Blood Trust jm-3

by Eric Van Lustbader

  They could hear shouts now—curses, imprecations.

  “What’s happened?”

  “There’s no time.” The hammering was louder. “Without me you’re trapped. Will you take me with you?”

  A gunshot splintered through the door. The angry shouts grew louder, more frenzied. The pounding increased in intensity until the door shuddered.

  “Yes,” Jack said. “All right.”

  Thatë nodded and, putting his shoulder to the desk, shoved it all the way to the door. In the area of the floor that was under where it had been was a trapdoor. Bending, he pulled an iron ring and the trapdoor swung up.

  “Quickly,” he said. “Quickly, or we’ll die here!”

  There was an iron ladder leading down into absolute blackness. Alli went first, then Jack. Thatë came last, pausing to lock the trapdoor from underneath. There was no light at all.

  “Keep going.” Thatë’s voice floated through the void.

  They were enmeshed in damp, in sharp mineral smells, and in the stench of dying things.

  “Thatë,” Jack said when he reached the ground, “what happened back there?”

  He could hear Thatë breathing. At last, the kid said, “Have you heard of a man by the name of Arian Xhafa?”

  Jack felt a chill go through him.

  Thatë took a breath. Jack could feel it on his cheek.

  “Dardan, the man you killed? He was Arian Xhafa’s brother.”

  PART TWO

  BLOOD TIES

  Five Days Ago

  The worst thing about dying alone, he used to say, is not being able to say good-bye.

  —The Skating Rink,

  R

  OBERTO

  B

  OLAÑO

  TWELVE

  “YOU’RE A dead man, Jack, you know that.” Dennis Paull shook his head. “All of you. You and Alli and this kid.”

  Jack tried to find a comfortable position, keeping the pain in his side to a minimum. He’d gone to a surgeon. The slash was superficial. His hand needed a number of stitches, and he was on antibiotics.

  “Why state the obvious?”

  “Because now it’s a race against time,” Paull said. “We’ve got to terminate Arian Xhafa before one of his people puts a couple of sniper’s rounds into the three of you.”

  Thirty thousand feet above the Atlantic, Jack and Paull sat side by side in the front section of the 757’s luxuriously reconfigured interior. In the cargo hold below them, packed and ready, was the arsenal of DARPA weaponry Paull had handpicked for Chimera’s first assignment.

  Alli and Thatë sat in the lounge area near the rear, eating pizza and drinking Cokes. The sight was incongruous and, for Jack, slightly eerie. They were just like two kids at a ’50s malt shop. Looking at them, the terrible events of the last twenty-four hours might never have happened.

  Paull glanced at Thatë. “This fucking kid. I don’t like that you dragged him along.”

  “I promised him. I had no choice.”

  “Sure you had a choice.” Paull’s voice was like granite. “You could’ve ditched him the first chance you got.”

  “And leave him to be picked off by Dardan’s men?”

  “He carried that Stem pendant.”

  “He didn’t lift a hand to protect Dardan.” Jack shook his head. “No, he’s straight, so far as that goes.”

  “Still.”

  “One day that cynicism will kill you,” Jack said.

  Paull grunted. “In our business, there is no sharper blade than trust.”

  Jack gave him an ironic smile. “I’ll try to remember that in the days ahead.”

  “Still.” There was an insistence in Paull’s voice. “Why do you keep putting Alli in such danger?”

  “I don’t do anything,” Jack said. “She does it herself.”

  “How big is her death wish?”

  “She was a holy terror in the Ukraine.”

  Paull shifted, returning to the topic on his mind. “If I’d been kidnapped and held captive for a week, my death wish might be the size of New Jersey.”

  So that was it. “She’s fine now, Dennis.”

  “So you’ve got enough evidence to clear her on Billy Warren. What about her uncle’s security team?”

  “Trust me.”

  “Remember what I said about trust, Jack. But of all the people I know, you’re the one I do trust, so I got the fugitive warrant on her frozen—until we get back. I burned significant political capital with the president.”

  “I appreciate it, Dennis.”

  “Bullshit. You had me over a barrel. Tell me, would you really have refused to come?”

  “I said it,” Jack nodded, “and I meant it.”

  “You must love that girl more than life.” Paull shook his head. “You really are a fucking piece of work.”

  “I appreciate the compliment.”

  Paull still had a sour look on his face. “Did it ever occur to you that this kid might have killed Warren and strung him up?”

  “It crossed my mind,” Jack said.

  “Then why are you letting her sit with him?”

  “She can take care of herself. Besides—” He sensed Alli coming toward them.

  “Am I interrupting?” she said, plopping down in one of the empty seats facing them.

  “We were just talking about you,” Jack said. “What’s the verdict?”

  Alli shot Paull a wicked look before she addressed Jack’s question. “The jury’s still out.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He hasn’t lied to my face, but there’s something he’s holding back. He’s clearly frightened. Dardan’s death has unhinged him in some way I can’t fathom.”

  “Do you think he killed Billy?”

  “Too soon to tell.”

  Jack, responding to the expression on her face, said, “What’s the matter?”

  “He doesn’t trust us—not really, anyway.”

  “Smart boy. He has no reason to keep trusting us.”

  Alli risked a quick glance over her shoulder. “I’m doing my best to change that.”

  “Go slow,” Jack said. “The kid’s skittish.”

  Alli nodded and stood up. Jack reached out and took hold of her hand.

  “I’m okay.” She touched his bandaged hand, and Jack nodded.

  She smiled, and went back to rejoin Thatë.

  Paull appeared stunned. “What are you two, a team?”

  Jack smiled. “Let’s say we have an understanding.”

  “Jesus, I wish my daughter and I understood each other like that.”

  “Every relationship has its own difficulties.”

  “Nevertheless.” Paull glanced after Alli. “What’s the secret?”

  The secret, Jack thought, is Emma, reaching out to both of us from her unquiet existence beyond the grave. But that explanation would mean nothing to Paull.

  “There is no secret.”

  “Sure. It’s personal. I get it.” Paull nodded absently and took a swallow of single malt from a glass that sat by his right elbow. “Do you know why the Warren boy was murdered?”

  “I now know that Dardan gave the order.”

  “Why?”

  “Billy Warren had something going with Arjeta Kraja, even though Arjeta belonged to Dardan. That’s more than enough cause for a man like him.”

  “So Dardan had him whacked.”

  “Wouldn’t that tie everything up in a nice, neat package.”

  Paull stared at him. “You think not?”

  “You bet I think not. Dardan had Billy Warren tortured. Why? To teach him a lesson before he died? I doubt it. No, Billy was tortured for the usual reason: information. Either he had discovered something about Dardan or he was in possession of something Dardan wanted. I think Arjeta knew it, too, because Billy told her the night he was murdered. Remember that Alli got a panicky call from Billy, but when she went to Twilight, she saw them disappearing together into the shadows.”

  Paull flexed his shoulder
s. “So what’s the information?”

  “That,” Jack said, “is the ten-billion-dollar question.”

  * * *

  NAOMI AND McKinsey stayed late at the office, fact-checking the backgrounds of the three Fortress employees, plus pulling together a timeline of the murders from whatever other notes and intel they had gathered so far.

  “There’s nothing from the forensic report on Alli’s room at Fearington,” McKinsey said.

  Naomi picked up a plastic evidence bag. “Except this damn vial the roofies were in.”

  “With her fingerprints on it.”

  “And no one else’s.” Naomi shook the bag and hard light glinted off the yellowish plastic. “Jack thought that was odd and so do I.”

  “Setup?”

  Naomi nodded. “But who? And why?”

  McKinsey looked at the whiteboard, where various possible motives were written out, and shook his head.

  “How’s your look-see into our friends, the bogus O’Banion and Willowicz, coming?” she asked.

  “It isn’t. The Metro police who interviewed us today took me off that. They say since the real Willowicz and O’Banion are on leave it’s an internal matter.”

  “Do you believe them?”

  “Metro police does not harbor spooks, Naomi.” He shrugged. “They’re two men without names.”

  She glanced up. “Meaning?”

  He shrugged. “For all intents and purposes they don’t exist.”

  She looked vexed. “They must exist, just not under the names Willowicz and O’Banion.”

  “Not our job now,” he said.

  “It pisses me off,” she said, “those two running around, doing whatever the hell they please.”

  “Leave it, Naomi. We have bigger rats to run down.”

  Neither of them said anything for a while. The air system rattled and hummed, a cleaning cart rumbled down a hallway outside their office. A tuneless whistle approached, then was gone. The place stank of hamburgers, stale sweat, and anxiety. Silently, they got back to work. The hands of the wall clock ground slowly forward.

  Around midnight, McKinsey said, “We’re never going to find Arjeta Kraja.” He threw a cup of cold coffee in the trash. “You know that, don’t you?”

  She sighed, suspecting that he was right. “She’s probably buried deep.”

  “More likely chopped into pieces.”

  Naomi sat back, surveying the mess of papers, reports, and crime-scene photos, which now seemed to whirl before her eyes like a pinwheel at a carnival. “One person killed Billy Warren and both the guys at Twilight. The MO Jack found proves that, and yet we have not one solid lead.”

  “We don’t have even a ghost of one. We don’t even have a motive. I mean why were these people murdered? What did they know? Carson’s going to be asking us questions and we’re not going to have any answers.”

  “Fuck him.”

  “You say that now.” McKinsey stretched. “Fuck this, I gotta get outta here.”

  Naomi realized that she was fried, too. Besides, she had another agenda to tend to. “I’m starved. Let’s go get something to eat.”

  “Really? You want to hang out?”

  “I want to eat.” She rose, grabbing her coat. “You coming or not?”

  He got to his feet. “Sure thing. I wouldn’t miss a date with you for all the porn on the Internet.”

  She smiled inwardly. She couldn’t wait to get him hammered.

  They went to Marco’s, a red-sauce Italian joint straight out of The Godfather, except the food was indifferent. It did, however, have the advantage of being close to the office, not to mention cheap. Plus, it had a first-class bar.

  The kitchen could have used a lesson or two from Pete Clemenza, Naomi thought sourly as they took their seats around a table with a red-and-white-checked cloth. She was something of a foodie, a frustrating trait for someone on her salary. How many restaurants had she been forced to pass by because she knew she couldn’t afford even a Caesar salad or a crudo appetizer?

  They started out with whiskey shots. Then, typical of him, McKinsey opted for a cheap wine, which Naomi immediately countermanded, choosing a bottle of Chianti, which at least would not take off the roof of her mouth. When it came, McKinsey attacked it like a roast turkey, downing a third of the bottle before she had finished her second glass. They discussed the case, the fact that all three Fortress employees seemed to check out. Naomi asked him what he thought of the information in the dossiers and he shrugged, as if to say, You’ve seen one dossier, you’ve seen them all.

  “I must say you’re taking this case very personally,” he said.

  “And that surprises you?”

  He shrugged again. “A bit. On the Ranch, you’re known as the Ice Doll.” The Ranch was the Secret Service “clubhouse,” a male-chosen name that set her teeth on edge. It only proved her male compatriots’ arrested adolescence.

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Let’s face it, Naomi, you don’t get involved—in anything.”

  “Shit, Pete, I know code words when I hear them. What your young boys’ club means is that I won’t go down on any of them.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then burst into laughter. “You know, you’re probably right. They ride me about that all the time, which I guess is a compliment.”

  “A shit-handed compliment if I ever heard one.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t figure out why you ignore the fact that you’re beautiful—and smokin’ hot.”

  “That’s because you’re not a woman,” she said tartly. “You go through life thinking you’re hot, and that’s exactly how men treat you. Boobs, butt, legs, beyond that they won’t see an inch. Do you have any idea how hard I have to work to get men to take me seriously?”

  “Not really,” he said dryly. “All I see when I look at you are boobs, butt, and legs.”

  “Bastard,” she said, and they both laughed.

  New glasses and a second bottle of wine appeared, a Lambrusco this time. The waiter poured a little into her glass to taste. She swirled it around, smelled it, then took a sip. It was fine, and she nodded her approval.

  McKinsey made a face. “But, see, this is what I mean. You can be such a fucking snob.” He swigged down some of the wine. His eyes had a semiglazed look and his hair seemed unkempt. “Honestly, I don’t know why I put up with you.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing.”

  He began to scan the menu. “Well, I could request a new partner, but no one else would have you.”

  Naomi buried her face in the menu and decided not to show how deeply he had stung her.

  He set aside the menu. “Besides, no one else would come up to your standards.”

  She raised her eyes to see his tight grin. Everything about Pete was tight. He was one of those people who worked out at the gym three nights a week. If he wasn’t in the Secret Service he’d have been a professional gym rat without any socially redeeming value whatsoever.

  They gave their orders to the waiter, who gathered up their menus and departed. That left the two of them staring at each other. The bustle all around them seemed not to exist, or to be muted out of all proportion. Though it was far too late for a normal dinner crowd, this crew was anything but normal. They all worked for the federal government; three-quarters of them—maybe more—were spooks of one sort or another. They were a clannish lot: the field agents over there, the intel parsers over here, the code breakers huddled in back like a bunch of old ladies. A table of four bosses—who knew their real ranks?—was in the center of the crowd, anxiously being observed by everyone out of the corner of their eyes.

  “The Bishops are in the process of rearranging the board,” McKinsey said. Bishop was the internal name for the bosses, from departmental chairs to ministry honchos to the secretaries in their lofty nests high above the fray at the president’s side.

  “They’re always rearranging something,” Naomi said. “It gives them something t
o do.”

  McKinsey nodded. “Stratagems within stratagems.”

  Speaking of which, Naomi thought, what stratagem are you involved with? She put a smile on her face. “Pete, we’ve been partners for a couple of years. What do we know about each other?”

  He shrugged. “We always have each other’s back. What else do we need to know?”

  The food came and she sat back until the waiter had left. She glanced down at her food and knew that she’d made a mistake. The red sauce looked too much like blood and the meatballs—well, she’d rather not even go there.

  McKinsey was already forking up his veal parm. “What’s the matter?”

  Naomi sighed and put her fork down. “I just lost my appetite.”

  He paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. “This isn’t like you, Naomi. What’s gotten under your skin?”

  “Just about everything,” she said, “from what was done to Billy Warren, to four dead bodies in the space of twelve hours, to Alli being the prime suspect in Billy’s torture-death.”

  He looked at her steadily. “You have a soft spot for that girl, don’t you?”

  She returned his gaze, part of her looking inside herself. “I was with her when she lost her father, when they brought her mother aboard Air Force One. Losing both parents in the space of a year. I feel for that girl. Her world’s been turned inside out. And now this mess.”

  “We’ve all been through shitty times, Naomi.” He popped a wedge of veal into his mouth. “She’s no different than the rest of us poor fools.”

  Naomi clamped down on the urge to say, There’s nothing the same between us and Alli, but, instead, sticking to her agenda, she said, “You’ve been through tough times, Pete?”

  “Sure.” He rolled his shoulders, the way all gym rats did. “One time, when I was eight, or maybe nine, I got lost. I mean really lost. My parents had rented a cabin in the Smoky Mountains. This was before the blood and guts of the divorce started flying, but already they weren’t getting along. I guess they thought the vacation would do their relationship good. Instead, the isolation just brought home to them how unhappy they were. They fought—every night they fought, worse and worse. I couldn’t stand it, so I left.”