“I thought so.”
“What did it say?”
“Something in a foreign language. I’ll send you a picture of it. Maybe you can work some internet magic."
“Magic is what I do,” Dan said. His voice turned serious. “Sam, seriously, three bodies in less than two days. Somebody is bound to notice.”
“I hope they do, and I hope they learn their lesson,” Sam said.
“The tough guy routine gets a little old, Sam. You take too many risks. You’re going to get killed again.”
She ignored the admonishment. “I’m told the first guy is being investigated as a murder victim. And when I left the scene with the other two goons a minute ago, the police were just arriving. I’m driving a dead guy’s car.”
“Smooth. They’ll have an APB out on you in a nanosecond. I don’t suppose you picked up your shell casings?”
“Shit,” Sam said. She wasn’t thinking like a fugitive.
“Smooth,” Dan said again.
“I suppose this probably warrants a call to Tom Davenport.”
“You think?”
“I have other news, too. The dead Mark Severn looks nothing like the live one.”
“What?”
“It was a dead guy,” Sam said. “But it wasn’t our dead guy.”
Dan whistled. “The old switcheroo?”
“Unbelievable. They couldn’t have expected to gain more than a few hours with such a brazen fraud.”
“Maybe a few hours is all they needed.”
“Maybe so. I’d really like to know if there were any stabbing victims treated in Budapest over the last couple of days,” Sam said.
“Your wish is my command.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” Sam said. She followed her phone’s directions and merged onto the highway, working through the Saab’s gearbox and enjoying the turbocharger en route to the airport. Was there a speed limit in Hungary? She had no idea.
“Speaking of wishes and commands,” Dan said, “I was able to do a little sleuthing about that eyes-only thing Farrar and Davenport want you to investigate.”
“Do tell.”
“Rumor has it Homeland is compromised.”
“Say it isn’t so.” Perhaps the sarcasm wasn’t necessary, but Homeland was compromised once a week, in Sam’s estimation. “Is it a bullshit tasking?”
“If it quacks like a duck…” Dan said.
“I was afraid of that.”
“Sam, you could spend your whole career looking for moles. Who was that guy who gutted the CIA?”
Sam nodded. She remembered the story. Everybody in the counterespionage world did. “James Jesus Angleton.”
“That’s right. He hobbled them. And how many moles did he catch?”
“Not one. So you’re saying the bosses are putting me on a snipe hunt?”
“I don’t know. But smart money says if they had any credible evidence, they’d be making an arrest, not reassigning agents from active cases.”
“Good point,” Sam said, taking the highway exit specified by the talking box in her hand. “So I should resist coming home for as long as possible?”
“I don’t know what you should do, Sam,” Dan said. “They don’t seem terribly happy with you at the moment. Davenport thinks you should have gone straight to the airport, and not stopped at Severn’s hotel.”
“Yeah, that might have been a direct verbal order,” Sam said. “Then again, it wasn’t the clearest connection in the world. Maybe there’s some wiggle room there.”
“I’d play up the wounded-in-the-line-of-duty angle.”
“I won’t mention that I might be wanted for murder. Speaking of, have you made any headway learning who my mysterious benefactors were?”
“Maybe. What kind of accent did they have again?”
“I don’t know for sure. Their consonants came from a little bit too far back in their throats, like they were talking around their teeth. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.”
“Is there any chance it was Israeli?”
Sam slapped the steering wheel. “Holy shit. That’s exactly what it was. I had an Israeli instructor during training. I could never really understand him. What the hell are the Israelis doing in Hungary?”
“Same thing they do everywhere else.”
“Mossad?”
“My money’s on Shin Bet.”
“Even better. How did you find them?”
“The coordinates you gave me corresponded to a safe house in the archives. I tracked the financials. The records dated back to a Cold War op.”
“Cold War?”
“Soviets. Nukes. Remember?”
“Yes, Dan, I remember the Cold War. It’s just a little hard to believe.”
“The agency divested the place in 1972. Right after the Munich Olympics massacre.”
Sam pursed her lips. “Hence your Shin Bet wager.”
“No pun intended, I’m sure,” Dan said. “My gut says the Agency gave it to the Israelis to use while they tracked down the Munich terrorists. It was a Shin Bet op all the way.”
“But that still doesn’t explain why the Israelis were helping me out, or how they knew where to find me, just in the nick of time.”
“I have no theories there,” Dan said.
“This is turning into one hell of a yarn ball.”
“Doesn’t it always? And here’s another little something,” Dan said. “My wife swears she saw Mark Severn yesterday.”
Sam laughed. “Are you sure it’s not lack of sleep playing tricks on her mind?”
“I’m sure that’s exactly what it is, but I would have to be a damn fool to suggest it.”
“Good point. I’m scared of Sarah, and I’m not even married to her.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s pure bliss. As long as I keep the kitchen knives hidden.”
“I’ll try to stop calling in the middle of the night.”
“No, you won’t.”
“I said I’d try. Who knows if I’ll succeed.”
18
Nero Chiligiris assessed his predicament. He was shirtless, wearing only shoes and pants trousers, walking south through scrub and scrabble, gaining distance between himself and Highway 50, which ran east-west with varying degrees of straightness across the entire width of the state.
Half a dozen miles to the east was Pueblo, a little slice of the Third World right in Colorado. Nero had made several exchanges in Pueblo in his capacity as messenger for the sour-tempered Arab, and he never enjoyed his time there. Globalization had decimated the industrial sections of town, and Pueblo only had industrial sections.
Trafficking was the major remaining commercial enterprise. Humans, narcotics, weapons, desperation. It was a grim business, but it was booming.
The recollection made Nero wonder again what kind of business Money was really in.
The recollection also made him realize that Pueblo was probably the perfect place to begin clearing his name. Almost everyone in Pueblo had something to hide, even if it was just an undocumented relative. Nero would fit right in. At least long enough to get a plan together.
He continued south until the road noise from the highway had dissipated to a low murmur, then turned toward the midmorning sun. He wasn’t certain how far it was to Pueblo, but he was certain he was up to the task. It would be slow going, through fields and bramble, over an occasional barbed wire fence, avoiding the ubiquitous dirt roads that transected the flat sections of the state.
He had no illusions. Setting things right wouldn’t be easy. While they weren’t exactly extreme right-wingers, the local population was certainly well-trained to avoid helping strangers so near the federal prison. It was full of murderers and rapists, so the locals wouldn’t likely hesitate to drop a dime on him. People with immigration problems usually had little stomach for criminal involvement. He had to be very careful, or he would find himself back on the inside.
And his experience over the last two
days had demonstrated clearly that working from within the system to clear his name was not going to be possible. The game was rigged in a new and different way than it used to be. The scales were never really in the little guy’s favor, but The Man had somehow developed a vice grip that worked on a guy’s balls like no tomorrow.
No phone calls. No lawyers. No trial. No Habeas whatever-it-was. We suspect you, and therefore you’re guilty.
He wondered when the justice system had gone off the rails.
Nero had done hard time, an entire decade in a gray cell, fighting despair and buggery, counting the days and months and years until he got his life back.
But he had done the crime that earned the time. He had been tried by a jury of his peers, and had been found guilty. Rightfully so. In his case, the system had worked. Sure, it didn’t go down the way he would have wanted it to, but justice was served — to the extent that losing one’s liberty over transporting a few plants across some line on a map could be called “justice.”
But that’s how the game was played. You drove on their roads, lived in their cities, paid for shit with their dollars, lived under the protection of their Army. You were very much in their world, and you had to play by their rules. That’s how it had always been, since people began writing things down. Big people made big agendas, and little people either followed suit or got ground up in the gears.
But this was different. This was a new game entirely. They could throw your ass in a cell, call you guilty, lock you away, throw away the key, and strip you of any ability to prove them wrong.
And exactly how would you go about proving your innocence, anyway? It meant proving a negative, proving that something didn’t exist. You couldn’t prove what wasn’t. Proving the non-existence of a sequence of non-events was a total impossibility. Not nearly the same thing as proving a fact, a relationship, a payoff, a murder, a crime. Something that existed could be proven. But if you didn’t do it? How the hell were you supposed to prove that?
There was no presumption of innocence these days. That was the gut punch of it all.
Nero walked east, the sun beating down on him, a heavy weight gathering in his chest, a seething anger festering within him.
He had to figure something out, and fast.
Nero didn’t have to walk very long or very far.
Opportunity met him more than halfway. A farmhouse. Low, sagging, gray, empty.
Farm consolidation. Only the big guys were left. At least, that’s what Nero had heard. He had no agricultural experience or aptitude. He could barely grow mold.
He cased the exterior of the house, looking for any signs of inhabitance. He peered through the windows, using his hands against the glass to block the sun’s reflection.
Graffiti covered the walls. Drug paraphernalia was strewn about. He walked around to the front door. Unlocked.
“Hello?” He called. He didn’t want to surprise anyone, especially anyone with jangly druggy-nerves and a weapon. He heard only the harsh echoes of an empty house.
“Hello!” Louder, and with more confidence this time.
Again, silence. He stepped in, looked around. The stench of human waste assaulted his nostrils. There was sweat mixed in there as well, and rot. He had smelled it before, a long time ago. He was grateful his life had never come to this.
He padded slowly and carefully through the small rooms of the small house, taking mental inventory of any potentially useful items left behind by the tweakers.
There weren’t many. Disassembled appliances littered the kitchen, victims of the crack addicts’ strange inclinations. It didn’t matter. Nero didn’t plan to do any cooking.
The bathroom was awful, worse than the worst truck stop disaster he had ever seen in his life. The smell was overpowering. He closed the door, fighting a wave of nausea.
He checked the bedroom. There was just one. It was a small farmhouse, probably belonging to a small farm, probably a small-time guy who didn’t have the cash reserves to survive a bad crop or two.
Nero smelled rotting flesh.
He looked in the closet.
He immediately wished he hadn’t. A junkie lay curled up, dead, leathery flesh taut around his skinny arms, stomach contents adorning his torso.
It was more than Nero’s stomach could take. He was sick, adding fresh bile and acid to the disgusting odors.
He stumbled from the bedroom and took a minute to gather himself.
Maybe he should have kept walking, he thought.
He took deep breaths, but the stench in the farmhouse added to his misery. He retched again, then put his hand over his mouth and nose, trying to block the stench.
He wandered through the remainder of the house, storm basement included. He found a long knife wedged in a crevice between basement stairs. It had a long blade, not very sharp, but if things turned sour, a dull blade was better than no blade. He tucked it into his pocket.
He found a dirty work shirt balled up in the basement corner. He shook it out, kicking up an indoor dust storm. It looked to be about his size. Providential, but smelly. He donned the shirt, fighting a sense of revulsion at putting on someone else’s garments. He walked back upstairs, picked his way through the house, and found the door to the garage.
He opened the door and walked down the two wooden steps leading from the house.
What he saw made him smile.
It didn’t look to be in terrific shape. There was rust, dust, and mud. But nothing major looked out of alignment. Upon first inspection, Nero could see nothing terribly wrong with it.
It was a motorcycle. Probably thirty years old. With a relatively recent license plate. Which meant that it probably ran, or if not, it probably wasn’t going to be too difficult to fix. Old engines were designed for simplicity and reliability.
Nero wondered how the motorcycle had survived the deadly disassembling clutches of the tweakers who had made the abandoned farmhouse their temporary home. Perhaps it was only by a random act of kindness on the part of the vast, dark, cold universe that Nero was able to find the motorcycle relatively unmolested while kitchen appliances lay strewn about the house in various stages of disassembly.
It was a lucky break. Nero was damn glad for it. Lord knew, he needed one.
He cleared away debris, an old blanket, a tire iron, and an anvil from around the motorcycle. He raised the bike up off of its kickstand. He clicked the gear shift into neutral, rolled the motorcycle backward, twisted the handlebars, and backed the bike away from the wall, giving himself some space to work.
He opened the gas tank. Half full. He wondered whether the gas had sat long enough to denature. He didn’t know what that meant chemically, but he knew it was a bad thing for engines. He moved the motorcycle back and forth, sloshing the tank. It looked and smelled like gas.
He checked the oil next. It was tar black, but again half full.
He squeezed the clutch. It squeaked and groaned. He wondered whether anything was happening inside the engine. He figured he would find out soon enough.
The spark plug seemed okay, and the ignition wires looked to be in good shape as well. Nero wasn’t a professional mechanic, but neither was he a slouch around engines. He liked his chances of getting the old motorcycle running.
He swung his right leg over the motorcycle seat, pressed his weight down against the cushion, felt the springs and shocks compress beneath him, flexed his fingers against the brake lever.
The moment of truth. He flipped the kick-starter out to the side, double-checked the transmission was in neutral, pulled the clutch in anyway, and jumped on the starter.
The motorcycle lubbed, coughed once, and stopped well short of starting. But it did turn over, and that was a great sign. It meant all the moving parts were still in decent shape, and nothing was rusted solid inside the engine block. He liked his chances even more, and set about figuring out what had prevented ignition.
Simple stuff, he recalled. Gas, air, and spark. The atoms took care of everything else.
It took less than a second to figure out why the motorcycle didn’t start.
No key.
Nero searched the garage, looking for a nail with a keychain hanging from it. No luck. Debris was strewn about, but there was little else of value remaining in the garage. He wandered around the house again, searching through piles of appliance parts for a key.
No luck.
He looked out the window. The sun was high in the sky. The prison van driver’s words returned to him. Burning daylight. There would be a search party forming soon, and it wouldn’t take any quantum physics to figure out the few likely hiding places in the vicinity. This part of Colorado featured a whole lot of nothing. He had to get that motorcycle running.
He went back into the garage, looked again at the motorcycle. The ignition box didn’t look all that sturdy, and an idea struck.
Nero opened the side door, walked outside the garage, and found a fist-sized rock beside the house. He brought it inside, got a sturdy grip on it, took aim, and bashed the ignition box several times. The box was made of sheet metal, but the cover was plastic, and Nero soon exposed the ignition wires within.
He smiled. There was only one wire coming into and out of the key receptacle. Simple. Old-school. Easy to hotwire. “Yeah, baby,” Nero said with a smile. He ripped the wires from the key receptacle, stripped the insulation a bit further with his teeth, and twisted the wires together.
No key necessary.
Nero mounted the bike again. He tried the kick starter again.
Again, the motorcycle didn’t start. But the motor did turn over, and it did sound to Nero as if it were trying to engage.
Encouraged, he tried again. And again, giving it a little more throttle each time.
It turned over, burbled and sputtered for a second, then died.
Nero checked the accelerator on the right handlebar, wondering if the cable was loose.
Sure enough. He used his fingers to tighten the cable. He tried again.
The motorcycle started.
He revved the engine, and it sang to him, unsteady and out of tune at first, then strong and steady.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 65
