The Guise of Another (22 page)

Drago Basta stood behind the pillar of the portico and trained his site on the overturned table, waiting for Max Rupert to make a mistake. How had the detective found him so quickly? It had to be the car—a GPS maybe. There were no other police around, so the detective either was working a hunch or was the spearhead of a force in transit. He could hear the shrieks of the night clerk on the floor of the lobby. He fired two rounds, hoping to see the bullets pierce a tabletop of cheap Formica. Instead, the bullets disappeared into a cloud of stone dust.

Drago moved quickly to a new plan. The cop would be focused on stopping the bleeding in the girl's leg and probably preparing for another frontal attack. Drago wouldn't attack from the front. He still had the hotel key card that would open the back exit. He ran around the side and found the back door. He swiped the card through the slot. The light lit up green.

But as he went to pull the door open, he heard the wail of sirens nearby. How far away were they? He calculated the time it would take to charge down the hall, shoot the detective, grab his duffle, and exit. Another siren cut through the night only a block away. He could see the halo of the emergency lights reflecting off of the buildings and trees at the end of the block.

Drago clenched his teeth in disgust, secured his rucksack to both shoulders, tightened his grip on his laptop, and ran for the woods of Fort Snelling State Park.

The full moon lit up the wetland in silver and gray, cut with black where the shadows of the trees crossed his path. In the bottom of the valley, a thin mantle of fog lifted from the marsh, hovering just above Drago's head. It reminded him of his childhood in Kosovo, camping
in the hills outside of Štrpce, telling stories to scare his companions, stories made all the more real by the haze that hid the monsters just out of sight. His boyhood friends seemed so frightened by the fog, but for Drago Basta, it wrapped around him and held him tight like a blanket. He paused to fill his chest with the cool night air and listen for any crackle of leaves, or the calling of orders to announce that someone had seen him scuttle over the valley wall. He heard nothing.

From memory he knew to work his way northeast, following the bluff of the river valley toward the airport. He ran at a pace that would have made his old military commanders in Serbia proud, following a deer path at the base of the valley wall, pushing through the scrub—his rucksack and computer pulled tightly to his body. He knew he had to keep moving, keep heading in the direction of the airport, before the helicopters with their thermal, infrared technology had a chance to become airborne.

Then he saw the landing lights of two C-130 transport planes lining up as they approached the airport from the east. That's how he knew that he had followed the river far enough. He looped the laptop strap around his neck and climbed the hill, which rose steeply out of the valley, only ten degrees shy of being a cliff. He clung to the roots and shoots, pulling himself up, until he crested the valley wall. He paused to look for patrol cars.

The traffic on the highway separating him from the airport was light enough that he could cross without being seen. Three cars went by, and none of them were law enforcement. In the distance he could hear the beating of a helicopter rotor against the night sky. They would likely start the search in the woods closest to the hotel, guessing that Drago might simply be hiding under a bush. Two more cars passed, and Drago stepped out of the trees and crossed the highway in a light jog. The entrance to the airport would be the most dangerous part of the trek—five hundred yards of open road. In a stroke of luck, only one car came by, but Drago found a ditch deep enough to hide in.

He walked into the long-term parking ramp like any other traveler, weaving in and out of cars, pretending to be looking for his. What
he really sought was a car to steal, an older car, one built in the early nineties, one that had no computer-chip technology. In the middle of the second floor, he spied a perfect specimen, an old minivan with rust framing the wheel wells.

The older-model van had no anti-theft technology beyond the locks on the door, which gave way in a matter of seconds. Drago's rucksack held tools that would start the vehicle, but he spied a standard screwdriver on the passenger floorboard of the van that would work just as well. He jammed a screwdriver into the ignition, using the palm of his hand to drive it in deep, and then turned it forward, grinding the teeth of the lock until the engine hummed to life. The steering wheel remained locked until he jimmied one of his own screwdrivers between the steering wheel and column to free the lock.

He found the parking ticket in the console and happily paid fifty-two dollars at the exit. He headed down a highway that took him within a few blocks of the hotel where he failed to kill Max Rupert. The horizon flickered with the flames of dozens of squad lights, and in the sky, a helicopter laced the river valley with search lights. Drago smiled and waved a symbolic good-bye as he passed by the bedlam. Then he dug through the rucksack, felt for one of the three prepaid cell phones, and placed a call to Garland.

Garland hawked up phlegm from the back of his throat, clearing a path for his words. “Hello,” Garland said. “Do you have it?”

“I am getting close,” Drago said. “I had to leave my lodgings and I left behind the rifles.”

“That's okay,” Garland said. “They can't be traced.”

“I am on my second ID. The first has been compromised. I will need you to overnight another ID, just in case. I will also need half a dozen more listening devices, another sniper rifle, and a remote vehicle tracker. Overnight those items and contact me with routing information once the package has been sent.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Is everything under control?”

“Yes,” Drago said. “I am close to retrieving our property. I am going
to put a temporary trace on a car using this phone. You need to lock onto the signal and relay that to my computer. I will need you to handle that personally.”

“Jesus. It's…it's two in the morning. In five hours I have to be on a jet to DC. I have to spend the day kissing the asses of a couple Democrats on the Appropriations Committee. I can't set up that tracker without going into the office.”

Drago closed his eyes and imagined the feel of holding a baseball bat as it broke through the plate of Garland's forehead. “Then go into the office,” Drago said. “We cannot have any eyes on this but our own. Things are…precarious.”

“Did you run into a problem?”

“No problem, but I had to clean up a stain. You'll read about it in the morning paper.”

“Do you need an exit?”

“Not yet. What I need is for you to get out of bed and go set a track on this phone number.”

“Alright. I'll set it up before I fly to Washington.”

“You will do it now,” Drago said and hung up the phone, cursing Wayne Garland under his breath.

He drove to an all-night convenience store and purchased a small roll of duct tape, then drove to the address he found on the Internet for Detective Alexander Rupert. On his first pass, he looked for any signs that Rupert might be awake—a light on or the glow of a television. He saw nothing. On the second pass, he looked for signs of a dog, and again saw none. He parked at the end of the block, closing his car door with a silent click. He waited. Everything remained quiet. He walked to the end of Rupert's driveway, paused there long enough to know that he was alone in the dark, and headed up to the garage, the phone and the duct tape in his hand.

He jiggled the door handle. Locked—but no deadbolt. He pulled out his wallet, slid a credit card into the jamb and worked the door, pushing the card in as he gently shook the door back and forth. The front edge of the card pushed the latch back one millimeter at a time
until the door clicked open. Again he waited and listened. Hearing no alarm, no footsteps, he walked to the Dodge Charger, dropped to his back, and slipped under the back bumper of the car.

Tracking with a cell phone didn't work nearly as well as the tracker he placed in Ianna's car. That tracker fed off of the car's own battery, and it would have juice as long as the car continued to run. The cell phone would have a battery life of one day, but that would be long enough for the new supplies to arrive. He taped the phone to the undercarriage, making sure that the cell phone was on. Then he retraced his steps out of the garage.

As he drove to find his new hotel, he let himself relax. He could feel the weight of his eyelids tug, now that they were no longer held up by the adrenaline of fighting for his life. He found a dumpy hotel with no security cameras, and checked into his room under the name of Marvin Taube. He stared at the laptop for half an hour, waiting for Garland to get the tracking signal into the system. Once he saw the blinking dot in Alexander Rupert's garage, he set his computer to ping, should the target move from that location.

Then Drago lay on the bed and fell asleep, regenerating his body and his mind for the battle he knew was coming.

Alexander and Ianna lay sprawled, naked, exposed to the night air, the bedding having been kicked to the floor. Moments earlier, as he gripped and moved her body with powerful, impatient hands, he felt completely there, within himself. No longer hiding.

Now, as her body lay curled against his, he was content, depleted, raw. Ianna was a relief to him. She opened him to an honesty that he hadn't felt in months, maybe years. He rolled onto his side and traced the path of a bead of sweat that had trickled down Ianna's shoulder blade and into the valley of her back. Her soft, blond hair straggled across her face, a couple strands fluttering in her breath.

“That was…” She didn't finish her thought as though unable to come up with the exact superlative to describe what they had just done.

“Couldn't have said it better,” Alexander said, kissing her shoulder.

She rolled onto her side and smiled. “I like this,” she said. “I like being here…with you, like this.” She rested her head on his chest. “I think I've wanted this since that first day that you came to my apartment. When I'm with you, I feel safe. I feel like no one could ever hurt me.”

“I would never let anyone hurt you,” Alexander said.

He hadn't planned on saying anything like that, but it was true. As he lay there, with Ianna wrapped up against him, he felt almost reborn. He had told her his darkest secret, he let her in where no one else had been allowed, and she didn't run away. She didn't curse or judge him. Instead, she touched him and kissed him and made love to him. She alone knew the man he truly was, the good side as well as the dark side, and she embraced him for it.

“Have you given any thought to what happens in the morning?” she said.

“In the morning?”

“The grand jury.”

“Well, first, I'll take you someplace safe and handpick a couple patrol officers to watch you—”

Ianna interrupted him. “I'm talking about you. Do you have to testify? What if you just didn't show up?”

The grand jury had never been far from Alexander's thoughts, but now that Rivas had flipped, what had once been a labyrinth became a trap. The US Attorney knew what Rivas knew—that Alexander stole more than $50,000 from a drug dealer named Castasian. What neither of them knew was that Castasian hadn't been the only one. Alexander had been careful, pocketing tightly rolled bills when no one noticed. Castasian had been his only time to share with another member of the Task Force—a mistake he knew at the time.

Before Rivas's betrayal, Alexander's denial before the grand jury would have been met with suspicion. The prosecutor would wear himself out coming at Alexander from different angles in the hope of getting him to slip up. But Alexander would simply maintain his innocence. The grand jury would be forced to choose between a drug dealer and decorated cop. Members of the jury would have been in the middle of their deliberations when the Putnam case broke, splashing Alexander's name across the newspapers in broad headlines proclaiming him to be a hero again. They would never have indicted him in that scenario.

But that all changed when Rivas turned on him. Now it was Alexander's own partner who accused him.

“I don't have to testify,” Alexander said. “I have the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. But pleading the Fifth is the same as telling the world that I'm guilty as hell. I had this thing beat up until my partner…”

“But now that he told them what you did, why go now?”

Alexander had been asking himself that same question since learning that Rivas turned state's evidence, and he had yet to come up with a good answer. He'd been fighting to find a way out of his mess, but every new idea led to the same tragic end. Even if he managed to
beat the charges, his career would end in shame and disgrace. And it would be worse for him than the others. He was the hero—the Medal of Valor recipient. The press always used a bigger ax when bringing down those whom it saw as hypocrites. Journalists never reported on the local accountant who gets a DWI, but have that person be a judge or senator, and it's front page, above the fold. Thus was the fate in store for Alexander. His crucifixion would be a big event.

As if she could read his thoughts, she asked, “What if you quit being a cop? Just told them to go fuck themselves? What if you told the grand jury to go fuck themselves?”

Alexander smiled at the thought, and, deep down, he knew that she was merely saying what he was thinking. “I don't know what it'd be like—not being a cop. It's all I know. I wouldn't know where to start.”

She began tracing a finger in little circles on his chest, and with a child's meekness she said, “You could start over with me.” She let that statement hang in the air for a few seconds before continuing. “We'd be together. We could go somewhere where no one knows us, someplace where nobody's heard of the Task Force. We could start a new life.”

“That's easier said than—”

“But what if we could,” Ianna interrupted. “What if we could just disappear, go someplace where they'd never find us…Rio or Spain or…I don't know—anywhere. If we could take off today and be together, would you do it? Would you go with me?”

Alexander had never allowed such reckless thoughts to enter his mind. He'd never considered what he might do if being a cop didn't matter—if staying in Minnesota didn't matter. And now, he could think of no reason to stay. What kind of masochist would stay and face the hell that awaited him? What did he have to gain? He could salvage nothing of the life he once had, or the life he dreamed of having. Ianna's question pried open a door that Alexander never knew existed.

Ianna went back to drawing imaginary curlicues on Alexander's chest. She didn't press him for an answer, but he could feel her pull nonetheless—the way the oceans feel the pull of the moon.

“If only we could,” Alexander said, momentarily allowing himself
to dream of a future as impossible as living without a shadow. “After the divorce wipes me out and I lose my job, I'll be lucky not to be living on the street. Going to Spain or Rio takes money. I don't have enough to even cross the border into Canada. Face it, I'm a sinking ship, and you should get as far away from me as you can.”

“What I'm asking is, would you go? If we could find a way to do it, could you leave your life here behind?”

Alexander thought about the hell that would swallow him in the morning. The fallout would be relentless and overwhelming—the kind of destruction that might lead a man to give serious thoughts about leaping over the rail of the Third Avenue Bridge, into the churning Mississippi River. Alexander's head swirled with dread and confusion.

Then he felt Ianna touch the side of his temple, her fingers brushing away the panic. Again, but with a trace of urgency in her voice, she said, “If I could find a way for us to leave all this behind and just be together, would you go?”

Alexander kissed her and said, “If there were a way to do it, I would go. I swear. I'd leave today.”

She smiled and kissed him back, her body relaxing into his, as if a weight of her own had been lifted. Then she snuggled in close, raised her lips to his ear, and whispered, “I know where the flash drive is.”