Dead Silence

by Randy Wayne White

  I realized I was smiling. The kid had grit. Still battling despite insane odds.

  Insane, the right word.

  The boy was in a box, looking up from a pit that might have been freshly dug. Dirt in his hair was suggestive. The angle gave the impression the hole was four or five feet deep. It was only a head-and-shoulders shot but enough to tell the story.

  Will’s mouth was duct-taped. A tube ran from the tape to a bottle of water, only partly visible. PCV pipe, attached to wires, had been propped next to the boy’s head, along with a heavily taped battery pack. The kidnappers wanted us to see part of the fan assembly that provided air—their way of saying the boy’s life was now in our hands. If we delivered before deadline, we had a chance.

  I glanced at my watch. Twenty-one hours, but the kidnappers had put responsibility for the boy’s life in our hands.

  Shrewd, I couldn’t deny.

  I cleaned my glasses, then wiped the palm-sized screen. Photo analysis isn’t my field. Presumably, there were experts on the case examining each pixel, assembling data. The Cubans, or whoever took the shot, had anticipated the scrutiny. That’s why the photo was cropped so tight. No trees in the background, no environmental markers except for a section of the dirt pit and dirt in the boy’s hair.

  The dirt looked fresh, damp. Maybe sand, or a mix of sand and clay.

  I looked at my hands. I’d showered, but there were still specks beneath my nails after my frenzied digging hours earlier. Was the dirt similar? Could be . . .

  More obvious was that a patch of the boy’s hair was missing. A ragged rectangle near the left ear, as if someone had grabbed a clump and cut it with a knife. In the first photo sent by the kidnappers, Will’s hair was crow black, shoulder-length but even. Same with recent photos that newscasters had been showing on television.

  Why would kidnappers want a sample of the boy’s hair? DNA, my first guess, until I gave it some thought. After my talk with Harrington, I had researched the Cuban Program. Under the guise of medical experiments, interrogators had tortured American POWs using techniques so perverse it disturbed even the Vietnamese jailers. Because the government feared exposure, fifteen of the men, all irreversibly maimed, were moved secretly to a Cuban prison, where the Malvados continued their experiments.

  The three interrogators weren’t really specialists. They were freaks who enjoyed inflicting pain. Fiends—a word with darker connotations in Spanish. If one had cut a chunk of the boy’s hair, it wasn’t to collect DNA. He’d taken it as a trophy . . . or a joke: Look, I’ve got the Indian kid’s scalp!

  I realized I was shaking as I studied the photo, unusual for me. Disconcerting. Emotion is a symptom, the by-product of a reality that’s been skewed by personal interest. I cleared the screen. Decided to check Harrington’s message. Good timing.

  It read: “G-R off X-F. 0-sig.”

  Translation: “Gloves are off. Zero signature.”

  I’d had only a few hours’ sleep but suddenly I wasn’t tired. Harrington had either seen the photo of Will or he, too, had reviewed data on the Cuban Program. Something had changed. I was now authorized to deal personally with the Cuban interrogators.

  X-F. X referred to the Executive Order of February 1976, which Congress had revoked, thus reestablishing assassination as an option.

  F was Farfel, the nickname assigned by men he’d tortured.

  0-sig meant just that: Zero signature, no trace. Successful assassins leave a body. Harrington’s group, the Negotiators, did not. People disappear. It happens every day.

  The euphemisms vary with the times and situations. Neutralize, terminate, liquidate, eliminate are the standards used in thriller films but never by anyone I’ve ever worked for or with. Pros prefer substitutes that provide built-in deniability or the hope of a legal out. X-F. How can you prosecute a man for writing that?

  There are others: Preemptive Solution. Assignment Targeting. ATQ—Assignment Targeting Qualified. PPI—Person of Preemptive Interest. PCC—Post Conflict Causality.

  Eternalize was Harrington’s favorite because it could be explained away as an attempt to write or say Internalize. It was a typo. Or a word that was misheard.

  It had been a while since I’d been assigned a target and almost a decade since I’d been authorized to operate within the boundaries of the U.S. I was pleased, but also aware that it could add to the legal nightmare I might one day face. In Fidel Castro’s files, it was possible my name was on a small list of American contractors with a W designation. W, as in World License.

  There were fewer than ten of us—far fewer now, possibly. An organization like the Negotiators didn’t hold reunions or pose for class photos. Each member was a self-reliant cell. In nearly two decades, I had met only three fellow members—as far as I knew anyway. No, I had met four. Only recently, I had been introduced to a great man, last name Wilson. It was just before his death.

  In legalese, W designees were sanctioned by the Executive Branch to use lethal force against enemies or preassigned threats anywhere in the world as long as the designee operated within the parameters detailed in the National Security Act of 1947.

  A World Court wouldn’t consider it legal. Nor would courts in most of the countries where I have worked. There is no statute of limitations on murder, and the U.S. now had extradition treaties with almost every member of the United Nations. Harrington was risking the same nightmare.

  Gloves off.

  Well . . . if he was willing, I was willing. Besides, it was different this time.

  I took another look at the photo. It wasn’t a real casket. The box was smaller, with a towel for a pillow instead of crinoline lining. Black eyes stared at me. Rage—it was there. Unbroken. The boy was still battling the beast, even as the beast consumed him.

  Spirit like that I wanted to preserve, but I’m not naïve. If they had buried the boy, I doubted he would live for more than a few hours, fan or no fan. Carbon dioxide would build up fast—a kindness, possibly, because Will’s heart would survive a lot longer than his sanity if we didn’t find him. Judging from what I knew, the boy was wound pretty tight to begin with.

  For a moment, my mind drifted, trading places with the kid, and I felt a welling panic. How many days would I last in a box, mouth and hands taped, listening to my own heart beat in the relentless silence? Barbara Mackle had endured eighty-six hours, then continued to prove her heroism by living a full and stable life. But she at least had a small light, and her hands were free in a space large enough to roll over in . . .

  Enough. Concentrate, Ford!

  People died every second of every day. Will Chaser’s spirit wouldn’t save him, but I might if I collected the right data and reassembled it cleanly. Even if I failed, though, I would go after the Cuban. Didn’t matter where he went or how long it took. One day, Farfel would turn around and I would be there.

  I stood and stretched, taking a nonchalant look at the mansion, then the road. No traffic, no outside activity. I cleared the phone, then opened the message from Montbard. We had talked earlier so I knew it contained information I wanted.

  It read: Symbols—yes. Rituals—many. Connection—no, not for 150 years. Obligations—binding but benign. Covenant—sorry.

  I had asked Hooker to research Skull and Bones and comment on similarities, if any, between it and the Freemasons. Montbard’s family connection to the Freemasons dated back centuries. An ancestor had been a founder of the Knights Templar: André de Montbard, a rhythmic name, so it was easy to remember.

  Symbols and rituals—yes.

  I had been right. Skulls, aprons, all-seeing eyes: The fraternity used Masonic symbols and similar rituals. In Hooker’s opinion, there was only a historical connection, including obligations that he considered harmless. He had warned me, however, there might be information he couldn’t share.

  “Freemasons take an oath, you have to understand. We’re bound to it or we wouldn’t be Masons.”

  The organization’s covenant? Sorry. He couldn’t t
ell me.

  Good enough. Unless Hooker was party to some bizarre world conspiracy, Skull and Bones was just a college fraternity—powerful, yes, but it was not a sinister cult. That didn’t guarantee members weren’t capable of committing crimes, murder included, but it reduced the odds that they had participated as a group.

  It also narrowed the list of motives. Fear, greed or insanity: the big three when it comes to premeditated crime.

  I glanced across the road at the Myles estate, alone and aloof on a hundred million dollars’ worth of ocean frontage, and I narrowed the list to two.

  Was Nelson Myles scared, or crazy, or none of the above?

  Archibald Heffner had told police that Myles was at his winter home—Sarasota, I’d overhead him say—and was furious about us exhuming the horses. “Tell your boss he’s damn lucky Nels can’t fly back until next week. Maybe he’ll calm down by then.”

  Nelson Myles didn’t know it but he was damn lucky to be in Florida because I still believed the boy had been at Shelter Point Stables. Maybe still was. I would’ve preferred to question the man personally. Just the two of us, alone in this quiet place.

  I believed the kidnappers had been here because . . . why?

  One reason was Heffner’s reaction when I mentioned ground radar. The odd sensory experience I’d had holding the rock had something to do with it, too. Irrational, no question. Part of me found that amusing, but interesting. Tomlinson’s subconscious, I was convinced, assembled information so effortlessly, he wasn’t even aware of the process. Had my subconscious retained a data byte that my forebrain had discarded? It was possible.

  But there were also too much solid, intersecting data to dismiss as coincidence. At Dinkin’s Bay, JoAnn Smallwood, one of the live-aboard ladies, collects paradoxical lines. One was an uncomfortably good fit: Until I believe otherwise, I will act upon what I believe. Another one applied, too: I have no choice but to believe in free will.

  If I was right and found what I was looking for, it could lead me to Will Chaser. That was reason enough to enter the Myles estate illegally.

  I switched off the phone and pocketed it. No more interruptions.

  I walked down the ridge toward the mansion, pretending to study utility lines strung from pole to pole along the road. I was wearing a coat over new coveralls, a Yankees cap and a tool belt that jangled. Anyone watching would think I was a telephone repairman returning to work after a break spent dozing in the trees.

  To the moneyed class, and their staffs, utility workers are an invisible essential, like plumbing.

  An hour earlier, Tomlinson had dropped me in South Hampton where I’d rented a white pickup truck and bought a few things, coveralls included. Because there were tools and a ladder in the family’s machine shop, I didn’t need much else. On my way to the Myles estate, I had completed my costume by stealing two orange highway cones from a restaurant closed for the winter.

  It was now 10:45 a.m. The truck was parked along the road, near a utility terminal. One cone was behind the truck, another next to a miniature green silo that was a connecting block for area telephones.

  There couldn’t be many. Along this section of coastline, mansions had been built on dunes, far off the highway, with acres of space between. The Tomlinson estate was on the point of the peninsula, two miles down the road.

  “Nelson was practically our neighbor,” Tomlinson had told me, explaining why it seemed commonplace when his brother and Myles were both tapped by Skull and Bones.

  In an area this wealthy, maybe it was.

  The Myles mansion lived up to the billing. It was a medieval-looking four-story that resembled “country houses” on England’s North Sea coast, because that’s where it had come from, shipped over in the nineteenth century, and reconstructed block by block. It was sandstone and slate, with turrets and roofed porticos that would have been hidden by hedges and a forest of hardwoods if it hadn’t been January.

  Even now, it wasn’t easy to see. That’s why I had been on the ridge. A stone wall, head-high, surrounded the place, interrupted by iron gates at several entrances. The main gate and the service gate opened on electronic tracks. On the seaward side, wrought-iron gates exited onto the beach.

  To each gate was affixed a brass placard that read SHELTER HOUSE.

  Shelter House was a castle, not a fortress. Breaking into the place wouldn’t have been difficult after midnight, but it was before noon on a bright winter Saturday. At the staff entrance, two economy cars were parked near a Dumpster: resident caretakers. There was electronic security, including cameras at each gate, but the guard station at the main entrance was empty.

  Getting into the house undetected should be easy. Spending ten or twenty minutes searching the place without interruption would be more difficult. Local police knew me now. If I didn’t play it right, I would add to Barbara’s embarrassment by calling her from jail.

  I walked to the truck, pretended to put something on the front seat just so I could slam the door, then knelt by the terminal. I loosed the nut and slipped off the silo cover. Inside were dozens of brass connection strips, a maze of candy-colored wires and heavier rubber-coated wires. The candy-colored wires came from the main cable. The rubber-coated wires were for local use. Spend your life on the water, working with boats, either you learn basic wiring or you find a job inland.

  Only four of the connector blocks were in use. An installer had used tape and a Sharpie to ID each of the four wires running underground to the mansion. I checked them, one by one. Two had phone numbers written on the tape. Two were DSL lines for Internet access.

  I copied the numbers into a notebook, then put on gloves. Telephone systems use low voltage, but no one likes getting shocked. No normal person anyway.

  Using a crescent wrench, I loosened a nut and removed a green wire. With a needle-nosed pliers, I stripped several inches of insulation, then bent the wire so it made loose contact with the positive side of the strip. All four rows were now partially grounded. Phones inside the mansion might still be usable, but there would be a lot of static.

  Finally, I crossed the two DSL lines. No more Internet.

  There.

  I covered the terminal and crossed the road to the main gate. I pressed the intercom button and waited. Pressed it twice more before someone answered.

  “Shelter House, can I help you?” A woman’s voice.

  I said, “I think you’ve got trouble on the line, ma’am.”

  “What line?”

  Above me, a motor whirred, and I smiled up at a security camera. “Check your phone, ma’am. I’ll wait.”

  When the woman returned, she said, “Could what’s wrong cause my computer to go screwy, too? A couple minutes ago, the screen went blank and the whole system froze. I was on the Internet.”

  I had the notebook out, not looking at the camera, as I leafed through pages. “We’re not supposed to give computer advice. It’s some kind of liability deal. Let me make sure I’m at the right place before I say anything.” I read off the phone numbers I had just copied.

  “That’s us. They’re both unlisted, so we hardly ever get calls. It could’ve been out for days.”

  “Could’ve been,” I replied.

  “The kitchen phone sort of works, but the important thing is my computer. I was right in the middle of a project, using the cable instead of using the Wi-Fi. Damn it! Please tell me it’s the phone. I just spent three hundred bucks for a new hard drive.”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  The woman said, “I’ve got a term paper due and I’m screwed if the Internet doesn’t work.”

  Not a woman, a high school student, I decided, until she added, “I just made coffee. I can have it waiting.”

  No, a college student. High school girls didn’t offer coffee.

  I said, “There’s no reason for me to come inside if it’s your fuse box.”

  “Just for a minute, as a favor?”

  I said, “Well . . . if I’ve got your permission, I
guess it’s okay,” picturing myself at the police station answering questions. One of life’s simple rules: Never, ever lie to a cop. Speak even a benign untruth and he will suspect you of murder.

  “Thank you!”

  I stepped back as the gate opened, adding, “It’s not that I don’t want to help,” wanting her to understand that phone men could be nice but we weren’t easy.

  21

  Through the window of Nelson Myles’s third-floor office, I could sit at his desk and look inland at the ridge where I’d hidden in the trees or stand by the elliptical machine and face the ocean. Bathroom, dressing room and spa all had views.

  Wind gusted off the Atlantic, west to northwest. The beach was silver, deserted for miles, an unfriendly corridor where salt foam tumbled like tumbleweed and sand blew in veils heavy as snow.

  There was a loft. I went up the steps and found a bed covered with a Yale comforter, a Yale throw rug on the floor, Yale pennants and a Yale varsity jacket hanging on a hat stand. Big yellow Ys everywhere but on the bay windows. I was standing near the window when I saw a police car slow as it passed my rental truck. I watched the vehicle stop, back up, then the officer on the passenger side opened his widow. He was checking the truck’s license plate. Smart cop.

  I had been inspecting the jacket. Nelson Myles had lettered in golf—the man had to have been pretty good—but I let the sleeve swing free, concentrating on the squad car. Now the officer was getting out, hand on his sidearm but using it more as a support. A young guy who had hurt his back. A hockey player, I guessed . . . or maybe he’d moved furniture into a new apartment.

  I was taking out my cell phone as the cop looked into the truck’s bed, then put a hand on the bumper to read the license. Watching the man’s reaction, I switched on my cell phone, thought for a moment, then dialed 911.

  I needed more time.

  Until the squad car, things had gone smoothly. I’d had only a minute or two to look around the rich man’s office, with its pecky walnut library, its marble floors and fireplace, walls checkered with mementos, photos of horses competing with Geronimo statuettes and Yale for space.