Simon Sees (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 5)

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  “Can I suggest tomorrow?” Sanders said.

  “Yes,” the man said. “I believe that will work.”

  Both men ended the call after that. No more words were spoken, because none needed to be. Those that had been exchanged were barely relevant to the point of the call, simply coded phrases and responses that neither man had used, nor heard, in nearly a decade.

  Over the next twenty minutes, using different phones, Ezekiel Sanders placed three similar calls to three different individuals, speaking the same rote phrases and receiving, after some surprised hesitation, the desired responses.

  His contacts complete, he followed a path along the Genesee River, turning onto a pedestrian bridge that crossed it. At several places along the span he stopped, leaning on the railing to admire the flowing waters below—and to let the phones he’d used slip from his grip and tumble into the river.

  On the far side of the bridge his rental car was parked in a small lot in the historic district, an area of brick buildings and brick streets. A trendy place where old was new again.

  Maybe, Sanders hoped, that could be true for what lay ahead. Maybe doing the right thing would be possible in the face of all that daily stood against such an endeavor.

  “Just one more time,” Sanders said to himself as he reached his car and slipped into the driver’s seat. “Please.”

  He pulled out of the lot, heading east. An eight-hour drive lay ahead of him to reach the spot on coastal Maine which, long before, had been agreed upon for their next meeting—should that day ever come to pass. Long gone were the gatherings around poker tables, where Pritchard would hold court with his contemporaries. With his friends. Sanders would find no such amenable group on the rocky promontory which was his destination.

  They would be skeptical at best. Dismissive. He had to overcome that, he knew. Had to craft the proper argument to push through their resistance, which would be rooted in reality. And in fear.

  They have families. Careers.

  And their own lives, Sanders added to his thought. One of Pritchard’s dictums was that no operation in which they agreed to engage was worth exposure of their amorphous organization. Security was paramount. The effort must survive the operation. That was both so that the group itself would continue to exist, and so that a personal guarantee of safety could be given to those who’d signed on to be party to what, in the eyes of the law, was illegal.

  Quod est necessarium est licitum.

  That was Pritchard’s defense against the laws of man. A Latin concept.

  “That which is necessary is lawful,” Sanders said aloud as he took the ramp to I 490. In fifteen minutes he’d be on Interstate 90, heading east.

  He could have flown. Drop his rental at the airport and then a short hop to Portland, Maine, followed by a shorter drive in a fresh rental to his destination. That would have saved time. A quick nap could have been had on the plane. A few hours in a motel would refresh him.

  But he wanted that time. Needed that time, even bleary eyed as he drove through the night. Somewhere in the five hundred miles that lay ahead, he had to perfect his approach to the others. His pitch. Whatever he said to them, it had to account for every nuance, every possibility, which might affect success or point to failure. The decision whether to proceed was ultimately theirs.

  Those who would oppose them had already decided, Sanders knew. Their actions were already underway, and had been for some time. His side, the right side, would be playing catchup.

  If he could make it happen at all.

  Seven

  The engines of the smallish Bombardier jet whined through the foam plugs Emily had pressed deep into her ears.

  It might have been as loud and incessant as she thought, or it could be just a remnant of the constant acuity she’d honed during her years ‘in the wilderness’. That was how she had often thought of her time undercover while deep in its machinations. As if she was lost among savages, unable to make her way back to a place of safety and sanity.

  But that place, she now realized, was never as safe, nor as sane, as she’d believed. It was exactly as it was when she’d reentered it—cold and judging.

  ‘Why did you pull the trigger, Special Agent LaGrange?’

  Emily straightened in the stiff airline seat and tried to force the memory down. This one came not from the moment. From that moment. No, it came from the aftermath. From people who had once entrusted her with the most sensitive information, but were now questioning how she had carried out her undercover assignment. Specifically, how it had ended in the worst way possible for the suits who’d sent her into that wilderness.

  She looked to her left, the seats empty, even across the narrow aisle. She’d only counted ten passengers as she came aboard just before the door was closed, only one person boarding after her. The flight out of Minneapolis was more than a redeye—it was going to get her to Idaho Falls at two in the morning local time. Her ticket, much like the one which had directed her to Chicago, had been delivered to her apartment across from Loring Park. That had come from a Bureau courier. The one sending her west had not.

  NSA…

  According to Aguirre and Lomax, she was now on the payroll of the secretive organization whose acronym, people had joked, stood for No Such Agency. The precautions taken so far could also point to No Such Assignment. The courier would not speak to her in the hallway of her apartment building. Nor inside the apartment when she’d offered. Instead, they’d walked across the street to the park and casually followed the shore of Loring Pond as instructions were given. Procedures to follow. Actions not to take.

  He’d left her there, next to the waters that would soon freeze over. Children and adults would glide on skates upon its surface. Pickup hockey games would send pucks slicing across the ice. She’d known Minnesota cold her entire life, but never had she known that feeling so deep within as the nameless courier walked away from her.

  That chill still stung as she sat next to the plane’s window and stared out at the dark earth below. Was she really just being shuffled off to handle a shit assignment? Left alone to stumble through it until she simply gave up and quit? If that was the case, her very presence on the flight carrying her west was tacit acceptance of that end sought by others.

  Unless she didn’t let it lead to that end.

  The bottom line, she knew, was that the powers that be in the Bureau wanted her out of sight, and out of mind. She could oblige that desire. Embrace it, even. She felt no need to be stroked and praised by men and women who had sent her into the wilderness only to chastise her when the very nature of that place forced her to act as one in the wild would.

  To survive.

  I’m a survivor…

  Emily reminded herself of that. She’d come out the other side of her undercover assignment, alive if not fully well. But she would get there. She would have her life back. Part of that, she believed, was proving the Bureau wrong. Proving that she hadn’t been broken by all that had transpired. Making this liaison garbage work was a start.

  She got out of her seat and stood in the center aisle, stretching her back, her arms, even doing a few squats in the narrow space to loosen her legs. The cabin around her was virtually empty. Just those few passengers she’d watched board before her, and the pudgy man who’d come on right after. He sat five rows back from her, sports magazine open on his lap, puffy face tipped to one side as he dozed. Why was he going to Idaho Falls in the middle of the night? Why were any of them?

  Emily walked up the aisle toward the front of the plane, then back, as much to have a lay of the land as to exercise. That behavior, ingrained in her all the way back in her academy days, had only been reinforced while she was undercover. Shedding it was not easy, and, to be truthful, she wasn’t sure that dialing back that part of the false life she’d left behind was prudent. Awareness was an advantage in many things. Knowing one’s surroundings. Maintaining vigilance.

  But it could also be tiring.

  She returned to her
seat and settled into the stiff cushions as best she could. There was only an hour left in the flight, but that was time she needed. Time to rest. To sleep, if possible. Whatever lay ahead, she was going to be focused and professional. If she was being warehoused in this liaison position, those who’d put her here were going to find out that she couldn’t be shoved in a corner very easily.

  Not without a fight.

  Emily closed her eyes and let sleep drag her down. Deep enough that she did not notice the pudgy man open his eyes, set the magazine aside, and rise from his seat. He studied the other passengers for a moment, all scattered throughout the cabin. The two who were not asleep had their attention focused on the glowing screens of their phones. None were paying any attention to him.

  The pudgy man stepped into the aisle and looked forward, fixing on the top of Emily’s head as it lolled toward the window. He did not blink, did not let his gaze stray from her as he seemed to work through some internal countdown. Waiting. Preparing.

  After a full minute he slipped his hand into the right front pocket of his khaki pants and walked up the aisle, slowly, approaching Emily’s row from behind. As he neared it his hand came out of his pocket and reached across the back of the empty seat next to her, something pinched between fingers and thumb. His hand briefly hovered over the sleeping FBI agent as he passed, fingertips rubbing against the fat pad of his thumb, as if grinding something between, letting fall upon her something seemingly invisible.

  Except it was not that at all.

  The pudgy man continued up the aisle. He went to the restroom and thoroughly washed his hands, making small talk with the flight attendant for a moment after he was finished. When he returned to his seat, Emily LaGrange was deep asleep as he passed by. He smiled to himself as he sat, pleased, allowing himself a bit of satisfaction. This part of his contract was complete. But there was still more to be done. Both by him, and by others.

  Little missy up there has no idea what’s coming at her, he thought.

  * * *

  Simon Lynch dreamed.

  Before things had changed, when he was the Simon Lynch he had always been, he rarely dreamed. The space between falling asleep and waking had been like a journey through a long, lightless, silent tunnel. He would always emerge to the world he knew when the morning came.

  But the world he’d been dragged into by Dr. Michaels was nothing like that place. His waking hours since that moment of demarcation were almost terrifying. And his sleeping hours were no less horrific.

  BANG!

  It was a gunshot in his dreams. Not thunder like he’d thought then. His father had fired a gun at the red-haired man who’d come to take him away. But the red-haired man had also shot his father and his mother, with a quieter gun. He knew that now, but didn’t then. His friend Art had told him what had happened. Explained it in detail on a day not long ago.

  ‘Simon, you may never understand this, but you deserve to know…’

  That’s what Art had said before telling him what the red-haired man had done, and what he’d wanted to do.

  ‘He shot your parents with a quiet gun…’

  In his sleep, Simon Lynch gasped.

  It’s called a suppressed weapon. Not a silenced weapon. The suppressor functions by slowing escaping gasses through a system of baffles in—

  The flash of facts interrupted his dream for a moment, but he was soon reliving that day. His cards had told him what to do when he heard a storm, and that was what he’d believed the gunshot was, so he did exactly what was written on them.

  IF A LOUD NOYZ SKAIRS YU AND IT GTS LOUDR AND YU KANT FIND MOMMY AND DADDY THN GO TO TH BASMNT

  The basement was quiet and cold.

  Temperature drops at a constant rate when environmental factors decline in unison along a…along a…

  Bits of his old self were invading his dream. Bits of the boy, the man, who saw everything as a calculation and a solution simultaneously.

  P versus NP P versus NP P versus NP

  He’d solved that unsolvable problem, though he could not remember either the when or where or how of the solution. Not right then.

  Mommy Daddy

  His head slammed back and forth against the pillow. Left. Right. Left. Right.

  Mommy Daddy Mommy equation find the constant solve for—

  “NOOOOOOOOOO!”

  Simon bolted upright in his bead, screaming.

  “NOOOOO!”

  He couldn’t solve the fact that his mother and father were dead. Dead for twenty years. There was no combination of numbers or symbols that he could arrange which would yield the right answer. The answer he wanted.

  “No…”

  He fell back against his pillow, sobbing, as Audra and Gary came to his door. They peered through the glass portal, watching for a moment until it seemed that their subject was asleep again, freed from whatever nightmare had rocked him.

  But Simon Lynch did not sleep. Not yet. The drugs they’d given him, and exhaustion, were pulling at him. Soon, those factors would win, and he would once again close his eyes and face the confusing mix of old and new which his mind would conjure as he slept. But for now, he fought to stay awake. And to think through the pharmaceutical fog.

  His mother and father were dead. Long dead. Twenty years they’d been gone. The old Simon would have noted the exact number of days, hours, minutes, and seconds since they’d been taken from him, but he did not want to add that cold specificity to thoughts. Not now.

  They were people he could trust. If they were still alive, they would not allow him to be kept where he was. Would not allow the doctors to give him injections. His father did not trust doctors. His father had loved him.

  Leah Poole was a doctor. She had given him injections. But she was not like Dr. Michaels. She was different. She seemed like someone he might be able to trust.

  But she was gone. Dr. Michaels had told him that Leah Poole had to go away. Without her, there was no one he felt he could trust. Not in this place.

  They call it The Ranch…

  “The Ranch,” Simon muttered softly.

  Art came to the ranch. Art came to the ranch!

  Simon had almost forgotten. Art came to visit him, two times a month. He would be here soon. He tried to work out when, how many days, but the fog was growing thicker, his thoughts thick, as if each had the weight of an anchor.

  Art will come…

  Simon could tell him then. Art had noticed things were different once the injections started.

  Fifty-one injections…

  He’d asked Simon if he was all right. If he felt different. If they were hurting him. Simon hadn’t been able to answer him with any useful specificity, other than pointing out that the shots hurt. But all shots hurt. The staff had dismissed the complaint, pointing out that very fact.

  Art was mad…

  He was. Not the kind of mad where one screamed. But the quiet kind, where what they were thinking showed through their silence. Simon had known Art for so long that what he did not say was as telling as what he did. Even in the world as Simon knew it before this change, he could almost feel what Art was feeling. What would the right word be for that? A connection? If that were possible, Simon Lynch believed he had a connection with his friend Art.

  “He’ll help me,” Simon said, barely whispering, his eyes fluttering at the bare grey wall just inches from his face. “Art will help me…”

  Simon Lynch drifted off to sleep. He dreamed no more that night.

  Eight

  Sanders parked in a spot along the circular drive and stepped from his car, a blast of cold wind off the Atlantic greeting him. It was early, but there were four other cars already tucked into spots such as his.

  They’re here, he thought. They all actually came.

  He hadn’t been convinced they all would show. They’d committed to doing so when they signed on to be part of the group, but that had been a long time ago, and so little had been accomplished since Pritchard’s passing. Their nameles
s organization, just individuals committed to an ideal, had been rudderless for so long. For too long. That had to change.

  He walked along the path past the red-roofed building attached to the Cape Elizabeth Lighthouse, the wet roar of waves smashing against Maine granite cutting through the morning calm. It was almost relaxing, Sanders thought, that symphony of nature’s violence. Unstoppable force challenging immovable object. Water always won, he knew. It just took time for the seemingly stationary sea to do what it did—wear away all that stood before it. Create new bays. New channels. New ways forward.

  It was a fine analogy to what his mentor had been able to accomplish, Sanders thought. Pritchard had slowly, carefully carved out his own niche in the government. One from which he could serve the ideals that still survived—the protection of extreme innocents.

  But the man was gone. Preserving what he’d built was a task that lay upon Sanders’ shoulders now. But he could not do it alone. The four people waiting for him near the base of the lighthouse would have to bear some of the burden with him.

  “Jesus, Sanders,” Porter said, shaking his head as the man who’d summoned them approached. “You look like shit.”

  “Driving all night will do that,” Sanders said. He looked to each of them. “Thank you for coming.”

  “If it was April I would have thought this was all a joke,” Harrison said, her scarf whipping about until she pulled it down and knotted it against her coat.

  “Why are we here, Sanders?” Sato asked, impatient. He was the oldest of those in attendance, but fit like the triathlete he was. Fifty-eight pushing thirty, it seemed. A man unaccustomed to committing time to pointless endeavors.

  “We have a situation,” Sanders said.

  “A situation?” Lane challenged him, a puzzled gaze narrowing at Sanders. “How can we have a situation? I didn’t even think there was a ‘we’ still in existence.”

  “Of course there is,” Porter fired back at the younger man. He was forty-six and had five years on the bureaucrat from Justice. Five years and a lifetime of real world experience beyond the nation’s borders. Being a CIA field officer for twenty years would give a person that. “We’re here. We made a commitment. Your word doesn’t die because time passes.”