David Morrell - The naked edge

"Steve Shackleford." The pleasant voice had a Tennessee accent.

Thank God, Cavanaugh thought.

"Steve, it's Aaron Stoddard."

Both Jamie and John straightened, frowning at one another, so unusual was it for Cavanaugh to use his real name.

"Aaron, what a surprise. I haven't talked to you in… It has to be three years."

"The last time I was at the Blade Show in Atlanta," Cavanaugh said. Of the numerous knife-enthusiast conventions, the Blade Show was the hugest, with more than ten thousand attendees.

"I was afraid you'd dropped off the face of the Earth" Steve's voice said.

"Not quite. I had a lot of obligations at the ranch." As far as Steve knew, Cavanaugh was a cattleman, thus explaining the Wyoming address. "But when I told you I was a rancher, I was really referring to a sideline. My main work is in the security field."

"Oh?" A moment's thought was broken with, "I guess you get a lot of use for knives in that kind of work."

"More than you can imagine. I need a favor."

Steve sounded wary. "What kind?"

"Your magazine's subscription list."

"You've got to be kidding."

"Names, addresses, phone numbers if you've got them. The works."

"That's confidential information, my friend. I can't just… What sort of security work did you say you did?"

"Why don't I let the FBI's director of counterterrorism explain it to you? I think you're going to hear the words 'federal government' and 'national security'."

Cavanaugh gave the phone to John.

Five minutes later, John gave the phone back to Cavanaugh.

"Now can you supply the subscription list?" Cavanaugh asked.

"As important as this sounds? Give me your email address," Steve said. "I'll send the list in five minutes. Are you looking for anybody in particular? Maybe I can ask around?"

"Carl Duran."

"Your friend?"

"He dropped out of sight. I'm trying hard to find him."

"It's no wonder you can't," Steve said.

"I don't understand."

"Carl died three years ago."

"Died?"

"I'm surprised you didn't know."

"We had an argument. We stayed out of touch."

"Shame about arguments, especially when it's too late to repair them. He stopped going to the Blade Show about the same time you did."

After he was fired from Global Protective Services, Cavanaugh thought. Cavanaugh had stopped going to the Blade Show in order to avoid crossing paths with Carl.

"I asked around, wondering what happened to him," Steve's voice continued. "The word I got was that he'd been killed."

"How?" Cavanaugh pressed the phone harder to his ear.

"A car accident in Thailand. Or maybe the Philippines. I heard two different versions. Carl was a construction worker, right?"

That had been Carl's cover story, the theory being that it paid to pretend to have a white-bread business that no one felt a compulsion to ask many questions about.

"I heard he saved enough money to take a vacation, and that's where he got killed," Steve said. "I checked our subscription list, and sure enough, he didn't renew. Sorry to break the news to you. Even if you had an argument, I'm sure you still thought of him as a friend."

Cavanaugh didn't reply.

"I guess you won't need the list now," Steve said.

"Better send it anyhow. I've got other names to check."

They spread the printouts across the floor and studied them.

"Here," Jamie said. "Duran's name."

"Three years ago," Rutherford said. "But not later."

"When you're trying to disappear," Cavanaugh said, "the rule is, abandon everything about your former life. Some people can't make a complete break, though. They have ties they can't give up."

"Such as a passion for knives," Jamie noted.

Cavanaugh nodded. "Carl got fired because of discipline problems. Maybe those problems carried over into his attempt to disappear. He'd have tried to be careful. He might have used intermediaries. But I'm betting that, under another name, he continued to subscribe to knife magazines. He's been getting Blade since he was a kid."

"After he dropped the subscription, maybe he just bought the magazine in a store," Rutherford suggested.

"When he was working for a drug lord in South America?" Jamie looked skeptical. "A specialty English-language publication would be almost impossible to find down there."

"Then maybe he had somebody buy it in the States and mail it to him," Cavanaugh wondered.

"A big nuisance needing to depend on somebody," Jamie said. "Plus, that probably wouldn't be the only knife publication he'd want. The easy way is to subscribe, have the publishers mail them to a drop site in the U.S., and then have them forwarded."

"John, can the Bureau investigate the background of anyone who subscribed after Carl's name disappeared from the list?" Cavanaugh asked.

"No," Jamie said. "Not after his name disappeared from the list. Before."

Cavanaugh and Rutherford looked puzzled.

"Suppose Duran anticipated that someone might try to find him this way," Jamie explained. "What if he took out a new subscription using a different name before he pretended to be dead? It's a better way to hide his trail."

"Smart," Rutherford concluded.

"That's why I married her," Cavanaugh said.

"It's all a long shot, of course," Jamie admitted.

"But it's the only lead we've got." Rutherford picked up the phone.

Atlanta, Georgia.

His hands in his windbreaker, caressing a special folding knife he'd crafted, Carl sat on a bench and watched pedestrians crossing the expanse of Centennial Olympic Park. In summer, children were able to skip back and forth through what was called a dancing water fountain, a wide area of water jets that gushed twenty feet into the air. Now, ignoring a cool October breeze, Carl imagined youngsters scampering through the spray. He could almost hear their laughter.

Wouldn't it have been great to have something like that when you and I were kids, Aaron? He remembered the two of them bicycling to the swimming pool at Iowa City's park. Below, the tree-lined river meandered toward the low, summer-hazed buildings of downtown. He remembered an afternoon when they chained their bicycles to a post, and when they returned from the pool, they found four kids trying to break the chain and steal the bikes. When Aaron shouted at them to stop, the kids attacked, but Carl showed Aaron that nobody could push them around. He pulled out his jackknife, causing the kids to gape when he opened it and chased them through the trees. He remembered how surprised Aaron was. He remembered-

A man sat down next to him. Nondescript clothes. Thin. Mid-forties. Mustache. Swarthy skin. From the Middle East. "This location is too exposed."

"It shows we've got nothing to hide."

"A directional microphone can easily overhear everything we say."

"Not with my associate playing with that miniature battery-powered car." Carl indicated Raoul a hundred feet away, the young Hispanic working a remote control that made a tiny Jeep go this way and that.

"The control interferes with directional-microphone reception?" the man asked.

"Enough to cause hearing loss to anyone using earphones. It's good for us to be outside. Fresh air. Sunshine. People going about their business. Keeps us in touch with the basics of life. The 1996 Olympics explosion was over there, incidentally."

The man looked toward where Carl pointed. "Three pipe bombs wired together," he said with contempt.

"Even so, the device managed to kill one woman and wound one hundred and eleven bystanders," Carl reminded him.

"The Army of God. That's the group the bomber's note gave credit to. The Army of Amateurs is closer to the truth." The swarthy man studied the unobstructed space around them. "How are you going to deal with Cavanaugh?"