Final Vector (7 page)

Nick threw a stick of gum into his mouth and wandered into the couple's massive walk-in closet. Lisa had loved that closet. In fact, it played a major role in their choosing this house over several others.

He stopped and stood quietly in the middle of the closet, in-haling Lisa's scent. He wasn't a guy who paid too much attention to what he called girlie stuff, so he hadn't the slightest clue what she wore for perfume, but whatever it was, he could smell it here--

something cinnamony--and it made his heart ache. As he wondered how long it would take before the scent simply faded away and was gone forever, he felt the tenuous control he had kept over his emotions beginning to crack.

Hanging in a far corner of the big closet was Lisa's wedding gown, which had belonged to her mother. Lisa had absolutely adored it. She had been planning to put it in storage to save for her own children in case one of them wanted to get married in it but had never quite gotten around to accomplishing that task, although she had used a clear plastic garment bag to protect the delicate silk and lace dress.

Nick walked over and slid the surrounding clothes out of the way. Lisa had owned a lot of stuff, and the heavy mass of clothing hanging on the rod moved slowly, reluctantly. He lifted the gown off the rod, planning to lay it on the bed for no particular reason other than to run his hand over the smooth silk and think about Lisa.

When he pulled the dress away from the wall, a bright blue notebook binder caught his eye. It was big, at least three inches thick, and had been placed behind the gown on the floor of the closet, wedged up against the side wall. It would have remained out of sight indefinitely had Nick not moved the dress. He stared at it in wonder. What the hell would a binder be doing amongst Lisa's clothes? It looked new, too; it was completely clean and dust free.

Nick had never seen it before.

He placed Lisa's wedding gown back on the rod in the closet and lifted the binder off the floor, turning it over in his hands, as if he could learn the story of its contents through osmosis. When that didn't work, he carried it over to their bed--his bed now--and sat down to examine it more closely.

The harsh white light generated by the fluorescent lamps hanging in rows from the ceiling in Tony's garage shone down on the small group of men as they worked. Tony was seated in his customary spot behind his desk, a dazzling smile lighting up his olive-colored face. Not so much as one twenty-dollar bill was missing out of the ten thousand in cash he had given Michaels in exchange for the map and personnel list. Now he had not just the information he needed, but all the money it had cost him to procure--the best-case scenario, at least as far as he was concerned.

Dimitrios Stavros, who despite the Greek-sounding name had been born and raised in the United States and was another of the American citizens working with Tony, saw him smiling and asked,

"Why did we need to kill the guy? He gave you what you wanted."

Tony shot Stavros a scornful look. "Why? Two reasons." He held up a finger. "One, that idiot was a cog in the machinery of the corrupt United States government, a government I have devoted my life to destroying, and which, I remind you, every one of you in this room has committed to destroying as well. There was absolutely no good reason to allow him to live and continue making his small contribution to the oppression of my people in the Middle East when we had the means and the opportunity to rectify the situation."

"Two"-- he held up another finger--"even though ten thousand dollars is a relatively small amount of money in the grand scheme of things, why should I allow it to go to an American and to the pigs I am trying to destroy when
we
could better use it to purchase more equipment and weaponry? In this manner, we can use the Americans' own money not just once but twice to contrib-ute to their downfall. I like to think of it as an unintended but not unappreciated little bonus.

"Now . . ." Tony paused, taking a moment to search the eyes of each of his soldiers in the small building. "Does that make sense to you, or do we have a problem we need to iron out? If anyone here doesn't see the wisdom of what I am saying or disagrees with the direction our little operation has taken, now would be the appropriate time to mention that fact. In order for us to be successful, we must all be on the same page, as you Americans like to say, from this point on."

He waited. The silence in the garage spoke volumes. "Well?"

No one answered. Each man averted his eyes when the laser gaze of Tony fell upon him. There was no doubt as to who was in charge.

The only member of the team not an American citizen was Tony, a Syrian by birth. The others had graduated from an intense indoctrination program held in a remote training camp located deep in the mountains of Afghanistan. Run by the resurgent Tal-iban and financed by various Middle Eastern governments through dummy organizations and generous individual donations, the camp specialized in training disaffected Westerners. They worked mostly with young white American males, teaching them guerrilla tactics and warfare as well as providing an introduction to radical Muslim theology.

The days of using Middle Eastern men to fly airplanes into buildings were over. Forward-thinking terror organizations like the one Tony represented now recognized the value of employing homegrown citizens, who could blend seamlessly into the cultural landscape of the West, to accomplish their goals.

Although born and raised in the West, these were men who had developed a burning hatred of their countries, usually the United States or Great Britain, and to the guerrillas providing the training, that was good enough. Being a true believer in radical Islam would be nice, but it was not a necessary part of the package. All that mattered was that the recruits be willing to sacrifice themselves to their leaders' bidding at the time and place of their choosing.

The four men currently wilting under the smoldering stare of Tony had been recruited for the Afghanistan program from diverse locations all over the United States. Brian was a native Southern Californian who had attended Stanford briefly before dropping out when he was unable to reconcile his anti-American beliefs with the benefits of an elite education.

Jackie Corrigan was a high school dropout and former gang-banger from the Bronx, Dimitrios Stavros a second-generation American from Las Vegas who had been born into casino wealth but wanted none of it, and Joe-Bob Warren was ex-military out of Frankfurt, Kentucky, the recipient of a dishonorable discharge from the United States Army when he was busted for purchasing child pornography while stationed at Fort Hood in Texas.

All the men were in their twenties, none had any loyalty whatsoever to the ideals of the United States of America, and all had passed the training course conducted deep in the mountains of Afghanistan with flying colors. They had been sent back to the States more than six months ago with instructions to report to Tony and live their lives in the D.C. area as quietly and unobtrusively as possible while awaiting an assignment. That assignment had come just a few weeks ago, and with the information that had been acquired yesterday from Michaels, the team was ready to proceed.

Tony snapped the briefcase containing the ten thousand dollars shut and smiled. "No one has a problem with my leadership.

Then I will assume we are all rowing this boat in the same direction. Very good. Now, let us discuss the specifics of this operation."

Nick hugged his mother tightly and shook his father's hand as they said their good-byes at the departure gate. Logan Airport was crowded as usual, and Nick was surprised to see that his parents'

plane was scheduled to depart on time. He knew he should be sorry to see them go, but he was still emotionally raw and wrung out.

After watching his mother and father disappear into the board-ing area, Nick made his way to one of the airport lounges and ordered a scotch and soda. He knew having a drink before hitting the road for the hour-long drive back to his depressingly empty home wasn't the best idea, but there really wasn't any point in being careful anymore, was there? There was nobody left to worry about him.

He was alone. Totally alone, in fact, and that knowledge shook him more than he had realized until just now.

In a couple of hours, Nick was going to walk through the front door of their little Cape-style home, and Lisa would not be there to carp at him when he tossed his jacket over the kitchen chair or when he kicked off his sneakers and left them lying on the living room floor in front of the television for her to trip on. Sure, she had been gone four days every week during most of their marriage, but that absence had only served to make them appreciate each other that much more when they were actually together. Now they never would be again. Nick didn't know how he would be able to stand it.

He took a sip of his drink, savoring the warm bite of the scotch as it burned down his throat and splashed into his stomach, letting his mind wander to the strange discovery he had made in their walk-in closet a few hours ago. In
his
walk-in closet, he reminded himself. It was his now, not his and Lisa's.

The blue binder had to have been stuffed behind the wedding gown in the back of the closet intentionally; it wasn't the sort of place the thing could have fallen by accident. Clearly it contained information Lisa had not wanted Nick to see.

But what? Nick knew the binder had to be somehow related to Lisa's job at the Pentagon as a civilian auditor, as it contained names and dates and places, which meant nothing to Nick. But Lisa had always been forthcoming about her work; as far as he knew, she had never kept anything hidden from him. Most of the time--hell, just about all the time--the investigations she got involved in at the Pentagon were pretty straightforward. Boring even.

He remembered one instance she related to him last year where a very well-compensated high-level bureaucrat had been caught stealing toilet paper from a Pentagon men's room. For years the man had been taking a roll every couple of days, stuffing it inside his briefcase and bringing it home with him. The guy had nearly been fired--over
toilet paper!
As it was, he had earned a three-day suspension without pay and been put on probation. The United States government apparently took their toilet paper responsibilities very seriously, Lisa had told him with a straight face, before breaking into hysterical laughter.

The recollection made Nick smile briefly; then it occurred to him that he would never again share in Lisa's infectious sense of humor. He finished his drink with one gigantic swallow and chewed on an ice cube. So why would she hide the blue binder?

And why hide it from
him
, of all people? It made no sense.

After finding the binder so cleverly hidden, Nick had expected to find something earth shattering in its contents, perhaps somehow involving him, but in reality there hadn't been that much inside. There were a list of names and a notation written in block letters that said
Tucson Bliss?
Written below that, also in block letters that were barely readable because they had been smudged before the ink had dried, was another notation that might have said
Stringers
or
Stingers
or maybe even
Singers
.

The binder contained copies of e-mails that had obviously been taken off someone's hard drive, presumably someone who worked at the Pentagon. The e-mails went back and forth between a guy name Michaels and an unnamed person in a coy, roundabout manner, eventually culminating in an agreement to meet last week at a park in Washington. The name of the park hadn't been specified in any of the e-mails, but Nick guessed it would be easy for someone familiar with the area to deduce the location. He had been to Washington only a few times, none of them recently, so it was all a mystery to him.

That was it, the sum total of the binder's contents. Nick had no idea what Tucson Bliss might mean or what sort of singers (or maybe stingers or stringers) had been involved in Lisa's investigation. To the best of his knowledge, Lisa had never been to Tucson in her entire life and would not have considered it blissful even if she had. She hated extreme heat, and for that reason Nick couldn't imagine her ever using the words
Tucson
and
bliss
together in the same sentence.

All of which brought him back to his original question: Why hide the material from him? It was not like he could decipher the meaning of any of it. Besides, what difference could any cloak-and-dagger stuff going on in D.C. possibly make to an air traffic controller living and working in Merrimack? It just didn't make sense.

Was it possible Lisa had been involved in something illegal?

Instead of the material in the binder being part of an investigation she had been working on at the time of her death, could it be that she had hidden the binder in their house, away from his prying eyes and anyone else's?

Nick felt a ball of unease forming in the pit of his stomach.

His beautiful wife of five years, the only woman he had ever really loved, was dead less than a week, and he was entertaining a possibility that he would never have even considered before he had found the binder. Guilt gnawed at him for even thinking it. He knew her better than that. But still, why else would she have hidden it and in such a perfect spot? If she had not been run down by that goddamned beer truck, he would never have found the material in the first place. He wished he hadn't.

He laid a ten-dollar bill on the tiny circular table and walked out of the bar and through the terminal, paying no attention to the throngs of travelers jostling him on all sides. It was time to face the long drive back to his empty house. Nick walked slowly to Logan Airport's Central Parking garage and slid into his car, his mind hundreds of miles away at a Pentagon building he had never even set foot inside.

"It's time to discuss the next step." Tony gazed into the faces of his men, using his intense dark stare to capture and maintain their full attention. "We have been training and preparing for months--