Frame 232 (30 page)

“Don’t insult me. You were selling yourself to the highest bidder. You know nothing about loyalty. Whoever provides you with the means to reach the next step on the ladder is your master.”

Diaz felt sick to his stomach. So much about this man was coming back to him.
He can see straight into a person’s soul.
“Just tell me what you want,” he said in a whisper.

“You will get in touch with some of your friends in Old Havana. Some of your friends from . . . your earlier days.”

Breathing was becoming difficult now. Diaz put a hand on his chest. “For what purpose?”

Rydell told him.

DAVID VOIGHT
stepped out of a conference room in the U.S. Department of Justice and closed the door gently so as not to disturb those who remained inside. An anonymous woman who worked elsewhere in the vast universe of this million-plus-square-foot building walked by. Voight mouthed a silent hello, then set off down the long corridor. He was in his early fifties, of slight frame, with steel-rimmed glasses and dark hair combed in the same respectable style he’d had since prep school. He wore his usual dark suit and tie and carried a leather portfolio in the crook of his arm.

He moved in a measured, purposeful stride, his leather shoes squeaking on the polished marble floor. When he started here six years ago, the noisy steps reminded him of his beloved basketball games at Cornell. But he was a veteran of the job now and barely noticed anymore. Like the hundreds of other federal prosecutors who worked in D.C., he had too much on his mind every day.

He turned left and started down a ridiculously wide staircase; his office was three floors below. He never took the elevator; the steps were healthier. He was in terrific shape
for his age and had every intention of staying that way. His father had been a boozer and a smoker and cashed out at the age of sixty-two, leaving David, his sister, and his mother nearly destitute. There was no way he was going to pass that legacy to his own wife and children. He felt great and never failed to thank God for it.

He reached the last step and turned right, down a carpeted hallway. At the far end, in front of his door, he spotted a man sitting on the sofa in the waiting area. At this distance, he could only determine that the man had gray hair and was wearing a tan overcoat. His first thought was that it was someone from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office. He’d been going several rounds with them lately, and they’d been sending people nonstop. Most came without an appointment, and his secretary had been making them wait in the hall as a kind of punishment.

As Voight drew closer, however, something about the stranger seemed familiar. Full recognition struck when the man realized he was being approached and turned.

“Oh, my goodness,” Voight said, a smile spreading across his face. “Can it really be?”

Henry Moore stood, wiped the wrinkles off his coat, and held out a hand. “Hello, David.”

“Mr. Moore . . .” Voight still could not bring himself to refer to the man by his first name in spite of Moore’s repeated urgings over the years. It just didn’t seem appropriate where former teachers were concerned. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “My secretary gave me your message, and I was going to get back to you this evening, from home. I didn’t know you were in the area.”

“I wasn’t,” Moore replied. “I flew in this morning. I haven’t even been to my hotel yet.”

Voight’s brow furrowed. “I’m sorry; you . . . you weren’t in town when you called?”

Moore shook his head. “No. Look, David, I need your help, and I need it very quickly.”

Voight suddenly realized something
 
—Moore hadn’t smiled back, hadn’t asked him how his folks were doing, hadn’t cracked one of his characteristically lame jokes. There was no geniality to the man. True, there were times when he could be bearish, particularly when he went into one of his tirades about the eroding ethics of the legal profession, tirades that Voight secretly held dear to his heart when he had been formulating his own career. But there was always that underlying paternalistic kindness that endeared him not only to the much younger David Voight but to just about every one of David’s classmates as well. That warmth was absent now, replaced by an unsettling nervousness that Voight had never seen before. “Is there something wrong?”

“Yes, there is.” Moore looked up and down the hallway. Then, evidently estimating that there were just too many people coming and going, he took Voight by the crook of the arm and led him gently forward. “Have you been following the stories in the news about this Jason Hammond fellow and the Kennedy assassination?”

“I’ve heard about it, although I haven’t been watching closely. Someone independently reinvestigates that case every week or so, and the government always ends up the bad guy. If I took the time to address every single accusation in that regard, I’d never
 
—”

“It’s all true,” Moore said, turning to face him. They had reached an elevator atrium where there was no one else in sight. “Every word of it. This Hammond is onto something.”

Voight stared at his old teacher with a touch of concern.

“I’m not losing my mind, David, if that’s what you’re wondering. Don’t think all this snow on the roof means I’ve gone soft up there too.”

The tiniest hint of a smile returned to Voight’s mouth. It wasn’t that he was reassured by the comment but rather that he found the folksy metaphor amusing. It was a welcome glimpse of the Henry Moore he had always known.

A herd of young lawyers, all without jackets, ambled by. They glanced curiously at the conversation taking place between Counselor Voight and some guy none of them recognized.

Moore waited until they passed, then led Voight into one of the waiting elevators. Once the doors closed, he said, “You know the girl Hammond is with? Sheila Baker?”

“I knew there was a woman involved. I didn’t know her name.”

“She’s a client of mine.”

“No.”

“She is. I was her parents’ attorney for years, long before she was even around.”

“Okay . . . ?”

“When her mother passed away, she left behind a key to a safe-deposit box that she opened in 1976. And do you know what was in it? A film she made of the shooting while she was standing in Dealey Plaza.”

“You . . . No. Mr. Moore, tell me you’re not serious.”

“Dead serious. She kept it a secret for the better part of half a century. Thousands of people have been looking for it. She was known as the Babushka Lady. I went on my computer and looked at the pictures of her standing there. It’s her, all right. I’m positive.”

Voight struggled to get his mind around the massive
reality of this. “Well . . . okay. That’s incredible. I mean, I won’t argue that that’s incredible. But why are you telling
me
?”

“Because Sheila Baker has been kidnapped, and someone in the government is behind it.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve talked to Hammond’s people in New Hampshire. I had to threaten them with a lawsuit, but they told me everything. When Sheila first discovered the film, she contacted Hammond because she was scared and didn’t know what else to do. She wanted to give it to Hammond and have him take care of it. But then someone else found out she had it too
 
—someone who was able to keep her mama under surveillance all these years just in case the film turned up in her possession. As soon as it did, a gunman was hired to try to eliminate the daughter.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean
 
—”

“The killer blew Sheila’s mother’s house apart by staging a gas leak. I saw the wreckage myself. And then the guy murdered a professor from Southern Methodist, an expert on the Kennedy assassination, who’d been helping Hammond. Apparently he had also been under surveillance for some time. Now this same lunatic has kidnapped Sheila. He grabbed her while she was on a train from D.C. to Boston. I’ve seen the security film from the station in Delaware. That’s where he got her.”

Voight was shaking his head. “I . . . I just don’t know what to say.”

“Who else could coordinate such an effort, David? Who else would have the power, the resources, or the motive?”

“What’s on the film that could’ve triggered all this?”

“A second gunman.”

Voight would remember the moment
 
—Moore’s simple delivery of information that would send a tremor across the world when it became public
 
—for the rest of his life. “That’s unbelievable.”

“I said the same thing until I saw the images myself. Hammond converted the film into a digital file some time ago. The second gunman doesn’t actually fire a shot. But he’s plainly visible with his weapon.”

“Where?”

“In the storm drain on Elm Street. Margaret Baker’s camera was the only one that caught him.”

Voight’s mind was swirling now. The enormity of it all, the implications . . .

“. . . on this.”

“What? I’m sorry.”

“I’m asking you to act on this and to do it immediately. Sheila Baker is being held against her will by someone in this government. I’d bet my reputation on it. I’m asking you to launch an investigation right away. She has to be found.”

The residue of doubt still clung to Voight’s thoughts, but it was eroding rapidly. He had known Henry Moore too long, had become too convinced of his thoroughness and seriousness, to go on thinking this was folly. If Moore believed some hidden entity in the government was involved, then Voight would treat it as fact. “Do you have the film with you? Or at least do you have access to it?”

“It’s on my cell phone.”

Voight reached over and poked the button that would take the elevator to the top floor.

“Where are we headed?” Moore asked.

“To see the attorney general.”

HAMMOND LEFT
the sidewalk and turned down a quiet corridor between two small apartment buildings. His untucked silk shirt fluttered as a welcome breeze blew through the crushingly hot morning. Stopping at the steps of a service entrance, he guided himself into a sitting position like an arthritic old man. His eyes were red and watery, the lids impossibly heavy. He was badly in need of a shave. And he could not halt the tremor in his hands
 
—a sign that he was short on both nutrition and rest. His nose had not been broken the night before, but it had swollen a bit and still throbbed like mad. Two teeth had been loosened. Above all else, though, he prayed he hadn’t suffered a concussion. His head was still pounding, but it was hard to take particular notice of it when everything else ached too.

He leaned against the wall even though it was filthy, as were the steps, the tiny landing at the top, and the weather-beaten door. He took several deep breaths, staring forward with a dead man’s gaze. A child’s inflatable ball, strikingly red in contrast to the dull tones of its surroundings, rolled by. It was chased by a boy of no more than five or six, deeply tanned
with a cherubic grin. Neither the child nor Hammond took much notice of the other.

Hammond removed a notepad from his breast pocket. He flipped to the first page and reviewed the entries. Each one, rendered in his careful print, had been crossed out. Same with those on the next page and the next. The cancellation lines had become progressively darker and deeper as his frustration grew. He’d spoken with nearly sixty people, given out more than five hundred dollars, and believed he was no closer to finding Olivero Clemente than before. He hadn’t paid for information, he now realized. He had paid for
mis
information. Every person with whom he’d spoken had been deceptive. For all he knew, he had already walked past Clemente’s home, maybe more than once. He was becoming familiar with the area through sheer repetition, learning the lay of the land. But he wasn’t learning what he needed to know most.

He put the pad away, pulled up his knees, and set his head down on his arms. Everything ached: every bone, every muscle, every tendon. He had never felt so used up. He’d had trouble sleeping again, and not just because of the physical pain or the dreams. The call and ensuing legal threats from Henry Moore had rattled him. Moore, Noah reported, clearly did not think much of what he called Hammond’s “reckless hobby.” That hurt for reasons Hammond still didn’t fully understand, although it nagged at him. No progress had been made where Sheila was concerned either.

Every time Hammond thought about this, he felt sick to his stomach. No, he rationalized, he wasn’t the one who kidnapped her. Nor was he the one who blew her house to pieces or tried to shoot them both.
But am I responsible for all of it nevertheless?
It was this moral question that plagued him, and when he finally felt as though he was approaching
an answer, he backed away from it simply because it wasn’t one he could live with.
Yes, you are. If you had insisted she go to New Hampshire on the first day, she would still be there and still be safe.
And what of Ben Burdick? Every time the guilt started eating into him about Sheila, thoughts of Ben came in tandem.
Gone forever. And before you reentered his life . . . maybe he was a wreck of his former self, but at least he was alive.

He tried to drive it all out of his mind. He’d done this many times before but could never sustain it. The guilt kept hammering away.
Maybe it really is time to give up,
he thought. He was coming unglued both physically and emotionally. Sheila was missing; Ben was dead. There were people in government, both good and bad, ready to pounce on him as soon as they had the chance. There was also Sheila’s lawyer, who had him in his crosshairs and was madder than a rattlesnake.

And he was no longer making progress. The trail
 
—if it could really be called that, in light of Moore’s opinion of his pursuits
 
—had gone cold.

Hammond closed his eyes and began to piece together an exit strategy. The first step would be to go back to the hotel, pack his belongings, and wait until sundown.
Then I’ll call Noah and make my way back to the boat. After that, I’ll have to
 
—

The church bells that suddenly began ringing in the distance caught his attention not because of their ethereal beauty but because they sounded hauntingly similar to those in the church where he used to attend services less than a mile from his family estate. In fact, Hammond realized with a chill, they were identical.

His head came up, the eyelids peeling apart, and he tried to pinpoint the source. It certainly wasn’t far. He got to his
feet somewhat clumsily and resumed his route down the alley. By the time he reached the end, the bells had stopped. Two blocks farther on, however, he saw a tiny cathedral that stood alone at the end of a weedy, spider-cracked parking lot. It was a boxlike structure made of white sandstone that had become grimed by age and neglect. There were two red doors set into a broad archway and a three-segmented bell tower with a gold crucifix on top. He stopped at the front, wondering if the place hadn’t been altogether abandoned. Then he saw that the door on the right was open a crack. He pulled it the rest of the way open, the hinges groaning, and stepped inside. The door eased to a close, enveloping him in darkness.

The odors came first
 
—ancient dust, tired wood, rotting books, and incense. Then, as his eyes adjusted, familiar shapes began to emerge. There was a pile of fraying hymnals stacked on a table. A once-beautiful tempera painting of Jesus hung at a forward angle, rippled by the tropical heat and discolored along the bottom by what appeared to be water damage.

He crossed slowly into the nave. The velvet carpet was worn to near transparency. Pews no longer possessed the luxury of uniformity, as many had undergone repairs of varying skill. Some of the chandeliers had broken shades, and most of the stained-glass windows had mismatching or altogether-colorless patch spots.

As he moved down the aisle, he thought about some of the people he’d seen since his arrival
 
—not just those he’d spoken with but others he’d noted in passing. There was a group of boys playing volleyball in a street, the “net” nothing more than a length of rope. They were all alarmingly skinny, even for young boys. A tiny woman of great but indeterminate age had shuffled up to him, her withered features like the skin of a dried apple, and openly begged for money.
When Hammond gave her a twenty, she rubbed her cheek against the back of his hand like a servile dog. And his sadness toward the countless prostitutes who seemed to populate every street mellowed into pity when he was told by one of the taxi drivers that most of them were, in fact, college students in need of extra money
 
—not for drugs or liquor, but for school supplies that the government failed to provide.

As he drew closer to the front of the church, he began to see things that weren’t really there. The three polished caskets, lids still closed, resting on their wooden biers and surrounded by candles. In the far reaches of his mind, he wondered if he would ever be able to enter a church again without conjuring this image. In spite of it, he willed himself forward. Just like in the dreams, the lids began to open slowly, and the waterlogged corpses sat up and reached out to take hold of him. . . .

Then he was there, in front of the altar, in the precise spot where he stood each time the nightmare came to its violent end. He looked up at the huge crucifix suspended on two thin wires, gazed into the eyes of the suffering-Christ effigy.

Then a voice broke the silence.
“Puedo ayudarlo?”
Can I help you?

Hammond turned like a trapped thief. The man who stood there was small but well built and dressed in a priest’s casual vestments. He was older but still appeared to possess much vitality. The cleric came forward, studying Hammond with benevolent curiosity.

“I apologize, Father,” Hammond replied in Spanish. “I didn’t mean to trespass.”

“That is okay,” the man said. His voice was so powerful and resonant that it seemed odd coming from someone of his size. “All are welcome here. I am Father Núñez.”

He held out his hand, and Hammond took it. “I’m Jason Hammond.”

Núñez nodded. “You are American.”

“Yes. I am . . . visiting. I heard the bells and wanted to see what the church looked like inside.”

Núñez’s bushy eyebrows came together in puzzlement. “Bells? What do you mean?”

“The bells in the tower, I heard them just before. That’s what led me here.”

The priest seemed to consider the idea for a moment, then shook his head. “No bells have been rung today. They are only rung on Sundays, before mass.”

Hammond couldn’t decide if this man, whom he had never met before, was kidding or not. But Núñez’s expression did not change, and Hammond intuited that he was not the type of person to joke about such things.

“The bells weren’t ringing just a short time ago?”

“No. I would know this. I am the bell ringer here.”

Hammond watched him for another moment in a final search for signs of trickery, then turned his eyes back to the massive wooden crucifix. “Is there another church in this area?”

Núñez laughed. “No,
señor
. It is hard enough keeping this one. My country’s government is not exactly sympathetic, you understand.”

Hammond nodded absently.

“Are you okay?”

“Hmm? Oh . . . sure.”

“Why don’t you sit down, and I will get you something cold to dr
 
—”

“No, no. Thank you.” Hammond turned and began walking away. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“Mr. Hammond, please,” Núñez called out. “You do not need to go.”

But Hammond did not turn around. He went out the door and crossed the parking lot without looking back.

He called Noah as soon as he left the church property to let him know the search was over. The older man tried to talk him into carrying on, but it was a halfhearted attempt, and they both knew it. The news from home hadn’t changed. Still no word from the police, no word from Sheila herself
 
—when Hammond finally conceded the fact she might already be dead, he had to struggle to keep from vomiting
 
—and Henry Moore yelling into the phone every time Noah tried to talk to him.

Hammond took a few bites of a room-service sandwich, then slept until the dreams forced him awake. As soon as darkness fell, he jammed everything into his bag and went out. Thinking about the real-life nightmare that awaited him back in the States numbed him. After paying his bill in cash, he traversed the lobby of the Hotel Parque Central and exited through one of the side doors. He paused to make sure his phone was on and fully charged, then tucked it in his pocket and started toward the rear of the building, away from the traffic-clogged Neptuno Prado y Zulueta.

He reached the corner and crossed into a quiet residential neighborhood; the street noise from the heart of the city grew fainter with each step. Then, seemingly from nowhere, a stranger appeared. It was a young man of perhaps twenty-two or -three, dressed in dirty jeans and a plain T-shirt. He had a cigar box in his hands and was holding it up to Hammond, smiling eagerly.

“Americano rico, mire, por favor. Esto es lo que quiere.”
Please, wealthy American, look here. This is what you want.
He said this quietly and was being watchful of his surroundings.

Hammond had been offered contraband cigars several times before, along with a variety of liquor, narcotics, weapons, and cheaply pirated pressings of popular CDs and DVDs.

Without breaking his stride, Hammond tried to wave the kid away.
“No, no
 
—déjeme en paz.”
Leave me alone.

“No, esto es lo que quiere,”
his antagonist insisted.
This is what you want.
Then he added,
“Mire, por favor.”
Please look.

Hammond took a deep breath, stopped, and glanced at the box as the lid was lifted.