Authors: Michael Palmer
“Sorry, Ray,” he said. “We’ll get them. I promise you we will.”
Santana left and quickly flattened himself against the wall. The rain had let up considerably, and the gate was easier to see. Harry peered at it for a second or two. When he looked back, Santana was again atop the wall. A moment later, his light flashed once. Harry checked the time, 9:08, and dialed the number Atwater had given him. Atwater answered on the second ring.
“Dr. Mingus?” Atwater said.
“It is.”
“Tell me again what you have for me.”
“I want proof that Maura’s okay.”
“Tell me what you have.”
“Santana is staying at a rooming house in Spanish Harlem. I’ll tell you the address and the name he’s using when you let Maura leave.”
“How did he find me up here?”
“Perchek left a thumbprint in Evie’s room. Someone at the bureau told Santana. He’s pledged the guy to secrecy. No one else knows about it except him and me—not even the crime guy who lifted the print in the first place.”
“How’ll I prove you’re telling me the truth?”
“Doug, I don’t give a shit about you, what you prove or don’t prove. Every cop in New York is looking for me. Once
I have Maura, I’m out of here. That’s all I care about. Now, where is she?”
“Who have you been in touch with on The Roundtable?”
“Two men. Jim Stallings is one. Now he’s dead. The other one I’ll name as soon as I speak to Maura. He’s told me all the other names.”
“Give me one.”
“Someone named Loomis. I can’t remember his first name, but I have it written down.”
“He’s not the other one you’ve spoken to?”
“No. Now, no more delay. I can’t stay here that long.”
“Call this number back in exactly five minutes.”
Harry hung up and waited in the dark. Up ahead, he could barely make out the shadow that was Santana, pressed on the top of the wall. The rain had all but stopped now. The country air wafting through the open passenger-side door was scrubbed and sweet. The songs of peepers and crickets filled the heavy silence. Harry ran his fingers over the greasepaint coating the backs of his hands.
9:13
. Harry picked up the receiver and hit
redial
.
“All right,” Atwater said as soon as he heard Harry’s voice. “You have thirty seconds. I’m standing right next to her, listening on a portable phone. Don’t upset me.”
“Hello?”
“Maura, it’s me. Are you okay?”
“Harry. I’ve been so worried about you. I’m all right. They … they made me drink bourbon. I fought it, but they made me. Then they gave that up and shot me with some drug to make me tell them where you were. But I couldn’t tell them what I didn’t know.”
Her voice sounded strained, but strong.
“Maura, just be tough. I have everything we need to get us out of the country.”
There was the briefest hesitation, then she quickly covered up her confusion.
“I didn’t think you could pull it all together so quickly,” she said. “I’m ready.”
Her extension clicked off.
“Okay, Harry. Call this number again in five more minutes and we deal.”
“Make it half an hour. I can’t stay where I am any longer.”
“Who’s the other man on The Roundtable you’ve spoken to?”
“Harper. Pat Harper. Northeast Life and Casualty.”
Kevin Loomis had said the man’s name just once, but it had been easy for Harry to remember. A girl named Pat Harper had been his first crush in junior high. Dropping Harper’s name now was perfect. If Harry didn’t make it through this night, at least Loomis would be safe from reprisal.
“Okay. Thirty minutes,” Atwater said.
Harry listened to the dial tone and tried to imagine what was transpiring behind the wall. For two minutes, there was only blackness up ahead. Then Santana’s light flashed twice. It was time.
Harry slipped on the rucksack and snapped the revolver into a holster on his belt. Keeping low, he flattened himself against the wall and moved along it until he reached Santana, who was standing on the road side.
“They’re not keeping her in the house,” he whispered. “Someone, I think it was Garvey, left by a side door and walked north. In a minute or so, he came back with her. Then they went back again and Garvey returned alone. Now, he’s back in the house.”
“Where to first?”
“The guard by the gate. If there’s going to be any shooting, try and let me do it. My gun doesn’t make any noise.”
“I remember.”
Santana set the rifle by the wall.
“It looks like it’s all going to be close-in work,” he said. “Maybe I can get a refund for this.”
The fieldstones offered easy purchase for scaling the wall. Together, they reached the top, lowered themselves halfway down the other side, and dropped to the sodden ground. Harry found himself anticipating pain in his chest
before he hit. In fact, he did experience a brief jab, though not nearly as bad as when he jumped the backyard fence in Fort Lee. If this was as bad as it got tonight, he could handle it easily.
Guns drawn, they inched up on the small gatehouse. There was a dark, four-door sedan parked beside it. Through the small side window of the house, they could see the guard talking on the phone.
“If this is a check-in call, we’re in luck,” Santana whispered. “One less thing to go wrong. Have some two-inch adhesive tape ready.”
He motioned Harry to the far side of the gatehouse door, then tapped lightly on it once and flattened himself against the wall. The door opened cautiously. Gun drawn, the guard stepped out. Harry hadn’t time to fully appreciate Santana’s moves before it was over. Ray brought his pistol down sharply on the man’s wrist. The guard’s hand went limp and the gun dropped as if it had suddenly become electrified. Before he could even cry out, Ray was on him, a hand tightly across his mouth, his leg around the back of his calf. The takedown was quick and silent. Ray came down straddling the man’s chest with the muzzle of his silenced revolver jammed between his teeth.
“Not a sound!” Ray growled. “Understand?”
The man nodded. Keeping the silencer in his mouth, Ray rolled him onto his side and motioned Harry to tie his hands behind him. Then he again rolled him to his back. He pulled his gun out and pressed it under the guard’s jaw.
“Okay, where’s the girl?”
The man stared up at Ray’s blackened face. Harry could see him assessing the benefits and dangers of trying to lie. The internal debate lasted only seconds.
“Guest house … down a path to the left …”
“Is Perchek with her?”
The mention of The Doctor’s name brought a flash of fear to the guard’s eyes. He hesitated, then nodded.
“How many men?” Ray waited for a response, and then set the silencer muzzle squarely on the man’s left eye. “How many?”
“One with P-Perchek in the cottage,” he stammered. “Two in the house.”
“Plus Garvey?”
“Who?”
“Atwater.”
“Yes. Two plus him.”
“Put a bandana in his mouth and tape it in tightly,” Santana whispered to Harry. “Wrap the tape all the way around his head twice. Then tie his ankles.”
Harry did so efficiently, and together they dragged the man ten yards to a tree and tied him there. Santana checked inside the gatehouse.
“The gate release is right inside the door,” he said. “The door beside the gate is unlocked.” He glanced at his watch. “We’ve got about twenty minutes. Let’s go get her.”
They stayed close to the wall, which met the chain-link fence on the far side of the property in a copse of low shrubs. Up the hill and to their right was the main house, with lights shining through every window and spots illuminating the front walk. Fifty yards or more to the left of the main house, shining through a small woods, were more lights.
“There,” Harry whispered, pointing.
Ray nodded and led the way. They reached the trees and moved through them carefully, keeping low. The guest house, a miniature version of the mansion, was itself spectacular. It was almost all glass, built on steel girders that thrust up from the cliff so that its deck was cantilevered out perhaps a hundred feet above the Hudson. Harry peered over the precipice. There was a shoreline of boulders extending out ten or fifteen feet from the base of the cliff. And directly across the still, black river, glittering like the Milky Way, was Manhattan.
Against the cliff, beneath the main floor, was a set of rooms not visible from the front of the guest house. Through one window, which was barred, they could see Maura alternately sitting on the edge of a bed and pacing. She appeared worn and tired, but reasonably steady. Santana put a finger to his lips and pointed toward the
house. Moving closer, they peered in through a massive picture window. The expansive space—living room, dining room, and kitchen—was tent-shaped, gleaming hardwood and glass with a cedar ceiling and a center pole fifteen feet high. French doors opened onto the deck, and half a dozen large windows offered stunning views of the city. A guard, his weapon in a shoulder holster, was pouring coffee. Behind him, reading at a table, sat The Doctor.
At the sight of him, an unnatural, guttural noise emerged from Santana’s throat—the sound of hatred. He picked up a shot-put-size rock and motioned with his gun for Harry to follow him. They stopped just outside the glass door.
“Me first,” he whispered.
Before Harry could respond, Santana hefted the rock and hurled it face-high through the door. The thick glass exploded inward. Ray was inside at almost the instant the rock hit the floor.
“Don’t!” he barked as the gunman reached for his weapon.
Harry stepped through the empty door frame and took the man’s gun. Anton Perchek, who had not even lowered his book, looked up first at him, then at Santana. His smile was one of bemusement. The irises of his eyes were so pale as to appear almost white. His pupils were wide, black holes in the snow. There was not a hint of fear in the man that Harry could see—or of any emotion at all, for that matter.
“Down on your face!” Santana ordered the gunman.
When the man hesitated, Ray dropped him with a pistol butt behind the ear, all the while keeping his attention fixed on Perchek. The gunman was moaning but awake as Harry bound him with the technique he had perfected on the gatekeeper. Santana pulled a chair away from the table. With his silenced revolver still aimed at Perchek, he helped Harry lift the semiconscious man into the chair. Harry tied him there. Then he stepped back, closer to Santana.
The Doctor eyed the two of them curiously. He was certainly the man Harry had seen outside of Evie’s room, the man Maura had drawn. But in some ways he wasn’t. He
looked like all of the computer renderings, but none of them. He would have fit in perfectly behind the counter of a convenience store or beside an operating table, sweeping streets or piloting a jet. He was nobody and everybody. When he spoke, his voice was mellow, hypnotic, and totally devoid of emotion.
“Well, Ray. It’s been a while, hasn’t it,” he said.
Santana pushed the table away from Perchek with his foot. Even through the black greasepaint, Harry could see the tension in his face. Clearly, Perchek sensed it, too.
“You don’t look so good, Ray,” he said, as Santana was taping his wrists to the wrought-iron arms of the chair. “The muscle wasting in those hands. That twitch by your eye. What is it—drugs? Some sort of disease?”
Harry noticed that The Doctor’s arms, especially his forearms, were thickly muscled. His biceps stretched the sleeves of his sky blue polo shirt. Santana checked him for a weapon, but found none.
“The key to Maura’s room,” Ray demanded.
Perchek shrugged as if the business was too mundane for him to bother with.
“No key,” he said. “Just a dead bolt on this side.”
Santana motioned Harry down the short flight of stairs. In half a minute he was back with her. She was hollow-eyed from strain and her lip was swollen and crusted with blood, but otherwise she seemed unharmed.
“The big guy hit her when they kidnapped her,” Harry explained;
“Anything else?” Santana asked.
“Except for forcing the booze down me, they haven’t really hurt me. I managed to spit a lot of it out, and after they left me alone I made myself throw up. I was drunk for a while, but I’m sober now. They thought I’d start begging them for more, but I hated the feeling and even the taste.”
Harry put his arm around her and held her tightly.
Santana glared down at Perchek.
“Who in the agency helped Garvey disappear so cleanly?” he asked.
Perchek continued smiling at him benignly.
“Ray, you look terrible. Absolutely terrible.” His speech was as sterile as his eyes. “You know, I keep thinking that back in Nogales I never had the chance to give you the antidote for my hyconidol. That’s what’s wrong with you, isn’t it. My Lord, Ray, what an oversight. I am so sorry. So truly sorry.”
“Shut up and tell me who sent Garvey out with a new identity.”
“There is an antidote, you know. And a damn effective one it is, too. The biochemical process is quite simple, actually. It’s called competitive inhibition. The antidote just floods the bloodstream and replaces those nasty little molecules that have been locked onto those nerve endings of yours all these years, and
Bingo
, you’re cured. No more pain, Ray. Think of it. Why … why, just look at your eyes. You’re addicted, too, aren’t you. Oh, Ray. I can just imagine what you’ve been through all these years. Why, it’s a wonder you haven’t done yourself in before now.…”
Santana listened as if transfixed. Perchek was soothing, seductive, hypnotic—and totally believable, Harry wanted to say something, anything to break the spell of The Doctor’s rhetoric. Instead, he too stood motionless. It was Santana’s pain.
“… Well, now you don’t have to hurt anymore, Ray. Those horrible pain flashes you keep having? I can make them go away for good. I promise you. No more need for narcotics. You’ll feel the difference in only a few minutes, Ray. Just think of it. No more pain ever again. Guaranteed. You can keep me tied up while you try it. Then you can leave. I promise no one will touch you. All I want is him.” He nodded toward Harry. “In exchange for the antidote, all I want is half an hour with him.”