Search: A Novel of Forbidden History (22 page)

“I don’t have to,” Qiamaro said, then drained his shell.

Mordcai looked at the shell in his own hand and let it fall, concerned that he’d left the map unfinished. Just as he was wondering if he could make it back to the hall in time, the concussion of the volcanic eruption struck him.

Nan Moar was the first outpost to fall.

“You sure you want to do this?” Roz asked.

Lyle stood before the one-way observation glass. On the other side, David Weir waited. He had been kidnapped, returned, then recovered in the middle of a firefight between two as yet unknown groups of trained and well-armed operators. Yet he didn’t appear troubled by any of it.

“He hasn’t moved, Roz. It’s been an hour, and he hasn’t moved.”

Up until last night, Lyle knew he’d been running a straightforward espionage case: A vital defense database had been compromised, and Holden Ironwood was prime suspect. The case had three distinct operational phases of investigation. First, determine if Ironwood
was
guilty of stealing the SARGE database. If yes, then locate the storage site of the stolen data. Finally, recover the data and arrest Ironwood before he could sell it. The end.

Then David Weir had become involved.

Now a member of Lyle’s team was dead and a Stinger missile had been fired on an American street.

“Is he asleep?”

“Eyes are open,” Lyle said. “He blinks. He scratched his ear a couple of times.”

“Then he
has
moved.”

“The point is, he hasn’t been screaming to see a lawyer. That’s not normal.”

Roz tapped his arm with the file he’d asked her to bring. She’d put the other item he’d requested in a small cardboard box on the table beside him. “That’s what it says in here.”

Lyle took the manila folder and flipped through its meager contents. A life reduced to a trail of paperwork. College transcripts. Bank records. Credit reports. Driver’s license. Tax forms.

“He’s
not
normal.” Roz reached over and pulled a stapled two-page form from the back of the file. “Look at this.” She handed him an Army CID security report. “When he joined the army lab, he needed to be cleared by Homeland.”

The cover sheet was stamped
DENIED
. Lyle quickly scanned both pages, then shrugged. “I don’t see anything to disqualify him from a basic clearance.”

“Exactly. I called the investigating agent. He said there was nothing to investigate. No family to interview. No close friends. They couldn’t gather enough information to make a judgment.”

“Any chance Weir’s in the witness relocation program?”

“Checked that, too. No record. And the photos we have from his driver’s license since age sixteen? Same guy, same name, just getting older.”

Lyle picked up the cardboard box, just in case his strategy worked, then started for the door to the hallway.

“Boss?” Lyle knew what his young assistant was going to say, just by the tone of her voice. She was worried he’d make it personal. “Del was my friend, too.”

“Duly noted.”

“Then go get ’im.”

“I intend to.”

Everything had changed, and David Weir knew why.

After months of false starts and dead ends, he finally had a promising lead to saving his life. Thanks to Jess MacClary.

His inner clock and stomach told him it was about 8:00
A.M.
He couldn’t remember when or even what he’d eaten last, but food would have to wait its turn. All he cared about now was getting out of here and waiting for Jess’s promised call. The local police were just a momentary problem. After all, technically, he’d done nothing wrong. Last night or this morning. What he’d do about Ironwood, he’d think about later. Jess had been explicit: He could only work for her.

A faint rasp announced the unlocking of a doorknob mechanism. Besides the irritating hiss of air vents high above in stained acoustic tile, it was the first new sound in more than an hour.

A moment later the door banged open, as if the person in the doorway had meant to startle him. If so, it didn’t work.

David recognized the man who entered, from last night at the warehouse. The local cops had deferred to him, even though he’d not been in uniform. No jacket. Blue short-sleeve shirt. Dark blue pants like those of a repairman. His white-streaked dark hair had looked flat, as if he’d been wearing some kind of cap.

He’d changed since then. Dark suit, white shirt, gray tie, boring.

The man closed the door and took a chair across from him. He put a
cardboard box on the floor and a manila file folder on the table. David could read his own name on the tab.

“You want to call a lawyer?”

“Do I need one?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“I’m a witness to the shooting. I wasn’t armed.”

“Oh, right, the shooting. At the warehouse where we found a body on the roof. And a federal agent killed by a Stinger missile attack.”

That last statement did startle David. He’d been handcuffed and put in the back of a patrol car for questioning while one of the uniforms took over with Dominic LaSalle. Half an hour later, he’d been uncuffed and was on his way to police headquarters in Atlantic City. No one had said anything about a dead federal agent or a Stinger missile.

“Am I a suspect?”

“Oh, yes.”

“But I wasn’t the one doing the shooting.”

“Who says that’s why you’re here?”

Okay . . .
David thought quickly. Army CID? From the moment he’d downloaded his first files from the DNA lab, he’d known they could apprehend him, even planned that when and if the moment arrived, he’d confess to everything, share the discoveries he’d made, and hope for the best—but that had been before Jess.

“Nothing to say?”

“I don’t know who you are.”

“Jack Lyle.” The man reached inside his jacket for a black leather badge case and flipped it open to show his ID. “Did Ironwood brief you on how to behave when you got picked up? Or maybe his lawyers did?”

Air force?
David watched uncomprehending as the agent returned the badge case to his inner pocket.

“Not that it matters,” Lyle continued, “but not only do we have proof that you’ve stolen government property, we know you’ve sold it. And the person you’ve sold it to . . . we can make a good case that he’s reselling it to foreign buyers. Ever hear of the Economic Espionage Act?”

David hadn’t.

Lyle drew the folder closer to himself, then leaned back in his chair as if settling in for a long discussion. “Why’d you abandon your Jeep last night?”

No matter who or what had pulled him in, David saw no harm in telling the truth, where he could.

“The engine died.”

“There was a kill-switch in it. A radio-controlled one.”

“I bought the car used. Must have been the previous owner’s.”

“Who was shooting at you?”

“People who wanted my computers.”

“Not at the warehouse. Before that. Under the overpass.”

That told David he’d been followed—by the air force.
Why?
“News to me.”

The agent tapped the folder again. “What about Vince Gilden?”

“The bookstore guy? He rents a place at the same warehouse I do.”

“You see him last night?”

“I saw his car. In the parking lot.”

“How about Mordecai Diego Rodrigues?”

The name was unknown to David. “Never heard of him.”

“Why didn’t you call for a tow truck? When your car died.”

“I don’t have Triple A. Can’t afford a tow truck.”

“How’d you leave the overpass?”

David studied the air force agent, wary. If the man had followed him, he’d know how he’d left the overpass.

“I caught a cab. On the overpass.”

“Where’s the receipt?”

David shrugged. “Didn’t ask for one.”

“Where’d you go?”

“To meet Dom at the airport.”

“Then what?”

“I wanted to show him my lab.”

“Who was the girl?”

“Didn’t catch her name. Ask Dom, she came with him.”

“He’s claiming amnesia from the trauma of being shot. Says he remembers nothing about last night. Doesn’t even remember you. So how long have you known him?”

David gambled that Jack Lyle had no way to contradict him—for now. “A long time. Friend of the family sort of thing.”

“What’s your explanation for last night?”

“Burglars after my lab stuff, and Dom surprised them in the act.”

The agent’s finger flicked his file. “Was it worth it?” he asked. “Thirty thousand dollars—for the rest of your life?”

David answered truthfully. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“You’re right. I don’t. When you’re convicted under the Economic
Espionage Act—and you will be—you’re facing fifteen years’ imprisonment. Per count. That’s forty-five years, minimum. No parole.”

David stayed calm. “They were
personnel
files, Agent Lyle. Not even complete ones. Colonel Kowinski can verify that I stripped the personally identifiable parts out. I only extracted geographical data from the sections about next of kin, family history.”

Lyle picked up the manila folder, as if preparing to go. “I don’t care if you lie to yourself, kid. I do care if you lie to me. You
stole
from the government while working for the government—a position of trust that you betrayed for money. You betrayed your country. That’s what a judge is going to care about. Same goes for me.”

David thought fast and hard. Long before he’d ever be tried, he’d die in custody if he couldn’t find a way to make this man release him.

Then it struck him: If Ironwood was suspected of selling his data to a foreign buyer, then Lyle had probably been listening in to all of Ironwood’s interminable calls to him. That meant he already knew what Ironwood was up to, so . . .

David had just been handed the advantage he needed. The air force needed something from him, even if Lyle couldn’t or wouldn’t say what that was.
What does matter is that he’ll have to trade my freedom for it.

“What do I have to do to walk out of here?” David said.

“I thought you’d never ask.” The agent picked up the cardboard box, put it on the table, then took from it a gleaming silver object the size of a paperback. It was the kind of hard drive that could be plugged into almost any computer to provide extra data storage.

He slid the drive across the table. “Use this to find out where and how your data’s being processed.”

David couldn’t believe his luck. Both he and the air force wanted the same thing.

In the light of the half moon, Merrit studied the two men with him on the beach. He’d probably have to kill one of them at the end of this conversation. He’d prefer killing both.

It was coming on midnight, and from more than a mile away blazed a kaleidoscope of light from Atlantic City’s boardwalk casinos. The night was cool after a hot and humid September day. Merrit’s black cotton trousers and shirt snapped against him in the breeze.

“C’mon, Merrit, we didn’t know she was under surveillance.” The speaker’s name was Griffith, and he was angry. Probably because he correctly suspected he wouldn’t be paid the outstanding half of his fee. “I mean, how could we?”

“By following her.” Merrit left the word “idiot” unsaid but implied. “Establish her routine. ID her bodyguards.”

“She only took one from the airport. Some guy named LaSalle.”

“If you knew that, you should’ve known about the other people keeping her under surveillance.”

“I know about them now, okay? I can still get to her.”

Merrit doubted that. As long as Jessica MacClary remained on her family’s private jet behind the layers of security at the airport, she was untouchable.

Amateurs,
Merrit thought. He couldn’t see any point in continuing this discussion.

The second man chimed in. “Listen, Nate—you know what my old man would say. You gotta let him try.”

Nathaniel Merrit didn’t like being called Nate, any more than he liked Holden Ironwood Jr. Still, Ironwood’s brat had given him the distraction he needed.

“Yeah, man, gimme a chance to earn out,” Griffith whined.

Merrit glanced up and down the beach to be certain their privacy would be undisturbed, that there were no unwanted watchers on the distant piers. “Okay, here’s the deal I’m willing to make.” He dropped his KA-BAR down his sleeve and into his palm as he saw his target relax.

“Pay attention,” he said.

Reflexively, Griffith and J.R. both eased closer.

Merrit locked eyes with the man he was going to kill and brought his knife up in a single sweeping motion to puncture the chest below the sternum and drive into the heart.

Except the target caught his hand first.

“No!”
Griffith cried.

A challenge.
Merrit’s sudden smile reflected his approval. A fair fight was preferable to a simple execution. He’d still win anyway.

Locked like lovers, he and Griffith pushed against each other, muscles rigid, straining, trembling with the effort, the blade easing toward one chest, then the other.

Close up, Merrit saw glistening sweat in every pore of Griffith’s face. Saw crazed determination in the man’s wide-open eyes. Smelled his sour breath—mints over something with garlic. His last meal.