Johnny took all that in, then said, “I’m sorry, too.”
“For what?”
“The way I acted the night we drove in together to get Jeremy.”
“You were disappointed, Johnny. I was disappointed for you. I just wanted you to know that you still had a future. You could still find a way to contribute. Trust me, I’ve had moments of despair over the past three years. Moments when I couldn’t wait any longer. When I thought of giving up, too, and just walking into that bar of yours one afternoon, or knocking on Cat’s door, or going to my old apartment and telling Jeremy that he had saved my life, that he wasn’t the fuck-up he thought he was.” He paused, then added, “Each moment of despair only ended up deepening my resolve.”
Johnny glanced at the rearview mirror and saw Dickey watching him. Then he looked back at his father.
“You said you knew Fiermonte would be watching us. Why?”
“Because he’s smart. Smart enough to know that when something looks too good to be true it probably is.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tambov was supposed to get the information out of me, kill me, get rid of my body, and then contact Fiermonte. That was the plan. They figured four hours, tops. But Tambov didn’t report in after four hours. Or six hours, or eight. By noon the next day Fiermonte had to have been wondering what was happening, that maybe something had gone wrong.”
“What was happening?”
“Like I said, Dickey saved me. Tambov was using one of Dickey’s empty warehouses. Where else in the city was he going to find the kind of privacy he would need to do what he’d been told to do? I was tied in a chair, had taken some punches to the face, but it was about to get bad — he was about to start cutting off pieces of me. He turns to get his shears, I look up, and there’s Dickey walking out of the darkness, coming up behind Tambov. I was never happier to see anyone in my whole life. Even someone as ugly as Dickey here.”
Johnny glanced again at Dickey’s eyes in the rearview mirror, saw that he was smiling, then looked back at his father.
“Fiermonte and I had worked together for over twenty years,” John Coyle said. “I’d begun investigating him in hopes that I would prove myself wrong, find that he wasn’t involved at all. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, figured I owed him that at least. Any hint that I suspected him of this kind of corruption could have damaged his reputation, not to mention end our friendship. The more I looked for proof that he wasn’t involved, though, the more I realized that it wasn’t just a matter of him being involved. He was the top of it, he was the ringleader. And by sending Tambov to question and kill me, he had tipped his hand. He knew I was on to him. And Dickey and I knew that we had a chance to turn Tambov and use him against Fiermonte.”
“By faking your death.”
John Coyle nodded. “We needed proof that he was the one calling all the shots. It had to be rock-solid proof, and for that we needed an official investigation. But Fiermonte had to think Tambov had done his job, despite not hearing from him for more than sixteen hours after I was abducted, otherwise he’d just close everything down. Or worse, use my kids against me. Send someone after one or all of you. Use you to keep me silent. Or kill you as a warning.” He paused. “We had to think fast.”
“How did you do that?” Johnny said. “How’d you convince Fiermonte that everything had gone as planned when it didn’t?”
“Dickey did what Dickey does. He let Tambov know what would happen if he didn’t do what we told him to do. What would happen to his family. And we let him know what was in it for him if he did work for us, which happened to be exactly what Fiermonte had promised him.”
“Witness protection.”
John Coyle nodded. “We instructed Tambov to go to his apartment and wait for the cops, and after he was arrested all he had to do was tell them everything that Fiermonte would want to hear — that I had been killed and my body disposed of, that a man he didn’t know, but that he suspected worked for Dickey, had assigned the job to him. We decided that since Tambov couldn’t leak the information Fiermonte had given him from jail, it would be best if Tambov used it as a bargaining chip. Tambov would give them me, a corrupt and high-ranking FBI agent, in exchange for a plea deal. That would satisfy Fiermonte because his lies would become part of the public record, which was what he wanted. But it would also look right to Fiermonte that Tambov had used that info to save his skin, and that was what we wanted. We needed Fiermonte to believe this, not just want to believe it. We needed him to believe that despite Tambov’s having gotten arrested, everything still went as planned.”
“How would the fact that Tambov hadn’t contacted Fiermonte within four hours be explained?”
From the front seat, Dickey said, “Hacking a man to death turned out not to be as easy as Tambov thought it would be. And scattering all the pieces in the various waterways took much longer than he thought it would.”
“Tambov’s story,” John Coyle said, “if Fiermonte ever got him alone and asked for it, which he did, was that he had just gotten back to his apartment after the longest night of his life and was having a drink to settle his nerves when the cops came busting in. Most criminals get caught for one reason and one reason alone — their own stupidity. As a prosecutor, Fiermonte would know this, so it wouldn’t be such an outlandish thing for him to believe. We also instructed Tambov to tell Fiermonte the other thing Fiermonte wanted to hear: that I was on to him but that no one else knew. It seemed better to give him that than to say I wasn’t. Fiermonte is the kind of man who needs to know he’s right. And it was another way for us to account for Tambov taking so long that night. He needed to make sure I was telling the truth on both counts — that I knew but no one else did — before he actually killed me.”
“And Fiermonte bought it?”
“It seemed so.”
“But why was he having Tambov’s men killed? In case they could identify him?”
“He wasn’t just having them killed,” John Coyle said. “Fiermonte sent Gregorian to extract information from them first, then kill them.”
“What information?”
“We could only assume he was trying to find out which one of them had tipped off the cops. It had to be one of them, right? Who else could have betrayed Tambov? And if it wasn’t one of them, then why did the cops show up when they did? And since it wasn’t any of them, Fiermonte was left with that one crucial question unanswered. Like I said, he’s smart. He needs everything neat and tidy, every possibility addressed and accounted for before he can call a case closed. After Tambov skipped out on witness protection, Fiermonte saw his chance to address his remaining doubt once and for all. If Tambov’s men couldn’t explain it, then maybe Tambov could. He sent Gregorian to hunt him down. Tambov knew what would happen to his family if he betrayed Dickey, but Gregorian is a cruel piece of shit, just like his father. He loves to hurt; it’s like sex for him. And anyway, a man can only hold out under torture for so long. Tambov spilled everything — that I was alive, and that Dickey and I had used him against Fiermonte. But the one part of Fiermonte’s plan that went perfectly was his effort to discredit me. Because of him I’m a traitor to the FBI. I died in disgrace and was tried and convicted in the media. Add to that the fact that for the past three years I’ve been living under the protection of the very man for whom I had supposedly betrayed my oath. With all that against me, what could I possibly do to Fiermonte? And if I could have done something, wouldn’t I have already?”
“How long ago was Tambov killed?”
“Close to a year. You were back by then, also under Dickey’s protection, so I wasn’t worried about you. Fiermonte was keeping a close eye on Cat, we knew that, but she’s FBI, and he wouldn’t dare risk coming after her. That left Jeremy. Fiermonte watched him like a hawk. When Jeremy recovered his memories, Fiermonte knew he had to get his hands on the recordings. He needed to know if they implicated him. But once he heard them, he realized this was his chance to draw me out of h
iding once and for all.”
“To kill you.”
“Yes. With my children in danger, I couldn’t just sit back.”
“Why not just abduct one of us, or all of us, like you feared he would three years ago?”
“It would expose him for who he is to the three of you. And then he’d have to kill all of you — particularly you and Cat, the two real threats to him. It would be better to stay behind the scenes and turn all of you against Dickey, the man who was hiding me. Eventually, one way or another, I’d have to come out, at which point the thug who’d been tailing Jeremy would have his chance at revenge.”
“You killed Gregorian’s father.”
“That’s right. It’s likely there’s nothing to connect Fiermonte and Dragoi Gregorian. Fiermonte would have set up buffers between them, used disposable cell phones, never met face-to-face. So if something went wrong and Gregorian got arrested, he couldn’t identify Fiermonte.”
Johnny thought about that for a moment. “I don’t understand,” he said finally. “If you were on to Fiermonte before he tried to kill you, why not just come forward with whatever you knew?”
“Like I said, I wanted it not to be true. Only Dickey knew my doubts about the man. It was Dickey, in fact, who came to me and suggested that Fiermonte was helping the Russians. What I found confirmed my suspicions, but it didn’t prove anything. It certainly didn’t prove that Fiermonte was running the whole operation.”
“So how can we prove it?”
“We may already have.”
“How?”
“Two months after Tambov got arrested, when everything started to settle down, Dickey and I approached a man named Kirkland. You know him as Smith. I had trained him, so I knew we could trust him. We told him everything, at which point he and Dickey were the only people who knew I was alive. And who knew that I had been framed by Fiermonte. It remained that way till just now, when we told you.”
“If Smith’s FBI, why do Morris and Fiermonte think he’s an undercover cop?”
“Because that was Smith’s way in. He approached the police commissioner and the FBI director, told them everything, except that I was alive. Dickey provided the proof that Fiermonte had both arranged my murder and framed me. The FBI has a history of working with paid informants, even men like Dickey, and they knew he had provided me with my covers over the years. So Smith was set up in Morris’s precinct, and as far as Morris was concerned, Smith was an undercover cop who had managed to infiltrate Dickey’s crew and was now working with the FBI’s Organized Crime Task Force. We knew Fiermonte would be interested in Smith. He would see Smith as a chance to maybe get information on Dickey’s business, which would help him both as a prosecutor and an informant to the cartel. And then later, when he found out Dickey was hiding me, there was the chance that he could use Smith to find out where. It was made to look like Smith was in deep financial trouble, that he was far from being a Boy Scout, and eventually Morris approached and recruited him. The more Smith proved himself to them, the more they trusted him. And the more they trusted him, the more responsibility they gave him. Smith had been moving up in Fiermonte’s organization, hoping to position himself as one of the men Fiermonte gave orders to directly. That’s what we’ve been waiting for. And it may have finally happened two days ago.”
“What happened two days ago?”
“Fiermonte put Smith in charge of Gregorian and another professional killer, a woman Fiermonte had brought in from a Russian-controlled mob boss in Detroit. Fiermonte even told Smith to use one of Dickey’s old warehouses as a base, so if things somehow turned to shit, it might look like they were working for Dickey. If over the past few days Smith has received direct orders from Fiermonte — orders involving his hired killers — then we’ll have what we need.”
“Is he wired? Is that how you plan on getting proof?”
“There’s a state-of-the-art digital recorder built into his bullet-resistant vest. Transmitters aren’t safe; their signals can be too easily detected. Everything Fiermonte has said to Smith in the past two days should have been recorded.”
“If Smith does have proof, wouldn’t he have told you that by now? Called you or something?”
“Cell phone communication isn’t possible. Calls can be intercepted, and phones themselves can be confiscated and searched through. When you’re undercover, your cell phone is a ticking bomb in your pocket. And stopping to send a text or an e-mail isn’t always an option. And even if you’re using codes, there’s no way of knowing for sure if the text or e-mail you are receiving is from your agent or someone pretending to be your agent. And vice versa.”
Johnny thought about the coded text message he had received from Haley, sent to him as Richter and his men held her blocks from their apartment.
He also thought about Haley waiting to hear from him right now.
Waiting with Cat, and Fiermonte, in the Gershwin Hotel.
“Times and locations arranged in advance were our only way of exchanging information with Smith,” John Coyle said. “It slowed things down a bit, but it was a necessary trade-off. One of those prearranged times is now, but he’ll only wait around for an hour.”
“That’s if he’s even there,” Dickey said.
“What does he mean?” Johnny asked his father.
“We came up with a long list of times and places, but they’re only chances to meet. Dickey would make every scheduled meeting, and if Smith didn’t show after a certain time, Dickey would leave and make the next meeting, hoping Smith would show then. Smith sometimes missed three or four meetings in a row before he was able to safely get away. The next prearranged time after tonight isn’t for another thirty-six hours, but we can’t wait that long.”
“Why not?”
John Coyle hesitated, met Dickey’s eyes in the rearview mirror, then said to his son, “Cat and your girlfriend were last seen leaving the hotel with Fiermonte. They got into his car and lost the men assigned to tail them.” He paused. “I’m sorry, Johnny.”
Johnny didn’t respond. He looked out the window. Despite the darkness and the rain, he quickly recognized their surroundings. They were on Route 9, heading south.
The same road he and his father had followed that October night three years ago when they went to get Jeremy.
“If their lives are in danger,” John Coyle assured Johnny, “Smith will help them, even if it means blowing his cover. I promise.”
Johnny thought of Smith firing just an hour ago — not at Johnny, but into the empty space above the downed woman beside him.
And he thought of Smith raising his hand suddenly as if about to say, “Don’t shoot.”
“But if he’s waiting at the meeting place,” Johnny pointed out, “then he isn’t with them.”
John Coyle said nothing.
Dickey was looking at Johnny in the rearview mirror again.
He, too, said nothing.
All Johnny could think of right now was the fact that he had simply led Haley from one life-threatening situation — the two of them being cornered in that guesthouse in Thailand — to another.
All his efforts in between, everything he had done to keep her hidden and safe, had been for nothing.
He was reminded of what Fiermonte had said about Jeremy — had likely said for Jeremy’s benefit, Johnny now realized, to propel the troubled boy even further in his dangerous pursuit of the man he believed ordered the murder of their father.
And who ordered the murder of the woman he loved, and loved him.
Jeremy oughtn’t have bothered.
Johnny thought then of his brother fighting for his life in a stranger’s house somewhere in Westchester.
“Any word on Jeremy?” Johnny asked.
John Coyle looked to Dickey.
“He’s still in surgery,” Dickey answered. “He’s in good hands, I promise,” he said to Johnny. “Richter will call as soon as he knows something.”
Johnny was staring out the window again.
H
e had only one last question.
There was only one thing that mattered now.
“How long till we’re at the meeting place?”
“Thirty minutes,” his father answered.
A long time to wait, Johnny thought.
A long time to wonder.
He decided to do what Haley would tell him to do if she were here.
He breathed.
Breathed through the pain.
And visualized her, wherever she was, doing the same.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Johnny watched from the backseat of the Mercedes as John Coyle crossed the empty parking lot toward Smith’s car.
The figure behind the wheel leaned across the front seat, and the passenger door swung open.
John Coyle climbed in and pulled the door closed.
Nothing for Johnny to do but wait.
He was holding his cell phone — his only conduit to Haley. He had reattached the battery and powered it up, hoping to find a text from her waiting for him — a text comprised of one of their prearranged codes. There was no way of knowing what this meant, of course. And he didn’t dare text her.
Like his father had said, there was no guarantee that any reply Johnny might get was actually from her.
Fool me once, shame on you…
Johnny’s life now had been reduced to one thing — finding Haley.
No, two things — finding Haley and finding Cat.
All other concerns had fallen away. What he and Haley would do after that didn’t matter. And how Johnny would accomplish finding them didn’t matter. Everything he was, everything he had been raised and trained to be, he would call in to play if necessary.
The Betrayer Page 39