Дэвид Балдаччи - Mercy

“And?”

“And your father was also charged with engaging in prostitution and human trafficking. He was selling young men and women into the sex trade. Some of them were members of his sect. I forget the name they used.”

“The Faithful. And those allegations were never proved.”

“They were proved. In court. It was one reason your father got a life sentence without parole. And maybe your mother testified against him because she felt enormous guilt about it. That’s just my speculation.”

“I meant it was not proved to my satisfaction.”

Blum said nothing to this, because she could apparently read in his features that her words would not change his opinion. It would be akin to moving a glacier with a tugboat.

Buckley eased back in his chair. “And now that I have bared my past to you, please answer my questions.”

“Agent Pine is a formidable person. An excellent agent. She has never failed on a case, to my knowledge. She is tenacious, smart, and tough.”

“And a good friend of yours. She will surely want your safe return.”

“Which, I’m sure, is a sentiment you don’t share.”

“And Mercy Pine?”

“Has been through hell and back.”

“Yes, I know something of her background. Tell me about their parents.”

“Why?”

“Knowing about the parents can tell much about the children.”

“Does that hold for you, too?” she said.

He smiled. “Are you sure you’re not an FBI agent?”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“I will concede that my personal history had a large impact on who I am as an adult. Now, the Pines’ parents?”

“When their mother was a teenager she was a mole for the federal government against the Mafia. That put them in danger. That danger came to fruition when Mercy was kidnapped and Agent Pine was almost killed. They were only six years old. It devastated the family.”

“The Mafia? Interesting. And where are the parents now?”

“No one knows. Agent Pine has been looking for them, too.”

“Their mother must be formidable to have worked against the Mafia at such a tender age.”

“I believe she was very scared, but did her duty. But her work came at a high personal cost.”

“I assume she or their father was tall?”

“She was six feet tall. Agent Pine told me. She did some work as a model, in fact.”

Buckley nodded. “And both daughters are tall, strong — fierce, even, with exemplary fighting skills. I saw Mercy Pine’s handiwork. I assume her sister is equally talented. I saw the Wikipedia page. She almost made the women’s Olympic weightlifting team. Impressive.”

“Both sisters have had to overcome a great deal of adversity.”

“Good, good. However, I doubt that your Agent Pine has ever been physically tortured, as her sister has?”

“No, I don’t believe so. But why in the world does that matter to you?”

“Being able to endure pain is a source of great strength, I believe. It gives one an edge over another. Perhaps the critical edge.”

“I suppose so, but, again, I don’t see the relevancy.”

“But you don’t have to, Ms. Blum. Because I do.”

“I’m not getting out of here alive, am I?”

“No, you’re not. And neither are the Pine sisters.”

Blum now looked alarmed. “They’re not here, are they?”

He rose and tapped the bars with his finger, gracing her with an eager look.

“Not yet.”

Britt Spector had to admit the scheme was brilliant. And risky. That didn’t lessen the brilliance; it just made the plan more complicated. And special. Her admiration for Buckley had been displaced by a growing concern for the man. He was taking all of this far too personally. She understood that it was his brother. But it seemed to have evolved into a personal grudge that was now devolving into a terrible, looming confrontation. And she was uncertain of the exact shape it would take.

She had walked the grounds of the compound. Knowing the geography of a place was critical, if you wanted to make it out the other end. She had great faith in Peter Buckley, but when things went sideways with something like this, they often went terribly wrong. And then faith was just a word. A useless one. Then you were on your own.

This was her first time here. The place was rugged, imposing. If you didn’t know what you were doing, survival out here would not be easy.

He had never spoken of the place. She knew some of Buckley’s background, and she had researched the history of this place once she learned where they were heading. His childhood had been as unusual and potentially as damaging as her own. So how could she judge the man harshly?

She stared out at the distant mountain range, and the less distant foothills. Canyons had been carved in the earth here by once mighty rivers that had vanished over time. She had driven all over this land after they’d arrived, getting a feel for it, trying to understand its secrets. Because one just never knew, did one?

She headed to the new two-story building where, Buckley had told her, the old hay barn had once stood.

A team was already there setting up the structure inside it.

The steel posts had been sunk into the dirt and reinforced with concrete footers. The chain-link perimeter fence was being strung along these posts. It rose ten feet.

She patted one of the posts; it didn’t give an inch. Cement shoes on a dead man. Buckley had thought of it all.

Spector went over the plans with the crew chief. He had been well paid, had no idea what this ultimately would be used for, and didn’t want to know. As soon as they were finished, he and his men would be on a chartered plane out of here and back to the country from where Buckley had recruited them. This tale, for them, would end with the wheels-up and the beer flowing.

She left the barn and kept walking, turning left and heading down the main street of the place. It really was a wonder that so many people had lived here at one point. And died here. The graveyard held well over a hundred plots simply inscribed with just first names on now-rotted wooden markers. Buckley had told her that these folks had all died of natural causes.

She didn’t believe that and wasn’t sure he did, either. She wasn’t certain how he reconciled that in his own mind. Maybe he never had.

Spector looked up. This was a part of the country where the sky seemed to go on forever. There wasn’t another living soul within at least a hundred miles. When they had been coming in on the jet she had looked out the window. She saw flat, rugged land frequently interrupted by buttes, rocky outcrops, a line of foothills, and finally their bigger, blunt-faced mountain cousins in the distance with snowy caps. She saw birds and animals and patches of water and some vegetation among the mostly stripped red earth.

But not a single human being.

She had come to realize that Buckley much preferred that arrangement. He had told her that he would come here for days at a time and just wander. He said that the power of the isolation astonished him.

“We’re all hamsters on the wheel, Britt. We never stop long enough to try to understand what we really want, what we’re really doing. It’s all a mirage based on speed and lack of personal focus and thought.”

“If you say so, Peter,” she had replied at the time, clearly not pleasing him. Which had been her intent. She was not simply going to agree to agree. That made her trivial and, worst of all, fungible. To matter to the man, you had to be unique. And one way to do that was not to blithely follow his lead.

Spector wondered if Buckley had thought of that during some of his wanderings here.