Pieces of the Puzzle

by Robert Stanek

  Helen screamed, “Stop, stop, stop! Stop it now!”

  Scott didn’t, instead he held Helen in place so she couldn’t turn away. He was rewarded with a partial view of the woman’s face. A moment later she was dangling a pair of panties from her right hand and laughing, she rolled onto her back. Scott lurched forward, pushed Pause. His eyes went wide—wide round globes—and his heart skipped. Two faces were captured in the frame and at the same instant he said, “Janet?”

  Helen said, “Pattie, it’s Pattie. You happy now?”

  He felt suddenly queasy. His toes tingled. His legs and jaw went numb as tension swept through him. He turned to her. “That’s Pattie, you’re sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  He heard her confirmation, though he didn’t want to. He sucked at the air, turned toward the balcony and the drapes being played upon by the wind. “Janet is Pattie, Pattie is Janet,” he told himself.

  Helen started to say something; he touched a finger to her lips. He heard something, a noise that didn’t come from the TV because the video was still paused.

  He reached for the gun tucked into the back of his pants, turned around. Just as the closet door directly behind Helen swept open, he jumped, grabbing her as he went down. As they tumbled to the carpet, he saw a flash, heard the muffled report of a gun, then another and another.

  He rolled onto his stomach, aimed, fired. One shot. Two shots. His gun didn’t have a silencer so the report was loud and echoed in the enclosed space. The figure in the shadows went down, didn’t move again.

  He scrambled across the carpet on his hands and knees. The figure was masked so he couldn’t see a face. He checked for a pulse, wasn’t surprised not to find one.

  After taking a deep breath and holding it, he peeled off the mask. There was a sudden emptiness in the bottom of his gut. He recognized the face. It was Edward. Edward, always the loyal servant, always willing to help out, always there when they needed him. Cynthia would be devastated if he ever told her, which he wouldn’t.

  A thousand thoughts raced through his mind, all demanding attention, all demanding answers. Janet was working for Glen.

  This was an absolute. But was Edward working for Cynthia’s father, Glen, Wellmen, or someone else? And how did this connect to the recording Kim Dong Gi had confronted him with? Did it connect at all? If it was Glen, why would Glen need to blackmail him? He was already doing everything Glen wanted. What more did Glen want? Or was Wellmen trying to mislead him? In the back of his mind, Glen’s voice whispered, “The bottom line is to put the hook in someone else’s mouth.”

  He took a deep breath, forced calm into his mind. He turned to Helen. She was lying on the floor, motionless, apparently still in shock. Then his eyes found the spray of blood covering one side of her face and his heart leapt.

  He touched two fingers to her jugular vein, looking for a pulse, as he asked, “Helen, are you with me?” He found a pulse. “Helen, are you with me?” he repeated.

  He lifted her to a sitting position, found a nasty bump on the side of her head. “We don’t have time for this,” he muttered under his breath. He slapped her face.

  She winced, opened her eyes. “Don’t hit me,” she whined. “My god, your shoulder?”

  It was when she grabbed his arm that he realized he’d been shot, not her—the blood spray on her face was from his arm. He helped her to her feet. She didn’t say a word. He grabbed her by the shoulders and held her there until she stopped trembling.

  “Grab a towel from the bathroom. Don’t touch anything. Don’t look in the tub. Wipe down the bathroom door handle, anything you touched, anything you think I touched. We don’t have more than a minute. Go!”

  He pushed her toward the bathroom, retrieved the disc from the video player, paused. He heard voices in the hall now. He staggered toward the door, switched on the security lock so that the door couldn’t be opened from the outside even with a card key—and that’s when the knock came, followed by a voice, “Hotel security. We have a report of shots being fired. Can you open the door, please?”

  He backed away from the door, heard the hotel security person attempt to open the door with a security pass card. Thinking quickly, he grabbed the top sheet from the bed, wrapped it around his shoulders. He looked around the room nervously, nodded to Helen, who was still following his instructions.

  His plan was to answer the door but blood running down his arm was soaking through the sheet and there was little he could do to hide the disarray in the room. He could drag the body into the bathroom but what if hotel security wanted to search the entire room? He could send Helen to the door but the side of her face was covered in blood. He nodded to the bathroom. “Your face,” he whispered, “Wash, quickly.”

  “Your arm?” She mouthed to him, afraid to voice even a whisper.

  “I’ll live, go.” He nodded again to the bathroom. He needed a diversion so they could get out of the room. The hotel had fire detectors and sprinklers, but he didn’t have time or the means to start a fire.

  The knocking came louder and more insistent on the door. He was sure Helen could get out safely through the other room if he could divert attention for a few moments but he didn’t think he could get away as easily. He was wounded and bleeding. He didn’t have a jacket or anything else to cover up his arm inconspicuously, and if he couldn’t hide the bleeding he was sure to be spotted.

  He looked to the blankets on the bed, glanced at the desk clock. It was pretty late; he could go out of the room wrapped in the blanket, pretend to have been awakened by the ruckus, race down the stairs after Helen. But what if someone had seen him come up to the room? Helen could slip out of the room alone but the two of them together would surely catch someone’s attention.

  There was no point in both of them being caught by the local police—there was no point in either of them being caught. He didn’t have time for lockup, questions, and phone calls to D.C. He didn’t want Helen to break down and start saying things she shouldn’t—No, he had to get her out safely. It was the only way.

  He did the only thing he could think of; he picked up the sofa chair and heaved it through the glass doors. The chair went careening over the balcony. He grabbed Helen as she ran out of the bathroom screaming and pushed her toward the door to the next room. “Walk out the same door we came in. Wipe the handle inside, touch the outside with the towel. Do it quickly, casually. Move!”

  “What if someone’s in the hall?”

  “Someone is in the hall,” he said calmly, looking directly at her. “Keep your wits. Walk slowly and calmly out the door and down the stairs. Get the car, drive out of the parking garage and around the corner, like you’re going to the freeway but stop just up the block.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m going to get your things and meet you.”

  She repeated, “What about you?”

  He gripped her shoulders harder than he meant to. She winced. He ignored her, didn’t release the grip. “We’re going to meet at the car, drive to the airport and get on the next flight to Honolulu. You aren’t going to cry. You aren’t going to say a word. Do you understand?” He grabbed one of the towels in her hand, gave her a shove. “Go!”

  She ran into the adjacent room, glanced back. For a few seconds, he could hear a tangle of voices from the hallway. He heard someone screaming, “What’s going on? What’s going on?” Then the door closed and he couldn’t make out the voices clearly anymore.

  They were trying to break down the door from the outside now. He heard a loud thump as a shoulder was levied into the door. The shouting and the frenzy in the hall grew louder. He knew he didn’t have a lot of time.

  He rewrapped the bed sheet around him, so that it covered his body and his head. The blood soaking through the sheet by his arm was only a temporary distraction as he stepped out onto the balcony. It was dark out, late, but this was Miami Beach, not Sleepy Hollow, so there were still a lot of people coming and going.

  He looked down.
Three floors below, people were gathering in the street. The braver ones were crowding around the sofa chair he had thrown out the window, staring directly up at him. “A jumper!” someone shouted as he stood on the rail of the balcony. Others shouted, “Look, up there!”

  He waited only a moment, listening to the edges of the sheet being played upon by the wind, then he turned and ran back into the room. He picked up Edward’s gun and mask, stuffing the gun into the back of Edward’s pants and the mask into a pocket.

  He unwrapped the sheet, letting it fall to the floor. He rolled the sheet around Edward’s body, took a deep breath, then ran into Room 336. He dropped the body, reached back and locked the door connecting the rooms just as hotel security broke through the door of the other room.

  Fortunately, Room 336 wasn’t a suite. There wasn’t a balcony outside the window, only air and a three-story drop to the pavement below. Holding the body about the neck and waist, he ran at an angle toward the window, stopped short, used the momentum to carry the body through the window.

  On the street below, people were screaming and shouting as the body hit the pavement. Fire trucks, ambulances and police cars started pulling up in front of the hotel. Someone must have called 911 when they heard the gunshots. He ran for all he was worth out the door and into the hall.

  The staircase was nearby. He pushed through the crowd in the hallway, didn’t look back. Someone called out, “Hey! Hey, buddy! You!” He kept going.

  When he reached the staircase, he went up instead of down, racing to the ninth floor. He wasn’t sure if he was followed, wasn’t about to slow down to find out.

  Chapter 17

  Miami, Florida Saturday, 22 January

  Scott pushed Helen into the window seat and took the seat beside her. He pulled her window shade down to deflect the glare of the rising sun and fastened his seat belt, good and tight, as if it would keep him safe—he loved flying and hated it at the same time. He set the morning edition of the Miami Herald on his lap, afraid to open it, afraid of what the headlines might read, and afraid of what the small red book folded into the middle of the paper might reveal.

  Since leaving the Ritz-Carlton, he hadn’t had time to think, but now he had nothing but time. His thoughts were moving in circles. He was battered, bruised, and the bullet that had grazed his arm was the least of his worries. Helen had dressed the wound; she was getting pretty good at using booze as an antiseptic.

  She started to massage his neck. He chased her hand away, breathed in and out slowly as Flight 803 taxied away from the terminal. He decided right then that he’d call Glen as soon as he arrived in Honolulu. He would tell Glen the search was going well and everything was looking good, but he wouldn’t say anything about his excursion to Miami, nothing about the meeting with Kim Dong Gi, nothing about Helen, Jessica or anyone else.

  He leaned back against the headrest as the plane taxied to the runway, closed his eyes for a moment, only a moment he told himself, but when he opened his eyes they were already airborne and the plane had leveled off on its transit altitude. He thumped the newspaper with his thumbs, then unfolded it.

  The headlines could wait. He glanced at Helen, who was sleeping, then turned his attention to the little red book and delved into the life of Jessica Johnson.

  He found dipping into the private thoughts of someone strangely seductive, especially Jessica’s thoughts. He had never kept a diary or a journal, though Cynthia did. He had peeked into it a few times out of curiosity, but this was entirely different. In his relationship with C there was a closeness, a oneness, so it hadn’t felt like an invasion of privacy. But now he was reading the thoughts of someone he had never met, yet felt he had known forever.

  Jessica’s thoughts were as organized as her credit cards. He could have divided the entries and put each paragraph under subheadings:

  Interesting/Ponderings

  Likes/Dislikes

  Work/Why I Don’t Have a Life Right Now People/Relationships

  Today I watched a jasmine sunrise. The water, calm and cobalt, invited me for a swim… Jessica always started with Interesting/Ponderings, and always ended with People/Relationships. I’m worried about Helen. It’s nearly Christmas and she is still decidedly somber… Before Scott knew it, the pilot was beginning the descent for Dallas-Fort Worth International. In Dallas, they had to change to Flight 123. It departed at 11:20 Dallas time. He glanced at his watch; adjusting for the time zone difference that was an hour and forty-five minutes away. He continued reading.

  The plane landed, finished taxiing to the arrival gate. He closed the diary, having just finished the entry for Friday, 29 October. Helen unbuckled her seat belt. He snapped the buckle back into place. “Stay put. We’ll get off last.”

  ***

  Scott paced in front of the ladies’ room. “Fifteen minutes,” he mumbled. Where was Helen?

  At one end of the terminal was a cluster of departure gates and on this end, he could see souvenir shops, a snack bar and a newsstand. The newsstand was the closest. Its racks of magazines and books were hidden from view, but the newspapers were right there, right out front, demanding his attention. He glanced from the ladies’ room door to the newsstand that was at most ten yards away.

  As he paced, he thought less and less about Helen, and more and more about the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star Telegram. Which would he buy? Or would he buy both?

  He started to walk to the newsstand. Someone emerged from the bathroom. He heard the door open and turned back. The circles under Helen’s eyes were clearly visible despite the newly brushed on mascara and eye shadow. He knew she had been crying, just like he knew whenever Cynthia had been crying. You couldn’t hide what was behind the eyes, you could never hide what was behind the eyes—the hurt always showed through.

  Wordlessly, they walked to the snack bar. He bought a Morning News and a Star Telegram as he passed the newsstand.

  While she ate lunch, he consumed news stories, page after page, until all that was left to read was the funnies. But he didn’t feel like reading the funnies. The lead story in the front page of both papers was the same:

  FINANCIAL CRISIS GROWS,

  HYSTERIA DEEPENS

  The accompanying articles showed that people were paying attention now. There was talk of a deepening panic, that people were losing faith in the financial and banking systems, the possibility of runs on banks the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the Great Depression, but he knew it was a little late to start caring now; they should have cared before, not now. Now it was too late. Whoever was behind this already controlled the pulse of the markets. They could send the markets up or down on a whim, but there was nothing whimsical about what was happening. It was planned, carefully orchestrated. The rich and powerful were getting the message and it was a simple, clear message: We can topple governments, make and unmake billionaires. You can lose big.

  He was back to the old questions. How do you attack democracy and win? How do you take control and keep it? How do you overcome immeasurable odds and survive? He knew with even deeper conviction that it wasn’t by stockpiling nuclear weapons, dropping bombs or terror. It was through the fuel that drives our world, which contrary to general opinion wasn’t oil, it was money. But it wasn’t just about the money; it was about control: Control the flow of financial information, stop global commerce and exchange, achieve what others couldn’t.

  Answers were somewhere in his previous assignments. Glen had subtly indicated that this went back to his days with Harry Johnson and that he had recruited Scott into this from the beginning—whatever this was. Scott knew it was significant that he was the only one to come back from Munich, and even more significant that the Agency had singled him out as a traitor afterward. But if there was one thing he was, he was a survivor.

  Glen should have known this, but would Glen have bet everything on his return against the odds, or was it only happenstance?

  He started thinking about what would’ve happened if he�
�d died with the rest of his team in Munich. He thought about what Glen would have done without him, then he thought about what Glen had said, “You’re making a mistake, Scott. I’m it, I’m all you got.” But he’d known that was bullshit the moment Glen had said it. The truth was, he was all Glen had and Glen knew it.

  He was just starting to connect the dots in his mind’s eye when Helen poked him. “They’re boarding.”

  He glanced at his watch, at the departure monitor just off the snack bar. “You doing okay?” he asked, putting his hand on hers. He didn’t wait for a response. He got up from the table, said “Let’s go.”

  They started back to the departure gate. He was midway through a yawn when he noticed she wasn’t at his side. He stopped, looked back over his shoulder, didn’t see her, but did see the ladies’ room door closing. He shook his head and waited.

  “What’s wrong?” said a voice from behind him, “Did you lose your lady friend?”

  He spun around, saw probing eyes filled with purpose. “If you so much as—”“We are hardly barbarous, Mr. Evers. You cooperate and no harm will befall a beautiful woman. Do we understand each other?”

  Scott beaded his eyes. “I understand that you’re not man enough to take me down without an insurance policy, that’s what I understand.”

  Kim Dong Gi snickered. “Do you want to go for another ride?”

  “And if I said no?”

  “Afraid I would have to insist.”

  “And Helen?”

  “The rules are the same as last time. What happens after is up to you.” Scott started to speak. Mr. Kim clapped his hands together. Two men in charcoal gray suits hurried to his side. “Our pilot is a very anxious man. I suggest we hurry.”

  ***

  Wellmen cut Mr. Kim off with a wave of his hand. “There are those who will never understand, there are those who will. Which are you, Mr. Evers?”