Authors: Jon Land
Sandy rose and started for the door.
“I suppose I owe you a debt of gratitude, Miss Lister,” Dolorman called after her, the pain still etched on his features. “You have confirmed my reasons for never meeting with reporters.”
Sandy left the office.
The elevator completed its slow descent, and the guard stepped out ahead of her, holding the doors. Sandy moved toward the exit and froze. Standing just outside the glass doors was a man in a cream-colored suit. He had been at the hotel that morning, in the lobby just before she left. She was sure of it. She hurried through the doors and hailed a cab, careful not to gaze in his direction.
The man in the cream-colored suit hailed one right after her.
Dolorman completed his report concerning the interview and switched the receiver from his right hand to his left.
“What she knows
can
hurt us, sir,” he concluded to the man on the other end. “And she will find someone who’ll listen, especially with the media at her disposal.”
“Yes, that makes sense. But of course we can’t allow it to happen. I trust you can handle things, Francis.”
“I’ve sent for Wells.”
“Good. Then I’ll see you on the island tomorrow. Dress warmly. The forecast isn’t promising.”
“Good-bye, sir.”
“Merry Christmas, Francis.”
Wells had not slept in nearly two days. But his face showed more frustration than fatigue over losing McCracken in Newport. He accepted Dolorman’s orders without expression. He had always liked military service because of its clarity. His work for Krayman Industries was no different.
“Wells, you must understand the risks involved here,” Dolorman warned. “Sandy Lister is a celebrity. We can afford no martyrs now. It must look like an accident.”
“It will.”
“And the task must be completed by this evening.”
The normal half of the big man’s face rose into a smile.
Sandy arrived back at the Four Seasons Hotel and made straight for the elevator, not bothering to watch for the man in the cream-colored suit. So what if they were watching her? They knew she was here anyway, and later this afternoon she’d let them follow her right to the FBI.
She felt bad that Dolorman had outperformed her in the interview, but she had the tape and that was what mattered. She had managed enough direct questions, and he answered them with unhesitant lies. The tape would prove that once she got it to the FBI. They would take matters from there.
Sandy rewound the tape, pushed play, and waited as it rolled past the starting leader.
Silence followed. No sounds, not even static.
The tape had been erased!
Where? How?
Sandy felt her breath coming hard. Then she remembered. The guard who rode down with her in the elevator from Dolorman’s office had brushed against her briefly as she stepped by him into the lobby. A sufficiently powerful magnet in his hand would have done the job nicely. Dolorman had considered everything.
There would be no trip to the FBI for her now, at least not yet. It would take hard evidence to make them move against Krayman Industries, evidence she no longer possessed. All she had were easily deniable accusations. Dolorman had proved that already.
But she wouldn’t need hard evidence to take her story to the media. T.J. Brown and Stephen Shay had been eliminated, but that wouldn’t silence her. There were other networks, newspapers, interview programs. People would listen to her because of who she was. At the very least, her exposure of Dolorman’s plan might give the authorities the impetus they needed to learn the truth.
She felt alive again, even excited, the fear in her pushed back. She had to think, plan an exact agenda.
It took four rings of the telephone before she even noticed it.
“Yes,” she said.
“Miss Lister?”
“Who is this?”
“I saw you at Krayman headquarters this morning,” a male voice whispered. “I know what you’re after and I’ve got it. The proof, I mean.”
“Proof of what?”
“What Krayman’s up to. The whole story.”
“You’ve got to tell me who you are.”
“It wouldn’t matter. You don’t know me. Kelno was a part of us.”
“Us?”
“There are others. I can’t talk anymore. We’ve got to meet.”
“Wait a minute, how do I know you’re not one of … them?”
“You don’t. But it cuts both ways, doesn’t it? There are risks involved, but if we don’t take them, there’ll be nothing left.”
“What do you mean by nothing left?”
The man’s voice became edged with panic. “They’re watching me. I’ve got to get off this line. I can meet you in an hour. I’ll lose them. You’ve got to come. Please!”
Proof, the man had said, what she needed most.
“Tell me where.”
The man gave her the address, Sandy jotted it down.
The connection clicked and broke.
MCCRACKEN HAD ANTICIPATED
leaving Newport would not be easy, and he was right. The town was part of an island with only three major routes of entry. Of course, Wells concentrated his forces on them, and his methods proved effective. Roadblocks were placed under the guise of construction work to slow traffic down for spotters. They seemed to be everywhere, at each corner and stoplight, their eyes peering in to inspect each car’s occupants. If their quarry was spotted, a call would be made down the road and a reception committee would be waiting.
From the beginning, after his phone calls to useless emergency exchanges, Blaine had known that driving himself out of Newport was out of the question. Hiding in the trunk or the back of a truck was a possibility, but there was no one he trusted enough in this area to take the risk. The answer came to him with surprising ease.
He phoned for a cab, choosing a small private company. The driver turned out to be a young, bearded man. Blaine found it easy to strike a deal with him. For an agreed-on number of still drying bills, they would switch places. Blaine would drive the car with the cabbie as his backseat passenger. McCracken’s only disguise would be a cap tucked low toward his eyebrows, though he expected that was all he would need. After all, even the best of spotters would not waste their time with a taxi driver. Only the passenger mattered to them, and in this case that passenger bore only the slightest resemblance to the man they sought.
Blaine followed the driver’s directions exactly and ended up in the town of Bristol. His next order of business was to get somewhere where the resources he needed would be available, where he could learn what happened to Stimson. Trouble was, his lone wolf status on this mission had stripped him of backup, and his years abroad had evaporated any trusted contacts he might have had.
There was one, though, not in Washington, but in New York: Sal Belamo, who had saved his life twice already. He had Belamo’s private number. Assuming Sal wasn’t off on assignment, Blaine could use him to run interference and to arrange for someone to whom Blaine could take his story. Stimson’s unavailability served as a warning for him not to come in on his own. People would be watching. Stimson’s enemies were his as well.
Two phone calls later Blaine had determined his best route into New York City would be by train. It provided better cover than flying. A train was leaving from Providence just before noon, which gave him nearly an hour to reach the station.
Still using the cab, he got there five minutes prior to boarding and chose a seat in the no smoking section for the three-and-a-half-hour ride. The train proved more crowded than he’d expected, but the fact that there were only three stops between Providence and New York kept his most anxious moments to a minimum.
The train arrived on time, and Blaine had no trouble finding a cab outside Penn Station. He told the driver to head north. He had Belamo’s number but not his address. Once he reached him, it would take the ex-boxer a few hours to obtain the information he sought. Blaine didn’t fancy spending that period moving around, and a meal in a public place or even a drink in a bar were out of the question.
So when the cab swung past an apartment building with lots of lights out on East Fifty-sixth, Blaine instructed the driver to let him off. Getting past the doorman proved no trouble, and neither was finding an apartment left vacant for more than the afternoon. The slushy, snowy streets outside kept the standard issue welcome mats before each apartment constantly wet. Blaine had only to find a dry one that corresponded with darkened windows and he would have his temporary refuge.
He found one on the second floor overlooking the street. The lock was of the standard five-tumbler variety and thus easily picked in the time it would have taken to use a key. McCracken left the lights off as he dialed Sal Belamo’s number.
“Yeah?” came Sal’s raspy greeting.
“Do you recognize my voice?”
“If this is an obscene phone call, fuck you.”
“It’s not. Recognize it yet?”
“Keep talking. How ’bout a hint?”
“You saved my life twice last week.”
“McCrackenballs! How they hangin’?”
“Not so good and don’t use my name. I need your help.”
“Why not go through Stimson, pal?”
“His phone’s not working.”
A pause. “You ask me, that’s not good.”
“I want you to check the front for me and find out what’s happened. Then get a hold of General Pard Peacher or someone close to him. Find out if he’s made any progress with his city inspections. I’ll give you the details in a minute. Most important, I need a friendly party to bring me home.”
“Take me a couple hours. Where are you?”
“I borrowed an apartment at One Forty East Fifty-sixth Street.”
“I’ll be outside with the limo at six P.M. on the nose. We’ll talk as we ride. Nobody notices limos in New York.”
“Don’t bet on it.”
True to his word, Sal Belamo pulled the black limousine up to the front of the apartment building at six o’clock sharp. Blaine watched him from the window and made no move to leave until Belamo stepped out and switched on the interior lights so he could see the limo was empty.
“Your car, sir,” Belamo announced a minute later, holding the back door open.
“You own this tub?” McCracken asked when they were both inside.
“The Gap lets me keep it. Like I said, it makes good cover. You ask me, though, I don’t look much like a chauffeur. Too pretty.” He paused and looked at Blaine in the rearview mirror. “Look, excuse me for cuttin’ out most of the small talk, but I wanna make this a quick ride.”
“What’d you find out?”
“What do ya wanna hear first, the bad news or the bad news?”
“Let’s start with Stimson.”
Belamo swung onto Lexington Avenue. “Yeah, that’s the bad news, all right. He’s gone.”
“Is he dead?”
“That’s the indication, but nobody’s confirming. I pulled out every stop I know of to reach him, and so did a few others. When he goes this long without answerin’, pal, it’s a pretty good bet he won’t be answerin’ again at all.”
“Sounds like a cover-up.”
“SOP at the Gap, pal. Our chain of command doesn’t function like the three-letter boys’. We lose our top man and things get a bit interesting. You ask me, I’m glad all I do is sit and wait for phone calls. No complications that way.” Another glance in the rearview mirror. “Until you called, that is.”
“What about Peacher?”
“I got hold of his number-one man. We worked together a few times back in the old days. He didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. Said they haven’t heard from Stimson and none of those city inspections of yours have been taking place.”
“Oh, Christ …”
“That’s bad, ain’t it?”
“Yeah. Peacher must be a part of all this. Maybe the whole army is, at least at the top. It would explain a lot. What else have you got for me?”
Belamo took a left. “The best is yet to come, pal, the reason why this has gotta be a short ride. The real bad news is there’s people lookin’for ya.”
“Who?”
“Can’t say for sure. After I finished with the Gap I called a buddy at the Company and mentioned your name. Your file’s been pulled. You don’t exist anymore.”
“I’m supposed to be dead, remember.”
“Sure, but your file wasn’t pulled until this morning. Someone important wants to make the hoax real.”
“Gap or Company?”
“Neither. Or both. The order was coded Blue. Don’t see many of those. A joint effort you might call it and anybody with a gun’s involved. Streets won’t be safe tonight.”
“Do they know I’m in New York?”
“Not specifically but, you ask me, it won’t take them long.” Belamo shook his head. “It’s scary, pal, downright scary. Nobody’s talking ’cause they don’t know a thing. Everything’s goin’ down below the surface. The hired guns are being brought in. You can forget all about comin’ home. I can’t get you in, nobody can get you in. ’Less, of course, you don’t mind arriving in pieces.”
Silence filled the limo. Belamo started to speak a few times, only to stop.
“Look,” he began finally, “you wanna lay low for a while, maybe I can set you up someplace. I got the right friends owe me favors. You ask me, that’s your best bet.”
McCracken shook his head. “Thanks anyway, Sal. Just get me to LaGuardia before the Blue Code reaches all levels.”
“Where you headed?”
“Atlanta.”
“What’s in Atlanta, pal?”
“The headquarters of the PVR and Mohammed Sahhan.”
The President leaned forward incredulously. “I think I need to hear that again, Bart,” he said to CIA Director McCall.
“We have identified the caller to our box office positively as Blaine McCracken.”
“How?”
“The coding and designation he gave. Each one’s as individual as fingerprints, and even if they weren’t, the voiceprint confirmed it was him.”
“But McCracken’s dead!”
“Only in Stimson’s mind. It was a means to keep him active on this mission without us knowing.”
“And the body at Roosevelt Hospital?”
“A John Doe. I just received a report from the team I dispatched up there this morning. Stimson filled all the holes in neatly. McCracken’s still out there and the box office refused to validate his call because we deactivated his file upon termination.”