Дэвид Балдаччи - The Fix

“Do you have Joey’s medical file?”

“Yes.”

“I know you can’t share the details with us, per se. But can you tell us when he was diagnosed with leukemia?”

Palmer looked uncomfortable with this, but consulted her computer. Once more her face displayed amazement. “I don’t understand. This doesn’t make any sense. I’m surprised I didn’t put two and two together before.”

“About what?” said Jamison.

Decker answered, “Anyone with cancer is going to go through treatment, especially a child who could conceivably have his whole life ahead of him. With Joey’s form of leukemia he probably had been diagnosed years ago, had the whole spectrum of treatments until it was determined that nothing else could be done. Then he came here. So the couple that wanted to ‘adopt’ Joey would have known all of this long ago. They would have had no reason to ‘unadopt’ him.”

Palmer said emphatically, “That’s right. That’s exactly right.”

Decker looked around. “This is a nice hospice. A private hospice. How can an orphan like Joey afford this place?”

“Oh, well, the couple I was talking about, they had some goodness in them. They’ve been paying the bills here for Joey.”

“So they’re paying the hospice bills of a kid they ‘unadopted’ and never come to visit,” said Jamison. “How does that make sense?”

Decker said, “It doesn’t at one level. But it does at another. How did Joey end up coming to this place?” he asked Palmer.

“It was the couple. They paid the bills and so they got to pick the place.”

“So Berkshire and Jenkins both started coming here after Joey was here.”

“Yes, that’s right. Shortly thereafter, but Joey was here first.”

“And Berkshire asked to read to Joey?”

“Yes.”

“How did she know he was even here?”

This puzzled Palmer. “I’m not sure. I do remember her coming in and asking if we had any children. She said she wanted to bolster their spirits.”

“I’m sure. And the only young child you had at the time was Joey?”

“Why, yes. It’s unusual for a little boy or girl to be in a hospice. But it does happen, unfortunately.”

“Right,” said Decker.

“As I said, I thought their paying his bills made up a little for them abandoning Joey.”

“Yeah, well, you can stop thinking that.”

“What?” said a startled Palmer.

“Do you have their name and address?’

“That’s confidential.”

“And I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist.”

“Why?”

“Because they’ve been using your hospice to pass stolen classified information to enemies of this country. If that doesn’t work for you, we can always get a warrant and surround this place with a SWAT team. Your call.”

Upper Massachusetts avenue on the way to Maryland. It was the land of foreign embassies and enormous and vintage private residences. Old money and new dollars uneasily commingled here. Unless one had a net worth in excess of nine figures, one did not get to live in this area.

And it was a neighborhood unaccustomed to having a police presence unless it involved a visiting foreign dignitary and a motorcade with flags on the fenders.

“Okay, Decker, I hope to hell you’re right about this,” said Bogart nervously.

He, Milligan, and Jamison were seated in a parked car across the street from a 1930s Tudor-style mansion fronted by iron gates and a high stone wall.

Decker said, “I hope I am too.”

“Let’s do this.”

They got out and approached the house. Bogart spoke into a walkie-talkie. “Everybody in place. All points covered?”

The response came and he nodded.

“Okay,” he said.

They reached the gates and Bogart punched the button on the call box. There was a screechy sound but no voice came on. He hit it again, with the same result.

“FBI, please open the gates.”

Again there was no response.

“This is the FBI. Please open the gates or we will be forced to open them by force.”

Nothing.

“Nobody home?” wondered Bogart. He looked around and pulled out the walkie-talkie again. “Breacher up.”

A minute later a truck roared up and two men in SWAT gear climbed out. They unloaded a hydraulic-powered ram set up on a wheeled platform.

“Hit it,” said Bogart.

They powered up the ram, set it against the gate, locked the wheels down, and one of the men hit a button on a remote he held. The piston-powered punch shot forward and smacked the gates squarely in the middle. They broke open.

“Hit it,” said Bogart into his walkie-talkie.

A SWAT team poured out of the truck and dashed up the long drive. On the other sides of the property other FBI agents scaled the wall and charged toward the mansion.

Bogart, Milligan, Decker, and Jamison followed closely behind the SWAT team. They reached the front doors, where the lead agent pounded on the wood and announced the FBI’s presence. There was no answer.

“Take it down,” ordered Bogart.

The portable ram was brought up and it slammed against the doors, bursting them open. The agents poured through.

It was an enormous house with lots of places to hide. But they didn’t have to look very hard.

The library was a beautiful room, book-lined with a marble mantel topping a mammoth blackened fireplace. An ornate writing desk was set in the middle, a high-backed leather chair situated at the kneehole. There was a black leather sofa against one wall and two wing chairs on the other side of a wood and wrought iron metal coffee table that had probably set the owners back five figures.

Not that they cared anymore.

The man was in one of the chairs. The woman was sprawled across the couch. They each bore the blackened tag of a bullet entry smack in the middle of their foreheads.

“Alfred and Julia Gorski,” said Bogart.

“They’re taking care of loose ends,” opined Milligan.

Bogart said, “We need to search this place from top to bottom.”

“I’ll call in the tag-and-bag team,” said Milligan. He pulled out his phone and moved over to a far corner of the room.

Bogart looked at Decker. “So they used this dying kid as a means to pass classified material?”

Decker nodded. “They knew Joey was dying. That’s why they picked him to ‘adopt.’ They never had any intention of doing that. They brought him to Dominion Hospice. And that’s why Berkshire started going there. It was a perfect cover to pass the secrets. I mean, who would have suspected? We discovered that Jenkins got the job as the night manager when the woman who’d originally held the position didn’t show up for work. I wonder when they’ll find her body?”

“Damn. This thing just keeps expanding,” exclaimed Bogart, rubbing the back of his neck.

“So does the universe,” replied Decker.

A voice said, “But the good news is we’re dismantling their spy operation by default. They’ve now lost four operatives and counting.”

They turned to see Harper Brown standing in the doorway.

She came forward and looked down at the couple.

“You know them?” said Bogart.

“I know of them. The Gorskis host charity balls, cut ribbons on hospital wings, throw great parties, one of which the head of my agency has attended.”

“What’s their background?” asked Bogart.

“They were immigrants. From Poland. Built a huge import-export company.”

“I guess we know what they were importing and exporting now,” said Jamison.

“I’m surprised if they’re so prominent that they didn’t get negative publicity for what they did with Joey,” said Bogart. “I mean not adopting him.”