“You’re telling me that an aging television show host broke past two highly-experienced field agents? They were so surprised by his audacity that they both up and died of heart attacks at the same moment? And then he escaped the secure site without a trace?”
“We checked the building. The only prints were his. No one else came in or out. There are only three cards that unlock that floor. Two were still in the dead agents’ pockets. I have the third. That’s it.” As if he hadn’t spent the last dozen hours trying to find another answer before he’d been called to Chicago O’Hare to meet Richards’ plane.
The elevators were fixed, the concrete rooms and bodies gone. An up-and-coming law firm had been informed that a space had suddenly opened in the prestigious Aon Center and would be built out and available in five days at an inviting discount. The crews were already hard at work on the renovation. If Jeffrey Davis returned, there would be no evidence of the floor’s prior state.
“And you were . . .?”
“In an elevator riding up from the lobby with Lieutenant Andrews for the next round of interrogation. After he cut . . . after the elevator cables were cut, we dropped three stories before the automatic brakes caught. We dangled in the shaft for an hour and half until they got us out. Someone had locked the elevator roof hatches on every single elevator car, from the top.”
Richards went silent and furrowed his brow looking even more sour and dangerous than usual.
Mark looked around to distract himself, not that there was anything to see. This agency didn’t exist and Richards did his best to emulate that philosophy. The office was a small cubicle of smoked glass. There was no desk because there was no paper. A laptop rested on a swing arm of the wheelchair, just above his lap. At a keystroke, the smoked glass walls lit up. Images of the dead agents. Photos of Phillip Peterson, Jeff Davis, and a video loop of the latter kneeling over the former’s body.
The glass cube was aboard a Boeing 737-400, purchased from a small Asian leasing company by a non-existent holding corporation. Thirty agents could work in sound-isolated cubicles in the cabin and a war could be run from the black box room in the hold.
Director Stephen Richards, “The Troll” behind his back, sat in his immaculate Brooks Brothers three-piece pinstripe and pulled the strings that sponsored civil wars and toppled governments. No one even knew who he reported to. Or if he existed in a wholly autonomous world of his own. Questions were discouraged, strongly. Millions, probably billions of dollars slid through this room as smoothly and untraceably as Jeffrey Davis had departed his fifty-sixth floor prison.
“He had outside help.”
He refocused on the director’s dark eyes. “No sir. At least no traces. The only prints we lifted were his. Both rooms, the monitoring console, elevator, both the door to the roof elevator motors and the parking garage door. No car went in or out, but his prints are there. We secured the building claiming a terrorist anthrax threat and did a room-to-room including all machinery spaces. It gave us cover time to repair the elevators. He simply isn’t there.”
A few more keystrokes and three addresses appeared on the wall.
Boston, Commonwealth Ave.
New York, West 81st
New York, St. Regis hotel
“We checked those immediately, sir. Nothing of interest. Truly nothing. The Boston apartment, not a very nice one. His hideaway from an awful marriage. We don’t know why he kept it after he was rid of her. West 81st is an incredibly luxurious apartment. A maid service had cleaned it. The service said his guest room had been used, only by one person, but all traces were gone. They’d changed and discarded their vacuum cleaner bags by the time we caught up with them. The St. Regis reservation was in the name of Phillip Peterson, but he never checked in.”
“Davis’s apartment was clean?”
The high whine of the plane’s engines starting up sounded in the room despite the sound-proofing. Mark had hoped to be reassigned before the plane took off. Anywhere away from The Troll was safer. His luck was holding steady. Steadily bad. Though it could have been worse. Jeffrey Davis had taken out two good men while escaping from a maximum security setup and left no trace of how he’d done it. If he’d arrived a minute or two earlier, he’d probably be lying in the morgue beside them.
“Truly clean. White glove cleaning service. Nothing there.”
“Where did he keep his weapons? His operational kit?”
“Other than a first-class set of cooking knives, there was nothing. No handgun that we could find. No permit to carry registered in New York State or Massachusetts.”
The Troll pushed aside the laptop and glared at Anders until he could feel the sweat soaking his armpits. The fact that Richards was a wiry little shit of a man who Anders could snap like a twig right in his wheelchair made no difference. Anders shifted his feet.
“Nothing?”
“Swept it myself, sir. No storage unit. No unaccounted for rental of other spaces. Not even a safety deposit box. No stray key or scribbled combination code that we couldn’t account for. Joe Normal Cooking Guy. That’s all we found.”
“Anders. We are discussing the first man that Lieutenant Colonel Peterson went to when we bombed his house. We’re talking about first contact by one of the most dangerous people on the face of the planet.”
“They hadn’t communicated, at least not in any way we could trace, since Davis precipitously departed EMS twenty-seven years ago. Not a single letter or phone record, though we’re working on it. Nothing unusual that we could find.”
“There were two Petersons.” Richards pulled his laptop close again and a dozen shots of an attractive older woman appeared on the wall, a petite woman beside a lumbering oaf of a man. One image, the footage of the final cooking show, ran forward in real time.
The colonel flopped to the floor like a dead fish. Jeffrey Davis vaulted the counter with an agility that surprised Anders every time he watched it. Pretty damn good shape for an old fart. Then him kneeling beside the dying colonel. The petite woman moved into camera range and knelt on the soon-to-be corpse’s other side. The crowd bumped and jostled them. Then they looked into each other’s eyes and she rested her hand on his chest.
“Do these look like people who haven’t been in contact for three decades?”
CHAPTER 25
Anders watched the video of the show for several seconds, had already watched it a half dozen times, and damn Richards for being right. Damn him for catching what Mark had missed.
“Shit! She and Davis look as if they slept together last night and were going to screw again as soon as the camera stopped rolling.”
“Crude but accurate.”
Anders bit his tongue.
The Troll could order a South American coup without breaking a sweat, but was still a stickler for the niceties of language. He was a psycho. One who terrified every man-jack in the whole organization.
“We can presume the brother used the guest room and that the woman did not.”
Maybe Anders wouldn’t mention that Davis’ bed hadn’t been used. After all, the cleaning company had stated that the couch had seen more use than usual.
“If Peterson came to Davis, then Davis must be more than he appears. Special Ops background? Does he have a team that we don’t know about?”
Now it was The Troll’s turn to look unsure. He attacked the keyboard once more.
“He doesn’t have a team, he’s not even on any of the rosters since a few weeks before the final fall of Saigon in ‘75.”
“Could he have gone black?”
The plane started rolling. It never came to a gate, so it never had to wait for pushback. It even had its own access stairs in the tail section. It was more secure than Air Force One by several times. For one thing, it was rarely on the ground over an hour, usually refueling in flight. For another, when down, it was guarded by a force as elite as the
President’s personal Secret Service detail, and they didn’t have to worry about looking all nice and friendly for the media. These guys were just plain nasty. Mark hated every time he had to survive their inspection to get aboard.
“If he went black, he was a solo.”
So Davis had no team. An A-team of a dozen would be normal. Or even a jed team of three. The only ones who went solo were snipers. And solo in that case always meant two, a shooter and a spotter. Truly solo was atypical beyond reasonable credence, despite the thrillers. The Day of the Jackal just didn’t happen in reality.
And there was no solo in Special Operations Forces. In addition to any field team, they always had a home team of intel, planning, PSYOP, and recon. The damn chef hadn’t even been Special Operations Forces in ‘Nam, at least not on the record. It was impossible to imagine. Anders had watched the cooking show a couple times. The guy just didn’t have the look.
That The Troll was upset about it was another odd factor. The whole operation didn’t make sense. A drunken TV show host was a black-op Special Operations Forces soloist with no recorded history? Not possible.
“Security tapes?” Command snapped back into Richards’ voice.
This was the moment that Anders had been dreading. He held up a standard one gig USB thumb drive. Bright blue.
“We found this in the back of the surveillance laptop. The site had Level C security, no outside connections. No backups. The entire time period of the incarceration and the escape was recorded on a single laptop. There was no interruption of the time clock. But this is the only image during the five minutes of the escape.” He handed over the small device.
“You can plug it into your system, it’s clean now. We removed the program that inserted its code into the surveillance gear.”
Richards inspected the “clean” tag carefully, the one by his own people. Then he pulled out a small cable from a slot on the arm of his wheelchair. It connected to a machine watched over by the most aggressive anti-virus routines ever created. For three long, sweaty minutes, the machine considered the input. The Troll didn’t speak and Mark wasn’t sure he could if he had to.
The center of the left hand wall cleared and they both turned to watch the developing image.
“One clear print on it. Jeffrey Davis. A tiny bit of skin-scraped DNA along one edge of the clasp was his also.”
A blind-folded Davis was escorted from holding cell to interrogation. The four quadrants of the screen showed the four surveillance cameras simultaneously: holding cell, the hallway, and two views in interrogation.
Davis sat unmoving at the steel table, his forehead resting against the top. Could have been asleep to all appearances.
Then, starting in the holding cell frame, Elmer Fudd dressed in a bearskin and wearing horns like an opera hero, stalked onto the screen with a shotgun firm in his grasp. He was repeated within moments across all four cameras on the screen until each quadrant showed identical views of the fat-cheeked cartoon. The theme from Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyrie” roared from the corner speakers as Elmer broke into song.
“Kill the wabbit. Ho-yo-to-ho.”
Anders braced himself against the wall as the plane started its takeoff roll and did his best to not be ill.
CHAPTER 26
Amanda Peterson rested her elbows on her desk and rubbed her temples. What should she deal with first?
Twenty project folders were ranged about her desk. Every single one had been labeled with the crash priority that her secretary was required to let through. So, that system was no longer working since every single EMS team abused the purpose of the crash code to get their question to the top of her pile including two from Phillip’s people. There had to be some way to control the science teams without being buried alive beneath the paperwork of their requests.
Her e-mail was even more ridiculous. She’d been gone four days and had over three hundred messages that had escaped her spam filter.
Then there was her third option. She glanced at the envelope resting across her keyboard. A standard number ten. Sealed, ready for mailing. Too slender for more than a single sheet of paper. Rather than an address, a smear of Phillip’s sloppy writing. Her fingers could feel no impression of blue pen upon white paper as she traced over the cursive she knew better than her own. She closed her eyes against the pain. It was a cursive she’d never see written new again. “Last Will and Testament — P. Peterson.”
The fourth and last priority, and in reality the highest of all, was represented by a single word text message to her phone. A number known to four people in the world, now three. Damn. How many reminders would there be of Phillip’s loss?
Text message. Right. Her mind was shooting off in every direction.
“Done.”
No other acknowledgment. No reference. Just the word, “Done.”
Jeffrey Davis extracted from Chicago and safe.
Done. Medium-well. No, rare. He was a one-of-a-kind, and a part of a past she’d been over and through with until the moment she’d stepped into his living room. A shrine in her honor, no, in their honor. Both masculine and feminine, exquisitely combined. From the masculine “his” chair, Chesterfield red leather with the steel and halogen floor lamp, to the feminine, plush “her” wingback with side table and Tiffany lamp. But close enough to share the same footstool. At the window, a chocolate brown love seat made for two with a view of the New York skyline and Long Island beyond. His library covered an entire wall, it even had the rolling ladder on the brass rail. He’d built a room she could slip into and never leave.
Done. That was all over and done twenty-six years ago.
Now she was in a cluttered office that had once been an extra bedroom. She fought to keep paperwork to a minimum in EMS, and still there were mounds of it on her desk, side table, and the two chairs that had once upon a time been foolishly empty when she’d needed to offload some files. The only art on the walls were family photos, few enough of those, and none recent. Her office window looked out over the rocky Maine coastline, the air chill and damp even in mid-summer.
She’d pulled in a favor rescuing Jeffrey. A big one. One she’d take a lifetime trying to pay back and never could. Worse, she’d never be allowed to. A request that had earned her no more than a monosyllabic reply.
“Done.”
Jeffrey was safe, but there was little more she could do about it at the moment. He would have to cool his heels where he was. There were too many problems extracting him and too many risks. They were risks she’d not have dared face if she’d had time to think, far worse than the ones covering her desk.
Amanda moved to the window and let her eyes look to the distant surf pounding against the rocky shoreline of Penobscot Bay. She loved the soothing roll of the Maine coast. The seasons as they’d rolled on and off and beach with unceasing perseverance.
Getting sentimental there, Mandy. Better go easy.
Mandy, only Jeffrey had called her that. She had never been one to invite nicknames. Not that she disliked them, they simply never appeared. Phillip, the Horse, Mr. The Wall Tall . . . Phillip had acquired them the way some people acquired t-shirts with foolish sayings.
But Big Bro was gone now and Little Sister, her only other nickname to survive the test of the years, missed him horribly. In her mind she couldn’t stop picturing Phillip’s death. The genuine shock on Jeffrey’s face. Her hand traced down her cheek and found the spot where their cheeks had touched. Where, for one brief instant in that horrible day, their tears had mingled. An instant in time that she’d felt safe in the midst of death and madness.
Then there were the two men who had hauled Jeffrey away. She knew the type. She knew by the way they moved that—
In three strides, she crossed to the door that led to the next former bedroom. It was little bigger than her own, a desk, a couple chairs, and a throw rug.
“Clarice?
We need to scram in twenty-four. Hours not days.”
Clarice looked with a start from the mounds that covered her desk. Her long, blond hair completely covering her face. She scrabbled at it then tossed it over her shoulder a fistful at a time.
“Shit! You know, I was afraid of that.” She pointed to a row of half-filled boxes lining the wall.
“Can do it in twelve, hours not days, if you need to, boss. Already gotta good start and I warned the others to prep when I saw the news clip.”
“You’re the best, Clarice. Nailed it in one. Make it twelve.” They’d be gone with no sign within half a day. Which, with Clarice’s efficiency would be more on the order of six or eight hours. It was time to move their small administrative section of EMS to somewhere new. Somewhere that didn’t have four years of using the same address.
“You should be named Radar.”
“Pass.” Clarice was typing rapidly on her computer as she spoke. “Too dated. That’s your gen’s metaphor, not mine. Koyuki, now there’s a savvy for you.”
“Koyuki?”
“Wicked cute blond, almost as cute as me. Clairvoyant and curvy. Of course, she’s only clairvoyant about the bad shit. And why she bonds to Umehachi? He just a total loss of a twerp. She could have anyone she wanted, but the stupid little twit has power, not his cute brother.” She glanced up from her typing long enough to see the blank look Amanda could feel on her face.
Clarice rolled her eyes at her boss’ denseness but kept typing.
“Koyuki?” Amanda knew she was only making it worse, but she couldn’t stop herself in time.
“Kuyou Koyuki. Manga? Japanese comics?”
“Ah.” Definitely a different generation.
“I can go get it from my room if you wanna read. Haven’t packed it yet. Isutoshi, he’s the mangaka, is pretty good. Has a couple of porno series too, good ones. The Tende Freeze story is over and done so you can read the whole thing.”
Swap Out! Page 10
