Дэвид Балдаччи - Hell's Corner

“Ashburn gave me an inventory of what they took from here and it was pretty minimal,” said Stone to Chapman as the latter sat down in a chair and surveyed the room. “But there isn’t one personal photo, no scrap-books, old yearbooks, nothing to show she had a family. She’s scrubbed herself clean.”

“She’s a spy, it obviously comes with the territory.”

“Even spies have lives,” Stone said firmly. “Much of their history might be invented, but they usually have some personal items around.”

“What do we know about her background?” asked Chapman.

“She was born in San Francisco. Only child. Parents both deceased.”

“How?”

“House fire.”

“You don’t think?”

“She was only four, so no, I don’t think she killed them. Her parents had been wealthy, but the estate taxes took a real bite out of the money, and apparently the relatives who took her in weren’t that generous. They couldn’t deny she had brains, though. She went to Stanford undergrad. Harvard Law School. Then recruited by the CIA. She’s been one of their top field agents for a long time. The lobbying firm façade was a brilliant one. It let her go to places all over the world collecting intel and no one gave it a second thought.”

“Apparently none of your blokes gave it a second thought that she had been turned either. Weaver looked ready to piss in his pants.”

Stone looked around the modest confines of the town home. “Not exactly a mansion.”

“So this is all about money, isn’t it?” Chapman said derisively. “I knew I hated the witch the minute I first saw her.”

“This is all about a lot of money,” said Stone. “A billion dollars can make just about anyone do just about anything and worry about rationalizing it later.”

“I can’t believe you’re defending her.”

“The only thing I’m wondering is when I find her can I keep myself from killing her?”

“Do you mean that?”

Stone turned away from her. “There’s nothing here that can help us.”

“So where do you really think she is?”

“Every airport surveillance video has been reviewed. Every TSA agent questioned. Every piece of paper one needs to travel by air in this country examined. Which leaves car, bus or train. She doesn’t have a car registered to her. A rental car is too problematic for a number of reasons. Bus the same. Besides I just don’t see a near billionaire traveling by Greyhound.”

“Private jet?”

“Checked. Nothing. There are holes in that arena certainly, and we can’t be absolutely sure she didn’t take private wings, but that’s the best we can do.”

“So a train somewhere north, to a big city? You really think that’s it? But if you think she sent a lookalike by train to Miami, it seems like she’d want to stay far away from the train station.”

“Friedman thinks eight moves ahead. She would have run through the analysis you just laid out, figured what we might think and done the opposite.”

“Right instead of left,” responded Chapman.

“Which means getting to her will not be easy. And bringing her in will be even harder.”

His phone buzzed. He answered it. Joe Knox was on the other end.

Stone listened for several minutes. “Thanks, Joe, now if you can put markers on credit cards, cell phones, what? Right, I knew you’d already thought of that. And this is all between you and me, okay? Right, thanks.”

He looked at Chapman. “She’s even better than I thought.”

“What do you mean?” Chapman asked nervously.

“I thought she would have hired muscle from either Eastern Europe or Asia.”

“Okay, so what did she do?”

“She hired a team from each one. Six and six.”

“Why would she hire two teams?”

“Two walls between us and her. And if one team for some reason turns on her or gets paid off by Carlos Montoya?”

“She has another team to fall back on.”

“And if I’m reading her right, she’ll keep each team independent and perhaps ignorant of the other.”

“Outer and inner wall. Classic defensive position,” said Chapman.

“We pierce one with casualties, we have another line to get through. Then maybe we don’t get through at all.”

“And where are these guys right now?”

“The big city to the north.”

“New York?”

“Which means that’s where I’m headed.”

“Where we’re headed,” corrected Chapman.

“Look, I—”

“Right, you don’t have a chance in hell of not taking me with you.”

“This isn’t your fight.”

“Look, that bitch tried to kill me too. So you’re not the only one wondering whether you can keep yourself from pulling the trigger.”

Six hours later a fellow named Ming, who was part of Friedman’s Asian protection team, came to the surface. He was known as a highly paid mercenary who sidelined as a hired killer. No case could ever be built against him, mainly because witnesses kept disappearing. Probably against orders, Ming had used his credit card to buy some lunch at a deli in the South Bronx.

That was still a big area, but they’d managed to whittle it down some. They could trace no rental cars to anyone on the watch list Friedman might have hired. Cabs in the Bronx were not as plentiful as those in Manhattan and there was no record of Ming being in New York before, which probably stopped him from trying to figure out how to use the subway. So based on all that, Joe Knox assumed he was probably on foot when he went for his meal.

On the phone he told Stone, “Let’s figure in a six-block radius with the deli as the center point. It’s a lot of ground to cover, but not nearly as much as we had to check before.”

“That’s good work, Joe.”

“So who do you have on your hunting team?”

“Harry Finn, Mary Chapman from MI6 and me.”

“And me.”

“No, Joe, not you.”

“Alex Ford saved my life. I owe him this.”

“I thought you were going to retire.”

“I will, right after this. How we getting up there?”

“Private wheels. For all I know Friedman has a way to put markers in the electronic system too, so rentals are out.”

“We can take my Rover. When do you want to leave?”

“You really sure about this?”

“Don’t ask again. But what about the rest of the Camel Club?”

“Reuben is shot up. I don’t want Annabelle going anywhere near this. And Caleb, well.”

“Enough said.”

They headed out at four in the morning. Knox drove. Stone rode shotgun. Finn and Chapman were in the rear seats. Stone had explained the plan to them the previous night. Except for Knox they were all disguised, just in case Friedman had scouts out doing what they were doing. Friedman might have gotten a look at Finn when he was tailing Turkekul and Stone was not willing to take any chances.

They each had a photo of Ming, and Knox also had one of Friedman, although it was doubtful the woman looked anything remotely like she had before.

“Six-block radius,” Stone repeated to them as they reached the Big Apple, which was fully awake by now as millions set off to work. Knox was going to roam in his wheels after he dropped the other three off in different locations around the South Bronx. The area they were in wasn’t exactly Park Avenue, but they were all armed and well capable of taking care of themselves.

Stone walked his route inward toward the deli. He had no need to look at Ming’s photo again. He’d memorized each of the man’s distinctive features, the most prominent of which was a pair of blank eyes. Stone knew if he weren’t a hired killer Ming would have simply become a sociopath and done the same thing for free. But even sociopaths made mistakes. Ming’s error had been using his credit card for a pastrami sandwich, a can of Sapporo and an order of fries.