Veil of Civility: A Black Shuck Thriller (Declan McIver Series) (61 page)

"I don't know any Ruslan Baktayev!" Kemiss spat, as he mustered what seemed like his last scrap of intestinal fortitude.

The temperature in the room had to be nearing combustion levels and the consistent roar of the propane heater was clearly having the effect Declan had intended. The entire environment had been designed to be as stressful as possible and Kemiss was proving to be every bit the pansy Declan had thought he would be. "I never said his name was Ruslan, Senator. Checkmate."

Kemiss' eyes opened and darted around the room between Declan, the two masked men and his wife, who was again making muffled pleas.

"I think your wife has something to say to you," Declan said, as he walked over and pulled back the tape on her mouth.

"You son of a bitch!" Mary Ellen Kemiss screamed. "You've been sitting here all this time and you never even thought to ask about your children!"

Kemiss' eyes darted to his wife as Declan placed the tape back over her mouth.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Senator," he said. "Did you think I was going to do all of these things to you?"

Across the room, Nazari ripped down the tarp that had been concealing the far side of the garage. Keniss watched in horror as two small people sitting on metal chairs were revealed, their wrists bound behind their backs and black hoods covering their heads. Each wore only a pair of white underpants that were clearly soaked with sweat that ran from their pale skin.

Kemiss drew in a labored breath and his eyes went wide as he saw his two sons seated at the other end of the garage. Declan reached for the claw hammer.

"I'll tell you what I know!" the senator screamed. "I know who Ruslan Baktayev is and I know that he killed Abaddon Kafni. I know you're innocent, I swear! Seth Castellano and I set you up after you witnessed Baktayev leaving the scene of Kafni's death. We had to keep anyone from finding out he was in the country."

"Why kill Kafni?"

"Because that was the price Baktayev wanted for doing business. He had a personal vendetta for something, I don't know what, and he would only do what was wanted of him if we helped him kill Kafni."

"Why Baktayev?"

"Because he had a history in committing the kind of terror that was planned, he was behind the Beslan School crisis and nobody would think twice about him doing it again. It was a suicide mission, a martyrdom for Allah, so he wouldn't be around for interrogation. He planned the entire thing himself in 2004 before he was arrested in Russia. We only got him out of jail and asked him to pick up where he left off."

"And who set up the bomb at the Barton Center?"

"We did. The bomb was a distraction to get Kafni evacuated, but we were hoping he would be killed and that Baktayev wouldn't get the opportunity to murder him the way he was planning. It didn't work. Kafni escaped and you followed him to where he was staying."

"Who were the men who set up the bomb? Were they the same men that came after me?"

"Castellano hired them. He knew them from somewhere, I don't know where. He hired them to set up the bomb in the trunk of the security car and to distract Kafni's men. After he interviewed you and realized you knew who Baktayev was, he sent them to kill you and your wife."

"Why did you do all of this?"

"It wasn't my idea. Someone else came to me with it months ago."

"Who?"

Kemiss shook his head as if he wasn't going to tell.

"Who?" Declan yelled, picking up the claw hammer.

Kemiss licked his lips. "A man named Kreft. Lukas Kreft. He planned and financed the entire thing. He came to me for help in getting Baktayev into the country undetected and getting the documents he needed to plan the assault."

Declan had thought about the possibility of Kemiss not being the only one involved. Was what he was saying true or just an attempt to shift blame by a corrupt old man trying desperately to separate himself from the evil he was involved in? At this point in time it didn't really matter. All of that could be ironed out once the plot was stopped and being officially investigated.

"I only have one more question for you, Senator, and your answer will determine the end of our time together. Is it going to end quietly or with the tortured screams of your young boys? It's up to you. Where is Ruslan Baktayev?"

Kemiss did his best to spit at Declan, but little in the way of moisture came out. "What makes you think I know that? Kreft's not an idiot. He kept that a secret, even from me. He knows who the weak links in the chain are. He blackmailed us. Castellano was gay. We were lovers, have been for years. If people knew, they'd think he got his position in the FBI by sleeping with me. Kreft used him to control the investigation and he used me to gain unrestricted access to the U.S. He set up illegal donations to my last campaign and threatened to reveal them. I'd have been ruined."

"You're lying, Senator. The stigma of being gay went out with the last century. And would you really choose your career over the lives of hundreds of innocent American children? I don't believe there is a chain, so how can there be any weak links? You're attempting to distance yourself from this whole thing and I'm getting very impatient."

Nazari made a loud exhibit of removing the now cherry-red fire poker from the grill of the propane heater as he stood, turning towards the seated boys.

"One last chance, Senator," Declan said. "Where is Ruslan Baktayev?"

Kemiss writhed in his seat and closed his eyes. "In a vacant warehouse in Dundalk, Maryland. The sign on the door says Broughman's Welding Service, but you're too late. He's already been activated. He and his men are on their way to a junior high school in Victoria, Virginia. Those people are going to die and if you try to stop him, you will too!"

Declan exploded. Unable to contain his hatred for the man seated in front of him he grabbed Kemiss by the shoulders of his shirt and jerked him out of the chair, shoving him hard across the garage. Kemiss stumbled uncontrollably over a trash bin full of garden tools. Declan advanced on him again, but was stopped suddenly.

"Enough!" Okan Osman shouted as he tried to hold Declan back, his feet sliding against the smooth concrete floor. "We still need him!"

The fire poker clattered to the floor as Altair Nazari joined Osman, taking hold of Declan around the neck and locking his arm in place with his hand. Declan's nostrils flared and his eyes bored into Kemiss as the politician looked up from the ground, his nose bleeding. Slowly Declan relaxed. "Get him out of here, now."

Nazari kept his hold as Osman let go and jerked Kemiss to his feet, pushing him quickly past Declan to the kitchen door, which he unlocked with a key before dragging the senator through and disappearing into the house.

"Alright," Nazari said. "Alright?"

Declan nodded and Nazari let go. They each took a deep breath and Nazari moved to the propane tank heater, turning a black knob on top of it until it popped loudly and the roaring stopped. Next he moved to one of the garage doors and pressed a button next to it, allowing the door to open about twelve inches before stopping it. Immediately a cold rush of air flooded in and it seemed like the temperature dropped dramatically.

Declan looked around as Nazari continued moving around the room turning off the makeshift spotlights that had been used on Kemiss. In seconds the room began to look again like the suburbanite three car garage they had found earlier in the evening when they had arrived at the Kemiss property. A muffled protest drew his attention as Nazari flipped on the halogen lights in the garage ceiling. Mary Ellen Kemiss struggled against her restraints, but stopped as Declan locked eyes with her.

"I would never hurt you or your children, Mrs. Kemiss," Declan said, as he walked around the two boys and pulled off their hoods. Her eyes went wide and became tearful as she saw the sweaty faces that blinked rapidly in the sudden light.

"Is that it?" one of them asked, as Declan removed a set of large headphones from his head that had been concealed under the hood. "Are we done filming?"

"Aye," Declan said, as he pulled the other boy's headphones off.

"Good thing, man. I was really getting tired of that music."

"Go out this door here and the men outside will make sure you get paid. Great work, lads." Declan cut the loose restraints that were barely holding them and they stood, pulling on two bathrobes that had been folded and stored near the door as they walked through it.

Declan closed the door. He didn't think he'd ever allow his own children, should he ever have any, to act in the kind of movie he'd said he was filming when he'd called the entertainment agency earlier in the day, but thankfully there were some parents who didn't seem bothered by it.

"Your two boys have been in the upstairs guest room watching a movie this entire time," he said, as he turned back to Mary Ellen Kemiss and walked over. He cut her restraints and slowly peeled back the tape on her mouth. "I'm sure they'd like to see their mother now."

"You son of a bitch!" the woman said, as she stood and slapped him across the face. "How could you do this, to anyone?"

He pushed her gently towards the door and Nazari guided her into the house, shutting the door behind them. When they were gone, Declan walked over to the spotlight that had been positioned in front of Kemiss and pushed the
off
button on a small digital camcorder that had been secured to the bottom of the light. Walking back towards the kitchen door, he stopped and slumped down into the chair Kemiss' wife had been sitting in and put his head in his hands, breathing heavily. Had Kemiss called his bluff, he would have lost, and America would have lost with him.

"Alright, boyos," Declan said, as he entered the kitchen from the garage, having finally been able to calm himself down after the events of the last few hours. "What do we have?"

Osman and Nazari had spread a map across the granite countertop of the center island and had turned on a laptop computer, which Nazari was typing away at.

"Victoria, Virginia is here," Nazari said, as he reached over and circled a town with a red sharpie. "Dundalk, Maryland is here, and we are here." He circled two more towns and Declan looked at each of them in turn.

"That could give us some advantage," Osman said, looking at the location of Dundalk on the map, just southwest of Baltimore. The three circles formed an obtuse triangle with the location of Baktayev's base being the furthest away.

"Yeah," Nazari said, “but if it's as the senator said, than Baktayev's already gone from there. For all we know he's already set up in the school and waiting for tomorrow morning when everyone arrives."

"I can make a call," Osman said. "There's a few 'diplomats' from our Washington embassy that could go and have a look at this Broughman's Welding Service. That way we'll know whether there's anyone there and if there ever was. I don't trust this scumbag upstairs to have been telling us the truth."

"He was," Declan said. "The only thing he fears worse than losing his power, is losing his two boys."

"Then you think that bit about it not being his idea was the truth?"

Declan nodded. "He got extremely stressed at that point in our conversation so either he really believes it or else it was a poorly prepared attempt at shifting the blame. Hard to tell which, but it's irrelevant. What we have to focus on is stopping Baktayev."

"Still, it won't hurt for someone to take a look at Dundalk. Maybe they can give us some kind of an idea what kind of preparation these guys were doing."

"Aye, that could be useful. We need information on the town of Victoria. There has to be some reason they've chosen that as their target."

"The Wikipedia entry for it basically indicates that it's a pretty impoverished town," Nazari said, as he turned back to the laptop computer. "Not much in the way of employment and I found several news articles about some serious drug issues in the area."

"That explains a lot," Declan said.

"The school itself, W.N. Page Junior High, is the oldest of three schools in the area. Here's a picture." Nazari turned the computer around so that Declan and Osman could see it.

"That explains even more," Declan said, as he looked at the picture of the single story, industrial-era building, with its rectangular architecture and narrow, metal rimmed windows. "They're using the same basic plan they did at Beslan in 2004. That school was the oldest in the area as well. Can you bring up an aerial view from Google Maps?"

Nazari turned the computer around and went to work. "Here," he said, turning it back around.

"Just like I thought. Look at the way the building is spread out in all of those weird angles," Declan said, pointing at several locations on the image. "Just like Beslan, the building's a tactical nightmare. Only two driveway entrances, both easily covered from the building. It's on a large open lot surrounded by trees, all of which is easily covered from multiple points in the building. Even the places across the street are mostly forest and wouldn't provide any kind of a decent operations point. The police would have to set up somewhere a good distance from the school and wouldn't have any line of sight."