Buxom, overweight, arms flapping like sausages, and eyes twinkling like stars, she showed Simon Brodey her flat-for-let, taking up the top two floors of a mews house in Marylebone. The twinkling eyes were for his benefit. She was a widow woman on the near side of fifty and in need of tender loving care, the kind Simon could not deliver. His needs were more licentious, on the far side of vulgar, but there was no need to enlighten her about his lack of moral character.
“What do you think?” she asked, her eyes an eager emerald green. The astounding color was wasted on such a dreary even if overdressed woman such as Hazel Roubidoux.
To reach the flat required a pair of sturdy legs and a huge lung capacity. The ground floor served as the storefront of a posh boutique for lady’s underthings. Mrs. Roubidoux lived in the first-floor flat. A family with three children occupied the second-floor flat. And the third-floor flat housed two roommates who spoke with sibilant S’s and worked in the theater district. Simon knew all this from the very talkative landlady.
“When was the last time this flat was cleaned?” He swiped his fingertips across the countertop of a kitchen cabinet whose door swung crookedly off its hinge.
“When the last tenants moved in. They were filthy people,” she said, pinching her nostrils while studying Simon with avarice glee. The prospect of having a single gentleman living in quarters that could comfortably hold up to two adults and three bratty kids made her think. She could afford to lower the price with the knowledge that this finicky bachelor would not visit additional harm on the property but might improve it. “We can negotiate,” she said with a wink. “And please. Call be Hazel. All my tenants do.”
Simon had been indulging himself for the past month, squandering his easy money on a luxurious hotel room. Then downgrading to a less posh hotel across the river in Lambeth. Lately taking up residence in a Belgravia bread-and-breakfast. He was using these temporary accommodations to explore London at large and sizing up his needs against his bank account. Eventually he concentrated his efforts on the city of Westminster.
Thrusting out a hip layered with abundant flesh over large bones, she smiled winningly. “Just so we’re square, Mr. Digby-Jones, there isn’t a Mr. Roubidoux, him having expired four years past under foul weather, if you get my drift.”
Back in July, after swimming due east from Virginia Beach and staging his own drowning by apparent suicide, Simon was swept up in an outgoing tide. He tread water for several teeth-chattering minutes, regained his bearings, and swam north, eventually emerging from the ocean a new man with a new identity.
“Please call me Simon,” he said, matching her smile with one of his own.
“I’ll leave you to it then,” she said, sweeping out an arm of invitation.
Simon checked out each of the rooms while considering his predicament. His fortune of five million dollars—already reduced by a fifth of its value—was currently parked in an overseas tax haven located on the Isle of Man, halfway between Ireland and England, halfway between poverty and wealth, halfway between heavenly rapture and everlasting hell. The way he flouted his wealth as if there were no bottom to the well portrayed him as a debonair man about town. But in the wanton pursuit for respectability, he had chosen his own personal hell. He was still trying to fit into his new skin, that of a bachelor with no ties but unlimited resources, a man of taste, a man admired by the most beautiful of women, and a connoisseur of art. All lies.
“You’ll have to take your trash down to the bin outside.”
Simon opened a door and peered upstairs. “This must go to the attic.”
She brushed past him, switched on a light, and led the way, the stairs creaking with each slap of her flat shoes. “You have leave to convert the space to your own particular use, subject of course to management approval, which is me,” she said with a cackle. “Most of my previous tenants didn’t do anything with it, except use it for storage. It could be converted to another flat, mind, but what’s the point. It would eat up half the sitting room downstairs. Plus climbing so many stairsteps would give the new tenants leg cramps.”
The worst that could possibly have happened had. His family was gone. He read the account on the internet, clearly not the best way to find out the life he left behind was in ruins, especially since he was the cause. By wiring a million dollars to a stateside bank account so Janice and the kid wanted for nothing, he assured their doom. The thought sickened him. Though someone else sent them to their fates, Simon was the instrument of their demise and no doubt the purveyor of his own inevitable destruction. It would only be a matter of time before he sat at the left hand of Satan himself.
“A bit of cleaning up would make the place sparkle.” Mrs. Roubidoux was leaning against the doorway, watching his every step and halt, and noting his every sigh and cluck.
Simon looked around the attic, filthy with layers of dust and cobwebs. On the upside, the space was ample enough to accomplish his plans. On the downside, it would need quite a bit more than a simple ‘cleaning up’. To start, fumigating for cockroaches and mice. Then a good scrubbing down. Mounting blackout blinds over the windows. Putting in new flooring, nothing fancy, just durable. Whitewashing the walls, a good two coats would do. And installing electronic security.
“You can set up an office, like you said. What kind of work do you do exactly?”
“Software engineering.” He answered her quizzical look with the simplest of explanations. “Computers.”
She nodded her head like a puppet. “A smart one, you are. Maybe too smart for your own good.” She was weighing whether he was a wise investment or a bad risk. If she were smart, she would listen to her intuition. But she wasn’t smart. She was greedy.
His wife had been murdered and his daughter was missing. For Janice, he felt very little. There was a time when he loved the girl he met in college. She was cute and vivacious back then. She had brought him out of his shell and made him feel as close to a whole man as he would ever be. Something approaching love was exchanged between them, perhaps going all the way to passion. Those times were long past. Over the intervening years, they grew apart, living in the same house, sleeping in the same bed, but perfect strangers. The only thing they had in common was their daughter Evie. Evelyn. Named after his mother. She was perfect when she was born. The moon rose and set on her. Now that too had turned to ashes between his fingers. He was no longer a man, only the shadow of a man, incapable of loving anybody or anything, even incapable of appreciating a rose picked fresh from the garden. But Evie. Oh, Evie. What had happened to Evie, the rose of his heart?
Mrs. Roubidoux leaned close, her breath smelling of stale liquor, her skin reeking of cheap perfume. “I don’t want no funny stuff going on up here.”
The flat was ideal for several reasons. The monthly lease was already a bargain since few relished the climb and it faced a busy street. The location served him just fine, it being within walking distance of Hyde Park, Piccadilly Circus, Bond Street, and the Marble Arch tube station. And blending into the neighborhood would be effortless for a bland man approaching middle age. “Funny stuff?”
“Against the law.”
“I live a quiet life.” It didn’t answer the question, but it was enough to satisfy her.
The county sheriff’s office in rural Virginia was looking for information leading to the capture and arrest of any persons connected with the murder of a wife and the disappearance of her young daughter, possibly the husband himself. The husband didn’t do it. All the same, Simon had blood on his hands. Whoever did away with his family, did it for one reason only: to withdraw the million dollars Simon wired to the account in Brenda’s name. He knew it to be true since he immediately went online, brought up the account, and saw the truth of his guilt. The day prior to Brenda’s death, the funds had been drawn down to a thousand dollars, making her expendable. Never could she testify against the man who raped her and killed her. Simon may not have drawn the knife across Janice’s throat. Or spirited away an innocent chil
d to God knows where. But he was guilty all the same.
Well,” Mrs. Roubidoux asked. “Do you want it or not?”
“I want it. Provided I can get a deal.”
“You Americans. You’re all alike. Looking for deals.”
She named a price five percent lower than advertised. He named a price twenty percent lower. They struck the deal with a nine percent discount. Her face brightened. They shook hands on it. “Let’s say we celebrate.”
His landlady was looking him over with expectant eyes. He knew what she was thinking. He was a handy man to have around, her being a woman on her own and him being unattached. She might knock at his door every now and again, seeking some afternoon delight or looking for a nighttime romp. He might take her up on the offer, making their arrangement cozier than he strictly desired but keeping her from prying into his private affairs.
Simon had nothing left to hold in his cold dead hands. But he could look forward to a brighter future. For the lavish lifestyle he imagined for himself, the five-million-dollar cut he received for his participation in that nasty bit of business back in Washington—less exorbitant expenses, he reminded himself—wasn’t near enough to satisfy him. Some men would have been content with millions of disposable funds. Simon Brodey wasn’t that kind of man. The ready cash served only as the down payment for a worldwide enterprise, one that could bring unlimited wealth his way, provided everything came about as intended.
He had self-styled himself as Simon Digby-Jones, a connoisseur of rare art throughout Europe. Because Simon Digby-Jones never existed and Simon Brodey was presumed dead—even though no obituary had been published in his name, or services conducted in his memory, or burial plot set aside for his casket—he had become a caricature of himself. Short of stature, lacking in looks, bereft of polite manners, thin of hair, pale of complexion, and paunchy of belly, he was eminently unforgettable in a crowd of two. It served his purposes. In daylight, he could easily assimilate. Nights, though, were different. By arming himself with a sophisticated wardrobe, manicured fingernails, affected mannerisms, erudite speech pattern, and a wry sense of humor, he could easily infiltrate circles where being a poof was as good as a calling card. Mrs. Roubidoux had fallen for it. Others would too.
He signed the lease on the scratched kitchen table. Paid a deposit and the first month’s rent in cash. And walked out of the flat.
Mrs. Roubidoux nipped at his heels. Upon reaching her ground-floor flat, she turned to look at him, a smile on her lips, her lipstick faded enough to reveal only the scarlet outlines. In the right light—which meant in the dark of night—she might have been passable, even remarkable for a man with a vivid imagination and a rapacious appetite. Yes, he decided, she would do for occupying his lonely nights.
She entered her apartment, and with a last longing look at her new tenant, closed the door on a click.
He left the building and sauntered down the street, knowing that Mrs. Roubidoux was looking at him from her front room windows.
In his worst nightmares, he envisioned Janice and Evie both drained of blood and pointing fingers at the husband and father who was supposed to protect them.
The official statement about the incident was garbage. Something about unknown intruders breaking into the house, terrorizing the woman over a two-day period, abusing her, beating her, and finally, it could only be hoped, mercifully killing her with a single stroke. The child plagued Simon. What had happened to her? Had she been taken off to be cruelly used and then killed within days if not hours? Or had she been kidnapped and sold into the slave trade, where prepubescent girls were commodities more precious than gold? Whatever her fate, it could not have been good.
Going home had been his fallback plan. He could have given his new life six months, a year, two years tops. If things didn’t work out, if he ran out of money, if he longed to have his old life back, he might have taken up his former life as a devoted husband and loving father, and resumed his career as a hacker and ne’er-do-well. Claims of amnesia or any number of excuses could have been his explanation. No one would have believed him, of course, least of all Janice, but would be a plausible enough excuse for anyone else. But who was kidding who? He left behind a wife who never satisfied him, a child who demanded too much love from a man who didn’t know how to love, and a profession that drained his soul. There was no going back. Now or ever.
8
Rockville, Maryland
Monday, August 11
WHEN LINDSEY-MARIE Moffat opened the front door of her modest home, she was holding a tissue to her nose, her face sallow and thin, and her posture spindly and insubstantial, almost like a ghost, as if she wanted to crawl into a cocoon of her own making and disappear inside herself.
Vikki Kidd presented an embossed business card. “I called your office. They said you were home sick.”
The woman looked it over with mild curiosity, her eyes nearly blank. “Bronchitis. It’s been going around.” She laughed bitterly.
“You might have read my article. About Spinnaker.” Vikki could only think the thirtyish blonde wearing sweats over a slight body should not have been so trusting as to open her door to a stranger, even if her conservatively dressed visitor had already identified herself through the peephole as a reporter with the Washington Gazette. Perhaps curiosity compelled her. Or habit. Perhaps the small dog yipping at her heels gave her a false sense of security. She ordered the creature to sit. The papillon obeyed and promptly stared up at their visitor with the same tilted head of curiosity as its owner.
“Yeah, sure, I read the article. Wish I hadn’t.”
The front of the house faced east. The sun was behind Vikki, still low in the sky, and not yet noon. The cool of the house looked inviting. She would have invited herself inside but didn’t want to push her luck. The woman was skittish. Anything unexpected silence her. And Vikki wanted her to talk. “Why do you say that?”
“Makes it real, doesn’t it? Everything. All the shit. Can’t go away now. Always expected it would. Somehow. Some way. People forget. They move onto the next headline. But the next headline keeps coming back to HID, doesn’t it? Now this thing with John ....”
This would have been the moment for her to break down. She didn’t. She went on as before, her voice a steady monotone, as if everything inside her had popped like a balloon, leaving behind a woman with nothing to her. If anything, her face had gone paler. She was withering away before Vikki’s eyes.
“It is him, isn’t it? They haven’t said. Officially. But I’ve been talking to friends at work ....” She repeated herself. “It is him, isn’t it? John?”
“John Sessions, you mean?” Vikki said. “His name’s been mentioned.”
Her eyes became suddenly bright and alive. “You’ve been talking to Jack, haven’t you? My boss worked with him on a few things.”
“That would be Harrison Tobias.” Vikki angled herself forward.
Lindsey-Marie stepped back, fear replacing curiosity. She shrunk tighter within herself. Soon she would disappear. “I really can’t talk to the press.” Her eyes darted toward the street.
Vikki looked at her back. The street was quiet. A bank of clouds was moving in overhead, the leading edge of a storm. The heat wasn’t quite as oppressive. A boy was walking a dog. A mom was loading her kids into a family van. A service truck wheeled down the street and turned at the corner. She turned back.
“Has the FBI approached you?” Vikki asked. “Or the CIA? Anyone else from government? One of your superiors maybe? Testing your loyalty?”
The woman drew her body upright. She backed away and put a hand to the door, preparing to close it, a self-protective instinct, done without thought. Loudly she said, “I’m loyal. As loyal as anybody. Loyal to my country. And the people I work with.” With every statement, her voice grew louder, as is she wanted to be heard.
“But I wonder ....” Vikki possessed instincts of her own. Uncompromising instincts. She knew how to appear open and friendly. Obtaining statem
ents and information from skittish people was a knack she honed over the years. Sometimes she bullied. Sometimes she appealed to common sense. Most times she became an instant friend, the kind of friend a person could confide in with absolute trust, a friend who kept secrets. “Does HID have your back? Can they protect you? Do they even care? They couldn’t protect your boss.”
The woman’s cheek twitched. She was worried. Frightened she could be next. “I don’t know what you’re talking about? Please go away. You’re making it bad for me.”
“Are you being followed? Watched? Is that why you’re afraid?”
Doors had been slammed in Vikki’s face more times than she cared to count. Long ago she developed a strategy: keep her subjects talking, pump them with questions, pepper them with facts and theories, and assume an attitude that mirrored their deepest fears and worries. “You’re more than afraid, aren’t you? You’re petrified. I just want to know, Lindsey ... can I call you Lindsey? ... I just want to know whether you knew about the mass surveillances your agency was conducting. Did you pick up on any clues or evidence? Is HID the shadow government everyone has been whispering about? Does it have direct access to the President? Or does it act independently? Under someone else’s orders? The Vice President. Or the director of the CIA. Maybe the FBI.”
“Possibly,” she said in a whisper. “I don’t know that much.”
“But you suspect?” Vikki took another step forward. “Can I come in?”
She shook her head, a barely discernible gesture, her hand still grasping the edge of the door. The dog had wandered off to the center of the living room and lain down on the off-white carpet, its ears fanned with interest, its eyes alert.
“What about your boss? Was he suspicious about anything? Did he confide in you? Do you know of any reason he would have been targeted?”
The woman stared blankly at Vikki, her face sallow and drawn with fatigue.
Enemies Within Page 5
