The Bricklayer
The Bricklayer
Noah Boyd
A blockbusting thriller introducing maverick FBI agent Steve Vail.“Move over Jack Reacher, here comes The Bricklayer.” James PattersonSTEVE VAIL IS A MAVERICK.A trained killer and former agent, Vail despises authority and he's never met a rule he didn't break. These days he's working as a bricklayer.Now, Deputy Kate Bannon of the FBI desperately wants his help.Because someone is killing their operatives - in complex, subtle, twisted ways - and the body count is rising fast. Someone holds a fatal grudge against the agency; someone who knows how it works, and wants a bloody revenge.And it might be an inside job.To stem the tide of murders, Vail must re-enter a world he hoped he left behind long ago - his own past.
The Bricklayer
Noah Boyd
For Esther Newberg
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#ub935eeaa-6057-5e01-ba34-d05900eb2a35)
Title Page (#uc4b74f4b-7624-537c-a7a0-7a7fa0795464)
Dedication (#u4b27f6c8-bbae-5721-b03f-9acd404d4cd6)
BEFORE (#u484d9e5b-ada3-5c07-892a-9671528f62e6)
ONE (#u88870677-e7a3-51c3-b307-44800abbf33d)
TWO (#u1c683ec9-77bb-5cc8-80c8-7c159f48d51b)
THREE (#u56917f20-05f3-5fef-bcc3-a5f22f370ccf)
FOUR (#u1ce11c55-e8d1-5cf3-8f60-0bc602a2407e)
FIVE (#u5764c8e4-d8e8-5146-bb48-123f9a91bbc3)
SIX (#u41753693-a407-5c23-9f9c-382b4438e17d)
SEVEN (#u060c3e18-084f-58b4-9015-af18103286e4)
EIGHT (#u488ead68-f401-5556-bbb0-d665cbfb4e69)
NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRTY (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
AFTER (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
BEFORE (#ulink_ac7871a0-7a42-5e75-9db2-d2eee03fbdce)
As Mickey Stillson stared at the gun in his hand, he absentmindedly reached up and adjusted the fake ear that was his entire disguise and wondered how a born-again Christian like himself had wound up in the middle of a bank robbery.
A year earlier, he had been so certain of his religious conversion that when he went before the Illinois parole board, he let his inner peace sell itself. He asked its members to address him as Michael – a name that he felt emitted a soft, evangelical glow – because like Saul giving way to Paul, prison had been his personal road to Damascus. Confinement, he explained to the stony faces in front of him, had actually been his salvation. Without it, he would never have found God, the void that had sent his previous life tumbling end over end, resulting in a three-year-long incarceration for forgery.
He couldn’t help but wonder now if finding God hadn’t in fact been strictly a means of survival. After all, his ear had been cut off by an inmate they called ‘Nam’ the first week Mickey had been released into the prison’s general population, leaving little argument that surviving on his own would be difficult. Although Nam had never been in the military, Stillson’s was the third ear he had collected in as many years. No matter how thoroughly Nam’s cell was searched after each incident, the appendages were never found, giving rise, due largely to inmates’ need of fiction, to the rumor that he had devoured them in some sort of ritual he had become addicted to in Vietnam.
Within a month, Stillson had found God. As his wounds healed, he found the gnarled stump did have some benefit. While some men displayed tattoos or scars as warning to others, Stillson was missing an ear – an entire ear – which was something that even heavyweight champions couldn’t claim.
He pulled his hand away from the fake ear in disgust. Maybe he was just a jailhouse Christian, but none of that seemed to matter at the moment. He would have liked to believe that just committing an armed felony demanded that his faith be reevaluated, but he had to admit that the police officers who had surrounded the bank probably had something to do with it. He cursed himself for thinking he could ever be a real bank robber. Hell, he wasn’t even much of a forger.
He peeked outside, around the frame of one of the bank’s full-length front windows, to see if the police had moved any closer, but they were still the same distance away, lying with weapons at the ready across the trunks and hoods of their cars, apparently waiting only for the slightest provocation. At a safe distance behind them were satellite dishes on top of the television news vans, ensuring this was going to play out to the end.
Greedy – that’s what he and his partner, John Ronson, had become. They hadn’t been satisfied with just robbing the tellers. Instead, they decided the take could be doubled, or even tripled, by ‘getting the vault.’ It was Ronson’s idea; actually he had insisted on it. Stillson had deferred to him, since he was the expert, if a previous conviction and prison stretch for bank robbery could be considered know-how.
Nervously, Stillson reached up again and touched the artificial ear. Ronson had made him wear it. ‘Don’t you watch TV? The cops are lousy with technology since we went inside. All they got to do is check their computers for convicted felons with one ear and they got you. And once they got you – no offense, Mickey – they got me.’ So they went to a costume shop and bought a half-dozen fake ears, trying, with minimal success, to match the color of Stillson’s skin. He also had to let his hair grow a little longer so when they tied the ear in place with clear fishing line, he could comb his hair over the almost invisible filament. Ronson thought the disguise looked good; Stillson was fairly certain he looked ridiculous.
Stillson stood on his tiptoes to look over the counter and into the vault, where Ronson was stuffing bundles of cash into an optimistically large hockey bag. Tall and extremely thin, Ronson had been released six months earlier from the state prison at Joliet, where he had been paroled after serving one-third of his twenty-year sentence for attempted murder and the armed robbery of a bank. The deadly assault charge stemmed from shooting it out with the arresting detectives. He had surrendered only after running out of ammunition.
Stillson’s job during the robberies was to keep all the customers and employees covered while Ronson vaulted the counter and cleaned out the tellers’ drawers. This time, as Ronson was taking the time to force the manager to open the vault’s day gate, the first police car showed up in response to a silent alarm. At the moment, everyone was aware of the increasing potential for violence and was lying facedown obediently, trying not to be noticed.
‘How are we going to get out of here?’ Stillson yelled over the counter.
‘One thing at a time,’ Ronson shot back, and continued stuffing the bag with money.
‘How can you think about the money?’
‘Because if we get out of here, we’re going to need every dime of it.’ After zipping up the bag, Ronson threw it ahead of him and vaulted back over the counter. He yanked an elderly woman to her feet.
‘No, no, please don’t!’
‘Shut up, you old broad. You’ve already lived long enough.’ He pushed her toward the front door, and as they disappeared around a wall that separated the door’s alcove from the rest of the bank, he yelled back to Stillson, ‘Just keep everybody covered.’
Stillson couldn’t deny that he liked the control he had over everyone during the robberies. And for some reason, with the cops outside, that feeling was even more intense. To demonstrate his willingness to fully execute his partner’s orders, he backed up a couple of steps and slowly swung his gun from side to side. That was when he noticed a man lying next to a watercooler. His gold-colored Carhartt work pants as well as his boots were covered with concrete dust. His faded black T-shirt clung to his thick shoulders and arms. He was the only one with his head raised, and he seemed to be watching the gunman with a mixture of curiosity and insolence.
The one-eared bank robber didn’t know it, but the man had been tracking and analyzing his movements, measuring his agility, the length of his stride, his reaction time. He judged Stillson as a man who had not built a career on physical prowess or intimidation. His only authority seemed to be the gun in his hand, which he was holding too tightly.
As the man continued to stare at Stillson, he admonished himself: You don’t carry a gun anymore, stupid. Next time, you use the drive-through.
‘What’re you looking at?’ Stillson demanded.
The man’s mouth went crooked with a sneer as he silently mouthed words, causing Stillson to think he was having trouble hearing. He reached up and checked the rubber ear to make sure it wasn’t blocking the auditory canal. When he found it in place, he realized that the man had figured out it was fake and was taunting him. ‘Think that’s funny?’
The man spoke a little too loudly now. ‘I said, I’m watching you so I’ll get it right at the lineup.’
Stillson took two quick steps toward him, thrusting the black automatic forward, being careful not to get too close. ‘Are you nuts? You some sort of tough-guy construction worker? Is that it?’
‘Bricklayer.’
‘What?’
‘I’m a brick mason,’ the man said.
Stillson took another half step, raising the gun to eye level. ‘Well, meat, you’re about to undergo a career change. You can be either a floor kisser or a brain donor. Your call.’
The bricklayer slowly lowered his head.
Next time, meat, definitely the drive-through.
Shielded by the woman hostage, Ronson opened the front door enough to expose her and yelled a demand for the cops to leave and, even though he couldn’t see any, to clear out the snipers. Almost before he finished speaking, a loudspeaker ordered him to surrender. Ronson cocked his gun and pressed it against the side of the woman’s head. ‘You’ve got five minutes, and then I’m going to begin shooting people, starting with this old goat. Understand?’
Stillson couldn’t hear exactly what was being said and took a couple of steps back, trying to get a more advantageous angle to see and hear. Then he heard something he couldn’t immediately identify – a couple of deep liquid glugs.
The watercooler!
He swung his gun back toward the bricklayer, who was up off the floor and coming at him, just a couple of steps away. In front of him, he held the almost-full five-gallon water bottle sideways, pressed tightly between his hands to keep the water from escaping.
Stillson fired.
The bottle exploded, absorbing the impact of the bullet. It was all the time the man needed to close the distance between himself and the robber. In a blur, he stepped sideways, minimizing himself as a target, and grabbed the barrel of the gun, twisting it outward in a move that seemed practiced. With Stillson’s wrist bent back to its limit and his finger being dislocated inside the trigger guard, the gun was easily ripped out of his hand. As the robber started flailing, the man used the weapon to strike him once in the temple cleanly, dazing him.
Then the bricklayer grabbed him and with relative ease hurled him through one of the bank’s full-length windows. Amid a shower of glass, Stillson skidded across the concrete and lay unconscious. Fluttering in the air and then landing on top of him was the rubber ear.
The bricklayer ran to the wall that separated the front door from the rest of the bank’s interior and flattened himself against it. The woman hostage was pushed around the corner of the alcove, followed by Ronson, who was screaming at Stillson, demanding to know what he was shooting at. The mason’s hand flashed forward, and the muzzle of the gun he had taken from Stillson was pressed against Ronson’s throat.
Ronson hesitated, and the man said, ‘Do me a favor – try it…Do everyone a favor.’ Ronson recognized the seething tone; he had heard it many times in prison; this man was willing to kill him. Ronson dropped his gun. As the man bent down to pick it up, the bank robber started to run toward the opening left by the shattered window, but the bricklayer caught him. Ronson swung and caught him full on the jaw, but it didn’t seem to have any effect. The mason countered with a straight right to the middle of the robber’s face, snapping his head back violently and buckling his knees. The bricklayer grabbed him, turned, and launched him through the adjoining window, shattering it as well.
Outside, one of the reporters yelled to his cameraman, ‘Did you get it? Both of them?’
‘Oh, yeah. Every beautiful bounce.’
Suddenly the front door flew open and the hostages came streaming out, running past the police line and into the safety of the crowd. While one group of officers ran up to search and handcuff the two gunmen, a SWAT team rushed into the bank, leapfrogging tactically to secure the building and ensure there were no more robbers. It was empty.
With the aid of a couple of bullhorns, the police rounded up the hostages and herded them back inside. Each told the same story: that the man in the gold-colored Carhartts and black shirt was the one who had disarmed both robbers. When the detectives asked the witnesses to point him out, they were astonished to find that the bricklayer had vanished.
ONE (#ulink_2acda771-5f9d-5704-9428-e66f9e1e2d5c)
As Connie Lysander took the towel from around her, she looked at her body’s reflection in the full-length mirror and ordered herself to be objective, really objective. She held herself erect and, turning a few degrees in each direction, tightened her stomach muscles. It was no use, she decided; her once-taut figure had lost its sleekness. Fifteen years earlier she had been a reporter on Beneath Hollywood, a local television show that scraped together questionable bits and pieces of the ‘real’ story behind the bountiful missteps of the crowned princes and princesses of the movie industry. The three years the show aired, it had better-than-average ratings. She knew her popularity had been due largely to her figure and the way she dressed. She had worked little since the show was canceled. When her auditions for more mainstream news shows would fail, her manager blamed it on her being ‘typecast’ as a tabloid reporter. In the interim years, she floated in and out of various jobs, eventually marrying. When that ended two years earlier, she vowed to get back into media any way she could.
She stepped over and opened the door leading out onto the lanai. One of the things she loved about Los Angeles was the weather – maybe it was the thing she loved most of all. Its warm, and consistency was reassuring for her, something she could count on, unlike while she was growing up in the damp, aching loneliness of Seattle’s Puget Sound. It was a daily reminder that life was just better here. Even the Southern California architecture reflected the climate. Family rooms, kitchens, even bathrooms, featured doors that opened directly to the outside, bringing the outdoors in.
A light breeze brought in the floral sweetness of her small garden. But then she thought she smelled the aroma of coffee. She had not had any caffeine in three months, part of her new regimen, and her neighbors were out of town. Probably just some sort of latent craving. Maybe she would get dressed and go have a cup; decaf wouldn’t hurt anything.
She went back to the mirror for a few more moments trying to decide whether an even more extreme exercise program would return any part of her physical appeal, and then, in a flash of honesty, she decided that it wouldn’t. She took a step closer to the mirror and started examining her face. Plastic surgery was not as easy a fix as it seemed, at least not in Hollywood. It fooled no one but instead marked her as someone who was moving onto the cusp of has-beenhood, joining a long and unenviable list her peers couldn’t wait to add another performer to. And maybe worse, once started, the procedures were progressive, until everyone’s look became comically identical, that of carved feline features being pulled back by the g-forces necessary to reenter the earth’s atmosphere.
She dared another half step closer to the mirror and, using her index fingers, pushed up the skin in front of her ears, tightening her jawline. It did look better, although it did little for her sagging neck. She was tired of trying to come up with combinations of turtlenecks, scarves, and shadowing collars to hide her age. She tapped the fold of skin under her chin with the back of her fingers and watched as it remained stubbornly unchanged. Maybe it was time.
Her agent had been getting a lot more calls since she had done the exposé of the FBI and the United States attorney’s office in Los Angeles. True, it had been her manager’s idea, but when she looked back on it now, it needed to be done. And Hollywood loved to target the FBI. If they and the U.S. attorney’s office hadn’t been so corrupt, why had their missteps been so easy for her to uncover? Maybe ‘corrupt’ wasn’t the right word. She had recorded agents and attorneys drinking on duty, frequenting prostitutes, and working out for endless hours at local gyms. There were actually some people fired, so it really had been a public service. And her peers obviously appreciated her efforts, because she was now getting called again.
She took a step back and put her hands on her hips. ‘Yep, I’m going to do it,’ she said out loud to make the decision binding. Pulling on a robe, she walked into her bedroom.
She didn’t notice the man sitting in the chair until she saw him in the mirrored closet door. Spinning around, she grabbed at the front of her robe. ‘Who are you?’ Then she noticed his gloved hands. In the left was a take-out cup of coffee. In the right was a gun, which hung indifferently. She tightened her grip on the front of her robe. ‘What do you want?’
He laughed noiselessly. ‘Certainly not that.’ She searched his eyes for any flicker of motive. They were gray and sad. Slowly the rage behind them became evident, not the sort that flashes for a moment, but the kind that doesn’t burn out in a lifetime. There was little doubt in her mind how dangerous this man was.
She released her robe and let her hands fall to her side with a calming reassurance. Her voice mellowed. ‘Then what can I do for you?’
‘Your story about the FBI brought me here. You really did a job on the agency.’
‘The story was true.’
‘Yes, you’re a real patriot.’
The remark seemed sarcastic, but she wasn’t sure. His voice was emotionless, containing none of the contempt that ensured the depth of the insult. ‘The story was true,’ she said again, as if testing his ability to be rational, the repeated defense the only one necessary for a logical person.
‘Careers were destroyed,’ he said. ‘How about your career? On the upturn, I would imagine.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Someone who wonders why you hate the FBI?’
Even though he asked the question in the same flat tone, she felt an increased possibility of violence. ‘I – I don’t hate the FBI. Why won’t you tell me why you’re here?’ She stole a glance toward the door, measuring its distance and his range of fire from the chair.
He tipped the muzzle of the gun up at her. ‘Sit down on the bed.’
Paralyzed by his sureness, she realized she wouldn’t make it and did as instructed. Attempting a smile, she said, ‘Sure, whatever you say.’
He took a swallow of his coffee. ‘I’m here for the same reason that you did your little story – to make the FBI pay.’
‘If we want the same thing, do you really think a gun is necessary?’
‘Unfortunately, yes. I’m here to provide you with the means of really damaging the FBI.’
‘I don’t understand. How?’
‘I’m sure you believe in what you did. That it’s critical to the well-being of the country to expose the FBI. And this has to be done no matter the cost. That is what you believe, isn’t it?’
‘Sure, I guess.’
‘See, we want the same thing. Only you’re going to have to make the ultimate sacrifice for your – or should I say, our – cause.’
‘What, you think you’re going to kill me?’
‘Unless you can find some way to kill me. But since I’m the only one in the room with a gun, I seriously doubt that.’
Her eyes locked onto him as her head tilted appraisingly. ‘You’re from the FBI, aren’t you? You were sent here to intimidate me. That’s what this is really about.’
He took the last drink of his coffee, tipping it up to ensure it was empty. Then, balancing the gun on his right leg and without taking his eyes from her, he pried the lid off the cup and set both down on the table next to him. With the gun back in his hand, he glanced at her, then carefully readjusted the cup’s position on the table. ‘Not really. Women like you are too irrational to ever be intimidated.’
‘Women like me. You mean a bitch.’ She threw her head back and laughed as though trying to embarrass him with his inability to show emotion. ‘This is Hollywood, moron. Without the bitches in the middle of everything, this town’s major export would be fat-free yogurt. From someone like you, “bitch” is the ultimate compliment.’
‘In that case, you’re the queen.’
‘Damn right.’
Again his face mimicked laughter without a sound. Glancing once more at the cup, he rotated the automatic slightly until the ejection port was exactly where he wanted it. ‘Personally, I would have chosen a different epitaph, but who am I to argue with royalty?’
He fired once, striking her in the middle of the upper lip. She fell back dead as the ejected casing from the automatic arced through the air and into the cardboard cup. He walked over to the body and placed a blue piece of paper on her chest. On it was written ‘Rubaco Pentad.’ From his pocket he took a plastic bag containing a Q-tip and dabbed it in the blood that was trickling from her wound. Careful not to let it touch his skin, he resealed the bag.
He went back to the table, dropped the bagged swab into the paper cup, and pushed the lid back onto it. After looking around for any other trace evidence that might have been accidentally cast off, he slid the gun into its holster under his wind breaker and walked out.
TWO (#ulink_fe13048f-2aff-5df2-b55d-95bafee861e3)
The FBI was about to pay the rubaco pentad one million dollars. At least that’s what the group was supposed to think. Agent Dan West was being guided electronically to a location in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Heading east, he crossed a wooden bridge, watching the river disappear into a turn that he knew had to be close to the ocean. Dusk and a warm summer breeze added to the serenity of the small seacoast town, making it an even more unlikely place to be the final twist in such a complicated and vicious crime.
For the first time since he’d left Afghanistan, a burning knot of fear was growing in West’s stomach, something that had not happened in his three years with the FBI, all of which had been spent on a white-collar-crime squad in Boston. It had been mind-numbing work. He had tried to tell his bosses that because he was a former Navy SEAL, he needed something more confrontational than endless columns of numbers that never seemed to add up to the same total twice.
He checked the coordinates on the handheld GPS receiver – they now matched those given in the demand letter. He pulled into a small parking lot and got out of the Bureau car, a ponderous Crown Victoria chosen for its obviousness. A brief chill shuddered along his limbs as he stretched nervously. An unlit sign above the single-story building identified it. ‘It is the Kittery Point Yacht Club,’ he whispered into the microphone taped to his chest, confirming his location. Fearing the Pentad might be watching the drop site, the FBI had conducted only a satellite reconnaissance of the coordinates, revealing the yacht club as the likely destination.
‘Copy,’ answered one of the dozen surveillance agents who had been following him at a discreet distance since he left the federal building in Boston.
West ran his tongue across his lips. The taste of salt air reminded him of his navy training, and that no matter what lay ahead, he was capable of handling it. His job was to drop the money and get out. The agents following him would deal with whoever tried to pick it up. The canvas bag he pulled out of the backseat was carefully weighted and shaped to give the impression it contained the full amount in hundred-dollar bills, but it contained only a thousand dollars, enough to make the crime a felony once delivered and retrieved.
Although the Rubaco Pentad appeared to be a politically driven domestic terrorism group, its demand for a million dollars was still technically extortion. And extortion, he had been taught during new-agents training, is simply a crime of intimidation at an anonymous distance. The victim has to be scared enough by the criminal’s threat to do two things without question: part with the cash, and not contact the authorities. Each party has its own advantages. The extortionist has anonymity, while all law enforcement has to do is never lose contact with the money. Most cases wind up a draw: the criminal doesn’t get the money, and law enforcement is unable to identify him. The would-be extortionist keeps from going to jail, and the Bureau justifies, in part, its budget requests. When the occasional arrest is made, it’s because the extortionist thought he had come up with an original, foolproof gimmick to retrieve the money. ‘That’s all there is to extortion,’ the instructor had declared. ‘There are no variations. The Bureau’s been around for a century and no one has been able to figure out a way to do it differently.’
But the Rubaco Pentad changed everything. After murdering a former Hollywood reporter a month earlier, it had demanded one million dollars to prevent the next killing. What was different about the Pentad’s crime, other than the before-the-fact violence, was that the demand was made directly to the director of the FBI. In extortion or kidnapping drops, the Bureau always had at least some degree of surprise on its side, but the Pentad had taken that advantage away, leaving the agency unsure what to do next. The FBI was being told not only to come up with the money, but also to deliver it. Evidently the group felt its plan was so flawless that it could afford to humiliate the Bureau and still get away with the money.
The clear New Hampshire sky was full of stars; a halfmoon hung distantly in the northeast. West looked around for some indication of what he was supposed to do next. He checked the coordinates on the GPS again. They matched those in the instructions exactly. Maybe he was just supposed to wait. He put the bag down and reread a copy of the demand note.
FBI,
Only your unconditional compliance with the following two conditions will prevent the next murder:
1. Delivery of $1,000,000 in hundred-dollar bills at precisely 9:42 P.M. on August 14 at 43.072N 70.546W.
2. The public or media must not learn about the demand for money.
If either condition is violated, even by a ‘leak,’ the next person, a politician we have selected, will die. Although we doubt your ability to comply fully, we’re willing to let the world-famous FBI try to get it right the first time. If not, this war will get progressivelymore expensive in terms of lives as well as money. Neither of which are we necessarily opposed to.
If the FBI continues to violate the rights of this country’s citizens, the money will be used to finance much more drastic measures. More lives will be taken, and not one at a time. The FBI will be fully credited with the resulting mass destruction.
Make sure your delivery boy is a good swimmer. The Rubaco Pentad
West checked his watch. It was almost nine thirty. Time was getting short.
Of course, he thought, the water. They wanted a good swimmer. He picked up the bag and walked across the parking lot tarmac and around behind the club. There was a waist-high fence that separated the asphalt from the grassy slope that led to the Piscataqua River. He vaulted over it and walked down to the edge. Music from inside the club lilted softly behind him.
Twenty yards to his right, he could see a faint optic-green glow among a cluster of large shrubs. Under them was a black tarp with a glow-in-the-dark arrow painted on top. The Pentad would probably have left it during the day when the paint would not have luminesced and been noticeable. The arrow pointed to a building on an island in the river, which was dimly silhouetted by the moonlight. It was a large white structure that, because of the notched turrets at either end, looked like a medieval castle.
The tide appeared to be out, making West wonder if he was supposed to swim across the river, roughly two hundred yards. He spoke into the mike on his chest. ‘Can someone find out what time low tide is here?’ The entire operation was being monitored in the Boston office’s major-case room.
After a few minutes someone said, ‘Nine forty-two P.M.’ That answered West’s question about crossing the river. It was the exact time given in the instructions. Slack tide, the time of least current. Under the tarp were a scuba tank, fins, and a mask. At first glance the tank appeared old-fashioned, but it wasn’t the tank. It was the harness that held it. Modern tanks come with a zippered vest or at least padded straps that divers can get in and out of easily. This one was fitted with excessively long black nylon webbing, crisscrossed unnecessarily, using far too much strapping. Some of it had been doubled in places that weren’t necessary, and although it would be uncomfortable, it looked functional. Placed inside the mask was a wrist compass, which he strapped on. West explained over the radio what was going on. ‘Can you find out something about the building on the other side? It looks like that’s where I’m heading.’
West stripped down to his swimsuit. The ‘good swimmer’ portion of the demand letter had been interpreted as an attempt by the Pentad to neutralize any FBI electronic devices, so the office technical agent had put a waterproof bag with a neck strap in a side pocket of the larger money-bag. Next to it was an underwater flashlight. Also a waxsealed container had been jury-rigged by the head firearms instructor, who had placed a Smith & Wesson snubnose inside it.
It was now nine forty. As West started to slip on the fins provided, he found a folded piece of paper inside. ‘34°’ was the only thing written on it. He held up his wrist and checked the heading to the ‘castle.’ It was exactly thirty-four degrees.
‘Command, it looks like they want me to swim underwater straight to that building. Any idea what it is yet?’
‘We’ve got the head resident agent in Portsmouth on the line. He says it’s a hundred-year-old naval prison. Been closed for thirty years. That’s Seavey’s Island you’re heading to. It’s a secure naval shipyard now. We’ve got some of the surveillance units already at the main gate. They’ll be on your land side by the time you get across.’
‘Just make sure they don’t get me burned. That note sounds like these people would be just as happy if we screwed this up.’ He pulled the transmitter mike off his chest and packed everything into the water-tight bag. As he stepped into the water, he took another deep breath and said, ‘Well, tough guy, this is what you wanted.’
The water was cold, but the biggest problem was swimming underwater with the twenty-two-pound bag of fake money. The weight kept him deeper than he wanted to be. Some of the time he had to drag it along the bottom while keeping his eye on the compass. And the strange configuration of the harness webbing that was cutting into his waist and shoulders wasn’t helping. Halfway across, the tide started coming back in and the current began picking up. It took him more than a half hour to get across the river.
As he got closer to the other side, he could see more luminescent green light. He felt the river bottom sloping up, so he set the bag down on it. Keeping a foot through the carrying straps, he surfaced to confirm his location. He was close to the prison now. Maybe too close. It looked black in its own shadow. And silent, making him want to hold his breath as if the building were a wounded animal he had stumbled across, its only means of attack to lure in those who believed it was dead. The structure was no longer two-dimensional, but seemed to wrap around the end of the island, and at the same time around him. Its west end had wings that ran north and south for hundreds of additional feet and at its tallest point was at least six stories high. So much for making the drop and leaving everything else to the surveillance agents. It looked like he was on his own.
He dove down and gripped the bag and saw that the green lights were a couple of glowsticks that had been attached to the underwater wall of the castle. When he got within a couple of feet, he snapped on the flashlight and could see the sticks had been laced through the remains of a metal gridwork that had once secured some type of conduit, possibly sewage, since the prison had been built when the country’s rivers were considered nature’s refuse solution. The underwater passageway was narrow, but he could fit through it. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the moneybag into the opening and followed it in.
A few minutes later he broke through the surface and found himself standing in a large stone room, the floor of which was bedrock except for the large rectangular access opening that he was now standing in. There were water-marks on the walls that indicated seawater filled the room to three-quarters at high tide. Toward the top of one wall were three heavy metal rings anchored into the stone and concrete, the kind that prisoners might have been chained to. He wondered if the U.S. Navy of a hundred years ago hadn’t used the room for ‘retraining,’ taking the most uncooperative prisoners to the subterranean cell for an obedience lesson taught by two high tides a day and the flesh-nibbling crabs that rode in on them.
Pulling off the fins and mask, West shrugged out of the scuba tank and took out the snubnose. After turning on the transmitter, he spoke into the mike: ‘Any unit on this channel, can you hear me?’ Because of the hundreds of tons of steel and concrete surrounding him, it would have been a miracle to get any reception. ‘Anyone hear me?’ he tried once more. The only response was the hollow silence of the cavernous cell.
There didn’t appear to be a way out of the room, but then he noticed a trapdoor in the ceiling above the far wall. The height of the room was a good ten feet. How was he supposed to get up there?
He walked over to the wall directly underneath the trap-door and shined his light up for a closer look. Just beneath it was a thick, rusty L-shaped hook embedded in the wall. In shoes, he could just touch a basketball rim if he jumped, ten feet. Barefooted, he could probably get up to the hook, but it didn’t look like there was enough of it exposed for him to hold on to. He flashed the light around the room for anything that might help him reach it, but there was nothing except what he had brought with him.
Then it hit him – the webbing on the tank. That’s why it was so long. The extortionists had used an excess of nylon strapping to rig the tank so he could extricate himself from this cell. It was some sort of test that they hoped the FBI would fail.
After stripping the strap out of the tank’s frame, he quickly measured it using the nose-to-fingertip method. It was three lengths, about nine feet long. Great, he thought, nine feet to get me up ten feet and through the trapdoor. And with the moneybag. He let his sailor’s knowledge of knots run through his mind for a while before the answer came to him.
He laid the scuba tank against the wall, and because it was round, he jammed the two wedge-shaped fins underneath it to prevent it from rolling out as he stood on it, getting him a foot closer to the hook. After knotting a simple loop in the middle of the strap, he tied a large slipknot at one end and threw it over the hook. Pulling it down slowly, he tied the moneybag tightly at the bottom end of the webbing.
As West started climbing, he realized how much the swim had taken out of him physically. He began to wonder if part of the Pentad’s plan was to exhaust him. If it was, that meant a face-to-face confrontation could lie somewhere on the other side of the trapdoor.
Once he could stand in the knotted loop, he was able to straighten up and, with a full shove, push up on the door, causing it to rotate 180 degrees and slam against the floor in which it was hinged. West waited and listened. Still there was only silence.
The room he was climbing into was pitch black. He pulled himself up, drew his weapon, and got into a crouched firing position before turning on his light. It was some sort of holding room in a cellblock, about twenty feet by twenty feet. White paint was peeling off all the walls, and he could now smell it in the salty, damp air. Knowing how old the facility was and what the navy used for paint thirty years earlier, he was sure it was lead-based. An old dry-rotted ladder lay flat on the floor next to the trapdoor.
There was only one door in the room and he walked to it, turning off his light before opening it. He tried to do it carefully, but its rusted hinges echoed shrilly ahead of him. It opened to a narrow corridor. A hundred years ago the navy probably figured that whether on sea or land, a sailor needed only minimal width to move from compartment to compartment, so why waste money on aesthetics. At the far end of the corridor, he could see three more glowsticks fastened to a heavy stairwell door that had a small window of wired glass embedded in it. The sticks were shaped into an arrow pointing up. He went back to the trapdoor and pulled the moneybag up.
If he was going higher, maybe the transmitter would eventually work. He taped it to the small of his back and ran the mike up onto his chest, taping it in place. Then he put on his shirt to hide it. Jamming everything else into the bag, he headed for the glowstick arrow.
The stairwell was even narrower than the corridor. A metal railing ascended alongside the stairs. Peeling paint lined the deck and he could feel some of it sticking to the bottom of his feet. West turned off his flashlight. Of course they knew he was coming, but they didn’t need to know exactly where he was. In the dark he put his hand on the railing and started up. There was a landing between each floor, and he stopped on each one, snapping on his light to check the next set of stairs. Then he turned it off and listened for a few moments. He heard nothing, though he knew they were there. He continued on up the stairs.
On each floor he checked the metal door to determine if it was where he was supposed to enter the prison, but they were all locked. The window in each had been covered with paper on the opposite side so he couldn’t look through.
It took a few minutes to reach the top floor, the eighth if he had counted correctly. He tried the door and it opened. He turned on his flashlight and checked his weapon. He was now on a small landing with doors on either side. Shining a light through the glass windows, he could see they led off to different parts of the floor. Both were locked. Between them was a shoulder-width opening that looked down over an eight-story airshaft. All at once he could see the vastness of that part of the prison. Each floor was ringed with a catwalk accessing hundreds of cells. Underneath the railing at the edge where he stood was another glowing arrow, this time taped to the floor and pointing straight out. West leaned out through the opening without touching the ancient railing. On the deck one floor down was another arrow pointing back toward the stairwell. Was he supposed to rappel down to the next floor? He stepped back and tested the railing and, surprisingly, found it was rock solid. He leaned over again, trying to see what was on the landing below, but it was shadowed in darkness, and he couldn’t get enough of an angle to use his flashlight. Quietly he tried his transmitter once more, but there still was no answer. He turned off the light and listened. Suddenly he felt the damp coldness that surrounded him, and shivered involuntarily.
Rappelling without a harness was chancy, but it was only about eight feet to the floor below. The nine-foot webbing was going to leave his descent a little short because of the four-foot-high railing and the knots at both ends, so he untied the bag, looping the webbing through the handles. Then, leaning as far over the side as he could, he swung the bag back and forth toward the landing below. When he was sure it would clear the railing, he released one end of the strapping, and the bag landed softly on the concrete deck below.
He pulled the webbing back up and tied it to the railing. Slowly he started to lower himself. When he came to the end of the strap, he could just reach the railing on his tiptoes. He took a moment to gain his balance on it and then let go of the webbing. As soon as his full weight transferred to the seventh-floor railing, he heard the horrifying sound of metal tearing. Both uprights supporting the crosspiece had been almost completely sawed through. He tried to grab the strap but it was already out of reach.
As he started to fall, he felt adrenaline explode through him. He turned himself in the air as best he could, hoping to catch a railing of one of the six remaining floors. But he was accelerating; it wasn’t going to get any easier. He threw his hands at one of them, but because his body was askew, his right hand caught the railing before his left. With a sickening crack, his right shoulder dislocated as his left hand grabbed the railing, stopping his fall.
Blinding pain shot through the entire right side of his body, and he could hold on with only his left hand. Unable to pull himself up, he looked down, trying to count the railings below. The flashlight dangled from his useless arm as its beam swept the airshaft haphazardly. He was still three stories up. Something streaked by him and he thought it might have been the railing. Then he saw the cut and bundled magazine pages hit the ground and burst apart. The moneybag, now empty, floated by. Helplessly he watched his left hand, as if it belonged to someone else, come off the railing.
Dan West didn’t think he had been unconscious very long. The first thing he became aware of was foot-steps. Help had arrived.
But there was something wrong with the approaching steps; they were too slow. And they belonged to only one person. West tried to look around but the flashlight had come off his wrist and lay beyond his grasp, giving off only a small fan of light in the opposite direction. He was lying uselessly on his gun as his entire right side was all but paralyzed by the searing pain. Slowly so his movement wouldn’t be detected, he reached back with his left hand and pushed the body recorder’s button to the On position.
A man came up behind him and stood silently for a few seconds before walking around and standing in the flashlight’s beam. Enduring the pain, West looked up as well as he could but still wasn’t able to see his features in the shadows.
‘Did you want to see my face?’ he asked in a cold whisper that caused West to understand the consequences of being able to identify the individual. He picked up the flashlight and scanned the agent’s sweating face. ‘You are young. That would explain the lack of self-preservation.’ He then shrugged and turned the light on himself. ‘Here you go.’
West stared at the man’s face, memorizing it. It was unremarkable except for his eyes; they were a stony gray but beginning to widen with pleasure. The agent tried to bring his injured right hand to his holster, but the extortionist easily kicked it away. ‘And they say the old BU was tougher. That must have been very painful.’
Hoping the recorder wasn’t damaged, West grimaced and said, ‘I don’t suppose you’d want to tell me your name.’
‘What good would that do you now?’
‘One last bit of satisfaction.’ He laughed painfully. ‘It’s not like I’ve got much else to look forward to.’
‘And what’s in it for me?’
‘Come on. It’s the ultimate act of control. Completely exposing yourself and then completely taking it away. For someone like you, that has to be damn near sexual.’
The man’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘Someone like me?’ the extortionist said, his voice amused but still in that hissing whisper. He then drew a black automatic. ‘I’m sorry, but we’d better move things along. I would imagine surveillance is getting close.’
‘I was hoping you’d stick around. Give them the opportunity to meet you and, with a little luck, shoot you to death.’
‘That’s the saddest thing about being young – you actually believe there is such a thing as hope.’ He raised his gun and fired one round that hit Dan West in the right temple. The shot echoed metallically for a few moments, and the killer closed his eyes as if trying to prolong its sound.
When it was completely quiet, he scanned the floor with the flashlight until he found the spent cartridge. He picked it up and slipped out a side door.
THREE (#ulink_676b6fcd-4417-53cb-a308-97d760ea424c)
Robert Lasker knew that in Washington, D.C., the quickest way to have one’s public-service résumé reduced to a oneline obituary was to get caught lying to the White House, especially if that individual happened to be the director of the FBI. But that was what he had just done. Anyway, he wasn’t sure what the truth was, or whether he cared if, as director of the FBI, he ever found out. He told his driver that he needed to clear his head and would walk back to the office.
Pushing his hands deeper into his pockets as he walked along, he tried not to think about the meeting with the White House staffer who had summoned him because of the press the Bureau had been receiving about the Rubaco Pentad murders. ‘After three murders of well-known people, silence is not an option with the media. It looks like you’re hiding something. You have to make some sort of statement,’ the staffer had said.
Actually, they were hiding something, not only from the public, and now the White House, but from most of their own agents as well. Lasker, without giving any details, told him that the investigation was at a critical juncture and the smallest miscalculation could cause additional deaths. The fear of the administration being dragged into the circle of responsibility for more murders was enough for the aide to back off, at least for the time being.
In truth, the FBI had not developed a single lead as to who was responsible for the murders or how to stop the killers from striking again.
Twelve hours earlier, the Rubaco Pentad had claimed its third high-profile victim, Arthur Bellington, a nationally known defense attorney who took particular delight in preventing or overturning FBI convictions, which he often followed with a press conference detailing the Bureau’s ineptitude.
A month earlier, a former reporter had been murdered in her L.A. home. Within a couple of days, a million-dollar extortion demand was mailed to the FBI. When Agent Daniel West tried to deliver a dummy package of money to catch them, he too was shot to death. The Bureau had covered up the death, reporting it as a training accident, because of the Pentad’s demand for secrecy concerning all monetary aspects of the case.
A couple of weeks later, Nelson Lansing, a Utah state senator who had coauthored a book about Ruby Ridge concluding that the Bureau had methodically executed members of the Randy Weaver family, had been shot and killed by the Pentad as he was leaving his Salt Lake City home early in the morning. To no great surprise, a two-million-dollar demand arrived at the FBI within a week. What followed then was anything but predictable. The letter also named the agent who was to make the delivery, Stanley Bertok of the Los Angeles division.
As instructed, Bertok, this time with the entire two million dollars, flew to Phoenix, rented a car, and took off on a four-hour drive to Las Vegas. The Pentad had warned about using FBI aircraft, which, like so many things in this case, indicated an uncommon understanding of Bureau procedure. The prescribed route was desolate and relatively free of commercial airline traffic so any plane would be spotted easily. Also, the terrain was flat and the roads were straight. Any trailing vehicle could be seen for miles. So the Bureau left it up to electronics, hiding GPS devices in the car and in the bag containing the money. Bertok was also given a cell phone with additional Global Positioning System abilities. Two and a half hours into the trip, the car, according to all three GPSs, stopped dead. Fearing discovery, the agents monitoring Bertok’s movements waited almost another hour before closing in. When they arrived at the indicated location, the only thing they found was a fast-food bag on the shoulder of the road. Inside were the two GPS devices along with the cell phone. Bertok, the car, and the bag containing two million dollars were nowhere to be found. Twelve hours later, the rented vehicle was found at the Las Vegas airport.
Lasker continued his way back to the Hoover Building, forcing himself to walk slower. The weather was perfect and he took a moment to watch a couple of attractive young women pass him.
With the Pentad claiming its fourth victim the night before, it seemed improbable that the missing two million dollars was in their possession. If they didn’t have it, the most plausible explanation was that Stan Bertok had just become America’s newest millionaire. And that meant the FBI would soon receive another demand for money to prevent a fifth killing.
If an agent selling out wasn’t bad enough, an even worse possibility existed. Just hours before, the lab had confirmed that all four victims, including Dan West, had been shot with the same weapon, a .40-caliber Glock, model 22. That particular gun was FBI issue and was part of Bertok’s property. Coupled with the possibility of ‘insider info’ with which the group operated, the thought had crossed more than a few minds that Bertok himself might have committed the murders to set up the extortion drop.
Involuntarily, Lasker shook his head at the ingenuity of the Pentad. Everything it did was carefully designed to defeat the FBI, especially its choice of victims. Not only were they high-profile individuals, their deaths instantly gaining national attention, but their murders took place in California, Utah, and Pittsburgh, implying that no one was safe anywhere. And maybe most important, each of the victims was known to have a conflicted history with the FBI, making the Bureau waste time either defending itself or planning circuitous avenues of investigation to avoid the appearance of any ‘further’ impropriety. With the public not knowing why the victims were really being murdered, the confusion continued as to who was actually killing the ‘enemies of the FBI,’ as the media were now referring to them.
Most puzzling was how difficult the Pentad made it to deliver the money. It almost seemed that they wanted the FBI to fail; in fact, that was exactly what one of the Bureau profilers theorized. ‘Their primary motive,’ he said, ‘is to disgrace the FBI. It is such an obsession with them that they consider murder nothing more than a necessary tool. They may not even want the money. Some people find self-validation in destroying institutions. They find power in destroying power. It’s being done every day through lawsuits. But legal channels wouldn’t produce the dramatic damage they feel they have a right to. And even though their methods would be considered by most as cowardly, they see themselves as great unsung heroes, defeating, in this case, an institution that the American people mistakenly see as heroic. The more times they can defeat it, the more heroic they are. And the more foolish we look. Do they want the money? Eventually they probably will. Greed is pretty dependable. But they’re not going to be in any hurry to get it as long as they’re beating us in these skirmishes. Waco and Ruby Ridge are apparently the justification of their actions. No one from the FBI was ever punished for those incidents, so they are taking retribution into their own hands. If Bertok did suddenly become a thief and take the money, they couldn’t have hoped for anything better. It proves their point that the FBI is really corrupt and can’t be trusted. And at some point they will reveal to the world that he took it. Again, to humiliate us. Not only do we have a dishonest agent, but we routinely cover up something like this. Which at the moment we are.’
Lasker knew that whoever was pulling the strings, whether it was the Pentad or Agent Bertok freelancing – or both – the effect was paralyzing the Bureau’s ability to go after them. That the FBI might be assassinating its enemies and blaming the killings on a fictitious group of terrorists was a ridiculous notion, but if the information about the Glock 22, the gun the Bureau had issued Bertok, became public, it might not seem so far-fetched.
At each of the crime scenes, a folded piece of paper with the same two words, ‘Rubaco Pentad,’ had been left on the victim’s chest. Since ‘pentad’ is defined as a group of five, the press felt safe in concluding that some sort of small domestic terrorism cell was committing the murders. And ‘Rubaco,’ they decided, was an amalgam of Ruby Ridge and Waco, two of the FBI’s most enduring black eyes, especially among the more radical antigovernment groups, most of which would list the FBI as first-strike targets.
Seeking to further sensationalize the case, the press drew a more abstract but marketable conclusion: that each of the three known victims, because of his or her individual history with the Bureau, could be considered an enemy of the FBI. However, the two assumptions collectively formed a paradox. If the Rubaco Pentad were committing murders to save the world from the FBI, then why was it killing individuals who shared the same beliefs?
Because of the monetary demand, Lasker had initially assumed it was just another extortion with a different coat of paint, and it had been handled as such. Terrorists who demanded money were simply extortionists no matter what kind of rhetoric accompanied their demands. But after they left the hundred-dollar bills lying around Dan West’s body, their long-range plans for the money suddenly seemed a more ominous possibility. If they were legitimate terrorists, there would be, as they had warned in their first demand letter, an irresistible irony to the idea of using secretly paid FBI money to commit mass murder, something for which the public would never forgive the Bureau.
FOUR (#ulink_85b6835a-58e4-5056-a59d-894331b97918)
Newly promoted deputy assistant director Kate Bannon had never been in the FBI director’s office before. While she and her boss waited for Bob Lasker’s return, she took the opportunity to survey the room more closely. The lack of pretension in the decor was surprising. She didn’t know what she had expected, but the offices of upper management she had seen usually looked more like small museums, lined with trophies, plaques, and photographs. Instead there were piles of documents littering the room, on tables and shelves, some of the taller ones leaning haphazardly. A few were starting to show a coat of dust, causing a dull mustiness that scratched at her nostrils. Only one photograph hung on the wall. It had apparently been taken during Lasker’s Senate confirmation hearing. Shot from behind the soon-to-be director, it focused on the face of a bald senator whose scalp glistened with sweat and who for some reason was shaking an angry finger at the nominee. She smiled, suspecting that it had been placed directly behind the director’s desk to remind everyone that whatever business had brought them there, he or she should remember that ultimately Lasker had to answer for what his agency did or failed to do.
The door opened and the director walked in. ‘You guys been waiting long?’ He fell unceremoniously into the chair behind his desk, grinding his eyes with the heels of his hands until he felt the tiny optic shocks that told him that was enough. He had gotten little sleep since the murders started, and the command performance at the White House had taken out of him what little was left.
Assistant Director Don Kaulcrick was sitting next to Kate. At fifty-three, he was the FBI’s senior assistant director. He was tall with a disjointed thinness to his limbs. His hair had not started to turn gray yet and would have made his face look younger if it weren’t for its being slightly lopsided, the right side of the jaw just noticeably larger than the left. It gave the appearance of a permanent sneer of skepticism, one that continually left subordinates trying to convince him of their sincerity, an advantage he had learned to exploit early in his career. But Kaulcrick noticed that Kate Bannon seemed immune to it, probably because very little intimidated her. So he did the only thing he could to combat her lack of regard for the privileges of rank; he handpicked her to be his assistant. That way he could personally rein in that freewheeling style that had caused her to rise through the ranks so quickly. ‘Not long, sir,’ he answered for both of them. ‘How’d it go?’
‘Don, I was summoned to the White House,’ Lasker said. ‘That’s like asking Marie Antoinette if the blade was nice and sharp. Kate, how are you?’
‘Just fine, sir.’
‘They’re not happy with us at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I was told to stop screwing around and just go ahead and solve this thing. Thank God they’ve taken the gloves off – now we can start the real investigation. What a mess.’ Kaulcrick and Kate glanced at each other furtively, trying to determine if he thought they were considered responsible. ‘Someone please give me some good news.’
After a few seconds, Kate said, ‘At the first three murder scenes, the killer or killers took the time to police up the casings. All we had were the slugs to identify the gun, but they got sloppy with this one last night. A forty-caliber cartridge was found near the body.’
‘That’s it. That’s the extent of the good news?’ Lasker said. ‘I know I’m not as up on this stuff as you are, but why would you pick up the casing when the slug in the body can identify the gun?’ the director asked.
‘Maybe they were hoping that the slug would be damaged enough that it couldn’t be identified. They used hollow points, which tend to deform a great deal more as they pass through the human body,’ Kaulcrick offered.
‘I suppose,’ Lasker said. ‘What else?’
Kate said, ‘I’m not sure this is good news.’ She hesitated. Lasker gave her an unenthusiastic wave of the hand to continue. ‘So far, the people I sent to Las Vegas haven’t been able to find any sign of Bertok having taken a flight out of there.’
Lasker looked at the woman that he had heard male agents refer to as ‘too good-looking to be a female agent.’ She was tall with a figure that was both athletic and feminine. Her face would have had a blond, girl-next-door innocence to it if it weren’t for the soft two-inch scar across her left cheekbone, a broken line that suggested a willingness for combat. In the past, he had noticed a nonchalance to the way she handled herself in a room in which she was the only woman. Lasker took a moment to lose himself in her confidence and then said, ‘I don’t have to remind you how sensitive this is, Kate. I assume you’ve explained to everyone working this just how quiet it has to be kept.’
‘Yes, sir, I chose the agents carefully.’
‘All good investigators?’
‘Not particularly. I went purely for obedience. As far as the investigation, I know what needs to be done, and I’m reading all reports to make sure it’s getting done. I just wanted agents who above all else could keep their mouths closed.’
‘In today’s Bureau? Please tell me how to accomplish that.’
A corner of Kate’s mouth lifted sardonically. ‘I picked only the most serious climbers.’ ‘Climbers’ was a term street agents used to stereotype the most serious promotion seekers. ‘I told them if they did a good job, their name would be put on a priority list, but if this leaked out in any fashion, whether it was their doing or not, they’d seen their last promotion.’
Lasker smiled. ‘Sounds foolproof.’ The director looked at Kaulcrick. ‘What else?’
He slid a report across Lasker’s desk. ‘This is the latest analysis of the recording from Dan West’s murder. The transcription is pretty much the same. That whispering voice the killer used makes it hard to distinguish. Like you suggested, the recording was played for Bertok’s supervisor in L.A. to see if he could identify the voice. All he would say was it might be him.’
The director turned to the transcription portion of the report. ‘And what about the language?’
Kate pulled out a different document. ‘Psycholinguistics said that a couple of phrases have definite overtones of someone familiar with FBI jargon, particularly “BU” for Bureau and “surveillance” instead of the more commonly used “backup.” And due to the killer saying things like “you are young” and “the old BU was tougher,” the conversation has the subtlety of an older agent lecturing a younger one. But there’s not enough to draw any definitive conclusions about the identity of the killer.’
‘So there’s nothing to say it isn’t Bertok.’
‘Unfortunately, no,’ Kaulcrick said.
‘They seemed to know everything we tried to do at the New Hampshire drop. Does that take an insider’s knowledge?’ the director asked.
Kate said, ‘Not necessarily. Dummy packages have been used in the past, and it has been made public in court testimony. From the outset, they probably planned to commit two murders because they knew it would be a dummy drop. That way they could demand two million. As a side benefit, they can now argue that our ineptness caused not only murder number two, but the death of an FBI agent. I don’t know, maybe Bertok was afraid that if he had tried to deliver the money, he would have wound up like Dan West, or worse. Maybe that helped him decide to take off. If he did,’ she said.
‘If it is him, it’s going to kill us when it comes out,’ Lasker said. ‘But for right now, the longer we can delay it, the more operating room we’ll have.’
‘We still have to find him. What makes it so difficult is that we’re looking for one of our own, and we can’t even tell our own,’ Kaulcrick said. ‘Plus he knows all our procedures and has two million dollars to be creative with.’
Lasker took a moment to consider what Kaulcrick had said and then asked, ‘Are we getting any closer to identifying this group? Is this really a group?’
Kate said, ‘It’s been my experience that almost invariably extortionists who work alone will use plural pronouns like “we,” “us,” “our.” It’s part of their intimidation process to make the victim believe that the extortionist has more manpower than he does.’
‘So what you’re saying is that this could be just one man.’
‘I’m saying it’s a possibility.’
‘Is there any record of “pentad” anywhere in our files?’
‘Since the first murder, we have been running “Rubaco” and “pentad” every way possible,’ Kaulcrick said. ‘So far, nothing.’
Kate said, ‘We’ve got a half dozen agents going through all the Waco and Ruby Ridge nut files. There’s a few leads being generated, but nothing with much promise.’
‘For the moment, let’s assume Bertok is not involved in the killings. Anyone have any theories why they picked him?’
Kate said, ‘He was a street agent who worked extortion cases. Maybe they ran into him somewhere or read his name in the paper. It might be another one of their ploys to make us think they know more about what we’re doing than we do.’
The director snorted a laugh. ‘So far it’s working.’
Kaulcrick said, ‘This could have been Bertok’s operation from the beginning. With him and the money disappearing together, it would be shortsighted not to consider the possibility.’
‘If it is Bertok, why would he use a gun that is so recognizable as FBI issue?’ Kate asked her boss.
‘Nothing would cover his tracks better if he’s caught and has to go to trial. He could then say, “With a plan this well thought out, would I be stupid enough to use an FBI-type service weapon? Somebody wants you to think it’s an agent who has done this.” If we’re having these doubts, a jury certainly would. And then, at just the right moment, he would stand up and surrender his service weapon. “Here’s my issued handgun – check the serial number and test-fire it.” It would destroy the prosecution’s case. Then he would only be looking at prison time for the embezzlement of two million dollars, which, with any reimbursement, carries a slap on the wrist compared to four murders.’
‘Assuming that’s true, then what did he shoot the victims with?’ the director said.
‘A second, unregistered Glock 22,’ Kaulcrick answered quickly, as if he had expected the question.
‘Do we know if he owns more than one gun?’ the director asked.
‘I checked his property card, and no, he doesn’t,’ Kate said. ‘Not that he’s told the Bureau about.’
‘I don’t know, Don. If he has the money, then why this last murder?’ the director asked.
‘Sir, if all this was part of a planned defense, another killing would be proof positive that he had nothing to do with the murders. He just boogied with the cash, so the real killers had no choice but to find another victim and make a new demand.’
The director collapsed back into his chair. ‘Anyone want my job?’
After a few seconds, Kaulcrick said, ‘I got something from the Chicago office this morning that might take your mind off this for a few minutes. May I?’
‘Please.’
Kaulcrick went over to a large television that sat on a corner table of the office and inserted a DVD. ‘I don’t know if either of you saw this on the national news a couple of weeks ago.’
A reporter came on the screen, microphone in hand, and started describing a hostage situation taking place at a suburban Chicago bank. Suddenly, the camera zoomed in on the bank’s front door. A terrified woman opened it, and a gunman could be seen behind her shielding himself, his weapon pressed against the side of her head. The reporter said, ‘It looks like one of the gunmen is trying to negotiate some sort of deal.’ Just as the robber finished his demands and closed the door, one of the bank’s front windows exploded as a man came crashing through it. He skidded across the sidewalk and lay unconscious.
The cameraman centered the shot on the body lying in front of the bank, and after another fifteen seconds, a second robber exploded through the adjoining window, landing on the concrete walk, dazed and unarmed. Immediately, customers and employees ran out of the front door as the police rushed forward to handcuff the two men. The screen went black.
‘What happened?’ Lasker asked.
‘According to the report, witnesses said a customer, waiting until the two robbers were separated, disarmed them one at a time and then threw each of them through the windows.’
‘Who was it?’
‘That is the strangest part to the story. No one knows. Whoever it was exited with the other customers and disappeared into the crowd.’
‘What?’ the director said.
‘The police and the media have been putting out pleas for him to call in, but so far nothing.’
‘What would make someone walk away from something that extraordinary?’
‘I have no idea,’ Kaulcrick said. ‘Want to see how he did it?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Chicago sent me the surveillance videos from inside the bank.’ Kaulcrick shoved in another DVD. ‘This composite was put together from three different cameras. It starts with the first gunman being over-powered.’ He hit the Play button and it showed the bank lobby with customers scattered facedown on the floor. ‘See this hand here?’ He pointed at the corner of the screen. ‘That belongs to our boy. Keep an eye on it.’
‘What’s that next to it?’ Kate asked.
‘A watercooler. Keep an eye on that, too.’ Kaulcrick pressed a button on the remote and the disk slowed to half speed. As the images rolled by, the hand on the floor reached up and took the bottle from the watercooler as its owner pulled himself from the floor. His grainy face came into view. He placed a hand on each end of the bottle, holding it in front of his chest just as the gunman realized he was up off the floor and turned toward him. The robber yelled something, but the man continued to move toward him, extending the bottle away from his chest and in line with the muzzle of the gun. The robber fired and the impact of the bullet ripped the bottle from the man’s hands. Almost simultaneously, the man grabbed the barrel of the gun and twisted it outward in a move that Kaulcrick and Kate recognized as one they had practiced dozens of times during defensive tactics training. Once he finished twisting the weapon from the robber’s hand, the robber swung at him, and the man used the gun to strike him in the head. Then, with relative ease, he hurled him through the glass window and immediately ran to the wall that separated the front door from the rest of the bank’s interior.
‘This is from a second camera,’ Kaulcrick said. The TV screen was filled with static for a second; then, from a different angle, the female hostage who had been held at the front door during the television report came around the corner, followed by the second gunman. The unknown man’s hand flashed forward and shoved his weapon against the robber’s neck. After a short hesitation, the bank robber dropped his gun, and when the man stooped to pick it up, he ran. But the man took a few quick steps and caught him immediately.
The robber struck him in the face to no effect. Before the robber could hit him again, the man punched him in the face, buckling his legs. Then the man turned and launched him through the second window. Looking up and realizing everything was being caught on camera, the man turned his head away and started herding the hostages out the door.
While the director nodded his head enthusiastically, Kate sat pensively. Noticing her lack of enthusiasm, he said, ‘Not impressed, Kate?’
She continued to look at the screen, which was again filled with static. ‘No, it’s not that…’ She didn’t finish her thought.
Lasker asked, ‘How’d he know there was enough water in the bottle to stop a bullet?’
Kaulcrick said, ‘I’m guessing he didn’t.’
‘Why would someone do something like that?’
‘Apparently, he has a screw loose.’
‘And they haven’t found out who he is yet?’ Lasker said.
‘No. Chicago wants to release this to the local media. That’s why they sent it to me, for authorization.’
‘Let me know who he is when he’s identified. I’d be interested to know why he’s so camera shy.’
Kate said, ‘I think I know who he is.’
‘You do?’ The director turned toward her.
‘Sir, you haven’t had the hand-to-hand training we have, but the way he took the gun from the first robber is an FBI move, one we have all practiced many times. That’s what tipped me off. His hair’s a little lighter now, but I think it’s a former agent named Steve Vail. I was a security supervisor in Detroit for two years, and Vail was assigned there. Not on my squad, on the fugitive squad. And I’m pretty sure he was originally from Chicago.’
‘Former?’
‘He was fired.’
‘Not given the option to resign?’
‘They gave him the choice, but he refused to respond even though he knew he would be fired.’
‘So he could sue?’
Kate gave a quick, full-throated laugh. ‘I guess I’m not giving you a very clear picture of him. You’re trying to figure him out by the experiences you’ve had with others. No, he’s…probably the best word – the kindest word – is recalcitrant.’
‘He’s a pain in the ass.’
‘Beyond that. They used to say he bit off his nose to spite his face so many times that he actually learned to like the taste.’
‘Then why was he fired? Apparently it wasn’t for a lack of courage.’
‘He hated – no, that isn’t right – he simply didn’t recognize authority, at least not incompetent authority. That’s what was so strange about his firing. He could have prevented it by giving up a thoroughly disliked assistant special agent in charge. It all started when a Detroit police officer was shot and killed in the line of duty. They didn’t have any idea who had done it. Vail always had great informants, so he goes off on his own to contact them. At the same time, he’s poking around the murder investigation, developing new sources. He finds this one local who, after a little, let’s say, cajoling, names the shooter and also tells Vail that the gun used is at the killer’s residence. Which was kind of a feat in itself because it turns out the informant was the killer’s cousin. At the same time, because killing a police officer is a federal offense, the Bureau offers a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward. Even though he would not have given up his cousin without Vail getting it out of him first, the informant decides that he might as well cash in and calls the same information into the FBI tip line. One of the ASACs at the time was Kent Wilson. Do you know him?’
‘By reputation.’
‘Then you won’t have any trouble believing what comes next. With the tip, Wilson has the same information as Vail – because of Vail’s work on the street. Vail was always that guy you called when you needed to get something done in spite of the rules. All full of himself, Wilson has Vail come in and reads him the tip sheet. Then tells him to do whatever is necessary to get probable cause for a search warrant at the killer’s residence. Vail leaves without saying a word. He already had everything in motion.
‘Because the informant had no track record, his credibility for a search warrant wouldn’t have been strong enough, so Vail calls one of his most documented sources and has him listen while he telephones the cousin and has him repeat the information. Then Vail has his old informant repeat it to him for probable cause on the search warrant. The Detroit police find the gun, get a confession and eventually a conviction.
‘Wilson tries to take credit for the arrest, but the brass at the Detroit PD goes nuts because Vail had also been keeping them up to speed all along, since it was their officer. He didn’t tell them about the sleight of hand with the sources. They call a press conference and give all the credit to Vail.
‘The most amazing part is Wilson thinks it was all Vail’s doing and calls in the Office of Professional Responsibility, telling them that Vail falsified information to obtain a search warrant. He gives absolutely no thought about how it could come back and collapse on him. Subsequently, Vail refused to talk to OPR.
‘Because of the inconsistencies in Wilson’s statement, they tell Vail what they suspected happened and even that Wilson had given him up. Still Vail won’t answer their questions. Not even after they offered him a walk if he flipped on Wilson would he say anything. They even went to the trouble of tracking down Vail’s old informant and threatened him, even tried to bribe him, but he wouldn’t give up Vail.’
‘That’s unbelievable. Why wouldn’t Vail just give Wilson up? He’s not exactly the kind of boss you’d waste loyalty on.’
Kate leaned back. ‘Vail’s not that easy to figure out, but there is one very practical reason. If he admitted manufacturing probable cause, OPR would have had to notify the state prosecutor’s office, and the search, confession, and conviction would have been thrown out.’
‘So Vail let himself be fired so a cop killer wouldn’t walk.’
‘I think it’s even more than that. I don’t know. He seems to have this resentment for the way the rest of us lack commitment or something. He didn’t even show up for his last OPR interview, therefore insubordination.’
‘Too bad we lost him.’
Kate sat silently considering something before she said, ‘Sir, Vail had this reputation for finding people. He handled all the federal fugitive warrants for Detroit homicide. They said whether someone was gone fifteen minutes or fifteen years, he’d find them. Like I told you, he wasn’t on my squad, but everyone knew about Steve Vail. Funny thing was he seemed oblivious to any kind of notoriety, that anyone would be interested in anything he did. I always thought it was an act – until just now watching him sneak out of that bank.’
‘Are you suggesting we bring him into this?’
Kaulcrick said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. We’ve got more than enough resources at our disposal. You can’t bring a civilian into this. With each turn of this thing, it looks like we can’t protect ourselves from ourselves.’
‘Just to find Bertok,’ she said. ‘Someone who doesn’t have to tiptoe around like the rest of us. So far we’ve got nothing. It’s pretty obvious that Vail can keep his mouth shut. What have we got to lose?’
The director pushed the Play button and watched again as Vail disarmed the two bank robbers. ‘Think you can get him, Kate?’
‘Me? He despises men in authority. What do you think his reaction will be to a woman?’
‘I think you’d better find out.’
FIVE (#ulink_24b85c1e-a320-59c9-a19d-4875941f42b8)
Steve Vail splashed some water onto the mortar and used the forged steel trowel to turn it over, alternately using the knife edge to sink the moisture deep into the mixture. The late-morning sun felt good on the back of his neck. It had rained the night before, leaving one of those damp Chicago mornings that felt cooler than the mid-seventy-degree temperature. Moving back into the shadow of the large circular chimney he had been hired to rebuild, he picked up a brick and flipped it over so its wire-cut face was in position and buttered one end with the softened mortar. He pushed it into place, tapping the top with the butt of the trowel handle, and then used a backhand sweep to scrape off the excess mortar, flicking it into the joint just formed. His eye checked the brick’s alignment as he reached for the next one.
The ladder he had used to get to the flat roof started tapping rhythmically against the top of the wall. Someone was coming up. Flicking the excess mortar off the trowel, he threw it, sticking it into the pine mortarboard. He peered over the edge of the roof and was surprised to see a woman coming up the ladder. She moved quickly, her hands and feet finding the rungs instinctively. She was wearing a pantsuit and small heels, which should have made the climb more difficult, but they didn’t seem to slow her at all. Under her jacket, on the outside of her hip, he could see the bulge of a gun. Parked behind his truck now was a four-door sedan, one of those full-size government cars that were conspicuously nondescript.
Kate Bannon came over the top of the ladder and was surprised to find Vail leaning against the chimney, apparently waiting for her, his stare mildly curious. She brushed her hands against each other, wiping away imaginary debris from the ladder as she composed herself. ‘Hi,’ she said, extending her hand. ‘I’m—’
‘Kate Bannon.’ He took her hand.
‘How’d you know?’
‘Detroit.’
‘I didn’t think you’d remember me,’ she said. ‘To tell you the truth, I didn’t think you knew I existed.’
‘I knew.’ His mouth tightened into a grin that she couldn’t quite decipher.
‘Even though I was some “management bimbo” getting my ticket punched?’
He smiled more completely. ‘Even though.’
‘I would assume that’s what most of the male street agents thought,’ she said. ‘And looking back, I’m not sure they were wrong.’
‘Brutal honesty, and so early in this little – what is it we’re having, some sort of sales pitch?’
‘At least give me the courtesy of pretending you’re being fooled,’ she said. ‘And it’s not about your performance at the bank last month if that’s what you’re worried about.’
She was hoping to see some surprise from Vail that she knew he was the one who had disrupted the robbery, but his face had shifted into those unreadable planes she remembered from Detroit. ‘I’m not. I know they wouldn’t send someone all the way from Washington just for that.’
‘How’d you know I’m at headquarters?’
‘Five years ago, you were some “management bimbo” doing your field supervisory time. I haven’t been keeping track of the rate of promotion for women, but I would guess that’s long enough for you to be at least a unit chief.’
‘Actually, I was just promoted to deputy assistant director.’
‘Really,’ he said. ‘You must be quite the agent because someone as brutally honest as you surely wouldn’t accept a promotion simply because you’re a woman.’
She stared back at him, slightly amused. ‘Listen, Steve, if you’re trying to convince me that you can be an SOB, I remember. You’ll also find I’m not that easy to get rid of.’
Vail laughed. ‘A deputy assistant director. And on a roof-top in Chicago. There must be a really big problem back at the puzzle palace?’
‘There is something we’d like your help with.’
‘Unless you’ve got some bricks that need to be laid, you’re in the wrong time zone, darlin’.’
She looked at the chimney and the tools scattered around it. ‘You have a master’s degree in Russian history from the University of Chicago. How did you wind up being a bricklayer?’
‘Is there something wrong with being a bricklayer?’ he asked, his tone half amused with the feigned indignation.
‘It just seems like there would be easier ways to make a buck.’
‘Fair enough. It goes something like this. First you have to get fired, and then if you wait long enough, you start getting hungry. The rest of it just kind of falls into place.’
‘I would have thought that you’d have looked for something a little more…indoors.’
‘My father taught me when I was a kid. It’s how I got through college. And if you’re going to snoop around my personnel file, please get it right. Soviet history. It’s an important distinction in case whatever brings you here depends on my ability to see into the future,’ Vail said. ‘Thus…’ He waved his hand to encompass the surroundings. ‘Actually, I kind of like the work. It’s real. There’s something permanent about it, at least in human years. Handfuls of clay being transformed into complicated structures. And then, of course, it was the only house that the wolf couldn’t blow down. Besides, there are too many bosses indoors.’
‘So you’re never going to take a job that has a boss?’
‘There’s always a boss. The trick is to never take a job you can’t walk away from. Especially when the bosses get to be insufferable, which I think is now a federal law.’
‘Is that what you did with the FBI, walk away when you didn’t like the boss?’
‘Seems like you’ve thought about it a lot more than I have.’
‘I’ve come with an offer that you can walk away from whenever you want.’
He pulled the trowel out of the mortarboard and picked up a brick. ‘Then consider me walked away.’
‘I wouldn’t be here unless we really needed your help.’
‘One of the things my departure from the Bureau taught me was that the FBI will never really need any one person.’
‘I’m impressed. You’ve maintained a grudge for five years. You rarely see that kind of endurance anymore.’
‘Thanks, but the credit really should go to my father. World-class scorn was the sum total of my inheritance. Enough of it can get you through anything.’ Vail started turning over the mortar on the board again.
‘Do you want it in writing? The Federal Bureau of Investigation needs the particular skills of Steven Noah Vail.’
‘You’ll find someone else.’
Kate stepped in front of him. ‘I know something about you that maybe you don’t even know.’
‘Oh good, I was wondering when we’d get around to managerial insight. Will I need something to write with?’
‘You have to do this.’ Her tone was not pleading but accusatory.
He held up the brick between them. ‘I do this so I don’t have to do anything.’
Her eyes carefully searched his face. ‘My God, you don’t know, do you? You really don’t know why you do these things. Why you have no choice but to say yes to me.’
‘In that case, no.’
‘Stop being so Vail for a minute.’
‘Why is “no” such a difficult concept for women? You demand we understand it the first time, every time.’
‘Do you know why you stopped that bank robbery?’ Ignoring her, Vail spread a bed of mortar and pushed the brick into it. ‘Because no one else could,’ she went on. ‘Everyone else in the world is running around searching for their own self-importance, and you’re cruising around ignoring yours.’ She smiled. ‘And let’s admit it, if you’re really that into revenge, what could be better than having the Bureau come crawling to you to fix some problem that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t?’
Vail stared at her like he was seeing her for the first time. He turned and went back to work on the chimney. For the next half hour neither of them spoke. She sat down on the edge of the roof and watched him. There was an economy of movement to his work that she supposed was necessary for any task so repetitive, but still there was something about the way he did it that she found intriguing. The way his large, veined hands flipped over the bricks and found the right alignment instinctually. The way when he applied mortar, it was always the exact amount needed, never dropping any, never needing to add any. The flow never interrupted. How he was transforming perfectly rectangular bricks into a perfectly round chimney.
The more she watched him, the more she realized he was working faster than he normally would. If the work was as rewarding as he had said, there should have been an occasional appraising touch or at least a glance when he finished a course, but instead he immediately reached for the next brick. She couldn’t tell if he was just angry with her or if he wanted to get done so that he could be rid of her for good.
After the last brick was tapped into place and the joint scraped flush, Vail flicked the excess mortar off the trowel and then scraped both its sides on the edge of the board. She could finally see some reaction on his face. Even though the trowel was clean, he kept stropping it against the board absentmindedly. ‘What exactly is it that needs fixing?’
‘I’m sorry, I am not allowed to tell you.’
‘Who is?’
‘The director.’
‘The director?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘What is it that you think I can do that the other eleven thousand agents can’t?’
‘Most important? Be discreet. Last month’s little bank robbery gave us a pretty good indication that you’re not interested in getting your name in the papers.’
‘And less important?’
‘You had a certain reputation in Detroit.’
‘For?’
‘Hunting men.’
‘So you want me to find someone without anyone knowing that the FBI’s looking for him.’
‘It’s a little more complicated than that, but those are the main concerns.’
‘Other than getting to polish my neglected self-esteem, what’s in this for me?’
‘It’s completely negotiable.’
‘Are you saying that as a deputy assistant director or as a woman?’ As her face reddened slightly, the scar on her cheekbone started to glow white. He smiled. ‘That’s enough of an answer for now. When?’
‘I came in a Bureau plane. It’s waiting at Midway.’
Vail picked up a ten-gallon bucket and started shoveling the unused mortar into it. ‘Give me a half hour to clean up.’
Vail’s pickup pulled up in front of his apartment with Kate’s Bureau car close behind. He walked back to her as she opened the door. ‘I’ll make it as quick as I can.’
She got out. ‘Can I use your phone?’
‘You don’t have a cell?’
‘I’d rather use a hard line.’
‘I wasn’t expecting company.’
Kate wondered how bad it was up there. She found herself intrigued at the prospect of peeking into Vail’s personal life. ‘I’ll keep my eyes closed.’
Vail opened the door and let Kate walk in ahead of him. The small apartment was not what she expected. It seemed newer, better constructed than the rest of the building. The walls were unpainted Sheetrock. The taped seams were visible but had been smoothed with the expert touch of a trowel. In stark contrast, the dark hardwood floors looked like they had been recently refinished and were buffed to a high sheen. The furniture was sparse, and the few tables and shelves scattered around held a couple dozen different sizes and types of sculpture, mostly the kind that were found at garage or estate sales or dusty way-out-of-the-way antique shops. Strangely, all the human figures were of the headless variety and had apparently been purchased for the detail of the torsos. She wondered if there was another reason. ‘I’m still working on the walls, but I guess that’s obvious.’
On a worktable at the front window, to take advantage of the natural light, was an almost complete sculpture of a male torso formed by hundreds of thumb-size smudges of clay. ‘You live here alone?’
‘If you’re asking if it’s mine, the answer is yes. And yes to living alone.’
She walked over to the two-foot-high figure and examined it more closely. The upper portion appeared completed and was heavily muscled. She glanced around at the other works in the apartment to see if any matched the style. ‘None of the others are mine if that’s what you’re wondering.’
‘Do you sell them or give them away?’
‘Actually, I throw them out when I’m done, or break them down so the material can be reused.’
‘Have you ever tried to sell them?’
‘They’re not good enough yet.’
‘Really, this seems like it has potential.’
He pulled off his T-shirt. ‘That’s probably why you’re not working at the Guggenheim, and I’m a bricklayer. Beer?’
‘Sure.’
‘Glass?’
‘Please.’
Her voice had an odd quality about it that Vail was drawn to. It was lilting, but at the same time gracefully incomplete, making him want to hear it again. ‘Not trying to be one of the guys drinking out of the bottle – refreshing.’ He handed her a glass and twisted the cap off. After opening his, he took a long swallow from the bottle.
She glanced at each of the sculptures again. ‘What’s with the no-heads?’
He took another swallow of beer. For the first time that day, she sensed a reluctance to answer a question, an evasion of the blunt answers that seemed to come naturally to him. ‘I find faces distracting. I’m always trying to figure out what the models were thinking about at the time, even what language they might be thinking in. Probably studying Russian and reading Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky all those years has scarred me for life. Besides, I’ve tried faces. They all wind up looking like they’re from Middle Earth.’
The explanation seemed superficially dismissive, one that he never quite believed himself. Remembering Detroit now, she wondered if there was a natural distance he preferred. Back then everyone assumed it was some sort of extension of his inexplicable modesty. Armed with this new insight, she looked around and could find no television or magazines or personal photos. Apparently not even pictures of faces were allowed. The real question, she supposed, was what had made him like that. ‘Even though you didn’t say yes right away, I’m surprised getting you to come back to Washington wasn’t more difficult.’
‘As you can see, my sculpting business isn’t going that well. And the job I just finished was the only one I had scheduled.’
Again, she detected a slightly hollow ring to his reasons. ‘You know, if you’re interested in getting your job back permanently, that could be arranged.’
‘I’m not looking for permanent right now, just different.’
She smiled and nodded, deciding to lighten the conversation. ‘I think I can pretty much guarantee that this is going to be different.’
‘Give me fifteen minutes. The phone’s over there.’
Kate sipped at her beer absentmindedly as she listened to the shower. She stood over the unfinished sculpture, admiring its virility. The shoulder and upper arm muscles seemed too large to be realistic, but it gave off a kind of primitive indestructibility. Then, closing her hand, she let her fingertips massage her palm, recalling the callused strength of Vail’s handshake. She let the tip of her finger run lightly down the curve of the figure’s spine like a drop of warm water.
SIX (#ulink_1eb01ef9-c7de-5f5b-8e7d-2f2a5552aa1e)
As they were boarding the plane, Kate thought she might have a chance to find out more about Vail. That he had recognized her on sight had made her curious, even flattered. As far as she recalled, their eyes had never met in the year and a half they were in Detroit together. Now seemed like a good opportunity to find out why he remembered her.
Vail took the window seat without asking her preference, and by the time she got settled, he was sound asleep. He didn’t wake up until the plane’s tires chirped onto the tarmac at Dulles International. ‘Why are you looking at me like that, was I snoring?’
She smiled. ‘No, in fact for the first time today, you were perfect company.’
‘Is that how you like your men, unconscious?’
‘My men? You make it sound like I collect scalps.’
‘Human beings are collectors by nature. Ownership, control. Breaching someone else’s defenses. In one form or another, we all do it. It’s part of the chase.’
‘Chase? What are we chasing?’
‘That’s what men – excuse me – men and women since Pythagoras have been trying to figure out.’
‘Pythagoras?’
‘Yes, there were Greek philosophers before Socrates.’
‘The guy with the triangle?’
‘The square of the hypotenuse. He believed that the soul was immortal. Do you think your soul is immortal?’ Vail asked.
‘Deputy assistant directors are not allowed to have souls.’
‘Or to collect scalps?’
‘Actually that’s a requirement.’
He leaned close to her with mock intimacy. ‘Tell me something, Deputy Assistant Director Bannon, is that all I am to you – advancement?’
‘Like you said, bricklayer, we all need something to chase.’
The Director had given his secretary instructions to show Kate and Vail into his office as soon as they arrived. When they entered, Lasker was seated at his desk signing a stack of paperwork. Directly behind him stood Don Kaulcrick, taking each of the documents after it was signed and barely looking at them.
Lasker rose and offered Vail his hand. ‘Steve, thanks for coming, and on such short notice. This is one of our assistant directors, Don Kaulcrick.’ Vail shook Lasker’s hand. The director waved Vail into a chair. ‘Your way of ending a hostage standoff is impressive.’
‘You’d think someone who did this job for a while would know better than to go inside a bank on Friday afternoon.’
Lasker laughed. ‘Let me ask you something that’s been driving all of us around here nuts. After it was over, why did you just walk away?’
‘I never really thought about it. But if it drove everyone nuts, especially around here, that’s reward enough.’
Lasker picked up a file that had Vail’s name printed on the cover. ‘Is that a warning? In case you decide to help us.’
‘I would think after reading my personnel file that question would be unnecessary.’
Lasker smiled. ‘I’m starting to understand why you were fired.’
Vail laughed. ‘I can’t see how it could have turned out any other way. It was a train wreck just waiting for the Bureau and me to be thrown in each other’s way. No one especially wanted it, but at the same time no one cared enough to prevent it, most of all me. A bureaucracy has to have the ability to self-repair if it’s going to be able to function. I’ve never done well knowing anyone has that kind of authority over me.’
‘So when you turned down a pass from OPR if you’d give up the ASAC, you weren’t just being loyal?’
Vail turned to Kate. ‘I suppose Kent Wilson is an SAC somewhere by now.’
‘San Diego.’
‘Ah. At least they sent him to someplace with bad weather.’ He turned back to the director. ‘Let’s just say I had other priorities.’
‘Like not letting a cop killer go free?’
Vail looked surprised, and Kate felt a small twinge of pleasure at uncovering something about Vail that he apparently hadn’t wanted revealed. ‘I assumed that this command performance would be for some sort of more immediate problem.’
‘Sorry. Around here, constantly checking motives is necessary for survival. In that vein – while I know it’s not necessary to say this to you – I have to ask that what you’re about to hear not leave the room.’ Vail nodded. ‘You’ve heard about the “Enemies of the FBI” murders.’
‘As much as I try to avoid the news, it’d be hard not to.’
‘Then I’m sure you know that a group calling itself the Rubaco Pentad is claiming credit for the killings. While they appear to be some sort of domestic terrorism group on a crusade, they have actually made large monetary demands to stop the murders.’
‘Who were they demanding it from?’
‘The FBI.’
‘Not lacking confidence, are they? And you’re not letting the public know about it because…’
‘One of their demands is that if we do, they’ll kill another prominent person. It’s an ingenious tactic. Since we can’t reveal their motives, it looks like we’re the ones with the hidden agenda, as if it’s just a matter of time before some vast governmental conspiracy is exposed. We’re really handcuffed.’
‘I could see how you would be,’ Vail said. ‘Since I’m here, I assume things didn’t go well at the drop.’
‘They turned it into a deadly obstacle course. It seemed like they didn’t really want us to deliver the money. The agent making the delivery was shot to death.’
‘I assume the entire million wasn’t in the money package?’
‘Just a thousand dollars, and they left that at the scene.’
‘A warning that they’d be back,’ Vail said.
‘Yes, it certainly was.’
‘Any decent leads come out of it?’
The director said, ‘Don, you’ve been handling that.’
Kaulcrick said, ‘There was some scuba equipment used we’re trying to trace, but it’s almost impossible. And the prison was on a secure naval base, so we’re in the process of finding out who’s had access to it the last couple of months. It’s literally thousands of people, so it could take forever.’
‘Sounds like somebody knows how to get you to burn manpower.’
‘Are you suggesting it’s a waste of time?’ Kaulcrick asked.
‘Not at all. You never know what lead is going to be productive. But it sounds like they picked the base because the bigger and more complicated the location, the more time it takes to investigate. It seems that their major weapon is distraction. Leads like that need a lot of manpower but tend to never go anywhere.’
‘There’s no question they know how to manipulate the investigation,’ Lasker said.
‘So what happened at the second drop?’ Vail said.
‘Who said anything about a second drop?’ Kaulcrick asked abruptly, glancing at Kate.
‘The second and third murders did,’ Vail said. ‘Don, I’m here because I’m on your side.’
‘I have to apologize for everyone, Steve,’ Lasker said. ‘I’ve been so insistent that this not leak out, everyone has become paranoid about it. You’ve given your word and that’s certainly good enough. What I’m about to tell you is even more sensitive.’ He then described the second demand letter along with its instruction for Bertok’s role in the delivery of money. He detailed the route and the Bureau’s inability to follow at an effective distance, and finally the disappearance of the agent and the two million dollars.
‘So you want me to find Bertok.’
‘Yes. And should you recover the money, we wouldn’t object.’
‘It couldn’t have been an easy decision letting the full two million drive away.’
‘When you got the press holding you hostage twenty-four hours a day with the possibility of not stopping the next murder, it was a surprisingly easy call.’
Vail became lost in thought. Kate waited a few seconds and then said, ‘I’m sure you’ve got a million questions.’
‘Nothing I need to waste everyone’s time with right now. You haven’t got the next demand letter yet, have you?’
‘Not yet,’ Lasker said.
‘Chances are the price will be going up. Do you think the delivery will be as difficult?’
‘We hope not,’ the director said. ‘But I wouldn’t bet on it.’
Kaulcrick said, ‘We were hoping to identify them first.’
‘Any promising leads?’
Neither Kate nor Kaulcrick answered. Finally Lasker said, ‘Not really.’
‘That’s too bad, but I guess it won’t affect me finding Bertok, which, by the way, is not going to be easy.’
Everyone was silent for a few seconds before the director said, ‘Actually the two problems may overlap. All three victims, and the agent at the drop, were killed with the same gun, a Glock model 22. That’s the same model Bertok carried.’
‘There are thousands of those guns out there,’ Vail said. ‘Why would you think he could be involved?’
‘Well, he was designated by name to make the drop, and whoever is doing this has a good knowledge of extortions, which Bertok worked. Plus he did disappear along with the money. I certainly hope he’s not involved, but to be perfectly honest, we don’t know.’
‘If it’s him, why this last murder?’
Kaulcrick said, ‘In theory, he could be looking down the road for a defense. Why would he kill again if he already had the money? He’s in law enforcement. He’s used to seeing people getting caught when they thought they couldn’t be. It’s cheap insurance. Three murders or four, they can only give him the needle once.’
‘I guess it’s possible, although that would take someone who is extremely cold – but I suppose two million dollars can get you to a lot of warm places,’ Vail said.
Lasker said, ‘So, Steve, will you help us?’
‘If I agree, I have a couple of conditions.’
‘I’m certain we can work them out.’ The director opened a drawer, took out a black case with a gold FBI shield pinned to the outside, and slid it across the desk.
Vail opened the credentials and looked at his photo, which had been taken during new agents’ training. ‘It’s hard to believe I was ever that…on board.’ He closed the case and put it in his jacket pocket.
‘Whether you find Bertok or not, I can make that permanent, with all the seniority, including the time you’ve been out of government service.’
‘I appreciate the offer, but it may be premature. I’m not here to find out if I can now be a good soldier. I know I can’t. What you want me to do is difficult, which means, because of the methods I may find necessary, it’s likely just a matter of time until you’ll regret bringing me into this.’
‘Right now that’s a chance I’m willing to take.’
Vail smiled. ‘That’s exactly what my last ASAC said to me.’
The director forced a short laugh. ‘Okay, but if you don’t want your job back, we’ll have to pay you something. How about a percentage of any money recovered, or a flat amount for finding Bertok?’
‘Which brings us back to the conditions. Two items. First, I’m sure at some point I’ll have to get assistance from FBI field offices. Unless SACs have changed, they’re not going to like taking orders from some imported street hump. So I’m going to need someone with enough capital letters in front of his – or her – name to make those guys nervous.’
‘Like Deputy Assistant Director Bannon?’ Lasker said.
Vail looked at her. ‘How about it, Kate, think you can make the right men tremble?’
She felt herself starting to blush, but extinguished it with a sarcastic smirk. ‘Looks like I’m going to be the one taking orders from some imported street hump.’
‘And second?’ the director asked.
‘That I not be paid.’
Confusion narrowed the director’s eyes. ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
Vail smiled. ‘If I’m being paid, sooner or later someone will consider me an employee and start giving me orders. We all know how that’ll end. No, my payment is to not have to take orders from anyone. Maybe when we’re done – if I’m successful – I’ll add up my hours and you can pay me the hourly rate for a bricklayer.’
‘Then what’s to prevent you from becoming a loose cannon?’ Kaulcrick asked.
‘Hopefully nothing.’
‘I have to tell you, I voted against bringing you into this,’ Kaulcrick said. ‘I’m sorry. There’s enough confusion.’
‘If you keep being that honest, Don, you and I will survive. Even through the confusion.’
Lasker said, ‘If you don’t want anything more than a pittance, why would you take on something like this?’
Vail looked over at Kate. ‘Apparently, because I can.’
SEVEN (#ulink_101cc575-50a7-53d7-9773-c9959f9aec34)
Vail sat at the desk in his D.C. hotel room reading from the laptop computer Kate Bannon had given him. Everything from the Rubaco Pentad case, including crime-scene photos, lab reports, and surveillance logs, had been downloaded into it. For such a clandestine operation, an incredible amount of material had been reduced to writing. As he took another bite of the cold room-service hamburger, there was a knock at the door.
It was Kate. Although holding a briefcase with both hands in front of her, indicating her visit was official, she had changed clothes and was wearing a dress and heels. ‘Hi,’ she said, and walked in, looking around. ‘How’s the room?’
‘You’ve seen my apartment, how good does it have to be?’
‘Good, good,’ she said distractedly. ‘Is there anything else you need?’
‘What are you offering?’ he said in a playful voice.
‘Equipment, bricklayer, equipment. Like an agent’s handbook or a pair of brass knuckles.’
‘I’m not the kind of person who thinks about his obituary, but I’d hate for it to read, “He died because he brought a laptop to a gunfight.”’
‘Okay, I’ll get you a weapon,’ she said. ‘We’ll need to get you to a firearms range to qualify.’
‘Do you really think there’s time for that?’
‘It’s pretty much an unbreakable rule. You know, lawsuits.’
‘Isn’t it my job to break rules?’
After a moment, she said, ‘Okay, I’ll have it for you tomorrow. I’ve ordered up a Bureau plane. I assume we’ll be flying to Las Vegas to try to pick up Bertok’s trail.’
‘I was thinking more like L.A.’
‘Why L.A.?’
‘I’m not exactly sure. Call it a hunch. And don’t think that the Cubs having three games with the Dodgers this week has anything to do with it.’
Kate studied Vail’s face and found the same unreadable expression he presented when asked about anything he didn’t want to answer. She was sure of one thing: his decision to start in Los Angeles had nothing to do with baseball or intuition. He had found some way to track Bertok that no one else had thought of. ‘You know this is going to be a lot easier if we don’t keep secrets from each other.’
‘Cosmo says that a little mystery can keep a relationship from getting stale.’
‘There are only a few things in life that are unquestionable. That you’ve never read Cosmopolitan magazine is one of the most certain. Why L.A.?’
‘First of all, it’s about as far away from your boss as we can get. I know his type and I know my type. We’ve all seen how that movie ends.’
‘And second of all?’
‘Simple math. How many times have each of the following locations come up in the case: New Hampshire, Pittsburgh, Utah, Arizona, and Las Vegas?’
‘Once each.’
‘And Los Angeles?’
‘I don’t know, a half dozen?’
‘Everything from the first victim to the postmarks on both demand letters to Bertok. Besides, I want to search his apartment again.’
‘Why?’
‘The biggest mistake agents make is believing that because something was done once, it was done right.’ Kate nodded in agreement. ‘Now, what do we know about Stanley Bertok’s personal life?’ he asked.
‘We’ve interviewed his supervisor. He described him as suffering from what he calls “the dysfunctional twos.”’
‘What’s that?’
‘Too much booze, too little money, and two ex-wives. He thinks Bertok may have seen an opportunity to downsize his problems and taken it.’
‘And psychologically?’
‘Intelligent but brooding. No friends and not the world’s most dedicated agent.’
‘But nothing to explain why our little band of terrorists picked him to make the drop. If they knew him well enough to ask for him, wouldn’t they have to assume he was a risk to take off with the money?’
‘Which leads us right back to him and the Pentad being one and the same, or at least being in it together.’
‘For something so well planned, this has some conspicuously dangling loose ends.’
‘Haven’t you heard, there’s no such thing as a perfect crime.’
‘Unfortunately, it doesn’t have to be perfect to get away with it.’
Explaining to kate that he had been up the entire night reading the contents of the Rubaco Pentad file, Vail slept during the entire flight to Los Angeles. After they landed at one of the secure runways used by government planes coming into LAX, Kate had to wake him. As Vail stepped off the plane and into the blinding white light of the Southern California sun, he couldn’t help but stretch himself against its silky warmth. The sky was a different blue than that of Chicago or even Washington. A thin band of gray-orange haze at the horizon separated it from the earth.
Parked a hundred feet away was a dark green sedan. A seemingly stoic man in his thirties wearing a tailored summer-weight suit was walking toward their plane. He had the practiced expression of someone whose first priority was that of confident congeniality, suggesting he was part of the office management team. He came up to Kate and offered his hand. ‘Allen Sabine,’ he said. Kate took his hand and introduced him to Vail. The two men shook hands. Sabine’s dark hair had been carefully cut, and he stood with a practiced slouch that angled his face away to mask a long, sharp nose. He tried to take her bag, but she smiled graciously and said she needed the exercise. Sabine pointed at the sedan. ‘This is the vehicle we rented for you while you’re here. It has the GPS navigational system you requested. We also put in a complete set of maps for most of Southern California. The SAC is available to meet with you anytime this morning.’
‘Okay,’ Kate said, ‘let’s get it over with.’ She said to Vail, ‘The SAC is Mark Hildebrand. Ever run into him?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘He seems okay, a little territorial on the phone when I told him we were coming out.’
‘Territorial’s not all bad. Maybe he actually cares about what happens in his division.’
‘You’re irritatingly positive after your nap.’
‘Sorry. Give me a few minutes with him, and I’m sure I’ll be as good as new.’
They got in the car, Kate in the front and Vail in the back. She handed him a Glock model 22 encased in a holster, with two extra clips. Then with just enough ceremony to be sarcastic, she handed him an operation manual for the weapon. ‘I thought you should at least know how to load it.’
‘You could have given me this before we took off.’
‘You were asleep. Plus, I was curious whether you’d ask for it, and since you haven’t been checked out, I didn’t want you practicing your quick draw on the plane and accidentally shooting me or the pilot.’
‘I would have been careful not to shoot you. I can imagine the paperwork involved.’ She handed him a credit card and then a cell phone. ‘Speaking of paperwork, don’t I need to sign for all this?’
She lowered her voice. ‘After your little speech to the director about it being just a matter of time until you ran amok, I thought it would be better if none of these items were traceable to you, or more important, us.’
‘Sometimes you scare me.’
‘If only that were true.’
They were now proceeding north on the 405. The traffic was heavy, so they moved in and out of bottlenecks. When an opening presented itself, everyone drove as fast as possible. Vail couldn’t help but notice that the cars were in remarkable condition. The vast majority of them had no fading of paint, no rust, not even dirt. It was a different world; even the highway was clean and perfectly landscaped. The few pedestrians he had seen from the freeway were jogging or biking, wearing the minimum of clothing. Like everything else in Southern California, there seemed to be a subliminal theme of eternal youth, or at least its quest.
Sabine said, ‘I guess the reason I was sent to pick you up is that I’m Stan Bertok’s supervisor. At least I was. So fire away.’
Before Kate could say anything, Vail said, ‘Was?’
‘Well, I guess technically I still am, but I seriously doubt he’s just going to walk in one of these mornings, sit down at his desk, and go to work.’
‘I suppose not,’ Vail said.
She said, ‘Tell us about him.’
‘He wasn’t – isn’t – much of an agent, at least from my standpoint. Everything he did I had to keep a close eye on. He was a pretty heavy drinker. I got a call one night from the LAPD; they had stopped him driving drunk. I had to go down and drive him home. And he has some financial problems. A couple of ex-wives will do that, I guess. And I get a call occasionally from bill collectors.’
‘Do you think he took off with the money?’ Vail asked.
‘I don’t want to convict the guy in absentia, but if he didn’t, where is he?’
‘So if he took the money, you wouldn’t be shocked?’ Kate said.
‘I suppose not.’
‘Where do you think the Pentad got his name?’
‘I have no idea.’
When they got to the office, Sabine led them to the special agent in charge’s office. ‘Boss, this is Deputy Assistant Director Kate Bannon and…I’m sorry.’
‘Steve Vail,’ Kate said before Vail could answer.
The SAC was tall and trim with a dark tan. His thick blond hair peaked low across his forehead, and he was wearing a medium-blue shirt with a contrasting white collar. The cuffs, also white, were set off by large gold cuff links.
He shook Kate’s hand first. ‘Mark Hildebrand. We spoke on the phone.’ He repeated his name when he shook hands with Vail. ‘Please, have a seat.’ He instructed Sabine to shut the door as he left.
Kate watched Vail examining Hildebrand before saying anything. ‘Mark, we appreciate your letting us come in here and run this operation. The director has all the confidence in the world in you and your division; it’s just that this case is running from coast to coast, and he feels it’s best if we chase it, you know, for continuity.’
‘What exactly is it that I can do for you, Kate?’
Vail said, ‘We need to search Stan Bertok’s apartment discreetly.’
Hildebrand was surprised at the presumptive authority in Vail’s voice. He looked at Kate, but she exhibited no interest in asserting herself. ‘I’m sorry, Steve, you didn’t say where you worked. Are you with OPR?’
‘A man can only dream. No, I’m just the deputy’s gun bearer on this.’
Hildebrand stared at Vail, trying to get a better read on him. Kate broke the silence. ‘Is there a problem, Mark?’
‘No, it’s just that we’ve already searched the apartment – with a warrant. With all that’s going on, we’re being overly judicious. I don’t see what searching it again will accomplish.’
‘Look at it this way,’ Vail said, ‘when we don’t find anything, you can say “I told you so.”’
‘Somehow I don’t think you believe that,’ the SAC said, still trying to figure out the source of Vail’s authority.
Kate said, ‘Mark, we’ve been exposed to a completely different set of facts in this case than your agents. We’ll see it from a different angle. Or if you prefer, call it a lack of imagination. If you think we’re second-guessing you, I apologize, but we’re going to need to take another look.’
Kate could see that Hildebrand resented being told what to do in his own backyard, and liked it even less that he had no choice. Vail had been right about the resistance he would receive, especially with his seemingly intentional lack of tact. The SAC grinned artificially. ‘We can use the same AUSA, Tye Delson.’
Kate said, ‘Mark, I know I don’t have to say this, but the last thing we need right now is someone leaking this to the press. This Delson, we can trust him, right?’
‘Her. And yes, you can. Unfortunately she’s leaving the United States attorney’s office soon. Too bad, too. You just can’t find prosecutors like her anymore. The agents here love her. She’s invited to more of our parties than I am. She’ll probably have your warrant in a couple of hours. She’s already got all the boilerplate from the first search, and she knows the right judge to get it signed in case the probable cause isn’t as clear-cut as they’d like.’
‘We’ll want the affidavit sealed,’ Kate said.
‘That’s what she did before. Do you have time to go see her now?’ Kate nodded and Hildebrand picked up the phone. After a brief conversation, he hung up. ‘She’s in her office. I told her you’re on the way.’
Vail asked, ‘Do you have a good lock man here?’
‘Why?’ the SAC asked, and Kate could tell by the intentional flatness in his voice that he intended to question anything Vail requested from now on.
‘We still want to do this quietly, probably in the wee hours of the morning,’ Vail said.
‘We will get you in.’
Kate and Vail stood up, and she shook hands with the SAC. ‘We appreciate the help, Mark. I’ll let you know how we do.’
Once outside the SAC’s office, Kate said, ‘Boy, you and management, talk about a match made in heaven. How did you last three years?’
EIGHT (#ulink_902e87a6-b918-53da-9e7e-a068a4dfc470)
Tye Delson offered Kate and Vail a seat in her cramped office. Although there were overhead lights, the only illumination came from a small brass lamp on her desk. The assistant United States attorney was slender and wore a long midcalf black dress that failed to reveal a single curve. Her hair was dark brown and cut short, framing her face symmetrically. Her skin could have been described as flawless if it hadn’t been for its ghostly lack of color. Her lipstick was a waxy brown-red, which Vail thought an unflattering choice. She wore glasses and was one of those rare women who were more attractive because of them. Her eyes were overly made up, which, coupled with the magnification of the glasses, made them appear to be oversized, like one of those Keane paintings of innocent but somehow damaged children. And they had a quick intelligence about them that was almost lost because of a vague nervousness that flickered through them. Her voice, however, was perfectly confident, allaying any fear that she might not be up to the rigors of hacking her way through the legal mazes necessary to put men or women in federal prison.
Vail noticed a framed quote by Martin Luther on her wall: Each lie must have seven lies if it is to resemble the truth and adopt truth’s aura. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.’
Tye said, ‘This is a business of lies. The police lie to suspects to get them to confess, and defense attorneys lie to juries to…well, because that’s what they get paid to do.’
‘And prosecutors?’
‘We’re the biggest liars of all. We tell ourselves that we’re making a difference,’ she said. ‘Sorry. I know how cynical that sounds. That’s a big part of the reason I’m leaving the United States attorney’s office. I’m thinking about practicing real estate law, where lying is not only assumed, it’s profitable.’
Instead of seating herself behind the desk, she spun her chair around and sat on the windowsill, using the seat for her feet. Vail could see it was a technique that had been used before, and he appreciated that someone who had attained the lofty position of assistant United States attorney had developed the courtesy of not ‘holding court’ across her desk with those who had come for her help. She pulled the window up a couple of inches and lit an unfiltered cigarette, inhaling deeply, the paper pulling at her thin lips with a surprising sensuality.
‘I know, I know, all federal buildings are smoke-free. Forgive me my one vice. Well, my one admitted vice.’ She grinned a little self-consciously. ‘So you want another warrant for Stan Bertok’s apartment. Can I assume the search for him isn’t going well?’
‘You can,’ Kate said. ‘And we want to go in after midnight.’
‘It’ll take a little more probable cause, but it seems like a prudent approach. I’ve got the basics from the other warrants. What exactly do I list as the object of your search?’
‘Two million in cash,’ Vail said.
Tye laughed with an erotic huskiness, apparently the by-product of her ‘one vice.’ ‘Wouldn’t that be nice. Something tells me that even Stan Bertok would be a little more discreet than that.’
‘So you know him,’ Vail said.
‘We’ve had a couple of cases together.’
‘What did you think of him?’
‘I don’t know how accurate any of my judgments might be in hindsight.’
‘No one’s keeping score. We’re just trying to find him,’ Vail said.
‘Fair enough. Well, he was a guy who seemed to be mailing it in, you know, as if his mind was someplace a lot darker. He was always wired – no, that’s the wrong word. It was more like he was ready to explode. Maybe a closet depressive. He’d go off in a corner at parties and pound down the liquor. If someone tried to keep him from driving home, he’d want to fight them. He got the reputation of being a mean drunk, but I think it went deeper than that.’
The use of the noun ‘depressive’ struck Vail as an overly clinical choice of words and caused him to wonder what made her so familiar with psychological problems. ‘Were you surprised when he disappeared with the money?’
‘To tell you the truth, I was more surprised he accepted the assignment without protest. After all, the last agent was shot to death, right? Stan was not a team guy. And he certainly wasn’t looking for any medals.’
‘So you weren’t surprised he vanished with the money?’
‘Are you sure he did?’
‘Is that the old “innocent until proven guilty”?’
‘That’s the old “as soon as you give me some proof I’ll be glad to hang him,” but in the meantime…’
‘Is he a smart guy?’
‘Do you mean, to stay one step ahead of you, or was he smart enough to put this extortion together?’
‘Both.’
She stared into Vail’s eyes and let her voice drop a half octave. ‘Actually, I don’t know how hard you are to stay ahead of, but measuring him against everybody else around here, it wouldn’t be that difficult.’
When Vail smiled in response, Kate interrupted. ‘And the extortion?’
‘The one thing I’ve learned on this job is never to underestimate a man’s capacity for evil. Even a good man’s.’
‘And a woman’s?’ Vail asked.
Her mouth shifted to one side artfully. ‘Men are mere amateurs by comparison.’
‘What about him being a murderer?’ Kate asked. ‘Did he have enough evil in him for that?’
‘I know the press is trying to intimate that agents may be involved in these murders, but that’s just today’s journalism. I would find it hard to believe that any agent could do that. But then every time a serial killer is caught, invariably the next-door neighbor is on the news saying what a nice guy he was. That’s not why you want this search warrant, is it? For murder evidence?’
‘We wouldn’t want to exclude any possibility. If we did and missed something, we’d be crucified later,’ Kate said. ‘Especially with this “Enemies of the FBI” thing gaining momentum.’
‘If you’re going to gather evidence that could be used in a murder trial, the probable cause for your search warrant has to be one hundred percent accurate. This is the first legal step to that end, and as such has to be carefully vetted. The fruit of the poisonous tree falls from this point forward. Keeping that in mind, what evidence do you have indicating that Agent Bertok is involved in these murders?’
Vail said, ‘Disregarding supposition, the only link is that he was issued the same make and model of gun that was used in the murders, as were thousands of other agents.’
‘So nothing,’ Tye said.
Vail said, ‘We were told that “nothing” is usually not a problem for you.’
She took a last drag on her cigarette and flipped it out the window. She stood up and closed it. ‘Let’s simplify everything. We won’t accuse him of anything. I assume he has certain items in his possession – credentials, gun, handcuffs – which were issued to him. Since he has abandoned his job, and his whereabouts are unknown, the government needs to recover its property. Possibly he has returned to his apartment since his disappearance and left them behind.’
‘Impressive. Nothing up your sleeve and – poof – a search warrant. It’s nice having a legal magician on our side for a change,’ Vail said.
‘Only for a month or so, so abuse away. But both of you remember, there is no magic, just illusion, and with that goes the magician’s oath.’
‘Which is?’
‘Never reveal how it’s done.’
‘Believe me, there’s no one more qualified to keep illusions secret than an FBI agent,’ Kate said.
‘Good,’ Tye said. ‘So now anything found incidental to the search of the missing agent’s apartment will be admissible in court, provided you don’t overstep the limits of the warrant.’
‘Such as?’ Kate asked.
‘If you’re looking for an automobile, you can’t go looking in dresser drawers.’
‘Credentials could fit almost anywhere,’ Kate said.
‘Nice how that works out, isn’t it?’ Tye said.
‘Then we’re all set?’ Vail said.
‘There’s one small problem. Because the purpose of the search warrant is so routine, and his apartment is apparently abandoned, there’s no justification for a nighttime entry. But a suggestion – sunrise is a little after five thirty, which is a time when most of his fellow apartment dwellers will be deep in REM sleep.’
The only sound in the dimly lit hallway was the metallic scratching of Tom Demick’s lock picks as he raked the tumblers of Stanley Bertok’s door lock. Vail had been surprised by the technical agent’s appearance when he had been introduced to him. His hair and full beard were pure white and made him look much older than his fifty-one years. He was stocky with a belly that hung amply over his belt. Vail supposed that because he didn’t look like anyone’s preconceived notion of a clandestine-operations agent, it gave him the perfect cover should he be interrupted. Demick’s hands, especially his fingers, were thick and stubby, like those of a second- or third-generation fisherman or some other occupation that required digital strength and leverage rather than quick dexterity. However, they worked precisely with no wasted motion. It took less than three minutes before Demick straightened up and carefully rotated the lock cylinder open. He looked at Kate to see if she needed anything else. She gave him a silent salute of thanks, and he lumbered off toward the rear parking lot.
Vail opened the door and stepped in quickly. Kate followed him, and while he locked the dead bolt, she placed a copy of the search warrant on the rickety kitchen table. There was still a copy of the first one executed by Los Angeles agents almost a week and a half earlier.
The one-bedroom apartment was sparsely furnished, and although its occupant hadn’t been there for a while, the acrid stink of cigarette smoke was still in the air. On a table next to a threadbare sofa was an answering machine; alongside it sat an ashtray with half a dozen butts in it. Kate handed Vail a pair of evidence gloves.
Although the light wasn’t blinking, the display on the answering machine showed three messages that had been heard previously but not erased. Vail hit the Play button and listened as one of Bertok’s ex-wives threatened him, in a routine voice, about his child-support payment being late again. The second message was the same woman not so patiently demanding an immediate call. The last one was someone who identified himself as Josh and asked for a call back. Kate said, ‘That’s probably his brother in Minnesota.’
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Noah Boyd
A blockbusting thriller introducing maverick FBI agent Steve Vail.“Move over Jack Reacher, here comes The Bricklayer.” James PattersonSTEVE VAIL IS A MAVERICK.A trained killer and former agent, Vail despises authority and he's never met a rule he didn't break. These days he's working as a bricklayer.Now, Deputy Kate Bannon of the FBI desperately wants his help.Because someone is killing their operatives - in complex, subtle, twisted ways - and the body count is rising fast. Someone holds a fatal grudge against the agency; someone who knows how it works, and wants a bloody revenge.And it might be an inside job.To stem the tide of murders, Vail must re-enter a world he hoped he left behind long ago - his own past.
The Bricklayer
Noah Boyd
For Esther Newberg
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#ub935eeaa-6057-5e01-ba34-d05900eb2a35)
Title Page (#uc4b74f4b-7624-537c-a7a0-7a7fa0795464)
Dedication (#u4b27f6c8-bbae-5721-b03f-9acd404d4cd6)
BEFORE (#u484d9e5b-ada3-5c07-892a-9671528f62e6)
ONE (#u88870677-e7a3-51c3-b307-44800abbf33d)
TWO (#u1c683ec9-77bb-5cc8-80c8-7c159f48d51b)
THREE (#u56917f20-05f3-5fef-bcc3-a5f22f370ccf)
FOUR (#u1ce11c55-e8d1-5cf3-8f60-0bc602a2407e)
FIVE (#u5764c8e4-d8e8-5146-bb48-123f9a91bbc3)
SIX (#u41753693-a407-5c23-9f9c-382b4438e17d)
SEVEN (#u060c3e18-084f-58b4-9015-af18103286e4)
EIGHT (#u488ead68-f401-5556-bbb0-d665cbfb4e69)
NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
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THIRTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
AFTER (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
BEFORE (#ulink_ac7871a0-7a42-5e75-9db2-d2eee03fbdce)
As Mickey Stillson stared at the gun in his hand, he absentmindedly reached up and adjusted the fake ear that was his entire disguise and wondered how a born-again Christian like himself had wound up in the middle of a bank robbery.
A year earlier, he had been so certain of his religious conversion that when he went before the Illinois parole board, he let his inner peace sell itself. He asked its members to address him as Michael – a name that he felt emitted a soft, evangelical glow – because like Saul giving way to Paul, prison had been his personal road to Damascus. Confinement, he explained to the stony faces in front of him, had actually been his salvation. Without it, he would never have found God, the void that had sent his previous life tumbling end over end, resulting in a three-year-long incarceration for forgery.
He couldn’t help but wonder now if finding God hadn’t in fact been strictly a means of survival. After all, his ear had been cut off by an inmate they called ‘Nam’ the first week Mickey had been released into the prison’s general population, leaving little argument that surviving on his own would be difficult. Although Nam had never been in the military, Stillson’s was the third ear he had collected in as many years. No matter how thoroughly Nam’s cell was searched after each incident, the appendages were never found, giving rise, due largely to inmates’ need of fiction, to the rumor that he had devoured them in some sort of ritual he had become addicted to in Vietnam.
Within a month, Stillson had found God. As his wounds healed, he found the gnarled stump did have some benefit. While some men displayed tattoos or scars as warning to others, Stillson was missing an ear – an entire ear – which was something that even heavyweight champions couldn’t claim.
He pulled his hand away from the fake ear in disgust. Maybe he was just a jailhouse Christian, but none of that seemed to matter at the moment. He would have liked to believe that just committing an armed felony demanded that his faith be reevaluated, but he had to admit that the police officers who had surrounded the bank probably had something to do with it. He cursed himself for thinking he could ever be a real bank robber. Hell, he wasn’t even much of a forger.
He peeked outside, around the frame of one of the bank’s full-length front windows, to see if the police had moved any closer, but they were still the same distance away, lying with weapons at the ready across the trunks and hoods of their cars, apparently waiting only for the slightest provocation. At a safe distance behind them were satellite dishes on top of the television news vans, ensuring this was going to play out to the end.
Greedy – that’s what he and his partner, John Ronson, had become. They hadn’t been satisfied with just robbing the tellers. Instead, they decided the take could be doubled, or even tripled, by ‘getting the vault.’ It was Ronson’s idea; actually he had insisted on it. Stillson had deferred to him, since he was the expert, if a previous conviction and prison stretch for bank robbery could be considered know-how.
Nervously, Stillson reached up again and touched the artificial ear. Ronson had made him wear it. ‘Don’t you watch TV? The cops are lousy with technology since we went inside. All they got to do is check their computers for convicted felons with one ear and they got you. And once they got you – no offense, Mickey – they got me.’ So they went to a costume shop and bought a half-dozen fake ears, trying, with minimal success, to match the color of Stillson’s skin. He also had to let his hair grow a little longer so when they tied the ear in place with clear fishing line, he could comb his hair over the almost invisible filament. Ronson thought the disguise looked good; Stillson was fairly certain he looked ridiculous.
Stillson stood on his tiptoes to look over the counter and into the vault, where Ronson was stuffing bundles of cash into an optimistically large hockey bag. Tall and extremely thin, Ronson had been released six months earlier from the state prison at Joliet, where he had been paroled after serving one-third of his twenty-year sentence for attempted murder and the armed robbery of a bank. The deadly assault charge stemmed from shooting it out with the arresting detectives. He had surrendered only after running out of ammunition.
Stillson’s job during the robberies was to keep all the customers and employees covered while Ronson vaulted the counter and cleaned out the tellers’ drawers. This time, as Ronson was taking the time to force the manager to open the vault’s day gate, the first police car showed up in response to a silent alarm. At the moment, everyone was aware of the increasing potential for violence and was lying facedown obediently, trying not to be noticed.
‘How are we going to get out of here?’ Stillson yelled over the counter.
‘One thing at a time,’ Ronson shot back, and continued stuffing the bag with money.
‘How can you think about the money?’
‘Because if we get out of here, we’re going to need every dime of it.’ After zipping up the bag, Ronson threw it ahead of him and vaulted back over the counter. He yanked an elderly woman to her feet.
‘No, no, please don’t!’
‘Shut up, you old broad. You’ve already lived long enough.’ He pushed her toward the front door, and as they disappeared around a wall that separated the door’s alcove from the rest of the bank, he yelled back to Stillson, ‘Just keep everybody covered.’
Stillson couldn’t deny that he liked the control he had over everyone during the robberies. And for some reason, with the cops outside, that feeling was even more intense. To demonstrate his willingness to fully execute his partner’s orders, he backed up a couple of steps and slowly swung his gun from side to side. That was when he noticed a man lying next to a watercooler. His gold-colored Carhartt work pants as well as his boots were covered with concrete dust. His faded black T-shirt clung to his thick shoulders and arms. He was the only one with his head raised, and he seemed to be watching the gunman with a mixture of curiosity and insolence.
The one-eared bank robber didn’t know it, but the man had been tracking and analyzing his movements, measuring his agility, the length of his stride, his reaction time. He judged Stillson as a man who had not built a career on physical prowess or intimidation. His only authority seemed to be the gun in his hand, which he was holding too tightly.
As the man continued to stare at Stillson, he admonished himself: You don’t carry a gun anymore, stupid. Next time, you use the drive-through.
‘What’re you looking at?’ Stillson demanded.
The man’s mouth went crooked with a sneer as he silently mouthed words, causing Stillson to think he was having trouble hearing. He reached up and checked the rubber ear to make sure it wasn’t blocking the auditory canal. When he found it in place, he realized that the man had figured out it was fake and was taunting him. ‘Think that’s funny?’
The man spoke a little too loudly now. ‘I said, I’m watching you so I’ll get it right at the lineup.’
Stillson took two quick steps toward him, thrusting the black automatic forward, being careful not to get too close. ‘Are you nuts? You some sort of tough-guy construction worker? Is that it?’
‘Bricklayer.’
‘What?’
‘I’m a brick mason,’ the man said.
Stillson took another half step, raising the gun to eye level. ‘Well, meat, you’re about to undergo a career change. You can be either a floor kisser or a brain donor. Your call.’
The bricklayer slowly lowered his head.
Next time, meat, definitely the drive-through.
Shielded by the woman hostage, Ronson opened the front door enough to expose her and yelled a demand for the cops to leave and, even though he couldn’t see any, to clear out the snipers. Almost before he finished speaking, a loudspeaker ordered him to surrender. Ronson cocked his gun and pressed it against the side of the woman’s head. ‘You’ve got five minutes, and then I’m going to begin shooting people, starting with this old goat. Understand?’
Stillson couldn’t hear exactly what was being said and took a couple of steps back, trying to get a more advantageous angle to see and hear. Then he heard something he couldn’t immediately identify – a couple of deep liquid glugs.
The watercooler!
He swung his gun back toward the bricklayer, who was up off the floor and coming at him, just a couple of steps away. In front of him, he held the almost-full five-gallon water bottle sideways, pressed tightly between his hands to keep the water from escaping.
Stillson fired.
The bottle exploded, absorbing the impact of the bullet. It was all the time the man needed to close the distance between himself and the robber. In a blur, he stepped sideways, minimizing himself as a target, and grabbed the barrel of the gun, twisting it outward in a move that seemed practiced. With Stillson’s wrist bent back to its limit and his finger being dislocated inside the trigger guard, the gun was easily ripped out of his hand. As the robber started flailing, the man used the weapon to strike him once in the temple cleanly, dazing him.
Then the bricklayer grabbed him and with relative ease hurled him through one of the bank’s full-length windows. Amid a shower of glass, Stillson skidded across the concrete and lay unconscious. Fluttering in the air and then landing on top of him was the rubber ear.
The bricklayer ran to the wall that separated the front door from the rest of the bank’s interior and flattened himself against it. The woman hostage was pushed around the corner of the alcove, followed by Ronson, who was screaming at Stillson, demanding to know what he was shooting at. The mason’s hand flashed forward, and the muzzle of the gun he had taken from Stillson was pressed against Ronson’s throat.
Ronson hesitated, and the man said, ‘Do me a favor – try it…Do everyone a favor.’ Ronson recognized the seething tone; he had heard it many times in prison; this man was willing to kill him. Ronson dropped his gun. As the man bent down to pick it up, the bank robber started to run toward the opening left by the shattered window, but the bricklayer caught him. Ronson swung and caught him full on the jaw, but it didn’t seem to have any effect. The mason countered with a straight right to the middle of the robber’s face, snapping his head back violently and buckling his knees. The bricklayer grabbed him, turned, and launched him through the adjoining window, shattering it as well.
Outside, one of the reporters yelled to his cameraman, ‘Did you get it? Both of them?’
‘Oh, yeah. Every beautiful bounce.’
Suddenly the front door flew open and the hostages came streaming out, running past the police line and into the safety of the crowd. While one group of officers ran up to search and handcuff the two gunmen, a SWAT team rushed into the bank, leapfrogging tactically to secure the building and ensure there were no more robbers. It was empty.
With the aid of a couple of bullhorns, the police rounded up the hostages and herded them back inside. Each told the same story: that the man in the gold-colored Carhartts and black shirt was the one who had disarmed both robbers. When the detectives asked the witnesses to point him out, they were astonished to find that the bricklayer had vanished.
ONE (#ulink_2acda771-5f9d-5704-9428-e66f9e1e2d5c)
As Connie Lysander took the towel from around her, she looked at her body’s reflection in the full-length mirror and ordered herself to be objective, really objective. She held herself erect and, turning a few degrees in each direction, tightened her stomach muscles. It was no use, she decided; her once-taut figure had lost its sleekness. Fifteen years earlier she had been a reporter on Beneath Hollywood, a local television show that scraped together questionable bits and pieces of the ‘real’ story behind the bountiful missteps of the crowned princes and princesses of the movie industry. The three years the show aired, it had better-than-average ratings. She knew her popularity had been due largely to her figure and the way she dressed. She had worked little since the show was canceled. When her auditions for more mainstream news shows would fail, her manager blamed it on her being ‘typecast’ as a tabloid reporter. In the interim years, she floated in and out of various jobs, eventually marrying. When that ended two years earlier, she vowed to get back into media any way she could.
She stepped over and opened the door leading out onto the lanai. One of the things she loved about Los Angeles was the weather – maybe it was the thing she loved most of all. Its warm, and consistency was reassuring for her, something she could count on, unlike while she was growing up in the damp, aching loneliness of Seattle’s Puget Sound. It was a daily reminder that life was just better here. Even the Southern California architecture reflected the climate. Family rooms, kitchens, even bathrooms, featured doors that opened directly to the outside, bringing the outdoors in.
A light breeze brought in the floral sweetness of her small garden. But then she thought she smelled the aroma of coffee. She had not had any caffeine in three months, part of her new regimen, and her neighbors were out of town. Probably just some sort of latent craving. Maybe she would get dressed and go have a cup; decaf wouldn’t hurt anything.
She went back to the mirror for a few more moments trying to decide whether an even more extreme exercise program would return any part of her physical appeal, and then, in a flash of honesty, she decided that it wouldn’t. She took a step closer to the mirror and started examining her face. Plastic surgery was not as easy a fix as it seemed, at least not in Hollywood. It fooled no one but instead marked her as someone who was moving onto the cusp of has-beenhood, joining a long and unenviable list her peers couldn’t wait to add another performer to. And maybe worse, once started, the procedures were progressive, until everyone’s look became comically identical, that of carved feline features being pulled back by the g-forces necessary to reenter the earth’s atmosphere.
She dared another half step closer to the mirror and, using her index fingers, pushed up the skin in front of her ears, tightening her jawline. It did look better, although it did little for her sagging neck. She was tired of trying to come up with combinations of turtlenecks, scarves, and shadowing collars to hide her age. She tapped the fold of skin under her chin with the back of her fingers and watched as it remained stubbornly unchanged. Maybe it was time.
Her agent had been getting a lot more calls since she had done the exposé of the FBI and the United States attorney’s office in Los Angeles. True, it had been her manager’s idea, but when she looked back on it now, it needed to be done. And Hollywood loved to target the FBI. If they and the U.S. attorney’s office hadn’t been so corrupt, why had their missteps been so easy for her to uncover? Maybe ‘corrupt’ wasn’t the right word. She had recorded agents and attorneys drinking on duty, frequenting prostitutes, and working out for endless hours at local gyms. There were actually some people fired, so it really had been a public service. And her peers obviously appreciated her efforts, because she was now getting called again.
She took a step back and put her hands on her hips. ‘Yep, I’m going to do it,’ she said out loud to make the decision binding. Pulling on a robe, she walked into her bedroom.
She didn’t notice the man sitting in the chair until she saw him in the mirrored closet door. Spinning around, she grabbed at the front of her robe. ‘Who are you?’ Then she noticed his gloved hands. In the left was a take-out cup of coffee. In the right was a gun, which hung indifferently. She tightened her grip on the front of her robe. ‘What do you want?’
He laughed noiselessly. ‘Certainly not that.’ She searched his eyes for any flicker of motive. They were gray and sad. Slowly the rage behind them became evident, not the sort that flashes for a moment, but the kind that doesn’t burn out in a lifetime. There was little doubt in her mind how dangerous this man was.
She released her robe and let her hands fall to her side with a calming reassurance. Her voice mellowed. ‘Then what can I do for you?’
‘Your story about the FBI brought me here. You really did a job on the agency.’
‘The story was true.’
‘Yes, you’re a real patriot.’
The remark seemed sarcastic, but she wasn’t sure. His voice was emotionless, containing none of the contempt that ensured the depth of the insult. ‘The story was true,’ she said again, as if testing his ability to be rational, the repeated defense the only one necessary for a logical person.
‘Careers were destroyed,’ he said. ‘How about your career? On the upturn, I would imagine.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Someone who wonders why you hate the FBI?’
Even though he asked the question in the same flat tone, she felt an increased possibility of violence. ‘I – I don’t hate the FBI. Why won’t you tell me why you’re here?’ She stole a glance toward the door, measuring its distance and his range of fire from the chair.
He tipped the muzzle of the gun up at her. ‘Sit down on the bed.’
Paralyzed by his sureness, she realized she wouldn’t make it and did as instructed. Attempting a smile, she said, ‘Sure, whatever you say.’
He took a swallow of his coffee. ‘I’m here for the same reason that you did your little story – to make the FBI pay.’
‘If we want the same thing, do you really think a gun is necessary?’
‘Unfortunately, yes. I’m here to provide you with the means of really damaging the FBI.’
‘I don’t understand. How?’
‘I’m sure you believe in what you did. That it’s critical to the well-being of the country to expose the FBI. And this has to be done no matter the cost. That is what you believe, isn’t it?’
‘Sure, I guess.’
‘See, we want the same thing. Only you’re going to have to make the ultimate sacrifice for your – or should I say, our – cause.’
‘What, you think you’re going to kill me?’
‘Unless you can find some way to kill me. But since I’m the only one in the room with a gun, I seriously doubt that.’
Her eyes locked onto him as her head tilted appraisingly. ‘You’re from the FBI, aren’t you? You were sent here to intimidate me. That’s what this is really about.’
He took the last drink of his coffee, tipping it up to ensure it was empty. Then, balancing the gun on his right leg and without taking his eyes from her, he pried the lid off the cup and set both down on the table next to him. With the gun back in his hand, he glanced at her, then carefully readjusted the cup’s position on the table. ‘Not really. Women like you are too irrational to ever be intimidated.’
‘Women like me. You mean a bitch.’ She threw her head back and laughed as though trying to embarrass him with his inability to show emotion. ‘This is Hollywood, moron. Without the bitches in the middle of everything, this town’s major export would be fat-free yogurt. From someone like you, “bitch” is the ultimate compliment.’
‘In that case, you’re the queen.’
‘Damn right.’
Again his face mimicked laughter without a sound. Glancing once more at the cup, he rotated the automatic slightly until the ejection port was exactly where he wanted it. ‘Personally, I would have chosen a different epitaph, but who am I to argue with royalty?’
He fired once, striking her in the middle of the upper lip. She fell back dead as the ejected casing from the automatic arced through the air and into the cardboard cup. He walked over to the body and placed a blue piece of paper on her chest. On it was written ‘Rubaco Pentad.’ From his pocket he took a plastic bag containing a Q-tip and dabbed it in the blood that was trickling from her wound. Careful not to let it touch his skin, he resealed the bag.
He went back to the table, dropped the bagged swab into the paper cup, and pushed the lid back onto it. After looking around for any other trace evidence that might have been accidentally cast off, he slid the gun into its holster under his wind breaker and walked out.
TWO (#ulink_fe13048f-2aff-5df2-b55d-95bafee861e3)
The FBI was about to pay the rubaco pentad one million dollars. At least that’s what the group was supposed to think. Agent Dan West was being guided electronically to a location in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Heading east, he crossed a wooden bridge, watching the river disappear into a turn that he knew had to be close to the ocean. Dusk and a warm summer breeze added to the serenity of the small seacoast town, making it an even more unlikely place to be the final twist in such a complicated and vicious crime.
For the first time since he’d left Afghanistan, a burning knot of fear was growing in West’s stomach, something that had not happened in his three years with the FBI, all of which had been spent on a white-collar-crime squad in Boston. It had been mind-numbing work. He had tried to tell his bosses that because he was a former Navy SEAL, he needed something more confrontational than endless columns of numbers that never seemed to add up to the same total twice.
He checked the coordinates on the handheld GPS receiver – they now matched those given in the demand letter. He pulled into a small parking lot and got out of the Bureau car, a ponderous Crown Victoria chosen for its obviousness. A brief chill shuddered along his limbs as he stretched nervously. An unlit sign above the single-story building identified it. ‘It is the Kittery Point Yacht Club,’ he whispered into the microphone taped to his chest, confirming his location. Fearing the Pentad might be watching the drop site, the FBI had conducted only a satellite reconnaissance of the coordinates, revealing the yacht club as the likely destination.
‘Copy,’ answered one of the dozen surveillance agents who had been following him at a discreet distance since he left the federal building in Boston.
West ran his tongue across his lips. The taste of salt air reminded him of his navy training, and that no matter what lay ahead, he was capable of handling it. His job was to drop the money and get out. The agents following him would deal with whoever tried to pick it up. The canvas bag he pulled out of the backseat was carefully weighted and shaped to give the impression it contained the full amount in hundred-dollar bills, but it contained only a thousand dollars, enough to make the crime a felony once delivered and retrieved.
Although the Rubaco Pentad appeared to be a politically driven domestic terrorism group, its demand for a million dollars was still technically extortion. And extortion, he had been taught during new-agents training, is simply a crime of intimidation at an anonymous distance. The victim has to be scared enough by the criminal’s threat to do two things without question: part with the cash, and not contact the authorities. Each party has its own advantages. The extortionist has anonymity, while all law enforcement has to do is never lose contact with the money. Most cases wind up a draw: the criminal doesn’t get the money, and law enforcement is unable to identify him. The would-be extortionist keeps from going to jail, and the Bureau justifies, in part, its budget requests. When the occasional arrest is made, it’s because the extortionist thought he had come up with an original, foolproof gimmick to retrieve the money. ‘That’s all there is to extortion,’ the instructor had declared. ‘There are no variations. The Bureau’s been around for a century and no one has been able to figure out a way to do it differently.’
But the Rubaco Pentad changed everything. After murdering a former Hollywood reporter a month earlier, it had demanded one million dollars to prevent the next killing. What was different about the Pentad’s crime, other than the before-the-fact violence, was that the demand was made directly to the director of the FBI. In extortion or kidnapping drops, the Bureau always had at least some degree of surprise on its side, but the Pentad had taken that advantage away, leaving the agency unsure what to do next. The FBI was being told not only to come up with the money, but also to deliver it. Evidently the group felt its plan was so flawless that it could afford to humiliate the Bureau and still get away with the money.
The clear New Hampshire sky was full of stars; a halfmoon hung distantly in the northeast. West looked around for some indication of what he was supposed to do next. He checked the coordinates on the GPS again. They matched those in the instructions exactly. Maybe he was just supposed to wait. He put the bag down and reread a copy of the demand note.
FBI,
Only your unconditional compliance with the following two conditions will prevent the next murder:
1. Delivery of $1,000,000 in hundred-dollar bills at precisely 9:42 P.M. on August 14 at 43.072N 70.546W.
2. The public or media must not learn about the demand for money.
If either condition is violated, even by a ‘leak,’ the next person, a politician we have selected, will die. Although we doubt your ability to comply fully, we’re willing to let the world-famous FBI try to get it right the first time. If not, this war will get progressivelymore expensive in terms of lives as well as money. Neither of which are we necessarily opposed to.
If the FBI continues to violate the rights of this country’s citizens, the money will be used to finance much more drastic measures. More lives will be taken, and not one at a time. The FBI will be fully credited with the resulting mass destruction.
Make sure your delivery boy is a good swimmer. The Rubaco Pentad
West checked his watch. It was almost nine thirty. Time was getting short.
Of course, he thought, the water. They wanted a good swimmer. He picked up the bag and walked across the parking lot tarmac and around behind the club. There was a waist-high fence that separated the asphalt from the grassy slope that led to the Piscataqua River. He vaulted over it and walked down to the edge. Music from inside the club lilted softly behind him.
Twenty yards to his right, he could see a faint optic-green glow among a cluster of large shrubs. Under them was a black tarp with a glow-in-the-dark arrow painted on top. The Pentad would probably have left it during the day when the paint would not have luminesced and been noticeable. The arrow pointed to a building on an island in the river, which was dimly silhouetted by the moonlight. It was a large white structure that, because of the notched turrets at either end, looked like a medieval castle.
The tide appeared to be out, making West wonder if he was supposed to swim across the river, roughly two hundred yards. He spoke into the mike on his chest. ‘Can someone find out what time low tide is here?’ The entire operation was being monitored in the Boston office’s major-case room.
After a few minutes someone said, ‘Nine forty-two P.M.’ That answered West’s question about crossing the river. It was the exact time given in the instructions. Slack tide, the time of least current. Under the tarp were a scuba tank, fins, and a mask. At first glance the tank appeared old-fashioned, but it wasn’t the tank. It was the harness that held it. Modern tanks come with a zippered vest or at least padded straps that divers can get in and out of easily. This one was fitted with excessively long black nylon webbing, crisscrossed unnecessarily, using far too much strapping. Some of it had been doubled in places that weren’t necessary, and although it would be uncomfortable, it looked functional. Placed inside the mask was a wrist compass, which he strapped on. West explained over the radio what was going on. ‘Can you find out something about the building on the other side? It looks like that’s where I’m heading.’
West stripped down to his swimsuit. The ‘good swimmer’ portion of the demand letter had been interpreted as an attempt by the Pentad to neutralize any FBI electronic devices, so the office technical agent had put a waterproof bag with a neck strap in a side pocket of the larger money-bag. Next to it was an underwater flashlight. Also a waxsealed container had been jury-rigged by the head firearms instructor, who had placed a Smith & Wesson snubnose inside it.
It was now nine forty. As West started to slip on the fins provided, he found a folded piece of paper inside. ‘34°’ was the only thing written on it. He held up his wrist and checked the heading to the ‘castle.’ It was exactly thirty-four degrees.
‘Command, it looks like they want me to swim underwater straight to that building. Any idea what it is yet?’
‘We’ve got the head resident agent in Portsmouth on the line. He says it’s a hundred-year-old naval prison. Been closed for thirty years. That’s Seavey’s Island you’re heading to. It’s a secure naval shipyard now. We’ve got some of the surveillance units already at the main gate. They’ll be on your land side by the time you get across.’
‘Just make sure they don’t get me burned. That note sounds like these people would be just as happy if we screwed this up.’ He pulled the transmitter mike off his chest and packed everything into the water-tight bag. As he stepped into the water, he took another deep breath and said, ‘Well, tough guy, this is what you wanted.’
The water was cold, but the biggest problem was swimming underwater with the twenty-two-pound bag of fake money. The weight kept him deeper than he wanted to be. Some of the time he had to drag it along the bottom while keeping his eye on the compass. And the strange configuration of the harness webbing that was cutting into his waist and shoulders wasn’t helping. Halfway across, the tide started coming back in and the current began picking up. It took him more than a half hour to get across the river.
As he got closer to the other side, he could see more luminescent green light. He felt the river bottom sloping up, so he set the bag down on it. Keeping a foot through the carrying straps, he surfaced to confirm his location. He was close to the prison now. Maybe too close. It looked black in its own shadow. And silent, making him want to hold his breath as if the building were a wounded animal he had stumbled across, its only means of attack to lure in those who believed it was dead. The structure was no longer two-dimensional, but seemed to wrap around the end of the island, and at the same time around him. Its west end had wings that ran north and south for hundreds of additional feet and at its tallest point was at least six stories high. So much for making the drop and leaving everything else to the surveillance agents. It looked like he was on his own.
He dove down and gripped the bag and saw that the green lights were a couple of glowsticks that had been attached to the underwater wall of the castle. When he got within a couple of feet, he snapped on the flashlight and could see the sticks had been laced through the remains of a metal gridwork that had once secured some type of conduit, possibly sewage, since the prison had been built when the country’s rivers were considered nature’s refuse solution. The underwater passageway was narrow, but he could fit through it. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the moneybag into the opening and followed it in.
A few minutes later he broke through the surface and found himself standing in a large stone room, the floor of which was bedrock except for the large rectangular access opening that he was now standing in. There were water-marks on the walls that indicated seawater filled the room to three-quarters at high tide. Toward the top of one wall were three heavy metal rings anchored into the stone and concrete, the kind that prisoners might have been chained to. He wondered if the U.S. Navy of a hundred years ago hadn’t used the room for ‘retraining,’ taking the most uncooperative prisoners to the subterranean cell for an obedience lesson taught by two high tides a day and the flesh-nibbling crabs that rode in on them.
Pulling off the fins and mask, West shrugged out of the scuba tank and took out the snubnose. After turning on the transmitter, he spoke into the mike: ‘Any unit on this channel, can you hear me?’ Because of the hundreds of tons of steel and concrete surrounding him, it would have been a miracle to get any reception. ‘Anyone hear me?’ he tried once more. The only response was the hollow silence of the cavernous cell.
There didn’t appear to be a way out of the room, but then he noticed a trapdoor in the ceiling above the far wall. The height of the room was a good ten feet. How was he supposed to get up there?
He walked over to the wall directly underneath the trap-door and shined his light up for a closer look. Just beneath it was a thick, rusty L-shaped hook embedded in the wall. In shoes, he could just touch a basketball rim if he jumped, ten feet. Barefooted, he could probably get up to the hook, but it didn’t look like there was enough of it exposed for him to hold on to. He flashed the light around the room for anything that might help him reach it, but there was nothing except what he had brought with him.
Then it hit him – the webbing on the tank. That’s why it was so long. The extortionists had used an excess of nylon strapping to rig the tank so he could extricate himself from this cell. It was some sort of test that they hoped the FBI would fail.
After stripping the strap out of the tank’s frame, he quickly measured it using the nose-to-fingertip method. It was three lengths, about nine feet long. Great, he thought, nine feet to get me up ten feet and through the trapdoor. And with the moneybag. He let his sailor’s knowledge of knots run through his mind for a while before the answer came to him.
He laid the scuba tank against the wall, and because it was round, he jammed the two wedge-shaped fins underneath it to prevent it from rolling out as he stood on it, getting him a foot closer to the hook. After knotting a simple loop in the middle of the strap, he tied a large slipknot at one end and threw it over the hook. Pulling it down slowly, he tied the moneybag tightly at the bottom end of the webbing.
As West started climbing, he realized how much the swim had taken out of him physically. He began to wonder if part of the Pentad’s plan was to exhaust him. If it was, that meant a face-to-face confrontation could lie somewhere on the other side of the trapdoor.
Once he could stand in the knotted loop, he was able to straighten up and, with a full shove, push up on the door, causing it to rotate 180 degrees and slam against the floor in which it was hinged. West waited and listened. Still there was only silence.
The room he was climbing into was pitch black. He pulled himself up, drew his weapon, and got into a crouched firing position before turning on his light. It was some sort of holding room in a cellblock, about twenty feet by twenty feet. White paint was peeling off all the walls, and he could now smell it in the salty, damp air. Knowing how old the facility was and what the navy used for paint thirty years earlier, he was sure it was lead-based. An old dry-rotted ladder lay flat on the floor next to the trapdoor.
There was only one door in the room and he walked to it, turning off his light before opening it. He tried to do it carefully, but its rusted hinges echoed shrilly ahead of him. It opened to a narrow corridor. A hundred years ago the navy probably figured that whether on sea or land, a sailor needed only minimal width to move from compartment to compartment, so why waste money on aesthetics. At the far end of the corridor, he could see three more glowsticks fastened to a heavy stairwell door that had a small window of wired glass embedded in it. The sticks were shaped into an arrow pointing up. He went back to the trapdoor and pulled the moneybag up.
If he was going higher, maybe the transmitter would eventually work. He taped it to the small of his back and ran the mike up onto his chest, taping it in place. Then he put on his shirt to hide it. Jamming everything else into the bag, he headed for the glowstick arrow.
The stairwell was even narrower than the corridor. A metal railing ascended alongside the stairs. Peeling paint lined the deck and he could feel some of it sticking to the bottom of his feet. West turned off his flashlight. Of course they knew he was coming, but they didn’t need to know exactly where he was. In the dark he put his hand on the railing and started up. There was a landing between each floor, and he stopped on each one, snapping on his light to check the next set of stairs. Then he turned it off and listened for a few moments. He heard nothing, though he knew they were there. He continued on up the stairs.
On each floor he checked the metal door to determine if it was where he was supposed to enter the prison, but they were all locked. The window in each had been covered with paper on the opposite side so he couldn’t look through.
It took a few minutes to reach the top floor, the eighth if he had counted correctly. He tried the door and it opened. He turned on his flashlight and checked his weapon. He was now on a small landing with doors on either side. Shining a light through the glass windows, he could see they led off to different parts of the floor. Both were locked. Between them was a shoulder-width opening that looked down over an eight-story airshaft. All at once he could see the vastness of that part of the prison. Each floor was ringed with a catwalk accessing hundreds of cells. Underneath the railing at the edge where he stood was another glowing arrow, this time taped to the floor and pointing straight out. West leaned out through the opening without touching the ancient railing. On the deck one floor down was another arrow pointing back toward the stairwell. Was he supposed to rappel down to the next floor? He stepped back and tested the railing and, surprisingly, found it was rock solid. He leaned over again, trying to see what was on the landing below, but it was shadowed in darkness, and he couldn’t get enough of an angle to use his flashlight. Quietly he tried his transmitter once more, but there still was no answer. He turned off the light and listened. Suddenly he felt the damp coldness that surrounded him, and shivered involuntarily.
Rappelling without a harness was chancy, but it was only about eight feet to the floor below. The nine-foot webbing was going to leave his descent a little short because of the four-foot-high railing and the knots at both ends, so he untied the bag, looping the webbing through the handles. Then, leaning as far over the side as he could, he swung the bag back and forth toward the landing below. When he was sure it would clear the railing, he released one end of the strapping, and the bag landed softly on the concrete deck below.
He pulled the webbing back up and tied it to the railing. Slowly he started to lower himself. When he came to the end of the strap, he could just reach the railing on his tiptoes. He took a moment to gain his balance on it and then let go of the webbing. As soon as his full weight transferred to the seventh-floor railing, he heard the horrifying sound of metal tearing. Both uprights supporting the crosspiece had been almost completely sawed through. He tried to grab the strap but it was already out of reach.
As he started to fall, he felt adrenaline explode through him. He turned himself in the air as best he could, hoping to catch a railing of one of the six remaining floors. But he was accelerating; it wasn’t going to get any easier. He threw his hands at one of them, but because his body was askew, his right hand caught the railing before his left. With a sickening crack, his right shoulder dislocated as his left hand grabbed the railing, stopping his fall.
Blinding pain shot through the entire right side of his body, and he could hold on with only his left hand. Unable to pull himself up, he looked down, trying to count the railings below. The flashlight dangled from his useless arm as its beam swept the airshaft haphazardly. He was still three stories up. Something streaked by him and he thought it might have been the railing. Then he saw the cut and bundled magazine pages hit the ground and burst apart. The moneybag, now empty, floated by. Helplessly he watched his left hand, as if it belonged to someone else, come off the railing.
Dan West didn’t think he had been unconscious very long. The first thing he became aware of was foot-steps. Help had arrived.
But there was something wrong with the approaching steps; they were too slow. And they belonged to only one person. West tried to look around but the flashlight had come off his wrist and lay beyond his grasp, giving off only a small fan of light in the opposite direction. He was lying uselessly on his gun as his entire right side was all but paralyzed by the searing pain. Slowly so his movement wouldn’t be detected, he reached back with his left hand and pushed the body recorder’s button to the On position.
A man came up behind him and stood silently for a few seconds before walking around and standing in the flashlight’s beam. Enduring the pain, West looked up as well as he could but still wasn’t able to see his features in the shadows.
‘Did you want to see my face?’ he asked in a cold whisper that caused West to understand the consequences of being able to identify the individual. He picked up the flashlight and scanned the agent’s sweating face. ‘You are young. That would explain the lack of self-preservation.’ He then shrugged and turned the light on himself. ‘Here you go.’
West stared at the man’s face, memorizing it. It was unremarkable except for his eyes; they were a stony gray but beginning to widen with pleasure. The agent tried to bring his injured right hand to his holster, but the extortionist easily kicked it away. ‘And they say the old BU was tougher. That must have been very painful.’
Hoping the recorder wasn’t damaged, West grimaced and said, ‘I don’t suppose you’d want to tell me your name.’
‘What good would that do you now?’
‘One last bit of satisfaction.’ He laughed painfully. ‘It’s not like I’ve got much else to look forward to.’
‘And what’s in it for me?’
‘Come on. It’s the ultimate act of control. Completely exposing yourself and then completely taking it away. For someone like you, that has to be damn near sexual.’
The man’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘Someone like me?’ the extortionist said, his voice amused but still in that hissing whisper. He then drew a black automatic. ‘I’m sorry, but we’d better move things along. I would imagine surveillance is getting close.’
‘I was hoping you’d stick around. Give them the opportunity to meet you and, with a little luck, shoot you to death.’
‘That’s the saddest thing about being young – you actually believe there is such a thing as hope.’ He raised his gun and fired one round that hit Dan West in the right temple. The shot echoed metallically for a few moments, and the killer closed his eyes as if trying to prolong its sound.
When it was completely quiet, he scanned the floor with the flashlight until he found the spent cartridge. He picked it up and slipped out a side door.
THREE (#ulink_676b6fcd-4417-53cb-a308-97d760ea424c)
Robert Lasker knew that in Washington, D.C., the quickest way to have one’s public-service résumé reduced to a oneline obituary was to get caught lying to the White House, especially if that individual happened to be the director of the FBI. But that was what he had just done. Anyway, he wasn’t sure what the truth was, or whether he cared if, as director of the FBI, he ever found out. He told his driver that he needed to clear his head and would walk back to the office.
Pushing his hands deeper into his pockets as he walked along, he tried not to think about the meeting with the White House staffer who had summoned him because of the press the Bureau had been receiving about the Rubaco Pentad murders. ‘After three murders of well-known people, silence is not an option with the media. It looks like you’re hiding something. You have to make some sort of statement,’ the staffer had said.
Actually, they were hiding something, not only from the public, and now the White House, but from most of their own agents as well. Lasker, without giving any details, told him that the investigation was at a critical juncture and the smallest miscalculation could cause additional deaths. The fear of the administration being dragged into the circle of responsibility for more murders was enough for the aide to back off, at least for the time being.
In truth, the FBI had not developed a single lead as to who was responsible for the murders or how to stop the killers from striking again.
Twelve hours earlier, the Rubaco Pentad had claimed its third high-profile victim, Arthur Bellington, a nationally known defense attorney who took particular delight in preventing or overturning FBI convictions, which he often followed with a press conference detailing the Bureau’s ineptitude.
A month earlier, a former reporter had been murdered in her L.A. home. Within a couple of days, a million-dollar extortion demand was mailed to the FBI. When Agent Daniel West tried to deliver a dummy package of money to catch them, he too was shot to death. The Bureau had covered up the death, reporting it as a training accident, because of the Pentad’s demand for secrecy concerning all monetary aspects of the case.
A couple of weeks later, Nelson Lansing, a Utah state senator who had coauthored a book about Ruby Ridge concluding that the Bureau had methodically executed members of the Randy Weaver family, had been shot and killed by the Pentad as he was leaving his Salt Lake City home early in the morning. To no great surprise, a two-million-dollar demand arrived at the FBI within a week. What followed then was anything but predictable. The letter also named the agent who was to make the delivery, Stanley Bertok of the Los Angeles division.
As instructed, Bertok, this time with the entire two million dollars, flew to Phoenix, rented a car, and took off on a four-hour drive to Las Vegas. The Pentad had warned about using FBI aircraft, which, like so many things in this case, indicated an uncommon understanding of Bureau procedure. The prescribed route was desolate and relatively free of commercial airline traffic so any plane would be spotted easily. Also, the terrain was flat and the roads were straight. Any trailing vehicle could be seen for miles. So the Bureau left it up to electronics, hiding GPS devices in the car and in the bag containing the money. Bertok was also given a cell phone with additional Global Positioning System abilities. Two and a half hours into the trip, the car, according to all three GPSs, stopped dead. Fearing discovery, the agents monitoring Bertok’s movements waited almost another hour before closing in. When they arrived at the indicated location, the only thing they found was a fast-food bag on the shoulder of the road. Inside were the two GPS devices along with the cell phone. Bertok, the car, and the bag containing two million dollars were nowhere to be found. Twelve hours later, the rented vehicle was found at the Las Vegas airport.
Lasker continued his way back to the Hoover Building, forcing himself to walk slower. The weather was perfect and he took a moment to watch a couple of attractive young women pass him.
With the Pentad claiming its fourth victim the night before, it seemed improbable that the missing two million dollars was in their possession. If they didn’t have it, the most plausible explanation was that Stan Bertok had just become America’s newest millionaire. And that meant the FBI would soon receive another demand for money to prevent a fifth killing.
If an agent selling out wasn’t bad enough, an even worse possibility existed. Just hours before, the lab had confirmed that all four victims, including Dan West, had been shot with the same weapon, a .40-caliber Glock, model 22. That particular gun was FBI issue and was part of Bertok’s property. Coupled with the possibility of ‘insider info’ with which the group operated, the thought had crossed more than a few minds that Bertok himself might have committed the murders to set up the extortion drop.
Involuntarily, Lasker shook his head at the ingenuity of the Pentad. Everything it did was carefully designed to defeat the FBI, especially its choice of victims. Not only were they high-profile individuals, their deaths instantly gaining national attention, but their murders took place in California, Utah, and Pittsburgh, implying that no one was safe anywhere. And maybe most important, each of the victims was known to have a conflicted history with the FBI, making the Bureau waste time either defending itself or planning circuitous avenues of investigation to avoid the appearance of any ‘further’ impropriety. With the public not knowing why the victims were really being murdered, the confusion continued as to who was actually killing the ‘enemies of the FBI,’ as the media were now referring to them.
Most puzzling was how difficult the Pentad made it to deliver the money. It almost seemed that they wanted the FBI to fail; in fact, that was exactly what one of the Bureau profilers theorized. ‘Their primary motive,’ he said, ‘is to disgrace the FBI. It is such an obsession with them that they consider murder nothing more than a necessary tool. They may not even want the money. Some people find self-validation in destroying institutions. They find power in destroying power. It’s being done every day through lawsuits. But legal channels wouldn’t produce the dramatic damage they feel they have a right to. And even though their methods would be considered by most as cowardly, they see themselves as great unsung heroes, defeating, in this case, an institution that the American people mistakenly see as heroic. The more times they can defeat it, the more heroic they are. And the more foolish we look. Do they want the money? Eventually they probably will. Greed is pretty dependable. But they’re not going to be in any hurry to get it as long as they’re beating us in these skirmishes. Waco and Ruby Ridge are apparently the justification of their actions. No one from the FBI was ever punished for those incidents, so they are taking retribution into their own hands. If Bertok did suddenly become a thief and take the money, they couldn’t have hoped for anything better. It proves their point that the FBI is really corrupt and can’t be trusted. And at some point they will reveal to the world that he took it. Again, to humiliate us. Not only do we have a dishonest agent, but we routinely cover up something like this. Which at the moment we are.’
Lasker knew that whoever was pulling the strings, whether it was the Pentad or Agent Bertok freelancing – or both – the effect was paralyzing the Bureau’s ability to go after them. That the FBI might be assassinating its enemies and blaming the killings on a fictitious group of terrorists was a ridiculous notion, but if the information about the Glock 22, the gun the Bureau had issued Bertok, became public, it might not seem so far-fetched.
At each of the crime scenes, a folded piece of paper with the same two words, ‘Rubaco Pentad,’ had been left on the victim’s chest. Since ‘pentad’ is defined as a group of five, the press felt safe in concluding that some sort of small domestic terrorism cell was committing the murders. And ‘Rubaco,’ they decided, was an amalgam of Ruby Ridge and Waco, two of the FBI’s most enduring black eyes, especially among the more radical antigovernment groups, most of which would list the FBI as first-strike targets.
Seeking to further sensationalize the case, the press drew a more abstract but marketable conclusion: that each of the three known victims, because of his or her individual history with the Bureau, could be considered an enemy of the FBI. However, the two assumptions collectively formed a paradox. If the Rubaco Pentad were committing murders to save the world from the FBI, then why was it killing individuals who shared the same beliefs?
Because of the monetary demand, Lasker had initially assumed it was just another extortion with a different coat of paint, and it had been handled as such. Terrorists who demanded money were simply extortionists no matter what kind of rhetoric accompanied their demands. But after they left the hundred-dollar bills lying around Dan West’s body, their long-range plans for the money suddenly seemed a more ominous possibility. If they were legitimate terrorists, there would be, as they had warned in their first demand letter, an irresistible irony to the idea of using secretly paid FBI money to commit mass murder, something for which the public would never forgive the Bureau.
FOUR (#ulink_85b6835a-58e4-5056-a59d-894331b97918)
Newly promoted deputy assistant director Kate Bannon had never been in the FBI director’s office before. While she and her boss waited for Bob Lasker’s return, she took the opportunity to survey the room more closely. The lack of pretension in the decor was surprising. She didn’t know what she had expected, but the offices of upper management she had seen usually looked more like small museums, lined with trophies, plaques, and photographs. Instead there were piles of documents littering the room, on tables and shelves, some of the taller ones leaning haphazardly. A few were starting to show a coat of dust, causing a dull mustiness that scratched at her nostrils. Only one photograph hung on the wall. It had apparently been taken during Lasker’s Senate confirmation hearing. Shot from behind the soon-to-be director, it focused on the face of a bald senator whose scalp glistened with sweat and who for some reason was shaking an angry finger at the nominee. She smiled, suspecting that it had been placed directly behind the director’s desk to remind everyone that whatever business had brought them there, he or she should remember that ultimately Lasker had to answer for what his agency did or failed to do.
The door opened and the director walked in. ‘You guys been waiting long?’ He fell unceremoniously into the chair behind his desk, grinding his eyes with the heels of his hands until he felt the tiny optic shocks that told him that was enough. He had gotten little sleep since the murders started, and the command performance at the White House had taken out of him what little was left.
Assistant Director Don Kaulcrick was sitting next to Kate. At fifty-three, he was the FBI’s senior assistant director. He was tall with a disjointed thinness to his limbs. His hair had not started to turn gray yet and would have made his face look younger if it weren’t for its being slightly lopsided, the right side of the jaw just noticeably larger than the left. It gave the appearance of a permanent sneer of skepticism, one that continually left subordinates trying to convince him of their sincerity, an advantage he had learned to exploit early in his career. But Kaulcrick noticed that Kate Bannon seemed immune to it, probably because very little intimidated her. So he did the only thing he could to combat her lack of regard for the privileges of rank; he handpicked her to be his assistant. That way he could personally rein in that freewheeling style that had caused her to rise through the ranks so quickly. ‘Not long, sir,’ he answered for both of them. ‘How’d it go?’
‘Don, I was summoned to the White House,’ Lasker said. ‘That’s like asking Marie Antoinette if the blade was nice and sharp. Kate, how are you?’
‘Just fine, sir.’
‘They’re not happy with us at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I was told to stop screwing around and just go ahead and solve this thing. Thank God they’ve taken the gloves off – now we can start the real investigation. What a mess.’ Kaulcrick and Kate glanced at each other furtively, trying to determine if he thought they were considered responsible. ‘Someone please give me some good news.’
After a few seconds, Kate said, ‘At the first three murder scenes, the killer or killers took the time to police up the casings. All we had were the slugs to identify the gun, but they got sloppy with this one last night. A forty-caliber cartridge was found near the body.’
‘That’s it. That’s the extent of the good news?’ Lasker said. ‘I know I’m not as up on this stuff as you are, but why would you pick up the casing when the slug in the body can identify the gun?’ the director asked.
‘Maybe they were hoping that the slug would be damaged enough that it couldn’t be identified. They used hollow points, which tend to deform a great deal more as they pass through the human body,’ Kaulcrick offered.
‘I suppose,’ Lasker said. ‘What else?’
Kate said, ‘I’m not sure this is good news.’ She hesitated. Lasker gave her an unenthusiastic wave of the hand to continue. ‘So far, the people I sent to Las Vegas haven’t been able to find any sign of Bertok having taken a flight out of there.’
Lasker looked at the woman that he had heard male agents refer to as ‘too good-looking to be a female agent.’ She was tall with a figure that was both athletic and feminine. Her face would have had a blond, girl-next-door innocence to it if it weren’t for the soft two-inch scar across her left cheekbone, a broken line that suggested a willingness for combat. In the past, he had noticed a nonchalance to the way she handled herself in a room in which she was the only woman. Lasker took a moment to lose himself in her confidence and then said, ‘I don’t have to remind you how sensitive this is, Kate. I assume you’ve explained to everyone working this just how quiet it has to be kept.’
‘Yes, sir, I chose the agents carefully.’
‘All good investigators?’
‘Not particularly. I went purely for obedience. As far as the investigation, I know what needs to be done, and I’m reading all reports to make sure it’s getting done. I just wanted agents who above all else could keep their mouths closed.’
‘In today’s Bureau? Please tell me how to accomplish that.’
A corner of Kate’s mouth lifted sardonically. ‘I picked only the most serious climbers.’ ‘Climbers’ was a term street agents used to stereotype the most serious promotion seekers. ‘I told them if they did a good job, their name would be put on a priority list, but if this leaked out in any fashion, whether it was their doing or not, they’d seen their last promotion.’
Lasker smiled. ‘Sounds foolproof.’ The director looked at Kaulcrick. ‘What else?’
He slid a report across Lasker’s desk. ‘This is the latest analysis of the recording from Dan West’s murder. The transcription is pretty much the same. That whispering voice the killer used makes it hard to distinguish. Like you suggested, the recording was played for Bertok’s supervisor in L.A. to see if he could identify the voice. All he would say was it might be him.’
The director turned to the transcription portion of the report. ‘And what about the language?’
Kate pulled out a different document. ‘Psycholinguistics said that a couple of phrases have definite overtones of someone familiar with FBI jargon, particularly “BU” for Bureau and “surveillance” instead of the more commonly used “backup.” And due to the killer saying things like “you are young” and “the old BU was tougher,” the conversation has the subtlety of an older agent lecturing a younger one. But there’s not enough to draw any definitive conclusions about the identity of the killer.’
‘So there’s nothing to say it isn’t Bertok.’
‘Unfortunately, no,’ Kaulcrick said.
‘They seemed to know everything we tried to do at the New Hampshire drop. Does that take an insider’s knowledge?’ the director asked.
Kate said, ‘Not necessarily. Dummy packages have been used in the past, and it has been made public in court testimony. From the outset, they probably planned to commit two murders because they knew it would be a dummy drop. That way they could demand two million. As a side benefit, they can now argue that our ineptness caused not only murder number two, but the death of an FBI agent. I don’t know, maybe Bertok was afraid that if he had tried to deliver the money, he would have wound up like Dan West, or worse. Maybe that helped him decide to take off. If he did,’ she said.
‘If it is him, it’s going to kill us when it comes out,’ Lasker said. ‘But for right now, the longer we can delay it, the more operating room we’ll have.’
‘We still have to find him. What makes it so difficult is that we’re looking for one of our own, and we can’t even tell our own,’ Kaulcrick said. ‘Plus he knows all our procedures and has two million dollars to be creative with.’
Lasker took a moment to consider what Kaulcrick had said and then asked, ‘Are we getting any closer to identifying this group? Is this really a group?’
Kate said, ‘It’s been my experience that almost invariably extortionists who work alone will use plural pronouns like “we,” “us,” “our.” It’s part of their intimidation process to make the victim believe that the extortionist has more manpower than he does.’
‘So what you’re saying is that this could be just one man.’
‘I’m saying it’s a possibility.’
‘Is there any record of “pentad” anywhere in our files?’
‘Since the first murder, we have been running “Rubaco” and “pentad” every way possible,’ Kaulcrick said. ‘So far, nothing.’
Kate said, ‘We’ve got a half dozen agents going through all the Waco and Ruby Ridge nut files. There’s a few leads being generated, but nothing with much promise.’
‘For the moment, let’s assume Bertok is not involved in the killings. Anyone have any theories why they picked him?’
Kate said, ‘He was a street agent who worked extortion cases. Maybe they ran into him somewhere or read his name in the paper. It might be another one of their ploys to make us think they know more about what we’re doing than we do.’
The director snorted a laugh. ‘So far it’s working.’
Kaulcrick said, ‘This could have been Bertok’s operation from the beginning. With him and the money disappearing together, it would be shortsighted not to consider the possibility.’
‘If it is Bertok, why would he use a gun that is so recognizable as FBI issue?’ Kate asked her boss.
‘Nothing would cover his tracks better if he’s caught and has to go to trial. He could then say, “With a plan this well thought out, would I be stupid enough to use an FBI-type service weapon? Somebody wants you to think it’s an agent who has done this.” If we’re having these doubts, a jury certainly would. And then, at just the right moment, he would stand up and surrender his service weapon. “Here’s my issued handgun – check the serial number and test-fire it.” It would destroy the prosecution’s case. Then he would only be looking at prison time for the embezzlement of two million dollars, which, with any reimbursement, carries a slap on the wrist compared to four murders.’
‘Assuming that’s true, then what did he shoot the victims with?’ the director said.
‘A second, unregistered Glock 22,’ Kaulcrick answered quickly, as if he had expected the question.
‘Do we know if he owns more than one gun?’ the director asked.
‘I checked his property card, and no, he doesn’t,’ Kate said. ‘Not that he’s told the Bureau about.’
‘I don’t know, Don. If he has the money, then why this last murder?’ the director asked.
‘Sir, if all this was part of a planned defense, another killing would be proof positive that he had nothing to do with the murders. He just boogied with the cash, so the real killers had no choice but to find another victim and make a new demand.’
The director collapsed back into his chair. ‘Anyone want my job?’
After a few seconds, Kaulcrick said, ‘I got something from the Chicago office this morning that might take your mind off this for a few minutes. May I?’
‘Please.’
Kaulcrick went over to a large television that sat on a corner table of the office and inserted a DVD. ‘I don’t know if either of you saw this on the national news a couple of weeks ago.’
A reporter came on the screen, microphone in hand, and started describing a hostage situation taking place at a suburban Chicago bank. Suddenly, the camera zoomed in on the bank’s front door. A terrified woman opened it, and a gunman could be seen behind her shielding himself, his weapon pressed against the side of her head. The reporter said, ‘It looks like one of the gunmen is trying to negotiate some sort of deal.’ Just as the robber finished his demands and closed the door, one of the bank’s front windows exploded as a man came crashing through it. He skidded across the sidewalk and lay unconscious.
The cameraman centered the shot on the body lying in front of the bank, and after another fifteen seconds, a second robber exploded through the adjoining window, landing on the concrete walk, dazed and unarmed. Immediately, customers and employees ran out of the front door as the police rushed forward to handcuff the two men. The screen went black.
‘What happened?’ Lasker asked.
‘According to the report, witnesses said a customer, waiting until the two robbers were separated, disarmed them one at a time and then threw each of them through the windows.’
‘Who was it?’
‘That is the strangest part to the story. No one knows. Whoever it was exited with the other customers and disappeared into the crowd.’
‘What?’ the director said.
‘The police and the media have been putting out pleas for him to call in, but so far nothing.’
‘What would make someone walk away from something that extraordinary?’
‘I have no idea,’ Kaulcrick said. ‘Want to see how he did it?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Chicago sent me the surveillance videos from inside the bank.’ Kaulcrick shoved in another DVD. ‘This composite was put together from three different cameras. It starts with the first gunman being over-powered.’ He hit the Play button and it showed the bank lobby with customers scattered facedown on the floor. ‘See this hand here?’ He pointed at the corner of the screen. ‘That belongs to our boy. Keep an eye on it.’
‘What’s that next to it?’ Kate asked.
‘A watercooler. Keep an eye on that, too.’ Kaulcrick pressed a button on the remote and the disk slowed to half speed. As the images rolled by, the hand on the floor reached up and took the bottle from the watercooler as its owner pulled himself from the floor. His grainy face came into view. He placed a hand on each end of the bottle, holding it in front of his chest just as the gunman realized he was up off the floor and turned toward him. The robber yelled something, but the man continued to move toward him, extending the bottle away from his chest and in line with the muzzle of the gun. The robber fired and the impact of the bullet ripped the bottle from the man’s hands. Almost simultaneously, the man grabbed the barrel of the gun and twisted it outward in a move that Kaulcrick and Kate recognized as one they had practiced dozens of times during defensive tactics training. Once he finished twisting the weapon from the robber’s hand, the robber swung at him, and the man used the gun to strike him in the head. Then, with relative ease, he hurled him through the glass window and immediately ran to the wall that separated the front door from the rest of the bank’s interior.
‘This is from a second camera,’ Kaulcrick said. The TV screen was filled with static for a second; then, from a different angle, the female hostage who had been held at the front door during the television report came around the corner, followed by the second gunman. The unknown man’s hand flashed forward and shoved his weapon against the robber’s neck. After a short hesitation, the bank robber dropped his gun, and when the man stooped to pick it up, he ran. But the man took a few quick steps and caught him immediately.
The robber struck him in the face to no effect. Before the robber could hit him again, the man punched him in the face, buckling his legs. Then the man turned and launched him through the second window. Looking up and realizing everything was being caught on camera, the man turned his head away and started herding the hostages out the door.
While the director nodded his head enthusiastically, Kate sat pensively. Noticing her lack of enthusiasm, he said, ‘Not impressed, Kate?’
She continued to look at the screen, which was again filled with static. ‘No, it’s not that…’ She didn’t finish her thought.
Lasker asked, ‘How’d he know there was enough water in the bottle to stop a bullet?’
Kaulcrick said, ‘I’m guessing he didn’t.’
‘Why would someone do something like that?’
‘Apparently, he has a screw loose.’
‘And they haven’t found out who he is yet?’ Lasker said.
‘No. Chicago wants to release this to the local media. That’s why they sent it to me, for authorization.’
‘Let me know who he is when he’s identified. I’d be interested to know why he’s so camera shy.’
Kate said, ‘I think I know who he is.’
‘You do?’ The director turned toward her.
‘Sir, you haven’t had the hand-to-hand training we have, but the way he took the gun from the first robber is an FBI move, one we have all practiced many times. That’s what tipped me off. His hair’s a little lighter now, but I think it’s a former agent named Steve Vail. I was a security supervisor in Detroit for two years, and Vail was assigned there. Not on my squad, on the fugitive squad. And I’m pretty sure he was originally from Chicago.’
‘Former?’
‘He was fired.’
‘Not given the option to resign?’
‘They gave him the choice, but he refused to respond even though he knew he would be fired.’
‘So he could sue?’
Kate gave a quick, full-throated laugh. ‘I guess I’m not giving you a very clear picture of him. You’re trying to figure him out by the experiences you’ve had with others. No, he’s…probably the best word – the kindest word – is recalcitrant.’
‘He’s a pain in the ass.’
‘Beyond that. They used to say he bit off his nose to spite his face so many times that he actually learned to like the taste.’
‘Then why was he fired? Apparently it wasn’t for a lack of courage.’
‘He hated – no, that isn’t right – he simply didn’t recognize authority, at least not incompetent authority. That’s what was so strange about his firing. He could have prevented it by giving up a thoroughly disliked assistant special agent in charge. It all started when a Detroit police officer was shot and killed in the line of duty. They didn’t have any idea who had done it. Vail always had great informants, so he goes off on his own to contact them. At the same time, he’s poking around the murder investigation, developing new sources. He finds this one local who, after a little, let’s say, cajoling, names the shooter and also tells Vail that the gun used is at the killer’s residence. Which was kind of a feat in itself because it turns out the informant was the killer’s cousin. At the same time, because killing a police officer is a federal offense, the Bureau offers a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward. Even though he would not have given up his cousin without Vail getting it out of him first, the informant decides that he might as well cash in and calls the same information into the FBI tip line. One of the ASACs at the time was Kent Wilson. Do you know him?’
‘By reputation.’
‘Then you won’t have any trouble believing what comes next. With the tip, Wilson has the same information as Vail – because of Vail’s work on the street. Vail was always that guy you called when you needed to get something done in spite of the rules. All full of himself, Wilson has Vail come in and reads him the tip sheet. Then tells him to do whatever is necessary to get probable cause for a search warrant at the killer’s residence. Vail leaves without saying a word. He already had everything in motion.
‘Because the informant had no track record, his credibility for a search warrant wouldn’t have been strong enough, so Vail calls one of his most documented sources and has him listen while he telephones the cousin and has him repeat the information. Then Vail has his old informant repeat it to him for probable cause on the search warrant. The Detroit police find the gun, get a confession and eventually a conviction.
‘Wilson tries to take credit for the arrest, but the brass at the Detroit PD goes nuts because Vail had also been keeping them up to speed all along, since it was their officer. He didn’t tell them about the sleight of hand with the sources. They call a press conference and give all the credit to Vail.
‘The most amazing part is Wilson thinks it was all Vail’s doing and calls in the Office of Professional Responsibility, telling them that Vail falsified information to obtain a search warrant. He gives absolutely no thought about how it could come back and collapse on him. Subsequently, Vail refused to talk to OPR.
‘Because of the inconsistencies in Wilson’s statement, they tell Vail what they suspected happened and even that Wilson had given him up. Still Vail won’t answer their questions. Not even after they offered him a walk if he flipped on Wilson would he say anything. They even went to the trouble of tracking down Vail’s old informant and threatened him, even tried to bribe him, but he wouldn’t give up Vail.’
‘That’s unbelievable. Why wouldn’t Vail just give Wilson up? He’s not exactly the kind of boss you’d waste loyalty on.’
Kate leaned back. ‘Vail’s not that easy to figure out, but there is one very practical reason. If he admitted manufacturing probable cause, OPR would have had to notify the state prosecutor’s office, and the search, confession, and conviction would have been thrown out.’
‘So Vail let himself be fired so a cop killer wouldn’t walk.’
‘I think it’s even more than that. I don’t know. He seems to have this resentment for the way the rest of us lack commitment or something. He didn’t even show up for his last OPR interview, therefore insubordination.’
‘Too bad we lost him.’
Kate sat silently considering something before she said, ‘Sir, Vail had this reputation for finding people. He handled all the federal fugitive warrants for Detroit homicide. They said whether someone was gone fifteen minutes or fifteen years, he’d find them. Like I told you, he wasn’t on my squad, but everyone knew about Steve Vail. Funny thing was he seemed oblivious to any kind of notoriety, that anyone would be interested in anything he did. I always thought it was an act – until just now watching him sneak out of that bank.’
‘Are you suggesting we bring him into this?’
Kaulcrick said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. We’ve got more than enough resources at our disposal. You can’t bring a civilian into this. With each turn of this thing, it looks like we can’t protect ourselves from ourselves.’
‘Just to find Bertok,’ she said. ‘Someone who doesn’t have to tiptoe around like the rest of us. So far we’ve got nothing. It’s pretty obvious that Vail can keep his mouth shut. What have we got to lose?’
The director pushed the Play button and watched again as Vail disarmed the two bank robbers. ‘Think you can get him, Kate?’
‘Me? He despises men in authority. What do you think his reaction will be to a woman?’
‘I think you’d better find out.’
FIVE (#ulink_24b85c1e-a320-59c9-a19d-4875941f42b8)
Steve Vail splashed some water onto the mortar and used the forged steel trowel to turn it over, alternately using the knife edge to sink the moisture deep into the mixture. The late-morning sun felt good on the back of his neck. It had rained the night before, leaving one of those damp Chicago mornings that felt cooler than the mid-seventy-degree temperature. Moving back into the shadow of the large circular chimney he had been hired to rebuild, he picked up a brick and flipped it over so its wire-cut face was in position and buttered one end with the softened mortar. He pushed it into place, tapping the top with the butt of the trowel handle, and then used a backhand sweep to scrape off the excess mortar, flicking it into the joint just formed. His eye checked the brick’s alignment as he reached for the next one.
The ladder he had used to get to the flat roof started tapping rhythmically against the top of the wall. Someone was coming up. Flicking the excess mortar off the trowel, he threw it, sticking it into the pine mortarboard. He peered over the edge of the roof and was surprised to see a woman coming up the ladder. She moved quickly, her hands and feet finding the rungs instinctively. She was wearing a pantsuit and small heels, which should have made the climb more difficult, but they didn’t seem to slow her at all. Under her jacket, on the outside of her hip, he could see the bulge of a gun. Parked behind his truck now was a four-door sedan, one of those full-size government cars that were conspicuously nondescript.
Kate Bannon came over the top of the ladder and was surprised to find Vail leaning against the chimney, apparently waiting for her, his stare mildly curious. She brushed her hands against each other, wiping away imaginary debris from the ladder as she composed herself. ‘Hi,’ she said, extending her hand. ‘I’m—’
‘Kate Bannon.’ He took her hand.
‘How’d you know?’
‘Detroit.’
‘I didn’t think you’d remember me,’ she said. ‘To tell you the truth, I didn’t think you knew I existed.’
‘I knew.’ His mouth tightened into a grin that she couldn’t quite decipher.
‘Even though I was some “management bimbo” getting my ticket punched?’
He smiled more completely. ‘Even though.’
‘I would assume that’s what most of the male street agents thought,’ she said. ‘And looking back, I’m not sure they were wrong.’
‘Brutal honesty, and so early in this little – what is it we’re having, some sort of sales pitch?’
‘At least give me the courtesy of pretending you’re being fooled,’ she said. ‘And it’s not about your performance at the bank last month if that’s what you’re worried about.’
She was hoping to see some surprise from Vail that she knew he was the one who had disrupted the robbery, but his face had shifted into those unreadable planes she remembered from Detroit. ‘I’m not. I know they wouldn’t send someone all the way from Washington just for that.’
‘How’d you know I’m at headquarters?’
‘Five years ago, you were some “management bimbo” doing your field supervisory time. I haven’t been keeping track of the rate of promotion for women, but I would guess that’s long enough for you to be at least a unit chief.’
‘Actually, I was just promoted to deputy assistant director.’
‘Really,’ he said. ‘You must be quite the agent because someone as brutally honest as you surely wouldn’t accept a promotion simply because you’re a woman.’
She stared back at him, slightly amused. ‘Listen, Steve, if you’re trying to convince me that you can be an SOB, I remember. You’ll also find I’m not that easy to get rid of.’
Vail laughed. ‘A deputy assistant director. And on a roof-top in Chicago. There must be a really big problem back at the puzzle palace?’
‘There is something we’d like your help with.’
‘Unless you’ve got some bricks that need to be laid, you’re in the wrong time zone, darlin’.’
She looked at the chimney and the tools scattered around it. ‘You have a master’s degree in Russian history from the University of Chicago. How did you wind up being a bricklayer?’
‘Is there something wrong with being a bricklayer?’ he asked, his tone half amused with the feigned indignation.
‘It just seems like there would be easier ways to make a buck.’
‘Fair enough. It goes something like this. First you have to get fired, and then if you wait long enough, you start getting hungry. The rest of it just kind of falls into place.’
‘I would have thought that you’d have looked for something a little more…indoors.’
‘My father taught me when I was a kid. It’s how I got through college. And if you’re going to snoop around my personnel file, please get it right. Soviet history. It’s an important distinction in case whatever brings you here depends on my ability to see into the future,’ Vail said. ‘Thus…’ He waved his hand to encompass the surroundings. ‘Actually, I kind of like the work. It’s real. There’s something permanent about it, at least in human years. Handfuls of clay being transformed into complicated structures. And then, of course, it was the only house that the wolf couldn’t blow down. Besides, there are too many bosses indoors.’
‘So you’re never going to take a job that has a boss?’
‘There’s always a boss. The trick is to never take a job you can’t walk away from. Especially when the bosses get to be insufferable, which I think is now a federal law.’
‘Is that what you did with the FBI, walk away when you didn’t like the boss?’
‘Seems like you’ve thought about it a lot more than I have.’
‘I’ve come with an offer that you can walk away from whenever you want.’
He pulled the trowel out of the mortarboard and picked up a brick. ‘Then consider me walked away.’
‘I wouldn’t be here unless we really needed your help.’
‘One of the things my departure from the Bureau taught me was that the FBI will never really need any one person.’
‘I’m impressed. You’ve maintained a grudge for five years. You rarely see that kind of endurance anymore.’
‘Thanks, but the credit really should go to my father. World-class scorn was the sum total of my inheritance. Enough of it can get you through anything.’ Vail started turning over the mortar on the board again.
‘Do you want it in writing? The Federal Bureau of Investigation needs the particular skills of Steven Noah Vail.’
‘You’ll find someone else.’
Kate stepped in front of him. ‘I know something about you that maybe you don’t even know.’
‘Oh good, I was wondering when we’d get around to managerial insight. Will I need something to write with?’
‘You have to do this.’ Her tone was not pleading but accusatory.
He held up the brick between them. ‘I do this so I don’t have to do anything.’
Her eyes carefully searched his face. ‘My God, you don’t know, do you? You really don’t know why you do these things. Why you have no choice but to say yes to me.’
‘In that case, no.’
‘Stop being so Vail for a minute.’
‘Why is “no” such a difficult concept for women? You demand we understand it the first time, every time.’
‘Do you know why you stopped that bank robbery?’ Ignoring her, Vail spread a bed of mortar and pushed the brick into it. ‘Because no one else could,’ she went on. ‘Everyone else in the world is running around searching for their own self-importance, and you’re cruising around ignoring yours.’ She smiled. ‘And let’s admit it, if you’re really that into revenge, what could be better than having the Bureau come crawling to you to fix some problem that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t?’
Vail stared at her like he was seeing her for the first time. He turned and went back to work on the chimney. For the next half hour neither of them spoke. She sat down on the edge of the roof and watched him. There was an economy of movement to his work that she supposed was necessary for any task so repetitive, but still there was something about the way he did it that she found intriguing. The way his large, veined hands flipped over the bricks and found the right alignment instinctually. The way when he applied mortar, it was always the exact amount needed, never dropping any, never needing to add any. The flow never interrupted. How he was transforming perfectly rectangular bricks into a perfectly round chimney.
The more she watched him, the more she realized he was working faster than he normally would. If the work was as rewarding as he had said, there should have been an occasional appraising touch or at least a glance when he finished a course, but instead he immediately reached for the next brick. She couldn’t tell if he was just angry with her or if he wanted to get done so that he could be rid of her for good.
After the last brick was tapped into place and the joint scraped flush, Vail flicked the excess mortar off the trowel and then scraped both its sides on the edge of the board. She could finally see some reaction on his face. Even though the trowel was clean, he kept stropping it against the board absentmindedly. ‘What exactly is it that needs fixing?’
‘I’m sorry, I am not allowed to tell you.’
‘Who is?’
‘The director.’
‘The director?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘What is it that you think I can do that the other eleven thousand agents can’t?’
‘Most important? Be discreet. Last month’s little bank robbery gave us a pretty good indication that you’re not interested in getting your name in the papers.’
‘And less important?’
‘You had a certain reputation in Detroit.’
‘For?’
‘Hunting men.’
‘So you want me to find someone without anyone knowing that the FBI’s looking for him.’
‘It’s a little more complicated than that, but those are the main concerns.’
‘Other than getting to polish my neglected self-esteem, what’s in this for me?’
‘It’s completely negotiable.’
‘Are you saying that as a deputy assistant director or as a woman?’ As her face reddened slightly, the scar on her cheekbone started to glow white. He smiled. ‘That’s enough of an answer for now. When?’
‘I came in a Bureau plane. It’s waiting at Midway.’
Vail picked up a ten-gallon bucket and started shoveling the unused mortar into it. ‘Give me a half hour to clean up.’
Vail’s pickup pulled up in front of his apartment with Kate’s Bureau car close behind. He walked back to her as she opened the door. ‘I’ll make it as quick as I can.’
She got out. ‘Can I use your phone?’
‘You don’t have a cell?’
‘I’d rather use a hard line.’
‘I wasn’t expecting company.’
Kate wondered how bad it was up there. She found herself intrigued at the prospect of peeking into Vail’s personal life. ‘I’ll keep my eyes closed.’
Vail opened the door and let Kate walk in ahead of him. The small apartment was not what she expected. It seemed newer, better constructed than the rest of the building. The walls were unpainted Sheetrock. The taped seams were visible but had been smoothed with the expert touch of a trowel. In stark contrast, the dark hardwood floors looked like they had been recently refinished and were buffed to a high sheen. The furniture was sparse, and the few tables and shelves scattered around held a couple dozen different sizes and types of sculpture, mostly the kind that were found at garage or estate sales or dusty way-out-of-the-way antique shops. Strangely, all the human figures were of the headless variety and had apparently been purchased for the detail of the torsos. She wondered if there was another reason. ‘I’m still working on the walls, but I guess that’s obvious.’
On a worktable at the front window, to take advantage of the natural light, was an almost complete sculpture of a male torso formed by hundreds of thumb-size smudges of clay. ‘You live here alone?’
‘If you’re asking if it’s mine, the answer is yes. And yes to living alone.’
She walked over to the two-foot-high figure and examined it more closely. The upper portion appeared completed and was heavily muscled. She glanced around at the other works in the apartment to see if any matched the style. ‘None of the others are mine if that’s what you’re wondering.’
‘Do you sell them or give them away?’
‘Actually, I throw them out when I’m done, or break them down so the material can be reused.’
‘Have you ever tried to sell them?’
‘They’re not good enough yet.’
‘Really, this seems like it has potential.’
He pulled off his T-shirt. ‘That’s probably why you’re not working at the Guggenheim, and I’m a bricklayer. Beer?’
‘Sure.’
‘Glass?’
‘Please.’
Her voice had an odd quality about it that Vail was drawn to. It was lilting, but at the same time gracefully incomplete, making him want to hear it again. ‘Not trying to be one of the guys drinking out of the bottle – refreshing.’ He handed her a glass and twisted the cap off. After opening his, he took a long swallow from the bottle.
She glanced at each of the sculptures again. ‘What’s with the no-heads?’
He took another swallow of beer. For the first time that day, she sensed a reluctance to answer a question, an evasion of the blunt answers that seemed to come naturally to him. ‘I find faces distracting. I’m always trying to figure out what the models were thinking about at the time, even what language they might be thinking in. Probably studying Russian and reading Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky all those years has scarred me for life. Besides, I’ve tried faces. They all wind up looking like they’re from Middle Earth.’
The explanation seemed superficially dismissive, one that he never quite believed himself. Remembering Detroit now, she wondered if there was a natural distance he preferred. Back then everyone assumed it was some sort of extension of his inexplicable modesty. Armed with this new insight, she looked around and could find no television or magazines or personal photos. Apparently not even pictures of faces were allowed. The real question, she supposed, was what had made him like that. ‘Even though you didn’t say yes right away, I’m surprised getting you to come back to Washington wasn’t more difficult.’
‘As you can see, my sculpting business isn’t going that well. And the job I just finished was the only one I had scheduled.’
Again, she detected a slightly hollow ring to his reasons. ‘You know, if you’re interested in getting your job back permanently, that could be arranged.’
‘I’m not looking for permanent right now, just different.’
She smiled and nodded, deciding to lighten the conversation. ‘I think I can pretty much guarantee that this is going to be different.’
‘Give me fifteen minutes. The phone’s over there.’
Kate sipped at her beer absentmindedly as she listened to the shower. She stood over the unfinished sculpture, admiring its virility. The shoulder and upper arm muscles seemed too large to be realistic, but it gave off a kind of primitive indestructibility. Then, closing her hand, she let her fingertips massage her palm, recalling the callused strength of Vail’s handshake. She let the tip of her finger run lightly down the curve of the figure’s spine like a drop of warm water.
SIX (#ulink_1eb01ef9-c7de-5f5b-8e7d-2f2a5552aa1e)
As they were boarding the plane, Kate thought she might have a chance to find out more about Vail. That he had recognized her on sight had made her curious, even flattered. As far as she recalled, their eyes had never met in the year and a half they were in Detroit together. Now seemed like a good opportunity to find out why he remembered her.
Vail took the window seat without asking her preference, and by the time she got settled, he was sound asleep. He didn’t wake up until the plane’s tires chirped onto the tarmac at Dulles International. ‘Why are you looking at me like that, was I snoring?’
She smiled. ‘No, in fact for the first time today, you were perfect company.’
‘Is that how you like your men, unconscious?’
‘My men? You make it sound like I collect scalps.’
‘Human beings are collectors by nature. Ownership, control. Breaching someone else’s defenses. In one form or another, we all do it. It’s part of the chase.’
‘Chase? What are we chasing?’
‘That’s what men – excuse me – men and women since Pythagoras have been trying to figure out.’
‘Pythagoras?’
‘Yes, there were Greek philosophers before Socrates.’
‘The guy with the triangle?’
‘The square of the hypotenuse. He believed that the soul was immortal. Do you think your soul is immortal?’ Vail asked.
‘Deputy assistant directors are not allowed to have souls.’
‘Or to collect scalps?’
‘Actually that’s a requirement.’
He leaned close to her with mock intimacy. ‘Tell me something, Deputy Assistant Director Bannon, is that all I am to you – advancement?’
‘Like you said, bricklayer, we all need something to chase.’
The Director had given his secretary instructions to show Kate and Vail into his office as soon as they arrived. When they entered, Lasker was seated at his desk signing a stack of paperwork. Directly behind him stood Don Kaulcrick, taking each of the documents after it was signed and barely looking at them.
Lasker rose and offered Vail his hand. ‘Steve, thanks for coming, and on such short notice. This is one of our assistant directors, Don Kaulcrick.’ Vail shook Lasker’s hand. The director waved Vail into a chair. ‘Your way of ending a hostage standoff is impressive.’
‘You’d think someone who did this job for a while would know better than to go inside a bank on Friday afternoon.’
Lasker laughed. ‘Let me ask you something that’s been driving all of us around here nuts. After it was over, why did you just walk away?’
‘I never really thought about it. But if it drove everyone nuts, especially around here, that’s reward enough.’
Lasker picked up a file that had Vail’s name printed on the cover. ‘Is that a warning? In case you decide to help us.’
‘I would think after reading my personnel file that question would be unnecessary.’
Lasker smiled. ‘I’m starting to understand why you were fired.’
Vail laughed. ‘I can’t see how it could have turned out any other way. It was a train wreck just waiting for the Bureau and me to be thrown in each other’s way. No one especially wanted it, but at the same time no one cared enough to prevent it, most of all me. A bureaucracy has to have the ability to self-repair if it’s going to be able to function. I’ve never done well knowing anyone has that kind of authority over me.’
‘So when you turned down a pass from OPR if you’d give up the ASAC, you weren’t just being loyal?’
Vail turned to Kate. ‘I suppose Kent Wilson is an SAC somewhere by now.’
‘San Diego.’
‘Ah. At least they sent him to someplace with bad weather.’ He turned back to the director. ‘Let’s just say I had other priorities.’
‘Like not letting a cop killer go free?’
Vail looked surprised, and Kate felt a small twinge of pleasure at uncovering something about Vail that he apparently hadn’t wanted revealed. ‘I assumed that this command performance would be for some sort of more immediate problem.’
‘Sorry. Around here, constantly checking motives is necessary for survival. In that vein – while I know it’s not necessary to say this to you – I have to ask that what you’re about to hear not leave the room.’ Vail nodded. ‘You’ve heard about the “Enemies of the FBI” murders.’
‘As much as I try to avoid the news, it’d be hard not to.’
‘Then I’m sure you know that a group calling itself the Rubaco Pentad is claiming credit for the killings. While they appear to be some sort of domestic terrorism group on a crusade, they have actually made large monetary demands to stop the murders.’
‘Who were they demanding it from?’
‘The FBI.’
‘Not lacking confidence, are they? And you’re not letting the public know about it because…’
‘One of their demands is that if we do, they’ll kill another prominent person. It’s an ingenious tactic. Since we can’t reveal their motives, it looks like we’re the ones with the hidden agenda, as if it’s just a matter of time before some vast governmental conspiracy is exposed. We’re really handcuffed.’
‘I could see how you would be,’ Vail said. ‘Since I’m here, I assume things didn’t go well at the drop.’
‘They turned it into a deadly obstacle course. It seemed like they didn’t really want us to deliver the money. The agent making the delivery was shot to death.’
‘I assume the entire million wasn’t in the money package?’
‘Just a thousand dollars, and they left that at the scene.’
‘A warning that they’d be back,’ Vail said.
‘Yes, it certainly was.’
‘Any decent leads come out of it?’
The director said, ‘Don, you’ve been handling that.’
Kaulcrick said, ‘There was some scuba equipment used we’re trying to trace, but it’s almost impossible. And the prison was on a secure naval base, so we’re in the process of finding out who’s had access to it the last couple of months. It’s literally thousands of people, so it could take forever.’
‘Sounds like somebody knows how to get you to burn manpower.’
‘Are you suggesting it’s a waste of time?’ Kaulcrick asked.
‘Not at all. You never know what lead is going to be productive. But it sounds like they picked the base because the bigger and more complicated the location, the more time it takes to investigate. It seems that their major weapon is distraction. Leads like that need a lot of manpower but tend to never go anywhere.’
‘There’s no question they know how to manipulate the investigation,’ Lasker said.
‘So what happened at the second drop?’ Vail said.
‘Who said anything about a second drop?’ Kaulcrick asked abruptly, glancing at Kate.
‘The second and third murders did,’ Vail said. ‘Don, I’m here because I’m on your side.’
‘I have to apologize for everyone, Steve,’ Lasker said. ‘I’ve been so insistent that this not leak out, everyone has become paranoid about it. You’ve given your word and that’s certainly good enough. What I’m about to tell you is even more sensitive.’ He then described the second demand letter along with its instruction for Bertok’s role in the delivery of money. He detailed the route and the Bureau’s inability to follow at an effective distance, and finally the disappearance of the agent and the two million dollars.
‘So you want me to find Bertok.’
‘Yes. And should you recover the money, we wouldn’t object.’
‘It couldn’t have been an easy decision letting the full two million drive away.’
‘When you got the press holding you hostage twenty-four hours a day with the possibility of not stopping the next murder, it was a surprisingly easy call.’
Vail became lost in thought. Kate waited a few seconds and then said, ‘I’m sure you’ve got a million questions.’
‘Nothing I need to waste everyone’s time with right now. You haven’t got the next demand letter yet, have you?’
‘Not yet,’ Lasker said.
‘Chances are the price will be going up. Do you think the delivery will be as difficult?’
‘We hope not,’ the director said. ‘But I wouldn’t bet on it.’
Kaulcrick said, ‘We were hoping to identify them first.’
‘Any promising leads?’
Neither Kate nor Kaulcrick answered. Finally Lasker said, ‘Not really.’
‘That’s too bad, but I guess it won’t affect me finding Bertok, which, by the way, is not going to be easy.’
Everyone was silent for a few seconds before the director said, ‘Actually the two problems may overlap. All three victims, and the agent at the drop, were killed with the same gun, a Glock model 22. That’s the same model Bertok carried.’
‘There are thousands of those guns out there,’ Vail said. ‘Why would you think he could be involved?’
‘Well, he was designated by name to make the drop, and whoever is doing this has a good knowledge of extortions, which Bertok worked. Plus he did disappear along with the money. I certainly hope he’s not involved, but to be perfectly honest, we don’t know.’
‘If it’s him, why this last murder?’
Kaulcrick said, ‘In theory, he could be looking down the road for a defense. Why would he kill again if he already had the money? He’s in law enforcement. He’s used to seeing people getting caught when they thought they couldn’t be. It’s cheap insurance. Three murders or four, they can only give him the needle once.’
‘I guess it’s possible, although that would take someone who is extremely cold – but I suppose two million dollars can get you to a lot of warm places,’ Vail said.
Lasker said, ‘So, Steve, will you help us?’
‘If I agree, I have a couple of conditions.’
‘I’m certain we can work them out.’ The director opened a drawer, took out a black case with a gold FBI shield pinned to the outside, and slid it across the desk.
Vail opened the credentials and looked at his photo, which had been taken during new agents’ training. ‘It’s hard to believe I was ever that…on board.’ He closed the case and put it in his jacket pocket.
‘Whether you find Bertok or not, I can make that permanent, with all the seniority, including the time you’ve been out of government service.’
‘I appreciate the offer, but it may be premature. I’m not here to find out if I can now be a good soldier. I know I can’t. What you want me to do is difficult, which means, because of the methods I may find necessary, it’s likely just a matter of time until you’ll regret bringing me into this.’
‘Right now that’s a chance I’m willing to take.’
Vail smiled. ‘That’s exactly what my last ASAC said to me.’
The director forced a short laugh. ‘Okay, but if you don’t want your job back, we’ll have to pay you something. How about a percentage of any money recovered, or a flat amount for finding Bertok?’
‘Which brings us back to the conditions. Two items. First, I’m sure at some point I’ll have to get assistance from FBI field offices. Unless SACs have changed, they’re not going to like taking orders from some imported street hump. So I’m going to need someone with enough capital letters in front of his – or her – name to make those guys nervous.’
‘Like Deputy Assistant Director Bannon?’ Lasker said.
Vail looked at her. ‘How about it, Kate, think you can make the right men tremble?’
She felt herself starting to blush, but extinguished it with a sarcastic smirk. ‘Looks like I’m going to be the one taking orders from some imported street hump.’
‘And second?’ the director asked.
‘That I not be paid.’
Confusion narrowed the director’s eyes. ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
Vail smiled. ‘If I’m being paid, sooner or later someone will consider me an employee and start giving me orders. We all know how that’ll end. No, my payment is to not have to take orders from anyone. Maybe when we’re done – if I’m successful – I’ll add up my hours and you can pay me the hourly rate for a bricklayer.’
‘Then what’s to prevent you from becoming a loose cannon?’ Kaulcrick asked.
‘Hopefully nothing.’
‘I have to tell you, I voted against bringing you into this,’ Kaulcrick said. ‘I’m sorry. There’s enough confusion.’
‘If you keep being that honest, Don, you and I will survive. Even through the confusion.’
Lasker said, ‘If you don’t want anything more than a pittance, why would you take on something like this?’
Vail looked over at Kate. ‘Apparently, because I can.’
SEVEN (#ulink_101cc575-50a7-53d7-9773-c9959f9aec34)
Vail sat at the desk in his D.C. hotel room reading from the laptop computer Kate Bannon had given him. Everything from the Rubaco Pentad case, including crime-scene photos, lab reports, and surveillance logs, had been downloaded into it. For such a clandestine operation, an incredible amount of material had been reduced to writing. As he took another bite of the cold room-service hamburger, there was a knock at the door.
It was Kate. Although holding a briefcase with both hands in front of her, indicating her visit was official, she had changed clothes and was wearing a dress and heels. ‘Hi,’ she said, and walked in, looking around. ‘How’s the room?’
‘You’ve seen my apartment, how good does it have to be?’
‘Good, good,’ she said distractedly. ‘Is there anything else you need?’
‘What are you offering?’ he said in a playful voice.
‘Equipment, bricklayer, equipment. Like an agent’s handbook or a pair of brass knuckles.’
‘I’m not the kind of person who thinks about his obituary, but I’d hate for it to read, “He died because he brought a laptop to a gunfight.”’
‘Okay, I’ll get you a weapon,’ she said. ‘We’ll need to get you to a firearms range to qualify.’
‘Do you really think there’s time for that?’
‘It’s pretty much an unbreakable rule. You know, lawsuits.’
‘Isn’t it my job to break rules?’
After a moment, she said, ‘Okay, I’ll have it for you tomorrow. I’ve ordered up a Bureau plane. I assume we’ll be flying to Las Vegas to try to pick up Bertok’s trail.’
‘I was thinking more like L.A.’
‘Why L.A.?’
‘I’m not exactly sure. Call it a hunch. And don’t think that the Cubs having three games with the Dodgers this week has anything to do with it.’
Kate studied Vail’s face and found the same unreadable expression he presented when asked about anything he didn’t want to answer. She was sure of one thing: his decision to start in Los Angeles had nothing to do with baseball or intuition. He had found some way to track Bertok that no one else had thought of. ‘You know this is going to be a lot easier if we don’t keep secrets from each other.’
‘Cosmo says that a little mystery can keep a relationship from getting stale.’
‘There are only a few things in life that are unquestionable. That you’ve never read Cosmopolitan magazine is one of the most certain. Why L.A.?’
‘First of all, it’s about as far away from your boss as we can get. I know his type and I know my type. We’ve all seen how that movie ends.’
‘And second of all?’
‘Simple math. How many times have each of the following locations come up in the case: New Hampshire, Pittsburgh, Utah, Arizona, and Las Vegas?’
‘Once each.’
‘And Los Angeles?’
‘I don’t know, a half dozen?’
‘Everything from the first victim to the postmarks on both demand letters to Bertok. Besides, I want to search his apartment again.’
‘Why?’
‘The biggest mistake agents make is believing that because something was done once, it was done right.’ Kate nodded in agreement. ‘Now, what do we know about Stanley Bertok’s personal life?’ he asked.
‘We’ve interviewed his supervisor. He described him as suffering from what he calls “the dysfunctional twos.”’
‘What’s that?’
‘Too much booze, too little money, and two ex-wives. He thinks Bertok may have seen an opportunity to downsize his problems and taken it.’
‘And psychologically?’
‘Intelligent but brooding. No friends and not the world’s most dedicated agent.’
‘But nothing to explain why our little band of terrorists picked him to make the drop. If they knew him well enough to ask for him, wouldn’t they have to assume he was a risk to take off with the money?’
‘Which leads us right back to him and the Pentad being one and the same, or at least being in it together.’
‘For something so well planned, this has some conspicuously dangling loose ends.’
‘Haven’t you heard, there’s no such thing as a perfect crime.’
‘Unfortunately, it doesn’t have to be perfect to get away with it.’
Explaining to kate that he had been up the entire night reading the contents of the Rubaco Pentad file, Vail slept during the entire flight to Los Angeles. After they landed at one of the secure runways used by government planes coming into LAX, Kate had to wake him. As Vail stepped off the plane and into the blinding white light of the Southern California sun, he couldn’t help but stretch himself against its silky warmth. The sky was a different blue than that of Chicago or even Washington. A thin band of gray-orange haze at the horizon separated it from the earth.
Parked a hundred feet away was a dark green sedan. A seemingly stoic man in his thirties wearing a tailored summer-weight suit was walking toward their plane. He had the practiced expression of someone whose first priority was that of confident congeniality, suggesting he was part of the office management team. He came up to Kate and offered his hand. ‘Allen Sabine,’ he said. Kate took his hand and introduced him to Vail. The two men shook hands. Sabine’s dark hair had been carefully cut, and he stood with a practiced slouch that angled his face away to mask a long, sharp nose. He tried to take her bag, but she smiled graciously and said she needed the exercise. Sabine pointed at the sedan. ‘This is the vehicle we rented for you while you’re here. It has the GPS navigational system you requested. We also put in a complete set of maps for most of Southern California. The SAC is available to meet with you anytime this morning.’
‘Okay,’ Kate said, ‘let’s get it over with.’ She said to Vail, ‘The SAC is Mark Hildebrand. Ever run into him?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘He seems okay, a little territorial on the phone when I told him we were coming out.’
‘Territorial’s not all bad. Maybe he actually cares about what happens in his division.’
‘You’re irritatingly positive after your nap.’
‘Sorry. Give me a few minutes with him, and I’m sure I’ll be as good as new.’
They got in the car, Kate in the front and Vail in the back. She handed him a Glock model 22 encased in a holster, with two extra clips. Then with just enough ceremony to be sarcastic, she handed him an operation manual for the weapon. ‘I thought you should at least know how to load it.’
‘You could have given me this before we took off.’
‘You were asleep. Plus, I was curious whether you’d ask for it, and since you haven’t been checked out, I didn’t want you practicing your quick draw on the plane and accidentally shooting me or the pilot.’
‘I would have been careful not to shoot you. I can imagine the paperwork involved.’ She handed him a credit card and then a cell phone. ‘Speaking of paperwork, don’t I need to sign for all this?’
She lowered her voice. ‘After your little speech to the director about it being just a matter of time until you ran amok, I thought it would be better if none of these items were traceable to you, or more important, us.’
‘Sometimes you scare me.’
‘If only that were true.’
They were now proceeding north on the 405. The traffic was heavy, so they moved in and out of bottlenecks. When an opening presented itself, everyone drove as fast as possible. Vail couldn’t help but notice that the cars were in remarkable condition. The vast majority of them had no fading of paint, no rust, not even dirt. It was a different world; even the highway was clean and perfectly landscaped. The few pedestrians he had seen from the freeway were jogging or biking, wearing the minimum of clothing. Like everything else in Southern California, there seemed to be a subliminal theme of eternal youth, or at least its quest.
Sabine said, ‘I guess the reason I was sent to pick you up is that I’m Stan Bertok’s supervisor. At least I was. So fire away.’
Before Kate could say anything, Vail said, ‘Was?’
‘Well, I guess technically I still am, but I seriously doubt he’s just going to walk in one of these mornings, sit down at his desk, and go to work.’
‘I suppose not,’ Vail said.
She said, ‘Tell us about him.’
‘He wasn’t – isn’t – much of an agent, at least from my standpoint. Everything he did I had to keep a close eye on. He was a pretty heavy drinker. I got a call one night from the LAPD; they had stopped him driving drunk. I had to go down and drive him home. And he has some financial problems. A couple of ex-wives will do that, I guess. And I get a call occasionally from bill collectors.’
‘Do you think he took off with the money?’ Vail asked.
‘I don’t want to convict the guy in absentia, but if he didn’t, where is he?’
‘So if he took the money, you wouldn’t be shocked?’ Kate said.
‘I suppose not.’
‘Where do you think the Pentad got his name?’
‘I have no idea.’
When they got to the office, Sabine led them to the special agent in charge’s office. ‘Boss, this is Deputy Assistant Director Kate Bannon and…I’m sorry.’
‘Steve Vail,’ Kate said before Vail could answer.
The SAC was tall and trim with a dark tan. His thick blond hair peaked low across his forehead, and he was wearing a medium-blue shirt with a contrasting white collar. The cuffs, also white, were set off by large gold cuff links.
He shook Kate’s hand first. ‘Mark Hildebrand. We spoke on the phone.’ He repeated his name when he shook hands with Vail. ‘Please, have a seat.’ He instructed Sabine to shut the door as he left.
Kate watched Vail examining Hildebrand before saying anything. ‘Mark, we appreciate your letting us come in here and run this operation. The director has all the confidence in the world in you and your division; it’s just that this case is running from coast to coast, and he feels it’s best if we chase it, you know, for continuity.’
‘What exactly is it that I can do for you, Kate?’
Vail said, ‘We need to search Stan Bertok’s apartment discreetly.’
Hildebrand was surprised at the presumptive authority in Vail’s voice. He looked at Kate, but she exhibited no interest in asserting herself. ‘I’m sorry, Steve, you didn’t say where you worked. Are you with OPR?’
‘A man can only dream. No, I’m just the deputy’s gun bearer on this.’
Hildebrand stared at Vail, trying to get a better read on him. Kate broke the silence. ‘Is there a problem, Mark?’
‘No, it’s just that we’ve already searched the apartment – with a warrant. With all that’s going on, we’re being overly judicious. I don’t see what searching it again will accomplish.’
‘Look at it this way,’ Vail said, ‘when we don’t find anything, you can say “I told you so.”’
‘Somehow I don’t think you believe that,’ the SAC said, still trying to figure out the source of Vail’s authority.
Kate said, ‘Mark, we’ve been exposed to a completely different set of facts in this case than your agents. We’ll see it from a different angle. Or if you prefer, call it a lack of imagination. If you think we’re second-guessing you, I apologize, but we’re going to need to take another look.’
Kate could see that Hildebrand resented being told what to do in his own backyard, and liked it even less that he had no choice. Vail had been right about the resistance he would receive, especially with his seemingly intentional lack of tact. The SAC grinned artificially. ‘We can use the same AUSA, Tye Delson.’
Kate said, ‘Mark, I know I don’t have to say this, but the last thing we need right now is someone leaking this to the press. This Delson, we can trust him, right?’
‘Her. And yes, you can. Unfortunately she’s leaving the United States attorney’s office soon. Too bad, too. You just can’t find prosecutors like her anymore. The agents here love her. She’s invited to more of our parties than I am. She’ll probably have your warrant in a couple of hours. She’s already got all the boilerplate from the first search, and she knows the right judge to get it signed in case the probable cause isn’t as clear-cut as they’d like.’
‘We’ll want the affidavit sealed,’ Kate said.
‘That’s what she did before. Do you have time to go see her now?’ Kate nodded and Hildebrand picked up the phone. After a brief conversation, he hung up. ‘She’s in her office. I told her you’re on the way.’
Vail asked, ‘Do you have a good lock man here?’
‘Why?’ the SAC asked, and Kate could tell by the intentional flatness in his voice that he intended to question anything Vail requested from now on.
‘We still want to do this quietly, probably in the wee hours of the morning,’ Vail said.
‘We will get you in.’
Kate and Vail stood up, and she shook hands with the SAC. ‘We appreciate the help, Mark. I’ll let you know how we do.’
Once outside the SAC’s office, Kate said, ‘Boy, you and management, talk about a match made in heaven. How did you last three years?’
EIGHT (#ulink_902e87a6-b918-53da-9e7e-a068a4dfc470)
Tye Delson offered Kate and Vail a seat in her cramped office. Although there were overhead lights, the only illumination came from a small brass lamp on her desk. The assistant United States attorney was slender and wore a long midcalf black dress that failed to reveal a single curve. Her hair was dark brown and cut short, framing her face symmetrically. Her skin could have been described as flawless if it hadn’t been for its ghostly lack of color. Her lipstick was a waxy brown-red, which Vail thought an unflattering choice. She wore glasses and was one of those rare women who were more attractive because of them. Her eyes were overly made up, which, coupled with the magnification of the glasses, made them appear to be oversized, like one of those Keane paintings of innocent but somehow damaged children. And they had a quick intelligence about them that was almost lost because of a vague nervousness that flickered through them. Her voice, however, was perfectly confident, allaying any fear that she might not be up to the rigors of hacking her way through the legal mazes necessary to put men or women in federal prison.
Vail noticed a framed quote by Martin Luther on her wall: Each lie must have seven lies if it is to resemble the truth and adopt truth’s aura. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.’
Tye said, ‘This is a business of lies. The police lie to suspects to get them to confess, and defense attorneys lie to juries to…well, because that’s what they get paid to do.’
‘And prosecutors?’
‘We’re the biggest liars of all. We tell ourselves that we’re making a difference,’ she said. ‘Sorry. I know how cynical that sounds. That’s a big part of the reason I’m leaving the United States attorney’s office. I’m thinking about practicing real estate law, where lying is not only assumed, it’s profitable.’
Instead of seating herself behind the desk, she spun her chair around and sat on the windowsill, using the seat for her feet. Vail could see it was a technique that had been used before, and he appreciated that someone who had attained the lofty position of assistant United States attorney had developed the courtesy of not ‘holding court’ across her desk with those who had come for her help. She pulled the window up a couple of inches and lit an unfiltered cigarette, inhaling deeply, the paper pulling at her thin lips with a surprising sensuality.
‘I know, I know, all federal buildings are smoke-free. Forgive me my one vice. Well, my one admitted vice.’ She grinned a little self-consciously. ‘So you want another warrant for Stan Bertok’s apartment. Can I assume the search for him isn’t going well?’
‘You can,’ Kate said. ‘And we want to go in after midnight.’
‘It’ll take a little more probable cause, but it seems like a prudent approach. I’ve got the basics from the other warrants. What exactly do I list as the object of your search?’
‘Two million in cash,’ Vail said.
Tye laughed with an erotic huskiness, apparently the by-product of her ‘one vice.’ ‘Wouldn’t that be nice. Something tells me that even Stan Bertok would be a little more discreet than that.’
‘So you know him,’ Vail said.
‘We’ve had a couple of cases together.’
‘What did you think of him?’
‘I don’t know how accurate any of my judgments might be in hindsight.’
‘No one’s keeping score. We’re just trying to find him,’ Vail said.
‘Fair enough. Well, he was a guy who seemed to be mailing it in, you know, as if his mind was someplace a lot darker. He was always wired – no, that’s the wrong word. It was more like he was ready to explode. Maybe a closet depressive. He’d go off in a corner at parties and pound down the liquor. If someone tried to keep him from driving home, he’d want to fight them. He got the reputation of being a mean drunk, but I think it went deeper than that.’
The use of the noun ‘depressive’ struck Vail as an overly clinical choice of words and caused him to wonder what made her so familiar with psychological problems. ‘Were you surprised when he disappeared with the money?’
‘To tell you the truth, I was more surprised he accepted the assignment without protest. After all, the last agent was shot to death, right? Stan was not a team guy. And he certainly wasn’t looking for any medals.’
‘So you weren’t surprised he vanished with the money?’
‘Are you sure he did?’
‘Is that the old “innocent until proven guilty”?’
‘That’s the old “as soon as you give me some proof I’ll be glad to hang him,” but in the meantime…’
‘Is he a smart guy?’
‘Do you mean, to stay one step ahead of you, or was he smart enough to put this extortion together?’
‘Both.’
She stared into Vail’s eyes and let her voice drop a half octave. ‘Actually, I don’t know how hard you are to stay ahead of, but measuring him against everybody else around here, it wouldn’t be that difficult.’
When Vail smiled in response, Kate interrupted. ‘And the extortion?’
‘The one thing I’ve learned on this job is never to underestimate a man’s capacity for evil. Even a good man’s.’
‘And a woman’s?’ Vail asked.
Her mouth shifted to one side artfully. ‘Men are mere amateurs by comparison.’
‘What about him being a murderer?’ Kate asked. ‘Did he have enough evil in him for that?’
‘I know the press is trying to intimate that agents may be involved in these murders, but that’s just today’s journalism. I would find it hard to believe that any agent could do that. But then every time a serial killer is caught, invariably the next-door neighbor is on the news saying what a nice guy he was. That’s not why you want this search warrant, is it? For murder evidence?’
‘We wouldn’t want to exclude any possibility. If we did and missed something, we’d be crucified later,’ Kate said. ‘Especially with this “Enemies of the FBI” thing gaining momentum.’
‘If you’re going to gather evidence that could be used in a murder trial, the probable cause for your search warrant has to be one hundred percent accurate. This is the first legal step to that end, and as such has to be carefully vetted. The fruit of the poisonous tree falls from this point forward. Keeping that in mind, what evidence do you have indicating that Agent Bertok is involved in these murders?’
Vail said, ‘Disregarding supposition, the only link is that he was issued the same make and model of gun that was used in the murders, as were thousands of other agents.’
‘So nothing,’ Tye said.
Vail said, ‘We were told that “nothing” is usually not a problem for you.’
She took a last drag on her cigarette and flipped it out the window. She stood up and closed it. ‘Let’s simplify everything. We won’t accuse him of anything. I assume he has certain items in his possession – credentials, gun, handcuffs – which were issued to him. Since he has abandoned his job, and his whereabouts are unknown, the government needs to recover its property. Possibly he has returned to his apartment since his disappearance and left them behind.’
‘Impressive. Nothing up your sleeve and – poof – a search warrant. It’s nice having a legal magician on our side for a change,’ Vail said.
‘Only for a month or so, so abuse away. But both of you remember, there is no magic, just illusion, and with that goes the magician’s oath.’
‘Which is?’
‘Never reveal how it’s done.’
‘Believe me, there’s no one more qualified to keep illusions secret than an FBI agent,’ Kate said.
‘Good,’ Tye said. ‘So now anything found incidental to the search of the missing agent’s apartment will be admissible in court, provided you don’t overstep the limits of the warrant.’
‘Such as?’ Kate asked.
‘If you’re looking for an automobile, you can’t go looking in dresser drawers.’
‘Credentials could fit almost anywhere,’ Kate said.
‘Nice how that works out, isn’t it?’ Tye said.
‘Then we’re all set?’ Vail said.
‘There’s one small problem. Because the purpose of the search warrant is so routine, and his apartment is apparently abandoned, there’s no justification for a nighttime entry. But a suggestion – sunrise is a little after five thirty, which is a time when most of his fellow apartment dwellers will be deep in REM sleep.’
The only sound in the dimly lit hallway was the metallic scratching of Tom Demick’s lock picks as he raked the tumblers of Stanley Bertok’s door lock. Vail had been surprised by the technical agent’s appearance when he had been introduced to him. His hair and full beard were pure white and made him look much older than his fifty-one years. He was stocky with a belly that hung amply over his belt. Vail supposed that because he didn’t look like anyone’s preconceived notion of a clandestine-operations agent, it gave him the perfect cover should he be interrupted. Demick’s hands, especially his fingers, were thick and stubby, like those of a second- or third-generation fisherman or some other occupation that required digital strength and leverage rather than quick dexterity. However, they worked precisely with no wasted motion. It took less than three minutes before Demick straightened up and carefully rotated the lock cylinder open. He looked at Kate to see if she needed anything else. She gave him a silent salute of thanks, and he lumbered off toward the rear parking lot.
Vail opened the door and stepped in quickly. Kate followed him, and while he locked the dead bolt, she placed a copy of the search warrant on the rickety kitchen table. There was still a copy of the first one executed by Los Angeles agents almost a week and a half earlier.
The one-bedroom apartment was sparsely furnished, and although its occupant hadn’t been there for a while, the acrid stink of cigarette smoke was still in the air. On a table next to a threadbare sofa was an answering machine; alongside it sat an ashtray with half a dozen butts in it. Kate handed Vail a pair of evidence gloves.
Although the light wasn’t blinking, the display on the answering machine showed three messages that had been heard previously but not erased. Vail hit the Play button and listened as one of Bertok’s ex-wives threatened him, in a routine voice, about his child-support payment being late again. The second message was the same woman not so patiently demanding an immediate call. The last one was someone who identified himself as Josh and asked for a call back. Kate said, ‘That’s probably his brother in Minnesota.’
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Noah Boyd
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Шпионские детективы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: A blockbusting thriller introducing maverick FBI agent Steve Vail.“Move over Jack Reacher, here comes The Bricklayer.” James PattersonSTEVE VAIL IS A MAVERICK.A trained killer and former agent, Vail despises authority and he′s never met a rule he didn′t break. These days he′s working as a bricklayer.Now, Deputy Kate Bannon of the FBI desperately wants his help.Because someone is killing their operatives – in complex, subtle, twisted ways – and the body count is rising fast. Someone holds a fatal grudge against the agency; someone who knows how it works, and wants a bloody revenge.And it might be an inside job.To stem the tide of murders, Vail must re-enter a world he hoped he left behind long ago – his own past.