Smoke (37 page)

He turned around and extended a hand. “Come on. What are you waiting for?”

Though her feet felt like they were made out of lead all of a sudden, though something inside her resisted, she followed him. She always followed him.

T
he moon shone through his window and bathed his legs in its milky light. He was watching for her, the phone in his hand. He could hear the laugh track from whatever his brother was watching on the television downstairs; his family didn’t want to leave him alone now. All he wanted was to be alone and wait for Lily in peace. If it was Lily he had seen at all. If there had been anyone there on the street outside his house. He wondered absently if he was losing his mind. He didn’t think so; he still felt like himself, if a little numb, a little emptied out.

He’d tried to call Jesamyn but she hadn’t picked up the phone and
he hadn’t left a message. He’d checked his messages and found three from Lydia Strong. The last one had been left just a few hours earlier.

“Don’t worry,” she’d said. “We’re in Florida. We’re going to find Lily and—” The cell phone connection had cut out before she’d finished her message. He wondered if she knew that he’d been accused of murder and arrested. He thought about calling her back but he didn’t know what to say. The phone had sat limp in his hand for the better part of an hour while he scrolled through all his options, rejected each, and eventually wound up doing nothing except sitting by the window, waiting.

“What are you doing, bro?” asked Theo, who had appeared in the doorway. He looked worried. No, that wasn’t right. He looked scared.

“Just sitting here.”

Theo nodded in the solemn way he had. “Why don’t you try to get some sleep?”

“I will,” said Matt.

Theo nodded again and put his hands in the pockets of his jeans and pulled his shoulders up, took a deep breath. “It’s going to be okay, you know?”

“I know.”

Matt was older and bigger than Theo, but Theo had always been the one to take care of him. When Matt was taunted at school for his height and awkwardness, it was Theo who always took up the fight. When Matt was tortured by his shyness around girls, it was Theo who advised him. Matt felt guilty that Theo had to sit on his couch while his wife was home alone.

“Go home, man,” said Matt. “You don’t need to be here. I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

“I don’t want you to be alone, Mateo,” his brother said sadly. He’d been a sensitive, compassionate kid who’d grown into a kind and caring adult. Matt was proud of Theo.

“I’m okay. Really. I’m just going to go to bed. Before? I was probably just dreaming. The stress of everything, maybe just got to me for a minute. But it’s fine, you know. I’m fine.”

He tried to make himself look normal by sitting up straight and smiling. But from the look on Theo’s face he suspected that it wasn’t
successful. Theo walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder, bent down and kissed him on the head.

“Just call me if you see anything else, you know, before you go running out into the street like that?”

“I promise,” said Matt, inwardly breathing a sigh of relief.

Theo gave him a quick pat on the back and moved backward toward the door.

“You sure—?” he started to say, but Matt lifted a hand to stop him.

“I’m sure, Theo. Thanks.”

When he heard the door close downstairs, he stood and quickly got dressed, pulling on a pair of jeans, a gray wool sweater and a pair of Timberlands. He took his wallet from the dresser and from a lock box in the back of his closet he removed his off-duty revolver, a five-shot Smith & Wesson. He moved quickly to his office and took out a file that contained all his banking records, his life insurance policy, of which his parents were the beneficiaries, and all of his investments. There was another file that contained his will. They were papers most cops had in order, someplace easy to find. He left them all on the kitchen table. There was enough, he thought, to cover his bond if he didn’t make it back. He pulled on his leather jacket and walked out the back door of his house. He told himself not to look back and he didn’t.

T
oo many bodies and a struggling old window air-conditioning unit made the hotel room too warm. Lydia shed the tailored black gabardine jacket she’d been wearing and laid it on the bed beside her. She pulled her hair back into a twist at the base of her neck as Special Agent John Grimm spoke. She liked him. He was sarcastic and tough, but not disrespectful of why they’d come to Florida.

“We first heard about Trevor Rhames in 1994,” said Grimm, crossing his legs and tapping a finger on the tabletop. His eyes were on the satellite image of the New Day compound. “He was arrested in the former Yugoslavia for selling arms to the Bosnians after the UN had imposed the embargo that pretty much left them at the mercy of the Serbian nationalists.”

“There are plenty of people who think the UN never should have
imposed that embargo,” said Dax, a little defensively, thought Lydia. John Grimm gave him a long, hard look.

“Anyway,” said Grimm, looking away from him and turning his eyes to Jeffrey. “He was found to be working with a company called Kintex.”

“The arms company owned by the Bulgarian government,” said Jeffrey with a frown. “How did he wind up working with them?”

“It’s a bit of a mystery,” said Grimm. “Rhames, as you probably know, is an American. You might not know that he was a decorated Marine, honorably discharged from service after touring in Rwanda, Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia. For a couple of years, he kept a very low profile, worked in security systems in the private sector with the training he’d received in the Marines. He dropped off the radar for a while, then he turned up overseas in Bulgaria.

“Bulgaria has been notorious for decades as an anything-goes arms bazaar, selling things like assault rifles, mortars, antitank mines, ammunition, all kinds of explosives to anyone who has the money to buy, no matter what their agenda,” said Grimm. “They’ve supplied—utterly without code or conscience—arms in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Libya, regions riven with conflict, rebel governments guilty of the most heinous civil-rights violations.

“The government keeps trying to get it under control because they want very badly to become part of NATO and the European Union,” he continued. “But the arms business is so entrenched in that culture that it’s almost impossible to be rid of it without bankrupting the economy. Then of course there’s all the corruption.”

“Okay,” said Lydia, thinking this was the first she’d heard of Bulgaria’s weapons activities. “So he wound up there doing what?”

“We’re not sure exactly. But he was apprehended during an Interpol sting where Kintex was selling guns to the Bosnians in direct violation of the UN embargo. He was extradited to the United States. He was charged and indicted for illegal weapons sales and did two years in a military prison.”

“That’s all you get for something like that?” asked Lydia. “Two years?”

Grimm leaned back and crossed his arms. “His spotless military
record and lack of criminal history helped. And he made a deal. He gave up some of the security codes he’d established for Kintex, some names and some upcoming deals, which allowed Interpol to intercept some illegal shipments. Anyway, after he was released he disappeared completely for a few years. Then he turned up working for a company called Sandline, a Privatized Military Company incorporated in the Bahamas but with bases of operation all over world.”

“What’s a Privatized Military Company?” said Lydia with a frown. “Like mercenaries?”

“In a sense,” said Grimm. “More like companies that facilitate arms deals, consult with ‘legitimate’ or democratically elected governments being threatened by rebel factions, provide trained soldiers for ‘conflict resolution,’ usually elite former military men from around the world.”

“For a price,” said Lydia.

“For a
huge
price,” said Grimm with a nod.

Her eyes fell on Dax, who was examining with great fascination the floor between his feet. He raised his eyes to her, saw her looking at him, and quickly looked away. Lydia held back a smile.

“They work best for small conflicts,” said Jeffrey. “Where only a couple of thousand men are needed for a job. But if they operate without conscience or in violation of UN accords, then they can have a destabilizing effect. You know, like arming rebels against a democratically elected government. But at their best, PMCs are effective for hostage negotiations or rescue operations, disaster cleanup, monitoring elections, sort of small, dirty jobs.”

Lydia nodded absently, the wheels already turning as she tried to connect this new information to what they already had.

“How do you go from being a mercenary to being a preacher?” Lydia asked.

“It’s a good question. He joined The New Day in 1998 after injuries he sustained on an op for Sandline. He almost died from multiple gunshot wounds and broken bones. He took some bullets and got blasted out a third-floor window in Kosovo. There was no reason for him to survive but he did. And apparently, during a grueling convalescence at a rehab center in Florida, he found religion.”

“Or it found him,” said Jeffrey.

Grimm nodded. “He was ripe for recruitment. Injured, likely depressed, no family or personal connections. Rhames was orphaned at the age of ten when his parents died in a house fire that he escaped; he went to live on a working farm belonging to his uncle and aunt.

“By all accounts, he was happy enough there. With a genius-level IQ, he did well in school, but was a bit of a loner. Unfortunately, a year after Rhames arrived, his aunt and uncle died in a house fire that the boy escaped.”

Jeffrey and Lydia exchanged a look. They knew too well the childhood signs of psychosis. Arson was a big one.

“Suspicious? Yes,” said Grimm, reading their faces. “But there was never any evidence that Rhames had started those fires. He had no other history of violent or aberrant behavior. He was sent to a state-run orphanage, the money and the land left to him by his parents and his uncle kept in a trust for him until he turned eighteen and was emancipated from the system. It was a fair amount of money for a young man, enough to go to college and start a life. But he chose to join the Marines.

“He excelled in the Corps. I mean, he was the best of the best. He became a part of an elite unit that doesn’t officially have a name. And his activities, until his honorable discharge in 1981, are classified. There aren’t many people who know what he did during that time.”

“Okay, so he went into the Marines, was discharged in 1981. He was off the radar for a while, you have no idea what he was doing until he showed up selling arms in 1994. He was arrested and went to prison for two years. After which point he went to work for Sandline. He was injured and almost killed but somehow recovered and wound up running The New Day?” asked Jeffrey.

Grimm shook his head. “Well, I wouldn’t say ‘runs’ it exactly,” he said, leaning forward. “It’s a big multinational organization, with tentacles reaching into a number of different business arenas, real estate, the entertainment industry, banking. Rhames isn’t a businessman. He’s a tactician, a security specialist, a soldier. We don’t know enough about his military career but we do know that he’s trained in what the military refers to as ‘psych ops,’ the ability to manipulate and control an enemy through brainwashing and mind games. What he does for the organization is unclear.”

“So who shot him in Kosovo?” asked Jeffrey.

“Who shot him, how he survived and got back to Florida are all unknowns. The unofficial word was that Sandline wanted to be rid of Rhames,” said Grimm. “He was unpredictable and becoming a liability; they doubted his loyalty. A couple of security breaches led the higherups to suspect someone was selling codes and information. But he knew too much to just serve him his walking papers.”

“So they arranged for his termination, but he survived?” asked Jeff.

Grimm nodded.

“Why haven’t they come after him again?” asked Lydia.

“Who says they haven’t? They just haven’t succeeded in getting to him. In fact, you three got closer to him than anyone ever has. As you know, his security is very tight.”

It was clear now why Rhames had spent so much money on his security system.

“I just walked in through the front door,” said Lydia.

“What did you see in there?” asked Grimm.

“A guy with a lot of personal power giving desperate people some hope, some spaced-out looking people in tunics, and a couple of big bald guys in leather.”

“On security monitors I saw people in five-point restraints, on feeding tubes, wide awake,” said Jeffrey.

Grimm didn’t seem surprised. “We’ve been on you since that night.”

“Why?” asked Jeffrey. “What do you want from us?”

“I’m glad you asked,” said Grimm.

I
was sitting out here, waiting to go in when the van pulled up. Look. It’s still there.”

They’d parked the GTO on Fourteenth Avenue and walked up Sixty-Sixth Street, stopping at the corner across from Clifford Stern’s residence. Jesamyn looked at her watch.

“How long ago?” she asked.

Dylan shrugged. “Like five or six hours.”

“Just sitting there all this time. Why?”

“Maybe they’re trying to make sure he stays put. At first, I thought
maybe they were going to head in there … kill him, take him, whatever. But then I thought, why? If what you say is true and The New Day is trying to frame Stenopolis, they need his testimony.”

“Right.”

“I waited here for hours and then I came to find you.”

“Why didn’t you just call me?”

He looked down at his feet. “I tried; you didn’t answer,” he said. “And I was afraid you wouldn’t come if I just left a message for you to meet me here.”

She looked at him, then back at the van. “You didn’t go across the street to see what was going on in there?”

He shook his head, turned his eyes on her. “I didn’t want to give myself up, in case they were looking to make some kind of a move.”

“And you didn’t see anyone exit the van?” Another shake of the head. She didn’t see anyone in the driver’s seat.