Andrew Grant - Even

And next time, be more careful.

The guys from the rear car got out and walked toward me. There were two of them. They would be in their mid-twenties, with black, slightly shiny suits and dark, glossy hair. Both were holding weapons. The driver had a Colt. 38 Super in polished stainless steel. The passenger had a Smith amp; Wesson 1911 Performance Center in glassbead black. Expensive pieces of hardware. Flashy. Not the kind of thing you’d expect Quantico to approve.

The passenger tucked his gun into his waistband and came over to search me. It was my third time in seventeen hours. I’d be surprised if it was his third time, ever. He didn’t even turn me around. Just put his left hand on my chest to hold me against the wall and checked me over with his right. The urge to gooseneck his left wrist and force him onto his knees in front of me was almost too strong to resist. Instead I held my arms out, kept quiet, and let him have a good rummage around in my clothes. Lavine’s gun went into his waistband, next to his own, the money went into his back pocket, and the handle I’d taken from the meeting room seemed to confuse him, so he just dumped it on the ground.

“Give me your hands,” he said, reaching forward and grabbing both my wrists.

He’d left himself completely open. I was amazed the FBI could have sent such amateurs to arrest me, knowing what they knew. Quite insulted, actually. Then something struck me about how they’d driven into the wall. How their vehicles had functioning airbags. How they were using shiny handguns in the field. How comically inept their search technique was. Put it all together, and there was only one explanation.

They weren’t FBI agents at all. I looked down at the guy’s face and smiled. He wasn’t off limits any longer. My head started to roll back. The muscles in my neck began to tighten, all on their own. It was as if some kind of magnetic attraction had developed between my forehead and the bridge of his nose. But before I could split his skull, another thought hit me. It stopped me in my tracks. This was no random mugging. These cowboys were out in too much force for that. And how had they known to target me in particular? What I looked like? Or where I’d be?

Someone had been helping them. And that was good.

Because now they were going to help me.

When I was four years old my grandparents bought me Snakes amp; Ladders for my birthday. Chutes amp; Ladders, they call it in the States. But whatever the name, it was my favorite toy for quite a while. And all because of the first time we played with it. I remember the anticipation, waiting for the old folks to get ready. Then lining up the counters next to the board. Picking up the dice. Rolling. And getting a… one.

I was disappointed. It was a terrible score. The worst you could get. I was obviously doomed. I took my counter and gloomily reached toward the first square. Then I noticed the ladder. It sprouted from the bottom corner and ran all the way up to square 38. It would carry me nearly halfway home with my first move.

From despair to hope in a single moment. It was an amazing feeling.

And when the fool from the Lincoln pulled a long white cable tie out of his pocket and wrapped it around my wrists, I felt something like it again.

I knew the guy from the car wouldn’t have been able to tell me anything useful, himself. He was too low down the food chain. But the person who sent him would be a different story. And this idiot was going to save me the trouble of tracking him down. I nearly laughed out loud, even when the driver popped the trunk and gestured for me climb inside.

We were on the move for fifty minutes. It was absolutely dark in the trunk, but apart from being cramped and a bit airless, I didn’t really mind. The carpet was thick and soft, and there was a raised ledge that made a kind of pillow. The big sedan’s suspension was much more civilized than the FBI van, it didn’t stink like the NYPD car, and the driver was taking it nice and steady. I’d been in hotel rooms that were less comfortable.

The first part of the journey was all stops and starts, so I guessed we were still in the city. Then there was a really rough section with tight twists and turns and lots of tire noise. After that a long, smooth, fast road with a couple of sweeping right-hand bends. The last five minutes were slower, then we turned left into some sort of rough yard or driveway. We snaked right and left, then crunched to a halt. The car paused for a moment. Then it rolled forward for the final few yards before coming to rest. The engine note died away. A car door slammed. Footsteps passed me. A mechanical clanking sound started up somewhere close. It lasted twenty seconds. Then there was silence.

The trunk lid opened, and all I could see was the inside of a roll-up garage door looming above me. The panels were made of wood. They ran horizontally. Each one was ten inches high, with some kind of dull brown coating applied to them. Rails ran up the sides to a winding mechanism that was fixed to the rough plasterboard ceiling.

The door was less than an inch from the car’s rear fender. I stood up in the trunk and looked around. The front of the car was touching a wooden pole, sticking straight upright, with a red circular reflector attached to it at windshield height. There was a blank unplastered wall to our left, and room for two other cars to our right. The driver was in the center of the empty space. He was leaning against a round metal pillar, his hands in his pockets, looking pleased with himself. The passenger climbed out and went to stand next to him, also with a smug grin on his face. Then a plain wooden door in the opposite wall scraped open and another man stepped into the garage. He would be in his fifties, and was heavyset with dark, wiry hair and an open, friendly face. He was wearing a black polo shirt with some kind of golf club logo, beige trousers, and boat shoes. He could easily have been a lawyer or stockbroker, home for a long weekend and killing time before the Tuesday-morning rush.

“You two,” he said. “Where are your manners? Help our guest.”

My feet were on the ground long before the passenger ambled across to the car, so he just took my elbow and steered me toward the internal door. The older man stepped through first, leading us into a basement area. It was basically a long rectangle, but with a block taken out at our end for a set of stairs. Another area was paneled in at the far end for something-I couldn’t see what-which made the remaining space into a shape like a capital H.

The floor was gray concrete throughout. There were wooden shelves all around the walls with piles of suitcases, bags, plastic containers, and cardboard boxes neatly lined up on them. There was a lot of stuff in there, but you could have emptied the place inside ten minutes. The ceiling was the only part that wasn’t tidy and organized. It was mostly boxed in, but in several places the boards were missing and wads of pink fiberglass insulation were hanging down. Either the place had recently been searched, or they had a major mouse problem.

The corner between the door and the stairwell was taken up with a washing machine, a dryer, some ironing equipment, and various baskets of clothes. The older man ignored them and hurried straight through, heading for the alcove on the opposite side. That was about the same size as the laundry area, and was also fitted out for a particular purpose. But not with white goods. Two giant cages had been crammed in there. They must have been ten feet deep by six wide and seven high. The floors as well as the sides and roofs were made of heavy-gauge wire mesh. Each one had a mesh door at the front. Both were padlocked.

The cage on the right, next to the stairs, was empty. There was a person in the other one. It was a woman. She was lying curled up on her side in the far corner, facing away from us. Her clothes looked smart. She had gray-green trousers, a matching suit jacket, and black low-heeled boots. I watched her carefully. Her shoulders flexed slightly as she breathed, but otherwise she didn’t respond to our arrival in any way.