Vanished

by Joseph Finder

  I could see that it wasn’t just one building but an entire factory complex. Three identical block-long buildings parallel to one another, maybe a hundred feet apart, along the west side of the railroad tracks. Each building was four stories high. Broken windows boarded up. Occasional grimy smokestacks. The sort of place that, in a nicer part of a city, would have been converted into condos for yuppies five or ten years ago and named The Meat Factory or something.

  I easily stepped over a caved-in section of the chain-link fence.

  The no-man’s-land inside was littered with old tires and trash and broken bottles. The wind swirled plastic-bag tumbleweed. The buildings were covered with graffiti and plastered with DO NOT ENTER and CONDEMNED notices. It took me a good five minutes just to reach the end of the first building. Then over to the third building, where I found an old loading dock, boarded up like all the windows. Each building was at least a thousand feet long. Far longer than an average city block. More like the length of an east-west block in New York City.

  And there I waited.

  Looked around at the now-dark, desolate landscape, the wind whistling, the distant sound of car horns.

  I understood why they’d chosen the location, or at least I had a pretty good idea. From a distance, anyone watching through binoculars could see I’d come alone. I was on foot and had no backup-they’d made sure of that-and the site was so deserted that they could enter and exit and know they weren’t being followed.

  I also realized how vulnerable I was, standing here. One man alone, a pistol holstered to my ankle. No one covering me. The Paladin guys could be waiting inside the abandoned building, aiming sniper rifles through the gaps in the boards.

  They could take me out in seconds.

  But the truth was, they could have taken me out at any number of points if they’d wanted to. Killing me wasn’t going to solve their problems. They could have done that easily, long ago. Instead, they probably wanted to force information out of me, which would require taking me alive, as a hostage.

  The way they must have taken Roger. Or maybe they planned something like what had been done to Marjorie Ogonowski.

  But what could they want from me if they had Roger already?

  Or else they really meant what they said, and they simply wanted the RaptorCard back. It was, in my hands, truly a threat. It would enable me to access their computer files.

  So maybe they actually did want to trade Roger for that little piece of hardware. Maybe this truly was a swap. The way East and West used to exchange imprisoned spies on the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin.

  Maybe. Or maybe not.

  At that point, though, I had no more leverage. Not if I wanted to see my brother again.

  I waited a little longer. Reached down and pulled the Ruger from its holster. Thumbed the safety up to the ready position.

  My phone rang: a call, not a text message. Garvin.

  “Where are you?” I said.

  “No goddamned cabs around here. I had to call for one. I’m waiting. Where are you?”

  I told him.

  “Get out of there,” he said. “Don’t do anything until I get there.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t control the timing here.”

  “You can if you want to. Just leave.”

  “No. Get over here as soon as you can.”

  “Heller, you idiot.”

  “Just get here when you can,” I said, and I ended the call.

  Then I heard the squeal of tires, and two vehicles careened around each end of the building, the timing synchronized. Two black Humvees barreling toward me.

  I stood still.

  Looked to either side.

  The two Humvees pulled up about thirty to forty feet in front of me, nose-to-nose, two feet apart, their brakes screeching. Dark-tinted windows: I couldn’t see inside. Mud on the license plates.

  I waited. The Ruger in my right hand, at my side. The driver’s side door of the Hummer on my right opened, and a guy got out. Tall, bullet-headed, his head shaven down to the skin. Odd-shaped head, too. He looked like a human-sized penis.

  In his hand was not a gun but something small and oblong that looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t immediately identify.

  “Don’t move,” the guy said.

  “I’m not,” I said.

  He held up the device. A garage-door opener, I realized, but I knew what it was for.

  “Drop the weapon.”

  “Convince me.”

  “This is a detonator,” the penis-shaped man said. “Do anything sudden, and your brother dies.”

  “Just like that, huh?”

  “Drop the gun.”

  “Drop it? Rather not scratch the finish.”

  “Drop it now.”

  “Why?”

  “You want to find out?”

  I didn’t. I lowered the Ruger, safety still off, still fire-ready, and set it gingerly on the hard-packed earth.

  He signaled with his free hand, and the back door on the other vehicle opened. I heard it open, didn’t see it. Heard voices. Commands uttered in a low voice. A figure came around the far side of the car, walked between the two vehicles, stopped to the right of the bullet-headed guy.

  A figure in baggy, shapeless clothes. Dun-colored overalls that were too big for him, under an old trench coat.

  Roger.

  PART THREE

  We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

  – GOETHE

  86.

  He looked as if he’d been drugged. He appeared even older and more haggard than in the picture they’d sent me. He was sweating profusely.

  “Nick,” he said, his voice cracking.

  “Stop right there,” the bullet-headed guy barked to Roger.

  “Hey, Red Man,” I said softly.

  “Hold up the card,” the guy said. “Take it out slowly.”

  I pulled it from my pocket, held it up.

  “You understand the deal,” he said.

  I nodded. Roger was wearing some kind of vest, maybe a fly-fishing vest, that had been rigged up with blocks of M112 demolition charges wrapped in olive drab Mylar film. C4 explosive, army-manufacture. I could have recognized them a mile away. Wires came out of each block. The whole thing duct-taped to him. Sloppy, but professional.

  He was a walking bomb.

  A second guy got out of the Humvee on the left, the same one Roger had emerged from. He, too, was holding a garage-door opener in one hand and a pistol in the other. That guy was beefy, had a goatee. A real type. Like Neil Burris, like a hundred other guys I’d served with.

  Both Humvees had been left idling. This was going to happen quickly. They wanted to make a speedy getaway.

  “Here’s how it’s going to go down,” the first guy said. “Your brother’s going to get the card from you and hand it to me. I check it out. If it’s good, I take off his vest.”

  “Sounds like you don’t want to get too close to me,” I said.

  “Try anything stupid, one of us hits the detonator. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “In case you’re thinking maybe you grab your gun and try to take us both out, lemme tell you, you don’t want to do that. The detonators are on a dead man’s switch. So either of us lets go, the bomb goes off. Then there’s a pressure switch on the vest, and you don’t know where it is. You try to take off the vest, it’s gonna blow, and both of you get vaporized. You getting all this?”

  “Seems sort of complicated.”

  “It’s not. It’s real simple. Don’t play games, and you and your brother go home. All there is to it.”

  I glanced at Roger. His eyes were closed, and he appeared to be trembling.

  “No,” I said.

  “Excuse me?” the first guy said.

  “No,” I repeated. “I hand you the RaptorCard, what’s going to stop you from setting off the vest and killing us both anyway? Your sense of honor?”

  The second guy said, “We don’t need this. Let’s get out of h
ere.”

  “Here’s how it’s going to go down,” I said. “I’ll hand my brother the card. Only you’re going to stand right next to him. Then you take off the vest, and he gives it to you. And we all go home.”

  There was a beat of silence. The goateed guy looked at the bald guy.

  They really wanted to keep their distance from me. I suppose I should have been flattered.

  The bald guy nodded. “Go,” he said to Roger.

  Roger walked toward me slowly, unsteady on his feet. By then, his eyes were open, and staring, and frightened. His face was ashen. As he approached, the two Paladin guys watched, gripping their detonators, thumbs at the ready.

  Roger seemed to be trying to tell me something with his eyes. I looked at him as he came closer, step by step.

  He was shaking his head ever so subtly.

  Telling me No.

  I gave him a puzzled look in return: What do you mean?

  He mouthed the word No.

  He was just a few feet away. Slowly he reached out his left hand. Dad’s Patek Philippe was on his wrist.

  I handed him the RaptorCard.

  He whispered, “They’re going to kill us both.”

  I shook my head.

  He spoke a little louder: “I won’t let them kill you, Nick.”

  His eyes were wide. “Run,” he said.

  I whispered back: “No.”

  The bald guy shouted, “Hey, let’s move it!”

  “Run,” he whispered again.

  “No,” I told him.

  Suddenly he lurched to his right. He spun, raced toward the Hummer on the left. Collided with the goateed guy. Knocked him to the ground.

  The detonator dropped to the ground.

  But nothing happened. There was no dead man’s switch on the detonator. That had been a lie. What else were they lying about?

  Then I saw Roger fling the car door wide open, ramming it into the goateed guy just as he was getting back to his feet, knocking him over again.

  “No!” I shouted. “Roger, don’t!”

  “Hey!” the bald guy shouted.

  Roger leaped into the Hummer, and I propelled myself toward the bald man, slamming his body to the ground. His detonator went flying, and even as I had him down on the ground, I braced myself for a terrible explosion.

  But nothing happened that time either.

  The Hummer roared to life, speeded forward, raced to the end of the building. The bald guy wrenched himself free of me and jumped into the other vehicle. The goateed guy vaulted into the car as well, and it took off in pursuit of Roger.

  One of the garage-door openers still lay on the ground, abandoned by the bald guy.

  I picked up the Ruger and took off on foot, but both Hummers were gone. I could hear them squealing around a corner, then I heard the screech of brakes.

  Shouted voices.

  I kept running. They must have headed him off. Trapped him.

  I ran.

  About five seconds later the explosion came, deafeningly loud, a blast as loud as anything I’d ever heard in wartime, echoing off the buildings. And I knew what had happened. They’d set off the C-4.

  But I kept running.

  I reached the end of the building, looped around, saw nothing.

  I ran until there was a stitch in my side so painful it almost brought me to a halt, but I ran through it.

  A yellow-orange blaze illuminated the sky on the far side of the next building over.

  As I raced, I did something I’d never done before: I prayed.

  Then I reached the second building and saw the conflagration. A bonfire twenty feet high. The wreck of a Hummer, its carcass barely visible behind the veil of flame.

  “No!” I shouted.

  Only one car. The other was gone.

  I got to within twenty feet of the fiery wreck before the wall of heat hit me. I stopped, tried to get closer. The Hummer’s windows had blown out. Shattered glass was strewn for dozens of feet.

  I shouted, moved in closer, saw the shape inside.

  A hand clutching the pillar between where the driver’s window had been and the window behind it. A human hand, yes, but blackened. Burned almost to a husk.

  Roger’s wedding ring on one of its fingers.

  On its charred wrist was my father’s Patek Philippe.

  87.

  Afterward, I wandered the streets of West Baltimore for a long while. I don’t know how long. I lost track of time. I felt my cell phone vibrate several times but ignored it.

  Eventually I answered the phone and heard Garvin’s voice.

  He came by in a Maryland cab and took me to the Union Station parking garage. A long, silent ride. Expensive, too. My jeans and sweatshirt were ripped and soiled and reeked of smoke, and pretty soon the entire cab smelled of it, too.

  I retrieved the Defender, drove over to Lauren’s house, and let myself in.

  I’D FACED all sorts of danger back in the day, in Bosnia and Iraq. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell Lauren what had just happened. I couldn’t bear to tell her-and Gabe-that I’d failed them after all.

  I’d made a promise to Gabe, and I’d broken it.

  As devastating as my brother’s death had been, the thought of telling Lauren and Gabe about it was worse.

  I needed to make things right before I could face them. So I quickly and quietly gathered up some of my things from the guest room, intending to slip out of the house while they both slept and head over to my apartment.

  Gabe was in the hallway when I emerged.

  “What are you doing awake?” I whispered.

  “You smell like smoke.”

  “Yeah,” I said, my hand on the doorknob. “It’s late. You should be asleep.”

  I had to get away from him because I was afraid I couldn’t hold things in anymore. I didn’t want to be the one to tell him about his father. That was his mother’s responsibility.

  “Something wrong?” he said.

  I pulled him into me and gave him a hug, long and hard.

  When he let go, he said, “What was that for?”

  “I need to leave,” I said. “I just wanted to say good-bye, and I wanted you to know I love you. And that I’ll always be there for you. No matter what happens. Okay? You can’t get rid of me so easy.”

  Gabe looked even more confused at my words. “Did something happen?”

  I ignored the question. “Oh, and you know how you’re always asking me to teach you how to use a gun?”

  “You serious?” he said, excited.

  “No, nothing like that. Next best thing. I left you a Taser. It’s in the TV room.”

  “Awesome,” he said.

  “It’s not a toy.”

  “Dude, I know that.”

  “It’s only for emergencies.”

  “Sure. Of course. Cool!”

  “You’ll figure it out. You don’t need me for that.”

  “Okay, Uncle Nick.”

  “But Gabe? Read the manual, okay?”

  “Okay.” He paused. “Uncle Nick, where are you going?”

  “I just have another job to do,” I said.

  88.

  When I got back to my loft, I fell fast asleep on the couch, still wearing my ripped and filthy jeans and sweatshirt and boots. At around eight in the morning my cell phone woke me up. My head was pounding, and my clothes gave off the stench of an ashtray, and for a moment I forgot where I was and what had happened.

  And then I remembered.

  “Nick.” It was Dorothy Duval. “Did I wake you?”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I had to get up to answer the phone anyway.”

  “Sorry about that. But you left me a voice mail last night?”

  “Oh, yeah. Right.”

  “You okay? You sound lousy.”

  I told her about how the swap had gone bad, and we talked for a while. I’d never heard her sound so gentle. “You know, I did get into your brother’s e-mail after all. And I found that woman’s cell phone
number.”

  “Woman?” I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “She called herself Candi Dupont, but her real name is Margaret Desmond. But I guess this is a little late, huh? I’m sorry, Nick.”

  I SPENT a fair amount of time examining the Defender for any tracking devices until I was satisfied there weren’t any. Then I left my cell phone and BlackBerry in my loft, just to make sure the GPS locator chips inside them couldn’t be used against me, and I gave Garvin and Dorothy the number of one of the disposable cell phones I’d bought.

  I was about to make a long drive, and I didn’t want Paladin knowing where I was or where I was heading.

  At least, not until I got there.

  ***

  THE DRIVE took me twelve hours, but I didn’t mind it. I finally got to spend some quality time in the Defender. Alone behind the wheel, in my own head. Listening to music. Burning tank after tank of petroleum. Thinking about my brother, mostly. I still didn’t know what to believe about him, what had happened to him. Whether he’d been taken hostage or had arranged an intricate disappearance, abandoning his wife and son. Why Lauren had been attacked. How much of her husband’s plan she’d known about-or had even been involved in planning.

  There were so many questions, and there was one person, I was convinced, who’d have the answers. At least, if my analysis of the network traffic was correct.

  Though I knew he wouldn’t exactly volunteer them.

  Most of the drive was straight down 95, through Virginia and North Carolina, through South Carolina and finally into Georgia. The Defender is a great vehicle, but it’s really meant for desert maneuvers, not the interstate. It doesn’t like to go much faster than seventy miles an hour.

  While I drove, I played a lot of Johnny Cash CDs-I was down South, after all. I listened to “All I Do Is Drive” a bunch of times, and when my mood turned darker, I put on his cover of a Nine Inch Nails song, “Hurt.” That one could always wrench the heart out of me. Johnny-or is it Trent Reznor?-sings about how everyone he knows goes away in the end. How “I will let you down” and “I will make you hurt.”