Sea of Crises (4 page)

“Tell me,” she said when they made eye contact, Nate halfway across the threshold, awkwardly propping the door open with his back as he eased his heavy load through, “that your tuxedo is hanging in your office.” There was an almost pleading look on her face.

It took Nate a moment to make the connection. And, when it came, it was with a sour wave of recrimination.

“The charity thing,” he said softly.

He could see the hope in her eyes transition to something cold.

“The charity
thing
? Really Nate?”

He remembered her telling him that the star-studded gala - it was to be at one of the studios, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember which one - would be the social event of the year. And, yes, he
had
said he’d go. If work permitted. He hadn’t expected that it would though. And, of course, it hadn’t. But, then, he’d never told her that, had he? He’d just never… focused on it, which, he now realized with acute embarrassment was a mistake. One, he reflected with a sudden rueful clarity, he’d made too many times in the past with the women he’d dated.

They stood there for a long moment, neither saying anything. Finally, knowing it was lame, Nate offered, “I’m sorry, Jan.”

She looked away quickly. Then she turned, gathering from the sofa behind her a small purse and a long black wrap, the latter of which she threw across her neck. As she spun to face him again, she hurled one end of the wrap over a shoulder.

Her lips were pursed, and there was a new look to her eyes.

After a beat, she said, “It’s
Jen
.”

Nate felt as if he’d been slapped.

“Do you mind?” she asked, now looking at the door, which Nate was effectively blocking with his body and the large box.

Not knowing what else to do or say, Nate stepped back, pushing the door open further, and she breezed past him, a wave of perfume there, then gone. He watched as she stalked to the elevator controls and punched the down button several times. One of the doors opened, and she stepped half in before turning and giving him a fierce look.

“Get a life, Nate Cartwright,” she said. Then she was gone.

Turning off Century Park East, Nate entered the massive garage beneath the iconic twin office towers that dominated the Century City skyline. He drove down to the lowest level, at this early hour mostly vacant, and parked next to a black Ford Taurus. He shut off the engine and got out. Peter followed with Buster. Nate retrieved his bag from the back seat of his car, unlocked the trunk of the Taurus and placed the bag inside. With arched eyebrows, Peter did the same with his suitcase.

Without a word, Nate closed the door to his car, locked it, and made his way around to the driver’s side of the Taurus. He climbed in and started the engine. Peter slid into the passenger seat, Buster in his arms. After closing the door, he gave Nate an inquiring look. “This is yours, I hope?”

Nate nodded as he backed the Taurus out of the parking space. “It is, though you wouldn’t know it checking the registration. The official owner is a Nevada limited liability company. That company is owned by a corporation in Anguilla, a small island in the Caribbean that happens to have some nice corporate privacy laws.”

“And you own the corporation?”

Again, Nate nodded.

“Why go to all that trouble?”

“Occasionally, clients ask me to do a little research. It’s not exactly cloak-and-dagger stuff,” Nate added, with a self deprecating wave of his hand, “but sometimes it’s better to be anonymous. There’s a lot of money at stake in some of the cases I work.”

Nate steered the car up toward the exit onto Constellation Boulevard. “In any event,” he continued, “it’s coming in handy now.”

He pulled out of the garage, made a left turn, then turned again onto the Avenue of the Stars, headed back toward the Santa Monica Freeway. “We need to talk.”

Nate told Peter about the warning given by the man on the phone.

“So this
is
about Apollo 18,” Peter said finally. “What the hell?”

Nate shook his head. “I don’t know. But I damn sure intend to find out.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to do exactly what they told us not to.”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

Nate glanced over at his brother. “Yeah, I’m afraid. But I’ll be damned if I’ll live my life that way. Someone’s hiding something. Something so important they’ll go to pretty much any length to keep it covered up. Something,” he added grimly, “that apparently involved our father.”

When they reached the freeway, Nate took the entry ramp and merged the Taurus into the eastbound traffic.

After a moment, Peter observed, “You seem to have a destination in mind.”

“I do.”

“So, where are we going?”

“Minneapolis. But first, we’re stopping in Idaho.”

Peter was silent for a long moment. Finally, he asked, “Do we have to?”

“Yes,” Nate said quietly. “Yes, we do.”

3

Raen turned the rental car off the highway and steered it through the opening in the rusted chain link fence. The gate, a dilapidated affair, was propped open as usual. He drove down the center aisle separating the small businesses to either side, passing a handful of auto repair shops and a furniture refinisher. He parked in front of the building at the end, a squat structure with a weather-beaten sign above the door that read “Zeke’s Auto Body.”

When he stepped inside, a bored looking young man seated behind a wooden counter peered up at him over the top of a newspaper. The place had a pervasive shabbiness. It looked as though the next time anyone took a broom to the floor or a dust rag to the counter would be the first. The front windows had been pasted over with a series of posters advertising various exotic automobiles, models whose owners wouldn’t be caught dead within miles of the establishment.

Hanging on the wall behind the young man was a calendar advertising a parts manufacturer, featuring a well-endowed woman leaning against the hood of a pickup truck, wearing only a tool belt. A large sign pasted on the wall announced, “In God we trust. All others pay cash.”

Once the door closed, the young man, his eyes now much more alert, tilted his head slightly to his left. Raen nodded, lifted the hinged section of the countertop, and walked through.

In the wall behind the counter was a small, narrow door. Raen opened it and entered what was, by all appearances, a closet. Shelves lined the back wall, filled, somewhat incongruously, with a collection of cleaning supplies. A mop and a broom hung from hooks to one side.

Raen allowed the door to close behind him. In the ceiling above, a dingy, dust-covered twenty-five watt bulb in an open fixture provided just enough light for him to see what he was doing. On one of the back shelves, at about chest level, sat an old metal pail. He pushed it to one side, revealing a cracked mirror bolted to the wall. He reached in and placed his right palm against the mirror. There was a slight buzz, followed by an audible click.

In a smooth motion, the rear wall, shelves and all, swung open on well-oiled hinges, revealing a brightly illuminated staircase with concrete steps leading down at a sharp angle. Raen stepped through and began descending. At a narrow landing, he turned and started down in the opposite direction. As he did, the rear wall of the closet above him swung shut, making almost no sound.

At the bottom of the stairway, he entered a tiny, bright chamber, the floor and ceiling of which each appeared to be one large square of light. The walls to either side were smoked glass, behind which Raen knew a series of cameras, conventional and infrared, was in the process of scanning him. In the wall straight ahead was a door. It had no handle. Instead, a small glass panel was inset at about chest height. Against this panel Raen again placed his right palm. As before, there was a buzz and a click, then the door swung open, revealing a broad corridor, carpeted and lit in a much more muted fashion.

A young man in a business suit stood on the other side. “This way sir,” the man said. “The director is waiting for you.”

Raen nodded and followed him down the corridor. He allowed no expression on his face. Nothing in his body language would have revealed to an observer that he was agitated.

A man of action, Raen hated being at headquarters, hated being around anyone that he had to treat as his ostensible superior. It was all the more aggravating being summoned back in the middle of an operation. The whole thing carried with it the suggestion of being called to the principal’s office, a stigma from a time past, a time long before Raen had become what he was: One of the top operatives in the most clandestine of the United States’ intelligence services.

It was known simply as The Organization. Few people outside of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were even aware of its existence. Its members were carefully culled from various branches of the military. They were all of a certain type: Loners, outsiders, most importantly, individuals who did not possess, for lack of a better term, the moral constraints that would prevent normal people from even considering, much less carrying out, the activities tasked to The Organization.

Raen knew The Organization was considered a necessary evil, looked upon by many of the few who were privy to its existence as a true abhorrence. He didn’t care. He loved what he did, what it allowed him to do. They could gnash their teeth, thump their self-righteous chests, rue the circumstances that required maintaining such a loathsome weapon. At the end of the day, however, there was no way they were going to give it up, to lose the flexibility it offered. And that was just fine with Raen.

In the outer room of the director’s suite, he paused while the young man escorting him knocked softly on the door to the private office and stuck his head in. A secretary sitting at a desk just outside alternately scanned a stack of notes lying next to her computer monitor and made strokes on the keypad. Raen didn’t acknowledge the elderly woman, but he knew who she was. Rumor had it Ruth Branson had been with The Organization since its founding, working for the succession of men who had served as its director. Though she also didn’t acknowledge his presence, Raen knew she was very much aware of
his
identity. And that was what was important.

“The director will see you now,” the young man said.

Again, Raen nodded. He stepped into the office.

The director sat behind a large oak desk, the top of which was empty, save for a laptop computer and a short stack of papers sitting immediately in front him. He had one of the pages from the stack in his hand and was reading from it when Raen entered. He continued reading for several seconds, ignoring Raen.

Doing a slow burn, Raen stood quietly in front of the desk and studied the man. He was in his sixties, with thinning gray hair. With the exception of his eyes, which were dark and penetrating, there was nothing about him that would draw attention - precisely the characteristic routinely cultivated in all of the men who served The Organization.

It was hard to be invisible when standing out in a crowd.

The director was known as Krantz. Each of the men in The Organization went only by a single sobriquet. As with his other colleagues, Raen had no idea what the man’s real name was, or, for that matter, anything about his life before joining The Organization. None of that was important.

Krantz, Raen knew, had been one of The Organization’s top field men for almost three decades, a long time in their line of business. Most of the operatives, or, more to the point, most of the ones who weren’t killed, retired after twenty or so years. By then, they’d made plenty of money and could afford to live out their days in relative luxury. Krantz, however, had evidenced no particular desire to leave the fold. When age had finally begun to slow his physical reflexes, he’d opted to stay in an administrative role, eventually inheriting the top position when the prior director had dropped dead of a heart attack a few years earlier.

Though he might have lost a step or two physically, Krantz’ mind was still as sharp as ever. Raen knew from experience that he had to be on his toes around him.

Finally, Krantz looked up at him and fixed him with those dark eyes. “Any update?”

Raen had filed his last report shortly after landing at Dulles. That had been about a half hour earlier. “No change.”

Krantz considered him for a moment. “How did the Cartwrights get away?”

“We still don’t know. We tracked them to the garage in the building where the older one works. But he never showed at the office. That means they left on foot or in another vehicle. There’s no record of either of them owning or having access to such a vehicle. We’re checking security tapes, but nothing yet. They’re not very high quality. We’re also monitoring banking and credit card activity. So far, again, nothing.”

Krantz nodded. Raen had not said anything that wasn’t in the prior reports he’d filed.

“Odd that they knew they were under surveillance,” Krantz observed.

Raen kept his face impassive. He had not mentioned in his reports that the elder Cartwright had disconnected the phone jack while they were talking, tricking him into revealing the presence of the listening devices they’d planted in the condominium.

“They both have much higher than average intelligence,” said Raen.

“Then you will not underestimate them again.” Krantz said it lightly, but it was a stinging rebuke. Raen nodded. Inside, he smoldered.

Krantz dropped his eyes to the paper in front of him for a moment, then looked back up at Raen. “There’s been a development.”

Raen was curious, but he waited patiently.

“It appears,” Krantz said, “that we have to deal with a third brother.”

“What third brother?”

“Peter Cartwright’s twin, Matthew Cartwright.”

That made no sense and had the unusual effect of catching Raen up short. He thought for a moment. He had personally gone through the dossiers on Nathaniel and Peter Cartwright. There was nothing in either file that suggested a third brother. He was certain of it.

He shook his head. “No,” he said with confidence, “there is no twin. He doesn’t exist.”