At all costs

by John Gilstrap

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Irene placed the call from her car, on her way to catch the plane that would take her to West Virginia. She’d been dreading the deed all day, and once Frankel picked up on his end, she realized she hadn’t been dreading it quite enough. As she took her drubbing, Paul Boersky sat quietly in the shotgun seat, pretending to be interested in the passing scenery.

  “I’ve got to tell you, Irene, just how disappointed I am in your handling of this case.”

  Like you did it so much better in ’83, she shot back silently. This was a call of atonement, not one of conflict-well, at least from her point of view. From the other side of the line, every call was an excuse for conflict.

  “You have him and then you lose him, and then you have him again. Jesus, I need a scorecard just to keep up. What have our redneck friends been able to turn up?”

  Irene checked over her shoulder and changed lanes, following the signs to Greenville-Spartanburg Airport. “Not much, I’m afraid. Nobody seems to remember seeing them, but a waitress remembers a kid spending a long time on the telephone. Didn’t hear any of the conversation, though.”

  “Damn,” Frankel spat. “So have the troopers given up?”

  What a ridiculous question. “No, sir, not that I know of. In fact, the last time I talked to the guy in charge down there, he said he had every available trooper on the case. I called Les Janier in the Charlestown office, and he said he’d get some agents down there to help out. I’m on my way there myself, in fact.”

  “What about the surveillance we put on old man Sinclair out in Chicago?” Frankel asked, changing subjects. “Last report I got, they were following him out of the state.”

  Irene took a deep breath. He’s going to go ballistic. “Well, there’s a problem there, too, sir,” she said. “Seems he was onto us somehow. He sent one of his associates on a ride, wearing a look-alike costume. Then, while we were distracted, he sneaked out another entrance to his compound and disappeared.” There, she’d said it. At least the primary heat from this one would be focused on someone else. Ted Greenberg, probably-her Chicago counterpart.

  Frankel remained quiet for a long time. She’d met the man only twice, but she knew he tended to turn crimson red when he was upset. In her mind, he was purple now. When he finally spoke, he seemed beyond anger, tipping the scale more toward fury. Hatred maybe. But he maintained perfect control of his voice.

  “You realize, don’t you, Irene, that we are the FBI? The most advanced investigative organization in the world. And these Donovans and their relatives are making you look like a complete idiot. A laughingstock for the entire world! Christ, I’ve seen Barney Fife turn out better police work than you!”

  Why, thank you for the inspiration, Peter, Irene didn’t say.

  “You’ve got two days, Irene,” Frankel concluded. “Two more days, and then I yank you off the case and bust you down to border guard. Are you understanding me here?”

  “Yes, sir,” Irene said. Translation: I’ve got my confirmation hearings in six weeks, and you better not screw them up. “Perfectly, sir.”

  “Now, go out and act like an FBI agent!”

  Nick saw the line at the elevators and said to hell with it. He flew down the stairs-six floors, twelve flights-passing two cliques of smokers huddled in the stairwell like high school students, sneaking their forbidden puffs where no supervisors were likely to catch them. Both groups looked startled at first, until they saw he was no one, then went on about their gossiping.

  As he crashed out of the stairwell into the lobby, a security guard looked even more startled than the smokers, and he instinctively moved his hand toward his side arm. For the briefest moment, Nick considered blurting out the story-that some madman had been threatening his children-but he pushed the thought out of the way. In response to the inquisitive look, he flashed the ID badge dangling from his neck.

  “Late for an appointment,” he said hurriedly. He didn’t wait for a reply.

  As promised, a white Lincoln was parked illegally, immediately outside the 13th Street entrance. He hurried toward the vehicle, then slowed his approach. How was he supposed to know if it was the white Lincoln?

  As if to answer his question, the driver’s door popped open, and a bull-headed man with white hair beckoned him over. “Mr. Thomas?” the man called.

  Nick’s breath caught in his throat. The voice was the same, minus the electronic distortion. He slowed even more. “Yes.”

  “Please climb in,” the man offered with a smile. “Truly, you are in no danger.”

  No, just my children, Nick thought. He approached haltingly, like a dog obeying an order to come and be beaten for eating a sock. The man gestured to the passenger side, and the instant Nick’s butt was in the seat, the vehicle started to move, even before the door was completely closed.

  “Hello,” the driver said, extending his hand across the seat hump. “I’m afraid we started off on the wrong foot. My name is not Fox. It’s Sinclair. Harry Sinclair. Harry to my friends. May I call you Nick?”

  Nick didn’t bother to smile as he hesitantly shook the old man’s hand. At first, the name didn’t mean anything. Looking at his face, though, it came back to him. This was the man he’d seen on the cover of Business Week, with a headline like “Mr. Connection.” In the photo, the tycoon was awash in money, with cartoon politicians bulging out of his pockets.

  “You can call me whatever you want,” Nick said, still tight as a bowstring. “Where are my children?”

  Harry scoffed and waved off Nick’s concerns. “They are as I said to you on the phone. Perfectly safe at their school. I mean it, Nick, they’re in no jeopardy. I’m afraid that in my zeal to meet with you, I may have led you to believe otherwise. I apologize.”

  The hell you do. Nick didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing, concentrating his energies on an effort to keep his body from trembling as Harry piloted the Lincoln toward the Virginia suburbs. For the first time in a very long while, he felt real fear.

  “You’re on edge,” Harry said. He flashed a smile that seemed to hold a genuine kindness. “I’ll get right to the point, then. I have a niece who’s in a bit of trouble right now, and she seems to think you can help her out. Her name is Carolyn Donovan. Ring any bells?”

  For a moment, Nick could think of nothing to say. Then the words tumbled out: “I, um… I knew her a while ago, yes.”

  Harry smiled broadly at the recognition that was so plainly displayed on Nick’s face. “I’m guessing you don’t play a lot of poker, Nick,” he said with a laugh. “Since you know her, I’ll assume you know the nature of her problem as well.”

  Nick nodded, abandoning all efforts to be coy or elusive.

  “Well, according to her son-they have a son now, by the way-whom I talked to this morning, Carolyn and her husband, Jack… do you know Jack?”

  Nick scowled. “You mean Jake? Yes, certainly.”

  Harry stood corrected. “Jake, then. Whatever. Do you think they’re guilty of the crimes they stand accused of?”

  Nick’s eyes narrowed. Obviously, there was only one right answer for this one. Happily, it doubled as his honest take on it all. “No,” he said at length. “No, I never have. In fact, I told the FBI at the time…” He shut himself up abruptly. The time had come to answer the question, and nothing more.

  “That’s good,” Harry said. “Because they vehemently deny any wrongdoing. In fact, confidentially, I must tell you that they wanted to turn themselves in from the very beginning; to prove their innocence. Alas, my faith in the judicial system was weaker than theirs, and I prevailed on them to disappear for a while. It’s the sort of decision that can’t be unmade. Now that events have taken this unfortunate turn, they feel that they can prove their innocence in this hazardous waste mess if they could just regain access to the site in Newark where it all happened.”

  Nick’s jaw dropped. “No way,” he said without hesitation. “You mean inside the magazine?”

  Harry
shrugged. “Presumably.”

  “No way. Absolutely not. The toxicity levels in there would knock down an elephant. They wouldn’t even let me recover the bodies, for crying out loud.”

  “They?” Harry seemed suddenly intrigued.

  Nick rolled his eyes. “The FBI jerks. And the EPA. They were so anxious to seal everything-”

  “So, given the chance, you would have reentered?” Harry interrupted.

  Nick paused, recognizing he’d just wandered into a trap. “Well, not without significant precautions. I mean, the protective equipment alone would…” He saw it. He saw what Harry wanted him to do. “I can’t just requisition a bunch of remediation equipment!” he said. “That stuff costs thousands of dollars. They’d fire me in a heartbeat.”

  Deep wrinkles materialized in Harry’s forehead. “Much as they would throw my niece in prison for a crime she didn’t commit,” he said. “She and her husband were hoping you’d be willing to help. That’s why they called me. To see if I could talk you into assisting them in their efforts to exonerate themselves.”

  Nick’s sense of dread bottomed out as he realized the choice he faced. One of the most powerful businessmen in the country-hell, in the world, for all he knew-had just confessed to committing a felony and had shared in detail the plans hatched by his own family to vandalize federal property. If he said yes, he’d become a part of the plot-a fellow felon.

  “What if I say no?” Nick asked cautiously.

  Harry gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Then I’d be very disappointed,” he said. This time the smile seemed slightly less genuine.

  Nick searched the old man’s face for the hidden threat, for some sign of what might befall him and his family if he refused to cooperate. All he got for his effort, though, was the smile. If Harry read the fear in his passenger’s eyes, he did nothing to dissuade it. He just smiled.

  Men as powerful as Harry Sinclair didn’t climb the ladder one step at a time; they knocked people out of the way, broke the ladder, then rebuilt it under themselves with no rungs on the bottom. A person like Nick meant nothing to a man like Sinclair-just another bug to crush if he got in the way.

  This old man was too sharp ever to make an overt threat, and way too savvy to ever let Nick relax. So now Nick had a decision to make, and in the balance lay his entire future. He could fight or he could cave in; no middle ground. Truth be told, Nick was never much of a fighter, anyway.

  When he finally renewed eye contact with Harry, he looked every bit as whipped as he felt. “What do you want me to do?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Without any real alternative, the Donovans had parked their van in an abandoned barn about a mile from the diner. It looked abandoned, anyway. Sometimes it was hard to tell in West Virginia. The vehicle barely fit and was still visible through the gaping spaces between the wall planks, but with luck, no one would notice. At least, not for a while.

  Leaving the van behind was tough for Jake. That vehicle-and the banged-up VW bus that preceded it-had always been the centerpiece of their escape plan. In casting it aside, he felt as if he were symbolically abandoning a second lifetime of planning and preparation.

  Now it was official. They were walking the tightrope without a net.

  The van was a storehouse for survival gear-clothes, ammunition, building supplies, food, and toiletries. Now these things were all useless to him. All but a few extra clothes. And the money, of course. Money was always useful. While Travis watched in wide-eyed astonishment, Jake and Carolyn transferred the banded bills into two zippered gym bags from off the shelves in the back.

  That done, they chose a spot in the forest and settled in for the endless wait. Knowing they’d have to find their way out in the darkness, they decided to stay in closer to the diner than was probably prudent, still over a half mile from the designated pickup point. Jake had lobbied for a hiding spot further out, fearing the cops would turn the area inside out looking for them, but Carolyn took a different view. The way she saw it, only a crazy person would stay in this close. Therefore, the search would likely concentrate on the highway, some miles distant. A little high-stakes reverse psychology. In the end, of course, her logic prevailed.

  Perched high on a hill and nestled in among jagged granite outcroppings, Travis watched in wonder as what seemed like hundreds of cop cars wore trenches into the highway below. “God, look at ’em all!”

  Carolyn yanked the back of his denim jacket. “Travis, sit down!” she hissed. “They’re gonna see you!”

  Pulling himself free with a single jerk, he scoffed, “Yeah, right. They’re gonna see me through all these leaves.”

  “It’s fall,” she countered. “The leaves are getting thinner every minute.”

  Travis laughed. “Do you really think-”

  “This isn’t a negotiation,” Jake snapped. “Now, get down below the rocks and do what you’re told.”

  Travis paused long enough to peek one more time, just to make the point before settling into his spot among the rocks. “This is so boring!”

  Jake chuckled. “Under the circumstances, boring is good.” In their hurry to get away from the van, Jake had snatched the wrong ammo bag, leaving the assembled magazines for the Glock on the shelves and taking the empties with him instead. Now, if only to pass the time, he busied himself with the task of loading 9-mm hollow points into his six remaining clips.

  “Can I do one?” Travis asked.

  “Sure.” Jake felt the heat of Carolyn’s glare without looking but paid no attention. Thirteen-year-old boys were poorly engineered for long periods of stillness, and if playing with bullets would divert him for a while, where was the harm?

  The clip and the box of bullets were both heavier than Travis had expected. Watching his dad, it looked like you just slid the rounds into place, but when that wouldn’t work, he looked up for assistance.

  “Press down,” Jake instructed. “Then slide in.” He watched his son try it again, with little success. “That’s the right idea,” he encouraged, “but you need to press harder against the spring.”

  Hard was right! His thumbnails turned white from the effort, but finally, the first bullet slid home. “Cool.”

  “You know I don’t approve of this, right?” Carolyn said.

  Jake smiled uneasily. “That’s why I didn’t ask.” He hoped to tap a vein of humor. The last thing he needed right now was a fight with his wife.

  She didn’t laugh, but she let it go. They’d seen enough confrontation for one day. Instead, she leaned back against her rock and stared up at the random splotches of brilliant blue sky through the patchwork canopy of leaves. The day was proving to be much warmer than the one before, and as the sun rose high to evaporate last night’s rain, the humidity got trapped under the canopy, providing a last moment of summer before winter took over for good. If it weren’t for the occasional siren and the incessant clicking of metal upon metal as her guys prepared for the worst, she might have talked herself into believing things were nearly normal; nearly peaceful. On a different day, she might even have fallen asleep.

  “You know,” Travis said, directing his words to his father, “you never answered my question.”

  Jake looked up. “Oh yeah? What question is that?”

  “Whether you would have shot those cops. You know, back there at the school?” The boy kept his concentration focused on his hands as he spoke, studiously avoiding eye contact.

  Jake tried to stay unfazed by the question. “What do you think?”

  A casual shoulder twitch doubled for a shrug. “I dunno. I guess so.”

  Jake stopped what he was doing and placed his halfloaded clip on a rock, sensing that this went beyond a simple hypothetical. More and more, it seemed, as Travis closed in on adolescence, conversations were becoming complicated.

  “There’s only one reason to kill,” Jake explained, peeling the words off carefully, as a gambler might deal a high-stakes hand. “And that’s to protect your family.”

 
Travis considered the answer, then went back to work on the clip, still making no effort at eye contact. “Even if it’s a cop? And he’s just doing his job?”

  Jake looked over to Carolyn, who suddenly lost interest in playing possum. He softened his tone. “Where are you going with this, Trav?”

  When Travis finally looked up, the innocence in his eyes had disappeared, bitterness residing in the spot once occupied by trust. “I’m just trying to figure it all out,” he said. “I mean, all these guns and these bullets and stuff. You bring them everywhere, and you threaten everybody. I’m just wondering who you’re going to kill.”

  If words were swords, Jake would have been in a million pieces. He didn’t know what to say.

  “That’s not fair-” Carolyn tried.

  Travis cut her off. “Why not? Am I supposed to think these guns are just for show?”

  “Travis, please,” she begged, rising up to her knees.

  Jake waved her off. “No, let him talk.”

  “Yeah, let me talk,” Travis mocked. “Let me ask my stupid-kid questions, right?”

  It was Jake’s turn. “Look, Trav, I tried to explain-”

  “Why you lied,” he blurted. “I don’t think we ever got to the killing part.”

  “We’re not going to shoot anyone,” Carolyn said.

  Travis dodged her grasp and stood, oblivious to his exposure above the rocks. “That’s not what he just said!” He gave his father a withering look. “He said he was gonna kill to protect his family. Well, that’s just great! And then they’ll kill you! And I’ll be…” His voice caught in his throat. “They’ll just…”

  Travis’s eyes grew red as he contemplated a prospect he didn’t dare to give a name. He searched for more words, but they just weren’t there.

  Carolyn stood unmoving, fearing the rejection she’d feel if she reached out to him. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”