Текст книги "Gideon's Corpse"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

50

The sun had set, the crescent moon was down, and a very dark midnight approached. Gideon drove Blaine’s Jeep off the Paiute Creek forest service road and into a thicket of gambel oaks. He backed it slowly into a clump of bushes, branches scratching against the paint, until the vehicle was well hidden from the road.

He got out. He had borrowed some of Blaine’s clothes—a bit loose and a bit short, but serviceable—and was dressed entirely in black, his face darkened with charcoal, a wicked Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver with a four-inch barrel—in his opinion, the scariest-looking pistol made—in one hand and an old-fashioned strop razor in his pocket. He wasn’t going to kill anyone—at least, he wasn’t planning to—but appearance would be everything.

First he had some work to do. He removed a shovel and a pick from the back of the Jeep and selected a soft, loamy portion of the forest floor as a place to dig. He broke up the ground with the pick, then shoveled out the loose dirt, keeping the edges of the hole crisp and sharp with the blade. It was soft ground and in less than an hour he had created a shallow grave, a stark rectangle, about seven feet long, two feet wide, and three feet deep.

He packed the shovel back in the Jeep, rinsed his hands from a canteen, then took a sap, some zip ties, and a few other items from the seat and stuffed them all into his pockets. Leaving the grave site, he made his way through the dark ponderosa forest. The Paiute Creek Ranch lay at roughly eight thousand feet of altitude and, despite being summer, the night air was cool to the point of chilliness. He paused frequently to listen to the night sounds of the forest: the distant yipping of a pack of coyotes, the low bassoon of a great horned owl.

In half a mile he came to the chain-link fence surrounding the ranch settlement. Through the trees he could see the yellow glow of windows. Stopping at the fence, he listened intently, but no sound came from the compound. It was as he hoped: they were apparently on “ranch time,” to bed at sunset, up before dawn.

A careful inspection indicated that there were no sophisticated alarms or sensors along the fence. Taking out a pair of fencing pliers, Gideon began to snip the chain links, creating a large flap that he pulled back and wired open. He crawled through and made his way carefully through the darkness to the rear of the main ranch house. All was quiet. A few dim yellow lights glowed in the lower windows, but—because the outfit was run on solar power and batteries—there were no bright spotlights or area lights.

He was convinced there would be some sort of night patrol: these people were paranoid and they would have posted guards. Moving with enormous care through the darkness, he drew up to the building and peered in the window. There, in a rocking chair, sat the cowboy with the squared-off beard, quietly alert, reading a book. An M16 was propped up against the sofa next to him.

Gideon was convinced Willis occupied rooms on the top floor. It was clearly the most comfortable accommodation at the ranch. One room had been his office, and he recalled seeing through an open door to a sumptuous bedroom with whorehouse-velvet walls and a canopy bed. That would be Willis’s bedroom.

So he had to do something about the man downstairs.

He watched the man for a while. The man didn’t look sleepy, he wasn’t drinking, and—what unnerved Gideon most of all—he was reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. This man was no dumb hick cowboy. The outfit was all show. This was a sophisticated and intelligent person who would not be easily fooled.

Gideon had anticipated running into some problem or other, and he realized he’d done so already. At all costs, he had to prevent the man from raising an alarm. He couldn’t just go in and bash the man over the head. That would make too much noise and had a high probability of ending in a ruckus or fight. Besides, Ulysses had an assault rifle. He began to formulate a plan. It was high-risk, but he couldn’t think of a better way.

Plucking a piece of paper from his pocket, Gideon scrawled a short note. He took a deep breath, then tapped on the window. The man looked up, saw Gideon’s black face peering in, and rose abruptly from his chair, grabbing the rifle.

Quickly, Gideon put his finger to his lips and gestured for the man to come outside. But instead the man started for the stairs. Gideon rapped again, this time louder, and shook his head, again putting his finger over his mouth. Then he held up the note he had written.

DON’T WAKE WILLIS!!

MUST TALK TO YOU

IMPORTANT!!

The man hesitated. He could not identify Gideon through the blackface and, Gideon hoped, would assume that Gideon might be a ranch insider. Who else would knock on the window like that?

Gideon gestured again, nodding and waving the man outside.

Shouldering the gun, the man headed for the door.

Gideon backed away from the house, into the edge of the trees, as the man came around the corner, looking this way and that. Gideon flashed his light, and the man approached.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

“Shhhh,” Gideon whispered. “You wake Willis, we’re in big trouble. This is important– realimportant.”

The man frowned in suspicion. “What’s this all about?” he asked, unshouldering the rifle. “Who are you and why the hell have you blacked your face?”

Gideon backed up a little, then shut off the light and moved rapidly and silently in a lateral direction.

The man stopped at the edge of the trees. “Lane, is that you?” He was looking around, still pointing the gun at where Gideon was no longer standing. “What do you want? Come out.”

Gideon darted out and whacked the man across the side of the head with the cosh. With a moan, he sagged heavily to the ground. Fortunately, the rifle did not fire.

Seizing the man under the arms, Gideon dragged him deeper into the forest, tied him to a tree, blindfolded and gagged him, and then—with a certain hesitation—whacked him a second time.

Picking up the M16, he returned to the house, snuck inside, and carefully propped it back against the sofa. He quickly wrote a second note, just in case anyone came by, and left it on the rocking chair:

BACK IN A MOMENT

DON’T WAKE WILLIS!!

That might not fool anyone for long, but it would at least delay things. It had always amazed Gideon how most people chose to obey as a default reaction, even if the command was illogical or stupid. It was a reaction he had relied on many times, to good effect.

He snuck up the stairs. Now he faced the second problem: what to do if Willis had a woman in his room? He didn’t believe for a moment the man was celibate.

He crept softly through Willis’s dark, empty office. The door to the bedroom was locked. Gideon knelt, took out his tools, and—with infinite care and excruciating slowness—unlocked the door.

The room had a night-light—cute—and Gideon saw, to his enormous relief, that Willis was alone.

He walked silently over to the bed, a piece of gaffing tape already unrolled and ready to go. He leaned over Willis, who was sleeping on his back—and then in one smooth motion laid a knee hard across his chest, pinning him, while simultaneously pressing the blade of the straight razor against the man’s neck.

“Cut your throat if you move or make a sound,” he whispered hoarsely into the man’s ear.

He had previously dulled the blade, but Willis didn’t know that. With the razor pressed to his neck, the struggle ended. Willis lay there, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the darkness. His eyes went even wider as he recognized Gideon through the blackface.

Keeping the razor to the throat, Gideon said: “Open your mouth. Wide.”

The man opened his mouth. Gideon placed the muzzle of the Colt Python into it, then removed the razor. “You’re going to do as I say, right? Blink yes.”

After a moment, Willis blinked.

“Stand up nice and slow. Keep the barrel between your teeth.”

He eased himself off Willis and the man stood up, exactly as told.

“Hands behind your back.”

Willis put his hands behind his back and Gideon cuffed them together with the zip ties. He removed the barrel from the man’s mouth, took the roll of gaffing tape, and sealed his mouth.

“Now you and I are going to take a walk. I’m going to keep the muzzle of this gun pressed against the back of your head and I willpull the trigger if anything happens. We will walk out of the door, down the stairs, and off the ranch. I repeat: if anyone disturbs us, I shoot you in the head. So it’s up to you to make sure no one disturbs us. Nod if you agree.”

Nod.

“Is there anyone else sleeping up here?”

Nod.

“Point to the room.”

With cuffed hands, Willis indicated the room next door, where Gideon had previously seen the woman lolling on the bed.

“Okay. She wakes up, you die. Now walk down the stairs and out the side door.”

Willis was perfectly obedient. He did everything exactly as instructed. Within a minute they were in the darkness of the trees. Gideon switched on an LED lamp and walked Willis out past the hole in the fence and through the half mile of woods to where he had dug the grave.

When they arrived, Willis saw the grave in the light of the lamp and immediately staggered with fear. Gideon had to physically hold the man up. He made a muffled moan through the tape.

Gideon reached around and ripped it from the man’s mouth. Willis gasped, staggered again. He was beyond frightened.

“Go lie down in the grave.”

“No. Oh my God. No—”

“ In the grave.”

“Why? Why in the grave—?”

“Because I’m going to kill you and bury you. Get in there.”

Willis fell to his knees, blubbering, the tears streaming down his face. “No, please. Don’t do this. Don’t do it, don’t, don’t…” His voice choked up. He was coming apart before Gideon’s eyes.

Gideon shoved him back and he fell, slipping into the hole, scrambling quickly out again in terror. Gideon took a step forward with the gun.

“Open your mouth.”

“No. Please please pleaseplease please, no, no, no—”

“Then I’ll just shoot you and roll your body in.”

“But why, why? I’ll do anything, anything, just tell me what you want!” His voice dissolved into a choking wail, his frame racked with sobs, a dark stain spreading from his crotch. And then he puked, once, twice, heaving and choking.

“I’ll do anything…” he managed to squeak out, heavy drool hanging from his mouth.

It was time.

“Tell me about the nuke,” Gideon said.

A silence, accompanied by a blank stare.

“The nuke,” said Gideon. “Tell me your plans for the nuke. The nuke you plan to detonate in DC. Tell me about that and I’ll let you go.”

“Nuke?” Willis looked at him with utterly uncomprehending eyes. “ What nuke?”

“Don’t play stupid. Tell me about it and you’re a free man. Otherwise…” And Gideon gestured toward the grave with the gun.

“What…what are you talking about? Please, I don’t understand…” Willis stared at the gun, wide-eyed, his pleas turning into incoherent babbling.

Gideon looked at him, an awful realization dawning: this man knew nothing. He might be the leader of a cult, an egocentric and paranoid man with delusions of grandeur, but he was patently innocent of nuclear terror. Gideon had made a terrible mistake.

“I’m sorry.” Gideon reached down, grasped Willis, and pulled him up. “I’m sorry. My God, I’m so sorry.”

He cut off the ties and holstered the gun. “Go.”

Willis stared blankly.

“You heard me, get out of here! Go!”

Still the man wouldn’t run. He just stared blankly, dazed, still paralyzed with fear. With a curse of self-disgust, Gideon turned, walked into the bushes, got in the Jeep, started it up, and drove away, skidding through the dirt, slewing around, and gunning the engine, wanting nothing more than to get away as quickly as possible.

51

By the time Stone Fordyce arrived back at Los Alamos from an inspection of the teams dragging the lake and combing the banks of the river, it was past midnight. Midnight: it marked the turn of another day. One day to N-Day.

He was dead tired but that thought woke him up fast. As he approached the Tech Area, he was directed to the new command and control center being set up in a disused warehouse just outside the security perimeter. It amazed him how fast things had moved in his absence.

As he flashed his badge at the entrance, the guard said: “Stone Fordyce? The boss wants to see you. In the back.”

“The boss? Who’s that?”

“Millard. The new guy.”

The boss wants to see you.Fordyce didn’t like the sound of that.

He brushed past the guard, walked by the acres of cheap desks, each with its own computer and phone, to a cubicle hastily erected in the back corner, occupying one of the few areas of the warehouse with a window. The door was open, revealing a small, lean man in a suit standing behind a desk, back turned, speaking into the phone.

Fordyce gave a polite tap on the open door. All his professional instincts told him that this was not going to be a good meeting.

The man turned, held up a finger, kept talking. Fordyce waited. He didn’t know Millard, hadn’t even heard the man’s name before, but that didn’t surprise him in an investigation like this, with everyone jockeying for inches of turf. And someone had to take charge on a local level—things had become increasingly chaotic, with many people in charge and no clear lines of command.

He studied Millard while waiting for him to get off the phone. He was a good-looking man in a WASPy sort of way: high cheekbones, fine green eyes, mid-fifties, a distinguished shock of gray hair at the temples, athletic and lean. He had an easygoing face and a mild-mannered voice. Fordyce hoped it would extend to his personality. But he doubted it.

Millard remained on the phone for a few more minutes, hung up, then gave Fordyce a smile. “Can I help you?”

“Agent Fordyce. I was told you wished to see me.”

“Ah, yes. Name’s Millard. Please, sit down.”

They shook hands. Fordyce sat in the only other chair in the cubicle.

“This is a unique investigation,” Millard said, his voice pleasant, even melodious. “We’ve got something like twenty-two law enforcement and intelligence agencies directly involved, along with sub-agencies and black agencies. Things get confusing.”

Fordyce nodded in a noncommittal way.

“I think you would be the first to admit that things have gone seriously off-track in the New Mexico branch of the investigation. But now Sonnenberg’s been sent back east, and I’ve been appointed by Dart to take charge of all aspects of the investigation. No more confusion.”

A pleasant smile.

Fordyce smiled back, waited.

Millard leaned forward, clasping his hands. “I’m not going to beat around the bush. Your involvement in this case has been less than successful. You failed to identify your former partner as a suspect until it was pointed out to you, you failed to arrest him at the movie set, failed to locate him in the mountains, failed to apprehend him when he entered Los Alamos, and then allowed him to escape down to the river. Your people can’t find his dead body—if in fact he did drown. You’ve been in law enforcement long enough to know that this is not an acceptable record, especially in a case like this, with a city at risk, the entire country in a panic, the president and Congress having a fit, and most of Washington shut down.”

He paused, folding his hands. His voice had remained quiet and pleasant. Fordyce said nothing. There was, in fact, nothing to say. It was all true.

“I’m going to move you out of the field and into the office, here, where your new responsibilities will be R and A.”

R&A. Research and analysis.That was the fancy term the FBI used for that most odious of jobs, given to new agents as a sort of rite of passage. Research and analysis. He thought back to his own early days in the Bureau, one of a hundred agents parked in a windowless basement room, loaded up with stacks of gray metal cabinets full of files to read, search, and summarize. An investigation like this generated literally tons of paper every day—wiretap transcripts, financial records, emails by the bushel, interrogations, and much more—all of which had to be digested and summarized, with the relevant facts plucked out of the mass of useless information like poppy seeds tweezered out of a soggy cake…

“But before you assume your new responsibilities, take the weekend off,” Millard said, breaking Fordyce’s chain of thought. “You’ve been killing yourself. Frankly, you look like hell.”

Another friendly smile and then Millard rose, extended his hand. “Are we okay?”

Fordyce nodded, taking the hand.

“Thanks for being a sport,” he said, giving Fordyce a friendly pat on the back as he exited the office.

Fordyce paused outside the door of the warehouse, gulping air as he walked toward his car. He felt slightly sick. His career was over. Millard was right: he had fucked up big time. Once again, he felt a swelling of black anger at Gideon Crew.

But along with the anger came a certain uneasiness. Again. It always came down to two things. The biggest was Gideon leaving incriminating emails on his work computer. The more Fordyce had seen Gideon in action, the more he’d realized the guy was as smart as hell. The computer wasn’t the only evidence against him, apparently: they had found a Qur’an and prayer rug in his cabin, along with some DVDs of radical Islamic preachers. But those discoveries, too, gave him pause. They seemed lame. Because at the same time, the CIA hadn’t been able to break into Gideon’s RSA-encrypted, security-protected home computers, despite the most sophisticated hacking tools in the toolkit of the CIA. A guy that careful, and that good, would not leave jihadist DVDs lying around.

The second was that Gideon had sabotaged the plane, putting himself at risk. Sure, if he were a jihadist he’d be looking for martyrdom. But he remembered Gideon during that flight; the guy was genuinely terrified.

He paused. If Gideon had been dirty, Fordyce felt sure he would have sensed it, felt somethingwas wrong. But he hadn’t. The guy felt genuine.

Maybe he hadn’t fucked up, after all. Maybe everyone else had. Maybe Gideon hadbeen framed.

With a muttered curse, he resumed walking to his car. He had his gun, badge, and a few days to satisfy himself whether or not Gideon really was guilty.

52

Fordyce consulted the GPS built into his pool vehicle. The house was in a cul-de-sac, with pine forest and mountains rising up behind. It was well after midnight but the lights were on, the blue flicker of a TV seen through the gauzy curtains. The Novaks were still up.

This was clearly one of the prime lots of the suburban neighborhood: the last house on a dead-end lane, bigger than the others. Not to mention the Mercedes in the driveway.

He drove in, blocking the Mercedes, then got out and rang the bell. A moment later a woman’s voice asked who it was.

“FBI,” said Fordyce. He unfolded his shield, showed it through the narrow side window.

The woman opened the door immediately, almost breathlessly. “Yes? What is it? Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine,” said Fordyce, stepping inside. “Sorry to be bothering you at such a late hour.” She was a fine-looking woman, very fit, trim little waist and a shapely butt, great skin, wearing white slacks and a cashmere sweater with pearls. Funny outfit for midnight television.

“Who is it?” came an irritated voice from what appeared to be the living room.

“FBI,” the woman called back.

The TV went off immediately and Bill Novak, the head of security in Crew’s department, emerged.

“What is it?” he asked matter-of-factly.

Fordyce smiled. “I was just apologizing to your wife for the late hour. I have a few questions of a routine nature. It won’t take long.”

“No problem,” said Novak. “Come in, please, sit down.”

They went into the dining room. Mrs. Novak turned on the lights. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?”

“Nothing, thanks.” They all sat down at the table and Fordyce looked around. Very tasteful. Expensive. Some old silver on the dining table, a few oil paintings that looked like the real thing, handmade Persian rugs. Nothing outrageous—just expensive.

Fordyce took out a notebook, flipped over the pages.

“Do you need my wife?” Novak asked.

“Oh yes,” said Fordyce. “If you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

They seemed eager to please, not nervous. Maybe they didn’t have anything to be nervous about.

“What is your annual salary, Dr. Novak?” Fordyce asked as he looked up from his notebook.

A sudden silence. “Is this really necessary?” the security head asked.

“Well,” said Fordyce. “This is strictly voluntary. You’re under no obligation to answer my questions. Please feel free to call your attorney if you desire legal advice or wish him or her to be present.” He smiled. “One way or another, however, we would like your answers to these questions.”

After a pause, Novak said, “I think we can proceed. I make a hundred and ten thousand dollars a year.”

“Any other source of income? Investments? Inheritance?”

“Not to speak of.”

“Any overseas accounts?”

“No.”

Fordyce glanced at the wife. “And you, Mrs. Novak?”

“I don’t work. Our finances are mingled.”

Fordyce made a note. “Let’s start with the house. When did you buy it?”

“Two years ago,” said Novak.

“How much did it cost, what was your down payment, and how much did you finance?”

Another long hesitation. “It was six hundred and twenty-five thousand, and we put down a hundred and financed the rest.”

“Your monthly payments?”

“About thirty-five hundred dollars.”

“Which comes to, what, about forty-two thousand per year.” Fordyce made another note. “Do you have any children?”

“No.”

“Now let’s talk about your cars. How many?”

“Two,” Novak said.

“The Mercedes and—?”

“A Range Rover.”

“Their cost?”

“The Mercedes was fifty, the Range Rover about sixty-five.”

“Did you finance them?”

A long silence. “No.”

Fordyce went on. “When you bought your house, how much did you spend on new furnishings?”

“I’m not really sure,” said Novak.

“For example, these rugs? Did you bring them from your previous residence or purchase them?”

Novak looked at him. “Just what are you driving at?”

Fordyce allowed him a warm, friendly smile. “These are nothing more than routine questions, Dr. Novak. This is how the FBI starts almost any interview—with financials. You’d be amazed how quickly one can smoke out someone living beyond their means with just a few simple questions. Which is alarm number one in our business.” Another smile.

Fordyce could see signs of tension in Novak’s face for the first time.

“So…the rugs?”

“We bought them for the new house,” Novak said.

“How much?”

“I don’t remember.”

“And the other furnishings? The silver collection? The wide-screen TV?”

“Mostly bought when we purchased the house.”

“Did you finance any of these purchases?”

“No.”

Another notation. “You seem to have had a lot of cash on hand. Was there a legacy involved, lottery or gambling winnings, an investment coup? Or perhaps family help?”

“Nothing significant to speak of.”

Fordyce would have to plug the figures into a spreadsheet, but already they were at the outer limits of what was readily explainable. A man making a hundred grand a year would be hard-pressed to buy the cars he had around the same time he was making a down payment on his house, and paying cash on top of everything else. Unless he’d made a real estate killing on his previous house.

“Your previous house—was it nearby?”

“It was over in White Rock.”

“How much did you sell it for?”

“About three hundred.”

“How much equity did you have in that house?”

“About fifty, sixty.”

Only fifty or sixty. That answered that question. There wasunexplained wealth.

Fordyce gave Novak another reassuring smile. He flipped the pages of his notebook. “Now, getting to these emails that were found in Crew’s account.”

Novak looked relieved to see the change in subject. “What about them?”

“I know you’ve answered a lot of questions already about this.”

“Always ready to help.”

“Good. Could those emails have been planted?”

The question hung in the air for a moment.

“No,” said Novak at last. “Our security is foolproof. Crew’s computer was part of a physically isolated network. There’s no contact with the outside world, no Internet connection. It’s impossible.”

“No contact with the outside. How about by somebody insidethe network. A co-worker, say?”

“Again, impossible. We work with highly classified material. Nobody has access to anyone else’s files. There are layers and layers of security, passwords, encryption. Trust me, there’s no way, none, that those emails could have been planted.”

Fordyce made a notation. “And this is what you’ve been telling investigators?”

“Certainly.”

Fordyce looked at the man. “But you have access, don’t you?”

“Well, yes. As the security officer I have access to everyone’s files. After all, we have to be able to track what everyone is doing—standard operating procedure.”

“So what you just told me is false. There isa way those emails could have been planted. Youcould have done it.” In asking this question, Fordyce shifted his entire tone of voice, pitching it low and accusatory, emphasizing the word youin an openly disbelieving manner.

The air froze. But Novak didn’t blink. After a moment, he said, “Yes, I could have planted them. But I didn’t. Why would I?”

“I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind.” Again Fordyce employed his most skeptical tone of voice. “You just admitted you told a falsehood to me and all the other investigators.” He glanced at his notebook. “You said, and I quote: ‘There’s no way, none, that those emails could have been planted.’ That’s false.”

Novak kept a steady eye on him. “Look, I misspoke. I wasn’t considering myself in that statement because I know I didn’t do it. Don’t try to entrap me here.”

“Could anyone else in your department have planted those emails?”

Another hesitation. “The three other security officers in my department might have been able to do it, but it would have taken two of them in cooperation, since they don’t have the highest level of clearance.”

“And are there others above you who could have done it?”

“There are those who have the authorization, but they would have had to go through me. At least, I think they would have. There are levels of security even I don’t know about. The higher-ups might have installed a back door. I really don’t know.”

Fordyce felt a little frustrated. So far, Novak hadn’t actually said anything incriminating, hadn’t shown any cracks. His misstatement wasn’t out of the ordinary—he had seen far worse from innocent people under questioning.

But the house, the cars, the rugs…

“May I ask you, Agent Fordyce, what makes you think those emails were planted?”

Fordyce decided to tip his hand a little. He fixed him with a glaring eye. “You know Dr. Crew. Would you call him stupid?”

“No.”

“Would you call leaving incriminating emails on your work account a smart thing to do? Without even erasing them?”

A silence. Then Novak cleared his throat. “But he diderase them.”

This brought Fordyce up a bit short. “Yet you recovered them. How?”

“Through one of our many backup systems.”

“Can anything really be erased from one of your computers?”

“No.”

“Does everyone know that?”

Another hesitation. “I believe most do.”

“So we’re back to my original question. Was Dr. Gideon Crew a stupid man?”

Now he saw Novak’s façade just begin to crack. He had finally succeeded in raising the man’s ire. “Look, I find the entire thrust of your questioning to be offensive, all these questions about my personal finances, these insinuations about planted emails, this late-night surprise visit. I want to help the investigation, but I will not sit here and be victimized.”

Fordyce, with his long experience in questioning suspects, knew when he had reached the probable end of what had been a very useful interview. No point in provoking Novak further. He slapped his notebook shut and rose, turning back on his warm, chummy voice.

“Fortunately, I’m done. Thank you kindly for your time. It was all routine, no need to be concerned.”

“I am concerned,” said Novak. “I don’t think it’s right, and I’m going to file a complaint.”

“Naturally, you’re welcome to do so.”

As he retreated to his car, he hoped to hell Novak wouldn’t complain about him, or would at least wait a few days. A complaint would be most inconvenient. Because he was now halfway convinced that Novak was dirty in some way. That didn’t exonerate Crew, of course, and Novak hardly looked like a terrorist.

But still… Was it possible Gideon hadbeen framed?