The Rule of Nine (11 page)

“Is that why he killed my son?” says Snyder.

“I don't know. But then it wasn't my card that he used.” Joselyn looks at me with a Cheshire-like grin. “Do you have any ideas?”

“No.” I slip the business card back into my pocket.

“What could you have done to make him that angry?” says Snyder. “I wanna know how you know this guy. What's the connection between you and him?”

“I told you. I don't know him. I don't have a clue. I wish I did.”

“That doesn't tell me why my son was killed,” says Snyder. “He wasn't involved in drugs. That I know. So how would he come in contact with someone like this—this Liquida?”

“Maybe he didn't,” says Harry. “Maybe this man Liquida came looking for your son. It's how he earns his money. He's hired to kill.”

“No. Why would he be hired to kill Jimmie? My boy wasn't involved in anything that would put him in that kind of danger.”

“Obviously he was,” says Harry, “or else he'd be alive.”

“What do you mean by that?” Snyder starts to get out of his chair.

“Relax.” I put a hand on his arm. People at the other tables are starting to look at us. “Harry didn't mean anything.”

“I'm sorry if I offended you,” says Harry. “If what you say is true, then Jimmie was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time. For all we know he could have been killed by mistake. The information we have on Liquida is sketchy at best, only that he works for the cartels and hires out. The people employing him would have the moral judgment of a cancer cell. If they thought the rain was a threat, they'd shoot the weatherman. So it might not have taken much for your son to get killed. If he saw something, heard something, and he may not even have realized it.”

“They would kill him for that?” At this moment Snyder has the look of a clerk who has rung up a sale and is calculating the change.

“What?” I say.

“Nothing,” says Snyder. “Only…”

“Only what?” I ask.

“It was just a minor problem, trouble he had at work. It's why I thought he might have come to see you.”

“What was it?” says Harry.

“Jimmie violated some security protocols in the building where he worked. At least that's what I'm told. He took someone into a secure area without authority, and apparently he got caught.”

“Your son told you this?” says Harry.

“No, the FBI, when they interviewed me. They showed me some pictures, Jimmie and another man. They didn't tell me that this was the actual event, but I have to assume…”

Snyder reaches into the leather portfolio next to his elbow and pulls out what appear to be three glossy prints. He hands them to me. I look at them. I recognize Jimmie Snyder from the death scene photos shown to us by Thorpe that day at the FBI office. The other man is pudgy looking, a little shorter than Snyder's son, wearing a baseball cap, Bermuda shorts, and a polo shirt.

I hand the photos to Harry. “Did they say anything else?”

“No. They showed me the photos in hopes I might recognize the man. They let me have them so I could run them by Jimmie's friends to see if anyone knew who the man was. I thought that if Jimmie talked with you about the problem at work, he might have told you who he was.”

I shake my head.

“Hard to tell what he looks like from the pictures. The hat's down over his eyes in two of them.” Harry zeros in on the other photo, the enlarged close-up. Over the shoulder is just a piece of a sign, the words “basketball and weight lifting” and a line below it that was out of focus. Harry studies it for a moment, then lays it on top of the other two and pushes them off to the side.

“When were these taken?”

Snyder looks up at Joselyn. “I don't know. Why?”

“Do you mind?”

“Go ahead.”

She picks them up.

“I'm pretty sure they are stills from a security video camera,” says Snyder.

“That's exactly what they are,” says Harry. “Where were the photographs taken? What building, I mean?”

“Oh, God.” Joselyn is leaning over the enlargement, peering down at it on the table. She's white as a sheet, and slack jawed.

“What is it?” I say.

“It's like a bad dream,” she says. “I thought he was dead. They told me he was dead.”

“Who?”

“National Security Agency.” She coughs, covers her mouth. “Gimme—can I have some water,” she says.

Harry motions for the waitress, but she doesn't see him.

“There's a pitcher and glasses on the side table near the bar.” I point.

Harry starts to get up, but Snyder's closer. He makes a beeline for it just as Joselyn topples sideways onto the booth seat.

I grab her before she can fall. Snyder scurries back with the water. He's got it in a glass, but Joselyn's not going to be drinking. She's out cold. I dip my linen napkin into the glass and wipe her forehead. The shock of the ice water on her skin causes her eyelids to flutter. A second later she opens them.

By now the waitress is over. “Is she all right? You want us to call 911?”

“No!” says Joselyn. “I'm okay. Really, it's nothing.” She struggles to right herself on the booth seat.

Her skin is clammy, with cold sweat on her arm. “Sip a little water,” I tell her.

She gives a feeble shake of the head. “No, my stomach right now…” I steady her so if she goes down again she doesn't bang her head on the edge of the table. “Yeah, you're just fine,” I tell her.

“I think she'll be all right.” Harry looks up at the waitress. “We'll get her back to the office. We've got a couch in the conference room. She can lie down. If she needs help we'll call from there. Can you bring the check?”

“We'll deliver it to the office. Go,” she says. “Take her on over. We'll catch up.”

H
e's older, and he looks heavier in the photograph, but it's him,” she says. Joselyn is flat on her back on the couch.

“Keep your head down, don't try to lift it. Keep your eyes closed.” One of the girls from the outer office is holding a cold compress across Joselyn's forehead and eyes.

“Do you have a name for this guy?” Snyder is holding the single enlarged photo in his hand, his notebook open on the conference table in our office.

“When I knew him he was calling himself Dean Belden.”

Snyder writes it down.

“But that was what? Nine years ago now. I was told later that he had a number of other names he used, but according to the people I talked to he usually worked under the name Thorn.”

“How did you meet him?” I ask.

“He came to my office. I was still practicing law back then. Up in Washington State, near Seattle. He said he…” Joselyn lifts the wet compress from her eyes and shifts her body on the sofa to get her head up onto the armrest.

“Don't try to sit up,” I tell her.

Harry hands her a pillow and helps her to slide it under her head.

“Thanks. I'm feeling a little better. Besides, I have to get my feet under me. I have a flight to catch tonight, remember?”

“As you said, there are more important things than Congressional hearings,” I remind her.

“You were telling us how you met him,” said Snyder.

“It's been so long. He was calling himself Dean Belden. He showed up at my office one day and said he was a businessman. Said he had some corporate legal work for me or something. No. No, I remember now.” She lowers her feet onto the floor and sits up. She holds her head for a moment with both hands as if it's ringing like a bell.

“Are you all right?” I ask.

“Yeah. Gimme a second.” She takes a moment to compose herself. “The offer of corporate work came later. The first thing he told me was that he had been subpoenaed. That was it. He was under subpoena to appear before a federal grand jury in Seattle. He told me that as far as he knew, it had nothing to do with him. He was not the target of the investigation. It was somebody else, another man he just happened to do business with. He claimed he didn't even know why they wanted to talk to him. He offered a large retainer and told me that if I did a good job on the grand jury thing, especially if I could get it quashed, there might be some corporate work for me later. I was starving at the time, in a solo practice, ready to take anything that came through the door, and like a fool I said yes. That's when the world caved in on me.”

“How do you mean?” says Snyder.

“All of it was a lie—his name, his business, the reason he was being called before the grand jury. He knew I couldn't get the subpoena quashed. The government was closing in on him and what he needed was a witness, so he could disappear.”

“Go on,” says Sydner.

“His business, which was nothing but a front, was located in
the San Juan Islands, in Puget Sound. He invited me out, supposedly to prep for his appearance before the grand jury. He had a pilot's license and a small floatplane. The day he was supposed to appear before the grand jury he decided we'd fly.

“I was impressed. I was young and stupid. He set the plane down on Lake Union in Seattle and we took a cab to the federal courthouse. He was cool as a cucumber. We got inside and while I was engaged in small talk with one of the marshals, Belden took a powder. It was a few minutes before I realized that he was gone. But there I was, standing all alone holding the bag. I assumed that Belden had a case of last-minute nerves, simply got scared and ran. It's what he wanted me to think. I grabbed a cab and headed back to Lake Union hoping I could catch him before he got into the air. I thought I could talk him into coming back to the courthouse.

“As it turned out, I didn't quite make it. I got there just in time to watch him push off from the dock, climb up into the plane, and lift off. I heard the engine sputter and watched as the plane cart-wheeled into the lake. To this day at least that's what I think I saw. He was very good. It was all meticulously choreographed. Of course, the divers didn't find his body in the wreckage, but then they didn't have to. The police had me as a witness. But the feds didn't buy it.”

“So they already knew about him,” says Snyder.

“Oh, yes. He wasn't just the target of their probe, he was the bull's-eye. They told me that he worked under the name Thorn and that he was a hired mercenary. That his specialty was the transport of dangerous cargos.”

“What kind of dangerous cargos?” says Snyder.

“Nuclear, biological, chemical, that kind,” says Joselyn.

“A terrorist,” says Snyder.

“That was a word that had not quite come into its own back then.”

The puzzlement on Snyder's face as he tries to snap all of these
amorphous pieces into the puzzle of his son's murder might be funny if it wasn't so sad.

“I know how you feel.” She looks at him. “While Thorn didn't pull the trigger, I know he is responsible for the death of a dear friend, a man named Gideon van Rye.”

“Ah.”

Joselyn looks at me. She nods. “He died trying to stop something that Thorn had set in motion. It's a long story.”

The story of how Gideon Quest came to be.

“Do you know where he might be now, this man Thorn or Belden or whatever he's calling himself these days?” says Snyder.

“No. For a short time, maybe a year or so after the plane went into Lake Union, he was up near the top of the FBI's most wanted list. Not only did they not buy his drama of accidental death, they didn't even treat him as missing, except for the fact that he was a fugitive. I heard they had him cornered somewhere in Africa and supposedly it was only a question of time. Then the World Trade Center went down, 9/11, and all the priorities changed. Have you seen the FBI's most wanted list lately?” She looks at me.

I shake my head.

“If you don't wear traditional Arab headgear, you don't get on it.”

“Can I see the photographs?” I ask Snyder.

He hands them to me. In one of the photographs, Jimmie and the man Joselyn calls Thorn are laughing.

“Any idea how this man might have gotten on your son's blind side?” I ask Snyder.

He shakes his head. “Jimmie was much too trusting. I tried to warn him. Some people would take advantage if he wasn't careful. But you know how kids are.”

“I'm learning,” I tell him.

“You have a son?”

“A daughter.”

“How old?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Almost the same age as Jimmie. You think this man, this Thorn, may have killed my boy?” Snyder directs the question to Joselyn.

“I have no idea. He's not Mexican, I know that. But from what I saw, what I know, he was certainly capable of it.”

“If he was on their wanted list, the FBI must have some kind of file on him,” says Harry. “Give them the names, Thorn and Belden. They should be able to connect the dots.”

“You better tell them that the photos you've got there aren't going to look the same as the ones in their old files,” says Joselyn.

“Do you think it's his print on your business card?” Harry directs this to me.

“I don't know how far back the FBI fingerprint database goes,” I tell him, “but if that print belongs to him, it should have spit out a name, Thorn or…”

Behind me the door to the conference room suddenly opens. “Paul!”

I turn, and it's my secretary, Janice. By the look on her face I can tell that something is wrong. “Phone call for you. It's urgent. Your daughter.”

“What is it?”

“You want to come right now, and take it in your office,” she says.

J
osh Root sat at the committee rostrum, gavel at hand, completely oblivious to the noise and commotion going on around him. This afternoon his mind was on other things. The Old Weatherman had struck again. This morning Root had gotten up and found it on his personal computer at home, another e-mail in the middle of the night, like a bomb blast.

But this time the fear that had been so palpable in Root following the first two communications was replaced by anger. The Old Weatherman was demanding an additional two million dollars, and he was giving Root only two days to come up with it.

The prick must have thought he was made of money. The thought of it produced bile in his throat. He coughed a few times and covered his mouth with the back of his hand. He took out a handkerchief and wiped a bit of phlegm from his lip.

“Are you all right, Senator?” One of his aides was hovering over his shoulder.

Root took a sip of water from the glass in front of him. He cleared his throat. “I'm fine. We'll get started in a minute.”

“Sure. Can I get you anything?”

“Nothing.”

The kid sat down again.

Root was beginning to suspect that someone at the Swiss bank had talked. How else could anyone know that he had that kind of ready cash on hand? Two million dollars. People with that kind of money usually had it tied up in investments. It could take anywhere from a few days to a week to sell stocks and reduce them to cash. But the Old Weatherman seemed to know that it was just sitting there, waiting to be wired from one Swiss bank to another. For the moment, how he knew wasn't the problem. Getting rid of him was. And by now it was clear that buying him off wasn't an option. Knowing the man as he did, Root knew that this would only serve as an invitation for him to come back for more.

The trick was to find him. The key was the Old Weatherman's e-mail account. Somewhere there had to be a record with an address, some point of physical contact. Ordinarily Root would turn this over to one of his staff members and within a short period they would have an answer for him. But this time Root couldn't do that. He would have to do it himself, in the same way that he would have to deal with the Old Weatherman.

He looked up at the clock on the wall at the far end of the room, picked up the gavel, and slapped it hard, twice. “The committee will come to order.” He cleared his throat again, took another quick drink of water, and slapped the gavel once more. “The committee will come to order.”

The voices in the room began to quiet. “We're going to pick up where we left off this morning.” Root looked down at his schedule of witnesses. “Next witness is Joselyn Cole. Is Ms. Cole here?”

A man was sitting at the witness table. “Are you here on behalf of Ms. Cole?”

“No, sir.”

The next thing Root knew there was a hand on his shoulder from behind and lips in his ear. “Senator, I think you're looking at
the wrong schedule.” One of his staffers was pushing a piece of paper in front of him. “You're looking at Tuesday's schedule.”

“Ah, sorry,” said Root. “My mistake. Seems I'm getting ahead of myself.” He laughed. A few in the audience laughed with him. But to Root his was a nervous laugh, a small measure of the forces now coming to bear on him. The Old Weatherman's e-mailed threats, Root's diminishing physical and mental condition, and all the other pressures and demands were now descending on him.

 

Ever since the destruction of the World Trade Center, the authorities had tried to erect a series of impermeable security barriers around the entire southern tip of Manhattan. Probably nowhere on earth was there a piece of hallowed ground more protected than this. Thorn was certain that if the local police and the federal authorities could shrink-wrap the whole area in Kevlar, they would.

This evening he stood on the pedestrian overpass and surveyed the work spread out below through a small rip in the blue plastic tarp. The overhead pedestrian walkway was bounded on both sides by chain-link fencing, which in turn was wrapped in plastic tarp material to keep prying eyes from seeing what was happening down below.

Where the twin towers once stood there now existed only a cavernous concrete hole three or four stories deep, housing communications equipment, generators, and the other machinery necessary to run the subway sixty feet down, below the streets. For nearly a decade arguments raged over whether the twin towers should be rebuilt in some manner, or if the site should be transformed into a park or a memorial for those who died on 9/11. In the vacuum of leadership that marked the new century, the concrete cavern remained as a symbol of American indecision.

It was nearing five in the evening, and the stream of human
traffic scurrying across the overpass was beginning to resemble some of the rapids on the Colorado, people running to catch the subway down below or one of the buses on Broadway.

Thorn waded into the stream and through the escalating rush-hour crush of people to the other side. At one point he had to grab the chain link to keep from being washed along with the masses. He found a short section of the fence where the walkway widened for just a few feet. He settled in and staked out this little nook as if he owned it.

The plastic tarp blocking his view cracked in the stiff breeze off the Hudson. He looked around to make sure there were no cops on the walkway. Then, using two fingers, he reached up and ripped the tattered tarp just a few inches so that he could claim a clear view out.

He wasn't interested in the site of the World Trade Center. Instead his attention was drawn to an area a few blocks to the south and east of where he was now standing. It was the intersection of Fulton and Broadway, almost dead center in the middle of the Financial District. Wall Street was only a stone's throw away.

The Cold War may have been over, but the Russians and Americans were still locked in a death spiral of ever more lethal weapons. When the United States introduced its largest thermobaric device on record, the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), and nicknamed it “the Mother of All Bombs,” the Russians responded with the largest vacuum bomb ever constructed. Dubbing it “the Father of All Bombs,” it was used to level an entire block of multi-story steel-reinforced concrete buildings. In testing it, they set off the largest man-made nonnuclear blast in history.

Now that the Russian cargo plane had been forced down in Thailand, Thorn had to assume that the American government was well aware of the type and size of the device on board. While he hadn't planned it, the downing of the Russian plane played right into his hands. Like a big, flashing neon sign.

The feds would be racking their brains looking for high-risk
targets. Thorn was already well ahead of them. The solid fuel-air device was much more effective in an oxygen-controlled environment. If you could introduce the device inside, solid concrete walls would serve only to magnify and focus the blast. The stronger the walls, the higher the pressure wave, the farther it would travel. Of course, American military ordnance experts would know all of this. They would be advising the FBI and other law enforcement agencies accordingly.

Identifying prime targets wouldn't be too difficult. The problem was there were too many of them. The authorities couldn't possibly cover them all. Adding to their problems, Thorn was already engaged in devilish games of misdirection, forcing them to look in one place while he was in another.

He wondered if anyone had ever considered what the blast from a large thermobaric weapon might do to the hardened concrete structure surrounding the reactor of a nuclear power plant. Particularly if the device were delivered from the air in the form of a bunker-busting bomb.

That reminded Thorn. He was going to have to make a call for more cash. His estimates of the cost to buy the airplane were too low. You would think that with the dismal state of the airline industry and the number of commercial jets now littering boneyards all over the desert, there would be a fire sale. But it wasn't the case. He had gone online and checked prices.

The banks that held the mortgages on these planes were now sitting on piles of taxpayer cash. Having been bailed out, they were demanding top dollar for their securitized loan assets, in this case airplanes for which they had vastly overpaid during the boom-boom times before the crash. The politicians and the central banks had stepped in it big time, up to their hips. And why not? They knew that if the banks went under, there wasn't enough money in the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to cover even a small fraction of the claims filed by depositors. So they ran the presses, printed more cash, and deferred the inevitable to a future date
when some other new regime could be left holding the bag. To Thorn it was a rat's nest of political and financial corruption, with a new generation of liars at every turn. At least for the moment, acquiring more money didn't seem to be a problem for his employers. What the devil could do if he had cash.

Even if the feds were able to track each of his moves, as long as he could stay ahead of them, Thorn knew they would have their hands full trying to guess what was coming next.

He trained his eye through the hole in the tarp toward the Fulton Street project. He could see the boom of a high-rise crane moving slowly, like the neck of some gentle giraffe, over the site. It was the answer to Thorn's dreams, nearly half a billion dollars in federal stimulus money for a single piece of construction. It was the once abandoned Fulton Street Transit Center. Total cost, 1.4 billion dollars for a transportation palace, complete with a crystal dome that would have shamed the Wizard of Oz.

Scheduled completion was four years off, but Thorn didn't care. All that mattered was that they had broken ground. The giant excavators had already ripped a two-hundred-foot wound in the earth directly above one of the busiest subway hubs in New York. According to the project schedule, the hole would be open for at least four months while they worked on foundations. This gave Thorn plenty of time. With the city providing the open aperture above the subway, the method of delivery became simple—gravity. The only question was how? And Thorn already knew the answer to that one.