Hard Target (A Jon Reznick Thriller)

by J. B. Turner

  By then he was drenched in sweat. He ended his daily early-afternoon fitness regimen the way he usually did. Twenty laps in the club’s pool.

  Afterward, he showered and put on his gray Savile Row suit, pale-blue shirt, navy tie, and shiny black leather shoes. He walked out of the club, said goodbye to Ramono at the door, and headed back toward his office, briefcase in hand.

  Charles liked routines. He liked order. He lived an orderly existence. It was only a short five-minute walk to his office in a glass skyscraper on Lexington Avenue. He rode the elevator to his thirty-eighth-floor corner office.

  Charles pressed his index finger to the digital biometric reader on the door. A metallic click, and he pushed open the door. It closed slowly behind him, clicking back into secure mode.

  He placed his briefcase beside his desk, fixed himself a coffee from the machine as his gaze wandered around his office. The walls showed the world who he was. Black-and-white photos he’d had framed of himself as a boy in New Jersey all those years ago. He’d grown up poor. The oldest of a family of nine. And he had been working since he was a child.

  How far he had come from those early years. Hauling crates of fruit from wagons, meat packing—he’d done all the dirty work. And he’d loved it. It was hard, brutal labor. But as a child, he’d been a vital moneymaker for his family. The first time he’d handed over his wages to his mother, she’d cried and hugged him tight, grateful for the money coming into the household.

  Now look at him. It was scarcely credible.

  Charles sipped his afternoon coffee and stared out the windows onto the bustling Midtown streets below. He’d come a long, long way. Sure, it was just across the bridge to Jersey. But to him, it felt like the end of the earth.

  He let his mind drift. He always enjoyed the silence the ten or fifteen minutes after his workout. The peace. It gave him satisfaction to think of how much he had achieved. It allowed him the space for his head to clear and get focused for the rest of the afternoon.

  His company, Geostrategy Solutions, was grossing five hundred million dollars a year. Hundreds of employees relied on him. Their families relied on him. He knew all about responsibility. Had since he was a boy.

  Charles gazed around the rest of his office. The floor-to-ceiling bookshelf was stacked with biographies of military and intelligence figures. He had written a highly regarded book on Allen Dulles, the first civilian director of the Central Intelligence Agency. More photos of Charles pictured with Kissinger, with the late President George H. W. Bush, and his favorite, one of him and his wife with the pope, taken five years earlier at a private meeting at the Vatican. He cherished the memories.

  Where had the years gone?

  The reality was that a lot of his adult life had been spent abroad. Serving the United States. But since he had retired from the Agency, he was glad to be back in the city he loved. A brash, crazy city that had an irresistible energy. No wonder everyone wanted a shot at the American Dream. It was available if you worked hard enough and took chances. The immigrants were still pouring in, just like his forbearers from Ireland had all those decades earlier.

  The phone on his mahogany desk rang, snapping him out of his reverie.

  Charles put down his coffee and picked up, cleared his throat. “Max Charles.”

  “Sir, I’ve got an update for you.”

  “Is your line secure?”

  “Yes, sir, of course.”

  “So spit it out. How was the Miami operation?”

  “That’s where we’ve got a problem. Trevelle Williams is missing.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “He’s the guy Marty traced the stolen document to. He still believes it was a hacker group based in Europe who initially breached our system about a week ago. They sent the file to a guy in New York who’s loosely associated with WikiLeaks. As you know, we dealt with him within a few hours of Marty discovering the breach.”

  Charles felt his blood pressure rise a notch. His company prided itself on state-level military encryption. A breach of any sort was unacceptable, but he’d deal with that after the leak was contained. “And why did he pass the document to this Williams guy?”

  “It sounded like a fluke, like he just didn’t have time to decrypt it and outsourced the work. Williams is an ex-NSA contractor gone rogue, a computer genius, apparently.”

  “Christ, he sounds like Snowden.”

  “There are similarities. He’s not in Moscow, though. This guy was living in some run-down shithole Miami warehouse which no one seemed to know about for the better part of seven years. But we tracked him down.”

  Charles sighed. “You say in Miami. Where is he now?”

  “We sent a team in awaiting his return, but there’s no sign of him. Our intelligence pointed to Williams always being back at the warehouse at oh-seven-hundred hours, at the latest. But he never turned up. We had to take out a friend of his. We couldn’t take any chances.”

  “You killed him?”

  “He’s dead, yes.”

  “Shit.”

  “We are working very hard to locate Williams.”

  “Not good enough. Where the hell is he?”

  Charles’s computer pinged.

  “I just sent you a photo.”

  Charles maneuvered the mouse and clicked on the photo. A grainy color photograph of a twentysomething black guy wearing shades, a Dolphins ball cap, and a backpack. “Where was this taken?”

  “North Miami Beach bus station. Oh-five-twenty-two hours, yesterday. The bus was headed to New York, but he could’ve gotten off anywhere. His phone and computer have dropped off the grid. So he’s clearly using jamming software.”

  “We’re running out of time. Find him. Quick.”

  “Understood.”

  “If Trevelle Williams figures out what’s in that file, we are all in serious trouble. People are relying on us to deliver. They pay us handsomely to make problems disappear. To make people disappear. Am I making myself clear?”

  “You still want Williams neutralized?”

  “Listen, you dumb fuck. Assemble whoever is available. Find Williams. Kill him. No more distractions.”

  Five

  Trevelle sobbed hard as he sat in the passenger seat of the rental car.

  Reznick threw their backpacks into the trunk of the BMW SUV, started up the car, switched on the air-conditioning to high, and pulled away. He drove down Varick Street and headed through the nearby Holland Tunnel toward New Jersey.

  “I can’t believe this,” Trevelle said, blinking away tears. “Two friends of mine, both dead. I’m responsible. I killed them!”

  Reznick snapped, “Stop that self-pitying bullshit! You didn’t kill them.”

  Trevelle dabbed his eyes. “My actions killed them.”

  “Bullshit. David sent the file to you. And Fernandez crashing at your place was bad fucking luck, that’s all. Besides, wasn’t it some hacker group in Europe that stole the file?”

  Trevelle nodded. “Yeah.”

  “There you go. You and your two friends—dead friends—were drawn into this without asking for it. The group accessed highly sensitive information. And it got your friends killed. You’d be dead, too, if you’d been home.”

  “They didn’t deserve to die.”

  “I didn’t say they did.”

  “I feel like I’m in a nightmare.”

  “You need to wake the fuck up, man, and deal with it. Get some backbone. We need to think strategically. These guys aren’t just going to drop it; they’re going to keep coming after you. You think this is a fucking game. This is no game, trust me.”

  Trevelle closed his eyes, unable or unwilling to contemplate what was happening.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “I heard. I just wish you’d lay off me for a minute.”

  “We need to get a grip on this situation.”

  “They were both good guys.”

  “Good guys get killed all the time.” Reznick sighed. “It’s life. It
sucks. Look, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been so hard on you. It’s tough, I know, losing a friend.”

  “Correction, two friends. One murder and one apparent suicide.”

  “For what it’s worth, I don’t think your friend in the Village killed himself. That wasn’t a suicide. It was made to look like suicide.”

  Trevelle scrunched up his face and shook his head, as if the full horror of what had happened had just crashed through.

  “I didn’t see any sign of computers or hard drives,” Reznick said. “Maybe it was an ordinary break-in, but that seems unlikely. Maybe they dressed like maintenance guys to gain access. Whatever happened—they took all the electronic equipment.”

  “Then they hanged him? Seriously?”

  Reznick nodded. “From the look of the body, it happened around the same time that crew in the masks turned up at your place. That crew probably would have shot you, just like they did Fernandez. Different MO, same result.”

  Trevelle stared at the dazzling lights of the oncoming cars in the tunnel. “I don’t want to be part of this. I want this to be over.”

  “So what do you suggest? You head back to sunny Miami? Does that sound like a good idea to you? Well, does it?”

  Trevelle shook his head.

  “Get your shit together, son.” Reznick headed through the tunnel and got onto I-95 South, glancing repeatedly in his mirror.

  “What’s wrong?” Trevelle asked.

  “Just making sure we’re not being followed.”

  “And are we?”

  “No. OK, my friend, you want some advice?”

  Trevelle nodded.

  “You need to go to the FBI with what you know. After everything, that would be the smart move.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What don’t you know?”

  “They know I stole government secrets in the past, accessed classified NSA documents, and just about everything else—probably more than Snowden. I think they’d throw the book at me. I think I’d never see the light of day again.”

  Reznick knew Trevelle had a point. “Listen, you’ve spoken to Martha Meyerstein when you’ve helped me in the past, haven’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “She’s a straight shooter. I trust her. You need to talk to her. I can tell her your concerns. We can get you a great lawyer. Maybe you spend a year or two wearing an ankle monitor, I don’t know, but it’s better than being dead.”

  “If it means going to prison, I’d rather take my chances.”

  “Well, you need to get this figured out. And fast.”

  Trevelle sighed. “Where are we going?”

  “We need to keep moving. We don’t know who these people are—the masked guys in Miami, the people who hanged your friend in New York. We don’t know where they are or if they’ve tracked you to New York. These guys aren’t going to play games if they find you.”

  Trevelle stared straight ahead as if mentally working through everything that had happened.

  Reznick changed lanes and accelerated.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I think DC would be good.”

  “DC? Why DC? Ah . . . the woman lives there. Dyer.”

  Reznick nodded. “And the FBI HQ is there.”

  “It’s like you’re telling me to jump from the frying pan into the goddamn fire.”

  “I want you to think long and hard about talking to the FBI. You’ve got time. Will you at least consider it?”

  Trevelle nodded. “Yeah, I will. I’m just shaken up. Not thinking straight.”

  “In the meantime, we’ve got a four-hour journey ahead of us, almost certainly longer at this time of day. I need to know more about this file. The memo from this private security company.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Reznick sighed. “Well, I do. We need to understand what we’re dealing with. The footage you showed me inside your warehouse, that’s not some home invasion crew. Forensic gloves, masks, the methodical way they went about their business.”

  Trevelle nodded, tears in his eyes.

  “Think about it. The people who sent that team don’t want the contents of that file becoming public knowledge. They don’t know if you decrypted it or if you told anyone about it, but they’re willing to take out anyone who might have even seen it. They probably took your computers and phones to forensically examine them to see if you sent the file to anyone else.”

  Reznick glanced again in the mirror. “Are the surveillance cameras still working in your house?”

  Trevelle shook his head. “By the time I was on my way out of Miami, the feed had stopped working.”

  “Right, so they’ve ripped the cameras out, deactivated them, taken it all. And I’ll guarantee, they will have ripped your place apart, right down to its bare bones. And they’ll have people working to try and find you. Teams of people.”

  “Who are they?”

  Reznick shrugged. “Based on the memo and what we could hear on the video? Foreign contractors, sent in by this US geosecurity specialist company. And if they’re caught, it’s nothing to do with the government.”

  “I know this sort of stuff happens.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Jesus. Poor David.” Trevelle glanced at a road sign. “You know, I never knew if that was his real name.” He turned to Reznick. “Are you going to turn me in to the Feds in DC?”

  Reznick thought long and hard before he answered. “No, I’m not.”

  “But you work for the FBI?”

  “I’m a consultant. But I don’t work for them. I don’t take orders from them.”

  “Please don’t hand me in. I’m terrified. If I had to spend time in jail, I swear, I’d kill myself.”

  “Relax, I’m not going to turn you in. But I want you to at least consider letting me approach Martha Meyerstein on your behalf.”

  “How did you go from black ops to toeing the line for the Feds? They’ve spied on innocent Americans since the Hoover days, you know.”

  Reznick chuckled. “Believe me, I had my doubts about them too. But there are good people there. I know them. They can save lives. They can save your life.”

  Trevelle pulled out a can of Red Bull from his jacket pocket, cracked it open, and took a few gulps.

  Reznick said, “Your friend David had a lot of that lying around his apartment.”

  “He lived on it.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry your friend is gone.”

  “Friends. Plural.”

  “Right. Sorry. But you need to get your head together. I can help you. But you need to help yourself.”

  Trevelle closed his eyes and started breathing fast.

  “Take deep breaths. Nice and slow.”

  Trevelle did as he was told. His breathing slowly calmed. When he opened his eyes, he said, “We need to warn Rosalind Dyer.”

  Reznick nodded. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We need to be careful how we go about this. She might be under surveillance. Close physical surveillance as well as electronic.”

  “I don’t care. I have to warn her. I can’t let another person die.”

  “Let’s get to DC,” Reznick said. “And we can figure things out on the way.”

  Six

  Martha Meyerstein was sitting behind her desk on the seventh floor of the FBI’s Hoover Building in Washington, DC, immersed in reading a domestic terrorism intelligence briefing, when her phone rang.

  “Ma’am,” her assistant said, “the switchboard says a detective in New York wants to speak to you.”

  “Did he give a name?”

  “It’s a she. Detective Isabella Acosta, Nineteenth Precinct, NYPD.”

  Meyerstein thought the name sounded familiar. “Put her through.” During the few clicks it took for the call to connect, Meyerstein remembered where she knew the detective from.

  “Martha Meyerstein speaking. Isabella, right?”

  “Hey, nice to speak to you again.”

  Meyerste
in sat forward. Acosta had been instrumental in bringing a psychotic UN diplomat involved in human trafficking to justice. The same guy who had nearly killed Reznick’s daughter on the streets of Manhattan. “Everything OK?”

  “Got something for you. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “What happened?”

  “Jon Reznick reports to you, right?”

  Meyerstein wondered where the conversation was going to go. “That’s correct.”

  “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I’m hearing from one of my friends downtown, a captain in charge of the Sixth Precinct, that they found some kid hanged in his apartment in Greenwich Village. There are signs it wasn’t a suicide, and they have two suspects. One of them, matching Reznick’s description, was seen breaking a window and entering the property.”

  Meyerstein took a moment to gather her thoughts. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “I didn’t believe it either. But Reznick is involved or has gotten caught up in whatever this is. And the NYPD are going to be in touch about this real soon.”

  Meyerstein leaned back in her chair. “Goddamn. What else do I need to know?”

  “They have the two of them on video. They think the guy he’s with, a young black male, is ex-NSA. Trevelle Williams.”

  Meyerstein scribbled down the name. Trouble with Reznick was the last thing she needed right now. “This all sounds pretty out of left field. How confident is the NYPD in the identifications?”

  “Look, I know this probably isn’t the sort of thing you want to hear. And to be honest, I can’t imagine what Reznick might be up to. But it doesn’t look good for him, know what I’m saying?”

  “I’m telling you right now, Isabella, and you know this as well as I do—Jon Reznick had nothing to do with the death of this young man.”

  “Trust me, I agree. The problem is we have eyewitnesses who saw him breaking into the apartment, and a woman in the building opposite even filmed it. She thought it looked suspicious. And when she saw the glass getting broken, she called the cops.”

  Meyerstein felt a migraine coming on. “Isabella, I appreciate the heads-up. I owe you one.”

  She ended the call, feeling an immense sense of foreboding for what lay ahead.