by Gayle Lynds
Ahead stood the club’s lodges and cabins with their steep roofs. The white Explorer SUV and the black Cadillac limousine were parked in the same places they had seen from their sniper lair, and the corpses were lying on the drive in positions the living could not sustain. It was like all other kill zones, eerie.
“Wow.” Danny stared out the windshield again. “We did all of them within seconds.”
His eyes bright, Danny leaned forward, grasping the dashboard. He always got charged up by their kills, and this had been a highly accurate and efficient one. They had used the best rifles—Silent Assassins, the nickname of the British-made L115A3 Long Range Rifle, renowned for taking out insurgents in Afghanistan a mile away. Today’s firing conditions had been nearly perfect, with clear visibility. The wind had died down just before the Padre had appeared. Only the low temperature could have been a problem, but they had accounted for it.
Eli stopped the van. Danny and he grabbed their AK-47s and climbed out.
Danny lumbered to the nearest corpse.
Eli assessed the silent buildings, the juniper hedges, the trees. There was no sign of his inside man, Tomás Lara. “Tomás!” he shouted. “Tomás, come out! ¿Como esta?”
Suddenly there was the noise of thumping. The SUV rocked, followed by shouts from inside.
Danny peered in a window. “Here he is, Eli. His feet are kicking, and he’s yelling. He thinks he’s angry, but I think he’s frightened.” At the age of twelve, Danny had been diagnosed with autism. Over the years, he had taught himself to assess expressions, skin colors, and eye contractions and dilations to deduce others’ emotions.
“Thanks, Danny.”
Nodding, Danny stepped back, and Eli opened the door. Lara lay on the floor, hands and feet bound. A big man, now he looked small.
Eli glared down. “What happened?”
“It was that bastard Judd Ryder.” The man’s eyes blinked rapidly. “He jumped me. He was going to kill me. I—”
“Where are the pieces of the tablet?”
“Ryder stole them. I could not stop him.”
Eli glanced at his brother. “Check the Padre. See if he still has them.”
With a nod, Danny trotted off.
Eli continued to study his man. The problem with buying someone’s loyalty was you could never pay enough. There was always the risk someone would offer more or threaten them so much the money lost importance.
Danny reappeared. “The Padre doesn’t have the pieces.”
“Thank you, Danny,” Eli said. He leaned his AK-47 against the SUV, took out his jackknife, and sawed the ropes that bound Lara’s wrists and ankles.
“Muchas gracias.” Pushing himself up, Lara leaned back against the vehicle’s wall, rubbing one wrist then the other.
“Did Ryder know about the limestone pieces?” Eli asked, keeping his tone mild.
“Yes, of course. Why else would he take them?”
“How did he find out about them?”
“He did not say.”
“Did he know about me?”
Lara shook his head violently. “No, no!”
“His information about the pieces came from somewhere. From the Carnivore, Seymour, Krot, or perhaps it was from the Padre himself?”
Lara looked away. “I think it must have been the Padre who told him. Yes, the Padre.”
Eli felt an itch at the bottom of his spine. He turned to Danny. “Is he lying?”
Danny nodded. “It wasn’t the Padre.”
Lara’s eyes widened. Sweat broke out on his forehead. “Then I … I must have been the one who said it. But I can help you find him. The Padre had him investigated. Everything that was learned is on the laptop in the main room of the lodge.” He pointed with his thumb.
Without being asked, Danny broke into a lumbering run.
Watching Danny’s back, Lara said eagerly, “I just remembered that Ryder must know something about the Carnivore. He asked whether the Padre was trying to find the Carnivore.”
Eli said nothing. He simply stared down at Lara.
The man adjusted his sitting position. A drop of sweat slid down his temple.
There was the sound of running feet on the drive. Danny was returning.
“This was the only computer in the lodge.” Danny showed them a Toshiba laptop.
Eli took it and handed it to Lara. “Find the material about Ryder.”
The man opened the machine and searched. “Here is the file. You will see many pictures.” He offered up the laptop.
Looking at the screen, Eli saw Ryder’s name with documents listed beneath it—early childhood, college, the army, retirement.
“Put it in our van,” he told Danny.
Again Danny left.
“How did the Padre find out Ryder or Blake might lead him to the Carnivore?”
Wiping sweat from his face, Lara was eager to help: “It was an equity kingpin named Martin Chapman. His relationship with Ryder is written in the report.”
“Where is Chapman?”
“He has a horse farm here in Maryland.” Lara related the location and described it.
Eli felt an odd ache and the beginning of a thrill. He aimed his AK-47.
Horror radiated from the man’s face. “No! Madre de Dios, no!”
With a smile, Eli fired a burst into the traitor’s heart. Blood exploded, spraying the SUV’s seats, windows, and floor. Not bothering to close the door, he jogged away. The cold air felt fresh and sleek, a slipstream.
When he reached the van, Danny was waiting in the passenger seat.
“Call Karel,” Eli told him. He jumped behind the steering wheel and tossed Danny his iPhone. “Tell him he can sanitize the place now. You and I are driving east, to see a man named Martin Chapman. He’s going to help us find Judd Ryder.”
21
Ryder stood in the snow high above the hunt club complex, listening to AK-47 gunfire reverberate across the hills. At the same time it sounded from the cell phone in his hands. Before that, he had heard the entire conversation between Tomás Lara and Eli Eichel, sent from the cell he had hidden in Lara’s front jacket pocket. Now it appeared Lara was dead, and the Eichels were not taking his corpse with them.
Shaking his head with frustration, Ryder closed the phone and slogged off, leaving the hunt club behind as he headed through the pines and down the other side of the hill toward where he had left his pickup.
He phoned Tucker Andersen.
“Have you heard from Eva?” Tucker’s tone was worried.
“Not a word. What’s happened?”
“She called the Farm this afternoon to say she had a family emergency and didn’t know when she’d be back. It could be the truth, but I’m not ready to believe it. I’ve sent a man to watch her house. I phoned her parents. They said they hadn’t heard from her in a month. Does she have a boyfriend?”
“Not that I know of.” Ryder kept his voice even while emotions pumped through him.
“I’m sorry about this, Judd. I know you’re fond of her. It’s entirely possible I’m wrong to be concerned, and she’s fine. Now tell me what happened there.”
Ryder paused, collecting himself. “First, the limestone pieces aren’t random—they’re part of a tablet, or at least that’s what Eli Eichel said. I checked the three pieces I have. They fit together and seem to form a corner, but of course I don’t have a clue what the cuneiform says.”
“Just one more reason to wish Eva were here.”
“Yes, maybe she could read it. Here’s a shocker—Eli Eichel said the Carnivore, Seymour, and Krot know about the limestone pieces, too. Who are Seymour and Krot?”
Tucker swore. “This is getting to be a Who’s Who of assassins. They’re old war horses who got their starts during the Cold War, too. Seymour has used many names. He’s formerly Islamic Jihad. Same with Krot. He’s ex-KGB.”
“Swell. I wonder whether they want the tablet pieces, too.”
“And how many more pieces there are, and who has them?”<
br />
Ryder was halfway down the hill. “Before he left, Eichel shot his undercover man to death.”
“Did he take the body?”
“No, dammit. I can’t listen to any more conversations, and of course the bug’s still with the corpse, which means I can’t track the Eichel brothers either. I got the license plate number.” He related it. “They stole a laptop from one of the lodges because it had background information the Padre’s people had dug up about how to find me. Probably about how to find Eva and you, too. So now they’re going to the source—the man who told the Padre we worked with the Carnivore—”
“Martin Chapman,” Tucker said instantly.
“Yes, that arsehole.” He heard the fury in his voice, then the sense of irreplaceable loss. It does not matter what others say, what the criminal evidence against your father is, if he put you on his knee and listened to you when you were young, took you fishing, never missed any of your football games, and told you he was proud of you even when you rebelled by choosing a different direction for your life, your father is still your father, and Judd had loved his. But his father had also been a member of a group of international businessmen led by Martin Chapman that had not only skirted the law but broken it many times, making large personal fortunes in the process. Still, his father had had a line he would not cross—he would not hurt U.S. security. When he discovered terrorist money might be flowing through the Library of Gold, the organization that was central to the powerful group, he had told Tucker. As a result, Chapman had ordered his death.
“You’re planning to go to Chapman’s place,” Tucker realized.
Ryder took a deep breath, controlling his rage. “I figure it’ll take me a couple of hours to get there. I’ll be in touch.”
22
Washington, D.C.
Tucker Andersen was sitting at his desk at Catapult, reading the file on Danny and Eli Eichel, when the phone call from Bash came in.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“At the hunt club.” Bash’s tone was strong and angry. “We were too late. The club’s sanitized. No cars, no weapons, no blood, no bodies. No breathing people either. The place looks like any well-tended sports club after a snowstorm. We searched the buildings and didn’t find any computers, files, records, or any sort of information to tell us more about the people that supposedly died here.”
“Jesus.” A knot formed in Tucker’s chest. “What else?”
“I made some phone calls and tracked down the company that maintains the place. The manager said they were sent in a few days ago to put it in order. All their business with the owner is handled by telephone. His name is Sabino Zaragosa.”
“That’s the Padre’s name.”
“No surprise there. So now I’ve got a bunch of pissed-off Langley people on my hands. They want to know why in hell Catapult has wasted their time and government money sending them out here on a wild-arse chase.”
Tucker hesitated. Not finding anything incriminating at the hunt club gave Bridgeman the excuse he needed to withdraw support for Judd and the investigation, and to tar Tucker with a very thick brush. Frowning, he sorted through events over the past few hours. That was when he remembered Judd had said he had planted an open cell phone and a tracking bug on Tomás Lara.
“I’ve got to make another call. I’ll get back to you.” Tucker hung up and dialed.
Judd’s voice was tense. “Yes?”
“Check your tracker for the bug you left on Lara. I want to know where his corpse is.”
“Shit. The body isn’t at the hunt club? Hold on. I have to activate the tracker again.” In seconds, he was back. “The bug’s either been turned off or it’s dead. In any case, there’s no signal. What in hell’s going on, Tucker?”
“The hunt club’s been sanitized. I was hoping the cleaners had missed the bug you planted so we could figure out where the corpses and other evidence were taken. But then, hope is the last bastion of the frustrated.”
Ryder sighed with disgust. “I bet I drove past the cleanup vehicles. About a mile from the hunt club’s entrance, a flatbed truck carrying a street sweeper was parked nose to tail with a sanding truck that had a snowplow fronting it. I didn’t connect any of it to the hunt club.”
“The Eichels did a hell of a job covering their goddamn bloody tracks.” Ending the connection, Tucker spun his chair around to his file cabinet, opened the bottom drawer, and took out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. As he poured himself a shot and downed it, warm memories of his previous boss filled his mind. At the end of an aggravating day they would meet in one of their offices to philosophize, analyze missions, and share a drink. Unlike his current boss, she had understood the terrible danger of being risk-averse in intelligence work. If you followed hidebound rules while facing an enemy who had no rules, you inevitably met disaster. She was not afraid to go where the outcome was uncertain. What was driving Catapult’s new boss bat-shit was that Tucker still operated that way—because it worked.
He got to his feet and paced. If he told Bridgeman the hunt club had been sanitized, Bridgeman would say the hunt club had never been the scene of a sniper kill, because there was no evidence—just Judd Ryder’s oral report. And Bridgeman did not trust Ryder.
Tucker turned on his heel and marched back across the room. On the other hand, if he delayed telling Bridgeman, he would have a chance to prove Judd was right about the hunt club, about being doubled, about Eva’s being doubled, and that international assassins were operating in-country—which was what scared the bejesus out of him.
He paused at his desk, poured himself some more Jack. Drinking it, he could almost see his former boss in the shadows of his office, hear her voice: “Dammit, Tucker, you know Bridgeman isn’t going to give you a break on this. Do what you have to do.”
Nodding to himself, he sat and dialed Bash Badawi, picturing his aggravation as he stomped around the hunt club.
Bash answered at the first ring. “What do you want me to do, Tucker?”
“Fly your people home to Langley,” Tucker ordered. “Tell the pilot his next assignment is to ferry me back to Maryland, but to a different destination—Merrittville. If he needs to refuel, he should do it as soon as he lands.”
There was no hesitation. “Want some help in Merrittville?”
“Not this time.” Getting himself into trouble by bucking Bridgeman was one thing; getting his people into trouble was an entirely different matter.
“Merrittville,” Bash repeated thoughtfully. “Doesn’t Martin Chapman have a place near there?”
“Sometimes your memory is too good.”
“Are you going to Chapman’s? Will the Eichels and Judd be there, too?”
“Yes to your questions, but you don’t get any more. And keep what I just told you to yourself. I’ll see you at Langley.” Feeling marginally better to have made a decision, he drank more Jack. Then he dialed Judd Ryder again.
“What in hell’s going on, Tucker?” Judd wanted to know.
“I’m flying out to join you. Are you at Chapman’s yet?”
“I’m about fifteen miles away. Why are you coming?”
“I’ll fill you in when I get there. I’ll be bringing dossiers on the Padre, the Carnivore, Eli Eichel, Krot, and Seymour. I’m hoping there’s a clue in there about this situation. I’m commandeering one of Langley’s choppers. There’s an old airfield outside town. Meet me there.”
After giving Judd directions, Tucker capped the bottle, set it back inside the file cabinet drawer, and put on his heavy wool overcoat. He strode out the door and down the hall. He could hear the tapping of Gloria at work on her computer keyboard.
He stopped at her desk.
She looked up. Her forehead crinkled as she saw his overcoat. “You’re going out again? It’s not on your schedule.”
“I’m impressed you still think I have a schedule, and that if I had one, I could stick to it.”
“Being an optimist keeps me young.” The smile lines around her eyes
deepened.
“I like getting old. I’m good at it. I’ve got the printouts of the reports on the Carnivore and the Eichel brothers that you assembled. Now I need ones on the Padre, Krot, and Seymour.”
“No kidding. Krot and Seymour, too. But don’t worry. I’m not going to ask.”
“Good. And I want up-to-the-minute satellite photos of Martin Chapman’s horse farm and the country around it. Building plans, too, if you can get them. Send everything to my secure handheld. I need all of it in an hour.”
She took off her glasses and stared at him. “Where are you going?”
“To Langley.”
“And then you’ll be back?”
“Not until late.” He glanced around. “When the chopper I requisitioned for Bash returns to Langley I’m going to nab it and head north, too. Judd and I are planning a surprise visit to Martin Chapman. It’s better Bridgeman not know anything about any of this, at least not yet.”
She nodded. “So Bash’s report about the hunt club was bad news?”
“Like the Titanic.”
ELI EICHEL
[T]hose who do not have power assassinate to get it, and those who have power assassinate to keep it.
—The Assassination Business, by Richard Belfield
23
Montgomery County, Maryland
Eli Eichel stopped the Dodge van at a reinforced wrought-iron entrance gate. Above it arched an ornate wrought-iron sign:
