Nathan didn't even look up. He dialed Carlos Saglieri's number at EG. He listened for quite some time until the voice mail picked up, but didn't leave a message. Frustrated, he clicked off his phone. He needed to talk to Carlos or Tilman now. From what Franken had to say, their methods of trying to recover their flash drive were way above and beyond accepted norms, to put it mildly. At the very least, it would cause a big problem with the GigaStar vote. At worst, he might have to turn them over to the FBI.
Where had Carlos gone? Jacobs had expected he'd wait at his desk for news of the bust. At the very least, they usually kept a security staff on all night, who should have answered the phone. Growing more and more curious, he clicked his phone back on and dialed Tilman at home.
There was no answer there, either.
CHAPTER 15
Franken drove his square, rusting Jeep Cherokee over to the apartment building Jacobs had named. His official car was actually more comfortable for him than his own vehicle – a Ford Crown Victoria with a nice bench seat. But those were the breaks. He’d left the unmarked car at the precinct when he went off shift, so now he was stuck in the jeep.
It wasn’t long before he spotted the FBI vehicles parked out front, one with a bubble siren stuck on top of the roof. Franken pulled in behind it.
He got out of his car and looked at the building. It looked about five stories tall, which was about average height for a DC apartment building. He liked the look of the place, actually. The old, almost Victorian architecture breathed fresh air into the midst of the plain square boxes that made up most of the office and living space in this town.
He was about to walk inside when he caught sight of Kathy Kelver, about a block down the street. She was in the middle of a small gaggle of people. It wasn't Kathy who really caught his eye, though. It was the men holding guns.
Franken had spent enough time on the streets to know it wasn't safe to stand there and gawk. If he drew attention to himself, the gunmen would turn on him. But on the other hand, he didn't want to miss whatever was going on here. Quickly, he stepped back inside his car. He pulled the door most of the way shut but didn't fully close it, not wanting to risk the noise that would make. Then he rolled down the window a crack, in case there was anything to hear. He barely had time to realize he was in his private vehicle and didn’t have a radio when he saw Kathy and the rest of the group being herded into a car.
***
Mike slumped against the Plexiglas bus stop, shoving his hands in his pockets. "I just can’t believe D.W. would do this," he muttered.
The voice that replied wasn’t Kathy’s, Colleen's, or John’s. "Whatever you can or can’t believe, it doesn't change the fact that you all will be coming for a ride."
They all whirled in unison to see Carlos Saglieri – Rat Face, to Kathy – holding a gun on them. Four armed men in combat fatigues flanked him, with matte black, oily, ugly looking guns. "No games this time," he said. "No chances to run or to fight back. Just pile in the van and do as we tell you."
The air went out of Kathy and her friends like a deflating balloon. So much energy was spent in the escape from Jakarta and the argument with Jacobs that none of them possessed the reserves to resist now. Kathy's shoulders dropped to a slump. Colleen sighed. Mike expelled a short curse. Only John tensed his muscles and whirled around.
"Ah," Carlos said when he saw John. "You and I just keep running into each other. Well, this time will be the last, I think. My boss wants to see you. I think he wants to make you all a deal."
He gave a signal, and each of his four accomplices moved into position next to Kathy, Colleen, John and Mike. As one, each man wrapped an arm around the neck of his target.
Kathy started to scream, but in the next instant he stuffed a rag into her open mouth. It covered her nose as well. She worked her tongue, trying to get the rag out, but he held it firmly in place. She didn't even notice the smell until she tried to breathe in. As soon as she did, she passed out.
Mike, Colleen and John had similar experience. Maybe it was the fact of seeing him again so soon after John accused Tilman. Or maybe it was Jacobs' unwillingness to agree with Colleen.
For whatever reason, as he passed out, Mike's last thought was that he finally knew where he had seen Carlos before. He'd been the man in the car wreck. The man who pulled a gun on him and told him not to call the police. And D.W. had been right there, agreeing right away that there was no need to call the police.
When the chloroform took effect, each black-clad man dragged one of them into the van. They pulled away from the curb and headed back toward Virginia.
He never noticed the sport utility vehicle that pulled away from the curb just as he did.
***
Sam Franken pounded the dash board as he used every four-letter word in his vocabulary. Every time he thought he understood what was happening, something new turned up.
Judging by what Mr. NSA had to say, he thought this was about wrapped up. The evil Mr. Hacker was behind bars, and this was supposed to be over. Yet here was Ms. Kelver again, being led away at gunpoint – and drugged, by the look of that little scene. Were these the same people she'd been with in that parking garage? Some of them looked the same, but some of them looked different. And she probably got into that van in the garage voluntarily, although he couldn't be sure. But this time, she was definitely going for a ride against her will.
When he saw the little scene where Kathy and her friends got chloroformed, Franken’s first instinct had been to reach under the dashboard for his radio. His hand had groped around there twice, closing only on thin air, before he remembered he was in his private car. He ground his teeth together and spat out a profanity. Procedure was crystal clear here. Call for backup, set up a road block, and negotiate for the hostages – which is what Kathy looked like to him.
But without a radio, all that went out the window.
Franken jammed his hand savagely into the pocket of his windbreaker, and drew out his cell phone. He punched the power button, and heard the low battery tone. That drew an even more vile curse than he’d used yet tonight. Hoping against hope, Franken dialed the direct number for Lieutenant Washington’s desk, but as he punched in the last few numbers the phone went dead.
As the van pulled away from the curb, he threw his dead cell phone across the car, where it bounced off the passenger side door. Bitterly cursing his long phone call to his wife, Franken stared at the van’s receding tail lights.
For precious seconds, he simply froze. Judging by what Jacobs told him, less than 100 feet away he would find a whole gaggle of FBI agents, who could easily get him some back up. But if he went to find them, he’d lose sight of the van. On the other hand, to keep track of the van, he’d have to tail it. Alone. And the van held four armed men who seemed to have little to no compunction about violence.
He reached for the door to go looking for the FBI men, changed his mind, and jerked the key around in the ignition. Stomping on the gas, he sprinted off after the van, which had gained three blocks on him while he sat there.
So, the federal agents were wrong – surprise surprise. And that meant that little old Sam Franken, newly minted detective on the MPD, was stuck holding the bag. Aloud he muttered, "Typical."
Franken hung on the van's tail as it crossed the Potomac into Virginia, despite the fact that he was traveling outside jurisdiction. His badge might not get him very far out here, but he didn't plan on showing his face. He planned to evade, observe, and call in backup at the very first opportunity when he could find a phone and not lose sight of the van.
He reached for the jumbo-sized cup of coffee in the cup holder – long since gone cold. He treated himself to a stale sip.
***
At three o'clock in the morning, the EG parking lot showed not a single sign of life. The building was dark; the parking lot was empty. Even the security guards had been sent home. Not a single office light gleamed through a window. And in a dark colored van, Carlos Saglieri chauffeure
d four unconscious people around to the loading dock in back.
The other mercenaries had been dropped off at a prearranged location, the better to keep them from ever knowing for whom Carlos worked. Tilman had been very specific about never letting the hired help know anything about EG.
The spartan loading dock offered few amenities, but few were needed. A bare cement set of stairs led up to a steel door. One at a time, Carlos dragged Kathy and her friends up the steps and into the building. He hauled them into the elevator and up to his office, where each was left lying on the floor, hands and feet secured.
Tilman walked into the office. Carlos was sitting in his desk chair, guarding the prisoners and catching his breath from the work of pulling four unconscious people to the top of a five story building. The boss’s eyebrows went up.
"Got them all, I see. No trouble?"
"No trouble. How do you want to handle this?"
"I would prefer not to lose a vote for GigaStar if I don’t have to," Tilman replied. "So I’m going to talk to Mike, and I want him predisposed to agree with me."
***
Sam Franken longed for some coffee. Stale, cold, bitter – it didn’t matter. He just wished for some coffee. But even if he had his car here, the cup in it was drained.
He’d followed the van to the headquarters of Electron Guidewire in northern Virginia, but had thought it would be a little too obvious if he just pulled into the parking lot right behind them. So he parked his car a couple blocks over, and walked the rest of the distance.
He’d felt naked walking across the parking lot, absolutely certain that surveillance cameras were tracking his every move. As he walked past uncounted yellow lines, vacant of any vehicles, the one thought Franken kept having was that he shouldn’t have to do this alone. He should have been on duty, not taken his stupid friend’s shift during the day. He should have had a radio. He should have called for backup. He definitely should not be walking unprotected through a heavily monitored parking lot, the only blue suit for miles, and not even wearing his blue suit.
He couldn’t have known that his worries were groundless. The guards who normally watched those cameras had all been sent home early tonight, the better to keep their minds free of unnecessary and dangerous information.
Once he’d reached the building itself, keeping right next to the wall let him feel much more secure, even though he knew that if there were cameras around, they could see him as easily here as they could in the lot. But there was something unsettling about being the only moving figure in such a big open space.
He’d crept around the building, trying to ignore the spine-tingling feeling of being on camera, wondering just where the van had gone. He peeked around the corner of the back side of the building and found it. He’d arrived in time to see the last body being pulled out of the van and into the service door.
He kept his head back until he heard the door slam shut, then looked again. No one was in sight. He’d walked up to the van and looked inside, only to find it completely empty. Turning to the service door, Franken walked up and found it locked. Frustrated, he chewed his lip, wished for some coffee, and thought for a while. He had just decided it was time to go for a phone when he heard the sound of another car.
His ears told him it was coming from his left, so he moved to his right to keep out of sight behind the van. A luxury sedan pulled up near the stairs to the service door, and a man climbed out. The light made it impossible to recognize facial features. The man left his car and walked up the stairs to the service door.
Silently, Franken came out from behind the van, watching the man’s back as he opened the door. When he did, the light from inside showed him a dark gray business suit and thinning brown hair, but still not enough to have any chance of identifying him. That didn’t matter. The important thing was that by opening the door, he offered Franken a way into the building.
The detective sought a balance of speed and silence as he rushed toward the door, but still his footfalls echoed loudly in his ears. The door swung gradually shut behind the tall man, and Franken measured the distance against the time it would take to fully shut. He gave up a bit more silence to get there on time.
His fingers slipped around the handle just before the door latch seated, and he tugged it back open just a hair. If the tall man had heard him, there’d soon be some sign of it from inside. When no sign came, Franken pulled the door open a crack and looked inside. He saw his quarry turning a corner at the end of a service corridor.
Franken slipped inside and trotted down the hall, past storage crates and undecorated walls. When he reached the corner, he peeked around it to see another door at the end. Praying that it didn’t lock, he ran up to the door.
It was a double wooden door, and the nice finish on the wood set it apart from the otherwise barren service corridor. His caution got the better of him, and Franken pressed his eye to the slight gap between the two doors, checking for danger.
Beyond he saw a wide foyer, clearly the way people were supposed to enter the building. The dim lighting kept much of the area in shadow, but Franken made out a reception desk, or perhaps a security desk, the doors to the front of the building – which he’d been looking at as he crossed the parking lot – and a bank of three elevators. The tall man stood before one of them, waiting. He watched as the elevator doors slid silently open. The tall man went in, and the doors closed behind him.
"Leave now," Franken muttered aloud. "Go back out the door and go for backup." He trotted back to the service entrance, pushed on the door, and swore under his breath. Locked. For a moment he stood there, not knowing what to do. At every step of this thing, the proper procedure was to get help, and lots of it. But he was stuck here, alone, with at least one girl unconscious and in need of help somewhere in the building. Wincing, he turned around and went back the way he’d come.
Franken tried the doors the tall man had gone through, and found them unlocked. He emerged into the foyer, and walked over to the elevators. Above the center elevator, which the tall man had boarded, the digital display showed the elevator on the fifth floor.
Now, he had a decision to make. If he could find a set of stairs, it might be wiser to take them than to take the elevator. After all, if he could read the digital display down here, surely his quarry could watch it from upstairs. He didn’t relish the thought of a hostile reception when the elevator doors opened on floor five.
On the other hand, even if he could find the stairs – Franken had no idea whether he could – he had no idea whether they’d be unlocked. Worse yet, they could be open to the outside and locked from the inside, which would trap him in the staircase. Any stairs might also open far from where the tall man got off the elevator, leaving him with no idea how to continue his pursuit.
Besides all that, Franken wasn’t exactly in the best physical condition of his life, and he felt winded just thinking about climbing five flights of stairs.
In the end, it was Kathy who made up his mind for him. That body he’d seen being dragged in was probably her. And though he couldn’t tell whether she was dead or just unconscious, he hoped for the latter. If Kathy was up there alive, she’d need help. Bratty college punk and all, she was basically a good girl, and Franken found that he sort of liked her, despite all her sass. He boarded the elevator.
To his great good fortune, Tilman was already in the office of his security chief, and never saw the digital display of the elevator as it carried Franken up to the fifth floor. The detective stepped out just in time to hear a voice say, "…I want him predisposed to agree with me."
Franken looked around. He found himself in a large, well appointed reception area, with wood paneling on the walls, hardwood floors, and several paintings hanging. They looked real, rather than prints. From his standpoint right off the elevator, there was one door to his right, a desk right in front of him, and an open door behind the desk and to the left. It was that door from which the voice came. He listened.
"Wake them
up and keep them cuffed until I come in and tell you otherwise. We’ll do a ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine and see if maybe it helps me make my case. If not, well…"
The sentence trailed off with no ending, and Franken could easily visualize the shrug that must have followed. Then he clearly heard footsteps coming back toward the open door. Desperate, he ran behind the desk and started climbing under it. His bulk made this a challenge, but Franken managed to squeeze most of himself in, except his head. He turned that to the side so he could look at the open door, pulled the desk chair over his head and prayed.
He saw the legs of the tall man emerge from the room, and turn to shut the door. Then he saw the legs walk through his field of vision and around to the front of the desk he hid behind. He could no longer see them – and wasn’t about to take the risk of moving his head and making noise – but he could still hear the footsteps on the hardwood floor.
The man walked past the front of the desk and kept going. The footsteps now came from behind Franken’s head. They seemed to go a ways away, so obviously he wasn’t at the elevator. Then they paused. Franken held his breath, wondering if he’d been seen but not daring to turn his head to look.
He heard the sound of a door opening, a few more footsteps, then the door closing. And then he couldn’t hear anything else.
Letting out his breath slowly, Franken wormed his head around until he could look the other direction. The door he’d seen from the elevator was closed, but now some light showed under it. The man had gone in there. Breathing a sigh of relief, Franken held his position. Judging by what he’d heard, the man in there would be back in a few minutes.
***
Consciousness gradually seeped back into Kathy’s brain, despite her wishes. Some primal instinct told her that the world she’d find when she opened her eyes would not be to her liking. Nevertheless, she cracked an eyelid open, and proved her instinct right.
Death of Secrets Page 25
