Lynne Heitman - The Pandora Key aka The Hostage Room

“Check this.” I picked up Hoffmeyer’s jacket and laid it across Harvey’s lap. Hoffmeyer didn’t move, but something told me he was humoring me, letting me keep him under control. I stepped back and positioned myself so I could watch both him and the doorway.

Harvey pulled a long, flat wallet from the pile of leather and opened it. Without his glasses, he had to hold it at arm’s length to head it. “Joseph Hildebrandt of Tucson, Arizona.”

“Where did you come from?” I asked him. “Don’t say Arizona.”

“Check my bag.” He nodded to a black gym bag on the floor near the door.

I went over and got it and put it on Harvey’s lap. “Take a look.”

“What am I looking for?”

“Take out the Mylar envelope,” he said, “and open it.”

Harvey reached in and pulled out a silver bag. It rustled and crinkled as he handled it. Then he opened it and pulled out a hard-drive unit that looked as if it would slide right into the computer Kraft had brought us.

“That’s the lock,” he said. “All I need is the key.”

Vladi’s laptop was still on the coffee table. It had been powered down and unplugged. Thorne or Red must have been packing it up to go.

I looked at Hoffmeyer, still on his knees in the center of the room. “What happened to Red?”

“Was he the second man down the stairs?”

“Yeah, he must have been.”

“I broke his neck.”

If he was psychologically scarred by having done it, he hid it well. That made two dead in the basement-Tatiana and Red-and Cyrus, still breathing but not moving, next to Hoffmeyer. Dead bodies…spies…tear gas…How would we explain all this? I couldn’t think about it. I had to think about what was right in front of me.

“Let me have the drive, Harvey.”

He gave it to me, and I went to the couch and sat down. Kraft must have felt the shift. “Cut these goddamn things off of me.” He was fighting the cuffs, which only made it worse for him. “My eyes are killing me.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Hang on for just a few more minutes.”

“Goddammit. You are such an amateur.”

It was so tempting to reach over and smack him across the face, but it would have been bad form to do that to a man with his hands tied behind him.

I had never swapped out a hard drive before, though I had watched Felix do it once. To get to it, I would have to take apart the laptop’s housing.

“Harvey, I need you to go to your desk and get a-”

“Phillips-head screwdriver?” Hoffmeyer was still down on his knees with his hands on his head. “I’ve got everything you need in my gear.”

“Where’s your gear?”

He pointed to a corner, where a black backpack was nestled in a basket of magazines. He must have tossed it there in the heat of the moment. Harvey had maneuvered his chair closer to the couch. I checked with him for his input. “He did save us,” he said. “In rather dramatic fashion.”

He had also killed two people in rather dramatic fashion. Had he wanted us dead, though, he could have waited five more minutes, and Tatiana would have done the job for him.

“Okay. Go ahead.”

Hoffmeyer stood up and took a moment to shake out his left shoulder. He kept rotating it as he stepped over Thorne. He brought the pack over and dug around until he found something that looked like a manicure case. He unzipped it, and it turned out to be a case full of small tools, one of which was exactly the one I needed. He extracted it and handed it to me.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. What do you want to do about Cy?” Thorne had begun to stir.

My nose and my eyes were still running, causing the scene to go blurry every few minutes. I used the sleeve of my shirt to dry my eyes.

“How about if I cuff him?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s good.”

He went off to do that, and Kraft started agitating again, albeit with his eyes squeezed shut. “What about me? You trust him and not me? He wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me.”

I watched Hoffmeyer tie up Thorne. He was efficient but almost deferential as he lifted him to a sitting position against the side chair where I had been tied up. He was a hard guy to figure out. I didn’t want to use my last brain cells trying. He dragged over a chair and sat, letting out a big sigh as he did.

“I’m getting too old for this.”

I wasn’t afraid of him. I wasn’t really afraid of Kraft, either. Hoffmeyer had a lock blade in his pack. I borrowed it and cut Kraft’s restraints. He got up and stumbled out of the room, presumably in search of water for his face.

Hoffmeyer sat across from me, staring coolly back. The laptop was on the low table between us. I had that feeling again that I was in charge only because he permitted it. “Who are you, really? Why are you here?”

“You can call me Hoffmeyer. I’m here for the money.”

“Drazen’s money?”

“I think of it more as my money.”

That was the straightest answer I’d gotten from anyone since the whole thing had begun. “Where did you get the hard drive?”

“From Kraft. We’ve spent a lot of time together. We’re collaborating on a book about Blackthorne. Political exposés are hot now. I think we have a shot at getting published.”

“So I heard.” I couldn’t tell if he was genuinely excited or being ironic. Either way, things just kept getting more surreal.

“Anyway, I swapped it out one night when Max was asleep.”

“You did what?” Kraft had found his way back. He was standing in the doorway, dabbing at his eyes with the same damp towel I’d given Harvey. I knew it was the tear gas, but he looked as though he were crying over the betrayal.

“I’m sorry, man. I couldn’t let you carry that thing around with you. It wasn’t safe. I knew Cy was around. Then you told me about the Russian. I copied over all your stuff.”

“You told me you didn’t know what was on it.”

“Yeah, I lied. Roger told me what was on it while we were on the plane.”

“Roger Fratello?” I asked. “You knew him as Roger and not Gilbert Bernays?”

“He told me his real name. He told me everything.” He sat back and rubbed his left shoulder, which was clearly bothering him. “Those are the kinds of things you share when you’re hostages together. No matter how positive you try to be, you don’t really know how much time you have left. Lies become meaningless. Artifice slips away.” He shook his head. “Roger caught a bad break.”

“Roger made his own bad breaks.” I had no sympathy for him. “He was an embezzler. According to the FBI, he was also responsible for the murder of an FBI agent. He told Drazen the guy was working undercover, and Drazen murdered him.”

Hoffmeyer nodded. “I believe that he did feel some remorse over that. He said the Russian scared him. He was looking for a way out of town. That was the biggest chip he had to bargain with.” He nodded and smiled at Kraft, who had reclaimed his spot on the couch next to me. “This is going to be a great story, man.”

“Pulitzer Prize, baby. I’m telling you. Oprah, Larry King, Today show…well, me, not you. But we can’t miss with this.”

“Could we hold off on the victory parade for a few minutes?” I said. I looked at Hoffmeyer, who seemed far more interested in the money than in Oprah. “How did you know the drive needed a key? Did Roger know about that?”

“Roger couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t get to the files. He didn’t know anything about hardware encryption, but I did. I told him he needed a token. That was disappointing for him.”

“I’m sure it was.”

Harvey weighed in from the wheelchair. “Can we please begin at the beginning? I am deeply confused.”