by Thomas Perry
Julian’s strides took him to the spot where he had been told to go after the exchange. A fake UPS delivery truck was stopped around the corner with its engine running and lights flashing as though it were making a delivery. He stepped up into the open side door by the driver’s seat.
Inside the cargo bay there were three men sitting on a bench wearing UPS uniforms, but two of them held MP5 rifles with thirty-round magazines. The slings that held the short automatic rifles were brown webbing that matched the uniforms. Julian didn’t know any of the three.
“Where do we pick up the money?” one of them said.
“He transferred the money electronically,” said Julian. “He’s already gone.”
“Should we go too?”
“Affirmative,” Julian said. “It’s over.”
The man released the magazine on his MP5 and put the gun and ammunition into an open cardboard box that sat in front of his bench, closed it so it looked like something he was delivering, and hurried forward to the driver’s seat.
Another man held a radio. He said, “I’m getting the call now.”
In a moment the truck pulled away from the curb, went down the street to the next corner, and turned. The big rectangular vehicle made two more turns and headed south of Market. Through the windshield Julian could see warehouses, garages, and small manufacturing operations. Occasionally there were bars that Julian judged were probably even less inviting at night. Then the truck was on the freeway. Fifteen minutes later it pulled through an open gate into a fenced lot adjacent to the vast open space of the San Francisco airport.
The building inside the fence had once been a hangar. The door swung upward and the truck pulled in past a couple of large trucks that looked like appliance delivery trucks and stopped. Julian got out. Beside him were two taxicabs, and beyond them an ambulance, a repair truck for Pacific Gas and Electric, a US Postal Service truck, and four black cars that looked like unmarked police cars, with the distinctive side spotlights.
“Hey, it’s Carson.” Harper’s voice was flat with a hint of sarcasm. “Glad you survived your dramatic mission.”
Julian turned to see that Harper and Waters were sitting at a table at the far side of the hangar. They got up and walked toward him.
“Thanks,” Julian said. “There didn’t seem to be anything dramatic about it that I could see. There seemed to be quite a few people running around tripping over each other, though. Did something happen after the old man left me?”
Harper and Waters glanced at each other, and Waters gave his familiar cringing expression. Harper said, “Maybe that’s the problem right there. He wasn’t supposed to leave.”
Carson said, “Nobody told me that.”
“Then maybe you weren’t supposed to leave either,” said Waters.
Harper’s cell phone rang and he clapped it to his ear. “Harper.” He listened. His eyes widened and then his jaw muscles began to work. He slowly turned his head to look at Julian Carson, but when he saw that Carson was looking at him he looked down at the floor. “Carson just arrived,” he said. “Yes, sir, we’ll do that.” He listened for a second and then put away his phone.
He muttered something to Waters, and Waters nodded and walked away. Harper picked up the newspapers on the table and began putting them in order and folding them neatly. It looked as though Waters was walking to the back of the hangar.
Harper looked up, put the papers in a pile, and said, “They want to debrief you before we wrap it up here.”
“All right,” said Julian. “I’m not doing anything else. It’s hard to get a date on short notice.”
“Well that’s fortunate,” said Harper. “They want us to wait in the office until they get here.”
Julian caught a movement in the periphery of his vision. Waters had opened the passenger door of one of the police cars. He took something off the seat and stood behind the car door holding whatever it was, but Julian couldn’t see it. Julian said, “What have you got in your hand?”
“Just cleaning up,” Waters said. “Putting away the toys.” He held up a short, black MP5 like the ones the UPS men had carried in their truck. “We can’t leave the equipment lying around unsecured.”
Did they think he would try to escape this meeting? It made him wonder if he should do it. No, he decided. Do your job and the worst you’ll get afterward is criticism.
“I’ll give you a hand,” he said.
“No, thanks,” said Waters. “I signed it out and I have to sign it in.” Waters didn’t move, but he ejected the magazine from the compact automatic rifle.
Carson walked toward the office doorway where Harper waited for him. They entered a room about fifteen feet square with two gray steel military-style desks and a swaybacked leather couch about ten feet long. There was only one door and no windows. The walls were covered with cheap wood-like paneling that had no pictures or decorations of any kind. Harper sat at the farthest steel desk and Julian sat on the couch. “What is this place?”
Harper said, “I don’t really know. I think I heard it was shipping and receiving for an import-export company that was off the books. No telling how long ago that was, because I’ve been here three times now, over a period of about twenty years.”
Julian didn’t ask about the other times. He didn’t want to listen to Harper’s story, and he had grown accustomed to the safe policy of not asking questions. Everything was classified. Everything was need to know. He didn’t need to know about some shit that happened twenty years ago.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, and Julian watched with satisfaction as Harper began to get restless.
Julian swung his feet up and reclined on the big couch, cradling his head in his hands and looking at the ceiling. He closed his eyes and sighed in comfort just loudly enough for Harper to hear. He thought through everything he had seen this afternoon. For these people a plan was never just a plan, something that everybody on the job knew and followed. There was always a plan within the plan, and probably one or two inside those, like layers of an onion.
He had been assigned to meet with the old man and accept his money. He had known where to go, and known there would be a UPS truck parked around the corner big enough to carry twenty million dollars in whatever form it came. If the meeting went badly, they could carry the old man’s wounded or dead body instead—or Julian’s.
But that hadn’t been the plan, really. That was just the outer layer. He wasn’t exactly sure what happened to the other parts of the plan, but there seemed to have been a screwup. Julian thought it over again. Whatever else had happened, he had done his job. Because he had shown up and risked his life, the money had been wired back to the government. He had gone to the UPS truck as scheduled, and been taken off. Those were the facts that mattered—his facts.
Harper’s phone rang. He said, “Yes?” Then after a couple of seconds he put the phone into his pocket. “They’re here.”
Julian Carson sat up slowly, swung his legs off the couch to the floor, and sat up straight. After another thirty seconds the door opened and admitted three men to the room. The two senior agents who had never been introduced to Carson sat behind the unoccupied desk and Waters sat beside Harper on the other.
The gray-haired man who seemed to be the ranking agent said, “Well, Carson. We implemented your suggestion. What did we get?”
“The old man showed up. He told me that he had sent the twenty million dollars to the government.”
“We didn’t see any money. He screwed you.”
“He said he had arranged an electronic transfer to the United States Treasury.”
The agent’s eyes narrowed and he sat in silence for a moment. Then he took out a cell phone and hit a programmed number with his thumb. He said, “Our operator says the subject wired twenty million dollars to the US Treasury.” He listened. “Yeah. Just like a tax payment. Check it out.” He looked at Julian Carson. “For the moment, all we’ve got is what he told you. Suppose it turns out to be true. Wh
at then?”
Julian shrugged. “That decision would be above my rank.”
“We’re all just a bunch of civil servants, trying to feel our way along. What do you think should happen to him?”
“He offered a deal. If he delivered the money, we would tell the Libyans he was dead and leave him alone. We agreed to the deal.”
“So, if the money is in the Treasury Department’s account where we can’t get our hands on it, we should still tell Faris Hamzah: ‘Sorry, he’s dead and you get nothing.’“
“Faris Hamzah is the important Libyan?” said Julian. “The deal with the old man doesn’t prevent the United States from doing something to keep him happy, too.”
“That’s what we’re after? The pursuit of happiness for all of our double agents and informants and contractors?”
Julian noted the inclusion of contractors on the list. He was technically an independent contractor. He said, “If Mr. Hamzah is smart, he’d welcome the news that the old man was dead, so he could stop recruiting amateur hit men. The ones he sent couldn’t find their way across Chicago and back. When I drove them to the apartment and let them in, the old man killed them both without raising a sweat.”
“Good point. He also killed one in Vermont and two on the way to Chicago,” the senior agent said. “In all, he’s killed five men in the past year, all of them sent by our friend and ally. That’s not counting the guards he killed stealing the money thirty-five years ago, and the guerrillas in the hills who died because their supplies were cut off.”
Julian said, “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m still pretty sure things didn’t happen the way Faris Hamzah says they did. If the old man could steal the money from Hamzah, he must have delivered it to him first. And if Hamzah had the money, but didn’t deliver it to the fighters as soon as he got it, what was he waiting for?”
The senior agent’s phone rang. “Yes?” He listened. “Thank you.” He looked at Julian again. “He did send twenty million dollars to the United States Treasury.”
Julian sensed that the pause was to give him a chance to step into a trap, so he said nothing and waited.
The senior agent said, “Which means it’s lost.”
Julian’s brows knitted, and the agent knew he meant: “Why lost?”
“We can never get our hands on the money. Congress sets our budget. The commanding officer of military intelligence can’t walk up to the chairman of the intelligence committee and say, ‘Thirty-five years ago one of our own operators stole twenty million dollars from an operation. We hushed it up at the time, and so did everybody since then, but now the money has been returned to the Treasury, so we want it.’ “
“I guess we should have told the old man how you wanted the money returned,” Julian said.
“Do you know why we didn’t?”
“Because we didn’t think he would live up to the agreement?”
“No,” said the senior agent. “Because it never mattered whether he did or not. This isn’t about getting back the money from a thirty-five-year-old operation. Thirty-five years might as well be a million years. We’re in the business of furthering our country’s interests in the present. Our job isn’t to salvage some dismal screwup from a generation ago. It’s to move the ball forward a few yards today. Our job is about today. The objective today is to strengthen the bond between the United States and the leader of an important faction in Libya. Nothing else. So what has today’s work contributed to that?”
“I don’t know,” said Julian.
“We’ve sent the already-bloated Treasury a sum of money that in the three and a half trillion dollars of the annual budget isn’t even a rounding error. We also made a scene in a major American city and got two agents beaten half to death in a subway station. We let a rogue agent who has killed five men this year disappear once again like a fart in a hurricane.”
Harper’s train of thought seemed to have been running a slightly divergent course during this discussion, but it converged with the conversation again. “That guy must have been a beast when he was in his prime.”
The senior agent contemplated Harper for a period of two seconds, and then said, quietly, “He’s in his prime. Right now.”
18
Late that night Marcia Dixon drove south on Route 1 beside the Pacific Ocean. Hank was slouching in the passenger seat looking out at the reflection of the moon on the surface. The black water looked as though it were covered in wrinkles, but he knew that up close they were rank after rank of four-foot swells. Marcia cleared her throat and said, “Do you think there’s any chance we can stop to see Sarah?”
“Any chance?” Hank said. His response bought him a few seconds to think. The worst thing he could do now was to say absolutely not, because that would ensure that she would make an amateur attempt on her own. “We’d have to find a way to do it without getting her, you, or me killed. To the chasers you’re either a kidnap victim or an accomplice, so your daughter’s phone will be tapped and her computer hacked. That’s why I had you call her as soon as we were out of Chicago. After that it became too dangerous.”
“What if I used a go-between?” said Marcia. “She has a couple of friends she’s mentioned a lot since she started law school. One of them used to be her roommate before she started living alone.”
He said, “Can you trust her?”
“Yes. They’re still good friends.”
“What I mean is, can you trust her to say nothing if she’s surrounded by four federal agents who tell her being silent will get her sent to prison?”
“I don’t think so. That’s a lot to ask.”
“Sarah knows that you’re not in Chicago anymore. She thinks that you’re safely out of the country. Visiting her now can only worry her and put you both in danger. And that’s if it goes perfectly. You told her to expect to be out of touch for a time.”
“When can I be in touch?” said Marcia. “Never?”
“No. When it’s safe.”
“We’re heading in the direction of Los Angeles right now. It’s night. After what happened in San Francisco, they must think we’re as far from California as we can get.”
“Maybe you’re right,” he conceded. “They won’t expect me to do anything risky again for a while. Maybe if we keep it simple and quick, we can pull this off.”
“You seem different,” Marcia said.
“How am I different?” he said.
“This is the first time since we left Chicago that you forgot to mention that we’re doomed. What’s changed?”
“I’m still doomed,” he said. “But at the moment we’re free, driving along a moonlit sea. I haven’t seen anybody following us away from San Francisco.”
“Come on.”
“I think it was the money,” he said. “Hiding was hard and frightening, and forcing my family to lie and use false names was worse. But now, I realize how much the money bothered me too. I wanted to believe I wasn’t the bad guy, but I still had the money. As long as I kept it I was a thief.”
“And now you don’t have it,” she said.
“Nope. The US Treasury Department has the twenty million. It’s out of my hands.”
“So now you’re a happy pauper.”
“I’m not a pauper. I invested the money over thirty years ago, and the investments did well. But what’s left is invested in names that haven’t been compromised yet. If I send the money from those accounts to the government too, then those identities will be burned, including Henry and Marcia Dixon. If we run out of people to be, we’ll be caught or killed.”
“If we’re still in danger, why are you letting me go see Sarah?”
“Because I can’t stop you.”
They reached Los Angeles late that night and Hank drove to UCLA to look around, but didn’t drive past Sarah’s apartment. Hank skirted the block and looked down the street from the intersection to try to detect any surveillance operations in nearby buildings or spot surveillance vehicles parked in the street. But Sarah’s apartmen
t building was one of several, so there would be dozens of windows that faced hers.
“I don’t see anybody who might be watching her place,” Hank said.
“Good,” said Marcia.
“But I wouldn’t necessarily see them from here.” Hank decided not to tell her the rest. This wasn’t some gang of criminals who had been searching for him. They could be watching Sarah’s apartment from one of the geosynchronous satellites that were always over this part of California. Her computer could easily be monitored. They could have planted microphones and cameras in Sarah’s car and her apartment, and be using her phone’s GPS to track her movements. Equipment hidden in her television cable box could be sending reports every second. They could be watching her a hundred ways at once.
But they might not be. Sarah wasn’t connected with him directly. She had visited her mother only twice during the time Peter Caldwell was living in Chicago. Military intelligence had seen him in San Francisco only a day ago, and he had been alone. If they believed he had killed Zoe McDonald, they would have no reason to watch her daughter.
Hank drove to John Wayne Airport in Orange County and rented a silver Nissan Altima. At a private parking lot for the airport he paid to park his BMW for a few days. Next he drove the Altima to a hotel near Disneyland and slept for the night.
The next morning Hank drove Marcia to the mall in Costa Mesa and helped her pick out clothes for Sarah. She chose clothes that every young woman in the area seemed to be wearing that fall—tight designer jeans, knee-high leather boots, and big-necked loose shirts. She bought a short dark-brown wig and oversized sunglasses. Hank told her not to make Sarah look like anyone, but like everyone.
While they were in the wig store Marcia also bought a shoulder-length wig that was light brown with blond highlights. At a nearby store she bought a black suit and white blouse, a small pair of earrings, and a matching necklace. When she tried on the outfit she looked as though she had just left work at a bank or a law firm. She added sunglasses that obscured the blue of her eyes and made her face seem smaller. At another store she bought makeup that made her skin look a shade darker and her lips thinner. At a giant drugstore she bought dark dye for Hank’s hair.