The Bricklayer (2 page)

A
S CONNIE LYSANDER TOOK THE TOWEL FROM AROUND HER, SHE
looked at her body’s reflection in the full-length mirror and ordered herself to be objective,
really objective
. She held herself erect and, turning a few degrees in each direction, tightened her stomach muscles. It was no use, she decided; her once-taut figure had lost its sleekness. Fifteen years earlier she had been a reporter on
Beneath Hollywood
, a local television show that scraped together questionable bits and pieces of the “real” story behind the bountiful missteps of the crowned princes and princesses of the movie industry. The three years the show aired, it had better-than-average ratings. She knew her popularity had been due largely to her figure and the way she dressed. She had worked little since the show was canceled. When her auditions for more mainstream news shows would fail, her manager blamed it on her being “typecast” as a tabloid reporter. In the interim years, she
floated in and out of various jobs, eventually marrying. When that ended two years earlier, she vowed to get back into media any way she could.

She stepped over and opened the door leading out onto the lanai. One of the things she loved about Los Angeles was the weather—maybe it was the thing she loved most of all. Its warm, arid consistency was reassuring for her, something she could count on, unlike while she was growing up in the damp, aching loneliness of Seattle’s Puget Sound. It was a daily reminder that life was just better here. Even the Southern California architecture reflected the climate. Family rooms, kitchens, even bathrooms, featured doors that opened directly to the outside, bringing the outdoors in.

A light breeze brought in the floral sweetness of her small garden. But then she thought she smelled the aroma of coffee. She had not had any caffeine in three months, part of her new regimen, and her neighbors were out of town. Probably just some sort of latent craving. Maybe she would get dressed and go have a cup; decaf wouldn’t hurt anything.

She went back to the mirror for a few more moments trying to decide whether an even more extreme exercise program would return any part of her physical appeal, and then, in a flash of honesty, she decided that it wouldn’t. She took a step closer to the mirror and started examining her face. Plastic surgery was not as easy a fix as it seemed, at least not in Hollywood. It fooled no one but instead marked her as someone who was moving onto the cusp of has-beenhood, joining a long and unenviable list her peers couldn’t wait to add another performer to. And maybe worse, once started, the procedures were progressive, until everyone’s look became
comically identical, that of carved feline features being pulled back by the g-forces necessary to reenter the earth’s atmosphere.

She dared another half step closer to the mirror and, using her index fingers, pushed up the skin in front of her ears, tightening her jawline. It did look better, although it did little for her sagging neck. She was tired of trying to come up with combinations of turtlenecks, scarves, and shadowing collars to hide her age. She tapped the fold of skin under her chin with the back of her fingers and watched as it remained stubbornly unchanged. Maybe it was time.

Her agent had been getting a lot more calls since she had done the exposé of the FBI and the United States attorney’s office in Los Angeles. True, it had been her manager’s idea, but when she looked back on it now, it needed to be done. And Hollywood loved to target the FBI. If they and the U.S. attorney’s office hadn’t been so corrupt, why had their missteps been so easy for her to uncover? Maybe “corrupt” wasn’t the right word. She had recorded agents and attorneys drinking on duty, frequenting prostitutes, and working out for endless hours at local gyms. There were actually some people fired, so it really had been a public service. And her peers obviously appreciated her efforts, because she was now getting called again.

She took a step back and put her hands on her hips. “Yep, I’m going to do it,” she said out loud to make the decision binding. Pulling on a robe, she walked into her bedroom.

She didn’t notice the man sitting in the chair until she saw him in the mirrored closet door. Spinning around, she grabbed at the front of her robe. “Who are you?” Then she
noticed his gloved hands. In the left was a take-out cup of coffee. In the right was a gun, which hung indifferently. She tightened her grip on the front of her robe. “What do you want?”

He laughed noiselessly. “Certainly not that.” She searched his eyes for any flicker of motive. They were gray and sad. Slowly the rage behind them became evident, not the sort that flashes for a moment, but the kind that doesn’t burn out in a lifetime. There was little doubt in her mind how dangerous this man was.

She released her robe and let her hands fall to her side with a calming reassurance. Her voice mellowed. “Then what can I do for you?”

“Your story about the FBI brought me here. You really did a job on the agency.”

“The story was true.”

“Yes, you’re a real patriot.”

The remark seemed sarcastic, but she wasn’t sure. His voice was emotionless, containing none of the contempt that ensured the depth of the insult. “The story was true,” she said again, as if testing his ability to be rational, the repeated defense the only one necessary for a logical person.

“Careers were destroyed,” he said. “How about your career? On the upturn, I would imagine.”

“Who are you?”

“Someone who wonders why you hate the FBI?”

Even though he asked the question in the same flat tone, she felt an increased possibility of violence. “I—I don’t hate the FBI. Why won’t you tell me why you’re here?” She stole a
glance toward the door, measuring its distance and his range of fire from the chair.

He tipped the muzzle of the gun up at her. “Sit down on the bed.”

Paralyzed by his sureness, she realized she wouldn’t make it and did as instructed. Attempting a smile, she said, “Sure, whatever you say.”

He took a swallow of his coffee. “I’m here for the same reason that you did your little story—to make the FBI pay.”

“If we want the same thing, do you really think a gun is necessary?”

“Unfortunately, yes. I’m here to provide you with the means of really damaging the FBI.”

“I don’t understand. How?”

“I’m sure you believe in what you did. That it’s critical to the well-being of the country to expose the FBI. And this has to be done no matter the cost. That is what you believe, isn’t it?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“See, we want the same thing. Only you’re going to have to make the ultimate sacrifice for your—or should I say,
our
—cause.”

“What, you think you’re going to kill me?”

“Unless you can find some way to kill me. But since I’m the only one in the room with a gun, I seriously doubt that.”

Her eyes locked onto him as her head tilted appraisingly. “You’re from the FBI, aren’t you? You were sent
here to intimidate me. That’s what this is really about.”

He took the last drink of his coffee, tipping it up to ensure it was empty. Then, balancing the gun on his right leg and without taking his eyes from her, he pried the lid off the cup and set both down on the table next to him. With the gun back in his hand, he glanced at her, then carefully readjusted the cup’s position on the table. “Not really. Women like you are too irrational to ever be intimidated.”

“Women like me. You mean a
bitch
.” She threw her head back and laughed as though trying to embarrass him with his inability to show emotion. “This is Hollywood, moron. Without the bitches in the middle of everything, this town’s major export would be fat-free yogurt. From someone like you, ‘bitch’ is the ultimate compliment.”

“In that case, you’re the queen.”

“Damn right.”

Again his face mimicked laughter without a sound. Glancing once more at the cup, he rotated the automatic slightly until the ejection port was exactly where he wanted it. “Personally, I would have chosen a different epitaph, but who am I to argue with royalty?”

He fired once, striking her in the middle of the upper lip. She fell back dead as the ejected casing from the automatic arced through the air and into the cardboard cup. He walked over to the body and placed a blue piece of paper on her chest. On it was written “Rubaco Pentad.” From his pocket he took a plastic bag containing a Q-tip and dabbed it in the blood that was trickling from her wound. Careful not to let it touch his skin, he resealed the bag.

He went back to the table, dropped the bagged swab into the paper cup, and pushed the lid back onto it. After looking around for any other trace evidence that might have been accidentally cast off, he slid the gun into its holster under his windbreaker and walked out.

T
HE FBI WAS ABOUT TO PAY THE RUBACO PENTAD ONE MILLION
dollars. At least that’s what the group was supposed to think. Agent Dan West was being guided electronically to a location in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Heading east, he crossed a wooden bridge, watching the river disappear into a turn that he knew had to be close to the ocean. Dusk and a warm summer breeze added to the serenity of the small sea-coast town, making it an even more unlikely place to be the final twist in such a complicated and vicious crime.

For the first time since he’d left Afghanistan, a burning knot of fear was growing in West’s stomach, something that had not happened in his three years with the FBI, all of which had been spent on a white-collar-crime squad in Boston. It had been mind-numbing work. He had tried to tell his bosses that because he was a former Navy SEAL, he needed something more confrontational than endless columns of
numbers that never seemed to add up to the same total twice.

He checked the coordinates on the handheld GPS receiver—they now matched those given in the demand letter. He pulled into a small parking lot and got out of the Bureau car, a ponderous Crown Victoria chosen for its obviousness. A brief chill shuddered along his limbs as he stretched nervously. An unlit sign above the single-story building identified it. “It
is
the Kittery Point Yacht Club,” he whispered into the microphone taped to his chest, confirming his location. Fearing the Pentad might be watching the drop site, the FBI had conducted only a satellite reconnaissance of the coordinates, revealing the yacht club as the likely destination.

“Copy,” answered one of the dozen surveillance agents who had been following him at a discreet distance since he left the federal building in Boston.

West ran his tongue across his lips. The taste of salt air reminded him of his navy training, and that no matter what lay ahead, he was capable of handling it. His job was to drop the money and get out. The agents following him would deal with whoever tried to pick it up. The canvas bag he pulled out of the backseat was carefully weighted and shaped to give the impression it contained the full amount in hundred-dollar bills, but it contained only a thousand dollars, enough to make the crime a felony once delivered and retrieved.

Although the Rubaco Pentad appeared to be a politically driven domestic terrorism group, its demand for a million dollars was still technically extortion. And extortion, he had been taught during new-agents training, is simply a crime of intimidation at an anonymous distance. The victim has to be
scared enough by the criminal’s threat to do two things without question: part with the cash, and not contact the authorities. Each party has its own advantages. The extortionist has anonymity, while all law enforcement has to do is never lose contact with the money. Most cases wind up a draw: the criminal doesn’t get the money, and law enforcement is unable to identify him. The would-be extortionist keeps from going to jail, and the Bureau justifies, in part, its budget requests. When the occasional arrest is made, it’s because the extortionist thought he had come up with an original, foolproof gimmick to retrieve the money. “That’s all there is to extortion,” the instructor had declared. “There are no variations. The Bureau’s been around for a century and no one has been able to figure out a way to do it differently.”

But the Rubaco Pentad changed everything. After murdering a former Hollywood reporter a month earlier, it had demanded one million dollars to prevent the next killing. What was different about the Pentad’s crime, other than the before-the-fact violence, was that the demand was made directly to the director of the FBI. In extortion or kidnapping drops, the Bureau always had at least some degree of surprise on its side, but the Pentad had taken that advantage away, leaving the agency unsure what to do next. The FBI was being told not only to come up with the money, but also to deliver it. Evidently the group felt its plan was so flawless that it could afford to humiliate the Bureau and still get away with the money.

The clear New Hampshire sky was full of stars; a half-moon hung distantly in the northeast. West looked around for some indication of what he was supposed to do next. He
checked the coordinates on the GPS again. They matched those in the instructions exactly. Maybe he was just supposed to wait. He put the bag down and reread a copy of the demand note.

West checked his watch. It was almost nine thirty. Time was getting short.

Of course, he thought, the water. They wanted a good swimmer. He picked up the bag and walked across the parking lot tarmac and around behind the club. There was a waist-high fence that separated the asphalt from the grassy slope that led to the Piscataqua River. He vaulted over it and walked down to the edge. Music from inside the club lilted softly behind him.

Twenty yards to his right, he could see a faint optic-green glow among a cluster of large shrubs. Under them was a black tarp with a glow-in-the-dark arrow painted on top. The Pentad would probably have left it during the day when the paint would not have luminesced and been noticeable. The arrow pointed to a building on an island in the river, which was dimly silhouetted by the moonlight. It was a large white structure that, because of the notched turrets at either end, looked like a medieval castle.

The tide appeared to be out, making West wonder if he was supposed to swim across the river, roughly two hundred yards. He spoke into the mike on his chest. “Can someone find out what time low tide is here?” The entire operation was being monitored in the Boston office’s major-case room.

After a few minutes someone said, “Nine forty-two p.m.” That answered West’s question about crossing the river. It was the exact time given in the instructions. Slack tide, the time of least current. Under the tarp were a scuba tank, fins, and a mask. At first glance the tank appeared old-fashioned, but it wasn’t the tank. It was the harness that held it. Modern tanks come with a zippered vest or at least padded straps that
divers can get in and out of easily. This one was fitted with excessively long black nylon webbing, crisscrossed unnecessarily, using far too much strapping. Some of it had been doubled in places that weren’t necessary, and although it would be uncomfortable, it looked functional. Placed inside the mask was a wrist compass, which he strapped on. West explained over the radio what was going on. “Can you find out something about the building on the other side? It looks like that’s where I’m heading.”

West stripped down to his swimsuit. The “good swimmer” portion of the demand letter had been interpreted as an attempt by the Pentad to neutralize any FBI electronic devices, so the office technical agent had put a waterproof bag with a neck strap in a side pocket of the larger moneybag. Next to it was an underwater flashlight. Also a wax-sealed container had been jury-rigged by the head firearms instructor, who had placed a Smith & Wesson snubnose inside it.

It was now nine forty. As West started to slip on the fins provided, he found a folded piece of paper inside. “34°” was the only thing written on it. He held up his wrist and checked the heading to the “castle.” It was exactly thirty-four degrees.

“Command, it looks like they want me to swim underwater straight to that building. Any idea what it is yet?”

“We’ve got the head resident agent in Portsmouth on the line. He says it’s a hundred-year-old naval prison. Been closed for thirty years. That’s Seavey’s Island you’re heading to. It’s a secure naval shipyard now. We’ve got some of the surveillance units already at the main gate. They’ll be on your land side by the time you get across.”

“Just make sure they don’t get me burned. That note sounds like these people would be just as happy if we screwed this up.” He pulled the transmitter mike off his chest and packed everything into the watertight bag. As he stepped into the water, he took another deep breath and said, “Well, tough guy, this is what you wanted.”

The water was cold, but the biggest problem was swimming underwater with the twenty-two-pound bag of fake money. The weight kept him deeper than he wanted to be. Some of the time he had to drag it along the bottom while keeping his eye on the compass. And the strange configuration of the harness webbing that was cutting into his waist and shoulders wasn’t helping. Halfway across, the tide started coming back in and the current began picking up. It took him more than a half hour to get across the river.

As he got closer to the other side, he could see more luminescent green light. He felt the river bottom sloping up, so he set the bag down on it. Keeping a foot through the carrying straps, he surfaced to confirm his location. He was close to the prison now. Maybe too close. It looked black in its own shadow. And silent, making him want to hold his breath as if the building were a wounded animal he had stumbled across, its only means of attack to lure in those who believed it was dead. The structure was no longer two-dimensional, but seemed to wrap around the end of the island, and at the same time around him. Its west end had wings that ran north and south for hundreds of additional feet and at its tallest point was at least six stories high. So much for making the drop and leaving everything else to the surveillance agents. It looked like he was on his own.

He dove down and gripped the bag and saw that the green lights were a couple of glowsticks that had been attached to the underwater wall of the castle. When he got within a couple of feet, he snapped on the flashlight and could see the sticks had been laced through the remains of a metal grid-work that had once secured some type of conduit, possibly sewage, since the prison had been built when the country’s rivers were considered nature’s refuse solution. The underwater passageway was narrow, but he could fit through it. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the moneybag into the opening and followed it in.

A few minutes later he broke through the surface and found himself standing in a large stone room, the floor of which was bedrock except for the large rectangular access opening that he was now standing in. There were watermarks on the walls that indicated seawater filled the room to three-quarters at high tide. Toward the top of one wall were three heavy metal rings anchored into the stone and concrete, the kind that prisoners might have been chained to. He wondered if the U.S. Navy of a hundred years ago hadn’t used the room for “retraining,” taking the most uncooperative prisoners to the subterranean cell for an obedience lesson taught by two high tides a day and the flesh-nibbling crabs that rode in on them.

Pulling off the fins and mask, West shrugged out of the scuba tank and took out the snubnose. After turning on the transmitter, he spoke into the mike: “Any unit on this channel, can you hear me?” Because of the hundreds of tons of steel and concrete surrounding him, it would have been a miracle to get any reception. “Anyone hear me?” he tried
once more. The only response was the hollow silence of the cavernous cell.

There didn’t appear to be a way out of the room, but then he noticed a trapdoor in the ceiling above the far wall. The height of the room was a good ten feet. How was he supposed to get up there?

He walked over to the wall directly underneath the trapdoor and shined his light up for a closer look. Just beneath it was a thick, rusty L-shaped hook embedded in the wall. In shoes, he could just touch a basketball rim if he jumped, ten feet. Barefooted, he could probably get up to the hook, but it didn’t look like there was enough of it exposed for him to hold on to. He flashed the light around the room for anything that might help him reach it, but there was nothing except what he had brought with him.

Then it hit him—the webbing on the tank. That’s why it was so long. The extortionists had used an excess of nylon strapping to rig the tank so he could extricate himself from this cell. It was some sort of test that they hoped the FBI would fail.

After stripping the strap out of the tank’s frame, he quickly measured it using the nose-to-fingertip method. It was three lengths, about nine feet long. Great, he thought, nine feet to get me up ten feet and through the trapdoor. And with the moneybag. He let his sailor’s knowledge of knots run through his mind for a while before the answer came to him.

He laid the scuba tank against the wall, and because it was round, he jammed the two wedge-shaped fins underneath it to prevent it from rolling out as he stood on it, getting
him a foot closer to the hook. After knotting a simple loop in the middle of the strap, he tied a large slipknot at one end and threw it over the hook. Pulling it down slowly, he tied the moneybag tightly at the bottom end of the webbing.

As West started climbing, he realized how much the swim had taken out of him physically. He began to wonder if part of the Pentad’s plan was to exhaust him. If it was, that meant a face-to-face confrontation could lie somewhere on the other side of the trapdoor.

Once he could stand in the knotted loop, he was able to straighten up and, with a full shove, push up on the door, causing it to rotate 180 degrees and slam against the floor in which it was hinged. West waited and listened. Still there was only silence.