by Jeff Gunhus
“Don’t worry, you’re next. I’ll pay, you pump, chump.” She hesitated before getting out of the truck. That was one of her dad’s sayings, said to her a thousand times when she was growing up because her dad always had her pump the gas. I’ll pay, you pump, chump. She hadn’t heard or said that in years. It made her feel weak that she was letting him get inside her head.
“You got it,” he replied. If he’d caught the saying, or thought anything of it, he wasn’t letting on. He climbed out of the cab and went to look for the gas cap.
She got out and walked toward the concrete building. There were two service bays with rusted doors and weeds growing up in front of them. Looked like it’d been a while since anyone had trusted Billy-Ray to change their oil. Why bother when there was a state-of-the-art facility just down the road?
She tried the door. Locked. Walking around the service window to the thick bulletproof glass, she spotted a teenager asleep in a chair, his face on the counter. She walked back over to the locked door, picked up a metal bar that was leaning against the wall, and slid it through the handles of the double door. Now it was locked from this side, too. Satisfied it was secure, she knocked on the glass. The teenager didn’t move.
“Hey, buddy. Look alive.”
The teenager raised his head, a string of drool extending from the corner of his mouth to the countertop. He rubbed his eyes, blinking hard to bring things into focus.
“Cash only,” he mumbled.
Mara slid two twenties into the rusty metal box and the kid pulled it back into his safe room.
“Pump four,” she said.
The kid snorted. “Uh . . . yeah. It’s the only one we got.” He pressed some buttons, still blinking the sleep from his eyes. “Right, all set.”
“Got a bathroom?”
“Side of the building. You ain’t gonna like it, ’specially if you got to take a dooger. Better off going in the trees out back. That’s what I do.”
Mara saw the kid’s cell phone on the desk inside. She glanced behind her and saw that Scott’s view of her was blocked by the pump.
“I lost my cell phone. Can I use yours? Just for a quick call?”
“No, you can’t use my phone,” the kid said, protectively grabbing it as if she might come at it through the window. “What if you take off with it?”
“Do I look like I’m going to take off with your phone?” Mara said. “If I do, you can call the cops.”
“With what? I wouldn’t have a phone.”
Mara pulled out a hundred-dollar bill and held it against the glass. “Maybe this will help you be a little more generous.”
The teenager licked his lips and scratched at the faint hint of stubble growing on his chin. “Did my mom send you down here?”
“Do you want the hundred dollars or not?”
He thrust the tray forward. “Put the money in.”
She did and he jerked it back. He pulled out a counterfeit pen and drew a line across the bill. Then he grinned. “You’re so stupid. Why would I give you the phone now? I’ll just keep the hundy.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” she said.
“Oh really? What you going to do about it?”
Mara narrowed her eyes. “I’m going to change my plans and sit out here the rest of the night, waiting for your shift to get over. Once you unlock the door, I’m going in there and punch your teeth so far down your throat you’d have to stick a toothbrush up your ass to brush them.”
Her tone left no doubt that she was dead serious. The teenager turned pale and put the phone in the tray and pushed it forward. She grabbed the phone.
“Thanks,” she said. “I appreciate your generosity.”
The teenager looked like he wanted to throw her a snappy comeback, but he held his tongue. Even locked inside with bulletproof glass between them, he appeared to have picked up on the fact that Mara Roberts was not someone he wanted to mess with.
She pocketed the phone and walked back to the car.
“I’m going to use the bathroom,” she said. “Be right back.”
Scott waved, indicating that he’d heard her. He was gingerly picking at the stitches on his side, barely paying her any attention.
Mara made her way around the outside of the cinderblock building to the bathroom. There was trash all over the ground, mostly empty beer cans, broken bottles, and piles of cigarette butts. The bathroom door was open a few inches, and even from ten feet away the smell of urine and shit filled the air. Even if she really had to go to the bathroom, she wouldn’t have gone in there.
She dialed the phone quickly, glancing up to make sure her dad was still at the car.
“Hello?”
“Jordi, it’s Mara.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. She imagined her friend pushing back from his workstation in his basement room at the FBI, his considerable girth making the chair groan as he did. Jordi Pines was one of the most brilliant minds she’d ever encountered, and one of the most bizarre. Although born in New Jersey, he spoke with a fake British accent for reasons he’d never explained.
“Mara, luv. There are all sorts of people talkin’ about you today. You’ve been naughty, it seems.”
She listened close for any of their safety words to tip her off that he might be in a room filled with agents tracking the call. And if he were under duress with people who knew what they were doing, even a change in his cadence would have been enough to tell her they weren’t alone. She’d called on his cell, but it was a burner phone he had just for this purpose. One thing about being friends with a computer and communications genius was that he was an excellent guide for how to subvert the system.
“Where are you?” Jordi asked. “Everyone in North America with Tier 5 clearance and above is looking for you.”
“No lie, I’m in the shit this time, Jordi. I could use your help. Are you in the mood to give the middle finger to the higher-ups?”
“Bureau or Agency assholes?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not really,” he said. “But I really like serving up shit sandwiches to those CIA monkeys.”
The CIA had turned down Jordi’s offer of his services. The powers-that-be worried about his stability and decided he was too much of a security risk. The FBI surveillance program had no such qualms. They just stuck him in a basement office and let him do his work. One thing about Jordi Pines was that the man held a grudge.
“They have Joey,” she said. “They took him.”
“Who did? How could . . .” Another pause. This time she heard heavy breathing. When Jordi’s voice came back on the line, she could tell he’d pieced it together. “What a bunch of fucking rotters.”
“Like I said, I’m in it, man. More than ever. So I need you to find him for me, all right? Use all that Jedi, voodoo magic of yours and find him.”
“Full rectal exam. I’m on it,” Jordi said. “How do I contact you?”
“You don’t. I’ll reach out to you.”
“Mara,” Jordi said softly, the accent fading to what she assumed was his actual voice. “I’m really sorry. We’ll find him. I promise.”
“Thanks, Jordi. I’m counting on you.”
“Destroy the phone you called me from. Rotate the phone number like we discussed to reach me next time.”
“Be careful.”
“You too.”
She hung up and smashed it against the wall. She felt a little pang of guilt for destroying the kid’s phone, but he’d been a jerk so it didn’t last long.
Besides, she had bigger problems.
Like the fact that she was about to join her dad in a plan to interrogate the ex-president of the United States.
What could go wrong with a plan like that?
* * *
“How well do you know him?” Mara asked.
“Who?”
“The Pope,” she said, lacing the comment with sarcasm. She’d let her dad drive, thinking she’d get some sleep, but that’d proved impossible
. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Joey’s frightened face, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“I actually know the Pope,” Scott said. “Saved his life once.”
“Of course you did.”
Scott shifted his weight, checking the rearview mirror for the hundredth time. “Preston Townsend? I know him well enough. He was the chair of the House Intelligence Committee before he made his run for the White House, which was both good and bad. Jim Hawthorn was a lifelong friend of Townsend’s dad. They were college roommates, best men in each other’s weddings. Tight. Jim’s even godfather to Townsend’s younger brother. It’s why he always had the president’s back.”
“No love lost between the two of them now,” she said.
He slowed down as they passed an Illinois State Trooper posted up on the side of the road with a radar gun. “No, I suppose not after everything that went down.”
“I can’t think he’s going to be very happy to see you either.”
Scott grinned and gave her a wink. “I think you’re discounting how charming I can be.”
She leaned toward him. “I don’t know if you’re trying to reduce the stress between us with his whole shtick you have going on, but it’s getting old in a hurry. I get it, you don’t know Joey. He’s just another hostage to you. But it’s pretty goddamn real to me.
There was a flash of anger, but he restrained himself. “He’s my grandson.”
“Only by blood,” she said. “He doesn’t even know you exist. You’re nothing to him. Just like you’re nothing to me.”
She looked out the window at the passing suburban landscape, and a long silence stretched out between them. The faint thump thump of the tires on the highway the only sound.
“You’re right,” he finally said. “About the joking and the bravado. It’s always been my way to deal with things. But you’re not right about Joey. He’s not just another hostage. He’s family. And believe it or not, being family still means something to me.”
“We stopped being family four years ago.”
His face fell. The comment struck a chord. “Not for me. But I guess that’s going to have to be enough for now.” He let that sit for a beat, but then took up a new thread. “To answer your first question, Preston Townsend owes me a favor, or two, or three. He’s a politician, so he’s better at asking for favors than paying them back. So, no. I don’t think he’s going to be happy to see me.”
“So, then what’s the plan?”
“You don’t go after the target. You go after his protection.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. “We’re not hurting anyone on his detail. That’s a nonstarter.”
“Of course,” he said, the cocky grin coming back. “We’re not going to hurt them physically. But I imagine we’re going to bruise a few egos along the way.”
“How do we even know where to find him? How can you be so sure he’s in Chicago? I’m guessing they weren’t sending you his schedule with your morning breakfast tray in prison.”
“And I’m the one with the snappy one-liners, huh?”
“Just answer the question.”
“It’s common knowledge he has an office in downtown Chicago. It makes the news, just like Clinton made a splash when he opened an office in Harlem. And yes, they do provide us inmates with access to newspapers.”
“That’s nice,” she said. “I thought they just gave you access to long showers with the other guys.”
He ignored the comment. “Tomorrow, ex-president Townsend is delivering a speech at the Chicago Tribune building. They’re turning the whole damn thing into condos now. We’ve been there before, remember?
Mara did remember. She knew exactly where that was. It triggered a memory of a trip to Chicago with her mom and dad when she was ten. Lucy must have been thirteen. It was the four of them living it up, playing a normal family for a few days when both parents had been together and available. They’d eaten deep dish pizza, had ice cream late at night before bed, done the rides out on Navy Pier, the whole nine yards. The Tribune Tower stuck out because the walls of the building were unlike anything she’d ever seen before.
Embedded in the façade at street level were bits of rocks from places and buildings around the world. A brick from Buckingham Palace, a stone from the Parthenon, even a sliver of moon rock. It was the epitome of cool for a ten-year-old girl to be able to touch something from so many exotic places in the world. But what stood out in her memory was when her mom and dad started to point to the stones that were from places they had been.
The Great Wall of China. The White House. St. Sophia in Istanbul. Notre Dame in Paris. Dozens and dozens of locations, the two of them playing a game and laughing as they took turns finding someplace they’d been. The Berlin Wall. The Kremlin. The Pyramids at Giza. The whole thing blew her mind at the time because, of course, she’d had no idea at that age who her parents really were. Looking back later, it made sense. Her parents weren’t well-traveled tourists. They were describing a lifetime of covert operations around the world.
“I’ve been there before, but I don’t remember being there with you,” she said. “Maybe it was just Lucy.”
“No, you were there. All four of us were. You remember.”
She played dumb. “If you say so.”
The lie was petty, maybe even childish, but she didn’t care. She doubted if it hurt him at all, the fact that his daughter had no recollection of their family together, but she hoped it did. She hoped it stung.
“What time is the speech?”
“Noon.”
“Where’d you get this intel?” she asked. “Same guy who told you about Joey?”
“Same guy.”
If the information was right, it was exactly what they needed. A specific time and place was great intel. Not only that, but the fact that he was going to a nonsecure location was helpful. Something like an embassy or bank would have been trickier. “So that’s where we do it?”
“I think so. We’ll get into Chicago just before eight. That gives us four hours to check it out and decide.”
“Plenty of time to work out how to kidnap the president.”
“Ex-president,” Scott said. “I’ve done harder with less time. And so have you from what I hear. Tehran? Hong Kong?”
She was surprised to hear him reference two assignments that were so black they were nearly nonexistent. Whoever his source was, it was high up in the organization. Or someone on the outside who had a way in. But she didn’t want him to think she was impressed, so she didn’t bother answering.
“I hope you have a good plan. I’ve dated a few Secret Service guys. They’re no joke.”
“You dated a few of them?” he asked. “How many is a few?”
“Oh please.” She noticed a small facial tic. For some reason it bothered him, so she pushed a bit. Just for fun. “I had a reputation to live up to. My dad was Scott Roberts, the notorious womanizer. I wanted to be just like you.”
The muscles in his jaw clenched, but he didn’t say anything for a while. When he did speak, it was in a low, steady voice, like he was trying hard to keep in control. “I never cheated on your mom. Not once. Think what you want about me, listen to the stories if you want, but not once. I would never have done that to her.”
She laughed. It was an unexpected reaction and it burst out of her without warning, laced with so much anger and bitterness that she hardly recognized the sound. He flinched at it, but kept his eyes on the road.
“Let’s not talk about Mom,” she said. “If we do, I think it’s going to go bad in a hurry, and right now, I need your help.”
“We’re going to need to talk about it eventually. I want you to—”
“Not now,” she snapped.
He drew in a sharp breath, paused as if he was about to say something, but then let it out as if he’d thought better of it. They drove without speaking for a few minutes, both of them needing the time to get their emotions in check. She was the first to break the silence.
“So, let’s go over your plan,” she said.
“Don’t you want to be surprised?”
“The last thing I ever want from you is to be surprised. Walk me through it, step-by-step.”
He did, and she had to admit the plan wasn’t half bad. It would almost definitely get them both killed, but there was a small chance it might work. They tweaked the details and then ran through it over and over, thinking of different scenarios, one after the other. By the time the sun was up and the Chicago skyline rose up on the horizon, the plan was better.
Instead of almost definitely getting them killed, she considered the newest version was only likely to get them killed. A major improvement and the best they were going to get under the circumstances. She took a deep breath, thought of Joey, and got herself ready for the job ahead.
CHAPTER 8
Asset read the instructions on the phone screen a second time. And then a third. He had an eidetic memory, a trait that he’d further trained so that he could perfectly recall complicated schematics or blueprints after viewing them for only a few seconds. But these instructions, just three sentences long, were unlike anything he’d received before. He wanted to be absolutely sure he understood.
After the third reading, he entered his affirmative response, deleted the text, and then destroyed the phone with a hammer. He checked his watch and felt his muscles tighten in his neck as he considered the time line. Placing two fingers against his throat, he felt his pulse well above where it ought to have been. His training kicked in and he responded to his body’s physical stress response with a deep, cleansing breath and cleared his mind of anything superfluous to the immediate task at hand.
Twenty seconds later, his heartbeat was back to normal. The tension in his shoulders eased. He was in control.
He crossed the sparse room of his long-term rental unit, a studio with a sleeping bag in one corner and a bathroom in the other. Asset had spent time in prisons in four different countries. The experience had hardened him in ways helpful for his profession, but had made normal comforts unbearable. He could pretend to fit into high-society and move through a five-star hotel as if he were the scion of the wealthiest of families, but he took no joy in it. The bare essentials were all he needed. All he wanted.
