk while Knox, her arms folded across her chest, moodily watched. Puller spent a long time with the hotel representative and the woman made several phone calls while Puller looked increasingly frustrated. Finally the woman put down the phone for the last time, shook her head, and said, “I’m really sorry. I even tried the downtown Y. Nothing.”

  “Thanks,” said Puller tightly.

  Puller walked back over to Knox. She said, “So what’s the word?”

  Puller was stone-faced. “The word is there’s some sort of cattlemen’s convention in town. They just rented the last room in the hotel ten minutes ago.”

  “Cattlemen?” said Knox, a smirk playing over her lips. “I didn’t know they had conventions. What do they talk about? The best ways to cow-tip?”

  Puller went on as though he hadn’t heard her. “Which means there’s not a hotel room to be had anywhere.”

  “You’re wrong there, Puller. There’s my room. Let’s go.”

  Puller came out of the bathroom in Knox’s room dressed in sweats.

  Knox passed by him and handed him her phone. “You can check the log. I didn’t make a call, text, or email while you were changing. And if you want you can hold on to it until we get to D.C.”

  “You’re really blowing this out of proportion.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said tersely. “I think I’m blowing it just right, actually.”

  She slammed the bathroom door behind her. A minute later he heard the shower start up.

  Puller looked around the room. There was only the one bed. And a chair. He grimaced. Contorting his nearly six-foot-four-inch body into a chair for a full night did not appeal to him in the least.

  He eyed the floor. Hardwood. Great.

  He called the front desk and asked about a roll-away bed. None were available. Apparently, several of the “cattlemen” were doubling up.

  “We have a crib,” the woman said.

  “Right,” said Puller before he hung up.

  Smartass.

  He sat in the chair and eyed her phone. She had disabled the auto lock, because he didn’t have to input a passcode. She had made no calls and had received none. He checked texts and emails. Nothing. Just like Knox had said. He checked the trash and junk caches. Zip there too.

  He set the phone down on the nightstand, stretched out his limbs, and waited. And while he waited, he listened to the water running in the shower, and then he heard Knox singing. And before he realized it, his thoughts had drifted back to an unlikely person.

  His mother.

  It had been the rockiest of relationships between his parents. She was a gentle woman, but with a spine of iron when she was pushed into a corner, a place John Puller Sr. had often forced her. Yet she had doted on her boys, until she was suddenly gone from their lives one day.

  She had showered. That’s what had prompted the memory now. Puller had heard the water running and his mother singing, as she often did. Then the water had stopped. The bathroom door had opened and then closed. Puller had gone outside in the backyard to play. He remembered looking toward the house on the base where his father was stationed. His mother had been at the window, a towel still around her and her long hair still wet. She was looking at him. She smiled and waved. And he waved back.

  That had been the last time he had ever seen her. When he had come back inside hours later she was gone. A search was conducted, but she was never found. His father had never spoken her name after that.

  Jacqueline Puller had been Jackie to her friends, of which she had more than his father ever would. People feared his father. People loved his mother. Not a day went by that he didn’t think of her. Not a single day.

  He conjured that face at the window. The smile, the wave. All of it full of love and reassurance, with nothing to predict such a catastrophic and mysterious end.

  The image began to fade as the voice intruded.

  “Puller? Puller?”

  Something shook him by the arm.

  He came out of this memory, opened his eyes, and looked up. For one vastly unsettling moment Puller thought his long-lost mother was standing in front of him.

  But it was Knox standing there draped in a towel, her hair pinned up and damp.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, looking genuinely worried about him.

  He cleared his throat, gathered his composure, and nodded as he abruptly stood, causing her to jump back as he almost stepped on her bare foot.

  “Sorry, just have a bunch of stuff on my mind.”

  “Gee, I wonder what that could be?”

  She smiled and he forced one to his lips. He picked up her phone and handed it back to her. “I think this is yours.”

  “You sure you don’t want to keep it?”

  “I’m sure I don’t need to.”

  She set the phone on the nightstand and eyed the chair, the floor, and then the bed. “I guess we better discuss sleeping arrangements.”

  “Look, I can just sleep in the lobby. There’s a couch there.”

  She said in a mock playful tone, “What, you don’t trust yourself spending the night in a woman’s hotel room? What about the Rangers’ legendary self-discipline?”

  He glanced down at her towel-draped figure. Then he abruptly looked up. “I trust myself.” He took in a whiff of air. Her hair smelled of vanilla. He felt an odd sensation creep up his spine. He shook it off, with difficulty.

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “I can sleep in the chair o
r on the floor.”

  “You can sleep in the bed, I’ll sleep in the chair.”

  “Knox, it’s your room.”

  “And you’re a lot bigger than me. And I’ve slept in far worse places, trust me.”

  She grabbed some things from her suitcase and went back into the bathroom. A minute later she came out dressed in shorts and a tank top, her hair down around her shoulders. She snagged a pillow off the bed and a blanket from the closet. She curled up in the chair and put the blanket over her.

  “You sure about this?” said Puller, who had been watching her uncomfortably.

  “For the last time, yes. Can you hit the light?”

  Puller swiped the switch with his hand. Then he got into bed, lay back against the pillow, and lifted the sheet up to his chest.

  Knox sat up in the chair. “What were you thinking about when I came out of the bathroom?” she asked. “Your brother?”

  “No. Somebody else in the family.”

  “Your father?”

  “No,” he said, his tone blunt.

  “Okay, I get the message. I’ll stop asking.”

  They lay there in silence for a few minutes, the only sound their breathing.

  “It was my mother. I was thinking about her.”

  He glanced over. Knox was looking at him.

  “Is she still alive?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he replied.

  “What happened to her?”

  “She disappeared when I was a kid. She was waving at me from the window of our house while I was outside playing. She was just there and then she was gone. Never saw her again.”

  “Puller, I’m so sorry.”

  “I’ve…I’ve never told anyone about this. At least not since it happened.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t…”

  “Puller, if there’s something I can do, it’s keep a secret. I would never tell anyone. I swear.”

  “Thanks, Knox.”

  “But why did you start thinking of her now? Because of your brother?”

  “No. It was your being in the shower. And the singing.”

  She looked embarrassed. “I was singing in the shower? Jesus, sometimes I don’t even know I’m doing it. I’m sorry. I can’t even carry a tune.”

  “No, you were fine.” Then he grew silent.

  She said, “Is that the last memory you have of your mother, apart from seeing her in the window? She was singing in the shower?”

  Puller nodded, because he couldn’t speak right now.

  “I had no idea, Puller. I never would have—”

  “I know,” he said interrupting her. “It’s okay.” He paused. “Some family, huh. Brother on the run. Mother disappeared. And my father’s sitting in a VA hospital still thinking he’s heading up an Army corps.”

  She said, “My grandfather had Alzheimer’s. It’s a…terrible disease. It wipes everything important away from the inside out.”

  “Yeah, it does,” he said curtly, and then there was silence once more.

  “Good night, Puller.”

  “Good night, Knox.”

  CHAPTER

  33

  THE NEXT MORNING they descended into an overcast D.C. and landed a few minutes early. Before they’d left Puller had taken AWOL to Fort Leavenworth and left the cat in the care of a vet who maintained a kennel there. Puller had arranged for an Army car to be waiting for him at the airport in D.C. They loaded their bags into it and drove off from the airport.

  “Two witnesses,” Puller said.

  “Two witnesses,” Knox repeated.

  “You got anything?” he asked.

  “I checked into the INSCOM database on the drive to the airport. Susan Reynolds has worked at Fort Belvoir for about four months. At the time your brother was arrested she worked at STRATCOM in Kansas City.”

  “Where she worked with my brother, or at least knew him by sight,” commented Puller.

  Knox pulled a notebook from her bag and flipped through the pages. “Shireen Kirk said that Reynolds testified that your brother copied something from a computer onto a DVD.”

  “I guess that’s a no-no at STRATCOM.”

  “It’s a no-no in most secure facilities. But Reynolds said she saw your brother do it, and then he pocketed the DVD and left the facility with it.”

  “I wonder if they ever determined what files he accessed and downloaded? Or allegedly did?” added Puller.

  “I suppose they would have had to check that if they introduced it into evidence against him at the court-martial.”

  “And I wonder what happened to the DVD? If it ever existed?”

  “It really would be helpful to get a transcript of the court-martial proceedings,” said Knox.

  “Shireen said it would take a court order. And it would have to trump national security, which was the reason the file was sealed in the first place.”

  “Well, your brother has escaped from prison. So if we accept the prevailing argument that he is in fact guilty, then his being on the loose with all the secrets he has in his head constitutes a national security problem. We could argue that if we are going to help catch him, we need to know about the crimes he was convicted of. In detail. For instance, this Iranian agent that he allegedly met with. If we can get a lead on him, it might bring us to your brother.”

  “He’s not guilty, Knox!”

  “I understand that. But the point is we need a way to get the files, Puller. And if we have to play the national security angle, well, hell, let’s play it.”

  Puller flashed her an admiring look. “That’s pretty clever, actually. How can they argue against that, right? They need to give us whatever they have, to allow us to apprehend him before he hurts this country.”

  “Maybe Kirk can file a motion?”

  “No, that would take too long. We need a shortcut.”

  “How?”

  Puller pulled out his phone. The man answered on the second ring. James Schindler from the National Security Council said, “Hello?”

  “Mr. Schindler, John Puller. I need your help, sir. And I really need it right now.”

  CHAPTER