Дэвид Балдаччи - The Escape

He read the text again. It was short, to the point, and capable of only one interpretation.

Don’t trust Veronica Knox, Puller. She is not what she appears to be.

NILES ROBINSON HAD left work early to catch his son’s soccer match. The boy had gone from death’s door to being a healthy athletic twelve-year-old in less than two years. It truly was a miracle, and one that Robinson never took for granted.

There were a handful of parents watching the match from the sidelines. The day was warm and the boys had already worked up a sweat. Robinson’s son was a center midfielder, which meant he had equal responsibilities for defense and attack. Because of this his kid probably ran more than any of his other teammates, but he seemed up to the task.

Robinson shook his head in wonder as his son flashed past him with the ball. A minute later the ball was in the net and his son’s team had taken the lead. It was a lead they would not relinquish. After the match was over, Robinson congratulated his son and then headed back to work. The boy would be driven home by a friend.

A tall man in a hoodie approached him in the parking lot. Robinson didn’t register on him until the man was nearly upon him.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Before the hooded man could answer, four men appeared out of vehicles parked nearby and converged on the pair. The hooded man was grabbed and his hood yanked down as his hands were cuffed behind him.

Robinson stared at the man and shook his head. “It’s not him,” he said. “It’s not Robert Puller.”

The man in the hoodie was younger and his face was dirty.

“Get your hands off me,” he yelled. “I ain’t done nothing wrong. Get them cuffs off me.”

One of the other men slammed him up against Robinson’s van. “Why did you approach this man?”

“Is that a crime?”

“It might be.”

“Some dude paid me.”

“What dude? Where is he?”

“Just some dude. Paid me twenty bucks. Said to come over here after the match was over.”

“What did he look like?”

“I don’t know. He was tall as me. Never saw his face.”

“Why’d he pick you?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“You hang around this park a lot?”

“Yeah, going through the trash cans. The kids leave full bottles of Gatorades. And the moms throw half the snacks they bring away. Cornucopia, man.”

“You’re homeless?”

“No, man, I had my private jet drop me off here so I could go through shit in the garbage.”

“When did the ‘dude’ approach you?”

“About an hour ago.”

“Where?”

“Over by the basketball courts on the other side of the park.”

The man let him go and looked at Robinson. “He faked us out with this idiot.”

Robinson nodded. “I told you he was smart.”

The man spoke to one of his colleagues. “Take this smartass and see what else you can get from him.”

They pulled the man away and pushed him into a waiting SUV, which immediately drove off.

The first man looked at Robinson. “If he contacts you, you get in touch with us immediately. Understood?”

Robinson nodded, climbed into his car, and drove off. When he looked at himself in the rearview mirror he was sweating.

He arrived at his house, having decided against going back to work. He emailed an excuse to his boss, went out into his backyard, and sat on a chair on his patio, his thoughts a whirlwind of mostly cataclysmic scenarios.

His personal cell phone buzzed. He had almost been expecting this.

He looked at the screen.

Sorry for all the excitement at the park. Had to flush the Dobermans.

A few seconds later another text came in.

I’m glad Ian is okay. But now that he’s healthy you have to consider what you’ve done and the damage that it’s caused. Because you opened the door for them. You and Susan. We need to meet.

Robinson stared down at the little screen and then, after looking around to make sure no one was watching him, thumbed in a brief response.

How? They’re everywhere.

As Robinson read the reply his opinion of Robert Puller was once more validated. He was a very smart man.

Union Station was busy at this time of day. Robinson parked in the upper deck and rode the escalator down to the station. He walked inside and over to a bank of phones set against one wall. In a world of cell phones, there was no one using these antiquated tools of communication.

Across from him some scaffolding enclosed with a tall curtain had been set up around repair work being done on the ceiling.

Robinson parked himself at the phone farthest from the door he’d come in and waited. A few seconds later it rang.

He picked it up and said hello.

“You’re looking good, Niles. Trim as ever.”

Robinson didn’t bother to look around. He doubted he could have spotted the man.

“How did you get out of DB, Bobby?”

“Nothing planned. Just taking advantage of an opportunity.”

“Your brother came by to see me.”

“I’m sure.”

“I don’t think he believed me.”

“It’s pretty much impossible to lie to him.”

“I know you went to see Susan. She said you tried to kill her. That she finally got away and got to her gun and that you ran.”

“I’m sure she did. Not exactly how it went down, but that’s Susan for you.”

“Meaning she’s a lying sack of shit.”

“That’s sort of what I meant, but I like the way you said it better.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to do it, Bobby. But they had me cornered. No way out. Ian was going to–” Here, Robinson faltered.

“I’m not here to judge you, Niles. Given the circumstances, I might’ve done the same thing. But now we have to make this right.”

“How?”

“For beginners, you need to tell me who paid you off to do what you did.”

“I never met anyone. It was all emails and they never deposited any money in my account. They just paid for the medical care in Germany directly. That way no one would be the wiser. We explained away the treatment in Germany as a charity case because the company running the clinical trials needed bodies to try it on.”

“Okay, but what exactly did they want you to do? Backdoor them into STRATCOM and from there everywhere else?”

“That might have been their plan. But that’s not what they told me to do. I just had to finger you meeting with the Iranian. They provided the doctored photos.”

“Okay, Niles, but there had to be some endgame on this.”

“You ever wonder why they specifically targeted you out of everybody at STRATCOM?”

“Of course I did.”

“And did you ever find an answer?”

“Not a good one, no.”

“Well, I asked myself that question many times.”

“And did an answer ever hit you?” asked Puller.

“About a year ago, when I was at work.”

“And what was it?”

“You were being groomed to go all the way to the top, Bobby. General Able was pretty clear on that.”

“So what?” asked Puller.

“There were some who might not have liked that.”

“Who exactly are you talking about?”

“I tried to make it right, Bobby. I really did. This has been eating me from the inside out for over two damn years.”

“Give me a name, Niles,” urged Puller.

The shot hit Niles Robinson right in the base of his neck and severed his medulla. With that core destroyed, so was he. He stood there for an instant, a look of intense surprise on his now bloody face where the round had exited and struck the wall. Then he fell face first into the phone bank and slid to the floor, the wall smeared with his blood, his hand still clutched around the receiver.