On Borrowed Time

by David Rosenfelt

  “But Dr. Gates is here.”

  “He’s not running things; he’s going to be another victim.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  Click.

  She hung up on me. I didn’t know if that meant she had heard enough and was going to do what was necessary, or if she thought I was crazy and didn’t want to talk to me anymore.

  Or something in between.

  Except something in between was not going to be close to enough.

  The Stone was watching CNN. He rarely did that; in fact he rarely watched the news at all. He couldn’t trust what they said; it consisted mostly of propaganda or overhyping to generate ratings. That was ironic, because the Stone was in the process of generating a massive ratings boost for CNN and news stations all over the country.

  Langel was not going to call him when Kilmer and Lassiter were taken care of, that was not necessary. He would instead come to where the Stone was, to collect his money and clean up the loose ends.

  The only way Langel would call was if Kilmer was the shooter, but events seemed to have overtaken that possibility. Once Kilmer learned of the implant and realized his memories of the girl were artificial, the overwhelming need for revenge on Lassiter would be lessened below the level to get him to commit murder.

  But you never know.

  The real news would come from the television. Once the hospital building blew up, the cameras and talking heads would descend on the wreckage area, and every nuance would be breathlessly reported. That would tell him and his buyer everything they needed to know.

  Their secret would be safe; no one working on the physical project, including Gates, would be around to ever reveal it. Only Langel would be left alive, simply because at the moment there was no one left to kill him. That would go on the Stone’s to-do list.

  Once today’s operations were completed, the money would be wired, the material and designs turned over, and the jet readied. If all went well, and it always did, the Stone would be out of the country in two hours.

  But this was the calm before the storm, and for the Stone right now there was nothing to do except watch some television.

  Marie Galasso wanted to get the hell out of that building.

  She had no doubt that Kilmer was telling the truth, and she didn’t want to be there when he was proven right. But she couldn’t just run; she had to get her friends and coworkers out as well.

  One glance told her what she already knew. This was a relaxed crowd, talking, drinking cocktails, and listening to music. It was going to take extreme measures to get them up and out in the time required.

  “EVERYBODY OUT! THERE’S A BOMB IN THE BUILDING.… IT’S GOING TO GO OFF!”

  She screamed that three or four times, but it had far less effect than she had hoped. Most people just looked at her, concerned and puzzled, and some even thought she might be joking. But none of them were moving.

  “Marie, what are you doing? What are you talking about?” her friend Sandy Miller asked. Marie just screamed at her that they needed to get everybody out of the building.

  Marie screamed her warnings again, as loud as she could, but while she certainly attracted attention, she still didn’t generate any movement. Most people assumed she was drunk and was handling it badly. How would Marie Galasso have suddenly gotten information about a bomb? It was ridiculous.

  “Is this a joke?” Sandy asked, but Marie was on the move and didn’t hear her. It was time for desperate measures.

  Marie ran to the front of the room and starting turning over all the tables, including the ones with the punch bowl and all the chafing dishes with the food. This created chaos in the room, but still didn’t get people to register the fact that they had to get out.

  All they were doing was wondering why Marie was going nuts, and trying to decide what they should do about it.

  Dr. Gates was in the restroom when he came out and saw what was going on. When he finally realized what Marie was saying, the cold realization hit him in the face. She had to be right, the building must be coming down, and his partners clearly had planned for him to die in the explosion. There was no way he was going to let that happen, and he heeded Marie Galasso’s warning and ran out.

  Marie had one final idea. She grabbed the gas lighter that was flaming under one of the hot chafing dishes, and she started to set fire to tablecloths, all the while screaming, “GET OUT OF THE BUILDING! NOW!”

  She knew that setting a fire in the middle of a building filled with bombs might not be the best idea, but the tables were in the center of the room, and there was no time for the fire to spread enough to impact anything before the time of the explosion.

  If Kilmer was right, this was her best chance of saving these people. If not, she would have a bit of explaining to do.

  The fire got the people moving, not so much because they understood that there were bombs about to go off, but rather because they didn’t want to die in a fire.

  Satisfied that she had done all she could, Marie ran out as well. Ninety-four of the one hundred and three people made it out and to safety before the building was obliterated in a massive explosion.

  Security arrived in time to see it; the Ardmore police got there three minutes after that, with Kentris four minutes behind them.

  The media arrived eight minutes later, just after Dr. Gates was read his rights.

  I heard the radio report about the explosion as I was nearing Teterboro Airport. I had no way of knowing how bad it was, or how successful Marie Galasso had been in getting herself and the others out of there. The preliminary report simply said that there were fatalities, but then it added that a large number of employees had escaped the building.

  Way to go, Marie.

  Teterboro is a private airport, so most of the planes in and out of there are either personal propeller-driven aircraft or corporate jets. One of the advantages of being on a corporate jet is that you don’t have to go through the check-in/terminal/security/gate experience. In fact, very often they let cars, mostly limos, drive right out to the tarmac where the planes are waiting.

  A man in a suit and tie was waiting at a fenced gate, and when he saw me, he opened the gate and motioned me in. He pointed toward a jet with a half dozen similarly clad men standing next to it. One of those men I recognized as Agent Emmett Luther.

  I pulled the car near the jet, got out, and left it there. I moved quickly toward Luther, but he and the others were already climbing the steps into the aircraft, motioning for me to follow. I did.

  When I got through the door and onto the plane, Luther was standing there waiting for me. Next to him was a man I assumed to be the pilot, since he had wings on his jacket and literally had one foot in the cockpit and one out of it.

  In the main passenger area were eight men and two women. I assumed all were FBI agents, but I wasn’t sure, and I had a feeling there weren’t going to be any formal introductions made.

  “Where are we going?” Luther asked.

  “North.”

  “You’re going to need to be more specific than that.”

  “First we have to make our deal,” I said. “Before we go anywhere.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I told you, we’re going to do this on my terms,” I said.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Kilmer. I’ll throw you off this plane, but I’ll wait until we’re at thirty thousand feet.”

  I was not in the mood to argue with him, so I decided to set out the conditions. “I believe that Allison Tynes is being held captive by the man we’re going after. His plan is to use her as a hostage if anything goes wrong, and for him something is about to go very wrong. I’m worried about her safety.”

  “We need to file a flight plan,” Luther said. “We can talk about this on the way; just tell me where we’re going.”

  I wasn’t having any of that. “First I want your word that her life will be the priority; that every effort will be made to keep her safe and unharmed.”

  Luth
er thought about that for a moment, then said, “Okay.”

  “And I am with you every step of the way. Where you go, I go.”

  “You think you’re a hero?”

  “Not even close. But I want to be there to watch you heroes in action, otherwise there’s no deal.”

  “You’re a pain in the ass, Kilmer. Okay, you have my word. Now, where the hell are we going?”

  “Damariscotta, Maine.”

  “Who is going to be there when we get there? Besides your girlfriend.”

  “Philip Garber. He’s been behind this from the start.”

  I didn’t waste time telling Luther how I knew Garber was behind this.

  It didn’t matter; I was either going to be shown to be right or I was going to be shown to be wrong. He needed to spend the precious time planning what was going to be done, not worrying about whether he should be doing it.

  I took note of the fact that Luther also didn’t ask me what it was that Garber was behind. The feds had had their eye on this operation all along, but they didn’t have the pieces. My guess was they knew basically what the research consisted of, and maybe even that I was the guinea pig. But they didn’t know who was in charge, and they needed that before they could successfully move in.

  The truth was it was easy for me to focus in on Garber, at least once I knew that Lassiter was in the clear. Garber told me I had come to see him three times, during which I’d mentioned I was working on a story about Lassiter. That was clearly not true; it was his way of setting Lassiter up as my fall guy.

  Also, and even more significantly, he told me that in those sessions before Jen’s “disappearance,” I had been worried that Jen was a fantasy and was questioning whether I was losing my mind. That was patently false; the truth was that Jen was not in my mind before the implant, and was indelibly there afterward.

  So Garber had to be lying about our sessions. I hadn’t remembered them, because they hadn’t taken place. His number was on my cell phone bill because I’d called him in the process of chasing down the story I was really on, the story about scientists creating memories. I must have been getting too close, so he made me the story.

  I told Luther that I thought Garber would be at a place listed in the phone book as Jefferson Auto Parts, near Damariscotta. It had been listed twice on the phone bill I’d found after Jen disappeared, but it hadn’t made any sense.

  Garber’s plane went down off the coast of Maine, near Damariscotta. I believe he must have sent the plane down purposely, while bailing out before it did. The location would make it easy to subsequently leave the country, and his apparent death would ensure that no one would ever suspect or look for him.

  Luther made some calls to get the lay of the land, and I think he spoke to someone in Washington about the strategy they would employ once we got to Maine.

  Luther was receiving updates on the explosion at the hospital, and he was good enough to fill me in. There had been nine confirmed deaths, though more were possible. As terrible as that was, it was a relief. I knew how bad it could have been.

  I told Luther about the events in the twenty minutes leading up to the bombing, as well as my adventure at Lassiter’s house.

  “You might be tougher than you look,” he said.

  “I don’t think so.”

  I asked if he could find out whether Marie Galasso had gotten out, and he asked the question of someone on the phone, then laughed at what he heard and turned to me. “She’s okay. She set fire to the place to get everybody to leave. She might be tougher than you look also.”

  I sat back and reflected for a few minutes on where we were going, and who we were going after. The man who had put me through all of this was there, and if we could get there in time and all went right, he would get nothing out of it.

  But my greatest hope, and a hope was all it was, was that Jen was there and okay, and that we would get her out of there.

  And then it hit me that I was thinking of Allie as Jen, and of Jen as real, instead of as a metal chip in my brain. And I worried that when all this was over, maybe all the people who thought of me as crazy would turn out to be right.

  It was the longest flight of my life.

  Philip Garber was a realist, and what CNN was saying was very real. All those people had escaped the building, which was bad enough, and indicated something unexpected had happened. But the worst part was that one of those people was Gates, and Gates had been arrested.

  Gates would talk; there was no question about that. He had to realize that he was to be killed in the blast, and he would get his revenge. He would reveal Garber’s involvement, his leadership, in the entire operation, and he would tell them that Garber’s death was faked.

  All of that was certain.

  The saving grace, of course, was that Gates had no idea where Garber was. He had been smart enough never to share that with Gates, so Gates could not put the authorities on his trail. At least not until long after Garber had left the country.

  Langel was the only person who knew where he was, and there was no reason to think anything had gone wrong at Lassiter’s house. He assumed that Langel was on the way, as planned, to get his share of the money and kill the woman.

  However, this changed the timing. He would close the deal now and leave, before anyone could figure out where he was. Langel would be out his money, but that was not Garber’s concern.

  Of course, it would mean killing the woman himself, a prospect Garber did not relish. Ordering a killing was one thing; doing it himself was quite another. He reflected on the irony for a moment; he was that rare combination, a squeamish mass murderer.

  Garber called the purchaser, explained what had happened, and why the deal needed to be consummated immediately. The man was upset, concerned about what his superiors, his government, might say.

  Garber gave him ten minutes to report to them, but he knew what the answer would be. They would go along with the arrangement. They had to, this was too important to them to lose out on. The ability to control memory gave them that which was most important to people in power: permanence.

  Garber took the time to gather everything together. It was remarkable that all the work by all those people could fit into one duffel bag, but it did, with room to spare. When he turned it over, it was not an exaggeration to say that the world would change.

  It only took eight of the ten minutes for the call to come in. The money was being wired; Garber could get confirmation of that within ten minutes. Then they would go to the airfield, the handover would be made, and the woman would soon be fish food.

  Soon Garber would be wealthy beyond his wildest dreams, beyond the wildest dreams of all but a select few. All he had to do was wait for the money, and then it would be time to move.

  Time to get this over with.

  The money was in the account. Garber had never seen that many consecutive zeroes before, at least not on any financial transaction he had ever been involved in. It was intoxicating to look at, and he could have happily done so all day.

  But there was no time for that. The best thing to assume was that they were on to him, even though they likely weren’t aware of his location. His customer was just as anxious to get out; he did not have diplomatic immunity, and together they were involved in a most serious crime against the United States of America.

  In the moment, Garber had to decide whether or not to change the plan and kill Allie right then. He came to the conclusion that there was no immediate upside to it; there was always the possibility that something could go wrong, so why voluntarily give up a bargaining chip?

  They would go to the airfield together, Garber, Allie and the buyer. Then the final piece of the puzzle would snap into place.

  Tied up in the basement, Allie knew there was no chance Garber would let her live. He had talked some about what he had done, and his openness and lack of concern that she knew his identity made it clear she would never be allowed to tell the world the truth.

  All she could do
was wait and hope there would be a chance to save herself. She had never felt fear like that before, but she had to make a conscious effort not to let it overwhelm her.

  She needed to be alert to any opportunity, and to act decisively if and when one presented itself.

  Garber came downstairs and it was obvious from his attitude that something was up. He had a gun, and he held it on her. “Let’s go,” he said. “Upstairs.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “First we’re going upstairs,” he said. “Unless you want a bullet in your head right here, but dying in the basement seems to lack some dignity, don’t you think?”

  She did as she was told, and the next step was to get into the car with Garber and a tall man she had never seen before. Garber drove, with the other man in the passenger seat. Because her hands were tied, she was put into the backseat and not viewed as a threat.

  Neither man spoke to her, and when she asked questions, Garber angrily told her to shut up. He had still given her no opportunity to escape; it was nearing the time when she would have to make her own.

  Damariscotta’s airfield made Teterboro look like JFK.

  Cars were there waiting for us right at the plane as we taxied to a stop, and within ten minutes we were at the target building. Less than three minutes later, the FBI had it surrounded.

  True to his word, Luther was allowing me to remain on scene, albeit it near the rear and therefore out of danger. Not surprisingly, he did not seem interested in consulting me on tactics.

  The lack of signs of life from the building were worrying Luther, but not nearly as much as they were worrying me. I was realizing just how little beyond a few hints and a lot of instinct I had relied on to bring us here.

  Luther wasn’t wasting any time; if Garber was not there, he needed to know it immediately. He had his agents move to the building in a pincer movement, though from my vantage point it was hard to know exactly what was happening.