Collision (27 page)

“You offered to do that for Vochek.”

“I was desperate, Ben. To get here. Because Hector’s not winning. Do you understand me?”

“Yes. I hate the bastard as much as you do. That’s why I want you to let me help you . . .”

“Call me on my cell if you find anything interesting in the phone records. I’ll call you when I’ve killed Hector.” He pulled the pilot’s stolen cell phone from Ben’s hands, activated the screen, memorized the number.

“Assume we succeed, then what?”

“I walk away. You negotiate an immunity, I’ll feed you plenty to give Homeland that’ll be worth gold to them. It’ll buy you your life back.”

“Buy your own life back. You’ll always be looking over your shoulder.”

“No. I won’t.” Pilgrim drove in silence for several minutes and then turned onto Poydras. On the streets were clumps of tourists, not like in pre-Katrina days, but more than Ben had expected. “Here.” Pilgrim pulled a few hundred dollars, hoarded from his storage unit, slid them to Ben. “You won’t be able to get the records without bribery. Nothing’s cheap. The hotel’s a few blocks down that way. Good luck.”

“You almost hope I get caught.”

“You don’t want to be in the cross fire, Ben.”

Ben offered his hand. Pilgrim shook it. “Sorry. Not good at good-byes.”

“Good-bye, Randall.” Ben stepped out of the car. First and only time to use his real name, the one Vochek mentioned.

“Bye, Ben. I’m sorry. For everything.”

Ben closed the door and the car raced off into the night.

38

The Cellar. They arrived, one at a time, taking rental cars from Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. The safe house was a two-story family home on the edge of the suburb of Metairie, in a neighborhood spared the Katrina flooding. Hector felt like a magician summoning spirits to do his bidding as each of them arrived, and he greeted each at the door with the pass code that Teach had given him—and with their real name.

Six in all. Two women, four men. The six of them had never been in the same room together, and he could see them glancing at each other, trying not to study each other overmuch. Trying not to be remembered or to remember.

Jackie stood in the back to the room, arms crossed, wearing sunglasses like he was a bad-ass.

“I’m afraid I bear tragic news. Teach is dead,” Hector said when they had all gathered. He pushed a button on his laptop, which was hooked to a projector. A slightly grainy photo of Teach lying dead on the carpet. He’d snapped the picture with his cell phone when he’d run back to the apartment, knowing proof of her death might be useful.

One of the men rubbed his eyes as though weary. One of the women gasped. The rest were silent.

“Let me assure you that the Cellar continues as it always has. The transition to my leadership will be as seamless as possible. Like you all, I am ex-CIA. I worked in Special Ops as deep cover. I currently run, in my regular life, a private security firm. But I’ve worked with Teach in partnership with the Cellar for the past several years.” It was best, he thought, to weave truth and lie together.

“Who killed her?” one of the men asked.

He clicked another button. Pilgrim’s face appeared on the screen. “She was found dead in an apartment leased to this man. He is a Cellar operative known as Pilgrim. He is also responsible for the deaths of three other Cellar agents.” Pilgrim flashed the file photos of Barker, Green, and De La Pena, one by one, and let the growing anger fill the room. “He killed one in Austin, two in Dallas. This is the most grievous attack on the Cellar in its history, especially coming as it did from within.”

“Why did he turn on us?” one of the women asked.

“For profit. He got bribed by our target.” Hector slicked the words with disdain. “We just came into possession of information about a terrorist group called Blood of Fire being underground here in New Orleans. They are gathered here to launch an attack. We’re going to kill them.” He moved the screen to a detailed map showing a house near the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain, in the Lakeview neighborhood. “Tonight. We move fast because they leave the house tomorrow. We’re not giving these bastards a chance.” He handed them copies of files, photos, of the six young men.

“Why isn’t Homeland handling this, why not just arrest them?” the second woman asked.

“We haven’t fed the information to Homeland. The terrorists know about us from Pilgrim. We don’t want the terrorists captured and talking about us. They go in the ground. All of them.”

The phone rang. He glanced at the number display. “Excuse me. Study the maps of the locale and of the house. This is a fairly straightforward operation, but I welcome your suggestions.” He displayed tactical maps on the screen, stepped into the other room, shut the door, and answered the phone.

It was Margaret Pritchard. “We have a problem,” she said.

He wanted to say,
Then solve it,
but she still believed the only agenda at work here was hers. “Yes, Margaret?”

“Two of the people from the covert group—I’m told they call it the Cellar—took one of my agents and her plane and they’re in New Orleans. One of them, Choate, offered a deal to tell everything he knows about the Cellar to us, but he and his partner ran once they got here. They wanted me to tell you they were being held for questioning by Homeland. I’m wondering why they’d make that request, why they’d want you to believe they were out of the loop.”

Hector stayed calm. Pilgrim didn’t know the location of the safe house; only Teach had. But did he know the target, would he try to interfere? He couldn’t know. He couldn’t.

“You should know serious allegations about you are being made by one of my agents, Sam. I think you’ve done a wonderful job in flushing out these people, but we have to find the rest of them and I want to talk to you about your methods.”

“Is this Agent Vochek? Is she the one they, um, kidnapped?” He remembered the name of the woman who’d called him in Dallas; he’d never returned her message. She’d been in a plane with Pilgrim and Forsberg. He wondered what had been said, what deal might be struck between them and this Vochek woman. This was a disaster for him.

Goddamn Nicky Lynch, missing Pilgrim when he had the chance to kill him. If he’d only shot him and Jackie planted the photos—then Pilgrim would be dead, Ben Forsberg would be under suspicion for having ties to a dead rogue CIA agent, with evidence pointing back to his wife’s murder planted on the dead agent’s body. A millimeter was making a huge difference in his life right now.

“Yes. She’s here with me now. I’m not sharing her allegations with anyone, and I’ve asked her to keep quiet for now. But, Sam, I have serious concerns . . .”

“Margaret. I know it’s late, but I can come over now and we can sort this out. You’re at your usual suite?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I’ll see you shortly.”

He walked back into the room; the team was gathered around a map. “New information. They may be rolling earlier than we thought. We need to go now.” He explained his basic plan of how they were to approach, kill any sentry, and rip through the house in an orderly fashion, room by room. “This group is not remotely ready for our level of expertise.”

“A bit rushed,” one of the men said in a tone of doubt.

“It’s a two-story house. They’re mostly sleeping. You have more guns. They don’t. It’s not calculus,” Hector said. He forced the iron out of his voice, because now they were all watching him. They weren’t contractors, he remembered. These were a different breed, ex-Agency like him. “I know Teach’s loss is devastating. But these guys have every reason to expose us if Pilgrim gives away our entire organization. So we take them out before they do.”

He left them discussing the maps, sharing thoughts on how best to proceed given their skill sets and styles.

He gestured Jackie down the hallway to the den.

Jackie shut the door, crossed his arms. “Quite a bit of fiction you’ve told.”

Hector realized, too late, he’d given Jackie an unwelcome taste of power, letting him attend the meeting, listen to the lies. Jackie could expose him as a fraud.

“Not all of it’s fiction,” Hector said.

Jackie rolled his eyes.

Hector leaned close to Jackie’s ear. “I have a job for you. I need you to kill two people.”

“All right.”

“Do you know New Orleans?”

“I can find any place if I got a map.”

“Use the GPS in the rental car. You’ll be killing two women. One in her late fifties, Margaret Pritchard, and the other a younger woman, Joanna Vochek. They’re at this hotel, this suite number. I need it done silent and fast. Both may be armed. Pritchard is a fool but Vochek isn’t. They’re expecting me; they’ll be getting you.”

Jackie studied the address, put it in his pocket.

“Pilgrim and Forsberg are in New Orleans. We don’t know where.”

Jackie blew an irritated sigh. “What if Pilgrim and Ben know where you’re headed?”

The corner of Hector’s mouth jerked. “They don’t. They couldn’t.”

“Never say couldn’t.”

“Then my new colleagues in the Cellar will be happy to kill them.”

Behind them, the clock chimed midnight.

Khaled’s Report—New Orleans

I can’t sleep. I hear snoring coming from the other rooms, but I cannot settle my thoughts. My mind is too full of worry. Later today I begin my work, and I must do it perfectly. With no room for error, no mistakes. It is strange to think of a job this way.

Tonight I saw on the news more coverage about the attack on the Homeland Security office that had not even officially opened yet in Austin, by a group of Lebanese men. I could feel everyone in the room tonight watch me when it was announced they were Lebanese, as though I brought a contagion of incompetence with me. Perhaps I am imagining it; reading so much into every reaction, because I am aware of the constant lie that my life is about to become.

A lie until I die. It is an odd, discomfiting feeling, one that works into your bones. I feel like tonight is the last night forever of the life I knew. Before I thought my very identity—who I am at heart—changed when I was recruited. That my uselessness ended then, and I became hopeful and useful all at once. But tonight is truly the end of my old life, and the beginning of another for me.

I lay awake, feeling the change in my bones.

39

“I really need your help,” Ben said with a tourist’s awkward grin. The night clerk at the Hotel Marquis de Lafayette flexed an automatic, customer-centric smile in response. But any murmured request asked past midnight probably meant vice was involved. Ben could see the clerk steel himself against a polite inquiry as to where one might locate the pricier hookers.

“Yes, sir?”

“My wife called someone staying here last Monday. I’d like to know who that someone is.”

“Sir, I can’t release our phone records.”

“I’ll pay you two hundred dollars.” Ben kept his smile friendly.

The clerk blinked. “Sir. I could lose my job. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

“I understand. Five hundred dollars.”

“Sir. Please.” The clerk reddened with embarrassment.

“Cash,” Ben said. “No one will ever know. But I have to have that phone number. My children. My wife wants to take my kids from me. I had an affair. So did she, but she didn’t have the guts to confess to it.”

“Sir, respectfully, I don’t want to know . . .”

“My kids. I can do shared custody but I can’t lose them from my life. Help me level the playing field. Please. Six hundred dollars. If you don’t need the money, you must have family here that could use it. I know how hard things have been since Katrina.”

“Sir.” The clerk wet his lips. “I’m not sure I could even give you enough information to help you . . .”

“She called at 11:09 A.M. Spoke for twelve minutes. You should have a record of the incoming call. Which room it was routed to and who was in that room. That’s all I need.”

“Sir. Pardon my question. How do I know you don’t mean ill to whoever she called?” This question followed a long sigh, low in the throat. Wrestling with the ethics. Calculating how much six hundred cash would buy. The clerk was maybe twenty-two and wore a plain wedding band on his finger.

“I swear I don’t.”

“I . . . I . . .”

“Six hundred. You’re not doing a bad deed. You’re helping yourself and you’re helping me, and trust me, I deserve a little help right now.”

“I’m not sure I can even get the information . . .” The clerk glanced over his shoulder. “My manager . . .”

Ben slid three hundred-dollar bills to the clerk. “Here’s half. The rest when you get me the records.”

The clerk didn’t look at the bills. Then he picked them up and tucked them into his pocket. He went into the back of the lobby office, was gone for thirty seconds, returned, and said, “Twenty minutes.”

Ben nodded and went into the bar. A few people drank and chatted in hushed tones—it wasn’t a loud, conventioneer crowd. He had the sense he’d walked into a room of bureaucrats, here for the reconstruction, persuading themselves it was okay to relax with a beer. The TV above the bar showed the news of the emergency landing—as it was being described—on Marais Street in the still-devastated Lower Ninth Ward.

He ordered a club soda, drank half, and leaned against the bar. Then quickly turned away from the door.

Walking across the lobby he saw Joanna Vochek and a navy-suited, ash blond woman wearing large eyeglasses, moving toward the elevators, deep in conversation.

Good Lord. What were the odds? All the hotels in town . . . but then he thought. A constant stream of people with federal agencies came and went from New Orleans with the reconstruction. They might keep rooms on permanent reserve, and hotels made deals with agencies to keep their business. That he knew from his consulting work.

Barker’s contact here might be someone inside the government.

Ben waited for the two women to vanish inside the elevator and then stepped back into the lobby.

The clerk stood at the desk, frowning at the computer screen and looking guilty of several felonies.

“Sir,” he said in a low whisper. “I can’t get the information. The manager’s on the computer and I can’t access the phone database records, I can’t, here’s your money back . . .”

“Please, keep trying. But can you tell me this—is there a suite or set of rooms often used by the federal authorities who come here?”

“Yes, sir. From several different agencies. FEMA, Commerce, Homeland Security, of course FEMA’s part of Homeland . . .”

“I need the names of every government-connected guest who stayed here last Monday and their phone calls. Can you do that for an extra hundred?”

The clerk frowned, as though asking questions about government workers made him uneasy. “I’ll try.”

“Yes. But please, hurry.” Ben returned to the bar, stayed near the door, avoiding eye contact with anyone.

Ten minutes later the clerk jerked his head toward the back of the lobby. The man’s forehead glistened like he might sweat to death, a sheen on his face that showed nerves on edge.

Ben walked past the counter, kept going toward a stairway. He glanced back and the clerk gave a short, savage nod. He went up the stairs toward a mezzanine that held conference areas and ballrooms. The landing was deserted and the clerk jogged past him, as if intent on another errand, not looking at him.

Ben followed the clerk to a closed ballroom. The clerk stepped inside and Ben followed him. The ballroom stood dark, empty; the floral aroma of carpet shampoo reeked like cheap perfume.

The clerk said: “The money, please.”

Ben handed him the rest of the cash and the clerk thumbed through the bills. Then he pushed an envelope into Ben’s chest. He opened it, unfolded the pages; the list of people with government ties at the hotel last Monday was at least fifteen names long. Each list included incoming and outgoing calls.

“We’re done. We never saw each other.”

“Thank you,” Ben said, but the clerk was already gone.

He stood in the deserted ballroom and ran a finger down the names. They meant nothing to him and there was no indication of which agency they were with . . . except at the end.

Margaret Pritchard in suite 1201. The clerk had penciled in, in block letters: “RECEIVED CALL ON MONDAY AT THE TIME YOU SAID.”

The name of Vochek’s boss, who had called them on the plane.

Why had Barker called her? Barker worked for Teach; he betrayed Teach and Pilgrim to Hector; how did he connect to Vochek’s boss?

Ben leaned against the wall. He scanned the printout under the calls. The next number called from Pritchard’s room was an Austin area code: 512-555-3998. He’d heard the number before but he couldn’t remember how he knew it. He racked his memory. Then he remembered a nasal stranger’s voice on his answering machine, damning him in front of Kidwell and Vochek. 555-3998 had been the number at Adam Reynolds’s office.

My God. Margaret Pritchard had been in direct contact with Adam Reynolds. Which meant she might know about his search software that had unearthed a few of the Cellar’s members. So who had Reynolds and Barker been working for—Hector or Pritchard? If Hector hired the Lynch brothers to kill Adam, and Pritchard worked with Hector—did she view Reynolds as an ally or a threat? At the least she’d been in contact with Barker, who was hiring death squads.

Hector had given someone their own private CIA. Maybe Pritchard hadn’t been used by Hector; maybe she was fully aware of his brutal actions.

Ben had been a dealmaker a few days ago; the smart thing now would be to cut a deal with Vochek. Show her this evidence, implicating her boss. Get her to help him find the truth.

He knew the odds of victory were not in Pilgrim’s favor. He was exhausted, hurt, and outnumbered. So if Hector escaped Pilgrim’s fury, he could not escape Ben’s. Ben would expose his conspiracy, strip him of his company, destroy his fortune. The idea gave him a cold shiver of pleasure.

The wounds in his arm and his foot throbbed. He opened the pilot’s stolen cell phone. He found Vochek’s number listed in it. He dialed.