Takedown (An Alexandra Poe Thriller)

by Robert Gregory Browne

  ALEX WAS BACK in the storage shed when she found it. A rectangular metal case she didn’t remember ever seeing before, despite the fact that at one time or another, she and Danny had been through every inch of this place, dodging lizards and hunting for treasure.

  Ironically, that’s what the case looked like—somebody’s treasure box, complete with a locked clasp, and no bigger than a hardback book. She’d found it inside an unopened cardboard box at the back of the shed, buried beneath a stack of her grandparents’ faded and dog-eared LOOK magazines, as if it had been deliberately placed there in an attempt to hide it from the casual explorer.

  Had her grandfather put it there? One of her parents?

  She could only assume it had been hidden years ago, and that she and Danny had missed it because of their complete lack of interest in the fifties and sixties, the two decades covered by most of the magazines. Faded photos of Sinatra and Kennedy and Audrey Hepburn weren’t exactly top draws for curious kids.

  Alex turned the treasure box in her hand and the contents rattled.

  Coins? Jewelry?

  She carried it to the workbench, set it down, and took a screwdriver from her father’s tool kit, jamming it into the space behind the clasp. After a single tug, the lock snapped.

  She didn’t lift the lid right away. Instead, she stared at the box, excitement welling up inside her. In that moment she was nine years old again, with Danny beside her, and her mother and father upstairs making lunch or lounging on the patio or playing a spirited game of Shanghai, and all was good in the world.

  All was good.

  She held on to the feeling as long as she could, not opening the box until the sensation passed. When she lifted the lid she found four items inside: a tattered newspaper clipping, a key, a worn 5x8 manila envelope…and a ring.

  Her mother’s ring.

  Alex’s throat constricted and tears filled her eyes. She remembered this ring vividly. Her mother had always worn it on her right forefinger, an ornate silver band with a polished turquoise stone from Nishapur. A gift from Alex’s great-grandmother.

  But why was it here? Her mother, an anthropologist, had been killed by a terrorist’s bomb in Lebanon during a research trip. Wrong place, wrong time. She would’ve had this ring with her. Would never have left it behind.

  Had it been recovered from the rubble? From the body itself?

  Apparently so. But why hadn’t Alex known about it?

  She stared at the ring, unable to choke back the tears, remembering the many times she’d sat on her mother’s lap, running her fingers over the smooth stone, wishing it could be hers. Remembering Mom’s promise that one day it would be.

  “It is family tradition, Alexandra. My grandmother had only sons, so she passed it on to me right before she died. And one day it will be your turn to wear it.”

  “I don’t want you to die, Mommy.”

  Her mother had smiled. “Don’t you worry, child. I’m not going anywhere for a long, long time.”

  But only a few years later, she was gone.

  Alex took the ring from the box, held it up for a moment, then slipped it on her right forefinger. The fit was a little snug, but she had no intention of ever taking it off again. The promise had been fulfilled, a thought that brought a whole new wave of tears.

  Wiping them away, she reached into the box again and took out the clipping. It was from a Lebanese newspaper, written in Arabic, the photo showing what was left of the cafe where her mother and two others had been slaughtered.

  Alex studied it a moment, wondering if any of the victims had felt anything, remembering the friends she and Cooper had lost to IEDs in Iraq. She briefly closed her eyes, then set the clipping on the workbench and returned her attention to the treasure box.

  The next item was the key. She took it out, studied it, and saw a series of numbers etched into the head, along with the letters S&G.

  The key to a locker of some kind?

  A safe deposit box?

  Maybe whatever was inside the manila envelope would give her the answer. She took it from the box and opened it, dumping its contents onto the workbench.

  A stack of photographs. Small, square snapshots, some black and white, some color, all faded by time. Photos of a baby, a young girl, a teenager. All with the face of Alex’s mother, many with an Iranian backdrop—a mosque, an open fruit market, a street in Tehran.

  Her mother had rarely talked about her childhood, but here was a glimpse of it. One Alex had never seen before.

  Looking into the eyes of that beautiful young girl got Alex’s heart thumping. What was her mother thinking all those years ago? Did she know she’d one day wind up living in the United States, married to an American soldier? Did she dream of having children?

  All at once, Alex felt cheated, thinking it should be her mother sharing these photographs with her. She wanted to reach into the past and warn her not to go to Lebanon. To stay away from that fucking cafe.

  Yet despite the pain, no tears came this time. She was the stoic Alexandra now. The soldier. A trait she’d inherited from her father. And she knew that wallowing in what-ifs was a waste of time. She couldn’t change what had happened to her family.

  Nobody could.

  But as she came to the last photo in the stack, that stoicism wavered. What she saw was her mother at twenty years of age, or maybe a bit younger, standing on the steps of a large house that looked very Persian. The word “palace” came to mind. And she was wearing an elaborate white wedding dress and veil.

  What the hell?

  This wouldn’t normally be anything earth shattering, except for the fact that Alex had seen photos of her parents’ wedding, and this was not one of them. They were married at Baltimore City Hall, and her mother had worn a simple yellow sundress that hung in her closet years after she was killed.

  Alex flipped the photograph over, hoping to find a date on the back, but there wasn’t one.

  What she found instead was an odd series of letters and numbers that looked like a website link, truncated by Google’s URL shortener:

  goo.gl/ALUAfk

  Alex didn’t move. The presence of her mother’s ring had indicated that the box could have been hidden away for a over a decade. But what about this web link? Google’s URL shortener had only been available for a few years, which meant the box had been left here more recently.

  Maybe within the last few months.

  Or even days.

  Did the person who had broken into the house leave it here for Alex to find? Was the interloper someone she knew?

  Could the owner of that sleeping bag be…

  No.

  That was ridiculous. He wouldn’t risk coming here. He wouldn’t step foot on US soil, not while he was still running from the DHS, the CIA, and every other acronym in the intelligence community, both public and private.

  So who had put this here?

  And more importantly—why?

  Alex took her computer tablet from her backpack in the rental car and carried it upstairs to the living room, her hands trembling as she brought the tablet to life. She set the wedding-dress photo face down on the coffee table, pulled up the Web browser, and carefully keyed in the truncated URL written on the back of the photo.

  She paused, sucked in a breath, then touched the GO icon and waited as the browser took her to a site called DataLock, one of the many file-sharing repositories on the web. The page held a download link for a video file, several megabytes in size, called SHADI.mp4.

  Shadi?

  A Persian name, but Alex didn’t recognize it. Her mother’s name was Mitra.

  Still, it had to mean something.

  She tapped the download link and a pop-up screen told her to enter a password.

  Shit. Now what?

  She thought for a moment, but she was no computer hacker and had no clue what the password might be. In a fit of inspiration, she tried typing in Mitra and a message in red came up on the screen:

  ERROR: Incorrect p
assword. 2 attempts remaining.

  Dammit.

  She was convinced now that whoever had left this link had wanted her to find it and download the file, so the clue to the password had to be in that treasure box. She thought about the items she’d found—the photographs, the key, her mother’s turquoise ring—but nothing sparked any ideas.

  Was there something in the photo itself?

  She picked it up and studied it again. Her mother standing on the steps of some kind of Persian palace. A smile on her face, but a bit forced, as if she wished the camera wasn’t pointed at her. Her hands clasped a bouquet, and she was wearing the ring.

  Could that be it?

  Alex started to type Mitra’s Ring into the password field, but reconsidered halfway through and erased it. The choice seemed unlikely and she didn’t want to waste an attempt.

  So, what else could it be?

  The photographs, the key, the ring…

  The key, the photographs, the ring…

  The ring, the photographs—

  And then it hit her.

  The key. It had to be the key. It was meant to open a lock, but maybe not a physical one.

  Tucking the tablet under her arm, Alex flew through the doorway and down the steps, back to the room where she’d spent most of the afternoon. She moved to the workbench, picked up the key, and squinted at the initials and numbers etched into its head—S&G 4576. She rested the tablet on the workbench and called up the password screen again.

  She took a deep breath and typed in S&G 4576.

  ERROR: Incorrect password. 1 attempt remaining.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  Okay, she told herself, think this through, then take another deep breath and try again.

  Feeling a knot form in her stomach, she started typing again, this time omitting the space between the letters and numbers: S&G4576.

  A little hourglass appeared—Hallelujah—then turned over several times until finally, thankfully, another pop-up filled the screen, asking her to approve the download.

  Alex nearly shouted in triumph as she clicked the SAVE button. As soon as the SHADI.mp4 file finished downloading, she didn’t waste time wondering what to expect. She simply tapped the link and watched the video player blossom.

  After switching it to full-screen mode, she waited as the tablet went black for a moment, then came to life with what looked like poorly transferred footage from an old VHS camcorder. There were streaks in the video and the sound was wobbly.

  But that didn’t matter. What she saw captivated her.

  Stunned her.

  It was her mother, in the very same wedding dress and veil, sitting on a chair in a large, palatial room, in front of a Persian rug covered with ornate trays full of baked goods and fruits and spices and coins and a mirror flanked by two burning candelabra.

  A traditional Persian wedding.

  Her mother was surrounded by Iranian family and friends who watched in delight as the ceremony was performed, the groom seated on the chair next to her.

  And as Alex stood there watching it all unfold, her heart started thumping again, leaving her confused, troubled, and even a little angry.

  Because the man in that chair was not her father.

  CHAPTER 6

  IT SEEMED SILLY to be so upset by the video.

  Alex had spent two years on active duty, and had seen things that would make most people want to curl up in a corner. And after years of that kind of conditioning, it should have taken more than a thirty-year-old wedding ceremony to get her going.

  But as she drove toward town, she felt angry tears threatening to cloud her eyes, and had to will them away with everything she had.

  It wasn’t her mother’s previous marriage that bothered her so much. It was that she had been lied to. All of her life. Told a story about a young college student who had left Iran right before the Islamic Revolution. But there had never been any mention of a dress and a veil and the handsome Iranian groom in that video.

  Not one word.

  Why would her mother hide such an important part of her past? Was she ashamed of it? Had she come here under a cloud of scandal?

  And what about Alex’s father? Had he known and been part of the deception? Or had he been as clueless as Alex?

  Her mind a swirl of questions, she turned the wheel of her rental car, and pulled into the parking lot of the Largo Inn. She had no idea why she had come here. She was running on autopilot right now and had only wanted to get away from that house and all of its memories.

  As she parked the car, it occurred to her she wouldn’t have come to Key Largo if it hadn’t been for those e-mails from Thomas Gérard, looking to buy the Shimmy Shack for an unnamed client.

  Could he be the one behind this? Or maybe the client?

  She must have unconsciously been thinking it, because here she was at the very place Gérard had said he would be, her anger quickly building into all-out rage.

  Easy, Alex. You need to relax.

  If Gérard was in that bar, going in there with her finger on the trigger would not get her any answers.

  Taking several slow, deep breaths, she shut off the engine and tried to center herself. Her friend Cooper had long been a proponent of meditation, a discipline he had adopted after their tour in Iraq. And in the months since they’d begun working together again, he had urged her to join him, telling her it was the perfect way to purge both mental and physical toxins.

  Alex had bristled at the thought, assuming it was Cooper’s passive-aggressive way of telling her she was too tightly wound.

  But maybe that was true.

  Especially now.

  Though she had no idea why Gérard would be part of some conspiracy to reveal the truth about her mother, she was far more likely to get information from him by taking the innocent approach than by rushing in and slamming his head against the wall.

  With this thought in mind, she twisted the rearview mirror to make sure her eyes were clear, then popped open her door and climbed out.

  Gérard had staked out a table near the windows overlooking a small man-made beach and the bay. The sky was full of the remnants of what had undoubtedly been a dazzling sunset that Alex had been far too preoccupied to pay any attention to.

  Gérard was draped in his chair, a large tropical drink in hand, his feet up on the arm of the chair across from him. He seemed lost in thought as he stared out at the water, reminding Alex of those Shimmy Shack nights on the patio with her father.

  Not that Gérard was anything like Dad. Far from it.

  Seeing him looking so relaxed made her doubt he had anything to do with planting that treasure box. But it didn’t mean he wasn’t an unwitting accomplice.

  He must have seen her reflection in the windows because he abruptly turned his head and gave her a wave.

  “Ms. Poe,” he said, keeping it formal.

  Taking his feet off the chair, he sat up, gesturing for her to join him. He looked a little drunk. Maybe more than a little.

  “Alex,” she said as she approached. “Call me Alex.”

  “All right, Alex it is. Have a seat, order a drink.”

  She sat down and a waiter appeared out of nowhere, as if Gérard had him on private retainer. “What can I get for you, ma’am? Key Lime Colada? Mermaid Tail?”

  “Jameson. Neat,” she said. “And tell the bartender to make sure he wipes the dust off the bottle before he pours.”

  The waiter gave her a stiff half smile and went away.

  “I think you upset him,” Gérard said, chuckling. He raised his drink. “They seem to enjoy pushing these fruity monstrosities—which, by the way, cost a small fortune.”

  “I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that the Keys don’t exactly embrace frugality. If you’re looking for a cheap vacation, you’d better apply elsewhere.”

  He smiled that smile of his. “Is this an attempt to persuade my client to raise his offer?”

  “It probably should be, but I’m not greedy. And the soone
r we get this done, the better. Have you spoken to him yet?”

  “I sent the photos, but he hasn’t responded.” He took a sip of his drink and leaned forward, his eyes glassy. “But if you don’t mind, I’d rather save our business for the light of day. I’m not a fan of discussing such things once the sun goes down.”

  Or when you’re half in the bag, Alex thought.

  She looked out the windows and saw that the sun had indeed disappeared, the sky now a mix of deep purples and blues, with a sliver of moonlight reflected by the water. The beach below looked empty and inviting, even if the sand had been shipped in from farther north.

  The waiter came back and set Alex’s drink on the table in front of her.

  As she took a sip, Gérard said, “Not that I’m complaining, but why the change of heart?”

  “Change of heart?”

  “About having a drink with me.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d believe I just got in the car and started driving and this was where I wound up?”

  He smiled again and lifted his glass in a toast. “So you’re a free spirit. A woman without purpose.”

  “Only on my bad days,” she said.

  He laughed but then studied her. “Unless my instincts are fuzzy, there’s something troubling you. Did the intruder come back?”

  She shook her head. “The only thing troubling me is that I don’t know who your client is. That’s the real reason I’m here.”

  “But I’ve already told you. He prefers to remain anonymous.”

  “And I prefer to know who I’m doing business with.”

  He paused. “So then this really is an attempt to raise the price.”

  “No,” she said, “it’s an attempt to find out who wants my house and why he had you contact me. Why now instead of a year ago? Six months?”

  Gérard shrugged. “As far as I know, he wasn’t in the market then. And I’m not sure why this is so upsetting to you.”

  He was right. She was upset and it showed. She was handling this like a ham-handed amateur, but interrogation had never been her specialty. She was the grab-and-go girl who left such things to the experts.