At Any Cost (26 page)

Tom did not think twice. “I'm in. Let's go.”

“I'll go too,” Leah said.

“No,” both men said in unison.

“Fine. If you kick me out of this car, I will go straight back to work and file a front page story about what both of you just said.” From her purse she pulled out her iPhone, which had been recording the conversation. She was still smarting from his threat to kill her, so she looked Omar with a particularly smug smirk on her face.

“When did you get so sneaky?” Tom asked, dismayed.

“Since I started covering politics for the
Washington Post
. Now are you going to let me tag along or am I going to write a big story about—”

“Or I could kill you,” Omar said tonelessly.

“Quit threatening to kill me! Is that the only trick you know?”

“No you couldn't,” Tom said smoothly, his gaze locked on Omar.

A car behind them honked; they were double parked and blocking traffic on G Street.

“Where do you live?” Omar asked.

“Court House,” Tom replied. Omar put the car in gear and headed toward Arlington.

“I wonder if the FBI has asked for the video footage outside my building,” Leah mused as the towering Art Deco structure came into view. “The DVD was hand delivered to my door. Maybe someone showed up on the video.”

“Secret Service didn't request it,” Tom said.

“Maybe it's still there,” Leah said.

Omar parked along the curb in front of Tom's building and they walked across the street to Leah's building. Tom approached the concierge desk with a smile; they knew him in here because he visited Leah almost every day, and the person at the desk was actually a woman he and Leah had given some chocolate chip cookies to over Christmas.

“Martha,” he said sweetly. “I've got a special request today.”

Leah hung back, watching him use his charm to procure the video. She glanced to Omar, who was attempting to avoid the video cameras in the lobby, looking down at his device. It didn't look like an iPhone or a BlackBerry. He was strange and scary, but he was also interesting. His body was dangerously sexy; standing beside him, she felt positively dainty.

He glared at her with his neutral poker face and Leah looked away.

“Thank you,” Tom said. To Leah and Omar he said, “Come on,” and headed toward the elevator bank.

“Why are we going to my place?” Leah hissed. “What's going on?”

Tom remained quiet until the elevator door slid open and they stepped inside, Omar following. Tom pressed the button for Leah's floor. “She said she'll record this morning's tape to DVD but it will take about half an hour. I figured we should wait here.”

Leah opened her door and glanced around, cringing when she saw her mess of papers stacked all over her desk, an empty bottle of water on her living room table, and that nothing had been dusted in months. In her haze, none of it had seemed important, but with guests over, she suddenly realized how sloppy she had become. She'd stopped caring about things, she realized in dismay.

“Sit wherever,” Leah said.

Omar went to Leah's desk. “Can I use your computer to receive some email?”

She looked at him suspiciously then said yes.

Omar used his encrypted cell phone to dial the operations desk at Sutton Layes. He trusted the people at Sutton Layes, if for no other reason than it was one entity that could not be cracked with the map of the keys; they existed outside the government structure and were therefore invulnerable to attacks.

A female voice answered without any official greeting. Just the standard, “Hello?”

Bridget. Koss liked her; she was a levelheaded analyst who maintained her calm composure under even the most extreme pressure. He didn't say her name—as was the protocol—but he was pleased that she had picked up.

“I need a look-down over the George Washington Parkway and surrounding areas for the last forty-eight hours.”

“I was wondering when we'd get this call,” she said lightly.

“Get a drone, flying high and silent,” he said. That was also blatantly illegal, and completely justified. The FBI and Secret Service were no doubt right now trying to locate witnesses who saw the crash. Eyewitnesses would give stunned descriptions of the assailants, each disagreeing with the version of events before it. One person would claim the attackers were Teutonic ectomorphs; another would be positive they were swarthy mesomorphs. One would say there were two; another would say no less than fifty. And because they did not know what else to do, the government investigators would give equal credence to every single one of those people who in reality knew nothing at all. The brain doesn't record information well during a crisis, a phenomenon that Koss often used to his advantage. In this most significant case, the FBI and Secret Service would scramble to investigate thousands of leads that would ultimate point them directly to a big fat dead end.

This way was much faster.

“I'm on it,” Bridget said.

“Expect some low-quality pictures in the next half hour,” Koss said.

“Standing by,” Bridget replied and hung up.

Leah's landline rang; it was Martha alerting her that the DVD Mr. Bishop requested was ready.

Tom left to get it and Leah looked over at Omar, who was intently involved in his handheld device. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Waiting.” He set the phone down and looked at her.

Leah held his gaze. She stood near the wall, biting her thumbnail. She was a funny little thing, a scared bunny with big eyes … and just five minutes ago had brazenly recorded him and threatened to write a report on his activities. Those flashes of confrontation intrigued him. A lot.

He had the strangest thought that she would hate him if she knew what he did most of the time. If she'd seen him kill the “flight crew” in Sweden, she'd have been outraged. On the other hand, she would have probably been completely impressed if she'd watched him disable Russia's electronic grid.

Leah walked into the kitchen. “Do you want something to drink?” she called from the fridge.

“Sure. When you were in the news room did you hear anything about Russia? Are the lights back on over there?”

“I haven't heard that. Why, did you blow their power grid or something?” She shut the door and handed him the water. Her playful smile faded. “Oh my God. Did you …?”

The door opened and Tom slammed inside. He held a silver DVD in his hands. “Move over,” he said to Omar. Omar stood up and Tom slid the disk into Leah's computer.

They gathered around the monitor and watched the grainy black-and-white video of the front of Leah's building. At 5:51 a.m. a man walked into the lobby. Leah gasped. “That's him. He's holding the box.”

The man was only on the video for two seconds. Tom replayed it and paused on the three-fourths profile against a muzzy background. Omar squinted, trying to see more than what was on the screen. Nada. He'd send it to Bridget; she would analyze it with sophisticated face-reading software, and with any luck, the guy would turn up in the database.

“Move over,” Omar said to Tom. He copied the video to Leah's desktop, then navigated to a website that had an incredibly long URL made up of seemingly random letters and numbers. Any attempt to determine in the origins of the domain would come up empty. A traceroute would lead any casual observer to believe it lead to a server in Russia, with a masking attempt. Even a more sophisticated attempt, say from the Mossad, the FSB, Istakhbarat, or even other divisions inside the CIA, would come up with nothing. In reality, it was a server located in Alexandria, Virginia: one of hundreds residing in the server farm at the Sutton Layes building.

Omar uploaded the video for Bridget.

Tom walked to the sliding glass door that led to Leah's balcony. He was no doubt thinking of the video the man had delivered. Fallon, tied to a chair, with terrorists barking like hyenas around her.

“Are you okay?” Leah asked. She hugged him and rested her head on his chest.

“Yes,” Tom lied.

Leah's cell phone on the desk sounded like a machine gun in the quiet room. Omar glanced at it. To his shock, the name Collin Whitcomb appeared on the screen.

“You know this person? You know Collin?” Omar said. He was on his feet, holding out her phone to her.

“I wish I didn't. Let it roll to voicemail.”

The ringing suddenly stopped. Omar looked at the screen, then back to Leah. “How do you know him?”

“He approached me a week ago at the mall. I hate him,” she said passionately. “He's awful.”

“Who is he?” Tom asked.

Omar dialed Bridget again. “Find the location of the last person who just called … Leah, what's your number?” She recited the digits to him, and he relayed them to Bridget. A second later, he asked, “Who is your carrier?”

“AT&T,” she answered.

Bridget replied coolly, “I see that phone. I'm looking up the last calls placed to it.”

Omar waited impatiently while Bridget collated the information. “It's a black hole,” she reported. “There's nothing.”

“Damn it.”

“But I have some raw satellite images from the kidnapping. I can give you a sixty percent assurance that one of the men is Djvebe Malkhazi. We are still attempting to ascertain the identities of the others.”

It was all the confirmation Omar required. Sixty percent was usually enough to justify a scud missile strike overseas. But this was the USA. There would be no missile play.

“See what you can find about Malkhazi's movements over the past twenty-four hours. Go several layers deep, in fact. Check out his known cohorts, et cetera.”

“Give me five minutes.”

“Make it a fast five minutes,” Omar said and hung up.

Tom turned on Leah's television. The kidnapping dominated the news cycle, pushing everything else off the electronic front pages of the cable news channels. There was little other news to report, each segment rehashing the previous ones, talking heads trying to inject fresh insight into the story. Pictures of Fallon appeared on every channel, images of her walking out of her office building just days ago when she'd been accused of murder and older images culled from tabloid and fashion magazines.

Tom turned it off, unable to stomach the onslaught, and turned his attention to Omar.

All his career, he had worked by the book. Warrants, probable cause, justifications, assurances, civil rights—all these things he willingly and enthusiastically embraced, even when he was certain the suspect was guilty. But Omar was concerned with none of the trappings of a restrained government. Tom grudgingly admired the productiveness of Omar's work and the complete lack of roadblocks, particularly since Fallon would be the beneficiary of it.

Fallon Hughes was the only thing in the world that mattered. Her safety, first of all. But after that was secured, if she ever wanted to talk to him again, he would make a full confession. He would wash himself clean with the truth. He would explain about Bethany. He would explain that he had been uncertain that he could ever love anyone again, until he met her. His love for Fallon had grown larger than the regret and sadness he felt over Bethany's death.

He shut his eyes for a moment, trying to assure himself that she was okay. She was alive. They wouldn't kill her as long as they believed they would get Ayrzu in exchange for her.

“What's the story with Ayrzu?” Tom asked Omar.

“Last I heard, he was being held in a private prison in Syria, but that was over a year ago. Who knows. He could be anywhere; we have classified prisons all over the globe. There is no chance Ballard will release him, if that's what you're thinking. And don't even think about him anyway, because if it is Malkhazi who has her, I promise he has no intention of actually seeing an exchange.”

Tom swallowed the rage that welled in his throat.

A moment later, Omar's phone rang. “A credit card number of a known Chechen rebel formerly connected to Malkhazi, currently in Tbilisi, had been used to make a purchase in Virginia Beach about twenty hours ago. Looks like a Wal-Mart.”

“That's him,” Omar said. “Get some drones over Virginia Beach and call me back when you find him.” Omar glanced at the fat platinum watch on his wrist. It was ten o'clock. “And get a helicopter ready to go at the South Capitol Street helipad.” Even with a helicopter, that would be cutting it close. Virginia Beach was at least three hours away by almost any method of transit. “And some good weaponry.”

“Your favorites?”

“Yes. Double them.”

Omar hung up. “Looks like Virginia Beach,” he said.

Tom and Leah began to speak at once and Tom placed his hand over Leah's mouth to hush her. “Where in Virginia Beach?”

“Still searching, but let's get to the helipad.”

“I'm coming too,” Leah chirped.

“All right,” Omar said. They left the apartment and headed for Omar's car. Leah slung herself in the back. Tom took the passenger seat. They were silent as they drove to the helipad.

It was late and there were many places he could have gone, but Richard Mullinax refused to leave his office. The president had returned from New York and had reconvened his meetings on the state of Russia, but Mullinax had not been invited. His boss, the Director of the National Security Agency, had been invited, of course. He did not know if others previously invited had been cut out, but he sensed disaster. Every hour seemed to add to the sick confirmation that his career was over.

He could not understand why they were toying with him. If they knew what he had done, why did they not arrest him? Perhaps they were attempting to gain more knowledge of his activities. They would not find it. He had destroyed his personal computer, bashed it over and over with a golf club until it had broken apart into pieces small enough to hoover up. Then he'd driven to Alexandria, where he threw away some in a Dumpster, and to Towson, where he threw away another chunk in another anonymous trash bin, and to a Wendy's in Arlington where he'd thrown away the rest in the restaurant bathroom. The hard drive he had soaked in his bathroom sink with bleach, and then taken it apart, destroying each part as thoroughly as he could, then throwing away the parts in three other Dumpsters.