Lynne Heitman - The Pandora Key aka The Hostage Room

“How’s Maggie?”

Thorne gave a que será será shrug.

“Have you seen your kids?” Hoffmeyer offered a sad smile and shook his head. “Or do you still consider them to be a liability?”

That piqued Harvey’s interest. “How so?”

“Over time, Cy came to see his family as a vulnerability. He never wanted any of his enemies to use them against him. Cy can’t be vulnerable, so he created a lot of distance from them.”

“Blackthorne is my family. It used to be yours. Why didn’t you come back?”

“And give you another crack?”

“I expected you’d be back to kill me.”

“I’m not like you, Cy.”

“You used to be.”

Harvey and I looked at Kraft, but it was clear the only people in the room who knew what they were talking about were Thorne and Hoffmeyer. Kraft stopped his scribbling long enough to ask what we all wanted to know. “Another crack at what, Hoff?”

“Cy had a side deal with the Martyrs. Besides hijacking the plane, they were also supposed to kill me.”

I reached over and tapped the arm of Harvey’s chair. “I knew it. Didn’t I tell you that?”

“I shouldn’t have done that.” Thorne looked contrite. “It wasn’t smart. But you would have gone down as a hero. You should see the crystal eagle I had commissioned for you.” He gave me the chin. “She was impressed. Go ahead, tell him.”

“It’s impressive. Why didn’t the Martyrs kill you?”

“Because I was the only one who knew what to do when everything went all to hell. They couldn’t kill me. Every terrorist group and insurgency in that part of the world started showing up and trying to hijack the hijacking. It was a circus.”

“One of the hostages told me you tried to save them.”

“I did what I could. It never should have happened. I can’t defend my part in it, or in any of the other things we did. But when it was all over, I didn’t want to do it anymore. I had the chance to disappear, and I took it.”

“I never took you to be weak-willed, Tony.”

“One man’s conscience is another’s weak will. I had a lot of time to think while I was on that plane. I spent time talking to those people. They weren’t soldiers, Cy. They were citizens, and they were scared. They had no way of dealing with what was happening to them. The ones who died burned to death. It was ugly, and it wasn’t right.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t right.”

“You should have come in for counseling. Or you should have stayed dead.”

“You’re right. I should have stayed dead. But then Max came to see me, and we started talking about the book. I liked that idea. I figured I owed you one.”

“It wasn’t the billion dollars that flushed you out?”

“It makes for a nice bonus.” He opened and checked more of the files. He’d been working as he talked to Thorne. They must have been the last, because he pulled out the flash drive and put that into the pocket of his trousers. Just when I thought he’d made a mistake and left copies on the laptop, he pulled out a second flash drive and made a backup copy, this time moving all the files off the hard drive. Had Drazen and Vladi done the same, they would have avoided a lot of trouble. “Friends,” he said, zipping his bag. “It’s been a pleasure. Max, do you need a ride somewhere?”

“Just get me someplace where I can write. Where are you going? Can we go over some of this?”

“Wait a second.” I got caught on the handles of Harvey’s wheelchair trying to get out from where I’d been wedged behind it and the couch.

Hoffmeyer was collecting himself to leave. “Do you mind if I retrieve my weapons?”

“No, go ahead. Look…” I pushed Harvey forward a few inches and freed myself to charge out into the middle of the room. “You can’t leave. What about Drazen? You’re taking the money we’re supposed to give him.”

“Right, right. Sorry.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a business card. “Call the FBI. Tell them to look in this safety deposit box. They’ll find the weapon used to murder the FBI agent. It has Drazen Tishchenko’s fingerprints all over it. Or if you want, you can strike a deal with Drazen. Tell him to forget about the money or you’ll take what you know to the feds. Either should work.”

He handed me the card. There were notes scrawled on the back. When I turned it over, it was Roger Fratello’s business card from Betelco. Holding it gave me chills.

For a dead man, Roger was very busy. “Where did you-”

The unmistakable click of a round being chambered interrupted, and I looked up to see Hoffmeyer about to shoot Thorne in the head.

“What are you doing? Don’t kill him.”

“He’ll come after me.”

Thorne, again, seemed wholly unconcerned. “He’s right.”

“You can’t just kill him.”

“I can.”

“Don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because…” I thought about what Harvey had said, that there had to be a difference between us and them. Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn’t. All I knew was I didn’t want him to shoot a man who had his hands tied behind him. “Because you’re not like him anymore.”

Hoffmeyer tilted his head. I watched him caress the trigger. Without moving the gun, he crouched down next to Thorne. “I won’t kill you today, but that doesn’t mean I won’t kill you. And don’t ever forget that I know Maggie, and I know your kids, and I can find them if I have to. Grandkids, too.”

Thorne tried not to show it, but his casual expression grew just a shade more forced.

“Don’t come after me, Cy.”

Hoffmeyer stood up and backed off, but his shoulders tensed, and he spun around and aimed at the doorway a split second before I saw what he had either heard or felt. No one had been watching the door, which explained how Drazen Tishchenko and his man Anton were able to materialize right in our midst.

EVERYONE WITH A WEAPON, INCLUDING ME, HAD IT OUT. Everyone had at least one bull’s-eye on him. If it went wrong, most of us would be shot. At least some of us would be dead, and that seemed like a waste.

“Drazen, what are you doing here?”

He looked around the room, seeming remarkably unperturbed by the situation. “Who is Thorne?” he asked.

“That’s me. I called him. Did I forget to mention that?”

I remembered the phone call he had made as we had waited for Kraft. He had apparently been speaking Russian.

“He said he had my money. He said he could tell me who killed Vladi.”

Cyrus said something to Drazen in Russian that made Drazen shift his focus to Hoffmeyer. Then Hoffmeyer joined their discussion. Now I couldn’t understand any of them.

“How about we speak a language we can all understand?”

Hoffmeyer obliged. “I was just telling Mr. Tishchenko that Cy undoubtedly brought him here to kill him.”

“That’s not true. My intention was to take him back to Virginia and kill him. But first I had planned to see what he would tell me about the black market for rogue nuclear weapons.”

Not surprisingly, Drazen seemed confused by Thorne. “You are U.S. government?”

“It doesn’t matter who he is,” I said. “He’s not taking you anywhere, and we’re not talking about who killed your brother. Our deal was if I gave you the money, none of that would ever come up again.” I glanced at the table where the computer had been. It was gone. I took a few steps back so I could include Kraft in my field of vision. He was clutching the machine to his chest. “Give me that.”

“You can’t let him have this.”

“He’s not interested in your story. Give it to me, or I’ll shoot you.”

Reluctantly, he passed it over. I held it up to show Drazen. “Vladi’s laptop. This is the reporter who had it. Here it is. Everything is happening exactly as I told you it would.”