End Game Page 7

“Uh-oh,” Boxers said.

  “It’s not what you’re thinking,” Maryanne said. “Yes, he was involved in Operation Gardenia, but he was a good guy. A couple of years into it, he was approached by an old friend named Gregory, from Chechnya, who shared with him an ambitious plan to seek retribution for the years of Soviet brutality. He wanted Bernard to share information on the location of old nukes.”

  “Actually,” Boxers said, “this is running pretty close to what I was thinking.”

  “Here’s where it goes different,” Maryanne assured. “This Gregory guy was a good friend, and there are few people in the world who hated the Soviet Union more than Bernard. But Bernard was also a family man, and he was proud of his then-recent American citizenship. He pushed Gregory away and told him to never contact him again.”

  “How do you know all of this?” Venice asked.

  Maryanne continued as if she hadn’t heard. “Gregory left, and he left angry. He called Bernard a traitor and he disappeared. Two weeks later, as Bernard was between the front door of his house and his car, on his way to work, an unknown man jumped from behind a bush and beat him with a baseball bat. Broke his right shin, his left forearm, and three ribs. Didn’t say a word until after the beating was finished, but then told him that he would do as Gregory asked, or he’d find his wife blinded by acid and his son crippled with a baseball bat.”

  “Now that sounds like Chechen payback,” Jonathan said. Chechen rebels had recently killed over three hundred schoolchildren in a terrorist raid in Russia. Nasty, nasty folks to get crosswise.

  “This is where I come in,” Maryanne explained. With a nod toward Venice, “And how I know all these details. Of course Bernard agreed to comply—it’s always smart to agree with the guy who’s trying to kill you—but he had no intention of doing so. He called the FBI, and I became his case agent.”

  “Case agent for what?”

  “You doubled him, didn’t you?” Jonathan guessed.

  Maryanne nodded. “Historically, we’ve found that newly minted citizens are often the most patriotic. In Bernard Mitchell’s case—”

  “What’s his real name?” Boxers interrupted.

  “None of your business,” she said. “And if that’s a deal breaker, then we are done.”

  Jonathan didn’t press the point. He’d seen this before. For whatever reason, aliases and birth names, once declared to be classified, tended to remain that way—to the point where confessed terrorists who had been put into witness protection in return for their testimony against their former jihad-buddies were able to disappear and recycle themselves in their old stomping grounds because nobody updated the no-fly lists with their new names. Jonathan saw no urgency in knowing Mitchell’s real name.

  “In Bernard Mitchell’s case, he was furious at the threat to his family and ashamed of the actions of his friend. His was one of the best motivations in the world—revenge. I told him that the easiest way to protect him would be to put him to work for us. We would feed him with false information that was laced with just enough truth to make it seem reasonable. If we did our jobs right, as the Chechens followed the bread crumbs, we’d be able to see where they were going and what they were doing.

  “Financially, it was a pretty sweet gig for the Mitchells. Bernard was on three payrolls simultaneously—the rebels were paying him for his espionage, we were paying him for playing along, and ARC was paying him for his real expertise.”

  “I don’t quite follow what kind of useful, sustainable intel he could provide,” Jonathan said. “I mean, you can dance for a while, but sooner or later, wouldn’t he have to cough up a nuke?”

  Maryanne smiled.

  “You’re shitting me,” Boxers said. “You gave up nuclear warheads? Tell me they were dummies.”

  “They were doctored,” she said. “To set off a warhead requires a complex series of electronic impulses. To initiate the process requires a complex code. We changed the code.”

  “But there’s still a nuclear warhead?” Venice asked.

  “There had to be,” Maryanne said. “There’s a predictable amount of radiation leakage outside of the warhead casing. We needed to keep the radioactive material in place, or else the leakage wouldn’t be there, and without the leakage, they’d know that they had a fake.”

  “I can’t imagine a single thing that might go wrong with that plan,” Boxers said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

  “Trust me,” Maryanne said. “Without the codes, these things are just radioactive paperweights.”

  “You just used the plural,” Jonathan said. “How many are we talking about?”

  “A few.”

  “Can you put a little more meat on that number?”

  “Five to eight.”

  Boxers’ jaw dropped as he leaned in closer. “You don’t even know the precise number?”

  “It’s complicated,” Maryanne said, “but yes, we don’t know the precise number.”

  “How big are they?” Venice asked.

  Maryanne shook her head. “Not very. Full-up, with the casing, they’re about six inches in diameter, a little over thirty inches long, and weigh under a hundred fifty pounds.”

  “So, they’re not all that powerful,” Venice concluded. She seemed relieved.

  “Zero-point-seven-kiloton yield, give or take.”

  “Before you take solace in that number,” Jonathan warned, “she’s saying that the warheads are the equivalent of seven thousand tons of TNT.”

  “So, we’re talking artillery rounds,” Boxers said. “The equivalent of our W-forty-eights.”

  From the early sixties through the early nineties, the US, its allies, and the Soviets all developed nuclear warheads that could be fired from standard artillery pieces. They were rendered obsolete by more reliable delivery systems, but the Soviets apparently felt compelled to keep some of them around.

  “Did the Russians know you were playing this game with their mortal enemies?” Jonathan asked.

  “Of course not. In fact, Russian records showed that the very warheads we were tracking had in fact been destroyed.”

  “You’re saying they lied?” Venice said.

  “It’s what they do,” Maryanne said. “That in itself became an important data point. It was useful to know that our new allies would rather lie than be embarrassed.”

  “So what went wrong?” Jonathan asked.

  “We’re not sure. About a year ago, Bernard’s Chechen friends started getting anxious, started making unreasonable demands. We got the sense that they were testing him to make sure he was really on their team.”

  Venice said, “That means someone tipped them off? That must have scared the Mitchells to death.”

  “It gets better,” Maryanne said. “Not only do we suspect that someone tipped off the Chechens, we think someone tipped off the Russians, too. They found out that we were playing nuclear games with terrorists and they were not happy.”

  “This does not seem unreasonable to me,” Boxers said.

  “We were learning a lot about Chechen terrorist networks,” Maryanne said. “So, now, all of a sudden, there’s a back-channel diplomatic firestorm. CIA is pissed, and State is furious. The White House was blindsided, and your friend Wolverine has had some serious explaining to do. Overall, the last few weeks have been interesting.”

  “So,” Jonathan said. “About the hit on the Mitchells.”

  Maryanne uncrossed her legs and recrossed them the other way. “Yeah, about that. We don’t know exactly. As things got progressively hotter with the Chechens, Bernard fell out of touch with the Bureau. He started skipping our regular meetings, wouldn’t return phone calls.”

  “Probably because he was frightened,” Venice said.

  “Undoubtedly. But that’s not how it works. When you’re on my payroll, you play by my rules.”

  “You started applying pressure,” Jonathan guessed.

  “I had to. I was worried that he might be considering going rogue and working for the other side. I ne
eded to keep tabs, and he wasn’t playing along.”

  Jonathan’s eyes narrowed as a piece fell into place in his head. “I think I see where you’re going,” he said. “You applied a little too much pressure. You drove him to the other side.”

  “I don’t know that for a fact, but I suspect it, yes. And here’s the really embarrassing part—we think he got the arming codes for the warheads.”

  Jonathan gasped.

  Venice said, “I don’t understand. I thought the codes were fakes. You said they were nuclear paperweights.”

  “They are. Except we left a back door in the coding software that would allow us to make them active again, just in case.”

  “In case of what?” Venice said.

  “In case we don’t have enough friggin’ world crises,” Boxers said. “You feds amaze me. If the world takes a step away from the abyss for just a few seconds, one of you steps in to push it closer again.”

  “Easy, Box,” Jonathan said.

  “Don’t tell me to take it easy,” Big Guy snapped. “Somewhere toward the end of this discussion, she’s going to ask us to undo this mess, and you’re going to say yes, because it’s what you always do. I’ve earned the right to bitch about it, because that’s what I always do.” He turned back to Maryanne. “And how the hell did he get ahold of these codes?”

  “We think the CIA gave them to him.”

  “Holy shit!” Boxers exclaimed.

  “Why the hell would they do that?” Jonathan asked.

  “I have no idea. I’m not even sure that’s the case, but that’s where the evidence points.”

  “Pretty incendiary guess.”

  Maryanne shifted her legs again. She wasn’t going to expound, and Jonathan wasn’t inclined to press too hard. Yet. “So, that’s a lot of moving parts,” he said. “If the Mitchells were going to hand over the codes, why would the Chechens hit them?”

  “Who said it was the Chechens?” Maryanne asked. The speed of the delivery led Jonathan to believe that she’d been waiting for the opportunity. “For all we know, it could be the Russians in an effort to keep the codes out of the bad guys’ hands. For that to be the case, though—”

  “Somebody on our side of the pond would have had to tip them off,” Jonathan said, completing her statement.

  “Exactly. That could mean CIA, State, or even, I’m sorry to say, the Bureau.”

  “Which is why you’re soliciting help from us instead of from the normal channels,” Jonathan said. “You don’t know who to trust.”

  Maryanne confirmed by arching her eyebrows.

  “Ah, crap,” Boxers said.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Jolaine didn’t like the way the night clerk at the Hummingbird Inn looked at her as he entered her name into the computer. His name tag read Hi, I’m Carl, and she saw in his expression equal parts suspicion and anger, covered by a thin glaze of false pleasantness. “Just the one night?” he asked.

  “I think so,” Jolaine said. She’d presented herself as Marcia Bernard—the only name she could think of off the top of her head. “There’s a chance we might extend, but I think it will be just the one night.” She knew she was talking too much—always her habit when nervous.

  Carl took forever to open the screen and type in her information. He’d asked for her identification, but she’d told him that she’d left it in the car and didn’t want to go back out to get it. In a place like the Hummingbird Inn, she figured there were many guests who happened not to have identification, and she’d wager that most of them were named Smith or Doe.

  “Is that a young boy I see out there in the car?” the clerk asked, straining to see past her shoulder.

  “My brother,” she said.

  “And what’s his name?”

  Jolaine hesitated.

  “I need it for the record,” he clarified.

  “Tommy,” she said. When in doubt, keep the lies simple.

  Carl’s eyes narrowed. And he didn’t type the name.

  “Is there something wrong?” Jolaine asked. “You seem . . . bothered.”

  “No,” he said, and he started typing. Then he stopped. “Actually, yes, and I don’t know how to say this without insulting you. Still, it’s got to be said.”

  Jolaine waited for it.

  “I know it might not look like it, but I run a reputable place here. Always have. Time was, when my daddy started it, this motel was one of the premier inns on this whole strip of highway. Then the Interstates came through, and, well, you know that story. Every secondary road in the whole damn country knows that story.”

  “I don’t think I understand—”

  “The Hummingbird is not that kind of motel.”

  She still didn’t get it. He nodded toward the car, and then she did. “Oh, my God,” she exclaimed. “He’s fourteen years old! And you’re damn right it’s insulting. He’s my little brother!” There’s a certain skill in pulling off righteous indignation and a bald-faced lie at the same time. She thought she’d done well.

  Carl held up both hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Like I said, I didn’t mean to be insulting, but sometimes, you’ve just got to be sure.”

  Jolaine felt heat in her cheeks. All she needed was to get some sleep, and for that, all she needed was a key.

  Carl reached to the board behind him and plucked a key off a hook. It was the old-fashioned kind—a real key with a plastic fob dangling from it that displayed the logo of the Hummingbird Inn.

  “Here you go,” he said. “Room twenty-four. Last one down on the left.”

  As her hand touched the door to leave, Carl said, “Excuse me, miss, but what did you say your brother’s name was again?”

  Oh, shit. It was a trap, and it was well played. “Thank you, Carl.”

  Back in the car, Graham was awake now, though still unfocused.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  “Napoleon, Ohio. We’re going to stay here tonight.”

  “I need clothes.”

  “I know. We’ll go shopping tomorrow.” You’d have clothes if you’d listened to me back at the house.

  Jolaine slipped the transmission into drive and eased the Mercedes down the line of rooms to the parking space in front of number 24. When she parked, Graham sat quietly, staring straight ahead, through the windshield, but at a point in space that was far beyond anything she could see.

  “Time to go in and go to bed,” she said.

  He didn’t move.

  “Graham?”

  He pulled the handle, opened the door, and stepped out. They met in front of the bumper and walked together to the assigned door.

  The motel room bore the motif of classic roadside dump. The steel door hadn’t been painted in many years, and the jamb had swollen to the point that she needed to give the door a shot with her hip to get it to open. The two double beds were separated by a nightstand whose lamp came to life when Jolaine hit the light switch just inside the door, on the wall with the big window to the parking lot.

  “Not so bad,” Jolaine said. “Not for one night, anyway.” She stepped aside and let Graham pass.

  He took two steps inside and stopped. She followed and closed the door. Now that it was just the two of them, and she could see him without the distraction of gunfire or a medical crisis, her heart sagged. He looked so young, so skinny and vulnerable. He needed a hug, but from someone else. He needed his parents.

  From where he stood in front of the open bathroom door, he could see his reflection in the mirror, and then he looked down at himself as if to confirm what the image showed. Despite a fast and halfhearted effort to wash at the doctor’s house, his arms and his chest were still smeared with his mother’s blood.

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?” he asked without eye contact. “They’re both dead.” He turned to look at Jolaine. “Aren’t they?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. It was the truth and this was no time for conjecture. She took a step closer and put her hand on his shoulder. “You should take
a shower. Clean up.”

  He jerked away and turned on her, his eyes red and angry. He shouted, “You were supposed to protect us!”

  The outburst made her jump. “Keep your voice down.” She imagined that the paint on the walls was thicker than the walls themselves.

  “If you’d done your job, none of this would have happened!”

  “Graham, that’s not true.” As she spoke, she wondered if agreeing and shouldering the blame might have been the smarter move, might have defused things.

  “This is your fault, Jolaine.”

  “You have to keep your voice down,” she whispered. “We’re in a lot of trouble here. You have to—”

  “Don’t tell me what I have to do! You can’t tell me what I have to do. You work for us, remember? We tell you what to do. And right now, I’m telling you to go to hell!”

  He stormed into the bathroom and slammed the door.

  Jolaine made a move to stop him, to explain, but stopped herself. He had every right to be angry. He was scared. Everything he knew was coming unglued. The trauma and the loss were at a scale that was beyond his imagination. If the only way for him to process that was by lashing out at her, then what was the harm? She wasn’t here to be liked, after all. She was here to do her job.

  As the water came on in the shower, Jolaine moved to the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed nearest the door. A call to the police might end this whole thing. Why did that seem so wrong?

  Her mind replayed the events of the past hours—the past days. She remembered the building tension in the house, the quiet, intense conversations between Bernard and Sarah. The stifling sense of paranoia, particularly in the past five days.

  Clearly, they knew that their family was in danger. If the solution were really as simple as a phone call, why hadn’t Bernard or Sarah made it? And if the reason for all of the mayhem was the string of numbers Graham had swirling through his head, why in the world would Sarah have burdened him with them?

  For now, she and Graham were safer than they’d otherwise be because no one knew where they were. A phone call would create a new trail that would lead directly back to them. That wasn’t going to happen. Not tonight, anyway.