The Discarded (7 page)

Seven years earlier, after he had left the girl named Tessa with the pickup team in Amsterdam, he had left the espionage life and traded his townhome in eastern San Diego for a small bungalow in the Pacific Beach area. He had planned on leading a quiet life—jogging along the beach, reading books, and drinking more than his fair share of wine. He’d even thought he could volunteer some of his time at the tutoring center where he’d first spotted Orlando before taking her on as an apprentice. And while he ended up doing all of those things, none could push away the memories of Tessa.

“Abe!” she called to him. “Abe! Abe! Abe!”

Whether he was asleep or awake, it didn’t matter. She called.

“Don’t leave.”

But he had, and it had been the worst decision of his life.

Six months into his retirement, he had called Eli.

“I need to know what happened to her,” he’d told his friend. “I need to know she’s all right.”

Eli had been hesitant, but said he would do what he could.

For a while, Abraham checked in with him every week, but the analyst would always tell him he had found nothing new. Operation Overtake was sealed tight. To keep from annoying his friend too much, Abraham cut his calls down to once a month, and then once a year on the anniversary of when he’d last seen Tessa.

With the years stacking up, he had come to believe Eli would never find anything. But finally his old friend had, and Abraham could barely keep his hands from shaking at the prospect of learning what it was.

He found the Azure Waves Hotel a few blocks from the beach and pulled into the lot. It was a decent-sized place, with a trio of buildings surrounding what he figured was a pool area. And while it was no Four Seasons, it seemed like a nice old resort, someplace where families on a budget would be more than content to stay.

Abraham climbed out of the car and headed over to the lobby entrance.

The interior sported a retro 1960s décor, complete with a few scattered lava lamps and three plastic egg chairs. A few guests were gathered around a display of brochures, and some kids were sitting on a couch staring down at game consoles in their hands.

“Welcome to the Azure Waves Hotel. How can I help you?” the male receptionist asked when Abraham approached. The receptionist’s name tag identified him as Devon.

“Good morning,” Abraham said. “I’m meeting a friend of mine. I believe he’s staying here.”

Devon smiled. “Your friend’s name?”

“Charles Young.”

The receptionist typed it into his computer and looked at the screen. After a moment, his helpful expression turned into a puzzled one.

“Everything all right?” Abraham asked.

Devon donned a quick smile. “One moment,” he said, and then stepped through a doorway along the back wall.

Abraham did not like the look of this. He plopped his arms on the counter as if bored, and sneaked a look at the computer screen. The name Charles Young was there, with the room number 721 beside it. There was some text in a box lower on the screen, but the font size was too small for him to read.

Soon, the receptionist reappeared, bringing with him an older blonde woman in a business suit.

“Good morning, sir,” the woman said. “I’m Keri, the assistant manager. I understand you were looking for one of our guests.”

“Yeah. Charles Young. I’m supposed to meet him here. Is there a problem?”

“Are you a friend of Mr. Young’s?”

“A good friend. What’s going on?”

“I’m sorry, Mr….” She paused, looking at Abraham.

“Durrie,” he said, his old partner’s name the first that came to mind.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Durrie. Mr. Young was taken to the hospital last night.”

Abraham inwardly tensed. “Why?”

“From what I understand, it was a heart attack.”

Heart attack? Though heart attacks
could
strike a thirtysomething person like Eli, the timing seemed extremely suspicious.

“Do you know what hospital he was taken to?” he asked.

“I would think Tampa General, but…” The woman looked at the computer. “Huh, there’s no mention here, but Tampa General is closest.”

“Who found him?”

“Actually, he was very lucky. Someone was visiting when it occurred and called an ambulance right away.”

“So your staff didn’t call the ambulance.”

“No, sir.”

“Do you have the name of the person who was visiting him?”

She hesitated, then said, “I’m not sure I should be giving that information out.”

“Mr. Young is my friend,” Abraham said. “Chances are, I know his visitor, too. And if Charles isn’t at Tampa General, then this person will probably know where he is.”

She thought about it for a moment before glancing back at the monitor. “Tina Dotson,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said. “I appreciate the help. Could you give me directions to the hospital?”

Her look of discomfort shifted back to one of sympathy. “Of course.”

__________

A
BRAHAM SPOTTED THE
watcher as he made his way back to his car. A young guy, sitting in a sedan parked in a spot that gave him a clear view of the hotel entrance. Abraham caught the faint glint of a camera lens a second before the man lowered the device into his lap.

Had the guy snapped a shot of Abraham, or had he decided it wasn’t worth it?

Abraham was confident he looked sufficiently old enough that even if a picture had been taken, the watcher wouldn’t consider him much of a threat. Just to be safe, though, Abraham drove out of the lot at the expected slow speed for someone his age, and turned in the opposite direction of the hospital. For good measure, he left his blinker on far longer than necessary.

Three blocks away, when he could no longer see the resort, he worked his way over to a parallel road and drove to Tampa General as fast as caution would allow. Instead of heading inside, though, he parked in the lot and retrieved his laptop from the overnight bag in the passenger seat.

“All right,” he said after the computer had booted up. “Let’s see if you’re here or not.”

He hacked into the hospital administration’s wireless network and navigated his way into the patient database, where he searched for patients named Charles Young. He wasn’t surprised to find there was no one by that name.

He contemplated searching again, this time using Eli’s real name, but decided it would be better not to have it noted by the system. He couldn’t chance activating a digital tripwire that would let someone know of his attempt.

Minimizing the hospital’s interface, he opened a new window and used Tampa General’s network to connect to the Internet. From there, he made his way to the website for Azure Waves. As he had hoped, there was both a public section and an employee-only area. Though he’d been out of the business for seven years, he had done his best to keep up with the latest innovations in hardware and software, so breaking through the firewall into the private area was like walking through air.

Once there, it took him less than thirty seconds to find the incident report for Eli’s “heart attack.” According to the night manager, Charles Young had been taken from the hotel at approximately 11:20 p.m.

Abraham was about to close the window when he noticed that the manager had also entered the name of the ambulance company. An unexpected bonus. Abraham copied the name—Tobin Ambulance Services—and pasted it into a holding file, then returned to the hospital database.

A trip to Tampa General in an emergency vehicle with siren and lights blazing would have taken no more than five minutes. To give himself a cushion in case the time in the hotel report wasn’t accurate, Abraham examined the emergency room admittance records from 10:40 p.m. until 12:30 a.m.

Plenty of people had come in, but none were heart-attack victims matching Eli’s description. Though Abraham was pretty sure of what he’d find, he accessed the admittance records of other hospitals in Tampa and neighboring St. Petersburg. Eli was at none of them.

Yesterday, when Eli had called, he’d seemed scared. Had someone come for him?

Need to get a look through his hotel room
, Abraham thought.
See if there are signs of a struggle or worse.

First, though, he copied the name of the ambulance company into Google’s search box and located the company’s website. Unfortunately, unlike the hotel’s, this company’s business records were not kept on the same server. He entered the company’s address into his GPS, and seventeen minutes later was parked at the curb right in front of the Tobin Ambulance Services facility.

Sure enough, the company’s records were kept on an internal system Abraham was able to access through the company’s “secure” Wi-Fi network. Tobin’s schedule showed no mentions of any trips to Azure Waves Hotel, but there was an entry for a long-distance hire earlier that evening. Under the notes was a mention that the vehicle in question—ambulance 072—would be gone for up to twenty-four hours, and that it was a vehicle-only hire, with crew supplied by the client.

That had to be it.

He found the vehicle database and clicked on
AMBULANCE 072
. There were maintenance records, supply requests, and—as he’d hoped to find—a list of vehicle equipment. Like many companies these days, Tobin Ambulance Services had installed transponders in their ambulances to keep track of each vehicle’s whereabouts. An unintended benefit was that the transponder would also allow someone to track where a particular ambulance had gone within the last twenty-four hours.

While Abraham could accomplish quite a bit on his laptop, this was not something for which he had the appropriate software. He would need help, and there was really only one person he could ask.

The line rang a single time before being answered by a short message.

As soon as the beep sounded, he said, “Orlando, it’s me.”

__________

G
LORIA CLARK—KNOWN
as Tina Dotson to the Azure Waves night manager—reached for her phone. A moment earlier, it had buzzed twice fast, once slow. A text, but not just any text. The message on the screen read:

TG C.Y. fl trp 11:26 a

It was the digital flag she’d buried in the Tampa General Hospital database to notify her if anyone performed a search for a Charles Young, the name Eli Becker had been using at the Azure Waves. Apparently, three minutes earlier, someone had done just that. Which meant the surveillance she’d set up outside the hotel had been a waste of time. Those interested in the CIA analyst had somehow learned about Becker’s supposed heart attack and were checking area hospitals remotely.

She had thought that might happen, but had hoped it would take at least a couple of days, if not a week, before someone came looking for Becker. Instead, only twelve hours had passed. An uncomfortable cushion at best.

She frowned, knowing they would have to move again soon, likely delaying their progress. The client wouldn’t be particularly happy, but she’d waited this long, so what was a few more hours?

But leaving soon was not the same as leaving right away. Gloria retrieved the special bag and went into the other room, where King and Nolan were waiting.

“Call Andres,” she said to King. “Tell him I don’t need him in Tampa anymore and to get his ass up here.” She looked at Nolan. “You’re with me.”

Together they headed toward the back room where Becker was locked away. It was time to find out what the son of a bitch knew.

CHAPTER
8

O
RLANDO’S SON, GARRETT,
was still at school, so the only people home when she and Quinn entered were Mr. and Mrs. Vu, the Vietnamese couple who took care of the household and watched Garrett when Orlando was away.

“Welcome home, Jonathan,” Mr. Vu said.

“You look hungry,” the man’s wife noted. “I make pho special for you. Come, come.” She motioned for Quinn and Orlando to follow her to the kitchen.

“Maybe later,” Orlando told her. “We have some work we need to do so we’ll be up in the office.”

“But he just fly a long trip,” Mrs. Vu said.

“No problem,” Mr. Vu told his wife. “You can bring to them.”

While Mrs. Vu looked annoyed, she made no further argument and headed toward the back of the house, her husband following.

Quinn and Orlando went upstairs to the room Orlando used as an office at the front of the shotgun house. Where one desk had once been, there were now two. Quinn pulled his chair close to Orlando’s as she set down her phone and played the message through the speaker.

“Orlando, it’s me,” Abraham said. Though he was trying to sound calm, there was an urgency in his voice. “I need your help. Just a little research so it should be easy. It’s time sensitive, though. I really need you to call me back as soon as you get this. Thanks. I’ll talk to you soon.”

Quinn frowned. “He didn’t come out of retirement, did he?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

She tapped
CALL BACK
. The first ring didn’t even finish before Abraham answered. “Hello?”

“You called?” she said.

“Thank God. I was starting to think that maybe you didn’t get my message.”

“I’ve got Quinn here with me.”

A beat. “Johnny?”

Only two people had ever called Quinn that. The other was dead. But while his mentor Durrie usually had a sneer in his voice when he’d said it, Abraham had always used the name with respect.

“Hello, Abraham,” Quinn said.

“What’s this about needing some help?” Orlando asked.

“I, um, well, I’m not sure if, um…” Abraham’s voice trailed off.

“Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”

“I was kind of thinking I could talk to you alone.”

“Alone?” she said. “You know I’ll tell Quinn whatever you tell me.”

“Even if I ask that you keep it to yourself?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitating.

“It’s okay,” Quinn said, rising from his chair. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I’ll step out for a minute.”