Maura Isles 05 - Vanish

by Tess Gerritsen

“Then where?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  She pulls me down the hallway. I can see almost nothing. I put my trust entirely in her hands, letting her lead me through a doorway. Moonlight glows through the window, and she glides like a pale ghost across the bedroom, picks up a chair, and quietly sets it down in the center of the room.

  “What are you doing?”

  She doesn’t answer, but climbs onto the chair and reaches toward the ceiling. A trap door creaks open above her head, and a ladder unfolds downward.

  “Where does it go?” I ask.

  “You wanted fresh air, didn’t you? Let’s go find some,” she says, and climbs the ladder.

  I follow her up the rungs and scramble through the trap door, into an attic. Through a single window, moonlight shines in, and I see the shadows of boxes and old furniture. The air is stale up here; it is not fresh at all. She opens the window and climbs through. Suddenly it strikes me: this window has no bars. When I poke my head out, I understand why. The ground is too far below us. There is no escape here; to jump would be suicide.

  “Well?” says Olena. “Aren’t you going to come out, too?”

  I turn my head and see that she is sitting on the roof, lighting a cigarette. I look down again at the ground, so far away, and my hands go clammy at the thought of climbing out onto the ledge.

  “Don’t be such a scared rabbit,” says Olena. “It’s nothing. The worst that can happen is you fall and break your neck.”

  Her cigarette glows, and I smell the smoke as she casually exhales a breath. She is not nervous at all. At that moment, I want to be exactly like her. I want to be fearless.

  I climb out the window, inch my way along the ledge, and with a heavy sigh of relief, settle down beside her on the roof. She shakes out the blanket and throws it over our shoulders so that we sit snug together, under a warm mantle of wool.

  “It’s my secret,” she said. “You’re the only one I trust to keep it.”

  “Why me?”

  “Katya would sell me out for a box of chocolates. And that Nadia is too stupid to keep her mouth shut. But you’re different.” She looks at me, a gaze that is thoughtful. Almost tender. “You may be a scared rabbit. But you’re not stupid, and you’re not a traitor.”

  Her praise makes the heat rise in my face, and the pleasure is a rush better than any drug. Better than love. Suddenly, recklessly, I think: I would do anything for you, Olena. I move closer to her, seeking her warmth. I have known only punishment from men’s bodies. But Olena’s offers comfort, and soft curves, and hair that brushes like satin against my face. I watch the glow of her cigarette, and how elegantly she flicks off ash.

  “Want a puff?” she asks, offering it to me.

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “Heh. It’s not good for you anyway,” she says and takes another drag. “Not good for me either, but I’m not going to waste them.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “The boat. Took a whole pack of them, and no one noticed.”

  “You stole them?”

  She laughs. “I steal a lot of things. How do you think I got the key? The Mother thinks she lost it, the dumb cow.” Olena takes another puff, and her face briefly glows orange. “It’s what I used to do in Moscow. I was good at it. If you speak English, they’ll let you into any hotel where you can turn a few tricks. Pick a few pockets.” She blew out a lung full of smoke. “That’s why I can’t go home. They know me there.”

  “Don’t you want to?”

  She shrugs and taps off an ash. “There’s nothing there for me. That’s why I left.”

  I stare up at the sky. The stars are like angry pinpricks of light. “There’s nothing here, either. I didn’t know it would be like this.”

  “You’re thinking of running, aren’t you, Mila?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “And what would you go home to? You think your family wants you back? After they find out what you’ve been doing here?”

  “There’s only my grandmother.”

  “And what would you do in Kryvicy, if all your dreams were to come true? Would you be rich, marry a nice man?”

  “I have no dreams,” I whisper.

  “It’s better that way.” Olena gives a bitter laugh. “Then you can’t be disappointed.”

  “But anything, anywhere, is better than here.”

  “You think so?” She looks at me. “I knew a girl who ran. We were at a party, like the one tonight. At Mr. Desmond’s house. She climbed out a window and got away. Which was just the first of her problems.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you eat out there? Where do you live? If you have no papers, there is no way to survive but to turn tricks, and you might as well do it here. So she finally went to the police, and you know what happened? They deported her, back to Belarus.” Olena blew out a cloud of smoke and looked at me. “Don’t ever trust the police. They’re not your friends.”

  “But she got away. She went home.”

  “You know what happens if you run away and make it back home? They’ll find you there. They find your family, too. And when they do, you’re all better off dead.” Olena stubbed out her cigarette. “Here it may be hell. But at least they don’t skin you alive, the way they did to her.”

  I am shaking, and not from the cold. I’m thinking of Anja again. Always, I think of poor Anja, who tried to run. I wonder if her body still lies in the desert. If her flesh has rotted away.

  “Then there’s no choice,” I whisper. “There’s no choice at all.”

  “Sure there is. You play along with them. Fuck a few men every day, give them what they want. In a few months, a year, the Mother gets her next shipment of girls, and you’re just used merchandise. That’s when they let you go. That’s when you’re free. But if you try to run first, then they have to make an example of you.” She looks at me. I am startled when she suddenly reaches out and touches my face, her hand lingering on my cheek. Her fingers trail heat across my skin. “Stay alive, Mila,” she says. “This won’t last forever.”

  FOURTEEN

  Even by the lofty standards of Beacon Hill, the house was impressive, the largest on a street of distinguished residences which had housed generations of Boston Brahmins. It was Gabriel’s first visit to this home, and under different circumstances, he might have paused on the cobblestoned walkway to admire, in the fading daylight, the carved lintels and the decorative ironwork and the fanciful brass knocker on the front door. Today, though, his mind was not on architecture, and he did not linger on the sidewalk, but hurried up the steps and rang the doorbell.

  It was answered by a young woman wearing tortoiseshell glasses and a look of cool assessment. The latest keeper of the gate, he thought. He hadn’t met this particular assistant before, but she fit the mold for a typical Conway hire: brainy, efficient—probably Harvard. Conway’s eggheads they were called on the Hill, the cadre of young men and women known for their brilliance as well as their absolute loyalty to the senator.

  “I’m Gabriel Dean,” he said. “Senator Conway’s expecting me.”

  “They’re waiting for you in his office, Agent Dean.”

  They?

  “Follow me.” She turned and led him briskly up the hallway, her low and unfashionably practical heels clicking across dark oak as they passed a series of portraits on the wall: a stern patriarch posed at his writing desk. A man garbed in the powdered wig and black robes of a judge. A third, standing before a draped curtain of green velvet. In this hallway, Conway’s distinguished lineage was comfortably on display, a lineage that he purposefully avoided flaunting in his townhouse in Georgetown, where blue blood was a political liability.

  The woman discreetly knocked at a door, then poked her head into the room. “Agent Dean is here.”

  “Thank you, Jillian.”

  Gabriel stepped into the room, and the door closed quietly behind him. At once the senator stepped out from behind a massive cherrywood desk to greet him. Though alr
eady in his sixties, the silver-haired Conway still moved with the power and agility of a marine, and when they shook hands, it was the robust greeting between men who have both known combat, and respect each other for it.

  “How are you holding up?” Conway asked quietly.

  It was the gentlest of queries, and it brought an unexpected flash of tears to Gabriel’s eyes. He cleared his throat. “The truth is,” he admitted, “I’m trying hard not to lose it.”

  “I understand she went into the hospital this morning.”

  “The baby was actually due last week. Her water broke this morning, and . . .” He paused, flushing. The conversation of old soldiers seldom strayed into the intimate details of their wives’ anatomy.

  “So we’ve got to get her out of there. As soon as possible.”

  “Yes, sir.” Not just soon. Alive. “I’m hoping you can tell me what’s really going on here. Because Boston PD has no idea.”

  “You’ve done me enough favors over the years, Agent Dean. I’ll do whatever it takes, I promise.” He turned, gesturing toward the intimate grouping of furniture that faced a massive brick fireplace. “Maybe Mr. Silver here can help.”

  For the first time, Gabriel focused on the man who’d sat so silently in the leather armchair that he might easily have been overlooked. The man stood, and Gabriel saw that he was uncommonly tall, with receding dark hair and mild eyes that peered through professorial spectacles.

  “I don’t believe you two have met,” said Conway. “This is David Silver, Deputy Director of National Intelligence. He just flew up from Washington.”

  This is a surprise, thought Gabriel as he shook David Silver’s hand. The Director of National Intelligence was a lofty Cabinet-level post with authority over every intelligence agency in the country, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to Defense Intelligence to the Central Intelligence Agency. And David Silver was the DNI’s second in command.

  “As soon as we got word of the situation,” said Silver, “Director Wynne asked me to fly up here. The White House doesn’t think this is your usual sort of hostage crisis.”

  “Whatever usual means these days,” added Conway.

  “We already have a direct line to the police commissioner’s office,” said Silver. “We’re keeping close tabs on Boston PD’s investigation. But Senator Conway tells me you have additional information that could affect how we approach this.”

  Conway pointed toward the couch. “Let’s all sit down. We have a lot to talk about.”

  “You said you don’t believe this is your standard hostage crisis,” said Gabriel as he settled onto the couch. “I don’t either. And not just because my wife is involved.”

  “What strikes you as different?”

  “Aside from the fact the first hostage taker was female? That she had an armed compatriot who walked in to join her? Aside from the fact she broadcast what seemed to be an activation code?”

  “All the things that got Director Wynne concerned,” said Silver. “Plus, there’s an additional detail that worries us. I have to admit, I didn’t pick up on the significance myself when I first heard the recording.”

  “Which recording?”

  “The call she made to that radio station. We asked a Defense linguist to analyze her speech. Her grammar was perfect—almost too perfect. No contractions, no slang. The woman is clearly not American, but foreign born.”

  “The Boston PD negotiator made the same conclusion.”

  “Now this is the part that worries us. If you listen carefully to what she said—in particular, to that phrase she used, ‘the die is cast’—you can hear the accent. It’s definitely there. Russian maybe, or Ukrainian, or some other Eastern European language. It’s impossible to distinguish her precise origins, but the accent is Slavic.”

  “That’s what’s got the White House worried,” said Conway.

  Gabriel frowned. “They’re thinking terrorism?”

  “Specifically, Chechen,” said Silver. “We don’t know who this woman is, or how she got into the country. We know that Chechens often use female compatriots in their attacks. In the Moscow theater siege, several women were wired with explosives. Then there were those two jetliners that went down in southern Russia a few years ago, after taking off from Moscow. We believe both were brought down by female passengers wearing bombs. The point is, these particular terrorists routinely use women in their attacks. That’s what our director of National Intelligence is most afraid of. That we’re dealing with people who have no real interest in negotiation. They may be fully prepared to die, and spectacularly.”

  “Chechnya’s quarrel is with Moscow. Not us.”

  “The war on terror is global. This is precisely why the DNI’s office was created—to make sure 9/11 never happens again. Our job is to make all our intelligence agencies work together, and not at cross purposes, the way they sometimes did. No more rivalries, no more spy versus spy. We’re all in this together. And we all agree that Boston Harbor’s a tempting target for terrorists. They could go after fuel depots or a tanker. One motorboat loaded with explosives could cause a catastrophe.” He paused. “That female hostage taker was found in the water, wasn’t she?”

  Conway said: “You look dubious, Agent Dean. What’s bothering you?”

  “We’re talking about a woman who was forced into this situation by accident. You’re aware she was brought to the morgue as a drowning victim? Admitted to the hospital after she woke up?”

  “Yes,” said Silver. “It’s a bizarre story.”

  “She was a lone woman—”

  “She’s no longer alone. She now has a partner.”

  “This hardly sounds like a planned terrorist operation.”

  “We’re not saying this hostage taking was planned. The timing was forced on them. Maybe it started as an accident. Maybe she fell overboard while being smuggled into the country. Woke up in the hospital, realized she was going to be questioned by authorities, and she panicked. She could be one arm of the octopus, part of a much larger operation. An operation that’s now been prematurely exposed.”

  “Joseph Roke isn’t Russian, he’s American.”

  “Yes, we know a bit about Mr. Roke from his service record,” said Silver.

  “He’s hardly your typical Chechen sympathizer.”

  “Did you know that Mr. Roke had explosives training in the army?”

  “So have a lot of other soldiers who didn’t wind up as terrorists.”

  “Mr. Roke also has a history of antisocial behavior. Disciplinary problems. Are you aware of that?”

  “I know he was given a dishonorable discharge.”

  “For striking an officer, Agent Dean. For repeatedly disobeying orders. There was even some question about a serious emotional disorder. One army psychiatrist considered a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.”

  “Was he treated for that?”

  “Roke refused any and all medications. After he left the army, he essentially went into seclusion. We’re talking about a guy just like the Unabomber, who withdrew from society and nursed oddball grudges. With Roke, it was all about government conspiracies, delusions of persecution. This is a very bitter man who believes his government has misused him. He’s written so many letters to the FBI about his theories that they have a special file on him.” Silver reached for a folder on the coffee table and handed it to Gabriel. “A sample of his writing. It’s a letter he sent to them in June, 2004.”

  Gabriel opened the folder and read the letter.

  . . . I’ve provided you with case after case of documented heart attacks that were secretly induced by PRC-25 mixed with burning tobacco. The combination, as our Defense Department well knows, results in a deadly nerve gas. Scores of veterans have been murdered this way, so the Veterans Administration can save millions of dollars in health care costs. Is there no one at the FBI who cares?

  “That’s just one of dozens of nutty letters he wrote to the Bureau, to his Congressmen, to newspapers and TV stations. The Wa
shington Post got so much of his paranoid crap, they just toss out anything with his name on it. As you can see from that sample, the man is intelligent. He is verbal. And he’s utterly convinced that the government is evil.”

  “Why isn’t he under psychiatric care?”

  “He doesn’t believe he’s crazy. Even though everyone else can see he’s clearly around the bend.”

  “Terrorists wouldn’t recruit a psychotic.”

  “They might if he’s useful.”

  “You can’t control them. You can’t predict what they’ll do.”

  “But you can incite them to violence. You can reinforce their beliefs that their own government is against them. And you can use their skills. Roke may be paranoid, but he also knows his explosives. This is an embittered loner with military training. The perfect terrorist recruit, Agent Dean. Until we have evidence to the contrary, we have to assume that this situation has national security implications. We don’t think Boston PD is up to handling this on their own.”

  “So that’s why John Barsanti is here.”

  “Who?” Silver looked bewildered.

  “Agent Barsanti from the FBI’s deputy director’s office. The Bureau doesn’t normally send someone straight from Washington when there’s a local field office to call on.”

  “I wasn’t aware the FBI had stepped in,” said Silver. An admission that startled Gabriel. The DNI’s office wielded authority over the FBI; Silver should certainly have known about Barsanti’s involvement.

  “The FBI won’t be handling the rescue,” said Silver. “We’ve authorized a special antiterrorist unit from the Strategic Support Branch to come in.”

  Gabriel stared at him. “You’re bringing in a team from the Pentagon? A military operation on US soil?”

  Senator Conway interjected: “I know it sounds illegal, Agent Dean. But there’s a recent directive called JCS Conplan 0300-97. It authorizes the Pentagon to employ antiterrorist military units within our borders when the situation calls for it. It’s so new, most of the public doesn’t even know about it.”

  “And you think this is a good idea?”