Andrew Vachss - Safe House

“And you don’t know that date?”

“No. I don’t believe it is known. Yet.”

“Or the target list?”

“There’s no way to know that at all. Each of the local cells has that. The way it’s set up, the member they detached to the super-cell doesn’t know it either.”

“Why can’t you just shadow each of them when they split?”

“Do you know the kind of surveillance effort that would require? And without tipping them off? No, we need the date. Anything else we get would be gravy.”

I raised my eyebrows at the mention of gravy. If he noticed, Pryce gave no sign.

“Up to now, they’ve been taking their cues from the newspapers. The church arsons, that’s an example. One cell just goes out and commits an . . . action, they call it. Another reads about it, does the same thing. There’s no communication between them. None at all. But this one’s different.”

I looked around for an ashtray. Couldn’t see one. Lit a cigarette with a wooden match. A real one this time, no damn cloves. I watched Pryce’s face. Nothing. Okay. I took out a small metal box, the kind some cough drops come in, and opened it up. Pryce nodded approvingly. Good. Let him get used to me taking things out of my pockets.

“You telling me each of them has a home cell?”

“Yes.”

“So where’s Lothar’s?”

“Right here,” Pryce said. “New York City.”

“And he’s gonna give them up too?”

“He already has,” the colorless man replied, the muscle jumping under his eye.

“So they’re being watched?”

“He has no contact with them, I told you. And we don’t have the resources to do that anyway.”

I wondered who “we” was in that sentence. Whoever it was, it wasn’t the FBI. It has enough damn “resources” to watch anyone. Could they already be in custody?

I dragged on my cigarette, thinking. The whole thing was as snaky-shaky as a politician’s promise.

“Herk’s gotta be a member, right?” I put it to him. “Not some free-lance assassin—a card-carrying, true-believing member. He’s gotta be inside.”

“That’s true.”

“And his credential is that he did some . . . job for them, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you can cover that?”

“Yes.”

I got it then. “So Herk was in Lothar’s cell? From the jump, right?”

“Right.”

“And the guy he . . . took care of, that guy was in the cell too?”

“Yes.”

“An informant?”

“No!” he said sharply. “There can’t even be the hint of such a thing. They would instantly disband if they had any reason to believe they’d been infiltrated. Just fold their tents and go.”

“But not drop the plan?”

“Of course not. But there’d be no way to pick them up again.”

A thought crossed my mind. Something I’d never asked. But it could blow the whole thing higher than Timothy Leary. “This guy you . . .” I asked Herk. “He was white?”

“Uh, yeah,” Herk said. He hadn’t thought about it either.

“No he wasn’t,” I said leaning forward, flushed with relief. Elbows on knees, looking only at Herk, shutting Pryce out of my vision. “He was a Jew. His mother, or his grandmother, whatever, was a Jew. That makes him a Jew. That’s the way they do it in Israel. He’d changed his name, but the cell discovered it. That’s when you got the word to—”

“That’s when you volunteered, ” Pryce interjected, with me now.

I shifted my eyes back to the colorless man. “They have some kind of mail drop?” I asked him. “I know they can’t contact the old cell, but is there some way for the cells to reach out to them?”

“Yes. They use a P.O. box on—”

“Okay.” I spun it out. “Lothar gets word that . . . one of his cell buddies was rotten, okay? Now listen, he tells the other guys in his unit that he got this word. He can get the details, but, to do it, he’s gotta meet with someone from his old cell. That’s Herk.”

“They might panic and—”

“And that’s the game,” I said flatly. “If they run, they run. But if they want to hear what really happened, calm themselves down, make a decision whether to abort or not, they have to meet with Herk. And once they meet with him, he’s gotta stay with them until it’s over, right?”

“Yes,” Pryce said slowly. “That’s the way they would behave. Once he was there, he couldn’t go back. But it’s a risk. . . .”

“Any other bullshit way you try and stick Herk in there is a risk too. Only question is, who takes the risk? And here’s the answer: it’s not gonna be us.”

“It’s my decision,” Pryce said. “Not yours.” He scratched the tip of his nose with his index fingernail. “Unless you can guarantee that this divorce business will be dropped.”

“I can’t do that,” I told him. “My way’s the only way. You can get a meet with Lothar, right? That’s when he meets Herk. He wouldn’t necessarily know all his cell buddies that good anyway. This is the way to do it, and you know it.”

“We’ll need good information, very good information about the . . . Jew.”

“I can get all that,” I promised him.

“How fast?”

“Twenty-four hours, max.”

He took a shallow breath. “You have complete control? Of that woman?”

I knew who he meant. “Total,” I promised him.

“Get the information,” he said. “We don’t have much time. You two stay together. Wait for my call. I’ll call her. Two, three days at the most.”

“Done,” I said. To remind him about the money.

Icalled Crystal Beth on the cellular to tell her we were on our way. As soon as I tapped lightly on her back door, it popped open. If she wondered how I could get past the padlock on the outside gate, she kept it to herself.

“Everything went fine,” I said to her. “Let me get Herk established in the basement and I’ll come back here and tell you about it.”

“I’ll help,” she said, starting to go downstairs.

“Go on up,” I said. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“I’ll wait here,” she said firmly. “If you don’t want me to go downstairs, I’ll wait right here. You can’t wander around upstairs by yourself. If Lorraine saw you, it would be—”

“Okay,” I agreed, cutting off the speech.

In the basement, I went over everything with Herk again. Then I palmed the cellular and left a message for Wolfe.

As Crystal Beth and I walked past the doors, I noticed one of them was open just a crack, a yellow band of light outlining the frame. Lorraine’s room?

“Tell me,” she said as soon as we got into her room.

“There isn’t a lot to tell. We’re going to try to do it. Depends on a bunch of things that have to happen in the next day or so. Pryce, he’s going to call here. You reach out for me and—”

“You’re not going to be here?”

“Not twenty-four/seven. There’s people I have to see.”

“I could come with you.”

“No. You couldn’t.”

“Because—?”

“Because I fucking said so,” I told her, my voice as tired as I felt.

“You don’t have to snap at me.”

“And you don’t have to pout like a spoiled brat,” I told her. “This is business. My business, not your business.”

“I thought you trusted me.”

“I do trust you, bitch. That’s my risk. I don’t make my people take my risks, understand?”

She didn’t say anything, just stood there facing me squarely, one hand pulling idly at her hair. Then she said, “Why do you use that word like that?”

“What?”

“ ‘Bitch.’ You say it like some other man would say ‘honey’ or something.”