Hidden Order: A Thriller

by Brad Thor

  Neither man spoke. Both stood or lay where they were catching their breaths and trying to overcome the pain of their injuries. Wise could see that he had opened up a pretty good gash at the top of Samuel’s nose. It was going to require stitches. At least there was that.

  Out of habit, Wise started analyzing his own injuries and then almost laughed at the absurdity of it all. He wasn’t going to live to see another hour, much less anyone who could give him medical attention.

  Samuel, who must have sensed something in his expression, said, “What’s so funny?”

  Just then a man stepped from behind Samuel, pressed a Taser against his jugular, and said, “This.”

  CHAPTER 47

  BOSTON

  MASSACHUSETTS

  Harvath and the Old Man spoke for more than two hours. He had gone through everything that had happened since he had arrived in Boston and then the Old Man had asked him to repeat it, twice. He asked question after question and expected Harvath to drill down to even the minutest details.

  When they were done talking, Harvath not only needed aspirin, he also needed a drink, and he helped himself to a glass, some ice, and two bottles of bourbon from the minibar.

  Even that, though, wasn’t enough to help him unwind. He thought about turning on the TV, but he knew it would only keep him up for hours. He also knew that pouring another drink wasn’t the right path. He might get a couple of hours of sleep, but it wouldn’t be quality sleep. Instead, he fished out one of the books Bill Wise had given to him and which he had tossed in his overnight bag on the way out of his house yesterday.

  The reading did the trick and he soon found his eyes growing heavy. As soon as he couldn’t keep them open any longer, he tossed the book aside, turned out the light, and fell asleep.

  Much like the night before, he felt like he had just drifted off when his cell phone rang. He snatched his Kobold off the nightstand and looked at the time. It was just after 3 A.M.

  It was Cordero. “The killer struck again,” she said.

  “Wait. What?” Harvath replied, as he tried to shake off the cobwebs. “Where? Boston?”

  “North End. Close to where we ate dinner. I’m already in the car. Be downstairs in fifteen minutes.”

  Harvath was downstairs in ten and Cordero showed up a minute and a half later.

  “Tell me what happened,” he said as he got into the car and Cordero sped away from the hotel.

  “Apparently, another elaborate scene like the Liberty Tree Building.”

  “Who was it?”

  “We don’t have an ID on the victim yet,” said Cordero as she weaved through the sparse traffic, her lights blazing and Klaxon blaring. “They’re saying it could take a while.”

  “Why?”

  “A lot of his flesh is missing. It sounds like he was boiled to death.”

  “Boiled to death?” Harvath replied.

  “That’s what Sal said. He told me I’d see for myself once I got there.”

  “Who found him?”

  “Fire department, apparently. The killer used a timer of some sort to start a controlled fire with lots of smoke. It didn’t do any real damage, but it scared a lot of folks. The guy lit a tire in the bathtub or something.”

  If you want to get someone’s attention, that is the way to do it. Tires burned with thick, acrid black smoke. Harvath had seen more than his share of tire fires across third-world countries. It was a smell you never forgot and one he absolutely hated.

  “The ME is going to need dental records from the two males on your missing persons list,” said Cordero.

  “Being boiled to death is pretty unusual, so is a timed tire fire, but how can you be sure this is our killer?”

  “Because,” she replied as she swerved and narrowly missed a car that had slammed on its brakes, rather than pulling over to allow her to pass, “the killer left a note, along with a picture.”

  “Of a skull and bones with the crown floating above.”

  “Yup.”

  “Do you know anything about the address we’re going to? Any reason why it might be significant?”

  Cordero shook her head. “No. It’s not one of the ones we passed last night, I know that.”

  “Do you know anything about the area at all?”

  “It’s near the intersection of Fleet Street and Garden Court. I think that’s the neighborhood where JFK’s mother was born or grew up or something.”

  Or something . . . If that was the case, it didn’t make any sense. What would Rose Kennedy have to do with a vendetta against the Fed? And why would the killer switch tactics like that all of a sudden? It had to be something else.

  When they arrived, narrow Garden Court was blocked off at each end by police cruisers and all of the buildings up and down the street were awash in the glow of emergency vehicle lights.

  “We’ll end up getting blocked in if I try to get any closer,” Cordero said. “Let’s park here.”

  Harvath agreed and after parking her car, they got out to walk the rest of the way.

  “Did you get any sleep?” he asked as they made their way to the scene.

  “A little. How about you?”

  “Not nearly enough, but I’ll be okay.”

  “We’ll get coffee after,” she promised.

  Because it was a one-way street with parking only on one side, most of the responding vehicles had parked on the west side, many of them all the way up on the sidewalks so as not to block through traffic for the fire trucks.

  Harvath and Cordero walked on the opposite side. As they drew parallel with their destination, Harvath noticed a plastic plaque on the building next to Cordero.

  “You were right,” he said. “Look.”

  The female detective skimmed the historical marker. “How about that? I know some Boston history after all. Four Garden Court Street. Home of John J. ‘Honey Fitz’ Fitzgerald, Boston mayor, and birthplace of daughter Rose Fitzgerald, mother of American president John F. Kennedy.”

  As they slipped between two parked cars and around a fire truck idling in the middle of the street, Harvath tried to process what the Kennedy connection could be.

  That train of thought, though, came to an immediate halt when they arrived in front of 5 Garden Court Street, which had an even more dramatic plaque, this one from weathered bronze, announcing the building’s, or more appropriately the site’s, historical significance.

  “Here stood the mansion of Governor Thomas Hutchinson,” Harvath read aloud as he typed the man’s name into the web browser on his phone.

  “Who was he?” Cordero asked.

  “Apparently, one of Boston’s most hated citizens. Brother-in-law to Andrew Oliver, the man they hung in effigy from the Liberty Tree. Hutchinson was also the last royal governor of Massachusetts before the Revolutionary War. It says here that Sam Adams couldn’t stand him. For many of the colonists, Hutchinson represented everything that that they believed was wrong with Britain. He was greedy, arrogant, and a pretty big snob. A couple weeks after the Liberty Tree incident, angry Bostonians looted and tore Hutchinson’s house apart.”

  “Didn’t Hutchinson have something to do with the Boston Tea Party?”

  Harvath scrolled further down on his screen and nodded. “When the colonists wanted to send a large shipment of tea back to England to protest the tea tax, Hutchinson intervened. When word leaked that he was the secret distributor for the tea, people went berserk. There were city-wide protests, which grew in scope and anger until culminating in—”

  “The Boston Tea Party.”

  “Bingo,” said Harvath. “He left not long after and died in exile in England.”

  “So he wasn’t killed in Boston? Never boiled to death?”

  “No, not according to this,” he said, as he slid the phone back into his pocket. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some sort of connection to whatever it is we’re about to see.”

  “Are you ready to go in?” she asked.

  Harvath wasn’t even near
the front door and already he could smell the horrible odor of burnt tire. Taking a last breath of semi-fresh air, he nodded and followed her inside.

  CHAPTER 48

  The smell of a burnt tire was worse than driving behind a bubbling asphalt truck. The smoke had left black streaks up the front of the building from where it had escaped out the front door and where the firemen had smashed the front windows.

  Inside, you could trace the smoke’s path along the upper walls and ceiling straight back to the bathroom. Unless there was something terribly interesting he had to see in there, he’d put off ground zero for the tire burning for as long as he could. What he was most interested in was the victim. He followed Cordero into the living room.

  Her partner was there waiting, smug as usual and looking fresh as a daisy with his hair combed, face shaved, and shoes shined. He’d probably gotten a great night’s sleep as well.

  “Looks like you were wrong about the killer’s next stop being Fort Hill,” he said.

  “Let’s not start, Sal,” said Cordero. “Okay?”

  “I’m just saying, our golden boy here isn’t right about everything.”

  “Why don’t you sit down and give your mind a rest, Sal,” Harvath said as he brushed past him.

  Cordero joined him in the living room. “Can we not do this, please?” she asked quietly.

  “Without looking at the body, how do you expect to figure anything out?”

  She cut him a look and tilted her head toward her partner in the entry hall. “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “I’ll try,” Harvath replied as he approached the gang box. As he got closer, he began to pick up another scent.

  Cordero could smell it, too. “What is that?”

  “Pine.”

  “Like Pine-Sol?”

  Harvath shook his head as he noticed a couple of stray feathers near the gang box. “Pine tar.”

  “What is—” she began, but stopped when she looked into the box and saw the horrific state of the body.

  Harvath stood next to her and looked at the corpse as well. For several seconds neither said anything. Then, he stated, “Pine tar was used in the colonies to preserve wood on sailing ships and to weatherize rope. It was also used for a form of physically and emotionally painful public humiliation called tarring and feathering.”

  As seasoned as she was to death and murder, this one was particularly rough to look at. “Do you think he died from the tarring and feathering? Or from having his head shackled to the bottom of the box and having it filled up with pine tar? Feel it,” she said, reaching her hand out to touch the metal. “It’s still warm.”

  Harvath didn’t need to feel it. He would take her word for it. What he was interested in was the message painted in red on the underside of the lid. In addition to the crossed bones with the skull and crown hovering above was a sentence, which read How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words! Beneath it were the letters S.O.L.

  “Any idea what that phrase means?” she asked.

  Harvath was unaware of its historical context, but he had a pretty good idea of why it had been chosen by the killer. Bill Wise had mentioned something about how the Fed purposefully obfuscated what they did in order to divert attention. If he had to bet, that was what he’d put his money on. As far as who said it, he had no idea.

  “Sam Adams,” said Cordero’s partner, who had come into the living room to join them. He held out his smartphone and read, “From a letter to John Pitts. January twenty-first, 1776.”

  She couldn’t tell if Harvath was warming up another jibe or not, but she decided to circumvent it and keep the conversation focused. “What do we know about the victim?” she asked.

  Harvath had already identified him, but he wasn’t about to spill that information to anyone but Cordero. And it would be done in private.

  “Right now,” replied the male detective, “we don’t have anything. He’s a John Doe. We’ll see what the ME gets prints-wise and if they turn up anything. If there’s nothing on file for this guy, we’ll have to attempt dental records, and maybe facial reconstruction.”

  “How about the fire?” asked Harvath. “Any clues there?”

  The man shrugged. “Go ask the arson investigators. They’re back in the bathroom.”

  Harvath figured Sal had already gleaned a preliminary report from them and could have easily filled him in, but he had promised Cordero he’d try to go easy on him.

  Walking to the bathroom, he stopped just short of the doorway. The lingering odor was terrible.

  “What do you guys have?” he asked.

  “Who are you?” one of the investigators asked tersely.

  “Emily Dickinson,” he replied just as tersely, sensing that was about the only thing this guy was going to respect. “Now tell me what you’ve got.”

  His partner held up a plastic evidence bag with what looked like charred and half-melted circuit board. “Pretty simple setup. A timer and an igniter. Left it sitting on top of the tire. Tire was soaked with gasoline or kerosene. Consensus right now is that he wanted to send a smoke signal, not burn the building down.”

  “Think you’ll be able to trace those parts?”

  “Maybe, but they look rather basic. Could have come from anywhere. I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”

  That was exactly what Harvath was doing, and he needed some fresh air. Passing through the apartment, he signaled for Cordero to join him.

  Outside, he stepped away from the building and took in a couple of deep breaths.

  “You all right?” she asked.

  “I’m fine. I just hate that smell.”

  She wrinkled up her nose. “It is pretty awful. Why’d you want me to follow you out here?”

  “I think I know who the victim is.”

  “You do? How? A huge part of the poor guy’s face was melted off and he’s covered in feathers.”

  “It’s Peter Whalen from Chicago,” said Harvath. “In the file I have on him, it describes him as being five foot five. The other missing man, Renner, is six foot two. You wouldn’t have been able to fit a six foot two man in that box unless you sawed him in half. Make sure to tell the ME to look for scars on the victim’s knees once they get all the tar and feathers cleaned off. Whalen was a skier. He’d blown both his knees and had to have them repaired back before the surgery got a lot less invasive. The scars should be pretty obvious.”

  “I’ll let them know.”

  He took a breath and said, “This means there’s only two left now.”

  Cordero nodded. “Do you think the killer plans to do them both here in Boston?”

  Leaning against the side of a police cruiser that had been parked up on the sidewalk, he tried to think. “I honestly don’t know,” he said.

  “Whalen went missing in Chicago, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, if the killer brought Whalen here, why not the others?”

  It was a good question, except for the fact that all five missing candidates had been grabbed on the same night, which meant there had to have been teams involved. At least one of those teams had brought Peter Whalen from Chicago to Boston. Had the others been brought here, too? Anything was possible.

  “The remaining two could be here,” said Harvath. “I suppose.”

  “You’ve had one murder in Georgia and two now, unfortunately, in Boston. I’d say just numbers-wise Boston is your best bet.”

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “First, coffee,” said Cordero.

  “And then what?”

  “And then we try to figure out where the killer is keeping the remaining two and get to them before he can kill again.”

  CHAPTER 49

  WASHINGTON

  DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

  “Go easy on him,” said Wise, as he watched them secure the CIA operative. “You don’t have to hurt him.”

  Bob McGee looked up at the man like he was nuts. “In case you misse
d what just happened, Mahatma, this guy wasn’t here for yoga class. He came to kill you. In fact, he came here to torture you and then kill you. Why are you so bent out of shape about how tight I put the cuffs on him?”

  “Because I know Samuel, and I want you to treat him with respect.”

  McGee shook his head. “This is a big boy. We’re trussing him up tight. After that you can show him all the respect you want. Fair enough?”

  Wise knew there was no point in arguing. In fact, he wanted McGee to restrain Samuel as tightly as possible. If he didn’t, and the man got loose, they’d all be in trouble. What’s more, by petitioning for kind treatment, Wise was already conditioning Samuel for interrogation. The gruffer and more inconsiderate of Samuel that McGee was, the more it played into Wise’s plan.

  “There,” said McGee, as he stood back and admired his handiwork. “This fella ain’t going anywhere anytime soon, are you?”

  Samuel did not reply.

  Wise looked at Ryan and said, “You can lower your weapon now.”

  Ryan looked at McGee, who nodded, at which point she aimed the muzzle of her weapon down, but didn’t put it away.

  Samuel had been secured to a support column and was facing away from the living area. Wise brought over a pair of shooting muffs.

  Showing them to Samuel, he said, “This is only going to be for a few minutes while we discuss what we’re going to do. May I?”

  Samuel nodded and Wise slipped the muffs over the man’s large head. They almost didn’t fit. When he had them in place, he laid his hand on Samuel’s shoulder for a moment and then walked away to join the others.

  They gathered on the other side of the glass display case with the sewing machines and the typewriters. It was not only an additional sound barrier; it also allowed them to keep Samuel in their sight. McGee was the first one to speak.

  “Why are you so deferential to that guy? Do you have any idea who he is? What he does?”

  “Of course I do. I trained him.”

  “Wait. What?”

  “Maybe trained is the wrong word,” said Wise. “Samuel was under my tutelage for a time.”