Watchlist (25 page)

“Don’t start, Jean-Marc. A few of those boys had me searching for a parachute.” She released his arm.

“You get the same message from Wiki?”

She nodded. “Big files.”

“I’ll use a computer in the executive lounge,” he said.

“And I’ll get the rental car. Give me your bag.”

“Connie—”

“Give me the damned bag.”

Lespasse had seen Carson dislocate a man’s nose with a blow so swift he would’ve sworn her hand never left her side.

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.

They met 30 minutes later, Carson leaning against the hood of a Prius in a No-Standing zone. “Where to?” she asked, as she opened the passenger door.

When Carson jumped behind the wheel, Lespasse read from his notes. “Get on Interstate Two Hundred Seventy-Five East.”

She laughed as she pulled from the curb. “I love how you say that. ‘Interstate Two Hundred Seventy-Five East.’ All formal and such.”

“I-Two Hundred Seventy Five East is better?”

“Two Seventy-Five East will do. How long have you lived in America, Jean-Marc?”

“Almost ten years,” he said. He slid on his sunglasses as they drove into stark sunlight beyond the airport grounds. Tampa was as bright as Nice had been.

“Ten years and it’s still ‘Interstate’ and all that?”

“Tired, I guess. Anxious.”

“Same,” she said. “You came here to work with the Colonel?”

“Well, I had worked with him before. But, yes, Harold Middleton was the reason I came to America.”

“You could’ve stayed in France.”

“My wife preferred North Carolina.”

“Your wife? Jean-Marc, I didn’t know you were married.” She looked at the third finger on his left hand. No ring.

“We worked together at Technologie de Demain—”

“Your company.”

“She began as a systems analyst—which was not the reason I noticed her, I can tell you. But Johanna was very clever, very precise. Soon, she was invaluable to me. And of course, I was in love.”

“She was too—if I’m hearing you right.”

“Lucky for me . . . ”

Carson checked the passenger side view and eased toward the highway.

“The first exit,” Lespasse said. “Don’t get on Inter—Don’t get on Route Four.”

The Prius took the ramp with ease.

“Jean-Marc, I see you’re not wearing a ring . . . ”

He undid the top buttons of his Oxford and withdrew a chain he wore around his neck. It was looped around a gold wedding band.

“Jean-Marc . . . ”

“She was killed. On September 11, at the Pentagon. A new-business presentation scheduled for 10 in the morning. She was early, as usual. We had no chance for the business, of course. But that was Johanna. A fighter. Very American. Like you, Connie.”

Carson saw his bittersweet smile.

“Jean-Marc, I’m so sorry.”

“As am I. Thank you.” Lespasse peered through the windshield. “There’s the exit.”

Carson tapped the blinker.

“Cookie-cutter,” she said as they approached the long, one-story building in the corner of an industrial park just short of McKay Bay. “Glass and steel. They throw down a foundation and drop ’em out of the sky.”

“Yes, but this one has palm trees,” Lespasse said.

There were FedEx, DHL and UPS boxes out front, and a tin box labeled Doolittle Diagnostics with a warning that it contained blood products. On the first floor, drawn blinds revealed an empty lunchroom with vending machines and newspapers scattered on tabletops.

Carson and Lespasse entered the vestibule to look at a blackboard dotted with white plastic letters.

“Sindhu Power & Electric,” he said. “Twenty-six South. So they’re still here.”

“Unless no one cared to change the sign.”

“We can imagine Sikari has been here. Perhaps he returned.”

“OK. But I don’t guess we’ll find him at a desk.”

“No,” Lespasse said, as he continued to study the board. “But let’s see what we can see.”

They stepped toward the receptionist, a young, brown-skinned woman who was hiding a college textbook under the crescent-shaped desktop. She greeted them with a warm smile and a Cuban accent.

Lespasse said, “My wife and I have an appointment with Dr. Faraday.”

Carson nodded. “We know the way.”

The receptionist hesitated. “You can go,” she said finally.

As they turned onto a long carpeted corridor, Carson said, “Dr. Faraday?”

“His office is Eighteen South.”

“Ah.”

The wooden doors to each office were closed, muting the buzz of activity. At the end of the hall, two women were using a smaller reception area to review a presentation on a laptop. Lespasse followed Carson along a dogleg turn and soon they passed Dr. Faraday’s office.

Twenty-six South was at the end of the hall and Carson realized its windows faced the parking lot, which teemed with cars glistening in the afternoon sun. “What’s the play?” she said.

Lespasse dug into his wallet and pulled out a Technologie de Demain business card. “A cold call,” he said. “I will ask for the head of IT.”

“You think they’ll have staff here? I mean, this office is probably the biggest on this side of the building. But it’s a shell, if anything.”

“I suppose you can file a patent from a post office box. Why go to the expense of opening an office if you don’t intend to use it?”

Carson reached for the door. “Ready?”

He held up a finger. “Forgive me, but I will put on a heavy accent. Maybe it will explain why I’m so . . . so wrinkled.”

She smiled. “At least you’re wearing slacks. I’m in jeans and a T-shirt.”

“Yes, but your T-shirt is the same color as your boots, and no one wears jeans like you, Connie. Maybe 100 men on our flights will swear to that.” He didn’t mention the make-up she applied at the airport nor the lipstick she refreshed before they left the car.

“Well, to be safe, I’m calling you ‘boss.’”

“
Très bien
,” Lespasse replied.

Carson swung open the door, and Lespasse stepped inside.

The office was empty.

Thin wires dangled from displaced ceiling panels and a few telephone handsets sat on the floor. There was room for perhaps 10 desks, but there were none in sight. The air-conditioner had been turned off.

As Carson passed him, Lespasse switched on the overhead lights. They flickered, then glowed. “Someone paid the bill,” he said.

Carson had stepped into a private office. It too was empty, its carpet musty and soiled, its closet flung open and bare. “So much for Sindhu Power & Electric . . . ”

Across the office space was another closet, the kind that held paper products, out-of-date files in cardboard boxes, maybe a space for jackets and personal effects. Someone had started to clean it—probably to get the place ready to lease again.

Together, Carson and Lespasse went through it and found nothing enlightening—except for a blank label from an international shipping company she’d never heard of. She also found a discarded Post-It note:
Call Moscow. 14.00 hours
. Carson jotted down the information. “That’s it,” she sighed. “When someone skedaddles, they usually leave
something
behind.”

She looked around. The blinds were drawn tight, but under the overhead lights, she could see there was dust everywhere—on the ledge below the windows, on the phones on the floor. Every door inside the suite was flung open. Except for another closet door.

“Maybe they have,” Lespasse said as he approached it, “Let’s see what we—”

As Lespasse pulled open the door, an explosion burst from the closet, rattling the building. The force flung him across the room, a fireball trailing him as the windows shattered, throwing glass and debris onto the parking lot.

Carson awoke under the flood of water raining from the overhead sprinklers. Through ringing ears, she heard sirens drawing nearer. She tasted blood in her mouth. She tried to stand to find Lespasse, but couldn’t manage. Collapsing, she lost consciousness again and dropped to the damp carpet.

5

JOHN GILSTRAP

F
elicia fought to control her hammering heart, and by so doing control her racing head. She didn’t understand what her captors were saying, but she easily comprehended the body language. They were angry, but in a way that went beyond whatever prompted them to take her. Twice while the woman was on the telephone jabbering in what she assumed to be an Arabic dialect, the word
Charlotte
rose above the gibberish and each iteration brought increased levels of ire.

The pieces fell into place easily. They’d thought she was Charley Middleton. And why wouldn’t they? She was in Harold’s house, after all, and she and Charley were close enough in age that it would be a simple conclusion that she was his daughter.

Oh, God, my Bela Szepessy
, she whined silently. Of all the potential weapons at her disposal, why did she have to choose something so valuable—something so close to her soul?

After the bitch with the gun hung up her phone, the heated discussion with her fellow captive confused her. They seemed to have the kind of knowing—if uneasy—relationship that comes of people who have worked together before. Why, then, was Felicia bound to this man and why did he continue to speak to his captor in tones that were as cordial as they were laced with fear? Each in turn looked right at her as they spoke. Clearly, she was the focus of their disappointment.

Felicia knew she was in trouble when the woman talked directly to the driver. It was something about the way she made a tossing movement with her head, at once dismissive and definite. A moment later, the driver changed lanes and headed for an off-ramp. They were going to get rid of her.

They were going to kill her. At this point, given all that had happened, what choice did they have? Hadn’t they already killed one of their own back in Harold’s flat? Murder was murder in the eyes of the law, whether you killed one or twenty. If they were done with her—and she was certain they were—they’d be crazy
not
to kill her. It was just a matter of when and how.

Her heart continued to slam itself into her breastbone as she weighed her options. The clarity of her thinking shocked her even as she determined that she in fact had no options.

Carson dialed back slowly into her surroundings. There was light and there was pain, though considerably more of the former than the latter. As she climbed out of the dark well that was her unconsciousness, she had the odd nonsensical thought that she was living in a bowl of red Jell-o. The light had a certain red tinge to it, so that was part of the illusion, but she could talk herself into believing that her head had been crammed with the stuff as well. Hearing was muted and her sinuses felt as if they had been stuffed with cotton.

Closer to the mouth of the well the light grew brighter still and the buzzing drone of which she’d been barely aware fine-tuned itself into voices.

“ . . . any time now. I can’t say for certain, of course, but I don’t think—”

“I need to speak to her as soon as possible.”

Who? Who did they need to speak to? What was the urgency and why wouldn’t Man A allow Man B to do whatever the hell he wanted?

As the voices clarified, so did the pain. It was as bright and red and piercing as the light and, now, equally inescapable. It radiated from the base of her neck, down her right arm to the ends of her fingernails and inward toward her belly button. With that kind of pain, you’d think you’d have some idea where it came from. Maybe that’s what they wanted to talk to that other person about. Maybe she could tell them all why she felt as though she’d rolled in razor blades and swum in alcohol.

It was a terrible image, but something about it amused her. Razor blades and alcohol. Throw in a little fire to boot.

Fire.

There’d been a fire!

Jean-Marc. She had to warn him. He was in danger. She opened her mouth to scream, but the well wouldn’t let her. Not yet. Yelling as loudly as she could, all she could produce was a moan.
Look out!
she shrieked. But there was no sound.

“She’s stirring,” a voice said. “She’s waking up.”

Yes! Tell her about Jean-Marc. Warn him!

“Connie?”

Yes! I’m here!

“Connie, can you hear me?”

The light grew brighter still and some of the color drained away.
Help me! I’m here! Pull me up! Jean-Marc is—

“She still out of it, Doc?” another voice asked. This one wasn’t as friendly. Wasn’t friendly at all, in fact.

“She’s coming to,” the first voice said. “Hello, Connie, I need you to wake up for me.”

Wake up. Wake up from what?

From the explosion.

Oh, Jesus, Jean-Marc was taken by the—

She returned to consciousness with a giant gasp. The sheer effort of it made her jump and the jumping added more alcohol to the razor blades. The light turned to white and surrounding the white, there was even more white.

And then a face staring down at her, his silhouette mercifully casting a shadow over her eyes. “Hello, Connie,” the face said. He spoke English, but with a thick accent that she knew she recognized, but couldn’t quite place. It was Indian. Maybe Pakistani. Just where the hell was she?

“Jean-Marc!” she said. To her own ears, her voice sounded normal, if distant, but the angle of the man’s head told her that she was wrong. “Save Jean-Marc!” she insisted. She tried to sit up, but that proved impossible the instant her wounds flashed again.

“Connie, you’re fine,” the face said. “You’re in a hospital. I am Doctor Ahmed. You’ve been in an accident.”

Fragments of a thousand accidents raced through her mind. How did she get to India or Pakistan? “Where am I?”

“You are in Tampa General Hospital. You were flown here by helicopter.”

“Tampa,” she said, testing the word. “Tampa, Florida.” It was coming back to her. The abandoned office. The dust. The closet.

“Is Jean-Marc OK?” she asked. But as her head cleared even more, the true imagery of that moment crystallized for her. There was no way he could have survived that blast.

“Ms. Carson,” another man said from off to her left. It was
the
other man who’d seemed unfriendly as she was climbing out of the Jell-o well. “My name is Detective Langer with the Tampa Police Department. I need you to answer some questions for me.”

She moved to look at him, but another stab of pain stopped her. “What happened?”

“There was an explosion,” Langer said.

Carson snapped, “I know there was an explosion. I was there. I meant what happened to me? Why do I hurt so badly?”

“You broke your right arm,” the doctor said. “In three places. And there are some burns.”

Her stomach flipped. “Bad burns?” she asked. It was the injury that she feared perhaps more than any other. The pain. The disfigurement.

“You’ll need some surgery.”

“But I need to talk with you first,” Langer interrupted. “A bomb like this, we need as much information as quickly as we can get it.”

“You can say no if you don’t feel up to it,” the doctor said.

“Actually, you can’t,” Langer said. “Not if you want to avoid obstruction of justice charges. Either one of you.”

All over the world, police forces drew their personnel from the same breed. “Then why don’t you stand where I can see you?” Carson said.

Langer turned out to be a Ken doll. Six-one with a head of thick blond hair, he wore khaki slacks and a blue knit shirt that made her wonder if her misfortune hadn’t pulled him off the golf course. “Tell me what happened,” he said.

It took all of two minutes to relate the facts. When she was done, she concluded, “Jean-Marc is dead, isn’t he?”

Langer nodded. His eyes showed pity, but she sensed that it was manufactured. “Yes, I’m afraid he is. You never said why you were there.”

“I know,” Carson said. “That’s a longer story.”

“I have time.”

“Apparently, I don’t.” She glanced toward the doctor, who recognized it as his cue to move ahead with his treatment plan.

Langer raised his hand to freeze the action. “Don’t push me, Ms. Carson. Right now you’re the only living person found at the scene of a bombing. That makes you a suspect.”

“I’m not going far,” she said.

“She has a point,” Dr. Ahmed intervened. “Speak with her now, speak with her in twenty hours, after surgery and recovery. What difference does it make?”

“It makes a lot of difference,” Langer said. “This wasn’t just any bomb, Doc.” He shifted his gaze to Carson. “This was a thermobaric device, much more—”

Carson gasped. She hadn’t intended to and if it weren’t for whatever meds she was on, she never would have shown her hand like that.

“That mean something to you, Ms. Carson?” Langer asked.

Hell yes, it meant something to her. Thermobarics were a class of explosives that allowed low-density charges to produce high-density yields. Whereas standard explosives contain chemical oxidizers in high concentrations to allow the mixture to consume all of its fuel in a single instant, thus producing its blast effects, a thermobaric device has relatively low levels of oxidizer, but is packed with highly combustible, often exotic fuels. When the charge detonates, the finely divided fuel is dispersed over a wider area and the oxygen in the air performs the role that the chemical oxidizer performs in standard explosives. In effect, the disbursed cloud of fuel continues to detonate, often at higher temperatures, thus expanding the kill radius tremendously.

“Not a thing,” Carson lied.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then arrest me.”

“Consider it done.”

“Excellent,” Carson said. She turned to the doctor. “Can I go to surgery now?”

Dr. Ahmed smiled. “Absolutely.”

“Consider her to be in custody, Doc,” Langer said. But he seemed suddenly flummoxed, as if this new turn had been totally unexpected.

“It will be foremost on my mind,” the doctor said.

Three minutes later, they were on their way to the elevator—all three of them, plus a couple of nurses and seeming hangers-on. Langer made a point, it seemed, to always be within Carson’s eyesight. The elevator took them to a set of double doors over which a sign read: SURGERY. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Below that was a smaller sign with an arrow that directed everyone else to the waiting area.

“You cannot go in,” Ahmed said to Langer.

The cop seemed to be struggling for words. “She’s your responsibility, then,” he said. He probably wanted it to be a more withering threat than it turned out to be.

On the far side of the double doors, Carson and the doctor exchanged victory smirks. “I often don’t like police officers,” Ahmed said.

“He was only doing his job the best he knew how,” Carson said, surprised at her own maternal tone. If Lespasse had been there, he would have been shocked to hear such forgiveness.

Lespasse. She’d seen too many friends die over the years to mourn them one at a time anymore, but she wished him well on this next leg of his Great Journey.

“Doctor, I need a telephone,” she said.

Their shared moment collapsed in his expression to more confusion. “Excuse me?”

“A telephone. It’s an urgent matter.”

“Your health is the most urgent matter at the moment,” Ahmed said.

Carson grabbed the hem of his scrub shirt with her good arm, igniting a lightning bolt of pain from her bad one. “Doctor, please stop.” The gurney glided to a halt. “It’s really not,” she said. “I love my own health as much as the next person—probably more, in fact. But in this case, it’s nowhere near as important as the phone call I need to make.”

Gun Bitch and the driver spoke with each other again and Felicia knew that the crescendo was about to begin. It was their manner of speaking, the conspiratorial tone. When Gun Bitch looked at her at the end of their exchange, Felicia knew that it would be bad for her.

The driver clicked the turn signal and started drifting toward the left—a shift in the natural order of a right-handed world to which she didn’t think that she could ever truly adjust—and as they slowed, Gun Bitch reached into her purse, looking for something. Felicia’s heart rate quadrupled. What could she possibly pull out?

It turned out to be a pair of clippers that looked like pliers and for a moment she thought she was looking at the instrument of her upcoming torture. When her captor leaned forward, however, and reached toward Felicia’s zip-tied ankles, she sensed that the bad ending to this adventure was at hand.

Felicia heard a
snip
and instantly her feet began to regain sensation that she hadn’t even realized they’d lost. She thought about kicking out at her captor, but then what? With her wrists bound to the man seated next to her, what would her next move be? Even if she knocked the bitch out with a kick to the head, she still wouldn’t be able to save herself.

“Don’t be stupid,” Gun Bitch said in English. She leveled her pistol an inch from Felicia’s forehead. “Move, I shoot.”

She pulled roughly on Felicia’s left shoulder to pivot her to the right. When she was facing the door, her arms stretched painfully beyond their limits, she first felt the closeness of her captor’s shoulders, and then the coldness of the clippers against her flesh as the tiny jaws slipped between the flesh of her wrists.

Snip.

She was completely free and she knew without doubt that she was seconds away from death. The instant her hands belonged to her again, Felicia knew it was time to act; just as she knew that her window to do so could be measured in seconds, not minutes.

Her first kick caught Gun Bitch in the stomach, triggering a cry that was equal parts pain and surprise. But the punch that landed squarely on her captor’s nose launched a shriek that was all pain and a fountain that was all blood.

The car slowed instantly, as if the driver himself had been the recipient of Felicia’s attack. That instant of inattention opened another window of opportunity. She lunged for the door handle and pulled, introducing a hurricane of wind and road noise.