World Without End (43 page)

You're right, of course. But you know being right and having the truth on your side doesn't change political agendas. You carry out your plan, your CIA career will be over.

On screen Conway saw Owen Lee and a short, dark man Lee called the Elf plant the drugs around Riley's apartment and talk about where to place the surveillance gear. He slammed the laptop shut, ripped off his earphones, and shoved it inside the briefcase. He had to leave his watch on. He wanted Cole and his men to be able to track him.

Inside the briefcase was a rubber Halloween mask. Conway removed it and looked at the stark white face and red hair the mask of serial killer Michael Myers from the Halloween horror movies. Conway fitted the mask over his head and then put on his black leather gloves to hide the skin color of his hands. He knew Cole had men waiting outside, maybe even inside the bank, ready to pick him up. Hopefully, the mask and the elaborate setup to follow would confuse Cole just enough to allow Conway to pass off the briefcase with the evidence.

Conway's phone rang again. He hit the button and pressed the phone against his rubber ear.

"Don't be afraid, Stephen," Angel Eyes said.

"I'll protect you. I give you my word. We'll travel this road together."

Conway hung up and shoved the phone inside his pocket. Then he locked the briefcase and moved behind the door, his hand on the doorknob, ready. His equilibrium seemed off. He felt like a man who had staggered away from a terrible accident. He sucked in air. He could smell his stale, sour breath along with the rubbery stench of the mask.

The fire alarm sounded. Conway opened the door and ran, navigating his way through the short maze, and then headed into the lobby. Four of Booker's men were dressed identically, all of them wearing the same masks and holding the same briefcases, people already on the floor, cowering, thinking it was a robbery. Booker's men fell into line with Conway. He exchanged briefcases with one of them and then they all raced for the front door.

Owen Lee couldn't believe his fucking luck. Man. He expected to hear the CD play over the speakers inside the van Cole had leaned forward in his chair, waiting, and Lee's hand gripped the revolver inside his jacket.

But no sound ever came. Conway must have plugged headphones into the laptop. They could hear the dude breathing heavy, then heard the phone ring twice and listened as he talked to Booker and then to that spooky motherfucker Angel Eyes.

Cole was only a couple of feet away. Lee thought, Kill him now.

And he would have if it weren't for the fire alarm. He could hear the goddamn drilling sound here in the van, a block away.

Cole, calm and in control cocky was what it was on the headset to the men: "Stephen's going to exit the back. Be ready."

Lee's attention shifted to the monitor showing the back door wait, what the fuck was this: on monitor four, here came Conway bursting through the front entrance, the area lit up by the bank's outside door lights.

The glass door burst wide open and oh shit, here came four no five, guys, all of them running. They were all dressed in long black jackets and held briefcases and what the fuck, all of their faces were covered by masks with creepy orange hair that stuck straight up.

"What the hell is this shit?" Owen said.

"He's trying to confuse us. Lock onto his transmitters."

Lee worked the console, his heart beating against his ribs. It didn't feel right. And why was he sweating so much? He had done this shit hundreds of times and never had he sweated like this.

Cole had moved directly behind him. Shoot him now. No. Got to deal with Conway first.

New action on monitor two, a live shot from the van across the street: five black Lincoln Navigators had pulled up against the curb. The people about to enter the bank had thrown themselves against the snow-covered ground and lawn, their shaking hands covering their heads.

Conway and his boys were at the SUVs.

"I've got all of Conway's transmitters locked: He's the middle guy, right here," Lee said and tapped a finger against at the screen.

"What do you want to do?"

Cole spoke into the headset to the sniper: "Take them down."

Conway was inside. The SUV, its engine throbbing beneath him, hadn't moved away yet. The first vehicle pulled away. Through the eye slits in the mask Conway saw Booker, his face calm as he gripped the steering wheel, ready to move.

Something slammed into the back window. A spider web of cracks bled off from the center hole, the round deflected by the SUVs bulletproof glass. More rounds deflected off the glass of the surrounding SUVs.

The Navigator peeled away from the curb in a screech of rubber. Another shot hit Booker's window, right where his head was. Book ignored it; he was locked in some other place, concentrating, the same look Pasha had that night in Colorado when a sniper hit the van window, her expression never breaking once as the van fishtailed over a snow-whipped street glowing under a blanket of silver moonlight that rained bullets.

"The Navigators are bulletproof," Owen Lee said. Steve, you clever motherfucker.

On the color screen, Owen watched as the pack of SUVs pulled away from the curb.

"I still got Conway's vehicle locked," Lee said. He looked up through the van's front window and saw the SUVs race past them. In fact, everything was racing. His heart, his vision man, he was soaring. It was like that time down in Tijuana when he was banging this seventeen-year-old whore, snorting coke off of her back, higher than a kite, sweeeet Jesus, and just as he was about to come he thought he was going to black out. But this… he felt like he was swimming away. It didn't feel right.

"Guys are calling in," Lee said. Now he felt short of breath.

"How… how you want to play it?"

Cole spoke his orders into the headset. Each unit was to break off and follow one of the Lincoln Navigators. While he spoke, Lee made a clumsy attempt to grab the gun. Cole grabbed him by the throat, pushed him back out of his chair, and pinned Lee against the floor. Cole's free hand pried the.38. away from the jacket.

"You were going to use this?" Cole said.

"This wouldn't have even put a dent in me."

Owen Lee tried to move and couldn't. His eyes were open; he could see but he couldn't blink. Cole moved in closer.

"You're going to be paralyzed for several hours," Cole said.

"Your friend the Elf drugged your food and coffee. For me."

What's the first rule in this business, Owen? Trust no one.

Lee wanted to talk, to try to barter for his life with the information he had on Bouchard, but his mouth wouldn't work. Nothing was working, but he could feel everything: the grip around his throat and the weight of Cole's body. And to top it off, it was becoming a struggle to breathe. Like he only had half of one lung working. But his mind was fine, nothing hazy there, and the voices screaming inside his head were clear and so loud.

Cole turned Lee onto his side. Out the front window the black sky was peppered with bright stars. It reminded Lee of a time long ago when he was a kid. Cole used flex-cuffs and bound Lee's hands and feet, and then moved his mouth closer to Lee's ear.

"When I'm done with Conway, you and I are going to take a ride up north to a cabin," Cole whispered, his voice breathy. Excited.

"The only way you'll be able to scream is in your head. Why don't you start practicing now." Cole sunk his teeth into Lee's ear.

Nothing in his life so far matched the pain he felt as his ear was ripped away from his head. In his mind he screamed for it to stop could hear himself screaming and what came next was a memory from his childhood: the time he had stolen the highly prized boom-box from his neighbor's back porch. Ten years old and the prize tucked under his arm and he ran like lightning across the dirt backyard in the dead of night with the neighbor's snarling bulldog mutt chasing after him. Lee had climbed the chain link fence and jumped, his right hand stretched out to the side, confident he was in the clear when he ran forward and was jerked back, the spike of pain in his wrist unbearable. He looked back and in the moonlight saw that the fence's barb-shaped tip had penetrated his wrist and had popped through to the other side, ripping through his flesh and muscle when he had tried to run. Blood squirting everywhere, Lee dropped the boom box and screamed and screamed, squares of yellow lights popping up in the windows of the neighborhood, the black sky filled with stars just like tonight, thousands of eyes that stared down on him, not caring.

Mark Alves, the Elf, sat behind the wheel, his eyes riveted on the rearview mirror. He felt his stomach flip and then flip again and then felt the bile shoot up his throat. What was happening in the back… he had heard stories about Cole but what Alves was seeing made him want to run out from the van. He had his hand on the door. He squeezed it, about to open it, when the nagging voice called out:

You check the account to see if Cole made the deposit?

Shit, no, he hadn't checked the Cayman Islands account. Four hundred G's… that's a lot of cash to give up.

You leave now, you leave without the money. You want to give it up?

No. And the strange thing was, he couldn't take his eyes away from the rearview mirror. Owen Lee lay on the floor, absolutely still, his eyes wide and staring straight at him as if to say Look what you've done.

You've fucked me and good. Not my problem, dude. I needed the money you knew that and you decided to play your cards and I played mine.

Shit happens.

Cole, on his knees and hunched forward over Lee's body, suddenly straightened as if startled by a sound. He turned his head around slowly, the ear still in his mouth. Then the ear dropped.

"Want a taste, Mr. Alves?"

"No," the Elf wheezed. That could be you, he thought and almost pissed himself.

"Then drive."

Alves peeled out of the parking lot. Stay on Conway and then let the cannibal psycho go after him, get Cole the fuck out of here. Alves would use the computer here in the back, check his account, and if the money was there, transfer it to another account. And after that? Fake his death, run away, do something. Mark Alves never wanted to see Cole again.

Booker headed down Route One South toward Boston. Traffic was light;

Booker and the other SUVs cruised up the highway at a steady eight-five. The world outside the windows was full of bright signs for stores and strip malls and gas stations. The SUV was warm, lit up by the dials on the control panel. Miles Davis played over the speakers.

Conway had taken off his mask, but he could still smell the aroma of the sweaty rubber. The fleet of SUVs had split up. When he left the room, he exchanged briefcases with one of Booker's men. Con-way kept the watch, Palm, and the phone, knowing that Cole would lock on the transmitters and follow this vehicle. The CD was on its way to Booker's contact at the Channel Five news station in Need-ham, and with any luck, Cole and his men would be following him.

"My boss, Raymond Bouchard, he killed Riley. I got it all on this CD,"

Conway said. He stared at the depth sensor in his watch and thought, I hope you're listening, Raymond.

"You got your FBI contact all lined up?"

"It's all set," Booker said.

"He'll meet us with his team. All we have to do is hand him the CD and he'll take it from there."

There was no way Cole would let that happen. He would try to intercept this vehicle and put a stop to it. That's what Conway wanted. Now all they had to do was to get to Roxbury.

The penthouse suite inside the nine-unit condo on Devonshire is less than a two-minute walk from the heart of downtown Boston even under the worst weather conditions. The suite comes with its own private parking garage and a separate elevator which is accessible only by key a remnant from the previous owner, a basketball player from the glory days of the Boston Celtics who demanded privacy and discretion. The other owners must pass through the front doors and enter the lobby where a security man who doubles as a concierge sits behind a wonderfully crafted desk bathed in soft light.

None of the owners or the security personnel have ever met Simon LeCruix personally in fact, no one who lives in the building can claim they've met the man. But they do know the story of how Mr. LeCruix paid a staggering seven-figure sum to gut the entire suite and rebuild it from scratch, a three-year project that included a changing chamber behind the door, complete with two special HEPA-filtered devices, scrubbing stations and lockers that held boxes of latex gloves, surgical masks and Tyvek sterile garb. No one knew why Mr. LeCruix needed such an area, or why the same group of well-groomed men would periodically visit him.

Inside the suite now, the rooms dark and cold, always cold to keep whatever lingering germs and viruses that might have survived the scrubbing with the Vesphene/Spor-Klenz cleaning solution from incubating. The suite's layout was almost a mirror image of the one in Austin, right down to the choice of furniture and its arrangement.

This strict order was also imposed on the owner's thoughts. For years, the rooms of his mind have been clean and ordered, a majestic, sweeping museum of stored emotions and experiences and adventures that have been neatly labeled and could be, at a moment's notice, examined with total clarity.

Gunther's death had changed that. The once-splendid rooms in Amon Faust's mind, these crafted private sanctuaries that had held glorious memories and tastes and secrets, have been ransacked, their contents destroyed, the glass containers and picture frames and vivid filmstrips of a perfect life now shattered against the floor, burned and defaced.

Faust had spent the better part of the day inside his office, sitting with his back against the wall, his eyes closed, focusing his mental energy on the task of cleaning. Deep, slow breaths kept the volatile mix of rage and regret and loss and grief from consuming him. It was critical to keep his mind clear. It was the only way he could help Stephen through this next maze. Faust couldn't afford another mistake.