by Mike Ryan
“Couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“Gonna lie to the bitter end, huh?”
“Why don’t you come in and we’ll talk about it?” Sanders asked.
“If I come in I’ll never see the light of day again.”
“You know if you stay out there that this can only end one way,” Sanders warned.
“You created Dmitri Kurylenko to make it seem like it wasn’t you. You tried to kill Heather for some reason and then you killed Heyward cause he knew the truth,” Cain told him.
“Even if that were all true it doesn’t matter now. You know you’re not going to be able to escape.”
“Who said I was looking to escape?” Cain said, putting his phone down on the bench without hanging up.
Cain knew they were tracing the call and figured he’d make it easier for them. He had to lose the phone anyway, so by leaving his phone they’d track it to the park and give him the time he needed to get to the reporter.
Sanders dispatched a security team to the park’s location. He knew Cain wasn’t likely to reveal his position like that unless he had something up his sleeve so he told the team to use caution. While waiting for them to report back when they arrived at the park, Sanders had Cain’s information pulled up.
“Get into the system and freeze his bank account,” Sanders told an analyst.
“Pulling it up now,” the analyst replied, looking at the information. “Uhh, there’s a small problem.”
“What problem?”
“There’s no point in freezing his account.”
“Why not?” Sanders asked.
“There’s no money in it,” the analyst explained. “Well, fifty dollars, but I assume you don’t care about that?”
“Fifty dollars?! How can that be? Pull it up again.”
“It’s still the same.”
“He’s made a couple million over the last couple years. How can he only have fifty dollars? What’s he been spending it on?”
“Doesn’t look like anything.”
“Say again?”
“Going over his records it looks like he’s been withdrawing fifty thousand every two weeks for the last two years.”
“Great,” Sanders sighed, knowing that would make tracking him harder. “That means he’s got enough cash to hold out for years.”
“I would say he most likely opened a different account that was untraceable,” the analyst offered.
“Any way to figure out where that account might be?” Sanders asked, hoping for a positive response.
“Unless he opened it in his name, or one of his aliases, it’s gonna be really tough. Probably impossible.”
“Any other way?”
“Banks have security cameras that we can try to pull footage from. That’s gonna take a lot of time to go through every bank in the city’s camera system though. And the odds of finding him are not strong. If he was smart enough to be doing this I would bet he used some type of disguise to hide his face so as not to be recognized by anything.”
“It’s all we got right now. Do it.”
“You got it.”
“Keep me updated,” Sanders said.
It took the security team about twenty minutes to reach the park. They tracked the location of the phone and took the necessary safety steps to ensure they weren’t being ambushed. After they secured the area and were sure that Cain was no longer there they informed Sanders of their findings. He wasn’t surprised that Cain was gone but wasn’t sure what else he had in mind. Sanders wasn’t sure if Cain was just toying with them by leaving the phone and irritating them by coming after it or if it was just part of a larger scheme he had. Sanders continued going over information in The Room with the analysts when Lawson burst in the room, looking for a confrontation.
“Can I talk to you for a minute, sir?” she sternly asked.
Sanders hesitated, slightly surprised at her presence. “We do have a lot going on here.”
“It’ll only take a few minutes.”
“Certainly,” Sanders responded after taking a few seconds to think it over. He directed everyone to keep going with what they were doing while he was gone.
Sanders lead Lawson into his office. He sat down at his desk and waited for Lawson to let out what was on her mind.
“I talked to Cain a little while ago,” Lawson told him.
“And?”
“He proclaims his innocence. He said Heyward was dead when he got there.”‘
“And you believe him?” Sanders asked.
“I have to. He’s never lied to me before.”
“Well, this is also a unique situation that hasn’t occurred before.”
“I don’t believe he did this.”
“There is footage of him at the station,” Sanders stated.
“I’d like to see it,” Lawson said, not believing the implications.
“It’s still being analyzed right now.”
“Still being analyzed? It’s either him or it isn’t.”
“There are some other things we’re looking at,” Sanders replied.
“Such as?”
“Such as things I’m not at liberty to discuss. It’s above your level right now.”
“Above my level? I am Matthew Cain’s handler. I should be included with every detail that involves him,” she said, her voice rising.
“I’m beginning to wonder if your loyalty to your agent is a bit blinded,” Sanders told her. “Your first loyalty should be to this agency, not an individual.”
“I would like access to all of his files,” Lawson stated.
“Absolutely not.”
“Maybe I can use it to our advantage.”
“I fail to see how it’d be of any use to you,” Sanders rejected.
“I want to be in on finding him.”
“I’m not sure that’d be a good idea. You have other agents to take care of. You have to accept that one of them’s gone rogue. It’s happened before. You deal with it and move on.”
“I’m not sure I can do that,” Lawson replied.
“You better learn to do that. Matthew Cain has a KOS order on him now and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Don’t do that,” she pleaded.
“Shelly, he killed a government agent. You know as well as I do that when that happens a KOS order is automatic. It can’t be changed,” Sanders explained.
“You’re in charge. You can change anything if you wanted to.”
“But I don’t want to,” Sanders told her. “Listen, I can tell it’s tough for you to wrap your head around this. It’s happened so suddenly. I know you’ve been through some tough times with him, we all have, but you have to accept reality. If you want to take a few days to get your head right, you’re more than welcome to.”
Lawson knew her pleas were falling on deaf ears and angrily stormed out of the office. She wasn’t surprised that Sanders shot down her offers for help. If he really was the one behind everything he wasn’t about to let anyone help Cain in his quest for truth. But she did hope that Sanders would agree to her request out of courtesy, even if he didn’t expect her to do much. She paced up and down the hallway until she saw Sanders leave his office and go back into the analyst’s room. As soon as he was out of sight Lawson approached his secretary with a bold idea.
“Hi Mary,” Lawson said in a very friendly manner.
“Hi Shelly. What can I do for you?”
“Umm, I’m gonna ask you for a favor that’s completely against protocol and you’ll probably say no.”
“Try it on me.”
“I need to get into Sanders’ safe,” Lawson told her.
“What? I can’t do that.”
“You know the code, don’t you?”
“That’s irrelevant. He would kill me if I did that without his knowledge and approval,” Mary said.
“That’s why he won’t find out.”
“I’m sorry, Shelly. I can’t do that.”
“How much do you know a
bout what’s going on right now with Matthew Cain?” Lawson asked.
“I know what I’ve been told.”
“That’s just it. I don’t think what you’ve been told is the truth. I know him. I know he didn’t do what they’re accusing him of.”
“There’s a camera in there you know,” Mary stated.
“I actually did not know that. Can you disable it?”
“Well, yes, I can, but that’s not the point.”
“You’re right, it’s not the point. The point is that I think he’s being set up by this agency. I think Heyward found out something and was gonna give it to Cain and when they found out about it, Sanders had him killed and framed Cain,” Lawson said.
“And you think what’s in that safe will prove it?”
“I don’t know for sure. But it’s a start.”
Mary continued sitting at her desk in silence, unsure about letting Lawson in. She needed more convincing for her to aid in helping someone break into her boss’ safe.
“If we do nothing and they kill him, and it later comes out that he actually was innocent, how would you feel knowing you had a chance to clear an innocent man and didn’t?” Lawson appealed to her.
Mary sighed, Lawson finally pushing her over the edge. “You sure know how to hit a girl beneath the belt.”
“So you’ll help?” Lawson asked, hoping.
“I can disable the camera for two minutes. Anything later than that and security will get suspicious.”
“Be in and out before you know it.”
“The code is 2212,” Mary told her, disabling the camera through her computer. “You got two minutes.”
Lawson hurried into the office and immediately went to the safe, putting the code in and unlocking it. She quickly took out all the files and put them on the desk to rifle through them. The files were in reverse alphabetical order. She saw Raines’ name on one of them. She stopped for a second, curious as to what it contained, but quickly moved on. As curious as she was, Raines would have to wait. Lawson knew she didn’t have enough time to go through every folder that piqued her interest. She only had time for Cain’s. She finally found his and opened it, laying it on the desk. She took pictures of every piece of paper with her phone. She didn’t read any of the information yet. At that time she was only concerned with getting a picture of everything for her to look over later. Lawson finished a minute later and put everything back in the safe and locked up. She rushed out of the room and nodded at Mary as she walked down the hall, just a few seconds before the two minute mark. Mary immediately turned the camera on again and went back to work as if nothing happened.
Lawson went into her office and locked the door. She sat down, plugged a USB chord into her phone and transferred the pictures to her computer. She eagerly read each document, most of which contained the information on Cain’s transformation from Thomas Nelson to Matthew Cain. Just when she started thinking that there was nothing to be gained from his file, she froze, stunned by what she’d just read. She stopped and read the passage again from the beginning. She stopped and reread the page five more times, almost like she expected the words to change and say something else the next time she read it. She couldn’t believe what was appearing on the screen in front of her.
“Oh my God,” she said.
Chapter 4
Cain stopped in front of the Times building and looked up at it, amazed at the sheer size of the skyscraper. It was a 52-story building that housed the Times, real estate companies, and some law firms. There was also an auditorium and banquet hall on the first floor. He walked into the building and asked the receptionist where he could find Roger Falk at. She directed him to the fourteenth floor. He bypassed the elevator as usual and used the stairs. Once Cain reached the fourteenth floor he looked around for Falk’s desk. Since he didn’t know Falk by sight he was at a little bit of a disadvantage. After a few minutes of unsuccessfully searching he asked the closest person near him.
“Excuse me?” he asked someone searching through a file cabinet.
“Yes?”
“Could you tell me where I can find Roger Falk?”
“Depends who’s looking for him.”
“Oh, my name’s Bill. I was supposed to meet with him on a story but I’ve never met him before so I don’t know what he looks like,” Cain said.
“Oh, OK. Well,” the man replied, looking around. “Looks like he’s about to get into the elevator over there.”
Cain hurried over to the elevator, hoping to get to Falk before he reached it. The elevator doors slid open and Falk stood to the side so a few people could get off. Cain snuck up behind Falk and locked arms with him, spinning him around and walking toward the stairs.
“Excuse me, who are you and what are you doing?” Falk asked, agitated.
“My name’s Matthew Cain and we have to go?”
“Go? Go where? Do I know you?”
“I believe you have something that interests me,” Cain said.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Falk said, stopping and breaking Cain’s grasp of his arm.
“I know you met with Bill Heyward,” Cain revealed.
“Cain. You’re the agent he was telling me about. He, uhh, didn’t tell me your name. But he said if something happened to him that you’d be making an appearance. Is he umm…”
“Dead? Yeah.”
“Oh, man,” Falk sighed.
“So we have to go now before they realize that he met with you.”
“I’m not going into hiding,” Falk objected.
“Just for a couple of days until we figure things out.”
“I can publish what I have now. They can’t touch me.”
“Listen, they will kill you once they know who they’re dealing with,” Cain bluntly told him.
“So what do we do then?” Falk asked.
“Right now we need to find a place to lay low for a day or two so we can figure out our next move without panicking or rushing into something.”
“OK.”
Cain led Falk to the stairwell and the pair started walking down the stairs. Falk adjusted his backpack, which was slung over his right shoulder. He used the backpack to carry most of the stories and ideas that he was working on.
“Umm, can you tell me why we’re going down the stairs when we could just take the elevator?” Falk wondered.
“I hate elevators.”
“Any particular reason why?”
“Sure is.”
“Mind telling me what it is?”
“Never know who or what’s gonna be waiting beyond those doors when they open,” Cain told him.
“How do I know you’re not the one who killed Heyward?”
“Because I say I didn’t.”
“Not to be difficult, but how do I know I can trust you?” Falk asked.
“Because if I wanted to kill you you’d be dead already.”
“So do you have any idea where we’re going?”
“Let me use your phone,” Cain said.
Falk handed him his cell phone and Cain dialed a number as they kept walking.
“Can you meet us at the corner of 43rd?” Cain asked. After getting a positive reply he hung up and gave the phone back to Falk.
“Who are we meeting?” Falk asked.
“A contact of mine. We can’t just walk around the streets. They’d eventually spot us.”
After a few minutes of briskly walking down the flight of steps they finally reached the ground floor. Falk was a little out of breath, not used to the physical activity. He was a slender man, in his mid forties, with black hair and graying temples. He couldn’t wait to get to work on this story since he thought it could’ve been his big break. Falk wasn’t usually assigned to the big stories and usually wound up working on the background stuff. If he could break a major story like this about a secret government agency it could catapult him into a lead story writer. Once the two of them hit the lobby, Cain went first to make sure everything was clear. If not, at leas
t he was armed well enough to put up a fight. With no obstructions in sight the two of them left the building and walked toward their destination.
“Keep your head down,” Cain told him. “Tougher to get a look at your face.”
“Do you think they’re here?”
“They will be soon enough. And trust me, you don’t wanna meet them.”
Once they reached 43rd street, they waited inside a small bookstore until Cain’s contact arrived. Cain stood near the front window so he could see the street and pretended to look through a book. After fifteen minutes flew by Cain started to get a little anxious. His contact said he’d be there in ten minutes. Cain wondered what was holding him up. He was about to call him again when Cain saw him pull up to the curb.
“Let’s go,” Cain told Falk.
“That’s what we’re waiting for? A taxi?”
The pair got in the back seat, Cain giving the driver a tap on the shoulder as a greeting and in appreciation.
“Nice to see you again,” the driver said. “I didn’t think it’d be so soon though.”
“I didn’t either, Mike.”
“What happened? It’s all over the news about a man getting shot at the train station,” Patel said.
“He was dead when I got there. They’re trying to make it look like I did it,” Cain explained.
“Wait a minute. I heard about the train station murder. That was you they were talking about?” Falk asked.
“Yeah. I went there to meet Heyward to get the documents he had. He was dead already and the documents were gone.”
“That’s a shame. He seemed like a decent guy when I met with him.”
“Did he give you the documents?” Cain wondered.
“He gave me something sealed in an envelope,” Falk said.