House Secrets

by Mike Lawson

  He was now in the dark, but while the door had been open, he’d gotten a brief look at his surroundings. He knew he was in a hidden space beneath the floor of a building that he thought might have been an empty grain silo. But just then he realized it wasn’t a silo. He could hear liquid splashing onto the floor above him. A lot of liquid, as if it was being pumped into the building through several large-diameter pipes. He realized then that he was in a tank, a tank normally filled with water or some other fluid, and when the tank was full, the door above his head would be invisible.

  Once again the panic began to wash over him and once again he held it back, suppressing his fear. Think, he told himself. Calm down and think. Why didn’t Calvetti just shoot him and bury him in the woods near the cabin? Why go to the trouble of transporting him to this place? And Eddie hadn’t hit him in the face. He’d battered his body something awful but had never touched his face, and that had to mean that Calvetti hadn’t wanted to mar his looks. Yes, that had to be it. Calvetti was just going to leave him here for a while, thinking he’d scare him so badly that he’d never fail him or lie to him again. He wouldn’t throw away all their years of work, not for a daughter he hadn’t loved or a granddaughter that had only been a small part of his life. Yes, the fact that Dominic hadn’t killed him meant that there was still hope.

  He searched his pockets. They were empty. No, wait. He felt something. It was a small disposable cigarette lighter. Where had that come from? He didn’t smoke and he’d used wooden matches to light the fire in the cabin. He flicked on the lighter and raised it above his head and looked around. The concrete walls were complete bare, no other openings or outlets that he could see, but just as the heat from the lighter began to burn his thumb he saw something in the shadows on his right-hand side. He crawled on his knees in the dark in the direction of whatever he’d seen, and flicked the lighter again.

  Oh, Christ! It was a skeleton. And it had been there a long time. There was no flesh or hair on the bones, just a few tattered bits of cloth and leather. He noticed, just before the lighter began to burn him again, that there was something near the skeleton’s right hand.

  He waited impatiently until the lighter cooled a bit, then spun the wheel again with his thumb. The object he’d seen near the skeleton’s hand was a pair of rusted nail clippers, the file blade of the clippers sticking out. What was the man doing with the file blade? Had he figured a way out?

  He let the flame die again and took a few shallow, rapid breaths. He told himself not to panic. He ignited the lighter once more to see what the dead man had been doing with the nail file—and then he screamed.

  He screamed until his throat was raw. He screamed for Calvetti to release him. He screamed for God to save him. But even as his screams were echoing throughout the chamber he knew that the likelihood of Calvetti returning for him was less than the possibility of God reaching down from heaven and opening the door above him.

  Now he knew why Calvetti hadn’t simply killed him. And he also knew why Calvetti had placed the cigarette lighter in his pocket. Calvetti wanted him to die slowly and painfully, and he wanted him to know while he was dying that there would be no last minute rescue, that no one was going to find him and save him. Dominic Calvetti wanted him to suffer a slow, horrible death knowing—with absolute certainty—that there was no hope.

  He knew this because scratched into the concrete wall above the skeleton were the words:

  House Justice

  A Joe DeMarco Thriller

  MUIKE LAWSON

  House Justice

  Prologue

  The battery was dead.

  For six years she had evaded discovery. For six years she had lived in their midst and endured everything she had to endure but now, after all her sacrifices—now, when it was time to go home and accept the medals no one would ever see—now, when she would be given a job where she wouldn’t wake up shaking every night, terrified that the next day would be the day she’d be caught—now she was going to die because a car wouldn’t start.

  She overcame the urge to scream and pound the steering wheel in frustration. She needed to stay in control. She needed to think. But she couldn’t stop the tears leaking from her eyes.

  She couldn’t understand why Carson had waited so long to tell her to flee. As soon as the story appeared in the newspaper she knew she was vulnerable but Carson had told her not to panic, that too many people had attended the meeting. Then, four days later, he sent the text message to her cell phone. Just a single word: eclipse!

  Eclipse meant: run. Run for your life.

  For the last two years she had been begging Carson to let her go home, and he kept saying that he would but he needed her to stay just a little bit longer. Just give me six more months, he said—and then it was six more after that, and six more after that. The manipulative bastard. If he had kept his word, she would have told her lover that she had to visit a fictitious dying aunt in Bandar-e Maqam and taken a routine, commercial flight to the coastal city, after which a navy SEAL team would have picked her up on the beach. But now she couldn’t do that; there was no way she would be allowed to board a plane. So she had to use the backup escape plan, the plan they had never expected to use. And maybe that’s why the battery was dead: because someone had forgotten to check on the car they’d parked in the garage so long ago. Or maybe, because Carson waited too long, no one had time to check.

  She had fled from the ministry as soon as she received Carson’s message and immediately called the four people in her network to alert them. None of them answered. That was bad. If they had been picked up they may have already talked. She knew they’d talk eventually because everybody talked in the end, no matter how strong they were. All she could do was hope they hadn’t talked yet.

  The backup plan had been for her to pick up a car hidden in a small, private garage two miles from the ministry and then drive to a house twenty miles east of the city. There she would be hidden, for weeks if necessary, until they could transport her safely across the border into either Afghanistan or Kuwait. When she left the ministry, she had wanted to sprint the entire distance to the garage but had been afraid that she would call attention to herself. So she had walked as fast as she could, knowing each minute she spent walking was one more minute for them to get the roadblocks in place.

  But now the roadblocks didn’t matter. Without a car she had no idea how she would get to the safe house. She couldn’t take a bus: there were no bus routes that went near the house. And as for walking or taking a cab ... the police, the military—and, of course, the brutes from the Ministry of Intelligence and Security—would all have her picture. They’d be showing it to cabdrivers and stopping every woman walking alone—and here, few women walked alone. And if she took a cab, and if the driver remembered her, not only would she die but so would the family who hid her at the safe house.

  She forced herself to take a breath, to suppress the rising, screaming panic. Did she have any other options? Any? Yes, maybe one: the Swiss Embassy. The United States didn’t have an embassy in Iran but the Swiss did. Moreover, the Swiss were designated as a “protecting power” for U.S. interests in Iran, meaning that if some visiting American got into trouble the Swiss would do their best to help him out. But what she wanted the Swiss to do went far beyond helping some tourist who had lost his passport.

  The Swiss Embassy was close, less than a mile from where she was, and if she was careful—if she used the alleys and ducked through buildings—she might make it there and she might live. They would know if she entered the embassy, of course, and it would cause the Swiss enormous political problems, but maybe they would provide her sanctuary until her own people could get her out of the country through diplomatic channels. God knows what sort of trade they’d have to make for her and she couldn’t even imagine the international uproar that would ensue, but she didn’t care about any of that. She was too young to die.

  The way she’d lived the last six years, she’d never had the chanc
e to experience the joys of being young. Her youth had been stolen from her—so they owed her, and to hell with the political fallout that would occur if she ran to the Swiss. She had done her job—and now the diplomats and the damn politicians could do theirs.

  Her mind made up, she exited the useless car, ran to the side door of the garage, and threw it open—and was immediately blinded by the headlights of two vehicles. Men armed with machine pistols closed in on her.

  She just stood there, head bowed, shoulders slumped in defeat, unable to move. She could feel something draining from her body —and that something was hope. There were no options left. There was no place to run or hide. She wished, more than anything else, that she had a gun; if she had had one she would have killed herself.

  It was over.

  She knew what was going to happen next.

  She knew how she was going to die.

  Chapter 1

  Jacob LaFountaine, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, had been a second-string middle linebacker at Notre Dame. At age fifty-two, some of the muscle from his playing days had turned to fat, but not that much. He was still a bull of a man: six foot two, broad shoulders, strong arms, a deep chest. His legs were thick through the thighs but short in proportion to his upper body. He had dark hair, muddy brown eyes set beneath the shelf of a heavy brow, and an aggressive chin. He rarely smiled and he intimidated everyone who worked for him.

  He looked up in annoyance when Sinclair entered his office. Sinclair was one of his deputies, a fussy nitpicker whom LaFountaine didn’t like but who was too good at his job to fire. He always looked anxious when he talked to LaFountaine but today he looked more than anxious—he looked ill, pale and waxen, as if he might be sick to his stomach at any moment.

  Sinclair held up a disc. “You need to see this,” he said.

  “What is it?” LaFountaine asked.

  “A video that was delivered to the embassy in Kabul.”

  “I have a meeting in five minutes.”

  “You need to see this,” Sinclair said, surprising LaFountaine with his firmness.

  LaFountaine made an impatient get-on-with-it gesture, and Sinclair put the disc into the DVD player.

  “Brace yourself. It’s bad,” Sinclair said.

  LaFountaine looked over at Sinclair, confused by the comment, but at that moment the video began. It showed the upper body of a woman wearing a typical Muslim robe and headdress. A veil covered her entire face, including her eyes. The camera pulled back and showed that the woman was kneeling, swaying slightly as if she was having a hard time maintaining her balance. Her hands were behind her back and LaFountaine thought they might be tied. The camera focused again on the woman’s head and then a man’s hand appeared and pulled the veil away from her face.

  “Oh, Jesus,” LaFountaine said.

  The woman had been beaten so severely that it was impossible to tell who she was or what she had originally looked like. Her left eye was swollen completely shut, the eye socket obviously shattered. Her right eye was almost closed, and the part of the eye that was visible was filled with blood. Her lips were split, her jaw appeared to be broken, and her nose was a deformed lump.

  “Is that...”

  Before LaFountaine could complete the question, the man’s hand appeared back in the picture, now holding a revolver, and the barrel of the weapon was placed against the woman’s right temple. LaFountaine stood up but was unable to speak. The gun stayed against the woman’s head for three seconds—three seconds that seemed like an eternity to LaFountaine—and during that time the woman did nothing. Because of the condition of her eyes, LaFountaine couldn’t see the fear that must be in them, or maybe at this point, he thought, she was beyond fear. Maybe it was relief she was feeling. Then the gun was fired. There was no sound accompanying the video but LaFountaine could see the man’s hand buck from the recoil of the weapon and watched in horror as blood and brain matter erupted out the left side of the woman’s head. The camera pulled back again to show the woman lying on her side, blood forming a wet red halo around her head. And then the screen went black.

  “Was that...”

  “Yeah,” Sinclair said, his voice hoarse. “It was Mahata.”

  “Aw, those bastards,” LaFountaine said. “Those motherfuckers!” he screamed.

  LaFountaine gripped the edge of his desk and the muscles in his upper arms flexed as he began to pick it up and flip it over. He wanted to unleash the rage he was feeling in a violent, destructive rampage. He wanted to smash every object in the room. He wanted to smash Sinclair. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath and walked over to a window so Sinclair couldn’t see his face.

  With his broad back to Sinclair, he said, “I’ve been praying for days that she made it out. When we didn’t hear from her, I told myself it was because she was someplace where she couldn’t send a message. But I knew in my heart...”

  He stopped speaking; there wasn’t anything else to say.

  He stood looking out the window for another moment, then turned and faced Sinclair. “I want that bitch arrested,” he said. His voice was a low, deep-throated growl, like the noise a dog might make before it attacks. “I want her phones tapped, I want her apartment searched, and I want someone to get into every computer system she uses.”

  “Jake, we can’t...”

  “I want her source, goddamnit! I also want every person in this agency who knew about Diller polygraphed before the day is over. That includes you.”

  “It wasn’t one of our people.”

  “I want them all polygraphed. Today.”

  Chapter 2

  Sandra Whitmore knew she looked terrible.

  The bastards had come to her house at two in the morning just like the fucking gestapo, and some lady cop had watched her get dressed—had even watched her pee—but they wouldn’t let her put on any makeup or comb her hair. So now she stood in a jail jumpsuit, flip-flops on her feet, her face bloated and unadorned and looking all of its fifty-six years—and all her fellow journalists were watching. The courtroom was filled with journalists.

  She hoped no one could see her feet; her toenails looked like talons.

  The judge—some big-nosed, bald-headed bastard who thought he was God—was talking again. “Ms. Whitmore, you said in your story that your source was a CIA employee, and if what you said is true, the government needs to know this person’s name. Your source divulged sensitive national security information, has caused the death of a CIA agent, and...”

  Whitmore’s lawyer rose to his feet. “Your honor, there is no proof that ...”

  “Don’t you dare interrupt me,” the judge snapped. “As I was saying, your source caused the death of a CIA agent, and this person could endanger other intelligence operations. In other words, your story was not only irresponsible but you are, right now, protecting a traitor. And contrary to what your attorney has argued, the identity of your source is not protected by the First Amendment or the press shield law. So if you don’t name...”

  Whitmore’s lawyer—a pompous wimp in a three-piece suit—rose to his feet to argue with the judge again. Her lawyer. What a joke. He had made it clear that he worked for the Daily News and not for her, and if she didn’t like that fact she could pay for her own attorney— knowing damn good and well that she couldn’t afford one. But right now he was pretending that he cared about her welfare as he challenged the judge’s last statement.

  Whitmore didn’t bother to listen to the legal wrangling; she already knew how this was going to end.

  Her source. She couldn’t believe it when he had called her. Why me? she’d asked. Why hadn’t he called one of the heavy-hitters at the New York Times or the Washington Post? Or why not Sheila Cohen who worked for the News and had won a Pulitzer in 2007? The guy said he came to her because he didn’t trust the flaming liberals at the Times or the Post, and he wasn’t sure that Sheila had the balls for this kind of story. That had made her laugh; it also made her think that he didn’t know Sheila C
ohen very well.

  Her source told her that a man named Conrad Diller—a junior VP at Taylor & Taylor, the company founded by playboy millionaire Marty Taylor—had met secretly with several high-ranking officials in Tehran. The purpose of the meeting had been to sell the Iranians equipment that would improve the guidance system for their Shahab-3 missile, the Iranian medium-range missile that could hit Tel Aviv. According to her source, the CIA was aware of the meeting but were doing nothing to stop Diller from completing the deal. He concluded that either someone at Langley was getting a kickback from Marty Taylor or, more likely, the agency was playing some sort of dangerous political game. Whatever the case, the sale had to be stopped and what Marty Taylor was doing had to be exposed.

  The next question she’d asked had been: Why should I believe you? And that’s when he had pulled out his CIA credentials. He also showed her proof that Diller had flown to Iran. Then she did what any good reporter would do: she confirmed the facts as best she could. She verified that Conrad Diller worked for Marty Taylor and verified, via an independent source, that he had taken a flight to Tehran from Cairo. She also called a guy at the Wall Street Journal that she’d had an affair with fifteen years ago and he confirmed that Taylor’s company was in deep financial trouble. Whitmore figured that Marty Taylor had to be up to his pretty neck in red ink to be selling classified shit to Iran.

  Lastly, she called the CIA and asked if the agency would care to comment on her story. They pulled the usual gambit of stalling until right before her deadline, and when they called back all they did was badger her for her source. When she refused to name him, they said that if she published, ongoing operations could be jeopardized. The CIA’s lawyer then quoted some obscure federal code and said that if their operations were in any way compromised she could be subject to criminal charges. But that’s all the arrogant bastards said, and they never said anything about some spy being in danger. And so she published—and now she was in a jail jumpsuit.