Collision

22

Tied to a toilet. Ben figured he could holler for help, pound the walls, and the housekeeping staff or another guest would hear him and come to his aid. And then what? At the least he faced a difficult explanation as to how he came to be bound to the pipes, and at the worst he’d be recognized from the news accounts and handed over to the police.

The plastic cuff bit into his skin. He had to loosen it. He lay between the tub and the toilet. A sample shampoo canister sat with its matching bottles of conditioner and soap on the counter. But well out of reach.

Ben yanked the bath towel hanging above his head. He held one end of it and whipped the tail of the towel onto the counter. It knocked over the pyramid of miniature soaps and gels. Ben lashed out again with the towel, caught the plastic bottles under its weight. He slowly dragged the towel and the toiletries tumbled to the floor.

He upended the shampoo bottle over the cuff and greased his skin. He worked the ooze between the plastic and his flesh. Pulling and twisting, he tried to ease his hand through the cuff. Too tight. He worked it for five minutes but made scant progress.

He tried again with the bottle of conditioner, pouring with greater care, making sure he spilled none to the tiles. His heart pounded against the floor and he steeled himself to lose an entire layer of skin. He gritted his teeth and pulled. Agony. He tried to twist his hand through the tough plastic circle but it was simply too tight.

His eyes searched the counter. Nothing else, just a set of sugar packets, plastic cups, foil pouches of crappy coffee, and a coffeemaker.

The coffeemaker. The small carafe appeared to be glass. He tried to flick it loose with his towel. Missed. Too far. He pulled himself as close to the counter as he could. The carafe was still beyond his reach. He pulled a second towel down from the rack and awkwardly knotted the two together. He tried again. Missed. Tried again. This time the carafe jarred in its perch in the coffeemaker but didn’t buck loose. He heaved the towel in another hard snap and now the carafe rocked free from the coffeemaker but skittered toward the sink. If it fell into the sink he’d never reach it.

Ben calmed himself before he made another attempt. He aimed the towel, held one corner, tossed it over the carafe. He dragged the carafe slowly past the sink, and then it fell to the tiles, shattering.

Please, God, he thought, let there be a piece big enough to cut with. He pulled the towel off the broken carafe. The handle’s metal ring held a jagged rim of glass. He carefully picked up the handle and began to saw at the cuff where it joined to the pipe.

A knock on the door, a voice calling in polite singsong. “Housekeeping… everything all right in there?” The woman had heard the breaking carafe.

“I’m fine,” he called. Please don’t let her open the door.

“Is something broken, sir?” The woman spoke with a Jamaican accent.

“No, everything’s fine.”

The woman gave no reply. He put the jagged edge back to the cuff and after several more seconds the glass sliced through the plastic. He stood, half the cuff still on his wrist. He stumbled to the door, stepping on an object.

Pilgrim’s small sketchbook; Ben must have knocked it out of his pocket during the fight. Serves him right, Ben thought, slipping the book into his pocket. He put his eye to the peephole. A housekeeping cart stood on the other side and the woman was speaking into a walkie-talkie and she said, “Yeah, I heard glass breaking in there.” She paused, listening for more instructions. “Okay.” She pulled her cord of keys from her pocket and stepped toward the door.

He opened the door and walked straight past her. “I dropped and broke the coffee machine,” he said over his shoulder. “Sorry, I was trying to pick up the mess.” He kept his hand in front of him, the sleeve rolled down to hide the plastic cuff. He reached the elevator and glanced back; the woman was staring at him, at his face. He stepped into the open elevator and went down to the lobby.

He hurried past the front desk, stepped out into the cool breeze. The stolen Volvo was gone from its spot. He froze, indecisive, and behind him the hotel doors parted. He glanced back through the glass and saw the hotel clerk standing behind the counter, phone to his ear.

Watching him.

He turned and walked across the lot. Was that what paranoia was, the certainty that everyone was gawking at you, everyone knew who you were, everyone was reaching to stop you and pull you into darkness? It was a worm that turned and chewed and ate at you from inside.

He had to find a car.

The hotel lay along a busy thoroughfare in Plano, one of the largest suburbs near Dallas, and a line of chain restaurants-Cajun, Mexican, seafood, a steakhouse-sat across from it. Behind them stood a strip mall that included a bath supplies shop, a craft shop, a furniture store, a bookstore. Dozens of cars sitting there, and he had no idea how to steal one.

Stop. Think. He stayed calm in negotiating multimillion-dollar business deals; he could stay calm now.

Grabbing keys out of someone’s hand-no. He wasn’t going to mug an innocent person. And no one left cars unlocked these days.

What had Pilgrim suggested when they were heading for the garage back in Austin, if they’d had to steal a car? Bumper surfing: hunting for key boxes hidden under bumpers. He picked the heaviest row of cars, leaned down low, moving from car to car, skipping the high-end sports numbers. He thought he might have better luck with cars with those stickers announcing kids’ activities-wouldn’t a mother be more likely to take precautions to keep from being locked out of the car, with kids in tow? He refocused his efforts on those kinds of cars.

My God, he told himself, you’re starting to think like a car thief. Nice. What did Pilgrim say about his job- We do the dirty work that’s necessary. Pilgrim was right. You did what was necessary to fight back.

He heard the approaching whine of police sirens.

A woman getting into a car four down from him glared at him as though she knew exactly what he was up to. She put a cell phone to her ear as she backed out of the parking lot.

On the next car he tried-a Ford Explorer-his fingertips touched the square of a key box.

He opened the box, worried it would be a house key but no, it was a Ford key and within ten seconds he was inside the car. He backed out, saw two police cars revving into the motel’s parking lot. He drove the Explorer around the back of the shopping center, exited onto a side road, desperate to put distance between him and the police.

Now what? he thought.

He drove west for ten minutes-Plano seemed to be mostly large streets with subdivisions constantly sprouting off the roads, interrupted by shopping centers. He pulled into a branch library.

He could call Sam Hector. Beg his old friend for help. Explain what had happened to his employees down in Austin. Sam had connections of steel into every government branch and agency. He could use his leverage to help Ben clear his name.

Ben put on a pair of sunglasses he found in the Explorer’s glove compartment. Scant camouflage, but it was the best he could do. He found a scattering of spare change in the Explorer’s CD holder. An old pay phone stood near the door. He fed it quarters and dialed Sam Hector’s direct line. The phone rang three times-he could see Sam frowning at an unknown number calling him on a line very few people knew how to reach-then he heard the familiar baritone. “Sam Hector.”

A sudden urge inside Ben said, Just hang up, don’t drag Sam into this hell. But instead he said. “Sam. It’s Ben.”

“Ben. Ben, thank God. Are you all right? Where are you?”

“I’m okay. I’m in Dallas.”

“Where?”

“Sam, I need help.”

“Where are you, Ben?”

“I don’t want to say; I don’t want to put you in a bad situation with the police.”

“Ben, I’m already in a bad situation. I have men dead. Why did you leave the scene? You have a hell of a lot of explaining to do to me.” In the background Ben could hear a gentle click-click-click and he thought: They tapped Sam’s line, in case I called him.

“Help me and I’ll explain.”

A pained silence. “Ben, come to my house. We can strategize and we’ll get you surrendered to the police, get you the best representation. I’ll stand by you.” Click-click-click.

“I can’t come to your house. I need information.”

Ben glanced over his shoulder, to see if anyone was watching him, recognizing his face from the television. The few library patrons were lost in their reading. He heard more of the clicking-it sounded familiar, though. “Tell me about Homeland’s Office of Strategic Initiatives.”

“Ben. You know I can’t break client confidentiality.”

“Please. I need to know who these people at Homeland are, what their job is.” Click-click. He debated how much to tell Sam. “Listen. I was framed and these people think I’m guilty of being connected to the sniper that killed Adam Reynolds.”

“How?”

“Never mind. But I’ve never heard of this group, and they leaned very hard on me, threatened me, threatened my loved ones, my business. Who runs the group? I need a name.”

The silence on the other end of the phone ticked away ten seconds. The clicking stopped.

“Sam, help me. Give me a name.”

“Fine. I will tell you if you come to my house.” He seemed to spit out every word.

“Just give me a name and a number.” Ben hated the begging tug in his voice.

“And watch you do what? Run to Washington and make a fool of yourself? Call the press and undermine an important program? What?”

“Don’t lecture me. I’m incredibly sorry your men were killed, but they aimed guns at me and helped Homeland take me from my house and deny me due process. That’s not exactly in the normal services your company provides on American soil.” He couldn’t keep the anger from his voice.

“My men must have been following Strategic Initiatives’ orders, not mine,” Hector said.

“Sam. You owe me.”

A long pause, no clicks. “All right. Strategic Initiatives is a very small and unpublicized group inside Homeland. You won’t see them listed on the agency Web site. They’re a think tank on how to slice through bureaucratic procedure and encourage teamwork between the agencies. They contracted with us for security services.”

“Why does a think tank need security?”

“Because they represent the cutting edge of counterterrorism thought. The bad guys would love to get their hands on any of the Strategic Initiatives people.”

“Who runs it?”

“Ben, for God’s sake, come to my house and we can talk.”

“No. I’ll meet you in a public place.”

He heard a solitary click on the other end of the line. “Now you sound paranoid.”

“Just tell me who runs Strategic Initiatives.” His frustration nearly made him yell.

“I can’t. I made a promise to be discreet. That is non-negotiable.”

“I’ll tell you what’s non-negotiable. How much money I’ve made you over the years. How many deals I’ve helped you win because you weren’t particularly good at compromise and negotiation and I was. How much I’ve contributed to your company’s success, and you won’t help me in my hour of need.”

“Ben. You’re hysterical. Just come to my house-”

Ben hung up. He calmed his breathing. The clicks. Sam kept that abacus collection in his home office. He often played with an abacus on his desk, fingering the worn wooden beads back and forth along the rods, when he talked on the phone, when he was bored or nervous.

That might have been the most important conversation he could ever have with Sam Hector and the man had been playing with an abacus. Like he was doodling on a pad.

He felt sick. Sam Hector, shying away from him. So much for loyalty. Every mooring of his life seemed undone. He drew a deep breath.

He remembered the phone number Vochek last called on her cell phone when Pilgrim went through the call log. Delia Moon, who’d left a message. She might be the woman who Reynolds had called four times, a partner, a confidante, someone who could be of help to Ben in clearing his name- saying, That’s not the Ben Forsberg that Adam Reynolds knew. Or who could tell him how Adam had found Pilgrim and the Cellar, and could help him find them again.

The library was not busy; a few retirees reading magazines, a few people surfing the Web. He saw his own face on the front page of the paper, held up as a man read the inside of the section. On the library’s reference shelves, he found a phone directory. He looked up her name. Not in Plano. He worked his way through the suburbs’ directories and found her address in Frisco. He consulted a map, sketched out directions, and headed back to his car.

Delia Moon’s house stood in a tidy section of grand but cookie-cutter homes, all with fancy stone exteriors and oversized garages. Hers was one of the few finished ones; construction seemed to sprout from the Dallas prairie as fast as weeds and wildflowers. He drove twice past the house; he could see a kitchen light gleaming. It was nearly one in the afternoon. He saw a dark Mercedes parked down the street, in front of two finished houses that still had dirt instead of sodded grass and with “FOR SALE” signs the only sprouting growth, a guy in dark glasses holding a newspaper open, probably house hunting.

He parked down the street, in front of a just-finished house that still had a “FOR SALE” sign in front, and walked back three houses to Delia Moon’s home.

He had an idea of what to say, but no clue if it would work. His throat locked.

He rang the doorbell. No answer, but he could hear the distant whine of a television. He rang the doorbell again. “Ms. Moon?” he called.

The door cracked opened. Before him stood a tall young woman, dark-haired. She opened the door barely an inch. He saw a green eye and a cheek scattered with light freckles.

“I’m not talking to anyone today.”

“My name is Ben Forsberg,” he said. “You and I were the last people Adam tried to call before he died. We need to talk.”

“How did you know where I lived?” Through the inch of space the green eye peered at him.

Ben swallowed. He was unused to lying; but then, he was unused to removing bullets from flesh and forging signatures and stealing cars, and right now a lie was necessary. He cleared his throat. “Homeland Security brought me in for questioning. The person who killed Adam had my business card in his pocket. They think I might be the next target.” He paused. “I saw your number on one of the Homeland agents’ phones when they were trying to reach you.”

“You were going to help him get his software business off the ground,” she said and he realized, She bought it, she thinks I’m Pilgrim’s pretend version of me.

“I wanted to help him,” he lied. “Can we talk?”

“I don’t know…” She bit her lip, and now he had to convince her, lie if he had to, or she would shut him out, probably phone the police.

“Listen. Whoever hired that sniper to kill Adam, they could come after you if they suspect he confided in you.”

The door stopped. Now she frowned. “I’m a nobody.”

“Still. If you knew what he knew…”

“All I know is, all his ideas, his software he’d developed, Homeland Security took it all. But…”

“But what?”

“I don’t know what they’re going to do with his research. I don’t want them to steal his work. I want to protect it.”

He needed to know what this research was as well. He pressed his advantage. “That’s exactly what this group at Homeland might do. Access to his software is going to save them millions.” He hoped his bluff made sense. “But maybe I can help you get his property back.”

“Just a minute.” She shut the door and he stood, waiting, for thirty seconds until she opened it again. She was out of breath, as though she’d been running. “Come in.”

Ben stepped inside the house. The rich smell of cinnamon coffee hung like a perfume. Delia Moon gestured at Ben to walk first into the kitchen and he did, realizing she did not want her back turned to him. No sudden moves, he thought, don’t scare her.

She was pretty but her face seemed careworn, as though life had made her suspicious and cautious. “You want coffee?”

“Sure. I really am sorry to intrude upon your grief,” he said, and he was. He remembered how awkward people seemed toward him after Emily’s death. Murder paralyzed everything in your life.

She went to the cabinet and reached for an extra cup. She poured him a cup and refilled her own.

“I hope you don’t mind black,” she said. “I’m out of cream and sugar.”

“Black’s fine.” He took a sip of coffee. The taste sent a surge of heat racing along his bones. It was a moment of calmness, of normalcy, good coffee drunk in a sunny, bright kitchen.

She pulled a gun from the back of her jeans, from under her untucked batik blouse. “Please put your hands on your head.”

He thought: She shouldn’t have given me a hot beverage, I could throw it on her, get the gun from her. Funny how your mind started to work when you were afraid all the time. But he set the coffee down. “I’m not a threat to you.” Slowly he put his hands above his head.

She glanced at the remnant of the plastic handcuff on his wrist. “Lay down on the floor.”

He obeyed. “I don’t have a gun,” he said.

“I never thought I’d use this one. Adam insisted. Me living here alone.” She prodded at him with her foot, along his legs, along the small of his back.

“Delia, please listen to me. There was a man who stole my identity. He pretended to be me. He’s the one who approached Adam. He works for a secret group in the government. Adam found his false identities, the ones used in undercover work, and this man and this secret group came looking for Adam. To discover how he found them, when no one was supposed to be able to identify them.”

She stepped back from him, kept the gun leveled at him. “False identities-” she started to say and then stopped. And he saw the dawn of belief in her eyes.

“You believe me,” he said in shock and she nodded.

The sense of relief-after two days of not being believed-was vast. Someone believing him. He shivered, put his face in his hands. “Thank God. Finally. Thank you, Delia.”

She slowly lowered the gun, two sudden tears inching down her face.

Ben slowly sat up from the floor. “These people he discovered are sort of spies, but they’re not part of the CIA. They do the dirty jobs that the government can’t own. I need to know exactly how Adam found them.”

“Oh, God, he was stupid and brilliant.” She wiped away a tear. “He told me he had created a set of programs that would help track patterns used by people who are using fraudulent identities. He thought it would be useful in tracking terrorists. He wanted to do good. He kept saying we had to find them before they strike.”

“But terrorists aren’t the only ones who try to hide behind false identities and accounts,” Ben said. “It could also apply in finding covert operatives.”

She wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. “He talked about stuff like ‘common behavioral patterns’-false names, quickly established and deactivated credit and banking accounts, large cash withdrawals from those kinds of accounts.”

“Brew all the data together and it sounds like a Google to find bad guys.” Ben frowned. “But that wouldn’t work unless you could have access to a very wide array of unrelated databases. Financial, law enforcement, governmental, travel, corporate. The trail any of us leave in our lives is across a quilt of databases that aren’t sewn together.”

“Couldn’t the government get him permission for that?”

“Not without tons of warrants. But he did it. Someone got him the access.”

“Adam wouldn’t try to expose undercover cops or CIA agents or anybody working for good.” She shook her head. “Never. Not on purpose.”

“I don’t believe he knew he was searching for covert government agents. Maybe he was told they were bad guys. Did he ever mention to you that someone wanted to fund this software?”

“He mentioned once, a guy named Sam Hector-that Mr. Hector might fund his research. But this was months ago. I called him today when I realized the government had taken all of Adam’s ideas. I thought he could help me. He said he’d come talk to me about how we could get Adam’s research back from the government.”

“I know Sam.”

“Oh, good.”

“Not really. He dragged his heels on helping me. It wasn’t like him.” He wondered if Sam was feeling his own set of pressures from the government. Maybe Sam knew much more than what he was saying.

“Well, Mr. Hector’s coming here and he’s going to help me.”

And he would do nothing for me that wasn’t under his own terms. What the hell was wrong with Sam? Bitterness rose into Ben’s throat. “Then he must see more value in helping you than helping me. Delia, this is huge. Have you told anyone, the police, about what Adam was doing?”

She made a face. “There was a Homeland woman here, but she acted like I was shit on her shoe.”

“Joanna Vochek.”

“You know her?”

“Yes. She might believe me.”

“She didn’t believe a word I said,” Delia said. “I’m supposed to call her if I remember anything else.” She pushed Vochek’s number at him; he opened the paper, memorized the number. He might need it soon.

He handed her back the paper. “But you believe me.”

She nodded. “Yes. I do.”

The doorbell rang.

“Is Sam on his way over here now?” Ben asked. Delia hurried to the front door.

“Yeah,” she said. She put her eye to the peephole.

Jackie had been sitting in the Mercedes, puzzling over how to get into Delia Moon’s house without a fuss when Ben Forsberg-the civilian from the parking garage last night-pulled up in a white Explorer.

He waited, watched Ben talk his way into the woman’s house. Interesting. He called Hector’s number. No answer. He left a message. Waited a few minutes and Hector called back.

“Her and Forsberg are here together.”

“Then why the hell are you calling me? Kill them.”

“I’m calling because you’re pretty freaking particular about how things are done,” Jackie said. He ended the call and walked out to the house. Rang the doorbell, bold in the daylight. Saw the peephole’s flick of light get eclipsed by whoever was answering the door.

Jackie fired his Glock through the peephole.