The Discrete Charm of Charlie Monk

by David Ambrose

  “I wonder if you can help me,” she said, having established she was talking to the right place. “I’m trying to get in touch with a man called Dan Samples. I know he writes for you sometimes.”

  There was a silence at the other end of the line. She could hear the man breathing, so she knew he hadn’t hung up. But the space between them was charged with mistrust.

  “What do you want with him?” the voice asked eventually.

  “He came to see me a few days ago. I’d like to talk some more with him about something we discussed.”

  There was another brief silence, then the man said, “I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible. Dan Samples died yesterday.”

  Chapter 11

  AS ALWAYS, surprise was essential. For that reason, Control had said, Charlie would have to jump at ten thousand feet. That way his plane would be mistaken for a routine night flight out of the city’s main airport.

  Charlie launched himself into the black void. After a few moments he became aware of a thin scattering of lights on the ground below, like pale reflections of the glittering stars overhead. He spread his arms and legs and began the tricky slalom through the air that he had to accomplish with absolute precision before pulling his parachute rip cord.

  After several minutes of intense concentration, he saw from the satellite-generated figures on the inside of his visor that he was where he needed to be. He pulled his rip cord, bracing himself for the jolt as his chute opened. For a moment he hung like a marionette swaying from side to side on its strings. The flickering data on his visor slowed almost to a standstill. Then he began to maneuver himself down with the clinical precision he had been taught in a special training session just that morning.

  When his visor told him he was at a thousand feet he touched a point on the side of his helmet. The words Night Vision On flashed over a crystal-clear view of the embassy compound beneath him. He could see the straight lines of paths and buildings and the outer wall, softened here and there by foliage. On one rooftop he could see the massive radio antennae that he had been warned to avoid.

  What he couldn’t see, and this slightly worried him, was any evidence of the military backup he had been told would be waiting outside the compound. Perhaps, he told himself, it was camouflaged, or hidden by trees and the surrounding buildings; he hoped, at any rate, that it was there.

  Beyond that he had no time for reflection. The ground was coming up at him swiftly, and the patch of ground he had located in the northeast corner on which he had to land seemed impossibly small. All he could do was head for it and hope to miss the trees.

  He felt a jab in the ribs and heard the sharp snap of a branch. It couldn’t have made too much noise, he told himself, because a moment later the thud of his feet hitting the ground sounded far louder in his ears. He rolled forward, pulled in his chute, and hid it, wedged by a stone, under a bush.

  From where he crouched he had a clear view across the compound and could see the lit windows of the room he had to take. It was, he knew, the banqueting hall. A reception had been in progress when the terrorists struck. Diplomats and politicians from all over the world were being held hostage. The terms demanded for their release were unacceptable, and it was known that the terrorists were fanatics and ready to die for their cause. A full-scale military assault would be impossible without massive loss of life. That was when Charlie had been called in.

  Charlie’s orders were very clear, a fact that didn’t make them any easier to carry out. There was one hostage above all whom he was to identify and pay special attention to. This was a senator, young and popular, who was being groomed by his party for high office. Charlie didn’t know it, but all things being equal, this young senator would be running for vice president in three years’ time. The plan then was that he would move on into the White House—all things remaining equal. That was why Charlie had received very special orders concerning this man.

  He glanced at the device on his wrist. Among other things, it operated as a watch. The local time, he saw, was 23:05. He pressed a point on one side of the device, and immediately a voice responded from the speaker in his helmet.

  “Bravo-one, we read you. Fortunes favor.”

  It meant that the backup he had been promised was there and ready, even though he hadn’t seen them from the air. He didn’t respond. The signal he’d just sent them was all they needed. Now they would wait until they heard the first explosion.

  He unstrapped the light machine gun from his back, checked the stun and sting grenades at his waist, and started to move forward. There were a couple of electronic trip wires that he’d been warned about, which he skirted carefully. Finally he stood right alongside one of the tall, lit windows. Blinds had been drawn inside so he couldn’t see in, which was fine by him because it meant they couldn’t see out as he attached an explosive device to the bulletproof glass. It took only a moment; then he pressed himself against the wall and waited.

  When the charge blew, and before anyone inside even started shooting, he lobbed in two stun grenades. They exploded with deafening and blinding force, and Charlie pitched into the room with a forward roll, firing as he moved.

  The hostages, trained as most of them routinely were for this sort of eventuality, had already hit the floor. The terrorists, disoriented and completely taken by surprise, were firing wildly in all directions. He mowed down three of them before the other five could turn their guns on him. Still moving, he got them all with two short bursts of rapid fire, but not before something punched him in the shoulder like a fist. He knew it was a bullet that had found an opening in his body armor. But it didn’t stop him or even slow him down. The adrenaline was pumping; he was immortal.

  On the periphery of his vision he sensed fresh movement. Two more terrorists had entered the room, their guns blazing. He rolled again, still firing, and saw them both fall. He came to a stop on one knee, poised and ready to spring in any direction.

  Then he saw the senator, whose photograph he had been shown in his briefing by Control. The pathetic image he saw now was barely recognizable as the same man. The confident smile and clear-eyed gaze had been replaced by abject terror and confusion. When Charlie gestured for him to move toward him, he didn’t respond. Charlie gestured again, more emphatically. The senator cowered away in the opposite direction, terrified of any movement near him. His lips quivered and he was whimpering like a child.

  Charlie reached out and grabbed him and pushed him to the ground, then looked around for further signs of danger. He sensed more than saw the movement behind him: A warning look of fear in the eyes of another of the hostages was all it took. He swung around, firing, and rolled a couple more times. Something ripped through his neck, snapping his head as though he’d been rabbit-punched.

  He saw now that the terrorist who had fired was a young woman. Thick, dark hair flew out around her head, like a glamour model whirling for the camera. Except she was already dead, ripped almost in two by the savage hail of Charlie’s bullets. Her own weapon fell from her fingers as she slid down the wall she had been slammed against, leaving a thick crimson smear behind her.

  An unreal silence fell. Only a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity, a shift into a whole new dimension. With it came several white-hot knives of pain that his adrenaline had so far anesthetized. He knew he was badly hurt, but he could breathe. When he put a hand to his neck he could feel blood, but not the gusher there would have been if the carotid artery had been hit. He was going to be able to hang on, though his head was beginning to swim.

  Then, in the distance, he heard shouts and more shooting as the waiting soldiers stormed the compound. It would soon be over. There wasn’t much time.

  Dragging the helpless young senator with him, he shouldered open a door and headed toward the sound of shouting and gunfire. He began to stumble over his own feet and had to fight to hang on to consciousness. But before he blacked out, he completed the most important—and secret—part of his mission.

 
He put a bullet through the young senator’s head.

  Chapter 12

  THE VOICE ON THE phone told her that Samples had fallen from the window of his eighth-floor apartment. Although neither suicide nor foul play was officially suspected, Susan wasn’t sure whether she heard or imagined a slight emphasis on the word officially. Then he apologized and said he couldn’t talk any longer because he had to go into a meeting. She asked him his name, and he said Tom Schiller. She thanked him for his time and hung up.

  Next day, without telling anyone what she planned to do, she flew down to Baltimore and found the office where Tom Schiller worked. It was much as she’d imagined, except for being over Jack’s Radio Shack instead of a Chinese take-out. There was a solid-looking street door with several locks and an unmarked intercom. She pushed the button and waited. After a moment a light went on even though it was broad daylight, and she became aware of being scanned by a video eye. A woman’s voice said, “Can I help you?”

  Susan explained who she was and apologized for not making an appointment. The woman asked her to wait, then after a moment said she could come up. The door clicked open. She climbed a narrow staircase, at the top of which was another solid-looking door, also with several locks and a spy-hole. She rang, and was admitted by a surprisingly attractive young woman in jeans and a turtleneck sweater. She looked as though she might normally have had a pleasant smile, though her manner that morning was tense and preoccupied. But there was no hint of the surly distrust of the world in general that Susan had half expected.

  She found Tom Schiller also surprisingly open and easy to talk to. He couldn’t have been much more than thirty. He had a casual, clean-cut look and was obviously bright. He ran the place, he told her, with a couple of assistants, one of whom Susan had already met. The other was a gangling young man with a beard who ran the computers. Writers and contributing editors, of which Dan Samples had been one, drifted in and out, said Schiller, as the mood took them. She got the impression that the latter were probably the ones who were dedicated to “the cause,” while Schiller himself had merely found a publishing niche from which he planned to build a wider empire. Nonetheless, he obviously cared about the things that were going on that “my team,” as he called them, were investigating.

  They went for lunch to an Italian place around the corner. She insisted he be her guest. He accepted graciously and ate with a healthy appetite. Schiller had no idea who she was or why Samples had been in touch with her. He knew only that Samples had been pursuing what he called his “bionic man story,” and that he had recently been to Russia for that purpose. He knew that Samples had come up with something there, but he didn’t know what.

  “Most of these guys play their cards pretty close to the chest. I guess they figure the less people know what they’re up to, the less they’re going to get hassled and pushed around—and maybe out of windows.”

  He closed his mouth on a forkful of ravioli and watched her coolly to see what reaction his words had provoked in her.

  She blinked a couple of times and felt her eyes narrowing as she met his gaze. “Are you telling me Dan Samples was murdered?”

  Schiller dropped his eyes while he casually forked up a few more squares of ravioli. “Isn’t that what you think, Dr. Hemyng?” he asked. “Otherwise what brings you here? You said you’d only met him the one time’. He must’ve said something that got your interest pretty well revved up.”

  He raised the fork to his mouth and his eyes to her, and awaited her response.

  “I can’t help saying, Mr. Schiller, that you’re taking all this pretty calmly. Almost as though it’s an everyday occurrence to have one of your employees, or colleagues or whatever he was, fall out an eighth-floor window.”

  Schiller gave a barely perceptible shake of the head. “On the contrary,” he said, “I’m very concerned indeed. I just like to be sure who I’m expressing my concern to before I speak.”

  She held his gaze for a second or two, then reached into her purse and took out the Polaroid that Samples had given her. “Do you know who this is?” she asked, pointing to John.

  Again he shook his head, more firmly this time. “Where was this taken?” he asked.

  “Siberia. Somewhere called Ostyakhon, about a hundred miles south of Norilsk.”

  Schiller listened impassively while she told him the whole story, omitting only the fact that she had suggested to Latimer West that he might like to take some legal action against Samples and his publisher. When she was done, Schiller took a deep breath, pursed his lips thoughtfully, and suggested they take a walk.

  She didn’t ask where they were headed until they’d gone a couple of blocks. In reply he pointed to a run-down apartment building across the road. “Dan Samples lived at the back. Come on. I’ll show you.”

  As they crossed the road her eyes went involuntarily to the eighth floor. It was a considerable drop to the sidewalk. The thought continued to preoccupy her until she realized that Schiller had fished a set of keys from his pocket and was heading for the scuffed and graffiti-covered main door. She followed him into the dark and gloomy lobby. There was no furniture other than a semicircular desk where a doorman must have sat in better days. Now the place didn’t look as though it was even swept very often. There were no pictures on the walls and the air had an unpleasant staleness. They didn’t speak until they were in the elevator, rattling uncertainly toward the eighth floor.

  “I suppose you’ve been over the place already,” she said.

  “I got the keys from the building super. Hadn’t ever been in when Dan was alive, but I offered to clear his things out by the end of the month. The rent’s paid till then.”

  It was obvious when they entered the apartment that the clearing-out process had not yet started; there was, after all, more than two weeks to go to the end of the month. Susan found herself in a drab but fairly light and spacious living room. Everything about it reflected a man who had been obsessively organized and wholly work oriented. Or, she corrected herself, research oriented. There were filing cabinets along the walls and folders on shelves, everything carefully labeled and arranged in a specific order. Other shelves bore dictionaries, directories, and reference books of all kinds. There was a television and a laptop computer alongside a printer.

  She exchanged a look with Schiller.

  “If the evidence you’re looking for is here,” he said, “maybe you can find it. I couldn’t. In fact there’s no reference anywhere—and I’ve been over the place with a fine-tooth comb— to the Pilgrim Foundation or the bionic man story. Not on paper, not on his computer, which I had Greg—that’s the guy you met in the office—check out. If you want to go through the place yourself, you’re welcome.”

  She thought a moment and shook her head. Not only did she find the idea distasteful, but she was prepared to believe that Schiller had done a thorough job.

  “Of course he may have hidden it somewhere else,” she said.

  He tipped his head in a way that acknowledged she could be right. “I talked to the people who live downstairs,” he said. “An elderly couple, both a bit hard of hearing. All the same, about an hour before he went out the window they said they’d heard about five minutes of thumping and banging, as though he was jumping up and down. They were going to call up and complain, then it stopped as suddenly as it had started.”

  “So you’re implying,” she said, “that somebody killed him, then spent an hour searching the place and removing whatever it was they were looking for—then threw him out.”

  He shrugged. “Company policy,” he said. “We just report the facts as far as they can be established. We don’t editorialize.”

  She looked at him, then glanced once more around the room, then back to him. “I want you to know,” she said, “that I appreciate your having shared these ‘facts’ with me. I think we should keep in touch.”

  Chapter 13

  AT THE TIME of John’s death, before his body had been brought home for burial, Susan
had been asked if she wanted to fly out to view the scene of the accident. Several wives and relatives of the other victims had accepted the offer, but she had not. Her main reason was a reluctance to leave Christopher; she felt that he needed her just then more than she needed to make this particular pilgrimage. There were no raised eyebrows, however, when she told Frank Henty that she now felt ready to fly out to Russia and see for herself where John had spent his final days and hours of life. It was a wish that everyone understood without her having to explain.

  It had occurred to her that if the agency made the arrangements for her, then she would be afforded at least some measure of protection against… she wasn’t sure what. All she knew was that she didn’t want to be out there on her own and unaccounted for.

  She told no one of her ulterior motive for making the trip, not even her father. No point, she thought, in worrying him unduly. Besides, she didn’t even know what she expected to find. She knew only that several people had died mysterious deaths, first her husband and his team, and now Dan Samples. And those deaths were somehow connected with a town called Ostyakhon in Siberia.

  Christopher was delighted at the prospect of staying over at his friend Ben’s house for a few days. Susan decided against explaining to him that she was going to see the place where his father had died, just saying that she was going away because of work. Her friend Carla, Ben’s mother, supported her in this minor deception, which made her feel strangely better about it.

  She had been once before to Moscow for a neurological conference not long after the collapse of Communism, but she had had no time to see anything outside the city itself. This time she didn’t expect to get beyond Sheremetyevo Airport, to which she took a direct flight from JFK. Frank Henty had made a call to the airline and made a plea on compassionate grounds to have her economy seat upgraded to business class. In the event, they found her a seat in first class, which allowed her to grab a few hours of reasonably comfortable sleep. In principle she had a three-hour stopover at Moscow-Sheremetyevo before boarding an Aeroflot flight for the twenty—five—hundredmile flight to Norilsk. However, she had been warned to expect delays of up to six hours or more: This, after all, was Russia.