Frame 232 (36 page)

RYDELL WAS ON I-95,
halfway between his home and his office, nursing a fierce headache as he continued to hyperfocus on an escape plan that now had to be plucked from its tree well before it was fully ripened. Not all the money was tucked safely away yet. Not all the travel tickets had been purchased. For that matter, the itinerary hadn’t even been finalized. There were no bags packed, no disguises assembled.
I have to buy more time,
he thought, barely aware of the thickening traffic around him.
Somehow . . . maybe with Theresa’s unknowing cooperation . . .

What jarred him out of this trance was the mention of Hammond’s name on the radio.

“Billionaire Jason Hammond has finally reappeared on public radar, spotted when his rental boat encountered a Coast Guard vessel near Key West during the early morning hours. And while a Coast Guard spokesman is refusing further comment on the matter, Hammond is believed to have slipped through their fingers, and his whereabouts are once again unknown. A report filed by the Associated Press also states that Hammond was traveling with one other
passenger, an older Latino man whose identity is unknown at this time. . . .”

Rydell whispered one word
 
—
“Clemente”
 
—then took out his cell phone.

Theresa answered on the first ring. “Where are you?” she asked, clearly shaken.

“I’m on my way right now, but there’s traffic. Why? What’s going
 
—?”

“Director Vallick has been asking for you. He’s called three times and come by twice. I can’t hold him off forever.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll be there shortly,” he said.

He got into the left lane to take the first available U-turn.

Exactly forty-two minutes later, an enraged Peter Vallick burst into Rydell’s empty office with four FBI agents close on his heels and Theresa peering through the doorway with tears in her eyes. It would take another seventeen for this impromptu team to establish that many of Rydell’s most sensitive papers had been dumped into the building’s basement incinerator, and that a large and now-irretrievable portion of his computer’s hard drive had recently been erased. Both operations had been carried out without authorization.

Red-faced and screaming, Vallick ordered an immediate manhunt, and the FBI formally issued an arrest warrant for J. Frederick Rydell.

Rydell was already in his home, having entered through the back door so he wouldn’t be seen by his neighbors. He had a list of needed escape items on the computer in the den, but it was unfinished. He would now have to complete it on the
fly. He passed through the kitchen and went into the living room, where he turned on CNN. There were no reports that concerned him yet.

First
 
—cash.
Leaving the TV on, he went into the bedroom, parted the louvered closet doors, and knelt in front of the small safe. There were several stacks of banded bills on the top shelf, resting on a large envelope containing his Social Security card and birth certificate. A similar envelope on the middle shelf held a variety of agency papers that he was required to keep in the event of his death. There was also a DNA sample in a small vial. On the bottom was a handgun and a magazine, the latter separated from the former but fully stocked. Rydell grabbed the cash, the gun, and the magazine and slipped them into various pockets around his blazer. Then he shut the door and gave the dial a spin.

The next item on the list rolled out of his memory as effortlessly as the first
 
—
clothes
. He retrieved a large duffel bag from under the bed and began loading in handfuls of socks, undershirts, and underwear from the dresser. He went back to the closet for several pairs of pants, shirts, shoes, and belts. Then into the bathroom, where he gathered toiletries and several over-the-counter medications.

Next, disguises.
The bag, which was nearly full already, had to be carried into the basement. The space was unremarkable, with unpainted cinder-block walls, a maze of copper piping, and a single bare bulb in the center of the ceiling. There were several dozen cardboard boxes stacked by the water heater. Rydell moved box after box until he reached one with
Tax Receipts
 
—Nondeductible
written on the front with Magic Marker. He set the box down beside the duffel and unfolded the flaps.

He froze when he heard the screech of tires on dry
pavement outside.
They can’t be here already.
He took the gun out, rammed in the magazine, and went back up the steps. He made sure to stay low at the top, out of view.

Then the question presented itself:
If this does turn into a shoot-out, will you really fight to the death? Will you be able to take your own life, if it comes to that?
He didn’t know. An unpleasant mental image followed
 
—his bloody, bullet-riddled body, lying half on the living room couch and half on the floor, arms extended, one eye partially open, tie running down his shoulder. They’d take pictures for their official files, but a few would mysteriously make it to the newspapers and the Internet. It would be his fifteen minutes of fame, which was fairly ironic given that he had worked all his life to remain invisible.

He was surprised to hear the tires a second time, preambled by another uniquely automotive signature
 
—an engine being revved over and over, in progressively higher tones. He went to the front window and parted the blinds with one finger. The tires on the vehicle in question had drawn a long equal sign, wavy and dark, on the macadam. Farther up the street, two boys of no more than nineteen or twenty stepped out of a ’68 Plymouth Barracuda. Rich kids with too much free time and parents who couldn’t be bothered watching them. They went around to the rear of the car, inspected their handiwork, and traded enthusiastic high fives. Rydell fantasized about shooting them dead where they stood.
How much precious time did I just lose?
He slipped the gun into his jacket and went back downstairs.

There actually was some tax paperwork at the top of the box, but this was a diversion in and of itself. He tossed it aside and turned the box over, shaking the contents into the bag
 
—wigs and other false body parts, hats, eyeglasses, hair
coloring, skin toner, all of professional grade. Like everything else, though, this kit was incomplete, and he’d had no time to study up on how best to use it.

Identity.
Sliding back a tile in the drop ceiling, he groped about with one hand until he came upon another large envelope, this one containing a collection of false passports, birth certificates, Social Security cards, credit cards, and driver’s licenses. It would be difficult to travel without these and impossible to leave the country. Two of the personas were already active, tied to bank accounts in Switzerland, Singapore, and Morocco. He had made some progress with this aspect of his strategy, knowing it was the most delicate. Creating a fictional character who functioned in the real world required time and patience, which he’d had in abundance until recently.

Returning to the first floor, he made a conscious attempt to calm himself. What happened next did little to fertilize this effort
 
—CNN broke in with an alert about early reports of a trio of murders that had occurred overnight in different parts of the nation. Then another story
 
—possibly connected to the murders, according to the newsreader
 
—about a manhunt that had been ordered by the FBI for the assistant deputy director of the CIA. When Rydell saw his official agency photo appear on the screen
 
—not off in the corner but rather front and center, along with a phone number that “anyone with information that might be helpful” was urged to use
 
—he felt like he’d been hit in the chest with a railroad tie.

He slung the bag over his shoulder and went into the garage. It was as astringently bare as the basement, save for a car that was covered stem to stern with a blue tarp. He went to the front and peeled the tarp away in dramatic fashion,
revealing a stone-gray 2004 Chevy Malibu. Rust bubbles were beginning to form around the lower edges of the body, there was a soft dent in the front passenger’s door, and the previous owner had put a Washington Redskins sticker on the rear bumper. In other words, it was remarkably unremarkable, which was exactly why Rydell had bought it, with cash, three months earlier.

He threw the duffel into the backseat and got behind the wheel. The key was still in its hiding place above the visor, and the engine turned over without a fuss. Realizing he would need a disguise immediately, he stepped back out, removed his jacket and tie, and took a baseball cap and a pair of glasses out of the bag. He used the remote on his other set of keys to open the garage door. As it lifted, his heart began thumping again. He imagined a fleet of government vehicles screaming up the street to intercept him.

But the road was empty, so much so that it was downright eerie. Even the two motor heads had disappeared.

He pulled out and pressed the remote again, sending the door back down. As he navigated through the development, his eyes darted from place to place. He reached the exit gate, which was mercifully raised, and cruised out.

Once in the flow of traffic, he allowed himself to relax a little.
Still a long way to go,
he told himself, but he was pleased by his progress so far. What he required now was a diversion of some kind, something to throw the Feds off his trail for a while. The inspiration came to him, as so many had before, virtually on command. He leaned over and removed the cell phone from his pants pocket.

Birk answered immediately. Rydell felt him out first, trying to determine if he had seen any of the news reports and perhaps put the pieces together for himself. He hadn’t.
Then Rydell gave him his new orders. These would be the last, Rydell promised; then he could return to his gigolo’s life on the Gulf Coast
 
—and with an extra $100,000 to boot. That caught Birk’s attention, as Rydell knew it would. Unfortunately for the employee, the employer had no intention of carrying through on this part of the proposal.

Mere seconds after the call ended, two black Chevy Suburbans
 
—smoked windows all around and FBI without question
 
—appeared ahead, approaching with frightening speed. Rydell knew the rest of the script
 
—one would spin to a sideways halt in front of him, the other along the driver’s side. Then a dozen or so agents, weapons drawn, would jump out and surround him. The options at that point were fairly obvious, and the choice would be his alone: give up or go down in a blaze of glory.

But nothing of the sort happened. The Suburbans zoomed past, their engines roaring, and kept on going. It didn’t take an MIT graduate to figure out their destination. Rydell watched them vanish in the rearview mirror and exhaled deeply.

If his attention hadn’t been trained so pointedly on the Suburbans, he might have noticed the white Lexus SUV three cars back that had been on his tail since he pulled out of his development.