David Baldacci - The Sixth Man

Roy tensed a bit as he heard the squeak of feet against the cement. Murdock was on the move. He was standing over him. A subtle prod in the back.

“Edgar, I need your full and undivided attention.”

Roy didn’t move.

“I know that you know Carla Dukes is dead.”

Another jab in the back, harder still.

“We got the slug out. It’s the same gun that killed Tom Bergin. Same killer.”

Age six. His beloved sister was preparing to go off to college. She was a tremendous athlete, basketball, volleyball, and crew. An academic star, she had given the valedictory address at commencement, a feat she would repeat in college. Roy was stunned by her ability, her absolute will to win, no matter the odds against her.

He had waved at her from the door of the old farmhouse as she put her things away in the car she’d bought with her own money working odd jobs. She had come back and hugged him. He had taken in her scent, a smell he could conjure up perfectly right this minute lying in his prison cell.

“Kel,” he had said. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll be back, Eddie. A lot,” she had told him. Then she had given him something. He had held it in his hand. It was a piece of metal on a chain.

She had said, “That’s the medal of Saint Michael, the Archangel.”

Roy had repeated this back to her, something he unconsciously did whenever someone gave him new information. It always made her smile. But this time she didn’t. Her look remained serious.

“He’s the protector of children. He is the leader of good versus evil, Eddie. In Hebrew Michael means ‘Who is like God?’ And the answer to that is no one is like God. Saint Michael represents humility in the face of God. Okay?”

He had repeated this back to her word for word, including her inflections. “Okay.”

“He is an archangel. He is the supreme enemy of Satan and of all fallen angels.”

She had said this last part while looking directly at her stepfather, who had glanced the other way, his face reddening.

Then she was gone.

A half hour passed and there was another argument and Roy had been at the center of it. It began with a slap. His father was drunk. The next blow was harder, knocking him out of his chair. His mother had tried to intervene, but this time his father would not be denied. She finally fell unconscious to the floor under his battering.

His father had turned to him, made him pull down his pants. Six-year-old Eddie was crying. He didn’t want to do this, but he did because he was terrified. His trousers fell to the floor of the kitchen. His father’s voice was low, soft, a singsong tone in his inebriated stupor. Roy had felt the man’s hands on his privates. Smelled the alcohol on his cheek. The man—Roy could no longer refer to him as his father—pressed against him.

Then he had been ripped backward off his son. There was a crash. Roy had pulled his pants back up and turned. He was knocked head over heels against the wall as the two struggled and slammed into him. His sister had come back. She was fighting her stepfather with the ferocity of a lioness. They crashed around the room. She was taller, younger, the same weight as her opponent, but he was still a man. He fought hard. She hit him in the face with her fist. He rose back up and she kicked him in the stomach. He went back down but the alcohol and the fury at having been discovered doing vile things to his son seemed to energize him. He grabbed a knife off the kitchen counter, rushed at her. She pivoted.

With all his prodigious mental skills, this was the one memory Roy had never been able to draw on at will.

She pivoted.

That was all he could recall about those few seconds of his life. Age six.

She pivoted.

And then it was a blank. The only memory gap he had ever had in his life.

When the blank ended his father was lying on the floor, blood dripping from his chest. The knife stuck out from his body; his sister standing over the man and breathing hard. Roy had never seen anyone die until that moment. His father gave a little gurgle, his body stiffened and then relaxed, and his eyes grew completely still. They seemed to be staring solely at him.

She had rushed to hold him, make sure he was okay. He had rubbed the medal, the medal of Saint Michael that was around his neck.

Saint Michael, the protector of children. Satan’s nightmare. The soul of redemption.

And then the memory faded. And then it was gone.

“Edgar?” said Murdock sharply.

They had taken his Saint Michael’s medal when he had come here. It was the first time he had been without it since that day years ago. Roy felt an enormous hole in his heart without it. He didn’t know if he would ever get it back.

“Edgar? I know. I found out about the E-Program. We need to talk. This changes everything. There are people we need to go after. Something is really wrong.”

But the FBI agent could not break through. Not now. Not ever. Eventually there was the squeak of shoe soles on cement. The door slid open and closed. The smells, the sounds of the man receded.

Saint Michael protect us.

CHAPTER

45

“THAT’S IT,” SAID KELLY PAUL.

She and Sean were standing outside a block of four-story brownstones on Fifth Avenue up in the East Seventies.

“Which one specifically?” he asked, as they stood there on the sidewalk opposite, a tree canopy shielding them from the rain.

She pointed to the largest one that had moldings and pediments and columns handcrafted by skilled workmen from over a century ago. “Nine thousand square feet. A lovely treetop view of the park from the front windows. And the inside is as splendid as the outside.”

“Have you been inside it?”

“Once.”

“How?”

“I never reveal my sources.”

“Is he there now?”

“Yes.”

“Describe him.”

“I can do better.” She pulled out a photo and showed it to him.

“He looks arrogant.”

“He is. But no more so than others in his position. He’s also paranoid, which makes him careful. Sometimes too careful, which can be exploited.”

“Why did you bring me here, really?”

“For this.”

She took his arm and drew him further back into the shadows.

A few minutes later five people came out of the brownstone; all were carrying large, open umbrellas. Bunting, his wife, and their three children: two girls and a boy. The kids wore two-hundred-dollar sweaters and equally expensive shoes. Their heads had never seen the inside of a barbershop, only a salon. The wife was beautiful, refined, tall, slender, and exquisitely dressed, her hair and makeup at the level of a black-tie event. Bunting had on a tweed jacket, pressed jeans, thousand dollar Crocs boots, and a swagger.

They were the epitome of the American Dream, displayed on the illustrious cement of New York’s high-dollar area.

“The family?”

Paul nodded. “And their guards.”

Sean turned his head to see the two men appear from the shadows and trail the Buntings.

“One is a former SEAL. The other is ex-DEA. Both are contractors working for a sub of BIC. He has two other men in his security detail. Sometimes they run four on, particularly when traveling abroad. Other times they rotate two on and off. Like now.”

“How did you know they would be coming out tonight?”

“They do this four times a week at roughly the same time. I believe the wife insists. Bunting doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like routines as a general rule, but he likes to keep the peace at home, too. He actually loves his wife and family very much.”

“How do you know that?”