The Final Twist

by Jeffery Deaver

  “Where you’d be expecting . . .”

  Shaw and Russell walked around the square, side by side. Homeless, always the homeless in San Francisco. Shaw could hardly blame them. Why live on the street in Minnesota or Anchorage? He would have come to San Francisco, the home of a warmer clime and wealthy executives, ready to toss a coin or bill into an inverted baseball cap.

  He observed that none of these street people seemed strung out, unlike those he and Russell had seen that morning in the TL. Apparently, BlackBridge hadn’t targeted Quigley Square for the Urban Improvement Plan. At least, not yet. But he could see it coming: two blocks away was a long expanse of glittery, glass-fronted high-rises. A developer standing on the soaring roof might look down at Quigley Square and think, “That’s my next conquest. Get the BNG to work.”

  More scanning.

  Then Shaw stopped fast, looking up.

  No, couldn’t be.

  A glance to his right. He wasn’t surprised to see that Russell was looking at exactly the same thing he was.

  “It possible?” Russell said.

  Where you’d be expecting . . .

  They were looking at the hospital.

  Beth Israel Obstetrics and Maternity Center

  There was no doubt a good portion of the patients inside would certainly be expecting.

  “Hmm.” Again Russell almost smiled. He pulled out his phone and sent a text as they walked to the looming structure.

  At the receptionist’s station in the lobby, Russell slipped his phone away and stepped in front of Shaw and said, “We’re here to visit a patient. Abigail Hanson. She had a C-section.”

  A computer screen was consulted. “Room seven-forty-two,” she told them.

  “Thanks,” Shaw said.

  So that was the text Russell had sent. As they walked to the elevators, Shaw asked, “Karin?”

  “Hmm.”

  She was good.

  In the basement Shaw had expected locked doors or gates. But no. The cellar was an easily accessed storage area. Lights were, however, a problem. Only two of the twenty overhead bulbs were functional. Shaw had not brought his tac flashlight. After a search for more switches, Russell cocked his head, looking up, and gripped one of the darkened spheres in his substantial fingers and twisted. It came to life. Maintenance staff had apparently been ordered to partly unscrew the bulbs to keep utility costs down.

  The men executed the same maneuver a dozen or so times and the place was soon awash in glare.

  Shaw noted that the diminutive size of the room did not mean their task would be an easy one. It was packed with cabinets, cartons, wooden boxes, cases of what seemed to be antiquated medical instruments—even, he was amused to see, the same fifty-gallon drums of civil defense water they’d found at La Fleur’s sanctuary. Shelves were filled to overflowing with books, files and—eerily—organ and tissue samples in jars of what was probably formalin. Hearts and kidneys were especially popular.

  The brothers paused. Footsteps sounded not too far away. A creak too, like a janitor’s cart whose wheels needed oiling. It faded.

  They resumed their search.

  Where would Amos Gahl have hidden his courier bag?

  While Russell began with filing cabinets—easily picking the simple locks—Shaw stepped back against the wall and gazed over the room.

  The trick to finding something that’s been hidden in plain sight is to look for what’s just a bit out of order. Like those puzzles in the magazines he and his siblings would read when they were children: Spotting what was the difference between two adjacent cartoons or drawings. What’s wrong with this picture?

  What was out of place in this chamber of outmoded instruments, cold soggy organs and dusty faded treatises on medical practices and procedures that had most likely become outmoded a year after they were published?

  He circled slowly.

  What’s wrong with this picture?

  Shaw stopped.

  “Russell.”

  His brother looked toward him and then at what Shaw was gesturing toward.

  High on a sturdy gray shelf containing scores of medical treatises, one object stood out. It appeared to be the spine of a book, though wider and taller than the others. Yet the brown leather did not bear any title, author or other information.

  Russell, the taller of the two, slipped it from the shelf.

  Was this the pot of gold?

  It turned out to be a large briefcase that opened from the top.

  “Courier bag?” Shaw asked.

  “Hmm.”

  He started to open the bag, but his brother touched his arm. “No.” The creaking had resumed. “Not here.”

  39

  As soon as the brothers had left the hospital, they walked to the Quigley Square Diner, not far away. It was a please-seat-yourself establishment and soon they were sitting across from each other in a booth. They’d bought sandwiches neither was interested in—rent for the booth.

  In the deserted back portion of the place, Russell ran a nitrate detector over the case to sense for explosives.

  Never assume an object that’s been in your enemy’s possession is harmless.

  No unstable substances were present.

  Then he scanned it for transmitters. This too was negative.

  Russell picked the lock securing the top flap of the case in five seconds and popped it open.

  A laminated card was inside.

  Property of BlackBridge Corporate Solutions, Inc.

  And there was a number below with the request to please return if found.

  The brothers shared a look.

  Then they began to unearth the contents.

  The top layers consisted of folded copies of San Francisco Chronicles and Peoples and Times from years ago.

  Then, like the archeological sites Margot Keller was so adept at excavating, things got more interesting the farther down you went.

  Beneath the innocuous periodicals were hundreds of documents—both photocopies and originals. Most were corporate or financial in nature: spreadsheets, balance sheets, contracts for services and goods, maps, memos about cash transfers, real estate plots, shipping schedules, accounts receivable, along with various contracts.

  They found a series of draft bills for some bodies of legislature, something that Gahl, the historian, had discovered in his job as a researcher for BlackBridge, Shaw guessed. Probably they’d been drafted for a governmental client of the company, one who—they gathered as they read through the papers—favored eliminating regulations on the environment, manufacturing and banking. Shaw read one that proposed redefining probable cause in criminal matters to make it far easier for the police to get warrants and detain suspects. Another proposed bill eased the burden of getting permission for surveillance. The authoritarian nature of the documents was troubling.

  They continued to dig, briefly examining each piece of paper: more spreadsheets, some documents that were quite old, one more than a hundred years.

  Shaw finally came to the bottom of the courier bag.

  Nothing referred to the “Endgame Sanction.”

  He did note, though, a bulge on the inside of the case—there was what seemed to be a hidden compartment, sealed at the top with Velcro. Shaw looked at Russell, who nodded.

  Shaw pulled the flap open with a tearing sound, and looked into the space.

  Bingo . . .

  He extracted an old-style cassette player. Inside was a tape of the sort that could be played in a Walkman or similar device from the 1980s. There were no batteries, which was fortunate. After all these years, they would have corroded and chemical leakage might have destroyed the tape itself.

  Russell left Shaw and walked across the street to a bodega. He returned with a package of AA batteries. Shaw loaded them in and, glancing once at his brother, hit rewind. Th
e unit worked.

  So. This was the moment.

  What was on the tape? Was it the Endgame Sanction itself? A recording of a secret meeting about it? The contents might put all the other documentation in the bag in context, answer clues, tie everything together.

  Devastating . . .

  When the tape was at the beginning and the rewind button popped up, Russell hesitated a moment and pushed the play button.

  40

  Suddenly rock music poured out, loud. And tinny, given the small speaker.

  A few customers glanced their way.

  Russell turned the volume down. “Black Eyed Peas,” he said.

  “That’s a group?”

  A nod.

  Fast-forward.

  “Beyoncé.”

  Fast-forward.

  “Ludacris.”

  “What’s ludicrous?” Shaw asked.

  Russell eyed his brother. “You don’t get out much, do you?”

  Fast-forward.

  “Mariah Carey.”

  Shaw: “I know her. Some Christmas song, right?”

  On and on. Pausing at the end of each tune to listen for a voice explaining what the Sanction was, why it would be disastrous if it were to come into Jonathan Devereux’s possession.

  But no, there was just a gap of static and then the next song would begin.

  Russell’s still eyes gazed at the player.

  They listened to the entire tape, both sides. Russell let it run all the way to the end and snap loudly off.

  “Hmm.”

  Shaw said, “What’s that technique called for hiding information in pictures and music?”

  “Steganography.” He was stroking his beard. “But that only works with digital media. Bytes of data. Analog?” A nod at the tape player. “No.”

  Shaw asked, “What about tracking? Something recorded over or under the music? Something we can’t hear, like a dog whistle. Can that be done?”

  Russell considered this. “Don’t know. I’ll see.” He looked up a number on his phone and called.

  A moment later he was saying, “It’s me . . . You free? . . . I’m going to play some music clips. Tell me if there’s anything out of detectable audio range.” He listened for a moment. Then: “No project number . . . I know. I’ll work it out later.”

  Perhaps a reference to the fact he was using the group’s resources for a very non-group operation.

  He set the phone beside the speaker and pressed play. It was a country western song. After a minute he stopped and fast-forwarded the tape. He played another sixty seconds or so of a different song. He did this a half-dozen more times.

  “You got that?” Russell said into his phone. Then he was listening to the person on the other end of the line. “’K.” He disconnected. “She’ll get back to us.”

  Five minutes later, after the brothers had gone through the contents of the courier bag once more and found nothing that even suggested the words endgame or sanction, Russell’s phone hummed. He took the call. As usual, his face gave nothing away. When he disconnected he told his brother, “Nothing she could pick up. She’s going to try a deeper analysis. But it doesn’t look likely. High frequency on analog is not a known technique.”

  Shaw suspected Russell’s group was quite well versed in all the known techniques.

  “Karin?”

  “No.”

  Shaw asked, “Could the names of the music groups spell out something? Or the songs.”

  The suggestion even sounded lame. But they tried. Russell knew most of the groups, though only about half of the songs. After five minutes of playing the anagram game, they gave up.

  “The lining?”

  A nod.

  Shaw set the bag in his lap and, after making sure no one was near, opened his razor-sharp locking-blade knife. He cut into the cloth linings. He put the knife away and reached inside. The search was in vain.

  “Microchip?” Shaw asked his brother.

  “Hmm. I can order a scan. Doubt it.”

  The men found themselves looking at the please-call-if-found tag.

  They shared a glance.

  “Maybe,” Russell said. His own knife appeared. It seemed the brothers both owned Benchmade folding knives, among the best on the market. Shaw’s was a Bugout. Russell’s was the Anthem model, costing about three hundred dollars more.

  Russell used the blade to slit the tag and slowly pulled the lamination away from the cardboard.

  He found nothing.

  He dropped the tag and wire inside the courier bag and folded up the knife, put it away.

  Shaw suggested, “The newspapers and magazines?” He explained: maybe there was something marked in an article, or several of them, that could point them in some direction.

  “Possible.”

  “But back at the safe house,” Shaw said, looking around. “We’ve been here too long.”

  “Agree.”

  The men gathered up their booty and left the diner.

  On the way to Russell’s SUV, Shaw voiced what had been in the back of his mind from the moment the first arrows hissed their way from Earnest La Fleur’s bow: “Percentage chance that Gahl was unstable and paranoid? He never had the Sanction at all. Ash—and Braxton and Droon—just thought he did.”

  Russell didn’t put a number on it but he said the exact word that Shaw was thinking: “High. Too high.”

  Which meant that what their father had perished for was not evidence to bring down one of the most ruthless corporations on earth, or this mysterious Endgame Sanction.

  Ashton Shaw had died for a greatest-hits mixtape.

  41

  Was that the car? The green Honda?

  “Turn left. Fast.”

  Russell, behind the wheel of the big SUV, apparently trusted his brother’s instincts. He spun the wheel hard, braking a little. Shaw would have gone faster.

  Ahead, two blocks away he saw a green car reverse fast into an alley.

  “There. I think that’s her. Catch her.”

  “Her?” Russell asked.

  Shaw hadn’t told him that the driver following him was a blond woman. He mentioned this now, leaving out the “hot” part.

  The SUV picked up speed and approached the alley the Honda had zipped into.

  “When you get to the mouth, turn but don’t drive in.”

  “Why?”

  “She may have left a booby trap.”

  “These windows are bulletproof.”

  “What about the tires?” Shaw explained about the nails the woman had scattered earlier.

  Russell lifted an eyebrow then skidded the vehicle to a stop.

  Yes, a blanket of nails littered the front of the alley. Ahead of them, several blocks away, the car vanished into traffic.

  “They have big heads,” Russell said.

  Shaw looked at his brother.

  “The nails. They’re roofing nails. You run over average nails, they stay flat. These, when the tire hits them, the points turn up, and into the tread.” He knocked the Navigator into reverse. “You have no idea who she is?”

  “Might be related to a job I did in Silicon Valley a couple of weeks ago. Made some enemies in the high-tech world.”

  Russell backed up and turned toward Alvarez.

  “Keep an eye out when you’re on your bike. She throws some in front of you, at speed, you’ll set it down. Won’t be good.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  He parked two blocks away, not far from the coffee shop where Shaw had first seen Russell, though he hadn’t known it at the time. Shaw was keeping his cycle locked here too, away from the safe house—in case someone had made one of the vehicles and traced it.

  Inside, Shaw lifted Amos Gahl’s courier bag onto the kitchen table and divided its contents into
two piles.

  He pushed one toward Russell and kept the other. The two men began reading through each sheet of paper carefully once more. Were there helpful notes in the margin? Were passages circled? Was a magazine opened to a certain article, a newspaper folded in a particular way?

  Had Amos Gahl, who apparently loved his puzzles, been cautious and coy once again, using these publications and other documents to send a message about what the Sanction was?

  Shaw thought again about the word sanction.

  Permission. Punishment.

  Or just a meaningless code name?

  But poring over the contents uncovered no clues, no codes, no secrets subtle or obvious.

  After an hour, both men sat back. “Maybe he just liked to read the news,” Shaw said.

  They sat in silence for a moment. Shaw gazed at the cassette recorder and, after collecting his tool kit from his backpack, unscrewed the back. Nothing inside but solid state electronics. He used a magnifier on the cassette itself but could see no writing or code. The labels on each side, which were blank, were glued tightly to the plastic; they couldn’t be pried up to reveal a message hidden beneath them without tearing the paper.

  Nodding at the stack of papers, Shaw said, “I’m not accepting it.”

  Russell glanced his way.

  “That this is just somebody’s imagination. It’s real, the Sanction. And it’s here.” Pointing at the material on the table.

  “You making that assumption?”

  “Call it that.”

  After a pause Russell said, “I agree.”

  “So. We’ll have to go through everything—”

  Just then a persistent beep came from Russell’s phone.

  Instantly he was on his feet. His hand was near his weapon. “Have a sensor, front door. Somebody’s picking the lock.”

  Shaw drew his Glock and crept to the closest window. “Droon, plus an entry team, five, six. Long guns too. How’d they make us?”