Edge

Chapter 66

A HALF HOUR later-the old government facility lit up like a carnival and populated with a hundred agents and emergency workers-I was standing near the front of the compound.

Freddy’s tac people, in respirators and masks, were working their way through the building and over the grounds, clearing the place for the fire crews. They’d found the other three hostiles, all dead, but the flames were still raging where Pogue had made his last stand and they couldn’t get to his body yet. The guard out front was now conscious and in cuffs.

Nearby, medics were preparing to take Ryan Kessler to Leesburg Hospital for surgery. He’d regained consciousness and didn’t seem as badly injured as I’d thought. “In and out,” he told me, the same phrase Dr. Frank Loving had used to describe the course of my bullet through his cousin’s side.

I’d called Joanne and told her that her stepdaughter was fine and that her husband had been shot. “He’s stable,” I told her. I gave her the name of a doctor to call. Then I broke the news to her about Pogue. There was a beat of a pause and then she thanked me for letting her know.

I wondered again about their history.

I asked, “You let Ryan out, didn’t you?”

Another pause. “Yes. I kept Lyle distracted.”

She must have watched one of us punch the code to deactivate the alarm to the door and memorized the number. Or maybe she had some special app in her security-blanket purse that cracked locks.

I explained to her, “He saved my life.”

I saw Freddy approach. I told Joanne I’d call her back.

“Wait, Corte,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Hold on.”

A moment later I heard Maree’s voice. “Corte?”

“Yes.”

“You get hurt?”

“Nothing serious.”

Silence.

“I’m glad.” Then, incongruously, she added, “I just wanted to say… I got an image of you. When we were by the river? Remember?”

I digested this for a moment. “Yes.”

“It’s really good.”

“An image.”

She hesitated. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine, yes. I have to go.”

“All right. Call me when you can.”

Now I hesitated. “Sure.” We disconnected. Freddy now joined me.

I asked, “What’d you find?”

“This’s a mystery wrapped in whatever else that expression says.”

I glanced his way impatiently.

“Okay, here we go. Loving we know. The others?” He swept his hand around the compound. “They were capital C contractors. As in former-Blackwater-type contractors. Not that outfit but you get the meaning.”

Mercenaries, security forces. I wasn’t surprised, given what I’d seen in the wallet of the guard we’d knocked out. But I was discouraged. Groups like that were expert at leaving no traces back to their primaries. “So we just don’t know,” I offered.

“That pretty much says it, son.”

“And him?” I looked toward the revived guard.

Freddy said, “Wants a lawyer like a baby wants a bottle.”

“Loving made a call. I’m sure he warned the primary off. You check his phone?”

“No record of anything. You didn’t expect there would be, did you?”

“No.”

“We got Loving,” Freddy pointed out. Probably thinking I’d consider this a major victory.

I muttered, “But I want the primary.” I found myself gazing at the tarp covering Loving’s body.

I asked the agent, “You clean out your department?”

Freddy’s lips tightened. “An assistant in Communications. I checked her phone records. She’d been making calls through a dead letter line in the Caribbean over the past day. Loving got the names of her kids and the school they go to, so she fed him everything he wanted.”

Edge…

“Her kids are okay?”

“Yeah. Sometimes all you need is to mention a name or two. You don’t need implements of torture.”

“That’ll do it.” Aware my toe was still in agony.

“I don’t know about bringing charges against her. I don’t like the idea but I may have to.”

“And Zagaev? His family?”

“You were right. Loving paid them a visit, too-to get him to pretend he was the primary. But they’re fine.” A shrug. “The guy didn’t do anything wrong, either, except lie to us and cart around some guns he shouldn’t’ve. So… I don’t know, we’ll have to see about charges for him too.” Freddy laughed. “He apologized for saying bad things to you about the pumpkin. He didn’t want to. He said you seemed like a nice man.”

Freddy headed off to consult with his teams and the state police.

I found myself looking over at Henry Loving’s body. All his personal effects had been gathered and were sitting on a tarp next to him. I walked over and looked down at them. A wallet, a small wad of cash. A knife. The sandpaper and alcohol. An empty pistol magazine. Maps and pens, scraps of paper. Six cell phones. All encrypted and missing call logs. I knew the models and the software; it would take Hermes weeks to get information from them-if at all.

And I noted too the shoe box, the one he’d taken from his family house just before he’d burned it to the ground.

My heart thudded with anticipation as I walked over to one of the Bureau’s Evidence Response Team agents and asked for a pair of latex gloves. I pulled them on and returned to the cache. I stood for a moment, then crouched over the box. Did it indeed contain more pictures? Or was it something else, something his sister had given him? His father or mother?

I peeled off several strips of yellowed tape and began to lift the lid.

Then I stopped.

Painfully I rose to my feet and left the box with the rest of the effects. Taking the gloves off and returning to my car, I reflected that whatever might be inside, it was nothing that I truly needed to know.