Дэвид Балдаччи - King and Maxwell

He was back on American soil. He crossed the street, dodging traffic, reached the other side, and picked up his pace. He turned up his collar and kept his gaze, concealed behind glasses, swiveling in a 180-degree arc. Every few seconds he would check behind him. If he was taken now, he was convinced no one would ever see him again.

And he would never see Tyler again.

He ducked into a coffee shop as the rain started coming down. He ordered a cup of coffee and carried it to the rear of the space. He sat with his back to the wall and his sight line to the door unobstructed.

He slid out a disposable phone loaded with minutes and data bytes that had been waiting for him in India courtesy of Adeel and gazed down at it. He had loaded his personal email account on the phone.

The message had come in as soon as he turned his phone back on after the cargo plane landed. Once they touched down he’d expected to feel a hand on his shoulder, a gun in his ribs, a voice in his ear saying, “You need to come with us, Mr. Wingo.”

But none of that had happened and Wingo began to think that others truly believed him dead.

Well, let them.

He gazed down at the email message again. It had come in from an unfamiliar Gmail account. But he knew it was from Tyler. It was written in their usual code. He easily deciphered it.

His son wanted to meet with him, as soon as possible.

Wingo wanted the very same thing. Only he knew it wouldn’t be that easy. His email account was known. There were others who had undoubtedly seen this message. Whatever he wrote back they would be able to see as well. There was no GPS chip in the phone he had so he wasn’t unduly worried about them tracking him down that way.

But he would have to keep moving. He had drastically changed his appearance and was wearing clothing designed for maximum concealment. Yet he well knew the resources aligned against him. And it wasn’t just his own government after him. There were others out there, and he wasn’t even sure who they were.

He took a few minutes to drink his coffee and compose his response to his son’s email in his head. Then he thumbed it in and hit the send key. He finished his coffee, rose, and headed out the other exit. He grabbed a cab and had it drop him off at a hotel near D.C.’s Chinatown where he had previously checked in.

He had cash and a set of credit cards under an alias. There would be markers in the system so he could no longer be Sam Wingo. He hoped one day to return to his normal life. But he was a long way from there yet.

Wingo went to his room, sat on the bed, and stared out the window. Across the river was the Pentagon, the world’s largest office building, surprising since it was only a few stories tall. After the United States had been attacked at Pearl Harbor and needed a centralized command and control facility, it had been built in a little over a year using wheelbarrows, shovels, and American sweat. It was an achievement of which to be tremendously proud.

Wingo was proud of his own service. He had always entered the doors of the Pentagon with an extra spring in his step. Now the thought of the place brought nothing but misery. He had a gut feeling that he had been set up somehow by folks in that very building. Why he didn’t know. But certainly the motivation was there.

The journey of the forty-eight hundred pounds – representing a billion in unmarked five-hundred-euro notes that could be freely circulated – had been a complicated multistep mission. The delivery of the money had been the very first step. Wingo was one of the few privy to the entire scheme.

In a way that was a good thing because the number of people who could have betrayed him had to be small. And he meant to find out who they were. He had tried to do his job. Someone had screwed him. He wasn’t turning the other cheek. He was a soldier. Soldiers were not wired for compassion or forgiveness. They were trained to strike back when struck.

He left his room, walked four blocks to the west, and rented a car using his fake ID and a credit card that also had been provided to him in India. He drove out of the garage in his new wheels. The mobility felt good. He believed he could accomplish something now.

But he had to take care of something first. He drove to a police impoundment lot and scanned the area. He saw no dogs, and the lone surveillance camera mounted on a pole wasn’t even connected to a power source. Budget cuts must be a bitch.

He scaled the fence and dropped down inside. Keeping an eye out for any uniforms, he searched until he found what he needed. A car in the back that looked like it had been here awhile, its front right fender and driver’s door crumpled. He checked the plates – still valid. A minute later the plates were in his hand and he was back over the fence.

He replaced the plates on the rental with the ones taken from the car in the impoundment lot. Now if someone keyed on his plate number and tried to run it down, Wingo’s alias would not be compromised.

He drove back to his hotel, went to his room, punched in a number, and listened while it rang.

The voice said, “South.”

“It’s me,” Wingo said.

There were a few seconds of silence as Wingo heard the other man start breathing hard, working himself up into a fury, no doubt.

“Do you know what a shitstorm you’re in?” barked South.

“Then you are too. It was your mission. The Army doesn’t pick fall guys, Colonel. They just shoot everybody.”

“And you think I don’t know that, you son of a bitch? You have screwed me beyond belief.”

“Did you find Tim Simons from Nebraska?”

“The CIA never heard of him. And they knew nothing of our mission in Afghanistan. Dead end.”

“So he was a fake.”

“If he ever even existed outside your own mind. Now where the hell is the money, Wingo?”

“I told you it was taken. Hell, you know it was.”

“All I know is the team that was supposed to meet up with you was slaughtered. The truck with the money is gone. You’re AWOL. [24] AWOL – absent without official leave. Are you really surprised by what we’re thinking about you?”

“If I had taken it, why would I keep calling you?”

“CYA. [25] CYA – cover your ass. ”

“If I had a billion euros why would I have to cover my ass with anything?”

“If you’re truly innocent, come in. I told you that last time you called. We can sit down and evaluate what happened.”

“You mean you’ll bury me in some remote location somewhere so the truth never comes out.”

“We’re Americans. We don’t make other Americans disappear.”

“If the facts of this mission come out, you know as well as I do what will happen. It’ll be felt not just at the Pentagon, but also across the river on Pennsylvania Avenue. I know where those euros were going and what they were going to be used for and so do you. And the last place they’ll want to see it is on the front pages of the Post or the Times .”

“Are you actually threatening me and by extension your government? What do you want, more money? Wasn’t the billion enough? Or do you blackmail for the fun of it?”

“I’m just explaining to you why me coming in doesn’t work. Even if I did nothing wrong, and I didn’t, it won’t matter. I’ll never see the light of day again.”

“Then why did you volunteer for the mission in the first place?”

“To serve my country. I didn’t focus that much on the details of it not going according to plan. But now I’ve had the time to do just that.”

“If you didn’t steal the money, who did?”

“I’m going to find out. Count on it.”

He clicked off and was about to put the phone back into his pocket when it vibrated. He read through the email that had just been deposited there.