The Escape

by David Baldacci

  57

  AFTER LEAVING ABERNATHY, Puller took a minute to compose a coded email to his brother telling him what he had found out from the bereaved lawyer. Daughtrey was gay and they had used that to blackmail the man into betraying his country. And maybe they had killed him because he had refused to do so anymore. He might have even threatened to turn them in. That would certainly have warranted a bullet to the head. They seemed to have no problem killing anyone at any time for any reason.

  His brother’s coded response came swiftly.

  Puller had to smile grimly when he read it.

  We have to get these assholes. Every single one of them.

  Agreed, Bobby. Agreed. But how?

  As he was driving along he checked his watch. It was after visitors’ hours, but he was confident they would make an exception. He stopped by a Smashburger and bought two burgers with the works, two large fries, and two fountain Cokes containing enough soda to fill a bathtub.

  After getting the okay from the guards stationed outside her door, Puller opened the door a crack and peered in. Knox was lying on the bed with her eyes closed. She still had a tube in her arm and she was still hooked up to a monitor. He read her vitals, and all looked good.

  He walked over to her bed and sat down in the chair set next to it.

  “Knox?” he said quietly.

  She slowly opened her eyes. “Do I smell food, Puller?” she said.

  “Wow, that’s good, Knox. Were you a bloodhound in an earlier life?”

  “The food here—they call it food, any way—sucks.”

  “It’s a hospital. If the food were good you’d want to stay, and that just wouldn’t work, would it?” He pulled out the burgers and fries and set everything up on the meal table that he rolled over to her. Finally he powered the bed so that Knox rose up to a seated position.

  She looked at the burger and fries and then gave him a skeptical look.

  He said a little guiltily, “I know it’s not your usual healthy stuff, nuts and twigs and nonfat cottage cheese. But I thought that—”

  “I love you,” she interrupted.

  “What?” he said, startled.

  “Come over here so I can hug you.”

  He did so, and she embraced him for a few seconds, pushing her face into his chest.

  When they pulled apart she said, “When I rowed crew I ate stuff like this all the time. It’s only when I got older that I realized I couldn’t keep doing it unless I wanted to weigh three hundred pounds.”

  “Nice of you to share that little secret.”

  She took a huge bite of burger and a long gulp of the Coke and said, “You’re like a knight in shining armor come to save me from a tower filled with limp noodles and stuff here they call meat but tastes like aluminum foil spray-painted brown.”

  “I’m not so sure how shiny my armor is.”

  She took another mouthful of burger and then stuffed some fries in after it. She still managed to mumble, “God, so good.”

  “You might have to run ten miles and do two Insanity routines to work this sucker off.”

  “It’ll be worth it.”

  She wiped her mouth with a napkin and watched him take a bite of his burger. “Did you just come to feed me or do you have something else?”

  “I have a lot.”

  He looked around the room.

  She followed his gaze.

  “Problem?”

  “There might be more than four ears in here,” he murmured.

  She sat back, ate another fry, then leaned over, opened the drawer of the nightstand, pulled out a pad of paper and a pen, and handed them to him.

  “You can swallow it after you show it to me,” she said in a low voice.

  He wrote it all down and handed it to her.

  She read it all, her eyebrows hiking at several spots. She handed him the paper and he crumpled it up and put it in his pocket. “I’ll swallow it later, after I finish my meal. But until then—”

  He pulled out his phone, dialed up his music library, and cued up a song. The music wafted through the room as Puller drew closer and looked at Knox. If they were being eavesdropped on, it would be very difficult to do so now.

  “Damn, Puller,” she said. “Daughtrey. Poor guy. I never imagined.”

  “Yeah. So we have the motive.”

  “Like Niles Robinson. No winner, no matter what you did.”

  “But not Reynolds.”

  “No. She made her choice for reasons that all benefited her.”

  “So they eliminated Daughtrey because he probably was no longer willing to do what they wanted. And he wanted out of the military They couldn’t allow that.”

  “That’s the way I see it.”

  She sat back against her pillow and looked anxious.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Promise you won’t get really mad at me?”

  Puller looked taken aback by this question, and he was. But then his features softened. “You almost died in an explosion. How mad could I get?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”

  “Okay, I promise I won’t get mad.”

  “I think I know why your brother was targeted. And the timing of it too.”

  Now Puller looked dumbstruck.

  She eyed him nervously. “Are you starting to rethink your promise about not getting mad?”

  “Just tell me, Knox!”

  “We received a warning about your brother.”

  Puller gazed at her stonily. “You received a warning about my brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  “INSCOM.”

  “And who was the warning from?”

  “We don’t know. It was anonymous.”

  Puller took a deep breath. He was clearly close to losing it. Knox seemed to realize this, because she sank back into her bed like she was trying to disappear.

  “What exactly did the warning say?” Puller asked, his voice tense but under control.

  “That Robert Puller had been framed, and that the DoD should take another long, hard look at it.”

  “When exactly was this?”

  “About four months ago. That’s what I meant about the timing.”

  Now Puller did lose it. “Four months! And you’re just telling me about this? What the hell is wrong with you, Knox?”

  He turned away, embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Not the time or place for that. I’m sorry,” he said again.

  She put a hand on his shoulder and tugged slightly. “Look at me, Puller. Please.”

  He turned back around to stare at her.

  She was trembling. And in the bed she looked small and helpless.

  “I deserve anything you want to say, Puller. You can yell and curse and even punch me if you want. It’s okay.”

  “I’m not going to do any of those things, Knox. Not now.”

  “I should have told you before now. I know that. But I didn’t. Seems like it’s a sickness with me. I can’t tell people the truth.” She said this last part in a small voice. Her features were full of disbelief, perhaps that she had made such an admission. To him. To herself.

  Puller sat back, nodding thoughtfully. “Let’s forget about the timing of what you told me and focus on what you told me. Four months? It would have taken that long to prep the hit on him. Question is, how did they find out you guys were going to take another look at Bobby?”

  Knox looked deeply troubled. “The simple answer is we have a mole in INSCOM, which is astonishing. Remember, I alluded to that before?”

  He eyed her appraisingly “So that’s why you were brought on this case? Not just to keep an eye on me.”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  “Would have been nice to know before now.”

  Her face flushed and her lips trembled. “I should have told you that too, Puller. I know you were spinning your wheels trying to figure out the catalyst for all this. And I just sat back and said nothing.”

&
nbsp; “I’m not happy about it, Knox. But that’s water under the bridge.”

  Knox looked relieved by this.

  He continued, “And maybe we know the anonymous source now.”

  “Who?”

  “Niles Robinson.”

  “Why?”

  He gazed steadily at her. “I have my secrets too.”

  She looked put out by this, but because of what she had withheld, it wasn’t as though she could press the point.

  Puller was thinking that that must have been what Robinson had been referencing when he’d told Bobby that he had tried to make it right. He apparently had tried to make it right, by contacting INSCOM, albeit anonymously.

  “Any idea who your mole might be?”

  “Not a clue. But it’s really hampered everything we do. We’re not sure who we can bring in on something.”

  “I can see that.”

  “And we never even thought that they would plan to kill your brother at DB. If we had any inkling of that we would have taken steps to ensure his safety.”

  “I believe you,” Puller said quietly.

  “In fact, it was that attack that made us realize we had a problem in our own ranks. The leak had to come from our side.”

  She fingered her last fry, looking uncomfortable. “So do you bring all the girls meals like this?”

  “I haven’t been associated with that many girls.”

  “That’s pretty hard to believe.”

  “Okay. Only the ladies in hospital beds for bomb-related injuries get this kind of special treatment.”

  That brought a brief smile to her lips.

  She popped her last fry into her mouth. “I am sorry I didn’t tell you.”

  “In your heart you’re a spy plain and simple. And they just can’t let it all hang out. Now finish your burger. But hands off my fries,” he added when he saw her greedily eye his untouched pile.

  CHAPTER

  58

  ROBERT PULLER WAS sitting in his pickup truck watching her. The Kansas plates had seemed to stick out here, so he had replaced them with D.C. plates he’d lifted from a car sitting in a D.C. impoundment lot.

  Susan Reynolds was eating dinner at a table in the front window of a restaurant on trendy H Street. She looked like she didn’t have a care in the world, but looks could be deceiving. And he wasn’t going to underestimate the woman. Not again. He had gone back through her professional history multiple times, focusing on parts he had skimmed before. He had taken all of this and built it into a new mosaic, which had presented some interesting possibilities.

  She was dressed to entice tonight, that was clear to see. The skirt was knee-length but tight, and the starched white shirt with the two top buttons undone was suggestively revealing. The shoes were long spikes and the stockings had seams down the backs.

  He sank lower in the driver’s seat as a D.C. patrol car sailed past. He knew cops everywhere now would be alerted to his possible presence in the metro area.

  He had picked up his tail on Reynolds at her home and followed her here. He didn’t recognize the man she was with, but he was dressed like a lawyer or lobbyist, which meant he was dressed expensively. Puller had gotten a look at him when he drove up shortly after Reynolds arrived. He had arrived in an Aston-Martin. So there was money there if nothing else. As he watched, she laughed at something the man said.

  It must be nice to be able to still find amusement in life when your boss just got blown to dust. Puller could imagine that the rest of DTRA must be mourning their slain chief. And Blair Sullivan. And the driver. Three innocent men who would not get to live one day longer. But not Reynolds. She just trucked on with not one blemish on her. Not an ounce of remorse.

  Puller knew that Reynolds had had some part to play in the bombing. He just didn’t know how or exactly why. His brother had told him that Sullivan had gone off on him and defended Reynolds. And Donovan Carter had agreed with his internal security chief’s position, though not necessarily his tone. So if Reynolds was off the hook, why kill them? his brother had wanted to know. But Carter had suspected Reynolds. And so had Sullivan, of that Puller was certain. And Reynolds must’ve realized this or discovered it somehow, and their deaths had swiftly followed.

  His brother was a superb soldier and a crackerjack investigator, but he was both an honorable and an honest man. And while he could sniff out when suspects were lying, the intelligence world was a different paradigm altogether. People in that world didn’t lie simply to conceal things. They lied for a living. And when you did something over and over you tended to get really adept at it. At least the ones who stuck with it did. The others were either drummed out of the field or perished within it.

  That’s what was so perplexing about Reynolds. His brother had been convinced she was lying. And when he had questioned her with a gun to her head, Robert Puller had felt the same way. And she had been lying. She had also been telling the truth about one crucial fact, but had tried to fashion it as a very clever lie.

  She saw the mirror I was using. She knew I was watching her face. She faked me out. Or at least she tried to.

  He could see that now. And that truth was worrying him greatly.

  He viewed Reynolds and her guest with his binoculars. There was definitely something familiar about the man. With the camera he had purchased, Puller took a long-range photo of him. He downloaded the image to his laptop and then ran the picture through the same databases he had used to check the image of the man he had killed in his prison cell.

  Yet unlike that image Puller got a hit on this search.

  Malcolm Aust.

  Now he connected the name with the face. Of course.

  He was neither a lawyer nor a lobbyist.

  He was a chief UN weapons inspector from Germany, greatly respected across the world for both his knowledge and his courage.

  Though Puller knew something of the man, he quickly read through Aust’s bio. He had been in his position for over twenty-five years and had traveled to pretty much every hot spot on the globe. He was held in high esteem and had also written scholarly papers and appeared often on news programs.

  He was cultured, spoke several languages, and was rich thanks to his status as heir to a fragrance fortune. Thus the Aston-Martin didn’t trouble Puller. But something else did.

  Why would Reynolds be meeting with him? Despite her employment at the WMD Center and many accomplishments, she was not at the level where she would be having a dinner meeting with someone of Aust’s stature. Their types of professional circles were tightly controlled by those within the field. They adhered to strict pecking orders like any good hierarchy. The various status levels simply did not associate with each other. Aust might sit down with secretaries of state or chairmen of congressional committees. He might hobnob with generals and admirals and key CEOs or even heads of state. But Reynolds was none of those things.

  And yet Aust looked quite engaged with the woman, and Puller started to wonder if it were simply personal on his part. Reynolds, despite what he believed she had done, was very attractive and smart and held an important position in a field that mirrored Aust’s own interests.

  As he watched they clinked glasses and Reynolds leaned across the table and gave him a peck on the cheek. The look on the man’s face–which Puller could see through his optics–made it clear that Aust wanted far more than a brush of the lady’s ruby red lips against his skin.

  This might get interesting.

  It was then that he glanced in the truck’s side mirror and saw the man. He was about four car lengths back and casually smoking a cigarette while leaning against a building. He had looked away, only not in time.

  The watcher is being watched. I’ve been made. But I don’t think they realize that I know that. At least not yet.