Red Cell Seven (25 page)

CHAPTER 29

T
ROY KISSED
Little Jack’s forehead and then handed him carefully back to Cheryl. He loved the way the boy smelled; he couldn’t get enough of that new-baby aroma. It was so fresh and beautiful—except when the little guy had an accident, like now.

“I’ll take care of everything,” Cheryl said, laughing and rolling her eyes as she took the bundle from Troy.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Bill and Troy were sitting at the card table in the Jensen basement. His father hadn’t seemed himself tonight at all, Troy realized. It wasn’t that he seemed preoccupied; he seemed depressed, which worried Troy. Bill was always the rock. He wasn’t always pleasant, but he was always calm and collected at crunch time when people around him were panicking.

Right now was one of those times the country needed Bill to be calm and focused. Ten more attacks today, and once again, none of the guilty had been apprehended. Local law enforcement had arrested two men in Boise, Idaho, where an attack believed to have been perpetrated by one of the death squads had been carried out at a shopping center in the suburbs, killing five and wounding seven. But the arrests had turned out to be false. Just a couple of guys in a pickup truck heading into the mountains to hunt elk and loaded down with weapons and ammunition, pulled over on their way out of town by ten cop cars and a SWAT team.

“You all right?” Cheryl asked as she leaned down to kiss Bill’s cheek on the way out of the room.

“Fine. Why?”

“You’re not yourself tonight,” she said as she headed for the door.

“That’s ridiculous. And do not bring that baby back in here.”

“See?”

“Stop it, Cheryl.”

“I know you too well,” she said as she reached back for the handle to close the door behind her. “Something’s not right.”

When she was gone, Bill muttered a few unintelligible words and then pointed at Troy without looking. It was another sure sign that something was wrong. He always made direct eye contact when he was giving an order. It was a holdover habit from his Marine days.

“Come on out, Major,” Troy called toward the closet.

When Travers had emerged from his usual hiding spot and was seated at the table again, Bill took a deep breath. “Where are we?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

“We wanted to give you an update.” He and Travers had been at the house for an hour, but Bill had been on the phone until ten minutes ago, supposedly dealing with an issue at First Manhattan. Troy could tell Travers was starting to get impatient. Taking another roundabout way through the woods to get to the mansion tonight hadn’t helped the major’s demeanor, either. “It’s important.”

“Okay, go.”

“I know you weren’t happy about me seeing this Jennie Perez woman in the first place, but—”

“It wasn’t that,” Bill interrupted. “I just thought it was a distraction.”

“Well, it turns out it wasn’t.”

“Oh?”

His father’s tone just then had seemed odd. It was almost as if he’d been expecting this development, Troy thought. “She knew a woman named Imelda Smith,” he explained. “Or was at least having consistent contact with her.”

“Imelda Smith is the person Kaashif went to see in Manassas, Virginia,” Travers reminded Bill. “It was the day I followed him all the way down there from Philly. Kaashif is the young man who I interrogated last—”

“I remember, Major. How do you know they were in contact?”

“Phone records. Apparently, Ms. Perez and Imelda spoke nine times in the two weeks prior to the attacks. Some of the calls lasted for over ten minutes.”

“After we left the hospital the second time,” Troy spoke up when Travers was done, “we drove out to Imelda’s place in Manassas, but nobody was there. A neighbor told us he’d seen a van out in front of her place a few days ago. He’d never seen the van before, and since then Imelda hasn’t been around. He admitted that maybe it was just a coincidence, but he was genuinely concerned, no doubt. He told us Imelda has a five-year-old son. The guy hasn’t seen the boy lately, either, and he was worried about it. We went inside after we finished talking to the guy, and it looked like there’d definitely been a struggle in the kitchen. Dishes and pans were scattered everywhere, and there were several chairs overturned. The door to the outside wasn’t locked, either.”

“That’s terrible,” Bill said quietly, chin almost on his chest.

“You okay, Dad?”

“I’m fine,” Bill retorted angrily, forcing emotion into his voice. “I’m dealing with something at the firm, that’s all. You all need to stop this crap.”

His father dealt with difficult issues all day long at First Manhattan, and he never acted like this. Oftentimes, in fact, he seemed to revel in problem-solving through confrontation. The explanation about First Manhattan causing his sour mood seemed pretty lame.

“You said you went to the hospital a second time today,” Bill spoke up. “Why?”

“I wanted to see Ms. Perez’s physical charts.”

“Why?”

“I just did.”

“And?”

“And we got into a records room, and it turns out she hadn’t been shot in the back like Dr. Harrison told me she had. That was all a lie.”

Bill’s expression remained impassive.

“She’s Lisa Martinez’s cousin,” Troy continued. “I ran a background check on her, and that connection came up right away. Ms. Perez was born in Brooklyn and moved to Virginia when she was ten. But I’m betting she and Lisa stayed close after she moved.”

“What are you saying?” Bill asked.

Troy glanced at Travers, then back at Bill. “I think what’s going on is pretty obvious.” He and Travers had run this logic through their collective gray matter several times today on the way up to Connecticut. “Jennie Perez is working with whoever’s behind the Mall Attacks.” Troy waited for a response from Bill, but got nothing. “These people must know something about Red Cell Seven, Dad. They must have contacted her to try to get to us, maybe to you specifically. I think they figured out somehow that Lisa and I were involved and that I was in RCS.” He paused. This was the key to the connection. “Maybe Maddux had something to do with them finding out—maybe everything, in fact. Maybe Maddux put together the whole thing, like he did with the LNG tankers heading for Boston and Virginia. Maybe the terrorists told Ms. Perez that I murdered Lisa after Maddux told them to tell her that.”

“Why would you murder Lisa?” Bill asked, obviously unconvinced.

“Maybe because Troy had told her to get an abortion,” Travers spoke up, “and she wouldn’t.”

“She’d already had the baby at that point.”

“Maybe we argued about it,” Troy said. “Maybe it was just passion boiling over. Ms. Perez would have been bitter and ready to believe anything if she and Lisa were close. They figured she’d want to get revenge, and they were right. They would have had an easy time signing her up to be their agent if they fed her all that. Look, it could be the same terrorist group Maddux was involved with on the tankers. In fact, it probably is.”

Bill shook his head. “I don’t think—”

“So what was Jennie Perez doing talking to Imelda Smith? And what was she doing in the mall right before the attacks went down? It’s too coincidental.” Troy was getting revved up, pissed at Bill’s stonewalling. “The sales guy at the cell phone store said Ms. Perez was real calm one second, but when she suddenly realized what time it was, she took off. Why would she do that?”

“It’s a stretch, Troy. And you know it is.”

“Where there’s smoke there’s usually fire.”

“Usually but not always.”

Why was his father doing this? “We couldn’t find her new phone anywhere. It wasn’t with her possessions at the hospital, and no one turned it in. I think she had information on it that was important to them. The guy at the store who helped her said he transferred a lot of data over from her old phone. It’s a natural to think that’s what was going on.”

“Someone at the mall must have gotten the phone,” Bill said. “If she was working with them, why would they shoot her?”

Bill kept putting up roadblocks everywhere on this. Unfortunately, that was the one question Troy and Travers couldn’t find an answer to, either.

“What about Kaashif, Major?” Bill asked, glancing at Travers. “Did you get any data on him from your phone, from the TQ app?”

“Yes, sir. We believe Kaashif met very recently with a man named Jacob Gadanz who lives in Manassas. The data from my phone shows us that Kaashif went to the offices of a company Gadanz owns, and then later went to a location very near Gadanz’s home. So we assume it was Gadanz who Kaashif was meeting with.”

“What kind of company is it?”

For the first time tonight Troy saw fire in his father’s eyes. “Gadanz and Company operates a chain of convenience stores.”

“So it deals with lots of cash,” Bill said quietly. “So it has money-laundering capability and would be able to spread lots of cash around easily.”

“That’s right,” Travers agreed, gesturing at Troy. “That’s what we thought, too.”

“Did you run any lines on Gadanz?”

“Not yet.”

“Do it,” Bill ordered. “Immediately. Sounds like you’re on to something there.”

“P
LEASE TELL
ME
,”
the man whispered compassionately. “I don’t want to hurt you. Just tell me where it is.”

Nancy Carlson gazed forlornly at the ski-masked man, her mouth dry from the nasty-tasting gag he’d stuffed in there hours ago. In the end, Roger had told her where only one of the two documents was hidden. He’d told her there were two, but he hadn’t told her the hiding place of the other one. She was terrified this man would be furious when he realized that she only knew of the whereabouts of the one document and he’d go into an insane rage. She’d been worried about this day coming for forty years, but her worry had grown to terror the moment she’d found Roger slumped over the steering wheel of his car outside the townhouse in Georgetown. She’d cried for him when she’d realized he was dead—and then for herself. She’d considered leaving immediately, but she’d put it off. Now she was regretting that decision.

Her eyes flickered around the dimly lit room. She didn’t know where she was now, but she knew it wasn’t Georgetown. He’d stashed her in the trunk of his car, and the frigid drive had to have been at least thirty minutes long.

She finally nodded to him, and he removed the gag. “I only know where one of them is,” she whispered, “and that’s all I know. I don’t even know what the document is. I swear I don’t.”

“It’s okay,” he whispered back, smiling through the hole in the ski mask as he patted her shoulder comfortingly. “That’s all I need. I’m keeping you here until I get it. When I get back I’ll let you go. I promise I will. I just have to make sure you’re telling me the truth.” It seemed silly to say that. She was obviously so scared out of her mind she wasn’t going to lie. But he had no choice. “Okay?”

She nodded back. “Okay.”

CHAPTER 30

T
ROY STEPPED
into a large room of the mansion’s basement. In one corner was a prison cell. It reminded him of the cell in North Carolina, though it was bigger and didn’t have that Inquisition-like ring hanging from a chain bolted to the wall. But the steel bars were the same—vertical, black
, and cold-looking.

The Jensen family had moved to this house in the countryside outside Greenwich twenty years ago, when Troy was eight. But he and Jack had never been allowed into this section of the massive basement while they were growing up. They’d tried getting in many times when they were left alone. But the thick, metal door was always triple-locked, and there was an alarm—which they’d tripped twice and paid the price on each occasion, the second time dearly, when Troy was eleven and Jack thirteen. It had been the summer, and for two weeks they’d been allowed out of their rooms only long enough to use the bathroom. They’d even taken meals in their rooms.

Troy had found out what was in here only after he became a member of Red Cell Seven. As far as he knew, Jack had died never knowing.

As he looked around, he wondered whether this room had been used not just to hold human beings but to interrogate them as well. He’d made his peace with the need for RCS interrogations to be thorough—rough, even—but for some reason it would bother him to know that torture had occurred in the house where he’d grown up. Which didn’t make much sense, he realized. You were either in or out when it came to the tough calls in life—and he was all-in when it came to RCS agents using any means necessary to protect the United States.

Still…

The cell was unoccupied tonight—which wasn’t a good sign, and there could only be one explanation for that, only one person who could have allowed the prisoner to go free.

Karen had called Troy to tell him that Maddux was locked in the cell, but she wouldn’t say exactly how he’d gotten there. She was an ex-cop, but she couldn’t possibly have gotten him in there by herself. Troy wasn’t sure he could have taken in Maddux alone. So he’d pressed her on what had happened several times. But she wouldn’t divulge anything more about the help she’d received—she wouldn’t even confirm that she had—though she’d apologized three times for being circumspect.

It had to be Charlie Banks, Troy figured. That had to be the person who’d rescued her at the cemetery and helped her bring Maddux to the house. Charlie must have survived being thrown from the
Arctic Fire
as well, and then laid low all this time. His body had never been found. It was the only possible explanation. She’d sounded happy when they’d spoken. That was a tip-off, too.

Charlie must have realized Karen had found happiness with Jack and not interfered, not made contact with Karen until after Jack was gone. Charlie was a good man. Troy looked forward to that reunion. He just wished it could have been Jack. It was a terrible thing to think, but he couldn’t help it.

“What are you doing in here?”

Troy turned around quickly. “I think you know, Dad,” he answered when he’d calmed down after the voice coming from nowhere had startled him.

“How did you…?” Bill’s voice trailed off.

“Karen called me. She said she was visiting Jack’s grave last night when Maddux confronted her. She said he tried finding out where Travers was, and assaulted her when she couldn’t tell him. He figured she was holding out, but she wasn’t. At least, that’s what she told me.” Troy shrugged. “Why was Shane looking for Major Travers?”

“He figured Travers knew where Kaashif was. You were right, son. Maddux is a patriot. He wanted his turn at Kaashif. He figured he could break the young man even if Travers couldn’t. He figured he could find out who was behind the attacks. As you are aware, he’s very confident in his ability to extract information from anyone.”

“Did you tell him where Kaashif was?”

“I gave Shane the address to the house in Philadelphia where Kaashif lives.”

“Any possibility there was another reason Maddux was looking for Travers?” Troy asked.

“Not that I’m aware of. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“Troy, if you know anything at all, you must—”

“I don’t.” Troy nodded at the empty holding cell. “What happened? Why isn’t Maddux in there?”

“I let him go,” Bill admitted.

“Why?”

“I had to.”

“What do you mean?”

Bill stared at Troy hard for several moments. But his gaze dropped to the floor when his son wouldn’t look away. “He…he had leverage on me,” Bill finally said in a faltering delivery.

“What does that mean, Dad?”

“It means if I hadn’t let him go, he would have released something about me that I could not have released. It was something that would have hurt your mother very badly. I couldn’t have that.” Bill grimaced as he finished. “There, I said it.”

His father’s voice was shaking, and that was unnerving for Troy. The rock of the family was disintegrating right in front of him. “What is it?” It seemed to Troy that whatever Maddux had on his father, his father was more concerned about himself than anyone else. “What does Shane have on you?”

Bill said nothing, just looked away.

This was a shot in the dark, but Troy figured he’d take it. “Dr. Harrison, the man who was taking care of Jennie Perez.”

“Yes?”

“You asked me what his name was when I was heading for Dulles to go to North Carolina. But you already knew him, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Bill answered, almost inaudibly.

“Why didn’t you just—”

“You were right about Jennie,” Bill cut in, “in a way, at least. She was approached by people claiming to be terrorists. Imelda Smith contacted her, and they were trying to get information on RCS, as you assumed. And they did tell her Lisa had been murdered by someone inside U.S. intel. But it turns out Jennie Perez is a patriot as well. She told me exactly what was going on when she contacted me. Apparently Lisa had told Jennie about the two of you and that I was your father. I asked Jennie if she would help us by appearing to cooperate with the terrorists. She said she would. She’s a brave young woman, Troy.

“And yes,” Bill continued, “there was information on that cell phone she bought at the store the other day. She had it transferred from her old one before she left the store. I told her she needed to make certain she had a record of what she gave them, even though the information was useless. It was full of red herrings. It would have seemed important to the people who got it, but it really wasn’t.”

Troy nodded as it all hit him. “She had no idea about the attacks. She thought she was just meeting her contact that day at the mall.”

“That’s right, and I don’t think they meant to shoot her. She got in the way of a bullet, probably when she was saving that little girl’s life. But they still got the phone.”

“How do you know?”

“Someone followed up on information on that phone. We set up a couple of data traps, and one was hit.”

“So that’s why they didn’t execute her the way they did the other two people.”

“I can only assume,” Bill agreed.

“Why did you have the doctor tell me she’d been shot in the back?”

“I wanted it to look real to you because I wanted you to leave her alone. I figured you’d hear about the other two being killed at close range and wonder why Jennie hadn’t been.”

“That’s why you told me it was a waste of time to see her.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”

“I couldn’t have anyone else knowing what was really going on with her. It was too big a risk for her and RCS, too covert an operation. I trust you completely, of course, but you could have been kidnapped and tortured, had drugs administered. All the typical stuff, so I was simply keeping to the RCS code. Need-to-know only.” Bill hesitated. “Once the attacks hit, I was hoping we could get information on the identity of the terrorists through Jennie. But they haven’t reached out to her again.”

“Her contact went missing,” Troy pointed out. “Something happened to Imelda Smith. Maybe her own people figured she had to be taken out. Maybe they suspected something.”

Bill shook his head. “No, it was Maddux. He got a blind tip about her from somebody at Fort Meade, I’m guessing, and he interrogated her. You know what happens to anyone Maddux interrogates.”

A sinking feeling rushed through Troy. “What about her son?”

Bill shook his head again. “No.”

“Maddux killed him, too?”

“Apparently.”

“That’s…that’s awful.” Troy glanced back at his father. “Did you know about the plan to assassinate President Dorn? Did you back it?”

Bill stared at his son for a long time without answering.

“Tell me the truth, Dad.”

“Yes,” Bill finally murmured.

For a few moments all Troy saw in front of him was a fury-wall of red. “When we were at the White House,” he spoke up, doing his best to control his anger, “you gave me that whole song and dance about how there could be no excuse for killing the president of the United States.” But the emotion was still coming through.

“It was a matter of national security, Troy. David Dorn is making us weak. He and people like him are bringing this country down. Look at the attacks that are happening around us right now. This country is being shut down by a small group of lunatics, and Dorn can’t seem to do anything about it. Despite the mayhem, he wants to shut RCS down.”

“I thought we were going to be a cornerstone of his intel strategy going forward.”

“Come on, son.”

Troy couldn’t argue with that. Hell, he’d felt the insincerity himself at the White House the other day, even mentioned it to Bill. Dorn had been on a fishing trip, nothing else. And Baxter clearly wanted to do anything he could to destroy Red Cell Seven. “We didn’t catch the Holiday Mall Attacks, Dad.” Another sinking feeling rushed through Troy. In fact, maybe they had, but his father had another agenda. “Or did we?”

“No.”

These multiple shades of gray were hard to deal with. How could he know if his father was telling the truth about anything at this point? What about Roger Carlson? What if his father had known and hadn’t done anything? What if he’d known about the LNG tankers as well? “Was Carlson backing Dorn’s assassination, too?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Protecting the United States is a complicated proposition, son.” Bill had suddenly gone pale. “It’s a minute-by-minute ordeal on a global scale, and it’s getting harder by the day. You of all people should understand that.”

“There has to be a chain of command that’s never broken, Dad. This is a democracy.”

“Grow up, son,” Bill snapped angrily, though his face was still ashen. “Democracy doesn’t work anymore. It’s a fractured model of government for our country at this point. Our society’s too splintered. We’ve got too many special-interest groups fighting to get a piece of a federal pie that isn’t big enough to go all the way around, not nearly. Too many lazy bastards want entitlements, they don’t want to work for a living anymore, they want it all for nothing. It’s too easy, and worse, too profitable not to steal from the government. Decisions can’t be made by the population anymore, son. Congress can’t agree on anything. How can you expect the population to? So, in effect, we’re paralyzed. A small collection of individuals have to make the decisions that
really
matter. It’s the only way we survive. Otherwise it’s gridlock that only gets worse and worse. It’s a few of us taking matters into our own hands because we have to. It’s called leadership.”

“I hope you’re not serious,” Troy murmured. But he knew Bill was. He recognized the truth tone. “You’re rationalizing what you’ve done, you’re making excuses.”

“When was the last time you looked at one of those old paintings of the founding fathers ratifying the Declaration of Independence or signing the Constitution?”

Troy shrugged. “I don’t know.” Where had
that
question come from?

“Look at one when you get a chance.”

Was this some kind of secret that had been handed down for hundreds of years to a limited few? Was there some kind of code embedded in those paintings, and now he was finally being let in on the secret—like the real meaning of the eye atop the pyramid on the back of the dollar bill?