Caspian rolled his head on his shoulders. Left to right. Right to left. He blinked sweat from his eyes. “How did you find my apartment?”
“We made a deal.”
“What are you talking about? A deal with who?”
“Heather.”
Caspian stopped breathing. Smith allowed a long silence to linger. Caspian felt his pulse accelerate. Heather.
Smith moved away from the wall. “She came to us, actually,” Smith said. “She knew about Mohammad Al-Islam and she was willing to trade you for money. Heather was smart. She didn’t make it easy on us, but she delivered.”
She had betrayed him. He should have expected no less from a whore.
Caspian couldn’t wrap his head around it. He couldn’t believe all this was because of her. From the airport to his apartment building something indefinable had twisted in his gut but he hadn’t listened to his instincts. At least not close enough. Huge mistake. Now he was going to die because he’d gotten sloppy. He never saw it coming. Heather had been all about sex for him. Nothing more. A gorgeous woman with a spectacular body. A trapeze artist in bed. She had been worth every penny of the hundreds of thousands of dollars he’d paid over the years for her services.
“Who do you work for?” Caspian demanded. “FBI? CIA?”
Smith remained at a distance. He lit a cigarette. “The hours of your life are winding down. Take my advice and don’t waste them. You are going to die and I am the one who will kill you. You’ll not make it out of this room alive, but how long you suffer is up to you. It can be over quickly. Would you prefer to die quickly?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, of course. The length of your suffering depends on your telling me what I need to know. I need to know your real name and where Al-Islam is hiding. Tell me now and I can send you sailing off into the white cloud of eternity.”
A minute passed. Then two.
“Gerard Kleurrman.”
“If you lie, I’ll make the pain unbearable,” Smith said.
“My name is Gerard Kleurrman.”
“What is the user ID and password to unlock your laptop computer?”
Caspian closed his eyes. He swallowed.
“We found it in the locked cabinet hidden inside the wall of your apartment,” Smith said.
Caspian was stunned. He had been meticulous with his security. He had taken every precaution and left no detail to chance, but all of it added up to nothing. He took a deep breath.
“I’m not going to tell you.”
Smith sucked on the cigarette.
“That is foolish.”
“I’m going to tell you nothing.”
“You’ve already given your name.”
“Gerard Kleurrman is an alias. One of many. Dozens actually. As is Caspian. I barely remember who I really am.”
“Tell me how to unlock the computer. Don’t be a fool. All you are doing is prolonging the inevitable. I will break you eventually.”
“Do what you have to do.”
“Which ear would you prefer to keep.”
“Both of them.”
“Pick one or I’ll pick for you.”
Smith selected a knife with a gleaming stainless blade from the table. Caspian could see nothing, but he heard footsteps move past him and then the muted clang of metal on metal.
“Surprise me,” Caspian said.
Smith removed the bag.
Caspian kept his eyes closed. He felt the blade pressed broadside against the side of his neck. He felt it slowly rise until the sharpened edge touched the lower part of his ear. His pulse climbed.
Smith let the blade linger against the ear for a long moment.
“The suspense is killing me,” Caspian said, barely above a whisper.
“Then I’ll not keep you waiting any longer,” Smith told him.
The men outside heard the scream, even through the thick metal door. It sounded as though it had been carried over seas and mountains from a thousand miles away, but they heard it nonetheless.
72
Eva DuPont had studied the list of names. It was a list of people who’d been a part of Brian Ripley’s life before he died at the age of twenty-five. His father had dropped dead from a massive heart attack at the age of fifty-seven. His mother had remarried twice and had moved from Omaha to Santa Fe and after a thorough analysis of fifteen years of phone records and email accounts there was nothing to indicate any form of communication between Mrs. Ripley and her son. She genuinely believed him to be dead.
Eva had now been up forty-eight hours without sleep. She studied her BlackBerry. The Pentagon was working around the clock to feed her any kind of information that might be of use. She read back through the volume of documents. Ripley appeared to have dropped off the face of the earth but Eva knew there had to be trail of breadcrumbs somewhere among those pages that would eventually lead her to Ripley’s present location. Her eyes moved down the pages.
She was seated behind the wheel of her Audi with the map light on. The Audi sat idle on the shoulder of the highway a few miles outside of Manhattan with the hazards flashing. It was full on dark outside and her headlights fell across the weeds running along the edge of the asphalt.
Her BlackBerry chimed as more messages dropped into her inbox. She pinned the pages to the wheel and used her thumb to scroll through the latest notes.
One of the notes caught her attention. It was not the note itself, but a single name.
She dropped the BlackBerry between her legs and leafed back through several of the printed pages her employer had provided. There it was again. That name. She made a quick call to the office and they performed a search. Within a few short minutes, she had a home address. The name was Folston and he lived in Washington, D.C. Eva could be there in less than four hours.
73
The street was average middle class and Folston’s house was a single level craftsman from the early seventies. The Audi crawled to the curb on the opposite side of the street and Eva stared at its dark windows. There was no car in the driveway. The house was dark and still.
The office had pulled everything available on Christopher Folston, which wasn’t much. He leased and sub-subcontracted machinery and heavy equipment to various industries and he filed an extension on his taxes every year. His average income was eighty grand a year, one-twenty being his best in a decade, and fifty-five his worst. He had never married. The only detail of interest at all was the fact that he had been Brian Ripley’s half brother.
Eva walked through shadows to the garage. She slipped through the gate in the chain- link and eased along the wall. She peered through a narrow window into the gloom of the garage. It was wide enough for two cars, but it was empty. The shelves along the walls were neat, but not overly so. There were oil stains on one side of the floor where Folston parked when he was home.
Obviously he wasn’t home now.
Eva moved to the rear of the house and cupped her hands around her eyes to see through the patio glass. She squinted and made out vague shapes of furniture arranged without inspiration against the interior walls. There were no signs of life.
She backed away and closed the gate and returned to the Audi. She sat behind the wheel and studied the dark house across the street. It looked like every other house on the street. In fact, it looked like every other house in the surrounding neighborhoods. She wondered where a forty-nine-year-old, unmarried, equipment salesman might be at 3 a.m. on a Thursday morning.
Her finely tuned instincts told her that contrary to appearances, she was on the right track.
74
The left ear went into a zip lock baggie along with the four toes. It was a bloody mess, but Smith was impressed. The man in the chair still wasn’t talking.
Smith had the overwhelming urge to go ahead with the remaining ear, but he had to remain patient and methodical. He spent the next sixty minutes quizzing Caspian, but Caspian stared straight ahead at the gray wall with empty eyes. The blood leaking from the ear was
blackened and charred from the cauterization. The room reeked of burnt flesh.
Smith remained unfazed. Caspian would break. They all did. It was only a matter of time.
75
Coburn was asleep when he felt Sabrina’s hand on his body. She kissed him on the mouth and smiled, and then lay beside him in the bed.
Coburn hunted through the sheets for the TV remote and turned on CNN. Then he sat bolt upright and touched up the volume as he saw what was on the screen. The headline splashed on screen concerned the murder of two NYPD detectives.
“This is bad.”
There was footage from a street in New York. The camera was shaky. There were cops and police tape and a reporter standing near a brown sedan. Coburn immediately recognized it as O’Shannon’s car. The reporter was talking into the camera. An instant later, photos of O’Shannon and Weaver appeared in the space above the bold headline. The murders had happened late the previous afternoon. The reporter was saying authorities were speculating that the double homicide of the detectives might be related to the murder of the a twenty-something woman whose body had been discovered in Washington Square Park at the start of the week.
“This is very bad,” Coburn said again.
“What?”
“My life just got a little more complicated.”
Sabrina stared at the TV, at the photos of the murder victims.
“Those are the detectives who came to my apartment.”
Coburn nodded. “Someone killed them,” he said. He stood and pulled on his jeans.
Sabrina asked, “Do you think it was Ripley?”
Coburn found his shirt on the floor and he pulled it over his head and put his arms through. “Yes, I do,” he said.
“That’s crazy.”
“No, it’s not. He’s cleaning up loose ends. They knew I believed he was alive. So he eliminated them.”
“What is Ripley hiding from?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe he’s crazy.”
“Maybe,” Coburn said.
“What time is it?”
“Time to go. Get dressed. Let’s go have a talk with Elvis.”
76
They battled morning commuter traffic in the rental car. A dull haze hung over the Capital. It was already hot and the day had barely begun. Coburn had only a vague idea of where he was going but he navigated the wilds of D.C. like he’d made the same drive every morning for the past two decades. He skimmed along the outskirts of Georgetown and ducked forward and squinted against the glare as government buildings began to cluster in front of them.
They parked and Coburn fed a meter.
“This guy is your friend?”
Coburn nodded. “He owes me a favor.”
“Did you save his life?”
“No, I saved his marriage. I lied to his wife for him. If she knew the things he’d done she’d kill him.”
“What’s the short version?” she asked with a twinkle in her eye.
Coburn waved off the question and replied, “Even the short version is x-rated.”
They had to walk a block and a half. He held the door for her and they ducked into stark air-conditioning.
Coburn spoke to a young female officer at the lobby counter and asked for his friend. The officer looked up at him like he’d told a dumb joke.
“You’re looking for Elvis?”
Coburn nodded. “Elvis Cheznik.”
The young woman was immaculate in a crisp uniform. She had strawberry blond hair styled short. She had kind eyes but everything else about her was all business. Her accent was southern but not too far south. She stared at him a long moment, trying to decide whether or not this guy was yanking her chain.
Then she blinked and said, “Do you mean Major Ron Cheznik?”
Coburn smiled. It occurred to him that around there few people probably referred to Ron Cheznik as Elvis anymore. Most likely no more than half a dozen people in the world still called him Elvis, but Coburn had all but forgotten his first name was Ron.
“Sorry,” Coburn said. “Ron Cheznik. I’m an old friend. Ask him if he has a few minutes to waste on John Coburn.”
“Please wait here.” Then she disappeared down a corridor lined with offices.
It was a short wait.
Major Cheznik put out a hand and greeted his old buddy. Sabrina’s eyebrows went up. He was not what she’d expected. Elvis was a short Korean man with a Boston accent.
Coburn made a quick introduction.
“We went through basic training together. He used to get drunk and climb up on the tables and do a terrible Elvis impersonation. The name stuck.”
“Where’d the accent come from?” she asked.
“Adopted as a baby,” Elvis answered. “My birth parents were Korean but I have no memory of them.”
“I need a favor,” Coburn said.
“I’m on a plane in an hour. I just came by the office to grab something on my way to the airport.”
“It’s important.”
“Wish I could help.”
“Still married to Sue?”
Elvis nodded.
“How’s that going?” Coburn asked.
Elvis shrugged. “Five kids and pregnant with number six.”
“Sounds like it might stick.”
“Twenty years and going strong.”
“So she probably wouldn’t care about what happened in Phoenix.”
“Coburn, you wouldn’t dare.”
“Just saying.”
Elvis hesitated a moment. He glanced at his watch and frowned.
“What do you need, Coburn?”
Coburn gave him the names of Ripley, Valentine, and Rooney. Elvis again protested about his flight and his crunch for time. Coburn deflected the protest and said they’d wait for him in the lobby.
The request was simple. Coburn had asked him to put in a call to the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri. He wanted them to pull the service records for the three men in the photo from Gabriella Goldman’s barn. They could have flown down to St. Louis in the Cessna, but it seemed like an unnecessary and inefficient consumption of time. Plus, Elvis Cheznik was in a position to pull some strings and persuade reluctant staffers to do as he asked. At the very least, Coburn wanted to know the dates the three men had enlisted and into what branch of the Armed Services. It seemed like a minimal request, but he was hoping for more. He wanted to know where they had served and the ranks they had achieved. Best case scenario, Elvis might be able to have the files faxed over or emailed in a PDF document, though that seemed like a bit of a stretch.
They lingered near one end of the lobby counter. He noticed a smirk growing at the corners of Sabrina’s mouth.
“What?” he asked.
“I can never listen to Jailhouse Rock with a straight face ever again,” she said.
• • •
They saw Cheznik materialize from a door at the far end of the long corridor. Coburn stepped away from the end of the lobby counter and waited. Cheznik was empty-handed.
“There was no U.S. Military service record for any of those three men,” Elvis said.
“Impossible.”
“I had the boys in Missouri triple-check for me. I spelled the names the way you spelled them for me, and the database came back with no results.”
“Impossible,” Coburn said again.
“What makes you think so?”
Coburn pulled the photo of the three men in jungle gear from a pocket and held it out for inspection.
“Names are on the back for the one in the middle and the one on the left. The unnamed soldier pictured on the far right is Brian Lee Ripley.”
Elvis pursed his lips. He nodded.
“Marines. Special Ops,” Elvis said.
“Exactly.”
Elvis flipped it to the names on the back.
“Well, I still don’t know what to tell you, because as far as the Pentagon is concerned, those guys never enlisted.”
&nbs
p; “What about the photo?”
Elvis shrugged. “Maybe those are paintball guns.” He managed a smile and handed the photo back.
“You’re sure?”
“As sure as I can be. No one with those names served in the Marines. If they had, there would be records. Wish I could be of more help.”
“Call them back. Have them check one more time.”
Elvis shook his head. “Sorry, Coburn. You are officially out of favors.”
77
It was the start of another ordinary day. The secretary arrived ten minutes late and the phone was already ringing. She had a key and let herself in. She let the phone ring while she turned on the lights and put her purse in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet. She saw through the frosted glass window in Mr. Folston’s door that the blinds were closed and the light was off in his office.
Mary Harding put on coffee and pushed forms and paperwork around her desk. She wedged the phone against her shoulder and opened her appointment book to take down the caller’s information. She was not a morning person and was relieved to pour her first cup of Joe. She heaped in the cream and sugar and set the cup on the heated pad on her desk.
When Christopher Folston finally stepped through the door, Mary handed him a stack of Post-It notes and file folders.
“Happy Birthday,” she said with no trace of humor.
Folston grunted, poured himself a coffee and walked past Mary’s desk to his office. He had not slept and was running on fumes. The last few updates from Smith had been less than inspiring. Mr. Armstrong was getting impatient and was starting to really turn up the pressure. He wanted results. The latest exchange over the phone had not gone well. Armstrong had gone so far as to threaten to pull his money.
Folston intended to put in a couple of hours at the office to keep his day job on track before turning his attention back to Caspian and the business of tracking down terrorists.
He unlocked his office door, the file folders pinned under one arm, careful not to spill the coffee. He nudged the door open with his knee and piled the folders amid the clutter on his desk. He hit the lights and sipped his coffee as he closed the door.
Never Back Down Page 20
