The Cutting Edge

by Jeffery Deaver

  “He wouldn’t be interested in my boy. He didn’t see anything!”

  “He’s already killed another witness.”

  “But Vimal couldn’t have seen him. There was a mask. I heard there was a mask. On the news. So he’d have no reason—”

  “Enough!” This, from Divya Lahori.

  “No,” Lahori growled.

  “Yes, Deepro. This has gone on too long,” the wife said calmly. Then looked imploringly at Sachs. “You have to protect him.”

  “We will. That’s why I’m here.”

  So, wrong about Divya. She could stand up to her husband.

  There was nothing to be gained by a cold glare at Lahori. But Amelia Sachs glared anyway. Then she asked, “Where is he?”

  “He’s downstairs. In the basement. His sculpting studio is there,” the boys’ mother said.

  She remembered that they believed the boy was a sculptor. The grinding sound would be Vimal working on a piece. She should have picked that up.

  No matter. She’d soon have him in protective custody. She’d arranged for a safe house, and she would put a detail here too, to keep the family safe.

  “So you lied to me.”

  The father said defiantly, “I’m only trying to protect him.”

  There was more to this than the father wanting to protect his son, though, Sachs assessed. Most parents would get the police on board as fast as possible.

  But she said only, “Please, go get him now.”

  His wife held out her hand, palm up. Lahori’s face tightened. He was fuming. He dug into his pocket and angrily handed over a set of keys with a trembling hand.

  His father had locked him in the basement?

  Divya Lahori was paying for her defiance with an icy gaze from her husband. She looked at his face once, then glanced away and walked toward the back of the house.

  Chapter 34

  With a gloved hand, Vladimir Rostov tested the front door of the Lahori residence.

  Ah, ah, the helpful kur had left it unlocked.

  This saved him from a dramatic—and potentially risky—entrance by kicking in a window. Subduing those inside would probably have required the use of his extremely loud pistol.

  Stifling a cough—very bad time for a spell of hacking—he looked through the lace curtain in the door. His form would be visible if anyone looked but not obviously so. The overcast was thick and there was little backlight to cast a shadow in the entryway.

  The kuritsa cop and the husband were in the living room, to the left. It seemed that the wife had gone to get Vimal, who was somewhere else in the house. The other boy—probably the brother—was not to be seen. It would be logical for the cop to bring Vimal into the living room too. She’d want to question them all.

  All my little kur in a single henhouse.

  Rostov could just see the redhead’s back from the doorway. She was five strides away. Rostov had an idea. He looked around and lifted a large brick from the garden. He returned to the door and peered in again. Yes, yes, this would work. Rostov would step inside fast, bring the brick down on her head and keep the father at bay with the gun. He’d get the cop’s gun and cuff her hands. Then take care of Vimal and the rest of the family.

  And her? The cop? Rostov caught one more glimpse of the blue diamond on her pale finger. So alluring.

  Gone to the stone…

  Rostov pulled the ski mask down, took the gun in his left hand and slipped the brick under his arm. He gripped the doorknob.

  Here we go, little kur. Here we go.

  Then there came a cry from the back of the house. “No!” A woman’s voice. Vimal’s mother. She burst from a door in the back, in the kitchen. The door that Rostov had seen a few moments ago, the one that seemed to lead down to the basement. She paused in the hallway. Still on the front porch, Rostov crouched. But he didn’t need to see the drama. He could hear clearly enough.

  “He’s gone! Vimal is gone!”

  “How could he be gone?” Lahori raged, as if it were her fault.

  “The saw? The one he uses for his sculpture? He used it to cut through the bars on the window.”

  So the father had locked his own son in a cell in the basement.

  Now the fucking kuritsa had escaped?

  Rostov risked a look to see if they were coming out the front door. But, no, all three adults hurried to the back of the house and down the stairway to the cellar.

  He backed away from the front door and down the steps. He walked into the neighbor’s property and jogged to the backyard.

  Hiding behind a hedge, he peered into the Lahoris’ yard. No sign of the boy. But he did see thick metal bars lying on the grass in front of a low window.

  He sighed and turned, striding quickly to the sidewalk. He got into his car. For ten minutes he cruised up and down the streets of the placid neighborhood, with no success. He searched for only a brief time, though, assuming that the redheaded kuritsa would call other officers to scour the neighborhood too.

  Glancing to the seat beside him, he noticed some cold Roll N Roaster fries. He shoved them in his mouth, chewing absently and swallowing fast. He lit a cigarette and enjoyed the inhale. A setback, yes. But Vladimir Rostov wasn’t as upset as he might be.

  The Promisor is savvy, the Promisor is devious.

  And, even though he’s completely gone to the stone, he always has a backup plan.

  Chapter 35

  Three p.m.

  This was the time Lincoln Rhyme and the man he’d texted yesterday, after meeting with Edward Ackroyd, had agreed on for a phone call.

  And it was with, no less, a spy.

  Lincoln Rhyme had a relationship with the American espionage community. It was ambivalent and infrequent but undeniable.

  The reason he’d been unable to participate in the El Halcón case—the Mexican drug lord who was on federal trial for murder and assault—was due to a meeting in Washington, DC, to assist a new U.S. security agency.

  Rhyme and Sachs had come into contact with the organization on a recent case. They, on the one hand, and the Alternative Intelligence Service, on the other, had butted heads over a clandestine operation the AIS had run in Naples, Italy. In the end, Rhyme and Sachs had saved the organization’s reputation—and some lives in the process. The director had been so impressed with their forensic work, he’d tried to recruit them.

  But working for the AIS would involve considerable foreign travel. Given Rhyme’s physical limitations, he was not inclined to sign on, despite the intriguing jobs the organization promised. Besides, New York City had no lack of challenging cases. Why fish elsewhere? It was also his and Sachs’s home. He had, however, been happy to jet down to DC, to help the AIS set up a new division to use forensics and physical evidence as an intelligence resource.

  At the first meeting in DC, one of the congressmen involved in the creation and funding of the AIS had said, “Glad you’re here, Captain Rhyme, Detective Sachs. We know you can help us in our task to parameter a new dynamic for evidentiary intelligence analytics and weaponization.”

  Rhyme, who otherwise would have engaged in a bit of verbal fencing about verbosity and about turning “parameter” into a verb, reminded himself he was inside the Beltway, and simply ignored the bullshit. The concept was clever: The new division would employ crime scene and crime lab skills to gather and analyze intelligence…and, yes, to “weaponize” evidence.

  Need to identify a mole within the American consulate in Frankfurt, when everybody passes the polygraph? Just find the one employee bearing a molecule of trace evidence that can be matched with a molecule of trace in the Generalkonsulat der Volksrepublik China.

  Need a North Korean hit team in Tokyo taken down? Just deliver to the Japanese Keiji-kyoku some trace evidence and shoe prints suggesting they have illegal weapons, and, bang, they’re in jail—for a long, long time. So much more humane than snipers. And more important, somebody other than the U.S. government does the dirty work.

  The name would be the
EVIDINT Division of the AIS, a word coined by Rhyme himself. As in “evidence intelligence.” Spy-speak. Like HUMINT, human intelligence. Or ELINT, electronic intelligence.

  It was the director of the AIS, Daryl Mulbry, whom Rhyme had texted when Ackroyd told him of Unsub 47’s Russian roots. Mulbry’s text suggested a 3 p.m. call.

  Espionage apparently engendered promptness and at 3:00:02, his phone rang.

  “Lincoln, hello!” The man, Rhyme recalled, was pale and slight and with thinning hair a light shade of brown. To judge by his patois, his roots were the Carolinas or Tennessee. When Rhyme had first met him he’d thought Mulbry was a minor, regulation-bound low-level diplomat. The man’s appearance and self-effacing manner gave no clue that he ran a hundred-million-dollar intelligence operation, including tactical teams, who, if they wanted you to disappear, could fulfill that task with a minimum of fuss.

  “So sorry it’s taken this long to get back. Had a brouhaha in Europe. Was a mess. It’s largely—though not completely—cleared up now. But more about that later. What can I do for you? You want to know how your baby, the EVIDINT’s going? Swimmingly. Though that’s not a word I really understand. It’s not all that easy to swim. And one can drown, course.”

  “Something else and it’s urgent.”

  Mulbry was used to Rhyme’s impatience. “Of course.”

  “We’ve got a perp in town, recently, we think. My diagnosis: he’s pretty unhinged. Obsessed with diamonds. Got away with a couple million worth of rough, it’s called. Uncut stones. He murdered some innocents. Tortured, in a couple of cases.”

  “Torture? What was that about?”

  “Mostly to track down witnesses. But probably for his own amusement too.”

  “Details?”

  “Not much. Russian national, Muscovite, fluent-ish in English. White. Blue eyes. Average height and build. Fashion choice leans toward dark casual clothing—off the rack—and ski masks.”

  “You’re a card, Lincoln. Why the theft? Funding terrorism? Money laundering?”

  “This is the odd part. He wants to save diamonds from desecration. Our British consultant describes him as a ‘nutter.’”

  “He thinking of heading back home for the Motherland’s borscht or does he have more mischief in mind?”

  “Staying put, at least temporarily, we’ll assume.”

  “Recently here, you said. How recent?”

  “Unknown. But we’ve checked for similar MO in the databases and nothing shows up. So let’s say the past week, ten days. Though that’s a big assumption.”

  “Means of dispatching people?”

  “Glock, short-barrel thirty-eight and razor knife.”

  “My. Any indication of military training?”

  “That’d be speculation too. But he’s smart. Careful with CCTVs and evidence.”

  “All right and you want to know if I can find any names of Russkies who’ve come to the U.S. in that time. Of questionable backgrounds or circumstances.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay, Russian, diamonds, psycho, access to weapons. I’ll see what we can find. I’ll get the kids and the bots on it.” Rhyme heard typing. Fast as train wheels over old track.

  Mulbry came back on. “Might be a while…and you might end up with quite the list. We don’t stop them at the border, those Russian folks, you know? The Cold War is over, haven’t you heard?”

  Rhyme had to laugh at this.

  “Now, Lincoln, as long as I have you, let me pose a question.”

  Rhyme recalled what the man had said a moment ago.

  More about that later…

  “Hm?”

  “That incident I was talking about. We wrapped up a radical cell in the suburbs of Paris. All good. But in the process our team vacuumed up some unrelated digital traffic that caught our attention. It was between Paris, Central America and New York City. That triad rings terrorist profile bells.”

  Rhyme said, “Must be about a million emails a day along those routes.”

  “You bet there are. But these were different. They were encrypted with duodecimal algorithms. Virtually unbreakable. Which makes us a tad nervous.”

  Rhyme, who had a science background, knew the duodecimal numbering system, also called base 12 or dozenal. The binary system has two digits only, 0 and 1. The decimal has ten: 0 through 9. Duodecimal has twelve, 0 through 9 plus two extra symbols, usually ↊ and ↋.

  Mulbry continued, “The encryption package is so ‘righteous’—that’s what the geeks say—that we’re treating the software as a weapon. It’s considered munitions under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, State Department. Since New York is one of the points of origin of the messages, I’m curious if anybody at NYPD has ever run across duodecimal encrypted emails or texts.”

  “No. Never heard of it.” He looked up at Cooper. “Mel, any duodecimal encryption in cases you’ve run?”

  “No.”

  “Call Rodney and see if he’s heard of anything.” Back to the phone. “We’ll talk to our expert here. We’ll see.”

  “Thanks. It’s got us troubled. We’re checking locations he or she or it were at when the messages were sent. Those’re hard to find too. Proxies, of course.” Another laugh. “Righteous ones.”

  “I’ll let you know if we find something.”

  The men said goodbye and disconnected.

  Hm, interesting idea, dozenal as a basis for encryption. Though Rhyme’s background was chemistry primarily, he harbored an interest in math and he knew that a number of mathematicians believed that base twelve was far easier to learn and use in making calculations. He’d even read about a dozenal clock, in which a minute equals fifty seconds of current time. A clock reading 7:33.4↊ in dozenal, for instance, was 2:32.50 on a standard timepiece.

  Fascinating.

  But, of course, irrelevant. And Rhyme pushed the thoughts away. He hoped he could help Mulbry but Unsub 47 was his priority. His phone hummed. The number was unfamiliar.

  Hoping for the caller’s sake it wasn’t a telemarketer, he answered, “Hello?”

  “Mr. Rhyme? Captain Rhyme?” The accent was Spanish, and it was light.

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Antonio Carreras-López. I’m an attorney from Mexico. I’m in New York at the moment, and I wonder if I may have a moment of your time.”

  “I’m very busy. What would this be in regard to?”

  “One of my clients is presently on trial here.” The man’s voice was low and melodic. “I’d like to discuss a matter that’s come up. It involves you.”

  “Who is your client?”

  “He’s a Mexican national. If you follow the news, you might have heard of him. Eduardo Capilla. He is better known as El Halcón.”

  Lincoln Rhyme was rarely shocked. But the ping in his insensate body was manifest as a significant throbbing in his head. This was the very case that he’d so wanted a piece of, but had been unable to participate in because of his commitment to Daryl Mulbry and the AIS down in Washington.

  “I’m familiar with him. Go on, please.”

  Carreras-López continued, “I know you understand the protocols of criminal trials. The prosecution is obligated to give the defense its evidentiary files prior to trial. In that material we received from the U.S. attorney, we discovered your name listed as a potential forensic analyst and witness. But a notation said you were not available.”

  “I submitted my name to consult for the prosecution but I had to be out of town.”

  “I looked you up, Captain, and was, I must say, impressed at your background and expertise. Extremely impressed.” He paused. “I gather that the consulting work you do is exclusively for the prosecution.”

  “Some civil work—for plaintiffs and defendants—but in criminal, yes, I work for law enforcement.”

  With the occasional spy thrown into the client mix.

  “Yes, well, if I may take just a few moments of your time to explain. The trial is under way and the prosecution is
presenting its case now. In looking over the evidence, our experts believe they have found something troubling. That the evidence, some of the evidence, has been manipulated by the police or FBI. My client is unpopular, and—frankly—he’s not such a very nice person. He has done some bad things in his life. But that does not mean he is guilty of the crimes he’s on trial for.”

  “And you want to hire me to see if I can find proof the evidence was manipulated?”

  “I think you are not a man who cares much about money, though we would pay a substantial fee. I think you are, however, a man who cares about right and wrong. And there is something very wrong about this case. But I can find no one who wishes to help me prove it. Of the four former prosecutors and retired forensic officers, and two professional forensic analysts I approached to help us, all have declined.”

  “You’ve made a motion to exclude the evidence, or for a mistrial?”

  “Not yet. We don’t want to do so without some substantive proof.”

  Rhyme’s thoughts tumbled. “From what I read there were multiple charges.”

  He heard a chuckle. “Oh, yes. Since you and I don’t have an attorney-client relationship, I will refrain from saying anything specific. But let me give you a hypothetical. A suspect is charged with five counts. There is no doubt he is guilty of one—let us say entering the country illegally. And there is ample evidence for that. And the jury will certainly convict. But the other, more serious counts, assault with a deadly weapon and attempted murder, he is absolutely not guilty of. Someone else committed those crimes and my client, my hypothetical client, was not even present when they happened.”

  “Justice,” Rhyme whispered.

  The lawyer said, “Yes. The very issue at hand. Mr. Rhyme, in reading about you, I saw you once testified at the petition of a man seeking release from prison on the ground that the laboratory technician had intentionally altered DNA results. You told the court that whether it was intentional or innocent, a forensic scientist’s errors in processing evidence are inexcusable. Truth is paramount, you said.”