Fade (2005) (18 page)

Chapter
Twenty-Two.

Fade put on his headset and began playing the twelve messages on hi s cell phone. The fact that his number wasn't listed had done little t o discourage his more resourceful admirers.

He slurped the last of his coffee, smiling as a man with a shakin g voice recounted an elaborate theory regarding the police department'
s infiltration by space aliens and asking what color the men he'd kille d bled. The second message had a more typical "fuck the fuzz" theme an d he deleted it after listening to only a few seconds. Number three wa s a re-porter: "Mr. al Fayed, my name is Kevin Swale and I'm with Th e Washington Post. I'd really like to talk to you. I know you'r e probably reluctant, but if you look at my stuff I think you'll find i t pretty even-handed. It wouldn't hurt for you to get your side of th e story "

Fade deleted the message and skipped through a few others unti l stopping on the soothing voice of a police negotiator who didn't reall y have much to say. Then a few more cop haters and that was it.

Earlier that day he'd gotten a message suggesting he was one of th e four horsemen of the Apocalypse and that the whole episode had bee n foretold by Revelations. Or was it Nostradamus? One of those.

"Can I get you anything else?"

Fade removed his earpiece and glanced up at the waitress. It was Sa t found near the Columbia University campus, which worked well for him.

His disguise was pretty thorough, if somewhat dopey looking, but yo u never knew when some art student with a photographic memory for face s would point a finger and start screaming.

"This wasn't bad," he said, pointing to his empty coffee mug. "But I'
m thinking something more festive. One of those coffee mocha chai latt e things."

She looked a little perplexed.

"Just bring me something really elaborate and expensive."

She shrugged and started for the counter, allowing him to return hi s attention to the computer screen in front of him. The whole Interne t thing had turned out to be a bit of a letdown. After all the hype , he'd assumed that he could just type Strand's name into a search engin e and come away with pretty much his whole life story. The sad truth wa s that the only thing he'd turned up was a brief bio on a site devoted t o a conference where he'd spoken.

So now he knew that Strand was forty-nine years old, unmarried, went t o Harvard for his undergrad, and was now taking classes at Georgetown.

He'd been with the NSA before taking a job at Homeland Security wher e he worked on "classified projects." He was a native of the Chicag o area, where there were countless Strands who may or may not have bee n related to him. The D
. C
. area had even more Strands but not a singl e Hillel Not that it really mattered. It seemed unlikely that he wa s hanging out at home waiting to be shot.

In retrospect, calling him had been stupid. It had put him on guard.

Fade didn't really regret it, though. He wanted him to be afraid. H
e wanted him to be consumed by it.

The waitress slid a tall glass mug containing an artistically swirle d drink onto the table next to him. An energetic slurp left him wit h nothing much more than a whipped cream mustache and a burned tongue , prompting him to set the mug back down and return his attention to th e computer.

The likely scenario was that Strand had picked up a few Special Op s guys as protection and that he was either living at his office or ha d retreated to an "undisclosed location." That didn't leave a lot o f options. He could stake out Homeland Security headquarters in the hop e that he was still there and would eventually leave, but that seemed a little obvious and a lot dangerous.

The bottom line was that this investigative crap sucked. Tedious, tim e consuming, and complicated. He'd always had Matt to take care of thi s stuff for him. Good thing, too. If it had been left to him, he an d his team would have probably ended up in the middle of Syria asking th e local farmers how to get to Iraq.

It was hard not to wonder what exactly Egan was doing at that moment.

Not hiding out at his office. Not his style. No, he was out ther e devising some sneaky and underhanded way to track him down and shoo t him in the back. Not that he didn't respect that approach. It wa s smart and added a much-needed element of excitement to the whol e operation.. ..

He took another, slightly more cautious sip of his drink and reminde d himself that Matt wasn't the priority. Hillel Strand was at the top o f the list and he needed to focus if he was going to get him.

So where did he go from here? No doubt there were people who could us e the Internet and public records to track down everything includin g Strand's favorite color, but he wasn't one of them. Maybe he should b e calling back some of those wackos who'd figured out his unlisted numbe r and asking them for advice.

Or better yet, maybe he should call about the Caddy. See how Isidr o was doing .. .

No. No more excuses. As hard as this was now, it'd only get harde r when Egan and the cops started to close in. And, of course, there wa s his back to think about. His scuffle with SWAT hadn't helped a whol e hell of a lot and he was still waiting to get full feeling back int o his right foot. Chasing people around was going to get kind o f complicated if his legs stopped working.

Someone probably Egan had once told him that Domino's gathered u p unlisted numbers and sold them to private intelligence companies. Mayb e there was something there. He grinned and tried to picture himsel f putting a gun to some pimply kid's head and demanding access to th e company's national database. Oh, and a pie with pepperoni and blac k olives.

Amazon listed a bunch of books about finding people that covered thing s like land records, credit reports, and high school reunion lists, bu t who wanted to get involved in that nonsense? What was he, a librarian?

Karen Manning. That's who he needed. According to the news, she wa s not only a kind of hot looking badass, she was smart enough to be on e of the people trying to find that loser who was running around Virgini a killing girls.

Fade glanced over at a very unfair and unflattering article about he r in the newspaper lying next to him and shook his head. The woman too k a job that demanded she put her life on the line to help others and no w she was getting completely screwed. He wondered how many reporters ou t there would have driven blindly into the war zone he'd created to tr y to save their guys.

He started to reach for his drink but then forgot about it as he los t himself in wondering how many twists of fate it would have taken to pu t them together. He could have decided to ignore the attack on tha t little Arab girl and instead gone straight to the extraction site.

Karen could have blown off the cops and joined the military where a woman like her would have been encouraged to go out for the new femal e Special Ops program. And if those two things had been the case, i t seems certain that they would have eventually run into each other.

Maybe they'd have hit it off. Maybe even gotten married. After a while, they would have taken training or administrative jobs an d started a family .. .

"Do you like the latte?"

Fade blinked hard and looked up at the waitress. "It's great.

Thanks."

"Anything else?"

He shook his head and watched her weave through the empty cafe towar d the bar. Enough daydreaming. It was time to either move forward o n this thing or walk away from it.

He glanced down at a legal pad sitting next to the keyboard and diale d the number he'd written there into his cell phone.

"Homeland Security. How can I direct your call?"

"Hillel Strand's office, please."

There was a brief delay and then a woman's voice. "Office of Strategi c Planning and Acquisition. How can I help you?"

"Hi. Hillel asked me to send him some documents and he neglected t o give me his floor, which I assume I need to include in the address."

"Go ahead and send it to the sixth. That'll get it there." "Great.

And who am I speaking to? Is this his assistant?" "No, this is Kell y Braith. I'm the receptionist." "Oh, okay. Thanks, Kelly. I'll ge t this right to him." Fade clicked off the phone and pulled u p BigBook . C
om. Maybe Ms. Braith wasn't as secretive as her boss.

Chapter
Twenty-Three.

Perhaps if he'd written bigger or added some graphs, the chalkboar d wouldn't look so empty. But he hadn't and it was time to face the fac t that not only were there very few potential paths to Fade, the one s that did exist were more than a little bit overgrown.

"Okay, we're all here," came Strand's distant-sounding voice over th e phone.

Egan adjusted his earpiece and began pacing back and forth to th e degree that the cramped hotel room would allow. "The first thing w e need to look at is cars. Fade is a nut for classic cars and h e particularly likes convertibles. Billy, I want you to go through th e local papers and call the used dealers. Find out if anything old an d sexy has been sold to anyone even close to Fade's description."

"What about rental places, Matt? They've got these dream car renta l places now," Billy replied.

"News to me. Give it a shot."

"I'm on it."

"Okay. Next. When we did the background check on Fade at the CIA w e had some problems with a friend of his from high school. He'd neve r spent a day in jail but we concluded that he was a fairly well-place d drug dealer in New York."

"Javan Franklin," Lauren said.

"That's him. It seems likely that he's the one who put Fade in touc h with the Colombians. I'd like to talk to him."

"We'll find him," Strand said.

"I assume there's no activity on his credit cards or ATM?"

"Nothing," Lauren said. "And even if there is, remember that th e police are watching, too."

"What else are they doing?"

"Their most recent report is on your e-mail," Fraiser said. "Basicall y they're doing exactly what we expected. No surprises. Not yet."

"Good. Keep me up on that. I don't need to run into any cops."

"Don't worry," Strand said. "We're staying on top of it. Where do yo u stand? Any movement?"

"I'm working on contacting some of the men he served with in the nav y and at Ramsey Security people who he might have stayed in touch with.

Maybe they'll have some ideas about where he'd go."

"Who exactly? Do we need to get you current addresses an d background?"

Egan didn't answer immediately. It was certain that Strand would wan t to keep as close an eye on him as possible and was anxious to get a tail on him. While Egan hadn't really done anything to actively kee p his location secret, he also hadn't volunteered it. At some point i t was a fence he'd be forced to stop straddling, but for now he fel t better on his own.

"Thanks, but I think I can handle it. Is there anything else?"

Silence.

"Okay, then. You can get me on my cell."

Chapter
Twenty-Four.

Karen Manning had never been to this part of southeast D
. C
. and , judging by the stares she was getting from the people on the street , not many other young blonde women in Hondas ever had either. The rout e hadn't looked particularly easy to follow on the map and the realit y turned out to be even worse a maze of poorly paved, garbage-strew n roads bordered by crumbling old homes and boxlike apartmen t buildings.

She stopped at an intersection with no sign, took a wild guess, an d turned right. Not exactly the most scientific navigation metho d available, but it worked. After about two miles she found a stree t blocked by police cars and pedestrians. She eased forward, slowin g enough to allow time for parents to shoo their children back onto th e sidewalks and to hear the occasional obscene suggestion from a laughin g teenaged boy.

She made it to within twenty feet of a yellow barricade and steppe d from the car, digging her badge from her pocket as she approached a young cop working crowd control. It turned out not to be necessary an d he waved her through, not bothering to hide a mildly disguste d expression that she was quickly growing accustomed to.

Most of the activity seemed to be centered around something that at on e time had been a car but was now just a few parts clinging precariousl y to a wheelless chassis. There were two fingerprint guys going over th e dented remains of the body and someone else beneath what was left o f the dashboard, apparently looking for fibers. The rest of the cops o n duty were fanning out, questioning the people in the street, an d knocking on doors.

She spotted John Wakefield leaning against one of the barricades an d started toward him.

"Karen! What are you doing here?" he said, pushing himself to a ful l upright position and giving her a brief hug.

"I was going to ask you the same thing. If some reporter sees you an d thinks you're looking into this, they're going to come after us fo r putting the deaths of our guys over the deaths of all those women ..

."

He shrugged disinterestedly. "I miss my sidekick and I was curious.