Hidden Order: A Thriller (16 page)

“Multiple teams,” Harvath replied, finishing the man’s sentence for him. “I already know that. That’s not what I’m struggling with here.”

“Just stay with me. Now, whoever orchestrated the kidnappings had to have had access to information, to the actual five names from inside the Fed itself. That’s no easy feat. Couple that with professionals having been hired to actually carry out the kidnappings and now we’re talking serious money. But, it gets better, or more specifically, more expensive because murder doesn’t come cheap.”

“You’re convinced the kidnappings
and
the murder were all done for hire?”

Wise nodded. “And I’ll tell you why. Per the file and the pictures, Claire Marcourt was beaten to death. Outside of self-defense or a fit of jealous rage, very few human beings are capable of taking another life like that. Then, there are her ears.”

“What about them?”

“They weren’t just hacked off with a pair of shears or a dull pocketknife. The lines were clean and pretty well matched. Someone used a sharp blade, took their time, and knew what they were doing.”

“But if you’re going to beat someone to death, who cares if the lines are clean?” asked Harvath.

“Exactly,” Wise replied. “And while we’re at it, and I think your theory about the Pine Tree Riot is right on the money, why prop up the ears in the photo? Why take the time to display them like that?”

“Because whoever this guy is, he didn’t want us to miss them.”

“They’re ears, for crying out loud. Who’s not going to notice them? Why not just drop them next to that economist’s quote and take the picture? Why go through all the trouble to set it up like it was some sort of an exhibit?”

“I don’t know,” said Harvath. “Maybe this guy’s a sadist and proud of his work.”

Wise tapped the tip of his nose with his index finger and then pointed it at Harvath. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Harvath waited for him to extrapolate, but Wise was suddenly lost in
his own thoughts. Harvath rapped his knuckles on the bar top to get the man’s attention. “Knock. Knock.”

Wise shook himself out of his reverie. “Sorry, I was thinking about a Russian diplomat kidnapped in Iraq.”

“What about him?”

“The FSB operatives flown in from Moscow were able to get him back within seventy-two hours.”

“That’s impressive. How’d they do it? I’m guessing it didn’t involve
pretty please with sugar on top
.”

“No, it didn’t,” Wise replied. “Actually, it was pretty vicious. The Russians focused on the most likely neighborhood, swept in, and started breaking hands, fingers, arms, and legs until they found somebody who knew something. From there, they were able to identify a cousin of one of the kidnappers. Once they had him, they began slicing off his body parts and had a courier drop them off one at a time at the family’s house. After the man’s nose and both ears had been delivered, the diplomat was returned to the embassy unharmed and the FSB agents returned to Moscow.”

“That’s one way of handling things. Especially in that part of the world, but do you really think we’re dealing with the Russians?”

Wise shook his head. “An organization with enough expertise to penetrate the Federal Reserve? Experienced enough to pull off five simultaneous kidnappings without leaving a trace? This is something different.”

“Well, if not the Russians, maybe this is some sort of a currency war. Or maybe the Fed screwed up and ran afoul of the Cosa Nostra. With the kind of money they move, anything is possible.”

“But what’s
probable
? What kind of group would openly invite the full ire of the United States government?”

“Who knows? Maybe they’re exactly who they claim to be,” Harvath stated. “Why can’t this simply be a group of patriots trying to intimidate the Federal Reserve into shutting down?”

“Because that doesn’t make any sense.”

“None of this makes any sense.”

“What I mean,” Wise clarified, “is that it’s nuts to think that the Fed could be bullied into doing anything, much less closing its doors.”

“Then why do this?” Harvath asked. “What’s the purpose?”

“Maybe the purpose isn’t to get them to close their doors but to generate enough media attention to force a discussion of the Fed center stage, right into the national spotlight.”

“Which is exactly what the Fed doesn’t want.”

“Of course not,” said Wise. “The less people take an interest in them, the better. That’s why you were given this assignment.”

“Then let’s suppose for a moment you’re right. Why would someone want to force a national discussion of the Federal Reserve?”

“Maybe these patriots see the Fed as something so dangerous to the nation that it has to be dealt with. Even if that means using violence.”

It was a provocative possibility, but there was something about it that just didn’t feel right to Harvath. There was nothing “patriotic” about murdering other Americans in cold blood. There had to be something else.

And that something else was the pressure weighing on Harvath’s shoulders, even after he had left Wise’s home that night.
Would he be able to figure out what that something else was before someone else was murdered?

F
AIRFAX

V
IRGINIA

R
yan rode with McGee back to the Farm to pick up her car. She thought about stopping by the grocery store on the way home, but she was wiped out from her jet lag. All she wanted to do was throw on her robe, pour a glass of wine, and stretch out on the couch with a good book until she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore.

Of course, she hadn’t told McGee any of this. He never slept, and in fact liked to joke that it was a sign of weakness. So instead, she had told him that she was going right home to start assembling a plan for how they should proceed.
Hit the ground running
, McGee had liked that.

She pulled into her complex and parked in the assigned space near her building. Any mail in her box could keep until tomorrow. Climbing the exterior steps to her second-floor apartment, she walked down the open-air hallway to her door. Opening it, she stepped inside and tossed her keys in a bowl on the kitchen counter. It had been a long day and it felt good to be home.

Her small, two-bedroom unit was tastefully decorated, particularly so for a government employee who was home so seldom she didn’t even have a landline.

Ryan had painted the entire place and had installed the crown molding and baseboards herself. The walls were hung with matted prints she had razor-bladed out of old botany books picked up at a flea market. Everything had been done cleverly and on the cheap. Her only substantial investment was her stereo system. It was built around an expensive Tritium Super Analog turntable, upon which she indulged her greatest passion, a museum-quality collection of jazz and blues records she had been collecting since college.

Powering up the system, she selected a Nina Simone LP, removed it from its sleeve, placed it on the turntable, and activated the tone arm.

The chicken-and-egg battle over what would come first, the bathrobe or the wine, was over before it started.
Wine first
. Ryan walked into her kitchen and took down a bottle of OneHope petite syrah.

As Nina Simone began singing “Blue Prelude,” she opened the drawer where she kept her favorite souvenir from France, a waiter’s-style Laguiole snakewood-handled corkscrew. Its box was there, but the corkscrew was missing.

She opened the other drawers in the kitchen thinking maybe, after a few too many glasses of wine last time, she might have put it back in the wrong place. That wasn’t like her, though. She always put it back where it belonged, but having been out of town for so long, it was hard to remember what she had done last time.

After a cursory glance through all the drawers, she gave up, and grabbed a Leatherman multi-tool from her bug-out bag.

Once the wine was opened, she fished out some cheese and crackers, and then carried everything to the coffee table. After pouring a large glass of wine, she took it with her as she went to get changed.

She came back with Nelson DeMille’s latest thriller, turned off her cell phone, and made herself comfortable on the couch.

Two glasses and nine chapters later, her eyelids started getting heavy. She laid the book on the table and intended to close her eyes for just a second, but before the final notes of “Solitaire” had been played she was asleep.

 • • • 

Bang, bang, bang!
It sounded like gunshots; close gunshots. The earsplitting cracks nearly caused her to leap off the couch.
What the hell was going on?

Ryan tried to shake the cobwebs from her head as the banging came again.
Someone was pounding on the door
. “I’m coming,” she said loudly, hoping to quiet down whoever was outside before they woke her entire complex.
Who the hell could this be
?

Tightening the belt of her robe, she approached the door and looked out the peephole. A young blond girl in her early twenties stood glassy-eyed and swaying. She raised her fist to pound again, but Ryan unlocked the door and pulled it open before she could make contact.

“I don’t know who you’re looking for,” Ryan stated, “but you’ve got the wrong apartment.”

The girl stood dazed for a moment, as if unsure what to say, but then collected herself and asked, “Do you drive a black Nissan Altima?”

“Oh crap. What happened?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” the girl said, quickly adding, “And it wasn’t my boyfriend’s fault. Someone cut us off.”

“Cut you off? What are you talking about? Better yet, who the hell are you and what happened to my car?”

“I’m Chrissie,” she replied with an inebriated smile and a look of misplaced expectation as if the mere mention of her name should be cause for fireworks or a parade. “I live in the building next door.”

She extended her hand, but Ryan ignored it. Clutching the lapels of her robe, she looked out into the hall and then said to Chrissie, “What happened to my car?”

“Like I said. It wasn’t our fault.”

“I got that part, Chrissie. Did you and your boyfriend hit my car? Is it damaged?”

Chrissie tried to raise her thumb and forefinger to indicate that there might be a little damage, but suddenly had trouble raising her arm while keeping her balance. The woman was smashed, and so too, Ryan worried, was her car.

She grabbed her keys from the bowl on the kitchen counter, slipped on a pair of flip-flops kept near the door, and said, “Why don’t you and I go take a look.”

“Sure,” slurred Chrissie as if she had just been invited shopping. “Do you want me to show you where it is?”

“No,” replied Ryan. “I think I can remember where I parked my car.”

As they started toward the stairs, Chrissie said, “Remember, you promised you wouldn’t be mad.”

She had promised no such thing, but there was no reason to argue. The girl was so wasted it probably wouldn’t even get through.

They walked down to the parking lot and over to Ryan’s Nissan. The right rear quarter panel was crushed. Idling perpendicular was a piece-of-shit white panel van with a dinged up push-bumper that must have belonged to Chrissie’s boyfriend. Ryan needed this kind of trouble like she needed a hole in the head.

As she walked over to inspect the damage, the boyfriend got out of the van. “Is that your car?” he asked. He sounded a lot more sober than his girlfriend. Ryan should have taken that as a warning, but her concern over what had happened to her car, coupled with her anger over the repeated problems with so many of the young residents in the complex, caused her to let her guard down.

His headlights perfectly illuminated the damage. This was going to cost at least a thousand dollars to repair, and judging by the looks of these two, they didn’t even have a hundred dollars between them. They probably didn’t have insurance, either. Ryan was growing angrier by the second.

“How did this happen?” she asked, vaguely aware of the young man’s approach on her left side as she bent down to examine the damage. “Do you have any idea how much it’s going to cost to fix this? I want to see your license and insurance card right now.”

The man’s right hand was in his jacket pocket and it didn’t come out until he had reached Ryan’s car and he was close enough to touch her.

It wasn’t until that moment that she processed the unmistakable shape of the Taser in his hand. The cartridge had been removed, which meant he didn’t want to leave a shower of micro-stamped aphids behind as evidence. It also meant he wasn’t afraid to get up close, press the device against her, and deliver its jolt of electricity via a technique known as a “stun drive.”

Either this guy was really good when it came to hand-to-hand, or he had no idea whom he was dealing with. Ryan didn’t wait to find out.

Pivoting on the ball of her left foot, she bladed herself to her attacker and snapped her left arm out in a wide arc. She crashed her forearm into the man’s wrist, knocking the Taser from his hand. She followed with a blow to his sternum, which knocked him backward two steps.