Brad Thor - State Of The Union

All of the suits were enshrouded in clear plastic dry cleaner’s bags. One in particular, though, seemed to have been hastily hung. The bag was not covering the entire suit and it was bunched up where it had been slid between its two neighbors. Harvath noted that the suit was black and wondered if maybe Gary had thought about packing that one for the memorial service and at the last minute had changed his mind and shoved it back in his closet. Possible, but not likely. Not unless Gary was running behind and had been in a tremendous hurry. For all he knew, some careless FBI agent had pulled it out and shoved it back in place, but somehow he doubted it. They would have left things exactly as they had found them so on their return they could videotape everything the way Gary had left it.

Scot searched the bathroom. There was no deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrush or razor evident, which made sense as Gary had been about to take a trip when this entire thing, whatever it was, went down. The toilet and sink were spotless, but the chrome wastebasket was filled with discarded tissues. Harvath pulled several of them out, only to discover that none had been used.That was strange. He kept digging only to find that the entire garbage can was filled with unused tissues.What was Gary hiding?

After emptying the can of tissues, Harvath could clearly make out the remnants of a small fire. There was a trace amount of ash and some melted plastic around the seam in the bottom of the can. A quick check of the shower confirmed Harvath’s suspicions. The ceiling above had been slightly browned as if by smoke. Some ash was still visible around the drain. Apparently, Gary had burned something in the shower and had tried to rinse the can out afterwards. When he couldn’t get ride of all of the evidence, he decided to fill the can with tissues. But why? What did he need to hide so badly that he had to burn it? For the first time, Scot’s confidence in the man was shaken.

As Harvath continued to search the bathroom, he flipped open the lid of the laundry hamper and was stunned by what he discovered. Inside were three days’ worth of clean, warm weather clothes-most still perfectly folded. The forecast in Southern California had called for temperatures in the mid-eighties. It was as if Gary had just dumped the clothes right out of his suitcase instead of taking the time to put them away back in the bedroom. A poorly hung suit was something Harvath could chalk up to a thoughtless Bureau investigator or packing in a hurry, but now signs were starting to point more toward a hurriedunpacking.

Even though Gary hadn’t bothered to call him, he might have phoned someone else. That someone might know what had happened to him. At the same time, Harvath knew that even while the Bureau waited for a FISA warrant, they would have already established a trap and trace on Gary ’s phone and would have been going through all of his incoming and outgoing phone logs.

Harvath also knew that if the Bureau had been in the house, which was almost a slam dunk considering the well being of its former deputy director was currently in question, that they would have most likely relied solely on the phone company to provide them with Gary ’s phone activity. That meant that the phones themselves might at least catch Harvath up on the most recent activity.

Leaving the master bedroom, Scot walked downstairs to the study where he picked up the phone and hit theredial button. There was a long pause and clicking noises before a series of ear splitting tones, which sounded like a fax machine at full volume, blasted on the other end.Must have been a wrong number, thought Harvath as he hung up. But why wouldn’t Gary have found the right number and tried again? None of this was making any sense.

Harvath hit *69 to see who Lawlor’s last call had been from. The automated voice gave a Maryland area code followed by a seven-digit number, which Scot wrote with a pen onto the palm of his hand. At least it was something. Whether that something would actually be worthwhile was another question entirely, but he didn’t have any time to toss that possibility around now. If there was a trap and trace, the FBI would now know that someone was in the house and that the phone had been used. He had to get out.

As Harvath took one last look at the pictures on the walls of Gary ’s study, he whispered into the darkness, “Where the hell are you?”

BERLIN, GERMANY

Gary Lawlor spat the blood from his mouth, looked into the eyes of Helmut Draegar and said for the third time, “Fuck you.”

The large, stone room, with its out-of-date furniture, empty filing cabinets, and antiquated communications consoles, was cold and damp. From the little Lawlor could remember of being transported here, it was someplace deep underground. Estimating the probable amount of time he had been incapacitated by the Taser, Lawlor figured they must still be somewhere in Berlin, or just on its outskirts. Often, he could hear a faint, but distinct rumbling, like jackhammers, and thought that they must be near some sort of construction, which wasn’t any help because in Berlin, that could be anywhere.

“Though this gives me great pleasure, it is not working, is it?” asked Draegar as he set down the oblong strip of leather clad iron he had been using to beat his prisoner and removed his black leather gloves. “We should try something else.”

He motioned to his assistant and for the first time, Gary noticed the flesh of Draegar’s right hand. There was something uneven about it. No, not uneven, butwrong. The color was off. Then he realized.It was a prosthetic.

Draegar’s assistant, addressed as Karl, was a sinewy man in his late forties with opaque eyes and a sickly, jaundiced complexion. He wheeled over a large surgical lamp and plugged it into a nearby outlet as Draegar said, “I see you looking at my hand.”

“How?” said Lawlor.

“Wolves caught in snares have been known to gnaw off their own leg in order to escape. Do you think when presented with the same obstacles human beings would be any different?”

Lawlor wanted to vomit.

At that moment, Karl flipped the switch and the murky room was suddenly awash in bright fluorescent light. As he adjusted the lamp, it flashed briefly in Lawlor’s eyes and caused him to see spots before it was lowered to focus on his mouth.What the hell were they doing?

The answer came quickly enough as his captor wheeled over a small stainless steel surgical tray and unrolled a worn leather case containing a series of long, chrome plated picks, probes, mirrors and dental pliers. “I actually first saw this in a movie,” said Draegar as he carefully selected the tools he would need and began placing them off to one side of the tray. “It takes a very precise hand, if you will, but can yield great results. The key is in prolonging the life of the exposed nerve for as long as possible, but if the one you are working on dies, which with this method inevitably happens, not to worry. We just expose a new one.”

With his hands and feet flexi-cuffed to the old wooden chair he was sitting upon, Lawlor could only stare in disbelief as Karl plugged a portable electric dental drill into another wall outlet, unraveled its long cord and then brought it over and set it down on the tray next to the other instruments. Instinctively, Gary clamped his teeth together as tight as he could.

Draegar noticed the ripple roll across Lawlor’s jaw and said, “Resistance. Excellent. It will help keep things interesting.” As Karl maneuvered himself behind Lawlor, Draegar continued speaking, “One way or another, I will extract the information I need from you.”

Though Lawlor’s body was tense in anticipation of the sheer agony Draegar had in store for him, in a small, removed corner of his mind there was clarity. Draegar had used the wordneed. Though the former Stasi operative obviously took pleasure in torturing him, he would not kill him, at least not right away.