Betrayal (11 page)

“Do you know how your teammates died?” Ayden asked.

“I only saw two of them. Both were shot in the head.”

“I’m no expert in forensics, Odi, but I had a look at the bodies and then consulted with a friend. Your teammates were not shot. All seven were assassinated by tiny bombs. Check out the headsets.” Ayden held up the remnants of an earpiece. “I found bits of this same plastic lodged in all seven head-wounds.”

Odi felt his skepticism kicking in. “How did you end up with the headsets?”

“I got them from the boy who scavenged them. He was playing with one while I examined him. I had already examined the bodies by then and found the strange shrapnel. When I saw the bloody headsets, I put two and two together.”

Odi did not want to think about the implications of that revelation. Instead he began to examine the pieces one after the other. They had not been tampered with, that much was clear. They were still covered with streaks of blood and bits of gore. It did not require his expert eyes to see that Ayden’s conclusion was correct—although he had missed it on the battlefield. Each headset had exploded from within. A tiny charge had been cleverly directed by the speaker dish into the wearer’s ear.

Odi put a residual piece to his nose and recognized the distinct scent of RDX. He knew that a drop of RDX the size of an eraser head would take a human head clean off. Given the location of the explosive, just millimeters from the ear, the charge would not have had to be any larger than a match head to be lethal.

Odi set the evidence back down on the table as his head began to spin.

His teammates were not the victims of war.
 

They had died from assassination.

He felt the walls closing in.

Ayden bobbed nervously in his chair as Odi took a long moment of contemplative silence. Then Odi brushed the broken bits off the table with a single sweep of his good arm. He looked up at his new friend. “Why would someone rig our headsets to explode? Why would someone back at Quantico want to kill my team?”

“If yours had been the only incident,” Ayden said, “I would say that someone on your team posed a serious threat to the person behind this—as in knowing something that would send him to jail—so he killed everyone to cover his tracks. But—”

“Hold on a minute,” Odi interrupted. “There were other incidents? Other attacks?”

“Oh yeah. There were two. The AmCham office was bombed in Belgium, and an American School was bombed in Paris.”

“When?”

“Both attacks took place the night your team was assassinated.”

Odi leaned back in his chair and let out a long breath. His life was getting more complicated by the minute. Now he understood why Ayden had discouraged his making a call, but that was about all he understood.

He needed more information.

“I interrupted you,” Odi said. “You were going to tell me why you thought someone had done this.”

“Yes, well, I think the core reason is obvious. Why do people do anything?”
 

“Money?”

Ayden nodded.

“How does killing my team make anybody money?” Odi asked.

Ayden answered him with a question. A surprising question. “Do you know what the biggest industry in the world is?”

“Oil?”

Ayden shook his head.

Odi raised his brows.

“Fear,” Ayden said.

“Fear?”

“Yes, fear. At the individual level, fear is sold in many forms, the most common of which is insurance: health, life, accident, theft. People are afraid that something big will go wrong, so they put their money down. At the collective level, fear is sold in the form of defense—against fire, flood, famine, and crime. Of course the granddaddy of these is national defense. Mention the word terrorism and people trip over themselves to hand you blank checks.”

“You’re losing me. What does—” Odi cut himself off. “I’m beginning to see where you’re going with this, but I’m not there yet. Keep talking.”

“America’s War on Terror was worth around three billion dollars a week to the defense industry. Think about it, three billion dollars a week. That’s greater than the GDP of many nations. Surely you don’t think the guys who were pocketing that kind of cash were happy when the gravy train stopped rolling. So why would you assume that they would just mothball the mint and walk away once the attacks lightened up?”

Odi had to accept the logic, but something still bugged him. It only took a moment for him to figure out what it was. “Ayden, with all due respect. If the defense contractors were secretly sponsoring attacks to spur demand and keep that gravy train rolling, you wouldn’t be the only person to figure it out.”

Ayden shook his head sagely. “Nobody else knows that someone inside the FBI planned the murder of your team. The world thinks your team was killed when you uncovered a secret al-Qaeda training camp. And even if someone suspected the truth, so what? He would have no proof. If he spoke up, nobody would listen. If he persisted loudly despite the skepticism, he would just be labeled a nut.”

“But we have proof, Ayden. These headsets ... my testimony as a Federal Agent ... those are proof.”

“Right,” Ayden said, looking up from the floor. “Now do you understand why I’m so afraid? Now do you comprehend just how much danger we’re in?”

Chapter 17

Alexandria, Virginia

S
TUART
LISTENED
INTENTLY
to the complementary voice streams coming from the two speakers. Timing was everything in an operation like this, so he was glad to have bugs both inside the daycare-center office and out in the hall.
 

Both were quiet now. Cassi had just finagled Sal’s name. She was a clever one. Stuart had to give her that. If she were just three inches shorter she would be a valuable asset rather than a critical liability. Wiley had that right. Unfortunately, those three inches meant everything. It was just one more way Washington politics resembled professional sports. The difference between winning and losing often came down to fractions and milliseconds. In this case, three inches meant that he had to cut Cassi from the team—the only way that he could.

Stuart wished that there were another way. Wiley would not cooperate. Violence was never his first choice. It was too primitive. But he had no other. Cassi should not have gone and gotten herself pregnant. She had painted him into a corner and this was his only way out.

Wiley would go berserk, of course, but that would change nothing. No spark of vengeance could outshine the luster of the Oval Office. Truth be told, Stuart had been secretly pleased to see Wiley show a little spine and stand up to him on Cassi’s account. The edge he displayed would serve them well in the campaign. Of course, Stuart had to ensure that Wiley never forgot his place again. Today, he would solve both issues—with the simple push of a button …

Chapter 18

Alexandria, Virginia

C
ASSI
FELT
A
jolt of excitement run through her as she considered Sal’s nobody-gets-hurt proposal. Cracking a hostage situation was not unlike cracking a safe. You had to find the right combination. As soon as he said the word helicopter, she felt the first tumbler fall squarely into place. “You seem to have thought this through,” she said, keeping the dial turning.

“Damn straight,” Sal replied.

Giving a hostage-taker a helicopter was out of the question, but she could not let Sal know that. “If you want me to consider releasing you, Sal, you’re going to have to convince me that you’re a small fish. No danger to society.”

“You want a reference? A note from my guidance counselor?”

Cassi was pleased to hear Sal exercising his sense of humor. That meant both that he was looking for approval and that he was not freaking out. “Tell me about this job. It was obviously well planned and highly sophisticated. Who set it up? What was the plan? Stuff like that. We’ve already caught you red-handed, so you’ve nothing to lose—except this last chance to get your freedom back. Don’t try to bullshit me though. If I think you’re lying, I certainly won’t trust you with a helicopter, a pilot, and two kids.”

Sal met her request with silence. Either he was thinking, or she had pushed too hard. “I’m throwing you a lifeline, Sal. You’ll be regretting it for twenty-to-life if you don’t grab on with both hands.
 

Finally Sal replied, his tone softer than before. “I’m just a wrench.”

“A wrench?”

“A tool. Hired help. It wasn’t my idea. He called me.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he’d give me a million cash if I could get him the Vermeer.”

“What Vermeer?”

“The one undergoing restoration on the other side of this brick wall.”

“What else did he tell you?”

“Everything. He planned it out for me. Told me about a gap in the security system I could use.”

“And what gap was that?”

“What’s it matter? Didn’t work.”

“I’m trying to work with you here, Sal. You’ve got to work with me back. Give me the details.”

Sal sighed loud enough for Cassi to hear through the door. “The art restorer uses a hyper-sophisticated security system. Detects vibration, body heat, shit like that. I can’t disable it locally because it arms and disarms according to a remote timer. On at eight every night. Off at eight every morning. Every morning. Since they open late on Sundays, there’s a ninety-minute window before anyone shows up. Nothing to worry 'bout from eight to nine-thirty but the normal door and window whistles. The brick wall the studio shares with the daycare center gave me a foolproof way to get around them.”

“Go on.”

“I broke into the daycare center last night and hid in the storage room, that’s where the shared wall is. Eight-fifteen I start drillin’ brick, knowing that all them kids running and screaming below will cover up the muffled noise. I’d almost got a hole big enough to wriggle through when I sees colored lights reflecting off the wall. I go to look and see the pigs pulling into the yard. There’s nowhere to run so I snatch a couple kids. The rest you know.”

Cassi did know. Sal had been set up. There was no Vermeer. There was no sophisticated alarm. There was definitely more to this than met the eye, and she wanted to know what it was. “Now for the most important question, Sal, the one your future rides upon. Who gave you the contract?”

“I knew you was going to ask that. I don’t know.”

“You know more than you think,” Cassi said. “What did he call himself?”

“X.”

“X?”

“Yep.”

“What else can you tell me about X? Was he working from the inside?”

“I’d say so. He had everything: blueprints, details of the security system, and, of course, he knew 'bout the painting.”

Cassi saw a picture rapidly taking shape. “Did he mention the kids?”

“Yeah. He said their screams would cover up the noise. Also suggested that if the shit hit the fan they’d make good insurance.”

“He said that?” Cassi asked, filling in the final strokes.

“Yeah. See. Takin’ hostages wasn’t even my idea. I’m no threat to nobody.”

“And how did he get you the blueprints?”

“Mail.”

“And how were you going to get him the painting and collect your cash?”

“He was going to call me once the job was done to work that out.”

The results of her interrogation were not perfect, Cassi thought, but the police were still going to be pleased. More importantly, Sal was now convinced that she was receptive to his escape plan. It was time for her to rescue the kids.

From his explanation of the job, she knew that Sal was quick on his feet. From his vocabulary and syntax, she knew that he was intelligent but not formally educated. From his escape plan, she gathered that he was meticulous. She had to assume that Sal had studied hostage-negotiation techniques. That made her job more complicated, if not more difficult.

Given his current state of mind, Cassi knew that Sal might react violently if he caught her manipulating him with standard procedure. That meant she would not be able to play this one by the book. Still, she could not abandon negotiation’s central tenets. She would still keep him off balance, but in an unorthodox way.