The Rule of Nine

SIXTEEN

He’s older, and he looks heavier in the photograph, but it’s him,” she says. Joselyn is flat on her back on the couch.

“Keep your head down, don’t try to lift it. Keep your eyes closed.” One of the girls from the outer office is holding a cold compress across Joselyn’s forehead and eyes.

“Do you have a name for this guy?” Snyder is holding the single enlarged photo in his hand, his notebook open on the conference table in our office.

“When I knew him he was calling himself Dean Belden.”

Snyder writes it down.

“But that was what? Nine years ago now. I was told later that he had a number of other names he used, but according to the people I talked to he usually worked under the name Thorn.”

“How did you meet him?” I ask.

“He came to my office. I was still practicing law back then. Up in Washington State, near Seattle. He said he…” Joselyn lifts the wet compress from her eyes and shifts her body on the sofa to get her head up onto the armrest.

“Don’t try to sit up,” I tell her.

Harry hands her a pillow and helps her to slide it under her head.

“Thanks. I’m feeling a little better. Besides, I have to get my feet under me. I have a flight to catch tonight, remember?”

“As you said, there are more important things than Congressional hearings,” I remind her.

“You were telling us how you met him,” said Snyder.

“It’s been so long. He was calling himself Dean Belden. He showed up at my office one day and said he was a businessman. Said he had some corporate legal work for me or something. No. No, I remember now.” She lowers her feet onto the floor and sits up. She holds her head for a moment with both hands as if it’s ringing like a bell.

“Are you all right?” I ask.

“Yeah. Gimme a second.” She takes a moment to compose herself. “The offer of corporate work came later. The first thing he told me was that he had been subpoenaed. That was it. He was under subpoena to appear before a federal grand jury in Seattle. He told me that as far as he knew, it had nothing to do with him. He was not the target of the investigation. It was somebody else, another man he just happened to do business with. He claimed he didn’t even know why they wanted to talk to him. He offered a large retainer and told me that if I did a good job on the grand jury thing, especially if I could get it quashed, there might be some corporate work for me later. I was starving at the time, in a solo practice, ready to take anything that came through the door, and like a fool I said yes. That’s when the world caved in on me.”

“How do you mean?” says Snyder.

“All of it was a lie-his name, his business, the reason he was being called before the grand jury. He knew I couldn’t get the subpoena quashed. The government was closing in on him and what he needed was a witness, so he could disappear.”

“Go on,” says Sydner.

“His business, which was nothing but a front, was located in the San Juan Islands, in Puget Sound. He invited me out, supposedly to prep for his appearance before the grand jury. He had a pilot’s license and a small floatplane. The day he was supposed to appear before the grand jury he decided we’d fly.

“I was impressed. I was young and stupid. He set the plane down on Lake Union in Seattle and we took a cab to the federal courthouse. He was cool as a cucumber. We got inside and while I was engaged in small talk with one of the marshals, Belden took a powder. It was a few minutes before I realized that he was gone. But there I was, standing all alone holding the bag. I assumed that Belden had a case of last-minute nerves, simply got scared and ran. It’s what he wanted me to think. I grabbed a cab and headed back to Lake Union hoping I could catch him before he got into the air. I thought I could talk him into coming back to the courthouse.

“As it turned out, I didn’t quite make it. I got there just in time to watch him push off from the dock, climb up into the plane, and lift off. I heard the engine sputter and watched as the plane cart-wheeled into the lake. To this day at least that’s what I think I saw. He was very good. It was all meticulously choreographed. Of course, the divers didn’t find his body in the wreckage, but then they didn’t have to. The police had me as a witness. But the feds didn’t buy it.”

“So they already knew about him,” says Snyder.

“Oh, yes. He wasn’t just the target of their probe, he was the bull’s-eye. They told me that he worked under the name Thorn and that he was a hired mercenary. That his specialty was the transport of dangerous cargos.”

“What kind of dangerous cargos?” says Snyder.

“Nuclear, biological, chemical, that kind,” says Joselyn.

“A terrorist,” says Snyder.

“That was a word that had not quite come into its own back then.”

The puzzlement on Snyder’s face as he tries to snap all of these amorphous pieces into the puzzle of his son’s murder might be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

“I know how you feel.” She looks at him. “While Thorn didn’t pull the trigger, I know he is responsible for the death of a dear friend, a man named Gideon van Rye.”

“Ah.”

Joselyn looks at me. She nods. “He died trying to stop something that Thorn had set in motion. It’s a long story.”

The story of how Gideon Quest came to be.

“Do you know where he might be now, this man Thorn or Belden or whatever he’s calling himself these days?” says Snyder.

“No. For a short time, maybe a year or so after the plane went into Lake Union, he was up near the top of the FBI’s most wanted list. Not only did they not buy his drama of accidental death, they didn’t even treat him as missing, except for the fact that he was a fugitive. I heard they had him cornered somewhere in Africa and supposedly it was only a question of time. Then the World Trade Center went down, 9/11, and all the priorities changed. Have you seen the FBI’s most wanted list lately?” She looks at me.

I shake my head.

“If you don’t wear traditional Arab headgear, you don’t get on it.”

“Can I see the photographs?” I ask Snyder.

He hands them to me. In one of the photographs, Jimmie and the man Joselyn calls Thorn are laughing.

“Any idea how this man might have gotten on your son’s blind side?” I ask Snyder.

He shakes his head. “Jimmie was much too trusting. I tried to warn him. Some people would take advantage if he wasn’t careful. But you know how kids are.”

“I’m learning,” I tell him.

“You have a son?”

“A daughter.”

“How old?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Almost the same age as Jimmie. You think this man, this Thorn, may have killed my boy?” Snyder directs the question to Joselyn.

“I have no idea. He’s not Mexican, I know that. But from what I saw, what I know, he was certainly capable of it.”

“If he was on their wanted list, the FBI must have some kind of file on him,” says Harry. “Give them the names, Thorn and Belden. They should be able to connect the dots.”

“You better tell them that the photos you’ve got there aren’t going to look the same as the ones in their old files,” says Joselyn.

“Do you think it’s his print on your business card?” Harry directs this to me.

“I don’t know how far back the FBI fingerprint database goes,” I tell him, “but if that print belongs to him, it should have spit out a name, Thorn or…”

Behind me the door to the conference room suddenly opens. “Paul!”

I turn, and it’s my secretary, Janice. By the look on her face I can tell that something is wrong. “Phone call for you. It’s urgent. Your daughter.”

“What is it?”

“You want to come right now, and take it in your office,” she says.