Guardian of Lies

FOURTEEN

For three days after finding the binder and identifying the insignia, Orville Honeycutt nibbled at the edges of the Pike photo assignment. He burned a day of sick leave playing hooky. He had more than a month of leave, and what he didn’t use he would lose when he retired.

To see what was in Pike’s photos he needed to get at the lab in the basement when no one was there. The opportunity would come tonight. The painter was working downstairs. Nobody was going to stick around with the fumes trapped down below.

It was late afternoon, four thirty. He went online one more time, checking to see if Pike had responded to his e-mail to provide a method of payment. There was no reply. Honeycutt could send him one more notice and if he didn’t hear back simply close the file, but he didn’t want to.

He thought for a moment and then picked up the phone. He called a cell number across the river in the District of Columbia.

Freddy Younger answered.

“You got a minute?” said Orville.

Younger recognized the voice immediately. Freddy and Orville had worked together in army intelligence decades earlier when they were both young and stupid. They used to carouse at night before Freddy got married and had kids and Orville got old. They did the same type of work and it kept them in touch over the years, only Freddy’s pension was much better than Orville’s. He worked doing photo forensics at the FBI’s crime lab.

“What’s up?” said Freddy.

“Something I want to run past you.”

“Shoot.” Freddy listened but sounded distracted.

Orville told him about Emerson Pike and his pictures, about the old man in the military fatigue jacket, and about the insignia on the shoulder patch, the Seventy-ninth Regiment, what Orville had discovered about its history. It wasn’t much, just a few lines on a page in the old denim binder. This was filled with loose-leaf pages, periodically updated by U.S. intelligence agencies and given to their private contractors doing photo work. This was before computers and the digital age. The updates would come periodically by regular mail.

Intelligence, and particularly the military, always wanted to keep tabs on foreign troops around the world, their numbers and where they were deployed. The material in the binder was decades out of date. This may have been the only reason he found what he was looking for. Inside was a page with a picture of a shoulder patch identical to the one Honeycutt had found on the fatigue jacket.

“Are you near your computer?” asked Orville.

“Yeah.”

“I’m shooting you an e-mail. It’s blank, but check out the two attachments.”

Honeycutt sent him a copy of the enlarged shoulder patch and a second image showing part of the name over the breast pocket on the old fatigue jacket with the Cyrillic letters, only the first two of which were decipherable, H.

“It just went out. You should have it in a minute.” Orville had Googled the Russian Cyrillic alphabet and knew that the first two letters on the name patch translated to N I in English.

“Why so important?” said Freddy.

Orville explained that, according to the information in the binder, the Russians had reorganized all of their rocket brigades in the early 1960s. At that time the Seventy-ninth had only been up and running for a few years. It ceased to exist shortly after the reorganization, sometime between ’63 and ’64.

“So, somebody’s got an old Russian army jacket,” said Freddy.

Freddy sounded indifferent until Orville told him about the unit’s last overseas assignment. Then there was a long silence.

“How old did you say these pictures were?” asked Freddy.

“I didn’t,” said Orville, “but the same thought crossed my mind. That maybe somebody scanned some old photos into a computer. No, the files are too small and they aren’t TIFFs.” He was talking about Tagged Image File Format, the usual form of a digital image generated by a scanner. “They were all taken four months ago, on the same date,” said Honeycutt. “The man who sent them to me sent the original digital data files, complete, and they don’t lie.”

“What did you say this guy’s name was?”

“Emerson Pike.” Honeycutt took a deep breath and edged toward what he really wanted. “Can you do me a favor?”

“What’s that?”

“Write down the name Emerson Pike.”

“Pike, I assume, is spelled just like it sounds?”

“Correct. Obviously, I don’t have his date of birth or a social security number. I’m guessing he’s probably up in years based on the information in his e-mail and the way it was written. He lives in California, according to the electronic signature on his e-mail, a city called Del Mar. With the address and name, I’m sure you can find driver’s license records that’ll give you his date of birth. With that you could run a background check on him for me.”

“What?”

Orville was over the line and he knew it. Doing an unauthorized background check using Justice Department databases could land Freddy in big trouble. It could cut off his pension before he even got it.

“If you can’t do it, just say no.”

“No,” said Freddy.

“Listen, just do me this one favor. Just think about it before you say no.”

“I already said no, and I did think about it. If I got caught nosing around FBI background records, driver’s license data, and did an unauthorized disclosure, you know what would happen?”

“Don’t get caught,” said Orville.

“They’d fire my ass, then they’d arrest me, and I’d spend the next year and a half trying to explain to a federal judge how I was just doing a little favor for a friend. No thanks. And you know you should be very careful even asking me to do that.”

“That’s why I’m talking to you on your cell phone,” said Orville.

“Tell me what you’re looking for. You think the man’s got a criminal history?”

“No. I think you’re going to find big blanks, long periods of time with no entries, and probably files you won’t be able to access.”

“You think he’s a spook.”

“Retired spook,” said Orville.

“Then the answer is hell no,” said Freddy.

“Listen. I can tell you there’s a good chance I’ll find more information in the images. I’m still working on them.”

“How did you get this stuff?”

“Over the transom,” said Orville. “He sent them by e-mail. I don’t know if he took the pictures or if somebody else did. But whatever I find I’ll share with you if you help me. It may be nothing, then again, your people may want to know.”

“And if it’s nothing and I do a background check on this guy and somebody finds out, then what? Even if it is something, how do I go to them and tell them how we got the information? NO!”

“Thanks,” said Orville.

“Anytime.”

“Listen, if you change your mind and find anything on this guy, give me a call and I’ll show you whatever I’ve got at this end.”

“Let’s get together for a drink sometime,” said Freddy.

“Sure thing. Just think about it,” said Orville. “That’s all I’m asking.”

“You’re crazy,” said Freddy. “Take care.”

Honeycutt heard the line go dead. He hung up the phone and checked his watch. Another few minutes and the lab staff downstairs would be gone for the day.

The smell of paint made it difficult to work. But it was the price that Honeycutt had to pay if he wanted to use the photo-editing lab after hours. The painter was still at it.

Tonight he was busy finishing some of the smaller offices and work areas in the basement. He had been at it since five, and if his schedule held he would knock off just before midnight to clean up and start again the following evening.

Now that Honeycutt was in the lab, he could see the images that Pike had sent him on the oversize high-definition screen, the figures enlarged to almost half their actual size.

In all, there were seven separate digital images, six original exposures that had been shot on the same date four months ago. The only exception was the attempted enlargement, the image that was so badly mangled by poor focus, resolution, and glare that it was worthless. From the digital data he couldn’t be certain when the enlargement was originally made, but it had last been opened and edited two days prior to Pike’s e-mail. That was probably when Pike realized it wasn’t going to get any better, gave up, and sent it in to be professionally processed.

Honeycutt knew from Pike’s e-mail that the attempted enlargement was something in the background of one of the other pictures. What he didn’t know was which one. Take his pick. There were six.

Pike probably assumed that the lab would work off his own failed enlargement, cleaning it up.

Honeycutt wanted to work from the original rather than Pike’s degraded copy so that he could use the lab’s software to render the enhancements and get the best image possible.

Worse, Pike’s enlargement failed to copy sufficient file data from the original shot so that the original could be easily identified.

To Honeycutt, Pike’s enlargement was nothing but a white fuzzy blur with a few dark lines on it. With nothing else to orient him, finding the original picture and then locating the tiny speck in the background that represented Pike’s target took the better part of an hour. It was like finding a single piece to a jigsaw puzzle in one of six different puzzle boxes.

He looked for color, the shade of white in the enlargement, and then tried to imagine how small it might be in the original digital frame.

There was a piece of white cloth on a flat boulder off to one side in one of the pictures. Not it.

One of the men was holding a sheet of paper. He appeared in four of the shots, holding the paper in a different position with differing shadows and shades of light in each one. Honeycutt was able to eliminate two of them just by looking, and then used the magnification of the software to eliminate the other two.

When he finally found what he was looking for, Honeycutt suddenly realized what was happening in the pictures, the arm gestures and all the frenetic movement. The item in question provided the missing context for the photographs because the old man kept pointing at it. Only the stop-action of the camera’s shutter kept his outstretched finger from getting there.

The men in the pictures weren’t just talking, they were arguing. If Honeycutt had to guess, what they were arguing about had to do with the square white speck in the distance, the one on the table behind them, near the house. It was this document that Pike was trying to read.

Honeycutt went to work quickly. Resolution and glare reduction were easy. Computerized algorithms had to be applied to provide proper focus. The camera’s auto focus had seized on the moving figures in the foreground, so the item in the distant background was beyond the focal point of the camera’s lens. The digital software effectively re-created the enlarged image of the document by using computerized numerical probabilities and refocused the enhanced image. The sharp edges of paper came into clear view.

Honeycutt could now see more than a single page, a stack of pages, maybe ten, maybe twenty, he couldn’t tell. They were large sheets if the size of the table was any measure. The pages covered the width of the table from one side to the other; he guessed maybe three feet top to bottom and not quite as wide. The white speck looked much smaller in the original photograph because of the oblique angle from which it had been photographed, with the paper lying flat on the table.

Enhanced and enlarged on the big screen he could see that the pages were bound together, with what looked like tape all along the far edge at the top. But the angle made it impossible to make out details on the page, only a mirage of lines and curves, as if their shadow seemed to float just off the surface of the paper. There was some kind of detailed drawing on the top page. That was clear.

Using the software it was possible to attempt to re-create the image from a less oblique, even perpendicular angle, as if the item had levitated up off the table to face the camera. The problem was that the accuracy and reliability of such a computer-generated “veritable” photograph, given the distance involved in the original shot, was sketchy at best. The algorithms of the software could reproduce the Mona Lisa, but they needed at least a minimal amount of basic information from the original before they could do it. Honeycutt could be left with large pixilated blanks if the data was not sufficient in the original image for the magic of the algorithms to fill in the missing information. But he had gone too far to quit now. He checked his watch. It was after eight o’clock.

It took him forty minutes and three separate attempts tweaking and adjusting the parameters of the program before he was able to come up with something that even looked as if it might work. It came back not as an image, but as a list of numbers several pages in length on the screen. Honeycutt sent the coded instructions to the wide-format printer in the other room. He then leaned back in the chair, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. He was getting hungry, it was late, time to go home.

It took nearly a minute before the printer’s motor kicked on in the other room.

Honeycutt got up out of the chair, sauntered across the hall, and turned on the light just in time to catch the point of the needle-sharp stiletto full force in the center of his stomach, two inches beneath the hard bone of his sternum. The eight-inch blade sliced through the diaphragm, its pointed tip penetrating well into the lower chamber of his heart.

Liquida held him for no more than four or five seconds before Honeycutt’s knees buckled and his body collapsed onto the heavy-mill plastic of the drop cloth. Orville tried to stay on his knees, holding his stomach, but Liquida toppled him with his foot into the fetal position.

“I thought you were never going to get around to printing that. Thought I might have to chase you down.” Liquida talked to him as he moved to the other side, picking up two of the corners of the drop cloth and getting ready to close it up like a bag.

Honeycutt’s eyelids flickered. He lay there, his pupils following his killer as Liquida moved around him. Blood spurted from the wound in his stomach in a pulsing arc, out onto the plastic. Honeycutt tried to stop it with his hands but he couldn’t. It continued for thirty seconds, maybe less, as Liquida moved around adjusting the plastic as needed to contain the blood. In a single sputtering pulse it stopped. When he looked at Orville’s eyes, they were glazed, the lids half shut.

Liquida had arrived at three that afternoon. He went immediately to the front desk at Herrington Labs with an envelope addressed to “Orville Honeycutt,” the name given to him by the people who employed him in Colombia. Apparently, they had gotten it from an e-mail they received on Emerson Pike’s computer. The envelope to Honeycutt was marked URGENT-PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL. Inside was a blank piece of paper. Liquida then went out to his rented car in the parking lot and with a pair of field glasses he watched through the windows as Honeycutt was called and came out to the front of the office to retrieve the envelope. He got a good look at him, and another a couple of minutes later when he came back and angrily confronted the receptionist, who pointed to the door and shrugged her shoulders.

At the end of the day, Liquida waited for Honeycutt to come out. When he didn’t, the Mexicutioner figured he was working late. After borrowing a pair of paint-splattered overalls from the painter’s van, he bagged the painter just after seven in one of the rooms downstairs. He wrapped the man in plastic and rolled him out to the van in a large wheeled trash cart he found in the basement. The Herrington parking lot was virtually empty. Dressed in the overalls, no one on the street paid the slightest attention as Liquida loaded the large plastic bundle into the back of the van and closed the doors. Taking advantage of opportunities and using what was at hand was part of his trade.

He rolled and wrapped Honeycutt in the same way he had the painter. He used two more sheets and plenty of duct tape to make sure nothing leaked and then hefted the body into the cart.

The last item was the man’s computer. Most of the large screen was covered by numbers, but across the top were smaller boxes with pictures in them. The man had courteously left the items Liquida was looking for on the screen. Except for one thing-there were not six photographs as he had been told by his contact, but seven. He thought about this for a second, then looked at the image of the extra picture. He couldn’t tell what it was. No problem, he would delete them all.

The system was an Apple, a little different from the PC, but Liquida had used one in his travels several times before. It was what you say, user friendly. He wrote down the name of the file so that if he hit the wrong key and the pictures disappeared from the screen, he could call them up again. The special program was a little tricky, but he quickly figured out how to find the pathway to the files. Within a couple of minutes he had tracked the images back to the server where they were stored. He deleted everything, including the covering e-mail from Emerson Pike and the billing inquiry sent in reply by Honeycutt. If there was anything more, it would take a computer expert to find it.

According to the people down south, as long as it didn’t look as if anything violent had occurred in the office, and the bodies simply disappeared, by the time the authorities sorted out the missing person’s reports it would no longer matter. They were merely buying time. This only made Liquida more curious. Whatever they were doing had a time frame, and apparently it wasn’t terribly long.

He would dispose of the bodies along with the van in a lake he had already mapped out. There was only one more item of business. He went back to the printer room and pulled the large sheet of paper from the top chute of the wide-format printer, then laid it out on a table in the room to look at it.

Liquida leaned over the table as his eyes wandered across the large sheet. It was a drawing, something like the pictures you see pasted to the inside of a washing machine when you take out the screws and lift off the metal panel. There were letters that looked as if they were printed backward, with blank spaces, as if someone had dropped little pieces of paper over part of them and that part had not gotten printed on the page. The only things Liquida could decipher in the text were some numbers, and even those had gaping blanks. They offered nothing by way of understanding.

His expression was one of puzzlement. This was not among the photographs he was looking for, so it had to be the extra picture he had seen on the screen. The people down south did not know about this picture, but Liquida smiled, because he was sure they would want to look at it. He picked up the large sheet of paper, folded it, and put it in his pocket. He would probably send it to them, but not just yet.