Liberty

CHAPTER ELEVEN

When he awoke on Saturday morning, Tommy Carmellini padded into his kitchenette and fired off his coffeemaker. As he waited for the dark brown liquid to drip through, he rubbed his eyes and examined the new day out his kitchen window. Sunbeams were peeping through gaps in the clouds.

You gotta admit, having a box full of money in the basement must be a warm fuzzy for Arch Foster. So how did good ol’ Arch come by a hundred grand in cash? A hundred and fifteen grand, to be precise. Maybe he saved his lunch money for the last 152 years.

Carmellini eyed the amount of coffee in the pot, then slipped the pot from the maker and held a cup in its place. Only spilled a few drops. When the cup was full, he reversed the process. He blew on the steaming brew, then sipped experimentally.

The real question was, What was he, Tommy Carmellini, going to do with the information he had acquired? If he reported the money in Foster’s basement to the honchos at the agency, they would want to know how he knew it was there. Confessing to a felony didn’t appeal to Carmellini, this morning or any other. What about an anonymous letter? In all likelihood someone would whisper about the letter to Foster or even question him about its allegations, so the money would be long gone when the cops or FBI arrived with a search warrant.

A pretty problem.

As he showered and got dressed this morning he thought about it. About going back and getting the cash. After all, sending postcards to the police wasn’t going to accomplish anything. Arch had probably gotten the money doing something slimy. Why shouldn’t Carmellini do something a wee bit nasty to keep that miserable pecker-head felon from enjoying the fruits of his ill-gotten gains? It wasn’t like Foster inherited a box full of cold cash from his kindly, white-haired uncle who adored him. Or did he? Well, it would be easy enough to find out.

He paused at his dresser as he considered what he knew of Archie Foster and his buddy, Norv. He thoughtfully removed his pistol from the drawer and loaded it. Put it in his pocket. Just in case.

Those two bastards were listening on the bugs. He wondered what they were listening for.

Oh, well. Time to go get a bagel and a cup of real coffee. He cycled through the kitchen to turn off the coffeemaker, then left the apartment, locking the door behind him.

“He’s coming down,” Norv Lalouette told Arch. “The front door just closed.” They were sitting in a van parked near the service entrance to Carmellini’s apartment building.

Arch was in the driver’s seat. He started the van, drove it over to where Carmellini’s red Mercedes was parked. He turned off the engine. Watching in the rearview mirror, he spotted Carmellini coming out the main entrance of the apartment building. Arch had parked in such a way that Carmellini would probably walk right between the van and another vehicle to get to his car. Yes. He was walking their way.

“Here he comes. Get ready.”

As Carmellini walked by the rear of the van Arch opened the door and pointed a pistol at him. “Freeze!”

Carmellini stopped in midstride, about four feet from Foster, who had dropped out of the driver’s seat and now had the pistol leveled belt-high, with both hands on the butt.

“Hey, Foster, what’s this—”

That was as far as Carmellini got, because Norv Lalouette had gone out the rear doors of the van, and now he whacked Carmellini in the head with a sap, a hose weighted with lead. The lights went out for Tommy Carmellini, and he collapsed.

“Quickly, now,” Arch said, pocketing his pistol and scanning the parking lot to see if anyone was watching. Apparently not. “Get his legs. Let’s get him in the van and get going.”

Sixty seconds later, Foster jumped back into the driver’s seat and started the engine. He pulled the shift lever into gear and fed gas.

In the back Lalouette used a plastic tie on Carmellini’s wrists and ankles, then put a strip of duct tape over his mouth. Working quickly, he produced a syringe and bottle of liquid. The next time the van stopped at a traffic light, he drew some liquid into the syringe, then turned Carmellini’s right arm so he could see the veins. Carmellini worked out, obviously. Lalouette picked a vein and jabbed in the syringe. Only after he had given the big man the injection did he take the time to search him. He passed Carmellini’s pistol, wallet, and keys up to Arch.

When Tommy Carmellini awoke, the process was gradual, a gentle dawning of consciousness. He tried to move … and couldn’t! He was lying on his back.

He could feel his legs and hands and arms, feel himself lying on something, but he couldn’t make his arms and legs move. He couldn’t focus his eyes. He was looking up, but he couldn’t decide what he was seeing.

He tried to make a noise. Something on his mouth. He filled his lungs with air and tried to talk. He couldn’t make a sound, not even a moan. He couldn’t turn his head, couldn’t move. He was totally helpless.

“Hey, he’s awake.”

Someone came into his field of view. He recognized the blurry face. Foster!

“How you doing, Tommy?”

He didn’t try to speak.

“Sorry it had to be you, Carmellini. You shouldn’t have broken into my house. My stuff was a little out of place — not much, but a little. I could tell someone had been in there pawing around, and you are the only burglar I know. And you weren’t in your apartment when this little crime was being committed. Then this morning, you’re packing heat — a rod in your pocket. Tsk, tsk, tsk. It’s all circumstantial, I know, but Norv and I are the judge and jury and we’ve convicted you. Not going to take a chance on you, Tommy. Wish it could have been different, but you are too much of a nosy asshole.

“You are an asshole — do you realize that, Tommy? Probably don’t give a shit, do you? Yeah, I know. Just lie there and don’t say a word like the asshole you are.

“’Course you couldn’t say a word if you tried. We’ve given you an injection, Tommy, to make you easier to handle. We’re going to kill you. Going to put you in an airplane with concrete around each foot and haul you fifty miles out over the Atlantic. Then we’re going to shove you out. Maybe you’ll get lucky. Maybe you’ll get killed on impact with the water. Needless to say, you’ll go down feet-first. If the impact doesn’t kill you, I doubt that you’ll swim far with thirty pounds of concrete on each foot.”

Arch Foster leaned over, placing his eyes inches from Carmellini’s. “We’ll have to wait for the concrete to set up. Takes at least twenty-four hours. Tomorrow night, Carmellini, we put you in the plane for your last ride.” Foster chuckled. “Could kill you now, of course. You’d be sorta stiff tomorrow night, but not too bad. Yet killing you now would spoil the fun. You see that, don’t you, Tommy? For thirty-six hours we get to savor the thought of that asshole Carmellini lying here paralyzed, unable to move, thinking about the fall. Oh, yeah, you’ll be thinking about it, all right. You’ll lie here thinking about how it will feel when you hit. Kersplat! It’ll be like falling off a twenty-story building. Oh, yeah, you’re going to think about dying.”

Arch Foster chuckled. He walked away still chuckling.

Tommy Carmellini tried by sheer force of will to move one finger. Just one.

And failed.

Arch chattered with Norv Lalouette while they stirred water into premixed concrete. Tommy Carmellini could hear the water running from the hose into the buckets, the sounds of bags being ripped, the shovel clanging against the metal pails. He was completely unable to move. He couldn’t even focus his eyes on the ceiling. He could hear okay, though.

“Too bad, Carmellini, that you couldn’t see the advantages of working with us. You weren’t man enough to just up and ask what the deal was. Naw, you had to break into my place and snoop. I always said you were the kind of guy who couldn’t be trusted, didn’t I, Norv?”

Norv grunted.

Arch returned, looked at Carmellini’s face. He reached and ripped the tape from Carmellini’s mouth. “You might drown in your own spit if I leave this on,” he said, and laughed. “Hey, Norv, he can’t even close his mouth.” He addressed his next comment at the paralyzed man. “Drool all you want, big guy.”

“I told you that was good stuff,” Arch told Norv. “It’s some sort of ketamine derivative. Never seen it work before, but I got it from a guy who used it in China a couple of years ago. Said the effect was awesome.”

“Okay, I’m a believer. Go easy on the water in the concrete, man, or it’ll never set up. Don’t let it get soupy.”

They worked with the shovel for a few seconds, then Arch said, “Yeah, that’s enough water. Stir it up good. When it’s ready we’ll jam his feet in.”

“Shoes on or off?”

“Off.”

Tommy Carmellini could feel someone peeling off his shoes, but he had no control over his legs. Or his bladder. He could feel a spreading cold wetness.

“Hey, he just pissed himself.”

“What did you expect?”

“Maybe we ought to shoot him. Won’t stink up the place so much.” That was Norv. He was a hell of a guy.

“Naw,” Arch told him. “More fun this way.” He chuckled.

They pulled Carmellini down the table and jammed a foot into each bucket. He felt the slimy cool wetness. The buckets were sitting on something below the table level, so Carmellini’s knees were bent ninety degrees. He knew that, too, although for the life of him he couldn’t move those legs.

“Wha’dya think? Should we give him another injection?” Norv asked that.

“The juice is good for forty-eight hours. Another shot would stop his heart and breathing.”

Arch put his head over Carmellini’s face, and grinned. “See you tomorrow night, asshole. I’m going to think about you all evening, lying here paralyzed, waiting to make the big splash tomorrow night. That’s as old as you’re going to get.”

“That’s enough, Arch. Let’s lock up and get going.”

“Okay.”

“I still think we should shoot him now.”

“Waste of a bullet,” Arch replied. “And we’d be doing the bastard a favor. I don’t like him that much. The fall will probably kill him, and if it doesn’t, he’ll drown. That’s more his speed.”

He stepped over to Carmellini and whispered in his ear, “Think about the fall.”

The lights went off. A little daylight leaked through the joints in the tin siding, so the building didn’t become truly dark. Carmellini heard a door close and the sound of a padlock clicking. A moment later he heard a vehicle start, then it drove away.

He listened for minutes. He was alone.

He tried to move his arms. No. Then his head. Close his mouth. Move a finger. Speak. All to no avail. He couldn’t move a single muscle. He was totally and completely paralyzed.

He lay there on the table motionless for the longest time. He heard airplanes start and taxi, occasionally a plane went overhead. The motors sounded like piston engines. Once he thought he heard a jet, but it wasn’t loud. Every now and then he heard car doors slamming far away, twice he heard voices. He concluded that he was at a general aviation airport, probably in a private hangar.

When his vision got extremely blurry he realized he was crying.

“Where’s Tommy this morning, Zelda?” Jake Grafton asked, then winced. He kept forgetting that her new name was Sarah. Sarah Houston.

“I don’t know, Admiral. We haven’t seen him.”

“Probably breaking into a bank or something,” Zip Vance said grumpily. They were in front of the computer terminals in the SCIF, or technocenter, as Tarkington had labeled it, in the basement of a CIA building on the Langley campus.

“I suppose,” Jake agreed. He produced a list from an inside pocket. “Here are three names. I want you to construct dossiers on these people, find out everything you can about them.”

“Everything?”

“Everything. Money, telephone records, e-mail correspondents, Internet sites visited — whatever you can get. I’m looking for something — anything — that shouldn’t be there. It’s time to try out the system you’ve been constructing. These people knew that the Russians had given us an American traitor named Richard Doyle, who was spying for them. When they learned that he had been fingered, one of the three probably told someone they shouldn’t have told, someone without access. It’s probable that Doyle was killed by someone who had the time and money to dispose of the body so it couldn’t be found.”

“He’s missing?”

“Vanished into thin air.”

“Perhaps Doyle was spirited out of the country,” Zelda mused.

“It’s possible,” Jake said, “but I doubt it. If he was in Russia we would have heard something, a hint over a telephone, a sighting, something. He’s dropped completely out of sight. I’m betting he’s dead.”

“Lanham, Twilley, and Tran,” Zip said, glancing at the list.

“We’ll do our best, Admiral,” Zelda said.

Jake left thinking about Janos Ilin, the tightrope walker. If the Russians killed Doyle or kidnapped him to keep him from talking, one had to assume they knew that Ilin sold him out. If that was the way it went down, Ilin was dead or in prison or soon would be. And Jake had no way to contact him. He felt helpless, as if he were living a nightmare in some dark, smoky room filled with mirrors that distorted every image and made it impossible to separate the real from the unreal.

An hour later Toad Tarkington bounced into Jake’s office upstairs with Sonny Tran bobbing along in his wake. “Got’er down front, boss. Let’s take a ride, see what she’ll do.”

Jake grabbed his hat and followed the two men from the office.

“There she is,” Toad said when they reached the parking lot. He gestured to an unmarked white van, a fairly new one by the look of it. Except for two small windows in the back doors, it had no windows behind the driver’s and passenger’s seats. “Sonny, you drive and the admiral and I will sit in back and play with stuff. Sir, the technician’s name is Harley Bennett.” He opened the door. Bennett was sitting at the control console. Toad introduced the two men.

As Bennett explained the Corrigan detection unit, Sonny Tran got the van under way. He threaded it through the parking lot, which was only about half full on Saturday afternoon, stopped for the guard at the gate, then dropped down the ramp onto the southbound lane of the George Washington Parkway. Traffic into Washington was flowing well. Tran accelerated to sixty miles per hour and held the van there.

Harley Bennett chattered on as the van swung onto the George Washington, headed toward the heart of the city. “We hunt alpha particles, X rays, gamma rays, and free neutrons. Each has its own characteristics. These types of radiation generally do not propagate far, especially in the atmosphere, and therefore detection ranges are limited. We think our arrays of sensors, which are mainly banks of crystals, push the technology as far as practical.”

“Crystals?”

“Yep. Remember all those crystals that NASA was trying to grow in space to advance pure scientific research? Crystals are used to detect radiation. In any event, Corrigan Engineering couldn’t get really big crystals in sufficient quantity. We have ganged little ones together to achieve the same effect and invented some new ones. Other sensor improvements and digital signal processing enable us to determine the amount and specific type of nuclear material being detected, which we think pretty much solves the false alarm problem.”

“False alarms?” Jake hadn’t really considered that angle.

“The problem is that our society is full of radiation. Darn near every electromagnetic device is radiating on some frequency. We want a device that won’t ring fire alarms when we drive by a dentist’s office and he’s X-raying teeth.” Bennett was an enthusiastic talker and Jake Grafton was a good listener, so Bennett charged on, discussing the truckloads of radioactive waste that crisscrossed the nation’s highways daily. Hospital waste, medical and industrial isotopes, even some types of concrete give off radionucleides.

“The innovation that makes the Corrigan detection system unique,” Bennett confided, “is the patented active measures we devised — mainly e-ray sources and neutron generators — for interrogating the emitter and inducing it to increase its emissions rate.”

“All that is in this thing?” Jake asked as he inspected the aluminum cabinet in the center of the van.

“It’s in there,” Harley Bennett said warmly, and patted the box.

Sonny drove to a hospital, which excited the Corrigan device. “Medical radiation,” Bennett said after he actively queried the emitters. He showed Jake and Toad the instrument readings. “Occasional X rays, and some low-order medical isotopes.”

“Naturally you’ve tested this thing on a real warhead?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” Harley said, slightly offended. “The air force made one available to us last week.”

“We also went by Three Mile Island on the way down here, Admiral,” Toad said. “This thing lit up like a drunk on Saturday night.”

They talked about the readings, what each meant.

“Let’s drive south to the Beltway,” Toad suggested. “Sit beside the road and see what goes by.”

Jake nodded. Toad spoke to Sonny, who started the engine and got the vehicle under way. They ended up on the I-95/I-495 interchange. Sonny pulled over and turned on the emergency flashers.

He came back to join Bennett and the naval officers. The men sipped coffee and watched the gauges. “We got some hits with radioactive waste being transmitted while we were driving down from Boston,” Toad said.

“We’ve got one detector and a whole city to protect,” Jake said to Bennett. “How should we proceed?”

“I recommend that we make a map of the city, a grid, and take a sample in every sector, establishing a baseline. Then we keep going back over the sectors sampling radiation levels. I imagine we could do the whole city a couple times a week. When we get more detectors, we will get more proactive, visit the airports daily, for example.”

“Do you think the goal of finding the weapons as they come in is unrealistic?”

“It is until we get more detectors. When we have enough, put one at every airport, establish corrals on all the major highways coming in to force the trucks to pass by. But since we can’t build a wall around the city and limit traffic to a few gates, I don’t see how you’ll ever get away from sector searches.”

“How about an airplane? Put one in a plane and have it fly over the city?”

“That would work, if we could fly low enough.”

It wasn’t long before a truck hauling medical isotopes went by. The device squealed an audible warning.

When the excitement died down, Jake said, “Sonny, let’s get this thing rolling. I want to drive around the Capitol, then the White House and Lincoln Memorial and the Pentagon.”

“You don’t really think the bombs are already here, do you?” Toad asked.

“If our source was telling the truth? No, let’s get busy establishing a baseline right now.”

Sonny moved back into the driver’s seat.

The van was proceeding north on 1-295, past the old Naval Station Anacostia, when the detector began squealing again.

“That’s strange,” Bennett muttered. As the van rolled north, the emissions faded. “Must be some kind of radioactive waste around here.”

“Here?” Jake said, and went forward so he could look out the windows. He could hear the audible tones sounding behind him. As the van rolled, the sounds faded.

Bennett scratched his head. “That was something, anyway.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, Admiral.”

False positives! Jake cursed under his breath, then told Sonny to turn around. He got off at the next exit, crossed the overpass, and headed south.

The Corrigan detection unit came alive again. An hour later the van was sitting on the waterfront. Reagan National Airport was across the river.

“Something’s triggering this damned thing!” an obviously frustrated Harley Bennett exclaimed. He had put out sensor cables, gotten the direction of the strongest reaction.

Jake and Toad got out of the van and consulted the map. “Could be something at Fort McNair,” Toad said, pointing across the Anacostia River. “Or at Reagan National, or maybe over on that golf course at East Potomac Park.”

“Let’s do Fort McNair first,” Jake said. Traffic was building, so it took a while to get there. At Greenleaf Point the machine was indicating the presence of a weapon.

“I don’t believe it,” Toad said. “There is no way in hell that terrorists have got a bomb here from Russia in five weeks.”

“We haven’t found the locus of the signals yet,” Jake said. He pointed toward the golf course on Hains Point, across the Washington Channel that led to the Tidal Basin. “Roll it, Sonny.”

The golf course security guard didn’t want to let an unmarked van onto the grounds. While he called the course groundskeeper, Jake used his cell phone. Ten minutes later two squad cars and a car full of FBI agents arrived within a minute of each other. Opposition from the groundskeeper vanished. He unlocked the access gate and let the van and police cars through.

They ended up at the southern end of the island behind a seawall made of pilings. Harley Bennett unwound sensor cables and plugged them into sockets in the van, then flaked them out on the ground. After consulting his machine, he announced, “We’re right on top of it, almost. Within a few feet.” He and Jake joined the police officers, who were searching the grounds, looking under bushes and hedges.

There was a small building nearby. The groundskeeper unlocked it. The building was full of shovels, rakes, mattocks, tools, and spare parts to repair the course’s watering system.

“This is all fill dirt, isn’t it?” Jake asked the groundskeeper as he gestured at the area around them.

“Yessir, it sure is. About five, maybe six years ago, the city hauled in dirt and piled it on this mudflat. They built the wall around here to hold it all in and made that fairway over there longer. Moved that putting green. Moved some trees, too.”

“Any digging around here lately?”

“Oh, no. Nothing like that.”

“I seem to remember the construction five years ago. I was living at Fort McNair around then.”

“The environmentals didn’t make much noise about this mudflat, not like they would today.”

“Five years,” Toad muttered to Jake. “Something’s wrong with that gadget.”

“Let, go.”

Bennett was embarrassed. “I can’t explain it, Admiral. Unless maybe someone dumped a drum of Three Mile Island waste into that fill.”

“I want you to go over this gizmo with a fine-tooth comb, Harley, check every lead and sensor. Call Toad in the morning, check in with him.”

Bennett nodded sadly and checked his watch.

“Sonny, take me back to the office.” He thanked the law enforcement officers and groundskeeper for their time, and led the little procession back toward the clubhouse.

When he returned to the office, Jake Grafton found a telephone message waiting. He had received a call from Sal Molina, the president’s aide. He was requested to attend a meeting at nine o’clock that night at the Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House.

Jake removed the card with Molina’s telephone number from his wallet and dialed the telephone. “What’s this meeting tonight about?” he asked.

“The heads of the FBI and CIA are hearing about your plans from their liaison officers. They want to argue about your decisions.”

“I see.”

Molina sighed. “The president asked the national security adviser, Butch Lanham, to referee. DeGarmo wants you canned. You’re a lightweight, Emerick told the president, in over your head.”

“And Emerick’s such a nice fellow.”

“Right.”

“How about inviting the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to this soiree, General Alt? Maybe even the guy I work for, Stuffy Stalnaker?” Stalnaker was the chief of naval operations.

“I’ll talk to Butch, see what he thinks,” Molina said. “Nine o’clock.”

Lying on the table totally paralyzed, Tommy Carmellini’s mind wandered freely. He thought of his parents, friends, places he had been, things he had done, stupid things he was ashamed of, things he regretted.

The night had come, and the building was totally dark. He heard some airplanes for the first few hours after the sunset, then silence.

Complete silence, broken only by the gentlest whisper of the breeze around the gaps in the metal siding of the hangar.

His mind resumed its aimless wanderings. Norv and Arch were going to kill him — of that he had no doubt. If they didn’t kill him, he would kill them, and they knew that.

He certainly never thought it would end this way. Or this soon. He was still a young man, with a lot of great years left.

He was thinking about dying when he heard a plane coming. The noise grew louder and louder. It seemed to be taxiing up right outside the building. Then the pilot cut the fuel to the engines and they died. Engines — Carmellini was sure there were two.

He filled his lungs, tried to shout. And couldn’t.

Tommy Carmellini tried to moan, to speak, to say a single word, He couldn’t make his lips or tongue move. He couldn’t swallow, couldn’t move his head …

The door of the hangar opposite the one he was in creaked as it was opened. Voices reached him, although he couldn’t distinguish the words. A small gasoline engine started … probably a nose tug of some kind being used to move the plane.

After a while he heard the hangar door being closed.

This was his only chance! He had to make a noise now!

He filled his lungs, tried by sheer strength of will to move his cheeks and tongue to form a word.

And failed.

When he heard a car start and drive away, he stopped trying. He lay staring up into the darkness, concentrating. If he could move a finger …