The Guardian (12 page)

Saunders scrambled toward the woman lying on the floor and rolled her over. He reached up to her throat to feel for a pulse and found it. She was unconscious, but he could see her chest moving
rhythmically. He figured she would be all right, and he turned his attention back to her brother. He quickly moved toward the door, opening it carefully, his gun drawn. He spun around the
threshold, pointing his weapon down the hallway. There was no one there.

‘Shit,’ he muttered under his breath.

He ran to the stairway and headed down the three flights, careful on each landing to be sure the huge man wasn’t waiting to take a shot at him. Saunders came out into the first-floor
corridor in time to hear the front door slam shut. He ran the length of the vestibule and emerged onto the street as a dark blue four-door sedan spun its wheels, pulling away from the curb half a
block up. Saunders held his gun up and took a shooter’s stance. The car was seventy yards away now, and it was moving fast. Still, the street was empty and it was a clean shot, so Saunders
focused in on the silhouette behind the wheel. He drew in a breath, held it, and pulled the trigger.

The back window of the sedan exploded, and the driver lurched forward slightly, the car hitching to the left as the driver’s hand went up to his shoulder. After a moment, though, the car
came back into its lane, and continued to speed away. Saunders looked down the barrel of his gun again, but by then the car was taking a corner hard and fast, and there was no way to get a clear
shot.

He looked over at his own rental and considered giving chase, but realized it was pointless. The blue car would already be blocks away, and the chances of picking up the trail on the twisting
South Boston streets were low.

He put his gun away and shook his head in frustration as he walked back to the apartment building.

The door to the apartment was still open, and the woman remained on the floor. As he leaned over her, she opened her eyes.

She looked at him in confusion, recoiled, and pushed herself away from him toward the wall.

‘Where did he take him?’ Saunders demanded.

‘What?’ she responded, still dazed.

‘I need you to tell me where they went. Do you understand? Are you hurt? Are you shot?’

Her hand went to her head, and she pulled away again. He could see a large welt just to the side of her temple. The blood from the cut over her eye had slowed to a trickle, though. ‘I hit
my head,’ she said.

‘Are you hurt anywhere else?’ Saunders asked. He reached over and touched her shoulder, examining her for wounds. She didn’t pull away this time. Other than the bruise on her
head, she didn’t seem to have any injuries.

She looked around the room. ‘Charlie?’ she said.

‘Your brother, right?’ Saunders said. ‘The other guy took him. I need to know where. You need to tell me what’s going on.’

She looked up at Saunders, her eyes narrowing with suspicion. ‘You’re a cop?’

Saunders stared back at her. ‘Sort of.’

‘What does
sort of
mean?’

‘It means I work for the government, and I’m one of the good guys. It means you need to cooperate with me, or I can cause problems for you that you can’t even imagine.’
He was bluffing, but it seemed his only option.

‘I’ve got a hell of an imagination,’ she shot back.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Because your brother’s just been taken at gunpoint by a man who is crazy enough to take a shot at a police officer. Imagine what that man is going to do
to your brother if we don’t find him. You getting a clear picture? Are you going to help me?’

She looked at him. ‘Are you going to arrest my brother if I help you find him?’

Saunders shook his head. ‘I’m not that kind of cop.’

The bullet had shattered the back window of the sedan and passed through the top of the front seat, ricocheting off one of the internal metal supports, before grazing Sirus
Stillwell’s left shoulder. It had hit no bone, as far as he could tell, but it was causing a significant amount of pain. Not enough to impair his ability to use his arm, but enough to piss
him off. He was steering with his left hand as he kept the gun in his right hand aimed at Charlie Phelan.

‘I don’t understand, Sirus,’ Charlie said, his voice quavering. ‘What happened?’

Sirus said nothing. He swung the barrel of his gun into Charlie’s face. The metal collided with his already mangled nose, and Charlie cried out in pain as fresh blood erupted. ‘Aw,
fuck!’ he screamed. ‘I didn’t do nothing!’

Sirus swung the gun twice more, hitting Charlie in the side of the head. ‘Shut up, Charlie,’ he fumed. It made him feel better, even as his right hand sent shivers of pain up through
his arm. The shot that struck his gun had not hit his hand, but the force of the impact had jarred the hand badly. He wondered whether it had cracked a bone, but knew he had no time to worry about
it. He spent his life in combat, dealing with pain. ‘I don’t want to hear another fuckin’ word from you, understand? Next time I hear a word from you, I’m gonna put this gun
in your mouth and blow your tongue through the back of your goddamned throat.’

‘Yeah, Sirus,’ Charlie said, his hand to his face trying to stop the bleeding. ‘I understand.’ He pulled his shirt up and held the tail against his nose, which seemed to
have some effect.

They rode in silence for several minutes as Sirus steered the car out of Southie and along the edge of the downtown area, down by the Fort Point Channel. From there, he hopped onto Storrow
Drive, and took the exit for Memorial out toward Cambridge.

‘Where are you taking me?’ Charlie asked. Sirus shot him a look, raising his gun slightly. Charlie flinched like he’d been hit, and covered his mouth. Sirus guessed he was
thinking about the threat to shoot out his tongue, and Phelan’s fear was gratifying. That specific threat was an empty one, though. Sirus needed Charlie to talk.

They pulled off Memorial Drive and onto Massachusetts Avenue, headed north toward the heart of Cambridge, passing the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with its great dome looking out
across the Charles River. From there, they sliced through the residential neighborhoods where the houses of students and teachers and government workers mingled with Title 8 subsidized housing. It
was a melting pot like few others in the greater Boston metropolitan area.

The turn was just before Central Square, in a little neighborhood thick with immigrants from India and Pakistan and Iraq. The tensions of the Middle East simmered among the displaced of each
ethnic contingent. Muslims and Hindus warred in café conversations over Kashmir; Sunis and Kurds regularly came to blows over the gassings of the 1990s; Islamic traditionalists and reformers
argued over the application of Sharia law. It was, in many ways, a microcosm of those rivalries and hatreds that had plagued the Middle East for centuries.

Sirus guided the car past a bar called The Holy Land, where pierced youths waited on a line for tickets to a concert featuring some indie-alternative rock band scheduled for that evening, and
continued two blocks west toward a small brick mosque that looked like a recreational center from the 1970s. He pulled into the driveway of a small house on the far side of the mosque, which led
around to a garage in back. The trees and shrubs at the edges of the property had been left to grow wild, providing good cover from the street and neighbors.

Sirus stopped the car and turned off the engine. He looked at Charlie, and said, ‘Get out.’ Phelan looked even smaller and more pathetic than Sirus remembered, and the dried blood
under his nose and on his chin gave him the look of a child who had just finished a raspberry ice-cream cone on a hot summer day. Sirus could see the streaks where tears had been falling from
Phelan’s eyes.

‘What happens now?’ Phelan asked.

Sirus stared hard at his hostage. ‘That all depends on you, Charlie,’ he said.

‘I’ll handle it.’ Jack Saunders was hurrying toward his car, talking on his cell phone with Lawrence Ainsworth. Charlie Phelan’s sister was by his side,
step by step, the concern evident on her face.

‘You really think there’s something to this?’ his boss asked.

‘Phelan’s name was on the memory stick, and when I show up here some genetically engineered GI takes a shot at me,’ Saunders said. ‘Hard to believe that’s a
coincidence.’

‘True,’ Ainsworth agreed. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to find him. I’ve got his sister with me.’

‘Is she cooperating?’

Saunders looked briefly at Cianna Phelan. He’d given her a moment to wash the blood from her face, and apply a butterfly bandage to the cut. Even with that triage, though, she was still a
mess. ‘I think so. She was involved in the dust-up at her apartment and took a couple of good knocks. She’s got a nasty bump on her head, and she seems a little disoriented, but I think
she’ll be cooperative. She’s clearly worried about her little brother.’

‘Word on the grapevine is she’s a looker. That true?’

Saunders glanced at her briefly. ‘Tough to tell at the moment. Maybe under different circumstances. What grapevine?’

Ainsworth didn’t answer the question. ‘Be careful with her.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She’s more dangerous than you think. That’s the report I’ve gotten from both her commanders in Afghanistan and at Leavenworth.’

‘You want to be a little more specific?’

Ainsworth paused. ‘I can’t.’

Saunders said, ‘Thanks, that’s helpful.’

‘My hands are tied.’

‘What about other assistance? Any chance we can bring in someone else to help with this?’ Saunders asked. ‘FBI or the locals?’

‘There is no
this
,’ Ainsworth said emphatically. ‘You’re on suspension, remember? You’re only in Boston for vacation.’

‘Right. That reminds me, I need to pick up some postcards. You like those wide-angle aerial shots, right?’

Ainsworth ignored the sarcasm. ‘You need to keep this clean and contained, and make sure there are no fuck-ups. If you get into real trouble give me a call, and I’ll see if I can
send in some cavalry.’

‘You don’t consider getting shot at “real trouble”?’

‘He missed, didn’t he?’

‘You’re all heart, Skip. I’ll call you when I know more.’

‘Jack, I was serious about what I said before,’ Ainsworth said. ‘Be careful with the girl. I don’t care how good-looking she might seem in other circumstances. I
don’t want to lose you like I lost Sam.’

‘Who is he?’

Saunders was sitting in his rented car with Cianna Phelan. He turned the key and the engine came to life. He watched her as she clenched and unclenched her fists. The bruise on her face had
darkened to a deep purple, and her clothes were disheveled, but her eyes blazed as they darted back and forth.

‘I told you, he’s my brother.’

‘The other guy,’ Saunders said impatiently. He pulled out into the street, and as he gathered speed, he could hear the sound of sirens approaching. He looked into his rear-view
mirror and saw two squad cars pull up in front of Phelan’s apartment. He kept driving.

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

She was lying; that much was clear. He didn’t mind so much when people lied, as long as their lies were obvious. ‘Well, let’s start with what we can put together,’
Saunders said. ‘He’s in the Army.’

She looked at him. ‘How do you know that?’

‘His gun was a Walther PK90; standard military issue in active theaters. And the car he was driving was the same blue piece-of-shit four-door sedan the Army uses when it doesn’t want
to announce its presence openly to the public. He probably picked it up from the motor-pool at one of the bases around here, which suggests he’s still active. Charlie just got out of the
Army, right? And you were in the Army, too, at least technically, before your discharge from Leavenworth.’

She looked at him warily. ‘You seem to know a lot.’

‘I wasn’t here by accident. I came here looking for your brother.’

‘Why?’

He decided to stick to an abbreviated version of the truth. ‘He was mentioned prominently in a communiqué from a terrorist network we intercepted. We figured it was worth looking
into so we could find out what his involvement with them is.’

‘You think he’s involved with terrorists? Charlie?’ She rolled her eyes in disbelief. ‘That’s what your investigation is about?’

‘It’s not an investigation,’ Saunders said. ‘Like I said, we thought it was worth checking up on. I wasn’t expecting to get shot at.’

‘The guy who shot at you isn’t a terrorist.’ She looked away. ‘Not in the way you mean, at least.’

‘I thought you didn’t know who he was?’

She looked sharply at him for a moment, then lowered her eyes. ‘My brother said his name is Sirus Stillwell. He knew him in Afghanistan.’

‘Which brings us back to where we were before. Your brother was discharged recently.’

She nodded. ‘Two weeks ago. He showed up here yesterday.’

‘What’s his connection to Mr Clean?’

She hesitated.

Saunders said, ‘Like I told you before, I’m not looking to jam him up, but if we’re going to find him, you’ve got to give me some information.’

‘Charlie said Stillwell is a thief. He ran a group that was stealing antiquities from Afghanistan. At least, that’s what Charlie told me.’

‘And Charlie was involved with the group?’

‘He wasn’t involved. Not really. He said he just looked the other way when some things came through his depot, and made sure they got delivered where they were supposed
to.’

‘That’s it?’ Saunders demanded. She nodded, but he shook his head. ‘If that was it, none of us would be here. What else is there?’

‘Nothing,’ she insisted.

He grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her. ‘You’re not doing him any favors, you know that, right? My guess is that if we don’t find him in the next five hours, he’ll
show up at the morgue. Or worse, they’ll never find his body. Either way, the only chance he has to make it through whatever
this
is alive depends on us. So I need to know everything
you know. You got that?’