by Thomas Perry
He had noticed during his time at war that most highly successful soldiers were, like him, country boys. They knew better than to fight the land or the climate. They endured them. They were also, like him, shorter than average. That part of his education had come by watching friends die. It didn’t matter how brave or how well trained, or even how smart you were if your head stuck up where all that superheated metal was flying in your direction.
Julian’s phone vibrated and he looked at the text: “Pay your check and come upstairs.”
He left a twenty-dollar bill on the table and slid out of his booth, then walked out of the bar. He used the stairs at the side of the lobby because stairs were part of his discipline. One set of stairs was nothing. A thousand staircases were a way to build a lean, powerful body and enough speed to get to an adversary a step before he expected you.
He reached the fourth floor, went to the room, and gave a military knock, a single slap on the door with the palm of his hand. The door swung open and he stepped in past Waters, one of the two contact men for this operation.
The room wasn’t what he had expected. This was a suite, with a long, narrow hallway that opened to a living room with two couches and a pair of matching armchairs. In an alcove to his right was a long conference table. Its surface was littered with coffee cups and saucers, trays that had once held food but now held crumbs and cloth napkins. There were papers and scratch pads and three laptops.
In front of him, seated in the living room, were three men. One of them was Harper, his other contact man. The remaining two men were older, one of them with gray hair, and they were both wearing expensive, well-cut dark suits.
Waters walked past him and sat down. He said, “This is Carson.” He didn’t introduce the two strangers.
Harper said, “Carson was our man at the fuckup here in Chicago. We found him gift wrapped in duct tape with a bump on his head.”
At one time Julian Carson would have felt he had to answer that, but he had learned that it was always better not to say anything unless they asked him a direct question.
“Okay, Carson,” said Harper. “Tell us what happened.”
“I found the subject a couple of months ago.”
“Where?”
“He was out at night walking his dogs. I reported that to you at the time, so you may have the date.” He stared at Harper, his face blank. Then he resumed. “I needed to learn where he lived, but because of the dogs I couldn’t follow him without his knowing. Also because of the dogs I thought he was likely to live within an hour’s walk from the spot, but normal walking speed puts that at up to three miles.”
“Skip that. You looked in the area and found his apartment. You drove Mr. Misratha and Mr. Al-Jalloud to the apartment. What then?”
“I repeated the warnings I’d given them. That the subject had a pair of big dogs that would probably hear or smell them coming. And the subject was old, but he was trained, in great shape, and probably armed. I took the Libyans to the building and picked the lock on the front door. Inside was a small foyer, with a staircase leading up to the subject’s apartment.”
“What did the two say?” This time it was one of the two gray-haired men on the couch.
“They didn’t take my warnings seriously. I believe it was Mr. Misratha who said, ‘Just be quiet, wait outside, and watch the back door in case he hears us coming and runs.’ They screwed the suppressors on their weapons and climbed the stairs.”
“And you did what they said? Kept quiet and waited outside?”
“Yes. I was told at the start that this was their operation. I went to the back of the building and stood by the garage so if the subject came down the back stairs and went for his car, I could stop him.”
“Did he?”
“No. After a couple of minutes I heard two rapid shots—bang-bang. Like one shot, and then one more a half second later. The two dogs barked. I guessed that the subject must have gotten to a gun and double tapped the trigger but missed, and when they shot him with their silenced weapons, a muscle reflex fired off the last round. To me the sounds indicated the subject was dead, since his shots took only about a second and stopped. At least one of the Libyans must be alive and unhurt, and probably both. So I waited for them to come downstairs.”
“How long?”
“Five minutes.”
“Then what?”
“I took out my phone and text messaged Mr. Al-Jalloud. He didn’t answer. It occurred to me that they might be doing something they hadn’t told me about, like cutting off a finger to prove they had killed the right man. I sent another text. By then I thought they must be searching the apartment for the money he had diverted. They were very sure of themselves, and it had occurred to me that they might not know how quickly the Chicago police might respond to a call about gunshots and the commotion from the dogs. I wrote: ‘Get out now.’“
“Of course Mr. Al-Jalloud didn’t answer.”
“No, sir. While I was busy with the phone, the subject climbed out a side window of the building, sneaked around to the back, saw me in the glow of the phone’s screen, and clubbed me in the head.”
“You’ve been in some tight combat situations,” the man said. “You never heard him coming, or noticed a change, a shadow, or anything?”
“I did, right at the last moment. But I was expecting one of the Libyans, not him. Then I was out. I became conscious when I saw him carrying a woman to the garage. He had tied me up with duct tape. He had her tied that way too—arms behind her, ankles together, then wrapped around and around. He put her in the car and strapped her in with the seat belt.”
“I hear he talked to you before he left.”
“Yes, sir,” said Carson. This was the part that Julian had been dreading, but he had given the old man his word. “The subject said to tell you that he had never intended to steal the money. He just took it back to return to the government because the go-between had kept it. When the subject’s contact cut off his communication, he felt he was being set up. He got home on his own. He says he’s still willing to give back the money. He’ll do it if you tell the Libyan who sent the shooters he was killed in the operation. He promises that after that he’ll disappear.”
“Jesus,” said the gray-haired man. “What a load of crap. I can’t believe you even bothered to repeat it.”
Julian Carson decided to interpret that as a question. “He said he wouldn’t kill me if I passed it on. He didn’t kill me.”
The man stared into Carson’s eyes, but Carson stared back, unblinking.
“You got a pretty good deal.”
“Yes, I did.”
“What did he do then?”
“He checked to be sure the woman was still strapped in the passenger seat with the seat belt. Then he let the dogs into the backseat and drove away.”
“That’s it?”
“He was in a hurry to be gone.”
“I’ll bet he was. Where do you think he was going?”
“Wherever he thinks we won’t be likely to look for him.”
“What do you know about the woman?”
“Her name is Zoe McDonald. Forty-five, divorced, pretty. The apartment was rented in her name only. She was living there for three months before the shooting in Norwich, Vermont, so she couldn’t have been renting it with him in mind. She advertised online for two roommates, and then she took the ad down about a week after he left Vermont, so that’s probably when he arrived.”
“Do you think he’s killed her by now?”
“No,” said Carson. “I think he carried her out that way—”
“Kidnapped her.”
“Kidnapped her that way because he didn’t think he should leave her there with the two bodies. He knew somebody would be along to clean up, and they wouldn’t leave a witness alive. I think he’ll free her in the middle of nowhere so she’ll have to walk a few hours to get to a town while he gets away. He might even have done it already and told her if she called the authorities he’d come
back and kill her.”
“Why do you think that?” the man asked. “If he took her to a remote area, why not kill her? It’s much safer for him.”
“Killing her on the spot would have been even safer. He had two weapons with silencers he took from the Libyans. He hasn’t killed anybody who wasn’t trying to kill him.”
“You’re starting to sound like you believe his story.”
“I don’t know. But I think he believes his story.”
“Why is that?”
Carson said, “Partly just an impression he made on me. But it also occurred to me that if he took back the money, then he must have delivered it to the Libyan first.”
“What does that mean?”
“The money didn’t get to the insurgents because the Libyan kept it.”
Harper and Waters glanced at each other and Waters seemed to cringe for him, but neither spoke.
The older man said, “And you said he only kills people who are trying to kill him. Why are you alive?”
“He wanted me to deliver his message, but he could have left a note. He just didn’t pull the trigger.”
“Tell us. What do you think we should do now?”
“That’s a difficult question, sir.”
“Take a crack at it.”
“I would do two things at once. I’d go through whatever evidence still exists to find out whether he’s telling the truth. And I’d also test him.”
“How?”
“He says he’s willing to give the money back. Let him.”
15
Hank and Marcia Dixon appeared to be relaxed, almost leisurely travelers. The only days when they drove more than five hours were when there was some exceptional delay—roadwork, accidents, weather.
They stopped at resort hotels, or the sort of city hotel that was one or two hundred dollars more expensive than the others in the vicinity. Hank chose the ones where there were plenty of people who were middle-aged or older with money, and few people in their twenties who might get into the sort of trouble that stimulated calls to the police. The hotels had doormen and security people to keep the guests from being bothered.
The Dixons were not the sorts who sought out company or conversation. When they passed anyone in the hallways they smiled. When someone spoke they answered politely. If they liked a hotel and it passed Hank Dixon’s standard of safety and anonymity, they sometimes stayed an extra day or two. The first time they did it, he explained to Marcia: “Every day that we’re living like this, getting stronger and healthier and more rested, they’re out there somewhere standing in the rain or the cold watching for us. Anything that makes their effort a waste of time is good for us.”
Every evening, Dixon turned on the television set in their room and watched the news for any mention of the shooting at Dan Chase’s house in Vermont, the two men found dead in the parking lot near Buffalo, or the kidnapping of Zoe McDonald in Chicago. He bought a new laptop and looked for anything that might be related to the hunt for Dan Chase or Peter Caldwell.
He had been expecting that the intelligence people would get frustrated and begin to use state and local law enforcement to find him. He had waited to see what the pretext would be. They might say he was anything from a bank robber to a child molester, but they seemed to be putting out nothing. At each stop he looked, found nothing, and then repacked his laptop for the next day’s drive.
Hank was premeditated and careful about the way he treated Marcia. He had used romance to manipulate and control her for months, and he had gotten good at it. The deception was not a chore, and her affection for him made her pleasant and pliable. But since the attack in Chicago he had occasionally had an uneasy feeling about her.
She had surprised him when she insisted on coming with him. Running away with a man marked for death was insane. He’d admitted he had been manipulating her, but she acted as though she had given her permission, or even known all along, and found it pleasant. He had tried to persuade her to leave him, and she wouldn’t. And if she secretly wanted revenge, circumstances had given her a hundred chances to turn him in, run off with his car, his money, his guns, or do whatever else that would cripple his chance of survival. She had done nothing but try to help him.
He knew that at some point he was going to have to part with her. For now, he still wanted the protective camouflage provided by traveling with a woman who appeared to be his wife. She had offered to be useful, and he would continue to accept her help, but she was more complicated than he had thought, and less predictable. During the months while he had used familiarity and charm to allay her suspicions and penetrate her defenses, she had done the same to his. He had to maintain an emotional distance, and keep himself separate from her.
He took detours that kept them off the interstates and toll roads, where there might be cameras at tollbooths and entrances. Between hotels they paid cash for most of the things they bought. Once, they rented a cottage at a remote lake in Minnesota for two weeks. He gave false names and paid the owner cash in advance. They spent the week hiking and paddling the kayaks that came with the place, and cooking their dinners over a wood fire in the stone fire pit by the shore. At the end of the second week he made sure they had cleaned the cottage, wiped away fingerprints, and returned the keys to the owner before they drove on.
As she watched the telephone poles going by beside the road Marcia seemed quieter and more contemplative than usual.
“Something wrong?” Hank said.
“I was thinking. That’s all.”
“It doesn’t seem to be making you happy. I plan to avoid it.”
“We just put fourteen days on the good side. We were happy and got lots of sun and exercise and ate healthy food. Nobody saw the car or our faces. Then I remembered that fourteen days isn’t that much. They found you after thirty-five years.”
“I doubt that they looked for thirty-five years. They might have searched hard for a couple of years. It would have been a quiet search, because they wouldn’t want to explain to a US attorney what I had done, or admit they were conducting operations in this country. After that I might have been on a list. Something happened this year to make me a priority.”
“What would it be?”
“At the beginning, my biggest mistake was to come home with the money. That proved that the people inside intelligence who had decided to cut me loose and let me die had given up too easily. Welcoming me home would have made them look bad. So they made up a better story—that I had been in it to steal the money, and had killed some people doing it.”
“That’s all they wanted to accomplish—just to not look bad?”
“I think that it’s also possible one of them was a strategist—that he knew even then that twenty million dollars in the context of the Middle East was going to be nothing. In the end, twenty billion was nothing. What they needed was friends, allies, operatives, and agents there. It’s even possible they knew before they sent me that Faris Hamzah would keep the money. They just didn’t tell me. Either way, by making it home I put everybody in a bad position.”
“Who was everybody?”
“Numbers. Voices on the phone. I never knew names, and what’s going on now can’t be about them anymore. Something new has happened.”
“Do you have any idea what?”
“Somebody has learned the story of what happened thirty-five years ago, and they want it to end differently.”
Hank Dixon moved them from place to place, making the time go by pleasantly and without exposing them to much risk. Then they reached a hotel in Spokane, Washington, that seemed to cater almost entirely to businesspeople. Most of the guests were out of the hotel during business hours, and many of them were out again in the evening, probably taking clients and prospects out to dinner. This gave Hank and Marcia a long period of time to use the pool and the gym without having many people notice them.
When they returned to their room, Hank went to work on his laptop computer, as usual. He looked for any reference to the ev
ents they had experienced—the shooting at Daniel Chase’s house and his disappearance, the two men he had shot near Buffalo, the two dead men in the Chicago apartment of Zoe McDonald, and her disappearance. There was nothing in any of the papers to indicate that any of it had ever happened.
“Any news?” Marcia asked.
“Not that I can see,” he said.
“I can’t believe this,” she said. “I was kidnapped out of my apartment. An unknown man tied me up, threw me over his shoulder, and drove me away, and there’s not a word of it anywhere.”
“It’s not exactly unbelievable,” he said. “There must have been agents on the scene right away, before the police. They probably made everything look as though nothing had happened, and cleaned everything up. In these operations, if the police get there and see anything, two federal agents show up at the local police station and say whatever happened is part of an ongoing federal investigation involving national security. If the papers don’t already have the story, they don’t get it. If they have the story, they’re asked not to print it.”
After a few more minutes, Marcia went to take a shower. He kept searching the papers. After another hour, he saw the personal ad in the Chicago Tribune. It said: “Mr. Caldwell. We’ve decided to take you up on your offer. Send your instructions to Post Office Box 39281, Washington, DC 20003. J. H.”
James Harriman was the young man he had asked to convey his offer, and here was the reply.
He turned off the laptop and said to Marcia, “I’m going out for a walk. No need to get dressed again.”
His walk to ok him through the downtown district. As he walked, he considered. Nobody in any intelligence organization had any particular attachment to the truth. The truth was just one of many versions that was not necessarily superior to any of the other versions.
If he showed up at a prearranged meeting with the money, they’d see it as a chance to end things neatly. He and the money would disappear. But if he devised ways of making it harder for them, they might see this as a time to take what they could get, and move on to the next project. They would keep their word only if they had no power to do anything else.