Passenger 19

TWENTY-EIGHT

While Sorensen was staring down a gun barrel, Davis strode along the shoulder of a mud-encrusted street. The sky tried to gather an early storm but only went gray, spitting a cool drizzle on the waking enclaves of northern Bogotá.

He was half a block from El Centro when the parking lot came into view. Marquez’ staff car had been removed. Not surprisingly, there was no ring of crime scene tape circling the spot where it had been parked. He entered the building two minutes later, and saw not a single person on the phone or recording data. Echevarria was nowhere in sight, and the few people who’d shown up seemed shell-shocked and rudderless, chatting in hushed pairs and staring blankly at computer screens. It was all to be expected. The investigator-in-charge had been murdered — a first in Davis’ experience — and that tragedy had driven the entire inquiry to a clattering seizure.

Which was, he thought, exactly what someone had intended.

He saw a newspaper on a counter, folded hastily to a second-page headline about the murder. Davis read three paragraphs, a reporter’s speculation mostly, interspersed with cautionary words from the police spokesman, a certain Major Echevarria of the Special Investigations Unit, who promised to identify the guilty parties and bring them to justice.

For the next thirty minutes Davis attacked the previous day’s summary report, but found nothing to bolster a case that was in serious need of bolstering. He considered asking if there was a skydiving outfit on the airfield, but dropped the idea when he realized he didn’t know the Spanish word for parachute. It would likely be a pointless excursion anyway. The jungles where the aircraft had diverted, and subsequently crashed, were ruled by paramilitary militias. If that’s who Captain Reyna had been working with, then a parachute could readily have been supplied by his co-conspirators.

Jesus, Davis thought, am I reaching or what?

The scheme he imagined was an elaborate one, and, if true, the question of who could coordinate such a conspiracy loomed large. Even more perplexing were the reasons behind it. He felt like a marathon runner who’d gone off course, plodding with ambition but getting no closer to the finish line. One answer, however, might put him back on track.

Who was Kristin Stewart?

Davis stared at the door to Marquez’ office. Or what had been Marquez’ office. It was open wide, like an invitation. Davis got up, walked over, and looked inside. The room had been sanitized: file drawers emptied, bookshelves swept clean, dry-erase board on the wall wiped blank. It reminded him of the empty parking space outside. Every vestige of the colonel’s presence had been quickly and quietly erased.

Had Marquez also been asking questions about Passenger 19?

Davis looked once more around the place, and saw a handful of people going though the motions of an investigation. A few faces were familiar, people he’d gotten to know since arriving. Even so, he’d never met a single one before last Sunday. Aside from Delacorte, who was probably across the street in the warehouse, was there anyone here he trusted enough to ask for help?

A disturbing corollary then came to mind. Which of these men and women had Marquez trusted?

The answer that arrived was a lonely one.

Sorensen was in the backseat of a dark-windowed Ford Taurus, her Flexi-cuffed hands secured behind her back. She remembered the car now, having seen it on her drive-by earlier — two doors north on the opposite side of the street, pulled sedately into a paver-brick driveway.

From the back seat she watched the two Secret Service agents work — they’d not yet admitted their affiliation, simply taking her into custody under the loose auspices of being “federal officers.” The woman’s name was Smithers, the man Shea. Presently, Shea was searching her brother-in-law’s Acura, and Smithers was holding his cell phone while she talked to Jean Stewart. Sorensen wondered how she was going to explain to Dean that his car and Samsung had been impounded by the Secret Service.

To the positive, she was encouraged that after an hour no uniformed police had shown up. That meant the agents were trying to keep things internal, definitely in her favor. The two had to know who she was by now, and who she worked for. Sorensen also had little doubt that these agents were, at least loosely, tied to the “Jones” she’d met on the National Mall last night. She sensed fine lines being walked, messy jurisdictional overlaps being sidestepped. Best of all, she finally knew why everyone was treading so cautiously.

Jean Stewart had told her.

It left Sorensen with one pressing question. Had Jean Stewart told the agents what she’d confessed before they burst in? Once the car had been brought up, and a restrained Sorensen planted in its back seat, Smithers had begun interviewing Kristin Stewart’s mother on the front porch, a long and animated conversation between a distraught mother who wanted her daughter back and a special agent seeking damage control.

Did you tell her why we’re here?

That was the hundred-dollar question — or maybe the million-dollar question — that Smithers would ask again and again. But how would Jean Stewart answer? The Secret Service had been her daughter’s protectors, tried and true until four days ago. Now, however, Stewart might view Sorensen and Davis as more relevant, because they were in a better position to help Kristin. If Stewart admitted having spilled the truth, Sorensen suspected they would all end up in the nearest field office for lengthy discussions. She didn’t want that. What she wanted was to get in touch with Davis as soon as possible to warn him what he was up against.

Shea, a thick-necked silent type, was still turning over the Acura, and Smithers hadn’t stopped talking. With both agents busy, Sorensen decided to be proactive. The Taurus was not a hardened agency model, but rather a stock vehicle — presumably a rental for two agents on a temporary duty assignment. Sorensen had been cuffed with her wrists behind her back, but not otherwise secured to the car. And, unlike a police car, there were no impediments to opening the door. She curled her legs and tried to wedge a toe under the door handle. Her first two attempts failed. On the third try she got it.

She kicked the door open, wriggled out, and began walking toward Smithers — Sorensen was sure she was the lead agent.

“Hey!” yelled Shea from behind. “Where the hell do you think you’re going!”

Sorensen was halfway up the brick sidewalk when Shea reached her. He grabbed her arm but she shrugged it away — a move that wouldn’t work more than once. She stopped short of the portico, and put all the indignation she could manage into her voice. “Agent Smithers, you’ve got some explaining to do! I’m here on assignment, and you are interfering with official business.”

“And just what business is that?” Smithers asked.

“First of all we need to get rid of these ridiculous cuffs.”

Smithers hesitated mightily before nodding to Shea. The big man reached into his pocket for a pair of wire cutters and snipped off the cuffs.

Sorensen made a point of rubbing the marks around her wrists. “We have a man in Colombia investigating an aircraft accident, and Miss Stewart’s daughter was on that airplane. Understandably, she’s worried sick. Her daughter is officially listed as missing, but last night our investigator told me he thinks she may be alive.”

“And that’s why you drove all night to get here from D.C.? To give hope?”

Sorensen regarded each of the agents in turn. “You obviously don’t have kids.”

Smithers replied with a seething look.

Sorensen said, “I’m sure you’ve verified my credentials by now.” She held out an empty hand, and after a nod from his partner, Shea gave back her ID.

Sorensen said, “I’m going back to Washington now. I’ve got reports to file, and I’m guessing you do too. Let’s not make them any longer than necessary. Oh — and I’d like my phone back as well.”

Looking doubtful as ever, Smithers broke away and made a phone call. After a lively five-minute conversation, she pocketed her phone and gave Shea another nod. He handed back the keys to the Acura while Smithers offered up the phone. Her conversation with Dean had just got easier, but Sorensen had no delusions — she knew the car would be tracked and the phone monitored. A backlog of her brother-in-law’s phone calls was probably already being analyzed in some distant cubicle. Jammer would call again, sooner or later, which meant she had to find a way to shift their communications strategy. But that could wait.

Sorensen shifted her attention away from the agents to Stewart who was standing by her damaged and very expensive front door. “If I hear anything new about your daughter, I promise to call right away.”

“No,” said Smithers, obviously not wanting to relinquish too much control. “If there’s news about her daughter, you call us first.” Shea handed over a business card with a phone number scribbled on the back.

Sorensen took it with a faux smile. “Have a nice day.”

She was just turning away when she locked eyes fleetingly with Jean Stewart. If she wasn’t mistaken, Sorensen thought she detected the most subtle of nods.