by Brad Meltzer
“You ignored my call on your cell phone,” the man with the woodchipper of a voice said. “Don’t do that.”
“Will you get over yourself! You and Houdini told me to be smart; I’m being smart! Unless you want me picking up your call in front of half of Dover?”
There was an announcement from the intercom. People bustled back and forth through the waiting area, most of them with their heads down, scrolling through their phones. It made the man think how much he hated the damn Internet.
“Where are you anyway? Sounds like an airport,” his associate said.
“You promised an update,” the man with the woodchipper voice shot back. He had gray hair, the color of smoke, and kept his back to the crowd so no one could get a good look at the fleshy white scar that split his lower lip and ran down to his jaw. “I need to know where Zig is.”
“That’s our first problem. I haven’t heard from him in hours.”
“Then let me give you a hint. Houdini’s dead. Zig and Nola are gone. You missed an entire firefight. We sent cleanup in, but it’s still a hot damn mess.”
“You have no idea. Remember when you said your magician friend Caesar was all taken care of? He was more hearty than you thought.”
“He’s alive?” Woodchipper asked.
“Not anymore. But someone placed a 911 call. Everyone here’s saying it sounds a lot like our friend Zig. Did Caesar know anything about you?”
The man with the woodchipper voice went silent.
“Now boarding on Track 29,” the intercom announced overhead.
A small crowd of travelers surged for the gate marked Track 29. The man with the woodchipper voice barely moved, gripping his phone, his back to them all.
“Train station, huh? What, you don’t like flying?”
His associate was perceptive. Even more than he thought. “Just do what we asked,” the man growled. “I know this isn’t easy for you, but if you don’t help us find Zig soon, we’ll all be—”
“I know the damn consequences, okay? I’m on it. I’ll call you back.”
Without a word, the man with the woodchipper voice hung up the phone and headed for the train. He chose the silent car because, God, he’d had enough slobs barking into their cell phones, clueless to the volume of their own voices.
As he finally found a seat, his own phone buzzed with a text message. Six words.
Spotted. At a CVS in Maryland.
A small grin twisted the fleshy white scar along the man’s lip.
With a few taps, he composed a new text message to a brand-new recipient.
We got him.
64
Zig gripped the corner of the motel’s thick TV, like he was using it to stand. What Nola said, did he believe her? Did it make sense? Part of it did. Back at Dover, someone made sure the body was switched. Someone purposely rushed the wrong fingerprints and dental records through the system. Someone even knocked Zig out on the morning when the other bodies arrived. Houdini was a stranger—a fast-talking thug—no way could he pull all that off. Not without help.
“Whoever snuck Houdini into our building…” Zig paused, rerunning the logic. “It could’ve been anyone. There’re thousands of people on base.”
Nola didn’t say anything, still focused on the watch.
“Don’t give me that look. My friends…Dino…Master Guns…even Amy Waggs…they wouldn’t do that,” Zig added, now pacing. “It could’ve been anyone.”
Nola sat there in the bed, hitting buttons, the watch beeping.
“Colonel Hsu… Her, I’d believe,” Zig continued, carefully watching Nola’s reaction. “But it’s gotta be someone who knows about the ways we ID people.”
She still didn’t say a word.
Heading for the nightstand, Zig picked up the landline.
“Who’re you calling?” Nola challenged.
He put the phone back down. He wasn’t even sure.
“What do you want, Mr. Zigarowski?”
“In alphabetical order? I want to know what the hell is going on. I want to know every single person who’s chasing us. Who was that Native American woman…the one who shot you and tried to murder us?”
“The Curtain.”
“That’s her name? The Curtain?”
“That’s what he called her. Never seen her until today. I’m guessing she’s a hired gun.”
“Hired by who?”
Nola went quiet, letting out a low deep breath. “Houdini.”
At just the name, Zig’s brain flipped back to what Caesar said about Houdini’s old Blue Book…about the three aliases on the plane…a small group that no one ever realized was there. Zig could feel the pieces starting to fit together at the far edges. But even so, the way Nola said his name… There was newfound anger in her voice. “So you know him,” Zig said.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You haven’t said anything. In case you didn’t notice, I saved your life.”
“I didn’t ask for your help.”
“And yet I still gave it. According to most dictionaries, that’s called generosity. Or kindness. Some might see it as stupidity, but I prefer something a bit more benevolent.”
Nola sat there, silent, now sketching something on the motel notepad. She didn’t look mad. She looked…lost in her thoughts.
“That’s how you process, isn’t it? By drawing?” Zig asked.
Still no response.
“I had a coworker who used to do that. He’d have to draw a picture of how the deceased would eventually look before he could start working on them.”
“Liar. You just made that up.”
Zig nodded. It was a lie. A white one, designed to gain some trust. But once again, she’d seen right through it. He wanted to be annoyed, but he was actually impressed.
“Nola, if I were working against you, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation right now.”
Back to silence. Back to her sketching.
“Okay, let’s try it this way,” Zig added. “Let me tell you what I know—and then, you sit there and draw whatever it is you’re drawing, and we’ll see where it gets us. Okay. First: I know, for sure, you had a seat on a military plane in Alaska. I know, for sure, you didn’t get on that plane—maybe you saw something and had a quick thought; maybe someone saw you and you took off. However it happened, you gave that seat to a woman named Kamille. Maybe Kamille was a longtime friend, or maybe someone you recently met.”
“I told you, I didn’t know her well.”
“You knew her well enough to paint her portrait.”
Nola again went quiet.
“Regardless, from the way you came looking for Kamille’s body—you didn’t know that plane was going down. Neither did Kamille, until it was too late. And that also tells me, for sure, that Kamille had some idea of what you were worried about, because during her last moments on a plane that was falling from the sky, Kamille ate a sheet of paper with a warning message for you.
“So if all that’s true—which I believe it is—that means that whatever brought you to Alaska, while you were there, you uncovered something—something that I’m wagering is called Operation Bluebook.”
“If I knew what Bluebook was, I wouldn’t be hiding in a motel.”
“But you know who Houdini is. Is he the one in charge?”
Nola shook her head. “He’s just a paying agent.”
“A what?”
“Paying agents. They make payments. That’s the job.”
“Payments to who?”
“Depends what our government needs. Sometimes an Army unit needs a hot tip; other times, we need a toilet paper contract so our troops can wipe. Usually, though, it’s just quiet money.”
“I have no idea what quiet money means.”
Still sketching, Nola explained, “Years ago in Iraq, one of our tank drivers read his map wrong and mistakenly plowed over a farmer’s herd of goats. Another time, our mortar men accidentally bombed the wrong building, sending bricks flying and in
juring half a dozen innocents. When disasters like that happen—and they always happen—the paying agent comes in to make restitution with the locals.”
“So he’s a guy with cash?”
“Again, that’s the job. Most soldiers carry an M4 rifle. The paying agent carries a far more potent weapon—a briefcase full of money. He can make payments up to $30K, no questions asked. A supervisor can get him above that. To go above $100K, he needs to clear it with the Department of Defense.”
“That’s a lot of currency for one person.”
“Consider it the cost for good PR. If we’ve got an Army unit sneaking into town, the last thing we need is to call attention to ourselves, or even worse, have some local farmer reveal our location while we’re still in the initial stages of an operation. You can make a lot of peace with a lot of cash.”
“So Houdini—”
“His real name was Rowan Johansson.”
“Okay. Rowan. He was one of these paying agents?”
“One of the best. When a Humvee hits a farmer’s handmade rock fence, you call for a paying agent. But when that Humvee hits something more valuable, you call Rowan.”
“What’s more valuable? Like hitting someone’s house?”
“Like killing someone’s child,” Nola said, looking up.
Zig stood there, not blinking.
She continued to stare, which Zig was starting to realize she did quite often. She had the wary eyes of an old woman, and they were always perfectly focused, picking life apart. Indeed, even now, as she talked about the death of someone’s child, she turned that focus straight toward Zig, searching him for a reaction.
For Zig, though, there wasn’t one. Despite the loss of his daughter, he knew how life worked. He saw death all the time. Every week, he’d stand over a gurney, putting flesh makeup on a gray body, prepping yet another young soul who was cut down in his prime.
“I see it every day,” he told her.
“No. You see it after the hurricane hits,” Nola said. “Imagine the moment itself, when a Sunni mom comes running down a dirt road, yelling in Arabic that our unit just left live ordnance around, which was found by her now-dead five-year-old son. I couldn’t understand the dialect, but I’ll never forget that woman’s screams. Anguish sounds the same worldwide.”
“What’s your point?”
“You asked about Rowan Johansson. That’s what he does. People are horrified when you put a price on a child’s life, but in a small Sunni town, for a male child—which are valued there more than females—when you calculate lifespan, add the fact they can work until they’re eighty years old, then compound it all as an annual salary… That dead boy will cost Uncle Sam about seventy-two thousand dollars. Pay the poor family in cash and—abracadabra—the problem goes away.” She paused as she said the words. “Now you understand why they call him Houdini? He makes the biggest mistakes…”
“Disappear,” Zig said as Nola went back to sketching on her notepad.
To Zig, the story made sense—and matched up even more with what he’d heard back at the magic shop. Houdini seemed to be spending a great deal of time moving cash, and lately, according to The Amazing Caesar, appeared to be moving more of it than usual, including a big shipment from Alaska. Which begged the question: What was going on in Alaska that they had a sudden influx in cash? Did all the extra cash mean that someone was asking Houdini to cover up an even bigger problem? And more important, how’d this all tie in to Nola, that crashed airplane, and Operation Bluebook?
Glancing over at Nola, Zig noticed the way she was holding her pen, like she was strangling it.
“Nola, if there’s anything else you know—?”
“I know Houdini, like any Special Ops paying agent, specializes in disasters. Especially the ones that the Army doesn’t want anyone to hear about. That’s all I know.”
“So could that be what Operation Bluebook is? Maybe that’s why he was in Alaska? Maybe Bluebook isn’t the process of making big things go away—maybe instead of being a slush fund, Bluebook is its own private mission—and in the midst of it, they made a mistake that they now need to cover up?”
Still sketching, Nola didn’t say anything.
“Or maybe someone accidentally found out that Houdini was covering Bluebook up? Or…” Zig said, still letting the facts tumble through his brain, “maybe when Houdini saw all the cash he was being sent, maybe he started taking his own private cut? Is that possible? How much did you say a paying agent carries around with them?”
More silence.
“Y’know, Nola, if you want to figure out what’s going on, it might be helpful to actually speak to each other.”
She continued to sketch. Zig wanted to be mad, but he knew silence like that was trained into her.
Zig cleared his throat and craned his neck, trying to get a look at what Nola was drawing. She turned away, just slightly, making it clear she wasn’t sharing.
“Nola, if it makes you feel better, I figured out your art. That’s what brought you to Alaska, right? I know why you went there.”
Nola glanced up, but not for long. She was about to say the word, Liar.
“I saw them,” Zig interrupted. “In your office, all those portraits you painted…the canvases that were leaning against each other. There were dozens of them—soldiers from the chest up. They’re really beautiful when you look at them—but also pretty sad,” Zig added, searching her face for a reaction. “On the back of each one, I noticed you always listed the soldier’s name: Daniel Graff—Monterey, CA. Sergeant Denise Madigan—Kuwait.”
Nola’s sketching slowed down. Not by much, but enough.
“C’mon, Nola, all it took was an Internet connection. Once I got pictures of them, did you really think I wouldn’t figure out what all your paintings had in common?”
“You don’t know what you’re—”
“Attempted suicide,” Zig blurted. “That’s it, isn’t it? Every Artist-in-Residence has her own motif. Years ago, during the wind-down in Afghanistan, one of the artists used to just paint landscape scenes of our troops leaving the desert. Painting after painting of piles of computers we left behind…holes where our HQs used to be…bulldozers that took our old bases apart. Other artists focused on people, painting soldiers in the field. But you? Daniel Graff. Sergeant Madigan. You paint those service members who tried to take their own lives.”
Nola sat there in the bed. She was no longer sketching.
65
Deutsch Air Base
Copper Center, Alaska
Five days ago
How much longer?” Kamille asked.
“Soon,” Nola said, a pastel crayon in her hand. “Stop talking.”
Kamille shifted in her seat, a plastic folding chair they took from the PX. Nola sat across from her, peeking out from behind her canvas every few seconds.
“C’mon, Sergeant Brown. Can you at least tell me how I look?”
Nola grunted, still trying to figure it out. She took another glance. Kamille squinted when she talked, like she was always asking for a favor. That was the secret. Her flat nose was easy, but for Nola, nothing was right until she captured Kamille’s squint.
“So this painting thing— You’ve done it with other people, yeah? People who tried to…who did what I…” Kamille’s voice trailed off. No one liked to say suicide. “You’ve met a lot of us, huh?”
“It’s not a club,” Nola shot back, using her finger to blend the beige pastel into the canvas.
“The other people you’ve met, Sergeant Brown. How did they do? Y’know, after they…” Again, her voice trailed off.
Nola usually despised small talk. But she liked this girl. Kamille wasn’t some self-hating cloud of doom. She was sharp, funny, even teased Nola for her subject matter, saying, “Maybe next time you can paint something less depressing, like a sad clown series…a dead kitten collection…or Still Life with Gun to Head.” Even Nola grinned at that.
“What you’ve been through,” Nola said. �
�Think of it as life’s second chance.” She dabbed the pastel some more. “Some people come back even stronger.”
Kamille sat up straight. A second chance. She liked that. “I’m gonna be one of those people.”
Nola nodded, cursing her pastels for not doing what they were told. She wouldn’t be happy until she finished Kamille’s eyes.
“So the Army really pays you to paint?” Kamille asked.
“I’m assigned. It’s a mission.”
“Still…to draw like that… You’re gonna make me immortal, huh?”
Nola made a face.
“I’m serious, Sergeant Brown. In a hundred years, thanks to your art, I’ll still exist.”
66
Maryland
Today
I’m right, aren’t I?”
Nola ignored the question. Sitting there on the motel’s saggy bed, she was pretending to sketch.
“You know I’m right. That’s why you went to Alaska, isn’t it?” Zig added. “Every morning, at that base in Virginia, you’d come into your office and scour the nightly blotter reports from each base. Then one day, you saw it in some outpost in Alaska: reports of a T14.91—attempted suicide—and you went running. That’s how you met Kamille.”
Nola still didn’t reply.
“Usually, no one gave it much notice,” Zig said. “That’s the artist’s job, right? You come in, paint a few pictures, and leave. That’s the job. Your boss told me back at your office. The Army gives you the right to go wherever you want. But when you arrived in Alaska…maybe Kamille told you something…maybe you saw it yourself. Whatever happened, though, something just didn’t seem right, did it? You realized it as you were going to leave: Something on that base was just a little bit off.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Actually, for the first time, I think I finally do,” Zig said, his voice now racing. “What’d you see out there, Nola? A crime? Or maybe something that just caught your eye…made you dig a little bit deeper? Either way, you realized what they were up to—”
