Джеффри Дивер - The Final Twist

“Microchip?” Shaw asked his brother.

“Hmm. I can order a scan. Doubt it.”

The men found themselves looking at the please-call-if-found tag.

They shared a glance.

“Maybe,” Russell said. His own knife appeared. It seemed the brothers both owned Benchmade folding knives, among the best on the market. Shaw’s was a Bugout. Russell’s was the Anthem model, costing about three hundred dollars more.

Russell used the blade to slit the tag and slowly pulled the lamination away from the cardboard.

He found nothing.

He dropped the tag and wire inside the courier bag and folded up the knife, put it away.

Shaw suggested, “The newspapers and magazines?” He explained: maybe there was something marked in an article, or several of them, that could point them in some direction.

“Possible.”

“But back at the safe house,” Shaw said, looking around. “We’ve been here too long.”

“Agree.”

The men gathered up their booty and left the diner.

On the way to Russell’s SUV, Shaw voiced what had been in the back of his mind from the moment the first arrows hissed their way from Earnest La Fleur’s bow: “Percentage chance that Gahl was unstable and paranoid? He never had the Sanction at all. Ash — and Braxton and Droon — just thought he did.”

Russell didn’t put a number on it but he said the exact word that Shaw was thinking: “High. Too high.”

Which meant that what their father had perished for was not evidence to bring down one of the most ruthless corporations on earth, or this mysterious Endgame Sanction.

Ashton Shaw had died for a greatest-hits mixtape.

Was that the car? The green Honda?

“Turn left. Fast.”

Russell, behind the wheel of the big SUV, apparently trusted his brother’s instincts. He spun the wheel hard, braking a little. Shaw would have gone faster.

Ahead, two blocks away he saw a green car reverse fast into an alley.

“There. I think that’s her. Catch her.”

“Her?” Russell asked.

Shaw hadn’t told him that the driver following him was a blond woman. He mentioned this now, leaving out the “hot” part.

The SUV picked up speed and approached the alley the Honda had zipped into.

“When you get to the mouth, turn but don’t drive in.”

“Why?”

“She may have left a booby trap.”

“These windows are bulletproof.”

“What about the tires?” Shaw explained about the nails the woman had scattered earlier.

Russell lifted an eyebrow then skidded the vehicle to a stop.

Yes, a blanket of nails littered the front of the alley. Ahead of them, several blocks away, the car vanished into traffic.

“They have big heads,” Russell said.

Shaw looked at his brother.

“The nails. They’re roofing nails. You run over average nails, they stay flat. These, when the tire hits them, the points turn up, and into the tread.” He knocked the Navigator into reverse. “You have no idea who she is?”

“Might be related to a job I did in Silicon Valley a couple of weeks ago. Made some enemies in the high-tech world.”

Russell backed up and turned toward Alvarez.

“Keep an eye out when you’re on your bike. She throws some in front of you, at speed, you’ll set it down. Won’t be good.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

He parked two blocks away, not far from the coffee shop where Shaw had first seen Russell, though he hadn’t known it at the time. Shaw was keeping his cycle locked here too, away from the safe house — in case someone had made one of the vehicles and traced it.

Inside, Shaw lifted Amos Gahl’s courier bag onto the kitchen table and divided its contents into two piles.

He pushed one toward Russell and kept the other. The two men began reading through each sheet of paper carefully once more. Were there helpful notes in the margin? Were passages circled? Was a magazine opened to a certain article, a newspaper folded in a particular way?

Had Amos Gahl, who apparently loved his puzzles, been cautious and coy once again, using these publications and other documents to send a message about what the Sanction was?

Shaw thought again about the word sanction .

Permission. Punishment.

Or just a meaningless code name?

But poring over the contents uncovered no clues, no codes, no secrets subtle or obvious.

After an hour, both men sat back. “Maybe he just liked to read the news,” Shaw said.

They sat in silence for a moment. Shaw gazed at the cassette recorder and, after collecting his tool kit from his backpack, unscrewed the back. Nothing inside but solid state electronics. He used a magnifier on the cassette itself but could see no writing or code. The labels on each side, which were blank, were glued tightly to the plastic; they couldn’t be pried up to reveal a message hidden beneath them without tearing the paper.

Nodding at the stack of papers, Shaw said, “I’m not accepting it.”

Russell glanced his way.

“That this is just somebody’s imagination. It’s real, the Sanction. And it’s here.” Pointing at the material on the table.

“You making that assumption?”

“Call it that.”

After a pause Russell said, “I agree.”

“So. We’ll have to go through everything—”

Just then a persistent beep came from Russell’s phone.

Instantly he was on his feet. His hand was near his weapon. “Have a sensor, front door. Somebody’s picking the lock.”

Shaw drew his Glock and crept to the closest window. “Droon, plus an entry team, five, six. Long guns too. How’d they make us?”

His brother shook his head.

Shaw saw one of the attackers standing at the open tailgate of an SUV. The men looked up and down the street. He then pulled something from the vehicle, turned and eyed the front of the safe house. He squinted directly toward Shaw. Then raised to his shoulder what looked like a large shotgun with a blunt object protruding from the muzzle. He pulled the trigger.

“Grenade!” Shaw shouted.

The brothers dove to the floor.

Irena Braxton, wearing a staid gray suit, stood with her arms crossed over her chest, surveying the interior of the safe house, as if she were waiting for her grown son and daughter-in-law and the brood of grandchildren to arrive for Sunday supper.

Other BlackBridge workers — a lean, unsmiling blond woman in a black tac outfit and a solidly built Latino — were tossing the living and dining rooms. Tossing . That was the technical term for searching a home or office, though there was in fact nothing sloppy about the process. They were meticulous and careful and breaking or destroying nothing. Drawers were opened, cabinets, the refrigerator and freezer, the microwave, the closets, the spaces under cushions, under couches, under chairs.

Another man from the team was examining the empty BlackBridge courier bag. He was the one who’d fired the grenade launcher. He had set down the weapon but like the others — aside from Braxton — he wore a sidearm, another expensive SIG Sauer.

One of the ops, a tall brunette woman, was in the living room. Hands on hips, she called, “Nothing. The Sanction’s not here.”

“What?” Braxton snapped, turning on her. “Is your search finished ? How can you say it’s not here if you’re not finished?”

“Yes, ma’am. The case was empty, I assumed they took it with them.”

“Oh, they didn’t hide it here maybe? Do you think that’s a possibility?”

The woman scurried back to work.

The others kept quiet and continued their tasks.

Ebbitt Droon came down from upstairs. “Didn’t get out that way. Windows locked from the inside. Clothes, ammunition. Nothing helpful.”