by Ken Fite
Jami was becoming frustrated and sighed heavily. “Then what are you suggesting?”
“I’ll call it in. Landry will get some Bureau guys over there to claim the body and figure out who he is.”
“No,” argued Jami. “I already sent the image to Morgan. I’m having him ID both of the guys already.”
“Metro PD will be swarming all over that place, if they’re not there already, Jami.” Chris turned to Mark Reynolds, who nodded in agreement. “It’ll be all over the news, and that could tip off whoever took Blake.”
“Chris is right,” said Mark. “We should call it in. If Metro PD gets there first, this will get ugly real fast.”
Jami’s phone started to ring, and she reached into her pocket to fish it out. “It’s Morgan,” she said and looked back up to Chris. “Go ahead and call Landry. Explain to him the situation with Simon Harris and DDC. Tell him what happened, but tell him he’s got to keep this between us—he can’t go to May about it.”
Chris nodded as Jami’s cell continued to ring. “Morgan,” she said and stepped toward the front door.
“I think I’ve found him, love,” he said as Jami turned back to look behind her and saw Reed across the room, talking on his phone, as Mark and Charlie stood together, studying the image on the monitor.
“Are you sure?”
“I think so,” the Chicago DDC analyst replied. “I was able to reposition one of the joint agency satellites when you first called me, so I had it taking snapshots of the area already. I was able to pinpoint the parking garage based on your phone’s GPS when you called. I located the garage and went from there.”
Jami’s heart started racing. She heard the sound of rain starting to come down hard outside. It hit the window next to the door, forcing Jami to press the cell harder against her other ear to hear him better. “Where is he?” she asked and placed her free hand to her forehead as Morgan typed in the background.
“Four miles north of you, love. Thirty-four ten Garfield Street Northwest, about fifteen minutes away.”
Jami nodded to herself.
“Hold on a sec.” A few seconds of silence passed. “Bloody hell,” he finally said.
“Morgan? What’s wrong?”
“The satellite’s refreshing every ninety seconds, Jami. Another vehicle just showed up at the location.”
“What kind of vehicle?”
After a few more seconds of silence, Morgan said, “It’s too dark; the picture’s grainy. But I’m positive that the vehicle I’m looking at right now wasn’t there a few seconds ago. It’s parked right behind the first one.”
Jami got the attention of the others and quickly filled them in on everything that Morgan had told her. Then she put Morgan on speakerphone so they could continue the discussion with the rest of the team. Morgan cleared his throat. “Okay, guys. The vehicles are parked in front of the building at Garfield. I’m going to need you guys to come in from the south. Actually, hang on a sec.” Morgan paused as Jami heard the sound of typing again as she raised the volume on her phone so they could hear him better. “Got it. You’ll want to come up Fulton Street and approach from Thirty-Fourth. Yes, I think that would be best.”
Jami was still concerned with the second vehicle that had arrived at the building. “Any way to figure out where that vehicle came from, Morgan?” she asked and looked up at the men all huddled around her.
“I can try, love. It took me a while to locate the first vehicle because of the way this satellite is refreshing and because there are still a lot of cars out tonight.” He thought about it some more and added, “I’d say the first priority is to get over there before it leaves, and we can get a plate number so I can run it for us.”
“Okay,” said Jami. “I’ll call you back from the road, and you can talk us in as we approach the building.”
Jami disconnected the call and began planning the next steps with Chris and Mark. The team decided that Jami would lead them into the neighborhood, with the Bureau guys following close behind. A bright flash of lightning lit the window by the front door, closely followed by a loud crack of thunder a second later. The lightning strike and accompanying thunder were so close that it put all of them on edge as they realized that the storm was getting worse and the conditions were less than ideal to perform a tactical operation. But they had no time to wait it out, and the team got ready to leave for the address immediately.
“Stop short of the building,” said Mark as he and Chris moved closer to the door. “We’ll pull Chris’s SUV behind yours and pop the hatch to shield us from the rain so we can make our final plans and get ready to move in, okay?”
Jami nodded as Mark turned to Chris. “We have enough gear for all of us, man?”
Reed thought about it. “We should be good.” He turned to his left to look at Jami and started to share the news that had just been given to him from Bill Landry, but changed his mind, deciding to hold off for now.
Charlie Redding moved past them, grabbed the doorknob, and twisted it. When he pulled the door open, the sound of rain engulfed the entrance to his home as the two Bureau agents brushed past him and Jami.
They headed outside, carefully jogged down the steps, and turned left to get to their parked vehicle.
Jami turned to look at Charlie before heading out into the storm herself. “Thanks for your help.”
Redding kept a hand on the door and nodded. “Get him back, okay?”
Jami extended her hand, which Charlie clasped, and the two smiled briefly as Jami maintained eye contact with the man. “I have to,” she replied over the sound of the rain. “There’s still a lot left to be said.”
TWENTY-NINE
I FELT THE sensation of someone slapping my face repeatedly, trying to wake me up, while shining a bright light in my eyes. As I opened my eyes, I remembered where I was and immediately felt pain in my wrists as my limp body hung from the ropes. I slowly stood to relieve the pressure as the light continued to shine in my eyes, and I closed them and looked away, trying to understand what was happening to me.
“Time to wake up, Mr. Jordan,” a man said as he grabbed my face and forced me to look at him.
The light moved from my face to his, and I had to blink several times to get my eyes to adjust. A young man stared back at me as he held the flashlight at the bottom of his face, creating shadows over his eyes as the top of his head remained darkened. The man looked like he was in his early twenties. He kept a stoic demeanor and just stared at me blankly for several seconds before he let go of my face and stepped back.
“Who are you?” I managed to ask, breathing deeply and still feeling drowsy as I tried to stay focused.
He smiled, dropped the flashlight, and started to pace around me. He circled me once before answering.
“My name is Dimitri,” he said with a Russian accent, confirming what I already knew—that my past was finally catching up to me as the words of the man I killed six months ago echoed inside my mind. “Dimitri Ivanov,” the man added, putting emphasis on his last name as he completed a circle around me.
“Ivanov,” I whispered to myself, trying to process what the young man had just said.
“Six months ago, my father—Nikolai Ivanov—attempted to put a stop to your government’s surveillance of the people of my country. And he would have been successful if it hadn’t been for you stopping him.”
“Is that what this is all about?” I asked the young man. “I killed your father, so now you want to kill me?”
I heard him laugh to himself. “But the truth is, Mr. Jordan, that he never really could have stopped that surveillance program. In his mind, bringing down that NSA substation hidden in plain sight in New York would have put an end to the American government’s program—” he paused briefly “—but you and I both know that’s not how it works. Another substation would have gone online and taken over. You can never fully stop a powerful force like the American government. No, the only thing that is effective is violence.”
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“But not just any kind of violence,” he continued, ignoring me. “It must be focused, unconventional, like the attack on nine-eleven. My father’s intentions were on target—but it was his approach that was flawed.”
My eyes were adjusting, and I could see the outline of a man in the far corner of the room. I imagined that the other one, who had injected the hallucinogenic earlier, was somewhere behind me. I watched Ivanov continue to pace the floor, circling me slowly and stepping around the body of the man I had killed earlier.
“I will tell you what I want from you, Mr. Jordan,” he said as he came around my right, stepped closer, and crouched down on the floor in front of me. “I want you to bring my father back to me by daybreak.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied. “Your father is dead. He was killed in the explosion at the top of the TITANPOINTE building in New York six months ago. He didn’t survive.”
Dimitri brought the flashlight to my face, and I turned away. “My father is certainly not dead, Mr. Jordan.”
The man let his words hang in the air before he lowered the light and began pacing again. I turned as he came around me again. “If he wasn’t dead,” I said, my eyes following him as he moved, “I would know.”
“I would have thought that someone in your position within the government would have known better,” he replied. “You are, after all, a senior advisor to the president—are you not?” When I didn’t respond, he said, “At the very least, I would think that someone with your background would acknowledge that your country has underground prisons for so-called terrorists that are presumed to be dead. Men and women detained in facilities hidden far away from the public’s view. ‘Black sites,’ as your government calls them.”
I shook my head. “Black sites don’t exist anymore. President Rouse terminated the CIA program well before leaving office. You’re kidding yourself if you think your father is being held inside one of them.”
Ivanov stopped again, reached inside a pocket, and retrieved a cell phone. The light illuminated his face as I watched his thumb flick across the screen several times before he held the phone up for me to see. Staring at the screen, I studied an image of a bearded man wearing an orange jumpsuit. I focused on the eyes of the man and felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I looked up at the man’s dark face. “Where did you get that?” I asked as I realized for the first time that Ivanov might be telling me the truth.
He pulled the phone away from my face and shoved it back into one of his pockets. “Mr. Jordan,” he said, this time remaining still, his dark outline visible to me as my eyes readjusted to the room, “my father had many contacts within this country’s government. Friends, I would call them. A few held positions within the intelligence community. When I learned the news about what had happened to my father in New York, I was saddened, until I received this picture,” he said, keeping his hand on the phone inside his pocket.
“I’m not going to help you,” I said, dropping my head and feeling weak as I felt my body go limp again. The ropes cut into my wrists, but I didn’t care anymore. I was getting used to the pain. “I’ll never help you.”
Dimitri laughed again. “Mr. Jordan, I told you that my father has friends—supporters—in government positions. So it should come as no surprise that I know everything about you.” He took a step closer, and as I looked up, he grabbed my face and held it straight. “I’ve read your file. I know about your friendship with President Keller.” He paused before adding, “I think I may know you better than you know yourself.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What are you talking about?”
I sensed that the man was now smiling. “The woman—Agent Davis—I know everything about her, too.” He let go of my face as I found my footing and stood taller. “Of course, none of this is in your file. I had to rely on my people on the inside to fully understand who you are and what matters most to you. It’s always the girl, isn’t it, Mr. Jordan? The women we want that we know we can’t have. The women we want to protect.”
I gripped the ropes, squeezing them tight as a rush of adrenaline surged through me. “You son of a bitch.”
Ivanov laughed. “That’s right,” he whispered. “The feeling you have right now—anger, vengeance, like you’re not in control anymore—use it like I have.” He paused and added, “My people on the inside, they know even more about her than they know about you. They know exactly where she is at any point in time. You have until dawn,” he said, slipping the phone into my pocket. “And if you decide not to comply—” he grabbed my throat and squeezed, gripping it tight as I struggled for air “—I’ll go after the girl. Understand? And before I kill her, I will explain to her that you had a chance to stop it from happening.”
I watched as the man in the corner of the room approached quickly and whispered something into Dimitri’s ear. As he left, Ivanov said, “Your people are on their way. They will be here in five minutes.”
“I don’t know where your father is.”
“Ask your friend President Keller. He’s been lying to you, but knows the truth. You have until daybreak.”
THIRTY
AFTER IVANOV LEFT, followed by the man guarding the door and the other guy who had been lurking in the dark somewhere behind me, I waited alone, expecting agents to arrive at any moment, as Dimitri had suggested. The storm that I had heard battering the building just a few minutes earlier seemed to be moving out. All I could hear now was a light sprinkle against the windows near the front of the building.
I waited, scanning the dark and thinking, until finally the front door was kicked in and three figures entered, each with tactical flashlights shining their path as they stepped inside and approached quickly. One broke off and moved to the left, another to the right, as the third one headed straight for me, illuminating my face briefly before the light checked each of the corners of the large room surrounding me and then stopped on the dead man at my feet. I heard the voice of Mark Reynolds as he got closer to me.
“Clear,” he yelled, his deep voice echoing throughout the large empty room. I heard Chris and Jami repeat the word as they came into view and shined their lights in my direction, joining Mark as he fished a knife out of a pocket. He set his light on the floor as Chris and Jami lit my wrists to help Mark see.
“Blake,” said Jami with a gasp as she raised her light to my chest and kept it there. I looked down at my shirt and saw a splattering of blood. “Are you okay?” she asked as Mark cut through the first, then second rope. I grabbed my wrists and massaged them. She approached and put her arms around me and held me.
“I think so,” I replied, wincing in pain from my hurt arm as it adjusted to its new position after being held upright for so long. I wrapped my other arm around Jami as Chris shined the light on the dead man.
“Who’s this guy?” asked Chris as he turned the body over, studied the dead man’s face, and got his answer. “Looks like one of the guys Redding showed us,” he said, and I knew that he had visited Charlie.
Jami shined her flashlight around the old, abandoned building as she tried to understand what she was looking at. “What is this place? Looks like it’s been deserted for thirty years,” she said before turning back to me. “I went to your friend’s house, Blake. Charlie Redding—he had an image taken from the CCTV footage you asked him to get. The two people talking to the homeless guy were the man you killed back at the parking garage and this guy here,” she said, looking at the body of the man who Chris had turned over.
The three of them moved their flashlights around, checking out the building. My eyes were starting to adjust to the light as I looked around, trying to understand why it was abandoned. Mark turned to me. “Blake, what’s this all about, brother?” he asked, knowing that the chances of the guy on the floor being able to tie me up by himself were slim and wanting to understand what had happened before they arrived.
Before I could answer,
I noticed Jami pulling her cell phone from a pocket. The screen was illuminated, and I could tell that she had an active call in progress. Jami held it up, and I asked who was on the line.
“Morgan,” she said, and I realized that he had likely helped her and the guys find my location.
“Morgan, can you hear me?” I asked, making sure that the DDC analyst was still on the line.
“I’m here, mate. Glad you’re okay.”
I nodded to myself and paused to collect my thoughts before I began. “What I’m about to share with you all must stay between the five of us,” I said and looked at Jami before turning to Mark and Chris to make sure that I had their agreement. They nodded as I put a hand on my hurt shoulder and held it there for a moment, deciding where to begin. “Nikolai Ivanov—the man who was killed at the NSA substation in New York six months ago—” I paused briefly and looked each of them in the eye “—the man is very much alive.”
“How do you know that, Blake?” asked Chris, the question that I knew the rest of the team shared.
“Because I just came face-to-face with his son, Dimitri Ivanov. He was here less than five minutes ago.”
Silence filled the room. A few seconds later, I heard the sound of typing coming from Jami’s cell phone. “Listen, mate,” said Morgan. “I’m looking in our database, but not seeing anything on a Dimitri Ivanov.” He paused. “And, Jami, the other two guys that you wanted me to ID, they’re not in the database, either.”
“What does he want?” asked Mark as Jami handed my phone back to me, and I slid it in my back pocket.
I thought about how to answer, weighing the pros and cons of sharing what I knew, given the threat that Dimitri had made against Jami. “He said that his father survived the explosion at the NSA substation back in New York and is being detained at a black site,” I replied. “And I have until daybreak to get him out.”
“A black site?” asked Jami. “I thought President Rouse shut them all down before he left office.”
