The 13th Target

by Mark de Castrique

  “The homicide detective is considering the possibility.” He repeated his conversation with Sullivan, including the “tough-ass” phrase in the note.

  “That’s not much to go on.”

  “I know. And I’m not suggesting we put it in the report. I’m well aware that would be dragging the company name through the mud, even though we had no responsibility once he entered his apartment building.”

  “You saw him get in the elevator?”

  “Yes. He used his pass card for entrance. He was alone.”

  Lewison clasped his large hands together on the table. “Then we’re in the clear.”

  Mullins nodded. “The company, yes. But I’m not.”

  “You did your job, and you’ve made your views known to the Arlington police.”

  “Ted, I can’t walk away from this. Luguire sent me a cry for help.”

  Ted Lewison understood Mullins had crossed the line between professional and personal. “We don’t do investigative work.”

  “I know.” Mullins stood from the table. “I’ve got vacation time. It started last night.”

  Lewison kept his seat. “You can’t represent yourself as Prime Protection.”

  “I know.”

  “And when you run through vacation time, we’ll talk about a leave of absence.”

  “Okay.”

  Lewison stood and offered his hand. “And when you need something unofficially, you call me.”

  “Thanks, Ted.” Mullins shook hands and walked out.

  He stopped by his small office to pick up extra clips and ammo for his Glock. The blinking red message light on his desk phone caught his eye. He rarely got a call on his direct line. Most friends used his cell, and since he’d been assigned to Luguire for nearly a year, few new business calls came to him. The phone was more of a glorified intercom.

  He figured some enterprising reporter must be seeking information about Luguire. If so, the guy was out of luck. Mullins had no intention of talking to the press.

  He decided to check the message anyway. He didn’t know when he’d be back in the office.

  “Mr. Mullins. I’m calling from Barnes and Noble at Clarendon.” A woman made the statement in a pleasant tone. “The book you ordered has come in and you can pick it up at the register. Remember, after five, your receipt entitles you to enjoy a free cup of coffee in our cafe. Thank you.” The call ended.

  Mullins punched one to repeat the message. The woman’s voice was familiar, but she spoke in such a sing-song, customer-service script that he couldn’t place her.

  He knew for sure he hadn’t ordered a book from Barnes and Noble.

  He also knew a rendezvous had been proposed at the bookstore only a few blocks from Luguire’s apartment building. Someone was being very cautious. Someone was afraid.

  Chapter Eight

  Zaina Khoury brushed her daughter’s silky black hair, a mindless activity that served to break the boredom of being confined to the apartment. She hoped today would be the day Fares returned. The guard had hinted that the work would soon be over and everything would go back to the way it had been—Fares’ job, her home, and Jamila’s preschool.

  Jamila squirmed in her lap. Sesame Street ended and so did the distraction that kept the four-year-old still beneath the hair brush.

  “Let me finish,” Zaina said. “You want to look pretty for Daddy.”

  Jamila craned her neck toward the front door. “Daddy?”

  “No, sweetheart. Not now. But soon.”

  As if to belie the words, the knob rattled and the retracting deadbolt clicked sharply.

  “Daddy!” Jamila jumped from her mother and ran to the door. She froze as a stranger entered, carrying three bags from Burger King.

  “Get away.” The man waved the bags at the child.

  Zaina stood from the sofa and Jamila ran to hide behind her.

  “Take the burgers to the kitchen.” He kicked the door closed behind him.

  Zaina didn’t move. She’d never seen him before. He looked at them with flat dark eyes that showed no more emotion than if he were watching two stray dogs in the street.

  “Where’s Chuchi?” she asked. Although she didn’t like being cooped up in the apartment for two weeks, the Hispanic guard she knew only as Chuchi had been respectful, saying Fares was on an important mission to Washington, D.C., working to get their home back.

  “Chuchi’s done here. I’ll be staying until this is finished. Now take these and put the food on plates. I’m not eating from a sack like a horse.”

  Zaina hesitated only long enough to see the man shove the bags at her. He wore a collared, peach-colored shirt and cream-colored slacks. The shirt opened two buttons down his hairy chest, revealing a delicate gold chain. A sheen of sweat clung to his swarthy face. She wasn’t sure of his ethnicity. Somewhere in the Middle East, but not Lebanon. Zaina understood he wasn’t someone you challenged.

  She stepped toward him. “Okay. Come, Jamila.”

  “Your daughter stays,” the man ordered.

  “Why?”

  “Because I say so. Because you’ll work faster. And set proper places at the kitchen table.”

  Zaina turned around and knelt. “Jamila, Mommy needs you to wait here and talk to our guest. Sit on the sofa and tell him what happened on your TV show. Be a nice hostess. Can you do that?”

  Jamila looked at the man.

  “Listen to your mother. Then we’ll have a nice supper. Maybe we can make something for your daddy and I’ll see that he gets it.”

  Jamila scooted onto the sofa, pushing her tiny body into the far corner.

  “I’ll only be a few minutes,” Zaina said, as much to the stranger as her daughter. She grabbed the bags.

  He called after her, “Warm them in the microwave, thirty seconds.” Then he turned to Jamila and smiled. “What did you see on TV?”

  Zaina pulled plates from the cabinets and spaced them around the small Formica table. She put the settings for her daughter and her at one end so the whole length separated them from Chuchi’s replacement. He made her nervous. If he was getting a message to Fares, maybe she could find a way to tell her husband how she felt. She would need to be subtle, but Fares knew her well enough to read between the lines.

  Even though the bags contained only burgers and fries, she set out a full complement of flatware—knives, forks, spoons. She would re-heat his plate first, both being polite and getting him in the kitchen away from Jamila.

  She punched start and the plate of food began rotating in the microwave. She didn’t hear the finishing beep. It was drowned out by Jamila’s scream.

  Zaina ran to the living room. Her daughter lay face down on the sofa cushions, her hands clutching the back of her head.

  The man stood over her. He held a knife in one hand; in the other was a clump of Jamila’s hair.

  “Something to send your husband.” He jammed the severed tresses into his pocket. “Is my dinner ready?”

  Chapter Nine

  At four-thirty, Rusty Mullins pulled into the parking deck half a block from the Barnes and Noble in the Clarendon section of Arlington. Paul Luguire’s apartment building was only a few blocks farther on North Garfield Street. He considered walking over there later on the off chance he might see Luguire’s daughter.

  Mullins took his time getting to the bookstore. What appeared to others as an amble stroll allowed him to scan the vicinity. A double-parked car or van would draw his attention. So would window shoppers who kept glancing over their shoulders. But nothing triggered the internal alarm bells he’d developed from over twenty years in the Secret Service.

  Satisfied nothing was amiss, he checked his watch. Twenty to five. He entered the store and went straight to the second floor. He stood in the game section near the railing where
he could view the entrance below. For the next twenty minutes, he browsed the merchandise, moving from games to children’s literature to the adult genres, but always keeping one eye on the lower level. Shoppers came and went, most browsing like him, absorbed in the myriad of displays.

  At five, he dropped his pretense and focused his attention on patrons and staff near the checkout line. Two cashiers worked the counter, keeping the customers moving so that the wait was never more than a few minutes. No one else seemed to be watching.

  Mullins picked up a children’s picture book from the bargain table and headed for the registers. His grandson, Josh, would like the story, and the purchase might deceive someone who had been told to be on the lookout for a man standing in line without any merchandise.

  “Did you find everything you wanted?” the woman behind the counter asked.

  “Yes. And you should have a book here for me.” He handed her his credit card. “Under this name.”

  She examined the Visa card. “We do. I found it on the counter about an hour ago marked prepaid. Did you give one of our associates your card number over the phone?”

  “No.”

  She nodded. “Good, because we’re not supposed to ask for that information. Those sales are handled over the Internet.”

  “That’s what I did,” he lied.

  The cashier frowned. “Well, someone didn’t use the proper paperwork for the in-store pickup of an Internet order.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  The woman retrieved a thin paperback from the shelf behind her. “No, but there should be a receipt. Did you happen to print one from your computer?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t think to.”

  She scanned the barcode and studied the register’s screen. “The book’s not listed in our inventory. It must have been the only copy and was deleted when you paid for your order.” She handed him the book. “Are you okay with just your Internet receipt?”

  Mullins didn’t answer. He stared at the book cover. Betrayal at Jekyll. The author’s name was Walter V. Simmons. Neither meant anything to him. Then he saw one of the quotes under the title.

  Louis T. McFadden: “We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks.”

  “Sir? The receipt?”

  He looked back at the woman. “No need. I’ve got the one on my computer at home. And I’ll pay cash for the child’s book. It’s not worth putting on the card.”

  He gave her a twenty, collected his change, and let her put both books in a bag.

  “Here’s the receipt for the children’s book,” she said. “It’ll get you a free cup of coffee.”

  “Thanks. I’ll take you up on it.” He left the register and headed for the cafe.

  He got a cup of black coffee and sat at a table for two in the corner farthest from the traffic flow. The bag lay by his feet next to the wall. He wasn’t going to display a book about the Federal Reserve like some hack spy in a hack-written spy novel. Then he saw her and he knew the book wasn’t an identifier.

  Amanda Church ordered a cup of green tea, and then turned to look for a place to sit. Her eyes lit up when she saw Mullins. Anyone observing would have thought she’d been pleasantly surprised to see a friend.

  “Hi. May I join you?”

  “Certainly.” He stood and welcomed her with an outstretched hand. He didn’t call her by name because she hadn’t used his.

  She set her cup on the table, clasped his right hand with her left, and gently pulled him into a hug. “No one here knows me,” she whispered.

  “Me either.”

  “You look good, Sam.”

  He indicated for her to take a seat. “You too.” He decided against inventing a name for her. It was clear to anyone they knew each other and an overuse of names would sound contrived. “My coffee was free.”

  “You must have bought something. They didn’t have the book I wanted.” She pulled her cellphone from her purse, checked the screen, and set it down, rotating it in the process.

  Mullins glanced at the face. In the split-second before it went dark, he read, “End if anything wrong.”

  Amanda was taking no chances. Her tight security measures meant she suspected either or both of them might be under surveillance.

  “I saw Peter last night,” he said casually. “He’s hoping to get back with Mary.”

  She nodded. “Maybe. I think she dumped the other guy.”

  “That’s what I heard too.” Mullins understood they were in sync. The other guy between Peter and Mary was Paul, the folksingers from the 1960s, except this Paul was Paul Luguire. “I don’t know any of the details.”

  Amanda laughed. “I do. But I’m not one to gossip.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since I’ve got to get home and make supper for Herb and the kids.”

  Mullins bent down and picked up his books. “All right, I’ll walk you to your car and you can fill me in.”

  They left, two friends who happened to run into each other and were catching up on mutual acquaintances. Mullins followed Amanda’s lead, trusting her actions to be appropriate for her assessment of the situation.

  Like Mullins, Amanda came out of the Secret Service. She was an agent experienced in the Treasury Department’s efforts to thwart cyber-crime. In her early days, she and Mullins worked cases together. He respected her abilities. Their first case involved a Nigerian ring of credit card fraud. Even before the onslaught of their Internet scams, Nigerian con artists placed Nigerian immigrant workers in custodial jobs in medical offices. Cleaning at night, they would break into billing records and steal patient credit card numbers. Then they would mail-order merchandise until maxing out the card’s limit.

  Amanda came up with the idea to intercept the package deliveries. More than once, Mullins dressed up as a Federal Express employee, drove a real Fed Ex truck, and delivered the merchandise. As soon as the recipient signed for the delivery, Mullins placed him under arrest while a backup team raided the premises.

  The operation was a big success, so much so that Amanda was assigned to more and more sophisticated electronic crimes. She crossed over from the government to the Federal Reserve when security concerns multiplied in proportion to the skills of hackers and the discontent of the populace that saw the Federal Reserve as the cause, not the solution, of the country’s financial woes.

  “Where’s your car?” he asked.

  “Right beside yours.” She grabbed his arm. “Lead on.”

  They took the stairs to the second level and Mullins stopped behind his Prius. A Lexus sedan was on one side and an Infiniti SUV on the other.

  “Which one of these limos is yours?” he asked.

  “Neither. Let’s sit in your car.”

  Mullins laughed softly and scanned the parking deck. The only people in sight were a mom and a toddler getting into a minivan six spaces away. He unlocked the Prius with his keyless remote.

  Amanda slid into the passenger’s seat and set her purse on the floor. “I don’t think I was followed, but they could have put a bug and tracker in my car. I parked in Alexandria and took the Metro to Clarendon.”

  Mullins studied her for a moment. She was an attractive woman in her early forties, five or six years younger than he. He knew she was married to the novelist Curtis Jordan. Mullins had read some of his international thrillers, entertaining if a bit far-fetched. Either Jordan was a pseudonym or Amanda had kept her maiden name. Mullins suspected she provided Jordan with procedural and protocol information for his complex plots.

  Today her confidence seemed shaken. He’d never seen her unnerved before, and the fact that they were sitting in his car told him she had no confidence in the normal channels of communication.

  H
e decided to meet her head on. “Paul Luguire was murdered. I know it and I’m going to prove it.”

  She jerked her head around, eyes wide. Then she laughed. “You’re amazing. Here I thought I was going to have to convince you. How do you know?”

  Mullins reviewed everything he told Detective Sullivan: Luguire’s mood, the plans for the Saturday ballgame, the withdrawal of one hundred dollars from the ATM, and the “tough-ass” insertion in the suicide note. “But you have something more concrete,” he said. “At least that’s what your precautions indicate.”

  She nodded. “Three days ago, a flag went up.”

  “A what?”

  “An alert. I’m developing a security system that reviews transactions that are perfectly normal in every way except for frequency. Proper pass codes, account numbers, protocols, and hierarchy of approval. The theory is if someone hacked into the payment system somehow an increased frequency might be the first indicator of the breach.”

  “Makes sense,” Mullins agreed.

  “I’m in beta testing to set the parameters so that we’re not swamped and paralyzed checking out false alarms. We’re limiting the scope to Richmond before expanding. Three days ago a transfer of funds from the Federal Reserve in Richmond to a member bank in southwest Virginia popped up as an anomaly.”

  “Just one?”

  “Yes. Everything was proper except in this case even one transaction tripped the alert. The order for the transfer came from Luguire. Such a matter wouldn’t originate with him. It would be handled strictly out of Richmond.

  “The bank, Laurel, is a small Virginia concern with interstate operations in western North Carolina and east Tennessee. It’s had its share of problems, mainly due to loans for mountain land development that crashed in 2008 and 2009, but they’ve weathered the worst of it. I hesitated to bother Luguire with it because he might have initiated the loan somehow, but it just didn’t feel right.”

  “He was high enough up someone probably thought the transaction wouldn’t be questioned.”

  Amanda turned in the passenger seat and leaned against the door. “Exactly. And that’s what the security software was designed to flag. I brought it to Luguire’s attention on Tuesday. He claimed to know nothing about it, but said he’d check into it. I never heard another word. Two days later he killed himself.” She shook her head. “I hate to admit it but I thought maybe he’d transferred that money for his own gain and I’d uncovered the beginning of a trail that threatened to expose him. So, this morning after I heard about his death, I went back to the data records and discovered the transaction was gone, completely removed from the records.”