The First 48 Page 17

  In the crack of the door, the barrel of a gun appeared, steady, waist-high, and pointing toward the kitchen. Then came his hands. Then him, blotting out the light. He was past her. She inhaled sharply, too sharply.

  She swung open the door and stepped out, but he was already pivoting back toward her while at the same time feinting away. She knew her thrust would never reach him, but she tried, lunging.

  The black pit of the gun barrel flashed. There was no pain, only shock, and the deafening and disorienting explosion of the shot.

  CHAPTER 45

  I told you. We dropped about five thousand feet,” Munch said over his shoulder from the front of the plane. He sounded jubilant. “We hit a hell of a pocket.”

  With that, the plane shook and dipped, buffeted by a new bank of clouds. Again, Tom felt the grip of panic. For two full minutes his fingers were fused to the seat. Munch took them on a steep ascent. Tom felt his stomach rise up into the back of his throat. They broke through some clouds with a wicked wrench that seemed like it had to be the end of them all, but then the plane steadied out, trembling like a cold wet dog.

  Munch let out a whoop and then cackled, “Who’s scared now, boys?”

  It was quite some time before Tom was breathing normally again. He looked over at Mike. He was eating pretzels and working his computer. He grunted abruptly.

  “What’s that?” Tom asked.

  “Just this guy Nicholas K. Slovanich,” Mike said. “Interesting guy. Back in the mid-nineties, seems he ran a biochem lab in the Ukraine. Get this. He’s mentioned in this article about a village near the plant. . . .”

  Mike looked up, staring hard at Tom.

  “Yeah?” Tom said.

  “They died.”

  “Who?”

  “The village. Everyone in it. It was near this guy’s lab,” Mike said. “I also found a paper he published. Some scientific mumbo jumbo about something called Filoviridae.”

  “So you’re like the Encyclopedia Britannica,” Tom said. “What’s that?”

  Mike shrugged. “Numbers are my thing. I never heard of it.”

  Their landing was rough. When they finally came to a stop next to the hangar, Tom pulled the curtain between the galley and the cabin so Munch could leave the plane without having to see Gleason.

  “We made it,” Tom said.

  “I told you it was going to be rough,” Munch said. His cheerful exuberance was gone.

  “Can you wait for us inside?” Tom said.

  “It’s not much of an airport,” Munch said as he forced the cabin door open into the stiff wind and put down the stairs. “Couple soda machines and a couch. Not a girl in sight. But I’m working for you today, right?”

  “I guess you are,” Tom said. The wind felt good after the heat of the capital. The glaring summer sun was cloaked in a thick blanket of clouds and their dark rolling underbellies promised more than just wind. As Tom made his way for the one-story brick building that was the airport, he squinted his eyes against the grit whipped up off the tarmac. The grass bowed and the trees showed the silver underside of their leaves.

  Inside, Tom dusted off his shirt and gave his credit card to the kid from Thrifty. The kid gave him back the keys to a silver Dodge Intrepid, as well as directions. He knew right where Kale Labs was.

  “Everybody knows,” the kid said.

  Mike tossed his bag in the backseat and navigated. Tom drove and used Mike’s phone at the same time. Mark Allen still wasn’t in and the secretary got even nastier with him. He didn’t give a damn. He tried Slovanich. Unavailable. Yes, she had given him the message. Ten minutes later, they were there anyway.

  Kale Labs was a monstrous brick facility surrounded by a high fence topped with concertina wire. The faded and broken parking lot held a thousand cars at least—late model Fords and Chevys, lots of pickups pocked with rust and patched together with NRA bumper stickers. Three different stacks stabbed up at the charcoal sky from the tangled fortress of brick. Plumes, endless and white, spilled from the stacks, trailing off at sharp angles in flight from the coming storm. Red lights pulsed steadily on their crowns.

  At the guard shack, Tom asked where Mark Allen’s office was. The guard pointed out a three-story reflective glass annex on one end of the factory as the corporate offices.

  “That entrance is over on Field Street,” he said, pointing. “Go to the light and make a left, then it’s your first left. There’s no guard shack, but you’ll have to check in with security inside.”

  The driveway and the circle around the offices were freshly paved, the sidewalks white. Inside the circle were a flagpole surrounded by junipers and some flower beds. There was a rectangular lot of no more than a hundred cars off to the side of the circle. Tom stayed out on the street.

  “Are we going in?” Mike asked.

  Tom drummed his fingers on the wheel. His watch said 07:41:10.

  “What time do you have?” he asked Mike.

  “Quarter to five,” Mike said.

  “Do you have a picture of Slovanich in any of that stuff on your computer?”

  “No.”

  “What about his car?” Tom asked. “Could you find out what he drives somehow?”

  “Sure,” Mike said. “I can hack right into DMV. Done it plenty.”

  “‘If you possess the high ground, let your enemy come to you,’” Tom said.

  “Sun Tzu?”

  “Chen Hao,” Tom said.

  “Oh . . . so we wait until he comes out?”

  “He’s got a dinner meeting with Mark Allen,” Tom said. “If you can get me his vehicle information, we can ID him and follow him to it.”

  “I gotta have a phone line is all,” Mike said.

  Tom drove back down the road until he came to a fading single-story building with an insurance agency, a printer, a real estate office, and a company that called itself Kwik Tech. They pulled into the narrow lot.

  The Kwik Tech guy was just locking up.

  “My name is Tom Redmon,” Tom said. The narrow man’s Adam’s apple bobbed and his eyes shifted nervously to Mike and back again.

  “This is my friend Mike Tubbs,” Tom said. “We’re investigators and we’re in an emergency situation here. We need access to the Internet, and we’re willing to pay you to give us your phone line for just . . . what, Mike?”

  “Ten minutes,” Mike said, pulling the fat roll of money from his pocket. “No more. I’ve got my own computer. All I need is the line.”

  The man swallowed at the sight of two hundred-dollar bills.

  “How about it?” Tom asked.

  “Sure,” the man said, fumbling with his keys. “You can hook right up to my cable modem.”

  Inside were a small table and chairs next to a dusty curtain and a counter with shelves of disassembled computer equipment behind it. The man pulled the cable right out of the computer behind the counter and snaked it to Mike. Tom stood over Mike’s shoulder as his friend’s fingers flew across the keys.

  “Got it,” he said after less than five minutes. “Blue Cadillac Seville. License CET-899.”

  Mike spotted the car through the fence just as people started pouring out of the glass office building. The secretaries came first, holding their hair against the wind, checking with their palms for rain. Men began to blend in with the women. Some with ties. Some with dress shirts open at the collar. Most carried their jackets over their arms. The parking lot emptied out, but the blue Cadillac remained, along with a handful of others.

  The stream of workers trickled out. Tom looked at his watch. 07:08:57.

  Mike looked up from the big binoculars.

  “He’ll come,” Tom said.

  Mike put his eyes back to the lenses. Five minutes later, he said, “Bet this is him.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Through the ringing in Jane’s ears she heard a tremendous crashing and kicking of wood. Disoriented, she spun halfway around and saw another man through the doorway to the cabin. Bald. Pink arms and legs flailing. H
is boots striking the door over and over. There was a crimson bloom in the center of his pale chest, where a green army vest hung open. Blood had already leaked through the vest into an expanding pool on the porch. His eyes stared up and his mouth opened and closed as if he were choking.

  Jane looked back at Mark Allen. Even as the gun went off, she knew it was him. Now she knew that his target was not her.

  Mark lowered his weapon. His grimace faded and he reached for her.

  Jane pulled away. “No.”

  “Do you see that?” he said. He stabbed his finger toward the man on the porch. His eyes were crazed, burning. “Who the hell do you think I did it for?”

  Jane saw the man’s gun now, lying haphazardly across the threshold.

  “You’re them,” she said.

  “I’m not. Would I do that?” he asked, pointing again. The man had stopped moving.

  Jane shook her head no.

  Mark moved past her and out onto the porch. He lifted the man up under his arms and dragged him down the steps and out of sight. A bloody swath glowed in the golden light of the afternoon. When Mark returned, he stepped around the mess and shut the door behind him. He took her hand.

  “You’re exhausted,” he said, leading her through the bedroom door. “You can rest here. It’s all right. We’ll stay here until dark.”

  “They’ll come,” she said. Her eyes were losing their focus.

  “No,” he said. His voice was soft, soothing. “Sit. It’s okay.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed, its softness sweet beneath her aching joints. Weariness was tugging her down into the pit of sleep.

  “That was Curly,” he said, nodding toward the porch. “He must have seen you or something. Dave is following the dogs. They had you treed, right? When I called them? I took them to the other side of the island. He won’t find them for a while. We’ll move when it’s dark. We’ll get a boat and I’ll get you out of here.”

  Jane pressed her fingertips into the bite on her neck. Tears spilled down her face.

  “They bit me,” she said.

  Mark moved her fingers gently aside.

  “Black snake?” he asked. “Big?”

  Jane nodded, biting her lip.

  “Northern Water Snakes,” he said. “Very aggressive, but not poisonous. You’ll be sore, but fine.”

  Jane took a deep breath and let it out. She put her legs up on the bumpy cotton bedspread and put her head back on the pillow. Mark sat down on the bed’s edge beside her. He touched her cheek. She pulled the bedspread over from the other side of the bed, covering herself. Clasping it tight around her neck.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I never meant for this to happen.”

  “What did—”

  “Shh,” he said, putting a finger to her lips. “Not now. You rest—you’ll need it. There’ll be plenty of time. Everything will be okay. You’re safe now.”

  His face was close to hers, his voice low and hoarse. Jane was numb. She felt a small shock when he brushed his lips against her. She was too tired to turn away when he let them linger. Instead, she took a deep breath, shut her eyes, and dropped off to sleep.

  CHAPTER 47

  Let me see,” Tom said.

  The man headed for the Cadillac was built like a bear, with wide hips, a thick chest, short bow legs, and a lumbering gait. He wore an ill-fitting blue single-breasted blazer with brass buttons, gray slacks, and a blue tie. He opened the car door, tossed in his briefcase, and tugged at the collar of his pink dress shirt, where black hair sprouted like the edge of a doormat. His eyebrows were dark and thick, like his hair. His face was shadowed by stubble.

  Tom fired up the Intrepid. He let the doctor get out in front, then pulled away from the shoulder and followed him down the road. Fifteen minutes later, Slovanich pulled over next to a meter on Fort Street in downtown Watertown. Tom stopped a block farther down and pulled over on the other side of the street. The brick and stone buildings, like the sidewalks, were drab and soiled by years of having gone without cleaning.

  Slovanich got out of his car and disappeared beneath a thin red neon sign on the corner. A man on a gondola. Little Venice. Tom and Mike got out, both of them instinctively feeling for their weapons. The traffic was thin; there was plenty of parking on the street. Papers blew by, and a Pepsi can rattled along before it clattered off the edge of the curb. Wind hummed through the buildings and whipped the dirty yellow awning of a Chinese restaurant that had gone out of business.

  They crossed the street and went in. A narrow bar area with two big round tables by the window. A black and white tile floor that led to the main dining room in back. A family sat at one table, dishing pasta and calamari with red sauce out of a large blue bowl. Tom smelled stale beer, fried fish, and cigarette smoke. His shoes stuck lightly to the floor. A decrepit set of people who appeared to be regulars slumped on their stools at the bar while a white-shirted man with bushy black hair and a mustache followed Tom with his bloodshot eyes as he wiped out a glass on his apron.

  “Drinks, gentlemen, or dinner?” he asked. His accent was more Mexican than Italian.

  “Dinner, thanks,” Tom said, moving through.

  The old patriarch at the table looked up at him through thick plastic glasses. Spots of sauce stained the white napkin that hung from his neck, and his tongue whipped around the inside of his mouth as if he were feeling for his dentures. Tom nodded at the man but got only a scowl in return.

  A narrow wood-paneled hall where the bathrooms were opened up into a large dining room lined with red plastic booths along the wall and linen-covered brass tables. Slovanich was sitting in a booth by himself with a basket-bottle of Chianti and a snifter of clear liquid in his hand.

  The big burgundy-haired hostess nodded when Tom pointed to the Ukrainian and said, “We’re with him.”

  Tom walked right up and extended his hand. “Dr. Slovanich? I’m Tom Redmon. Mark Allen told me I was supposed to meet you guys here.”

  “Mark say nothing to me this,” he said in a thick accent, his mouth, like a creature separate from the rest of him, red and strained beneath the heavy mustache, the teeth lopsided and gray. Tom saw now that the burly man’s hair was peppered with gray and that the skin around his eyes was creased. A white napkin was tucked into the collar of his shirt. It hung limp down his front without covering the bronze CCCP pin that rested at an angle on the lapel of his blazer.

  “This is Mike Tubbs,” Tom said, sliding into the booth. “We work together. With Mark.”

  “Vodka?” Mike said, pointing to the snifter.

  “In Soviet Union,” Slovanich said, staring flatly at Mike, “Party members drink grappa. Russian czar was Caesar from Rome. Roman Empire is good until 1990. You understand?”

  “Three grappas,” Tom said to the waitress, who had appeared without a sound.

  Slovanich sipped at his grappa; then, closing one eye, he slugged it down and said, “How long you work Mark?”

  “Just getting started, really,” Tom said.

  “So. You hunt on that Galloo?” the doctor said, taking a fresh glass from the waitress’s hand. The nails on his fingers had been gnawed to the quick and their tips were white under his firm grip on the glass.

  “Galloo?” Tom said.

  “Yes. You hunt ducks. American all like guns. They hunt many ducks. They want me work. Take me Galloo. We hunt ducks. Now I work. They no take me. You hunt today Galloo?”

  “We talked about it,” Tom said. “I didn’t know Mark was at Galloo.”

  “Yes, yes,” Slovanich said. “He Galloo. I speak to him. Always there. Hunt many ducks. Big-shot men go there. Like Soviet Party. You no big shot, eh? No Party?”

  “So he’s there today?” Tom said.

  The doctor narrowed an eye and said, “Yes. I no speak good English? I tell you this.”

  “Is the girl with him?” Tom said, edging closer to the table. “Jane Redmon?”

  “Girls?” Slovanich said, grinning wide, his eye sparkling. “O
h, yes. Many many girls from Kingston they bring on boat. Many hookers.”

  “No, just one girl,” Tom said. “Dark hair. About five foot five . . .”

  “This hooker have name?”

  “No, not a hooker. Just a girl.”

  The doctor shrugged, looked at his watch and said, “We eat. No wait. Mark Allen knows this.”

  Tom ordered spaghetti with meatballs, as did the Ukrainian. He listened to the doctor’s broken description of the glory of the former Soviet Union as he slurped up pasta and washed it down with wine that he poured into a small water glass.

  “When state ask people die in Soviet Union,” he said, wiping his mouth on the napkin and pitching down another glass of grappa, “they give life. Millions. Hundreds village. No now. Now is weak like West. People die, every people cry like woman.”

  Tom looked at the door, then at his watch. Time was burning away and still no Mark Allen. Then the doctor said something about quarters.

  “You play this?” the doctor said as he pulled a smudged coin from his pocket and bounced it up and into his grappa glass with one swift movement.

  “A little,” Mike said.

  “Sure,” Tom said.

  “I good, no?” he said.

  “Once,” Tom said. Mike shook his head no.

  “You get sick?” the doctor said. He started to laugh through his nose, a loud snorting noise that made the waitress look their way.

  The doctor’s body shook and he dabbed at the corners of his eyes with the brass-buttoned cuff of his jacket as he laughed.

  “Every cruise I take,” he said, his dark eyes twinkling. “Every people sick. But . . . I learn this game. Is very good.”

  The doctor ordered a pitcher of beer from the waitress. While they waited for it to come, Tom listened as the Ukrainian explained away the 1980 defeat of the Soviet hockey team to the Americans as part of the Brezhnev conspiracy to destroy the Roman Empire. When the beer came, he poured some into his empty wineglass and bounced the quarter into it. He pointed at Tom with his elbow.

  “Only elbow, no?”