by Jeff Abbott
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“How did you meet her?”
“I worked security at one of her events.”
“Yet in her charity’s financial records we cannot find a payment to you for security services rendered.”
“I worked for a company owned by someone else. He paid me, not Cori.”
“What company?”
“Robles Security.”
“Owned by Steve Robles, who is now dead. What do you know about his death?”
“I know nothing. It was a tragedy.”
“One of the men who killed him met death himself.” One? I wondered where Tellez was now. “I could see you being involved.”
“I wasn’t.”
She folded her hands on the desk. “Who sent you?”
“I told you, no one.”
“People always try to stand up for themselves, when they first get here,” she said. “They take it as their last bit of defiance.” She shrugged. “It passes. It’s better for you if this passes quickly, not slowly. Answer me.”
“It’s not like you’re going to let me go home.” She thought I meant Cordelia. I meant Daniel, and New Orleans. I couldn’t let myself think of my baby. It would break me. I couldn’t help it. I shivered, I shook, tears came hot to my eyes. Daniel. I’ll get back to you. I promise.
Nanny misread the wave of emotion. “If you love Cordelia, cooperate with me, and you will go home eventually,” she said. “That is a promise from the Varelas, to you. Now. Just one tiny detail. There’s a real possibility Sam Chevalier is not your real name.”
I stared at her.
Nanny continued: “Now, I was waiting for you to tell me who you truly are. Really, you could have earned some extras by confessing.”
“Why would you think it’s not my real name?”
She tapped a pen on her folder. She’d tapped a finger earlier, a nervous habit. In this situation you notice and file away everything because you don’t know when it will be useful. And anything could be useful. She was a tapper of pens and pencils, I’d remember that. “Sam Chevalier, former Canadian soldier and onetime smuggler specializing in eastern European routes to London and Paris, has normal levels of financial activity for the past two years. But you don’t send any e-mails. We can find no history of e-mails used by your identity.”
“E-mail isn’t secure. I don’t use it often.”
“But you have the social media accounts. Yet we noticed that all updates done to those, even though they were marked as being posted across a range of dates over the past two years—if you dig into the account’s activity log, like we can, you see they were all uploaded in the course of a single hour. And several of your ‘friends’’ accounts don’t seem to be real accounts.”
August—or one of his people—had made a mistake.
She leaned forward. “So you are interesting to us. Coming at the Varelas. Becoming Cordelia’s friend. Being friends with a man Cori hired to look into her family, a man we tried to pay off and then had to kill.” I said nothing and she smiled. “Cordelia has been talking quite a bit in an effort to save you. Yet these blank bits of your history even she can’t fill in. Very unusual. Who do you work for? I don’t think you are a police officer. The cover would be better.”
“I am who I say I am,” I said.
“Your friend in Prague. Mr. František Lada. I know that Mr. Varela’s people in Europe questioned him. Well, our people will be talking to him as well.”
I betrayed no emotion. If Lada vanished because these people took him, and I hadn’t been heard from, then August would know my cover had gone bad.
And there would be nothing he could do about it.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “I deactivated my social media accounts for quite a while and then reactivated them. That might be how all my postings were reset to the same time. I don’t know.” I lowered my voice. “Mr. Lada’s an innocent man who just tried to help me. He has powerful friends. If you hurt him, they’ll come after you.”
They were worried I was a spy sent after the Varelas. Simply being Cori’s boyfriend meant I was useless, except for keeping Cori in line.
So make them think I was here for another reason. Make Nanny uncertain.
This could be a fast way to lose a thumb. I couldn’t be afraid.
I had to be inside here, the way I’d tried to be inside the Varelas.
“You must be scared,” I said quietly. “I mean, you think I’m a spy. And yet you’ve brought me into the heart of your operation. You must be incredibly afraid of what I represent. But you’re afraid of the Varelas, too, that they’re the weak link in the chain. It would be difficult to move prisoners here secretly without them—far more people involved if each guest is moved by those who want them here. The Varelas are very good at it and it’s hard to penetrate a transportation company, especially a long-established one. You really need the Varelas.”
“You’re delightfully naïve,” she said. “You think that the Varelas have a choice? They’ve never had a choice. They’ve been owned from day one.”
Owned. Someone owned them? Someone who could protect Rey from his past crimes? The government? More like governments, several, around the world. I kept my poker face in place. “Don’t underestimate the Varelas,” I said. “I did.”
“Take him back to his cell,” Nanny ordered the guard. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. I know your brain must feel clogged by all the chemicals, and perhaps you’ll be more forthcoming then.”
They took me out of her office. I stayed in the wheelchair. I asked for a glass of water. They took me back to the cafeteria. It was nearly empty, only a few people. I saw the angry Hungarian and he glared at me. His hands were bound in front of him. The guards were eating but the guests weren’t, except for cups of water, and the guests looked miserable. I could smell the guards’ food—eggs, potatoes, fried meat—and my stomach rumbled loudly.
People stared at me. There were maybe fifteen of them total and I scanned their faces, trying not to alight on any of them, just trying to see who might be angriest with me, who might, other than the Hungarian, be likely to wreak revenge on me for the day’s empty stomach. I had to assume everyone was an enemy.
Then I saw, huddled and alone at a table, with that empty, broken gaze, a face I’d seen before.
Only in photos, in the information package that Paige had sent me on the Varela family, in the den of the house in Puerto Rico.
The empty hole in the family. The ghost boy.
Edwin Varela.
56
I DIDN’T WANT to sleep, but it was the smartest move I could have made. My body needed to get out all the chemical filth in it. I needed to think, to put together everything I knew, the whirl of information I’d gotten, the truth that lay behind Nanny’s questions and threats. And I had to get healthy and fit if I was going to get out of there.
And I was.
It wasn’t my first time being a captive. I’d been held by the CIA when they thought I was a traitor (wrong), and by a major criminal syndicate (underestimating me). In neither case could you say I’d staged an actual escape.
But I was going to get out. No prison was escape-proof. It had a weak point, somewhere. I just needed to find it. And stay alive while I did so.
But there were challenges. This was a big prison but a small population. So it was harder to go unnoticed by both prisoners and guards and, as the new guy who’d tried to escape, I was under heavy scrutiny from both sides. Also, the guards might well kill me as surely as the prisoners. There was no (sane) warden, no prison board, no oversight to keep you alive.
And I needed to find Edwin Varela and talk to him. He’d gotten up and left when the guards were still escorting me. He was here; it wasn’t my drug-addled brain. Did Galo or Rey know? Did Kent—he must, he was the one who’d sent me here. I felt sure Cordelia didn’t know.
Edwin might be able to give me the answers I needed, or confirm my coalescing theori
es.
The prison was a place of routine. Our doors opened at seven a.m. We were to stand in the doorway and wait. When we were all in our doorways, all accounted for, then we were marched to the cafeteria. We stood in line and the workers served us a simple breakfast. Where did the staff live, I wondered, and what did they think this place was? Most of them never spoke except to point at a dish and wait for you to say yes or no. I got my scrambled eggs and a slice of cheese and an orange—no coffee, no hot drinks—and a cup of water. I saw Edwin Varela sitting at a table, with three other men. There was an empty space across from him and I took it.
He glanced up at me for the barest moment as I put down my tray.
No one seemed too happy that I joined them.
What do you say? “Hi. I’m 47,” I tried. Socially awkward.
They said nothing. Next to Edwin was a fiftyish man with arms adorned with Yakuza tattoos; another man, in his sixties, who was bald and gaunt and murmured something in French after I’d greeted everyone; and my buddy the Hungarian.
“What do you think we chat about here? Current events?” the Hungarian said.
“I don’t know. What do we talk about?”
The Hungarian—32 written on his jumpsuit—shrugged. “What we miss from real life. When they’ll let us go.”
“They’ve let people go?” I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice.
“Yes. There was one prisoner they let go. So the guards said.”
So maybe release wasn’t an automatic death sentence. They must have some power over people to ensure their silence. The released prisoner was probably dead. But the idea that people could be released to go back home—it gave hope, no matter how thin the sliver. And hope is a cruel promise.
“An American,” the Hungarian said, looking at me. “We don’t have so many of those.”
“Canadian, actually.” With the guests I would stay true to Sam Chevalier’s identity. Anyone might be an informant for Nanny.
“Even rarer,” the Hungarian said.
I glanced at Edwin as I ate. He did not look up from his plate. He looked like Cordelia, for sure you would have known they were brother and sister. But Cori was healthy and vibrant and Edwin looked beaten down.
The Frenchman finished his plate and he and the Japanese man left. Just three of us left. I willed the Hungarian to get up and leave. But he seemed content to wait Edwin out. I didn’t dare speak about the Varelas in front of the Hungarian. Edwin finished sipping at his apple juice and got up and wandered away with his tray.
The Hungarian moved down three seats next to me. “No one can decide if you’re legit or if you are a plant by Nanny.”
“I’m not a plant.”
“You showed spine. No one here likes that. No one but me.” He laughed. Coldly.
“What do you mean?”
“Look at these nothings. They’ve been broken into sheep, or they were sheep from the moment they woke up here,” he said. “There are no wolves here but me. And maybe you.” And to prove his point, he gave me a wolfish smile.
I didn’t smile back.
“You are not like the others, 47. I can tell. Lots of rich people here.”
“Rich people routinely go missing?”
“No one thinks they are gone. They moved overseas. They are in a sanitarium. They are on a long trip. All sorts of ways to make a person not be missed.”
“Why are you here?”
“Last survivor of a gang that pissed off a powerful man in Budapest,” he said.
“Why would he keep you alive?”
“I’m his cousin.” He shrugged. “He couldn’t look my mother in the eye if he murdered me. This is easier. She thinks I live in Australia. I talk to her on phone now and then.”
“And you don’t ask for help?”
“There is a knife at my throat the entire time. And I had a girlfriend back home. They will kill her, her family, if I don’t play along on the phone.”
“And your mother buys this?”
“I am a good actor. Motivated. Maybe my cousin will relent soon. I know a lot about the criminal rings in eastern Europe.”
Powerful families. Criminal families. This was a place for them to keep their problems. You didn’t have to be Michael Corleone and kill your brother in a rowboat. You could ship him to Nanny.
“But he won’t let me back until Mama is gone, I think,” the Hungarian said. “I’ve thought about it. He might think I will tell her what he did.”
“Would you?”
“No.”
“Is your story typical of everyone here?”
“Many of them. Some are related to terrorists or known criminals and are used as leverage. Others, I don’t know.”
“By whom? Who runs this place?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think it must be US government, you know, like in a movie, a secret back corner or group. Then I think, no, it is criminal gangs, maybe working together. I can’t decide.” He jerked his head toward a table where a trio of older men sat. “Like those guys, they handled money or websites for terrorists or syndicates and it’s easier to break a service provider than an ideologue—maybe they knew who they were working for, maybe they didn’t. Some wanted to be terrorists and told the wrong person. Some have ties, personal or professional, to criminal rings and need to be kept alive for a while because they’re useful. Some here are bad and some are innocent. But here we all are together.”
Betrayed family members. Edwin.
I felt cold. I felt angry, too.
The Hungarian said, “See you around,” and got up and left. I was the last person at the table.
I closed my eyes. I thought of the burnt man, all his advice he’d given me. I could hear his voice in my head: You still have to be an inside man. Just here. You have to sell a story that will help you escape. Think, Sam.
And I realized hearing his voice in my head meant I was losing my grip.
57
I FELL INTO a pattern. The days were structured. Three meals a day. Exercise-yard time. A channel that showed classic old television shows and movies but no current events or news. There was a library stocked with books in a dozen languages. Presumably there was time for interrogations if scheduled. The walls were high. Guards in the turrets. This must have been a real prison once, built for legitimate reasons, and then bought by Nanny or whoever her masters were.
I waited for Nanny to come to me with more questions. She didn’t. Somehow that made me more nervous. If I knew what information she wanted, I’d have an idea of what she knew and what she didn’t know. Maybe Lada had gone on the run. Maybe they were hunting him. Maybe the CIA was hiding him. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Each morning I had an exercise period and today was sunny and bright after a few days of rain. An older couple kicked a soccer ball between them. Two younger guys shot baskets.
Edwin Varela sat in the sunshine. He was reading a battered paperback, thick. It was a collection of Shakespeare’s plays.
I walked over to him and my shadow fell across his page. “Leave me alone,” he said without looking up.
“Edwin?”
He still didn’t look up at me, but his finger froze in its tracks along the small print. The finger next to it was missing. The one that had been mailed to Rey. I could see the scar where his ear had been. “25. I’m number 25.”
“You’re Edwin Varela. I’m Sam Chevalier. I’m a friend of Cordelia’s. I know your family. I’ve been to your house in Puerto Rico.”
His maimed hand didn’t move along the paper. “I’m 25,” he repeated.
“Eddie.” I used the family nickname.
“Twenty. Five,” he said with emphasis. Now he looked at me.
“I’m going to get out of here, Edwin,” I said quietly. “Do you want to come with me?”
Five heartbeats passed. “I’ll tell on you.”
“If you’re strong like your twin sister, you won’t.”
He looked back at his book. I couldn’t see which play
he was reading.
“I don’t think your father sent you here, Edwin. Did he?”
He didn’t answer.
“Was it Kent? He sent me. He talked to me, in the crate.”
He didn’t answer, but his finger wavered on the page. He closed the worn book and looked past my legs, at the wall.
“Your stepsister Zhanna is dead. Poisoned. She was pregnant.”
Now he looked up at me again.
“I’m blamed for her death, but I didn’t kill her,” I said.
“Who did?”
“Kent. She might have cheated on him.”
“With Galo,” he said, as if he knew. “Cori and I caught them once. Years ago. They’ve been off and on for years. Let me guess, my brother’s still not married.”
“Nope.”
“Zhanna’s in his blood. He can’t commit to her and he can’t be without her. They’ve been stuck for years.”
I knelt by him. “Your father is descending into dementia. And he’s disowned Cori, because she’s tried to get him to stop the smuggling. The family’s at war with the group that has them ship people here.” I didn’t add that I had contributed to the hostilities. “Why are you here, Edwin?”
“Go away. There’s nothing to be done.” He got up and walked away from me. I let him. He had to be ready to talk to me.
At dinner he sat alone after everyone else had finished eating, his book open. I sat across from him, drinking cold tea.
I was about to speak but he started, as though we were still in the yard, under the bright sunshine. He’d had time to decide he would talk to me. “I was working for Papa and Galo. I thought I found a hole in our security at FastFlex. What I found was their system to ship people. I took it to Kent because I thought I could trust him—and I was too afraid to confront my own father. And now I’m here.” He stood up. “But you know that. You’re just a spy sent here by Kent. There, I’ve done what you wanted, I’ve talked. Now go away and tell him whatever you have to tell him. Does he think he can hurt me any more than he has? All he can do is kill me.”
