Father Night (27 page)

*   *   *

N
ONA WAS
playing “Wichita Lineman” on an iPod speaker dock, a modern gizmo she had bought, resting side by side with Frankie’s old-school cassette/CD player, when Fraine walked into the private room. Through the window, the meticulously manicured grounds of Bethesda Naval Hospital spread out in a showy display.

He stood just inside the door, watching her as she sat in the bedside easy chair, holding Frankie’s unresponsive hand. At least the music drowned out the metronomic hiss and sigh of the respirator that was keeping her brother alive.

“He loves Jimmy Webb,” she said. “Go know.” She always used the present tense when speaking about Frankie.

“And I like Kanye West.”

Nona’s laugh held a bitter knife edge.
She looks exhausted,
Fraine thought. He supposed nights with Bishop could do that to you.

“Any change?”

With infinite tenderness, she disengaged her hand from Frankie’s, rose, and came over to where Fraine stood. Then she recounted in detail what she had overheard in the men’s room of George’s Pentagon—that Bishop was for some reason tracking Jack McClure’s movements for the General, that they both knew about Alli’s abduction, that Bishop had Sergeant McNulty on his private payroll. “As if all that isn’t fucked up enough, this asshole General orders Bishop to take care of what he called loose ends,” she concluded.

Fraine’s eyes narrowed. “Meaning?”

“Vera Bard, if and when they find her.”

“We’ve got to make sure we find her first. Any ideas?”

“Well, there’s Stoddart,” she said. “He took Vera Bard’s statement, didn’t he?”

Fraine looked up. “You’re shitting me. This general ordered Bishop to kill a Metro detective?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

Fraine’s face broke out into a huge grin. “But this is fantastic news, Nona!”

“What? Stoddart is one of your own. How can you—”

“Don’t you see?” He grabbed her and swung her around. “This is how we’re going to bring Bishop down.”

Nona began to laugh as he danced with her to the beat of “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.”

“You hear that, Frankie?” she called. “Your sister’s gonna be free!”

*   *   *

“I
T LOOKS
like Bridges hung himself,” Paull said on the way over to the
Titanic
Memorial. “Broken neck, ligature marks are all consistent with suicide.”

“Was Dick depressed?”

“He was in counseling after he returned home from Moscow with Edward and Lyn Carson. He took the president’s death pretty hard. Then when Lyn passed away, and now Alli’s missing…” He spread his hands.

“Who was Bridges’s partner?”

“Lenny Betances. He’s currently on leave.”

“Where is he?”

“White-water rafting on the Snake River. Four days ago, according to the records. He’s due back in a week.”

“And where was Vera last seen?”

“Detective Stoddart took her and her statement up to see Bishop.”

“Then he has her.”

“No. Somehow she must’ve smelled a rat. She hightailed it out of there the moment he left his office.”

“She’s both smart and clever, but I still don’t like it,” Jack said. His mind was racing, fitting pieces of disparate information together. “Alli and Vera disappear, Dick is found hanged, and his partner is out of town.” He turned to Paull. “Here’s what I think happened: Alli’s been abducted, Dick was killed—”

“Killed?”

“It would explain Vera’s disappearance; she’s in fear for her life.”

“That would mean a cover-up at Secret Service.”

“Yes, it would.” Jack gestured. “Call your ME. Ten to one he’ll find bruises and defensive wounds on Bridges’s body.”

Paull pressed keys on his cell, spoke briefly, listened for a longer time, said, “Thank you,” and broke the connection. He looked at Jack. “On the money. It looks like murder.”

Jack nodded. “And what about Carson? Why isn’t he raising holy hell about his niece’s disappearance?”

“Since he hasn’t called or made a move, I have to assume that he doesn’t know. You can be sure Bishop didn’t tell him, and I sure as hell haven’t.”

“Good. Find a way to leak him the news about Alli and we’ll see which way he jumps.”

Paull regarded him with unconcealed skepticism. “You don’t seriously believe that he could have had something to do with her abduction.”

“I think Henry Holt Carson is capable of pretty much anything if it suits his purpose. Besides, there’s no love lost between uncle and niece, of that you can be certain.”

“You’d think—”

“But you’d be wrong. He resents Alli deeply because his own daughter is lost to him.”

“Idiot.” Paull thought of his own daughter, estranged for so long, who had come back to him with her young son, who he adored. “He should cherish her all the more.”

“Human psychology,” Jack said. “Its twists, turns, and distortions never make much sense in any rational way.”

They arrived at the memorial, which, Jack was pleased to see, was still cordoned off with yellow and black crime-scene tape.

As they got out, Paull’s cell buzzed and, standing by his car, he took the call, while Jack lifted up one section of the tape and entered the place where Vera claimed Alli had been abducted.

Jack stood in the center of the area and slowly turned in a complete circle. By that time he had created a three-dimensional map in his mind of where he was and where he needed to go. He began his search in the south quadrant, but there was nothing to see except dirt and the usual debris, which he sifted through on his haunches.

He thought he found something on the east side of the monument itself, but it turned out to be nothing. Having made the complete circuit, he closed his eyes and conjured up Vera’s recounting of the report she had given to Detective Stoddart. When he reached the part where she described Alli looking out of the Town Car door, he opened his eyes and went under the west-side tape. Fifty paces on, he stopped at a spot and crouched down on his hams. There were two dark drops, not blood as he had first surmised, but motor oil. His fingertip smeared the oil. Though Vera hadn’t made it clear, this was where the Town Car must have been idling when Alli was bundled into it. He continued his search in concentric circles, using the oil spots as a starting point.

As he went, he brushed leaves, sharp-edged gravel, and the odd crushed soda can away. That was when he saw something. He wasn’t sure what it was at first, so he started taking pictures of it with his cell.

He felt the kiss of cold against his cheek at the same moment he heard her:

W
axman.

“Emma. You know what this means?”

I know Waxman.

“Is he the one who took Alli?”

Having finished his call, Paull came up. “Looking farther afield?”

Jack, no longer sensing Emma, changed angle and snapped another shot.

“Bishop knows something about Alli’s abduction,” Paull continued.

At that, Jack stopped what he was doing and stood. “If Bishop knows, then this group you’re trying to follow is involved.”

“My thought as well.” Paull handed over his cell. “This fellow look familiar?”

Jack looked at the photo, shook his head. “Who is he?”

“Another member of the group. Bishop’s superior. His name is Gerard Tarasov. He’s a general.”

“Your group’s Secret Service connection?”

“Likely, isn’t it? I was just starting to get a line on him when I got the call about Leopard. Are you finished here? I think we’d better go back to my office to find out all we can about Tarasov.”

He gestured with his head. “What did you find?”

“Take a look.” Jack pointed. “You tell me.”

Paull stepped closer, then squatted down, peering at what Jack had uncovered. “Someone might have scratched something into the roadbed with a piece of this gravel.” He looked up. “But wouldn’t it be too hard?”

“Not here. The tarmac has been recently poured. It hasn’t fully hardened yet.”

“‘Waxman,’” he read. “It looks to me like graffiti. A gang moniker, maybe?” He rose. “You think it’s significant?”

“I do,” Jack said. “I think Alli left us a message.”

*   *   *

T
HE AIR
terminal in Tripoli was eerily quiet when Annika and Dyadya Gourdjiev arrived. Flying in, they had seen fighter jets banking, their trigger-happy pilots deep in electronic conversations with the pilot of the aircraft carrying them—a NATO cargo plane carrying relief supplies to the Libyan rebels. Once or twice the yellowish air was split by fluorescent lines of tracers, but the NATO fighter escort that had picked them up at the border kept them safe from harm.

Apart from their own hurried footfalls, the arrival hall was silent, eerily deserted. Outside, they were met by Bir Aziz, Gourdjiev’s agent-in-place, who ushered them into an armored troop carrier, bristling with machine guns fore and aft.

“Apologies,” Aziz said, “here this is the only way to get around.”

“What news?” The old man was in no mood for idle pleasantries.

“The ongoing civil war has allowed us to make some progress of late.” Aziz was a small, dark man, with a full beard, the nose and curious eyes of a hawk, and ringlets of black hair. A livid scar split his left cheek, which looked as if the underlying bone had been shattered and put back together in either a hasty or an incompetent manner.

“Ever since the chaos engulfed Tripoli, we have at last been able to infiltrate Gaddafi’s palace and residence. Before she ingloriously defected, the Syrian’s hacker expert had broken the Libyan encryption, so for weeks now we have monitored those communications. We know for an absolute certainty that what we’ve been looking for isn’t in Tripoli. In fact, it’s not in Libya at all.”

The armored carrier reached one of the many checkpoints set up throughout the city, and they could hear the driver’s tense, contentious exchange with the militiamen manning the checkpoint. Aziz lifted an assault rifle from its rack along one wall and checked that the magazine was fully loaded.

“The Syrian has provided us with the proper papers,” he said as he set the rifle across his knees, “but you never know.” He grinned. “Not to worry, worst case, we can blast any resistance to kingdom come.”

A moment later, the altercation came to an abrupt end, and the carrier lurched forward.

“It appears,” Aziz continued as he reracked the weapon, “that Gaddafi had advance warning of the uprising—enough time, at least, to move his entire fortune to a safer location outside the country.”

“Do you know the origin of the warning?” Gourdjiev said.

“Not definitively, but I have a gut feeling.”

“Please share it,” Annika said.

“The Syrian.”

The old man nodded. “It would be just like him to play both ends against the middle.” He nodded to Aziz. “So tell me, have you learned his whereabouts?”

“Alas, no.” Aziz clasped his hands together, as if petitioning Allah for continued life. “We intercepted only one message to him before the cipher was changed.” His expression turned bleak. “However, if the text is code, we haven’t been able to break it.”

“What is the mysterious text?” The old man said.

“It’s unpronounceable.” Aziz drew out a pad and pencil and quickly scribbled on the top sheet. The he spun the pad around so they could see what he had written:

KWIFA

“At first we assumed it was a simple rearrangement of the letters, but we ran it through the computer program and nothing it came up with made sense.” As he glanced from one to the other, he said, “Frankly, we’re stumped. Does it mean anything to either of you?”

They shook their heads.

Aziz grunted. “Pity the Syrian’s IT woman—what was her name?”

“Caroline,” Gourdjiev said. “No one seemed to know her last name.”

Aziz nodded. “It seems likely that she would have cracked this.”

“Didn’t the Syrian replace her?” Annika asked.

“Three times,” Aziz said. “Not one could solve the encryptions she had created, so the Syrian shot them.”

“Lovely.”

Aziz said, “I must be going. Is there anything else?”

“No, good friend. Be at peace, and may Allah bless you.”

“And you, as well,” Aziz said as he clambered out of the vehicle.

“If the Syrian betrayed us once, he’ll betray us again,” Annika said when they were alone. She was smoldering. She’d had just about enough of being knocked around by forces she could neither see nor attack. She was itching to take action.

Gourdjiev shook his head. “I think not. You misunderstand him.”

“I very much doubt that. He’s a businessman, first, last, and always. He has no interest in ideology; money is his religion.”

“Ah, darling, there you’re wrong, though this is what he wants everyone to believe. My guess is he leaked just enough to Gaddafi to receive millions from the grateful dictator.”

“But the money—”

“The Syrian has no interest in Gaddafi’s fortune.”

“Are you kidding me? Isn’t that what we’re in this for?”

The old man smiled indulgently.

Annika sat back in the uncomfortable metal seat, chewing over everything that had happened.

“What a partner we have!” she exclaimed at last.

“We have no partners,” her grandfather said, “not in any real sense, anyway.”

“But I thought—”

He patted her hand gently. “Pragmatism in all things, my darling, that is the first and most important lesson of the world we live in. Without pragmatism it is impossible to survive, let alone live to be my age. Without pragmatism it is also impossible to discern your enemy’s motives.”

“You know what the Syrian is really up to?”

“I do.”

“Then tell me.”

“Not yet.” He leaned over and delivered a dry kiss on her cheek. “I would not have you die young.”

*   *   *

V
ERA, HAVING
switched over to flat-heeled boots, black jeans, and a man’s white shirt under a surplus Navy peacoat, had no trouble finding the black Lincoln Town Car. Her father’s contact at Metro had been thorough as well as punctual. He had not only gotten the name the Lincoln was registered to, but he also was able to place its current whereabouts.