Doing Hard Time (10 page)

“Holly says he’s an inventor—he designed a lot of those household gadgets that you see in TV infomercials, and some of them made millions. She thinks he’s set up a way to collect the royalties into one or more offshore bank accounts.”

“I guess that’s doable,” Mike said.

“I actually met him once. So did Dino.”

“Tell me about that.”

“Holly Barker got sent down to an island in the Caribbean, St. Marks, where a retired CIA agent lived. I forget her name, but she and Teddy had reportedly had an affair. Dino and I went along to provide her some cover, and when we got there we met the woman’s boyfriend, a fairly elderly guy who may have been heavily disguised, but I couldn’t spot a toupee or anything else. Holly believed him to be Teddy, and she had been sent there to be sure that he never left the island alive. When he finally ran, she got off a couple of shots at him and may have wounded him, but we never knew. A couple of years ago, Holly told me that he called her at the Agency. There was a CIA officer who had become obsessed with finding him, and Teddy told her to call the guy off or he would kill him. Teddy proposed a kind of truce.

“Holly called the man off, but he persisted, and he was found a few days later in his own bathtub, with his wrists slit. Holly got another call from Teddy, saying he was done, and that was it. Nobody heard from him again.”

“There’s a novel in that story,” Mike said.

“Well,” Stone said, “I’m not going to write it. I want nothing further to do with Teddy Fay. I consider him extremely dangerous, and I certainly don’t like the idea that he may now have made my son’s acquaintance.”

“He’s not dangerous to anybody except people who are trying to hunt him down and kill him,” Dino pointed out.

“Nevertheless,” Stone said.

“I’m trying to think of ways to help,” Mike said, “but if this guy is as good as you say he is, we’re not going to find him. If he contacts Peter, though, then we might have a good chance.”

“That’s what I don’t want to happen,” Stone said.

“Well, you’re not in charge of that. Just tell Peter to let you know if he contacts him.”

“I’ve already done that.”

“One final question: Suppose he is Teddy Fay, and you find him—what then?”

Stone stared at the ceiling.

“I want to hear this, Stone,” Dino said. “Answer the man.”

“All right, I don’t know.”

“How about this,” Mike said. “If you meet him, just tell him you know who he is and you don’t want him around your son.”

“You think that might work?”

“He obviously doesn’t want to be identified.”

“He might take umbrage,” Dino said. “I wouldn’t want Teddy Fay taking umbrage at me.”

“Good point,” Mike said. “Tell you what, Stone. If this guy turns up, say nothing to him out of the ordinary—just tell me. I’ll take care of scaring him off.”

“How are you going to do that?” Stone asked.

“It’s better if you don’t know, but I’ll tell you this: he will never know that you identified him. He’ll just think that he blew his cover accidentally.”

“All right,” Stone said. “If I meet this Billy Burnett, and I think he’s Teddy Fay, then I’ll give you a call. I don’t want to do that unless I’m certain he’s the guy. I don’t want to turn some innocent into a victim.”

“I understand your scruples, but if you think he
might
be Teddy Fay, please let me know, and I’ll handle it.”

“You’re not going to hurt him, are you?”

“Stone, my people are not thugs, but they have ways of warning people off. The threat of exposure should be enough, if he’s Teddy Fay.”

“If he’s Teddy Fay,” Dino said, “I don’t think I’d threaten him.”

Igor landed the rented Cirrus at Gallup Airport, then hired a car and drove south. Mesa Grande was just where it was supposed to be and looked just as it was supposed to look: dusty and a little forlorn.

Igor had received the call from Paris and the GPS surveillance tapes that had been e-mailed to him. He had printed enough stills to help orient himself in the search for Ivan and Yevgeny in their Lincoln Navigator, but first, he thought that speaking to a few human beings might be useful. He started at the gas station.

A teenaged boy ran out of the building and asked what would be his pleasure.

“Actually, I just rented the car, so I don’t need any gas yet,” Igor replied. “What I could use is a little information.”

“What kind of information, sir?”

“A couple of friends of mine passed through here last week, and I’m trying to find them. They were driving a black Lincoln Navigator. Have you seen anybody like that?”

“No, sir, but I only work after school. If they came by here before that, I wouldn’t have seen them.”

“Who would have been working here while you were in school?”

“Last week? That would be Billy Burnett.”

“May I speak with him?”

“I’m afraid he moved on at the end of last week. He was only here for, I don’t know, two or three weeks. He was helping us out while my uncle, Tom Fields, the owner of the place, was taking care of his wife.”

“Do you know where Billy Burnett moved on to?”

“I don’t know. Uncle Tom said he just got in his airplane and flew away.”

“What kind of airplane did he fly?”

“When he got here he had a nice Cessna 182 RG, but he swapped it with a feller for a like-new Piper Malibu that had a turboprop conversion.”

“You remember his tail number?”

“November one, two, three, tango, foxtrot.”

“What’s your name, son?”

“Bobby.”

“You’re a bright boy, Bobby, and I appreciate your help. Where’d Billy take off from? Gallup?”

“No, sir, we got an airstrip behind the buildings, here.”

“Do you mind showing me?”

“No, sir. Come on.” The boy led him through a workshop, and Igor saw a backhoe and a forklift through a door leading to the next building.

Out back there was, in fact, an airstrip, with a windsock and a fuel tank marked 100LL. An old Stearman biplane was tied down at one end. “You mind if I take a stroll around?” Igor asked the boy.

“No, sir, but I gotta get back out front, in case somebody wants gas.”

“You go ahead,” Igor said. “I won’t get lost.” The boy ran back through the shop, and Igor unfolded the printouts of the GPS tracking. He located his position behind the buildings, then he began walking, checking the printout now and then, following the dotted line that led, first east, then north into what appeared to be a solid forest of piñon trees, none of them more than about six or eight feet high. But they weren’t all that close together, and there was room for a big car to drive among them.

He checked his bearings and walked into the trees on a path approximating the dotted line, and a couple hundred yards later, he came to a clearing. He looked around for tire tracks but saw none. There had been a big line of thunderstorms through here last week, he remembered, because they had come through Phoenix, too, then gone on into Texas. A hard rain would have obliterated tire tracks. Then he saw something that interested him.

A few yards into the clearing he came to a slight indentation in the earth, and it was rectangular—about eight feet wide and twenty feet long. It was as if a large hole had been dug, then filled in again, then the dirt had settled. He thought about what that might mean, and he wished he had a metal detector.

“Something I can help you with?” a voice behind him said. Igor turned to find a man of about sixty standing behind him.

“Good day to you,” Igor said. “You must be Mr. Tom Fields.”

“I am.”

“Your nephew was showing me your airstrip, and I just took a little stroll.”

Fields nodded at the papers in his hand. “You looking for something out here?”

“I’m looking for a couple of friends of mine who passed through here last week, driving a black Lincoln Navigator. Did you by any chance see or talk to them?”

Fields shook his head. “No, I was home with my sick wife most of last week. If my nephew Bobby didn’t see them, Billy Burnett might have.”

“That’s what Bobby told me. He also said that Billy moved on late last week. Do you have any idea where he went? I’d like to talk to him.”

“No, he just said he had a lot of country to see. He had recently sold his business in New York State and retired. He happened to land here, looking for fuel, and we got to talking, had lunch together. He knew his way around cars and machinery, and I invited him home for supper and asked if he’d like to work for me for a while. He did, but he never would take any money.”

“Do you have his address or a phone number?”

“I don’t think he has an address anymore, but I think I have his cell phone number in the office. Come on, and I’ll see if I can find it.”

“Mr. Fields, before we go, can you tell me what that is?” He pointed to the big indentation in the desert soil.

“Never seen that before,” Fields replied. “Looks like something heavy must have made it.”

“Or maybe there was a hole dug, then refilled.”

“Could be that, too,” Fields agreed.

“Is that your backhoe in the building next to your shop?”

“Yes, I’ve got a little equipment-rental business.”

“Did Billy Burnett know how to operate a backhoe?”

“Might’ve. He was handy with machinery.”

“Do you think he might have used your backhoe to bury something out here?”

Fields looked at the indentation, then back at Igor. “What, exactly, are you getting at?”

Igor didn’t speak for a moment.

“You mean, like a Lincoln Navigator?”

“It seems like a possibility.”

“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard,” Fields said. “Why would Billy do a thing like that?”

“I don’t know,” Igor said honestly. “Do you, by any chance, have a metal detector?”

“No, I don’t, and I don’t know where you’d find a thing like that. I mean, this area isn’t exactly a Civil War battlefield. You’re not going to find any old bayonets out here.”

“Mr. Fields, you say you rent equipment. Could I rent your backhoe for an hour or two?”

“Do you know how to operate a backhoe?”

“No, sir, but I expect you do.”

Fields looked at the indentation, then back at Igor. “It’s a hundred dollars an hour, plus operator,” he said.

Igor produced some bills, peeled off five hundred dollars, and offered it to Fields. “Will that do it?”

“Yessir, it will,” Fields said, pocketing the money. “Hang on a minute, I’ll go crank up the backhoe. You’ve got me interested, now. I’ll get Billy’s number for you, too.”

“Thank you, sir.” Igor stood and stared at the indentation. Ten minutes later, he heard the backhoe coming.

Fields stopped and handed him a slip of paper. “There’s Billy Burnett’s cell number. You want this whole area dug up?”

“I think just a trench down the middle would do it,” Igor replied.

• • •

A little under an hour later, the scoop of the backhoe struck something hard, making a noise.

“Sounds like metal,” Fields said, climbing down from the backhoe and taking a shovel out of the toolbox bolted to the side. He walked into the trench and started digging.

Igor followed him. “Here, let me do that,” he said. He took the shovel from the older man and started a new trench within the old one. Soon, he had a hole two feet by three. “What do you make of that?” he asked Fields, nodding at the hole.

Fields got down on his knees and brushed away some soil with his hands. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “I reckon that’s the underside of a car or truck,” he said. “Or maybe a Lincoln Navigator.” He got back on the backhoe and started to enlarge the trench he had dug.

After another fifteen minutes of digging, he had exposed the entire bottom of the vehicle. He switched off the backhoe. “Take a look at this,” he shouted to the man behind him. He didn’t get a reply, so Fields turned and looked. The man was gone. Fields walked back to the filling station and checked out front. The man’s car was gone, too.