Текст книги "Adrenaline"

Автор книги: Jeff Abbott

Соавторы: Jeff Abbott
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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

14

THE TEXT MESSAGE DISPLAYED: Do not return now. Lay low. Destroy this phone and I will destroy mine. Call backup number in three days. Good luck.

Well, that was not helpful. English sent to a Dutch phone number meant little. Practically everyone in Holland spoke English; including any Company operatives there who might consider me a traitor worth killing. And if the person on the other side decided to call this number and saw that the phone still received calls or texts—hmm, he’d realize his buddy had disobeyed orders and figure out that said buddy might be dead.

Understood, I texted back, hoping to get more.

I hope he suffered, was the answer.

Wow.

He did, I texted back. I knew this was a huge risk; it might raise suspicion that I wasn’t following orders.

The call failed. The other end had broken or dismantled the phone; I was texting to ether.

I turned on the lights in the apartment. I found the bullet buried in the bookcase; it had sliced into a copy of Great Expectations. I pocketed the bullet and threw the shredded book in the trash under the kitchen sink.

I went and stared at the body. How was I going to get it out of here? There was not only the matter of the neighbors, but Howell’s watchers might check the apartment at any time when I was at work, and I wasn’t inclined to call Howell and say someone took the bait until I knew who this someone was.

My link to Novem Soles, whatever it was, was that someone in Amsterdam wanted me dead and thought they had gotten their wish.

I could call August. But what could he do?

For the next hour, I retrieved the bullet from the mattress, made the bed, tidied the apartment, then sat and paced and thought about what to do with this dead body.

There was a quiet knock at the door. It was four in the morning. I took the intruder’s gun and went to the side of the door.

Howell’s soft voice came through the wood. “Sam?”

“Yes.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to open it.

“Are you okay? I got a report your lights have been on for a while.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Open the door.”

I tucked the silencer-capped gun in the back of my pajama pants and made sure the T-shirt covered it. I opened the door. Howell stood there, in jeans and a black sweatshirt. “Is everything okay?”

I let him step inside and then I shut the door. I hoped he didn’t have to use the bathroom.

“You get a call if I leave my lights on?”

“Yes. Especially on a day like today. When you tried to run.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“You’re not up thinking about a new way to run?”

“No. It’s just standard-grade insomnia that is the curse of accused traitors. I hope to get an Ambien endorsement next week.” I kept my voice steady, so unbelievably I-am-a-statue steady.

“You’re tense.”

“You showing in the middle of the night reminds me that I’m basically still your prisoner. Tension is a by-product.” I shook my head. “Honestly. I can’t believe you get up out of bed in the night to come check on me.”

“You matter to me, Sam. I know you want to believe the whole world is your enemy, but I’m not.”

I wanted to believe him. I could hand over the intruder’s phone and, you know, validate Howell. Show him the Novem Soles tattoo and say, well, you asked if I’d heard of it and now I have. Make him happy. But Howell and his peers had been so ready to believe the worst of me for so long, I had no reason to trust them. And whoever was gunning for me thought that I was dead. I had to take advantage of that temporary illusion.

I had to move. Quickly.

Howell said, “Well, if you’re all right.”

“I appreciate the concern.” I didn’t look at him. It just occurred to me that maybe I had marks on my throat from the intruder’s attack or bruises on my face. I hadn’t looked in a mirror. “I think now I can sleep. I mean, knowing that your team is watching over me. You all are better than a night light.”

He shook his head at my sarcasm.

If they’d watched everyone enter the building, then they’d notice on their logs that a guy in dark clothes who’d entered at some point hadn’t left. Questions would be asked, probably by the morning. I didn’t have much time. I met Howell’s gaze.

Howell looked at me and he tried, God help him, a smile. “I know this is a pressure cooker. Just be patient, Sam. The truth will come out.”

“I’m sure of that, Howell. I’m all about the results.” The results were in the tub. And I smiled at him, the tentative way you do when you want a job and you’re not sure the interview went well.

He left. I went back into the bathroom and I looked at the dead guy for a minute. I looked at the useless phone number on his cell and then I took apart the phone. I didn’t want whoever wanted me dead to be the least bit suspicious. I went next door to an apartment under renovation and I picked the lock, then I carried the body there and put it in the bathtub. I cranked the air-conditioning to its highest setting. The body would start to stink in the next day, which was Saturday, but the remodelers didn’t work weekends so as not to disturb the current tenants, so I might have two days before the body was found, if I was extremely lucky. Fine. I would be gone by then.

I put the pieces of the cell phone into a plastic bag I could throw away after I left the apartment. I didn’t want the Company finding it after I was gone; I didn’t want them on my trail.

I went back to bed, and I thought that having killed, I would never sleep again. But I slept the deep and restful slumber that comes after making a hard decision.

15

MY SPARK OF INSPIRATION CAME from a complaint Ollie had made about some missing imported whisky. Because there are thousands of containers holding crates of fine whiskies shipped from Ireland and Scotland, and nearly nine billion metric tons of all sorts of cargo shipped on the seas every year. These goods are mostly carried in two hundred million containers—twenty-foot– or forty-foot-long steel coffins you can fill with whisky or shoes or computers or frozen meat or whatever. Even me.

Many cargo ships carry six thousand containers or more. Almost none of these containers are inspected for contraband. A busy port may see thirty thousand containers a day enter and then be loaded onto rail and trucks. As the ships arrive to deliver their cargo—whether in New York or Boston or Los Angeles or Houston—they are met by a fleet of trucks. Stop the containers to conduct detailed inspections, which involves offloading a container onto a truck, hauling it to a scanner, having bureaucrats complete paperwork and watch the inspection, unpack and then repack if any anomalies are found, and then reload and return to a truck, and you get a logistical and financial nightmare. Any inspected container creates a delay, strains a link in the surprisingly delicate economic chain. Trucks bring cargo or empty containers to the port and they take away cargo from the port. Stop for inspections, and the trucks and the trains moving the raw goods and finished products stop. The stores don’t have necessities on their shelves. The shoppers complain, the stores lose profits, the shareholders scream bloody murder, the politicians listen.

This is the big, gaping hole in our armor.

The security people brag that six percent of containers get inspected. That math means ninety-four percent don’t. But that number lies. Six percent at a major port would be nearly two thousand containers a day. It simply doesn’t happen.

I could get to Europe if I could get inside a container. The odds of being caught in an inspection were very low. Hide in the steel box for seven to ten days, get spit out in London or more likely Rotterdam, the biggest European port. Then hitch a boat into London. Start looking for Lucy and my son.

All I had to do was smuggle myself.

16

Amsterdam

EDWARD LOVED FEAR. The smell of it in the skin, the taste of it in the saliva, the feel of it in the drumming heartbeat. Fear was the most powerful force in the world. Edward knew fear was the engine for religion, the spark for war, even the kindling for love—because all people are afraid to be alone.

Fear had been the key to breaking the young woman’s soul.

Edward sipped his coffee at the kitchen table and considered the past three weeks. His experiment had proved to the malcontents and low-level criminals he’d formed into a loose gang that a careful application of abuse, drugs, and isolation, coupled with a consistent dose of rape and frequent threats of execution, could produce desired effects. He could tell each morning that the group’s nervousness about the kidnapping had lessened: the ransoms were paid, and the young woman had begun to drift into their circle. It wasn’t so different from his student days as an actor: you created a character and stepped into the skin. Now he’d done that for the young woman. He had remade her into a new character.

Edward made it clear to the others that no one else was to touch her; no one else was to speak to her without his permission. She was his clay. He knew, though, that they listened at the closed door as he told her of her evils, and the evils that she and her father had done, while he held the knife to her throat and pushed himself inside her. He knew they eavesdropped on the disintegration of another human being. And he’d told her they were listening, and it made her more afraid.

It was lunchtime, and most of the group had gone for a walk around Amsterdam to enjoy the sunny cool of the day. The others were eating in the main room.

He could talk to her alone now. Alone was best. He opened the knapsack and looked at the most interesting gear that she had rigged for him. It had taken a long while to get all the materials, but now it was done and there was only the final step. His only worry was Simon, who had to lay low in Brooklyn now that Sam Capra was dead but would be in touch, no doubt, in a few days.

He put down his coffee cup and went upstairs. She was kept in a small closet in the corner. He told the gang she was frightened of enclosed places, and her claustrophobia had played a critical role in her unraveling. Research was so important. He unlocked the door and inched it open.

She lay curled in the dark, holding her stomach, trembling. The room was not cold but still she shivered. She stared at him, not drawing away, just lying there, waiting to see what he would do.

“It is an important day,” he said. He did not climb atop her, pushing her legs apart and easing down the sweatpants she wore for his pleasure. He did not yell at her about why everything in her Old Life was bad, and disgusting and criminal, and an affront against human dignity, and how they fought against injustice. He did not play her videos showing the burned people, the shot families, the results of her father’s commerce. The rest of the gang loved his speeches; they leaned against the door and listened to him preach to the girl. He had read a book on how the Symbionese Liberation Army had brainwashed Patty Hearst, and it held many useful and fascinating tips for reshaping a woman into a pawn. So far his approach had borne fruit: after a few hundred hours of careful torture the young woman was quiet and pliant now, a textbook victim of intimidation and fear. Suffering was a condition that forged strength, and Edward needed her to be strong. “What do you want to tell me?”

She glanced at the door.

“They’re not out there,” he said. “It’s only you and me.” He smiled; it would let her know that it was okay to smile. “So you can use the toothbrush today, and the toilet. And then we will take a walk.”

“A walk?”

“Yes. I have a job for you, one that is very important.”

Edward helped her to her feet and steered her into the small bathroom. She stank of sweat; she would need a shower before she could venture into public. It was important she not be noticed or remembered. He opened the door and told her to clean herself. She nodded, not looking at him.

He went downstairs and into his bedroom, where he had bought new clothes for her: modest slacks, a plain blue scarf she could pull over her mouth when needed to help mask her face, a gray pullover. She would be practically invisible. He came out and glanced in the kitchen. Demi stood at the sink, frowning.

“What’s the matter?” he said.

Demi said, “Piet went upstairs. He said you are handling the woman wrong. That you don’t know how to break her entirely. That he will do it.”

Edward turned and ran up the stairs. He tried the bathroom door. Locked. He kicked it in and he could see Piet, bending her over the lavatory, starting to inch his pants down. He held an antique short Japanese sword in his hand, a wakizashi, teasing its sharp edge along the woman’s back as though her spine was a whetstone. She shivered in silence. Screaming for help was long past her abilities.

Edward pulled his gun from the back of his pants and put it at the base of Piet’s neck. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “That’s my science project.”

“She needs to be properly broken,” Piet said. “And it’s not fair you get all the fun.”

Edward’s hand trembled. “Pull your pants up and go downstairs. She has a job to do today. Critical. You would traumatize her now?”

“If you break her right, nothing’ll traumatize her, and that’s the point. She feels nothing then.” Then he said, looking at Edward in the mirror, “What job is she doing?”

“A job for which she is uniquely qualified.” Edward fought down the urge to splatter Piet’s inconsequential brains across the faded paint of the bathroom wall. He wiggled fingers in Piet’s face. “Touch her again and her skin is the last thing you will feel.”

“Why don’t you want to share Little Miss Succulent here?”

Edward didn’t like the glint in Piet’s eyes. Piet was useful, but only to a point. However, he could make trouble and it was important there be no trouble, not now. Not when he was so close. So he said, “Because I don’t have to.”

Piet took the small sword away from the woman’s spine and walked out of the bathroom, Edward holding the gun at his side. Piet turned and smiled back at the young woman who looked away from him, covering her nakedness. Edward closed the door behind Piet.

The woman started to shudder, and Edward put a protective arm around her shoulders. “Did he? Did he?” He didn’t finish the question.

She shook her head. He inspected her back; a scratch, but the wakizashi sword that was Piet’s pride had not made a serious mark.

“It’s because you’re so important to me that he wants you,” Edward said.

“You’re not here all the time.” She spoke very softly.

“I’m everywhere. All the time,” he said, his voice cold. “I’m even in here.” He tapped her forehead. “Now clean yourself.”

He went downstairs. Piet sat alone in the kitchen. People always seemed to clear a room when Piet entered. It was time to get leverage over Piet so he made no further trouble.

“Your initiative inspires me,” Edward said. “Come along on the job. Since you’re curious.”

“Where are you going?” Piet sounded a bit nervous; Edward smiled.

“Centraal Station.” It was Amsterdam’s main train hub, on the north side of the city.

“Are you letting her go?” Piet asked. Demi, a thin Dutch blonde, stepped back into the kitchen, arms crossed.

“Don’t be silly; she doesn’t want to leave me. You will walk with us. Demi, you too. Go get the handheld camera. We have footage to shoot.”

Piet looked uncomfortable.

“I want you there. Because I trust you. And if you are there, I think she will do whatever I say.” Piet would be a spur to her to do what must be done. And Piet would then be in his power.

The woman came downstairs, slowly. She glanced about, uncertain, her hands trembling. She had not been left alone outside of the closet since being brought to the house three weeks ago. But she had made no trouble now, Edward thought, and he flicked a smile at Piet. The Hearst approach worked: break, tear down, and give her the barest bit of hope to rebuild.

She glanced once at Piet and her mouth trembled. “Are you making me leave?” she asked Edward.

“Of course not, Yasmin. You belong to us now, and we to you.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice small. She’d fought back hard the first two days. That memory of defiance in her face seemed distant now.

“Today is about your father.” Edward made a click in his throat. “He is dead to you. Do you remember, Yasmin?”

“Yes,” she said after a long silence. “He’s dead to me.”

“He’s a bad man, Yasmin. Your old world was very bad, isn’t that right? We’ve saved you from that evil.” He lingered on the last word. Evil wasn’t a word you got to use in every conversation. “But we are the ones who do good.”

“He’s a bad man. He needs to pay for what he’s done.” More strength in her voice. “He’s bad. Like you said. Very bad.”

Edward shot Piet and Demi a scowl of triumph. Then he gave Yasmin a smile. “You are nothing to him, and you are everything to us. Yes? This is true. This is your home now. We are your family. Forever.”

She didn’t speak.

“We are going for a walk, Yasmin, outside the house. You’ll be good, won’t you, Yasmin? Or I’ll have to put you back into the closet, for a week or a month or maybe a year. I’ll have to visit you there for a long time, play with you and my little knife. Maybe Piet would visit you, too.” He ran a finger along her jawline. She stared past his shoulder at Piet.

Then she nodded. She rubbed her arm and he could see the needle marks from the drugs he’d given her.

“You don’t need to be afraid,” he said. “I’ll be with you every step of the way. We’re going to use your expertise. You should be proud, us taking the bad you made and using it for good.”

She nodded again.

“We’re going where there are a lot of people, Yasmin,” Edward said. “All very bad people.”

“Very bad people,” she repeated.

“We’re going to the train station,” Edward said, and he held out his hand with a smile. With Piet and Demi watching, he put her hand in his. He could feel their gaze on him, like an audience in a darkened theater. And then he started to crush her fingers.

A slow moan escaped her mouth.

“I didn’t say you could make a noise,” Edward said, squeezing harder.

She went silent. He continued to increase the pressure. “Now you may speak.”

“When do we leave?” Yasmin gasped. But the best part was she didn’t try and pull her fingers away. She was broken.

Behind him, Piet laughed.

He released the pressure and interlocked her fingers with his.

“In a few moments. If you do as I tell you, you don’t have to go back into the closet. You can stay outside. All day. And tonight you could sleep in a bed, Yasmin. With me. Like man and wife.”

Her mouth moved like words might spill in a flood, but she was silent.

Edward put his lips close to her ear. “Will you do what I tell you, Yasmin?” But he already knew the answer.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I’ll do what you ask.” For a moment he saw the strong woman she had been, before her ordeal in the hellish closet, and then that sense of steel vanished as she glanced at Piet and Demi. Now she showed the others that she was a broken, desperate shell, trying to survive to the next hour. Just as he’d planned. Fear. He’d seen it in the faces of the men he’d killed in Hungary, in Sam Capra’s blind panic as he tried to find his wife in the smoke and noise of Holborn.

Fear worked.

He released her hand. “Everything changes for you today, Yasmin. Today, you’re the most important person in the house.”

Edward smiled. This was going to be so much better than London.

17

ON SATURDAY I HAD a day off from Ollie’s. I had been careful to spend my days off at home, sitting quietly, watching TV or reading books that sharpened my mind. My only outings were an occasional jog or a trip to the library.

A typical trip to the library meant browsing for an hour, killing time in the stacks, checking out books that would not raise red flags (no nonfiction, no books on the Company; I usually picked thick historical novels). I would log onto the web and do a search on Lucy’s name; I felt sure Howell monitored the library’s Internet connection, since it was my only avenue to the web. Lucy’s name never resulted in any news. I would visit her abandoned personal page on Facebook and I lingered over the few pictures of her: our first Christmas in London, her walking on a beach during a long weekend in Majorca, us having coffee in Kensington Park during a glorious summer morning. I have no photos of her; nothing left from our apartment in London. The Company had taken and kept it all, for evidence.

In some of the pictures she smiled, in others she wore the intense competitive frown I’d seen in her. I stared at the old photos, looking for any trace, any sign, that she could turn traitor. As if it could be read in a face. She had not put up any photos since she became pregnant; most of her Facebook friends were from her college days at Arizona, and their wall postings remained unanswered.

So, no surprise to my watchers when, on Saturday at noon, I stopped by Ollie’s for a minute and then went to the library. I dropped my checked-out, unread novels into the return chute. I smiled at the librarian behind the desk, who ignored me as she spoke into a phone. I moved along the shelves for five minutes, determining the relative positions of the staff and the visitors. I took off the cover of the alarm system sensor—it was close to the door—and with a pair of scissors I snipped the wire that connected the back exit door to the alarm. I replaced the cover. No one looked at me; story time was going on in the children’s section, a hearty reading of Where the Wild Things Are.

Then I took the deepest breath of my life and eased open the door. The alarm didn’t blare. I walked straight out into the cool sunlight. I waited for a bullet to pound the pavement in front of me, or to cut into my kneecap. I waited to be hurt and fall and for a man to hustle me into a car at gunpoint and call on Howell to say I’d been a bad boy, asking me to explain the dead body in the neighboring apartment.

Silence. The bars were widening, just a bit.

I walked to a nearby car I’d noticed parked on a side street, same place every week, in front of a strip shopping center. The model was one that was easy to boost, and it had no GPS system to track it remotely. I hot-wired it and was gone in less than the proverbial sixty seconds. No sign of pursuit in the mirror; any watchers used to my routine were probably keeping their eyes on the front door or considered themselves clever by monitoring the Internet searches.

I drove north, making a stop at a Wal-Mart for the rest of my disguise, then I drove on and found a truck stop about thirty miles south of Albany. I parked the car in the far corner, went inside for coffee. Many ate here because it was cheaper to eat a couple of hours out of New York than in the city. I drank three cups of excellent coffee in unhurried progression, watching the truckers come and go. Mostly they sat and listened to the news: a bombing at a train station in Amsterdam that had killed five, a dive in stocks yesterday, an indictment against a congressman for bribery.

In the hush of the commercials I listened to them chat, in their varying levels of sociability; I wanted a talker. Talkers don’t ask as many questions. They like to discuss themselves, not you. You are just there to drink in the wisdom. Often they talked about their cargos, a conversational opener the same way one might ask about the weather. Forty-five minutes after I came in, a trucker, silver-haired and with a slight Southern accent, sat next to me and wolfed down a hamburger and fries, half-drowned in ketchup. When his plate was clear, he mentioned to the uninterested trucker next to him that he was hauling flannel and buttons to be shipped overseas for fashioning into shirts.

“Why they can’t stitch together shirts here is beyond me,” the talker said. “We got sewing machines.”

“Yeah,” the other trucker said, “Japanese sewing machines.” He shrugged at the shrinking world. He got up and left.

The talker ordered a cup of coffee.

After it had been poured and the first curl of steam was rising from it and he’d taken an ample sip, I asked, “Are you heading to the port, sir?”

He gauged me with a look. “Yeah.”

“I’m trying to get there. My car broke down here. My brother’s working on a ship sailing out of New Jersey and he got me a job.”

“Usually it’s not American boys working those ships.”

“I know. He’s a supervisor. He got me the job.” I tucked my teeth over my lip, all small-town sheepish. “I’m a little desperate. Ship’s coming in and leaving tomorrow and I’m stuck here, drinking coffee. I kept asking for rides earlier and I think I asked wrong. Everyone said no.” I let a shade of heartbreak show on my face.

“That’s tough.” He looked at the empty, ketchup-smeared plate like it was a painting.

“I know, sir. I wouldn’t ever ask but I need the job bad. If I can get to any Port terminal I can get a ride to my brother’s ship.”

“I’m not supposed to take on riders. You understand.”

“Sure, of course. But this wouldn’t be out of your way.” Then I went for the knife. “Like you said, wish they’d make shirts here. I’d have a job where I could stay on dry land. I got to take what I can get.” I had been careful to count out sparse change for the coffee in front of the waitress. I wanted to look like I was what I said I was the moment I walked into the truck stop. You have to play the role to the hilt. The waitress, listening since the crowd had slowed, put a bit more coffee in my cup without me asking.

The trucker set down his coffee cup. Thinking it over. Most people are decent and are inclined to help. “Well…”

“I could chip in some gas money.”

“What’s your name?”

“Sam. Sam Capra.” I had no fake ID; there was no point in lying. I did have a driver’s license and he asked to see it. I showed it to him.

“Capra like the film director?”

I laughed like I’d never heard the question before. “Sadly no relation. How much royalties could I get off It’s a Wonderful Life?”

“That’s a good movie,” he said, like I had confirmed a connection to the most famous Capra. “Says you live in New York: why are you up here?”

“I was looking to get a job in Albany. Didn’t get it.” Could I be more hard luck?

He studied the license some more, like it was a long book. He handed it back to me then downed the rest of his coffee.

“Then it’s a wonderful life, Sam Capra, you got a ride,” the trucker said, and he laughed at his own joke. So did I.