Steve Martini - The Rule of Nine

“Ah.”

Joselyn looks at me. She nods. “He died trying to stop something that Thorn had set in motion. It’s a long story.”

The story of how Gideon Quest came to be.

“Do you know where he might be now, this man Thorn or Belden or whatever he’s calling himself these days?” says Snyder.

“No. For a short time, maybe a year or so after the plane went into Lake Union, he was up near the top of the FBI’s most wanted list. Not only did they not buy his drama of accidental death, they didn’t even treat him as missing, except for the fact that he was a fugitive. I heard they had him cornered somewhere in Africa and supposedly it was only a question of time. Then the World Trade Center went down, 9/11, and all the priorities changed. Have you seen the FBI’s most wanted list lately?” She looks at me.

I shake my head.

“If you don’t wear traditional Arab headgear, you don’t get on it.”

“Can I see the photographs?” I ask Snyder.

He hands them to me. In one of the photographs, Jimmie and the man Joselyn calls Thorn are laughing.

“Any idea how this man might have gotten on your son’s blind side?” I ask Snyder.

He shakes his head. “Jimmie was much too trusting. I tried to warn him. Some people would take advantage if he wasn’t careful. But you know how kids are.”

“I’m learning,” I tell him.

“You have a son?”

“A daughter.”

“How old?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Almost the same age as Jimmie. You think this man, this Thorn, may have killed my boy?” Snyder directs the question to Joselyn.

“I have no idea. He’s not Mexican, I know that. But from what I saw, what I know, he was certainly capable of it.”

“If he was on their wanted list, the FBI must have some kind of file on him,” says Harry. “Give them the names, Thorn and Belden. They should be able to connect the dots.”

“You better tell them that the photos you’ve got there aren’t going to look the same as the ones in their old files,” says Joselyn.

“Do you think it’s his print on your business card?” Harry directs this to me.

“I don’t know how far back the FBI fingerprint database goes,” I tell him, “but if that print belongs to him, it should have spit out a name, Thorn or…”

Behind me the door to the conference room suddenly opens. “Paul!”

I turn, and it’s my secretary, Janice. By the look on her face I can tell that something is wrong. “Phone call for you. It’s urgent. Your daughter.”

“What is it?”

“You want to come right now, and take it in your office,” she says.

Josh Root sat at the committee rostrum, gavel at hand, completely oblivious to the noise and commotion going on around him. This afternoon his mind was on other things. The Old Weatherman had struck again. This morning Root had gotten up and found it on his personal computer at home, another e-mail in the middle of the night, like a bomb blast.

But this time the fear that had been so palpable in Root following the first two communications was replaced by anger. The Old Weatherman was demanding an additional two million dollars, and he was giving Root only two days to come up with it.

The prick must have thought he was made of money. The thought of it produced bile in his throat. He coughed a few times and covered his mouth with the back of his hand. He took out a handkerchief and wiped a bit of phlegm from his lip.

“Are you all right, Senator?” One of his aides was hovering over his shoulder.

Root took a sip of water from the glass in front of him. He cleared his throat. “I’m fine. We’ll get started in a minute.”

“Sure. Can I get you anything?”

“Nothing.”

The kid sat down again.

Root was beginning to suspect that someone at the Swiss bank had talked. How else could anyone know that he had that kind of ready cash on hand? Two million dollars. People with that kind of money usually had it tied up in investments. It could take anywhere from a few days to a week to sell stocks and reduce them to cash. But the Old Weatherman seemed to know that it was just sitting there, waiting to be wired from one Swiss bank to another. For the moment, how he knew wasn’t the problem. Getting rid of him was. And by now it was clear that buying him off wasn’t an option. Knowing the man as he did, Root knew that this would only serve as an invitation for him to come back for more.

The trick was to find him. The key was the Old Weatherman’s e-mail account. Somewhere there had to be a record with an address, some point of physical contact. Ordinarily Root would turn this over to one of his staff members and within a short period they would have an answer for him. But this time Root couldn’t do that. He would have to do it himself, in the same way that he would have to deal with the Old Weatherman.

He looked up at the clock on the wall at the far end of the room, picked up the gavel, and slapped it hard, twice. “The committee will come to order.” He cleared his throat again, took another quick drink of water, and slapped the gavel once more. “The committee will come to order.”

The voices in the room began to quiet. “We’re going to pick up where we left off this morning.” Root looked down at his schedule of witnesses. “Next witness is Joselyn Cole. Is Ms. Cole here?”

A man was sitting at the witness table. “Are you here on behalf of Ms. Cole?”

“No, sir.”

The next thing Root knew there was a hand on his shoulder from behind and lips in his ear. “Senator, I think you’re looking at the wrong schedule.” One of his staffers was pushing a piece of paper in front of him. “You’re looking at Tuesday’s schedule.”

“Ah, sorry,” said Root. “My mistake. Seems I’m getting ahead of myself.” He laughed. A few in the audience laughed with him. But to Root his was a nervous laugh, a small measure of the forces now coming to bear on him. The Old Weatherman’s e-mailed threats, Root’s diminishing physical and mental condition, and all the other pressures and demands were now descending on him.

Ever since the destruction of the World Trade Center, the authorities had tried to erect a series of impermeable security barriers around the entire southern tip of Manhattan. Probably nowhere on earth was there a piece of hallowed ground more protected than this. Thorn was certain that if the local police and the federal authorities could shrink-wrap the whole area in Kevlar, they would.

This evening he stood on the pedestrian overpass and surveyed the work spread out below through a small rip in the blue plastic tarp. The overhead pedestrian walkway was bounded on both sides by chain-link fencing, which in turn was wrapped in plastic tarp material to keep prying eyes from seeing what was happening down below.

Where the twin towers once stood there now existed only a cavernous concrete hole three or four stories deep, housing communications equipment, generators, and the other machinery necessary to run the subway sixty feet down, below the streets. For nearly a decade arguments raged over whether the twin towers should be rebuilt in some manner, or if the site should be transformed into a park or a memorial for those who died on 9/11. In the vacuum of leadership that marked the new century, the concrete cavern remained as a symbol of American indecision.

It was nearing five in the evening, and the stream of human traffic scurrying across the overpass was beginning to resemble some of the rapids on the Colorado, people running to catch the subway down below or one of the buses on Broadway.

Thorn waded into the stream and through the escalating rush-hour crush of people to the other side. At one point he had to grab the chain link to keep from being washed along with the masses. He found a short section of the fence where the walkway widened for just a few feet. He settled in and staked out this little nook as if he owned it.