Long Road to Mercy

by David Baldacci

  The man did as he was told and then blurted out, “Hey, if you had a damn gun why didn’t you just pull it? Why’d you have to kick their asses?”

  Blum said, “Because she can and she wanted to.”

  Pine took out zip ties from her jacket pocket and bound all three men together, legs and hands, back to back, so they were totally immobile. After Pine and Blum used the restroom and finished washing up at the sinks, Pine dialed 911, told the dispatcher what had happened, gave her location and added, “I can’t stay to press charges, but just hold them for a few years on account of being stupid.”

  When Pine slid behind the wheel of the Mustang, Blum said, “You were quite impressive back there.”

  “I was incentivized.”

  “Well, I get that. We were being threatened.”

  “No, I mean I had to use the bathroom really bad.”

  Later on, Pine turned onto Interstate 81 North and punched the gas.

  This stretch of asphalt was known as the Trucker’s Highway as it wove through the mountains, and they passed many a big rig along the way. They stopped for takeout at a twenty-four-hour diner near Roanoke, Virginia. As they drove on, Pine cradled greasy fries in her lap and munched on a double cheeseburger, while Blum nibbled on hers and only occasionally ventured to pick up a fry.

  “You don’t like burgers and fries?” asked Pine.

  “Oh, I do. But at my age, they don’t like me like they used to. In that regard, they’re sort of like men.” A few minutes later she lay back against the seat and fell asleep.

  Hours later Pine reached Interstate 66 and took it due east toward Washington.

  It was right about then that Blum woke up. Stretching, she said, “Where are we?”

  “About two hours outside of DC.”

  “I’ve never been to DC.”

  “With all your rah-rah talk about Mr. Hoover, that surprises me.”

  “Well, he was already dead when I joined up, so . . .”

  “But there is the Hoover Building, which is falling apart, by the way.”

  “You never worked there. You were at the WFO,” she added, referring to the Washington Field Office.

  Pine shot her a glance. “You checked up on me?”

  “Well, of course I did. Did you want an idiot for a secretary?”

  “I visited Hoover quite frequently. They were looking for another home, but apparently Congress won’t give them the money.”

  “Well, it’s about time someone stopped wasting taxpayer dollars.”

  “Right, so the Pentagon can spend it on more ten-thousand-dollar toilets.”

  “Where are we staying once we get there?”

  “I’ve got a buddy. He’s on overseas assignment. We’re staying at his place in northern Virginia.”

  “For a loner, you certainly have a lot of buddies.”

  “So long as they keep their distance, I’m good.”

  They drove on, the ride nearing its end.

  CHAPTER

  26

  The “buddy’s” condo was in Arlington, Virginia, in an area known as Ballston. Kurt Ferris was a CID investigator in the Army and had been recently deployed overseas for six months to investigate crimes involving those who wore Army green in other countries. Pine had met him when they’d done a joint case together involving a smuggling ring operating out of Fort Belvoir that had international implications.

  They’d solved the case and ended on good terms, which had prompted her to contact him about a place to stay in Virginia. Instead, he had offered his apartment up to her, since he wasn’t using it. He swore he would not mention the arrangement to anyone after Pine told him she was working undercover on a Bureau case.

  The condo was near the Ballston Mall. The area had been widely renovated and was one of the most popular residential areas for well-educated and well-heeled millennials, who had come here to work and play. Initially, Pine had been surprised that Ferris could afford a place here on his Army pay, but then remembered that his parents had left their only child a fairly substantial inheritance when they’d died in a car accident.

  The condos were new, and all doors were operated not by keys but by passcodes. Ferris had given the necessary ones to Pine. That was good, because she didn’t want to have to give her name or show ID to the building personnel.

  Blum stowed her bag in her room, keeping everything in the bag in case they had to get away fast, as Pine had advised.

  She took a stroll around the three-bedroom condo. It had high ceilings and a small balcony overlooking a rectangle of park. The furnishings were tasteful and plush, and the kitchen was well stocked and equipped with Wolf and Sub-Zero appliances.

  After Blum checked out this and the pantry and the various cooking utensils, Pine emerged from her bedroom. Blum said, “Beautiful place. Is your friend single?”

  “Yeah, he is.”

  Blum picked up a picture from a credenza. It showed a tall, handsome man in his Army dress blues with two older people. “This him?”

  “Yeah, that’s Kurt, and his mom and dad.”

  “Quite the looker, and definitely a good friend to let you stay here. You two must have a close relationship.”

  She looked at Pine expectantly.

  “I’m not into girl talk,” said Pine.

  “Neither am I, considering neither one of us are girls.”

  Pine sighed. “I think Kurt wants to be more than friends. No, he does want to be more than friends. But I don’t think he and I being together would be a good idea.”

  “Career in the way. He’s in the east, you’re in the west?”

  “That’s partly it, yes.”

  “What’s the other part?”

  “Maybe I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “Fair enough. Men can be simple, but relationships are not, at least from the woman’s perspective.”

  “I did meet, I mean, I . . . there’s this park ranger.”

  “Really, what’s his name?”

  “Why, you know a lot of park rangers?”

  “Actually, I do.”

  “Sam Kettler.”

  “Don’t know him.”

  “He’s only been at the Canyon a couple years. He was on duty at Phantom when the guy went missing.”

  “So that’s how you met and then started dating? Pretty quick.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it dating. We went out for pizza and beer one time. And then he brought some beers over to my place the night before we left town. We sat out in his Jeep and drank them.”

  “You must be intrigued with him.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You just said you went down to his Jeep and drank beer with him right before you were leaving on this trip. You had a lot on your mind. You could have easily declined the offer. Only you didn’t. Pretty simple deduction.”

  “Well, I guess I am intrigued with him.”

  “Nice guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where’d you leave it with him?”

  “Nowhere, really. I think he’d like to see me again.”

  “And you?”

  Pine took a breath and rubbed at her mouth. “It’s complicated.”

  “And you might be more complicated than most.”

  “Why do you say that?” Pine said sharply.

  “I know about your past, Agent Pine. When you were a child?”

  “That has nothing to do with anything.”

  “Are you sure about that? It would have traumatized anyone.”

  “I’m not traumatized. I wouldn’t be in the FBI if I were. I would have punted on the psychological testing.”

  Blum nodded. “Okay. In the interests of getting it all out there, I also know that you went to ADX Florence to find out some things.”

  Pine gazed stonily at the woman. “I told no one about my trip.”

  “But you had to get special permission to visit after hours. That request came through the FBI bureaucracy. I saw the trail. Did you find what you nee
ded to?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Pine said in a tone that clearly indicated this conversation was over.

  Blum put the picture down. “Now what?” she said.

  “I’m taking a shower. I still have residue of the three creeps in a women’s toilet on me. I suggest you do the same.”

  Pine undressed in the bedroom and caught her image in the vertical mirror hanging from the wall.

  She looked first at the scars from her various encounters at the FBI. The bullet wound on the back of her calf that Kettler had noticed. An arrest gone to shit. She’d been lucky to survive it. The wound was small, and ugly. As she had explained to Kettler, the round had never come out of her. A surgeon’s scalpel had later done the trick. That was good, because the exit wound might have blown out an artery. Now, it just looked like a small, blistery melanoma.

  The knife slice on her left triceps had been a mistake on the part of an agent she’d been working with when handling a suspect. Fortunately, she’d been able to recover and take him out before she or her partner had paid the ultimate price. The scar looked like a centipede.

  She turned around and looked at her lower back. That hadn’t been the Bureau. That had been the weights. Lower back surgery was pretty typical for Olympic-caliber power lifters.

  She could not bring herself to look at the delt tats: Gemini and Mercury.

  She did lift her arms to show the words “No Mercy” on each.

  No, not the words. The name.

  She took a shower, letting the hot water and soap wash away the remnants of their encounter at the rest stop. She toweled off, put on fresh clothes, and then finger-dried her hair.

  She walked into the kitchen to see Blum sautéing some vegetables on the cooktop.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We both need a home-cooked meal. And your buddy left a well-stocked fridge. I’m assuming it’s okay if we use it?”

  “He said it was. I’ll leave him a check for the food we use. So, you cook?”

  “I had six kids to feed. What do you think? Although, actually, when they were growing up, it was more Hamburger Helper and mac and cheese. Six kids meant I didn’t have time to spend hours on cooking a meal. And I worked too, outside the house. Did your mother cook?”

  Pine didn’t answer the question. She sat down at the kitchen table and took out her laptop.

  “Still working?” said Blum as she peppered the vegetables. “We just drove across the country. You could take a break for an hour.”

  Pine typed in some information and waited for the search results to come back. “Actually, best sleep I’ve had in a long time, snoozing while you drove,” she said.

  “It is a beautiful car. My ex had one sort of like it. It wasn’t nearly as nice. He knew nothing about cars, unfortunately. It finally had to be junked.”

  “The guy who owned it was pretty special. He helped me out a lot in my early days at the Bureau. I wouldn’t be nearly so outgoing but for him.”

  Pine tacked on a very brief smile to this statement, as though trying to make fact what was really nothing more than speculation for most people who knew her.

  “Hallelujah for friends,” said Blum.

  “What are you making?” Pine asked.

  “Chicken Milanese. I do it pretty well, if I do say so myself. He’s got some ciabatta dinner rolls I’m going to warm in the oven, too. You want to do a salad? The fixings are in the fridge. Don’t use the arugula, that’s for the chicken.”

  Pine rose, washed her hands, and dried them off on a dish towel. She grabbed a large bowl from one of the cabinets, then opened the fridge and pulled out the necessary ingredients.

  Blum said, “I have to say, I never imagined us preparing a meal together on the East Coast, or anywhere, actually.”

  “Life is unpredictable,” said Pine as she sliced up a tomato and then a cucumber on a cutting board she’d taken from a drawer.

  Blum prepped the chicken breast cutlets, dredging them in plain Greek yogurt and then dressing the meat in bread crumbs together with oregano, basil, and thyme. She coated a pan with extra virgin olive oil and cooked the cutlets for three minutes on each side.

  After finishing the salad, Pine set the dining room table, then put the bowl of greens on the table.

  Blum squeezed a sliced lemon over the cooked chicken cutlets and plated them over beds of arugula. She took the rolls out of the oven and put them in a basket that she had lined with a cloth napkin.

  “I see your friend has a wine chiller,” said Blum, pointing to the appliance under the kitchen counter. “I’m more of a red person, but a Chardonnay or even better a Pinot Grigio would go well with the chicken. You want to check while I carry the plates and rolls in?”

  A minute later Pine came in carrying an uncorked bottle of Pinot and a wineglass in one hand, and a Fat Tire Belgian ale in the other.

  “My idea of a nice white,” said Pine, holding up the beer.

  She poured the wine into the glass and set it in front of Blum before taking her seat.

  Blum clinked her wineglass against Pine’s bottle of beer.

  They ate in silence until Pine said, “This is really good.”

  “I can show you how to make it.”

  Pine didn’t respond to this at first. “You know, that might be nice. I’m, uh, I’m not that much of a cook.”

  “Simple is best. And fresh ingredients.”

  “Right. So, um, maybe you can teach me a few dishes.” She glanced away and took a quick swig of her beer.

  Blum looked at Pine closely. “For Sam Kettler?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, come on, Agent Pine. I’m too old to be manipulated.”

  Pine smiled. “Okay, I do like him. We seemed to connect.”

  “Well, thank God, there’s no law against that. You said he likes you, and after what you told me, I agree. And whether you think it’s complicated or not, I think you should see him when we get back.”

  “If we get back,” said Pine, turning serious once more.

  “I stand corrected. So what’s our next step?”

  Pine put her fork and knife down and picked up her beer. “His brother gave me Ben Priest’s home address. It’s in Old Town Alexandria. I would expect the place is being watched, so we’re going to watch the watchers and do some recon at the same time.”

  “Okay.”

  “Then there’s Ed Priest’s family. I need to contact them without anyone knowing.”

  “Aren’t they still in protective custody?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t get them into an actual safe house. But I had uniformed FBI looking after them. That might have been pulled after the call Dobbs got from the DD.”

  “And then we have the men in the chopper who took away the Priest brothers. Any idea who they might be?”

  “I can make some deductions.”

  Blum took a sip of her wine and looked across the table thoughtfully at her boss. “What are they? And, more importantly, what are they based on?”

  “I recognized the type of chopper.”

  “What was it?”

  “A UH-72A Lakota. I’ve actually ridden on them.”

  “Who uses it?”

  “Mostly, the United States Army.”

  CHAPTER

  27

  Kurt Ferris had also left his two-year-old Kia Soul for Pine to use. She knew he’d owned a decked-out Dodge Ram pickup with double rear wheels before coming to DC from the wilds of Fort Bragg, Texas. However, he’d found the Ram was too big to drive and park in the traffic- and space-challenged Ballston area, so he’d traded it in for the Kia. Pine knew the man wasn’t happy about it, because he’d told her he wasn’t. He said he felt like a wimp on wheels.

  She was parked at the curb about five townhomes down from Ben Priest’s nineteenth-century row house on Lee Street in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. It was an upscale, historic area located along the Potomac River.

  She’d Googled real estate i
n the area and had calculated that Priest’s home was worth north of two million.

  She wondered what sort of work he had done to afford that sort of residence.

  Like allowing a man to take his place on a mule ride down to the floor of the Grand Canyon and then disappear? Priest had mentioned “laundering” people, but she hadn’t believed him. Yet maybe she needed to think about that some more.

  Priest had told her that he’d worked for American intelligence before hanging out his own shingle. If Pine could have used normal Bureau resources, she might have been able to do a far deeper dig on the man, finding out perhaps what agency he worked at, and what sort of work he did there. Yet Pine was doing something she should not be doing, so those official resources were not available.

  She had watched the home for a while, and was convinced that Priest’s home was not under surveillance by anyone else.

  This gave Pine an opening.

  She had seen the woman before when she had gone out earlier. She lived in the row house next to Priest. In fact, the homes were attached. Pine had checked the backs of the houses. The backyards were separated only by a low-level fence. There might have been some interaction there.

  The woman looked to be in her sixties, with thinning white hair styled in a way that indicated she had money and wasn’t adverse to pampering herself. This was also shown by her designer clothes and shoes and sunglasses. She was also tanned and fit, and she carried herself with the air of someone who had had the pleasure of giving orders rather than following them. This had been confirmed by what Pine assumed was the woman’s uniformed maid or housekeeper, who had been handed a cluster of bags from a late model burgundy Jag convertible parked in front of the woman’s house. The woman had then carried them inside.

  From her perch and using binoculars, Pine had seen the names on the shopping bags: Gucci, Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Hermes. The hall of fame of fashion.

  Pine had never owned a single thing from those brands. She was more of an Under Armour girl. Yet even if she had wanted to, she doubted she could afford anything they sold. She doubted she could afford the bags the stuff came in. And her physical dimensions did not meet high-fashion standards. She was big where societal norms told women to be small, and small where the ladies were supposed to be big.