by Brad Thor
“Yes,” she replied.
Harvath removed a wedge of cash from the pocket of his trousers and peeled off two hundred-dollar bills. Brittany’s eyes widened at the sight of the money. Pointing at the tarnished metal cuff on her right wrist, he said, “Detective Cordero could seize that as evidence, but I’d like to rent it from you. I only have one condition.”
The young woman looked at the cuff and then back up at Harvath. “What is it?”
He peeled off two more hundreds and held all four bills out for her. “You and Agnes stay off the street until Detective Cordero and I catch this guy. Deal?”
The wheels were turning in the young woman’s head. She was undoubtedly doing some sort of calculation and it wasn’t about how many holy candles she and her pal could purchase with that kind of money. Finally, she replied, “Deal.”
After tucking the money away, Brittany removed the cuff and placed it into the handkerchief Harvath had retrieved from his jacket.
He then let her rejoin her friend, while Cordero phoned her department to make sure they had the young woman’s complete arrest record in the system.
Satisfied, Cordero asked the ladies for a few more details, including contact information, and then gave each of them her business card along with her cell phone number on the back. With that, the patrol officers were asked to drive the women back to South Boston.
“You’re definitely not a cop,” the detective said to Harvath, as they watched the cruiser pull away from the curb and head toward Southie.
“Why’s that?”
“Because outside of a drug buy, no one hands over that kind of cash for something the law empowers them to take.”
Harvath shrugged. “Just because something is legal, doesn’t always mean it’s the right thing to do. Trying to keep those kids off the street for a couple of days was the right thing to do.”
Cordero shook her head. “They’re junkies. They’re going to burn through your four hundred dollars in the blink of an eye. But hey, if it buys you a good night’s sleep.”
Having seen what he had of this killer, Harvath doubted he was going to be able to sleep well anytime soon. Even if the money kept Brittany and Agnes off the street for only one night, it would be worth it.
Though he didn’t yet have physical proof that the woman pulled from the Charles River had been killed by the same person as Claire Marcourt and Herman Penning, his gut told him that he was right on the money. It also told him something else. The killer was losing control.
CHAPTER 32
FORT BELVOIR
VIRGINIA
Bob McGee had spent the better part of his career engaging in risky operations, but the minute Lydia Ryan explained her plan, he told her it was off-the-charts stupid. It was one thing to screw up and have Phil Durkin triangulate on them that way; it was something entirely different to openly invite him to come kill them, and that’s what he had felt Ryan was doing.
Just as the porch light came on, and just in case she hadn’t internalized it the last one hundred times he had said it, he stated, “This is going to go down as the mother of all bad ideas.”
“You’re overestimating your prowess in this category,” she replied as someone inside unlocked the door.
“Like hell I am” was the last remark McGee made before the door opened. He had decided to stand behind Ryan not so much because he didn’t want to appear imposing, but because if the person on the other side was armed and the rounds began flying, Ryan would suffer the fate she so rightly deserved for this idea and function as his bullet sponge while he took off running. He turned out to be wrong, but not about the being armed part.
Colonel Brenda Durkin had opened the door with her Beretta M9 pistol just out of view. One of the last people she ever expected to see on her doorstep, much less in the middle of the night in a bathrobe, was Lydia Ryan. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”
“We’re in trouble. Can we come in?”
The woman looked at the man standing behind Ryan as if deciding what to do, and then stood back and opened the door the rest of the way. “Of course you can.”
They sat in the kitchen, where the closest thing to coffee Durkin had to offer her guests was Diet Coke. Both Ryan and McGee accepted. Grabbing three bottles out of the fridge, she brought them over to the table and sat down.
“When I told you if there was anything I could ever do for you,” said Durkin, “I didn’t actually think you’d show up at the house. I figured maybe you’d call or send an email.”
“I know,” Ryan replied, opening her Coke. “I would never have come like this if it wasn’t serious.”
“Wait a second,” McGee interrupted. “You two actually know each other?”
Durkin looked at Ryan before responding. “I needed to make sense of my marriage, or what was left of it at the time. The only way I could do that was to meet Lydia and have her tell me, face-to-face, that nothing had happened between her and Phil. She was kind enough to do so.”
“But you still left him.”
“Our marriage had been over for a long time. Would it have been easier to end it if Phil had been having an affair? Probably. That’s why I had wanted to meet Lydia. As soon as I saw her, I was convinced they’d been having an affair. I mean, look at her.”
“Yeah,” Ryan replied, extending a clump of her ruffled hair and tugging on the lapel of her dirty robe. “Look at me.”
Durkin smiled. “Then we sat down and started talking. I wanted to believe she was sleeping with Phil because then I could blame him for everything, walk away, and never have to acknowledge my role in the fact that our marriage collapsed.”
“I threw a wrench in that plan, though, didn’t I?”
“You did. In fact, you caused me to take a deep, hard look not only at my marriage, but myself. Getting divorced was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do, but it was the right thing. Phil Durkin is a colossal asshole. Had Dante known that son of a bitch he would have invented a whole other circle of hell for him.”
“So what you’re saying,” McGee replied with a grin, “is that you’ve moved on. It’s all behind you at this point.”
Brenda Durkin laughed. “I guess that’s the Scottish in me. We can hold a grudge like nobody’s business.”
“If it’s any consolation, I agree with you. Not about the grudge, but about your ex being a colossal asshole. I told Lydia she should have dumped him in a shallow grave. In fact, I even offered to dig it.”
“I came close to digging one for him many times myself, but in the end, he dug his own. That’s the way it should be.”
McGee and Ryan nodded. Brenda Durkin was right.
“So why don’t you tell me why you’re here,” the Colonel said, and with that, Ryan filled her in on their story.
They talked until just before dawn. It was agreed that if they were going to hole up in her house, Brenda Durkin needed to act as if nothing had changed. That meant not missing her morning group run and not calling in sick to her position at the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command. The one thing she decided to do differently was to park her car in the driveway so that McGee’s 4Runner could be kept out of sight in her garage.
Ryan tried to grab a couple of hours of sleep, but it came in fits and starts. When she finally gave up and came downstairs to the kitchen, she found McGee had had about as much luck as she had. He was sitting at the table with a Diet Coke, a café-au-lait mug full of Lucky Charms, and the television tuned to some Animal Planet program.
“Just once, I’d like to see the little guy at the back of the herd kick the lion’s teeth in,” he said as Ryan got a Diet Coke for herself and sat down next to him.
“Any word about what happened last night?”
McGee picked up the remote and clicked back over to one of the local news channels. “Not really. There was a brief mention of a car fire, but that was it. My guess is that local law enforcement kept the press from getting too close and didn’t give them much in the
way of details.”
“Which means they probably don’t have much themselves.”
“Or they’ve been told not to talk.”
She took a sip of her drink and set the bottle back on the table. “What about the men you shot at your place?”
“I don’t think that’s going to make the news.”
“Why not?”
“Because I live alone. If my neighbors had heard any shots, they would have already called the cops.”
“But somebody is going to be looking for those men.”
McGee took another bite of cereal and wiped the milk from his mustache. “Of course. You know the game. When they fail to report in, a team will be sent out to check on them. They’ll show up at my place dressed like exterminators, utility workers, or some sort of contractor. They’ll have a big van with a name and backstopped phone number emblazoned along the side of it, so the neighbors won’t get suspicious.
“They’ll walk the perimeter and peek in the windows. At some point, they’ll muster up the courage to break and enter. That’s when they’ll find the bodies and will have to decide what to do.”
“Meaning, sanitize your place like it never happened or try to use the scene against you.”
McGee nodded and through another mouthful of cereal said, “I hope they sanitize it. I haven’t had a cleaning lady through that place since Reagan was in office.”
Ryan studied the crawl along the bottom of the TV screen, trying to pick up any updated information. “So what do you think? No news, then, is good news?”
“I don’t know. Maybe this thing doesn’t reach as high as we feared.”
“Meaning up to the DNI, General Johnson?”
McGee nodded. “But the flip side could be that, thanks to the Jordanians and you asking questions about your old team, you’ve surprised them and now they’re scrambling to pull their act together.”
“In order to do what?”
“If they’re willing to try to kill you, then they’d be willing to do anything, including framing you.”
“Framing me for what?”
McGee shrugged. “Depending on how high up this thing goes, you could wind up as the shooter on the grassy knoll.”
“Except for the fact that I wasn’t even born.”
“They’d find away around it, believe me. They think of everything.”
“But what about you and me? What were they going to do, kill us and just dump our bodies out there in the woods?”
He sucked the milk off his spoon and set it down on the table. “I patted down all the hitters I splashed at my place. One of them had a key fob. After I tossed my go-bag and a couple of other items in my truck, I went outside to make sure there wasn’t another team waiting for me. As soon as I felt it was safe, I kept pressing the unlock button on the fob. I finally found their vehicle parked not far from my place.”
“Was there anything inside?”
“Anything that could ID them? No. Just some picnic crap.”
Lydia looked at him. “What do you mean, picnic crap?”
“A blanket and a basket with a couple of glasses and a bottle of wine.”
“So no ID, but tons of firepower and a picnic basket? Doesn’t that seem odd?”
“All of this seems odd to me. Why? What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that could be part of a cover story. Maybe they were going to make it look like you and I were having a picnic out in the middle of the woods and got shot.”
He thought about that for a moment. “Or better yet,” he replied, “how about a murder-suicide? You kill me and then turn the gun on yourself. Not only would Phil Durkin’s problems be solved, but he’d be able to play the I-told-you-Lydia-Ryan-was-crazy card all the way to the Agency bank.”
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t put it past that son of a bitch.”
“I’m just speculating, of course.”
“No,” Ryan replied. “You’re right on the money. That’s exactly what he would do.”
“I don’t think either of us can be sure. Maybe the stupid picnic basket was some part of their cover.”
Her eyes narrowed as a question came to her mind. “You said there was a blanket and two wineglasses. What else was there?”
“I don’t know. I was in a bit of a hurry to get out of there, but I guess there was some food and a couple of bottles of wine.”
“What about an opener?”
“Yeah,” McGee recalled. “It wasn’t the type with the arms, though. It was a fancy, pocketknife style. Expensive-looking, you know, with that brass bee on there from that French knife-making company.”
“Laguiole.”
“That’s it.”
“Did it have a wooden handle?” she asked.
He nodded. “It did. Why?”
“Because that was my corkscrew. That son of a bitch took it, or had someone take it out of my apartment. That way, even if the police did a half-assed investigation, they’d find the empty box I normally keep it in back in a drawer in my kitchen.”
“That would make it look a lot less like the picnic was staged.”
“And more like we had undertaken it willingly,” she said, finishing his statement for him. “What kind of wine was it?”
“Give me a break, Lydia. I don’t know the first thing about wine. That’s always been your thing. I’m a bourbon guy. You think I stood there and read the labels?”
“Keep it simple. Was it red? Was it white?”
“It was dark,” McGee responded. “All I saw was black bottles with black frickin’ labels.”
She didn’t need to ask him anything more about the wine. She knew what it was. “OneHope red,” she stated. “It’s the same wine I drink at home.”
“There you go. Killing, framing or both, they’re not above anything.”
“Which means we’re racing against two clocks — whatever plot the Jordanians have uncovered, as well as whatever Phil Durkin has planned for us.”
“All the more reason for us to figure out what he’s up to and put his balls in a nice little box with a big pink bow.”
“The question, though, is going to be who do we deliver the box to?”
“It all depends on what he’s doing and what we can make stick,” McGee replied as he picked up the remote and turned back to Animal Planet.
There was a new program on. It was showing home videos of people who got too close to animal enclosures at foreign zoos. Suddenly, Ryan got an idea.
“How much cash do you have?” she asked.
“I have five grand in my go-bag. Why?”
“Because we can’t use credit cards and you need a new suit.”
McGee looked at her. “I do?”
Ryan nodded. “We’re going to go rattle a very big cage, but before we do, I want to see who’s throwing the meat into it.”
CHAPTER 33
The only thing McGee disliked more than having to cut his hair was being forced to shave his mustache. Ryan, though, had insisted. And in order to set the example, she had cut her hair first.
They stood in Brenda Durkin’s master bath with their feet in plastic lawn and leaf bags to help catch as much of the hair as possible. Ryan did a halfway decent job cutting her hair into a short, spiky cut. McGee’s spin as a coiffeur was horrible and Ryan had to step in to rescue him and clean it up.
McGee did his mustache on his own and when he was finished, they both looked in the mirror together. The transformation was remarkable.
With the Colonel’s blessing, Ryan selected clothes and a pair of shoes from her closet. She was fortunate they were so similar in size. McGee had changed into some of the extra clothes he had fled his home with.
The operatives were well aware of the amount of domestic surveillance technology that could be arrayed against them and had already ditched their cell phones. That one move would go a long way toward blinding the monster that would be tracking them. The other move that would keep them hidden was abandoning their credit cards. F
rom this point forward, everything would be paid for in cash.
The last thing they agreed upon was very selective use of the Internet. Social media platforms were a godsend to the intelligence community. They recorded in stark detail almost everyone, everywhere, and everything you were connected to. Along with cell phone and credit card activity, social media and email accounts were one of the first places Phil Durkin would be looking for them.
Because people’s digital exhaust gave so many clues about them, they had to break with all of their old habits. They also needed to break with any friends, family, or colleagues they normally communicated with. That was another pond Durkin would be skimming as he tried to determine their whereabouts.
In essence, they were dropping completely off the grid. For her part, Ryan considered them blessed that the Colonel had made her home available to them. If not, they would have been forced to break into a vacant house or leapfrog from cheap hotel to cheap hotel, and both strategies were fraught with a myriad of problems.
The other thing Brenda Durkin had graciously made available to them was use of her 1990 Ford Mustang LX. Not only was it a nondescript vehicle, it also was built before the explosion in GPS technology. It was perfect for their new, under-the-radar personas.
Leaving Fort Belvoir, their first stop was an office supply store. While Ryan purchased what they needed inside, McGee walked around back. After making sure there were no security cameras or personnel present, he checked all three dumpsters until he found what he was looking for. By the time he returned to the Mustang, Ryan was already waiting for him.
Their next stop was a midrange men’s clothing store that specialized in business attire. Against McGee’s more flamboyant taste, Ryan picked out a cheap, off-the-rack gray suit, along with a plain white shirt, a boring tie, a belt, shoes, and a pair of dress socks.
“You got me everything but the pocket protector,” he said as she directed him toward a dressing room to put it all on.
When he stepped back out and the salesman complimented him on the fit, Ryan had him remove the jacket. Because of his physique, it was too tight. That was not going to do for her purposes. “This isn’t a casting call for a mob movie,” she stated as she sent the salesperson to find him a bigger size.