Текст книги "The Hit"

Автор книги: David Baldacci

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“Okay.”

“I don’t suppose I’ll see you again.”

“Do you do autopsies here?”

She looked surprised. “No, why?”

“Then you probably won’t see me again.”

Robie slipped his clothes back on. “Can you direct me to where I need to go next?”

“Someone else will come in to do that. There aren’t many places here I’m cleared to go.”

“Glad you signed up?”

“Are you?” she shot back.

“Keep asking myself that every day.”

“And your answer?”

“It changes depending on the day.”

She held out her card. “My contact info is on there. Burns are not to be messed with. And you really need to take it easy. I would limit strenuous exercise, travel, and. . .” Her voice trailed off as he stared at her. “And none of that is possible, right?”

He took the card. “Thanks for fixing me up.”

She walked to the door and then turned back. “For what it’s worth, good luck.” And then she was gone.

Robie waited there for another five minutes.

The door opened.

Blue Man stood there. Suit, modest tie, polished shoes, hair perfect.

But his face was not.

In those features Robie could see that Blue Man was not himself at all today.

Which meant that things were about to change for Robie.

CHAPTER

20

JESSICA REEL WAS ONCE MORE on the move.

She had never liked to stay in one place for too long.

She had taken a cab and then she had walked. She liked to walk. When you were being driven in a cab you gave up some measure of control. She never liked to do that.

This day was cooler than the day before. The rain had come and gone yet it was overcast and still felt damp. But it wasn’t a humid damp. It was a chilly one.

She was glad of the long trench coat. And the hat.

And the sunglasses, despite the weak light.

The car came down the street. It was a late-model hunter green Jag convertible. A man was driving. He looked to be in his late forties. His hair was short and he sported a small graying goatee.

His name was Jerome Cassidy. He had overcome alcohol addictions and other problems to become a self-made millionaire. There were many lessons to be learned from the man’s personal triumph.

But the person sitting next to Cassidy interested Reel far more.

Fourteen, small for her age, with messy hair.

When the car stopped and she got out, Reel saw that she wore torn jeans, cheap sneakers, and a sweatshirt. A large backpack was over one shoulder. It looked like it weighed as much as she did.

Julie Getty looked like a typical urban teen going to school.

A few words were exchanged between the two and then the Jag drove off.

Reel knew that Jerome Cassidy loved Julie Getty as a father did a daughter, though they had just recently become acquainted.

Now she forgot about Cassidy and focused on Julie.

The first thing she did was scan the area. She doubted they would have thought that far ahead, but one never knew.

She saw no one watching Julie, and she was confident she would have if they had been there. She slipped her phone from her pocket and took some pictures of Julie and the school she was now heading into.

School was out at three-fifteen.

She knew that Julie did not ride in the Jag for the trip back home. She took the bus.

Reel would be back at three-ten.

She watched Julie disappear through the doorway of the school building and then turned and walked down the street.

Killers sometimes returned to the scene of the crime. That was next on her agenda this morning. She wasn’t interested in the crime scene itself. She was more interested in someone who she knew would be there.

When she arrived at her destination, Reel saw that the barricades had been pulled back until only the two buildings in question were still off-limits.

She stepped inside a shop, bought a coffee and newspaper, and stepped back out. She sat on a bench, read her paper, drank her coffee, and waited.

It took one hour before the woman came out. Reel had long since finished her coffee and the paper. She now just sat there looking idly around. Or so it seemed.

She made no visible reaction to the woman’s appearance on the scene.

Nicole Vance talked to one of her agents and signed off on a document. She stepped back and took a long look at the building from where the shot had been fired that had killed Doug Jacobs. Then she gazed toward the building where Jacobs’s life had ended.

Reel knew that Vance was very good at her job. She knew that the woman had probably gathered all the evidence that was collectible at both sites. She would go over it and then look for the killer. She wouldn’t find the killer. Not because she wasn’t good enough, but because it just wasn’t the sort of crime that the police ever solved.

Reel knew that either the people after her would get to her first, long before the police would be made aware of her presence, or else she would finish her work and disappear forever.

Reel was not afraid of much. She was not afraid of the police. Or the FBI. Or Special Agent Vance.

She was afraid of her former employer.

She was afraid of Will Robie.

But she was most afraid of failing at the one mission that had come to define her perhaps as she truly was.

She took some photos of Vance with her phone while pretending to make a call.

She knew where Vance lived. A condo in Alexandria. She’d been there quite some time. Never married. Never close to being married. Her career apparently was her perfect soul mate.

But she liked Robie. That was obvious.

That could help Reel. And hurt Robie.

She thought things through. Robie had sustained burns. That meant getting treatment at an agency facility. And with Jim Gelder dead, Robie almost certainly would have been summoned to meet with the one man above Gelder: Evan Tucker.

She took a cab to a Hertz dealer, rented a car, and drove off, merging into traffic and, in her mind, merging the possibilities of the young teen and the FBI agent. There was nothing fair about what Reel was thinking about doing. Yet when one had few options, one had to go with them.

She drove to Virginia and stopped in front of an imposing building that was relatively new.

United States Courthouse.

It was inside here that justice was supposed to be accomplished. It was inside here that wrongs were supposed to be righted. The guilty punished. The innocent absolved.

Reel didn’t know if any of that happened in courthouses anymore. She wasn’t a lawyer and didn’t understand the intricacies of what lawyers and judges did.

But she did understand one thing.

There were consequences to choices.

And a choice had been made by someone in that building and she happened to be the consequence of that choice.

She waited for another hour, her car parked on the street, its engine running. There was virtually no parking around here. She had been lucky enough to snag a spot and didn’t want to give it up.

The clouds had steadily moved back up the river and thickened. A few drops of rain plopped onto her windshield. She didn’t notice; her attention was riveted on the front steps of the courthouse. Finally, the doors opened and four men walked out.

Reel was only interested in one of the four. He was older than the rest. He should have known better. But perhaps with age, at least in his case, did not come wisdom.

He was white-haired, tall, and trim, with a tanned face and small eyes. He said something to one of the other men and they all laughed. At the bottom of the stairs they parted company. The white-haired man went to the left, the others to the right.

He opened his umbrella as the rain became steadier. His name was Samuel Kent. His intimates called him Sam. He was a federal judge of long standing. He was married to a woman who came from money. Her trust fund fueled a lavish lifestyle with an apartment in New York, a historically important eighteenth-century town home in Old Town Alexandria, and a horse farm in Middleburg, Virginia.

A year ago, the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court had appointed Sam Kent to the FISC, which stood for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the most clandestine of all federal tribunals. It operated in absolute secrecy. The president had no authority over it. Neither did Congress. It never published its findings. It was really accountable to no one. Its sole purpose was to grant or reject surveillance warrants for foreign agents operating in the United States. There were only eleven FISC judges, and Sam Kent was thrilled to be one of them. And he never rejected a warrant request.

Reel watched Kent walk down the street. She knew his Maserati convertible was parked in a secure section of the courthouse garage, so he wasn’t driving anywhere. His town home would have been within walking distance of the old federal courthouse in Old Town, which was now used by the bankruptcy court. But it was too far to walk from this courthouse. There were two Metro stops in the area, but Reel doubted he would be taking public transportation. He just didn’t seem the sort to mix with regular people. At this hour of the day she assumed he might be going to grab a bite to eat at one of the nearby restaurants.

She pulled out onto the street and followed the judge at a discreet distance.

In her head Reel had her list. There were two crossed off.

Judge Kent was the third name on that list.

She had covered the intelligence sector. Now it was time to move on to the judiciary.

Kent was very foolish for walking alone even in daylight, she thought. With Gelder and Jacobs dead he would have to know.

And if he knew, he should be aware that he was on the list.

And if he didn’t know, he was not nearly as formidable an opponent as she thought.

And I know that’s not the case.

Something was off here.

Her gaze hit the rearview mirror.

And that’s when Jessica Reel realized that she had just made a very costly mistake.

CHAPTER

21

“YOU LOOK LIKE YOUR GOVERNMENT pension got shit-canned,” said Robie as he walked next to Blue Man down the hallway.

“It did. But that’s not why I’m upset.”

“I didn’t think they could take pensions away from federal employees.”

“We’re not the Department of Agriculture. It’s not like we can write an op-ed in the Postbecause we’re upset.”

“So where are we going?”

“To talk.”

“Just you and me?”

“No.”

“Who else? I’ve already spoken with Evan Tucker. And number two is no longer with us.”

“There’s a new number two. At least an interim one.”

“That was fast.”

“Never let it be said that government bureaucracy doesn’t move fast when it has to.”

“So who is he?”

“She.”

“Okay. Glad to see the agency is progressive. What’s her name?”

“I’m sure she’ll introduce herself.”

“And you can’t tell me because...?”

“It’s a new paradigm, Robie. Everyone is feeling their way.”

“New paradigm? Because of what happened to Jacobs and Gelder?”

“Not just that, no.”

“What else is there?” asked Robie.

“I’m sure that will be explained.”

Robie didn’t ask another question, because it was clear that Blue Man was not in the mood to answer. And Blue Man was not the one to question about the crime scenes being policed and the roses taken. Robie wondered if the interim number two would be the one to talk to about that.

The door at the end of the hall opened, Robie was ushered in, and Blue Man left, closing the door behind him. Robie looked around the room. It was large but with minimal furniture. A round table with two chairs. One was empty. The other was not.

The woman was in her late fifties, about five-five, stout, with a heavily wrinkled face and graying hair that hung straight to her shoulders. Big round glasses partially obscured her plump face. She looked like the smartest girl in high school who had aged badly.

Robie didn’t recognize her. But it was a clandestine agency after all. It didn’t advertise its personnel.

“Please sit, Mr. Robie.”

Robie sat, unbuttoned his jacket, and put his hands on his stomach. He wasn’t planning on starting the conversation. She had summoned him. It was her show to run.

“My name is Janet DiCarlo. I have assumed Mr. Gelder’s duties.”

Not “the deceased Mr. Gelder.” Not “the unfortunate Mr. Gelder.” Not “the murdered Mr. Gelder.” Apparently no time for sympathy.

“That’s what I understand.”

“I have reviewed the files and your recent steps.”

Robie wanted to say, You mean my missteps.

Something was not making sense here. He was wondering why the one-two punch. First Tucker at home. Now his new lieutenant. Had this been planned out in advance?

DiCarlo stared across the width of the table at him. “How are the injuries?”

“Fixed.”

“It was close,” she noted.

“Yes, it was.”

“I saw the satellite feed. I don’t think you’ll survive another one like that.”

“Probably not.”

“You haven’t found out much.”

“I’m working it. Takes time.”

“But we’re running out of time.”

He said, “Well, you folks are making it harder.”

She leaned forward. “Well, perhaps I can make it a little easier. Jessica Reel?”

“What about her?”

“I think I can help you with her.”

“I’m listening.”

“You need to listen very carefully,” said DiCarlo.

“I am.”

“There is a reason why I have been elevated to this spot at this point in time.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

“I can tell you things about Reel that you might find helpful.”

“How is that?”

“I helped train her.”

CHAPTER

22

REEL DID NOT DO THE OBVIOUS. The obvious would have been to speed up or otherwise take evasive action. She did neither after processing the ground conditions in her mind and arriving at the best scenario for her survival.

There were two cars. One SUV, one sedan. Both were black. Both had tinted windows all around. Reel figured they were full of men with weapons. They were no doubt in communication with one another.

As though she were competing in a chess match, she jumped four moves ahead, retraced each link in that mental chain, and decided it was time.

She still didn’t punch the gas. She didn’t try to turn down a side street. That was too predictable. She calmly eyed the rearview mirror, looked at the rain-slicked streets, glanced at the traffic around her, and finally noted Judge Kent’s position on the street.

She counted to three and slammed not the gas, but the brakes.

Smoke poured from her rear wheels as traffic veered around her.

She counted to three again and hit the gas. But only after putting the car in reverse.

She surged backward, right at the SUV and the sedan.

In her mind she could hear the communications going back and forth between the two attack units: She’s trying to ram us. Disable us.

She angled her car’s rear at the grille of the smaller sedan. It was the game of chicken played at speed and partially in reverse.

The sedan blinked. It veered a foot to the left. But the bigger SUV instantly filled this gap.

In her mind Reel imagined the next communication.

The far heavier SUV would take the impact, while the sedan stayed clear. She could almost see the men in the SUV checking their seat belts, getting ready for the impact. After the collision, the men in the sedan would perform the execution on Reel.

What the SUV could not do, however, was match the agility of a smaller car, especially with someone as skilled as Jessica Reel behind the wheel.

She timed it perfectly, cutting the wheel hard and instantly pointing her car’s rear at the gap created by the SUV’s move, like a running back executing a cutback at the line as a hole appeared. At the same time as she pulled her pistol, she used her elbow to hit the button to roll down her window.

One would think that a car moving backward could not be as efficient as one moving forward. But the key was that Reel was moving in the direction she wanted to go, which was behind her. The SUV and sedan weren’t. Because where they wanted to go was where Reel was going, which was in the opposite direction.

Reel flew through the gap, aimed her gun, and fired. The rear tire of the SUV exploded and the tread unraveled, launching rubber crocodile hides off into the roadway. It swerved and collided with the sedan.

Clear of both vehicles, Reel let go of the gas, spun the wheel, executed a seamless J-turn that the Secret Service would have given her full marks for, and ended up with the front of her car pointed in the opposite direction.

She punched the gas once more, turned down a side street, and was gone.

Five minutes later she abandoned the car and walked away with a small bag containing clothes and other necessities that she always carried for just this sort of scenario. There was no need to wipe the car for her prints. She always wore gloves.

She entered a nearby Metro station, boarded a train, and within a few minutes was hurtling miles away from the two cars, the targeted federal judge, and her nearly premature death.

Still, with all that accomplished she gave herself a failing grade, and with good reason. Reel had always been her own harshest critic, and today she was brutal. She had committed at least five mistakes, any one of which could have led to her death.

Should have led to my death.

In addition to that, she would have to change her identity yet again.

They knew her car. They would trace it back to the rental place. They would know her new name and her credit card number and her driver’s license. These were all ways to trace her. Thus those items were now useless to her.

Fortunately, she had planned for that and had backups. But she had not planned for them to be corrupted so soon. This was clearly a setback.

Even more critically, Judge Kent had been fully alerted.

It was a screwup of regrettable proportions.

She took a cab to a bank and gained entry to a safety deposit box she had rented there under the ID that had just been put at risk. There she kept additional IDs, credit cards, passports, and other documentation she would now need. She did this as quickly as possible because they were probably on their way right now.

She left the bank and walked to a cabstand. She could not stay at a hotel near the bank. That would make it far too easy for them. She took the taxi to another cabstand, got out, and waited in line for another cab. She didn’t take the first one that came through and took a long, hard look at the second.

She gave the cab an address across town. After he dropped her off, she walked for a mile in the opposite direction.

These were all extraordinary measures to a layperson, she knew. But they were actually a bare necessity in her field.

She checked into another hotel under the new identity, went to her room, and put the few things in her bag away. She cleaned and fully loaded her gun as she sat at a table by the window looking for black vehicles with tinted windows pulling up in front.

A moment later she glanced at her shirtsleeve.

She had not gotten out of the predicament entirely unscathed. The bullet had ripped through her shirt, burning her skin before embedding in the passenger door.

She rolled up her sleeve and looked at the wound. The heat from the shot had cauterized the ridge in her skin. It didn’t worry her—she had scars from past missions that made this one look lightweight by comparison.

She supposed Will Robie had his share of mementos from his missions. And he would have some fresh ones thanks to her trap on the Eastern Shore. If they ever faced off she had to hope those wounds would slow him down enough to give her an edge.

She looked at her watch. She would have to leave soon. To get to the school on time.

For now, Reel continued to stare outside as the rain fell.

It was a gloomy day. It perfectly matched her life.

They had clearly won this round. She had to hope it would be their only victory against her.

CHAPTER

23

JANET DICARLO STARED ACROSS AT ROBIE, but didn’t appear to be actually focused on him. Robie wondered if the woman was even aware he was still in her presence. It had been at least two minutes since she had dropped the bombshell on him.

“Ma’am?” said Robie gently but firmly. “You said you trained her?”

DiCarlo blinked, shot a glance at Robie, and sat back, looking slightly embarrassed.

“She was the first and only female field operative recruited to the division. I was one of the few female handlers who worked with people in your division. People at the agency thought it would be a good idea to put the two of us together. I had years of experience and she a ton of potential. She bested every man in the class that year.”

“I worked with her on some assignments early on in our careers.”

“I know,” responded DiCarlo.

Robie looked surprised by this, but DiCarlo’s expression showed he shouldn’t have been.

“We keep score, Mr. Robie. People do, you know. In everything. Sports, business, relationships.”

“And killing people,” said Robie.

“Terminating problems,” corrected DiCarlo.

“My mistake,” he said dryly.

“We admired your record,” said DiCarlo. “Jessica in particular was an admirer of yours. She often said you were the best of all of them. You graded higher than her head-to-head. You were the only one to do so.”

“Since she almost killed me I think she might have to reevaluate her opinion.”

“The key word being ‘almost.’ The fact is she didn’t kill you. You escaped from her attempt.”

“Part luck, part instinct. But that doesn’t help us get to her.”

“It may, in a way.”

DiCarlo sat forward and steepled her hands in front of her. “I have evaluated both of you as objectively as I can. I think you are equally gifted, in both similar and dissimilar ways. You think alike. You adapt well. You have ice in your veins. You pride yourselves on being one step ahead, and if the other side catches up, you can still win by changing tactics on the fly.”

“Again, how does that help me get to her?”

“It doesn’t. Not directly. I’m telling you this so that you will better know how to confront and beat her when the time comes.”

“ Ifthe time comes. I have to find her first.”

“Which leads us to the question of why she’s doing what she’s doing. That may well take us to the next target before she gets there. I see that as your best chance to catch up, so to speak. In fact, it’s probably the only way. Otherwise, you’ll always be one step behind.”

“So why do you think she’s doing it?” asked Robie.

“When I was first told that Jessica was suspected in her handler’s murder, I refused to believe it.”

“Do you still not believe it?”

DiCarlo laid her hands flat on the table. “It’s ultimately unimportant what I believe, Mr. Robie. I have been tasked to aid you in finding Jessica Reel.”

“And killing her?” Robie said. He wanted to see her reaction, because only Blue Man had expressly said they wanted her for interrogation. Everyone else, including Jim Gelder and Evan Tucker, had been either vague or silent on that point.

“You’ve been assigned to this mission long enough to know what results are desired.”

“You would think. But nothing about this task has been made clear.”

DiCarlo sat back in her chair and stared off. She finally regrouped and said, “Be that as it may, it doesn’t really impact you and me and why we’re here.”

Robie nodded. “We can agree on that, for the time being. So that gets us back to the question: why is she doing this?”

“I think it might be beneficial for you to hear some of her history, Robie. Using the skills that I know you possess, one or more of these facts might aid you down the road.”

Robie mulled over this for a few moments. “Okay. Let’s take a trip down Jessica Reel’s life.”

She began, “Reel came to the agency under what I would say are unique circumstances, that is, not through traditional routes.”

“So she wasn’t former military? Most of the people who do what we do are.”

“No. Nor was she in the intelligence field.”

“She never talked about herself to me.”

“I’m sure she didn’t. Jessica Reel was born in Alabama. Her father was a white supremacist who led an antigovernment group for years. He was also a drugs and explosives trafficker. He didn’t like the color black, but he apparently loved the color green. He was arrested in a shootout with the DEA and ATF and is now serving a life sentence in a federal penitentiary.”

“And her mother?”

“Killed by her father when Jessica was seven. After he was arrested, her remains were found in the basement of their home. They’d been down there for quite some time.”

“So you’re sure he killed his wife?”

“Jessica witnessed the execution, for that’s what it was. Mrs. Reel did not share her husband’s views and was thus a liability to him. By the way, all of the facts I’m telling you we have independently verified. We didn’t simply take the word of a little girl for it. And the authorities had plenty of other evidence tying the husband to the crime. It was just a matter of finding the body. Not that it mattered, really, since he was in prison for life on the other charges, but it was a semblance of justice for Jessica and her poor mother.”

“Okay. And what happened to little Jessica after that?”

“Shuttled to relatives in other states who either didn’t want her or couldn’t afford another mouth to feed. She ended up in the foster care system in Georgia. Some really bad people got hold of her. Forced her to do things she didn’t want to do. She escaped from them and started living on the streets.”

“She doesn’t sound like the sort of person the agency would ever consider recruiting. How was the connection made?”

“I’m getting to that, Mr. Robie,” DiCarlo said, frowning.

“Sorry, ma’am, go ahead.”

Robie sat back, his full attention on the woman.

“When she was sixteen, Reel did something that would later lead her to be put in the Witness Protection Program.”

“What?” said Robie in surprise.

“She became an inside informant against a neo-Nazi group that was planning a mass attack against the government.”

“How did a sixteen-year-old girl manage that?”

“One of the foster parents she was taken in by had a brother who was in the Nazi group. He and some of his friends would use their house as a base when they were in town recruiting in Georgia. Reel went to the FBI and offered to wear a wire and take other steps to help build a case against them.”

“And the Bureau let her?”

“I know it sounds extraordinary. But I read the special agent in charge’s report on the initial meeting with Reel. He couldn’t believe she was sixteen. Not just in looks. His notes said he thought he was interviewing a hardened combat veteran. The girl was unshakable. She had an explanation for everything. Whatever the Bureau threw at her she flicked it off. She really wanted to nail those guys.”

“Because of her old man? And her mother?”

“I thought that too. But you’re never sure where you stand with Reel. She does things for purposes that seem clear only to her.”

“So she helped nail the neo-Nazis?”

“Not only that, she killed one of them. This was after she had taken his weapon from him.”

“At sixteen?”

“Well, she was seventeen by then. She spent a year infiltrating the organization. She gained their trust, cooked their meals, wrote their disgusting hate pamphlets, washed their filthy uniforms. By the end she was helping them plot out their master attack. And of course feeding the Bureau all the details.”

“I can think of only a handful of undercover agents at the FBI who could have pulled that off. And none of them were teenagers.”

“When they mounted their attack, the Bureau was waiting, with force. But there was still a battle. The man Reel killed was in the process of ambushing several FBI agents. She saved their lives.”

“And was put in Witness Protection?”

“The neo-Nazi organization is a labyrinth in this country. Their reach is far. With Reel’s help they wiped out part of it, but the monster still lived.”

“And how did she go from Witness Protection to the agency?”

“Through the Bureau we learned what Reel had done. It occurred to us that she had a skill set that was going to waste. And we could protect her as well as the U.S. Marshals could. And with her new job she would be invisible. New identity, traveling all the time, and she would gain personal protection skills that would make it very hard for anyone, even the skinheads, to get to her and kill her. We approached Reel about coming to work for us. She accepted on the spot. No second-guessing. We spent years educating and training her. As we did you.”

“That qualifies as a unique way into the agency, I’ll give you that.”

DiCarlo didn’t say anything for a few moments. “Not so different from how you came to us, Mr. Robie.”

“This isn’t about me. It’s about her. And from what you’ve just told me I could go in either direction on Reel.”

DiCarlo looked puzzled. “Explain that.”

“I’m assuming that because of her traumatic childhood you gave her a series of psychological tests to see if she was mentally up to the demands of the job?”

“Yes, and she passed all of them with flying colors.”

“Either because she was okay mentally or she’s a great liar.”

“She isa great liar. She fooled the skinheads for over a year.”

“And it sounds like she’s patriotic, which gets us back to the question of why she’s turned on us. So either something happened and she’s doing this for reasons we don’t as yet understand, or she’s been turned in the traditional way, which means she fooled all of you and wasn’t as patriotic as you believed.”

“I follow your reasoning.”

“And while I appreciate better understanding her history, what I need to know more about is her missions from the last two years.”

“Why two years?”

“That to me is the outer reaches of how long she would carry something around inside her and then lay the plans necessary to execute her response. That’s only in the case of her not being turned in the traditional sense, which could be simply about money.”

“I would never believe that about Jessica.”

Robie cocked his head and stared at her. “Would you believe it about me?”

“I don’t know you the way I do her.”

“The fact is, ma’am, you don’t really know either one of us. That’s why people like Reel and me are so good at what we do. It’s why you approached us in the first place. You don’t get to be like us if your childhood was normal. We’re not Beaver Cleavers with a stay-at-home mom in pearls making us pies and pouring us milk after school.”

“I understand that.”

“Until I’m proved wrong I will assume that Jessica Reel is doing this for some reason unrelated to being bought off. To better understand that I need to know what she was involved with in the last two years.”