140914383X

by Raymond Khoury

  44

  Bethesda, Maryland

  My early start was paying off and it wasn’t yet noon as I rode the ramp off I-495 and headed into Bethesda. Traffic was light and before long, I was rolling down Old Georgetown Road, which was where Ralph Orford had his office.

  It was time for the third stop on my magical mystery tour of the past. Mother, lover, psychiatrist—it was like a three-card spread from the Woody Allen Tarot deck.

  From what Kurt and Gigi had learnt, Orford’s life had barely altered across thirty years, the only adjustment being a reduction in the number of hours spent seeing patients, both at his office and across a short list of hospital psychiatric departments. As of five years ago Orford spent at least ten hours every Monday at Walter Reed where he took a strong interest in the more complex cases. Tuesday through Thursday he was at the office. He rotated around several private psychiatric hospitals on Fridays, keeping the weekend free for golf or hunting, a fact which sparked my interest in light of what Rossetti’s editor had tried so hard to conceal.

  In fact, I was still unsure about what Orford would turn out to be. Was he my dad’s shrink, and had he genuinely diagnosed him as depressive and treated him before he died? Or was he a CIA plant who had been parachuted in after the fact to pad out the coroner’s report and lay any suspicions about my dad’s death to rest?

  Of course, I was leaning toward the latter, and for someone I suspected of being a key part of whatever conspiracy I was starting to unravel, his public life had been an almost entirely open book—at least it was if you had a couple of talented hackers working with you who could follow the digital breadcrumbs and map out his movements as accurately as if he’d swallowed a tracker. There were gaps—sometimes lasting a few days—that were consistent with someone traveling under any number of cover identities, and Gigi hadn’t managed to pinpoint any of them. If he had been working for Corrigan, then this made sense, because he would have had the full resources of the CIA at his disposal when it came to creating watertight legends.

  As it had been in the 80s, his practice’s client list included congressmen, lobbyists, journalists, Fortune 500 executives and university professors, and it struck me this was a source of confidential information that would just keep on giving. If Orford was indeed dirty, he and his handlers had clearly been careful about how they used what they discovered, evidenced by Orford not having so much as a question mark hanging over his entire professional life.

  The small office building in which Orford’s office suite had been located for the last twelve years also housed two dentists, an OB-GYN, a family doctor and a dietary nutritionist—all on the first and second floors above a high-end travel agent, pretty much the only kind that had survived the almost total exodus of the business from the real world to online.

  I passed the row of cars parked on either side of his street and pulled in around the corner, behind the building. I got out and headed back and I had just reached the corner when my eyes snared something that froze me in place.

  A man in a baseball cap and gloves was walking up to the building.

  Sandman was parked fifty yards down the street from Orford’s office. He’d been there since eleven, running over the plan in his head while he waited for the clock to hit something approaching an early lunch hour.

  As he waited, he wondered where this crisis would take him next. If it all went according to plan, then only Roos and Tomblin would remain. Sandman wondered which of them would blink first—if indeed either of them did. They hadn’t survived more than seventy-five years in the secret world between them without knowing how to stare down a threat, but Sandman had a strong feeling this was perhaps one of the most potentially catastrophic situations they had faced. In Sandman’s experience, even the most battle-hardened soldier was capable of losing control when faced with something outside their operational experience, and although he trusted both men whose bidding he performed without question or complaint, he suspected that one of them was more likely to lose a game of chicken than the other.

  He checked his watch—five to twelve—and pressed the dial button on his smartphone just as a white BMW drove past. He couldn’t see the driver’s head from the tinted windows and the fact that the driver had his head turned away from him, but it wasn’t something that registered as a threat on Sandman’s radar in any way.

  After a couple of rings, Orford came on the line.

  Sandman said, “The season’s over for sika deer, but a limited cull will continue. Considering our mutual interests, we should discuss this at the earliest opportunity.”

  Sandman could hear Orford processing this in the silence that followed.

  “I’ll send Violet out for an early lunch.” Orford’s voice was calm but focused.

  “Good.”

  Two minutes later, he watched as a young woman wearing a smart coat over a pencil skirt—hair, makeup and posture all perfect—exited the building and headed toward a strip of restaurants three blocks to the south.

  Sandman checked his face in the mirror, climbed out and walked up the sidewalk toward Orford’s

  It was the baseball cap and gloves that gave him away.

  As I held back and watched him approach the building, an instinctive memory meshed with what my eyes were sending to my brain. Although the man was clean-shaven and no longer wearing glasses—his face was half-obscured by the turned-up collar of an old-style waist-length coat—I instantly recognized him as the bearded man from Kirby’s. And I figured the odds were pretty slim that he was here to buy an all-inclusive tour of Italy’s opera houses.

  I quickly pulled out my phone to snap a picture of him, but I was too late as he reached the entrance to the building and turned away to ring the buzzer.

  I muttered a curse, pocketed the phone, and watched. The killer pulled the steel-and-glass door open and disappeared inside. I charged down the street and got there just as the door closer was doing its job, and just managed to catch the big glass door before its lock clicked in. Behind the glass, I glimpsed Kirby’s killer before he disappeared through an internal fire door in one corner of the small lobby. It was no surprise he’d decided not to take the elevator, aiming to considerably reduce the risk of running into anyone.

  I knew that if I followed him up the stairs, I’d be an easy target if he heard me, so I pressed the call button and waited for the elevator.

  The bastard wasn’t getting away this time.

  45

  Sandman arrived on the second floor, checked the corridor was empty, then exited the stairwell and made his way past a dentist’s clinic toward Orford’s office. A shared kitchen stood opposite the door to the dentist’s suite. It was empty right now, but would surely start to get busy shortly.

  Sandman only needed ten minutes, fifteen at the outside.

  He found the door to the suite and entered, then locked the door behind him, crossed the reception area, and let himself into the psychiatrist’s office, closing the door behind him.

  Ralph Orford was sitting in a large leather chair behind a polished oak desk on which sat an open laptop, a pen set, a blotter and several golf trophies. The office was tastefully decorated—mostly with large black-and-white photographs of Maryland’s national parks. A few personal photos sat on a lacquered filing cabinet beside a large window. There was an old-fashioned modular hi-fi on a side cabinet, with at least five hundred CDs arranged in tastefully designed wall shelves above. A leather sofa stood against the back wall beside a closet door.

  Orford looked Sandman up and down. “This is completely against all protocol.”

  “Not all,” Sandman replied. “We wouldn’t be talking right now otherwise.”

  “But for you to come here? In broad daylight? That’s not how we work.”

  Sandman sat in one of the two chairs facing the desk. He could see that the poor guy was trying to stay cool, but was clearly rattled.

  “We need you,” he told Orford. “There was no time to set up a meet at the blind.”
>
  The mere casual invocation caused a visible change in Orford’s attitude. He let out a ragged breath, then asked, “What do you need?”

  “There’s a senator. He’s like a stray dog with a juicy bone he can’t stop chewing on. We need it to look like the guy’s gone bananas. Like everything he’s been doing for the past year is the delusion of an unhinged mind. It needs to be very public and as messy as possible. A total meltdown. Something that’s a shoo-in for the top of the six o’clock news.”

  “Something like the Ukrainian ambassador?”

  “Something exactly like that.”

  Orford’s eyes widened. “You do know it’s highly unpredictable? It’s the nature of it. People react differently depending on what they’ve got tucked away in the folds of their brains.”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  “Delivery?”

  “Injection. He’s diabetic, so the needle mark will be discounted as an insulin shot.”

  After a moment’s consideration, Orford stood. “I have some in the fridge. You’ll need the right syringe.”

  Sandman moved to one side as Orford walked over to a wall unit. He pulled out a key fob from his pocket and unlocked it. It led to a walk-in cupboard with a locked fridge, a fire safe, a set of golf clubs and floor-to-ceiling shelves of confidential patient notes.

  “He’ll need zero-point-four milliliters per pound of bodyweight. Intramuscular.”

  “The upper thigh. Yes, I know.”

  “How much does he weigh?”

  “About the same as you, I’d guess,” Sandman said.

  Orford didn’t register the significance of the remark as he unlocked the fridge and pulled out a small vial. He then opened a shallow metal drawer in a standing unit and carefully selected a small syringe.

  I had the door to Orford’s suite open in less than thirty seconds. There was no one at reception, but I could hear voices from inside Orford’s office. I drew one of the confiscated FBI Glocks from my coat pocket and edged toward the door.

  “I still think I need to look at his medical file. He could be taking something that’ll react badly to the drug.” I assumed it was Orford talking.

  “Oh, I’m sure that won’t be necessary.” That voice I recognized. And although the words were reassuring, his tone was full of thinly-veiled menace. “Tell me, doc, are you on any medication?”

  The room went quiet for a moment, then I heard Orford, his voice clearly imbued with fear. “What are you—no, wait. You can’t!” Fear was quickly giving way to incredulity. “Dear God. Padley? That was you? You did that?”

  “A fitting way for him to go, don’t you think?”

  “But . . . why?” Orford pleaded.

  “Think of it as a tribute to his work—and, in this case, to yours.”

  “You’re going to make it look like I injected myself? No one’s going to believe it.”

  “Why not?” the killer said. “Hoffman, Lilly, Bob Wilson. All the great warriors of consciousness have wanted to dive off the deep end. They wanted to know what was there before they sent anyone else. And you’re one of the greats, doc. You wouldn’t want to go out any other way, would you?”

  “But why?” he asked again

  “We’re just cleaning house. Think of it as the Janitors’ work coming full circle.”

  “And Siddle?”

  The killer didn’t answer. I guess he didn’t need to. Then it sounded like Orford knocked something over as he tried to back away. “No, please . . .”

  “Come on, doc. Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.”

  It was time to intervene. I turned the handle as quietly as possible, then shouldered the door open and burst in, my gun leading me.

  The killer already had his left arm around Orford’s throat and the needle about to go into the doctor’s neck when I leveled the gun at him.

  I yelled, “Let him go,” stepping in closer. “Let him go right now.”

  Orford screamed “No!” as the killer pushed the needle into his neck, his finger tight on the plunger.

  I figured I could put a round through the bastard’s hand before he got the drug into Orford’s bloodstream, but even as I was thinking it, the guy adjusted his position so his hand was shielded by the psychiatrist’s shoulder.

  Involuntarily, I gave a micro-nod of appreciation.

  This guy wasn’t just good. He was exceptional.

  For a second, I didn’t move. Nor did he. I could see he was thinking fast about his next move. He looked right at me, his eyes, though they kept darting out from either side of Orford’s head so quickly that I could only catch brief glimpses of them, so dark they were almost black.

  “Really?” he said. “You want to save this guy? After everything he did to your son?”

  Confusion gripped Orford’s face, but all I saw was a solar flare of blinding truth. The logic of it was so unassailably elegant, yet so totally perverse. This was the guy who had programmed Alex. The same guy who maybe, somehow, drove my father to kill himself.

  It only seemed right that I should be the one to refresh his memory.

  “Alex Martinez,” I hissed at the doctor. “My four-year-old son, in San Diego. The job Corrigan asked you to do.”

  Orford couldn’t hide his own flash of recognition.

  The killer must have felt Orford’s body momentarily tense—a crystal-clear tell that he knew exactly what I was talking about.

  I could feel my finger tightening around the trigger before my brain had even sent a message to my hand. And just as the part of me that was still a reasonably clear-thinking FBI agent waged a split-second Armageddon with my raw hunger for revenge, the killer pressed down on the plunger and shoved his screaming victim toward me before pulling out his handgun with lightning agility.

  My aim was blocked by Orford who was staggering toward me, his hands reaching desperately for the syringe. I ducked around him and fired twice just as three bullets from the killer’s automatic cut through the space I’d occupied a split second earlier and drilled into the wall behind me in a perfect kill pattern. My own shots missed, though I didn’t think by much.

  Jesus, the guy could move.

  I ducked left as the bastard unleashed more shots before crashing out the window and dropping from view.

  We were on the second floor—there was simply no way he was going to walk away from that, I thought as I bolted to the window, but there he was, on the damp soil and rising out of a perfect roll. He was already upright when I fired several rounds at him as he jagged one way, then the other, and sprinted off down the sidewalk.

  “Fuck!”

  I gritted my teeth so hard I could feel the roots grind into my jaw, and after an instant of raging frustration, I realized that Orford needed urgent medical attention if I was going to keep him alive long enough to answer my questions—but the door to his office was open and he’d vanished from sight.

  Where the hell was he?

  I rushed out into the suite’s reception. No one was there, but the door was open. Raising my gun, I edged toward the door and peered out into the corridor. Down and across the corridor from the suite, Orford was standing in the kitchen, a large kitchen knife in each of his hands.

  I moved toward him. Thankfully, the area was otherwise empty. “Orford, we need to talk. About my dad, Colin Reilly. Then I’ll get you the help you need.”

  He was staring at me with manic eyes, his pupils dilated like he was staring into the darkest black hole, his face was all sweaty, his knife arm moving jerkily from side to side.

  “Stay back,” he hissed. “You’re not getting me too.”

  My arms opened up in a calming gesture, my gun no longer aimed at him, my other palm wide open.

  “Orford,” I said. “Put the knife down and talk to me. That’s all I need. Colin Reilly. 1981. I need to know what happened. I need to know what you did to him.”

  He was just eyeing me with sheer terror. “I know what you are. I know what you really are inside—that,”
he said with a mix of fear and disdain. “You don’t fool me. Just—stay away from me. You’re not getting inside me. Do you hear me? You’re not getting me too!”

  Whatever he’d been injected with was taking over and messing with his mind, big time. I realized I might not have much time. “Orford, calm down. Just talk to me. What did you do to my father?”

  “Your father? How the hell should I know? Your people—they probably took him too. Like they took everyone. Everyone!”

  “Orford, put the knife down,” I said as I inched closer. “I’m with the FBI.” I tried to talk as unthreateningly and soothingly as I could, but he was backing away, riven with fear, his eyes manically darting left and right—then they registered the window.

  Our eyes met—then he just freaked and yelled, “You’re not taking me, you fuckers!” and he threw the knife at me—a lousy throw, it just flew past harmlessly—before charging towards the window. I rushed after him but I couldn’t cover the ground in time to grab him before he flung it open and just threw himself out.

  His landing wasn’t anywhere as graceful as the killer’s. He was sprawled on the ground, his neck and arms twisted at odd angles.

  I hurtled down the stairs and out of the building and reached him just as a few gawkers were hesitantly approaching his prone body. Blood was oozing out of his mouth and his eyes were just staring into the distance, unfocused.

  “Someone call 911! Get an ambulance here,” I yelled at the shocked faces as I tried to focus on what really mattered to me. I bent down, closer to Orford’s face. He was still breathing. “Orford. Do you remember? You must remember! Colin Reilly? He shot himself?”

  His eyes flickered, then glanced sideways at me with the look of a soul so lost, so haunted it was hard for me to not look away. “That’s why you’re here, right? To set us free. Ralph, Marcus, me, Reilly . . .”

  I couldn’t make sense of it. “What you do mean? Did you know my father? Did you know Colin Reilly?”

  “Reilly . . . yes, he was . . . interesting.”