The Blacklist--The Beekeeper No. 159

by Steven Piziks

  “And who is this whale?” Keen asked.

  Reddington tapped the fedora on his lap. “Dr. Benjamin Griffin. Also known as the Beekeeper.”

  “Really?” Ressler said dryly. “We’re going to sting the Beekeeper and take his honey? Have tea and scones?”

  “Very droll, sir,” Stuart said. “But the Beekeeper is dangerous, quite dangerous indeed. The bees he keeps are actually people. He… keeps them. The Bodysnatcher brings him people, and he incorporates them into his hive. They work for him. They obey him. And they love him. Indeed, they do.”

  Keen shuddered and touched her scar. “How does he manage that?”

  “The good doctor was quite the renowned psychologist and pharmacologist in his day,” Reddington said. “He worked with the military for years, trying to perfect techniques to quash individual thought and create a sort of groupthink, as it were. But his work with drugs and chemicals proved too controversial for even our boys and girls in uniform. They ended his relationship with them, quite emphatically, as I recall. Angry but undaunted, he went underground. Quite literally.”

  “Wait.” Keen tapped at her phone, then made a face. She barely had one bar. The mountains must be interfering. At last she got an internet connection. “Is it this guy?”

  She showed them a picture of a gray-haired man, clean-shaven, thick glasses. Both Reddington and Stuart peered at it.

  “That is he,” said Stuart. “Though that photo seems to be at least twenty years old.”

  “Wow.” Keen put the phone back in her pocket. “Benjamin Griffin. We learned about him in Behavioral Sciences. He had created an entire army within the army—a bunch of soldiers who obeyed him instead of their commanding officers. They gave him classified information, secret documents, even access to research facilities that no civilian knows existed. It was a masterpiece of group thought and crowd manipulation—and a horror. When he was found out, his army fought to the death for him. It was a little civil war at the base. Worst of it was that it was friend against friend. Griffin escaped and no one knows what happened to him. The army rounded up the guys he’d brainwashed, but it took an entire team of therapists to undo everything he did. It was horrible.”

  “Which is why it’s incumbent that we catch him now,” Reddington agreed. “The problem has always been that the Beekeeper keeps himself well hidden. But Stuart here got a rare lead on him through the Bodysnatcher. We follow the Bodysnatcher, we find the Beekeeper.”

  Keen took her phone out again and checked it.

  “Poor signal out here—”

  “The mountains,” Ressler agreed.

  “—but the tracker says the Bodysnatcher’s van is still about two miles ahead of us.” She double-checked the map coordinates, then checked the map on her phone. This was a pain in the ass. “He seems to be heading into the Sumter National Forest.”

  “That would make sense,” Ressler said. “Big chunk of federal land. Isolated. Heavily wooded in the Appalachians. Easy to hide in there. Could you speed up some more, Dembe?”

  Dembe glanced over his shoulder at Reddington, who nodded, and the car picked up speed. The van behind stayed with them. Keen kept her eyes on the little red dot. Now they were gaining.

  A silence fell inside the car, an oddly uncomfortable one. Keen shifted in her seat. Ressler stared out the window, and Dembe kept his eyes on the road.

  After a moment, Keen found herself saying, “How do you know Reddington, Stuart?”

  “I don’t believe we have time—” Reddington said.

  “Now that’s a story,” Stuart interrupted. “Red stayed with my wife Vivian and me for… quite some time when he was a young man, even younger than you are, my dear. It was almost like we were a family, in some ways.”

  Keen did some math in her head.

  “That was not long after you… left the Naval Academy, then?”

  Reddington turned his head sideways in that gesture she found both familiar and infuriating. He used it whenever he wanted to change the subject.

  “Stuart and I have quite a history. Did I mention his wife Vivian is a descendant of the Gorey family?”

  “The ones with the house and the slaves and the silver?” Keen said, surprised.

  “The very same.” Reddington chuckled. “After the war, a branch of the Goreys went back to England. Stuart and Vivian spent years looking for that buried treasure. Nothing but torn trousers and broken cuticles to show for it.”

  Stuart blushed lightly. “Don’t let’s go into that, Red. You owe me, you know. Vivian and I taught you a great deal. Without us, you wouldn’t be where you are today.”

  “Is that so?” Keen interjected, leaning a little closer. It was rare to hear anything about Reddington’s past, especially where it didn’t involve Keen herself. “What was your interest?”

  Here Stuart’s eyes took on a faraway look.

  “Purely selfish. Viv and I never had children, and it was nice having a young person about to pass on our accumulated wisdom.”

  “Wisdom? Is that what you call it?” Reddington raised an eyebrow. “God knows where I would be now if I had followed your wisdom.” There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, then Reddington’s voice softened as he said, “If nothing else your aphorisms could certainly use some improvement.”

  “I took them from the greatest,” Stuart protested. “Never give a fool a break.”

  “Sucker,” Ressler said. “It’s sucker.”

  “Vulgar,” Stuart said. “Also, you draw more flies with honey than motor oil.”

  “Vinegar,” Reddington corrected almost absently.

  “Does that make it any less true?” Stuart responded. He ticked off his fingers. “Never let emotions cloud a deal. Don’t let your concern for someone else endanger your safety. That kept you alive more than once.”

  Keen blinked. “Really? You taught Reddington that?”

  “Vivian learned it to her great dismay,” Reddington said.

  Keen was multi-tasking, keeping an ear on the conversation and checking the tracker at the same time. The latter had frozen due to a lack of signal. But even as she watched, it found a signal again and updated. The Bodysnatcher was a mile ahead of them. Traffic on the road was light, at least, so they’d have no trouble spotting him. Stuart’s comment, however, brought her head up.

  “What happened to Vivian?” she asked.

  “I know a few embarrassing stories about your Mr. Reddington, too,” Stuart said, ignoring the question.

  Keen let it pass. “Tell, then!”

  “Stuart—” Reddington said.

  Stuart leaned back in his seat. “I remember when Red was a young man and he had his eye on a young lady who lived a few houses up the road.”

  “Stuart, don’t you dare,” Reddington warned, but there was more than banter beneath his words.

  Keen looked at both men sharply. Her trained eye picked out a stiffness in their posture, an overly succinct pronunciation of their words. It pointed to a definite tension growing between them.

  “No way. You have to go on,” Ressler urged, oblivious.

  Stuart’s eyes flicked toward Reddington.

  “Well, somehow he managed to get the girl’s phone number, and he decided to write a poem about how he felt about her.”

  “You wrote adolescent love poetry?” Ressler said in utter delight.

  “It wasn’t adolescent,” Reddington sniffed. “It was a Petrarchan sonnet, and I would match mine against anything the old Italian bastard wrote. Stuart certainly wouldn’t appreciate it. His poetry all begins There once was a man from Nantucket.”

  “Whatever, man,” Ressler said from the front seat. “You wrote a love poem.”

  “You might try it sometime, Donald. Women respond to men who show them actual emotion.”

  “Red did more than write a sonnet,” Stuart said. “He rang the girl up and proceeded to read it to her. He had just finished the final couplet when the voice on the other end said, ‘I think you meant this for my
daughter, love.’”

  Keen burst out laughing. “No! You read a love poem to your girlfriend’s mother?”

  “In my defense,” Reddington said, “they sounded exactly alike on the phone.”

  Stuart was patting back a laugh. “We’ve never let him forget it, Vivian and I. Or, we didn’t.”

  “What did happen to Vivian, then?” Keen repeated.

  Before anyone could answer, Keen’s phone buzzed. It was Aram.

  “Where the heck are you going?” he demanded.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I was away from the keyboard for a second because I had all this coffee from that new place Navabi found up on North Avenue? She’s gotten me addicted to their salted caramel lattes, but then I have to run to the bathroom every—”

  “Aram,” Keen interrupted.

  “Oh, right.” Aram coughed. “Anyway, when I got back, I saw you guys have really booked it south of your previous location. What did you do—get into a race car?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Keen glanced out the window at serene trees and foothills. “We’re going at a normal speed. The Bodysnatcher’s van is—”

  “You’re something like ten miles farther south of your previous location,” Aram cut in. “Not far from Fort Daymon, in fact.”

  “I’ve never heard of Fort Daymon.”

  “Military base. Army. Seriously—don’t… geography of… country?”

  “Aram, we’re nowhere near any military base.” Pause. “Aram?”

  “Hello? Hello? Keen, I… can’t—”

  The signal cut out. Keen made a face.

  “What’s going on?” Ressler asked.

  “Aram thinks we’re near some military base. Fort Demon or something.”

  “Daymon,” Ressler corrected. “Geez, that’s miles away from here. He’s way off.”

  “We seem to have reached the forest,” Stuart said blithely.

  A left turn with a large wooden sign meant to be reminiscent of a log cabin proclaimed they could enter the Sumter National Forest. Dembe took the turning and Ressler pulled out his phone.

  “Better send an update back home,” he said, then frowned. “I’m not getting a signal.”

  Keen checked her own phone again. No bars. The tracker’s signal still worked, however, and it reported the Bodysnatcher’s van a short distance ahead of them in the park. She relayed this to the group.

  “The mountains interfere with cell phones,” Reddington said.

  “But not a walkie-talkie signal,” Keen said. “That seems weird.”

  Reddington’s car and the FBI van glided into the park. A ranger in a brown uniform stood guard. This was going to get sticky. Normally any FBI agent could flash a badge and get in, but no one was carrying ID. Not only that, Keen hadn’t had a chance to resolve whether or not Stuart knew about Reddington’s relationship with the FBI. She was operating on the assumption that he thought she and Ressler worked for Reddington. Before she could consider the problem further, Reddington rolled his window down and showed a card to the ranger on duty. He waved them by with a smile.

  “I’m a member in good standing of the park society,” Reddington explained. “Free admission is one of the perks.”

  Dembe guided the car along a twisting road. The speed limit was fifteen miles per hour, but the moment they got out of sight of the ranger station, he sped past that. A mile into the park, Keen checked her phone again—still no signal. The red dot was on the move.

  “There’s a road ahead on the right,” Keen said. “Take it.”

  “How big is this place?” Ressler asked.

  “Just over five hundred eighty square miles,” Stuart said. “A third the size of your state of Connecticut. Between the mountains and forests and caves, a number of people become lost in here every year.”

  “Fantastic,” Keen growled. They were now several miles into the park and they hadn’t encountered a single other vehicle. Nothing but thick forest and slanted mountainside. Keen, born and raised a city girl, had no idea where she was or how to find her way without checking her phone.

  “Hurry up,” Ressler said to Dembe.

  “We will not lose him,” Dembe replied. “In fact… there!”

  He pointed ahead of them. A white van was just turning down a gravel side road. Keen wondered who the Bodysnatcher had locked inside it. They must be terrified, sure they were alone and about to die.

  We’re coming, she thought. We’re almost there. Hang on!

  But who was this Beekeeper? Keen thought about a man who had a mass of people stuffed into a house or a basement somewhere, people who had been tortured and brainwashed into loving him and obeying him. Like any decent psychologist, she knew quite a lot about both cults and Stockholm syndrome, ways in which ordinary people could be persuaded to think in abnormal ways. With a combination of isolation, poor food, sleep deprivation, and other conditioning methods, a charismatic leader could persuade nearly anyone into following him—and it was always a him. Keen had never heard of a cult led by a woman, unless you counted Clementine Barnebet, who had allegedly persuaded a dozen people to commit ax murder on her behalf, but that had been over a hundred years ago and evidence of her group being a cult was spotty.

  Benjamin Griffin, the Beekeeper, would be another animal entirely. He wasn’t interested in killing. He brainwashed people into becoming his pets. Keen’s insides churned at the thought. Even after years of studying the underside of the human psyche at the FBI Academy and more years of pursuing it in the field with the Post Office, she couldn’t get past how horrific people could be. She had caught criminals who dissolved victims into soup, who had tortured and killed members of their own family, who had mutilated women and smiled all the while, but she didn’t fully understand their reasoning. Sure, she knew the theory—most of the time it was a need for control mixed up with bone-chilling childhood trauma and abuse—and she had learned how to think like these terrible people, but she still didn’t have a perfect instinct, one that let her get fully into the head of a killer or his victim.

  A part of her was glad about that.

  The Bodysnatcher’s van was less than fifty yards ahead of them now, and the road had deteriorated into a dirt track. Keen leant forward, halfway into Ressler’s seat. Abruptly, the black van swerved and spun to face them. Keen’s heart jumped, and she automatically reached for her holster. Dembe hit the brakes, jolting Keen off-balance. Behind them, the white van crunched to a halt on the gravel.

  A swarm of people burst from the woods and surrounded the white FBI van. They wore strange gas masks that hid their faces and gave them an insectoid look. Rifles and revolvers shone sleek and deadly in their hands.

  “Down!” shouted Keen.

  The swarm opened fire on the van. The crack of bullets and smash of glass filled the air. Rows of holes opened up in the metal. Its doors were flung open and FBI agents poured out. The first one was Gillford. He raised his weapon to fire, then dropped, caught by the swarm’s bullets. The pistol fell from his left hand. Keen’s breath caught in her throat.

  “No,” she whispered.

  One of the swarm also fell—and then another agent.

  Dembe wrenched the wheel around and hit the gas. The car spun sideways on the road so the passenger side was facing the besieged FBI van. Keen’s gaze was riveted on Gillford. He wasn’t moving, and the horrible hole in the side of his head told her everything she needed to know. She thought about Bethany. Who would teach her to swear now?

  “Damn it!” Ressler said.

  The spell broke.

  “Ressler!” Keen shouted. “We have to get these guys to safety!”

  Dembe was already moving. Since he had turned the car, it now formed a rudimentary shield between him and the FBI van. The Bodysnatcher’s black van was behind him, but at the moment, it sat quiet and ignored—a lesser threat. Dembe reached into the back and with impressive strength, yanked the startled Reddington bodily over the front seat into the driver�
��s compartment before Reddington could even react. Then Dembe shoved open his own door and spilled out, his Glock in his hand. Fortunately, the swarm was concentrating its fire on the van. The smell of cordite hung in the air. Gillford’s body lay motionless on the road.

  “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” Stuart moaned.

  “Go!” Dembe snapped at Reddington. “To the trees! You too, Elizabeth! I will cover!”

  Reddington didn’t hesitate. He dove past Dembe and ran toward the tree line. One of the swarm noticed and aimed at him. Dembe fired first, and the swarmer dropped. Then Dembe vanished into the trees after Reddington. Seconds later, he fired from cover.

  “I’m taking Stuart,” Keen shouted to Ressler.

  Ressler scrambled across the car and out the driver’s door as well, keeping low. Bullets split the air, and Keen’s skull prickled. Any moment one would crack her head in half. The other agents were fighting back, but guns at close quarters when you were caught by surprise were terrifyingly ineffective. Blood flowed from a hundred wounds, and the screams of wounded men filled Keen’s ears.

  Ressler took aim with his pistol. It looked puny.

  “Go!” he shouted.

  Keen was already moving. She shoved her door open and dragged Stuart out.

  “Stay low!” she said.

  “I know how to exit a gunfight,” he snapped, and with surprising agility scuttled toward the tree line. Keen followed, leaving Gillford behind, hating herself for it, having no other choice.

  When she reached the trees, wood cracked and a warm line of blood scored her cheek. Keen dropped to her stomach and crawled into the undergrowth. After a moment, she realized Stuart Ivy was nowhere to be seen. Damn it, damn it, damn it! Where was he? And where was Reddington? The bushes were thick and they blocked her view. The gunfire and screams continued. Another bullet smacked into a tree less than a foot above her.

  Sweat ran down Keen’s back. A big part of her wanted to rush to the aid of her fellow agents, but another part of her pointed out that she was outnumbered, outgunned, and outmaneuvered. She needed to keep moving, find Reddington, find Stuart Ivy. Her jaw clenched.