The Blacklist--The Beekeeper No. 159

by Steven Piziks

  “Oh, they both came back,” Reddington said, “but neither one of them survived the war. And what with one thing and another, neither of them got around to telling anyone else where everything was buried. Each of them figured the other would always know.” Reddington shook his head. “Neither thought both would meet the Grim Reaper.”

  “What happened to Mamie?” Keen asked.

  “You know, I have no idea,” Reddington replied. “The Gorey family still lives in that house—it’s on the National Registry—so ultimately everything must have come out all right for her, but I’m sure she ate a great many carrots first.” He shot his cuffs and checked his watch. “We have half an hour before the Bodysnatcher leaves his lair. If we aren’t on that stretch of road in time, he’ll vanish into the wilds of Appalachia.”

  Keen set the timer on her cell phone for thirty minutes so she wouldn’t lose track.

  A minivan with tinted windows was waiting for them at the grain elevator. The van had six agents inside it, all in flak jackets, all strangers to Keen. They must have been from the South Carolina field office. None of them wore visible badges or FBI insignia. They had been told this was a covert operation and that the FBI’s involvement was to be kept quiet. This was the only way Reddington would allow himself to be involved—the criminal world had no idea Reddington was in bed with the FBI, though Keen rather doubted Reddington would put it that way.

  Ressler grabbed a shotgun and told the driver about the fake breakdown plan while Keen scootched into one of the bench-style passenger seats. The agents occupying it gave grudging ground, and Keen noticed with an internal sigh that she was the only woman in the van. Suddenly she very much wanted Navabi there, but she was two states away.

  “Let’s head out!” Ressler said.

  Keen let him run the show, even though it was her and Navabi’s plan. Not because she wanted to defer to him. She needed to think. Something else was happening here, something big, but she couldn’t see what it was.

  Keen’s cell phone read twenty-one minutes.

  The van rushed down the road. The agents made small talk and cracked dumb jokes like agents always did when they were nervous.

  “I’m Rob Gillford,” said the agent next to her. His holster pushed into Keen’s side, and it was on his right. Almost absently she noted this meant he must be left-handed.

  “Liz Keen,” she said.

  “Who is this guy we’re going after?” he said. “We didn’t get much of a briefing. They even ordered us to leave our IDs and badges behind. Some kind of bigwig thing, but they didn’t say what.”

  “I don’t know much either,” Keen said, semi-truthfully. “We got a tip that he’s a big-name kidnapper, and he has a high-level victim.”

  Gillford sighed. “Yeah, that’s all we got, too. We’re all mushrooms, I guess.”

  “Mushrooms?” Keen said with raised eyebrows.

  “Kept in the dark and fed sh—uh, manure.”

  Keen laughed, warming to his tone. “I’ve heard worse swear words than that, Agent Gillford. Believe me.”

  “Trying to break the habit,” Gillford said ruefully. “My little girl is learning to talk.”

  Little girl. Keen pushed unwanted thoughts and memories firmly away, but with limited success. “I can see where this is going.”

  “Yeah. The other day my computer crashed in the middle of a World of Warcraft quest, and I forgot she was in the room. Second after I finished swearing, I hear this little voice repeating a stream of bombs.”

  “Oh crap!” Keen said.

  “That’s definitely not what she said. My wife heard, and let me have it. So I’m off swearing for the next, oh, eighteen years.” He laughed. “You got kids?”

  Keen was expecting this. She had long ago decided what she would say when someone asked her this. Still, the question stung with unexpected sharpness. She hid behind her ready answer.

  “No. One day. What’s your daughter’s name?”

  “Bethany.”

  Keen nodded and let him talk about play dates and potty training, but her main attention was on the upcoming fight with the Bodysnatcher. And likely with Reddington. In her experience, Reddington never handed the FBI a Blacklister for free. He always stood to gain something from their capture—or death. Sometimes it was mere money—and here she could hear Reddington’s voice saying, I have expenses. My tailor doesn’t work for free. Sometimes it was revenge. Sometimes it was to get someone out of the way so one of Reddington’s schemes could move forward. In other words, Reddington wasn’t herding them toward the Bodysnatcher out of the goodness of his heart or out of a sense of justice. He wanted something. But what? What would a professional kidnapper who kept an obsessively low profile have to offer Reddington? She didn’t know, and it was frustrating. Reddington, of course, wouldn’t say.

  Twelve minutes on the cell phone.

  “The other day—it was so cute—Bethany wanted to tuck me into bed for a nap,” Gillford was saying. “I about melted.”

  As far as Keen knew, Reddington never lied to her. Exactly. Quite. But he often dodged questions or outright refused to answer. He doled out information at his own pace to suit his own purposes—or to help Keen. Sometimes his reasoning about what qualified as “help” was a little twisty, though, and even though he had always defended her in the past, she couldn’t bring herself to fully trust him. He knew more about her than he was telling.

  Keen realized she was stroking the Y-shaped scar at the base of her right hand. The spot had been burned when she was young, and after it healed she had developed the habit of stroking the shiny skin for comfort when she was nervous or unhappy, the same way a child might stroke a blanket. She always traced it the same way, starting at the base of the Y, running up the left side, around the top of the upstroke, down into the valley of the Y, back out again, and down the right side. It tickled just a little, and always made her feel better. Keen had tried a number of times to break herself of the habit, but had lately decided it was harmless, so why not? It wasn’t like she was smoking cigars or drinking bacon milkshakes. Except why was she doing it now?

  Six minutes on the cell phone.

  A silence from Gillford, and Keen realized with a start that he had asked her a question. She tried to backtrack and found she had no idea what he had said.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I spaced for a minute there. Nerves, you know?”

  “I hear that.” Gillford touched his revolver with his left hand, confirming Keen’s earlier suspicions.

  Nerves. She was nervous, and it made her stroke the scar. Keen did a quick run-down. A mission always made her nervous. They were about to apprehend a dangerous criminal, one who had a hostage. Who wouldn’t be nervous?

  But it was more than that. Something inside her was warning her that this whole mission was already going wrong.

  Up the Y, down the valley, up the other side, and down again. Hmm.

  “We almost there?” Gillford asked.

  Keen held up her phone so Gillford and the other agents could see.

  Three minutes.

  They all tensed. Keen leaned forward in her seat. They were cutting it close.

  The van reached an empty stretch of road that ribboned through forested foothills. Reddington’s rented car was hanging back about half a mile.

  Ressler checked the GPS. “This is it. Our guy better be right about this.”

  “Is he ever wrong?” Keen countered.

  “Who do you mean?” Gillford asked. “Your informant?”

  “Yep,” Keen said tightly.

  One minute.

  The driver twirled the wheel. The van spun sideways and blocked the road. Keen touched Gillford’s shoulder with a tight smile, then jumped out with Ressler, shut the doors, and popped the hood.

  Hot yellow sunshine melted over them and made the pavement shimmer with heat. Sweat burst out on Keen’s forehead. Ressler whipped off the yellow Isaia tie Reddington had admired, stuffed it into his pocket, and unbuttoned the t
op of his shirt, playing the part of the slightly rumpled husband on a long car trip. He leaned into the engine. Keen got the spare tire and the jack out of the back and tossed them onto the berm, where they’d be “accidentally” in the way of anyone who tried to drive around them, then stood back and pretended to talk on her cell phone. It annoyed her that Ressler was looking at the engine instead of her, but her skill as a profiler reminded her that most people still expected the husband to fiddle with the car while the wife called for help, and they didn’t want to make their target suspicious. A quicky undercover mission wasn’t the time to strike a blow for gender equality.

  Reddington’s car backed into a track that ran into the woods and hid there like a cop hungry to hand out tickets. He got to sit in AC comfort with a martini while they stood out here in the awful sun. How did it always happen this way? She wiped sweat from her face with her sleeve.

  Another van—white, its windows also tinted—slid into view. Keen’s heart quickened. She deliberately didn’t exchange a look with Ressler, whose backside was poking out from under the hood. He must be even more miserable than she was, with the heat of the engine gently roasting him.

  The other van drew closer. When it was maybe fifty yards away, Keen nodded, as if someone on her cell were saying something important, and looked up, apparently seeing the van for the first time. She put her phone away and waved both arms at it, putting a look of relief on her face.

  The van lurched over to the gravelly berm. For a bad moment, Keen thought the driver would try to drive over the junk she had strewn across the gravel and get away. Then the van stopped. Keen plastered on a smile and forced herself not to reach for her weapon. Ressler came around the hood, looking fake surprised.

  “Honey!” Keen sang out. “Maybe these people can help us.” But she did not trot over to the driver’s side of the van. Instead, she stood directly in front of the van, her chest tight as a drum. Mala Rudenko was in that van, alone and scared and sure she was going to die. Keen wouldn’t let that happen.

  We’re here, Mala, she thought. Just hold on a few more seconds.

  The van sat silent at the side of the road. Keen waved again.

  “Can you help?” she asked loudly. “My cell is running out of power.”

  Still no response. Keen went over possibilities in her head. She could wait. She could signal the team and they could pour out of their own van. She could—

  The white van’s door opened with a little squeak. Keen held her breath, but stayed where she was. Her skin prickled, and she wanted a Kevlar vest in the worst possible way.

  “Hey, sweetie.” Ressler trotted up, wiping his hands on a handkerchief. “Are these people able to call someone?”

  “I don’t know who it is yet, darling,” she said through clenched teeth.

  A figure stepped down from the van and came around the door. He was tallish and thin and wore a brown suit, nattily tailored. And he carried a hat that he clapped on his balding head. Keen blinked at this. Wispy tufts of gray hair poked out from underneath the hat, and the sun gleamed off a gold watch on his wrist. The man seemed to be in his late sixties, but still straight of back and joint. Keen suppressed a gape. This was the Bodysnatcher? He couldn’t win a wrestling match with a bag of cats, let alone kidnap a healthy adult.

  “You seem to be in a bit of trouble,” the man said in an English accent. “Could I be of assistance?”

  The minivan doors burst open. FBI agents exploded onto the road. In seconds, the man was surrounded by helmeted officers pointing pistols and rifles at his chest. Gillford held his pistol in a lefty grip. The man’s eyes widened slowly, as if he didn’t quite understand what he was seeing. His hands came up, shaking with either palsy or fear.

  “You can have my van,” he said in a frightened squeak. “Just don’t shoot. I have grandchildren.”

  “Who are you?” Ressler demanded from behind his own pistol.

  “I’m… that is…” he stammered.

  “Good heavens, gentlemen, put your weapons down.” Reddington came around the FBI minivan. “This isn’t the Bodysnatcher.”

  The guns didn’t move, and the man continued to look bewildered.

  “Who is he?” Keen asked.

  “This,” Reddington said, “is Stuart Ivy.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “That doesn’t exactly answer the question,” Keen said. She edged around to the open driver’s side door and peered in. At first glance, the van seemed to be empty. Anyone inside would have to be hidden in a secret compartment. No sign of Mala Rudenko. Keen downgraded the van from probable threat to unlikely threat.

  “Raymond Reddington!” Stuart Ivy said in his rolling accent. His hands were still up, but they had stopped shaking. “It’s about time you arrived. Though I wasn’t expecting so many rifles pointed at my head.”

  “Stand down,” Ressler said, and the agents obeyed.

  Reddington, meanwhile, gave the close-mouthed smile Keen recognized as the one he used when he greeted friends—and underworld contacts. He held out his arms. “Stuart!”

  “Red!” Stuart brought his hands down and embraced Reddington. “Really! We need to do more than just talk on the phone.”

  “I don’t like phones—” Reddington began.

  “—You never know who’s listening,” Stuart finished with a close-mouthed smile of his own, and both men laughed expansively.

  Utterly baffled now, Keen came around the front of the van.

  “Who is Stuart Ivy?”

  “Ah.” Reddington backed away from the man. “I’m being dreadfully rude. Stuart Ivy, may I present my associates Elizabeth Keen and Donald Ressler.” He pointedly didn’t introduce the other FBI agents, leaving Stuart to assume they were anonymous mercenaries or bodyguards.

  “We don’t really have time to talk,” Stuart said. “Might I suggest we hustle along, as you Americans like to say?”

  “Where’s the Bodysnatcher?” Ressler asked.

  “Still on his planned path.” Stuart checked his watch. “But I’m afraid your plan to catch him has changed a little.”

  “What is going on?” Keen snapped.

  “I am here solely to confirm a number of Mr. Reddington’s suspicions,” Stuart said. “The Bodysnatcher’s actual van is somewhat farther down the road. If we hurry, we can catch him up.”

  “Though you don’t want to catch him,” Reddington added. “You want to follow him.”

  “We’re going to need more than that,” Ressler growled.

  “The Bodysnatcher is a minnow on our little fishing expedition, Donald. I believe I already told you we were hunting a whale. Someone much higher on the list. I wasn’t entirely certain, but my good friend Stuart has just now confirmed everything, so we’re good to continue with the next stage.”

  “Mr. Ivy was your source of information for the Bodysnatcher, wasn’t he?” Keen said.

  “We really should move along,” Reddington said. “Not only will we lose the Bodysnatcher entirely, we’re still blocking the road.”

  “How are we going to find him if he isn’t even in sight?” Ressler said.

  “I assume your team is conversant with radio tracking,” Stuart said.

  “Yes,” Keen said warily.

  “An associate of mine placed a device on the Bodysnatcher’s van. This will follow it.” Stuart patted his pockets, came up with a tobacco tin, a folded travel toothbrush, and a safety pin before finding what looked like a smart phone. “That’s it! Give this to your driver and you’ll have the Bodysnatcher in no time!”

  “I’ll take it,” Keen said.

  The device showed a flashing red dot and map coordinates that Keen had to unscramble in her head.

  “He’s a couple miles away.”

  “Let’s ride in my car,” Reddington said. “The other van will be too crowded.”

  “What should we do about this van?” Gillford cocked a thumb at it. His left thumb.

  “That?” Stuart frowned. “Just something I picked up
. We can leave it.”

  Moments later, they were driving down the road again. Dembe and Ressler rode up front while Keen, Reddington, and Stuart Ivy sat in the rear. Reddington told Dembe to blast the AC on arctic, which Keen at first appreciated, but it quickly chilled the sweat on her scalp into a damp ice pack. Gillford was back in the FBI van, of course.

  Keen phoned Aram.

  “Can you follow a GPS tracker if I give you the frequency?” she asked.

  He snorted. “Give me something hard. I mean, something difficult. I wouldn’t want something hard. I mean, I would, but not a—”

  “I know what you mean,” Keen interrupted, and read the frequency numbers from Stuart’s device.

  There was a slight pause. “That’s not a GPS signal. Your tracker is using a weak frequency that I can’t follow up here. It’s more like a walkie-talkie.”

  “Huh.” Keen relayed this to the others.

  “Well, of course,” Stuart said. “A GPS signal can be tracked by outsiders. I wouldn’t carry such a thing on my person!”

  “Great,” Keen sighed. Then, to Aram: “Can you track my phone, then?”

  “I already am. You’re on the highway, heading south. Don’t…” The signal crackled in her ear. “…lose you.”

  Keen plugged her free ear with a finger. “Repeat that? You’re breaking up.”

  “I said, don’t worry—we won’t lose you.”

  The map function on Ivy’s phone showed a flashing red dot about two miles south of them. She reported this to Dembe and Ressler. Dembe sped up.

  “First things first,” Keen said. “Who are you, Mr. Ivy?”

  “Please call me Stuart,” he said. “I’ve known Red for a long, long time.” He glanced at Reddington with an expression that would, under most circumstances, pass for fondness. Keen, however, caught something else underlying. A tension. Even, dislike? She narrowed her eyes. This bore watching.

  “The first thing is actually what’s going on with the Bodysnatcher,” Ressler interrupted from the front. “And with Mala Rudenko.”

  “The Bodysnatcher is unwitting bait, Donald,” Stuart said. “Miss Rudenko is not in his van at the moment because he delivered her to the whale we are hunting some weeks ago. Right now, the Bodysnatcher is making another delivery to that whale, and we are following with our little harpoons.”