Dickey nodded. “He was the one on the take, Johnny. Morris, too.”
“The detective Jeremy went to for help.”
“It was probably the luckiest day in Fiermonte’s life when Jeremy did that. But of course, that’s why Morris helped Jeremy out in the first place when he got busted two years ago. Trust is a valuable commodity, Johnny, much more so even than money. We live and die by trust, don’t we? Trust in others, trust in ourselves. It’s not even gold that runs our economy. It’s the trust in gold. And to a kid like Jeremy — cut off from his family, in and out of trouble — having someone he could trust, someone like a New York City detective willing to help him out when he needed it most, was as good as gold.”
Johnny thought about that, then said, “You make it sound like they’ve been watching Jeremy for years.”
“They have. Cat, too. And you — well, till you disappeared. Though it’s possible Fiermonte may have located you recently.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Smith believes Gregorian was provided a current photograph of you. And your girlfriend.”
Johnny felt a small but powerful rush of panic. “How could he have found us?”
“Where else would you go if you needed to hide? My turf isn’t what it used to be. New York isn’t what it used to be. I only have so many legitimate businesses, and your nature wouldn’t allow you to take the kind of illegitimate work I have to offer you. All Fiermonte needed to do was to look around.” He paused. “Thus the men watching your girlfriend while you went to meet Atkins. Thus Richter trying to bring the two of you to me after that.”
Johnny needed a moment to take that in — that he and Haley may have been photographed without his knowing it.
And that, had he not escaped from Richter’s men, Haley would likely be in a much safer place right now.
But how could I have known? Johnny thought.
Again, as if reading Johnny’s mind, Dickey said, “That, too, was Richter’s error. He should have been more clear about what was going on.”
Johnny nodded, then said, “Fiermonte’s on the take how, exactly?”
“He has been providing protection to a Russian cartel in exchange for large sums of cash.”
“What kind of protection?”
“Through Morris, Fiermonte gathers information about the cartel’s rivals in New York — information that has led to the murders of countless men. Fiermonte himself would provide information about ongoing federal investigations — information that no doubt cost the lives of a number of undercover agents. When Fiermonte began to fear that your father might have been on to him, he had to come up with a plan to get rid of him. It involved giving Tambov everything he would need to discredit your father posthumously. Carefully doctored files, the right incriminating photographs — all of it based on Fiermonte’s intimate knowledge of everything your father had done during his years undercover, and all of it also exposing everything I had helped your father do. He wanted your father dead, and he wanted me, the man your father had allegedly betrayed the FBI for, to be the only one who could have killed him.”
“Which is what happened.”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you mean?”
Dickey spoke carefully, as he needed Johnny to understand this next point perfectly.
“The nature of undercover work, Johnny, is such that, in order to maintain his cover, an operative often has to go along with things he normally wouldn’t. He has to come close to certain lines without crossing them. But there are times when he’ll have no choice but to cross those lines, because if he doesn’t, he faces blowing an operation he has spent years on. That’s the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is a prolonged, gruesome death. Your father had done some things in order to build and maintain his cover, and Fiermonte had collected proof of those ‘indiscretions’ and was going to use them against him by having Tambov leak them to the media after your father was killed. That was part of the conditions of the job. Abduct your father, get the information from your father, kill him and dispose of his body, then, in a few days, leak Fiermonte’s info to a certain reporter on Fiermonte’s payroll. Unless all of these conditions were met, Fiermonte wouldn’t consider the job completed. He was relying on this to start the feeding frenzy, knew that the media — particularly the New York papers — would love the story of a legendary FBI agent that turned out to have been corrupt all along. Part of the mob, not a brave crusader against it. And Fiermonte knew that this frenzy would help cover his own tracks further, not to mention draw attention away from his other illegal activities.”
“How do you know this?”
“Tambov told us.”
“But he got busted the next day.”
Dickey nodded. “That’s right.”
It took Johnny a moment to put it all together. “You found Tambov before the police did.”
“Yes.”
Johnny thought he detected a hint of pride. “You were the informant. You told the cops where to find him. But if you and Smith knew he was going to say all that bullshit about my father, then why didn’t you stop it?”
“When we figured out what was going on, we considered killing Tambov, silencing him — and Fiermonte’s lies — for good. But we realized it would be better if Tambov was encouraged to carry out that last part of Fiermonte’s job.”
“Why would you want that?”
“So Fiermonte would be convinced that in spite of Tambov’s quick arrest, everything still had gone as planned.”
“Why was that more important than my father’s reputation?”
“It was necessary to maintain his cover.”
“Whose cover?”
Dickey stopped there.
“Whose cover?” Johnny demanded. “Smith’s?”
Dickey looked Johnny up and down for a moment, then nodded and said, “I’ll leave the rest up to him.”
It looked to Johnny as if Dickey were bowing out of the conversation.
Johnny found what it took to raise his voice. “Up to who?”
As though in an answer to his question, the sound of footsteps was suddenly heard crossing above them. Someone walking from one side of a room to another. Then Johnny heard the sound of a door opening and closing.
“I’m going to get out my cell phone,” Dickey said calmly. “Okay?”
Frustrated, desperate to understand, Johnny glanced down as Dickey reached carefully into his pocket and removed his cell phone, holding it up for Johnny to see.
The bright animation running on the display screen told Johnny that an active call was in progress.
Obviously, whoever was upstairs, and was now on his way down, had been listening.
“He thought I should talk to you first,” Dickey told Johnny, terminating the call and pocketing his phone again. “He thought it might be better if I explained as much as I could to you before he came down. You may not be in any condition to hear much of anything if we did this the other way around.”
“Did what?”
Johnny heard a door open in the kitchen. He also heard the sound of the pouring rain. A few seconds later the door closed, and then all Johnny could hear were footsteps again.
Wet rubber soles on wood planks.
Heavy.
Johnny glanced toward the kitchen door, then back at Dickey.
As casually as he could, he moved his right hand to his side, inches from the knife in his back pocket.
Despite his exhaustion, his heart was pounding fresh adrenaline into his veins.
Despite all his training, he knew he was on the verge of flight or fight.
All he could think of was Haley, getting back to her, getting away from all of this, whatever it was.
Johnny looked as the kitchen door swung open. His hand was now on the handle of the knife.
Ready to move, ready to act the moment he saw or heard something — anything — he didn’t like.
All Johnny saw was a man wearing a black mackintosh enter
the doorway.
A large, powerfully built man who all but filled the door frame to frame.
Johnny looked for the man’s face but couldn’t see it yet.
The man took a few steps forward, edging closer to the rim of dim light cast from the dining room.
Chapter Fifty-Four
The man reached the light and moved into its periphery, but Johnny almost didn’t look at him, was too busy eyeing the possible exits and his routes to them.
Finally, though, Johnny saw the man clearly.
But what he was seeing wasn’t possible.
Made no sense at all.
He doubted his eyes, doubted his own mind.
Fatigue plays all kinds of games; Johnny knew this. It can trick the eye into seeing motion when there is only stillness, turn common shadows into dangerous creatures.
But this wasn’t that.
Johnny turned to Dickey in disbelief, his heart a wild animal throwing itself against his chest and ribs.
All Dickey did was nod once.
Then Johnny looked back at the man beside him — the man in the black mackintosh shimmering with rain — and uttered the only thing he could.
The only word he could form.
It came out as little more than the gasp of a lost child.
A stunned, simple plea that was barely loud enough to be heard over the pounding rain.
“Dad?” Johnny said.
Stepping into the light, John Coyle Sr. nodded and smiled.
“It’s good to see you, son,” he said.
He approached Johnny and held him by the shoulders, squaring the two of them off so he could take a good look at his son’s face.
Johnny stood there, frozen.
Then John Coyle pulled Johnny close and embraced him with powerful arms.
A lump rose in Johnny’s throat, and tears sprang from his eyes. It took a moment for him to find the presence of mind to embrace his father back.
“I’m proud of you,” John Coyle said softly. “Of everything you’ve done so far.”
Johnny felt as if he were in free fall. His mind was reeling, his senses as overwhelmed as they had been when he’d made his first parachute jump out of a C-130 Hercules.
The first in line, the first out the rear door — Always be first, his father had told him. Always take point.
John Coyle released his son and held him again by the shoulders, this time to brace him, because it looked as though Johnny’s knees might buckle.
“I’m sorry, Johnny. I’m sorry to have put you guys through this, but it was the only way. As long as Fiermonte believed I was dead, you three were safe.”
Johnny found one more word, and just enough air to gasp it.
“How?”
Before John Coyle could answer, Dickey spoke.
“We need to move, John.”
John Coyle nodded but kept his eyes on Johnny. “I’ll tell you everything on the way, son.”
Johnny’s tears only further blurred his already-diminishing vision.
He still couldn’t believe this, still didn’t fully comprehend what was going on, what he was seeing, hearing, feeling.
Despite his confusion — and elation — he nonetheless was able to recognize changes in his father’s face.
Something not right here, something different there.
Something more than the man advancing in years — fifty-seven when Johnny had last seen him, so sixty now.
Sixty, and still vital.
Johnny knew that what he was seeing were indications of broken bones that hadn’t properly healed.
John Coyle was aware of his son’s line of vision.
“Tambov, doing his job,” he explained. “Trying to find out what I knew.”
Johnny was able to form two words. “Then…how…?”
“He only has a brief window,” Dickey said. “And it’s closing soon.”
John Coyle nodded again. “Okay.” He looked Johnny over one more time. He was smiling wildly, proudly.
But it was time to get down to business.
“Richter gave you the change of clothes?” he said.
Johnny managed to nod.
“Get changed, then.”
“Where are we going?”
“To meet with Smith.”
Haley did a quick search of the room — the bed, which was actually only a metal-framed cot on metal rollers, and a dresser with empty drawers. Nothing else, not even curtains or shades. She found a closet, but it, too, was empty.
The cot’s mattress was covered with a cheap sheet and single blanket. She pulled the blanket off and wrapped it around her shoulders against the damp and cold.
Walking to the window, she looked down at the end of the driveway — fifty feet away — and the two cars parked in it, one behind the other.
She could have easily opened the window and jumped down to the soaked ground, but her captors were certain to hear that. And anyway, where would she go in this rain, with no clothes? Wrapped in a blanket and barefoot? Nothing but deep woods in three directions and open space in the fourth?
How far could she get before being hunted down?
More than all that, though, she couldn’t just leave Cat behind.
Stepping to the cot, Haley sat down. She thought about Johnny. Of course he was alive. Of course he was. She feared for the man, any man, who got in his way.
But without her cell phone there was no way for him to contact her.
No way for her to tell him where she was.
After a few moments Haley heard the sound of the door to the farmhouse opening and closing. She returned to the window and watched as someone crossed to the second car.
It wasn’t Fiermonte or the bloodied hulk, so the other guy, the one who had made her and Cat undress.
He reached the car but paused before getting in.
Then he looked toward the upper windows of the farmhouse.
Haley could have sworn that he saw her there.
And that he had nodded at her before getting in and driving away.
Spies are useful everywhere.
— Sun Tzu
EPISODE SEVEN
Chapter Fifty-Five
Dickey was driving the black Mercedes SUV south along a rain-swept road. John Coyle was in the backseat beside Johnny, who was now dressed in dry clothes and a light rain jacket.
“When he realized Tambov had betrayed him, Dickey went searching for me,” Johnny’s father explained. “If the abduction had gone quickly and quietly, I would have been dead before anyone even knew I was missing. Jeremy doesn’t know this, Johnny, but he saved my life. Because of him, shots were fired and the police were called. Dickey was driving home and heard the dispatch calls over the scanner. He put two and two together.” John Coyle paused. “I’ve been waiting three years to tell Jeremy that. It’s something I think he should know, don’t you?”
Johnny nodded, then said, “You could have gotten word to us, no? To me or Cat, at least. Explained what was going on. We could have let him know. You could have trusted us.”
“It wasn’t a matter of trust, Johnny. We knew Fiermonte would be watching all of you closely. He needed to believe I was dead.” He paused, then said with regret, “He needed to see the three of you mourning your father, otherwise you’d all be in danger.”
Johnny thought about what Fiermonte had in fact seen: Cat all but giving up on the career that had once been everything to her; Jeremy guilt-ridden and struggling with addiction; Johnny’s pilgrimage to oblivion by way of Vietnam and Thailand, a pilgrimage financed by his share of his father’s minor estate.
“It wasn’t just that we thought you were dead,” Johnny said. “That was bad enough. But what came out after, that you were a traitor and always had been…that was just…” Johnny trailed off.
John Coyle nodded. “I know. But like Dickey said, it was necessary. Fiermonte and Morris were getting men killed. Lots of men, dedicated men, men with families — families that would never actually see them again
. I had to trust that in your hearts you kids would know better. I had to trust that you would survive it, that you would take care of yourselves in the meantime, which is what your mother and I raised you to do. The fact that you three were estranged actually helped keep you safe.”
Johnny said nothing.
His father watched him, sensed his son’s mixed feelings — shock still, yes, and joy that his father was alive, of course.
But there was also disapproval and hurt in Johnny’s eyes.
John Coyle had always put his career ahead of his children; it was the cost of the work he did, it was why he waited till relatively late in life to start his family. He had never put his work ahead of their safety or well-being, but he was for the most part an absent father, living his secret life in the city, coming home on weekends only, though sometimes not even then.
But this was something else.
“Dickey was looking out for all of you,” John Coyle said. “He had Jeremy under surveillance at one point. Twenty-four hour surveillance, in fact. He made sure that wherever Jeremy applied for a restaurant job, he got hired. How do you think he was able to keep quitting jobs like he did and still find work? Dickey even offered to have a team of men follow you to Vietnam, and pay for it himself, keep it running for as long as needed. But I told him to let you go. I knew why you were going there. Or at least I thought I did. And you’re a Coyle, for Christ’s sake. You were 101st Airborne, like me, like your grandfather; you had qualified as a Ranger. If anyone could take care of himself, it was you. If I had known why you were really going there, I would have had Dickey send his best men. I would have gotten a fake passport, gone there myself, and gotten you the hell out of there.”
Johnny thought about that.
If he hadn’t gone in search of rock bottom — and found it, smacked hard against it — he would have never met Haley.
And where would he be without her?
John Coyle paused, then said, “I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry for putting you through this. I need you to know that I woke every day hoping it would be the day I would see my children again. Expecting it would be. I went to bed every night praying that you were okay, and that the next day would be the day. It was all I could do, and it wasn’t anywhere near enough. But I had to trust in Dickey. I had to trust in you kids. And I had to trust in myself, that I was doing the right thing. I had to remind myself every minute of every day that I was part of something bigger than myself. That sacrifice is what elevates us. I had taken an oath and I couldn’t break it.”
The Betrayer Page 38