Lynne Heitman - The Pandora Key aka The Hostage Room

“Here we go.” Felix was back. “Blackthorne was founded by a marine lieutenant colonel named Tony Blackmon and a CIA operative named Cyrus Thorne. That sounds cool.”

“What kinds of services are we talking about for the military? Hauling fuel and slinging hash? Because that’s not really all that cool.”

“Hold on…hold on.” He mumbled a little more of the Felix tune. “Okay, hauling fuel and meal preparation would be a passive PMF. Passive means providing training and support. Active means providing services up to and including combat operations. There aren’t many that are considered truly active.”

“Which is Blackthorne?”

“Active.” Another pause. “Whoa. Way active. It’s the fastest-growing one there is. These guys are all over the Middle East, in the Balkans, Africa, South America. Anywhere there’s a fight going on and money to be made, you can find Blackthorne.”

“What would a…a…what did you call them?”

“Private military firm. PMF.”

“What would one of those want with Rachel?” I thought about it. “Maybe I should call and ask. If there’s a private army looking for Rachel, chances are they’ll find her quicker than I will.”

“Way to leverage, Miss Shanahan.”

“Exactly. Do you have a contact for Blackthorne?”

“I’ve got their main number down in Falls Church, but I called them already, and there’s no way to get through the administrative assistants. It’s a wall, Miss Shanahan. I’ve busted through world-class firewalls that were easier.”

“Do you have a suggestion?”

“There’s a guy in town you might want to talk to. He’s a reporter for the Globe. His name is…let me see. I just had it here. He won some awards for his stories on the Catholic church scandal, and this guy named Whitey Bulger. Who is Whitey Bulger, anyway?”

“Notorious local criminal and fugitive. His brother was president of the state senate.”

“State senate?”

“It’s a long story. Who is this reporter? What’s his name?”

“Lyle Burquart.”

When he said the name, I didn’t make the connection, but when he spelled it, I knew I’d seen it before. After we hung up, I dug through the piles of printouts I’d stuffed into my backpack. When I found the swath devoted to the hijacking of Salanna 809, I pulled it out and checked the bylines. Lyle Burquart, reporting for the Boston Globe. Yet another twist in the road that had already made me seasick. What did it mean that the same guy who had reported on this private military organization also reported on the hijacking of Salanna 809? I had to stop and think about why the hijacking was relevant in the first place. The connection to the hijacking was the name Stephen Hoffmeyer. Ling had said that Hoffmeyer was an alias for Fratello. But Hoffmeyer was dead. That was no secret. I had read it on the Internet. So, why was Ling treating him as if he were very much alive?

Maybe Susan’s intuition was right. Maybe a woman is the first to know her husband has died, even if he is a sack of shit.

LYLE BURQUART WAS AT LEAST SIX-FOOT-FOUR, WITH dark, wiry hair that sat on his head like derelict shrubbery. His stooped shoulders were a perfect complement to his sad, aching eyes. With a gait that was more like a series of connected lunges, he made his way across the WBRS-we-do-sports-better-than-anyone lobby to greet me.

“Who are you?” It wasn’t a warm greeting.

“Alex Shanahan. Thank you for seeing me. Can we-”

“What do you want?”

“I’m a local private investigator. I’m working on a case, and I saw in the paper you wrote-”

“What kind of case?”

“Missing person. It’s my partner. Can you-”

“Who is your partner?”

“Harvey Baltimore.” I stopped there, grateful to get through a whole sentence, even if it was a short one. When he said nothing, I pressed on. “I called the newspaper, and they said you had left and to try you over here. I was hoping I could get a few minutes to talk with you.”

“About what?”

“Salanna 809 and a company called Blackthorne. I understand you reported on both.”

He took a step back. It put him directly under one of the overhead fluorescent tubes. The unflattering light caught the bags under his eyes and made them look absolutely huge.

“I can’t talk to you,” he said.

The receptionist was not bothering to hide her interest. I reached out, as if to gather Lyle in, and made a move for a couple of chairs in the lobby, a good distance from prying ears. “Could we just move over here where we can be a little more comfortable?”

There were lots of things going on with him. His jaw was working, and I could hear his teeth grinding. With his elbows locked, he was bouncing the heels of his hands against his thighs. I watched his chest rise and fall at least ten times before he finally agreed to take five steps to his right.

I turned us so that our backs were to the receptionist. “Look, my partner is missing. He’s sick. He’s got multiple sclerosis, and I’m worried about him. The FBI came to the house and asked all kinds of questions about a man named Roger Fratello. Do you know that name?”

“No.”

“What about Stephen Hoffmeyer? Do you know that name?”

I could see in his eyes that he did. He knew it from the hijacking story. I could also see a spark of interest in his pale face. It wasn’t much, but I was hoping it could be the thread that unraveled his resistance. I started to pull on it. “Roger Fratello is an embezzler. He ran a company called Betelco. It sounds as if he got into trouble with a bunch of Russian investors and stole some money and disappeared. This was four years ago, right around the time of Salanna 809.”

“There was no one named Fratello on Salanna.” His voice was tense but controlled.

“The FBI says Fratello might have been going by the name of Stephen Hoffmeyer.”

“Why do they think that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “They were the ones asking all the questions. Do you think that’s true? Do you think Fratello might have been on Salanna?”

“Not under his own name.”

“Could he have been Hoffmeyer, in which case he’d be dead, I assume?”

“No. Stephen Hoffmeyer was not an embezzler from Boston.”

“Are you sure?”

“I know everything there is to know about that incident. You’re wrong about that. So is the FBI, but…” He stared at me with the obsessive look of a problem solver who had left the problem only half solved. He was taking this latest piece of data, putting it with everything else he already knew, trying new combinations, and hoping the answer would emerge. But as quickly as the desire had gripped him, it let him go. Or he threw it off. “I’ve got a different gig now,” he said finally. “I can’t help you. I’m sor-”

“Wait a minute. You know something else. I can tell. What is it?”

He let out a deeply troubled sigh. “Why are you asking about all this? It happened four years ago.”

“The FBI told me that they found a bunch of money with Roger Fratello’s fingerprints on it in Brussels. Salanna 809 left from Brussels, didn’t it?”

“It originated there.”

“On top of that, I just left Susan Fratello. The FBI told her that her husband has turned up again. I don’t know where or what the circumstances were, but something is obviously going on. Then I saw these two guys checking out the house of my partner’s ex-wife. It turns out they’re from a company called Blackthorne. When I looked into it, it turned out you had reported on both Blackthorne and the hijacking. All I’m trying to do is find my partner. These happen to be the leads I’ve turned up, and they happen to lead to you.”