The Naked Edge

by David Morrell

  “Over there,” Jamie said.

  Fifty yards away, a shed-like structure had an open door. With the Mississippi spread along their right, they raced toward the exit.

  “He used the roof to head east! Farther along the block!” Cavanaugh shouted into his lapel mike. “The corner!”

  They entered a stairwell in time to hear footsteps rumbling below them.

  “He's almost onto the street!” Cavanaugh shouted.

  “We're waiting!” a voice shouted through his earpiece.

  Shots made Cavanaugh pause. Even in the stairwell, he heard screaming along the street.

  35

  Two minutes to ten.

  Nearing the ground floor, Carl heard shots outside. Beyond a window, a frenzy swept through the crowd, people swarming to get away. He veered into an office, where workers stared in alarm at the chaos outside. Turning toward him, they reacted with greater alarm to his bare chest, the water dripping from his face, and the gun in his hand.

  “Out!” Carl yelled. When they didn't respond, he chose a man with red hair and shot him. “Out! Out! Out!”

  The survivors collided with each other, all of them trying to get through the door at once. Firing above their heads, Carl watched them surge out, joining the turmoil on the street. Agents out there would be totally overwhelmed.

  He grabbed a suit coat off a chair and put it on. He picked up a chair and hurled it through French doors. He surged through and joined the screaming, stampeding crowd.

  36

  Reaching the ground floor, Cavanaugh saw that the door was open, people rushing past. Taken aback by the chaos, he heard a window shatter in an office to his left.

  “Go that way,” he told Jamie, indicating the open door. “I'll take the side!”

  He rushed into the office in time to see Carl leap through the window and charge into the crowd. Immediately, Cavanaugh followed, shouldering past men and women, straining to keep Carl in sight. Another distant shot increased the crowd's panic. “Bomb!” he heard somebody say. The hysterical need to get away was so powerful that, for a moment, Cavanaugh was actually lifted off his feet by the crush of people around him. It was like being swept along in a flood while he tried to break free of the current and maintain a direction.

  Ahead, he saw Carl struggling to go sideways through the crowd. But that didn't make sense. Where Carl seemed determined to go—to the right—was a dead end. He couldn't escape there. Abruptly, Cavanaugh realized he was mistaken. What he thought of as a dead end was actually the Mississippi River. The river. That was how Carl planned to get away.

  37

  One minute to ten.

  No matter how hard Carl strained to break free from the crowd, it caught and squeezed him, carrying him with it. The force was so great that he had trouble breathing. Jabbing with his elbows, ramming with his shoulders, he managed to clear a space and thrust closer to the river.

  He was too confined to be able to look at his watch. But he sensed that ten o'clock was almost upon him. Any second, the few remaining members of the team would pull the cords on their knapsacks, the police radio frequencies would trigger the detonator, and black clouds filled with nerve gas would drift across the remaining demonstrators.

  Vaguely aware of a building on his right, he jabbed harder with his elbows and cleared enough space to draw his pistol, firing into the air. The deafening shots made people scream and run faster. Several fell, others piling onto them. Carl scrambled over them.

  Ahead, part of the crowd raced across train tracks, up steps, and into a tunnel. He fired several more shots to keep the crowd hurrying and charged into the shadow of the tunnel. When he broke into sunlight, a wide expanse of concrete ended at the water. Barges and tugboats chugged along the Mississippi. He vaulted a waist-high fence and dove past a paddle wheeler moored at the shore, plunging beneath the surface.

  38

  Racing after him, Cavanaugh saw Carl sprinting toward the river. He stretched his legs to their limit and sped closer, but not enough. There wasn't sufficient time to close the gap. As Carl vaulted the fence, Cavanaugh didn't have time to stop and try to control his exertion-trembling body enough to aim. In a blur, Carl dove past a paddle wheeler into the river. Three seconds later, Cavanaugh vaulted the fence. Afraid of being weighed down, he dropped his gun and the knife on his belt. He threw off his jacket, tugged his claw knife from its neck sheath, gripped it securely, and dove.

  The river was cold. Gritty. Greasy. Submerged in the weight of the muddy water, he heard the muffled vibrations of engines. The water was so murky that when he opened his eyes, he couldn't see. All he could do was keep kicking with his heavy shoes, blindly sweeping his arms, following the course that Carl had taken into the water. As he thrust with his hands, he gripped his claw knife, slicing, hoping to wound Carl's legs. Already short of breath from running, he felt pressure in his chest, his lungs demanding air. He kept thrusting, his clothes weighing him down.

  Caught in the current, no longer hopeful that he was on Carl's trajectory, he thrust again with the knife. The engine vibrations were louder. Then he realized that what he heard was the pounding of his heart. Lungs feeling as if they'd explode, he kicked upward, pawed through the water, broke the surface, and gaped at a tugboat looming toward him. It was so close that he had to shove his feet against its hull, thrusting his body away before he was struck. Nonetheless, the suction of the current pushed him back against the hull. The propeller, he thought.

  A row of tires hung from the tug's side, buffers that kept it from banging against a dock. Stretching up, Cavanaugh snagged a hand into one of the tires and felt an agonizing strain in his shoulder as the tug carried him along. Staring back, he saw Jamie standing at the side of the river, helplessly watching his struggle.

  In the distance, a black cloud rose.

  Farther over, so did another.

  Suddenly understanding Carl's plan, he prayed that Jamie would realize what she needed to do. As a third black cloud rose, he raised his free hand, the one with the knife, waving insistently that he was all right, urging her to go. She returned his wave, and with a frightened look behind her toward the isolated black clouds, she broke into a run.

  PART EIGHT:

  THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE KNIFE

  1

  “So far, we know almost one thousand people died,” Dawn Finch told him, “including forty Federal agents and fifteen GPS operators.”

  Cavanaugh was too overwhelmed to reply. He sat in a Coast Guard office, where a patrol boat had brought him after he was transferred from the tug. Although he clutched a blanket wrapped around him, he shivered—only partially because of his wet clothes.

  Jamie brought him a steaming cup of coffee. “At least, another two thousand needed medical care, enough to fill the emergency wards in every hospital in the area.”

  “But it could have been significantly worse,” an FBI agent said. “The canisters were so carefully sealed, none of the toxin detectors in the crowd registered what was in them. If the conference had occurred, if all the protestors had remained in the area, if all the knapsacks had been detonated and all the gas released . . .”

  “The preliminary estimate is that at least fifteen thousand protestors would have died, plus the thousands of tourists and business people in the downtown area” another agent explained. “Lord knows how many others would have needed medical attention. This came close to being the worst—”

  Outside the office, boat engines rumbled. A door opened. Everyone turned toward a Coast Guard officer who entered. Rutherford and Mosely followed, neither of them looking happy.

  The Coast Guard officer reported, “No luck finding him. We're beginning to think he might have been hit by boat traffic on the river. Perhaps he was knocked unconscious and drowned.”

  “He didn't drown,” Cavanaugh said.

  “One of our men saw you chase him,” an FBI agent reported. “Our man was too far away to help, but he managed to see both of you go into the water. Only you
came up.”

  “Maybe he struck his head on something under the water. Maybe his body's caught on something down there,” the Coast Guard officer hoped. “We're dragging the area. We sent for divers.”

  “And you're searching the banks all the way up and down the river?” Cavanaugh asked. “Using helicopters as well as boats?”

  “Of course.”

  “Still think you're running things?” Mosely demanded.

  The hostile interruption made everyone turn.

  “Just contributing to the conversation,” Cavanaugh said.

  “Sure.”

  Except for the rumbling of the boat engines, the room became silent.

  “Don't mind me,” Mosely said.

  Cavanaugh told the Coast Guard officer, “Carl's an expert swimmer. In high school, he was state champion. On our Delta Force team, it was one of his specialties. I once saw him swim under water for a minute and forty-five seconds. Given the current, he could easily have gone quite a distance downstream before surfacing, probably using a boat for cover. He's miles away by now.”

  “We'll explore every possibility.”

  “Yeah, definitely running the show,” Mosely said.

  Again the room became silent. Next to Mosely, Rutherford's dark face brooded.

  “Have you got a problem?” Cavanaugh asked.

  “Yeah. But you've got a bigger one.” Mosely turned to the Coast Guard officer. “Does this office have a DVD player?”

  “On this computer.”

  “Then let's take a look at this.” Mosely handed him an unlabeled disc.

  The officer inserted it and pressed buttons on the keyboard.

  Everyone stepped close.

  For a moment, the screen was blank. Then it showed a corridor. At the far end, elevator doors were visible.

  “This is from the Delta Queen hotel's security-monitor system,” Mosely explained. “Very up-to-date technology. No blur. No haze.”

  The screen continued to show the corridor and the elevator doors at the end.

  “Not too interesting so far,” William said. “How much of this do we need to—”

  “I'm just setting the scene, counselor. Building suspense. The camera's on the hotel's maintenance-room level. There's also a camera at the end of the corridor, near the elevator doors, and one on the stairwell leading down. Those cameras had their lenses spray-painted, but I guess you didn't know about this one,” Mosely told Cavanaugh.

  “There's no way you can prove my clients had anything to do with spray-painting those cameras,” William protested.

  “Keep watching, counselor.”

  A man appeared at the end of the corridor. Crouching, moving past the elevator doors, he aimed a can and sprayed paint at something above him.

  “This still proves nothing,” William said. “That man is so far away, he's impossible to identify. He could be anybody.”

  “I knew you'd say that, counselor, so for your edification, I had the image magnified.”

  The man at the end of the corridor now filled the screen.

  “A good likeness, don't you think?” Mosely asked.

  The man was unmistakably Cavanaugh. He finished spraying paint at something above him. Then he used lock picks to open a panel next to the elevator. He pressed a button inside the panel, causing the elevator doors to open. The floor of the shaft was empty, the elevator at a higher level. After flicking a switch on a box, he lay on his stomach and stretched down to set the box at the bottom of the shaft. Finally, he closed the doors and stepped out of sight.

  “This proves nothing. The image could have been manipulated,” William insisted. “With fifty dollars of software from a computer store, I could make it seem as if you opened those elevator doors.”

  “Yeah, but the person who magnified that image is an FBI computer technician who'll testify under oath that the face wasn't altered.”

  “I can't wait to cross-examine that agent.”

  “Not in this state, counselor. You're not licensed. Also, I did some checking about your famous brother-in-law. The great defense attorney Lester Beauchamp is on vacation in Europe.”

  On the monitor, a green-tinted image showed a flat roof.

  “The green comes from a night-vision camera,” Mosely said. “At the Southern Belle. That hotel has a state-of-the-art surveillance system, also. The management even put a camera on the roof. Those are air-conditioning units you see in the background. And here comes our co-star, who spray-painted the surveillance cameras on the stairway to the roof but who didn't know about this other camera.”

  On the screen, silhouetted by the lights of the city, a far-away woman came into view. She knelt, removed a knife from her belt, and unscrewed its cap. Abruptly, the image was enlarged. The woman was clearly Jamie.

  “No objections this time, counselor?” Mosely asked.

  “I'll save them for court.”

  “You do that.”

  The group watched as Jamie pulled tools from the knife's handle and used them to unscrew an air-conditioning duct. Next, she flipped a switch on an object and put it inside. Finally, she used the tools from her knife to close the duct.

  “The switch activated a timer on a tear-gas bomb,” Mosely said. “The switch Cavanaugh tripped was on a smoke bomb. Naturally, he and his wife used latex gloves. No fingerprints. But seeing's believing, don't you think?”

  “You already know my opinion about that,” William responded.

  “Well, here's my opinion. Cavanaugh or Stoddard or whoever you are, you got lucky. The trade minister who broke his leg needed a pin put in it. The one who had a heart attack is still in intensive care. The people whose cars hit the emergency vehicles are still in the hospital, also. You put four hotels out of business for the days it'll take to repair the damage. Millions of dollars have been lost.”

  “Now you sound like you belong to the Chamber of Commerce,” William said.

  “Counselor, shut your mouth. You have no legal authority here.” Mosely stared at Cavanaugh. “You're under arrest.”

  “Don't do this,” Cavanaugh said.

  “You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. If you can't afford an attorney, one will be appointed—”

  Cavanaugh turned toward Rutherford. “John, isn't there any way you can stop this?”

  “The time for him to have stopped this was last night,” Mosely interrupted. “Trusting civilians is one of the first things an agent learns not to do.”

  2

  “Bankrupt?”

  In a stark interview room in the New Orleans detention center, Cavanaugh and Jamie listened in disbelief to what William told them.

  “You knew Global Protective Services was in precarious financial condition.”

  “That's why I ordered the cancellation of the planned Tokyo office and cutbacks at the others,” Cavanaugh said.

  “Both were good ideas, but the downsizing came too late. It's not your fault. Duncan overextended the corporation, and this is the consequence. In normal circumstances, the cash outflow and inflow might have been balanced enough for Global Protective Services to rebuild its strength. But the attack on the New York office and the tremendous resources you put into security for the conference tipped the balance. It's only a matter of weeks before GPS collapses.”

  “Couldn't you have waited a while longer before you gave us more bad news?” Jamie asked.

  “Unfortunately, that wasn't an option. The judge set bail at a half million dollars for each of you. I tried to persuade the bail bondsman to accept GPS as equivalent value for the bond. But even a hurried examination of the corporation's finances was enough to show how wobbly its balance sheet is. If you want to be released on bail, you need to use your personal resources as collateral.”

  “Personal resources?” Cavanaugh seemed not to understand.

  “Your Jackson Hole property,” William said. “Because the government owns most of the valley and only four percent is available for private ownership,
the area's land values keep surging. Even without a structure on it, your ranch is worth several million dollars.”

  Cavanaugh exhaled in what was nearly a gasp, not because of the worth of his home but because he suddenly realized how threatened he was. “Carl tried to kill us. He burned our home. He destroyed my business. Because of him, we'll probably go to prison, which means I'll lose my security status.”

  “Don't assume you're going to prison,” William said. “Mosely arrested you because he's in line to be the Bureau's director. By refusing to ignore the laws you broke, he shows he can't be influenced, doesn't play favorites, or make exceptions. But a lot of people are on your side. Here are copies of as many national newspapers as I could find. USA Today, The Washington Post, The New York Times. You're on the front pages and, more important, the op-ed pages, where you're favorably presented as preventing an even greater disaster. You're the topic of every talk show. Every network called, asking for an interview.”

  “Hard to do an interview when we're in custody,” Cavanaugh said, “not to mention, protectors shouldn't put their faces on national television programs. Removes our effectiveness, don't you think? Assuming we're ever allowed to work again.”

  “The point is, a lot of people understand the difficult choice you had to make.”

  “What matters is what the court thinks,” Jamie said.

  “What a jury thinks. Lester Beauchamp's on his way back from Europe. He's extremely persuasive. I believe there's a good chance you'll be exonerated.”

  “When? The trial might not happen for a year.”

  William's cell phone rang.

  “One moment.” He pulled the phone from his pocket and raised it to his ear. “William Faraday.” He listened. “Yes.” He listened further. “Yes.” He concentrated. “That's very generous of you. . . . I agree—if things had gone the other way, you wouldn't have had the opportunity to be generous. You'll make the arrangements? . . . Thank you.”