Disappearance (41 page)

"We've had some enemies in the past, if that's what you mean, but never ones I would deem capable of committing murder. Most
of our disputes have been on a purely professional level. I honestly can't think of anyone who would have had reason to take such measures."

"How about on a personal level?
  His private life?  Were there any family disputes?  Did he owe money?  Was there a mistress? Alcohol problems? Drugs?"

Suzy was shaking her head, horrified.

"There was none of that," Lambert said irritably. "I've known him for thirty years.  George Eckert was as straight as they come.  Hardworking, dedicated family man.  None of what you just said applies to him."

The striking FBI agent
squinted her eyes at him.

"Then maybe, Mr. Lambert, since you knew him so well, maybe you tell me what you think got him killed?"

-------

The house looked no different from a thousand others built in the current decade on the western outskirts of Omaha, Nebraska.  It was well kept, had a small lawn in front and an even smaller yard in the back.  Painted light brown, it had a wooden-shingle roof and a two-car garage.

The address was easy to find.  It was located in the Pepperwood sub-division, a twenty minute ride southeast of Omaha's Eppley Airfield, where Sarah and Eitan were staying at the Ramada Inn.

They had been watching the house for two days now, and as Mikki had predicted, it seemed to be deserted.  No cars coming to and from, no kids coming home from school, no visible movement inside the house day or night and no activity in the back yard.

Sitting at a McDonalds in the West Roads Mall, Eitan stuffing down a Big Mac and Sarah munching on some chicken nuggets.  They were getting ready to approach the neighbors.  Sarah, with her considerable interviewing experience and much better English, was chosen for the task. Eitan would hang around the mall and check the McDonalds every hour.

She parked the rented Chrysler a few houses down the street and walked toward the house.  It was early afternoon when the children returned from school.

It had been crispy clear since they had arrived, the sun melting the hardened icicles and frosty snow off house walls and yard fences.  A flock of teenagers was filing out of a mini-van, two women were out shoveling snow, and the commotion in front of the house was a snowball fight between several red-faced children, with no regard for the mush or passing traffic.

Sarah was standing on the sidewalk, across the street from the
house, when one of the women started heading her way.  She let her pass but called after her when she turned to enter the small gate at the front entrance to a house.

"Excuse me," she said politely in her best American accent.
"Could I talk to you a minute?"

The woman, a rather stubby, short blonde with moon-like features, looked at her suspiciously, wary of traveling saleswomen, religious peddlers and the sorts.

"Sure, what's it about?" she asked in a leery tone, dropping her shovel into the snow.

"Do you know
… I mean… is anybody living in that house?" Sarah asked pointing to the house directly across the street.

The woman instinctively glanced over her shoulder and shook her head.  "Haven't seen anyone there in quite a while, why do you ask?"

Lisa gave her the 'Jewish Student Exchange Program' bit, taking a chapter out of Mikki's repertoire, about a girlfriend she had known in Israel and was now trying to locate.

That seemed to put the woman at ease.

"The Mahoneys moved in at about the same time we did, five years ago, but moved out a year later.  The house has been pretty much left alone since then.

"How odd," Sarah said.

"Ah… there's a gardener that comes around every two weeks or so. Cleans up the lawn; waters the plants; but no one else."

"I guess... I probably I have the wrong address," Sarah said, perplexed.

The woman nodded and was turning to leave.

"I have a photograph of her," Sarah said hastily, taking out Karen's photo from her handbag and offering it to the woman. "Maybe I just got the house numbers wrong."

The woman shrugged but took the photo anyway and examined it briefly when a beefy boy rammed into her, waist high, nearly knocking her over.

"C’mon Jeremy, watch where you're going!" the woman complained loudly.

He was after the ball and didn't pay any attention.  Knocking over her shovel, he jumped through the gate onto her lawn, located the ball, scrambled after it in the slush, picked it up and threw it low over their heads back to his excited teammates.  The woman tried to grab his arm as he ran back but he slipped through and was back at his rowdy game in no time.   She brushed at her dress where the boy had collided with her, mumbling something under her breath, then looked at the photo again.

"Sorry ma'am, don't think I know this girl; not on this street. She certainly is pretty, though," the woman commented. Handing the photo back to Sarah, she reached for her shovel and disappeared into her house.

-------

The list had been considerably shortened once they had cross- referenced the information from their various sources. Mainly, the escrow company database was cross-referenced with each of the houses acquired by Lionheart Inc., Langone's fictitious front, and with the locations Dan Hasson had sent postcards from.

That left five houses: one in San Clemente, California, which was but an hour’s drive north of San Diego and could explain the SeaWorld postcard sent by Hasson; the one in Provo, Utah, where Mikki had discovered their most encouraging proof to date; the one in Omaha, Nebraska, and two in New York state, both on Long Island.

After their discovery in Utah, leaving the San Clemente house aside, they expected to follow the trail to Omaha, corroborating their assumptions on the locations and dates of Dan Hasson's postcards.

It was at this juncture their hypothesis had reached a dead end.

Yes, they had found the house and yes, it was as they had expected it to be – deserted - but it was there that the similarities with Provo, Utah, ended.  Sarah had spoken to at least three adult neighbors and a couple of teenagers, all living in close proximity to the house, and all confirmed that no one had occupied the house since the original owners left.  There was no blonde girl staring out windows, no strange characters hiding indoors, and no one even remotely resembling a Dan Hasson.

In short, their theory had gone astray and they desperately needed fresh evidence to reinforce their search.

Their room at their Miami South Beach Hotel was sprawling with paperwork.  Lisa had spread her escrow database printouts all over the bed and only table, and was carefully re-inspecting them for clues she might have missed.  Specifically she was now carefully checking whether people who had purchased Cascade real estate through Lionheart Inc. had Cascade real estate independent of Lionheart.  Mikki was on the floor, busy evaluating alternative scenarios and occasionally jotting down addresses thrown his way.

Langone was turning out to be a slippery customer.  If, in fact, he was holding Karen in one of Cascade's houses, he certainly picked a front that had easily swallowed his objectives with shady objectives of its own.  It was a perfect camouflage: buy in at Cascade, whose dealings were all part of a scam to provide client secrecy and tax write offs, and use that infrastructure to stash the girl.

After four excruciating hours of checking all her lists four years back, she found two.  Of the few names that appeared in Lionheart titles there was a Mr. William Devon who held title on the houses in San Clemente, Omaha, and Provo, and a Mr. Colin Foxworth who held the title of the two Long Island houses.

Mr. Devon, she discovered, held title of one more house, purchased in Las Vegas Nevada on April 11, 1986. Mr. Colin Foxworth held the title of another house purchased in Omaha, Nebraska on December 5 1985.

Omaha, Nebraska, appeared to have another house belonging to Cascade.

Mikki and Lisa hugged each other and spontaneously danced around the room at the discovery then hastily ran out to call Sarah and Eitan.

CHAPTER 40

Lisa noticed the man in the hotel lobby right as she stepped out the elevator.  It was their second day in South Beach and the second time she had noticed him, seated with his back to the large glass windows which unveiled a busy beach restaurant and the boundless yellow/blue shoreline.

He was dressed in a light sports jacket over a bluish turtle neck shirt pretending to read a newspaper.

She had noticed him on the opposite side of the lounge the day before throwing her a curiously interested glance followed by a hasty regress back to the newspaper.  He was dressed differently then, with an orange V shaped sweater over a white collared shirt.  She had gone out for an hour to find a public phone and do some shopping, finding he had remained in the same spot when she returned.  She only had time to glance at him briefly, noticing curly brown hair, a modest tan, dark eyes, and a peculiarly square jaw.

After their sleepless night she was looking forward to a hard workout to relieve some of the pressure.  Mikki was safely asleep upstairs.

She intentionally delayed exiting the hotel, bending over to tie the shoelaces of her Nikes, watching for a reaction from him in the mirrored columns by the reception area.  She had seen his face coming out of the elevator but it was now entirely obscured by the newspaper.

She jogged out of the hotel in her UCLA sweats and broke into a run toward the beach.  She reached the waterline and stopped, panting from the sudden burst of energy.  She performed her usual warm up stretches, sit-ups and pushups, on the cool sand, then began jogging south along the shoreline, away from the clustered hotel promenade.

The morning was clear but cool, the sun just clearing the horizon over the Florida straits.  A crisp breeze stroked her face as she plowed ahead keeping close to the water where the sand was naturally packed.  Now and then the surf would surprise her and wet her sneakers.  She jogged for twenty minutes or so, then cut across the sandy stretch of beach to a parallel dirt road just beyond the low ridge of sand dunes and headed back toward the hotel.

Someone stepped out from beyond a sand dune and stood in her way. She stopped in her tracks, startled, wiping the sweat from her eyes. The figure began walking toward her.

It was Mikki, dressed in jogging gear himself.

"Couldn't catch you..." he called out, smiling, his face flushed and perspiring.

"You scared me," Lisa said, stooping over to catch her breath, "thought you were one of them."

"Square Jaw has a partner, you know, "Mikki remarked, using the nickname they had given the goon in the lobby.  "He went to him after you left; parked out in the lot; blue Chevy."

Lisa was still recovering from the effort.  She straightened up and walked around a bit loosening her arms and legs.

"We may be getting a little too close," she finally said, edgily and out of breath. "I mean, these guys had just murdered two people who were helping us. Shouldn't we be next?"

"They could have done it by now if they so wished," Mikki replied, "Johnson most probably talked before they killed him and Eckert was killed just a few hours after Johnson.  My guess is they quickly went after the two of them thinking it'll cut off the chain of information."

"Are they assuming we're unaware of what went on?"

"Probably not. They obviously can’t assume Eckert hadn’t talked to us or found some way of passing on the information.  One way or the other they have to assume we know about Cascade."

"Then why are we still breathing?" she asked.

"My guess is that it's because of you."

She thought about it then looked up at him, too fatigued to figure it out on her own.

"Why me?" she asked in resignation.

"Because if they hurt you, they lead everyone to where they don't want anyone led."

She considered what he said, shuffling her feet on the sandy earth, looking down at the ground.

Mikki went on.  "As long as we keep leading them in wrong directions, they have no real reason to hurt us."

"Until they figure we're leading them the wrong way, that is," Lisa pointed out.

"That'll take a while," Mikki said reassuringly.

"We take them on a tour," Lisa observed after further reflection, "I like that; steer them away from Sarah and Eitan."

"That's the plan," Mikki said cheerfully.  "Let's go to Disneyworld. That'll steer them away."

Lisa grinned, her flushed face losing its disturbed look.  Her eyes twinkled and she flashed a contagious smile at him causing him to smile back.  Then she began giggling and before long they were both laughing.

"I love mornings," she said when they relaxed, inhaling the crisp clear air.

"So do I," Mikki said suddenly dropping to the ground for a set of rapid pushups.

"They make me feel optimistic," Lisa continued, speaking in the general direction of the ocean as if unaware he was at her feet.

"It's kept me sane you know.  Every morning I’d get up with a feeling it might be the one to bring her back."

Mikki was getting up. 

"Then one morning you showed up," she declared, looking at him as his face appeared at normal height level.  "Do mornings make you feel optimistic Mikki?" she asked as if he was standing there all along.

"Only the ones I wake up next to you," he said playfully.

"We owe you a lot Mikki," she said seriously.

"No, you don't, Lisa.  You don't owe me a thing.  I did it all for me.  I'm doing it for me. I need to find her just as bad as you do."

They began jogging back toward the hotel.

"You made it happen," she insisted, pacing beside him.

"We all did."

"You held it together."

"You're financing it."

"Think we'll find her?"

"Piece of cake!"

They smiled at one another and gradually increased their pace, until they were at an all-out sprint toward the hotel.  That afternoon they loaded the rental car and headed in the general direction of Orlando.

-------

The report from Russo came at the end of their second day tracking the sister and boyfriend.  Kumar took the call in his hotel room in New York.

Russo and his partner, Herb Lance, were at a rest area on Highway 528, twenty miles east of Orlando, Florida.  Their subjects were having dinner.  Russo detailed the activity of the last two days and made the presumption they were headed for Orlando.

He reported the sister dashing to a local shopping center on two occasions, using a pay phone and doing some shopping. Russo and
Lance had bribed the hotel manager into letting them tap into the hotel phone switchboard but no calls were made out of the subject's room other than to order room service. The only time the two had been out of the room together was for a short jog in the morning.  It provided no time for inspection.

Kumar gave further instructions.  They were to call him when settled in Orlando then bring in the back-up team.  Russo grunted his approval and hung up the phone.

Kumar placed the receiver and rolled over on his bed.  He wasn't happy using the locals but it had to do for now. Schultz and his team had performed well and were safely back in Germany, on call in case he needed them again.

All was quiet so far.  His people were not attracting any heat from law enforcement agencies.  He had been closely monitoring the media for signs of progress on the two murder investigations but found nothing worrisome. Both had gotten the publicity, with speculation running high and wild, but as far as he could tell the two killings had not been linked.  Schultz had done a clean job; might have even made up for his mess over in Denmark.

Having listened to the Johnson interrogation tapes at least a dozen times, he thought he had a fairly clear picture of what he needed to look out for.  Schultz's man had been extremely methodical establishing what Johnson knew and had passed on to Eckert.  That left figuring out what the sister and boyfriend were up to.

He could not be quite sure how much they really knew about the Cascade setup and Langone's involvement but he had to assume the worst.  The information Johnson had spewed out certainly linked the two together.  He admitted knowing about the Lionheart scheme and the specific real estate acquired. That was most troubling, for it provided a clear trail to pursue.

They had taken precautions against such a scenario but he still needed to make absolutely certain his two subjects were kept under microscopic surveillance.  He could not afford to lose sight of either one of them, like had happened twice before.

He still admonished himself for letting the boyfriend slip from under their guard, realizing now how careless they had been. His crew had been caught off guard when the boyfriend, utterly deviating from his early morning routine, took a cab at three o'clock in the morning, as they had later learned, to Los Angeles Airport.  Kumar had been in Europe at the time and had learned of the development a day late.  It quickly became apparent that the boyfriend's disappearance coincided with Glass's East Coast trip to meet with
Langone and Matlock, but that had been too little, too late.

The boyfriend had come back to Los Angeles three days later, within six hours of Glass's return.

Kumar had kept the episode to himself but he now had to deal with its ramifications. He had to assume they had learned both about Langone and Matlock and he could only hope they had not discovered the PAAM project as well.  He had been extremely careful after that incident but the boyfriend managed to slip again, the night he had visited Glass in Los Angeles, ducking his most experienced crew with an amateurish maneuver and turning up in New York ten days later.

One disturbing aspect of the Johnson interrogation was his denial of being aware of anyone else's involvement in the affair.  He even denied knowing the true purpose of what had been asked of him, saying he acted for the money, which was found in his room, and to avenge his humiliation by Langone, sticking to that contention throughout, even under extreme duress.

He sensed that somehow Johnson had not told all.  They had focused too much on what he had been asked to provide Eckert but failed to press Johnson on what he had on Langone, and since his fate had been decided beforehand, they should have gone for broke, Kumar thought, again frustrated at his own lack of foresight.

Eckert and Johnson had obviously been a key link in the chain, possibly even the most dangerous, but there were others in the way, some of whom were still unknown.  It was still unclear how they ever got to Kollsmeyer in Denmark.  Kumar had carried out a very quiet and careful investigation through a network of contacts in Israel, mostly Palestinians living on the West Bank. Two of the operatives who had performed the kidnapping seemed to have vanished off the face of the Earth and no one could tell for certain what had happened to them.

That prompted an array of speculation and worry, but further investigation revealed no renewed activity in Israel could point to the fact that the sister and boyfriend were acting pretty much on their own.

The killings had certainly prompted the two into action, he observed.  Quickly heading out of New York, they remained quite active, but so far, headed in wrong directions.  That was certainly encouraging but the report on the sister making discreet phone calls made him uneasy.  Their initial reaction may have been one of panic, fleeing New York looking for a place to hide.  But on further reflection they seemed to be just a touch too deliberate.  They did not seem afraid but rather collected.  They did flee but not right
away.  The sister took her time attending Eckert's funeral, spending time with the widow, and checking in on her office.   In panic, he would have expected them to run straight away, but they did not. They also did not seem to be attempting to cover their tracks, or were simply doing a poor job of it.  That again, was not typical of the boyfriend's evasion habits.

He called Paris to brief Stana then he called William Devon asking him to send some people to check on the Lionheart properties.

-------

It took them three hours to find the house and even then they were not certain they had found the right one.

They had received word from Lisa during the night about the second Omaha house and set out to explore the following morning.  The neighborhood turned out to be quite different.  There were no clusters of duplicate homes crammed into linear streets but a random variety of considerable size ranches spread about.  There were no street names and essentially no streets, only obscure turnouts off the main highway marked by tin mail boxes on wooden sticks.

The address given was 34 Catlin Lane in the Elkhorn district. They took Dodge Street to Route 6 then over to Route 31 where they assumed Catlin veered off, but Catlin Lane was nowhere to be found.

They would have gone straight through to Fremont if not for the staggering lightning display that had suddenly amassed ahead of them.  They stopped, watching in awe as the sky turned gray and white.  Sarah had checked the meter and noticed they were thirty miles out, well beyond Elkhorn.  They turned around, storm at their backs, noticing the sky above turning darker.  A few miles further they took refuge in a wooden shack proclaiming to be a coffee shop next to an ancient, single pump gas station, and waited out the storm.