James PATTERSON - The Big Bad Wolf

I nodded. So did I. And I also thought that Monnie had great street smarts for somebody who rarely left the office. So far, she was the best person I’d met at the Bureau, and here we were in her tiny cube trying to solve White Girl .

I had never really stopped being a student since my days at Johns Hopkins, and it had served me well in the Washington P.D., even given me a certain mystique. Hopefully, it would be the same in the Bureau, though it hadn’t been so far. I set myself up with a supply of black coffee and started in on the Russian mob research. I needed to know everything about them, and Monnie Donnelley was a willing accomplice.

I made notes along the way, though I usually remember most of what is important enough and don’t need to write it down. According to the FBI files, the Russian mob was now more diverse and powerful in America than La Cosa Nostra. Unlike the Italian Mafia, the Russians were organized in loose networks which cooperated, but weren’t dependent on one another. At least not so far. A major benefit was that the loose style of organization avoided RICO Mafia prosecutions by the government. No conspiracies could be proved. There were two distinctly different types of Russian mobsters. The ‘knuckle draggers’ were into extortion, prostitution and racketeering, and their particular crime group was called the Solntsevo . The second type of Russian mobster operated at a more sophisticated level – often securities fraud and money laundering. These were the neocapitalist criminals, called the Izmailovo .

For the moment, I decided to concentrate on the first group, the low-lifes, especially the brigades involved with prostitution. According to the Bureau’s Organized Crime Section report, the prostitute business operated ‘a lot like major-league baseball’. A group of prostitutes could actually be ‘traded’ from an owner in one city to one in another. As a footnote, a survey conducted among seventh-grade girls in Russia listed prostitution as among their top-five choices for when they grew up. Several historical anecdotes in the file had been inserted to represent the mob mentality: smart and ruthless . According to one story, Ivan the Terrible had commissioned St Basil’s Cathedral to rival, even surpass, the great churches of Europe. He was pleased with the result, and invited the architect to the Kremlin. When the artist arrived, his blueprints were burned and his eyes poked out, thus ensuring that he could never create a finer cathedral for anyone else.

There were several more contemporary examples in the report, but that was how the Red Mafiya worked. It was what we were up against if the Russians were behind White Girl .

Something incredible was about to happen.

It was a gorgeous afternoon in eastern Pennsylvania, the leaves just beginning to turn bright shades of crimson and gold. The Art Director found himself lost in a storm of dazzling colors, and their reflections sliding back and forth across his windshield were mesmerizing. Am I doing the right thing now? he had asked himself several times during the ride. He thought that he was.

‘You have to admit that it’s beautiful,’ he said to the bound passenger in his Mercedes G Class SUV.

‘It is,’ said Audrey Meek. She was thinking that she’d believed she would never see the outdoors again, never smell fresh grass and flowers. So where was this madman taking her with her hands tied? They were driving away from his cabin. Going where? What did it mean?

She was terrified, but trying not to show it. Small talk , she told herself. Keep him talking .

‘You like this G Class?’ she asked, and immediately knew it was an insane question, just insane.

His tight smile, but especially his eyes, told her that he thought so too. And yet, he answered politely. ‘I do, actually. At first I thought it was the final proof that rich people are incredibly stupid. I mean, it’s kind of like putting a Mercedes logo on a wheelbarrow, and then paying triple for it. But I do like the oddness of the vehicle, the rigid lines of the design, the gizmos like lockable differentials. Of course, I’ll have to get rid of this one now, won’t I?’

Oh God, she was afraid to ask why, but maybe she knew already. She’d seen the car he drove. Maybe someone else had too. But she had also seen his face, so he wasn’t really making sense. Or was he?

Suddenly Audrey found that she couldn’t talk at all. No words would come out of her mouth, which was very dry. This self-professed nice guy, who said he wanted to be her friend but who had raped her half a dozen times, was going to kill her very soon. And then what? Bury her out here in the beautiful woods? Dump her body in a gorgeous lake with a heavy weight attached to it?

Tears formed in Audrey’s eyes, and her brain buzzed as if there were a short in the circuit. She didn’t want to die. Not now, not like this. She loved her children, her husband, Georges, and even her company. It had taken her so long, so much sacrifice and hard work, to get her life right. And now this had to happen, this fluke, this incredibly bad luck.

Suddenly the Art Director turned sharply on to a narrow dirt road, then sped down it much too fast. Where was he going? Why so fast? What was at the end of the road?

But apparently they weren’t going all the way to the end! He was braking.

‘My God, no!’ Audrey screamed. ‘No! Please! Don’t!’

He stopped the car but let the engine run.

‘Please,’ she pleaded. ‘Oh please… don’t do this. Please, please, please. You don’t have to kill me.’

The Art Director merely smiled. ‘Give us a hug, Audrey. Then get out of the car before I change my mind. You’re free. I’m not going to hurt you. You see, I love you too much.’

There was a break in White Girl . One of the women had been found – alive.

I was rushed to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in one of the two Bell helicopters kept at Quantico for emergencies. A few senior agents had told me that they’d never been up in one of the helicopters. It didn’t sit too well with them. Now here I was becoming a regular during my orientation period. There were benefits to being on the Director’s fast track.

The sleek black Bell set down in a small field in Norristown, Pennsylvania. During the flight I found myself thinking of a recent orientation class. We’d burned fingernail clippings so that everybody would know what a DOA smelled like. I already knew, and I didn’t relish experiencing it again. I didn’t think there would be any DOAs on this trip to Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, that turned out to be wrong.

Agents from the field office in Philadelphia were there to meet the helicopter and accompany me to where Audrey Meek had been brought for questioning. So far there’d been no announcement to the press, though her husband had been notified and was on his way to Norristown.

‘I’m not exactly sure where we are right now,’ I said as we rode to a local state troopers’ barracks. ‘How far is this from where Mrs Meek was abducted?’

‘We’re five miles,’ said one of the agents from Philly. ‘It would take about ten minutes by car.’

‘Was she held captive near this area?’ I asked. ‘Do we know yet? What exactly do we know?’

‘She told the state police that the abductor brought her here early this morning. She’s not sure of the directions but thinks they rode for well over an hour. Her wristwatch had been taken away from her. He kept some of her clothing too. Even a small bottle of perfume called Meek One .’