“Janice Brodey was a housewife living in rural Virginia with her husband and young daughter. According to authorities, a pair of intruders broke into their house and sexually molested her over several hours before finally ending her misery and slicing her throat. Three weeks earlier, coincidently on the Fourth of July, her husband ... a hacker,” she stressed, “... took a long walk off a short pier. There were witnesses. He conveniently left behind his ID and street clothes. His body was never recovered. Their nine-year-old daughter has also gone missing.”
“Interesting,” was all he said. Taggert never lost his appetite over anything.
Cordelia fetched chilled wine from the fridge. Concentrating on uncorking the bottle instead of looking into his probing eyes, she went on. “Coyote’s DNA was found at the scene. He doesn’t appear to be linked to the woman’s rape, small favors for him I guess. But there’d been a knock-out, drag-out fight, presumably between the two men. Questions remain. Did Coyote watch the rape, making him complicit? Or did he try to save her? Why was he there to begin with? And who was the other man?”
“Could’ve been the husband.”
She acknowledged the possibility, refilled their glasses, and sat. “Then there’s Duncan Spears. He was a hacker. I say was because he hanged himself from the ceiling of his Georgetown apartment. His body was discovered when a friend dropped by. Description of said friend matches Coyote.”
“Ah,” Taggert said. “And the train victim?”
“An aide to Congressman Billings. It looks as if she was targeted at random, some sort of argument between Coyote and another man in the Metro station. She just had the bad luck of getting in the way. I viewed the video. The other man used her as a shield. It looks like Coyote tried to save her. But I may be wrong,” she said, shrugging.
Taggert spooned another helping of Irish stew onto his plate and ate in silence. Something was on his mind, something he was hesitant to bring up.
She angled her head and gazed at him. “What is it? What’s going on? Taggert?”
“I put you up for promotion. Senior Data Research Specialist. You’ve been an invaluable asset to the company.”
“Or maybe ass?”
“A little more enthusiasm would be appreciated.”
“I’m not up to enthusiasm tonight.” She picked at her food, making a show of appreciative smiles and feigned appetite. She had replayed her conversation with Kirschner several times over. He must have thought her a lightweight, thinking he could weasel his way out of anything. He was a bright man, but not bright enough. “Did Hynes ever get in touch with Prendergast,” she asked.
Cleaning his plate with the last bread roll, he inclined his head in a neutral gesture. “She did, but he can’t offer any insight. Or won’t. I can spend the night. Amy’s in Minnesota with the kids, visiting my in-laws.”
“I see.”
He reached over and fingered away a tendril of stray hair. “This isn’t a casual come-on. I’m worried. You, my dear, have become a target. Or hasn’t it occurred to you?”
It had. She was scared but not scared enough to be frightened off. Besides, there was nothing she could do about it short of resigning from MonCom, which was unthinkable and probably wouldn’t protect her anyway.
He read her thoughts. “I’ll take you off the case if you want.”
“Oh, I’ll be all right,” she said casually, even if her voice tripped over the words. The jittery feeling in the pit of her stomach was still there. She had set aside her fork and was fondling the wine glass between her fingers, taking a sip every so often. “I know more in my little pinkie than you’ll ever know, Taggert. I’m in it for the long haul.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.” He reached for her free hand. “I know a guy. Ex-Marine. I’ll have him give you a call. He knows weapons. He’s good.” She started to protest, but he cautioned her with a look. “That’s an order. You’ll do it so I can sleep nights. Not that I ever sleep nights.” He withdrew his hand and picked up his glass, sipping like she was sipping, in a measured pace, while considering Cordelia quite a bit more than the vibrant color of his merlot. “This Coyote thing is getting under your skin.”
It was getting rather stuffy in the close confines of her one-bedroom apartment. Day by day the walls had been closing in. The hermetical seal that kept the cool air inside and the hot air outside seemed increasingly like a solitary confinement module. Jack Coyote knew better what that experience was like. He was still a wanted man. Unlike her, he hadn’t been able to escape the nattering voices drifting into his cell. Or unlock the door. Or strike the manacles from his wrists. Had his troubles been his own doing? The work of the gods? Or engineered by the agency he worked for? The Coyote affair was as fragile as a Tiffany vase. A priceless artifact had been stolen from its protective glass case and smashed into smithereens. To glue all the pieces back together again would require patience, resolve, and skill. Her task was clear. She might be the only individual who could reassemble the pieces, not only because she was the best person to bring everything to light but because she had a personal stake in seeing it through to the end. But only if Taggert gave her enough freedom.
After she had identified Coyote as the man behind the fifty million dollars, Cordelia broadened her scope by running a background check on his income, credit history, and tax returns, hoping to find clues of ill-got gains or other instances of money laundering. She analyzed every substantial dollar movement into and out of his checking, bank, and personal brokerage accounts—tracking them back to their original sources and following them out to his creditors—and verified that every transaction was legal and legitimate. She delved into his background, his upbringing, the desertion by his father, the death of his mother, the adoption by his aunt and uncle, the lackluster history of his youth, his career path in government, his voting record (independent), his speeding tickets (two in all), his buddies (not many), his choice of women (quite a few), and his preference for beer and Scotch whiskey, either would do. Jack Coyote was an interesting man. She wanted to know him better.
When the mysterious case of the vanilla name inside the manila envelope was cracked, she was going to light a candle on the altar of St. Cordelia and afterwards, do some serious atoning for all the past sins of her life.
After lovemaking, Taggert held her in his arms, his body steamy and earthy. “We’re thinking about getting you a partner.”
“We?” She propped herself on an elbow and gazed down at him, eyes narrowed with annoyance.
He lifted his hands in surrender. “Frances’s idea, not mine.”
Cordelia let out a swear word and fell onto her back, blinking at the ceiling. Frances Hynes called the shots and Taggert obeyed. There was no getting out of it and no point in arguing.
He rolled her into his arms. “You’re too smart for your own good. And too damned stubborn.”
“You ain’t seen nothing yet, mister.”
They made love again. The only thing that would have been an improvement was for the two of them to be lying on a sandy beach under the stars. Cordelia was still, and would forever remain, a romantic fool.
31
Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands
Wednesday, August 13
JACK RETURNED THE way he had come, past scrub and along dirt roads towards the highway. He planned to return to the hotel, scrub off the grime of the girl, gather his things, and head to the airport. His flight was scheduled a little after ten, giving him ample time to check in and grab something to eat.
He had frightened the girl and maybe put the fear of God into her. With any luck, the next time a handsome bastard offered her money in exchange for luring an unsuspecting dupe into a trap, she would think twice. Except for one thing. So driven was she for a life that did not include the drudgery of a being a housemaid, she would do it again in a heartbeat. Time would beat her, though. Her youth was already wilting at the edges. From there, it would be an easy fall into decay. She would probably marry a boy her age and go t
hrough life the way her mother and grandmothers had, having babies and being grateful for the leftovers that came her way. Or meet a mature man, perhaps a rich man, who would sweep her off her feet ... for a while ... until a younger version came along. Or marry a drunkard who enjoyed beating his wife every other day for good measure until she finally reached the point where she didn’t give a damn what happened to her anymore and took a knife or a gun to him. Or become a prostitute, wiling away her days squatting in the dirt and spending her nights with pawing men who gave her a few coins in exchange for her well-used body. Whatever path she chose, she would look decades older than the date on her birth certificate. There was no place for wan, wide-eyed girls like her, only the dying embers of youth.
Not that he had a right to pass judgment on anyone.
Jack was apart from other men, always had been. The apartness had been imprinted in the womb. Through amniotic fluid, his growing fetus must have sensed his mother and father did not conceive him out of love but from an urgent need to drive out solitude. Once, when he was a child of seven or eight, he found their marriage certificate in the bottom drawer of his mother’s dresser, tucked beneath satiny lingerie rarely worn. He knew how to count from one to nine. He had been conceived before his parents had gone before a justice of the peace. He came into being as the byproduct of passion though not necessarily of love. Although he never knew exactly what had gone wrong with their marriage, it was doomed from the start. And it doomed him. Always around him, he watched the games and parades and celebrations others enjoyed with abandon while he looked on from a distance, feeling nothing. Who needed games? Who wanted parades? Not he. People passed by him, warbling with laughter and song, while he stood apart. Watching. Always watching. And wondering what separated him from everyone else. Everything had come to him secondhand, discarded and used up. Just as he had been discarded by his father and all the fathers before him. Jack had a photo album of remorses, and even though the pictures faded long ago, the emotions remained sharp. Always he had been on the sidelines, even among friends. Always he had looked at himself through the wrong end of a telescopic lens, seeing the distortions of a boy, and then the man, while he stood at the perimeter, lonely in a crowd and trying to be someone else.
The rain dwindled. The clouds parted. The sky became bluest blue. Steam rose from the road, spiriting the wetness away as if by magic.
He became aware of the pounding of oversized tires and the revving of an engine. In the rearview mirror, a monstrous truck—constructed of blinding chrome and dark menace—bore down on his tiny foreign make. The first jolt arrived like a sledgehammer. The second jolt came like an earthquake. Greenery and asphalt revolved from left to right. Images spun in a whirlpool of muddy hues. The car skidded sideways into a ditch. Metal crunched. Windows shattered. A rush of feet arrived along with barked orders. The door was jacked open. Jack tumbled onto the embankment, a tangle of arms and legs, the fall delivering an agonizing blow to his shoulder and a second to his skull, just two more insults to his racked body and stunned mind. The sky revolved above him like a giant pinwheel before sluggishly coming to halt. Three men approaching from the far end of a dark tunnel gathered him up like a broken doll. Even if he wanted to run, to fight back, he couldn’t.
The only option left was to blissfully, gratefully give into blackness. Consciousness slipped away ...
When he came to, his arms were braced over a pair of broad shoulders belonging to two of the men. His head was bowed, his body limp, his eyes tracking a trail of leaves and weeds beneath his feet. He played dead. It was easy to play dead.
The shiny truck loomed before him. They were taking him to it. Somewhere to the rear, the leader spoke in a quiet but stern voice. The duo shifted their hold. One of them cranked open the rear door. They prepared to lift him up and toss him in. The back seat loomed before him. Once inside, he would be trapped.
He jerked. Made a calculated movement. Loosened his left arm. Twisted the other away. Toddled back several steps. Miraculously remained on his feet. Swung his right arm around. Took the first man with a snapping punch to the soft part of his throat. Wheeled around. Found a shout at the back of his throat and howled at the sky. Spun a half turn. Booted the second man between his legs. Sighted a clear path to his left. Raced for it. Shifted the pain into a crevice of his nervous system. Mustered every bit of fight. And hurtled toward escape.
Inherently, Jack was not a violent man. Intellect had been his instrument of power. He used it to get everything he wanted. If his dad had taught him anything useful, it had been this: using fists, especially in a man’s face, would break bones sure enough, most especially his own. Fleetness, he said, worked better than strength. Grabs, twists, lateral kicks, and sweeping legs that relied on balance and gravity were more powerful than punches and whacks. Jack had survived his fair share of scraps of as a kid, usually winding up in wrestling matches where no one was the winner. This time he was fighting for his life.
The big men went down like weeping grizzlies, landing on all fours. The third man, the one who gave the orders, was waiting for him. He growled instructions. The first man rebounded with remarkable agility and delivered a savage kick squarely beneath Jack’s ribs and into his diaphragm. He doubled over, tried to catch breath, struggled to regain his bearings. The scenery gyrated around him. As he readied to maneuver to the right, the second man encased his head in the grip of his paws, and sent Jack skittering across the deserted road like a bowling ball. Road rash scorched his body. He lay sprawled on his belly, limbs thrown apart. Breath refused to come. His lungs struggled for one ragged gasp. Just one. It came, but too late. Both men commenced the cheery business of rib cracking, stomach punching, and head slamming. They were a jolly pair, these two.
He heard a low wail. Then a defeated groan. Both noises came from him. A final whomp into his right kidney took the last bit of fight out of him. He went limp. Only one finger twitched. The index finger of his left hand. A curious detail. He concentrated on the oddity and held onto it, making it a bridge to cognizance. He had minuscule part of consciousness left along with a tilted view of reality. His vision was filled with fuzzy pictures and blurry sounds, everything warped and surreal, moving in slow motion. His brawlers stood at a distance, hands braced on knees, sucking air, working kinks out of pulled muscles and cracked joints. The boss stepped into view, an ugly man with a face resembling a rotten potato sitting on the forgotten shelf of a scrawny neck. His eyes were focused and unconcerned, almost amused. A sly smile spread across his thin lips. He had something in mind for Jack. He was smirking now. Chortling. His merriment didn’t bode well. He snapped a commanding gesture. His men moved with fawning alacrity. One of them kicked Jack in the head. After that, Jack could not have winched up a single eyelid.
Scrabbling movements followed. The leader snapped orders. Car doors opened. Engines revved. The henchmen came back and gathered up their inert captive by the armpits. They tossed him into the trunk of the rental car, stinking of gasoline fumes. His arms were yanked back and his wrists secured with duct tape. Another strip was slapped across his mouth and a third wrapped around his eyes. The lid of the trunk was slammed home with a finality not unlike the closing of a coffin lid. They laughed, deep throaty laughs of merriment accompanied by the sawing of insects and the squawking of parrots.
Unconsciousness encased Jack like a scratchy blanket, plunging him into darkness. Not the darkness of night or even the darkness of sleep. Instead, the darkness of the spirit world. From the darkness came visions of his ancestors, dancing around a campfire and singing songs in falsetto ululations and clamoring laments, hair braided with eagle feathers, faces decorated with war paint, bodies clothed in animal skins, and bare feet pounding the ground to the beat of water drums, rattles, and their own chanting voices. Of a sudden, they disappeared in a whiff of smoke and deserted him. In the nothingness, he heard himself groan, an appeal for deliverance.
Worse than being suspended between two worlds—the painful pres
ent and the stirring past—Jack regretted his misspent youth, his frivolous wanderings, and his laughable escapades. Regretted there was no time to say goodbye to a single living soul, proving once again that his apartness had always been waiting for him, here on the road to nowhere.
The next thing he recalled—possibly seconds later, maybe minutes later, perhaps hours later—was of being hauled out of the trunk and dragged away, the toes of his shoes certainly leaving parallel tracks in the dusty dirt. Wherever they were taking him, whatever plans they had for him, he prayed for death. The cessation of existence, he reasoned in the blackest recesses of his mind, would have been preferable to what they planned for him.
He was ushered into a structure of some sort, out of the heat and into the cool. The walls echoed. They slapped him onto a chair with a hard seat and a spindled back, and there secured him by chest, wrists, and ankles with rounds of duct tape . Escape was but a weary dream. Once he had been secured, a broad hand slapped him across the cheeks, once and then twice, bringing him around. From the other side of consciousness, Jack heard himself moan miserably, and moan once more. The gag across his mouth was ripped away.
The leader spoke, his words spoken in German. Since Jack had a grasp of the language, translation was not required. “Enough. He’s coming to.”
From the movements and footfalls bouncing off distant walls, he gathered they were in a large space. A garage of some kind. Or a warehouse. Away from civilization where they wouldn’t be disturbed. Sounds were tamped down by jungle air. With a single sniff, Jack knew that dread had come to visit him like a tiger with claws.
The man who had spoken advanced to the fore, deliberate in his actions and unhurried. He had all the time in the world to do what he set out to do. Jack’s time was limited.
The other men positioned themselves behind their leader, ready for action should their brawny skills be required. The four of them were alone in a standoff from which there would be three winners and one loser. The boss scraped a chair across the floor and positioned it opposite Jack, face to face, a yard separating them. He fumbled in his pocket and lit a cigarette. The smoke gave off the sweet aromatic fragrance of Turkish tobacco. He leaned forward, studying his secured prisoner from close up, a thorough examination that took in every feature and blemish. He was memorizing the details for future reference. Finished with his examination, he sat back and took a few more leisurely puffs of his cigarette, allowing fill the gulf between them. At last he cleared his throat, a prelude to interrogation. He made a motion. His bodyguards cleared out. Silence followed.
Enemies Within Page 21
