Trade-Off

by Trade-Off (retail) (epub)

  ‘Which happens to be stolen, doc,’ Reilly added, helpfully. ‘But with all the other things your conscience has been real busy takin’ care of, I guess that shouldn’t bother you none.’

  * * *

  Reese tensed in the driver’s seat of his Lincoln as the nose of the dark blue Ford compact appeared in the restaurant driveway. He checked the direction indicator on the Ford and realized he was perfectly positioned to follow it – the car was clearly headed downtown. Reese started the engine and waited for the Ford to accelerate away. The Jaguar followed the Ford onto the street, but turned in the opposite direction, directly towards him.

  The only mistake Ketch had made was not supplying a description of Doctor Evans to the Las Vegas PD, so when Hunter swept past in the Jaguar with Reilly crouched down on the floor in the back, Reese barely gave him a second glance.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Saturday

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  ‘They’re on the move.’ Harris’s voice crackled out of the speaker of the two-way radio. ‘The cop who spotted the cars is following the Ford. It’s heading downtown. Evans left at the same time, but he’s going uptown.’

  ‘Up-town?’ Templeton asked, puzzled. ‘Why would Evans head uptown? McCarran’s in the opposite direction, and that’s where he should be going.’

  ‘So?’ Harris asked.

  ‘So I reckon they’ve pulled a switch.’

  Harris was silent for a moment, weighing the options. ‘Good thinking,’ he said, finally. ‘You could be right. OK, we’ll leave the cop to follow the Ford. Find the Jaguar.’

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ Templeton said. ‘Wait. Yes,’ he added, his voice rising. ‘The Ford’s just passed us heading in the opposite direction. Definitely not Hunter or Reilly driving it.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Not unless your mugshots are way out of date. The driver looked to be tall and thin, and was wearing glasses.’

  ‘That’s not Hunter or Reilly,’ Harris said. ‘OK, keep going. We’ve got to find that fucking Jaguar.’

  * * *

  The ‘fucking Jaguar’ was going to take some finding. Two miles after leaving the restaurant, Hunter had pulled in to a multi-storey parking lot, driven up to the top floor and parked it. Then they’d grabbed their bags and other belongings and walked down three levels before Reilly produced his Slim Jim.

  ‘How about that Camaro?’ the sheriff asked.

  Hunter barely glanced at the bright red two-seater. ‘Great fun,’ he said, ‘but not exactly what we want. Try to find us something that nobody’s going to look at.’

  Six minutes later, Reilly leaned out of the driver’s window of a black Lincoln town car and paid the exit toll using Wilson’s credit card. What neither man had noticed were the cameras above both the entry and exit lanes, and even if they had, there wasn’t anything they could have done about them.

  Groom Lake Air Force Base, Nevada

  The mobile rang again and Ketch leaned forward and picked it up.

  ‘Yes,’ he barked.

  ‘It’s Captain Dawson again, sir. Our officer followed the blue Ford as far as the main gate at McCarran, and confirmed that the suspect car entered the base. He’s now parked outside, watching as you instructed. Do you have any further orders for him?’

  ‘No,’ Ketch answered, shortly. ‘We now know that the perps did a switch, and drove away in Doctor Evans’s own car, a blue Jaguar. That’s what we need to find now, and that is to be your highest priority.’

  ‘We’re on it, sir. These two offenders seem mighty adept at swapping vehicles, so I’ve instituted a watch at all the parking garages in Vegas. Most of them have some sort of security surveillance system in place. We’re asking them to check their tapes for any sign of the Jaguar after it drove away from the restaurant.’

  Ketch nodded approval. Dawson’s idea had real merit, and Ketch realized he should have thought of it first.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said, somewhat grudgingly. ‘Keep me informed.’

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Willie Betts had been employed as a security guard for most of his adult life. He enjoyed the work, mainly because he had to do almost nothing, just sit in a booth and keep one eye on the TV or a book and the other on a bank of video screens, and that suited Willie just fine.

  The shoulder bag he carried to the job contained a sandwich lunch, a flask of coffee, a selection of candy bars, and at least one book. Willie got through about three books a week. He was probably the best-read security guard in Las Vegas, but as his taste ran mainly to westerns and pulp horror, you’d never have thought so from talking to him.

  Axelrod Parking wasn’t quite Willie’s idea of an ideal number, but he was sixty-three years old, arthritic and slow, and he had to take pretty much whatever he could get. At least there was nobody around to bother him in the tiny booth next to the exit lane on the ground floor. Almost all he ever did was help out drivers who had lost their tickets or who for some reason wanted to pay in cash rather than use a credit card. It was simple, undemanding work.

  When the phone rang it startled him, simply because it had only ever rung about three times since he’d started working at the garage nearly two years previously, and he picked it up cautiously, like a long-dead fish.

  ‘Axelrod Parking,’ he muttered.

  ‘This is Sergeant Callaway of the Las Vegas PD. I’ve got a couple of questions for you,’ the voice began.

  FBI Headquarters, J. Edgar Hoover Building, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.

  William McGrath had tried, as far as possible, to forget about Roland Oliver. In truth, he was extremely busy as acting Director, reading files, making decisions, chairing meetings and handling all the other tasks required of the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That was, as the saying goes, the good reason for pushing Roland Oliver to the back of his mind.

  The real reason was something else. Twice he had woken up, hot and sweating, with one of the images from the video tape vividly imprinted on his mind. He had re-sealed the Omega Procedures file and replaced it at the back of the Director’s personal safe – he was now occupying Donahue’s former office pending the appointment of a new Director – and with every day that passed without a call from Nevada, he breathed a little easier. No news, he reasoned, was good news. Obviously Reilly and Hunter had been taken care of, and with any luck he would be able to hand over the reins of the FBI to somebody else without ever having to be involved with Roland Oliver again.

  That hope was shattered by the call from the CommCen early that evening, just as McGrath was tidying his desk before heading home.

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Willie Betts began pressing buttons on the video console, running back the entry lane camera tape to the time Sergeant Callaway had told him to start looking. It hadn’t been a particularly busy afternoon, and Willie had only thirty or forty cars to check. He froze the image of the eighteenth car on the screen and peered closely at it.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said, and stretched out his hand for the telephone.

  Oval Office, White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.

  ‘I’m sorry to trouble you so late, Mr. President,’ McGrath began.

  Charles Gainey smiled gently at him and waved him to an armchair by the coffee table. James Dickson, the Secretary of Defense, had already taken a seat, summoned by the President as soon as he knew McGrath was coming to see him.

  ‘No trouble, William,’ he said. ‘I take it you have news?’

  ‘Yes, I have, and I’m afraid it’s not good. Roland Oliver is certain that Reilly and Hunter are in Las Vegas – there hasn’t been a physical sighting of either man, but all the indications are that they are there.’

  ‘Be more specific, William. What do you mean by “indications”?’

  ‘That’s also bad news, sir. The Roland Oliver duty doctor was enticed away from his post at McCarran and actually left the base, which is in complete contravention of
his Standing Orders. The supposition is that Reilly, or more likely Hunter, fed him a convincing enough story over the telephone to persuade him to leave. How he got the number of the Roland Oliver building we don’t know, but that seems to be the only explanation that fits the facts.

  ‘The doctor was later seen driving back into McCarran in a stolen Ford, and his car – a fairly distinctive Jaguar sedan – has vanished, although there’s an APB out for it and we believe that it’s still somewhere in Las Vegas. The Ford was stolen today from the passenger parking area at the North Las Vegas Air Terminal, and parked close to where the Ford had been left was an old pickup truck that had itself been stolen from Crystal, Nevada.

  ‘And,’ McGrath concluded, ‘to complete the circle, as it were, the crop duster that was reported stolen from Virginia landed near Crystal early this morning. It is, I agree, a chain of nothing more than circumstantial evidence, but Roland Oliver believes it’s enough to locate these two men.’

  ‘We had hoped, Mr. McGrath,’ Dickson began, anger apparent in both his voice and face, ‘that you were coming here to tell the President that this matter had been successfully concluded. From what you’ve said, it looks like we’re in a worse state now than we were when this whole mess started. What you haven’t said is why Reilly and Hunter wanted to talk to this doctor. You do realize the implications, I hope?’

  McGrath nodded. ‘I’m afraid I do. The fact that they knew that this doctor – any doctor – was working for Roland Oliver at McCarran means that somebody, presumably Director Donahue, told them something about what Roland Oliver does. And, I’m also afraid, we have to assume that they now know a whole lot more about it. This particular doctor – his name is Evans – is one of the few who have actually seen the processing being carried out at Groom Lake.’

  ‘What?’ Dickson demanded. ‘Why the hell was he shown that?’

  ‘Roland Oliver didn’t give me details,’ McGrath said, ‘but I gather Evans wanted out of the program and they flew him to Groom Lake to show him what they’d do to him if he didn’t toe the line.’

  ‘Jesus wept,’ Dickson said, his voice rising. ‘So now we have to assume that Reilly and Hunter also know what Roland Oliver does.’

  McGrath nodded again, miserably. ‘Yes, but what they don’t know, of course, is why.’

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Willie Betts had put away his sandwiches, flask and book, and had done his best to straighten his somewhat crumpled uniform. He’d even tidied away some of the rubbish that regularly accumulated in the booth, and had prepared the tape recorder so that the black and white image of the Jaguar was frozen on the screen.

  ‘Mr. Betts?’ the uniformed officer asked, when Willie opened the door of the booth to his knock.

  ‘That’s right. Come right in. Got everything ready for you.’

  The patrolman sat down where Willie indicated, and looked at the monitor. He compared the registration number in his notebook with the one displayed on the screen, and then nodded.

  ‘That’s excellent, Mr. Betts,’ he said. ‘Thank you for finding it so promptly. Now, can I see the exit lane camera footage?’

  Willie Betts looked puzzled. ‘Why do you wanna see that?’ he asked.

  ‘Simple,’ the patrolman replied, pointing at the screen. ‘We need to find out what car these two offenders were driving when they left the parking lot.’

  ‘Well, the Jaguar,’ Willie said.

  ‘Afraid not. These two guys have heisted more cars over the last week that you’ve probably ever owned, Mr. Betts. They’re experts at it. Whatever car they left in, the one we’re quite sure it won’t be is that Jaguar.’

  Ten minutes later, the patrolman left the booth, walked out to his cruiser and called in the number of a black Lincoln town car. In his pocket he had a fairly clear Polaroid image, taken from the TV set, of Sheriff Reilly’s face as he fed a credit card into the exit barrier toll machine.

  McCarran Air Force Base, Las Vegas, Nevada

  Doctor Evans stood irresolute by the door of the large open area in the Roland Oliver building and looked across the rows of caskets. He knew exactly what fate awaited all of these young women, and talking to Hunter and Reilly had only sharpened his awareness. Tears swam in his eyes as he turned away. Whatever it took, he vowed, he was going to get out of the program, even if the FBI wouldn’t offer him protection.

  Evans was expecting the ring on the outer door, but out of habit checked the video camera feed just to make sure. Two Roland Oliver technicians stood outside waiting, a large white closed van visible behind them. The last C-130 Hercules transport of the week had arrived just over an hour earlier, and it was time to start the loading process.

  Evans opened the door and walked back towards the rows of caskets, leading the two men. One of them tapped him on the shoulder and smiled at the doctor.

  ‘Before I forget, doctor,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a message for you from Roland Oliver.’

  ‘Yes?’ Evans asked, trepidation evident in his voice.

  The technician smiled again, glanced past Evans, and nodded. His partner, acting with a skill born of long practice, reached over the doctor’s shoulder and whipped the chloroform pad swiftly over Evans’s mouth. The doctor struggled briefly against the fumes, then his eyes closed and he slumped to the floor.

  ‘OK, that’s enough,’ the first technician said. ‘Not too deep unconscious – Ketch wants him to know what’s happening.’

  The two men dragged Evans across the room to an unoccupied casket and opened the lid. They swiftly stripped him naked, put him into the casket, attached the fabric bands around his wrists, ankles, forehead and hips, and closed the lid. Then they adjusted the gas concentrations to the levels that Ketch had specified, and walked away to begin the loading.

  On the far side of the room, Christy-Lee Kaufmann lay silently unconscious in her casket, her breathing shallow but regular. If either Hunter or Reilly had told Evans the name of the person they were looking for, it’s just possible that he might have remembered it. But the discovery of the name Maria Slade, and the realization of what had already happened to her, had made Hunter forget. And now, of course, Doctor Richard Evans would never make that connection.

  Six minutes later Evans slowly began to recover consciousness, his brain at first fuzzy and troubled by the effects of the chloroform, his memory confused. His eyes widened as he looked at the glass faceplate six inches in front of his face, and he finally realized where he was and what was going to happen to him. Then he started to scream.

  Oval Office, White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.

  The ring of William McGrath’s mobile phone sounded unnaturally loud in the silence of the Oval Office. He had forgotten to switch it off as he entered the White House. ‘I’m very sorry, Mr. President,’ he began.

  ‘Answer it, William,’ Gainey said. ‘It may be good news.’

  McGrath pressed a button and listened intently, then turned the phone off and replaced it in his pocket. Charles Gainey looked at him inquiringly.

  ‘Not good news, exactly, but better news,’ McGrath said. ‘Roland Oliver tried to reach me at the Hoover building, and then used the mobile because I wasn’t there. You’ll appreciate that he couldn’t go into detail because of the security implications of using a mobile, but I gather that the car the two men are driving has been identified, and the Las Vegas Police Department has obtained a still photograph of Reilly from a security camera located in a Vegas parking lot. So we do know they’re still in Las Vegas.’

  ‘And all you have to do now is find them,’ Dickson finished for him.

  ‘Basically, yes.’

  ‘Much like all we had to do here in D.C. was find them,’ Dickson added. ‘You’d better hope the Las Vegas cops are a whole lot better that the combined resources of the FBI, CIA, secret service and the police here, hadn’t you?’

  McGrath nodded, but said nothing. He and James Dickson looked across at Charles Gainey.

 
‘Why are we worrying about this?’ the President asked, of no one in particular. ‘What can just two men do?’

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Three and a half thousand miles away, Steven Hunter was asking himself pretty much the same question. He and Reilly had driven a short way out of Las Vegas, down beyond the entrance to McCarran, and had pulled off the road into the empty parking lot of a shut-down diner. Reilly had pulled the car around the back of the building, so they were invisible from the road.

  ‘If you’ve got any ideas, Dick,’ Hunter said. ‘Now would be a real good time to share them.’

  Reilly was staring pensively through the windshield into the gathering dusk, his fingers tapping a meaningless tattoo on the rim of the steering wheel.

  ‘Two problems, as I see it,’ he said. ‘First, we still don’t know where Christy-Lee is, ’cept we know she hasn’t already been shipped out to Groom Lake, so I guess she’s still on the road somewhere. Second, I don’t see an easy way into McCarran, and I definitely don’t see an easy way into Groom Lake.’

  Hunter stirred uneasily. ‘What the hell is Groom Lake, Dick? I’ve heard of it, I think. Isn’t that what some people call Area 51?’

  Reilly nodded, then reached into the back of the car and picked up the papers they’d gotten from Doctor Evans and the sheets they’d taken from the ambulance crew and photocopied.

  ‘Know a bit about it,’ he began, spreading the sheets out in front of him and flicking through them. ‘It’s a piece of the Nevada desert about the size of Switzerland, and the Groom Lake base – it’s a dry lake – is pretty much in the middle of it. It’s called “Area 51” ’cause of the numbering system on some military maps. Believe it was started in the fifties, but it wasn’t ’till the nineties that the government even admitted it was out there. You can trust me, there’s no way in or out unless you’re supposed to be goin’ in or out.’