Lone Wolf (10 page)

When the movie ended, Sarah declared herself hungry and went to the kitchen to see what was available to make for dinner. Most of the food they had bought was simple fare, since they didn't really know how long they would be there. She opted for chicken salad sandwiches, and opened a big bag of rippled potato chips to go with them. She made each of them a sandwich and put it on a plate, along with a pile of chips, then yelled for them to come and get it. Everyone took a plate, although Neil stopped to make himself a second sandwich, and then they went back to the living room to watch more television.

“Sarah,” Noah said, “how come you never make this at home?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Because you usually do the cooking,” she said. “This is the first chance I've had.”

“Really? Remind me to change that.”

M
oose, for all his size and muscle, could move silently when he chose to do so. This was partly due to his Navy SEAL training, but he had also developed the skill on his own as a kid, always finding ways to sneak up on his friends during their various combat games. Getting up the ladder silently had not been difficult for him, and he had made himself comfortable on a couple of hay bales as he settled in to watch Pendergrast hanging.

Periodically, the man would start yelling for help, and would keep it up until his voice gave out. He reached the point that his voice sounded scratchy even when he first began talking, and Moose knew that the guy was on his way to cracking. Very few people could handle hanging this way and still manage to resist questioning. After only a few hours, Pendergrast—like most people—would be ready to do anything at all to get down from his position and survive it.

Noah could probably have questioned the guy right then and gotten the answers he wanted, but he insisted on leaving him hanging all night. Moose didn't know why, but he was learning to trust Noah's instincts. Letting him hang overnight might cause Pendergrast to spill even more beans, and Noah had demonstrated in the past that he could adapt quickly when the situation called for it.

The night wore on, and finally, Pendergrast stopped yelling and just hung there. His head was drooping onto his chest, and it dawned on Moose that the man had actually managed to fall asleep.
Don't think I could do that,
Moose thought to himself.
How can a guy sleep when he's hanging by his wrists like that?

The answer, apparently, was that he couldn't sleep long in that position. The nap lasted about twenty minutes, before Pendergrast began groaning and woke up. He tried weakly to yell for help, but it was obvious that his spirit was not in it.

After another hour, he seemed to drift off again. Moose didn't know exactly what time it was, and he didn't want to light up his phone to find out, just in case Pendergrast were to look in his direction at that moment.

When the sun began to rise, peeking over the horizon, Moose went down the ladder again just as quietly as he had come up it. Pendergrast was still hanging where they had left him, and seemed to be nearly catatonic.

Moose slipped into the house, being quiet so that he wouldn't wake the others, but it was too late. They were already up, having coffee and breakfast at the table. Moose poured himself a cup and grabbed the plate with two big pancakes that Sarah had set aside for him on the warmer. He sat down at the table and smothered it with butter and syrup, then began eating.

“Since you're calm enough to eat, I gather that our guest is still hanging around,” Noah said. “Am I right?”

Moose nodded, his mouth full. He chewed and swallowed quickly, then said, “Yep. Would you believe the guy actually managed to get some sleep? Dozing off, sleeping for about twenty minutes or so and then waking up.”

“I'm not surprised,” Noah said. “I would imagine it's pretty exhausting, just hanging there. Did he yell much?”

Again, Moose's head bobbed up and down. “In between naps, like clockwork. Kept yelling for help, even though I'm pretty sure he could tell nobody was coming.”

“It's the survival instinct,” Becker said. “Even when we know it's hopeless, we always try to hold onto some kind of hope. Somebody trapped in a ravine will continue to call for help until they die of dehydration, somebody facing a firing squad will imagine a sudden, last-minute reprieve, right up to the moment when the guns go off. It's just human nature.”

“I don't know,” Moose said. “I don't think I could go to sleep like that.”

“You would if you hung there long enough,” Noah said. “Exhaustion sets in, and there's nothing you can do about it. You get depressed, because you start to feel like there's no way out, and that's when the exhaustion will get you. I was counting on it.” He shoved the last bite of pancakes into his mouth, and washed it down with coffee before getting to his feet. “I think it's time to pay him a visit. I want the rest of you to come out to the barn and stand underneath him, just looking up. Don't say anything, just stare at him.”

Everyone but Moose was pretty well finished, and he shoved the rest of his own breakfast into his mouth as quickly as he could. When he was done, they all rose to follow Noah out to the barn.

The barn where Pendergrast was hanging was about a thousand yards from the house, so it took them a little while to walk out there. When they arrived, Moose, Sarah, Neil and Decker all went to stand just underneath the man while Noah climbed the ladder.

Pendergrast was awake, and began yelling at them to let him down. None of them responded, but just continued to stare up at him, keeping his attention while Noah moved as quietly as he could across the loft floor. He came up behind Pendergrast, out of the man's line of vision.

“You see those people down there?” Noah asked, startling Pendergrast. “They asked me to give you one more chance to be straight with me. This is the only chance you're going to get, and I want you to understand that. When I ask you a question, I want a straight answer. Do you understand me?” He moved around the hole in the floor so that Pendergrast could see him.

Pendergrast's lips were covered in spittle, and there was a dark stain on the front of his pants. The man had pissed himself. “Yes, yes, whatever you want,” he shouted. “I'll tell you anything you want to know, I swear it!”

“That's good,” Noah said, “because whether you live through this or not depends on how honest you are with me right now. So tell me, Jeremy, old pal, where is Selah Habib?”

“Look, they just hired me to deliver a message, okay? I never had anything to do with the girl, I just had to make a phone call, that's all.”

Noah shook his head, and started to turn away. “That's not the answer,” he said as he took the first few steps back toward the latter.

“Wait! Wait, please! I never saw the girl, myself, that's the truth, I swear, but you need to know that she was never really kidnapped! She made a deal with the Russians, to help her run away with her boyfriend. He's a Russian, from the embassy there in Nouakchott. She'd been keeping it a secret, because her father would never approve, but I guess it got pretty serious. They're living somewhere in Russia, but I have no idea where, I swear I don't.”

Noah had stopped when he began talking, and turned back to face him. “Who hired you?”

“He was SVR, Russian foreign intelligence service. I've known the guy for years, his name is Vladimir Sokoloff, he works as an attaché in the Russian Embassy in London. He called me up a couple of weeks ago and told me he wanted me to negotiate a deal for him. It was all set up, already; the girl and her boyfriend were loaded onto a diplomatic flight back to Moscow, and all I had to do was deliver the message. It was just a pressure move—no one's really going to hurt the girl.”

Noah stood still and stared at him for a long moment, then stepped back up to the edge of the hole. “Can you arrange a meeting with Sokoloff?”

“Yes, yes, all I got to do is call him. We've done business together for a few years, now; if I ask him to meet with me, he will. I don't have to tell him what it's about, I can say I've got a lead on some new information they might want.” He licked his lips with a very dry tongue. “Just one thing, though—you can't let him go when you're done with him. You've got to kill him, promise me that. If you let him go, he'll know I set him up, and I'll be a dead man.”

Once again, Noah just stared at him for a moment. “What if it turns out that he's more important to me than you are? Maybe it would be worth it to me to let him have you.”

“Oh, come on, man,” Pendergrast said frantically. “Do you have any idea how much information I can provide you? You keep me safe, and I can get you just about anything you want!”

Noah crossed his arms and looked into Pendergrast's eyes. “Can you get me the location of the girl?”

Pendergrast opened his mouth, but then closed it again. He licked his lips once more, then said, “I can, but you'd have to trust me. You'd have to leave Vladimir alone and let me handle him.”

Noah smiled, the kind of smile a shark might wear just before it bites you. “What makes you think I would ever trust you, Jeremy?”

Pendergrast burst out laughing. “Right now, whoever you are, you got my life in your hands. Do you think I'd be stupid enough to cross you? You took me in broad daylight, right out of my apartment! You're obviously an American, but you're not CIA or NSA, so I got a hunch you're somebody a lot darker than that. I know that both of those keep tabs on me, so the chance I could ever hide from you would be pretty slim, right? Yeah, you can trust me. You can trust me because I know damn well that if I get sideways with you, you're going to make me a dead man, yourself, and I suspect it wouldn't be anything I'd want to experience on the way. Good enough?”

Noah stood there for a moment longer, then nodded. “I think you're being sincere,” he said. “Hang tight for another minute, and I'll let you down. Just remember what you just said, though, and understand that if you cross me, your death will be as slow and painful as I can possibly make it. Got that?”

“I've got it, believe me, I've got it.”

Noah traced his steps back to the ladder, and made his way down to the ground floor. He untied the rope from the hook that locked it in place, then slowly let the rope play through his fingers until Pendergrast's feet touched the floor. The man collapsed, unable to stand, and Moose moved in to pick him up.

Noah walked over and unhooked him from the block and tackle, and then Moose tossed Pendergrast over his shoulder and carried him up to the house. It was a long walk again, punctuated now and then by grunts and groans from Pendergrast.

Moose dropped him into a chair at the table, and then cut the zip strips to release him. Sarah went to the sink and got him a glass of water, cautioning him to sip slowly at first. Pendergrast nodded, but even by taking small sips, he emptied the glass within a minute.

“I think I'm getting some circulation back,” he said. “Would it be possible to get to the bathroom?” He looked down at himself. “And could I maybe borrow a pair of pants from someone?”

Noah nodded, and Moose grabbed the man by one arm and helped him stand. He was still weak, and his legs were unsteady, so Moose had to help him all the way to the bathroom. Stan Decker went to his room and got a pair of his own Dockers and brought them to him, and stayed in the bathroom with him as he stripped and showered, leaning against the walls of the stall to stay on his feet. When he was finished, he managed to walk back to the table with only minor support from Decker.

“So, what's your plan?” Noah asked him. “How are you going to give me that location?”

“I'll need a phone,” Pendergrast said. “I'll call Vladimir and tell him that the Israelis are on me, and I need to prove to them that the girl is unhurt. I can convince him that I have to go to her and get a photo of the two of us together in order to keep the Mossad off our backs. Israeli intelligence scares the hell out of him, I don't know why, but they do, and even though Israel and Mauritania don't maintain diplomatic relations, Israel would be dead set against this alliance with Russia and Syria. If they got wind of it, I guarantee you they really would be on top of me and anyone else they thought might know something. Vladimir would know that, too, so he'll believe me.”

Noah cocked his head to one side and squinted at Pendergrast. “But why would they only want proof the girl is alive and unhurt? Wouldn't they be working to stop the alliance?”

“Not publicly, not right now. Once it's announced, then you'll see Israel all over it, but not till then. For now, they would just want to know whether the leverage is intact. If it is, meaning that the girl is safe and still in Russia's custody, then Israel would have to sit back and wait to see what happens. On the other hand, if they found out that something bad had happened to her, they could leak that information to President Habib and scuttle the whole deal. That's exactly what the Russians would be afraid of, and that's why I can use it this way. I'll get on a plane to Russia, to go get that supposedly necessary photograph, and all you have to do is follow me.”

Noah shook his head. “That sounds like such a stupid plan that it's bound to work.” He nodded to Neil, who produced a cell phone and handed it to Pendergrast.

“I hope you know the guy's phone number,” Neil said.

“Trust me, it's embedded in my memory.” He dialed a number quickly, then held the phone up to his ear. “Vladimir? It's Jeremy. Listen, buddy, we got us a problem. You want to guess who just paid me a visit? Yeah, Abner Ben Yousef! Well, what do you think he wants? I guess their people got wind of what's going on in Mauritania, and somehow they found out I was involved.” He listened for a moment, then scowled. “I didn't leak anything,” he said emphatically. “As far as I knew, only you and I knew that I was involved in this at all, but knowing how many leaks your organization has, I'm not surprised they found out about it. Well, it had to come from your place, nobody else knew! Okay, okay, calm down! All he wants is to know that the Habib girl is still alive and well, and they want me to get them proof of that. I'm supposed to go to her and come up with a photo of me and her together, or they're going to blow this whole thing wide open on us.” He paused and listened again for a couple of minutes. “Yeah, yeah, I'm free right now. I don't have anything going on, so it's good timing. Just tell me where she is and I'll go get the photo, get these bastards off our backs.”