Trust Me

by Abbott, Jeff

  ‘Are you working for the State Department?’

  ‘I told you, the Book Club doesn’t exist any more.’

  ‘Okay.’ Henry thought, so Drummond’s working for someone who wants to flush out terrorists and for some reason is off the books. It could be the FBI, it could be CIA operating illicitly on American soil … what? He didn’t know. Drummond and Clifford had both been mercenaries at heart. ‘How did Clifford find this seller of information?’

  ‘We’d been following extremist movements over here. Trying to apply pressure to people who want to leave the dark side,’ Drummond said. ‘Bridger mentioned to Clifford that he knew details on an impending attack codenamed Hellfire.’

  The years of planning and waiting demanded that Henry not blink, not swallow, not betray the jolt of heat that pounded through his body and brain. This was not trust, Drummond sharing information. It was a trial by fire. He could feel Drummond studying his face for the merest reaction. He blinked, once, and hoped he had not betrayed himself. ‘Hellfire. Sounds religious.’

  ‘I don’t think these are Baptist terrorists, Henry. If you know anything about this, whatever Luke’s gotten involved in, you and I can deal. But now’s the time.’

  ‘I don’t know anything.’

  ‘The day after Clifford gets killed, a bomb goes off in Ripley, Texas. I’m sure you saw that on the news.’

  ‘Ripley was Hellfire?’

  ‘Bridger made Hellfire sound much bigger than a single bomb. Much bigger. More than one city attacked.’

  ‘I can’t help you. I know nothing, except that Luke is not a terrorist.’

  ‘No, Luke has just consistently reached out to freaks and people who hate. But he’s not a terrorist, no.’ A smile flicked on Drummond’s face. ‘What did you make him into, Henry? Now, Warren, he knew how to be a father. I think you just know how to be a screw-up.’

  ‘You judging me. Where were you again when our friends died? Those rehab places all sound alike to me.’ Henry kept his gaze locked on Drummond’s eyes and to his satisfaction he saw he’d scored a hit.

  Drummond lifted and inspected a photo of Luke, his mother and Henry from the desk. A happier time, the photo taken at a vacation in Hawaii a year before the car crash that killed Barbara. Their smiles glowed. He set the photo down. ‘If you’re hiding him, don’t. Give him to me. If he’s innocent or he’s been pulled into this against his will, we’ll help him and he’ll go home with a clean slate. If he’s guilty, then we find out what this Hellfire bullshit is and we stop it cold.’

  Drummond’s tactic was nothing but playing nice cop before he played bad cop again. ‘I do not know where he is.’

  ‘The world you and your stepson are in is a little too small for my liking, Henry. You and Luke Dantry and Allen Clifford, all mixing it up years after we said our goodbyes. Sit there. Move and you get cut.’ Then Drummond proceeded to search the study with a professional’s keen efficiency. Henry sat, calmly, blanketing the rage inside him with a knowing half-smile. Nothing to link him to the Night Road, or to Hellfire, was here. Let Drummond look.

  When he was done, Drummond stood. The frustration in his eyes was a knife that Henry could twist.

  ‘You’ve kept Clifford’s name out of the paper,’ Henry said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you are with the government.’

  Drummond didn’t answer but he wanted to prove his power, Henry could see. Proving his power, his superiority, had always been Drummond’s weakness.

  From his jacket, Drummond pulled out a photo and pushed it under Henry’s nose. The photo appeared to be from a video camera mounted in a police car, aimed out the front windshield. It was a single shot, an officer talking to two men sitting in a BMW, a traffic stop. The ticket Luke had gotten in Mirabeau, Henry realized. He recognized the grainy profile of a man in the passenger seat. Eric Lindoe.

  If he finds Eric, Drummond could find his connection to me, Henry thought. Keep the lies simple. ‘That’s Luke at the wheel, I don’t know who the other man is. Why hasn’t this photo been released to the press?’

  Drummond ignored the question and tapped the photo. ‘It’s not a good enough shot to ID his face, but we’ll find out who he is. I understand the last time you saw Luke was at the Austin airport. We’ll nab all the video feeds from there as well.’

  He knew then that whoever employed Drummond and Clifford would identify and find Eric Lindoe; it might just be a matter of hours. Maybe a couple of days. His world was unraveling. ‘This proves Luke is innocent … he must have been forced …’

  ‘Proves nothing. Innocent of pulling a trigger, perhaps, but Luke drove the car. Someone destroyed the Book Club before. Someone seems to be trying again. You and I shouldn’t sleep too good. Maybe we’re next.’

  ‘The plane flight - they were collateral damage. Ace Beere’ - the private jet mechanic who had tampered with the plane’s flight system so everyone on the flight died from hypoxia -‘he was trying to get revenge on his employer. Not the Book Club. We weren’t the targets.’

  ‘Lucky, that you and Clifford and me couldn’t make the trip.’

  ‘I always thought so,’ Henry said.

  Drummond crossed his arms. ‘I need to understand Luke. Then I can figure out what his next move might be.’

  Henry saw that the questions Drummond asked might reveal more than he intended. He nodded. ‘What do you want to know? I’ll tell you just to help Luke. You promise you won’t hurt him.’

  ‘I promise. After his father’s death, Luke Dantry vanished for seven weeks.’

  ‘He ran away from home. He walked and hitchhiked south.’

  ‘His mother must have been frantic. Good thing you were there to comfort her.’ Drummond raised an eyebrow.

  ‘A dear friendship and a good marriage came out of Luke’s running,’ Henry said evenly. ‘Luke went to Cape Hatteras.’

  ‘It doesn’t take seven weeks to walk or hitchhike from Washington to Cape Hatteras. Where was he during those seven weeks?’

  ‘Mourning. Hiding from the world.’

  ‘He was living on the streets.’

  ‘He was only fourteen. But Warren had taught him to be rather independent. When the police found him he was sitting on the beach at the cape, staring out at sea where his father’s plane went down. He’d been sitting on the sand for two days, watching the sea. Someone noticed him and called the police.’

  ‘Pining for the dead at this level doesn’t sound quite normal.’

  Henry loathed Drummond’s dismissive tone but he decided it might be a goad, a prod to make him talk more than he should. ‘Luke was extremely close to his - to Warren. You know how much everyone loved Warren.’

  ‘Didn’t we all.’ Drummond tilted his head. ‘Luke never called his mom to say he was safe?’

  ‘No. He should have. Luke had a tough time of it. He ran out of cash; he’d only taken a hundred dollars with him. His face was all over the Virginia papers then; people were looking for him. He figured out how to blend in, how to hide, how to survive on the run.’

  ‘I never thought of concealment as a genetic trait. His father was good at staying under the radar, too.’ Drummond rested the knife against his leg. ‘This kid spent seven weeks evading the police and the detectives that your wife hired to find him. All without money or resources. And now he’s hiding again.’

  Henry’s mouth thinned. A twist of pride in Luke filled his chest. ‘If he doesn’t want to be found, you won’t find him.’ I will find him first, he thought. And then I’ll have Mouser kill you with your own knife, you insufferable bastard.

  ‘Are you using this kid to settle old scores? Let’s be honest. You hated me, you hated Warren, you hated everyone in the Book Club.’

  ‘That’s not true …’

  ‘Isn’t it? We all thought you hated us.’

  ‘Hardly. I made the Book Club happen.’

  ‘Maybe. But Warren Dantry made it succeed.’

  Henry shook his head slowly. The
words, and the truth, couldn’t hurt him any more. The Book Club was dead and he’d won. ‘Some success. A bunch of thinkers and thugs that no one paid much attention to in the first place.’

  ‘And now your stepson …’

  ‘He’s my son!’ Henry snapped. An awful silence descended between the two men.

  Drummond’s lips curled in a sneer. ‘You really did step into Warren Dantry’s life. His career. His wife. His son. My God, I guess you got over your hatred for him. How do Warren’s shoes fit you, Henry?’

  Henry breathed slowly, counted to ten, etched a half-smile on his face. He had never wanted to kill anyone as badly as he wanted to kill Drummond. He quelled the rage. ‘You know if I knew, I would tell you, because then I could help you find Luke. That’s all I want. Luke to be found and home safe.’

  Drummond tented his fingers with the air of a man with a final card to play. ‘I’ll find him. Before the police do. He’s going to talk to me.’ Drummond stood. ‘It might be best, Henry, if you allowed yourself to be placed under my protection.’

  If he was kept under watch, the first wave of attacks might fail and then Hellfire would not happen. And no way he could find Luke or Eric Lindoe or the fifty million. ‘Some protection, you with a knife at my throat.’

  Drummond laughed. ‘Yes. But no one else would get a knife near you.’

  Henry swallowed down the tickle of bile at the back of his throat. ‘I stay here. If he comes here - my son needs me.’ A wave of dizziness flushed through his brain.

  ‘Stay in touch, Henry. I will.’ Drummond handed Henry a plain white card, with a Manhattan address handwritten in black ink, with a phone number below. ‘Henry. I don’t want to see Warren’s kid hurt, if he’s innocent. But if he’s not, if he killed Clifford, nothing you do can protect him. We just want to know why.’

  ‘I want to know why, too.’ And it was true.

  ‘Henry, this has just been great. I love reunions.’ He fixed a steely glare on Henry. ‘If you decide there’s a greater truth you’re not telling me, call me. Because I’m going to find this kid, and I’m going to find out the truth of what he’s been working on. You don’t want me pissed at you.’

  Henry said nothing.

  Drummond left, this time out the front door. Henry slammed it behind him.

  He stayed at the front window until Drummond had driven away. Drummond isn’t going to let this go, he thought. He wondered who Drummond’s employer was - a private concern, he’d said. What did that mean?

  Henry dug out his cell phone and called the cabin rental number in Braintree, Texas that he’d gotten earlier from Snow and Mouser. The number was posted on the gate to the road that led to the cabin. If Clifford had rented that cabin - if it wasn’t coincidence, he had to find out who Clifford was freelancing for.

  ‘Good morning, Braintree Park Rentals.’ A bright cheery voice answered the phone.

  ‘Yes. Good morning. A coworker of mine said he was renting cabin number three, I believe, and he’s not been answering his cell phone, and I wanted to know if he had shown up there.’

  ‘Mr Clifford? I saw him at the beginning of the week.’

  The very dead Allen Clifford had rented the cabin Luke had been taken to. ‘But not since?’

  ‘People come out here to escape the world,’ the clerk said. ‘Maybe he just turned his cell phone off.’

  ‘Did he charge the cabin to the corporate card?’

  ‘Yes, sir, but I can’t give out details, I’m not allowed.’

  Henry didn’t give up. ‘Did he give a billing address?’

  ‘Yes. In New York. Who is this?’

  ‘Oh. Was it this address?’ He read off the address on the card Drummond had given him.

  ‘Yes, sir, that’s it.’ The clerk’s hesitancy vanished. Henry could almost imagine him smiling.

  ‘We have several firms under the umbrella, so to speak, which company did he charge it to?’

  ‘Quicksilver Risk.’

  ‘Thank you so much.’

  ‘Did you want to leave a message for Mr Clifford? I can go up to the cabin.’

  ‘No, that’s fine. He’s not supposed to be using a corporate card for his vacation but it’s not a problem, we know he’ll reimburse us. Thanks so much.’ Henry hung up.

  Quicksilver Risk.

  Henry glided back onto the web and found the company’s website. It was chrome-colored and discreet in the manner of the most expensive consultants. Only a mission statement and a trio of principals. Allen Clifford, hired muscle for the Book Club, was one. The other two were former professors, but with business backgrounds in risk assessment. They hadn’t been part of the Book Club. No listing of clients. No listing of fees. No mention of ties to the government. It said that they’d helped Fortune 500 companies assess the risk of providing relief after the Boxing Day tsunami, after Katrina, after the chaos in a few African countries that had contested elections.

  He tried the phone number. He got the voicemail, left a message for Allen Clifford. ‘Hey, Allen,’ he said to the dead man’s machine, ‘it’s Henry Shawcross, haven’t talked to you in a while, I’d like to catch up. See what you’re up to. Give me a call.’ He left a number. Hopefully someone at the firm would start returning Clifford’s calls and he could ask more questions.

  ‘What dirty work were you up to?’ he said to Allen Clifford’s photo.

  The doorbell rang.

  At his feet lay an overnight package, flat, in a large thick plastic envelope. Luke’s condo was the return address.

  He weighed the package in his hand, listened to every side of it. Light. No ticking sound, although that meant nothing with digital detonators. He carefully opened the box.

  Inside was another package. It had been sent first to the American transport company for delivery in the United States, but had originated in France. Paris. An address he didn’t recognize.

  Without opening the inner package, he Googled the Paris address. It was a postal shop in the Saint Germain district, the kind where you might rent a mailbox.

  Inside was a cell phone. Plain, cheap, the prepaid kind. A card attached to it read FOR HENRY’S EAR ONLY.

  He turned the phone on.

  He very badly wanted a shot of whiskey. He was afraid what news the phone would bring. He was afraid of how the day could darken. But the phone had to be a positive, yes? It must be the kidnapper, reaching out to him. The phone was a blessing if Drummond was monitoring his calls. He had to assume they were. Drummond knew how to tap lines, bug rooms - he’d done it for years when Henry worked with him.

  He put the phone into his pocket and went to get his whiskey, his mind blazing with confusion. Things that should not be intersecting were. The Book Club, Luke, Hellfire, the long and still hot hatred for Luke’s father. A hatred he had worked hard to mask, every day, when he was around Barbara and Luke. It had been hard, keeping his acid loathing bottled up. Warren Goddamned Dantry. Warren was a know-it-all and a know-nothing, all at once. Even now the thought of Warren Dantry made Henry quake with fury, with disgust.

  Warren made the Book Club work, Drummond had said.

  A lie. A complete lie. ‘I brought him in, I brought you all in,’ Henry said to the empty kitchen. His hand shook slightly as he poured, and the glass tinkled. He ran a finger along his neck, convincing himself that Drummond had left no mark. He would have to call Snow and Mouser, warn them that Hellfire - at the very least the code name - had been leaked, that if Bridger was found Snow was in danger of being exposed, and that Drummond was hunting Eric and Luke, just as they were. If they chose to withdraw, he could do nothing to compel them.

  But then he would have to start the Night Road all over again. The Ripley operation’s advantage of distraction would be lost, rendered to nothing like the chlorine in the rain. Or else he’d have no choice but to run, from the prince’s throat-cutting wrath, since his fifty million was either locked in an inaccessible account, had been moved to Switzerland or had vanished into the ether.
/>   Then he heard a quiet trill. He opened the phone.

  ‘Henry Shawcross.’ It was a British woman.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You may call me Jane, for the purposes of our discussion. I thought given time to miss your stepson, you might reconsider my offer.’

  This woman was the mastermind. The boss. Relief flooded him; now he could strike a deal. ‘I want to know where Luke is.’

  ‘Shame on you, shoveling the blame on poor Luke. I suspected you were a truly despicable person and, my God, you didn’t disappoint.’ She laughed. Laughed at him, a teasing giggle.

  ‘You have made enemies with the wrong people, young woman.’

  ‘Have I? It’s more that you have made the wrong friends. That nasty billionaire who played dress-up in the London park and offered fifty million to you while the pigeons danced for the crumbs at his feet. I heard your every word.’ She laughed again, silvery, and a cold fist closed on Henry’s heart.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Transfer the fifty million to a numbered account and you’ll get Luke back.’

  She didn’t know that the passwords to the accounts had been changed and he couldn’t access the millions. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have bothered with the call.

  ‘I want to speak to Luke.’

  ‘I don’t give the goodies without the cash. You can let him yell at you after the funds are delivered.’

  ‘No, now.’ Jane might be desperately bluffing, to get him to release the money that he couldn’t touch. Nausea and rage swept through him. ‘Why did you have Eric kill Allen Clifford?’

  ‘Oh, so many questions, so little time,’ Jane said. ‘I don’t have to answer anything, love, that’s what power is. Never having to explain yourself. Now. The money for Luke. Do I need to spell it out with pictures?’

  ‘You’ll kill Luke anyway.’ An ache suffused his entire body.

  ‘Actually, we won’t. We’ll let him go. He’ll be your problem, won’t he?’ And Jane gave the cruelest laugh he’d ever heard. ‘How exactly will you explain your refusal to help him? What you are, what you’ve done? Should we tell him to ask about what happened to his sweet mother?’