by John Whitman
Tony did not see the mystery. “Lots of bad guys do lots of bad things that we don’t know about. They get a reputation with other bad guys even if we don’t have their whole résumé.”
Jamey made a skeptical noise into the phone. “That’s where I don’t buy this thing with Jack. There wasn’t any reason to kill this guy. How many people do you think Jack’s killed?”
“A freakin’ lot!”
“Right, but do you honestly think he’s ever killed anyone he didn’t have to?”
Tony paused. “Read his service record, Jamey. It’s not that hard to believe—”
“—for somebody who’s read the service record. That’s why this story stands up to a typical investigation. But I’m talking about us, people who know him. Do you believe it?”
There was another long pause while Tony considered. He put aside his snap judgments and disapproval of Jack’s actions. “No,” he said at last, “I don’t believe it.”
Jamey felt a thrill. She’d won a point. “I have a name. It’s Adrian Tintfass’s widow. Can we send someone to go check her out? No point in me asking Henderson about this, he’ll just say no.”
“Nina,” Tony said. “Get Nina to do it. Now where’s my analysis?”
“Got it.” Seth Ludonowski was standing at his shoulder, beaming.
Tony hung up. “Go.”
Seth didn’t bother with any impressive overview of the cryptographics programs, the analysis of semantics, allophones, or any other highly relevant but distracting methodologies used to parse through the intercepted e-mails. He just said, “Papa Rashad’s factory is pretty unimaginative encryption for the initials PRF. If you ask me, PRF can also stand for—”
“Pacific Rim Forum,” Tony said. “And it starts in about fifteen hours.”
2:44 A.M. PST Boyle Heights, Los Angeles
There ain’t nothing like a late night fuck and a late night joint, thought Smiley Lopez. The girl was in the other room, still sleeping off the tequila. She might not remember the ride, he flattered himself, but she’d be sore in the morning. The fatty was in his hand and he took another puff, put his feet up on the little table, and used the remote to flip on the television. HBO, Cinemax (he called it “Skinemax”), Showtime, and still there wasn’t a goddamn thing on at three o’clock in the morning. He flipped through channels until he came to ESPN-something-or-other. They were playing reruns of fights, but not boxing. It was that other shit, the fighting where you can hit with your knees and elbows and shit. Smiley liked that sort of fighting. It was more like the street.
His cell phone rang. He was expecting a call from some of his soldiers, but this was a different number. “Yo,” he said, knowing who it would be.
“What the fuck’s going on?” the angry voice on the line snapped.
Smiley checked the clock on the cable box. “They shoulda finished it right about now, homes. You can ease up.”
“No, I can’t,” the other man said. “Your little homies” —the word was foreign, clumsy, an insult on his lips, and meant to be so— “screwed it up. For the third time!”
Smiley felt a buzz kill coming on and it annoyed him. “Goddamn, ese, you the one who told us he’d be tough to pop.”
“Well figure out how!” the man demanded. “Or I’ll make sure your guys inside burn.” Smiley sat up, his buzz gone in an instant. “Listen to me, homes,” he said, overpronouncing the word as the other man had. “I ain’t Oscar. You get up in my face like that I shove your dick down your throat, I don’t care what kinda law you put on me. Got it?” He heard the other man choke back a response. “Besides, you fuckin’ want him popped, you do it yourself, fuckin’ maricon.”
“All right,” the other man said. “All right. I know he’s tough, but you keep after it, or you don’t get paid and I will make sure your boys go away.” He hung up.
Smiley took another puff.
2:53 A.M. PST Century Plaza Hotel, Century City, California
Old men don’t sleep much. Martin Webb remembered his father telling him that when Martin was a much younger man. Though he was now approaching seventy-three, Martin’s mind and memory were as sharp as ever, and he could see the old house in Silver Springs, when he’d bring his kids to visit the old man. He’d stay up late working on the financials for some company or other, long after his dad had gone to bed, only to find his dad waking up and coming down for a glass of warm milk. They’d talk then; those were some of the best talks they’d ever had.
Now Martin was the old man. Even his son Max was in his fifties, and when the family came to visit him in Georgetown and Martin got up for his own glass of warm milk, it was more often his grandson Jake he’d find up, though of course Jake wasn’t doing financials.
At the moment, though, he was alone, and instead of padding downstairs for milk he had called room service.
Old men don’t sleep much, he told himself again. But he knew that he had reason to be losing sleep.
The economy. The goddamned economy. It sat there like an engine that ought to start but wouldn’t. No, that wasn’t the right analogy. Better to say hung there like an airplane whose engine wouldn’t start. The plane was losing altitude, gliding on the last of its momentum, and any minute it would plunge.
“That’s about right,” Martin said out loud to his quiet hotel room.
He was the engineer, the man who was supposed to fix that engine. So far, he had tried every tool in his toolkit: interest rates, of course, which served as his hammer, screwdriver, and wrench. He’d employed the bully pulpit to shame the current administration into fiscal restraint. He’d hedged his bets against overseas markets. All to no good. The Dow looked like a downward staircase. Unemployment was up, and so was inflation, and those two things should not go together. According to last month’s index, consumer spending had dipped, and the real estate market was slowing. Consumer confidence — Martin privately called it consumer overconfidence — and the housing bubble were really all that stood between the country and an economic crisis it had not faced in seventy years.
Martin Webb was being humble with himself. Others would say that a third barrier stood between the country and disaster: Martin Webb. Martin was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He was not just the grand old man of the economy; in the eyes of many, he was the economy. For twenty-seven years he had played nursemaid, steward, lord-protector of the United States economy, and always, always he had managed to make the markets pull themselves up by their bootstraps. He would do it again, at least that’s what the Wall Street Journal told him. And he was sure the pundits were right. He would do it again.
He just didn’t know how.
The warm milk came, and the room service attendant went. Martin sat down and sipped. Right about now was when he needed his son Max or his grandson Jake to stroll in and chat. Lacking Jake, he turned on the television, which bathed him in its hypnotic glow. He flipped channels until his eye was caught by a sports channel. He stopped, and watched two warriors pound each other with tiny gloves on their hands. As the commentator indicated, these were reruns of previous fights, all being broadcast as the prelude to the fights the following night. He’d seen this sort of fighting before — mixed martial arts, they called it — and he admired it. Not so different from the economy, really, with an interesting combination of subtlety and brute strength.
He drank his milk and watched.
8. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 3 A.M. AND 4 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
3:00 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
The last fifteen minutes had been Christmas come early for Tony Almeida. Seth’s code cracking had been brilliant — and it had been followed by quick work from CTU field agents and techs who’d bugged Sungkar’s house. Thanks to their work, Tony was now sitting at his own desk listening to a conversation between Sungkar, on his home phone, and an unknown associate.
“. and you’re sure the other side can deliver?” Sungkar was asking.
“Their reputation
is solid. They want the arms and in return they can deliver a computer program that
will do the job.”
“In each country?”
“Yes.”
“And the arms, we can get them?” Sungkar queried.
“I have a contact.” Bacharuddin Wahid. That was the name Seth slipped to Tony as he listened. “I have not worked with him, but I have heard he is reliable.”
“We buy the arms, and then trade the arms for the virus,” Sungkar summed up. “Let’s proceed.”
Tony saw the pattern: Riduan Bashir provides the money, Sungkar uses the funds to purchase arms, which he then trades for this computer program, and Jemaah Islamiyah uses this virus to target the Pacific Rim Forum.
The man named Bacharuddin Wahid read an address, which Tony scribbled down. He reminded himself that neither of them had met this arms dealer, and a plan began to form.
3:06 A.M. PST Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles
Dan Pascal turned his Crown Vic onto Sweetzer just north of Wilshire Boulevard. His radio chattered with updates as LAPD units rolled into position. Two units were ahead of the target and two were behind. Pascal snatched up his radio mike. “Go,” he said.
He stepped on the accelerator and reached Wilshire in a second, just as the blue Maxima passed him. Two cruisers pulled onto the street behind the Maxima, their lights going bright. The other two cruisers pulled out in front of the Maxima, angling themselves to block the street. The blue car hit its brakes and pulled up short. Pascal and the two follow cars pulled up behind, blocking its retreat. Pascal switched his radio mike to PA, threw open his door, and dragged himself out, drawing his Smith & Wesson.45 at the same time. “Stick your hands out of the car window!” he ordered.
Patrol in all four cars had opened their doors and taken cover behind them, weapons leveled. The occupants of the car complied, a set of hands sticking out from each side.
“Open the doors slowly. Get out and lie down on the ground!”
Again the occupants complied, and a moment later two men had climbed out, lying down on the asphalt in the middle of Wilshire Boulevard. As one, the law enforcement officers hurried forward.
Pascal stalked forward, moving suddenly much faster than one might have expected from someone his size. Catching Captain America had been easier than he’d thought. He watched the LAPD officers handcuff the occupants and haul them to their feet. Pascal straightened up to his full height and stared down. at two terrified eighteen-year-old kids.
3:11 A.M. PST InterContinental Hotel, Downtown Los Angeles
Jack and Ramirez parked the just-stolen Nissan pickup truck a block away from the InterContinental Hotel and left it there for someone else to find. They walked into the four-star hotel in downtown Los Angeles. The lobby was quiet except for the Latino man and woman running an industrial-sized scrubber across the tile floor. Ramirez walked over to the house phones mounted over an elegant marble ledge. Picking one up, he punched in 7 plus a room number and waited while it rang.
“No answer?” Jack wondered.
Ramirez shrugged. “He did sound pissed when I called before. Wait—” Now he was talking into the phone. “Yeah, we’re here. Okay, Van, we’re coming up.”
They found a bank of elevators and pressed the button for the twenty-third floor.
“So this was the guy you were working with, the one you murdered for?” Jack asked.
“Sort of. His name’s Vanowen. I worked for him, he worked for the guy in charge. I never met that guy. Not sure I want to.”
They reached twenty-three and walked down to 2346. It was a good hotel, with wide hallways and thick, soft carpet. Ramirez knocked and the door opened, then closed behind them. The man who’d admitted them was short and round with a thick walrus mustache and close-cropped reddish-brown hair. His arms weren’t cut, but they were big, bulging out of his blue polo shirt. He was holding a Glock.40 in his hand.
“It don’t figure,” he said by way of hello. He motioned for them to sit down on the couch. The hotel room was an L-shaped suite, with a sitting area and, beyond a door, a bedroom. A couch stood near the door, and beyond it was a small counter extending out into the room, creating a divide. Beyond that was the bed.
“It don’t figure why you’d break out to come see me.”
Jack didn’t say anything. He was sure in this case it was better to speak when spoken to.
“It does,” Ramirez replied. “We didn’t break out to see you. We broke out because someone was trying to kill us. We need a place to hide out.”
The man sat down in a chair across from them, the Glock resting casually across his leg. “Rami, you know I owe you and you know why. You need someplace to hide, I’m gonna do it. But I don’t know squat about you,” he said to Jack.
Jack didn’t like seeing the muzzle of the Glock, but at the moment he had no choice. He kept his hands on his knees. “Ask away.”
“Tell me a story.”
Jack told the story he’d used with Ramirez, the same story Ramirez knew. Like all good lies, it was as close to the truth as possible: he was a former agent for Homeland Security who’d murdered a scumbag and was awaiting trial and decided he didn’t want to wait once MS–13 decided to kill him. He told the story of killing Tintfass. The man called Van seemed amused.
“I could check your story,” Van said, rubbing his thick mustache. “I got people who could check.”
“Knock yourself out,” Jack said.
Van figured he would. “Uh-huh. Meantime, why the fuck should I help you?”
“I come in handy, if there’s any trouble.”
Vanowen waggled the gun. “Why’d there be trouble? I got a legitimate business, ask Rami. No reason for trouble.”
“If you say so. I just figured if Rami was going to kill someone, there was something worth killing for and you were okay with it.”
“I got people to answer to, people who don’t like new faces. I probably oughta kill you right now.”
Jack immediately relaxed. He had heard this kind of talk before. It almost always came from someone who had no intention of doing any killing. A man cold-blooded enough to kill him would have done so already, without compunction. Vanowen wanted to appear tough, and he wanted Jack to know that he was capable of killing if need be. But Jack would give him no need.
“I did Ramirez a favor getting him out. He’s doing me a favor by getting us a place to lay low. That’s all that’s going on here. You decide you want some extra help, I’ve got some skills you might use.”
Vanowen did not ease off, but his face shifted. He’d made some decision. “So tell me how you got out of jail.”
Jack started to tell the story.
3:28 A.M. PST Van Nuys, California
There was no such thing as a good way to knock on the door at three-thirty in the morning, so Nina Myers didn’t try. Bauer was a fugitive and they needed leads A.S.A.P. She found the little house off Kester Avenue, a square one-room stucco building on a flat square lot. She rang the bell and pounded on a metal door knocker in the likeness of William Shakespeare.
“Who. who is it?” called a sleepy, frightened voice on the other side of the door.
“Federal agent, ma’am.” Nina held up her ID to the peephole above William Shakespeare’s head. “Sorry for the late hour, but I have a couple of urgent questions.”
There was a long pause — so long that Nina started to decide whether to sprint around back or try to kick in the door — when the bolt turned and the door opened. The woman standing there was short, with thin black hair, a big nose, and a very unwelcome look on her pale face. She wore slippers and a frayed blue terry-cloth robe that she kept tucking and re-tucking around her body. She opened the door just enough to talk, but kept her body wedged into the open space.
“What questions?” the woman asked grumpily. She had clearly been sleeping.
“You’re Marcia Tintfass?” The woman nodded. “Nina Myers. I’m afraid I have a question or two about your husband.”
“The kind that have to do with your husband’s murderer, who just escaped from jail.”
Marcia Tintfass’s eyes popped open. She looked around, as though the killer might jump out from behind Nina. “Come in then.”
Nina entered and sat down on the couch in a living room lit only by one standing lamp. Many of the shelves were bare, and Nina noticed two moving boxes in the corner. “You probably know all this, but I gave a big statement to the police already. I really didn’t know much about my husband’s business.”
Nina had reviewed the file on Adrian Tintfass’s murder, and learned everything there was to know about Marcia Tintfass, which wasn’t much. “I understand. We’re really interested in the killer himself—”
“I didn’t know him,” Marcia said hastily.
“I, yes, I know you didn’t know him. We’re just trying to figure out why he did it. The man who murdered your husband was an exemplary agent for the federal government.”
“Right up until he killed my husband, I guess.”
“Are you moving?” Nina asked.
The question caught Marcia off guard. “Oh, yes. You know, now that Adrian’s gone, it doesn’t, well, you know, it doesn’t feel right being here.”
Nina nodded but didn’t believe a word of it. One learned a lot from interrogating prisoners, and Nina had interrogated her fair share. Marcia Tintfass’s words were totally reasonable, of course, but her delivery had been off. Nina had the distinct impression that, in her sleepiness, the woman had forgotten a line and then picked it up, like an actor recovering in the middle of a scene.