The Siege

by Stephen White

  In a tone that teachers reserve for instructions to the slow student, he said, “I’ll get a subpoena for your cell phone. Saw you using it today. That will tell me everything I need. Is that where we’re heading?”

  I rotated my wrist so my hand was palm-up, exposing the vulnerability of the veins and arteries for his appraisal. I could feel my pulse accelerating. You take my phone, I thought, Jane is dead. Orange dead.

  Time stopped, yet the echo of his words wouldn’t stop reverberating in my head.

  He’d said, “tell me everything I need,” not “tell us everything we need.” My experience was that FBI special agents played team sports. I recognized I was engaging in wishful thinking—I knew I wanted to believe that the use of the personal pronoun revealed something that I wanted to be true about Christopher Poe.

  Specifically that he wasn’t a team guy.

  I caught him looking in the mirror behind the bar. I said, “My phone won’t tell you anything that might actually help you. And it will put someone’s child at . . . immediate risk. I would argue that’s not necessary. And more importantly, it’s not going to give you what you really need.”

  “So you know what I really need?”

  I’d walked right into that one. I didn’t have a quick reply ready.

  Poe took two long pulls from the bottle of beer, waiting. Finally, he said, “What if I agree not to demand to know the kid’s name? Not right away. Then what? Think we have a future? You and me?”

  I wondered if it was possible that Poe had the hostage taker’s rules figured out. Had the FBI talked to another hostage family already? The family of one of the dead kids maybe? Yeah, probably. If that was true, this offer to play along cost him nothing.

  “I’m thinking,” I said.

  “While you’re thinking, tell me something. You got to New Haven when, Sam Purdy?”

  The question was a trap. If I didn’t answer quickly, he’d know I was screwing with him. If I lied, he might already know enough about what I’d been doing to recognize that I was pumping my answers from a septic tank full of bullshit.

  “Yesterday,” I said. I thought my delay was within margins. Two or three seconds.

  “Time?” he asked.

  “Early afternoon. Before the sniper scare and before the body was discovered in the hockey rink.”

  “Early Friday afternoon? Huh? How long was your trip here? I’m not asking you where you started, I’m just trying to get some sense of how early the student’s family knew to be concerned.”

  The agent had put special emphasis on the word “Friday.” I filed it.

  I wasn’t going to mention Miami or the length of my private jet flight. “The family was initially concerned sometime . . . Thursday evening. By Friday morning, they were worried. Their kid is a kid who stays in touch with family. The silence screamed at them.”

  Poe said, “So it’s a girl.” He said it with a little wonder in his voice.

  “Think what you want.”

  “If it was a boy, you’d have said, ‘His silence screamed at them.’ You should have just lied, Sam. Would have been better. I wouldn’t have known the difference.” He shook his head. “Almost every cop I know would have lied right then. Which means you’re not every cop I know. You’re either stupid, or honest, or, God help me, both.”

  I said, “Fifty-fifty chance you’re right.”

  “Binary,” he said. “The way life has gone? I’ll take those odds.”

  I didn’t know what he meant. But I had a hunch about how to be useful to him. Since it was all I had, Jane’s life might depend on the quality of my hunch.

  I said, “Friday is the key to all this, Poe. The quiet time in the tomb on Friday.”

  He blinked twice, fast, but otherwise he didn’t react.

  My phone rang. Seconds later, Poe’s BlackBerry vibrated.

  “Can I get this?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Stay right here.”

  He glanced at the cuffs and smiled.

  I looked at the screen of my phone. Ann. I said, “It’s me.” I listened. I said, “Just now? This minute?” I was editing my responses to try to ensure that Poe couldn’t discern anything important from my words. I asked, “That was first? That order? Then the jersey? I got that right?” I listened to her reply. “Yes, yes. I’m sorry. You got it, not a great time. I’ll get back to you.”

  Ann closed the call with “I’m sorry, too, Sam.”

  I didn’t know what the hell that meant.

  Poe had turned his BlackBerry screen so I couldn’t read it. I saw the screen just long enough to recognize that his message was a text, not an email.

  If it was official government business, it wouldn’t be a text message.

  He read it. Then he looked at me. He offered a melodramatic “Well?”

  I said, “Another kid is outside the tomb. Solo, shackled, blindfolded.”

  I could tell from Poe’s eyes that what I was telling him wasn’t news.

  He learned about it via text message.

  Huh.

  APRIL 19, SATURDAY EVENING

  NEW HAVEN

  Christine Carmody knows little more than what she can see in front of her.

  Earlier that afternoon, after the tall black student read the unsub’s demands before retreating back inside the tomb, her HRT counterpart had summoned her inside the command vehicle. He told her the mobile cranes and cherry pickers were being driven away from the staging area behind the law school, and the contact microphones had been removed from the stone walls on the sides of the tomb. Finally, he instructed her to resume her role as lead hostage negotiator.

  Unclear what it all meant—other than that the cranes weren’t going far, that assault helicopters remained on standby, and that the FBI undoubtedly had an alternative plan for getting an audio bug into the building—Carmody took her post again. She was back where she had spent much of the day, out in front of the tomb.

  That’s where she was standing when the young man stepped outside the tomb with the cardboard box in his hands. That’s where she was standing when he squatted and poured the oranges down the stairs. That’s where she was standing when the IED that was buried in front of the tomb exploded.

  The blast killed the young man.

  The IED explosion left Christine with six stitches above her left eye and a sliver of shrapnel embedded in her right calf. She insisted on being treated where she was wounded—at her post, in the middle of Grove Street. A local EMT—he’d done two tours as a medic in Iraq—cut her trousers and dressed her wound, but didn’t go after the shrapnel. He’d leave that to a surgeon. He told her that the IED that had been buried in front of the tomb had been a shaped charge. Its force had been directed toward the building.

  As he poked a tetanus booster into her upper arm, he let her know that if the charge hadn’t been shaped, she might have been killed.

  That’s when she decided to accept a flak jacket.

  As the cold white illumination at the crime scene supplants the last useful daylight, Christine stands in front of the tomb on Grove Street, waiting. The HRT hostage negotiator, the man who originally replaced her—but who she has now replaced—hovers nearby. Earlier, Moody exited the command vehicle long enough to make clear to Christine that her counterpart in the FBI remained available for consultation about the “unsub” when he was not inside the “Tactical Operations Center.”

  She should, he said, “continue to liaise liberally.”

  So far, her FBI counterpart is spending more time inside the TOC than out. His frustration at his secondary role is palpable. But he’s handling the demotion like a pro, she thinks.

  Christine is aware that this unsub has received everything he’s asked for. She is curious how long the official magnanimity will last. She can sense that patience is running low.

  She paces to keep her leg from stiffening up. She is literally waiting for the next surprise, unsure whether it will come from the man in the tomb, from Hade Moody, or from one of the guy
s from the FBI Hostage Rescue Team.

  Christine’s husband, Ray, is a foreman at the nearby shipyard. Christine and Ray have almost nothing in common. She is a vegan. Ray is no more a vegan than he is a woman, an African-American, or a Puerto Rican-American. He’s a white kid from suburban Chicago whose idea of supper starts and stops with the well-cooked flesh of creatures that had mothers. Alongside some form of pale starch.

  On paper, they make no sense as a couple. But Christine adores the guy. Ray adores her right back.

  On his way to his late shift, Ray detours by the crime scene to deliver Christine a new pair of pants and a cold supper he fixed for her that’s heavy on soy and nuts and leafy greens. He fusses over her injuries a little bit during his visit, but not enough to embarrass her. He was following events on television and knew that his wife would need extra protein for the endurance trial she was facing. He threw in a couple of bananas so she’d be sure to get enough potassium to stay sharp.

  After Ray leaves to head to the shipyard, Carmody eats her dinner. She saves a banana for later. She resumes pacing the street in front of the tomb. Her steps have taken on a pronounced limp. The flak jacket she’s wearing feels wrong.

  She is tossing shelled pistachios and almonds into her mouth like popcorn.

  At precisely seven-thirty, a young man wearing a Tampa Bay Buccaneers jersey appears out in front of Book & Snake. The door closes behind him.

  The football jersey is tangerine orange.

  All activity outside the tomb stops as though a switch has been thrown. The sudden quiet feels surreal. The roaring whine of a motorcycle revving on the other side of the cemetery intrudes like a profanity.

  Christine recognizes that this young man is about to die. She doesn’t know how.

  Worse, she doesn’t know why.

  She is acutely aware that she can do nothing to betray to the man in the tomb the fact that she—and the rest of the authorities on the scene—knows about the code.

  That orange means death.

  She suspects that the unsub already knows that the authorities know. And that he wants the cops to know.

  But that he wants the pretense of ignorance to continue.

  She stuffs the bag of nuts into her back pocket and returns to her spot. She faces the young man.

  This new kid standing at the top of the Book & Snake stairs is shackled. His wrists are bound in front of him with plastic cuffs. His legs are hobbled loosely at the ankles with a leather belt wrapped in a figure eight.

  He is blindfolded.

  Since he can’t see her, Carmody steps halfway across Grove Street to get closer to him. She wants him to hear her clearly.

  Joey Blanks whispers to Christine that the HRT hostage negotiator has exited the command vehicle. Her counterpart strolls into position ten feet behind Carmody. Christine can feel his presence. She wonders if he is preparing to intervene.

  Carmody introduces herself to the latest hostage. To no one’s surprise, the kid doesn’t respond. She asks him to raise his shirt. He doesn’t. She asks him to drop to the ground. He doesn’t.

  He swallows. Licks his lips.

  Christine waits.

  His voice swollen with fear, he finally says, “Don’t come near me. I will die.”

  She knows what he is saying is true. She wonders if he knows how true it is. She wonders if this young man knows that even if she doesn’t approach him, he will die.

  The air in her lungs gets heavy, as though it has mass. Her heart sinks in her chest. She waits for most of a minute to pass before she asks the young man if he has anything else to say. He doesn’t reply.

  Joey Blanks steps to within a foot of Christine. He whispers, “His name is Gregory Tantalus, he’s twenty-one, from St. Louis. I have complete background on him and his family whenever you want it, Sarge.”

  Without turning her head to face him, she says, “That jersey is orange, Joey. Is this kid already dead?”

  Joey’s words sound especially profound, like documentary narration by James Earl Jones. He says, “He is one of the kids with an ATL. Parents have been in contact. None of that’s good. Whenever you want more information about him, you let me know.” Joey steps back two paces.

  They stand in silence.

  A while later Carmody asks, “Joey, how long has the kid been outside now?”

  Joey checks his watch. “Eight minutes and change.”

  Ten feet behind Carmody, the HRT hostage negotiator touches his earpiece with his left hand. He mutters a reply into a hidden microphone before he hustles back toward the TOC.

  “Something’s going on,” she says, stealing a quick glance toward the command vehicle. “Whatever it is, the feds don’t want to tell me. Any ideas?”

  “My patrol partner, Alfred, he heard that the feds disabled two webcams that were focused on the tomb from outside. One was over in Swing Space. Another at the top of Berkeley. Guy inside’s been monitoring us in real time, online.”

  “I bet he has more than those two,” Christine says. “He’s still watching us. I can feel his eyes. But that’s not what’s going on right now. I got a bad feeling, Joey.”

  “I feel something, too,” Joey Blanks says. “I do.”

  APRIL 19, SATURDAY EVENING

  Sam

  The bar in the Omni was growing more crowded.

  Poe kept his voice low as he spoke to me. “In case you’re tempted, you can’t go back over there to watch this hostage, Sam Purdy. Sorry.”

  “That’s bullshit,” I said. Despite my compromised circumstances, I felt like arguing.

  Poe lowered his chin toward his chest and momentarily closed his eyes. He exhaled loudly. “You’re under surveillance. The moment you leave this building they will be on you like syrup on pancakes.”

  He’d said “they,” not “we.” I said, “Then I’ll lose them.”

  Poe’s voice was tired. “With all due respect, no, you won’t. You know anything about the Special Surveillance Group? SSG?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “You won’t even be able to find them. They’re that good. We’ve both been over there, you know you can’t see anything from the perimeter at the tomb anyway.”

  “TV?” I suggested.

  He thought about it for a few seconds. He slapped a pen onto the bar. “Write your room number and your cell number on the napkin. I’ll follow you in a few minutes. We’ll talk some more.”

  I said, “You’re trusting me?”

  “Sam? With all due respect, you’re dead in the water without me. Miles from shore. My initial appraisal of you is that you’re smart enough to realize that.”

  I wrote down my room number. I made up a cell phone number.

  Poe released the cuffs.

  My room was on the eighth floor. I didn’t close the door all the way. Poe waltzed in about three minutes later. After he hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign outside, he closed the door all the way. He turned the dead bolt, hung the chain.

  He wasn’t locking anyone out. He was locking us in.

  He took the room’s only soft chair. I sat on the end of the bed. I flicked on the TV, began searching for cable news. I said, “I’d offer you a beer, but the damn minibar was stocked by Mormons.”

  “Mine, too,” Poe said.

  CNN came up first. The shot was grainy and indistinct, but Poe was right, it was a better view than I would have gotten from the perimeter established around the tomb.

  As Ann had described to me on the phone, a solitary male hostage—shackled and blindfolded—was standing between the pillars at the top of the stairs. The network apparently had no audio. The time stamp on the corner of the screen read, “7:47 ET.”

  The hostage—the crawl identified him as Greg Tantalus—was wearing the tangerine-colored jersey of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

  Ann had already warned me about his clothing. But seeing the orange, my heart sunk to my toes. I wondered how he would die. I wondered if I should tell Poe that the young man was about to die.

  “Can I see
your ID again?” I said to Poe.

  He didn’t hesitate. He pulled it from his pocket and tossed it to me. I examined it. It was real. I tossed it back. He caught it with the casual confidence of a goalie guarding his glove side.

  “You’re not with the local field office?”

  “I already said I wasn’t.”

  “You’re not with hostage rescue?”

  He shook his head. He found the idea of being attached to HRT amusing.

  “Not with SS—whatever—your super-duper surveillance guys?”

  “Nope. I work a small special investigations unit formed after Nine/eleven.”

  “Counterterrorism?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Okay, I’ll say that. If I talk to you tonight, where does it go?”

  “If? Don’t kid yourself. Right now? It goes nowhere. Later? Depends what you tell me. I’m not going to ignore viable intelligence. I don’t do this for amusement.”

  I knew I wasn’t going to get any more assurance than that. My suspicion was growing that Poe was some kind of anomaly in the FBI culture. I also knew that my time in New Haven as a free agent for the Calderóns was over. If I was going to be of any continued use to them, the time had come for me to take a calculated risk.

  Poe said, “I think you know why some of those kids are being released and some are being killed. If the asshole was just massacring kids, that’d be one thing. We understand that kind of terror. If he was bartering his hostages for ransom, or tactical advantage, that’d be something else. We understand those situations, too. As far as I can tell, he’s not doing either. I want to know what you know about that.”

  I couldn’t decide how much to reveal. I gestured toward the television. “This boy is about to be killed,” I said.

  Poe eyed me for a good five seconds before he said, dismissively, “What, you got a hunch?”

  Poe really didn’t know. He wasn’t aware of the color code.

  “No hunch. I know for a fact that this young man will be killed. Any minute. On national TV.”