The Shadow Artist

by James Grayson

  Miss Pinkerton folded her arms. “That’s not the way it works. You’ve got it all backwards. Transactions are filed by address, then you can look up the reference number.”

  Alex said, “What if we know the owner’s name?”

  Miss Pinkerton shook her head. “Still no good.”

  “Then how about this?” As a last-ditch effort, before Alex kicked in the records room door and started rifling through the files herself, she took out the drawing of Edgar and showed it to Miss Pinkerton. “This is the man we are looking for. Have you noticed him in here paying his taxes in cash? Or maybe seen him around town before?”

  Staring at it, she lifted her chin, squinted, held it as far as she could from her face, tilted her head, and said, “Nope. Never seen him in my life.”

  She dropped the drawing on her desk.

  Alex moved to explain to the old woman that her job was on the line just as a voice from behind them said, “Visitors?” It sounded like an echo of Miss Pinkerton’s voice.

  Alex turned to see a woman, who continued, “I’m Miss Pinkerton.”

  Feeling like they’d entered some sort of time continuum, a parallel universe or something, Alex looked back and forth between the two women and then at Jack.

  The first Pinkerton said, “Not just that. These two want to go rummaging about the filings.”

  “Do they?” Pinkerton Two said. “What seems to be the problem?”

  Alex explained the situation to her, in full this time, telling her about the offshore LLC and the name of RiverRock, yet she too stared at Alex, expressionless. Finally, she said, “Can’t help you there, I’m afraid. It would take days to locate a reference number or owner name in the files. Perhaps weeks.”

  Alex was about to insist they let them try when Pinkerton Two added, “Is that a mug shot?”

  “A police sketch is more like it,” Pinkerton One said.

  “Well, I’ll be mogadored!” Pinkerton Two picked up the drawing and studied it about an inch from her face.

  “What?” Pinkerton One said.

  “What?” said Alex.

  Pinkerton Two tapped the drawing and held it out. “This chap’s my neighbor!”

  The white sky descended, swallowing the horizon, and dumping endless shreds of white on the landscape. Reduced to a faint glow like a dying flashlight, the afternoon sun settled low and threatened to disappear altogether. Even though the address was only twelve miles from town center, the small roads leading to it were difficult to differentiate. It had taken them a full hour to find it.

  A long, wordless hour in the gathering blizzard.

  Having ditched the holster and tucked the SIG into the small of her back, Alex sat forward and scanned the property. The mound of a thatched cottage lay under a thicket of tall oaks far away from the other houses, and a wire fence bordered a thicker and taller iron fence at the home’s back. A small wooden barn edged the fence, near the shallow stream that cut through the field like a wide footpath. Overgrown grass reached through the snow and up the fence posts, suggesting a small amount of neglect or maybe recent absence of the owner.

  The whole scene reminded her of a series of winter landscapes she’d studied in college by Dutch painter Andreas Schelfhout. In short, the dull, dusky, and white-washed scene was no Thomas Kinkade.

  “See anything?” Jack asked.

  Scanning the windows, Alex shook her head. “Not a hint of light anywhere.”

  “Maybe he saw us on the approach.”

  “Maybe.” She turned and stared out the back window. “Did you notice that SUV before? The white one?” She pointed back up the road, where it forked to the north. The red glow of taillights turned and moved away.

  “I didn’t.”

  Alex stared at the lights as they disappeared, wondering if it was her father.

  Jack said, “Another neighbor?”

  “Maybe.” She kept her eyes on the blank horizon. “Let’s keep moving.”

  Jack spun back around and eased the Porsche forward again, parking a few feet from the cottage’s front entry.

  Alex popped open the door and shrugged into her overcoat as she got out. Her ears perked up in hyper-attention as they walked through the flakes on the stone walkway. The chalk stream slurped behind the house. No other sounds.

  Stopping next to her, Jack nodded at the front door.

  Alex stepped forward and, feeling her heart rate rise at the sudden thought of seeing her father again, she knocked. Nothing. Tempted to yell, open the damn door! She stopped and called, “Edgar?” Then, knocking harder, she called out to the second-floor windows, “Anyone home?”

  Jack said, “Stay here.” He trotted off into the yard and disappeared behind the corner of the house.

  Alex banged again, and tried the door just in case, but it was locked. Peeking through the window over a thick, snow-covered bush, she could make out a long wooden table and metal chairs in what looked to be a dining area off a kitchen. As she was looking around for a rock or something to break a window with, she heard a loud crack and a thump from behind the house.

  “Shit.” Alex hopped into the snowy grass and leaned low, one hand on the SIG, edging to the corner for a look. But the front door opened.

  “Here, love,” Jack called. “The back door was…open.”

  Dropping her aim, Alex spun back around. “Open?”

  “Well. It is now.” He smiled.

  “Two felonies in a day, Jack.” Shaking her head, Alex walked past him and into the house. “I’m impressed.”

  As Alex had imagined, the cottage was furnished with Old World items and classic European pieces, like the French pine table and black cast iron stove. A stone fireplace dominated the living area, with a pair of club chairs sharing a view of the snowy stream. She imagined her father sitting fireside, reading Dickens or Tolstoy, and drinking a few fingers of Scotch, neat. In her image he was lonely, regretful.

  Alex and Jack split up to look around, and a few minutes later he called from the kitchen, “It’s quite evident that he lives alone.”

  “Agreed.” Among the paintings, there was not a single personal photograph, framed or otherwise, anywhere in the house. She wandered into the kitchen.

  “He’s not exactly a gourmet.” He leaned back from the cabinets.

  Inside sat two boxes of the same type of Dorset muesli, two boxes of Carr’s whole wheat crackers, and two jars of Nutella. Nothing else. It made her sad for the man.

  “Or a connoisseur.” He opened the refrigerator. Two bottles of the same no-name Bordeaux were tucked into the bottom shelf. No perishable items, either, only ketchup, mustard, and some jellies. He nodded to the counter, where, sitting on a towel next to the sink, were a single fork, knife, dinner plate, and wine glass. The glass was spotted. Hand-washed and air dried, Alex thought.

  “Maybe he’s on a starvation diet,” Alex said.

  She opened a drawer. Empty. Then another. Silverware and napkins. Working her way through the kitchen and into the living area, she scoured for a clue, any verification that Edgar was the one who lived there.

  Jack searched the rest of the kitchen as Alex made her way around the house and upstairs. A long bed sat undisturbed, along with a thick quilt and one large pillow propped to the wrought iron headboard. Returning from the bedroom, she stopped at the top of the stairs and looked back. The room overlooked the front of the house, but seemed too small to be the only room upstairs. So what about the space looking out to the stream? She returned to the bedroom and looked for doors to an attic or eaves, but there was nothing.

  Alex descended the stairs and glanced at Jack as he flipped through every page of every book on the shelves at the back of the kitchen. A fine job of turning the place over. Interesting that he had that skill, too. She filed the information away for later. Behind him, a sliver of a doorway opened to a mudroom, where a set of waders hung in the corner, a fishing rod propped against them.

  “Strange,” she said.

  “You’re just n
ow having that thought?” He was leafing through a thick cookbook. As he held it up, Alex noticed the binding hadn’t been creased.

  She looked to the ceiling. “I think there’s a hidden room up there, but I can’t figure out how to get to it.”

  He smiled for a second, glancing at Alex as he set the book down. “Ahh.”

  “What?”

  “It seems the art of intelligence runs in the family.”

  “Not flattering.” She walked behind Jack and into the tiny mudroom. The ceiling reached no higher than in the rest of the house. There was nothing in the little mudroom but boots and coats and fishing gear. A small wooden bench was pushed against the back door to prop it closed since Jack’s kick to the lock had split the wooden frame.

  Alex knocked on the walls, listening for hollowing or echoes, but every wall sounded the same. She tried again, slower this time, and paused when she heard a deeper thump on the wall facing the kitchen. Knocking harder, she put her ear against the wall.

  “What are you doing?” Jack asked, standing in the doorway.

  “There’s something here.”

  “It’s probably just insulation or an old stone wall behind the sheetrock.”

  “Then why doesn’t the wall on the other side of the doorway sound the same?”

  “That’s where the water and gas pipes run?”

  Peeking behind the waders—no closet, nothing—Alex said, “And did you notice that this is the only room with wainscoting?”

  “I hadn’t.”

  “I think it’s an odd decorative choice for a mudroom, don’t you?” She moved the bench from the door and stepped outside. Sure enough, a small round window peered back from the second floor, and it was the only window in the house with stained glass. Alex frowned. She was wiry, but even her nine-year-old self wouldn’t have fit through that.

  She returned inside and moved the waders, then stepped back and compared that wall to the one on the other side of the door. With one hand flat against the wood, she inspected it from the ceiling to the floor.

  And noticed that one notch of wainscoting was thicker than the rest. Alex pressed on the thick panel, felt it give and come back, unhitching itself.

  “Well, well,” Jack said, as she pulled back the hinged panel.

  Tucked behind the door, a narrow spiral staircase extended up to the second floor. Just wide enough for a single person.

  “Why do I feel like I’m entering a Berlin safehouse?” Leaning in, Alex found a single bulb and pulled the string to switch it on.

  She ascended the stairs to the top, and looked over the lip of the ceiling and across the wood floor of the secret alcove. Smaller than most modern-day American bathrooms, the recess held a makeshift desk made of a thick slab of pine suspended by two file cabinets, a steel swivel stool, a corkboard wall stuck with papers and photos, and a box under the desk. Squinting, she continued higher to get a better look at the box.

  And stopped cold.

  Even in the dim light, she could see the item was not a box after all. It was a large metal briefcase, a Zero-Halliburton. And inside, spilling over the edges, were stacks and stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills.

  Twenty-Four

  Lockard was right. They’d led him straight to Edgar. Too bad the super spy himself wasn’t home.

  Nothing came easy these days, did it?

  That said, it had taken Lockard a mere seventeen minutes to traverse the stream, stash the Range Rover, and trudge back across the water back to the cottage. He hadn’t planned on a slop-op and was drenched from the waist down, his legs numbed by the cold water. He knew he had ten, fifteen minutes tops before frostbite set in, or worse, hypothermia. Still, he needed to be patient, to act with surgical precision. Lockard had the element of surprise on his side, but there were two of them.

  Standing at the edge of the iron fence and behind a bent oak, Lockard watched for movement inside the house. Of course it would have been easy for him to snipe them from this vantage. Just wait for them to move to separate areas of the home, shoot the first target near a window, wait for the second to investigate, and finish the job. With nobody within half a mile of the home, it would be undetected, too. About ten times easier than Baghdad.

  Baghdad.

  Ironic if you thought about it. The place was so damned poor, devoid of the world’s luxuries, yet that was where Lockard had found riches beyond a king’s ransom, a fortune worthy of a god. He’d orchestrated the grandest heist of all history. It made Oceans Eleven look like an ATM withdrawal.

  The memory of it warmed him while he waited.

  Najaf, Iraq

  One hundred sixty-eight kilometers from Baghdad

  Evan Lockard felt at home in the Blackhawk helicopter, surrounded by eight Navy SEALs dressed and painted in so much black that only their eyeballs showed in the moonlight. Having led three of them on a SEAL team dubbed Red Cell, Lockard trusted the other five to go along with today’s effort without question. People said marines were like brothers, but SEAL teams were more than that. SEALs were one unit, with one mind, focused on one mission. Having been weeded and sorted and chiseled into the finest of soldiers through BUD/S training, relentless testing and prep missions, these men were assembled not only by particular skills, but by their ability to become one consciousness together. An organism, as his own leader had liked to refer to Lockard’s first team. Normally, the mere presence of a CIA intelligence officer would be seen as an intrusion by the others. Their minds had been programmed to think one thought:

  Unless you were a SEAL, you could not be trusted.

  Good programming. Which was why Lockard, having been a SEAL, was critical to the success of the mission. He had handpicked this team. Gregory Pierce and the O’Doyle twins, Mark and Mike, had all served under him on Red Cell, and because today’s mission was a CIA directive, Lockard was in charge of the overall operation. Pierce trusted Lockard and the team trusted Pierce.

  A perfect chain.

  The Blackhawk descended to the brown grass and circled the half-toppled Baghdad palace—the former residence of one of the Hussein sons—as brown dust kicked up from the chopper’s blades, enveloping the men in a cloud. The O’Doyle twins stared at the playing cards displaying a photo of the supposed target’s mug shot. A nice trick by the CIA, putting the fifty-two highest value Middle Eastern terrorist targets on a deck of cards and assigning values accordingly. Of course bin Laden had been the ace of spades. Though now a member of what was known as ISIS, the Islamic State, today’s target was Akbar Say Naat Muhleen, Ak-Snot for short, the jack of clubs.

  In succession, the twins folded the playing cards back into their breast pockets and buttoned them closed. They were ready.

  They should be, Lockard thought. The team had planned the mission to the millisecond for almost three weeks. According to CIA (read: Lockard’s) intelligence, there would be eleven insurgents inside the palace, ten of whom would die for their leader, Muhleen, who was holed up in the basement. Of course Lockard was the only one who knew this was all untrue.

  The SEALs tipped forward to the edges of their seats, and Pierce stood and moved to the door. The twins followed, securing the rope and crouching on each side as the dust and wind whipped into the cavity. Then, like high-wire acrobats, the other men assembled and dropped out the door one by one until each of them, Pierce being the last to go, disappeared into the predawn haze. The pilot lowered the helicopter to the ground and stood ready to evac at the exact moment Pierce instructed.

  Earphones secured, Lockard waited, listening to the pop-pop of gunfire coming from inside the palace, picturing the men entering the compound and killing their way into the basement. They would not find what they were looking for, so they would clear the entirety of the palace first. When they were sure the mission had failed—at least in their minds—they would signal Lockard.

  So he waited.

  Less than three minutes later, he got the signal. “Secure, sir.”

  Removing the headphones, he no
dded at the pilot, drew his HK45 Compact Tactical pistol from a concealed hip holster, and shot the man in the side of the head, sending a splat of blood and brains across the windshield. Then, Lockard exited the Blackhawk into the darkness and strode across the crumpled grass. His heart beat fast, but unlike the others, it was not because of adrenaline for the unknown.

  His heart thumped in anticipation.

  After reaching a pair of towering and splintered doors, Lockard stepped into the gun smoke. Two bodies, both men’s faces torn open by point-blank shots, lay beside the entry, their arms and legs bent at awkward angles.

  Lockard stepped over one of the legs and entered the cavernous foyer. Lit by a single lamp from the corner, the gold-trimmed walls that remained intact from past bombings glittered. Following the path he’d suggested to the SEALs, and past two more fallen men, Lockard found a fifth body at the top of the basement stairwell with a single hole in the forehead. Clean and industrious. Lockard stepped around the body, and was taking the first step down when Pierce appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Down here, sir.” Pierce disappeared again.

  Willing himself not to bound down the stairs, Lockard descended to the bottom, entered the basement, and stopped before the men. Pierce stood at the front, with the other seven fanned out with their MP5s held at their sides. As planned by Lockard, one twin stood at each end. An oil lamp flickered behind the stoic silhouettes, making them look like an Orwellian nightmare.

  Looking around, Lockard said, “Where’s Ak-Snot?”

  Pierce glanced at his men and then at Lockard. “Target absent, sir.”

  “Absent or escaped?” Lockard asked, staring back at him.

  One of the twins stepped forward. Lockard thought it was Mark but he couldn’t tell in the dark. “There’s no evidence he was ever here, sir.”

  Lockard frowned. “Have you notified Camp Victory yet?”

  “No, sir, wanted you to hear it first.” Pierce paused. “Plus…there’s something else we think you ought to see.”