A Vicious Balance: A Mystery Thriller

by Jolyon Hallows

  She said, “I’m going to make a call. In private. You can wait outside.”

  Meyer sat in a waiting room reviewing what he had been able to piece together. The call from Travathan had been prescient. There had been an attack on the Sandersons and on Handley. This was a change of tactics that alarmed him. Up to now, the Hammer of Vengeance had been cautious, even clandestine. But for reasons he didn’t understand, that had changed. They were engaged in battle. Open warfare. He still had no idea what the battle was, why it was being waged, or even how to fight it. Jake Handley held the key.

  Elwood called him into her office. She looked subdued. “You can have him, but I want a signed release so that if something goes wrong and he escapes, I’m covered.”

  Meyer nodded. “You’ll have it when we transfer him.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Tonight. It will take a couple of hours to set things up. Say around eight.”

  “And you’ll handle all of the arrangements? Like transport?”

  “Of course.” He left her office as if he had details to handle, although the arrangements had already been made.

  Elwood strode down the hall. She had no destination. She needed to work off the anger toward her regional manager who had chastised her for ignoring a request from the Terrorism Response Agency. “Right now,” her manager had said, “You ought to be aware those guys have the clout to do whatever they want. I’m surprised you’re wasting my time calling me.”

  Wasting his time. If Handley escaped custody, her idiot of a manager would be the first to condemn her judgment in releasing a dangerous killer. She was marching down the hall when Arnie Torena called out to her.

  “What is it, Torena?”

  “Well, Warden, I just wanted to congratulate you.”

  She made no attempt to hide her suspicion. “What for?”

  “What for? For saving Jake Handley. Your insistence on training and observation paid off. If you hadn’t made sure we were all on our toes, we’d be tied up in red tape having to explain another convict killing. It should look good on your record.”

  “Yeah, if that kid doesn’t make us all look bad.”

  “Come again?”

  On any other day, Karen Elwood would have ignored Torena. To her, he was a grunt, someone who occupied space and absorbed food and in return, provided an increment of order. But his show of support was like turning on a tap, pouring out her frustrations.

  “Some terrorism group wants him. They’re sending a van for him tonight. Apparently, we’re not good enough to protect him. You can bet we’ll be the ones on the hook if he escapes.”

  “Moving him? Tonight? Where?”

  Her managerial distance reasserted itself. “I have no idea. And this conversation is to go no further. The last thing I need is for some reporter to start asking questions. Understood?”

  “Yeah. Sure.” Elwood was so immersed in her own fuming she didn’t notice his urgency as he scurried away.

  “The Hammer will strike.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Arnie. Torena.”

  “What is it?” He didn’t have time for this fool whose call had forced him to pull over to the side of the road. He needed to get to where his brothers were gathering for an all-out assault on Travathan and Kagan, and if they could find out where the Sandersons were, on them as well. Jake Handley would have to wait.

  “You told me to call you if I got any news about the Handley kid.” Torena sounded as if his feelings were hurt.

  “What is it?” Damn his feelings.

  “Some terrorism group is taking him from the prison. He’s being transferred tonight.”

  His anger at Torena evaporated. “Tonight? Where are they taking him?”

  “I don’t know. Except they’re sending a van.”

  “When will they be there?”

  “I don’t know that either. All I know is that they’re picking him up this evening.”

  “Torena, do you have a tracking device?”

  “Me? Where would I get a tracking device?”

  He checked his watch. He was over an hour to the prison. Maybe enough time to get there before the van, but he couldn’t take the chance.

  “Here’s what I want you to do. When the van comes to get Handley, attach your cell phone to it. We can use its GPS to track it.”

  “Uh, if I lose my cell, it costs me.”

  He gritted his teeth. “If you do this, we’ll pay you a hundred times what the phone is worth. If you don’t, you won’t ever need a phone again. Do you understand?”

  The voice that answered was trying to hide a quaver. “Yeah, I understand. What do you want me to do?”

  “Just tape it to the van. Make sure it’s not visible, and that it’s turned on and set to mute. And make sure it’s fully charged.”

  “Okay. Is there anywhere on the van that’s best?”

  Idiot. “Just don’t attach it to anything that gets hot, like the tailpipe. And let me know when the van’s leaving. Torena?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Fix this and we’ll reward you well. Screw up and you’re dead.” He switched off the phone and pulled back onto the road.

  At eight o’clock that evening, a van pulled into the floodlit prison yard and backed up to a door. Two men wearing fatigues and carrying automatic weapons emerged from the van and went inside. The driver stayed behind the wheel.

  Arnie Torena studied the van from an alcove where he knew the prison guards couldn’t see him. This would be tricky. One side of the van was in shadow, but that was the driver’s side and the rear-view mirror. The other side was bathed in light. Because the presence of the van was unusual, the guards in the towers were no doubt scrutinizing it. There was only one clandestine approach. Directly from the rear.

  Torena slunk along the side of the building, keeping to the shadows where the driver couldn’t see him. An overhang above the entrance hid him from the view of the guard towers allowing him to approach the rear of the van. He lowered himself to his stomach and crawled forward, rubbing his sleeve against his forehead, wiping away the sweat oozing into his eyes. The night was not warm, his exertion not great, but his heart was thumping, and he could imagine he heard footsteps from inside the building approaching the entrance, the rear of the van, and his prone body.

  He wriggled forward until his head was just below the rear bumper. He struggled to retrieve the phone from his belt, cursing at himself for not having had the foresight to take it out before he crawled under the van. He checked the display. It was on, he had set the phone to mute so that it would neither beep nor vibrate, and he had just recharged it. He pulled out a roll of duct tape and taped the phone to a bumper strut. His efforts were clumsy. In places the tape stuck to itself, creating irregular ridges, but it made up in volume what it lacked in neatness.

  He slid himself backward into the protection of the shadows. He was about to move away when the door to the building flew open. One of the guards came out, scanned the yard, and opened the rear doors of the van. He gave a signal, and the other guard escorted a man, handcuffed, shackled, and dressed in prison denim, into the van. The first guard gave the yard one last glance and jumped into the van, slamming the doors shut behind him. The van pulled out of the yard.

  Arnie Torena slipped back into the prison, found a phone, and called the man who had given him his orders.

  35

  Travathan and Kagan sat in the back seat of a car. The road was black except for the beam of the headlights. Clouds obscured the moon and stars. There were no buildings to provide a sense of passage. Only the road and a fringe of trees were visible, caught by the periphery of the headlights. Beyond the trees was forest, above them darkness, beneath them asphalt.

  The driver had arrived late in the evening saying he was to take them to Agent Meyer. He drove out of the city, ignoring every question and every comment, even when Kagan said, “It’s a good thing I don’t have to go to the can. I doubt he’d stop.”


  The car pulled onto a side road studded with potholes and chunks of asphalt, finally coming to the top of a hill. The road led down to a house at the edge of a lake. A van, illuminated by a yard light, was parked beside the house.

  The driver pulled up beside the van, started toward the house, and gestured to his passengers to follow. Kagan grunted. “Ugh. Me go house.” The driver escorted them up a set of steps and knocked on the door. An agent opened the door, frisked them for weapons, and motioned them inside. The driver returned to the car.

  A vaulted ceiling rose over an expanse of furniture clustered around a coffee table. On one side, drapes covered a plate glass window facing the blackness of the lake. On the other, a cast iron insert sat inside a stone fireplace, the sounds of a fire crackling inside it, suffusing the room with the scent of burning wood. Agent Meyer, Jake Handley, and a couple that neither Travathan nor Kagan recognized sat on couches, the coffee table laden with plates of sandwiches and a coffee urn. Two guards, dressed in fatigues and carrying automatic weapons, stood in corners of the room.

  Meyer said, “Good. You made it. People, allow me to introduce Gord Travathan and Max Kagan, luminaries of the Brouer Foundation and the reason we are all able to be here tonight. Gord, I believe you have met Jake Handley although I don’t think you have, Max. And this couple is Larry and Maureen Sanderson, Jake’s aunt and uncle. Come in. Sit down. Help yourselves to coffee and sandwiches. We don’t eat as well as at detective MacIlhenny’s safe house, but then, our comfort budget isn’t as big.”

  The two men sat down and waited for Meyer to continue.

  He nodded at Travathan and said, “Your judgment is excellent. Have you ever considered entering government service? As you expected, attempts were made on Jake’s life and on the Sandersons. It seems you have stirred up quite a mess.”

  Kagan said, “I see you got to them in time. Congratulations.”

  Meyer shook his head. “Hardly. But for some good fortune in Jake’s case and some good planning in Larry and Maureen’s, these people would now be dead. Jake, why don’t you tell these men what happened to you.”

  “I don’t know what happened.” Handley had pressed himself into a corner of the couch as if finding some position from which he could protect himself. To Travathan, his insolence and suspicion had abated, but he chose his words as if one wrong step would land him back in prison. “All I know is that someone tried to kill me, I fought him off, and the guards shot him. Then they put me in isolation.” He looked around the room and said, “This is a lot more comfortable.”

  “So there you have it,” Meyer said. “An assassination foiled by an alert target and a prison guard who was doing his job. As for the Sandersons, your nemesis planted a bomb in their house. C-4.”

  “So they weren’t there?”

  “Yes, they were. Enjoying a pizza and a bottle of wine.”

  “The bomb didn’t go off?”

  “Oh, yes, it did. Powerful it was, too.”

  “Hold on,” Travathan said. “These guys may be homicidal, but they’re not incompetent. If they planted a bomb, you can bet it was strong enough to blow up the house. And its occupants.”

  Meyer said, “Tell them, Larry.”

  Larry Sanderson hesitated as if he had been asked to reveal a confidence. “The bomb was powerful enough to destroy an average house. Ours wasn’t average.” He took a deep breath. “You need to know that these terrorists threatened Jake and me.”

  Travathan said, “We figured that out. They wanted you to keep silent?”

  Sanderson nodded. “We didn’t have a lot of choice, so Jake and I agreed not to talk. But when I thought it over, it seemed foolish to believe that someone who’d commit murder could be trusted to keep his word. I figured it was just a matter of time before they decided to kill us anyway. So I took precautions.”

  “Precautions?”

  “Yes. We were just starting to plan our house when this all happened. I made the house bomb-proof. The walls, inside and outside, and the floor above the basement are steel reinforced concrete. I told the contractor I was concerned about a nuclear attack. As far as he was concerned, I was a paranoid nut, but it meant more money for him. A bomb that would flatten an average house wouldn’t have any effect on ours. To destroy our place, you’d need a very large bomb.”

  “What made you think they’d bomb your home? Why not your car? Why not shoot you down in the street?”

  “Our car is the kind used by diplomats and high-level corporate executives. It’s well protected. As for being shot down in the street, that’s not their style. They prefer to plant a bomb or cut a brake line so they’re nowhere around when the action starts.” He shrugged, “Unless they decided to send a suicide killer. That was a risk I had to take.”

  Travathan said, “So you were home when the bomb went off?”

  “As Agent Meyer said, enjoying pizza and wine.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Well, when the bomb exploded, at first I thought it was an earthquake, but I could smell burning. When I went into the basement, it was in flames. I guessed what had happened, put out the fire, and we were getting ready to go into hiding when Agent Meyer here arrived.”

  Kagan had been listening with a growing frown. Finally, he said, “Hold on a minute. If you had been threatened by this terrorist group to keep quiet, why would you send an application to the Brouer Foundation about Jake?”

  Maureen Sanderson scowled at her husband and said, “Because my darling husband decided to protect me and didn’t want me to worry. So he didn’t tell me what was going on until after that lawyer, Ruth something, visited us. Then he had no choice.”

  “And you didn’t think it was strange when your husband built a fortress instead of a house?”

  Larry said, “I never told her. There was no need to stress her out.”

  Kagan nodded. Maureen Sanderson’s tone of voice told him that once this was over, terrorists wouldn’t be Larry Sanderson’s only problem.

  Travathan turned to Meyer and said, “So why are we all here? What’s the agenda?”

  “Ah. Well, our first priority is to find out what’s going on. Why do these madmen so desperately want these good people dead? Our second priority is to provide them with new identities and move them elsewhere in the country.”

  “And us? Why are we here?”

  “First, you’ve earned a seat at the confessional. Second, we suspect you have also become targets, and we are prepared to offer you the same protection. This is a limited-time offer. I’ll need your answer tonight.”

  “Well, first things first.” Kagan reached for a sandwich. “I’m fascinated by this story, so let’s hear it.” He turned to the Sandersons and asked, “What is it about you that has this Hammer of Vengeance in a twist? What made them decide you were the nails they wanted to pound?”

  There was silence. Maureen Sanderson cleared her throat. “I guess I’ll start. It all began when Dad retired.”

  “Aunt Maureen. We agreed not to talk about this.”

  “For Heaven’s sake, Jacob, why so serious. Honestly,” she turned to Meyer, “I think our family skips the lighten-up gene every second generation. My father, I loved him dearly, but he had the sense of humor of a flowerpot. Ed and I on the other hand could never take anything seriously. Jake’s more like his grandfather than his dad.”

  She turned to Jake and said, “Look, I know this is supposed to be a secret, but let’s face it, these madmen won’t be deterred. Whatever happens here tonight, they won’t stop hunting for us. You can bet that one way or another, sooner or later, they will find us wherever we are, and on that day, they will kill us, including these two. I believe they have the right to know why they have become targets. Okay?”

  Her tone of voice left no option for any response other than his nod.

  She said, “It all started when my dad retired. Dad was a mechanic. He was hoping Ed would take over his garage—or maybe whoever I married. But neither Ed nor Larry had any i
nterest in it. So he sold it and took Mom on a world cruise. They were in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in a coffee shop. A terrorist came in, yelled that his God was great, and blew himself up.” Her voice quavered. “Mom and Dad were both killed.”

  Kagan said, “That must have been tough on you.”

  Maureen said, “It was. It was just so senseless. Mom and Dad never—” She reached for a handkerchief.

  Larry said, “Let me tell this.” She nodded. “We were in grief. Crying. Hugs. Reminiscing. Except for Ed. He closed himself up. He never talked. Never cried. Never changed expression. I tried to get him to react, but he shut me out just as he shut everyone else out. Including Jake, his son.”

  Travathan glanced at Jake Handley whose face was flushed as if he was fighting back tears. “That’s not an atypical response to something like this.”

  “I guess not, but it wasn’t easy to take. One day, he called me and asked me to pick him up at the gym because his car was being serviced. I was surprised. I doubted if Ed had ever been in a gym in his life. When I picked him up, the gym owner pulled me aside and said if we couldn’t get Ed to behave, he’d kick him out.”

  “Why? What was he doing?”

  “He was almost violent in his workout routine. He’d monopolize the equipment, swear at anyone who tried to intervene. I guess he was like a madman in the way he tackled the exercises. The other patrons complained but when the manager tried to talk to him, Ed pushed him away.”

  “Why? What was going on?

  “That’s what I asked him when I picked him up. He was all bottled up. Refused to say anything. When we got back to his office, I’d had it. I told him I was losing patience with him. That we were all grieving and my concern was to support Maureen, and I didn’t have time for his antics. That’s when he blew up. Went into a rant. He was going to get into shape, learn weapons, and take the fight to the terrorists. It was surreal listening to him. He was going to become the terrorists’ terrorist. He was going to blast them with bombs and grenades and AK-47s. He would become a one-man wrecking crew killing as many people as he could.”