Top Ten (26 page)

Romero’s face lit up now. “She wasn’t from Centre Hall. She was from New Jersey. He might be from there. From near where she lived. From the circles she hung in.”

Ariel nodded. “And the tape. That explains it.”

Romero had read enough bulletins and texts out of the Investigative Support Unit to know what she was talking about. “He was embarrassed. He couldn’t stand to have her looking at him.”

“Right,” Ariel said. “Do you know what this means? If we’re right?”

“It means we have to know every tiny thing we can about Susan Rollins,” Romero answered.

“And now.”

*   *   *

The day was done in Tenerife. Valentin Yevgenovich Gryoko sat at a table in a bar overlooking the airport and snickered as he sipped his cognac.

Across the table from him, Yves Costain was not similarly inclined toward levity.

“It appears we were right about the American,” Gryoko said.

Costain nodded slowly, soberly, and drew long on his cigarette. “A man with two government sanctioned identities is not a man who would work against that government.”

Gryoko nodded and watched a jet take off into the dark waters over the Atlantic. “We will need to take care of him.”

Costain could not disagree. “But he is their pilot...”

“There are more pilots than planes in the world,” Gryoko reminded him. “We can bring them another.”

Costain considered this and nodded very slowly. He asked the bartender for a phone and called an associate of his in Spain, asking the former member of Spain’s
Libre
squadron if he’d be interested in doing a favor for him. A very profitable favor.

*   *   *

He stepped from the terminal with his suitcase in hand and raised his hand for a taxi. One presented itself and drove him away from Hartsfield International Airport.

“Hotel, buddy, or are we going home?” the cabbie asked.

“Are there any decent motels downtown?” Mickey Strange asked. He was not Michaelangelo. Not yet.

“Sure, yeah. You want something cheap, or something dirt cheap.”

“Something cheap would be fine.”

The cabbie nodded. “Cheap I know well. We’ll fix you up fine, buddy. Leave it to old Freddy.”

“One more question, Freddy...”

“Yeah?”

“Would you be able to direct me to a whore?”

Freddy laughed and looked in the rearview. His passenger was not laughing. He was, however, holding up a hundred dollar bill. “Action, buddy? That’s what you want?”

Mickey Strange passed the bill through the cage to Freddy’s waiting hand.

“Yeah. Old Freddy can score you some action.”

In the back seat, Michaelangelo smiled.

Twenty Nine

Goners

They rolled the plane out of the barn on Gareth Dean Hoag’s property north of Gainesville, where Mills had left it three days earlier. A beaut of a Piper Navajo Chieftain, long and lean and powerful as all get up. Stripped out and tricked up inside courtesy of Nico Trane, and ready this Friday morning to carry Mills DeVane on a trip across the water to Clarion Key.

“What do you want me to tell him?” Mills asked Gareth as they loaded six duffels of cash into the Piper.

“Who?”

“Costain.”

“I’ll do the talking to Costain,” Gareth said, and Mills tried not to act surprised. Unsuccessfully.

Gareth threw the last duffel into the stripped out rear of the Piper and looked at Mills. “You didn’t think you’d be taking this one alone, did you?”

“I’ve taken the others.”

Gareth put his hands to Mills’s shoulders, facing him. “Yeah, but this time you’ll be bringing something back. Something
beeeeautiful
.”

Mills nodded as Gareth took his hands away. “Hey, I’ll be happy for the company.” He walked around the plane, giving it a quick visual, thinking. If Gareth hadn’t gone along, it would have been a cake walk. Pay Costain, pick up the goods, and fly them to some Air Force Base after alerting Jack Hale through the FAA. No problem.

But now...

“Gareth...”

“Whatcha need number five?” Gareth asked, his arms around Nita Berry now, hands in the back pockets of her jeans as they stood near the right wing tip.

“How heavy is this stuff we’re bringing back?”

Gareth’s look settled on Mills, suspicion edging it. “Why?”

Mills stomped the soft earth. “This is one big plane, Gareth, and if we’re carrying a heavy load...”

He hadn’t thought of that. Hadn’t thought of that at all. “You got any suggestions?”

“Crutch Field,” Mills said, hoping Gareth would go for it. He was thinking five, ten steps ahead now, hoping that all of them would line up. Otherwise this thing was going to get nasty. Real nasty. “Where else?”

Gareth considered it for a moment.

“We can meet you there,” Nita told him, and Gareth nodded.

“Crutch Field it is, number five.”

Step one
, Mills thought. Just a shitload more to go.

*   *   *

He checked the small bag he always brought with him. The tan satchel that his wife had given him more than thirty years ago. Beaten up, sure, but it did its job and, well, Arlo Donovan was a sentimental man. Always had been. Always would be.

Especially when it came to his son.

So he checked the bag twice. Cards. A couple magazines, picked up at the newsstand so there’d be no labels, just in case his boy took one with him. And, this time, just for kicks, Arlo was bringing a good number of chips. Red, white, and blue ones, just to keep track one time and see who could really whoop the other in five card.

He zipped up the satchel and got his coat. The car was gassed up, and he thought he had the oil leak fixed up pretty good. Just a little bit of driving, a little bit of waiting, and he’d have a little while with his boy.

His boy Teddy.

*   *   *

Mills brought the Piper in low from the west, his usual procedure, and from a half mile distant could see the plane that had brought Costain in its place a few dozen yards off the end of Clarion Key’s single runway. A quarter mile out he could see shapes standing near the plane. As they touched down he was able to count three.

The hard pack of the strip rumbled as the Piper slowed and rolled toward the date palms at the end of the runway. Costain waved as Mills turned its left side to them and stopped. The fat Russian was his usual self—stone. And the third man, he stood with hands behind his back to the side like some ever ready servant awaiting an errand.

“Who’s the mystery man?” Gareth asked. Mills knew who he meant.

“Never seen him.”

Gareth nodded and grunted.

Mills cut the engines and shut down his system and moved back through the stripped out back of the Piper, stepping over the duffels to get to the aft cargo door. He popped it open to the warm Caribbean breeze and stepped out, Gareth on his heels.

“Mills, my friend!” Costain called out to him from a few yards away.

“Yves,” Mills shouted back, and started toward him. Costain moved toward him as well, arms outstretched anticipating an embrace. The Fat Russian was moving as well, stepping to one side, out from behind Costain.

Costain smiled big. Bigger than usual, Mills thought. But then this was a big day for him. For them all. The Fat Russian incl—

The first shot rang out loud behind Mills’s right ear, close enough that he flinched in pain at the retort, seeing from the corner of his suddenly restricted vision the Fat Russian double over, a small dark spot exploding on his chest.

And a second shot, and right in front of Mills, Costain dropped awkwardly to his knees, his eyes open and blood jetting from a hole in his forehead as he fell face first into the hard pack.

Mills made himself look behind now, and he saw Gareth with a pistol out, stepping over him, trotting quick to catch the third man who was running fast toward the date palms. Gareth raised his pistol and fired and the man dropped like a rag doll.

Mills looked up at Gareth as he came back his way. His employer passed, going to the Fat Russian and delivering a coup de grace to the back of his wide head.

“Gareth...Jesus...”

Hoag looked back at Mills and squatted next to the Russian. Reached behind him and pulled something from the sand beneath his girth. “Glad I came, number five?”

The pistol was small, but then how big did it have to be to kill a man, Mills thought? To kill
him
?

“You didn’t see it,” Gareth said. “Be damn glad that I did.”

Mills got to his knees and looked around. “He has bodyguards.”

Gareth, too, gave the area a scan. “I’ll deal with them if that comes. Now...” He stood and extended his hand to Mills. “...we’ve got a package to move.”

Mills accepted Gareth’s helping hand and went with him to Costain’s plane. The cargo door was already open. Gareth looked inside. When he turned back to Mills he was smiling. “Have a look, number five.”

Mills did as Gareth went back to the Piper and retrieved a small knapsack he had brought. In the back of Costain’s plane there was a box. A case, really. Four feet long, a foot and a half high, and about that much in width. Made of a dull metal, it bore several markings. Some numbers, some characters in Cyrillic. The Fat Russian had come through.

But come through with what?

Gareth returned to Costain’s plane and moved Mills aside, removing something from his knapsack. A small instrument with a probe at one end and a readout on its face. Gareth switched it on and it began to hum.

When he moved it near the box it began to click. Click quickly.

He looked back to Mills, beaming. “Jackpot, number five.”

Mills felt himself go cold throughout. Go icy.

This wasn’t a case of shoulder-fired surface to air missiles. Not unless they made those with plutonium now.

“All right, number five, lets get this thing moved over.”

Mills glanced at the gun in Gareth’s waistband. He could go for it. And he might get it.

But if he did not...

If he did not, no one would know what Gareth Dean Hoag had bought from Yves Costain and the Fat Russian. And no one would know to stop him. He would be dead, and Gareth, who had flown just enough in his earlier drug running days to be able to maneuver from Clarion Key to the mainland, would deliver his merchandise to whoever had bought it from him.

Game, set, match. Lights out.

The gun. There. Close. But not close enough. He had to bide his time. Wait for the best chance. Because it might be his only chance.

*   *   *

All night they had poured over information about Susan Rollins as it came in from every conceivable source that could be roused. Employment records, medical records, school records. Her family had helped with items from her present and her past, giving them to an agent who showed up at their door around midnight and flew them in a Bureau jet to Oneida, getting them finally to Damascus near two in the morning.

It was noon, now. Noon Friday. And neither Ariel nor Tom Romero felt any closer to identifying a connection between Susan Rollins and Michaelangelo than they had more than a dozen hours before. They were beat. Beat and beginning to wonder if there was any connection at all. Maybe he had just killed her. Because. No reason. Just because. He was a madman, wasn’t he? Didn’t that entitle him to do irrational things?

Maybe, Ariel thought, but she wasn’t ready to concede yet.

“What are you looking at?” she asked a bleary eyed Romero, who was paging through a book retrieved from the box Susan Rollins’ husband had sent them.

“High school yearbook,” Romero said. “Junior year. Calvert High School in the great state of Texas.”

Ariel nodded tiredly and took a similar book from the box. Susan Rollins’ yearbook from her senior year at the same high school. She flipped it open and paged through absently. Not looking, really, because what was there to see? A picture of their killer? Really? Well, what was his name, and what did he look like? Supposing she had gone to high school with their Michaelangelo about all this book looked like it would do was provide them with about five hundred, six hundred suspects. Yes, this was a real productive shot in the dark.

But she needed a break. They both did. They’d been going non-stop for more than twenty-four hours. And so she allowed herself these idle few minutes, flipping through the yearbook, gazing at the photos of touchdown’s made and pie throwing contests in the quad. All that and all the faces and all the fancy artwor—

Her back slowly straightened. A wet bulge rolled down her throat. She reached with a single finger and traced it along the decorative scrollwork that adorned this page. That had adorned several pages. Vines and branches and coils that could have been snakes if you looked at them just so. She looked at these. Turned the page. Saw the adornment. Turned the page. Saw still more. Traced this work as well, traced it all the way down to the bottom of the page where a mark had been put. Where credit had been taken. Where a name was applied.

M. Strange.

“Look up the last name ‘Strange’,” Ariel told Romero, her fingers already flipping fast toward the senior photos.

“Why?”

“M. Strange, just do it!”

There was no more tiredness. A wave of energy had just washed over her, through her, and her fingers worked so quickly through the yearbook that they felt disconnected from her. Disconnected but working in concert.

She found her page long before Romero found his, and when she saw on that page what she thought, what she hoped, might be there, she reached fast to him and gripped his arm so tight he protested and yanked it away.

“Look,” she said to him, directing him to a photo on a page facing that which held Susan Rollins’ senior picture.

When Tom Romero saw it, and in particular the name that was beneath it, his face went white. “Holy shit.”

Ariel could not have agreed more. “Michael Angelo Strange.”

They looked at each other, but it was Ariel who spoke. “Let’s get Jaworski.”

They ran to his office with Susan Rollins’ senior yearbook in hand, and didn’t bother knocking before practically bursting in to find the space empty. He wasn’t there.