F Wilson: Deep as the Marrow

Vanduyne was leaning forward now. “Son of a bitch! Who is he?”

“That’s not for publication.”

“I’ve got a right to know! I’d have Katie back by now if it wasn’t for him. The bastard almost had her killed!”

“And you almost killed the President!” Bob said, flaring.

“They had my daughter.”

“And how do you know they don’t have this man’s wife? Or one of his grandkids?”

Vanduyne leaned back again, slowly. “If they do, then my heart goes out to him. There’s nothing… absolutely nothing worse than having the life of someone you love hinge on your doing something vile.”

“Have your people check that out,” Bob told Canney. “But discreetly… very discreetly.” And while Canney called, Bob continued down the road to Sooy’s Boot, almost hoping that Dan Keane had been forced into this treachery by a threat to his family rather than a threat to his career.

And yet—the prospect of all those billions in appropriations being diverted from your agency to another… who knew what that could do to a man?

4

Snake finished reprogramming the third cell phone and stretched.

All set.

His head and eye still hurt, but not so bad this morning. He was a long way from feeling good, but the dizziness seemed to have receded, and the pills were managing the pain better.

He went to the bathroom to check himself out. After going on his electronics shopping spree last night, he’d removed all his bandages except the eye patch, and had slept that way. Turned out to have been a good move. His scalp lacerations had dried out; some crusting remained around the sutures, but in general they looked pretty clean.

He peeled off the eye patch and studied himself in the mirror. Pretty fucking frightening. With his half-shaven head, the crisscrossing stitches, and his ruined right eye, he looked like the Terminator after a bad day.

And he liked it.

Not that he wanted to look like this for the rest of his life, but it just might come in handy today.

He’d been planning to do the mummy thing with his head and the hooded sweatshirt. But this was better. This would scare the shit out of those Jersey hillbillies. Scare Poppy too, he’d bet. He’d let her get a good look at him before he blew her away.

He buttoned up a denim shirt. Over his right eye he gently fitted the black eye patch he’d bought last night. And over that he slipped a pair of superdark sunglasses.

Humming the riff from “Bad to the Bone,” he began to gather his equipment.

Time to hit the road.

5

“That is impossible,” Carlos Salinas said. “It must be a new motel that is not listed yet.”

“I’m telling you the place doesn’t exist!” Alien Gold was flushed and sweaty as he stood on the far side of Carlos’s desk, the phone in his hand. “I’ve called information and there’s no listing—new or old—for an Adamston Motel in Tuckerton or anywhere else in Ocean County, or in any of the counties around it. I even called the Tuckerton town hall and they’ve never heard of the Adamston Hotel. You know what this means, don’t you?”

Carlos knew exactly what it meant. “Mierda!”

“Right. Deep mierda! They’re onto us!”

“Perhaps,” Carlos said, keeping cool on the outside and trying to stay equally cool inside. Now was not the time to panic. Not yet. “And perhaps not. It means for certain that they are onto Senor Keane. This false information may be a lure to trick us into revealing ourselves.”

“I say we get out of here,” Gold said, breathing like he had just run up half a dozen flights of stairs. “Pack up shop and git!”

Carlos was tempted. His survival instincts urged him to run, but his paisa upbringing held him back. Do you flee your burning house if there is a chance you can put out the fire? Of course not. He had worked too long and hard to reach his present position. He would not abandon it so quickly.

“Not quite so fast. Alien. We are in no danger.”

“The hell we aren’t!”

“Think a moment. They do not know who we are, otherwise they would not have tried so clumsy a trick. This was not meant to lure us into the open—we would naturally check on the exact location of this motel before doing anything. No, my young friend, the more I think about it, the more I am sure that this was set up to confirm their suspicions about Señor Keane.”

Gold did not seem soothed by this. “Okay, so we’re not in the fire yet. But we’re still in the frying pan. If they suspect Keane, it means we can’t trust anything we get from him.”

“That is obvious. We will accept no further calls from him.”

“But what’s worse,” Gold said, “if they already know Keane is dirty, and can prove it, how long before they bargain him into revealing who he’s been talking to?”

“Not long,” Carlos said. “Not long at all.” He’d already thought of that. In the course of a single phone call, Señor Daniel Keane had dropped from valuable asset to dangerous liability. Of course, what could Keane say beyond the fact that he’d had conversations with Carlos Salinas? And he had no proof that these alleged conversations ever took place.

But still, he was a liability. As was MacLaglen. They were the only two people out there who could connect the name Salinas with the kidnapping and the poisoning of the President. Carlos Salinas liked to remove liabilities from his balance sheet. MacLaglen was protected by his tape—but Keane…

“I must think on this,” Carlos said. “Perhaps we will make one more call to Señor Keane.”

6

“Yes, sir,” Decker said, and held the cellular phone toward him. “It’s for you.”

John stared at the phone. “Me?” Who’d be calling him out here, in middle of nowhere, in Decker’s car?

“Yeah. An old friend.”

John took the phone. That could only mean…

“Johnny. It’s me.”

“Tom!”

“How are you, buddy?”

How the hell did he think? “I don’t have Katie yet. But you know that.”

“Yeah, I do. But they’re closing in. Won’t be long now. A couple of hours and she’ll be safe home.”

“From your lips to God’s ear.” John wanted to ask why the call, here, just this side of noon, in the middle of nowhere. But he didn’t. He let it hang.

Tom cleared his throat. “John… I’ll be leaving Bethesda in a few minutes.” Even with the air conditioner running, the summerlike sun had kept the inside of the car uncomfortably warm.

But now John felt a chill.

“What?”

“I’ve got to, Johnny. I’ve got to show up at the drug summit tomorrow morning. If I don’t the whole program will sputter to a halt.”

“But they’ve still got Katie! You said—”

“She’s as good as back, John. She—”

“But she’s not back! We’re in the middle of the woods, Tom—the mother of all goddamn woods! They could hide her here for days, weeks!”

“You know if I thought there was the slightest danger to Katie I’d stay right here, but the plot, the conspiracy, whatever you want to call it, is a bust. This woman who’s got Katie obviously cares for her and—”

“And no doubt cares for her own life too! The only thing we know for sure about this Poppy Mulliner is that she was born in the Jersey sticks, has a criminal record, and was a party to kidnapping my daughter. The rest is all talk. For all we know she could have been stringing us along since day one, feeding us a line to help her work out a deal with whoever she had a falling out with. One guy’s already dead. She may be bargaining with Katie to save her own ass.”

“John—”

“If you suddenly appear in public in perfect health, they’ll know they’ve lost. They’ll do whatever they can to cut their losses, eliminate anything that connects them to this plot. And Katie’s one of those connections.” He was so afraid… little Katie in the hands of those soulless animals. “Please, Tom. I’m begging you. Just one more day. You promised.”