Havoc (24 page)

CHAPTER 62

“What?” sputtered Rossi, who until now had observed the proceedings in silence. “You know?”

“That’s right,” replied Alton. “We’ve talked a lot about who could have a motive for arranging Duncan’s murder. All the suspects had one thing in common: greed. They’d all stand to become ridiculously wealthy if they could sell the rest of the files to Cúnchú. That’s why Terry Langford was playing Anna and everyone at Vidulum—to try to sell the remaining Silverstar files and make a fortune. But there’s another plausible motive, too: revenge.”

“I don’t follow you,” said Rossi.

“Let me tell you a little story,” said Alton. “On Saturday—the day Mallory and I drove down here from Florence—we told you we would help investigate this case, right? During that conversation, you mentioned that you weren’t interested in Sergeant Lama’s help. When we asked why, you said Lama is lazy and acts unintelligent to avoid being assigned a lot of work. In other words, his stupidity is just an act.

“Do we know anyone involved in Duncan’s murder who doesn’t strike people as the sharpest tool in the shed?” Alton turned to Anna Wells. “You’ve struggled to cope with this situation and have relied on others—heavily—to tell you what to do. You’ve really been pretty helpless since your husband’s death. But what if that’s just an act?”

“Alton, it sounds like you’re saying I had something to do with Duncan’s murder,” said Anna. “That’s silly. Everyone knows he was trying to sell that thingy from work to the Chinese man and got robbed.”

“Keep going, Blackwell,” said Vega.

Alton nodded. “The comment about Lama triggered the memory of an anomaly from the day after Duncan’s murder. Inspector Rossi was wrapping up a briefing with me, Mallory, and Anna here in this building. When I called out my cellphone number to the inspector, Anna was able to memorize it instantly—memorize a ten-digit number, despite fatigue, a headache, and the recent murder of her husband. How many people can do that? With the flurry of activity at the time, I didn’t really think about that small incongruity, but the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me.”

He turned to Anna. “Your feat of memory didn’t seem consistent with the ditzy image you try to portray. I also observed a second anomaly: when we first saw you at the beginning of that same meeting with Inspector Rossi, you seemed almost chipper—not the kind of reaction one would expect from a widow of twenty-four hours. Your demeanor quickly became somber, but your initial breezy air had always seemed a little out of place. I had chalked it up to the shock of the event, which makes different people react in different ways, but now I know why. You
were
chipper. Your plan had worked flawlessly.

“Just to satisfy myself that I was on the right track, I followed up on one more lead. I asked Inspector Rossi when he first told you that Duncan’s cellphone had gone missing. He said he didn’t tell you until the meeting at your hotel, the one in which Terry first told us about ionic-storage technology. But
before
the inspector arrived that morning, you told me and Mallory that the police had asked you if you knew where your husband’s phone was. The only way you could have known his phone was important—and missing—was if you already knew about his sale of the Silverstar files. But prior to the meeting that morning, none of us knew the phone’s importance, nor had inspector Rossi asked you about it.”

Anna Wells clenched her jaw but said nothing.

Alton turned to Vega. “Once Mallory and I compiled these three facts, we felt pretty sure we were onto something. Using this information, Mallory obtained a warrant to search Anna’s internet activity over the last few weeks, and we made an interesting discovery. Anna used Duncan’s laptop to access his secret Panamanian bank accounts the night of his murder.”

Finally, Anna spoke. “Wait—that would have been Duncan. He probably wanted to make sure the money was in the account before he handed over his cellphone to the Chinese guy.”

“Sorry,” replied Alton, “but the account access record contains a date/time stamp. The account balance was checked more than four hours after Duncan’s murder. So unless he managed to rise from the grave, it wasn’t him. And since the access occurred from his laptop, which was still in your hotel room, we know you had to be the person accessing the account.”

“Even if I had known about his account, how could I have possibly known what his password was?”

“You told us you met Duncan in college,” replied Alton. “We checked into your background. You met him in one of the Information Technology classes you shared on your way to earning a Bachelor’s of Science in IT. With this type of background, it was only a matter of time before you cracked the passwords to all his accounts.

“We know you did eventually discover the password, or you wouldn’t have been able to access the bank account. And the fact that you were aware of the bank account and its password implies that you were aware of the transaction in advance. Yet on the night of Duncan’s murder, you claimed to be completely surprised by the sequence of events.

“This also explains how Zane Crowe was able to track down me and Mallory so effectively. You memorized my phone number, and Mallory gave you her FBI card. You passed those phone numbers on to Crowe. With his experience in the British Army’s Special Reconnaissance Regiment, a unit specializing in digging up information, our phones numbers represented more than enough information for him to dig into our past. Our background information—plus Crowe’s Mafia connections and the element of surprise—afforded him several tactical advantages, ones he used to nearly kill us.”

Anna Wells drummed her fingers on the tabletop and stared at the wall behind Alton’s head.

“Mrs. Wells,” said Inspector Rossi. “I need to tell you that if you say anything, your statements can be used against you in the courts.” He proceeded to inform Anna of her rights under Italian law.

Alton turned to Anna. “As Inspector Rossi said, you don’t have to say anything. I’m going to draw some inferences, and feel free to correct me if I get anything wrong.

“From the evidence we’ve already discussed, Mallory and I knew you had arranged for Duncan to be murdered, but at first, we weren’t sure why. Eventually, we decided it probably wasn’t just about the money. We think it was more an act of revenge.”

Anna arched a curious eyebrow but remained silent.

“You knew about Duncan’s deal with Wu before you left for your Roman vacation. This suggests one of two possibilities. One, Duncan told you about the deal with the intention of sharing the proceeds with you. But if this were the case, why would you take the risk of murdering him? Yes, you’d have all the money to yourself, but so many things could go wrong and land you in jail. Why not just sail off into the sunset with your husband and enjoy the riches?

“The second possibility seemed more plausible. Duncan
hadn’t
told you about the deal with Cúnchú. This was a bad omen for your marriage, since Duncan’s only reason for withholding this information from you would be if he were planning on leaving you.

“Mallory and I believe you found out about this secret deal and—being a lot smarter than you put on—realized he was on the verge of collecting a vast fortune and then dumping you. So you decided to turn the tables on him. Instead of letting him collect the money and leave, you arranged for him to be assassinated once he received the first payment. Then you’d have a pretty good-sized chunk of the money and Duncan would get what he deserved for plotting against you.”

Anna shook her head and emitted a mournful laugh. “I have to hand it to you—you’ve got it pretty well figured out.”

After sitting in silence for a moment, she continued. “We’d had our issues, even talked about divorce a few times. Then a couple of months ago, I overheard him on the phone in the middle of the night. I guess it was during the middle of the day in China. I heard him arrange the meeting here. Duncan never told me about the deal. I knew what that meant: he was going to dump me. Oh, he’d split the estate—the part I knew about—fifty/fifty. Why not? He’d have a hundred million dollars in a foreign bank account waiting for him once the divorce was final.”

Mallory spoke up. “I don’t agree with your reason for killing Duncan, but I can at least understand it. But how do you justify sending a hit man after me and Alton? There’s no moral high ground you can use to rationalize that.”

“I don’t know,” said Anna. “Once you two appeared, I was desperate to keep from being exposed. I was afraid you’d implicate me somehow.”

“So you were willing to hurt other people to benefit yourself,” said Alton. “Sounds like you and Duncan really weren’t all that different after all.”

Anna dropped her gaze to the table.

Rossi leaned into the hallway and called for a sergeant. After the man entered the room, Rossi issued brief instructions. The sergeant led Anna Wells and Terry Langford away in handcuffs.

“
Brillante
,” said Rossi once the accused had left the room. “I don’t think I would have figured out these things about Mrs. Wells.”

“You would have gotten to them eventually,” replied Alton, stealing a glance at Captain Moretti. “Mallory and I weren’t bogged down in the all the details of the case. We only looked at a few specific issues that turned out to provide some good clues.”

“Thank you, my friend,” said Rossi, whose eyes also darted in his commander’s direction.

“So, what’s gonna happen to Feng Wu?” asked Vega.

“He is going to be prosecuted,” said Rossi. “But that will be a difficult case without Duncan Wells’ cellphone as evidence.”

“Sorry about that, gentlemen,” said Vega, “No offence, but there’s no way I’m going to risk my country’s national security on the safety of a physical evidence locker in the Roman courts—a judicial system famous for Mafia insiders, I might add. I destroyed that phone the first moment I could. Speaking of that, I have a question for you all,” he continued, turning to Alton and Mallory. “What happened to the second set of Silverstar files? Did you ever find them?”

“We think so,” replied Alton. “Duncan had rented storage space on a private cloud network and saved about fifty gigs of data on it. The files he stored there were so heavily encrypted, they’d take weeks to crack. We think they must have been the remaining Silverstar plans. Duncan didn’t have another cellphone in his possession, so our guess is that after wrapping up the first transaction, he planned to buy a new phone and transfer the files onto it.”

“Why not just travel with two cellphones?” asked Vega. “The way you described it sounds like a lot of unnecessary hassle.”

“We wondered about that,” said Mallory. “We figured Duncan wanted to remain as inconspicuous as possible. He had to know he might be scrutinized after Vidulum discovered the theft of the Silverstar files. He might have predicted Vidulum would send someone to chat with him before the first sale. If that someone noticed Duncan had two cellphones, it would look suspicious. So to play it safe, Duncan decided to carry only one at a time.”

“I see. So are the encrypted files still sitting on the cloud?”

“No, I deleted them,” said Alton.

Mallory turned to Inspector Rossi. “What about Wu’s wife? When we arrested Wu, he kept saying we had to let him go, or she would suffer.”

“Yes, I heard that, too,” said Rossi, “but Wu told us that a few days ago, he set up a plan with her. Wu said if she didn’t hear from him by the end of yesterday, she should leave their home and try to escape across the border into Mongolia. I guess she tried to do this.”

Mallory nodded.

Everyone filed out of the meeting room. Alton returned Inspector’s Rossi’s Beretta, relieved that the need for it had vanished.

After conversing with the law officers a few more minutes, Alton and Mallory exited the building and strolled down the street towards a taxi stand.

“Something feels different,” said Alton.

“Yeah, we don’t have someone trying to kill us for the first time in two weeks,” said Mallory. “It feels different to me, too.”

Remorse filled Alton’s heart. “Mallory, I’m sorry I dragged us into this. I never should have gone charging into the Colosseum that night. Look at the danger I put you in.”

“Sweetie, don’t apologize for doing the right thing. Yeah, it’s been a crazy two weeks, but what if we hadn’t intervened? Anna Wells and Zane Crowe probably would have gotten away with murder, and critical US technology would already be in the hands of other countries.”

“I guess you’re right. But considering everything we’ve been through since we got here, I don’t think I’m doing a great job of keeping you out of harm’s way.”

“I’m a big girl,” she replied with a smile. “So…now that this case is over, what do you want to do the rest of today?”

“Want to go see Castel Sant Angelo? We never had a chance to visit it the first time we were here.”

“Sounds good to me. At this point, anywhere I’m with you, and not running for my life from remorseless hit men, is fine with me.”

CHAPTER 63

For the remainder of the day, Alton and Mallory explored the historic Castel Sant Angelo, wandering its grounds and scaling its ramparts.

That evening, the couple returned to the pizza parlor down the street from their hotel, the same restaurant they had enjoyed four nights earlier. Alton once again performed pizza-serving honors.

“Thanks for dropping Crowe with the Taser,” he said, “not that it’s the first time you’ve saved my life during a case.”

“You’ve saved mine, too. We seem to be perfecting the technique of having each other’s back.”

“Yeah,” said Alton with a snicker. He cast a wicked grin in Mallory’s direction. “However, I have to lodge a complaint about your conduct during Crowe’s capture.”

“And what’s that?”

“Do you remember what you said after you tasered him? ‘You look shocking in that uniform, but your prices are killer.’ I think you beat David Dunlow in the cheesy-joke contest on that one.”

“Hey, my jokes are way better than his,” protested Mallory. 

“I may have to get a ruling on that one.”

“But how often does David make up his jokes just after bringing down a career criminal? I should get degree-of-difficulty points for that.”

“Hmm…maybe you’re right. I award you this slice of pepperoni.”

After leaving the restaurant and heading for their hotel, the couple set a leisurely pace. As they walked, the sun kissed the horizon, sending a slash of vibrant colors across the sky, much as it had on the night of Duncan’s murder.

The fading sun bathed them in its warm rays. Alton observed Mallory’s striking appearance, rendered even more flattering by evening glow, and once again fell into silent contemplation of those questions that had haunted him during much of their vacation.

“Can we sit on that bench over there?” asked Mallory.

“Sure.”

Once seated, Mallory grasped Alton’s hand and fixed him in an earnest gaze. “Sweetie, we need to talk. It seems like something has been bothering you the last week or so. I wish you’d tell me what it is.”

Not realizing he had been so easy to read, Alton wasn’t sure how to respond. “Well…”

Mallory seemed to recognize his reluctance to speak. “For a while, I thought you were bothered by trying to crack the Duncan Wells case or by Zane Crowe trying to track us down. But I’ve seen you solve cases before, and I’ve seen you deal with danger before, and you didn’t have this look back then.”

“‘This look’?”

“Yeah—like you’re worried or sad, but about something different, something I haven’t seen you worry about before.”

Resisting an initial urge to disclaim any unusual feelings, Alton decided to broach the subject that had recently troubled his mind. “Mallory, do you have any doubt of my feelings for you?”

“No, of course not!”

“Good. I love you more than life itself. What I want more than anything in the world is for you to be happy. My hope—my prayer, really—is that I can be the man to do that. But lately, I’ve been wondering if I’m really the best man for that role, the man who can make you happiest.”

“Alton, what are you saying?”

“Do you remember when you introduced me to Henry Gowin at Rossi’s office?”

“Yes.”

“Gowin mentioned that you used to be interested in another guy, ‘Tom.’ You never told me about him. And I’ve been wondering if in your heart, you’d rather be with someone like him, a person with a normal life, who won’t drag you into danger on a regular basis, rather than with damaged goods like me.”

Mallory paused without answering, and Alton’s stomach dropped as he realized he had struck upon the truth. If his concern were misplaced, wouldn’t Mallory have denied her interest in another man without hesitation?

“You don’t have to answer,” he said. “Your silence tells me enough.”

“No, don’t think that. That’s not why I didn’t answer. I hesitated because you caught me so completely by surprise. I’m not sure how to answer this. Alton…what’s your middle name?”

“My middle name? Thomas.”

“Sweetie, there wasn’t a ‘Tom.’ When I used to talk about ‘Tom’ to Henry Gowin and the rest of my FBI colleagues, I was talking about you.”

“Me?” said Alton, incredulous. “Why the ruse, then?”

“I knew—or at least I hoped—you’d eventually come visit me in DC, and I didn’t want my friends saying, ‘Oh, so this is the Alton we’ve heard so much about.’”

“In that case, why say anything?”

“I couldn’t just stay silent. It felt funny saying ‘no’ when guys would ask me out. I felt better about explaining that there was this guy…” She swallowed. “…this guy that I was crazy for…who I hadn’t seen in a while but hadn’t gotten out of my thoughts.”

“I see.”

“Besides, it was hard enough staying silent when we were together in Kabul. I had no choice there, since everyone who knew me, knew you, too. If I had said anything about how I felt, it would have gotten back to you in a day or two. In Washington, at least I could get it off my chest without your finding out. Do you know how hard it is to keep a secret like…well, I guess you do.”

Indescribable relief poured through Alton’s mind like a cleansing rain. Only he occupied her thoughts! The revelation seemed too good to be true.

“What about my scar?” he asked. “I hope you don’t find it too disgusting. After all, you didn’t get your first good look at it until recently. Our arrival day here in Rome was the first time you’ve seen the whole thing.”

“Alton, you know I wouldn’t have wanted you to be hurt, but if you hadn’t, we never would have met. So no, it’s not disgusting. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. It led you to me.”

The quieting of his doubts led Alton to a peace of mind beyond description. “I don’t think there’s anything you could have told me just now that could have made me happier. But I still can’t see how you’re interested in a guy like me. I don’t think I’ll ever figure that out.”

“Maybe I can answer that,” said Mallory with a thoughtful look. “I don’t suppose you remember the day we first met back in Kabul, do you?”

“Are you kidding? I’ll never forget it—the day of the bombing in the bazaar across the street from Camp Eggers. I saw you helping a civilian half again as big as you come inside the camp for emergency treatment.”

“And I saw you, a soldier still recovering from combat wounds, defy the odds and carry in an injured child. It looked like a scene from a movie, only it was real. You were this true-to-life hero. You have no idea what kind of impression that made on me.”

Alton swiveled on the bench to stare directly into his companion’s earnest eyes. “Want to know what I remember most about that day?”

Mallory nodded.

“A few minutes after I first saw you,” said Alton, “when Doctor Dunwoody had banished me to the recovery table in the mess hall, you came up to see how I was doing. I turned around and saw the woman who had helped the wounded civilian. With the sunlight coming in behind you, I swear it looked like there was an angel in front of me. You seemed too perfect to be real—and even more perfect as I got to know you.”

“And how do you think I viewed you? You not only saved the injured girl but made a habit of visiting her in the hospital…gave her your tablet computer to send e-mails to her mom…showed her she had a friend.”

“I never meant to make a show of it,” said Alton.

“You didn’t. And that’s when I started to love you, when I began to realize that the qualities you revealed the day of the bombing weren’t just one-time heroics, but really a reflection of who you are.”

“It’s funny. During that same time, in the weeks and months following the bombing, I learned much the same about you. I began to love you, too—and despaired.”

“Despaired? Why?” asked Mallory.

“Because I viewed you as a person far above anyone I should have the presumption to love, a person so much worthier than anything I had to offer, especially considering my injury. As much as I treasured our friendship, a part of me was always sad when we were together, knowing—or at least thinking—I could never hope to be more than your friend.”

Mallory lowered her head and wept.

“Honey?” said Alton. “What is it?”

“Oh, Alton, it breaks my heart to hear you say that! I wish more than anything I had been brave enough to tell you how I felt before you ever left Kabul.”

“It’s okay. I should have done the same thing. But let’s not regret the past. Instead, let’s rejoice over the years we’ll have together in the future.”

And Alton wept too, though he was so happy.

In the hotel room that night, after retiring to bed, they held each other tightly, fiercely, as if determined to never let go, bound in a silent intimacy more powerful and pure than any carnal act.

Smelling Mallory’s intoxicating fragrance and feeling the warmth of her body infuse into his, Alton closed his eyes and blessed the day he had experienced the good fortune to meet the one he held so dear.