A three-foot-high gate kept passengers from entering the tunnel itself. I ignored it and stepped over onto a narrow ledge leading into the darkness. As the last few cars whipped past in a blur, I crabbed down the tunnel on the ledge to get as far away from the station as I could. The wind rush and lighted windows blinking by made me dizzy enough to nearly fall, and the suction nearly whipped the duffel from my hand. I focused on the narrow pathway at my feet, walking it like a field sobriety test. The rushing train on one side and wall on the other closed in until I thought I would be crushed by the weight of the panic that threatened to overwhelm me.
Tunnels….
I squeezed my eyes shut, and a vision of Sonny dangling like a pig on a spit in a beam of yellow light played against the back of my eyeballs. I opened my eyes again to banish the memory, but the darkness provided no relief. Now I smelled the fecund odor of rotted jungle undergrowth mixed with that of dank earth and fresh blood. My breath came in shallow gasps. I felt for the wall behind me, fingers on one hand digging for purchase.
Mercifully, the train finished passing me and came to a stop in the station. Its racket gone, I felt I could breathe again. Sonny’s face faded, replaced by the dimly lit, wide tunnel ahead. I plodded several yards deeper, and chanced a glance back at the station. With the train still there, I doubted anyone could see me, but I slowly backed farther into the tunnel and held my breath. I’d know soon enough if cops or a bystander had seen me sneak in. Security cameras would do the job eventually. Shouts drifted into the tunnel as the train slowly pulled away, the red lights at the back of the last car getting smaller and fainter as they receded from view. The chill of the stone pressed into my back seeped through my clothes, but I didn’t care. The tunnel was my refuge now. I wanted to sink into it, out of sight.
72
Sally’s sleeping form stirred under the covers as Doug swung his legs out of bed. He stood in the dark and silently watched her sleep, the mound beneath the duvet made larger by her swollen belly. He knew she was exhausted. Grief, anxiety, anger all had kept her up far past midnight, and when she finally had come to bed her sleep had been fitful, marred and broken by nightmares and discomfort caused by the baby’s movement inside her. He knew, too, that much of her anger was directed at him. Well, not so much him as his job, which had caused this catastrophe to descend on their family. He didn’t know how to make it right. He didn’t know how to get his son back. His only hope at this point was a sixty-two year-old man from whom he’d been estranged for most of his adult life. To Doug it felt like throwing a cork on a thread to a drowning man. But he clung to that thread because that was all he had.
Sleep had eluded Doug for most of the night, too, but as tired as he was, he was too full of nervous energy to lie in bed. He went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face and brushed his teeth at the sink. He ran a comb through his unruly hair, and damped down the worst cowlicks with water. He found clean clothes in the walk-in closet and dressed in the dark. Grabbing a pair of loafers, he tiptoed out so he wouldn’t wake Sally. At the door he took one last look at the way her dark hair spilled out across the pillow, and a lump filled his throat as his chest swelled. Though they might think they knew, most people truly had no clue how they would react in a given situation until they found themselves at a decisive moment. Doug knew with absolute certainty that he would do anything to protect his family and keep them safe.
The welcome smell of freshly brewed coffee reached him as he descended the stairs, and in the kitchen he poured himself a cup to take with him. That and a protein bar would constitute breakfast. He didn’t know if he would have time for lunch. He stopped in the living room to let the agent know he was leaving, then went out to the garage and raised the door manually so the noise of the opener wouldn’t wake Sally. He’d backed out onto the street before any of the sleepy news crews realized he was going. One half-heartedly hurried toward his car, dragging his cameraman by his microphone cable. Doug rammed the gearshift into drive and took off down the street.
At that early hour, Doug was in his office within forty-five minutes, and with no outside distractions he was able to go over his notes on the case again and finish writing his opening statement. The office slowly came alive around him as more people came in and started working. A little before eight, he rose and stretched, then went to a break room to refill his coffee mug. When he stepped back into his office, his cell phone was ringing. Quickly, he crossed the floor and set the coffee mug down on the desk. He had to rummage through his suit coat for his phone, and when he finally found it and answered it, he was a little breathless.
“Hello?”
“Listen carefully,” a deep male voice said. “You have one chance to get this right. Get a police band radio. One capable of decryption.”
“Who is this?”
“Don’t waste time. Get a pencil and paper. In exactly one hour, you need to monitor the following frequency—one-six-seven-point-seven-six-seven-five. The network access code is one-six-zero. You will relay the contents of the conversations you hear on that frequency, exactly as you hear it, to a person at this phone number.”
The voice rattled off a phone number, and Doug scrambled to jot it down.
“Where do you think I’m going to get a police band radio?” Doug said.
“That’s your problem. You have less than one hour to figure it out if you want to see your son alive again.”
Doug sucked in a breath. “I want to see him. I want to talk to him. Otherwise, no deal.”
“You’re not in a position to bargain.”
“The hell I’m not. Why should I do this if Preston’s already dead? I want to speak with him, and I want guarantees that he won’t be harmed.”
“Be on your computer in five minutes.”
The line disconnected.
73
Someone had taken a jackhammer to the inside of my skull. I don’t know which woke me, the pain or the noise, but both threatened to take off the top of my head when I opened my eyes. A room with unfamiliar contours, colors, furniture and décor surrounded me, and for a moment I had no idea where I was. The pounding now came from both inside and outside my head.
“Mr. Zeman!” a voice called between sturdy blows to the door. “Mr. Zeman, I have an urgent package for you. Are you in there?”
“Just a moment,” I croaked.
I climbed out of a bed to find myself in T-shirt and boxers. Within three steps toward the door, most of the previous night had come back to me. The shouting in the subway station had continued for a while, and then had begun to fade. I’d leaned forward and peered toward the station again, watching the platform in case the cops returned. I’d waited ten minutes. No uniforms in sight.
When another train had approached the station, I’d stepped back over the gate onto the platform. I’d wasted no time slipping into the closest car when the train had stopped. I hadn’t taken another breath until the doors had closed and the train had pulled out of the station, slowly gathering speed.
I’d checked into a hotel in Foggy Bottom using the fake ID Dinky had commissioned for me. My head hurt like the dickens from the knock I’d gotten from the kid I’d killed. And my body didn’t feel much better from hopping the Metro turnstile and crouching in a train tunnel. Still, I told myself: You’re alive. And no one knew where I was. No one except Jack Calhoun knew the alias on the fake ID.
I detoured to the closet to grab the big Sig out of the duffel and checked the peephole in the door. A uniformed bellman stood in the hall showing me his profile. His hands carried a box, no gun. I stood a little to one side anyway and spoke through the door.
“Who’s the package from?” I said.
“A delivery service just dropped it off, sir. I was told to tell you the man from Preaek Traeng sent it.”
Dickie.
I opened the door, holding the gun down at my side out of sight. The bellman held out the box. I took it with one hand and told him to wait. I turned away from him
and got my gun hand up under the box, too, and set the box on the desk, setting the gun down behind it. My trousers were draped over the chair. I dug in the pocket for a few bills, and handed them to the bellman. He thanked me without looking them and left.
The box was a plain, brown, cardboard shipping box with no markings and no label, not even my name written on it. I slit the packing tape with my knife and opened the flaps. A block of dark gray foam filled the interior. Nestled in cutouts in the foam were two objects both familiar and foreign. I lifted out the first one, an almost exact replica of the knife I’d used to open the box, the only difference being that the one I now held was made of carbon fiber. I turned it over in my hands, examining it, and ran a finger lightly over the blade.
I set it down and lifted out the other object. Again, an almost exact replica, it resembled a kid’s version of my “qwhisper,” only this revolver was some sort of plastic. I peered in the box, and in a space below the cutout that had held the gun was a box of ammunition with a hand-written note on top. The note said simply, “I’m guessing you might need these.” I lifted out the box of ammunition and opened it. Unlike the original, the shells in the box were cardboard casings containing, I guessed, some non-metallic pellets.
For the hell of it, I pried one open and dumped it out. Instead of tungsten, the pellets looked like glass. Cubic zirconia, maybe. I inspected the casing again. Looking even more like a .410 shotgun shell than the ones in my old gun, these had some kind of hard plastic base, perhaps even ceramic. The smooth-bore barrel had an exceptionally shiny surface, and I wondered if it, too, might be cubic zirconia.
I’d heard about experiments with “plastic” guns, but this was way beyond simple plastic. Experimental, I guessed. And top secret, no doubt. Both weapons would show up on a body scanner, but they sure as hell wouldn’t set off a metal detector. The cubic zirconia shot, though, would be about half the density of tungsten, which meant about half the penetrating power. The QSPR had been okay inside five yards and deadly inside ten feet. If I used this gun at all, I’d have to do it inside five feet, almost close enough to use the knife. Not much of an advantage, but some.
By the time I’d finished looking over my presents and acquainted myself with them, I also had a good idea of how Dickie had found me. He was right, a deputy director of the CIA was not without resources, and it had probably been easy enough to track the cell phone I’d used to stay in touch with him. He was using me, just like he’d used me in Vietnam. I should have been pissed. When it came right down to it, Dickie represented The Man and always had. Hell, Dickie was The Man. He would have been hard-pressed to get more “Establishment” than DD of the CIA. He was part of the very government that had lied to us about Vietnam, part of the most secret institution within that secretive government.
But I’d always felt a certain kinship with Dickie, that we were cut from the same cloth, both patriots in a world of divided loyalties. I held no illusions that the CIA, or even Dickie himself, would ride to my rescue if I got into hot water. But the care package made me glad I had friends—at least one, anyway—in high places. Yeah, Dickie was using me to do the dirty work, as usual. But I was using him, too.
I had one burner phone left I hadn’t made calls on yet. I thought about using it to call Dickie to let him know where I was headed. But I got the sense that if this son of a bitch al-Qadir was using Preston as a suicide bomber, he’d blow everyone sky high, including himself, if he saw anything hinky. I used the phone to reach Doug, instead, but my call went straight to voicemail. I didn’t leave a message.
A glance at the clock on the nightstand told me it was time to go get my grandson.
74
Even before he heard the muffled tread of footsteps, creak of floorboards and voices in muted conversation, Preston waited for them. As the windows had grown lighter, he’d put his art supplies away and gotten out of bed. He’d gone to the small bathroom and completed his morning ritual, washing his hands and face, combing his hair and brushing his teeth. Then he’d dressed, neatly repacked his backpack and waited. He knew from the sounds that others had been present in the building for some time now, but no one had come to unlock his door. Still, he waited patiently.
There had been a lull for a while, the building around him quieter than before, but the sounds had resumed, and now they were accompanied by the smell of food. His stomach growled. Footsteps approached the door, and a key scraped in the lock. With a click, the door opened and Joseph walked in carrying a paper sack. His eyes widened when he saw Preston, and he looked the way his mom or dad did when he did something especially well.
“I see you’ve already gotten dressed,” Joe said, handing him the sack. “Wonderful. We have a busy day ahead. Come with me, and you can eat your breakfast.”
Preston followed Joe through the rooms until they reached the one with all the video equipment, and Joe indicated Preston should sit at the table where he sat last time. He wriggled onto the chair, set the sack on the table and opened it. He peered inside, inhaling the savory aroma wafting out of the bag, then reached in and took out a paper-wrapped sandwich—egg, sausage and cheese on an English muffin. He would have liked pancakes, but he was so hungry he bit into the sandwich and didn’t say anything. As Preston chewed, he watched Joseph adjust the lighting and video equipment.
Joe looked funny today. When Preston had first met him, Joe’s clothes had suited him, had seemed to Preston to be a like a second skin. Now Preston was curious about why Joe had worn a costume. Joe could easily be the person the costume represented, but Preston didn’t like these clothes as much. The materials were thicker, rougher. But he did like the shiny brass buttons, the badge, and the lettering over one shirt pocket, and the bright blue stripe on the outside seam of the black trouser legs. He liked the pointed stripes on the long sleeve of Joe’s powder blue shirt, too, right below the patch on the shoulder that read, “United States Park Police.”
“Are you ready?” Joe called.
Preston nodded, though he didn’t know what he was supposed to be ready for. But a moment later, the laptop screen on the table in front of him came to life, and the bright, blank screen dissolved into a picture of his dad. Preston stared at it for several seconds before realizing it was his dad, not just a picture.
“Dad! Dad!”
His father turned toward the camera. “Preston! Thank God, you’re all right.”
Preston held up his food. “Look, I got a breakfast sandwich.”
“That’s great, kiddo. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Dad. Today’s the big day!”
“Right. You’re going to the National Archives.”
“It’s going to be awesome.”
“I’m sure it will. I hope you have a good time.”
“Okay.” Preston waved. “I have to go, Dad. See you later.”
“Wait! Preston, remember, whatever happens, Mom and I love you.”
Preston heard his parents say that a lot. But he was more excited about the day ahead.
“’Bye, Dad.”
“That was an excellent job, Preston,” Joe said as he stepped out of the shadows. “I’m sure your father was happy to talk to you before you leave. Now, finish your breakfast, so we can get started for the museum.”
Joe walked around the lights, being careful not to trip on any cords, and came toward Preston holding a piece of clothing.
“It’s a chilly morning,” he said, “so I brought you this fleece vest. Preston took the vest from his hand. It was heavy, but not so bad once he put it on.
“This is a special, heated vest,” Joe said. “Here, let me show you.”
He reached over and unzipped a small pocket on the inside of the lapel, then pointed at the open pocket.
“Can you see something inside?” he said.
Preston pulled the lapel away from his body a little. Peering down, he saw a slender plastic stick with a button on top. He reached in and pulled it partway out. Something held it there.
&
nbsp; “Go ahead,” Joe nodded. “Push the button.”
Preston gripped the stick and pushed the button with his thumb. A small green light came on, and a moment later, his chest felt warmer.
“Push it again,” Joe said.
“When Preston pushed the button this time, the light turned orange. He felt the increased warmth almost immediately.
“You push it once more for hot,” Joe told him, “and one last time to turn it off. There’s a battery in the pocket that you can recharge. Do you like it?”
Preston nodded and pushed the button again. The light turned red. One more push and the light went out.
“It’s really cool,” he said. “Can I keep it?”
“Of course you may,” Joe said. “It’s a gift.”
Preston looked down, admiring it. “Why’s it so heavy?”
“Special insulation, to help it keep you warm. Now, are you ready? Fayad is downstairs waiting for us. It’s almost time to leave.”
75
Doug ran flat out, tears of rage threatening to spill down his cheeks. He felt like such a fool. Bad enough that the kidnappers likely planned to use his son as a suicide bomber. Worse, he’d failed to see how they could use Preston against him. Well, they’d found a way, and he had no time for self-recrimination now. The thought of helping these people made him nauseated, but he had less than forty-five minutes to figure out how to get a radio before his deadline, and his thoughts raced as fast as his legs in the short sprint over to the courthouse.
He’d worked with several people in the US Marshals Service. The service provided courthouse security in addition to prisoner transport. While he saw deputy marshals practically every day he had business in the courthouse, Doug’s cases had only occasionally brought him into contact with those who worked in the more glamorous areas of the service such as witness protection, fugitive apprehension and asset recovery.
Stolen Identity Page 30
