by Brad Thor
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Harvath replied. “Listen, as much as I enjoy discussing my shortcomings with people I’ve just met, why don’t we bifurcate our work? You take the state and local databases, and if you give me a computer, I’ll work on the international. That way, we’ll be twice as fast and hopefully get you to your little boy by five o’clock. Make sense?”
Cordero smiled. Whatever his problem was, a healthy sense of humor and what appeared to be a decent sense of compassion weren’t part of it.
Once again, she found herself attracted to him. More unsettling, though, was her growing feeling that whatever was wrong with him relationship-wise, she could fix it. But then there was her rational side. Through years of counseling brokenhearted girlfriends over countless glasses of wine, she knew what a dangerous proposition that was. You couldn’t fix something that was intent upon staying broken.
After showing Harvath to an available computer, she pushed her romantic notions from her mind and returned to her desk so she could begin scouring the databases.
In any other circumstance, Harvath would have smiled and watched a woman like Lara Cordero as she walked away. Not now, though. Now all he was focused on was catching a killer, and catching him before he could kill again.
CHAPTER 37
Harvath went through the motions of searching all the databases he had access to, but he knew he wasn’t going to find anything. Even if their killer had a prior record, it would have been scrubbed clean. An operation this sophisticated, regardless of who was behind it, would not roll the dice on everything falling apart because their lead hitter had his prints on file in a law enforcement database somewhere.
That didn’t mean, though, that his prints didn’t exist somewhere. If the man was indeed part of some black-ops program, the Agency was going to have a full dossier on him. Accessing that dossier, though, was going to be very difficult, particularly if the powers-that-be at Langley were trying to keep the program secret. Based on what he had heard about Swim Club, if the guy they were looking for was a part of it, Harvath would have a better chance locating Jimmy Hoffa than the man’s personal information. He decided to turn it over to the Old Man. Monroe Lewis wanted regular updates and he owed Reed Carlton a situation report anyway.
Typing up a brief synopsis, Harvath transmitted it to Carlton via a secure server they used. Attached to the email were photos from the crime scenes as well as scans of the prints the Boston PD crime lab had isolated from Brittany Doyle’s wrist cuff. He asked him to please forward the materials along to Bill Wise. With the two of them working on the prints, there was nothing else he could do in that arena and he logged off the computer.
Pushing his chair out from the desk, he stood and walked back to Cordero. “Any luck?” he asked.
“Nothing. You?”
Harvath shook his head.
“You knew we weren’t going to find anything, didn’t you?”
“I had a pretty good feeling,” he replied. “Whoever this guy is, he’s a pro.”
“A professional psychopath,” Cordero replied. Looking at her watch, she said, “I’ve got to pick up my son. Are you staying in Boston tonight?”
Harvath hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I’m not sure. It depends.”
“On whether or not the killer is still here?”
He nodded.
“Five victims from five different cities,” she said. “For all we know, the killer has already left Boston and is on his way to the next.”
“That’s the problem. He could be anywhere. I’ve got no idea.”
“Any reason at all to think he may still be here?” she asked.
Harvath thought back to what Wise had said. “There may be a slim chance. A very slim chance.”
“Based on what?”
“I spoke with an expert back in D.C. Call him a profiler. He thinks one of the reasons the killer weighted Kelly Davis down and sunk her in the river, rather than leave her body wherever he killed her, was that he needed to buy himself more time.”
“You don’t seem convinced,” said Cordero.
“My question is what would he be buying more time for? To get out of town and get to one of those other cities? Or is it something else?”
“What does your profiler think?”
“He thinks maybe the killer still has unfinished business here.”
“You’re the guy who paid attention in history class,” she stated. “If this guy was going to stage another murder in Boston, where would he do it?”
Harvath had already thought about that and had been doing a little research online. It could be any number of locations. But there was no reason, apart from Wise’s speculation, to believe that the killer hadn’t already left.
Cordero glanced at her watch once more.
“Go pick up your son,” said Harvath.
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll probably hang around here a little bit longer to see if anything breaks. Maybe the FBI will get lucky. If not, I’ll head back to D.C.”
“And what if the killer is still here?” she asked.
“Then I guess you and I’ll see each other again.”
Cordero and Harvath shook hands, holding on a fraction of a second longer than they should have.
“Stay safe, Annie Oakley,” he said as she let go of his hand and brushed past him to pick up her umbrella and a small plastic bag with a box in it.
“You, too,” the detective replied.
As she reached the door, the answer to the question she had asked him popped into his mind and he said, “Fort Hill.”
Cordero stopped and turned around. “What?”
“You asked me where I thought the killer would stage another Boston murder if he was still here and the answer is Fort Hill.”
“The water tower in Roxbury?” she replied as her partner entered the office and walked past her.
“Water tank,” the male detective corrected her, drawing out the words in his heavy Boston accent as he sat down at his desk.
“Excuse me, water tank.”
“No,” said Harvath. “We’re talking about two different things. It’s a fort.”
“It was a fort,” Cordero’s partner said. “When the town of Roxbury was annexed by Boston in the 1800s, they put a water tank on Fort Hill made to look like some fairy princess tower and renamed the area Highland Park.”
Cordero looked at her partner. “Where the hell did that come from?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Other than arcane Red Sox trivia, I’ve never heard you mention one historical thing about Boston.”
“I guess you just don’t know me.”
She stared at him, half in disbelief and half with the conviction that he was not telling her the full truth.
The male detective looked at Harvath and said, “Do you want to tell her why Fort Hill is significant, or should I?”
Though Harvath didn’t know the man from Adam, he was equally stunned by his sudden fluency in Boston history and chose to let him keep the floor.
“By all means,” Harvath said. “Please.”
The male detective looked at his partner and said, “After Penning’s murder this morning, I decided to do a little research.”
Cordero was going to be late picking up her son, but this was more than worth a dollar a minute. “Do tell, Sal.”
“I’m a smart guy, with an even smarter smartphone,” he said with a smirk. “So I researched what happened after they hung Andrew Oliver’s effigy from the Liberty Tree.”
“And?”
“The mob ginned itself up and ended up tearing down the dockside warehouse Oliver owned. Probably because that’s where he was storing all the stamps from King George.”
“What does that have to do with Fort Hill?”
“Oliver lived at the foot of Fort Hill. The mob set the effigy up in front of his house, chopped its head off, and set it on fire.
“When local law enforcement
showed up and tried to calm things down, they got showered with rocks. The crowd then looted Oliver’s house and set it on fire. The next day, Oliver resigned his commission from King George, but the colonists weren’t done with him. They made him march down and publicly renounce his office beneath the Liberty Tree.”
Cordero’s partner shifted his gaze to Harvath and said, “Correct?”
Harvath hated to hand it to the guy, but he had done his homework. “That’s right,” he replied.
“So, let’s pass that along to the FBI and beef up patrols around Highland Park and the water tank just in case. We’ll see what happens.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Cordero, who then looked at Harvath and asked, “How about dinner?”
“What about your son?”
“My parents live in the apartment above mine. They’re older. They don’t drive anymore. But they can babysit after I get Marco put to bed. If the killer is still here, you want a crack at him, right?”
“Of course,” Harvath replied.
“Good,” she said, as she turned to walk out the door. “So do I. I’ll text you in an hour and we’ll pick a place to meet. In the meantime, have Sal help you find a hotel. If you’re lucky, he’ll put in the good word with his sister. She’s one of the assistant managers at the Four Seasons.”
As he watched her leave, Harvath looked at the male detective and realized that he probably had a better chance of having the killer walk right into the police station than he did of having Cordero’s partner put in the good word for him anywhere, much less with his sister at the Four Seasons hotel.
CHAPTER 38
FORT BELVOIR
VIRGINIA
After purchasing groceries and a few extra items of clothing, McGee and Ryan returned to Brenda Durkin’s. With coffee brewed, they made sandwiches and turned the Colonel’s dining room into their makeshift operations center.
The name of each member of Ryan’s former destabilization team was written on a three-by-five card and taped to the wall. Under those, cards were added based on what Ryan could remember about her teammates including physical descriptions, training and experience levels, where they lived, what their marital status was, if they had children, and what their weaknesses and potential pressure points were, among other things. They were attempting to create the best 30,000-foot picture possible and from there they would zoom in on their target.
Stevenson, the community bank manager, had been very helpful. The reams of banking information he provided included credit histories, ATM transactions, and credit card statements. Two team members had even set up their mortgages through Stevenson’s bank. The guy Ryan ultimately wanted, though, had been much more careful. His personal financial presence in the data was almost nonexistent. There was only the corporate stuff. He had been smarter than the rest of the team members and had established follow-on bank accounts for his money to wash through. Even if somebody pierced the community bank, they’d have a lot more work to do to track down where he lived.
That was fine by her. They’d catch up with Tom Cushing, the team’s leader, eventually. They weren’t looking for the head of the pack now anyway. They were looking to pick off someone a little bit further back.
As far as Ryan was concerned, they had taken a significant leap forward. The team had not been disbanded; it had just been pushed further into the shadows. The question that she didn’t want to wrestle with, but which was still there, was why had she been cut loose? Why did they not bring her along with them? She had thought she had been a pretty good fit, even when she was acting as her teammates’ conscience.
Was that it? Was that why she had been let go? Had her morality been that inflexible? Granted, she’d been fairly rigid when she joined the team, but once she’d been tossed in the deep end and saw not only how much was at stake but how ruthless the enemies of the country were, she had begun to quickly play ball.
Maybe her being added to the team had only ever been window dressing. Maybe someone on the seventh floor had leaned on Phil Durkin and he had assigned her to the team in order to appear like he was at least trying to make things right. Who the hell knew what was real and what was fiction when it came to anything anymore at the CIA?
Ryan forced the question from her mind. It was a rabbit hole that went absolutely nowhere. There were bigger things she needed to focus on at the moment.
The Eclipse team still existed and they were still being funded via the Central Intelligence Agency. That was a big part of the puzzle that had now fallen into place. The next question she needed answered was what they were up to. Were they destabilizing Islamic countries so that their current governments could be overthrown and replaced? If so, was Jordan on their list? And if it was, how far along were they and who else beside the Muslim Brotherhood figures that had been photographed meeting with them in Cyprus were they involved with? Nafi would want all the details. Of that, she was sure.
She was also sure of what their next move should be, but McGee didn’t agree. He liked the idea of isolating one of the team members; he just didn’t like the person she had picked. McGee had his own feelings when it came to whom they could double back against Phil Durkin and the team.
“There is no way you’ll get Tara to crack,” Ryan had told him.
“The hell I won’t,” the man replied. “Everyone cracks. Drag their kids in and they crack so fast your head’ll spin.”
“We’re not bringing anyone’s children into this.”
“That’s a mistake.”
“Jesus, Bob. We’re talking about little kids.”
“What kind of monster do you think I am?” McGee retorted. “Nothing’s going to happen to them. We’re just going to use them for leverage.”
Ryan fixed him with a withering look. “No, we’re not.”
“So then what? We go with your guy? Florence of Arabia?”
“Cut it out. Florentino makes more sense than Tara at this point. He’s the weakest one on the team, he’s the person I had the strongest rapport with, and based on his credit card history, we know what bar he spends every Tuesday night in when he’s in town.”
“The only reason you two had such strong rapport is because he didn’t try to put the make on you.”
“He actually had reservations about many of the things Cushing was pushing the team to do.”
The older operative stood looking at the names on the wall and took a sip of coffee. “Just because your Arabist had his moral compass set a little truer north than the rest of them,” he said, lowering the mug, “doesn’t mean he’s going to cooperate with us.”
“We’ll see what happens.”
“I’m telling you, it’s a mistake. We should go after the Tara woman. We use her kids, she talks, and bang. We’re golden.”
“No kids. No bang.”
“I didn’t mean bang as in—”
“I know what you meant, but we’re done discussing leveraging anybody’s children. I’m not doing that. Understood?”
McGee was silent and Ryan shot him another look. “Understood?”
“Fine,” he finally replied. “We’ll do it your way. No kids.”
“And you’ll let me handle Florentino? You promise to stay out of my way?”
“What are we, suddenly in a negotiation?”
“No,” she said. “This isn’t a negotiation, it’s an operation, and I want to make sure that there is no confusion as to chain of command. This was my team, I know these people, this is my op. Easy enough?”
“Fine,” McGee relented again. “But let’s just be clear on one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“The minute any guns come out, this becomes my op and we do things my way.”
CHAPTER 39
WASHINGTON
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Florentino Marche had been born in Brooklyn, New York, and was the only child of an Italian father and a Puerto Rican mother. He had attended Columbia University, where he showed considerable aptitude for la
nguages, particularly Arabic. From there he had gone on to Georgetown and a master’s degree from the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. The Central Intelligence Agency made their approach shortly thereafter.
He was a tall, thin man with dark features and curly hair. With his black-framed eyeglasses and retro fashion sense, he came off as more geek than chic.
There were at least a hundred other hipster men in the crowded bar dressed just like him. Waitresses shuttled to and fro with pitchers of beer and trays laden with rings and wings. Televisions mounted on every wall broadcast a myriad of current as well as classic sporting events. It was difficult for Ryan to move through the crowd unimpeded. Table after table of young men invited her to join them, some less sober and more insistent than others. Finally, she spotted Florentino.
He was sitting with a group of friends in a booth. Instead of talking to each other, they were all looking down at their phones, texting. Occasionally, some team on one of the TVs would score, the crowd would cheer, and Florentino’s booth full of hipsters would look up and react. She needed to get his attention.
Tipping a waitress to slide him a cocktail napkin with a cryptic message had occurred to her but Florentino was too smart and too paranoid to bite on something like that. Guys like him didn’t get sent notes on cocktail napkins.
She was trying to come up with another option when she saw him tuck his phone in his pocket, say something to his friends, and get up from the table. As he walked toward the restrooms, she fell in step behind him and followed.
Her question now was whether she was going to present herself before or after he used the men’s room. Probably better to wait till after.
Slowing her pace, she picked a spot where she could wait and watch for him to come back out. He didn’t go into the men’s room, though. He kept walking toward the back of the building.
He hip-checked the crash bar on a fire exit and stepped outside. Smoke break?
She needed him isolated anyway. Behind the building was just as good as anyplace else. Besides, it was too noisy inside. She could barely hear herself think.