Lynne Heitman - The Pandora Key aka The Hostage Room

There were no coins or keys or wallet in his trousers. Those would all be in the desk drawer in his office. His cell phone was missing, presumably taken by the kidnappers and inadvisably turned on at some point. His schedule of medication was in a side pocket. The only other item was a photograph. It was Harvey in younger, healthier days. He was standing with Rachel at some scenic overlook. The sight of Harvey in sunlight was enough of an oddity, but to see him smiling was stranger still. With his arm around Rachel’s waist, he was gazing upon her as if she were some kind of rare hothouse flower. Rachel was gazing at something off camera. The photo paper was soft and fringed around the edges, the way pictures get when you take them out and look at them often. As much as I disliked the woman, he obviously took comfort in seeing her face. I set it on his nightstand, leaning it against the base of his reading lamp so he could look over and see it if he wanted to.

The clothes offered up nothing more beyond the stale and pungent odor of a helpless man stiff with fear. I piled them into a corner and took the medicine list to the prescription stash in the kitchen. I pulled out everything he should have taken and didn’t while he was missing. He could figure out what he could skip and what he had to catch up on. I put the pills on his bedside table with a glass of milk, which is what he typically used to push them all down.

For a brief moment, I gave consideration to calling Ling to let him know that Harvey was home. I even took out the business card he’d given me and stared at it. Calling him would have been the safe thing to do, the right thing to do. Instead, the phone rang. Not my cell but Harvey’s land line. I went into his office to take the call.

“Harvey Baltimore’s office.”

“Goddammit, Shanahan, don’t you ever return phone calls?” It was Dan. “I left you about a hundred messages on your cell.”

“What are you talking about?” I dug into my pocket for my phone. “I don’t have any-” Oops. I had turned it off before the big rescue and never turned it back on. When I did, I found seven messages waiting: five from Dan and two from Felix.

“Sorry. We were out getting Harvey back.”

“You got him? How is he?”

“A little worse for the wear. I think he’s really depressed.” I left it at that as I dropped down into Harvey’s desk chair. “Did you find something?”

“I’ve got one word for you. Are you ready? Afghanistan.”

“What about it?”

“The U.S. invades Afghanistan, right?”

“We did, yes.” I clamped the receiver between my shoulder and ear and began straightening the stuff on the desk. I needed to be doing something.

“In towns and villages and mud huts all over the country, Marines are rolling in through the front door and terrorists are running out the back.”

“Is this at all relevant to the case?”

“They’re leaving all their shit behind, like bomb-building instructions and maps and computers and memos and all the internal papers and documents and other crap that goes with running an organization, be it an airline or a terrorist ring.”

“Memos from Osama?”

“Right, right. Expense reports. Performance reviews. Anyhow, there’s this bumfuck little village south of Kabul called Zormat. In Zormat is a house. In the house is a closet. In the back of the closet is a big black Hefty bag.”

“If you say so.” When the surface of the desk was straightened, I started in on the drawers. I collected a bunch of loose binder clips and put them back in their box.

“Inside this bag are empty wallets, family photos, business cards, a few passports. Nothing of value but things that might mean something to the people who lost them, especially…are you listening to me?”

“I’m listening.” And trying to refill the stapler. Those replacement strips of staples are hard to handle without breaking them apart.

“Especially if they lost them in a hijacking.”

“Uh-huh.” I stopped. What? Wait. “What are you saying? Are you saying-” I switched the receiver into my other hand. “You’re saying there’s a bag in a closet in Afghanistan filled with the personal belongings of the people on Salanna 809?”

“A black Hefty bag.”

“From four years ago? You cannot be serious.”

“Serious as a fucking heart attack.”

“How did it get there?”

“Those shitheads who did the hijacking…what the fuck were they…” I heard papers shuffling on his end. “Jihads R Us or Jihad Express or-”

“Armed Islamic Martyrs Brigade.”

“Those guys, yeah. The ones who took over the aircraft, this was their safe house or headquarters or something like that.”

“How did it get there? The hijackers were all killed.”

“The ones on the plane. But I told you this thing was fucked up, didn’t I? It was a circus. People on, off, on, off. That’s how they got their guns, by the way. Those fucking Sudanese let someone onboard who was carrying Kalashnikovs. Stupid motherfuckers. Anyway, one of them must have gotten off somewhere along the way, brought the bag back with him, threw it into a closet, and forgot it was there. You do that, don’t you? Put shit away and forget about it?”

“Well, yes, but I’m not an international terrorist.” I closed the drawer. Enough cleaning. “Why would they keep incriminating evidence around?”

“I don’t think the Taliban gave a flying fuck what these guys had in their closet. Can you imagine the eBay potential for that stuff? Someone is going to make a lot of coin.”

I got up and walked to the bookcase, which had been my next planned stop on the cleaning-and-straightening tour. “This has to be it.”

“What has to be what?”

“The reason all this is happening now. The whole thing with Fratello. Susan said the feds showed her Roger’s wallet.” I started to feel the tingle of a few things finally coming together. “It must have come out of the Hefty bag, and whatever else they found must have led them to that safety deposit box and the money.”

“Shanahan?”

“What?”

“I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about.”

“I know. Sorry.” I couldn’t remember who knew what. The only thing I had told Dan was that Harvey had disappeared. “Roger Fratello is an embezzler. He stole a bunch of money and fled the country around the same time as Salanna 809. I think he was on that plane traveling as Gilbert Bernays.”

“Wait, I’ve got a copy of the manifest. Hold on.”

“You have a copy of the Salanna 809 passenger manifest? How did you get that?”

“Majestic used to handle Salanna down at JFK. I know this flight attendant who used to be married to a ramp supervisor down there, and he knew a guy who knew a guy, and I don’t know. I just did it. Bernays, you said?”

“Gilbert Bernays.”

“Yeah, hold on.” I heard pages turning. Whereas Felix’s thinking music was a low, steady hum, Dan’s was more like a fast rattle, something like “tsetsetsetse,” as in tsetse fly. “He was in seat 4B. Boarded in Brussels, on his way to Johannesburg.”

“Supposedly, he was one of the ones who survived.”

“Do you want to talk to him?”

“Why? Do you know where he is?”

“I know where he might be for the next few days. Believe it or not, these Salanna 809 people have reunions.”

“The hostages have reunions?”

“I shit you not, and they’re former hostages. Lucky for you, they’re having one this week.”

“This week? That’s a pretty strange coincidence, don’t you think?”

“No. It was scheduled for later in the year, but they moved it up because of a State Department request. State wants to meet with the survivors to give back their stuff. It’s happening because of Zormat.”