The Wrong Man (Complete 3-Book International Thriller Box Set)

by Fritz Galt

  He typed in Connors’ fax number and stood up, about to click the Send button when he heard a car pull up.

  From the sound of the footsteps, several people had jumped out.

  “Oh no.”

  He clicked the button to send the photos and quickly left the office.

  Bonnie’s bed lay unmade. Beyond it was a bathroom. The other door took him out to the living room. Only the kitchen separated him from the approaching footsteps.

  The doorbell rang impatiently.

  He treaded lightly to the front door that led down the long path to Corbett Avenue below. Suddenly, the back door crashed open.

  His movements masked by the sound, he let himself out the front door, shut it behind him and raced down the dark path. A shadowy object rose up in front of him, and before he could swerve, he had mowed down a man. He threw the man back against the wooden gate, where the guy cartwheeled over backward and landed with a moist splash in the grass.

  Ferrar continued charging forward, vaulting over the fence, and slipped down the stone steps toward Corbett. He encountered no resistance, and the man lying in the garden behind him had not yet pulled himself together.

  Sprinting down the curved, dewy road, he tried to put as much distance between himself and the intruders as he could. He soon found himself on a major street where commuters were descending from Twin Peaks into town for another day of work.

  A bus pulled up to a stop, and he poured on the speed to catch it.

  He threw his two quarters into the hopper beside the driver and turned to find a seat. The interior was well illuminated and many seats were empty. As the bus pulled away from the curb, he felt alone and exposed to the world.

  “Broken window, sir,” an agent called to Eddie from the back bedroom of the house on Twin Peaks.

  The team of agents had fanned out in the lighted house, calling out traces of evidence.

  “Front door is unlocked.”

  “The perp may have been in the computer room,” a voice rang out.

  Eddie rushed toward the agent who had said that. He found an egg-shaped iMac connected to a strange-looking thing. It was a roll of Tropical Fruit Lifesavers.

  On the screen, the last image in a column of three was being sent over the computer line.

  Eddie leaned in close and jotted down the telephone number in the onscreen message box. It had a DC area code.

  The connection finished and the telephone line clicked off.

  An agent came limping into the office holding his head.

  “I got jumped,” he said, groaning as he tried to explain what happened. “He came out the front door like a flash of lightning and bowled me over in the front yard. I must have cracked several vertebrae falling over the fence out there. I landed on my head. I swear it’s about to explode.”

  “Did you catch his face?” Eddie asked as the agent began to sway backward.

  “Ohh,” he yowled as two other men caught him by the arms and gently pulled him back onto the queen-sized bed.

  One agent leaned over the stricken man and tried to pat his face, but got no response. Another agent brought in a dripping towel from the bathroom.

  The injured man had gone completely pale, and his eyelids were fluttering. This had to be the work of Ferrar.

  Eddie shook his head at the pitiful domestic scene. “Call da ambulance,” he ordered. “I’m going after Ferrar.”

  He pocketed his notepad, sprang out of the room, and let himself cautiously out onto the front yard. The first blue of dawn filtered through foliage in the silent, dripping garden.

  He eased over the splinters of the fence where his agent had fallen, and followed the steps down to the road below. Encountering nobody, he headed for the main street, his thick legs churning furiously.

  As he reached the thoroughfare, a bus was just pulling away from the curb. He could make out several people onboard: an older woman in a woolen cap, some Hispanic cleaning ladies, a couple of men getting friendly with one another, and a young girl in a school uniform.

  A typical city bus.

  He leaned over, gasping for breath, and finally let his eyes drop to the notepad hanging from his pocket. Whose phone number was that in Washington?

  By the time the bus reached the second stop on Castro Street, the man was trying to force his tongue down Ferrar’s throat.

  Ferrar slapped him on the face. “Don’t get fresh,” he said. “Where is your sense of decency?”

  “Hey,” the young guy retorted, watching Ferrar stand to leave. “Where’s your prick?”

  Ferrar pressed outward on the side door and let himself off the bus and onto the sidewalk.

  An indigo streak was beginning to glow in the eastern sky.

  He had a lot of work to do that day and strode briskly toward Union Square. In the refreshing breeze, he tried to focus on what to say to Congressman Connors and how to approach the military.

  But it took a long time for the image of the young man with the milky breath and smooth chin to disappear from his mind.

  Using his cell phone, Eddie called the number he had jotted down. He held the phone away from his ear while a fax picked up on the other end and began its piercing squeal, an attempt at an electronic handshake.

  The squeal stopped and the fax machine began to ring like a telephone. he had to be patient. It was already office hours on the East Coast and eventually someone would answer the ringing.

  But he was surprised by the reply he finally received. “Congressman Connors’s office. You’re calling his fax machine.”

  “Congressman, huh?” Eddie said. The FBI hierarchy had a strict pecking order, and Assistant Special Agents did not talk directly with U.S. Congressmen. “I think I’d better bump this baby upstairs.”

  “What is this in regard to?” the woman asked.

  “Does the congressman know someone named George Ferrar?”

  “Are you the press?”

  “No. FBI.”

  “Hold on. The congressman is at the Pentagon right now. I’ll patch you through.”

  In a few short seconds, the Assistant SAC found himself talking with the illustrious chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

  “What’s happening?” Connors shouted out.

  Eddie identified himself.

  “Have you seen Ferrar?” Connors asked.

  “Hey, let me ax the questions,” Eddie said. He had immediately lost control of the conversation, and his cool. Maybe that’s why the bureau only allowed top brass to talk with the Hill.

  “I don’t want to repeat myself,” Connors said.

  “Yes, sir. He was just here, at this house in San Francisco. Did you just receive a fax?”

  “Not that I’m aware.”

  In the background, Eddie heard someone call, “Hey Ralph. Your secretary just sent us a fax.”

  “Check the fax,” Eddie said.

  He heard Connors walking over to a fax machine. A print head was chattering and paper was spitting out.

  “Holy Moses.”

  “Yes, Congressman?”

  “It’s photographs of Tray Bolton. Where did you get these pictures?”

  “It appears that George Ferrar sent them to you. We just missed him as he left Bonnie Taylor’s house.”

  “Bonnie Taylor, huh?”

  “Know her?”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard Ferrar talk about a Bonnie,” he said. “He’d get a little Chianti in him and talk about the mistakes of his past. She seems to have been one of them.”

  “Sounds like he was a mistake in her past. He just struck a Federal agent and ran from the scene of the crime.”

  “That wouldn’t be a first,” Connor said with a chuckle.

  “I fail to see the humor in this, sir,” Eddie said as an ambulance shot away from the house, its siren wailing.

  “You may not appreciate it, but it gives me an enormous sense of relief,” Connors said. “If you’ll please excuse me, I have a picture to show to the Director o
f the CIA.”

  Chapter 26

  “Get in here, buddy,” a female voice said from a passing car on Castro Street.

  Ferrar waved off the advance.

  “George. Get the hell in here.”

  He whirled around. In a small brown Toyota, a woman wearing a gray sweat suit was leaning over from the driver’s seat.

  “Bonnie?”

  “How’d you guess? Now jump in here before I catch you making out with another buck.”

  “Oh, Lord,” he said, rolling his eyes. He pulled the passenger door open and slid in.

  “I’m going to report you as a peeping Tom,” he warned.

  “And I’ll report you for lewd behavior in public, not to mention breaking and entering my house.”

  “You’ve got me there,” Ferrar said, holding up both hands. “How did you know I was here?”

  She steered into the flow of commuter traffic. “When Tray arrived last night, I freaked out. I talked with him. He was hungry. He wanted sex. Finally this morning I slipped out while he was taking a shower. Then I waited on the street in my car.”

  “Waited for what?”

  “For you.”

  His eyebrows shot up.

  “Last night you told me you were coming,” she explained. “Then I saw you entering through the gate.”

  “Why didn’t you stop me?”

  “You’re one of the reasons I got out of the house. I had no idea if I could trust you. And judging from what Tray had to say about you, I still don’t. Then a short while later, another man followed you up the slope of my garden.”

  “Okay. I’ll fill in the rest. I saw Tray leaving by the back door. Bonnie, he was wearing a Coast Guard uniform.”

  She furrowed her light brown eyebrows, her deep blue eyes trying to peer into Tray’s murky intentions. Finally, she glanced at him, but her look didn’t soften.

  “First things first,” she said, and cut northward, straight up a hill. Soon they were traveling against traffic into a residential section of the city.

  “Did you find out what Tray means to do?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “You were with him all night,” he reminded her.

  “We weren’t exactly talking about nuclear bombs.”

  She drove in silence for several more minutes, and Ferrar recognized where they were headed. She was taking him into a wooded, public-access military reservation known as the Presidio.

  “Gonna turn me in?” he asked.

  “Maybe.”

  She drove up to a spot with a view of the Pacific. The gray horizon was sharp in the lifting fog. Waves crashed against a beach far below. She pressed the emergency brake on the sandy shoulder.

  He took a deep breath and opened the door. “Is this the point where I get to escape?”

  “If you need to.”

  He climbed out of the car and straightened his back.

  Red brick barracks with porches and buff-colored officers’ quarters spread out along the road.

  “Aren’t you being a little ballsy driving terrorists onto a military reservation?” he asked.

  “This is the last place they’d expect to find you,” she said with a wink.

  He circled the car and approached her, taking her hand. “I get this strange impression that you’ve done all this before,” he said.

  “I’ve known Tray long enough to understand the way you undercover creeps think.”

  He nodded. He should have known.

  She tugged his hand and began to lead him through the grove of tall trees. They passed parade grounds where a color guard was raising an enormous American flag that immediately tried to break free in the breeze. Suddenly rifle fire filled the air.

  Ferrar ducked and pulled Bonnie down with him. Then a bugle rang out a flawless reveille. Crouching beside him, Bonnie broke into laughter.

  “Do you always do this when they raise the flag?” she asked.

  He picked himself up and helped her dust off her sweats.

  “Yeah, it’s not easy being a traitor,” he said. “It screws up one’s loyalties.”

  Then he nudged her in the same direction as before. They passed a colorful schoolyard, where the swing set and monkey bars sat mutely behind an iron fence.

  “I always wanted to be surrounded by kids,” Bonnie said wistfully. “I came from a big family and I always wanted one of my own.”

  “I can help in that department,” he offered.

  She caught his eye. “You’re supposed to be working undercover. Not screwing.”

  He stared at her levelly.

  “If I didn’t know any better,” she said, “I’d think you were serious.”

  He smiled inwardly and resumed the walk, studying the slender twisted trees and lofty mass of branches.

  “Actually, I’ve never stood still long enough to consider a family,” she went on. “Always climbing the job ladder. Always some important fire to put out.”

  Ferrar raised his eyebrows. Those could have been his very own words. But surely she had had opportunities to settle down. “Any handsome young man ever come your way and ask for your hand in marriage?”

  She averted her eyes. “Nobody of consequence. Of course, there once was a good-looking young knight…”

  He observed her closely. “Do you remember Sir Lancelot?”

  “Child’s play,” she said, her eyes humorless, the momentary dreaminess having passed.

  “I haven’t thought of Camelot in years,” he admitted.

  “I don’t seem to have time for knights in shining armor and woeful Greek tragedy any longer. Those concepts are dangerous and deceptive. They set you up for a big fall.”

  “I guess life seems more black-and-white overseas,” Ferrar said.

  “Well it isn’t that way the closer you get to home. Real life’s full of mundane battles.”

  Just then several Humvees rumbled past them, the troops inside pulling on full combat gear.

  “Mundane?” he asked.

  The forest cover broke to the north and west and he could see a turbulent harbor where the Pacific’s current met head-on with the warm flow out of the bay. Light fingers of a cloud extracted themselves from the struts of the Golden Gate Bridge.

  They skirted around the barracks for enlisted men, and Ferrar heard an officer barking a command. Several soldiers emerged from the buildings and jumped into a canvas-covered troop carrier.

  Ferrar watched the truck disappear into the forest to the south.

  “Let’s go down to the beach,” Bonnie suggested.

  She led him along the road that wound down a sandy slope through scrubby pines and purple flowers.

  “Maybe it’s time to stop playing GI Jane,” she mused.

  They reached the soft beach, and he stood beside her watching the rising sun cast a pink glow against the west. On the distant horizon, he made out the conning tower of a huge military vessel, perhaps a battleship.

  “Are you holding maneuvers today?” he asked.

  “What? Dressed like this?” she pointed to her sweat suit.

  He indicated the horizon, where two smaller ships were just appearing, their color as gray as the water.

  “I would know of any scheduled exercises,” she said.

  He pulled her down to sit on a half-buried log, a giant dune looming behind them. Ahead lay the graceful burnt-orange bridge and spilling waves where several fishermen cast long lines into the surf.

  A handful of private sailboats peeked out from under the bridge, then headed back into the bay. Gray seagulls swarmed over a school of fish, competing for their first meal of the day.

  “Does it seem somewhat quiet to you this morning?” he inquired.

  “Are you talking business, or are you trying to be romantic?”

  He turned to take his first good look at her. Just inches from her face, he noticed that the salt air had turned her complexion a perpetual pink. She kept her fair hair nicely shaped, like the wave of a mermaid’s locks.

/>   Then he finally settled on her eyes in a look that was as intimate as a kiss. They were a penetrating blue, deep as the sea. They were the same eyes that he had adored throughout college and contemplated for years thereafter. Perhaps they were wiser, perhaps more cautious. But there was something else, more disturbing, about them.

  They were no longer soaking up the present. They had the slightly harrowed look of someone who was afraid of what the future held.

  “Time has been good to you,” he said.

  “Bull.”

  “Only, something seems to be worrying you,” he continued. “You don’t have that carpe diem attitude that I remember.”

  “Yeah, well maybe the world has finally gotten the better of me.”

  He looked around. People were gathering along the road above them. Traffic had stopped on the Golden Gate Bridge and police lights were flashing behind the guardrails.

  “You’ve taken on huge responsibilities,” he said.

  “So have you.”

  “Hey, you joined the military before either Tray or me. In fact, I doubt if I ever would have considered enlisting if it hadn’t been for you.”

  She closed her eyes and nodded. “I guess I’ve finally proven something to myself.”

  He understood. “Do you want out?”

  Her shoes off, she ran her toes through the fine white sand.

  “Maybe,” she admitted at last, holding back her hair and throwing him a challenging look.

  Something flashed from above. Ferrar tensed. He looked up and caught sunlight glinting off a metal tube. He took a closer look. It didn’t look like a gun. Rather, it was a television camera.

  He stood up and turned around. A helicopter was circling over the bay, the whirring sound of its blades riding the breeze.

  Out at sea, the battleship and several destroyers were progressing steadily toward the narrow inlet to the bay.

  “Do you think you’ve got one more operation left in you?” he asked.

  She stood up, alerted to the increasing activity around them.

  Cold mist sprayed evenly in her face. Across the Presidio, a line of camouflaged tanks was taking up position, the exertions of their engines echoing back and forth across the bay.