Hard Fall

by Ridley Pearson

  The Smoker returned to Security to straighten it out.

  Hairless spoke for the first time. “Security don’t like us much. The feeling is mutual.”

  Backman reluctantly surrendered his weapon. Hairless, who didn’t seem to miss much, was the first to spot Backman’s wing tips. He nudged the Smoker and pointed out the shoes, which instantly reestablished the chain of command. Only desk jocks wore wing tips. Daggett wore a pair of scuffed Rockports. “Let’s go,” Backman said anxiously, taking the lead position. A fat duck in a drenched pinstripe.

  The Smoker flashed his badge at the gate. They went down the hot jetway at something close to a run, Backman wheezing.

  Daggett ducked through the plane’s entry hatch, fourth in line behind Hairless. They hurried past a nervous steward. “We’ll be out of your way in a minute,” Backman said, trying to sound in control, but he was clearly uncomfortable here.

  As a group, they quickly moved down the aisle. Inquisitive faces rose to greet them, some sensing excitement, others expressing a mixture of curiosity and sudden fright.

  To Daggett they were the faces of the innocent, faces with lives behind them—and hopefully ahead of them. Faces of people like his parents and his boy.

  With their approach, a man in row 19 rose and stepped into the aisle, blocking it. A flight attendant, a woman with hard eyes and gray-flecked hair, came up the aisle immediately behind him. Two of the Smoker’s people, Daggett assumed. Bernard was now at the center of a well-executed squeeze play with nowhere to go. The emergency exit to the wing was effectively blocked by two “maintenance mechanics.” Beautiful—like when the shortstop stepped up to take over second base in time to trap the steal. Daggett loved to see runners pinned; the “pickle” was one of his favorite plays of the game.

  The Smoker’s calm was impressive. Daggett heard some soft talking and saw Bernard’s upraised palms as he was carefully drawn from the seat, patted down and advised to cooperate. Hairless quickly extricated his hardshell carry-on briefcase. Everyone’s attention was fixed on the scene, heads craned.

  Suddenly, Bernard’s eyes caught Daggett’s and their gazes locked. Daggett thought this must be the sensation a hunter feels as the animal lifts its head, suddenly alert to the hunter’s presence.

  Daggett knew this face all too well: he had lived with it for months. Bernard was dark-haired, with gray eyes, not quite handsome, just the kind of unremarkable countenance easily forgotten by even those who prided themselves on being observant. A vein pulsed strongly in his forehead. His occupation had cost him: His left hand was missing two fingers. But it wasn’t the man’s face, or his missing fingers that Daggett remembered. It was the black-and-white photographs of his work—the demolished restaurants, the aircraft, a half-dozen vehicles. A body count in the hundreds.

  A monster.

  The group filed out in professional silence. Daggett and Backman had their handguns returned to them at the security check.

  The five men rode in the back of a Marriott food service van to a dull green building that seemed abandoned. A narrow hallway that smelled of grease and sweat led them to a windowless room that the Smoker had chosen for the interrogation. Daggett had a bad feeling about this room. Something terrible was about to happen.

  Gunmetal desks in various states of disrepair, stacked three high, occupied most of the small room. A black, oily residue crusted the dysfunctional ventilation grate. The stale, dead air and the thick dust that rose with each footstep hazed the room in a curtain of gray, increasing Daggett’s sense of claustrophobia. His throat went powder dry. The stifling heat prickled his skin and scalp, and he longed to be anywhere but here.

  A handcuffed Bernard was seated in a chair in the center of the room. Hairless, the Smoker, and Daggett pulled a desk from the corner and used it as a bench, like fans in the bleachers. Backman wormed his sweaty hands together and glowered, pacing in front of Bernard like a man attempting a stage audition. He looked more suited for the role of headwaiter than cop.

  “We’ve read you your rights. You’re lucky to have them. Officially, you’re being detained under the Terrorism Act of 1988. It gives us some rather broad powers, Bernard. Perhaps you’re familiar with it?” He added, “You seem like a reasonable man.”

  Daggett cringed with the line. The Smoker lit a cigarette and exhaled toward the grate. The smoke mushroomed into an enormous cone and seemed to hang in the air. Hairless cleaned his impeccably clean nails with a penknife.

  Backman tried again. “I can see what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that maybe it’s not so bad you were caught here in the United States. After all, we guarantee due process even to international terrorists. You’re thinking that on the federal level we haven’t used the death penalty in decades, that if you remain silent and wait me out, some crafty attorney may take your case just for the publicity. What the fuck? Maybe somebody’ll turn you into a TV movie, right?” It was true. Bernard displayed a disturbing confidence. Where did such monsters come from? Justice for a man like Bernard came at the end of a weapon. No jury. No trial. Two or three randomly placed shots and the excuse the man had tried to escape.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Hairless whispered. He went back to his nails like an old lady at the hair salon.

  Daggett realized that his hand was on his weapon. It was as if that hand didn’t belong to him. He withdrew it, leaving the gun in the holster, and nodded as if he understood; but he didn’t. Who was he becoming? What had this investigation done to him?

  Backman continued, “What you probably aren’t aware of is that two years ago Scotland Yard lifted a partial print from EuroTours flight ten twenty-three. A piece of your handiwork.”

  Daggett cringed. This was just the kind of technical information they should protectively guard at all costs. You tell a person like Bernard this, and if he should get word to his people, no one in Der Grund will ever make this same mistake again. In point of fact, the tiny partial print in question had required four weeks of sifting through rubble to locate, another ten months to identify, an identification that, because the print was only a partial, would not be considered hard evidence by any court of law, but was nonetheless one those in law enforcement felt could be trusted. Backman had stupidly volunteered this information. “Sir,” Daggett interrupted, quickly silenced by Backman’s harsh expression.

  Backman continued, “We know what you were up to in your Los Angeles hotel room.”

  That snapped Bernard’s head. He was losing his confidence. His eyes began blinking quickly.

  Backman paced. “One thing you don’t know,” he said, “is that Daggett’s parents and little boy were on flight ten twenty-three.” The Smoker and Hairless looked over and stared at Daggett in disbelief.

  Bernard also glanced at him, but showed no remorse whatsoever.

  “I could leave you and Daggett alone for a few minutes,” Backman suggested, his implication obvious but again ineffective. There would be no rough play in a dingy room at National Airport. It just wasn’t done that way.

  “You have an offer to make?” Bernard asked Backman a little too quickly, a little too hopefully.

  Backman asked, “What if there is no deal? What if we’re merely awaiting the papers to deport you? Ten-twenty-three was British. You realize that, don’t you?”

  The roar of a jet taking off made it feel hotter. Daggett loosened his tie further.

  “You want that again?” Backman asked with an authority he had previously lacked. Daggett sensed the man’s rebound. Backman, it suddenly seemed, was not weak but merely soft. Out of practice. He seized the moment effectively by asking the Smoker for a cigarette, as if he had all the time in the world. He didn’t smoke, but Bernard didn’t know this.

  Bernard repeated, “There is or is not an offer?”

  A sharp knock on the door shattered the resulting silence. The Smoker rose and opened it, spoke to an unseen person in a hushed voice, and then pulled the man’s briefcase through. He closed the door. Dag
gett came off the table as the Smoker placed the briefcase at Bernard’s feet. Backman said, “Your briefcase. Shall we have a look-see?”

  They knew what was inside: deutsche marks. But to what purpose? A payoff? Financing? This briefcase had been a vital part of their investigation. What was Backman doing?

  “You are not going to open that,” Daggett stated. “Are you forgetting this man’s occupation?”

  “It was X-rayed,” the Smoker said. “Twice. No sign of any wiring. No explosives. It’s been cleared: we have nothing to worry about.”

  “Has it been sniffed? Has it been checked with ultrasound? That bag should be handled by the bomb squad. That bag has been on the move since—” He caught himself before making the same mistakes Backman had made. He dried his palms on his pants legs. He was terrified. His eyes jumped between that bag and Bernard.

  “Put yourself in his position,” Daggett said, stepping close to Backman. “What if the suitcase is rigged? Unless he cuts himself one hell of a deal, he faces life imprisonment, at best. But what if he could take out the chief of C-three and the investigator responsible for ten twenty-three all in one move? What kind of a hero would that make him?”

  “A dead hero,” Backman said, unimpressed. “No one kills himself over principles anymore, Daggett. Use your head.” He bent down toward the bag and released one of its two latches.

  Daggett jumped forward and pushed him away from the bag. Backman slipped, reached for purchase, but fell to the dirty floor. His weight gave him trouble getting back to his feet. It was a pitiful attempt. Daggett offered his hand, but Backman refused any help. It took him several, embarrassingly long, seconds to return to his feet. “Get out of here, both of you,” Daggett shouted at the two others.

  When the Smoker didn’t move, Daggett added, “Now!” his focus still on the briefcase. Hairless pushed his friend quickly out the door.

  Backman mopped his face with his handkerchief. “That was a stupid thing to do, Michigan. Really fucking stupid. That’s going to cost you, big time.”

  Bernard said nothing. His attention remained fixed on the briefcase with its one open latch.

  “You can order me to leave this room with you. Right? You can report me. Christ, you can probably get me fired.”

  “Damn right I can.”

  “So do it! Come on, let’s go. Your only witnesses are getting away.”

  Backman pouted his lips and nodded. “Okay, I guess you’re right.” He took a step toward the door. Then, abandoning his ruse, he threw his weight into Daggett and knocked him off his feet.

  Daggett hit the floor hard, slid, and careened into the door.

  Backman lumbered back to the briefcase and struggled with the other latch.

  Bernard glanced up hotly and looked at Daggett with dark, wet eyes.

  Daggett knew. “No!” he shouted as he reached for the door handle and dove into the hallway.

  The door blew as a unit, straight across the hall, through the opposing wall, and out onto the tarmac. An orange ball of burning gas rolled down the hall like a tongue uncurling. The Smoker, Hairless, and the uniformed security guard they were escorting between them were all three knocked off their feet by the concussion. Fire licked out angrily and set the ceiling ablaze.

  In a world of silence, Daggett belly-crawled for an exit door jarred open by the blast. Hairless appeared through the smoke, crawling on hands and knees. Partially blinded, he climbed right over Daggett. The two took shelter behind a cinderblock wall. The uniformed cop was on his feet, his pants on fire, running fast across the open field of blacktop, the Smoker trying to catch up with him. A surreal sight, punctuated by the slowly moving heaviness of a taxiing jet.

  Daggett heard nothing; he’d gone deaf. He didn’t want to hear; he didn’t want to see. Bernard had won, even in death. He felt half crazy with frustration, the loss of life, the whole mess. He tried to scream. Still heard nothing. But the frightened expression he drew from Hairless told him his voice still worked. He wondered about his state of mind: maybe he wasn’t half crazy, maybe he’d gone all the way. It certainly couldn’t be snowing in August, but that was what he saw.

  He extended his hand—there was no hair on the back of it, he noticed—and awkwardly caught hold of some of the falling snow, like a child in his first winter storm.

  Slowly, his fingers uncoiled. He still could not hear, but his eyes worked well enough. His hand was filled with confetti. He wasn’t crazy after all.

  Deutsche marks.

  2

  * * *

  Anthony Kort sat behind the wheel of the rental car carving a potato. He recalled his Bavarian grandmother doing the same thing. She wore thick cotton dresses, which covered her calves, and a tired white butcher’s apron as she sat in a dark wicker chair on her back porch preparing a bucketful of potatoes to mash and later lather with butter, pepper, and generous chunks of pork bacon. Kort had no intention of eating this potato.

  It was Tuesday, August 21. He had been anticipating this day for months. He needed detailed information on the behavior and performance of a Duhning 959 Skybus. A hundred yards away, on the other side of some cinderblock and glass, his chance to obtain that information, a Dr. Roger Ward, was in the throes of passion.

  A pair of candles cast a yellow light on the windows beyond the small balcony of the third-story apartment on the corner of East Olive Street and Bellevue Avenue. It was the kind of light that flattered women, that witnessed whispers of affection with wine-sweetened breath, that failed to mask the distinctive, intoxicating smell of arousal. The building, a clean-lined, setback, double-box structure of ivory stucco, had low-walled balconies enclosed by steel pipe banisters painted indigo blue. Its basement held two parking garages, both secured behind heavy metal gates. A placard sign on the sidewalk out front announced: SPACE AVAILABLE. The real estate agency used Seattle’s Space Needle as part of its logo.

  Kort continued his work on the potato, dividing his attention between Ward’s Taurus, parked in the Pay-and-Park, and the apartment window. The second game of the Mariners’ doubleheader played softly from the car radio despite Kort’s basic lack of understanding of the American game.

  Kort wore stone-washed canvas pants, brown leather Italian walking shoes with rubber soles, a short-sleeved olive-green permanent-press shirt, and a navy-blue Nike windbreaker. For reasons of anonymity, his face was not entirely his, but instead the repository of theatrical cosmetics, pigmented contact lenses, a wig, and fake eyebrows. He was no expert at such things, but he got the job done.

  Sarah Pritchet was obviously a good lover: Ward had been with her for hours. Kort couldn’t help but imagine the sensations this man was experiencing. What he wouldn’t give to be in the clutches of a willing woman instead of carving a potato in the front seat of a rent-a-car. But even so, his concentration remained fixed. With German efficiency, he compartmentalized the tasks before him: abduct Ward; gain access to the Duhning simulator. A mind cluttered with too much information, too many considerations, was incapable of quick reaction. Anthony Kort had the reactions of a cat.

  As the sixth inning drew to a close behind the failed attempts of a Mariners’ relief pitcher, the ember-red August sun sought the coolness of the Pacific, issuing a candy-pink glow to everything not in shadow. Kort left his rental and deposited the potato firmly into the exhaust pipe of the gray Ford Taurus. He slipped off into the corner of the Pay-and-Park lot, positioning himself behind a tow trailer bearing the weathered logo and address of Stoneway Asphalt and Paving. He lit a cigarette and waited.

  Up the street a block, a group of six kids loitered outside the Malstrom’s Market smoking cigarettes; 99¢ VIDEO, the sign read. He wished they would move on. Thankfully, a few moments later they did.

  The relief pitcher must have found a second wind, or was himself relieved, for the arrival of the seventh-inning stretch took another three cigarettes. This was fine with Kort because the sunset blush and subsequent twilight had darkened into a starry summer night sk
y when three dimensions are reduced to silhouette and any measure of distance becomes unreliable.

  Roger Ward appeared behind the polished bars of the security gate at the entrance to the apartment building. He paused to check the street carefully in order to protect his infidelity.

  Like a lion in hiding before the kill, Kort watched him. He snuffed out the cigarette. He temporarily snuffed out his concerns as well: that he was now on his own; that Michael and the other members of Der Grund were, at this very moment, fighting the chill of Bonn jail cells; that many of his previously arranged contacts might now be compromised and/or conspiring with U.S. authorities to lay traps to catch him; that he now relied on a young woman whom he had neither seen nor worked with in over two years, a woman he had contacted less than twenty-four hours before, abruptly changing the timing and the degree of her involvement in this project; that this was the most ambitious undertaking Der Grund had ever attempted—fourteen months in planning.

  He lightly brushed ashes from the front of his dark blue windbreaker, stepping completely out of sight of the Taurus, awaiting the sound of an uncooperative engine. That was his cue.

  The Taurus ground away, refusing to catch. Kort waited patiently for the sound of the driver’s door opening, which finally came, accompanied by a muttered curse of complaint. Now Kort approached, making sure to be seen so he wouldn’t surprise the man. He needed the man to feel comfortable. He needed the man to feel rescued.

  From a distance, Roger Ward seemed smaller than he actually was. He had hair the color of dead bamboo, a lantern jaw with a cleft chin, and gray-white sideburns improperly trimmed: the right a bit longer than the left. He wore a lime-green woven short-sleeved sport shirt and cuffed khaki trousers. His ankles were bare above shiny penny loafers. The left shoe had a new heel. Even peering angrily into the darkness of a raised hood at the uncooperative engine, he gave Kort the impression of a man who had boundless energy and a great vitality. To spend a doubleheader with your mistress you needed great vitality, Kort supposed.