She yanked the door open and rolled out.
I looked back at the road. All I could see was the white truck parked on the shoulder near a creek where you might hunt frogs for bait, like a dozen other trucks I'd seen en route. It perfectly blocked anyone's view from the road. Just like I'd used a truck to mask my escape, I reflected grimly.
The hitter was now reaching in to unlatch my door. I squinted in pain, grateful for the man's delay. It meant that Alissa could gain more distance. My people would know our exact position through GPS and could have police here in fifteen or twenty minutes. She might make it. Please, I thought, turning toward the path she'd be escaping down, the shallow creekbed.
Except that she wasn't running anywhere.
Tears rolling down her cheeks, she was standing next to the car with her head down, arms crossed over her round chest. Was she hurt more badly than I'd thought?
My door was opened and the hitter dragged me out onto the ground, where he expertly slipped nylon restraints on my hands. He released me and I sagged into the sour-scented mud, beside busy crickets.
Restraints? I wondered. I looked at Alissa again, now leaning against the car, unable to look my way. "Please." She was speaking to our attacker. "My mother?"
No, she wasn't stunned and wasn't hurt badly and I realized the reason she wasn't running: because she had no reason to.
She wasn't the target.
I was.
The whole terrible truth was obvious. The man standing over me had somehow gotten to Alissa several weeks before and threatened to hurt her mother--to force Alissa to make up a story about corruption at the government contractor. Because it involved an army base where I knew the commander, the perp had bet that I'd be the shepherd to guard her. For the past week Alissa had been giving this man details about our security procedures. He wasn't a hitter; he was a lifter, hired to extract information from me. Of course: about the organized crime case I'd just worked. I knew the new identities of the five witnesses who'd testified at the trial. I knew where Witness Protection was placing them.
Gasping for breath through the tears, Alissa was saying, "You told me. . . ."
But the lifter was ignoring her, looking at his watch and placing a call, I deduced, to the man in the decoy car, followed by my protege, fifty miles away. He didn't get through. The decoy would have been pulled over, as soon as our crash registered through the mobile phone call.
This meant the lifter knew he didn't have as much time as he would have liked. I wondered how long I could hold out against the torture.
"Please," Alissa whispered again. "My mother. You said if I did what you wanted . . . Please, is she all right?"
The lifter glanced toward her and, as an afterthought, it seemed, took a pistol from his belt and shot her twice in the head.
I grimaced, felt the sting of despair.
He took a battered manila envelope from his inside jacket and, opening it, knelt beside me and shook the contents onto the ground. I couldn't see what they were. He pulled off my shoes and socks.
In a soft voice he asked, "You know the information I need?"
I nodded yes.
"Will you tell me?"
If I could hold out for fifteen minutes there was a chance local police would get here while I was still alive. I shook my head no.
Impassive, as if my response were neither good or bad, he set to work.
Hold out for fifteen minutes, I told myself.
I gave my first scream thirty seconds later. Another followed shortly after that and from then on every exhalation was a shrill cry. Tears flowed and pain raged like fire throughout my body.
Thirteen minutes, I reflected. Twelve . . .
But, though I couldn't say for certain, probably no more than six or seven passed before I gasped, "Stop, stop!" He did. And I told him exactly what he wanted to know.
He jotted the information and stood. Keys to the truck dangled in his left hand. In his right was the pistol. He aimed the automatic toward the center of my forehead and what I felt was mostly relief, a terrible relief, that at least the pain would cease.
The man eased back and squinted slightly in anticipation of the gunshot, and I found myself w--
September 2010
SATURDAY
The object of the game is to invade and capture the opponent's Castle or slay his Royalty. . . .
--FROM THE INSTRUCTIONS TO THE BOARD GAME FEUDAL
Chapter 1
"WE'VE GOT A bad one, Corte."
"Go ahead," I said into the stalk microphone. I was at my desk, on a hands-free. I set down the old handwritten note I'd been reading.
"The principal and his family're in Fairfax. There's a go-ahead order for a lifter and seems like he's under some time pressure."
"How much?"
"A couple of days."
"You know who hired him?"
"That's a negative, son."
It was Saturday, early. In this business, we drew odd hours and workweeks of varying lengths. Mine had just begun a couple of days ago and I'd finished a small job late yesterday afternoon. I was to have spent the day tidying up paperwork, something I enjoy, but in my organization we're on call constantly.
"Keep going, Freddy." There'd been something about his tone. Ten years of working with somebody, even sporadically, in this line of work gives you clues.
The FBI agent, never known for hesitating, now hesitated. Finally: "Okay, Corte, the thing is . . . ?"
"What?"
"The lifter's Henry Loving. . . . I know, I know. But it's confirmed."
After a moment, in which the only sounds I could hear were my heart and a whisper of blood through my ears, I responded automatically, though pointlessly, "He's dead. Rhode Island."
"Was dead. Was reported dead."
I glanced at trees outside my window, stirring in the faint September breeze, then looked over my desk. It was neat but small and cheaply made. On it were several pieces of paper, each demanding more or less of my attention, as well as a small carton that FedEx had delivered to the town house, only a few blocks from my office, that morning. It was an eBay purchase I'd been looking forward to receiving. I'd planned to examine the contents of the box on my lunch hour today. I now slid it aside.
"Go on."
"In Providence? Somebody else was in the building." Freddy filled in this missing puzzle piece, though I'd almost instantly deduced--correctly, from the agent's account--exactly what had happened. Two years ago the warehouse Henry Loving had been hiding in, after fleeing a trap I'd set for him, had burned to the ground. The forensic people had a clear DNA match on the body inside. Even badly burned, a corpse will leave about ten million samples of that pesky deoxyribonucleic acid. Which you can't hide or destroy so it doesn't make sense to try.
But what you can do is, afterward, get to the DNA lab technicians and force them to lie--to certify that the body was yours.
Loving was the sort who would have anticipated my trap. Before he went after my principals, he'd have a backup plan devised: kidnapping a homeless man or a runaway and stashing him in the warehouse, just in case he needed to escape. This was a clever idea, threatening a lab tech, and not so far-fetched when you considered that Henry Loving's unique art was manipulating people to do things they didn't want to do.
So, suddenly, a man a lot of other people had been content--I'd go so far as to use the word "happy"--to see die in a fire was now very much alive.
A shadow in my doorway. It was Aaron Ellis, the head of our organization, the man I reported to directly. Blond and fiercely broad of shoulder. His thin lips parted. He didn't know I was on the phone. "You hear? Rhode Island--it wasn't Loving after all."
"I'm on with Freddy now." Gesturing toward the hands-free.
"My office in ten?"
"Sure."
He vanished on deft feet encased in brown tasseled loafers, which clashed with his light blue slacks.
I said to the FBI agent, in his office about ten miles from mine, "That
was Aaron."
"I know," Freddy replied. "My boss briefed your boss. I'm briefing you. We'll be working it together, son. Call me when you can."
"Wait," I said. "The principals, in Fairfax? You send any agents to babysit?"
"Not yet. This just happened."
"Get somebody there now."
"Apparently Loving's nowhere near yet."
"Do it anyway."
"Well--"
"Do it anyway."
"Your wish, et cetera, et cetera."
Freddy disconnected before I could say anything more.
Henry Loving . . .
I sat for a moment and again looked out the window of my organization's unmarked headquarters in Old Town Alexandria, the building aggressively ugly, 1970s ugly. I stared at a wedge of grass, an antique store, a Starbucks and a few bushes in a parking strip. The bushes lined up in a staggered fashion toward the Masonic Temple, like they'd been planted by a Dan Brown character sending a message via landscaping rather than an email.
My eyes returned to the FedEx box and the documents on my desk.
One stapled stack of papers was a lease for a safe house near Silver Spring, Maryland. I'd have to negotiate the rent down, assuming a cover identity to do so.
One document was a release order for the principal I'd successfully delivered yesterday to two solemn men, in equally solemn suits, whose offices were in Langley, Virginia. I signed the order and put it into my OUT box.
The last slip of paper, which I'd been reading when Freddy called, I'd brought with me without intending to. In the town house last night I'd located a board game whose instructions I'd wanted to reread and had opened the box to find this sheet--an old to-do list for a holiday party, with names of guests to call, groceries and decorations to buy. I'd absently tucked the yellowing document into my pocket and discovered it this morning. The party had been years ago. It was the last thing I wanted to be reminded of at the moment.
I looked at the handwriting on the faded rectangle and fed it into my burn box, which turned it into confetti.
I placed the FedEx box into the safe behind my desk--nothing fancy, no eye scans, just a clicking combination lock--and rose. I tugged on a dark suit jacket over my white shirt, which was what I usually wore in the office, even when working weekends. I stepped out of my office, turning left toward my boss's, and walked along the lengthy corridor's gray carpet, striped with sunlight, falling pale through the mirrored, bullet-resistant windows. My mind was no longer on real estate values in Maryland or delivery service packages or unwanted reminders from the past, but focused exclusively on the reappearance of Henry Loving--the man who, six years earlier, had tortured and murdered my mentor and close friend, Abe Fallow, in a gulley beside a North Carolina cotton field, as I'd listened to his cries through his still-connected phone.
Seven minutes of screams until the merciful gunshot, delivered not mercifully at all, but as a simple matter of professional efficiency.
Chapter 2
I WAS SITTING in one of our director's scuffed chairs next to a man who clearly knew me, since he'd nodded with some familiarity when I entered. I couldn't, however, place him beyond his being a federal prosecutor. About my age--forty--and short, a bit doughy, with hair in need of a trim. A fox's eyes.
Aaron Ellis noticed my glance. "You remember Jason Westerfield, U.S. Attorney's Office."
I didn't fake it and try to respond. I just shook his hand.
"Freddy was briefing me."
"Agent Fredericks?" Westerfield asked.
"That's right. He said we have a principal in Fairfax and a lifter who needs information in the next few days."
Westerfield's voice was high and irritatingly playful. "You betcha. That's what we hear. We don't know much at this point, other than that the lifter got a clear go-ahead order. Somebody needs information from the subject by late Monday or all hell breaks loose. No idea what the fuck hell is, though. Pardonnez moi."
While I was dressed like a prosecutor, ready for court, Westerfield was in weekend clothes. Not office weekend clothes but camping weekend clothes: chinos, a plaid shirt and a windbreaker. Unusual for the District, where Saturday and Sunday office hours were not rare. It told me he might be a cowboy. I noted too he was also sitting forward on the edge of his chair and clutching files with blunt fingers. Not nervously--he didn't seem the sort who could be nervous--but with excitement. A hot metabolism burned within.
Another voice, female, from behind us: "I'm sorry I'm late."
A woman about thirty joined us. A particular type of nod and I knew she was Westerfield's assistant. A tight hairstyle that ended at her shoulders, blond. New or dry-cleaned blue jeans, a white sweater under a tan sports coat and a necklace of impressive creamy pearls. Her earrings were pearls too and accompanied on the lobes by equally arresting diamonds. Her dark-framed glasses were, despite her youth, trifocals, I could see by the way her head bobbed slowly as she took in the office and me. A shepherd has to know his principals' buying habits--it's very helpful in understanding them--and instinctively I noted Chanel, Coach and Cartier. A rich girl and probably near the top of her class at Yale or Harvard Law.
Westerfield said, "This is Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Teasley."
She shook my hand and acknowledged Ellis.
"I'm just explaining the Kessler situation to them." Then to us: "Chris'll be working with us on it."
"Let's hear the details," I said, aware that Teasley was scenting the air, floral and subdued. She opened her attache case with loud hardware snaps and handed her boss a file. As he skimmed it I noted a sketch on Ellis's wall. His corner office wasn't large but it was decorated with a number of pictures, some posters from mall galleries, some personal photos and art executed by his children. I stared at a watercolor drawing of a building on a hillside, not badly rendered.
I had nothing on my office walls except lists of phone numbers.
"Here's the sit." Westerfield turned to Ellis and me. "I heard from the Bureau's Charleston, West Virginia, field office this morning. Make a long story short, the state police were running a meth sting out in the boonies and they stumbled on some prints on a pay phone, turned out to be Henry Loving's. For some reason the homicide and surveillance warrants weren't cancelled after he died. Well, supposedly died, looks like.
"They call our people and we take over, find out Loving flew into Charleston a week ago under some fake name and ID. Nobody knows from where. Finally, they tracked him down to a motel in Winfield this morning. But he'd already checked out--a couple of hours ago, around eight-thirty. Clerk doesn't know where he was going."
At a nod from her boss, Teasley continued, "The surveillance warrants are technically still active, so the agents checked out emails at the hotel. One received and one sent: the go-ahead order and Loving's acknowledgment."
Ellis asked, "What would he be doing in West Virginia?"
I knew Loving better than anybody in the room. I said, "He usually worked with a partner; he might be picking somebody up there. Weapons too. He wouldn't fly with them. In any case, he'll avoid the D.C.-area airports. A lot of people up here still remember what he looks like after . . . after what happened a few years ago." I asked, "Internet address of the sender?"
"Routed through proxies. Untraceable."
"Any phone calls to or from his room in the motel?"
"Mais non."
The French was irritating. Had Westerfield just gotten back from a package vacation or was he boning up to prosecute an Algerian terrorist?
"What does the order say exactly, Jason?" I asked patiently.
At a nod from him, Chris Teasley did the honors. "Like you were saying, it was solely a go-ahead. So they'd have had prior conversations where they laid out the details."
"Go on, please," I said to her.
The woman read, " 'Loving--Re: Kessler. It's a go. Need details, per our discussion, by Monday midnight, or unacceptable consequences, as explained. Once you get information, subject must be eliminate
d.' End of quote. It gave an address in Fairfax."
Unacceptable consequences . . . all hell breaking loose.
"No audio?"
"No."
I was disappointed. Voice analysis can tell a lot about the caller: gender, most of the time, national and regional roots, illnesses, even reasonable morphological deductions can be made about the shape of the nose, mouth and throat. But at least we had a confirmed spelling of the principal's name, which was a plus.
"Kessler's a cop in the District. Ryan Kessler, detective," Westerfield explained.
"Loving's response?"
"'Confirmed.' That was it."
"The primary wants the 'details' "--Westerfield did air quotes--"by late Monday. Details . . ."
I asked to see the printout. Noted a slight hesitation on Teasley's part, then she passed it over when Westerfield gave no reaction.
I read through the brief passage. "Grammar, spelling and punctuation are good. Proper use of 'per.' " Teasley frowned at this observation. I didn't explain that "as per," what most people say, is redundant; she wasn't my protegee. I continued, "And matching commas around the appositive, after 'details,' which you hardly ever see."
Everyone stared at me now. I'd studied linguistics a long time ago. A little philology too, the study of languages from analyzing texts. Mostly for the fun of it, but the subject came in useful sometimes.
Ellis toyed his neck sideways. He'd wrestled in college but didn't do many sports nowadays that I knew of. He was just still built like an iron triangle. He asked, "He left at eight-thirty this morning. He probably has weapons so he's not going to fly . . . and he doesn't want to risk being seen at an airport here, like you were saying, Corte. He's still about four hours away."
"His vehicle?" I asked.
"Nothing yet. The Bureau's got a team canvassing the motel and restaurants around town."
Ellis: "This Kessler, what does he know that the primary's so interested in extracting from him?"