by Brad Meltzer
“Darren Nixon was Libyan,” Rabbit said, then explained to Moten what Hazel had found, the family tree, about what it appeared Nixon had figured out, that Jack was doing things with the government in dangerous places. “His mother was Libyan, sir. Mona Haql. Her family line runs back two hundred and fifty years in Sirte. There’s something with that.”
“Where’s the proof?” Moten said.
“There’s nothing,” Rabbit said.
“Nothing isn’t proof.”
“Nothing,” Rabbit said, and he could hear Hazel in his head, “is impossible.” Rabbit uncrumpled the paper. Held it up. “This paper? It’s possible. Darren Nixon didn’t come from Libya for no reason. Which is why I need to know what Jack was doing on these jobs. Nixon seemed to think they were searching for pages of Benedict Arnold’s bible in every place on this list. If he’d figured out that Jack was working for the government—or that something went wrong on one of these missions—maybe Nixon was blackmailing him. He was a criminal, right? Nixon could’ve heard about something Jack did in the field. Mistakes happen; people screw up. Maybe that’s why Jack killed him. Maybe that’s what this all is. Covering up Jack’s past messes.”
Moten took the paper from Rabbit’s hand. “Was Nixon also blackmailing Castro? The Ayatollah? Gorbachev? You find a time machine among his belongings, Agent?” The front door opened again, Moten’s wife poked her head out, Moten waved. “Just one sec, honey,” he said, shook the paper. “Can’t make heads or tails of this address.” She closed the door, no smile. “What do you want, Agent?”
“I want the missions,” Rabbit said.
“You won’t get them.”
“Do you know what he was doing?”
“No,” Moten said. “I just sent him where they told me to send him.”
“Who were they?”
“CIA,” he said. “NSA. Anything with an A. You need to understand, Agent, it wasn’t like things are today. When they told us to do something, we did it. Today, being a terrorist is easier; being an actual nation is harder.”
Rabbit thought for a moment. “Skip Nash is in Dubai,” he said carefully. “Hazel says he’s bringing a TV crew, for a new show. He’s about to announce it, tell the world he’s out there looking for Benedict Arnold’s bible. He wants to see what happens, see who comes out of the woodwork.”
Moten stared at Rabbit for five, ten, fifteen seconds without blinking. “He’ll just become bait.”
“Or you’ll save him and catch whoever comes,” Rabbit said, “and we’ll get this circle closed. That’s what you want, right?”
Silence again for fifteen seconds. Thirty. “Where’s Hazel Nash now?”
“Still in Spokane,” Rabbit said. It was a lie. But a lie he felt he needed to tell.
“Get her on a plane to Dubai.”
“Is that the safest place for her?”
“I don’t care what’s safest. It’s smartest. Skip will listen to her. And to you,” he said.
“Anything else?”
“You like my house, Agent Rabkin?”
“It’s very nice, yes, sir.”
“You know how I got it?”
“I don’t.”
“By following orders,” he said. “Don’t come here again. And don’t fucking call me until you’re in Dubai.”
63
The Drawing Room, Hazel’s hotel in New Haven, Connecticut, had been upcycled from an old Radisson, the inside redesigned to look like it was still the 1700s. Dawn in America every day…except with twenty-four-hour room service and specialty cocktails in The Franklin, the faux dive bar that hosted karaoke night every Wednesday.
Today, The Franklin was filled with the attendees of a tech conference, everyone in matching lanyards, polo shirts, and tan pants, their conversations bleeding out into the lobby over the thump of classic rock, Journey telling everyone to keep believing.
Hazel sped past a couple asking the concierge for dinner reservations somewhere “casual but with fancy food,” wishing it was all so easy.
Arthur Kennedy had lived in this city.
That wasn’t a mistake.
Just like it wasn’t a mistake that Darren Nixon had been lured to Canada to be killed.
Messages were being sent.
“C’mon, where are you?” Hazel whispered into her newest burner cell as the line rang for the third time.
“You’re alive?” Butchie finally answered.
“Still,” she said, now outside, with the afternoon sun on her face.
“Where’s the 203 area code? Area 51?”
“Connecticut,” Hazel said.
“Same difference.”
“You have no idea. You somewhere better?”
“Camping out in Humboldt,” Butchie said, referring to the Redwoods park four hours north of San Francisco. “You ready to come home?”
“Not yet,” she said, heading for the parking lot a few blocks down. No way was she parking near the hotel. “I need another favor.”
“Good. This nature shit is boring me to death. What’s it this time?”
She told him what she knew about Arthur Kennedy, this man with no past. Told him about Nixon, about Agent Rabkin, about the family trees, and her suspicions.
Butchie listened intently, then said, “You want me to come get you?”
“No,” Hazel said. Since the moment she landed, she’d been reading and rereading the files Rabbit gave her. “I have bits of Kennedy’s life; what I want is his full history.”
“Define history.”
“Airline records. I need you to get me proof of any flight Arthur Kennedy ever took.” She thought for a moment. “Run train records too, just in case. I want to know where he’s been going, who he’s been seeing.”
“You said there were no records of Kennedy’s childhood?”
“Nothing,” Hazel said. “Not even his parents’ names. So if he just sprouted from the ground fully formed in 1996, in time to get his real estate license, that means Arthur Kennedy’s name…”
“…had been changed,” Butchie said.
“Just like Darren Nixon. Which would leave a paper trail. Somewhere. But just like Nixon—and his mother Mona—there’s nothing.”
Sure, Hazel wanted to know who Kennedy had been, that was important, but she also needed to find out what he’d been, why he’d died. And with those names—Nixon and Kennedy—who named them so uncreatively? Right now, that was the only way to find out what Kennedy’s connection to Benedict Arnold’s bible might be. “I want to know foreign countries, I want to know if Kennedy took a cruise on the Mississippi, I want to know if he flew to New Orleans for spring break to flash his tits in college. He was here in New Haven for a reason. If he’s been somewhere else, there’s a reason for that too.”
“Girl,” Butchie told her, “this will cost you. You want someone to break into the airlines? That’s high-level hacker shit.”
“How much?”
“Enough for a lawyer down the line,” Butchie said.
“How much?”
“Someone legit? Keep their mouth closed? Twenty. At least.”
Hazel had money in her bank accounts—she found those in her apartment: about ten thousand dollars in savings, another five in her checking account. But if she was who everyone said she was…“Do I keep money somewhere else?”
Butchie made a tsking sound. “You’re lucky I’m an honest person,” he said. “You got a spot hollowed out in your closet, behind that big-ass chest of drawers. You keep a stash.”
“Can you get to it?”
“You really want me going in your place while someone might be watching?”
“You must have loose change somewhere.”
“Now you want my retirement fund?”
“Butchie, when I get home, whatever I have is yours. And if I don’t ever make it back for some reason, it’s still yours.”
“You don’t make it back,” Butchie said, “we all got problems.” Hazel heard a car alarm going off in the background.
“You’re not in Humboldt, are you?”
Butchie sighed. “No one likes the outdoors.”
Hazel cut through the parking lot, found the gray rental car she’d rented, using the fake ID she’d found in her purse. “Please tell me you’re not in the city,” she said.
“Just tell me when you need this information by.”
“Two hours?” Hazel said.
“You know even hackers got lives. It’s not like they’re just sitting at home waiting for illegal business opportunities.”
“One last thing,” Hazel said. “I need better contact info for Ingrid Ludlow. My dad’s old assistant. In Hartford.”
“You don’t have Google?”
“I tried. She’s not picking up.”
“Give me ten,” Butchie said. He called her back in five. “This woman’s gonna be hard to reach. For the last two weeks, she’s been at some place called the Institute of Living.”
“That a co-op or something?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Butchie said. “Lovely old Ingrid—she’s in a psychiatric facility. That’s where her mail’s being forwarded to, anyway.”
“Hnh,” Hazel said, wondering if she should even be surprised. “I’m headed there now. And Butchie? After you send me Kennedy’s airline records, I want you to send them to Agent Rabkin. But wait for a bit. Give me a head start on it.”
“You want me to email a fed? Girl, I’m not comfortable with that.”
“Things go wrong,” Hazel said, “he won’t be a fed by the time he gets the message.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I don’t either,” Hazel said. “But that’s where we are.”
“Haze, before you go…” Butchie paused. “Why’re you really going to see this woman Ingrid?”
“I think something bad happened on one of their old missions, something when my dad was searching for Benedict Arnold’s bible. And I think someone found out about it. Maybe Ingrid will remember some detail I can use.”
“Again, why’re you really going to see this woman Ingrid?”
Hazel paused. “To ask her about my father. And my mother.”
“You prepared for the answer?”
“She’s in a mental home. At this point, I’m prepared for anything.”
64
Belfast, Northern Ireland
1984
Season 8, Episode 9 (1984): “The Ghosts of Belfast”
Jack Nash doesn’t have much of a stomach for blood.
Ingrid Ludlow? No problem at all.
Usually.
But the wounds they’re seeing today—missing limbs, burns, bullet and shrapnel holes—have her rattled.
“What happened to these people?” she asks.
Jack, Ingrid, and the rest of the crew have been in the city for twenty-four hours, finishing an episode on the haunted history of Ireland, from the ghosts seen walking the halls of ancient castles, to the sounds of shrieking children outside the old match factory, to the whimsical story of a dog who followed its master, even after death. But that’s not the real reason for this trip.
Jack knew he’d be getting an invitation to visit the hospital from the mayor of Belfast. It’d look like a small goodwill mission, the sort of thing he was always happy to do, sharing a joke with the children in pediatrics, the newspaper photographing him with a bald child. The sort of thing that helped balance the scales in his mind.
“The IRA exploded a car bomb outside a market,” the mayor says. He’s a tall, angular man in a black suit, an impressively knotted tie. Jack thinks he probably hasn’t slept in a week, maybe two. The bags under his eyes sag nearly beyond his cheekbones. “Twenty people died. An absolute tragedy.”
The dead are the lucky ones, Jack thinks. No one in the ICU has even lifted his eyes, and Jack suddenly feels like he’s in the wrong place, like coming here was a mistake. Talking to the kids, the choreographed photo ops, that was fine. People seemed happy to see him, and maybe someone sick got a shot of adrenaline from the experience. But here, where life and death were separated by threads, he felt like an impostor.
Once again, the search for Benedict Arnold’s bible had brought them to hell.
“Did they catch the bomber?” Ingrid asks, knowing the answer.
The mayor stays silent, knowing it as well.
They’re led out of the ICU and down a long hallway, through a set of double doors, then downstairs and through a labyrinth of hallways, until they’re in a waiting room with leather couches and filled with the smell of brewing coffee. Two men with machine guns slung over their arms are guarding a door.
Jack didn’t know he’d be in Ireland until two days ago, which is when they heard someone was offering a brand-new page of the bible. Within forty-eight hours, Moten’s unit scrambled, throwing the trip together and coming up with a good enough TV topic so it looked completely logical for the great Jack Nash to be filming in Ireland. Now all they needed was to close the deal.
“Mr. Nash,” the mayor says, “we have a patient who would very much like to see you. But only you. Is that all right?”
Ingrid gives Jack the look. The same one she gave him in Libya. The one she’s been giving him for almost ten years now. The look that says no.
“I would prefer to have my assistant nearby,” Jack says. “Maybe out in the hall?”
The mayor looks to the armed men. One of them, the shorter of the two, nods almost imperceptibly. “I guess that would be fine,” the mayor says. This “patient” isn’t going anywhere.
Jack and Ingrid are led into a room that looks into another room, where there’s a man hooked up to a hanging matrix of IV lines and monitors. He’s missing one arm up to his elbow, and Jack can only make out a single eye.
“You have fifteen minutes. Doors will be locked, so if there’s a problem, best to make noise,” the guard says.
“What’s his name?” Jack asks.
“Shitbag,” the guard replies. “But his given name is Dermot. He answers to both.”
“Do you want me to talk to him first?” Ingrid asks Jack once the guard has left and locked the door behind him.
“No,” Jack says, “it’s fine.”
Jack walks into the room, sits down in the chair next to the bed.
“You know me?” Jack asks.
“I know you,” Dermot says, but it’s as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing. He tries to turn his head, as if he’s forgotten he only has one eye, but that’s not happening. “You’re the ghost-and-goblin man.”
“That’s right,” Jack says. At first Dermot looked bald, but in fact his hair has been burned off.
“Seen you on my TV. You and your boy.”
“That’s right,” Jack says again. Where would Skip be now? Asleep in his bed at home. Where he belonged.
“I’m a family man too,” Dermot says. “I have a daughter. Five years old.”
“A good age,” Jack says. There’s a chain running down from the bed to the floor, padlocked to the ground. Dermot is shackled.
“I’ll probably never see her again.” He runs his tongue over his lips. They’re dry and cracked.
“You probably should have thought of that before you detonated that bomb,” Jack says.
“Two hundred years ago,” Dermot says, “I would have been a hero to you.” He closes his one eye for several seconds. Jack watches him, thinking he might be fading out from the drugs running through him, but then Jack sees that his lips are moving silently. Dermot reaches up with his good arm and feels for something at his neck, pulls out a cross, brings it to his lips, and kisses it. “I have a page from your bible,” he tells Jack.
“I know,” Jack says. “Where?”
“In my home,” Dermot says. “My wife will give you what you need. She has my demands as well. You know how valuable it is.”
“Our deal has already been made.”
“No,” the man says. “Not yet.”
Jack stands up.
“
Where are you going?” the man asks.
Jack doesn’t answer. He leaves the room. Ingrid is waiting for him outside.
“We set?” Ingrid asks.
“He wants to renegotiate,” Jack says. He checks his watch. He was in the room for three minutes. “You have twelve minutes. Will you need more than that?”
“Not if he’s cooperative,” Ingrid says.
65
Washington, DC
Today
Rabbit didn’t sleep anymore. He was beginning to think no one did.
Used to be, back before his wife left, he had a schedule. Once he walked out of his office, he was done working for the day, unless it was a matter of national security. He’d turn off his work cell phone, go to the gym for an hour, reacclimate to being around people not involved in either perpetrating or solving crime. Then he’d head home to his house off Coldwater Canyon, less than a mile from Jack Nash’s, maybe five minutes away. That was the thing about the real world. You never knew who your neighbors were.
He’d kiss his wife, play with his daughter Candace for a bit, maybe read her a book or watch a cartoon for twenty minutes. After they put Candace to bed, he’d tell his wife about the office politics, because that’s all he could tell her about. Maybe he’d do a crossword or watch a ball game to settle his mind, then he’d close his eyes and, presto, eight hours later, he’d wake up just before the alarm.
It was a skill he’d learned from his time in the military, where you slept anywhere, anytime. It didn’t even need to be particularly safe. He’d catch thirty minutes propped up against a Humvee, an hour in an Apache hustling between air bases. Once he even took a ninety-minute nap strapped into the cargo hold of an AWAC.
For a while, after his wife packed up and walked out, he tried to keep that same schedule, but it was pointless. He’d end up sitting in the dark watching TV, replaying old fights in his mind.
The thing was, it wasn’t like she’d been wrong about anything. Her demands had been simple. Be present and be loving. He’d been bad at both. And then one day two years ago, she told him, “Today’s your daughter’s birthday.” The next night, he came back from work, and she and Candace were gone.