Post: The First Byron Tibor Thriller

by Sean Black

  He got out of the car, walked up the short flight of stone steps and pressed the buzzer for the apartment. He waited.

  ‘Hello?’

  From her tone and the hesitancy of her response to the buzzer, he could tell she hadn’t been expecting any visitors. That was good.

  ‘Mrs Tibor, I’m from the State Department. I need to speak to you about your husband. May I come up, please?’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  ‘Is he dead?’ Julia Tibor asked Graves.

  ‘We don’t know.’ He motioned for her to sit down and asked if she wanted anything. Some tea? A glass of water?

  ‘No, thank you, Mr … ?’

  ‘Graves,’ said Harry. ‘Harry Graves.’

  She sat, and he sat opposite her in an old wing-backed armchair. For a moment his mind settled on the morbid humor of his surname while on such a visit.

  ‘Can you just tell me what’s happened, Mr Graves?’ she said.

  Up close, she was even more striking. In contrast to most women who used makeup and clothes to create an image that worked better from a distance, it was only when you got within a few feet that you saw Byron had married a woman who would have been attractive in pretty much any era. He felt a twinge of regret at never having found anyone to share what passed for his life, but pushed it away. This was high stakes and he had to get his approach right.

  ‘You know that your husband’s job involves more than working as an intelligence analyst for the department?’

  ‘He doesn’t go into specifics but, yes, I had always assumed it was more than just sitting in an office.’

  She seemed to be holding it together pretty well, thought Graves.

  ‘I used to tease him about it.’ She paused. ‘I mean, I do tease him.’

  ‘I can’t go into specific details either but he was doing important work for us overseas, and during the course of that work he went missing.’

  ‘Where? Where did he go missing?’

  He’d known she would ask. That was why he’d omitted it. It was crucial that he built a bridge with her early on. That she didn’t think he was keeping things from her. If he didn’t establish trust with her now, it would only complicate matters further down the line. ‘That I can’t say.’

  ‘He told me he was going to Nevada.’

  ‘I can neither confirm nor deny where he was. But I can say that he was assisting us with an important matter of national security when he went missing.’

  She sat a little straighter. ‘What do you meant “went missing”? My keys go missing. A dog goes missing. A grown man doesn’t go missing. You mean he was kidnapped? That’s what you mean, Mr Graves?’

  Harry folded his hands on his lap. ‘No, Mrs Tibor. I mean exactly what I said. He’s missing. We don’t know where he is. He was on a mission, we were monitoring him, and he dropped off our radar.’ At least that part wasn’t entirely fabricated, he thought. ‘Believe me, we’re devoting every possible resource to locating him and we’re all very hopeful.’

  ‘And what should I do in the meantime?’

  Harry sighed. She had to believe that he felt the weight of her husband’s disappearance almost as much as she did. ‘I’m going to ask three things of you. You don’t have to agree to all or, indeed, any of them, but I do need to know your decision. First, it may put Byron’s life at risk if this becomes public.’

  She nodded. ‘I understand that. I won’t say anything to anyone about this unless you think it’s the right thing.’

  ‘I appreciate that. Now, additionally, if someone does have your husband it may be that they attempt to get in touch with you. We did have a case last year, unreported, of course, of a kidnapping where the hostage was made to contact his family directly as a way of his captors gathering intelligence.’

  She leaned forward. ‘You think he’s been kidnapped? What do you mean? I don’t follow.’

  Harry rubbed his chin. ‘The value in someone like your husband is often what he knows rather than in any ransom. In this case the kidnappers tried to use the family to glean information. I can’t be any more specific but all we’d ask is that if your husband gets in touch, even to say he’s safe, then you let us know immediately.’

  ‘Of course. If he gets in touch let you know,’ she repeated back.

  Harry dug into his wallet for a piece of paper and a small silver wallet pen. He jotted down a cell-phone number. ‘I’m contactable twenty-four/seven,’ he said, handing it to her. ‘I’ll keep you updated if anything changes, but if you want to speak to me, please don’t hesitate.’

  She took the paper without a word. In truth there was no need for her to contact them if Byron surfaced. Her cell phone, apartment and work landlines and email were already being monitored on a live basis by the National Security Agency. If Byron got in touch, they needed to know whether she would tell them about it or not. If she followed instructions, she was safe.

  And if she didn’t, thought Graves, well, they had a contingency for that too.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Graves was stepping back into the Town Car when his secure phone chirped. ‘Graves,’ he said.

  ‘We have a positive ID,’ said the man at the other end of the line.

  Graves slammed the rear passenger door. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Oh, it’s definitely him. Hundred percent. Unless there’s someone else out there who can toss a two-hundred-pound cop into the air like he’s a softball.’

  Graves closed his eyes and slowly exhaled. Finally, some good news. ‘Okay, great. Let’s get someone out there to go pick him up.’

  ‘The sighting was yesterday. He wasn’t detained, and now he’s back off grid,’ said the voice.

  ‘Okay, so send in a team. Set up a secure containment area. Soak the ground with people until you locate him again.’

  ‘Not something we can do that easily where he is. At least, not without risking a breach.’

  The protocol for Byron was the same as it had been for Lewis. No media. Limited notification of law enforcement. Keep the details vague, and definitely no names. Apart from the risk of panic that would be created in the general population by telling them that someone from the program was on the loose and rogue, this entire field was, of course, still very much classified. If at all possible, it was staying that way. This was one can of worms that was not going to be opened, if it could be avoided.

  ‘So where is he?’ said Graves.

  There was a pause that signaled he wasn’t about to like what was coming.

  ‘Where?’ Graves prompted.

  ‘Vegas,’ said the voice. ‘He made it to Las Vegas.’

  Graves stopped himself cursing. Of course he had, he thought. Stay in the desert or a small town, and he’d be noticed sooner or later. But in a vast urban center, especially a goddamn freak show like Las Vegas, their job would be ten times more difficult. Not only was it easier to melt into an ever-shifting crowd, but the general level of security meant that sending in a big team of operatives to locate him was sure to attract attention and get people talking. This was a game-changer.

  ‘Still no signal from the RDF tracker?’ he asked. The signal from the subcutaneous device had died shortly after Byron’s exit from the facility.

  ‘That was the other news,’ said the voice. ‘It’s been recovered ten miles north of the facility at the last active point of contact we had for him.’

  After Graves had killed the call, he pounded a fist into the door. ‘Son of a bitch.’ He glanced up and saw Julia Tibor standing at the apartment window. She looked drained. She wasn’t the only one, he thought. They needed a new plan, and fast. Something clean, sterile, a scalpel rather than a daisy-cutter bomb.

  As the car pulled away from the curb, he started to make calls. The news wasn’t good. He had the perfect individual in mind, but he came with a lot of baggage. Graves was going to use every bit of pull he had to bring him on board. And good luck containing him if he did. But who else out there was up to it? He came up blank. It was a shortl
ist of one, and right now the one was technically unavailable.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Las Vegas

  Chauncey and Repo

  Chauncey had lived in the tunnels for a couple of years now. They were safer than the streets, and the streets were safer than the weekly rental motels. When it was so damn hot out on the Strip that the asphalt stuck to your feet, it was cool in the storm drains. At night, when the temperature dropped, it was warmer. You got more privacy too.

  Metro cops didn’t come down here unless they had to. Their radios couldn’t push out a signal through all that concrete and rebar. Course, them not coming down here meant you had to handle your own business. Anything jumped off, no cop was going to help you. No, sirree. And people did come down: folks looking for a place to stay, or somewhere quiet to jack up or smoke crank. Kids came down too, gangs of ’em, looking to hunt people down for kicks. They’d caught Chauncey once. Only thing that had saved him was that there were so many of them around him they kept getting in each other’s way: well, that and Repo. He’d come out of the darkness with that goddamn crazy sword of his, waving it around, blond wig stuck on his head, looking like Xena, Warrior Princess, if she hadn’t shaved and had a bad hankering for crank.

  The least Chauncey could do for Repo/Sheryl after that was to let him set up a place further back down the tunnel. They’d become friends, or as close as you could get to friends. For a crazy transvestite who liked to wave a sword, Repo was good people, real neat. His camp was something to see. It lay about two hundred yards down the pike from Chauncey’s. Repo had hung a curtain across the tunnel so that could both have some privacy. You had to holler before you went beyond the curtain. Get the word from Repo, step on through, and you’d swear it was nicer than some condos. Repo had a shower bag, a king-sized bed, a shelf with books, a TV with a DVD player, a laptop computer. Place was a goddamn palace. All it needed was a bathroom ’stead of the white bucket that Repo used. He’d hooked up a clothes rail too. That was where he kept all his Sheryl dresses and his makeup. Sheryl was something. A real lady. Repo, though, he could be a mean son of a bitch if you crossed him.

  That was what had shocked Chauncey about Repo heading out to help the guy with the crazy eyes. Chauncey and Repo both knew to stay out of the cops’ business. The Metro cops could be mean. They were trigger happy, too. Maybe that was why Repo had decided to help the dude. The cops were on one side and they were on the other. And there had been something cool about what the dude had done. One second he was on his knees, the next he’d fucked up that one cop, taken his gun (‘Taken his gun off a him like candy’), and his partner was screaming like a little girl. Dude wasn’t joking either about shooting the cop. It had been some show. You saw a lot of crazy shit on the Strip, heard a lot of guys talk smack, too, about how they were gonna do this if Metro riled them, but no one did it. Not like that dude either.

  They had watched him jump the fence into the golf course, figured he was heading their way. The tunnel was right there. Repo had taken off running, and Chauncey had tagged along. Chauncey had told him that it was a bad idea and the dude was going to bring them a world of trouble, but Repo wasn’t listening. Before he knew it, Chauncey was jumping the fence too. By that stage, with that helicopter closing in, he was kinda committed, and they’d kinda had to help the brother out.

  He was in bad shape when they’d got him down into camp. And the Metro cops had changed their minds about coming down there. They swarmed all over the tunnel. Sent dogs in too. But Repo and Chauncey and the dude were long gone. No way were the Metro cops going to find ’em – not down here. They musta run the whole length of the Strip almost. Miles and miles. Chauncey didn’t know when the Metro cops had given up chasing ’em. All they knew was that when they headed back home the cops had smashed up all their shit. They’d taken a knife to Repo’s shower bag, smashed his TV and all his electronics, even slashed Chauncey’s bed so that the springs were showing.

  Repo had stayed up, keeping watch, as Chauncey had got some sleep. The dude had crashed out too. He’d said things in his sleep. Chauncey had noticed he had a real bad wound on his neck, like someone had cut him.

  Chauncey lay awake in the darkness and thought about the night that had gone. Crazy. He looked around at all his shit the cops had smashed up or dragged all over the tunnel. Dumb motherfuckers. What did they think they could do to a man who had to live underground? Life had already stripped away everything he had. Repo was the same. Chauncey figured that was why he’d created Sheryl. It was Repo’s way of having another life, another shot.

  He wondered what the crazy dude’s story was. He was a vet, that was for sure. You could tell that from the way he’d dealt with the cops and carried the gun. Hell, you could tell it from the way the guy walked. He wasn’t long out either. He was still sharp. Lean. In shape.

  There was something else about him. Repo had noticed it too. When they were walking through the tunnels with no light at all, the dude had gone ahead of them. Repo had a torch but the dude had heard something, likely just tourists walking around above ground on the Strip. Repo had killed the light for a moment but the dude had kept walking like it was the middle of the day.

  They had kept moving for the next three days, trying to keep to themselves as best they could. The tunnels were full of people who hated the cops but who would happily rat them out for a few bucks. It had crossed Chauncey’s mind and he’d broached the subject with Repo. Repo had shot him down. He’d been burned by too many bad deals in the past.

  They lay up during the day and early evening when the tunnel-dwellers moved out above ground to get food or go trawl the slots for credits. The first night they had found somewhere quiet and taken turns on guard duty. The second day, the guy had shared his name. Byron. A real black name, Chauncey had thought, though the guy was light-skinned.

  By then even Repo was starting to have second thoughts. Byron was taking over, telling them where to go. Chauncey didn’t like being told what to do usually, but the guy had a way about him. Kinda quiet authority thing. By the third day, he was the leader, and Repo, who hated just about everyone, was following him around like a puppy.

  ‘This guy’s our ticket,’ Repo had whispered to Chauncey in the darkness, while they were supposed to be sleeping and Byron was doing what he called recon.

  ‘Yeah, our ticket to the chair.’

  Byron had come back with food. Real nice stuff. There was steak and mashed potato and broccoli and a bottle of wine. Chauncey was starting to think that maybe Repo had it right. Then things changed.

  Repo and Chauncey had started going over what Byron had done to the cops. Chauncey was half Irish, so the story had grown some with each telling. Byron didn’t seem to be enjoying it, though. It was like a big black cloud settled over him.

  ‘Pow! I swear that motherfucker was going to fly into space,’ Chauncey had said.

  ‘Be quiet.’ The words had come in a whisper so quiet that Chauncey didn’t quite catch them.

  ‘I was only …’ Chauncey stumbled, as Byron gave him that death stare he had.

  ‘Well, don’t.’

  Repo had started in on Chauncey: ‘Yeah, shut the fuck up with that. We were all there.’

  Chauncey felt hurt, like he was being cut out. Him and Repo had always been tight. Him and Sheryl tighter still.

  Byron had asked them questions then. Stuff about how he’d arrived, what direction he was coming from when he’d seen Chauncey.

  There wasn’t much to tell. The lack of information seemed to piss him off. He’d had the look of a blackout drunk, piecing together all the crazy shit from the night before. All of a sudden he’d got up and announced they were going up above ground. All three of them. Worse, he was talking about how he’d seen a sports bar when he’d gone to get dinner. He wanted to have a beer.

  Repo had start arguing with him. Soon as he moved, though, Repo and Chauncey fell in behind. They surfaced in an alley right behind the Strip.

  Chauncey didn’t l
ike bars. They were pricey, and the booze was weak. Most of all, there were too many regular citizens.

  Byron bellied up to the bar. He had a roll of money. They got the kind of looks that guys like them always did but the sight of the money changed the dynamic. Fucked-up-looking people in Vegas got 86ed. Fucked-up people with money, though?

  ‘What can I get you, gentlemen?’

  Byron ordered a soda. Repo got a goddamn Mai Tai and Chauncey got himself a boilermaker. Byron was staring at one of the screens. It must have been a light sports night because it was tuned to the news. He got the bartender to hike the volume.

  Chauncey had sucked down the boilermaker and ordered another on Byron’s tab. Any second he was expecting their pictures to flash up on screen. It had been only three days. They were surrounded by people, some watching the same pictures. This was all kinds of bad.

  Byron was cool. He’d sipped his soda, his eyes never leaving the screen.

  Nothing. No mention of them. Chauncey had another drink to celebrate. The cops would still be looking for them but Vegas had moved on. There was too much crazy shit for it not to.

  They had left a while later. Chauncey and Repo were in high spirits. They could move back to their camp, or close. Byron’s mood was darker. Repo tried to reassure him. ‘Chill. You’re good,’ he said.

  Byron had given him the look. ‘No,’ he’d said. ‘I’m not. And neither are you. You need to get out of here. Split up, get out and don’t come back. Get out of the country entirely if you can.’