Дэвид Балдаччи - Long Road to Mercy

“What does it say?”

Pine read the text. “Check out the death of Fred Wormsley. He was very close to both Roth and Roth’s father.”

Pine went online and found an article on point.

Blum read over her shoulder.

“Okay, it says here that Fred Wormsley’s body was found in the Potomac near Three Sisters Island a while back. The police speculated that he fell in somewhere along the GW Parkway, was sucked under by the current, and drowned.”

“But obviously Fabrikant thinks there’s more to it,” said Blum.

“And maybe so does David Roth.” Pine pointed to another part of the story. “Wormsley worked at the NSA. He was very high-up there. That’s why the police investigation was a little bit more involved than would be normal. They still concluded it was an accident, and now I wonder if they were pressured to say that.”

Blum sat back and seemed to process all this. “Okay, Roth is a WMD expert. He found out about this plot by the North Koreans, maybe from Wormsley. Wormsley might have learned about it through his work at the NSA. Then he got killed, maybe by this Sung Nam Chung. After that, Roth hooked up with Priest. They somehow discovered there’s a nuke planted in the Canyon. And he impersonated Priest and went down there to find it so no one would know he was involved. So, is he trying to disarm it?”

“I don’t know. But why would Roth turn to Ben Priest?” asked Pine.

“Maybe they knew each other before. And Priest was helping him out.”

“But if Roth knew there was a nuke in the Canyon, why not just call in the government?”

Blum thought about this for a few moments. “Maybe he’s afraid if the North Koreans know that we’re on to them, they’ll detonate it. Maybe he’s trying to disarm it by stealth. I’m just speculating here. I have no idea how nuclear weapons even work.”

Pine said, “Neither do I. I just know what they can do when they go boom.”

“Okay, now what do we do?”

“I think it’s time to head back west.”

“Thank goodness. I can already feel my tan fading.” She smiled embarrassedly. “Sorry, bad joke. I do that when my nerves are about to run away with me.”

Pine was punching in numbers on the computer. “What if the longitude and latitude lines indicate the spot where the nuke is located? And maybe Roth was trying to give whoever found that dead mule a clue. J and k ? That could point to a hidden cave for those who know about the legend.”

“A lot of questions to answer,” noted Blum.

“And the answers apparently lie in one of the biggest holes on earth.”

The credit card purchase was made online at eleven a.m. Two one-way tickets from Reagan Washington National Airport to Flagstaff, Arizona. The fastest flight was on American, which only had one stop in Phoenix before heading on for the short leg to Flagstaff. The flight was scheduled to leave in three days.

Carol Blum’s personal credit card number had been flagged and sent along to those parties who had requested the marker. Strike teams were assembled, and a recon unit was dispatched to Reagan to bang out the necessary details for Blum’s and Pine’s apprehension before they boarded.

The people in charge were wary of the purchase, however, since Blum could be the only one to show up. Or else neither of them might appear for the flight. Thus, the other two airports and the train and bus depots in the DC area were immediately put under watch.

And a secondary team was deployed to the Flagstaff area just in case. Pine and Blum’s homes and the office in Shattered Rock were already under surveillance.

Now, all they could do was wait.

“You want to go where ?”

The cab driver looked askance at Pine and Blum. He was a black man in his sixties wearing a felt cap and glasses that dangled on a chain against his broad chest. His checkered shirt was open enough to reveal curling gray chest hair.

“Harpers Ferry, West Virginia,” replied Pine.

“Lady, you know this is Virginia , right, not West Virginia?” said the man.

“I can read a map,” said Pine.

“You know how far that is from here?”

“About a hundred miles. You should be able to do it in under two hours.”

“The hell you say. Look, ma’am, first thing is, I don’t drive to West Virginia.”

Pine held up five fifty-dollar bills. She had used her friend’s debit card to get the cash.

“Two hours for two hundred and fifty bucks. Do you still not drive to West Virginia?”

The man considered this offer. “Well, I got to drive back.”

“Still, over fifty bucks an hour, guaranteed. I doubt that’s a hardship for you.”

Blum pulled out a hundred dollars from her wallet.

“And this extra amount to cover your gas,” she said. “And because you’re a nice person.”

The man said, “You two must really want to get to Harpers Ferry. Why?”

“I hear it’s very historical,” said Pine.

“And you got no car?”

Before she’d used her credit card to buy the plane tickets, Blum had driven the Mustang to Reagan National and left it in long-term parking to give credence to their taking a flight from there to Flagstaff.

“We’re visiting from out of the area,” said Pine.

The man nodded. “Okay, thing is, I got nothing against taking your money, but it’d be a lot cheaper to take a bus, or even the train.”

“I don’t like crowds. You want the gig or not? Unless you can make more money today somewhere else.”

The man eyed their luggage. “Is that all the bags you got?”

“That’s it.”

He shrugged and slipped on his glasses. “Okay, ladies, let’s go.”

They made it to the Harpers Ferry train station in a little more than two hours. It was right on the border between the two Virginias. The building was wood sided, stained a dull red, and was Victorian in style. It rested on the buried foundations of old armory buildings.

They paid the promised money, and the cabbie handed out their bags from the trunk.

“Hope you gals enjoy the history ,” he said, patting the cash in his pocket.

“Maybe we’ll make some of our own while we’re here,” said Blum.

The man cracked a grin and knuckle-smacked her. “Now, there you go!”

He drove off, and thirty minutes later Amtrak’s Capitol Limited train roared into town.

They had previously purchased their tickets at another train station, paying in cash. When the woman at the ticket window had asked for ID, Pine had pulled her badge and said in a low voice, “FBI, undercover, escorting a valuable witness for the government. Hoping to nail some really bad guys. Do not say anything to anyone about this.”

The woman, a matronly type in her sixties, glanced at Blum and smiled. “Good for you, honey. I won’t breathe a word to anyone.”

Blum smiled. “We all have to do our part.”

The train pulled away only a couple of minutes late.

They had reserved a Superliner bedroom compartment with its own bath, which also doubled as a shower. They stowed their bags and sat on the blue couch staring out the window as the West Virginia scenery passed by. Soon they would be looking at Maryland scenery followed by Pennsylvania and Ohio landscapes, with the final destination in Chicago, where they had a layover before boarding the Southwest Chief. They would arrive in Arizona before the flight they’d booked for Flagstaff ever left the ground.

Pine looked around the compartment. “I’ve never taken the train before. How about you?”

“Once. Along the California coast. I was sixteen. First time I’d been away from home. I went to visit an aunt. I really enjoyed it. Felt free as a bird. Three years later, I was a mom learning to live on a couple hours of sleep a night.”