Post: The First Byron Tibor Thriller

by Sean Black

  Graves reached into his jacket and pulled out a single sheet of paper. He handed it to Julia. ‘Read it again if you need to. Make sure you’re happy with it.’

  She scanned the statement, her hands trembling a little. It had taken a lot of persuasion and arm-twisting back in Washington before Graves had got agreement on this tactical shift. In the end, Lewis and the envelope had been his trump card. In a closed session, he’d asked the chairs of the relevant congressional committees, and the President, if they would have been happy with that material being released into the public domain. That one question was all it had taken. Of course, Byron might already have put measures in place to get whatever information he had into the public domain. It could still happen. But material was judged by the source. Discredit the source, and you discredited the material. If the New York Times or a major network ran a story, most people assumed there was something to it. If a guy living in his parents’ basement ran the same story on his YouTube channel, it was dismissed as the rant of a crank. The story could be identical, but it was the public’s view of the source that counted. It was all a matter of news management.

  Flashguns exploded as Julia walked out onto the stage and took a seat, flanked on one side by Graves and on the other by a spokesperson provided by the State Department. Julia stared at the ranks of media assembled in the conference room, TV cameras capturing her every movement. She would look down at the statement, printed in sixteen point font on two pages, and there would be a fresh explosion of light.

  The spokesperson, a take-no-prisoners middle-aged woman, with a sharply coiffed blond bob, wearing an Ann Taylor pant suit, spoke first. Julia would read a statement and then they would take questions. Julia had already been thoroughly briefed on what to say. Any curveballs the media threw would be handled by Graves or the spokesperson.

  Julia cleared her throat, and leaned forward, getting too close to the microphone as she began, so that her voice boomed out from the speakers mounted either side of the table they were sitting at.

  ‘My name is Julia Tibor. I am here today to make an appeal to my husband, Byron, whom I love very much, to please contact the authorities and bring an end to this.’

  She found herself tearing up as she spoke. The emotion was something she didn’t have to fake. Every word was heartfelt. She did love Byron. She did want him to hand himself in rather than be killed.

  ‘Byron served his country proudly. He’s not a bad person. But he has problems. I’ve been reassured that if he surrenders of his own volition he will be given the help he so desperately needs.’

  As she came to the end of her statement, a volley of questions tangled in the air. The spokesperson silenced them. ‘Yes, Rick.’

  Rick, a lantern-jawed news anchor Julia recognized from one of the main cable networks, got to his feet. ‘Rick Santos, FNN. Mrs Tibor, had your husband ever given you any hint that he was capable of this kind of extremely violent behavior?’

  Graves tried to jump in but Julia got there ahead of him. ‘No, he hadn’t. I’ve rarely seen him lose his temper.’

  As she spoke, her mind flashed back to the tape of Byron attacking the two muggers. It had been so ruthless, so efficient. It hadn’t been like watching a human being. It had been more like watching a machine dismantling something piece by piece.

  The questions continued to come at her thick and fast. Most were batted away by the PR handler or Graves. They let her take one or two, the ones where she could offer ‘a wife’s insight’, and ‘personalize the situation’. Those has been the phrases Graves had used.

  ‘You say that you had noticed a change in your husband’s behavior prior to his going missing and these incidents?’ was one question. ‘Can you be more specific, Julia?’

  Julia bristled at the reporter’s over-familiarity as Graves gave her the nod to answer. ‘My husband was showing signs of what I realize now was post-traumatic stress disorder.’

  ‘Could you be more specific?’ another reporter pressed.

  This was proving harder than she had thought it would be, and she had known it would be tough. ‘He seemed to be having flashbacks. He was on edge.’ Every word she uttered seemed like a greater betrayal than the one that had come before. She imagined Byron watching her tell a bunch of strangers about things that should remain private between husband and wife. ‘It wasn’t like him. He was such a gentle, even-tempered person. A gentleman.’

  A gentleman who killed people in cold blood. But then, even before he had confided in her, she had known that during his military career he would almost certainly have killed. He had been a Ranger, deployed in places where war raged. Anyone who married someone in the military during a time of war would have to accept that they would go to bed at night with someone who had taken life.

  She was beginning to lose her composure now. As her voice cracked and tears welled in her eyes, she sensed the reporters leaning forward, the creeping zoom of the cameras as they tightened their frame so that there was only the face of a woman in distress.

  Graves intervened, tapping his watch and letting them know that there was time for one more question. Almost before he had finished he was pointing at a male reporter in the front row. Something about their body language and the eye contact between the two men told Julia that this part had been carefully choreographed. When the question came she knew she was right.

  ‘Mrs Tibor, Julia, if Byron’s watching this right now, what do you want to say to him?’

  Now the tears came. The PR woman handed her a tissue. Julia looked from the pack of reporters to Graves. This was wrong. The mock-concern. The idea that all these people wanted to do was help Byron. It was a lie. Whatever Byron had done, whatever he had become, Graves, Muir, DARPA, the Special Operations Group, the politicians in Washington had made him like this. If he was a monster, he was a monster of their creation, not his own.

  She took her time, dabbing at the tears, and taking a sip of water. The chatter at the edge of the room fell away to silence.

  ‘Byron, if you’re listening, if you can hear me, I want you to know that whatever you’ve done I love you and I don’t blame you. If you can hear me, my message is simple. Keep on running. These people don’t want to help you, they want you dead.’

  FIFTY-TWO

  ‘Do you know what you just did? Do you realize how much shit you’re in?’

  Julia sat on the end of the hotel-room bed as Graves paced the length of the room, screaming at her. The sense of unreality she had felt as her final words to the media had tumbled forth hadn’t left her. She was in the present, in a hotel room in the middle of Manhattan, with the media setting up a permanent camp on the sidewalk outside, yet she was thousands of miles away. As she had told Byron to run, and not to look back, she had felt him with her, the good Byron, the human Byron, the man she had fallen in love with and married.

  Graves continued to rant, spittle flying from the corners of his mouth. ‘You’re in a world of shit. A universe of shit!’ He stopped in front of her, and jammed a chubby finger at her face. ‘This is national security. You could go to prison for this.’

  She looked up at Graves’s bloodhound face. Byron was a murderer but Graves was ten times worse. He and his kind were just as culpable. The only difference was that Graves let someone else do his dirty work. ‘Am I under arrest, Mr Graves?’ she asked.

  He stared at her with piggy eyes. She could hear the rattle of his breathing.

  ‘Because if I’m not, then I’d like to go home,’ she said, getting to her feet, putting an arm out in front of her to establish a distance between them.

  He took a step back. ‘You walk out, and you’re on your own. We won’t protect you.’

  It was as much as Julia could do not to laugh. ‘I’ll take my chances.’

  She walked past him to the door. She was still torn. Without Graves, without the government, she would have to face all of it by herself. The media wouldn’t give her a moment’s peace. They, Graves, the Agency and a dozen other fede
ral agencies would scrutinize her every move. At least she’d had the good sense to stop speaking when she had. She had said nothing of who (what?) Byron was, or the facility, or the work that had taken place there.

  For a start, it was all too out there. The public weren’t ready for it. She’d come off like a crazy person. More importantly, though, it would place not just her but Byron in even greater danger. It was one thing for a mentally unstable special-forces operative to be on the run, but quite another for some kind of half man/half machine to be out there. Every weekend warrior between here and California would be on the lookout for him, and they’d be firing first and asking questions later.

  ‘You’ll take your chances?’ Graves screamed back at her. He moved toward her, got right up in her face. She could smell the stale cigarette smoke on him. It made her want to gag. ‘I’m not just some guy here, Mrs Tibor. This is the government. We run the country. Think about what that actually means. The name Bradley Manning mean anything to you?’

  She did her best to keep cool. She wasn’t unfamiliar with men like Graves. ‘I’d remind you that I’m a private citizen, Mr Tibor, protected by the Constitution. I don’t work for you or the United States government.’

  At the mention of the Constitution, Graves’s lip rolled up into a sneer. ‘You’re quite correct, Mrs Tibor. And I apologize for losing my temper. So, as a private citizen, why don’t you exercise your constitutional right to get the fuck out of here? You’re on the outside now, same as your husband. Don’t expect any more help from us.’

  She wasn’t going to be bullied by someone like Graves. She grabbed her coat and put it on. ‘There’s a lot more I could have said downstairs. A lot more. You might want to keep that in mind. Helping veterans sounds very noble. I doubt the public would feel the same if they knew what this has really been about.’

  She walked out into the corridor and headed for the elevator. As the adrenalin buzz wore off, she was starting to have second thoughts. More than anything now, she wanted her husband. To speak to him. To hear his voice. To be able to tell him that, even if no one else was, she was on his side. That she loved him, more than she had ever loved anyone or anything in her life.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Eldon

  Eldon lay on the bed, his head propped up on the pillows, watching the giant flat-screen TV as the hooker he had picked up on the casino floor the night before went to work between his legs. He should have been happy right now. The suite was sweet. Graves had said he could have it for the remainder of the week. His kill tally was up by two – Chauncey, the homeless guy who had helped Tibor, and Chenko, the retired cop. He was out of prison. Graves had assured him that there would be more work – as long as he stayed out of trouble. No shooting car-jackers or assholes or civilians just because he could.

  He grabbed the hooker’s hair, and pulled her off his dick. Her noisy slurp was distracting him from the TV, where footage of Byron’s wife at the press conference played on an endless loop between pictures of Byron Tibor, Public Enemy Number One, and a bunch of other shit about his military service and PTSD sending vets over the edge. Blah blah blah. Yada yada yada. Booooring.

  ‘You see this guy?’ he said to the hooker, whose name was Giselle.

  Giselle rubbed her chin. ‘Think my jaw’s locking up. You want to try something else, sweetie?’

  ‘That guy. You see that guy?’ he said, ignoring the question and jabbing a finger at the TV set.

  She pushed herself up so that she was on her knees and glanced over her shoulder at the TV. The picture right now was of Tibor in dress uniform.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Giselle. ‘Looks like a young Denzel only, I dunno, maybe a little bit lighter.’

  ‘Me and him used to be like best friends.’

  Giselle stared at him, glassy-eyed. She probably figured he was bullshitting her. In her profession she’d spend hours on end listening to all kinds of crazy stuff. ‘Uh-huh,’ she said.

  Eldon pushed off the bed and headed for the can. ‘We’re done. You can leave.’

  ‘You still got me on the clock for another hour, honey.’

  Eldon crossed to the closet, opened it and took a long look at his gun. One short of the two hundred mark. Giselle could make it up. He was itchy for a kill, itchy to round things off: 199 seemed so wrong, and it was driving him crazy.

  He glanced back at the woman as she dressed, pulling on her panties with all the grace of an offensive linesman. Nah, thought Eldon. He wanted two hundred to be special, to count for something, to be worthy of him, and Giselle wasn’t that.

  He shut the closet door. She put on her dress and slid past him. She would never know how close she had just come to death. The thought cheered him a little. He turned back to the TV screen. Number two hundred was right there on screen. He could wait to round up his number. It would make it all the sweeter when the time came.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Byron

  I rolled out of Bakersfield in a two-year-old silver Ford Escape with tinted glass. Muir’s body was in back, covered with a plaid blanket. I’d left the red Honda in a parking lot. I’d also jacked and then hidden two other vehicles before I left. They had been carefully chosen to ensure that they were different in make, model and color from the others.

  Requesting that the public and law enforcement look out for one vehicle was a big enough ask, but alerting them to three would be a cluster-fuck guaranteed to generate thousands of false leads that would need to be chased down. The Ford I’d taken from a different location. It was the very definition of a cheap trick. But when it came to counter-surveillance and tracking, those were often the best kinds: simple, efficient and designed to cause maximum confusion.

  I took the 58 east, heading for the Pacific coast. The journey would take me a little under five hours. Near Santa Margarita I picked up the 101 north. I was inching toward the ocean, closer to the edge of the continent, hoping that I would have answers when I got there.

  The fuel gauge was low. I would have to stop for gas sooner rather than later. It would be risky. It was daylight. I had no credit card, which meant I couldn’t just pay at the pump, shielded from prying eyes by the bulk of the SUV.

  I got off the freeway and found a gas station. The place wasn’t busy: a couple of cars filling up, and one truck easing round the back of the gas station to take on diesel. I was sporting sunglasses I’d found in a compartment of the Escape.

  I strode into the gas station, grabbed a couple of bottles of water, and put them on the counter along with four twenty-dollar bills. The woman behind the till was middle-aged, Hispanic, with reading glasses on a silver chain. She had watched me the whole way, and was doing a bad job of trying to appear like was she engrossed in the book she was reading. The idle curiosity of someone bored at work or something else?

  I stared at her skull, lasering in on the center of her mind. Her amygdala was going crazy.

  There were other, far more obvious, signs, in her body language. Either she was in the early stages of Parkinson’s or her hand was trembling with nerves as she opened the till. I glanced back outside. The two cars that had been out front were likely using cards. Unless they came in for something else, they wouldn’t be a problem.

  I looked at the woman. ‘You recognize me?’

  She shrugged, trying to come off like she didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.

  ‘It’s okay. All I want is to get gas and get out of here. That’s it. But if you do anything stupid, I’ll have no choice but to hurt you. Do you understand me?’ I told her.

  She met my gaze and nodded.

  ‘You have a phone behind that counter.’ I had already seen it. It was cordless with a single handset. ‘Give it to me.’

  Almost dropping it as she lifted it from the charger, she did so. ‘Are you the only employee here now?’

  She nodded again. She was going to be compliant. Hell, what was I to her? Either the last person she saw on earth or a story she could dine out on for days if she play
ed along.

  ‘You have a cell phone?’ I asked her.

  I tensed as she bent down, praying that she wasn’t going for a gun. I had the reaction time for it not to be an issue but I really didn’t want to kill some random lady just because our paths had crossed. She came up with a cell phone and handed it to me.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m going to put gas in my car. Stay next to the window where I can see you. When I’m done, I’ll leave. If someone arrives while I’m still here, just be normal. I’ll be out of your life in under five. If you tell anyone about this in the first hour after I leave, I will come back and I will kill you. Do you understand me?’

  She nodded. As soon as I left she would tell the next person she saw. That was human nature. Humans had restricted impulse control – especially in stressful situations when their emotions overwhelmed them.

  Clutching the two phones, I walked back out, jammed the pump into the gas tank and waited for it to fill. The woman was staring at me, doing her best to make sure I could see her and what she was doing.

  The numbers clicked over. I stilled my breathing, allowing my mind to flatten out and the implant to do its work. Its job was to dampen my emotional response, and allow my frontal cortex to dictate the play. Fear, elation, guilt, joy: none had a part to play anymore.

  No one else pulled in. The pump clicked to a stop. I had a full tank of gas.

  I didn’t get back into the Escape. Instead I strode back into the gas station. The woman hadn’t moved. Her eyes followed me as I walked to the counter. I took out the phones and placed them in front of her.

  ‘I took the batteries out,’ I lied. ‘Where’s the hard drive for the security system?’ I had already scoped out the cameras. It wasn’t a system that hooked up to an ISDN or broadband line to send footage to a remote server. I doubted internet service was up to much out here – ridiculous in this day and age, but it was a poor community.