Rising Phoenix (46 page)

He eased the Cherokee to the side of the road, trying to figure out why he was being pulled over, finally
deciding that it must be a brake light or something equally trivial. Even the widely heralded Mark Beamon couldn’t have identified him that fast. And even if he had, he wouldn’t send one lone cop to pick him up.

Hobart examined the police officer as he stepped from his cruiser and began walking toward his car. Too
slow,
he thought watching the man’s gait. He also noticed the fact that his right hand wasn’t swinging as he walked. It was being held unnaturally close to his gun.

That just wasn’t normal. He was a middle-aged white male in an expensive automobile. This guy should be cool as a cucumber.

Shit.

He reached between the driver’s seat and console and pulled out a .45. He slid the lever back and switched it to his left hand, where it would be out of sight. The cop was close enough now that he could see his nervous expression reflected in the Jeep’s side mirror. His grip tightened around the gun as the cop came abreast of his open window and crouched down, bringing his face level with Hobart’s.

“FBI’s on to you Mr. Hobart. A lot of us are behind what you’re doing.”

With that, he stood and walked back to his cruiser. Hobart sat silently, watching the cop’s stiff stride. He looked like he wasn’t entirely sure if he was going to get a bullet in the back or not.

The cop slid back into his car. His engine roared loudly as he pulled into the street. Hobart sat and watched the car as it grew smaller and smaller, finally turning off onto a side street and disappearing into a landscape of mountainous piles of black coal.

“
L
ooks like he does okay,” Mark Beamon commented as the elevator door slid open. The decor in the hallway that stretched before them was understated, but reeked of wealth. It didn’t seem to reflect the man that they had come to see.

“Nice vase.” Beamon stopped to admire it further. “My mom used to love this stuff. Had a house full of it when I was a kid.”

“I don’t think that one’s in your price range,” Laura said, continuing down the hall. They were already five minutes late for their appointment.

“Hello, can I help you?” the receptionist asked as they approached.

“Yes, I’m Laura Vilechi, and this is Mark Beamon. We’re here to see Reverend Blake.”

She nodded, appearing not to recognize Beamon’s name. She looked like she was used to powerful people dropping by. “Go right in.”

They walked through a beautifully etched glass doorway and into a large waiting area dominated by flowering trees. The air smelled fresh and sweet.

“Hello, I’m Terry, the Reverends personal secretary You can go right in. Can I get you some coffee or perhaps some tea?”

They politely declined.

“It’s nice to meet you, Reverend,” Laura said graciously, extending her hand. “I’ve seen your show.” Beamon knew both statements to be lies.

“It’s nice to see that our law enforcement officials know the Lord. I imagine it’s difficult not to become cynical and hard—the things you must see.” He turned to Beamon. “And you’re Mark Beamon. I recognize you from your photos.” They shook hands.

Beamon examined the Reverend carefully. Blake’s expression was the serene mask required of men in his profession.

“Please sit down. So what can I do for you today?”

“We’d like to get some information on a former employee of yours. A John Hobart,” Laura said.

Blake laced his fingers together and laid his hands on the table. He seemed to be deep in thought. “No, I can’t think of a single thing that I haven’t told you.”

The two agents looked at each other, confused. Blake elaborated. “In my meeting with Agent … Martinez, is it?”

“Let me get this straight,” Beamon started slowly. “You’ve had an FBI agent in here recently asking about Hobart?”

“That’s right. You didn’t send him?”

“When did you meet with him?”

“Just yesterday, actually.”

Laura broke in. “Could you describe him.”

“Sure.” He paused. “About thirty-five, I think. Very
well dressed. Slight Spanish accent. Not Hispanic—Spanish. I’d peg him as a European. He said his name was, uh, Alejandro I think. Alejandro Martinez.”

Beamon shook his head, a thin smile on his lips. The
cartels are smarter than the whole goddam FBI.

“Do you know where Mr. Hobart is?” Laura asked.

“No. As I told Mr. Martinez, he’s probably at his house. I can have Terry pull his personnel file if you like.”

“We’d appreciate it.”

Blake leaned back in his chair, looking around Laura. “Terry!”

She peeked in the door.

“Could you copy John Hobart’s personnel file for me please.” She disappeared without a word.

“Just a few more questions, Reverend,” Beamon said. “We’ll try not to take up too much of your time.”

The questions took less than a half an hour but had still been a complete waste of time. Like Hobart’s neighbors, Blake knew very little about his old employee. Personal interests, friends, hobbies. No one seemed to know the first thing about John Hobart.

“We really appreciate your time, Reverend. We know how busy you are.” Beamon shook his hand. Laura was already out the door.

“Anytime, Mr. Beamon. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

Beamon strode purposefully across the office. In the doorway he stopped and turned around.

“Oh, I almost forgot, Reverend.”

“Yes?”

“Did this Martinez tell you why the FBI was looking for John?”
Blake’s jaw clenched slightly. “No. No he didn’t.”

“Thanks, Reverend. It was nice meeting you.” He hurried off to catch Laura, who was standing at the elevator, jabbing at the DOWN button.

Laura maneuvered the car through the thick traffic, leaning down over the steering wheel so that she could read the street signs hanging from the traffic light wires. She seemed to never be able to remember which street took them back to D.C.

“Oh, he’s in on it all right.” There was a note of happiness in her voice.

“Why?”

“Too cool. Not curious enough. Did you notice he didn’t even ask why we were looking for Hobart? Besides, it would take some serious cash to get an operation like this off the ground.”

“What if our mystery agent—Martinez—told him why we were looking?” Beamon tested.

“He still would have asked something about the case. Especially when we didn’t know who Martinez was. I mean, come on. He’s got the infamous Mark Beamon sitting in his office, and he doesn’t even bring up the CDFS. Please.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. It’ll be hell to prove, though.”

Laura flipped on the radio to a news station. It was playing the tail end of a report on the President diverting millions of dollars to drug rehab clinics and away from enforcement programs. Beamon ignored it. It was the same story they’d been running all morning.

“He really did it, though,” she observed. There was
something in her voice that made Beamon a little uneasy.

“What?”

She looked over at him. “What do you mean, what? He’s damn near killed the coke and heroin trade in the U.S. And the few people who are still using are trying to get help.” She pointed to the radio to punctuate her remark. “How much have we spent over the last ten years—and never gotten close to what he’s accomplished?”

“I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t even know …”

Laura’s voice softened a bit. “Yeah, me neither, but I’ll bet it’s a hell of a lot. Time and money that could have been spent better somewhere else.”

It was something that he had been struggling with for months. The pro-CDFS arguments, hawked by the media for their sensational, audience-grabbing effect, rang true more often than he liked to admit.

The constant media coverage, with its thoughtful sound tracks and high-tech graphics, had been very effective in desensitizing the public to the carnage associated with the CDFS’s actions. In his opinion, the coverage was more to blame for the public’s increasing support of the CDFS than the DEA’s leak of drug-use statistics.

And now the number of deaths had dropped dramatically. All that was left was fear. But when he captured Hobart, that fear would disappear. He would go back to Houston and the drug users and dealers would let out a collective sigh of relief. The lines at the rehab clinics would disappear, and twenty thousand people would have died for nothing.

There were only two things keeping his heart in the investigation, Beamon knew. The thought of his nephew rotting in the ground, and the fact that he couldn’t bear letting John Hobart get the better of him again.

It was just barely enough.

His thoughts were interrupted by a breaking news story. Laura leaned forward and turned up the radio.

“We have a report that the FBI has put out a statewide APB in Maryland for John Hobart in connection with CDFS activity. He is described as a forty-year-old Caucasian male with short dark hair. He stands five foot eight and weighs approximately one hundred and fifty pounds.”

Beamon reached to the dash and turned the radio off.

“Man, that was fast,” Laura observed.

He just shook his head and dialed the cellular phone anchored to the floor. He put it on speaker.

“FBI.”

“Carol? Hi, it’s Mark.”

“How are you, Mr. Beamon.”

“Oh, you know. Could you patch me through to Tom Sherman?”

The phone went dead for a moment, then began ringing.

“Tom Sherman.”

“Hey, Tommy, you watching the news?”

“Yup.”

“Who won the pool?”

There was a pause and the sound of shuffling paper.

“Looks like Laura did. Six hundred and thirty-five dollars.”
Beamon looked over at her and scowled. She flashed a wide smile and gave him the thumbs-up sign.

“Do we have that press release ready?”

“It went out an hour ago. Hobart’s picture will be on every TV in the world in a few hours.”

“And we’ve got our men in place.”

“Yeah. A mouse couldn’t get out of the country without our knowing it. The SAC’s aren’t too happy about it, though. We’re draining off a lot of their manpower.”

“Fuck ’em. Let ’em complain to the President if they don’t like it. See you in an hour.” He reached over and disconnected the phone.

“So you’re sure he’s going to skip the country?”

“Probably. Too many people looking for him here. And it’s not just us, it’s every drug dealer and addict, too. Europe’s the way to go. Nobody’s too mad at him there.”

“Getting him at the airport’s going to be tough. He’ll spot our guys the minute he walks through the doors,” Laura said.

Beamon shrugged. “I’m sure you’re right. Hobart didn’t get drummed out of the DEA ’cause he was stupid. He’s not going to just waltz into an airport when he knows we’ve got guys crawling all over ’em.”

He leaned the seat in the car all the way back. Staring up through the skylight, he pulled out a cigarette. “If I was in his position, what would I do?”

He didn’t light the cigarette but just let it perch between his lips. Laura had made it clear that if he ever lit another one in the car, she’d put it out on his scalp. They remained silent for almost a half an hour. A few
minutes from the J. Edgar Hoover Building, Beamon sat upright so fast that the seat belt caught, snapping him back. “Jesus, how much more stupid could I be?”

“What?” Laura asked anxiously.

“The question isn’t what I would do in John Hobart’s position. It’s what would I do if I were John Hobart.”

She failed to see the difference.

“That’s the ball game,” Robert Swenson said with a hint of relief in his voice. He and Hobart were sitting in his apartment above the warehouse that they had been using as a base of operations for the past two months. Both were intently watching the news report on the television in front of them. On the screen, a computer-generated image of Hobart’s head was slowly rotating. After each full revolution, minor changes were made—hair, eye color, facial hair They matched his elaborate makeup jobs surprisingly well.

“Looks like it,” Hobart agreed. “I’ll call our guys in the field and tell them it’s time to pack it in.”

“Where are you going to go?”

Hobart shrugged. “Don’t know. Somewhere where I’m getting a little less press. Can you stick around for a day or two? I can’t imagine they have anything on you—and I could use the help wrapping things up.”

“They’re looking for me, though. I doubt that they missed that I quit the church right after you did.”

“Oh, they’re looking all right. But what will they charge you with when they find you? Getting tired of your job?”
Swenson let that sink in for a moment. In the end, he decided that staying on would be less dangerous than leaving Hobart in the lurch. He knew better than to cross him. “Okay. I’ll stick around and help you wrap things up—then I’m out of here.”

“Good. Why don’t you call our people and tell them to go home. I’ll figure out a way to get rid of the orellanin.”

“That ought to be a trick.”

They were both driving rentals now, having dumped their cars in a manufacturing plant’s expansive parking lot. Swenson was trying to picture how Hobart would get the large metal storage drum into the trunk of a Subaru.

“I’ll figure something out,” Hobart said, rising. “With a little luck, we’ll be out of here tomorrow.”

Those were the words that Swenson had been waiting to hear. It seemed they’d been at this for years. He turned back to the television and watched Hobart’s disembodied head spin slowly around. It was somehow entrancing.

Less than two miles away, Alejandro Perez was watching the same program while he carefully tucked his clothes back into his suitcase. Luis wasn’t going to be happy, but he would just have to take it like a man. With Hobart’s identity public, the chances of finding him before the FBI were a million to one.

He pressed hard on the top of the suitcase and latched it. His first-class flight to Bogotá left in an hour, and at this time of evening, the traffic was unpredictable. He didn’t want to be stuck in Baltimore for another night.