“I just met with Drazen. The good news is, he wants the money, and if we can find it for him, we’ll all be free and clear.”
“Including me?” Rachel was barely able to contain her glee.
“Especially you. You’re not even on his radar screen.”
“Oh, thank God.” She set the popcorn on the coffee table and collapsed onto the couch. “I have been living with this death sentence hanging over my head for I don’t know how long.”
“Four years,” I said.
She looked at me. “What?”
“It’s been four years since you killed Vladi and the money disappeared.”
She sniffed. “It was—”
“Self-defense. You don’t have to keep reminding me. Also good news, I think I know where the money is. I think Kraft has it. I know he has Vladi’s computer. He’s willing to trade it for this.” I dug the heavy envelope from my backpack and dropped it onto the coffee table. The thud bounced the popcorn bowl. Rachel grabbed it and pulled it into her lap. “It’s Lyle’s story,” I said.
“Who’s Lyle?” She scooped out a handful of popcorn and passed the bowl to Harvey.
“Lyle Burquart. He was a local journalist who was trying to do what Kraft is doing. He wrote an article, an exposé on Blackthorne, four years ago. This must have been before the hijacking.” I hadn’t paid much attention to the dates. “Anyway, no one ever read it, because Thorne killed his son to keep him quiet.”
“My God.” Harvey reached for Rachel’s hand. He looked pale.
“I went back to talk to Lyle, and he’s gone. Packed up his family, left his job. But he left me all his notes.” I took the microcassettes and player from my backpack and threw them out there as exhibit two. “These are interview tapes. The interviewee was Tony Blackmon, Cyrus Thorne’s partner. I haven’t listened to everything, but from what I heard, he disagreed with the direction Thorne was taking and was ready to speak out about it.” A thought occurred to me as I was talking. “I wonder if Thorne killed Blackmon.”
“Why would he?” Harvey asked. “Is there an indication on the tapes that he was threatened?”
“The feeling comes more from Thorne. He told me Blackmon died on a mission. He had this incredible crystal eagle commissioned in his memory. It’s like protesting too much, you know? And it sounds as if Thorne is capable of anything. But listen to the tapes. See what you think.”
“Why do we have to listen to anything?” Rachel had her feet on the table, her knees up, and the popcorn bowl in her lap. “Let’s just get this deal done and get on with it.”
“I’m trying to, Rachel. There’s just one problem. No one can access the files without the key. Kraft won’t show up until we have the key.”
“What key?”
“The key to accessing the money files. It’s also called a decryption token, and it looks like this.” I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the copy of the KryptoDisk page Felix had printed for me. “It’s the size of a credit card, only thicker. Here…” I unfolded the page and handed it to her. “It slides into a PMC slot on the side of the machine.”
Harvey leaned over from his chair to see the picture. Rachel handed it to him with barely a glance. “I didn’t know anything about a key or a token. How was I supposed to?”
“You stole the computer for the files. I have to think you knew what was needed to access them.”
She sat up straight and put her feet on the floor. “How many times do I have to say this? I didn’t steal the computer for the files. I didn’t even know about the files. I took it because Roger had said it was worth something.”
“When Roger came to take it from you, did he try to boot it up?”
“He tried, but—” Her eyes widened. “He couldn’t get it to work.” She reached over to snatch the page back from Harvey. “Let me see that.”
“Roger took it even though he knew he couldn’t get in?”
“Sure he did. He was on the run, especially after that fed got killed. He said he would find a hacker to crack it.”
“Felix told me there was no way to hack it. Roger probably had some hacker tell him he needed the key. You can’t access the files without the key or the password.”
“But we don’t have the key,” Rachel said, “which means we don’t have the money, which means we must be planning on handing the reporter over to those Blackthorne people.” She blinked up at me. “Right?”
“No, we can’t do that.”
“You just said if we can’t give him the money, then Drazen comes looking for whoever killed Vladi. If he gets the video, he knows who to come looking for. Am I right?”
She was right, and it started to sink in that I might have overstepped my bounds just a tad. “When I made the deal, I didn’t know I needed a key.”
“But you did make the deal, which means you gambled my life on finding some key that has been lost for four years.” She passed the bowl to Harvey and roared to her feet. “How in the hell do you make a deal like that?”
“Drazen has no idea you’re even involved.”
“If he gets the video, he’ll know.”
“Rachel, dear…” Harvey tried to calm her.
“How do you trade my life for something you don’t even have, and have no real chance of getting?”
I looked past her to Harvey. I could see him struggling, torn between Rachel and reason. He wanted to please us both. He cleared his throat. “It seems the strategy you chose is very high-risk.”
“Thorne will kill Kraft, and Hoffmeyer, too, if he can find him. We agreed we wouldn’t facilitate something like that.”
“But you’re happy to hand me over.”
“I didn’t say that.”
The room went quiet as we both waited for Harvey to answer. He stared down at the low coffee table and spoke slowly. “I am not disagreeing with the choice.” He glanced up at me, then away. “But it was a choice that affected us all. You could have discussed it with us first is all we are suggesting.”
All we are suggesting? Rachel could not have looked more smug. I got up and walked away from them, finding my way over to Harvey’s bookcase. Some of the titles had been put back in upside down. Having to deal with all the interpersonal stuff on top of all the life-and-death stuff was getting to be too much, but they were right. I had made a somewhat large decision for the three of us. Perhaps they should have had some say.
I flipped a few of the titles right side up and turned around. Harvey was blinking at me intently, but Rachel stood with her arms folded and her head cocked to one side. She would not be easily placated.
“I’m sorry, okay? I got going too fast, and I didn’t do things…right. You deserved more consideration than I gave you…both of you. We can talk about it now, but I still think a solution where no one gets killed is worth trying.”
“I accept your apology,” Harvey said. “And I agree with your reasoning.”
“You’re agreeing with her?” Rachel stood up and threw both hands in the air in disgust. “That’s great. Just great. I’m so glad you’re on my side.”
“Rachel…” Harvey maneuvered his chair so he was facing Rachel. She had moved to a spot across the room from me and behind him. “We will take care of you. You must believe that.”
“I know. I’m just…” She’d lost some of her self-righteous rage. She came over to him and encircled him from behind, hooking her hands together at his sternum. He pulled her hands close to his heart. She leaned down and laid her head on his shoulder. “I’m scared, Harvey. So many things could go wrong.”
He turned back to me. “Are you sure this Kraft has the files?”
“No. That’s why I think we should get Rachel out of town.”
Harvey actually beat Rachel to the punch. “What? Why? Because you object to her?”
“Because you’re right. Both of you. This is a very risky way to go. There are too many assumptions, and any one of them could be wrong. Even though Drazen has agreed to take the money and call it
even, the biggest assumption of all is that he will keep his word. I think she’s in danger if she stays here.”
Harvey turned to Rachel, but a moment too late. She had already disengaged and moved away from him. She was across the room, plucking her tooth with that right thumbnail, working out the odds in her head. I knew what would happen next, and I didn’t want to see.
“You two decide, but first, I need you to tell me where you buried Vladi.”
Harvey was aghast. “For what?”
“I think Vladi took the key to his grave.”
“How could you possibly know?”
“Roger didn’t have it. Rachel here says she doesn’t have it. I saw the video, and I never saw her take it off the body. I assume you didn’t take it. We know Roger was looking for the body. It can’t be the corpse he wanted. It has to be the key.”
“How would he know?”
“He’s the one who knew about the money to begin with. Of all of us, he would have had the best information. If he thought Vladi had it on him, then that’s where I need to look.”
“Dear God, there must be another way.”
“There is. We could go and ask Drazen for his key. Presumably, he has a way to get in. Personally, I’d rather deal with the Tishchenko who’s dead. Now, unless anyone else has a better idea, I need to know. Where is the body?”
30
DAN’S SHOVEL RIPPED INTO THE SHALLOW HOLE WE’D managed to scoop out over the course of three long hours. He dug up a dead body the same way he did everything else, with ferocious impatience.
“It goes without saying, Shanahan, that this is the creepiest fucking thing I’ve ever done.”
“Digging up a four-year-old corpse in the woods would probably make most people’s top ten.”
We had waited until it was dark before striking out on our morbid mission, when the night was cool and the air thick as velvet with the smell of moss and fungus and decay. Harvey had buried Vladi in the forests overlooking the Quabbin Reservoir, thirty miles outside Boston, where it was very dark and very quiet.
I tried not to think too much about what we were doing. There was the whole physical aspect of having to handle the remains of a man long dead and buried. Then there were the spiritual implications. Was it not ignoble enough that Vladi had been dispatched with violence and disposed of with such indifference? Now he had to be disturbed for the purpose of retrieving the key to a fortune. They say you can’t take it with you, but Vladi had, and now we were digging him up to wrench it back.
Dan stopped and dragged the back of his hand across his forehead. It wasn’t that hot, but the work was arduous. “Are you sure this is the spot?”
“This is where Harvey’s map said. We won’t be sure until we hit something.”
“Leave it to fucking Harvey to save the map to where he buried a dead man.”
I stabbed the ground again with my shovel. The work was serving as a good anger management tool for me. I thought about Rachel with every rip and slice.
“And you’re telling me this kryptonite thing will work after being buried for four years.”
“It’s a cryptographic token, and I can only go by what Felix told me. He says if it’s in its protective case, it should be fine. It’s fireproof and waterproof and every other kind of proof. According to him, you could run over it with a Humvee, and it would be fine, because if something happens to it, you’re kind of screwed.”
“Yeah.” He leaned over to start shoveling again. “Instead of like we are now.”
Two and a half backbreaking, arm-wearying hours later, my shovel cracked against something hard. Hard like a bone in the cod. Hard like an eggshell in the custard. I dropped my shovel and scrambled out of the pit, because I knew I was standing on the body of Vladislav Tishchenko.
I tried to walk it off, pacing among the trees, but every time I tried to get back in that hole, I wanted to vomit. Then I did. I leaned against a tree and puked my guts out. All this just at the thought of pulling the remains out of that hole. I hadn’t seen anything yet. Oh, for a glass of cool water to splash in my face and rinse the taste of death from my mouth. I straightened up and looked to the sky. It was clear. There were stars in the universe, twinkling down on us as we dug a man from his grave. Some things just shouldn’t be.
“Are you coming back? Or do I have to do this sick fucking thing by myself?”
Dan, who had not stopped to vomit, had apparently uncovered the body. He climbed out and popped another chemical light stick. I went to my bag of supplies and pulled out a set of gloves. They were heavy-duty fisherman’s gloves that came up to my elbows. I tossed a pair to Dan. Then I pulled out two pairs of surgical gloves and a couple of surgical face masks. Having been wrapped in plastic bags before he was planted, Vladi could be a skeleton or a still-rotting puddle of putrid tissue, but I figured one way or the other, there would be something bad to smell. We put on our masks, and I joined him at the side of the pit.
What Dan had dug out looked like a giant, mud-encrusted cocoon. “Do you think we have to pull him all the way out?”
He snapped on his first set of gloves. “What else would we do?”
“Slice open the plastic and dig around until we find his wallet. That way, we don’t have to see that much.”
“Right. We just have to stick our hands into it. Come on, Shanahan. How bad can it be?” He pulled on the heavier gloves and dropped down into the hole. “You didn’t happen to bring any rope, did you?”
“Uh, no.”
He shrugged. “I’ll push from down here. You pull from up there.”
He grabbed the feet end and yanked hard, dislodging the body from where it had been embedded for four years. Loose soil fell from around the roll of plastic. When he had it mostly worked out, he paused for a moment, perhaps to see if any ghosts came forth. If they had, they had arrived in silence. I crouched down. When he put the feet into my hands, only one thing came to mind. Vladi wasn’t a skeleton yet.
I started to pull. Dan moved along the body toward the head, pushing as he went. The fact that neither of us wanted to touch the thing was problematic.
“Grab him,” he said, huffing through his nose. “Grab him. Don’t let him roll the fuck back on me.”
“I’m trying. I can’t get a good…grip.”
The body wasn’t heavy as much as awkward and hard to hold. We teetered at one point with the mass hanging half in and half out, until I found a better way to grasp it. Unfortunately, the better way required me to put my arm around it. Dan gave one last shove and pushed the shoulders ashore. I rolled the mass away from the ledge and sat back on my butt. Dan climbed out and sank down next to me. The two of us sat there, sweating, breathing fast, eyes fixed on the task in front of us.
“We should get on with it,” I said after a few shallow breaths.
“Yeah.”
“Before someone comes and finds us.”
“I know.”
“This would be hard to explain.”
“No doubt.”
Neither of us moved. I could smell his exertion. I’m sure he could smell me. It was hard, dirty, tedious work, this grave robbing.
I stood up, reached down, and offered a hand. He grabbed it and pulled himself up. Then he surveyed the cigar-shaped package at our feet.
“I’ll take the head,” he said.
“No. You’re doing this as a favor to me.”
“For Harvey, Shanahan. I’m doing this for Harvey.”
“Whatever. I’ll take the head.”
I didn’t have to tell him twice. We took our positions and crouched. I found the place where the edge separated from the roll and nodded to him. The plastic was wrapped tightly around the corpse but not fastened in any way. As we started to unroll it, I had the absurd image of a crescent roll. The plastic was thick and dried out. It cracked and complained as we unwound Vladi’s shroud.
“We need to anchor the end,” I said. “Or it will just wrap itself again.”
Dan looked around a
nd found a couple of heavy rocks. We used them as weights and kept unrolling. We went slowly, inch by inch, both of us drawing away as far as we could without losing contact. Nine-foot arms would have been useful.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Dan was staring at the first thing to fall out at his end. It was a foot. Actually, it was a leather O. J. Simpson loafer with a foot in it. The shoe was stuck to the plastic, as if it had gum on the bottom, which meant it stopped as the rest of the body had rolled forward.
I sped up. Better to just take it in all at once and not piece by gruesome piece. One last roll, and there he was. Displayed on the ground in front of us were the earthly remains of Vladislav Tishchenko.
I had hoped for skeletonized. No such luck. The plastic, much like a large freezer bag, must have preserved him. He looked like Beetlejuice. His skull was partially covered with skin and random tufts of hair. There were no eyeballs, only sockets staring up at me. His suit was mostly still there. It was a double-breasted affair, probably brown, but it was being worn by only half a body or less. He had been wearing a gold chain, which was now draped around his spine.
“Shanahan.”
“What?”
“Get the wallet. Let’s plant this guy and get the fuck out of here.”
I moved around to where his waist was…had been. My outer gloves were too bulky to rifle through his pockets, so I took one off, leaving only the surgical glove. I started to reach and recoiled. It was instinctive. I had to concentrate really hard to reach down and lift his suit jacket. But once I had broken the barrier, once I had touched him, I couldn’t move fast enough. I turned him slightly to reach into his back pants pocket. I tried not to notice how the corpse moved under my hands. Parts of it around the waist felt somewhat solid but spongy. Other parts felt like what they were: a bag of bones. I tried his side pocket. Loose change and some keys. I pulled everything out and dumped it in the dirt behind me. No wallet.
I stepped across him to stand on the plastic and try the other side. I didn’t look at him. I didn’t think about what I was doing. I forced every ounce of concentration I had into the few square inches where my hand was searching. His cell phone was in his other side pocket. I took it. There was nothing in the back pocket.
The Pandora Key Page 24