Night Fall

by Nelson DeMille

  I didn’t hear him over the sound of the surf, but I caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of my left eye as he moved abreast of me, about ten paces away. He said, “We need to talk.”

  I kept walking. Ahead I could see the first beach house outside the park.

  He tried again and said, “It’s better if we talk here, unofficially. It’s either this, or you’ll be questioned at a hearing.” He added, “You may face criminal charges. And Kate will, too.”

  I turned and started walking toward him.

  He said, “Keep your distance.”

  “You’re the one with the gun.”

  “That’s right, and I don’t want to have to use it.”

  I got about five feet from him, and he backed up and pulled his Glock. “Don’t make me use this.”

  I stopped and said, “Take the magazine out of the gun, Ted, clear the chamber, and put the gun back in your holster.”

  He didn’t do as I instructed, but better yet, he didn’t shoot. I said, “Men with balls don’t need guns to talk to other men. Unload it, and we can talk.”

  He seemed to be struggling with his options, then he raised the gun, released the magazine, and put it in his pocket. He pulled back the slide and a round ejected and fell to the sand. He holstered the Glock and stood there, glaring at me.

  I said, “Throw me the magazine.”

  “Come and get it.”

  I closed the distance between us. I had no doubt that this guy could give me a good fight if we got into it. I reminded him, “The magazine.”

  He said again, “Come and get it, tough guy.”

  “Come on, Ted. Don’t make me beat the shit out of you. I haven’t gotten laid in forty days, and I’m feeling mean.”

  “I’m glad Yemen did you some good. One of my colleagues told me you were becoming a fat drunk.”

  He didn’t have a loaded gun, so I had to give him some credit for balls. Or maybe he had backup, and I was in the crosshairs of a sniper rifle. I looked back toward the dunes, but didn’t see the telltale green glow of a nightscope. There was a fishing boat a few hundred yards offshore, but maybe it wasn’t a fishing boat. I said to him, “I know you don’t have the balls to talk to me like that without your gun, so you must have your little helpers here, like the fucking coward you are.”

  He surprised me with a left hook that I didn’t see coming, but I managed to snap my head back in time, and he just clipped my jaw. I fell back into the sand, and he made the mistake of diving at me. I planted both my feet in his solar plexus and heaved him up into the air and over me. I flipped around and scrambled across the sand toward him, but he was on his feet and backpedaling fast as he pulled his gun from his holster and the magazine from his pocket. Before he could put Tab A into Slot B to make bang-bang, I rose into a sprinter’s stance and sprung forward. But the damned sand was too soft, and I lost traction and couldn’t get to him before he got the Glock loaded. He was pulling back the slide to chamber a round when I got my hand on his ankle and yanked hard.

  He tumbled to the sand, and I was on top of him, my left hand clamped around the barrel of his gun, and my right hand delivering a roundhouse punch to the top of his head.

  This stunned him, but not enough to keep him from planting his knee in my groin, which took the wind out of me.

  We started rolling together down the slope of the beach into the surf. A few breakers smacked us as we grappled and locked together, and the undertow began to carry us out farther.

  Each of us was trying to find some traction on the ocean floor so we could get in a good punch, but I wasn’t letting go of the gun in Ted’s hand, so we were locked together as the tide and the undertow took us farther out.

  Every time I thought about him and Kate together, I butted my head into his, and we were both becoming dazed. He must have realized by now that I hated him so much that I’d become psychotic, and I didn’t care if we both drowned.

  After about a minute of wrestling, we’d both swallowed a lot of salt water, and Ted was being weighed down by his heavier clothes. I was in very good shape—thanks to Yemen—and I knew I could drown him if I wanted to. He knew it, too, and he suddenly stopped struggling. We both looked at each other, our faces only about a foot apart, and he said, “Okay . . .” He let go of the Glock and swam a few yards to where his feet hit solid ground, then he stumbled up on the beach, walked a few more yards, then turned and flopped down in the sand. He’d lost his shoes, and he was barefoot and covered with wet sand.

  I scrambled up on the beach and stood about five feet from him, breathing hard. The salt water was burning my jaw where he’d clipped me, my balloons ached where he’d kneed me, and my head was throbbing from butting him. Other than that, I felt great.

  It took about a minute for him to get to his feet, and he stood bent over, taking deep breaths, and coughing up seawater. Finally, he stood up straight and I noticed a stream of blood running from his nose. He congratulated me on my win by saying, “Asshole.”

  “Come on, Ted. Be a good loser. Didn’t they teach you sportsmanship at that Ivy League school you went to?”

  “Fuck you.” He wiped his nose with his hand. “Asshole.”

  “I guess they didn’t.” I ejected the magazine and put it in my pocket, then pulled back the slide, and saw that indeed he’d gotten a round into the chamber, though he hadn’t squeezed it off while we were having a dispute over who should hold the gun. I ejected the round, and I stuck the Glock in my waistband.

  He said, “I could have blown your head off about six times.”

  “I think once would have been enough.”

  He actually laughed, which made him cough, then he wiped the salt from his eyes, and said, “Give me my gun.”

  “Come and get it.”

  He staggered toward me and held out his hand for the gun. I took his hand and shook it. “Good fight.”

  He pulled his hand away and gave me a push.

  He still had some fight left in him, which I admired, but I was getting tired of his act. I shoved him hard and said, “Don’t do that again, asshole.”

  He turned and began walking away. I stood there, watching him as he approached the dunes. He turned back to me and said, “Follow me, stupid.”

  How could I resist an invitation like that? I followed him, and we climbed the same sand dune that Kate and I had climbed back in July.

  We stood at the top of the dune, and he said to me, “I’m going to tell you what happened here on the night of July 17, 1996.”

  He could have done that a half hour ago and saved us both a dunk in the ocean. But there had been other issues to settle first, which still weren’t fully settled. I said to him, “No lies.”

  “The truth,” said Mr. Nash, quoting from his company motto, “shall set you free.”

  “Sounds like a good deal.”

  “It’s a better deal than I wanted to give you. But I follow orders.”

  “Since when?”

  “Look who’s talking.” He stared at me and said, “We have something in common, Corey—we’re loners. But we get the job done better than the team players we work with and the political wimps we work for. You and I don’t always tell the truth, but we know the truth, and we want the truth. And I’m the only guy who will tell you the truth, and maybe I’m the only guy who you’ll believe.”

  “You were doing okay there for a minute.”

  “I’m not going to insult your intelligence with more bullshit.”

  “Ted, from the first minute I met you, and through two major cases, all you’ve ever done is bullshit me.”

  He smiled and said, “Let me try again.”

  I think I detected a double meaning there, but I said, “Talk.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Ted Nash stayed silent awhile, still catching his breath, then said, “Okay, this couple left the Bayview Hotel, at about seven P.M., carrying a hotel blanket. In their SUV was an ice chest with wine, and a video camera with a tripod.”

&n
bsp; “Yeah, I know all that.”

  “That’s right,” he said, “you’ve spoken to Kate, and you’ve done some snooping on your own. What else do you know?”

  “I’m not here to answer questions.”

  He said, “Kate’s in some trouble, too, for telling you about this.”

  “And how about you? Are you in some trouble now because you blabbed to her about this five years ago? Is that why you were resurrected and dusted off? To deal with your screw-up?”

  He stared at me awhile, then replied, “Let’s just say that I’m the best man to handle this breach of confidence and set matters straight.”

  “Whatever.” I glanced at my watch, which was still working, and said, “Say what you’ve got to say. I have a long ride back to Manhattan.”

  Ted looked annoyed because I didn’t seem very interested in his bullshit. He said to me, “What you don’t know is that after they had sex”—he pointed down into the small valley between the dunes—“there on the blanket, she wanted to go skinny-dipping, and she wanted it recorded, so he moved the camera and tripod up here, and pointed it out there, set it on infinity and aimed at the beach, which from this height includes a good piece of the sky.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I spoke to them. How the hell else would I know that?”

  So, if I was to believe him so far, this couple had been found, and she was alive—at least she was at the time. I said, “Continue.”

  “All right, so they ran down to the beach, as the camera recorded them, and they skinny-dipped awhile, then came back to the beach and had sex again, on the shore.” He sort of smiled and said, “You can assume correctly that they weren’t married to each other.”

  “And if this guy had two erections in one night, he wasn’t CIA.”

  Ted let that one slide, and he pointed to the beach. “As they were having sex on the beach, they wouldn’t notice anything in the sky, but they did hear the explosion, which would have reached them about forty seconds after it happened. By the time they turned toward the sound of the explosion, the aircraft had already come apart, and the nose section was already in the ocean, and the main fuselage was still climbing, then it began its descent. Interestingly, they thought they saw a streak of light rising toward the aircraft at this point in time—after the destruction of the aircraft. But they realized it was a reflection of a stream of burning fuel that they saw mirrored in the glassy ocean, which they confirmed later when they watched the tape.” He looked at me. “Understand?”

  “Sure. Smoke and mirrors. Isn’t that what you guys are all about?”

  “Not in this case.” He continued his story. “All right, realizing that there would be people descending on the beach within minutes, they ran back to this dune, dressed quickly, and grabbed the camera and the tripod before running to their vehicle, a Ford Explorer, and heading back to the Bayview Hotel.” He added, “Unfortunately for them, they left the hotel blanket and video camera lens cap, which told us two things—where they were staying and what they were doing here. They also left the ice chest, wine bottle, and two glasses, from which we lifted two perfect sets of prints.”

  I thought about that, and I couldn’t find any holes in Nash’s story. In fact, it was what I, Kate, and everyone else surmised, with a few added details as a result of Ted actually speaking to this couple. I asked, “What was on the videotape?”

  “Not what you’d like to be on the tape.”

  “Look, Ted, I have no wants or needs about this either way. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, and I’m not professionally locked into the official conclusion, as you are. I’m just an open-minded guy, looking for the truth. And for justice.”

  His mouth formed that little sneer, which I hate, and he said, “I know you are, John. That’s why we’re here. That’s why I gave up my Saturday night for this.”

  “Hey, you can miss one church bingo game now and then. What was on the tape?”

  He replied, “The lady played the tape through the viewfinder on the ride back to the hotel. She couldn’t see much, but she did see what they didn’t see while they were having sex—she actually saw the aircraft, captured on tape at the moment it exploded. She said to me that it was bizarre that the aircraft was exploding on the upper-right-hand side of the frame, while she and her companion were making love in the lower-left-hand side of the frame, and they didn’t even look up. Of course, the sound hadn’t reached them yet, and they continued to have sex as the aircraft was exploding into a huge fireball, then breaking up and beginning its final moments of flight.” He paused, thought, and said, “The man said to me that when he watched the videotape with her, he had to explain to her the vast difference in the speed of sound and of light, which was why they were still making love as the aircraft exploded.”

  “Thank God for the laws of physics, or you guys would have had trouble making an animation that none of the eyewitnesses recognized as what they’d seen with their own eyes.”

  He seemed a little annoyed with me and said, “The animation was very accurate, based on those laws of physics, eyewitness interviews, radar sightings, the dynamics of flight, and the knowledge of what an aircraft does when there is a catastrophic explosion on board.”

  “Right. Can I see their videotape?”

  “Let me finish.”

  “You’re finished. I want to see the tape and talk to the couple.”

  “I’ll finish.” He continued, “The couple got back to the Bayview Hotel and hooked up the video camera to the VCR and watched the tape through the TV set. They both saw what she had seen through the viewfinder. It was a sound tape, and they could now clearly hear the explosion, about forty seconds after they saw it on the videotape.” He looked at me and said, “The entire accident was recorded, start to finish, in color, with sound, with good quality film, and with the video camera on a twilight setting. On the videotape, they could actually see the blinking lights of the 747 before the explosion.” He stared at me intently and said, “There was no streak of light rising toward that aircraft before the explosion.”

  Why did I know that was coming? I said, “That’s good news. I need to see the tape and talk to the couple.”

  He didn’t reply directly and said, “Let me ask you a question: If you were this couple, and you were having an affair, and you videotaped yourself engaged in several sexually explicit acts, what would you do with that tape?”

  “Put it on the Internet.”

  “You might. They, obviously, destroyed it.”

  “Yeah? When? How?”

  “That night. As soon as they left their hotel room. They pulled off to the side of the road, the man ran over the cassette, then he burned the tape.”

  “Where did he get the matches or the lighter?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe one of them smoked.”

  They didn’t, according to Roxanne, but I didn’t say that to Nash. Also, it was very convenient of Nash to say that the guy physically destroyed the tape rather than erased it, because an erased tape can be restored in a lab, and Ted didn’t want me pursuing that thought.

  I said, “Okay, so they burned the videotape. Then what?”

  “They drove into Westhampton village where she had parked her car. By now, both their cell phones were ringing as people tried to contact them about the accident. They’d told their spouses they were out in the Hamptons—he was fishing, she was shopping in East Hampton, then having dinner with a girlfriend and staying overnight.”

  “His story wasn’t bad. Hers might make a husband suspicious.”

  Mr. Nash informed me, “Most spouses trust each other. Didn’t you trust Kate in Tanzania?”

  “Ted, if you mention Kate’s name one more time, I’m going to shove your gun up your ass, butt first.”

  He smiled, but didn’t reply. Why does this guy get to me?

  Getting back to the business at hand, he said, “They drove back to their respective homes in their cars, then spent the rest of the evening with their spous
es, watching the news coverage of the crash on television.”

  I commented, “That must have been an interesting evening at home.”

  He looked at me and said, “That’s it. As many people suspected and surmised, there was a couple on the beach, they were having an affair, and they did inadvertently videotape the accident. But there was no smoking gun, no smoking rocket on that tape.”

  “That’s what you’re telling me that they told you.”

  “Well, obviously I asked them both to take a polygraph test, and they both did perfectly.”

  “Great. Then I need to also see the polygraph results plus their written or recorded statements before I speak to them.”

  Ted of the CIA obviously didn’t like dealing with a police detective because detectives want to establish a chain of evidence, while the CIA deals with abstractions, conjectures, and analysis, which are the main ingredients of bullshit.

  Ted explained patiently to me, “They both told the whole truth about their sexual activities on the beach, and this is where you’d expect to see some lies on the polygraph because people become embarrassed—but they told us exactly what they did on the beach. Then, when we asked about what they saw with their own eyes on the beach, then on the videotape, they were again truthful. No streak of light.” He added, “The polygraph sessions were almost as good as us having the actual videotape.”

  I wasn’t quite buying that, but I said, “Okay. I guess that’s it.”

  He knew me too well from when he was alive the first time, and said, “I don’t think you’re convinced.”

  “I am. By the way, how did you find this couple?”

  He replied, “I had an easier time than you’re having. The man had once been printed for a job, and we had his fingerprints on the wine bottle and the wineglass. We ran them through the FBI databank, and on Monday morning we called on him at his office. He, in turn, gave us the name of his married girlfriend.”

  “That was easy. I hope you lifted his prints from the registration card at the Bayview so you could connect him between the beach and the hotel.”