The irony was that in order to fulfill her objectives, in order to put aside her old life and start anew, she would have to kill one last time. Or die trying, since she would never let herself be taken alive if she was caught. She would not rot in some prison like Carlos the Jackal. She would either accomplish her assignment and go on to live a full and happy life, or die by her own hand, on her own terms. One way or another, she would die knowing that she had triumphed over her hate, that she was capable of giving and receiving love.
At the moment, however, all thoughts of the planned assignment and a happy future were removed from her mind as she peered out the window for signs of surveillance. Now she was confronted with a new problem: federal agents would be smashing down her door any moment. But how did they find her? Who tipped them off? And how was she going to get out of here?
With these unanswered questions racing through her head, she heard a sound behind her and turned to see Anthony stepping out of the bathroom.
CHAPTER 91
“IS SOMETHING WRONG?”
“We have to get out of here.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
The lie came to her instantly. “One of my former informants has sent someone after me. He’s already supposed to be in L.A. There was a bad scene, a few years ago and this guy, this informant, wants revenge. I have to fly to Langley and give a briefing. The Company wants them both badly, the informant and the man he’s sent after me. I can’t tell you any more than that. I have to get you out of here.”
He stepped toward her and took her hand, his face a mixed study in confusion and desperation. “What about you?”
“I’ll be right behind you. I have to take care of one thing first.”
He looked torn. “But I can’t just leave you here.”
“You must.” She set down the mobile and started prodding him toward the door, feeling invisible walls closing in around them both.
“But why? I’m not going to let some wacko—”
“Please, Anthony! If you care about me, you’ll do this for me!” She thrust her body at him and kissed him fiercely. The thought of never seeing him again made her dizzy with dread.
He pulled away, reluctantly, and grabbed his rain jacket from the coat hook and his umbrella. “Jesus, why do I feel like I’m in a goddamned movie?”
“This is no movie, believe me, Anthony. Here’s what I need you to do. Take the fire stairs to the basement and head to the south end where the laundry room is. Go to the rear door. At night it’s locked, but you can unlock it from the inside. Proceed quickly but quietly out that door. It opens onto a narrow covered parking lot. Just head for the trees on the other side of the lot—from the laundry room, it’s only about thirty feet. Don’t stop for anything. Once you’ve made it there, go straight to the pier. I want you to hang out at a bar or restaurant for a couple of hours, then take a cab home.”
“Where will I meet you?”
“I’ll call you from Langley.”
“This isn’t right. I should stay with you.”
“No, you have to go.” She pushed him toward the door. “I love you, Anthony.” She felt the emotion welling up inside her, swirling around with the unbearable tension.
“I love you too,” he said, and he pulled her toward him and kissed her. For an instant, they were Bogie and Bergman in Casablanca . Then he was off and running down the hallway.
She closed the door and quickly went through what she had to do. Though she had always planned for this eventuality, she was still taken off guard. She had planted multiple sets of fingerprints and hair fibers all around the apartment, so at least the authorities would have to sift through a lot of misleading detail, but they would still get forensics on her since there wasn’t enough time for a sweep through the apartment. The most important thing was to gather her critical belongings. All her long-distance firearms, disguises, and false passports were stored in her safe room in Marina Del Ray, but she still kept her SIG-Sauer and three sets of false identity papers, driver’s licenses, and credit cards here with her. She would also need to get her laptop and the hard drive from her desktop computer.
She went first to the desktop in her office. She pulled off the monitor and set it down on the table, then popped the metal side to the processing unit. She reached in and withdrew the small hard drive. It contained the magnetic-coated disks, tape heads, and selector mechanisms used to store and access the programs and data inside the computer. She took the hard drive and stuffed it in the soft nylon carrying case with her laptop. Walking into her bedroom closet, she grabbed the daypack containing her SIG, holster, and ammo magazines. On the way out, she snatched her purse and her coded mobile, stuffing them in the pack. Zipped within a special compartment was a nine-inch stiletto and the false identifications. She went to the coat rack, put on her raincoat, and slung the pack over her shoulder. Though her blood was pumping and she was frightened, there was no evidence of panic in her movements. She worked with calm mechanical efficiency, like a well-trained spy.
She looked at her watch. Less than four minutes had passed since the warning call, and it had taken her less than two to gather up the critical items she could not leave behind. But she had to check one last thing. She went to the window, pulled back the blind, and peered down at the street below.
A cold hand closed over her heart. She was trapped!
CHAPTER 92
WITH THE STEALTH of a wolf pack, the FBI raid team crept into final position. Anticipation gripped the hallway, the face of each and every agent one of focused concentration. There was no sound, not even a creaking floorboard or squeaking shoe, as the team edged forward, sidearms cocked and unlocked.
Reaching the door to apartment 330, Patton cast a glance at Supervising Special Agent Roberts and his L.A. squad.
They were ready to move.
Patton smiled inwardly. The apartment building was surrounded, all possible escape routes sealed off. And beyond the door lay the unsuspecting quarry.
We’ve got you, Jane Fucking Doe—there’s no way out.
Roberts gave a hand signal and rapped on the door, hard. “FBI—open up!”
Three seconds, two, one...battering ram forward, door smashed open.
Patton stormed into the apartment with the frontal wave, the adrenaline flowing through him like a mighty river.
He ran into the living room, but was shocked to find no one there. The team members fanned out to check each room. Patton and Taylor led a group into the bedroom. They checked the closets, behind the curtains, under the bed, but found nothing. An agent went to the window, opened it, and looked up and down the exterior of the building. Again nothing.
Jesus Christ. Where the hell has she gone?
Sharp poked his head in the room. “Anything?”
“Zip.”
“Shit!” and Sharp was gone.
Finishing the search, Patton bolted back out into the main hallway where Schmidt was being held by the two escorts from San Francisco. The apartment was overflowing with field agents, checking and rechecking every conceivable hiding place with pistols drawn.
Patton led Schmidt to the bedroom. “Are you sure this is the goddamned place?”
“One hundred percent. The bed, the furniture, everything’s the same.”
“You’re sure?”
“Look, I’ll never forget what went down here. That woman is one twisted bitch.”
Patton wondered: Could the assassin really be a woman?
They went into the kitchen. The search was wrapping up. No space small enough to hide a cat was left unexamined, but there was still no sign of anyone. Not more than five minutes ago, Patton had a prime suspect in his mitts. Now he didn’t have jack shit.
He wanted to strangle Sharp, the goddamned idiot! Instead of driving off for a cup of coffee and waiting for the L.A. raid team to arrive, the ASAC should have ordered the subject’s apartment raided right off the bat with the agents they had! Why it was almost as if he had deliberately allowed t
he suspect to get away!
“The bird has flown! I repeat, the bird has flown!” Agent Roberts barked into his two-way radio to the teams staked outside. “Perimeter One, any sign of anyone?”
“Negative.”
“P-Two, Marvin?”
“That’s a negative, sir. But we’ve got the rear covered. If anyone came this way, we would have seen ’em.”
“P-Three, anything?”
“Negatory.”
“Shit! Keep your eyes peeled. She may still be in the building. Over and out.” Roberts turned and shook his head, severe disappointment evident on his features.
Sharp came walking up, red-faced. “Agent Roberts, have your team search the building and rooftop. Round up every tenant and get the property manager. We also need a ground search. Make it a twenty-block radius around the apartment complex. Set up checkpoints along Venice Boulevard, PCH, and wherever else you think we need them. And mobilize an ERT on the double...”
As Sharp rattled on, Taylor walked over to Patton. “If we’re down to checkpoints, she’s gone baby gone.”
“Yeah, I know. We’re fucked.”
CHAPTER 93
IT WAS TWO HOURS LATER before Patton got to do his walk-through of Jane Doe’s apartment. The building and ground searches had been completed. The LAPD had established checkpoints at all major arteries linking Venice Beach with the rest of the city. Interviews had been conducted with the landlord and tenants, thirty-eight people in all. Despite this exhaustive effort, Jane Doe was still at large and Patton had no idea where she was headed. She had been within his grasp, but now, to his dismay, he might never find her.
He logged in at the door to the apartment: flashed his creds, signed in, and slipped on a pair of latex gloves. As he stepped inside, he saw the evidence response team still busy dusting for prints and bagging and tagging. He was careful not to disrupt the process as he strode into the living room. After the ground search and interviews, he felt ragged. But mostly he was pissed off that they had let the subject get away.
He stopped and looked around the room, hoping to find some clue, however minute, that would shed light on Jane Doe. The room was tastefully furnished, a little arty, which revealed a certain cosmopolitan quality. The furniture was for the most part antique, spare but luxurious, dominated by classical styles. There was some photographic equipment lying about and the walls were covered with pictures showing dramatic scenes of people and landscapes. Patton could tell that photography was more than just a hobby for Jane Doe; in all the pictures, the lighting and scenery were exquisite, National Geographic caliber. The works showed a skilled artist, meticulous yet sensual, which seemed at odds with a criminal.
He walked to the large bookcase and examined the books. Most were modern male action-adventure and suspense novels by Barry Eisler, Clive Cussler, Lee Child, and Stephen Hunter, male self-help books, and bland non-fiction works on military history. But there were also female literary works by Jane Hamilton, Annie Proulx, and Amy Tan, feminist manifestos by Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, and Susan Faludi, a smattering of romance novels, and collections of woman’s poetry. It was if two people lived in the apartment, one unabashedly male, the other female.
He walked into the bedroom and looked through Jane Doe’s closets and drawers. They were filled with not just women’s clothing, but similar-sized men’s apparel. The male clothing was neatly separated from the female and ran the full gamut, from casual jeans and T-shirts to chinos and polo shirts to supremely costly Armani suits. Stepping into the bathroom, he opened the medicine chest and looked in the cabinet below the sink. He quickly found that the toiletry articles in the bathroom were for both sexes as well. There were men’s electric shavers, combs, condoms, underarm deodorants, foot powders, and the like, adjacent to but separate from feminine hygiene and makeup products, like Tampax, perfume, and lipstick.
Based on the clothing alone, Patton would have concluded that either Jane Doe was sharing the apartment with a man or she had a male lover who stayed over regularly. But earlier, when he had interviewed Barr Hogen, the art-dealer living next door in Apartment 326, she had said Jane Doe lived alone, spent little time at her apartment, and didn’t have a steady boyfriend who stayed over on a regular basis. Patton supposed the articles could belong to an ex-lover, but if that were true, they almost certainly would have been boxed up and not spread all over the apartment as if regularly used. It didn’t make any sense.
Perplexed, Patton summoned Hogen, whom he regarded as the most credible witness, to the bedroom. Looking over the clothing and toiletries with him, she admitted to being as puzzled as he. But then she pointed out that she had been in New York all week on business and perhaps the woman had taken in a lover during her absence. She considered the prospect unlikely, however. Jane Doe, she said, was, despite her ravishing beauty, a loner and recluse.
Sending Hogen on her way, Patton continued to poke around, careful not to disrupt anything. He talked a few minutes with Charlie Fisher, the ERT supervisor. Slowly, it began to dawn on him that the apartment was as conspicuous for what was missing as what was actually present.
There were no personal documents, no bills, letters or postcards of any kind; no photographs of Jane Doe, a spouse, siblings, relatives, children or lovers; no diplomas, awards or certificates; no obvious objects of sentimentality or nostalgia. There was no phone, and though there was a computer, Fisher pointed out that the hard drive was gone, which meant she must have known they were coming and removed it before her escape. There was nothing to indicate the presence of a profession or hobbies beyond photography and an apparent fondness for California wines.
A woman with no name, no past, changing physical appearances, maybe even a split personality.
All in all, it was an unusual evidence scene, raising as many questions as it answered. There was nothing of great importance, nothing that couldn’t be abandoned, nothing that revealed a past or future. If this woman was indeed Kieger’s assassin that would explain why all personal records had been carefully cleaned out. There should have been some bank statements, bills or personal photographs, but there were none. She had left virtually no trace of her identity, as if she knew, one day, the authorities would come for her.
Patton went over how all this fit with what the landlord had said. According to the landlord’s records, the apartment had been rented since July to one Dominique Rousseau. A background check by the L.A. team revealed that the social security and driver’s license numbers on the rental application were falsified. When shown the police artist’s sketch of Jane Doe, the landlord said it was definitely not Rousseau, which meant that for the past few months he had been renting to an imposter. He admitted he didn’t make a habit out of keeping tabs on his tenants, unless they didn’t pay their rent on time. In this regard, the fictitious Ms. Rousseau had been a model tenant, paying five days early each month at the discounted rental rate. Obviously, Jane Doe was doing everything in her power to maintain a low profile and keep her true identity concealed.
But where was she from? Barr Hogen and two of the other tenants had shed some light on this. They believed Jane Doe was from somewhere in California. Her tone was flat and generic, they said. But there was another tenant who had overheard her on the street speaking Spanish—impeccably fluent Spanish. Patton thought this might be an important clue and underlined it in his iPad notation.
He walked to the window and stared out at the slashing rain. The male clothing and other personal belongings vexed him. If Jane Doe lived alone and didn’t have a steady boyfriend who stayed over nights, as Barr Hogen claimed, then what were these articles doing here? It was as if Jane Doe had a split personality: one-half distinctly male, the other half female.
But why? What was the cause of this schism?
He knew it might be the key to the case. Somehow he had to fit this piece to the puzzle.
Now at least he would have a high-quality computer sketch of Jane Doe based on the tenants’ and Schmidt’s descriptions
. The fingerprints and forensics would help too; they would shed additional light on this bizarre woman. And hopefully Dr. Hamilton would be able to make sense of all the physical evidence and put together a meaningful profile of her.
But Patton was still gravely worried. He had the sense he was dealing with an extremely clever adversary, a person far more intelligent than the militia nutcases and terrorist extremists with whom he customarily dealt.
And there was the rub: catching Jane Doe, dead or alive, was going to be tough as hell.
FRIDAY
CHAPTER 94
THE FIFTEENTH OF NOVEMBER seemed like it would be no different than any ordinary fall day— certainly not one that would go down as one of the bloodiest in Colorado history along with Sand Creek, the Ludlow Massacre, Columbine, and Aurora. The sky was razor-blue with wisps of white, the sun a subdued peach orb above the vast Great Plains to the east. The temperature was cool in a hearty autumn way and a brisk wind stirred the fallen leaves, swirling them about. On the mountains to the west lay a fresh veneer of snow, like a shawl on the shoulders of a handsome elderly woman, Georgia O’Keeffe perhaps. The clear skies, chilly morning air, and spectacular backdrop of mountains seemed to reinforce the idea that this was truly God’s country, as many native Coloradoans claimed, without reference to an actual deity, but to a natural physiographic majesty greater than humankind.
The Coalition: A Novel of Suspense Page 32