by David Ellis
“I have to believe you?”
“I’m going to be charged with Sam’s murder,” she says.
“You’re going to be charged.” Jessica’s face contorts; she angles her head to get a different look at her mother, as if it could change reality.
“Yes,” Allison says simply. “It was my earring, Jess. Not yours. You’ve never borrowed my earrings. Never. Do you understand?”
She does, eventually, taking in her mother’s statement with a mounting horror.
“No one is ever going to know you were there that night,” Allison says.
Jessica looks around the room, claustrophobic, though she knows she can’t leave. This conversation cannot take place in the open.
“Sit,” Allison says.
Jessica moves to her bed, unmade, with three pillows scattered. She was always that way, her beautiful daughter. Always loved to bury herself in the pillows.
“Now listen to me.” Allison clears her throat. “The police will have reason to believe that I was at his house that night.”
Jessica looks up at her mother.
Allison raises a hand. “They will probably think I killed him. That’s a pretty safe bet. And it’s okay with me that they think that. It’s okay because nothing’s going to happen to me.”
“No,” Jessica whispers, her voice failing, tears coming fast.
“Jessica, I don’t have time for this,” Allison says. She needs to stay above her emotions so that Jessica will follow her lead. “And I’m not going to tell you why. But I’m covered. I am not going to be convicted. That’s a one-hundred-percent guarantee. Now look at me.”
It is a moment before Jessica manages to comply, her body quivering, her eyes unrecognizable.
“I’m not going to tell you anything more than that,” Allison continues. “It will be tough for you but you’re going to have to deal with it. You’ll understand, one day. For now, you have to listen to me. Okay?”
She can hardly expect a warm response from her daughter, and she does not receive one. Jessica, it seems, can’t decide whether she resents or appreciates her mother’s strength.
“Fine,” she says.
“Okay, good. The police will be investigating me, and they’ll come to you, no doubt. They will interview you. You need to be ready with some answers. So we have to make sure that you and I are clear on this.”
“You want me to tell them things that will make you look guilty.”
“Let’s get started, Jessica,” she says. “Do what I ask and this will turn out okay for everyone.”
Ram Haroon sits in the passenger seat of the car, staring into a wall in the underground parking garage downtown. It’s cold inside the car, in a parking area that is not well insulated. They couldn’t very well leave the vehicle running for the last half-hour, while Ram Haroon received his instructions.
“Let me be sure I understand this correctly,” he says. “This woman, Allison Pagone, must be dead, but it must appear that she took her own life. That she committed suicide out of guilt, remorse over her crime, and that she preferred death by her own hand to execution.”
“Yes,” the driver says.
“And you feel quite strongly that I should be the one who makes this happen.”
“Yes,” the driver says. “It must be you. Larry Evans, obviously, can’t be used.”
“Larry Evans is an idiot,” Haroon says.
“But effective. He has the scientist in his pocket.”
They sit in silence, the windows fogging while the temperatures plummet. Ram Haroon rubs his hands together.
“You miss Pakistan?” the driver asks.
Haroon looks at him. “Don’t you? Why you’d want to return to this city is beyond me.”
Special Agent-in-Charge Irving Shiels purses his lips. “Na’am,” he says. “Ohebbo taghayor al mawassem.”
“Yes?” Haroon laughs. “You like snow and ice and freezing temperatures?”
“Damn right I do. This is home for me.” Shiels looks Ram over. It’s been years for the two of them. Shiels, if memory serves, was never much for sentimentality, doesn’t seem comfortable with it. “Tabdo bi sohha jayyida,” Shiels adds.
Haroon takes the compliment in stride. “I eat well and exercise when I can,” he says, a line he’s heard in the States.
Shiels smiles at that. “Lakad mada waket tawil,” he says.
“Ten years, at least,” Haroon calculates. “Too long. Ladayka awlad?”
Shiels nods. “An eight-year-old boy, and my daughter’s six.”
Haroon smiles. It’s hard to imagine Irving Shiels with a wife and children, but he is a long way from Pakistan, and maybe Haroon never knew the real man.
“This has to look like a suicide, Zulfi,” says Shiels. “Everyone has to think Allison Pagone killed herself.”
“Everyone will think she killed herself,” Haroon says.
“When this is ending, you’ll be stopped at the airport.” Shiels looks at him. “There’s nothing we can do about that. We’ve had to keep you on the ‘watch’ list to keep your cover.”
“Understood.”
“It will be one of my agents. Just be ready with the answers to the questions. She’ll do a song and dance for the benefit of Customs, but she’s been instructed to let you go.”
“I am sure it will be a memorable experience,” Haroon says.
Irv Shiels laughs, a forced effort, a brief smile that returns to stoicism almost immediately. Shiels was never particularly animated.
“Tawakka al hazar, sayyedee,” Haroon says. Stay safe.
“You do the same.” Shiels presses his hand in Haroon’s.
“Al selem, lakan abadan lil istislam.”
Haroon leaves the vehicle and heads for the exit. Peace, Shiels said to him, but never surrender.
ONE DAY EARLIER
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9
Strange as it may seem, it’s plausible.” Paul Riley speaks in a hushed voice to Allison, though they are in a conference room with the door closed. “The likelihood of an acquittal is remote. So sooner or later, you’d fall into government hands. At that point, they would expect you to play whatever hand you could. Believe it or not, you’re safer this way, Allison.”
Allison starts, something like a nervous laugh.
“The timing is a bit concerning, I suppose,” Paul adds.
“Very.” Allison leaves her chair and paces around the long table. The contrast between this FBI office and the ones at Paul Riley’s law firm is staggering. “I want to do it now. They’re saying, ballpark, mid-May.”
“They must have some reason.” Paul sighs. “Not that they’ll tell us.”
Paul looks awful, out of sorts. He must be utterly exhausted. Since last night, when Allison reached him, and through a long day today—it’s close to eight in the evening—Paul has probably only slept a handful of hours. About twenty-four hours ago, he was probably dozing in front of a television on a lazy Sunday, waiting for a busy week of court appearances and meetings with clients. Instead, he has spent nearly twenty hours straight digesting a very complicated situation and attempting to frame a solution.
“Let’s go back in,” Allison says.
Jane McCoy sits in one of the chairs in Special Agent-in-Charge Irving Shiels’s office. Harrick paces about the room. Shiels is on his cell phone. United States Attorney Mason Tremont is reading the news coverage of Sam Dillon’s murder.
“What a mess,” Tremont says. This is the first time McCoy has met Tremont. He’s been U.S. attorney since the new governor came in, about four years ago. He is the first African American to hold the position. Word is, he was a big fund-raiser for the governor, but the word also is that he has done the office proud. He’s not a bad-looking guy, distinguished and fit in his mid-fifties, if a little too sober.
“She has to take this deal,” Harrick says, lapping the room. He’s wearing a sportcoat and tie today, a step up for him.
A knock on the door, and Allison Pagone enters with h
er lawyer, Paul Riley. Riley used to be an AUSA, part of the federal family, but he made his name prosecuting that mass murderer, Terry Burgos, back when Jane McCoy was in grad school.
Mason Tremont puts down his paper. Irv Shiels kills his cell phone.
“We have a deal in principle,” Riley announces. “We have to see it all in writing, formally, of course.”
“We’ll have it done very soon,” says Mason Tremont. “Immunity letter for Mateo Pagone, affidavits, the works.”
“Not just immunity,” Allison says. “He doesn’t even have to talk to you.”
“I understand,” says Tremont. “It’s a clean deal, Mrs. Pagone. He walks and doesn’t talk.”
“Good.” Allison claps her hands together. “So who’s going to kill me?”
McCoy laughs at the bluntness of her comment. She removes a photo from a file and shows it to Allison. It is a photograph of Ramadaran Ali Haroon.
Allison recoils—not, McCoy assumes, because he’s unsightly, because in truth Haroon is pretty handsome, but because he’s from the Middle East. You can talk about political correctness all you want, but Allison and her lawyer are already probably thinking along these lines, and now they’re surely suspecting that this operation involves international terrorism.
“The man in this photograph,” McCoy says, “is working with us.”
That will be the extent to which McCoy elaborates. This is all Allison Pagone needs to know. Ramadaran Ali Haroon is an undercover operative for the CIA, a non-official cover agent, but this is not something she would ever share with Allison. No, Allison Pagone cannot know Haroon’s name or his specific occupation, or even his employer. All she needs to know is that this unidentified man in the photograph is a friend, a friend who will be dispatched by Larry Evans to kill her at some point down the road.
“This guy is some kind of undercover agent?” Allison asks, nodding at the photograph.
“He’s working with Larry Evans, among others,” McCoy answers, though it is not really an answer to the question posed. “He’s calling the shots, Mrs. Pagone. He will insist that you be eliminated, and he will insist that he be the one who does it.”
“He’s supposed to kill me but make it look like a suicide.”
“Yes,” McCoy says. “The last thing they want anyone to think is that you were murdered. They want it to look like you were distraught, guilt-stricken, that kind of thing.”
Allison looks skeptical. McCoy had thought this idea had already been accepted.
“You were in theater, right?” Harrick says to Allison, sensing her hesitation as well. “So this is playacting. This man in the photograph will come in and pretend to kill you and make it look like a suicide.”
“I just—it seems so hard to believe that anyone would believe that.”
“Who’s ‘anyone’?” McCoy shrugs. “All that Larry Evans will know is what he hears through his eavesdropping device. It’s audio, not video. He’ll hear a man he trusts”—McCoy shakes the photograph of Ram Haroon—“he’ll hear this man enter your house, he’ll hear you scream or whatever, he’ll hear a struggle, he’ll hear this man forcing you up to your bathroom, he’ll hear a gun go off—a gun with blanks, of course, but he won’t know that—and then he’ll hear his trusted partner leave your house, and you just have to keep quiet for a few hours. Larry Evans will have no reason to think you aren’t dead.”
“I guess,” Allison says.
“And then Agent Harrick and I, we’ll come storming into your place early that next morning, and we’ll find you ‘dead,’ and Larry Evans will still be listening. He’ll hear me say, ‘Allison’s dead,’ and he’ll hear my partner say, ‘Oh, yeah, she’s dead, all right.’ And we will come to the conclusion that you committed suicide. I will say, loud and clear for Larry Evans to hear, that this is all my fault, because I had been squeezing you for information on the bribery scandal, and because I threatened Mat. Poor me. Poor you.”
Allison smiles sheepishly.
“Then we’ll whisk you out of there, on a covered gurney, hopefully before any press or local officials get to the scene. Within the hour, you’ll be sipping champagne in protective federal custody. Larry Evans will think he’s home free—that you’re dead with no questions asked—and he will complete his operation. And you will be totally safe.”
“Mrs. Pagone,” Harrick adds. “Larry Evans trusts the man in that photograph. He’ll believe he is hearing a murder, staged to look like a suicide. And when we come in the next morning, we’ll confirm it for him. There’s no way he’ll know the truth.”
“It’s not the first time we’ve staged a death,” McCoy adds. “The fact that Larry Evans will be listening in only makes it easier. We can use his bugging device against him.”
Allison raises her hands. “Fine. That’s fine.”
“So you’re clear on how this works,” McCoy asks.
Allison nods. “It’s a five-step plan.”
“Right. Step one?”
“Step one,” Allison echoes. “You’ll tell my lawyer, Paul, when it’s time to begin. Paul will get in touch with me and he’ll reference the murder weapon. That will tell me it’s time to begin.”
“Right.” McCoy looks at Paul. “Just say something like, ‘They still haven’t found the murder weapon.’ Something not too obvious.”
Paul nods.
“Then we get to step two,” Allison continues. “I will tell Mat, in my house, for Larry Evans to hear, precisely where I buried the murder weapon. Larry Evans will like that, because it adds something to the idea of my suicide. He will send that—that man in the photograph—to get the statuette, with the idea that he’ll put it beside me after I ‘kill myself.’ It is tantamount to a suicide note, a confession.”
“Exactly,” McCoy says. “But what you’re really doing is giving me the signal.”
“Right,” Allison agrees. “That’s step three. You will be watching the grocery store where I buried it. When you see that man in the photo retrieve the statuette from behind Countryside, you’ll know it’s time to work our plan.”
“Good,” McCoy says. “And step four?”
“Step four,” Allison sighs, “you will come to my house and introduce yourself to me as if we had never met. We will have a conversation for Larry Evans to hear. You will say you are investigating the bribery scandal. You will say that you are going to take a deal to Mat, that if he confesses, you’ll get the county attorney to spare me the death penalty.”
“Yes.”
“I will be distraught. Suicidal, I suppose. I will say things like, ‘My daughter is already losing one parent.’ And the obvious route for me to take—as someone who is looking at a surefire conviction and probably a death sentence—is just to take my own life, on my own terms.”
“Which is perfect, from the perspective of Larry Evans,” Harrick adds.
“And then,” Allison continues, “step five, I can expect a visit from that man in the photograph.”
McCoy brightens. “We’ll stage your death/suicide and get you somewhere safe.”
Paul Riley clears his throat. “There’s one wrinkle, folks.”
“A wrinkle,” Irv Shiels repeats.
“There’s a wrinkle?” McCoy asks.
“Yes,” Paul says. “We want this to happen very soon. We would like it to happen now—tomorrow, the next day—or at the latest, after she is charged. Your target date of mid-May is not acceptable.”
“It’s the only way,” McCoy says quickly. “We’ve told you that.”
It’s the only way because the scientist whom Larry Evans has compromised, Doctor Neil Lomas, apparently was extremely distraught about Sam Dillon’s death and has told Evans that he will cease working on the formula if anyone else is killed. Paul Riley is right, in theory. They should stage Allison Pagone’s “murder” very soon, a matter of days, and whisk her to safety. But reports of Allison’s death would be big news in town, news that would not escape the attention of Doctor Neil Lomas, and the Burea
u needs Doctor Lomas to complete his formula. Their intelligence tells them that Ram Haroon will likely deliver this formula to one of the high-ranking members of the Liberation Front, and they need that to happen. They need Doctor Lomas happy and productive.
Which means Allison Pagone can’t “die” until the formula is completed, which is estimated at this point to be mid-May.
“We can’t give on that,” Irving Shiels says, standing in the corner in that military stance he so often assumes. “If we do this with Mrs. Pagone now, there’s no point in doing it at all. It has to be when we say, and it looks like mid-May.”
Allison Pagone looks at Paul Riley. McCoy expects them to leave the office and confer, but surely they’ve already discussed this. McCoy has never left any room for doubt on this point.
“Okay,” Allison says to Irv Shiels. “I’ll do mid-May, or whenever. Whenever you say. Whenever Paul comes to me with the talk about the ‘murder weapon.’ ”
McCoy sits back in her chair, looks at her boss, Shiels, who stands with arms folded, scowling. Scowling, but content. They have their deal.
“Your ex-husband, Mat, obviously will know about this,” Harrick says. “He will know about his immunity deal, and he will be the one who plays the partner in these staged conversations you will be having in your house for Larry Evans. You need someone to say these things to, and Mat makes sense. Your daughter, Jessica, remains in the dark.”
“Yes.” Allison shakes her head too eagerly. “She will not know the details.”
A pause. Everyone looks at one another.
“We have a tentative agreement, then,” Paul Riley says. “This is—I’ve only had today to digest an awful lot of information.”
“Understood,” Irv Shiels says. “But we don’t have much time. We would assume that Mrs. Pagone will be questioned very, very soon. And things will start moving against her very quickly.”