The Pandora Key (10 page)

I sat on the corner of his bed and looked at him. “Harvey, the FBI was here earlier. They were asking questions about Roger Fratello and Betelco and some cash they found in Brussels.” I looked for a reaction. There was nothing but dazed confusion. “They believe you helped Fratello flee the country after he defrauded his company. Is that true?”

“I do not know where Roger Fratello is.”

My stomach tightened. “But you do know him?”

“I might. Perhaps a client? I…” He looked as if he wanted to answer my questions, but he’d been without food or medicine for hours, and he was fading fast. “Must we speak of this now?”

I gave it one more shot. “Rachel was the outside auditor for Fratello’s firm. Could she have been the one involved in this somehow? Is that why she was here this morning? Maybe she was looking for your help?”

“Help…yes. But I cannot remember. I cannot…” He shook his head. “I cannot go another second without washing the stink of this ordeal from my skin. I must shower.”

“I need you to tell me about Fratello. I need details. I need—”

He lifted his hands with difficulty and began to unbutton his shirt. “I can do it myself.”

On a normal day, he could have. He had the kind of modified shower with a seat, plenty of handrails for maneuvering, and enough pride that he could still find a way to take care of the deeply personal aspects of his self-care. It was pride and, I suspected, fear that crossing that particular threshold would take him downhill fast. Faster. This wasn’t a normal day, but he still had his full measure of stubbornness.

“Just tell me one thing. Do you know where Rachel is?”

He shook his head. I had never had to wonder before if Harvey was lying to me, but I wondered then.

I helped him unbutton his shirt and peel it off. Then I pulled his T-shirt over his head. Without letting him notice, I checked the soft white expanse of his back and then his chest for bruises or cuts. Saw none. I took off his shoes and socks. He unzipped his own fly, and I helped him stand so he could step out of his trousers. It was all very clinical and mechanical until he was stripped down to his boxers.

“Um…do you need me to—”

“I can manage from here, thank you.” He tried to turn his chair and roll himself to the bathroom. Left to his own devices, it would have taken hours. I pushed him in, turned on the shower, and made sure a fresh towel was in reach. I went back to the bedroom to find his pajamas and robe hanging on a doorknob. When I got back, he was listing to the right in his chair.

“You should have let me go.”

“What?”

“I was ready to go.” He turned his head slightly. “You should have let me.”

I had hoped that his wishing to die had come from the stress of the situation, but he looked like a man who had already given up. I hoped that a shower and a good night’s sleep in his own bed would change his outlook. All I said was, “I’ll be right out here.”

I hung his bedclothes on the inside knob and pulled the door almost closed. The clothes I had stripped from him were piled on the floor across the room. I didn’t feel comfortable pawing through them, but maybe they could tell me what he couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.

There were no coins or keys or wallet in his trousers. Those would all be in the desk drawer in his office. His cell phone was missing, presumably taken by the kidnappers and inadvisably turned on at some point. His schedule of medication was in a side pocket. The only other item was a photograph. It was Harvey in younger, healthier days. He was standing with Rachel at some scenic overlook. The sight of Harvey in sunlight was enough of an oddity, but to see him smiling was stranger still. With his arm around Rachel’s waist, he was gazing upon her as if she were some kind of rare hothouse flower. Rachel was gazing at something off camera. The photo paper was soft and fringed around the edges, the way pictures get when you take them out and look at them often. As much as I disliked the woman, he obviously took comfort in seeing her face. I set it on his nightstand, leaning it against the base of his reading lamp so he could look over and see it if he wanted to.

The clothes offered up nothing more beyond the stale and pungent odor of a helpless man stiff with fear. I piled them into a corner and took the medicine list to the prescription stash in the kitchen. I pulled out everything he should have taken and didn’t while he was missing. He could figure out what he could skip and what he had to catch up on. I put the pills on his bedside table with a glass of milk, which is what he typically used to push them all down.

For a brief moment, I gave consideration to calling Ling to let him know that Harvey was home. I even took out the business card he’d given me and stared at it. Calling him would have been the safe thing to do, the right thing to do. Instead, the phone rang. Not my cell but Harvey’s land line. I went into his office to take the call.

“Harvey Baltimore’s office.”

“Goddammit, Shanahan, don’t you ever return phone calls?” It was Dan. “I left you about a hundred messages on your cell.”

“What are you talking about?” I dug into my pocket for my phone. “I don’t have any—” Oops. I had turned it off before the big rescue and never turned it back on. When I did, I found seven messages waiting: five from Dan and two from Felix.

“Sorry. We were out getting Harvey back.”

“You got him? How is he?”

“A little worse for the wear. I think he’s really depressed.” I left it at that as I dropped down into Harvey’s desk chair. “Did you find something?”

“I’ve got one word for you. Are you ready? Afghanistan.”

“What about it?”

“The U.S. invades Afghanistan, right?”

“We did, yes.” I clamped the receiver between my shoulder and ear and began straightening the stuff on the desk. I needed to be doing something.

“In towns and villages and mud huts all over the country, Marines are rolling in through the front door and terrorists are running out the back.”

“Is this at all relevant to the case?”

“They’re leaving all their shit behind, like bomb-building instructions and maps and computers and memos and all the internal papers and documents and other crap that goes with running an organization, be it an airline or a terrorist ring.”

“Memos from Osama?”

“Right, right. Expense reports. Performance reviews. Anyhow, there’s this bumfuck little village south of Kabul called Zormat. In Zormat is a house. In the house is a closet. In the back of the closet is a big black Hefty bag.”

“If you say so.” When the surface of the desk was straightened, I started in on the drawers. I collected a bunch of loose binder clips and put them back in their box.

“Inside this bag are empty wallets, family photos, business cards, a few passports. Nothing of value but things that might mean something to the people who lost them, especially…are you listening to me?”

“I’m listening.” And trying to refill the stapler. Those replacement strips of staples are hard to handle without breaking them apart.

“Especially if they lost them in a hijacking.”

“Uh-huh.” I stopped. What? Wait. “What are you saying? Are you saying—” I switched the receiver into my other hand. “You’re saying there’s a bag in a closet in Afghanistan filled with the personal belongings of the people on Salanna 809?”

“A black Hefty bag.”

“From four years ago? You cannot be serious.”

“Serious as a fucking heart attack.”

“How did it get there?”

“Those shitheads who did the hijacking…what the fuck were they…” I heard papers shuffling on his end. “Jihads R Us or Jihad Express or—”

“Armed Islamic Martyrs Brigade.”

“Those guys, yeah. The ones who took over the aircraft, this was their safe house or headquarters or something like that.”

“How did it get there? The hijackers were all killed.”

“The ones on the plane. But I told you this thing was fucked up, didn’t I? It was a circus. People on, off, on, off. That’s how they got their guns, by the way. Those fucking Sudanese let someone onboard who was carrying Kalashnikovs. Stupid motherfuckers. Anyway, one of them must have gotten off somewhere along the way, brought the bag back with him, threw it into a closet, and forgot it was there. You do that, don’t you? Put shit away and forget about it?”

“Well, yes, but I’m not an international terrorist.” I closed the drawer. Enough cleaning. “Why would they keep incriminating evidence around?”

“I don’t think the Taliban gave a flying fuck what these guys had in their closet. Can you imagine the eBay potential for that stuff? Someone is going to make a lot of coin.”

I got up and walked to the bookcase, which had been my next planned stop on the cleaning-and-straightening tour. “This has to be it.”

“What has to be what?”

“The reason all this is happening now. The whole thing with Fratello. Susan said the feds showed her Roger’s wallet.” I started to feel the tingle of a few things finally coming together. “It must have come out of the Hefty bag, and whatever else they found must have led them to that safety deposit box and the money.”

“Shanahan?”

“What?”

“I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about.”

“I know. Sorry.” I couldn’t remember who knew what. The only thing I had told Dan was that Harvey had disappeared. “Roger Fratello is an embezzler. He stole a bunch of money and fled the country around the same time as Salanna 809. I think he was on that plane traveling as Gilbert Bernays.”

“Wait, I’ve got a copy of the manifest. Hold on.”

“You have a copy of the Salanna 809 passenger manifest? How did you get that?”

“Majestic used to handle Salanna down at JFK. I know this flight attendant who used to be married to a ramp supervisor down there, and he knew a guy who knew a guy, and I don’t know. I just did it. Bernays, you said?”

“Gilbert Bernays.”

“Yeah, hold on.” I heard pages turning. Whereas Felix’s thinking music was a low, steady hum, Dan’s was more like a fast rattle, something like “tsetsetsetse,” as in
tsetse fly
. “He was in seat 4B. Boarded in Brussels, on his way to Johannesburg.”

“Supposedly, he was one of the ones who survived.”

“Do you want to talk to him?”

“Why? Do you know where he is?”

“I know where he might be for the next few days. Believe it or not, these Salanna 809 people have reunions.”

“The hostages have reunions?”

“I shit you not, and they’re
former
hostages. Lucky for you, they’re having one this week.”

“This week? That’s a pretty strange coincidence, don’t you think?”

“No. It was scheduled for later in the year, but they moved it up because of a State Department request. State wants to meet with the survivors to give back their stuff. It’s happening because of Zormat.”

Wasn’t everything? One way or another, everything was happening because of Zormat and what was found there. Nothing, I was finding, was coincidence. Coincidence, in fact, was to be regarded with deep suspicion.

“Where is this reunion?”

“Paris. Do you want to go? I can get you in.”

“Is it a private affair?”

“It’s very private. They don’t let anybody in.”

I would have asked how he could do that, but the answer was always the same. He knew a guy who knew a guy. “How long is this thing going on?”

“Tomorrow and the next day until noon.”

I went back behind the desk and sat down. It had been a rough day, and no matter how good the lead, a trip to Paris in the next twenty-four hours felt overwhelming. Besides, the more I thought about it, the less reason I could find to go there. Harvey was safe, I didn’t know what Rachel was up to, and as long as I could protect Harvey from her, I didn’t care. Roger Fratello was the FBI’s problem. I couldn’t afford a walk-up fare to Paris, anyway. That had to be at least a couple grand. But Dan had done a lot of good work for me, as he always did when I asked. I didn’t want to just dismiss the idea.

“Let me call you back after I figure out what’s going on. Harvey has more to tell me, and I’m still waiting for Bo.” I started to end the call but had one more thought. “But if I have to go, you have to give me a break on the fare.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

I would have said thanks and good job, but he’d hung up on me. It was so much fun to push his buttons. I was just about to dial Felix when Bo walked in. I took one look at his face and hung up. Felix would have to wait.

11

WHEN BO LOWERED HIMSELF ONTO THE FURNITURE, IT seemed to sigh. That’s what the couch did when he settled his bulk on it. “We have to talk.”

“Let me just check on Harvey. I left him in the shower.”

“It’s important.”

“I can see that. I’ll be right back.” Harvey’s room was dark when I got there. He had already managed to get himself into his pajamas and then into his bed. The light that fell across his face illuminated the fact that he had combed his hair and shaved. It appeared that he had also taken his meds. The bottles were arranged next to his nightstand, the milk was gone, and he was sleeping soundly, unbothered by his own loud snoring. I closed the door, leaving it open just a crack in case he needed something.

Bo started the meeting the second I walked into the office. “They were marked.”

“Marked?” I sat in the wingback across from him. “Those guys at the house?”

“Yes.”

I thought about how he and Timon had checked the bodies with both curiosity and concern. “The tattoos?”

“Yes.” He sat with both feet on the floor, one arm resting on his thigh and the other on the armrest. It was an oddly stiff pose. I could feel the tension coming off him in waves.

“What does that mean?”

“It means we never should have taken them.” I had never seen Bo regret anything. Things were what they were, and he simply dealt with them and moved on. Not this time. He shook his head. “Never.”

“Why not?”

“They belong to a man named Drazen Tishchenko.” He looked at me as if I should know the name. As if everyone should know. I didn’t know the name, but he sounded Russian, and Russians had already come up in this investigation. Given the lack of sleep and the high stress level, it took me a minute to connect the dots. Betelco. Russian investors. Russian
mafiya
. “This Tishchenko is a Russian?”