by Tim Green
“Johnny,” he said into the phone, “go to Heid’s. I’ll meet you across the street. Stay on the parkway. They’re going toward the city. You there?”
“What the hell are you doing, kid?” Johnny asked.
“Just go,” Sam said.
He was in a full sprint down the service road, sucking wind, when he saw the headlights round the corner and start toward him. He brought the phone to his lips. He could hear the whine of the car’s engine. It was coming fast.
“I told you the goddamn parkway!” Sam screamed. He snapped the phone shut. He wanted to throw it at the car. The time it would take them to turn around could be the difference between staying with the Albanians and losing them, following them to his dad or starting over with nothing.
The car’s brakes gave a little chirp as it pulled up short and the door swung open. Sam put an arm up, blinded by its high beams.
“Goddamn it!” Sam yelled, running. “Turn it around!”
He was to the door before he realized the man driving wasn’t Johnny. In fact, it wasn’t a black town car, but the silver Audi. The heavyset man wearing a leather coat, a short dark cap of messy hair, and a sneering face grabbed Sam by the wrist and twisted his arm up behind him in one smooth motion. Sam’s nose and lips smashed into the car window and he saw stars. Before he could react, the man had Sam’s other hand behind his back, too.
Cold plastic cut into Sam’s wrists as the man cinched down on a zip tie before taking away his phone. The trunk popped open and the man shoved him toward it.
“Hey!” Sam screamed, struggling. “Help!”
Before he could say another word, he toppled over the edge, helplessly dumped into the trunk. The top slammed down. Sam kicked at it, screaming, but after a few seconds he heard the car door slam and they started to move.
Sam bumped around the bottom of the trunk as the car sped away. Ten minutes later, they pulled over and Sam heard someone from the passenger’s side get out. When the trunk lock popped he braced himself, but it didn’t fly open. The bulb went on and he saw the end of a rubber tube being fished into the crack.
After a minute, the tube began to hiss. A chemical stink filled Sam’s nostrils and he fought to rise up, kicking down with his legs, groping with his bound hands. His eyes went wide. He tried not to breathe, but couldn’t stop. His lungs tingled and his head swam. Tears filled his eyes as he fell back into the bottom of the trunk, his limbs now numb and useless. His eyes focused on the end of the hissing hose and he thought of a science experiment they had done back in school. School wasn’t so bad, really. He was deep in the bottom of a well. The light was fading. He wanted to tell his dad about school and how he would gladly turn over a new leaf.
Then everything went black.
77
SOMETIME DURING THE MAIN COURSE a fleck of meat caught hold of the congressman’s face just beyond the reach of his lips. Van Buren kept on, steaming ahead, working his knife to the bone, as if the first two courses were simply a warmup. Jake tried to keep his attention on the congressman’s eyes as the older man unraveled the less private parts of his family history. He tried to decode the pattern of leafy vines that gilded a wall sconce. He tried to count the dozen or so candles the sconce held, each fat as his swollen wrist. But he couldn’t.
He couldn’t stop his eyes from stealing back to that gray shred of veal and the way it refused to desist. He couldn’t stop thinking of all the things a man with as much power and money as Van Buren must not notice. Things too small. Crude things beneath his dignity. His own bad breath. The bruises on the inner thigh of the chambermaid. A fart in church. Jake himself.
That was the real problem, and Jake knew it.
Jake’s hunger ceased. His stomach twisted as he watched Van Buren calmly finish his meat, survey the changing of the plates, then tap his spoon edge against the braised caramel shell, breaking its surface before scooping out the supple heart of a crème brûlée.
“I could help you a lot more with what’s going on if you’ll let me use the phone,” Jake said, repeating himself for maybe the fourth time.
Van Buren straightened up and wiped his mouth clean, then pointed with his spoon at Jake.
“Don’t confuse my hospitality,” he said. “I don’t know if your son is the one. Neither do you.”
“If he is?”
“Then I’m guessing, because you say your son matters to you, that you’re not going to want this thing in the media either,” Van Buren said. “I have people working on this, trust me. Your show we weren’t able to convince, but the networks are sitting on this thing until all the facts are out.
“Am I right about you?”
“My son is the most important thing in my life,” Jake said. “I’m not a TV whore.”
“But your employer is.”
“I don’t have an employer,” Jake said, picking up his own spoon and breaking the crust on his dessert without eating any of it. “I got fired.”
“So, you want to contain this as much as we do,” Van Buren said.
“What if Sam’s not the one?”
“Then I have to protect this family. Whatever I say, whatever happens that you repeat outside these walls, I’ll deny. If you want to stay with me on this, you’ll have to be patient for a few hours. Believe me, the people I have working on it are the best. If you walk out that door, you’re on your own.”
“Chained up in some cellar, you mean?” Jake said, caressing his swollen wrist.
Van Buren set down his spoon and dabbed at his lips again. “Whatever happens if you walk out of here is between you and Mr. Slatten.”
Jake stared at him.
Van Buren got up. “I’m glad we had a chance to talk.”
Jake turned on his heel for the thousandth time, grinding down the small flattened circle in the dark blue rug. He continued along his track to the other side of the room and spun again. He believed that Sam was fine, otherwise pacing wouldn’t have been enough. He had already looked over the books on a wall shelf, picked one out, and sat down with it, but his eyes roamed over the words without comprehension.
It was just after eleven when someone knocked on the door. Jake tore it open and found Slatten.
“He needs to see you,” Slatten said.
“What’s wrong?”
Slatten shook his head and headed down the hall. Jake followed him down a back set of stairs, then along another hall, before being shown into a spacious paneled office. Wood polish and leather hung in the air. Van Buren sat behind a broad desk, examining some papers. He had lost his bow tie and jacket, his sleeves were rolled up, and the top button of his shirt was undone. Behind him, the picture window reflected orange globes of light from the Tiffany floor lamps that matched the one on the congressman’s desk. When Van Buren saw Jake, he set the papers down and took a deep breath.
“Have a seat.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I just got a call,” Van Buren said. “Do you know who Niko Karwalkowszc is?”
“The Albanians’ lawyer,” Jake said.
Van Buren nodded slowly and splayed his fingers across the desktop. “They have your son.”
Jake gripped his swollen hand, wincing, then twitching the fingers to shake free from the pain. “Oh, Christ. Where is he? They called you?”
Van Buren glanced at Slatten. “I don’t know where. Two days ago I paid the Albanians for some documents.”
“They’re blackmailing you?” Jake asked.
Van Buren nodded.
“What do they want?”
“Nothing I don’t have.”
“Money?”
Van Buren nodded.
“How much?”
“A million.”
“You’re going to give it to them?”
“It’s money,” Van Buren said. “The important thing is the boy. Your son. Sam. Once he’s safe, Mr. Slatten can worry about the money.”
“When? When can we get him?”
“Now, tonight.”
“But the money?”
“The bank.”
“It’s almost midnight,” Jake said.
“The regional manager is already on his way. It’s my bank. I own it.”
“I’ve got a friend at the FBI,” Jake said.
“It’s not about friends,” Van Buren said. “It’s about efficacy.”
“This is my son.”
Van Buren scowled at him, staring hard, and said, “And he might be my grandson. I don’t know how much you know about these people.”
“Enough,” Jake said. “They tried to kill me. They murdered a woman who tried to help me.”
“Slatten has done exchanges like this for executives in South America,” Van Buren said.
Jake looked at Slatten’s expressionless face, the furrows of time on his forehead, the corded muscles in his neck. His eyes flickered at Jake.
“Just Sam. We need to keep him safe,” Jake said quietly. “I don’t care about anything else.”
78
A KNOCK AT THE DOOR revealed one of Slatten’s men. Slatten accepted two maps that he unrolled onto a reading table in the corner of the room. He took several books off the adjacent shelf to weight down the corners and removed a Magic Marker from his pocket.
“What are these?” Jake asked.
“It’s the Bellevue Country Club,” Slatten said. “From a satellite. One overhead, the other at an angle that lets you see the elevation of the terrain. This is a layout of the course. We lifted it from the scorecard. There’s a PDF file on the club’s Web site.”
“It’s where they want to meet,” Van Buren said out of the side of his mouth as he examined the map. “We go to the first green. They said they’d signal us where to go from there.”
“They’ll be on high ground,” Slatten said. “Here, or here.”
Most of the course was cut into the side of a hill with several holes up on top. Slatten’s marker left two dots, one on the seventh tee and another on the sixth green. The slope above those two grassy plateaus was entirely wooded with two cart paths cutting through to the hilltop part of the course.
Slatten then pointed out the first green. “They’ll be able to see us here.”
“What about the street, here?” Jake asked, pointing to an intersection that bordered the lower corner of the course. “They could wait there.”
“Isolation,” Slatten said. “That’s what they want, but also a place they know, and a place they can get in and out of without attracting attention.”
The course was surrounded by housing developments on all sides. It was located on the southwestern edge of Syracuse. The Albanians could get into the city or out into the countryside, depending on which way they went from the course.
“Another reason not to involve the police,” Van Buren said. “There’s no way of knowing who’ll be watching and where they’ll be.”
“So we just go in there?” Jake asked.
“Mr. Slatten will,” Van Buren said, placing his knuckles on the overhead map of the course. “He’ll take the money and some men.”
“I’m going,” Jake said.
The two other men looked at each other. Their eyes said something Jake couldn’t understand, then Van Buren addressed Jake.
“We thought you might. You’ll have to do what Slatten says. That’s the condition.”
“You’ll be there, too, right?” Jake said, looking deep into the congressman’s eyes. “You said you don’t know, but I do. He’s your grandson.”
Jake held Van Buren’s gaze until the congressman cleared his throat and said, “Of course I’ll go.”
“We’ll all be safe. I’ll put shooters here, here, and here,” Slatten said, making marks in the trees around the high ground he predicted the Albanians would choose. “They’ll go in from the neighborhoods. Rental cars. They’ll have night vision.”
“When?” Jake asked.
Slatten looked at his watch. “I sent them fifteen minutes ago on a private jet. They’ll be in place by one. The exchange is at two. I don’t think we’ll need them, but it’s always better to have more firepower than less.”
“The idea is, no fire at all, right?” Jake asked.
“Of course,” Slatten said. “But if we need them, the Albanians will be neutralized instantly. They’ll mark up and hold on them until we have the boy.”
“How are we getting there?” Jake asked. “You have another jet?”
“We have a helicopter outside,” Slatten said.
“Fly it right to Bellevue?” Jake asked.
“No, too much attention,” Slatten said. “We’ll rent a car at the airport and drive. It’s ten minutes. If anything, we may want the copter to pick us up after we get the boy, get out of there without giving them a second bite at the apple.”
“Have the helicopter fly in once Sam is safe?”
“Exactly.”
“You’re worried what they could do?” Jake asked. “Once they have the money?”
Slatten looked at him like an exasperated parent. “Most times, you’re right. You give a kidnapper the money, you get to go home with your man. But these people? They have no rules.”
79
VAN BUREN STUDIED JAKE’S FACE while he watched Slatten slip the bulletproof vest over his head, then strap his gun on over that. Slatten handed the same kind of vest to Van Buren and another to Jake. They were in the back room of a two-story detached garage, Slatten’s base of operations. Guns lined one wall. A desk with a computer and phone sat in front of a bank of closed-circuit television screens. The vests came from an open closet crowded with dark clothes and boots. The navy windbreakers Slatten handed them had sailboats stitched into the labels, the same kind Van Buren had worn as a young man sailing in the America’s Cup.
“I have to use the bathroom,” Jake said.
Van Buren had seen Jake eyeing the small doorway at the far end of the long rectangular room, so he wasn’t surprised.
“Hurry,” he said, glancing pointedly at his watch before nodding toward the open door. Then he noticed Jake’s eyes seeking out Slatten for permission as well and he smiled at that. They needed the father to do as he was told.
“It might take a minute,” Jake said.
Slatten grunted, and Jake walked the length of the room before closing the door. When the two of them were alone, they simply stared at each other. Van Buren enjoyed the game. He had seen Slatten’s silent and confident assessment unsettle senators and administrative cabinet members in seconds.
It was more than a minute when Van Buren dropped Slatten’s gaze for a peek at his watch. That’s when he noticed the red light on the desk phone glaring at him.
“You don’t have a phone in that bathroom, do you?” Van Buren asked.
Slatten’s eyes followed the path of Van Buren’s. They locked onto the phone, but only for an instant before Slatten marched toward the bathroom door. He rattled the handle, then hammered on the door with the meat of his fist.
“Carlson!” he yelled.
Van Buren glanced at the phone. The red light went out and the bathroom door opened. Jake stepped out into the room wiping his hands on a paper towel.
“All set?” he said.
“Who the fuck were you talking to?” Slatten asked, his chin extended toward the reporter, teeth clenched.
Jake blinked at them and took half a step back.
80
SAM’S BRAIN PUSHED against the inside of his skull, throbbing softly with the beat of his pulse. He opened his eyes. They felt crowded by the bone. The smell ate away at the insides of his sinuses. He blinked, rolled to the side, and vomited. He twisted his nose and face against the stink. It was sharp and rotten and somehow sweet.
His feet had been bound with the same plastic zip ties locking his wrists. Every joint, bone, and muscle ached, but nothing more than his throbbing head. Above him loomed the sides of a tall round structure unlike anything he’d ever seen. Artificial light leaked in from above where a massive convex roof pitched steeply u
pward.
He was wet, and the stench around him was damp, making the air too thick to breathe without taking great gasps. He struggled against his bonds, rolling and bumping into the metal frame of a wall. When he rolled the other way, he found a mound of whatever was making the stink. He wretched and rolled back to the wall, panting. He lay there, and his own breathing was the only sound he heard until a car pulled up outside, gravel popping beneath its tires. A metal door rattled open, casting a white rectangle of light into the space and filling the rancid air with dancing motes of dust.
The metal ribs, round shape, and stink defined themselves as an old silo. The rotting feed had fermented in the confined damp space. A man with long blond hair and a dirty Fu Manchu stepped inside with a bandanna tied around his face against the smell. His partner with the short dark hair ducked in behind him, coughing and choking back a gag before raising his bandanna to spit out a gob of phlegm. They raised Sam up by the arms, one on each side, and dragged him toward the opening.
The windows of an empty farmhouse gaped at him like the eyes of a skull. The silver Audi rested in the dirt drive with its trunk yawning wide.
“Get in,” the blond man said, pushing Sam toward the trunk.
Sam hesitated and his head was pushed down into the space, burning his cheek against the wooly lining. Sam cowered and tumbled in with his hands still bound behind his back. The blond man slammed the trunk and he huddled in the dark cramped space, bracing his legs against the thin rough carpet as they bounced down the driveway. They rode for a time on pavement, the tires humming and Sam drifting in and out of consciousness until they took a series of sharp turns and came to a stop.
The blond man threw open the trunk and yanked him out. They were next to a woods alongside a country road, high on a hill that overlooked the lights of a city. Sam saw the glow of the dome. The man pointed toward the dark woods and told Sam to go. In the faint light, he saw a black entrance into the trees. He shivered, and when they were a few yards inside the woods and the man flicked on a flashlight, Sam could see the puffs of his breath. The light illuminated a dirt path that wound through the trees before coming out the other side onto the fairway of a golf course where the smell of cut grass filled his nose.
