State of the Union (5 page)

G
ary Lawlor spat the blood from his mouth, looked into the eyes of Helmut Draegar and said for the third time, “Fuck you.”

The large, stone room, with its out-of-date furniture, empty filing cabinets, and antiquated communications consoles, was cold and damp. From the little Lawlor could remember of being transported here, it was someplace deep underground. Estimating the probable amount of time he had been incapacitated by the Taser, Lawlor figured they must still be somewhere in Berlin, or just on its outskirts. Often, he could hear a faint, but distinct rumbling, like jackhammers, and thought that they must be near some sort of construction, which wasn’t any help because in Berlin, that could be anywhere.

“Though this gives me great pleasure, it is not working, is it?” asked Draegar as he set down the oblong strip of leather clad iron he had been using to beat his prisoner and removed his black leather gloves. “We should try something else.”

He motioned to his assistant and for the first time, Gary noticed the flesh of Draegar’s right hand. There was something uneven about it. No, not uneven, but
wrong
. The color was off. Then he realized.
It was a prosthetic.

Draegar’s assistant, addressed as Karl, was a sinewy man in his late forties with opaque eyes and a sickly, jaundiced complexion. He wheeled over a large surgical lamp and plugged it into a nearby outlet as Draegar said, “I see you looking at my hand.”

“How?” said Lawlor.

“Wolves caught in snares have been known to gnaw off their own leg in order to escape. Do you think when presented with the same obstacles human beings would be any different?”

Lawlor wanted to vomit.

At that moment, Karl flipped the switch and the murky room was suddenly awash in bright fluorescent light. As he adjusted the lamp, it flashed briefly in Lawlor’s eyes and caused him to see spots before it was lowered to focus on his mouth.
What the hell were they doing?

The answer came quickly enough as his captor wheeled over a small stainless steel surgical tray and unrolled a worn leather case containing a series of long, chrome plated picks, probes, mirrors and dental pliers. “I actually first saw this in a movie,” said Draegar as he carefully selected the tools he would need and began placing them off to one side of the tray. “It takes a very precise hand, if you will, but can yield great results. The key is in prolonging the life of the exposed nerve for as long as possible, but if the one you are working on dies, which with this method inevitably happens, not to worry. We just expose a new one.”

With his hands and feet flexi-cuffed to the old wooden chair he was sitting upon, Lawlor could only stare in disbelief as Karl plugged a portable electric dental drill into another wall outlet, unraveled its long cord and then brought it over and set it down on the tray next to the other instruments. Instinctively, Gary clamped his teeth together as tight as he could.

Draegar noticed the ripple roll across Lawlor’s jaw and said, “Resistance. Excellent. It will help keep things interesting.” As Karl maneuvered himself behind Lawlor, Draegar continued speaking, “One way or another, I will extract the information I need from you.”

Though Lawlor’s body was tense in anticipation of the sheer agony Draegar had in store for him, in a small, removed corner of his mind there was clarity. Draegar had used the word
need
. Though the former Stasi operative obviously took pleasure in torturing him, he would not kill him, at least not right away.

But the primary question that dominated Gary Lawlor’s mind was how in the world Helmut Draegar had survived Gary’s attempt on his life. Night after night he had lain awake devising the method by which he would kill the man who had murdered his wife. When the time came, he had carried out his plan in perfect detail, even allowing himself time to watch the explosion as it shook the ancient building and spat a thundering cloud of smoke and fiery debris into the night sky. But somehow, here Draegar was. How was it possible? How could he have escaped?

As Karl’s hands gripped the side of Gary’s head and his fingers tried to pry their way into his mouth, his mind was jolted back to the present. The man was strong and Lawlor did his best to resist him, thrashing in his chair as much as his restraints would allow.

“Pitiful,” said Draegar as he delivered an agonizing blow with a truncheon to Lawlor’s groin area, “but to be expected.”

As Lawlor opened his mouth, a whoosh of air burst forth along with a deep groan of pain. Karl was ready for the reflex and shoved two rubber blocks between his teeth as far back as they would go. The blocks caused Lawlor to gag, but nothing he could do would dislodge them. They were wedged in tight, forcing his jaw wide open and fully exposing his teeth.

The blocks set in place, Karl stretched a tight metal band across Lawlor’s forehead, bending his neck backwards, until the band locked into a restraining device on the back of the chair.

Draegar positioned his lamp so he could get a good look into Gary’s mouth and began slowly probing his teeth with one of the sharp dental picks. “Americans take oral hygiene very seriously, don’t they? You have lovely teeth. Absolutely lovely for the most part,” said Draegar as he continued his exam. “But, I am a little concerned with this one here.” He emphasized his point by adding pressure to the pick.

Lawlor’s body involuntarily convulsed.

“Just as I suspected. Do you know much about teeth?” asked Draegar, who waited for some sign from Lawlor. When he didn’t get it, he pressed down with the pick again and watched Lawlor’s body tense against the restraints as if it had been jolted with an electric shock. “You see, inside each tooth is what we call pulp which provides the nutrients and nerves to the tooth. It runs like a little thread right down into the root. When it is diseased or damaged, as yours appears to be, the pulp can die, exposing the nerve. That is the pain you are feeling now.” Once again he pressed down with the pick and watched Lawlor’s body thrash like a man in the electric chair, before continuing. “The obvious course here would be to dig out the pulp, clean out the area and seal it. The procedure is commonly known as a root canal.”

Draegar removed the pick from Lawlor’s mouth and set it on the tray beside him. “You are actually quite lucky that I discovered your tooth problem. Had it gone on much longer, it could have been quite a mess, but I think we may have gotten to it just in time. It is quite painful, isn’t it? In fact, I would imagine that the anticipation of my further prodding has to be just as dreadful as the act itself.”

Lawlor fixed Draegar with a cold, hard stare.

“If you answer my questions, we can be done with all of this. No more pain. No more fear of pain. Tell me what I need to know and it all stops,” said Draegar as he swabbed Lawlor’s damaged tooth with a short-acting topical anesthetic. “Are the same men still involved? Has the team been updated? What is your contingency plan if they fail?”

Lawlor closed his eyes and let his body go limp, as if resigning himself to surrender.

“That’s it,” said Draegar. “Cooperate and all of the pain goes away.”

After several moments had passed, Lawlor opened his eyes.

Draegar smiled. “You are ready to answer me now?”

Though the rubber blocks had his jaws stretched to what felt like the breaking point, Gary steeled himself, opened his mouth even wider and retracted his tongue, providing Helmut Draegar with unfettered access to his tooth.

Through the bright glare of the surgical lamp, Lawlor was able to enjoy a brief moment of victory as he saw the surprised reaction on Draegar’s face. The look was soon replaced by one of sadistic determination as Draegar lifted the old dental drill and pumped life into it via its foot pedal on the floor.

The nauseating smoke from the drill bit burning through his tooth bothered him only for a second. Soon, there was nothing other than a roiling tidal wave of pain.

B
eing an agent of the OIIA had several advantages, not the least of which was access to the vast resources and databases of the Department of Homeland Security. Ten minutes was all it had taken for Harvath to track down the name and address attached to the phone number he had pulled from Gary Lawlor’s house. He was fairly confident that he had never heard Gary mention anyone named Frank Leighton before, but that didn’t mean they weren’t somehow connected. When it came to Gary, Scot was no longer taking anything for granted.

The Leighton residence was one of only a handful of houses along a quiet country lane known as Waverly Island Road, just outside downtown Easton, Maryland. The Cape Cod–style dwelling faced a farmer’s field across the road while its backyard sloped gently down toward the Tred Avon River, one of the Chesapeake Bay’s many tributaries. Though the snow had been falling for most of Harvath’s drive, it began to let up around Annapolis and by the time he had crossed the Chesapeake and had arrived in Easton, it had stopped altogether.

Making more than one pass down the practically deserted road at three in the morning was out of the question, as it would only draw undue attention, especially if the FBI was sitting on Leighton’s house. Though many people often got lost on the country lanes that dead-ended at water up and down the Eastern Shore, the last thing Harvath needed was to attract notice.

He found a secluded spot at the end of the road and after parking the TrailBlazer, grabbed his gear and walked back along the shoreline toward his target.

He had tried calling Leighton’s house three times from his encrypted cell phone on the drive down, but no one had answered. If there was a trap and trace on Leighton’s line, the FBI were going to have a very difficult time deciphering where Harvath’s calls were coming from.

After surveying the rear of the property with his night vision goggles and not seeing anything, Harvath tried calling the house again. No one answered, so he decided to make his move.

Using a thick line of trees for cover, he made his way along the southern edge of the property until he was parallel with the rear of the house. He waited for several minutes crouched among the trees and scanned the area once more before darting across the snow-covered lawn toward the back door. With his lock pick gun in hand, he had the door open in a matter of seconds and was creeping quietly down a short hallway.

The house was cold and it was not just “somebody had turned down the heat for the night cold,” but rather “somebody had not been in the house for a while and had not needed the heat” kind of cold.

Harvath passed a small bathroom and an empty guestroom. As he neared the end of the hallway, he noticed a digital thermostat mounted on the wall. Flipping up the cover and using the filtered beam from his flashlight, Harvath cycled through the daily settings. The system had been set to maintain a constant, bare minimum temperature for every day of the week. Harvath was getting the feeling that whomever Frank Leighton was, he didn’t plan on being home for a while.

The house was tidy, but not overly so. After checking the rest of the bedrooms and finding them empty, Harvath entered the kitchen and did a quick scan. Upon opening the refrigerator, he saw that though it contained at least six different kinds of salad dressings, both of the vegetable crisper drawers were empty and there were no salad fixings. When he looked underneath the sink, he found a metal garbage can with a clean liner. Somebody had not only set the temperature down before leaving, but had also removed all of the perishables from the fridge and taken out the trash. Out of curiosity, Harvath removed the garbage pail liner and was surprised at what he found beneath. The can was blackened from having something burned in it and showed trace remnants of ash—just like the garbage can at Gary Lawlor’s.

Had Leighton and Lawlor burned the same thing? If so, what was it? What connected these two besides ownership of metal wastebaskets and a penchant for burning things in them? Was Leighton somehow part of the mystery surrounding Gary’s disappearance? What the hell was this all about?

Quietly, Harvath moved past a butler’s pantry into the laundry and storage room that doubled as Frank Leighton’s home office. He looked at the pictures pinned to the corkboard near the desk while he pushed the power button on the computer and waited for it to boot up. There was a photo of a woman with two children and he wondered if maybe she was Leighton’s ex. There had been no women’s clothes in the closets, nor had there been any woman’s touch in the house to suggest that he was currently married or living with someone.

A quick perusal of the contents in the sole desk drawer produced the usual bank and mortgage statements, all in Leighton’s name, as well as a recent
to do
list. While several of the items had been checked off, other items such as
pick up dry cleaning
and
haircut
were devoid of check marks. Several unpaid bills also lay in the drawer, their due dates drawing nigh. It all contributed to the picture of yet another very hasty departure.

As Harvath sat down to examine the computer, which had finally completed its startup, something on a shelf across from the desk caught his eye. An ornately painted beer stein held a handful of pens and colored pencils. He rolled the chair over to the bookshelf and removed the mug. The front featured a detailed relief of “Checkpoint Charlie”—the former border control checkpoint between East and West Berlin with the phrase, “You are now leaving the American sector,” in English, Russian, French, and German. Oddly enough, at the very bottom of the mug where it flared out, was wrapped a piece of barbed wire. What was even more interesting, was that as odd a drinking vessel as it was, Harvath had seen one just like it before in Gary’s kitchen.

He remembered Lawlor getting on the subject of beer steins one night and telling Harvath that because of the bubonic plague and subsequent health ordinances of the sixteenth century, all food and beverage containers in Germany were required by law at that time to be covered to protect their contents. To make them easy to open and close with one hand, the Germans had devised a hinged lid with a thumb-lift.

As Harvath now turned the mug around, he saw the same inscription on the back as on Gary’s. It was a passage written in German entitled, “
Für die Sicherheit
.” Translating into English, he read it aloud and said, “For the Security. If one of us is getting tired, somebody else is watching over. If one of us starts doubting, somebody else is believing with a smile. If one of us should fall, somebody else will stand for two. God will give a companion to every fighter.”

Though it was the second time in his life he had read the inscription, Harvath still had no idea what its significance was. The one and only time he had asked about it, Gary had shrugged it off as a simple memento of his time spent overseas.

As he took a closer look, Harvath noticed that the stein appeared to have been commissioned by a pub called the
Leydicke
because its name was not only engraved upon the lid, but was also painted on the bottom, along with a serial number. Leighton’s was number seven of only twelve. Harvath wasn’t about to risk another trip back to Lawlor’s house, but he was sure that if he did, he would find that the same barbed-wire-wrapped stein resting above Gary’s kitchen cabinets was a perfect match for Frank Leighton’s. It probably also had a serial number from the same batch.
Had Leighton and Gary known each other in Berlin?

Scot set the stein back in its place and rolled himself back over to the computer when he heard it chime. Leighton’s web browser had opened to an Internet weather site that had been established as his home page. Clicking on the tab next to the address field, Harvath dropped down a list of the most recently visited web sites. At the top of the list was American Airlines. Scot clicked on the link and moments later was transported to their home page. The site recognized that it was being accessed by Leighton’s computer and asked him to enter his password. Harvath took a couple of incorrect stabs before the site finally shut him down.

He scrolled through Leighton’s Outlook Express and found nothing out of the ordinary. Like everyone else with a computer, Leighton was plagued with electronic junk mail. Harvath was about to give up when he noticed that Leighton had received an auto-confirmation email from American Airlines for a roundtrip ticket purchase to Stockholm, Sweden. The ticket had been issued in the name of Johan Saritsa for same day travel three days ago. The return was set for a month later, but Harvath figured the date was probably bogus and the return flight would go unused.

Leighton obviously had not anticipated an automatic email confirmation of his flight purchase. Now, Harvath had the alias he was traveling under and with a couple of well placed phone calls, would be able to get the full credit card number Leighton had used to pay for his flight. The haystack had not necessarily gotten any smaller, but the needle had just gotten a little bit bigger.

Harvath was about to turn on the printer and print out a copy of the flight confirmation, when he heard something from the kitchen. With barely a sound, he was out of the chair with his SIG Sauer drawn. Someone was in the house.

He pulled the night vision goggles from his backpack, powered them up and put them on. Leighton could have returned, but he doubted it. His gut told him somebody else was inside and he had learned long ago that his gut was seldom wrong.

Hugging the wall of the laundry room, he focused on slowing his breathing. He counted to three and then button-hooked around the laundry room door into the short hall leading to the kitchen. With his pistol out in front of him, he swept it along with his eyes from left to right and back again.
Nothing. Could he have imagined it?
, he wondered as he moved cautiously forward. Maybe it was just the heater kicking on. It had been getting progressively colder in the house and part of him had been willing the old Cape Cod to warm up.

As he neared the kitchen, he stopped for a moment and listened. He could hear what sounded like air blowing through the heating vents. Maybe it was the heater after all.

Just at that moment, the door to the butler’s pantry exploded open, and before Harvath could react, someone knocked him onto the floor. The figure clutched furiously at Harvath’s right hand, trying to tear away his weapon.

Harvath fought back hard, delivering several sharp punches to the man’s kidneys. The intense pain caused the man to let up on his assault, and that was the edge Harvath needed.

He pushed himself away from his attacker and struggled to regain his feet. His mysterious assailant, though, was faster. The man lashed out with a sweeping kick that took Harvath’s legs right out from under him. He hit the floor hard, with his head crashing into the wall, which sent his night vision goggles flying. The pistol, though, was still grasped tightly in his hand.

The only thing he was seeing were stars and all he could do was point his sidearm in the direction he believed his attacker to be. As he did, there was the quick
schlink
of what sounded like two pipes being fitted together, followed immediately by the sound of something slicing through the air. It was only as his assailant’s telescoping baton hit Harvath’s pistol and knocked it from his hand, that he fully realized what the noises had been.

Harvath pulled his new Benchmade Auto AXIS knife from his pocket and depressed the button, which swung the blade up and locked it into place, but it was knocked from his hand as well. As an added measure, his attacker delivered a searing blow to the upper thigh of his right leg with the tactical baton.

The man was good—too good, especially to be part of an FBI surveillance team, and as Harvath’s vision cleared he could see that his opponent was already regaining his feet. He didn’t want to risk another spinning kick and having his legs taken out from underneath him again, so he used his feet to propel him backwards as fast as he could go along the floor into the kitchen. The minute he took off, his attacker was almost right on top of him. Harvath made it as far as the kitchen sink before the man took another swing with the baton and connected with his ribs.

As the man raised the baton for another strike, Harvath rolled hard to his left out of the way and ripped open the nearest cabinet door. The baton missed its mark, and Harvath thrust his hand under the sink. The first thing he touched was Frank Leighton’s canister of starter fluid. Pulling the canister from the cabinet, he flicked off the lid and sprayed the fluid in his attacker’s face as the baton came down again and caught him in the shoulder.

With a yelp of surprise, the man dropped his weapon and his hands flew to his poisoned eyes. The fumes from the fluid caused him to gasp for air.

Harvath leapt to his feet and threw a blistering kick into the man’s abdomen. As his attacker fell to the floor, Harvath swept the countertop with his arm until he found what he was looking for.

He ripped the cord from the coffee maker and positioned himself behind his attacker, wrapping the cord around the man’s neck. “Who the fuck are you?” he commanded as he applied pressure. The man could only gasp for breath and Harvath realized he would never get anything from him like this.

He withdrew the cord from around the man’s neck and shoved him face forward onto the floor. Harvath used the cord to bind the man’s hands behind him and then searched him for additional weapons. He found a semiautomatic Smith & Wesson, which he tucked into his waistband, and a small Motorola radio. Apparently, this guy wasn’t working alone. He unplugged the man’s earpiece and microphone from the unit and then hoisted him up and leaned him over the edge of the sink, where he turned on the water so his captive could rinse his face under the faucet.

While the mystery man was flushing out his eyes, nose, and mouth, Harvath kept one hand firmly on the cord binding his wrists and used his free hand to turn up the volume on the Motorola. Before Harvath could make any assessments of how dangerous it was to leave the house and who might be waiting for him outside, he had to find out who he was dealing with.