140914383X

by Raymond Khoury

I knelt down and took hold of Orford’s head, knowing this was my very last chance. “Orford. Please. Tell me what happened.”

  His eyes locked onto mine, but there was little light behind them. Then it flickered out and he was gone.

  The sound of distant sirens edged into my awareness.

  I have to get out of here.

  I stood, pocketed the gun, pulled my badge and spoke in the most authoritative voice I could muster.

  “I need to go after the man who did this. Tell the police they’ll find the murder weapon on the floor of Orford’s office. Tell them there was another man here, a man sent to kill him. He jumped out of Orford’s office window and escaped.”

  I was about to run off when I remembered the open laptop on Orford’s desk. I decided I had to risk it. I raced back into the building and up the stairs to Orford’s office where I grabbed the laptop and stuffed it into his own shoulder bag.

  I was almost back at the stairs by the time the sirens were right outside.

  I stopped, stepped across to the window of the kitchen, which was on another side of the building, and looked out.

  Two Montgomery County PD cars and an EMS vehicle had pulled up outside. Four cops and two paramedics were rushing towards Orford.

  I watched as the EMTs got to work and waited for the cops to disappear inside, then swung the bag across my shoulder and rushed back to Orford’s office. I was going to have to follow the killer’s route out. I grabbed the neatly folded blanket from the leather sofa and laid it over the base of the window frame. No way was I jumping out. I’d try to hang off the frame and drop down, reducing the distance to around fifteen feet.

  As I lifted one leg over the empty window, I noticed something for the first time. The photo at the back of the framed pictures sitting on a lacquered cabinet, only now visible because of the angle at which I was looking at it.

  It showed three guys in their forties on a hunting trip—Orford on the left. Behind them was some kind of hunting blind.

  I swung my leg back inside, grabbed the picture and stuffed into the laptop bag. Then I climbed out, took all my weight on both hands, hung for a moment, and dropped to the ground. A piercing shot of concentrated agony burst through my right ankle as I hit the sidewalk.

  I pulled myself upright and hobbled away, parting a few rubberneckers as I picked up speed, ignoring the screaming pain accelerating up my right leg.

  I climbed into the BMW, thankful that Gigi had explained the car’s registration was tied to a fake ID and a derelict address, and charged off.

  46

  Federal Plaza, Lower Manhattan

  Sitting at Aparo’s desk, Deutsch was staring off into space, her mind and body so worn out that she was now totally dead to any emotion regarding what had happened over the past two days. Indeed, this impenetrable numbness was so oddly relaxing she feared what would happen once it wore off after she’d grabbed a good night’s sleep and eaten properly.

  As she sat there, both unable and unwilling to move, a junior agent she’d vaguely seen around the office walked over to her. He was waving a letter-sized manila envelope.

  “Agent Deutsch? This arrived this morning; it’s addressed to Agent Reilly. Since his calls are being rerouted to you, I figured you’d want to take care of this too?”

  “Who’s it from?”

  “There’s no name, no return address. Scan shows it’s only got paper in it.”

  He held it out to her. She hesitated momentarily.

  Who the hell got mail these days?

  The thought was enough to pique her interest.

  She levered herself out of her chair and reached for it. “I’ll take it.”

  She did just that, waving the junior agent away, and glanced around her cubicle. Her immediate neighbors weren’t at their desks. She knew they were locked in the main meeting room, trawling through Reilly’s case files, looking for anyone he might go to for help. Satisfied she had a moment of privacy, she sat back down and examined the envelope.

  As the junior agent had said, it bore no return address. It had Canadian stamps with an illegible postmark. Reilly’s full name and the field office address were written in neat but overly small block capitals with an old-fashioned ink pen.

  She carefully tore it open. Inside was a single brown folder, in which were two sheets of drawing paper from a pretty decent artist’s sketchpad. On each sheet, portrait layout, someone had drawn the face of a male adult. Under the first face, written in the same block capitals, were the letters “FF”

  At first, the letters under the second face, “RC,” didn’t mean anything to her either. Then it suddenly hit her, and she couldn’t help but gasp, though luckily there was no one around to hear her.

  They were initials.

  RC was Reed Corrigan.

  The one guy who knew what the hell was going on. And why.

  There was also a small note with them, written by the same hand, with the same pen. It said:

  Hope these help. With eternal thanks, L+D

  She put the note aside and laid out the drawings side by side and stared at them for a few seconds, then she pulled out her personal cell phone and took full resolution, sixteen megapixel shots of each portrait and of the note. She then pulled out a large blank envelope from her desk, put the three documents back in their folder and the folder in the envelope. Then she folded the original envelope in half, hiding Reilly’s name, and stuffed it at the bottom of a drawer in her desk.

  Although it went against everything she’d said to Tess, everything she’d been tasked with by Gallo—along with every single shred of self-preservation and common sense—she’d already decided to find a way to get the drawings to Sean. He wasn’t around to see that she was finally thinking of him as Sean, now that she’d gone over to his side. The change felt irreversible.

  Someone had to help him. With Aparo dead and Tess willing but at risk, she was all he had left—but she couldn’t tell anyone about it. She was fully aware that she’d be risking her career, not to mention potential prison time, if she contacted him without telling her superiors and passed on the drawings instead of handing them in. And even though it went against everything she believed in—the FBI, for her, staunchly stood for Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity, as it did for pretty much every agent she’d come across apart from Lendowski—and everything she fought for, she felt she had to do it. She sensed that his life, his career, even his family’s future, could all hinge on it.

  She couldn’t hand the envelope over to Gallo. He’d either dismiss its contents, or he’d share it with Henriksson, who in turn would quickly ensure that the drawings ceased to exist.

  There was one small problem. She had no way of contacting Reilly. Tess, however, could. She was sure of it. She’d need to involve her, at least to get through to him, however queasy that made her in terms of Tess’s wellbeing as well as that of the kids. But she had no choice. There was simply no other way she could think of to get the drawings to him, and she was convinced they would prove to be more than useful.

  She grabbed her keys and, without bothering to inform anyone, hurried out.

  47

  Chelsea, New York City

  It wasn’t just the image of Orford and his possessed, terrified look that was haunting me.

  It was his words.

  That’s why you’re here, right? To set us free. Ralph, Marcus, me, Reilly . . .

  Us.

  That damn word.

  Two small letters that were driving me nuts.

  And yet, and yet . . . yes, the guy was under the influence of some monster drug. The killer in the baseball cap had talked about the “great warriors of consciousness,” compared it to them pushing the envelope on mind trips. Who knew what was going through Orford’s brain at the time he said these things. But still—what if the drug had actually taken away his inhibitions. What if it was an “in vino veritas” moment—the notion that being loosened up with alcohol frees us to say what we really mean?

  Wh
at if my dad was part of them?

  What if he’d killed himself out of guilt and remorse, or they’d bumped him off because he was about to blow the whistle on their activities?

  And what the hell were they?

  It was around five in the afternoon and we were sitting around the big island in Gigi’s kitchen.

  Orford’s laptop was on the counter, taunting me. I’d told Kurt and Gigi I needed them to crack it open. It could tell us exactly what Orford had done to Alex, which could help fine tune his recovery and make sure he gets the right therapy. They’d said it would take a bit of time for them to get past its password. Regardless, it wasn’t the priority. We had something more pressing to figure out.

  “We’ve got three names,” I said to Kurt and Gigi as I finished telling them what had happened. “Ralph Orford, psychiatrist, killed off using some kind of psychoactive drug. Someone called ‘Ralph,’ who also died in some way that was a ‘fitting tribute to his work.’”

  “Poetic,” Kurt said.

  I shrugged. “We’ve got another guy, ‘Marcus,’ who was also recently bumped off. And they seem to be part of something called ‘the Janitors,’ and they’re being wiped out to ‘clean house.’”

  Kurt flinched. “What did you say? ‘Janitors?’”

  He hunched over his laptop and started punching away at the keys like he was living in fast forward, then he turned the screen to face me. “Janitors. It’s here. In the web history of Rossetti’s editor.”

  I leaned in for a closer look.

  “See, here,” he pointed out. “He searched for ‘janitors government secret,’ ‘CIA janitors,’ ‘janitors murder.’” Followed some links from them. I had a quick look at them. They all led nowhere. Just random sites that had the words scattered in them, but not directly relevant to the kind of thing we’re talking about.”

  I asked, “What about Rossetti’s search history?”

  “He worked from home, where he had a Version FiOS connection. They’re harder to crack.”

  “We need to look at both their search histories more closely. And we need to ID these three Janitors,” I said. “Which shouldn’t be too hard. I mean, Marcus isn’t such a widely used name. Male, adult. Died recently. We also know their skill sets. They do accidents—Rossetti’s fire, the Portuguese reporter’s climbing accident. They do heart attacks—Rossetti’s editor, Nick. And they do mind games. My son Alex, Orford—”

  “And maybe your dad,” Gigi added.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  Gigi had been studying the framed photo I’d snatched off Orford’s desk. She set it down on the island. “And we’ve got this. Three guys in full mid-life crisis who decided they’d rather play ‘Deer Hunter’ than ‘Deliverance.’”

  “So these ‘Janitors,’ they clean things up by killing people?” Kurt asked while Gigi started tapping away at her keyboard. “You think the guy who called you was one of them?”

  “I think so,” I said. “Either ‘Ralph’ or ‘Marcus.’ Maybe he was a whistleblower. He contacts Rossetti first. They find out. They kill Rossetti and his editor. For some reason, they weren’t able to figure out who he was. I guess neither Rossetti nor his editor knew who he was, and if they set a trap for him, he saw it and avoided it. He knows how they operate; he’s one of them. He knows what to look out for. So he tries to get his story out again, with me. Only this time, they get to him.”

  “Before he could tell you what he knew or give you the evidence he said he had for you,” Kurt said.

  “He kick-started all this,” I said. “And they decided to shut it all down. Clean house. Less people who know what was going on and who can talk about it if it all goes pear-shaped.”

  “Here we go,” Gigi said as she looked up from her screen. She started reading off it. “Marcus Siddle. Fifty-nine years old. Died last night in Miami when his Lamborghini slammed into the side of a building. The guy owned and ran a high-end car shop. Souped-up all kinds of cars, a king of the road.” She looked up from her screen. “Then he drives into the side of a building?”

  “A mechanic,” I said. “Maybe he’s good with house electrics.”

  “And climbing gear,” Kurt added.

  Things were falling into place. “OK, which means our Ralph might be a heart guy if they truly have that capability.” I turned to Gigi. “Look for—”

  “Ralph Padley,” she said, way ahead of me already. “A top cardiologist at Harvard. Died of a heart attack in a swimming pool in Boston on Tuesday. Sixty-nine years old.”

  “Jesus,” Kurt said. “How many others of them are out there?”

  I asked Gigi, “Do you have headshots for them?”

  She tapped some more keys, then swiveled her screen around to face me.

  I got out of my chair and moved in for a closer look. She had two faces up, a bit grainy from her having enlarged them, but clear enough. I moved the framed photo I’d snatched off Orford’s desk closer to her screen and compared them.

  They were all there. Orford, Padley and Siddle.

  The three “Janitors.”

  Three middle-aged civilians—a psychiatrist, a cardiologist, and an upscale car mechanic—who were part of what seemed to be some top secret CIA hit squad. A hit squad that, by the looks of it, was operating not just outside our borders—which was already illegal enough—but on home ground too. We knew they’d committed a murder in Portugal over thirty years ago. The question was, how many other people had they killed over the years? How many of those were Americans and on American soil? And was this unit still active?

  And—the biggest question of all—had my dad been working with them?

  “I’m starting to understand why they’re desperate to keep this under wraps,” Kurt said.

  “Padley said he had proof to show me. Evidence he needed me to make public,” I said. “If it’s still out there somewhere, if he managed to hide it before they got to him . . . maybe we can find it.”

  “Without ending up like the rest of them,” Gigi added as a sense of gloom settled over the room.

  I had a lot of questions, but the only guys who could give me the answers had been either wiped out, or—in the case of my ever-elusive bête noire, Reed Corrigan—untraceable.

  And then Tess called and the dam burst wide open.

  Deutsch angled a nervous glance at the Bureau cars parked outside Tess’s house as she rang the doorbell.

  She hadn’t had any problem getting to Tess’s front door. She just hadn’t mentioned her little jaunt to Gallo or anyone else at Federal Plaza, and she knew she’d have some explaining to do when she got back. She had some time to come up with an excuse and knew she’d find a way through it, but that would wait. Right now, she needed to act fast.

  She ducked inside as soon as Tess opened the door, then ushered her discreetly through the house and out onto the rear deck while asking her mundane questions about how she was and whether or not she’d heard from Reilly yet.

  Once they were outside, she looked around, making sure she hadn’t missed any part of the FBI’s surveillance net, then turned to Tess.

  “I can’t stay long and it’s not safe talking inside. You’re under watch,” she told Tess in a low voice.

  “I assumed, but—”

  “Tess, everything is being monitored,” Deutsch told her. “Phones, emails, WiFi. Any connection you make with the world beyond this house or even within in for that matter, we’re on top of. Even what you say. So you’re going to have to be careful.”

  “Be careful?” Tess asked, her face tight with tension. “About what?”

  “I need you to connect me with Sean.”

  “Annie, I told you—”

  “Listen to me!” Deutsch interjected. “I know, I know—you don’t know how to get through to him, you haven’t heard from him. Tess, this is important. I know you can find a way to get in touch with him. He wouldn’t disappear without telling you how. Not when you’re under threat like this. And this is coming from me, personally—I’m s
ticking my neck out here for you. For him. Please.”

  She watched as Tess ran a deep scan up and down her face, clearly trying to decide whether to believe her. “Why? What’s happened?”

  Deutsch glanced around again, more out of paranoia then out of some credible threat, then leaned closer and dropped her voice even lower. “Someone sent Sean two drawings. Portraits, of two men. They were sent from Canada and just signed ‘L+D.’ I think they’re important. I think they might be the guys that Sean’s been trying to find.”

  She fished out her phone, pulled up the pictures she’d taken of the drawings, and showed them to Tess. She watched as Tess studied them.

  “I’ve never seen these guys before,” Tess said.

  “Nor has he, I imagine. But I think they could help him zero in on them.” She put her phone away, then asked, “You know who L and D are, don’t you?”

  Tess hesitated—it was enough of an answer for her.

  “They’re important, aren’t they?” Deutsch asked. “You know they are. Come on, Tess.”

  Tess finally nodded. “They’re a couple Reilly helped out. They owe him. A lot.”

  “And this is them paying him back. Come on, Tess. He needs this.”

  Tess hesitated some more, her face muscles tightening up visibly—then she nodded. “I have a phone number. A burner phone.” She looked intensely worried. “God, let this not be a mistake. You can’t lead them to him, Annie. How will you get them to him?”

  “All I need is a smartphone number or an email address. Hell, even a Facebook account will do. I’ll send them to him from my personal phone.”

  Tess held her gaze for a moment, then nodded.

  Sandman knew his message would anger Roos and the others but, strictly speaking, he’d still achieved his immediate assignment. Orford was dead, even though it wasn’t as clean a kill as he’d been aiming for. Still, if it was going to be considered more of a murder than a suicide, Reilly would be on the wanted poster. All of which, coming on the back of the successful dispatch of Siddle in Miami, wasn’t too shabby.