by Lee Child
No reaction.
“Leaders?”
“Go on.”
“Al Qaeda is using women leaders?”
“They’re using whatever works.”
“Doesn’t seem plausible.”
“That’s what they want us to think. They want us searching for men that don’t exist.”
I said nothing.
“Go on,” he said.
“OK, the one who calls herself Svetlana fought with the mujahideen and knew you captured the VAL rifle from Grigori Hoth. They used Hoth’s name and his story to get sympathy over here.”
“Because?”
“Because now Al Qaeda wants documentary proof of whatever else it was that you guys were doing that night.”
“Go on.”
“Which Sansom got a big medal for. So it must have looked pretty good, once upon a time, way back when. But now you’re worried about exposure. So I’m assuming it wouldn’t look so good anymore.”
“Go on.”
“Sansom is miserable, but the government has got its panties in a wad, too. So it’s both personal and political.”
“Go on.”
“Did you get a medal that night?”
“The Superior Service Medal.”
“Which comes directly from the Secretary of Defense.”
Springfield nodded. “A nice little bauble, for a lowly sergeant.”
“So the trip was more political than military.”
“Obviously. We weren’t officially at war with anyone at the time.”
“You know the Hoths killed four people, and probably Susan Mark’s son too, right?”
“We don’t know it. But we suspect it.”
“So why haven’t you busted them?”
“I work security for a Congressman. I can’t bust anyone.”
“Those feds could.”
“Those feds work in mysterious ways. Apparently they consider the Hoths to be A-grade enemy combatants, and a very significant target, and extremely dangerous, but not currently operational.”
“Which means what?”
“Which means that right now there’s more to be gained by leaving them in place.”
“Which actually means they can’t find them.”
“Of course.”
“You happy about that?”
“The Hoths don’t have the memory stick, or they wouldn’t still be looking for it. So I don’t really care either way.”
“I think you should,” I said.
“You think that’s their place? Where you were?”
“This block or the next.”
“I think this one,” he said. “Those feds searched their hotel suite. While they were out.”
“Lila told me.”
“They had shopping bags. Like window dressing. To make the place look right.”
“I saw them.”
“Two from Bergdorf Goodman, and two from Tiffany. Those stores are close together, about a block from those old buildings. If their base was on the block east of Park, they’d have gone to Bloomingdales instead. Because they weren’t really shopping. They just wanted accessories in their suite, to fool people.”
“Good point,” I said.
“Don’t go looking for the Hoths,” Springfield said.
“You worried about me now?”
“You could lose two ways around. They’re going to think the same as us, that even if you don’t have the stick, then somehow you know where it went. And they might be even more vicious and persuasive than we are.”
“And?”
“They might actually tell you what’s on it. In which case from our point of view you would become a loose end.”
“How bad is it?”
“I’m not ashamed. But Major Sansom would be embarrassed.”
“And the United States.”
“That too.”
The waiter came back and inquired as to whether we needed anything else. Springfield said yes. He reordered for both of us. Which meant he had more to talk about. He said, “Run down exactly what happened on the train.”
“Why weren’t you there, instead of the chief of staff? It was more like your line of work than his.”
“It came on us fast. I was in Texas, with Sansom. Raising money. We didn’t have time for proper deployment.”
“Why didn’t the feds have someone on the train?”
“They did. They had two people on the train. Two women. Undercover, borrowed from the FBI. Special Agents Rodriguez and Mbele. You blundered into the wrong car and rode with them all the way.”
“They were good,” I said. And they were. The Hispanic woman, small, hot, tired, her supermarket bag wrapped around her wrist. The West African woman in the batik dress. “They were very good. But how did you all know she was going to take that train?”
“We didn’t,” Springfield said. “It was a huge operation. A big scramble. We knew she was in a car. So we had people waiting at the tunnels. The idea was to follow her from there, to wherever she was going.”
“Why wasn’t she arrested on the Pentagon steps?”
“There was a short debate. Those feds won it. They wanted to roll up the whole chain in one go. And they might have.”
“If I hadn’t screwed it up.”
“You said it.”
“She didn’t have the memory stick. So nothing was going to get rolled up anyway.”
“She left the Pentagon with it, and it isn’t in her house or her car.”
“You sure about that?”
“Her house has been torn down to the slab and I could eat the largest remaining part of her car.”
“How well did they search the subway train?”
“Car number 7622 is still in the yards at 207th Street. They say it might take a month or more to rebuild.”
“What the hell was on that memory stick?”
Springfield didn’t answer.
One of the captured phones in my pocket started to vibrate.
Chapter 62
I pulled all three phones out of my pocket and laid them on the table. One of them was skittering around, an eighth of an inch at a time. Vigorous vibration. Its window said Restricted Call. I opened it up and put it to my ear and said, “Hello?”
Lila Hoth asked, “Are you still in New York?”
I said, “Yes.”
“Are you near the Four Seasons?”
I said, “Not very.”
“Go there now. I left a package for you at the desk.”
I asked, “When?”
But the line went dead.
I glanced at Springfield and said, “Wait here.” Then I hustled out to the lobby. Saw no retreating back heading for the door. The scene was tranquil. The greeter in the tail coat was standing idle. I walked to the desk and gave my name and asked if they were holding anything for me. A minute later I had an envelope in my hands. It had my name handwritten across the front in thick black letters. It had Lila Hoth’s name up in the top left corner, where the return address would be. I asked the desk clerk when it had been delivered. He said more than an hour ago.
I asked, “Did you see who dropped it off?”
“A foreign gentleman.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“No, sir.”
The envelope was padded, about six inches by nine. It was light. It had something stiff in it. Round, and maybe five inches in diameter. I carried it back to the tea room and sat down again with Springfield. He said, “From the Hoths?”
I nodded.
He said, “It could be full of anthrax spores.”
“Feels more like a CD,” I said.
“Of what?”
“Afghan folk music, maybe.”
“I hope not,” he said. “I’ve heard Afghan folk music. At length and up close.”
“You want me to wait to open it?”
“Until when?”
“Until you’re out of range.”
“I’ll take the risk.”
So I tore open
the envelope and shook it. A single disc spilled out and made a plastic sound against the wood of the table.
“A CD,” I said.
“A DVD actually,” Springfield said.
It was home-made. It was a blank disc manufactured by Memorex. The words Watch This had been written across the label side with a black permanent marker. Same handwriting as the envelope. Same pen. Lila Hoth’s handwriting and Lila Hoth’s pen, presumably.
I said, “I don’t have a DVD player.”
“So don’t watch it.”
“I think I have to.”
“What happened on the train?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can play DVDs on a computer. Like people watch movies on their laptops on airplanes.”
“I don’t have a computer.”
“Hotels have computers.”
“I don’t want to stay here.”
“There are other hotels in the city.”
“Where are you staying?”
“The Sheraton. Where we were before.”
So Springfield paid our tea-room bill with a platinum credit card and we walked from the Four Seasons to the Sheraton. The second time I had made that trip. It took just as long. Crowded sidewalks, people moving slow in the heat. It was one o’clock in the afternoon, and very warm. I was watching for cops the whole way, which didn’t aid our progress. But we got there in the end. The plasma screen in the lobby listed a whole bunch of events. The ballroom was booked by a trade association. Something to do with cable television. Which made me think of the National Geographic Channel, and the silverback gorilla.
Springfield opened the door to the business center with his key card. He didn’t come in with me. He told me he would wait in the lobby, and then he walked away. Three of the four work stations were occupied. Two women, one man, all of them in dark suits, all of them with leather briefcases propped open and spilling paper. I took the empty chair and set about trying to figure out how to play a DVD on a computer. I found a slot on the tower unit that looked fit for the purpose. I pushed the disc in and met with some temporary resistance and then a motor whirred and the unit sucked at the disc and pulled it from my grasp.
Nothing much happened for five seconds. Just a lot of stopping and starting and whirring. Then a big window opened on the screen. It was blank. But it had a graphic in the bottom corner. Like a picture of a DVD player’s buttons. Play, pause, fast forward, rewind, skip. I moved the mouse and the pointer arrow changed to a chubby little hand as it passed over the buttons.
The phone in my pocket started to vibrate.
Chapter 63
I took the phone out of my pocket and opened it up. Glanced around the room. My three temporary colleagues were all hard at work. One had a bar chart on her screen. Columns of bold bright colors, some of them high, some of them low. The man was reading e-mail. The other woman was typing fast.
I put the phone to my ear and said, “Hello.”
Lila Hoth asked, “Have you got it yet?”
I said, “Yes.”
“Have you watched it yet?”
“No.”
“I think you should.”
“Why?”
“You’ll find it educational.”
I glanced again at the occupants of the room and asked, “Is there sound on it?”
“No, it’s a silent movie. Unfortunately. It would be better with sound.”
I didn’t answer.
She asked, “Where are you?”
“In a hotel business center.”
“The Four Seasons?”
“No.”
“Are there computers in the business center?”
“Yes.”
“You can play a DVD on a computer, you know.”
“So I was told.”
“Can anyone else see the screen?”
I didn’t answer.
“Play it,” she said. “I’ll stay on the line. I’ll do a commentary. Like a special edition.”
I didn’t answer.
She said, “Like a director’s cut,” and laughed a little.
I moved the mouse and put the chubby little hand over the play button. It waited there, patiently.
I clicked the mouse.
The tower unit made more whirring sounds and the blank window on the screen lit up and showed two distorted horizontal lines. They flashed twice and then the picture settled to a wide-angle view of an open outdoor space. It was night. The camera was steady. Mounted high on a tripod, I guessed. The scene was brightly lit by harsh halogen lights just out of shot. The color was raw. The space looked foreign. Beaten earth, a dark khaki tone. Small stones and one large rock. The rock was flat, bigger than a king-sized bed. It had been drilled and fitted with four iron rings. One at each corner.
There was a naked man tied to the rings. He was short and thin and wiry. He had olive skin and a black beard. He was maybe thirty years old. He was on his back, stretched into a wide X shape. The camera was positioned maybe a yard from his feet. At the top of the picture his head was jerking from side to side. His eyes were closed. His mouth was open. Tendons in his neck stood out like ropes.
He was screaming, but I couldn’t hear him.
It was a silent movie.
Lila Hoth spoke in my ear.
She asked, “What are you seeing?”
I said, “A guy on a slab.”
“Keep watching.”
“Who is he?”
“He was a taxi driver who ran an errand for an American journalist.”
The camera angle was about forty-five degrees, I guessed. It made the taxi driver’s feet look large and his head look small. He thrashed and bucked for a whole minute. He was raising his head and banging it down on the rock. Trying to knock himself out. Or trying to kill himself, maybe. No luck. A slender figure ducked into the shot at the top of the frame and slipped a folded square of cloth under the guy’s head. The figure was Lila Hoth. No question about it. The video definition was not great, but there was no mistaking her. The hair, the eyes, the way she moved.
The square of cloth was probably a towel.
I said, “I just saw you.”
“With the pad? It’s necessary, to avoid self-inflicted injury. And it puts their heads at an angle. It tempts them to look.”
“At what?”
“Keep watching.”
I glanced around the room. My three temporary colleagues were all still working. They were all focused hard on their own business.
On my screen nothing happened for close to twenty seconds. The taxi driver wailed away, silently. Then Svetlana Hoth stepped into the frame from the side. She was unmistakable, too. The fireplug body, the blunt steel-gray hair.
She had a knife in her hand.
She crawled up on the rock and squatted beside the guy. She stared up at the camera for a long second. Not vanity. She was judging its angle, trying not to block its view. She adjusted her position until she was crouching unobtrusively in the angle made by the guy’s left arm and the side of his chest.
The guy was staring at the knife.
Svetlana leaned forward and to her right and placed the tip of the blade on a spot about half-way between the guy’s groin and his navel. She pressed down. The guy jerked uncontrollably. A fat worm of blood welled out of the cut. The blood looked black under the lights. The guy screamed on and on. I could see that his mouth was forming words. No! and Please! are clear in any language.
“Where was this?” I asked.
Lila Hoth said, “Not far from Kabul.”
Svetlana moved the blade up toward the guy’s navel. Blood chased it all the way. She kept it moving. Like a surgeon or a wholesale butcher, casual and practiced and expert. She had made similar cuts many times before. The blade kept on moving. It stopped above the guy’s sternum.
Svetlana put the knife down.
She used her index finger and traced the line of the cut. Blood lubricated its progress. She pressed down and put her finger right in the cut, to the
first knuckle. She slid it up and down. She paused occasionally.
Lila Hoth said, “She’s checking that she’s all the way through the muscle wall.”
I said, “How do you know? You can’t see these pictures.”
“I can hear your breathing.”
Svetlana picked up the knife again and returned to the places where her finger had paused. She used the tip of the blade quite delicately and nicked through what seemed to be minor obstructions.
Then she sat back.
The taxi driver’s belly was open, like a zipper had been pulled. The long straight cut gaped a little. The wall of muscle was ruptured. It was no longer able to hold back the pressure from inside.
Svetlana rocked forward again. She used both hands. She worked them into the cut and parted the skin quite carefully and rooted around inside. She was in there up to her wrists. She tensed and squared her shoulders.
She lifted out the guy’s intestines.
They made a shining, glistening pink mass about the size of a soft soccer ball. Coiled, sloppy, moving, wet and steaming.
She laid the mass on the guy’s chest, quite gently.
Then she slid off the rock and stepped out of the frame.
The camera’s unblinking eye stared on.
The taxi driver looked down in horror.
Lila Hoth said, “Now it’s just a matter of time. The cut doesn’t kill them. We don’t sever any important vessels. The bleeding stops quite fast. It’s about pain and shock and infection. The strong ones resist all three. They die of hypothermia, we think. Their core temperature is compromised, obviously. It depends on the weather. Our record is eighteen hours. People say they’ve seen two full days, but I don’t believe them.”
“You’re crazy, you know that?”
“That’s what Peter Molina said.”
“He saw this?”
“He’s on it. Keep watching. Fast forward, if you like. Without the sound it’s not so much fun anyway.”
I checked all around the room again. Three people, working hard. I put the fat hand on the fast forward button and clicked. The picture leapt into fast motion. The taxi driver’s head moved back and forth through a tiny jerky arc.
Lila Hoth said, “Normally we don’t do this one at a time. It’s better to have a sequence. The second guy waits until the first guy dies, and so on. It builds up the dread. You should see them, just willing the previous guy to live a minute longer. But eventually they die, and the spotlight moves on. That’s when they have heart attacks. You know, if they’re going to. If they’re susceptible. But we can’t always arrange a live sequence. That’s why we use the video now, for an approximation.”
