Дэвид Балдаччи - The Sixth Man

Sean called the man back. He answered on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“It’s Sean King.”

“Thank you for calling me.”

“I’m surprised to hear from you after our last meeting. My partner and I are lucky to still be breathing.”

“I don’t know what happened after I left you,” said Bunting. “But I apologize if you were put in any danger. That was not my intent. For what it’s worth the rest of the evening was far from pleasant for me either.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Actually, I do.”

“I want to meet with you.”

“That’s what you said on the message. Why?”

“I have a proposition.”

“Change of heart?”

“You could say that.”

“They’ve come down hard on you, haven’t they?”

“I need to know one thing. Is Kelly Paul working with you?”

“Who?”

“We don’t have time for that,” Bunting said irritably. “Is she?”

Sean hesitated. “Yes.”

There was silence.

“Bunting?” Sean said sharply.

“We really need to meet.”

“How can you get away from them? You know they’re watching you. In fact they’re probably listening to our conversation right now.”

“Impossible,” said Bunting.

“Why?”

“Because I’m using better scrambling technology than the president of the Untied States uses for his calls. Not even the NSA can touch it. And as soon as you picked up on your line, my technology pipeline was extended to your phone as well.”

“But that still doesn’t answer my question of how you can physically get away from them.”

“Leave it to me. I didn’t build a billion-dollar business in the intelligence arena by being a moron.”

“And your family?”

“Let me worry about that. I’m assuming you’re somewhere near Edgar Roy. How about we rendezvous halfway? Say Portland, Maine?”

“When?”

“Tomorrow night.”

Sean said, “Where in Portland?”

“There’s a restaurant down by the waterfront. Clancy’s. They’re open until midnight. My wife and I used to go there when we were dating.”

“If you’re trying to set us up–”

“My family is in danger, Mr. King, and I need to make this right.”

Sean let the silence linger. He listened to the other man’s tight breathing.

“See you in Portland,” said Sean.

THE NEXT NIGHT the Bunting family left their brownstone and walked down the street, their two private security men a few yards behind them. The weather had stayed cold, and the Bunting family was bundled up, hats, gloves, and mufflers. Mrs. Bunting walked hand in hand with her youngest child. Not once did the man beside her check his cell phone for messages.

Twenty minutes before they had left, a furniture delivery was made to their residence. Three large boxes. This was not unusual as deliveries often came to the Bunting residence. Mrs. Bunting was an avid shopper.

The men watching from across the street saw the three large boxes carried in and three empty boxes carried out. Only one of them wasn’t empty. The truck rattled off down the road and Bunting lay in that box, praying that his subterfuge had worked. After the truck had gone two miles without being stopped, he lifted the top of the wooden box, clambered out, and sat on one of the curved metal bump-outs over the wheel wells.

His thoughts were not on his predicament. Or on Edgar Roy. Or the E-Program. He was thinking about his wife and children. He was thinking about their next step in his plan. And he bitterly chastised himself for having to put them through this. And of course he prayed that it actually worked.

It has to.

The Buntings’ walk lasted about an hour and then they returned to their home. The children raced upstairs to their rooms. Julie Bunting took off her coat and hung it up in the closet. She turned to the man behind her as he also took off his hat, coat, and muffler. He had entered the house hidden in the same box that Peter Bunting had exited from it.

“Peter said you knew what to do,” Mrs. Bunting said to the man, who was the same height and build as her husband. With the other man’s clothes on he was a perfect decoy.

“I do, Mrs. Bunting. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

A minute later Julie Bunting sat down in a chair in the foyer, her hands kneading her thighs. When her husband had come to her, told her what she needed to do, it had collapsed her perfect little world. She was a bright, educated woman. She loved being a wife and mother, but she was no wallflower. She had questioned him at length about what was going on. The little he had told her had frozen the woman’s blood.

She had never wanted to know exactly what he did. She knew it was in the government arena, something to do with protecting the country, but that was all. The security team that he employed she had assumed was for this reason and also because the Buntings were wealthy and such people needed security. On the other hand she had her hemisphere of existence: her family, her charities, the wonderful social life of a New Yorker with money to burn. It was really all that she could have wanted in life.

But a colder reality had just settled into her bones. And she had felt guilt for wanting to remain oblivious to his world all these years, especially when it had provided her with such a wonderful existence.

She had asked him, “Are you in danger?”

She loved her husband. They had married before he had had money. She cared about him. Wanted him to be safe.

He would not answer her, which was an answer in itself.

“What can I do to help?” she’d asked him.

And the plan had been hatched.

Now it was time for part two of that plan. This segment her husband had insisted on. And she understood quite clearly why. He had taken her through the paces time and again until she felt she could perform it flawlessly. The children had been prepared; the staff the same. She had tried to make it seem like a game to her youngest child, but the older kids knew something was very wrong.

Their father had sat with each of them before heading out in the box. He had told them that he knew they would be brave. He’d told them that he loved them all very much. He told them that he would see them soon. Julie Bunting could tell that it was only this last statement that her husband didn’t quite believe.

She had gone to her luxurious spa-like bathroom, cried her tears, washed her face, and emerged ready to do what she needed to do. She headed up the stairs, where her children were huddled in her oldest child’s room. They sat on the bed staring at her. She looked back, tried to give them an encouraging smile.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

Each of them nodded.

Her youngest said, “Is Daddy coming back?”

Julie Bunting managed to say, “Yes, sweetie, he is.”

She went downstairs and opened the pillbox her husband had given her. She took three of them. They would make her very sick, but that was all. They would mimic medically all the symptoms she wanted to have happen to her. She next picked up the phone and made the call. She told the dispatcher she had taken the pills and needed help. She gave her address.

Then she collapsed to the floor.

The men watching from across the street heard the sirens long before they saw their source. The cop cars, ambulance, and fire engine pulled up in front of the Bunting brownstone five minutes after Julie Bunting put down the phone. The emergency personnel rushed into the house with their equipment along with two uniformed police officers. Two more police cruisers showed up and the men in them set up a perimeter outside the house.

One man across the street called this development in to their superiors and asked for instructions. They were told to sit tight. They did.