Targets of Deception

by Jeffrey Stephens[epub]

  “We have no lead on his whereabouts. Not yet.”

  “Even with McHugh dead we still have a chance to get to him”

  “Yes sir.”

  “We’re running out of time on this operation, John. We can’t announce to the media that there are new security threats without a single positive shred of information in hand.”

  “I understand.”

  “I hope you do. I truly hope you do. Now get to New York and find out what you can.”

  Jordan spent the late afternoon at the state trooper barracks. A police artist had driven down from Albany and Sandor worked with him to refine the descriptions he had given earlier. They also reviewed a new series of mug shots on the computer, after being granted access to the federal database. They struck out there, but Jordan was not surprised. The more they searched, the more evident it became to him that the two shooters were men who flew below the radar.

  For now, he kept those thoughts to himself and struggled to be as patient as he could manage. Matters for the local authorities were fairly chaotic, one of their own having been shot. That was their principal focus. There was also discussion about Ryan, about taking his body to Kingston for an autopsy, and Sandor listened as three junior officers debated the necessity of such action. After all, the youngest of the three argued, there was clear evidence that Ryan had been beaten before getting plugged with two shots from close range. They understood that an autopsy was standard procedure, the trooper said, but what was the point in tearing the corpse apart just to confirm what they already knew?

  Sandor had answers he was not giving. The ballistics expert would be interested in the slugs they recovered. They would need to confirm that the shooters on the road had also taken out Ryan. There would also be questions about chemicals that might be found in the dead man’s system, and Sandor assumed they would find traces of so-called truth drugs.

  While the local law enforcement team debated the possible reasons for the sadistic beating of Ryan prior to his murder, Jordan was certain that he and Dan Peters knew why. Whatever story Ryan had to tell, as Ryan himself had said to Peters, it was dynamite.

  The rest of the available police force, including men and women borrowed from neighboring towns and the state, were scurrying around looking for clues, and surveying the roadside scene of the shooting. As far as Sandor reckoned, they were trying to close the barn door after the horses had galloped away.

  “You ready, Sandor?” Reynolds came up from behind, all business in front of his men.

  “Ready, sir,” Jordan said.

  The place rented by Jimmy Ryan was a tiny house set back from an unpaved lane that shunted off an access road leading to Route 32. As Reynolds had explained, it was not far from the spot where Collins and Peters had been shot. Jordan simply nodded, realizing he and Dan had only been a few minutes and a couple of miles late.

  The dirt driveway kicked up a cloud of dust as Reynolds brought his cruiser to a halt. Two troopers were waiting on the small front porch as the captain and Sandor got out of the car.

  “This is Sandor,” the captain said. “Guy that helped Jack.”

  The officers said hello, then offered their thanks.

  “So, what have we got here?” Jordan asked.

  Neither of the troopers replied.

  “Let’s have a look,” Reynolds said as he led him into the house. The two officers remained on guard at the door.

  Dusk was replacing day, and there wasn’t much in the way of lighting in the main room. All the same, Jordan made out the scene immediately. Ryan’s body had been removed hours ago, but the chair was there, as were the fragments of rope that had bound Ryan to the wooden seat. Splotches of dried blood stained an oval loom rug.

  “Nice, eh?”

  Jordan nodded. “I guess you got photos of all this. Before they took him out, I mean.”

  The captain responded with a withering look, and Sandor was reminded again of what sort of commanding officer Reynolds must have been.

  “Sorry,” Jordan said politely. “Of course, you did.”

  “Several rolls of film, a videotape, and a hundred digital images, if you care to know.”

  “Right.”

  Sandor and Reynolds slowly circled the chair in which Ryan had died, viewing the scene from all angles, each of them envisioning what had happened there.

  “No sign of forced entry,” Reynolds told him, “but around here, who locks the door? Even so, I get the feeling he knew these guys. No sign of a struggle, no overturned tables, no nothing.”

  “Maybe. On the other hand, they might have walked in, guns drawn, taken him before he had a chance to react.”

  Reynolds grunted. “Main question is, What was the point? Look at this place.” He extended his arm like he was displaying the third-place prize on a game show. “What the hell would they possibly want? And no sign that the place was searched. Unless he had the Hope Diamond sitting on the table there, what would they be looking for?”

  “Information,” Jordan said.

  The two men stared at each other for a moment.

  “Only thing that makes sense,” Sandor said.

  Reynolds nodded. “They certainly beat the hell out of the poor bastard, that much is obvious.”

  “Rule out sodium pentathol.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Some of the guys talking about the autopsy.”

  “Yeah,” Reynolds agreed. “You don’t pump a guy full of truth serum and then beat the hell out of him.”

  “My thought exactly. Coroner will tell that tale.”

  “So, not much to see, right?”

  Jordan moved slowly around the small area that encompassed most of the modest house, the living room, dining table and the entry to the kitchen. “I assume your men have searched the place,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Thoroughly.”

  “Find anything interesting?” he asked as he took it all in, looking for something that might be out of place.

  “Nothing,” the captain said. “Except one item we thought was odd.”

  Sandor turned towards him. “I’m all ears.”

  “This off the record?” Reynolds asked with a wry smile.

  “Only if you insist.”

  The captain came toward him. They were standing face to face at the doorway to the small kitchen. “One of those electronic tickets,” he said in a quiet voice, “the kind you get off a computer. Hidden in his dresser. Plane ticket to Paris.”

  “As in France?”

  “Strange thing. For a guy living in this kind of a shack, I mean. First class ticket, leaving tomorrow. And a hotel reservation.”

  “Going back,” Jordan said to himself.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing. So you tracked it down?”

  “We did. The ticket was booked in the name of James McHugh. Hotel reservation also in the name of James McHugh.”

  “McHugh? And you ran his prints through—”

  “The federal databank. Yeah.”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “Our friend Jimmy Ryan was actually one James McHugh.”

  Sandor did not appear surprised, a fact not lost on Reynolds. “I can tell by the look in your eyes it gets better than that, Captain.”

  Reynolds nodded. “McHugh was ex-military. His service record looked a lot like yours.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Name, rank, and social security number. Did his duty and puff. Finished business. Guy no longer exists after that.”

  “Uh huh. So we’re not talking about a robbery here.”

  “Not even close.” Reynolds hesitated. “And something tells me you knew that before we walked in.”

  Sandor gave no answer to that. “And when you brought McHugh’s name up on the computer?”

  “I’m sure all the bells and whistles were going off down in Washington.”

  “Agreed.”

  The two troopers at the door were straining to hear the discussion, but missing most of
it as Sandor and Reynolds became quieter with each exchange.

  “I imagine the feds’ll be coming in on this in no time,” Jordan said.

  “I believe that’s affirmative,” the captain said. “So what say we cut the crap and you tell me what you know about all this?”

  Jordan shook his head. “No more than you do.”

  The captain leaned even closer now. “That’s not good enough, son. I’ve been up front with you. Now why don’t you tell me something I don’t know?”

  “Like what?”

  “Look, I got one man in the morgue, two men in the hospital, and by some incredible coincidence you and the dead man turn out to be some kind of former spooks—all this in a town where six speeding tickets in a week is a crime wave.”

  “What a mess,” Jordan said, doing his best to sound sympathetic.

  “That’s it? I give you everything I got before the feds show, and all I get from you is ‘what a mess’?”

  Sandor stared at him without speaking.

  “You said something about him going back. What makes you think this guy was ever in France? You told me you never met him.”

  “And I never did. But I also never said I didn’t know anything about him.”

  “Which makes you better informed than I am right now.”

  “I’m not trying to be difficult, Captain. There are some things I have to do first.”

  “Me too, like investigating a murder and two attempts.”

  “Give me a little time and—”

  “I don’t have time, Sandor.” Reynolds stared into Jordan’s eyes, the younger man’s unblinking gaze a match for his own. “Something tells me you’re gonna need a friend around here pretty soon. You took care of Jack and so you’re entitled to something for that, but don’t count on it for too much. I can get unfriendly real fast. I think you’re jerking me around.”

  “All right,” Jordan said. “Let me sort some of this out, then I’ll get back to you.”

  “You’ll get back to me? That’s not good enough, Sandor.”

  “I’m asking you to trust me.”

  Reynolds lifted his trooper’s hat and passed his hand over his thinning scalp. “You’re not making it easy.”

  “I understand, Captain.”

  “All right,” Reynolds said with a rueful expression, “but as far as I’m concerned, you’re on a short timeline.”

  Jordan nodded, then looked around the room again as if he might have missed something. “What did you say the name of that hotel in Paris was?”

  Reynolds smiled. “I didn’t say.” He pulled a note pad from his pocket. “It’s called . . . the Pas de Tour,” he said, butchering the pronunciation so badly that he had to spell it out. “Mean anything to you?”

  “Just that your French is as bad as mine,” Jordan replied with a smile.

  Reynolds shook his head. “Anything else?”

  “Not yet,” Jordan said. “Not yet.”

  SEVEN

  It was dark by the time Captain Reynolds had one of his men give Sandor a ride back to Dan Peters’ house. Jordan figured the young officer knew less of what was going on than he did, so he managed to keep their discussion brief and close to the surface.

  Jordan thanked the trooper as he dropped him off, grateful to be done with everyone and everything for now. It had been a long, draining day and, alone in Dan’s small home, he realized how tired he was. He decided to sleep there, then get an early start for home the next morning. He fixed himself a ham and cheese sandwich and, as he was finishing a second bottle of Dan’s Budweiser, he telephoned his best friend, Bill Sternlich, in New York.

  Sternlich was an articles editor for the Times. He and Sandor had met over a decade ago, when Bill was on assignment to the Washington bureau, and Jordan was working for the government. Now they were both in New York, their friendship having stood the test of years, not to mention their philosophic differences.

  Professional considerations sometimes made it an uneasy alliance. Jordan could never reveal much about his work and what little he shared with Bill could not be printed. That was the first irony of their friendship. The second was the disparity between Sternlich’s liberal beliefs, engendered so relentlessly by the editorial leanings of his newspaper, and Sandor’s own individualistic views, which would better be expressed by Ayn Rand than anything on the Times Op-Ed pages. The final irony was Jordan’s abrupt departure from the Agency and his subsequent decision to enlist in the Fourth Estate, albeit on a freelance basis. Sternlich had given him help, even getting a couple of Sandor’s pieces published in the Times’ Sunday Magazine section.

  The main point for Jordan and Bill was that they were friends, which meant something special to each of them.

  “You really okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Jordan said. “Friend of mine, Dan Peters, took a bullet in the side. The trooper was hit pretty hard too. We were lucky to get out.”

  Neither man said anything for a moment.

  “I need a favor, Bill.”

  “Hey, I’m totally shocked,” Sternlich said with one of his short, asthmatic laughs. Their recent history was a bit lopsided in the area of favors given and received. “For a minute there I was afraid you called to ask me to lunch. Or just to say hello. I wouldn’t want to die from the shock.”

  Jordan ignored the sarcasm. “I need some information on a James McHugh. Likely to be classified. You’ll probably need to go through one of your government sources.”

  “Will I?”

  “You’ll have to move fast, though, before it comes out that the Jimmy Ryan that was murdered up here today was actually one James McHugh.”

  “That right?”

  “Yes. You’ve got the scoop. Print it right after you get me the dope on this guy.”

  “And why, may I be so bold to ask, don’t you just call one of your old cronies in Langley to get this whatever, this deep background information?”

  “Even guys I still trust there will balk. I was involved in the shooting.”

  “Mind if I ask, then, why I would I want to do this?”

  “Who knows? Full-length article?”

  “My by-line or yours?”

  “I’ll flip you for it.” Sternlich forced a derisive laugh. “Come on Bill, I need your help. I have a feeling there’s something big going on here.”

  Sternlich issued a long, theatrical sigh into the phone. “I don’t know what I can do, but I’ll take a run at it.”

  “You’re a pal.”

  “And what am I supposed to be looking for?”

  “I’m not sure. Not exactly. See if you can find out where he’s been the past couple of years. Check out his government service. Get addresses, prior contacts, phone numbers, identification numbers, the usual tap dance.”

  “Uh huh.”

  Jordan could tell that Sternlich was writing things down, a good sign. “And Bill, see what connection he had to Paris.”

  “Paris?”

  “I’m coming back tomorrow. Call you in the morning.”

  “I may have to trade favors to get this. You understand that?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’ll owe me for this one.”

  “No problem.”

  “I mean it, Jordan.”

  “I need this Billy. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”

  Jordan left Woodstock early the next day and drove south, the bright October sun rising to his left as he headed towards New York City. He guided his aging Land Rover along the sweeping curves and extended straightaways.

  Jordan’s mind raced as he drove in silence, the radio and his cell phone turned off. He gazed out at the road ahead, realizing that the danger he had faced yesterday would only intensify in the hours and days ahead.

  Whatever James McHugh had known, his gruesome death was proof of its importance. His murderers had inflicted a sadistic beating, and when there was nothing left for McHugh to save, strapped in that wooden chair facing certain death, he would have done anything to
spare himself those final moments of pain and degradation. He would have revealed anything his murderers wanted to know, including his intention to meet with Sandor and Peters, which left them both as marked men.

  He arrived in the city, pulled his car up to the curb in the “No Parking” zone in front of the old brownstone where he lived on West 76th Street, then placed an expired Press Card in the windshield. He ran up the front steps and, unlocking the front door to the building, he entered the vestibule and grabbed his mail. His eyes adjusted to the filtered light as he climbed the stairs to his third floor apartment, rifling through the bills and advertisements as he went.

  He got to his apartment, put the key in the door and stepped inside, still concentrating on the mail in his hands. Then he looked up.

  The place was in shambles.

  Jordan left the door open behind him as he moved farther inside, his nerves on alert as he placed his mail on the foyer table and warily stepped into the living room. It appeared that everything had been turned inside out. His brown tufted leather couch was sliced open, clumps of stuffing scattered all over the room, the brass and glass cocktail table shoved against the wall, two chairs and a mahogany cabinet turned over, even the Oriental rug lifted and yanked to the side. Where looking through a cabinet would have sufficed, the drawer had been pulled out, turned upside down and smashed.

  Sandor moved cautiously to the bedroom. If possible, it looked even worse. The mattress was slashed, closet and dresser taken apart, clothing scattered all over the floor. He stepped inside the closet, reached up to a hidden compartment above the top shelf, and pulled away a false panel. He was relieved to find the contents, which consisted of small arsenal, intact. He lifted out his Walther PPK .380 and drew back the slide far enough to see the first round was chambered.

  He remained quiet, his movements studied. He could not be certain the intruder had gone. He checked the bathroom and the small kitchen, ready for an assault from anywhere in the apartment. The second bedroom, which he used as his office, was also a disaster. His filing cabinets had been emptied, the leather chair knocked over, his antique roll-top desk searched, papers strewn across the room. The intruders had ripped through and savaged the most intimate details of his private life. His writing, letters, even personal souvenirs had been examined and destroyed.