The Naked Edge (27 page)

“You killed some of them? That was your first time?” Jamie asked.

“I laid down covering fire, three thirty-round magazines, but I have no idea if any of my bullets connected. I need to assume I did damage, but it was as if I was destroying objects. I had no sense that I was actually killing people. My primary emotion was relief that Carl was safe and that I'd survived the mission.”

“Then I don't understand. It doesn't sound like your first time.”

“We radioed for evac choppers and set up a perimeter in case other revolutionaries heard the shots and came to investigate. When I found cover and waited, I had a sense that something was terribly wrong, a feeling that I was being watched, that something awful was about to happen. By then, it was dawn. I glanced to my left and saw a face in the bushes. A kid. He was maybe sixteen, raising a pistol. Before I realized what I was doing, I swung my rifle and emptied the magazine into him. Total reflex. Thirty rounds. Just about blew him apart. Even if I'd probably killed before,
that
was my first time. Up close and personal. The moment was so intense, I could see into the kid's eyes, past his fear-dilated pupils into his brain. Into his soul. I remember thinking,
You stupid kid, why didn't you hide? Why did you need to try to be a hero?
It was so pointless, so damned unnecessary.”

“What happened then?”

“I threw up,” Cavanaugh said.

“That's what
I
felt like doing.”

“I had a lot of nightmares about that kid,” Cavanaugh continued. “His chin had a wart. He had scruffy hair and a scar on his forehead. His clothes were filthy and ragged. He was so thin, he probably hadn't eaten a decent meal in weeks. The revolution was one of those ‘share the wealth’ deals: millions of poor people against a handful of rich landlords and financiers trying to control them. I'm sure the kid had been exploited all his life. He was probably consumed with hate. I bet he went to sleep every night longing for a decent future. A lot to sympathize with. But if I had the chance to do it again, I'd shoot him just as dead as I shot him the first time. Otherwise, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation.”

Jamie's hand touched his. “And if
I
had to do it again, I'd shoot
that
man as dead as he now is, just to make sure you and I could be lying here like this.”

“It's one way to decide if something was justified—whether you'd do it again,” Cavanaugh agreed.

“But I hate that it needed to happen.”

“Yes. I measured my life from that moment . . . before I killed and after.”

“Rescuing Carl Duran,” Jamie said.

5

His eyes feeling raw, Cavanaugh peered toward painful sunlight seeping past the draperies. With effort, he got out of bed. He opened the door a crack and saw a different pair of armed agents in the living room. With the attentiveness of their predecessors, they watched the numerous surveillance monitors.

Cavanaugh shifted his gaze toward a different area in the living room and saw Jamie seated at a table, tapping on a computer. Rutherford stood behind her, watching her fingers work magic. Jamie's fresh jeans and turtleneck were part of the safe-site resources.

He took the longest, hottest shower of his life, but tension insisted. He couldn't keep his mind off everything that had happened. Damn it, what was Carl's objective?

Khaki slacks and a brown shirt were on a bureau, along with fresh underwear and socks. Motivated by a sudden idea, he dressed so hurriedly that he continued to button his shirt as he walked into the living room.

“Morning, sleepy head.” Jamie kept her gaze on the computer screen.

“Did I miss anything?”

“Breakfast.”

“We left you a doughnut,” Rutherford said.

“Haven't you heard of Dr. Atkins?” Cavanaugh picked up the phone and pressed the numbers for information. “Cincinnati, Ohio,” he told a computerized voice. “F and W Publications.”

Jamie and Rutherford looked at him.

“F and W Publications,” a cheery voice said.

“
Blade
magazine. Steve Shackleford,” Cavanaugh said.

“One moment please.”

Cavanaugh said a silent prayer that Steve wouldn't be out of his office on an assignment.
Blade
was a favorite magazine of knife enthusiasts, but it was a mistake to imagine a redneck, good-old-boy reader with biker's boots, a beer gut, and a chain leading from his thick wallet to his belt. Instead, most of
Blade
’s 40,000 subscribers were attorneys, physicians, computer experts, and other white-collar professionals, their average income in six figures: a subscription base that many magazines envied. The magazine's avid readers had knife collections they'd assembled with the care of sophisticated art collectors.

Some of the knives were treasured antique Bucks, evoking pleasant memories of trusty jackknives from a happy childhood. Others were pocket knives crafted so painstakingly and with such elegance, those by Michael Vagnino, for example, that collectors who'd paid $2,000 for one of his folders felt lucky to have gotten a bargain now that he'd risen to the top of his field.

Some knives were valued because of the life-experience they symbolized, Vietnam veterans treasuring the rugged Ka-Bar combat knife that, in many instances, had meant the difference between death and survival. Other knives were valued because of their current reputation as a dependable tactical knife, those by Ernest Emerson, for instance, who in 1991 handcrafted tactical knives for soldier friends departing to the Gulf War. These soldiers bragged to their comrades about how well designed the knives were. Eventually, Emerson received so many orders that he shifted from making knives by hand to manufacturing them in a factory, with the goal of proving that, with proper diligence, a factory-made knife could have the quality of a forged one. He followed the example of Al Mar, a former Green Beret who in the late 1970s pioneered the modern tactical folder and became known as the father of specialty knives. An original Al Mar or Ernest Emerson knife had an auction price of several thousand dollars.

Still other knives were prized because of their place in popular culture. The prop knives for the film
The Iron Mistress
were diligently acquired by Hollywood production-artist Joseph Musso: a wooden version, a rubber version, an unfinished steel version used in a forging scene, and the magnificent fully realized knife. Musso's unique collection traveled to various museums, including one in San Antonio, Texas, the site of the Alamo, where Jim Bowie had died. Musso's love for the Iron Mistress prompted him to allow skilled bladesmiths to study the knife and its studio blueprints. Copies by George Cooper, Joe Keeslar, and Gil Hibben were better made than the original and highly prized. This was the world that Cavanaugh needed to tap into as he listened to the other phone ring.

“Steve Shackleford.” The pleasant voice had a Tennessee accent.

Thank God
, Cavanaugh thought.

“Steve, it's Aaron Stoddard.”

Both Jamie and John straightened, frowning at one another, so unusual was it for Cavanaugh to use his real name.

“Aaron, what a surprise. I haven't talked to you in . . . It has to be three years.”

“The last time I was at the Blade Show in Atlanta,” Cavanaugh said. Of the numerous knife-enthusiast conventions, the Blade Show was the hugest, with more than ten thousand attendees.

“I was afraid you'd dropped off the face of the Earth” Steve's voice said.

“Not quite. I had a lot of obligations at the ranch.” As far as Steve knew, Cavanaugh was a cattleman, thus explaining the Wyoming address. “But when I told you I was a rancher, I was really referring to a sideline. My main work is in the security field.”

“Oh?” A moment's thought was broken with, “I guess you get a lot of use for knives in that kind of work.”

“More than you can imagine. I need a favor.”

Steve sounded wary. “What kind?”

“Your magazine's subscription list.”

“You've got to be kidding.”

“Names, addresses, phone numbers if you've got them. The works.”

“That's confidential information, my friend. I can't just . . . What sort of security work did you say you did?”

“Why don't I let the FBI's director of counterterrorism explain it to you? I think you're going to hear the words ‘federal government’ and ‘national security’.”

Cavanaugh gave the phone to John.

6

Five minutes later, John gave the phone back to Cavanaugh.

“
Now
can you supply the subscription list?” Cavanaugh asked.

“As important as this sounds? Give me your email address,” Steve said. “I'll send the list in five minutes. Are you looking for anybody in particular? Maybe I can ask around?”

“Carl Duran.”

“Your friend?”

“He dropped out of sight. I'm trying hard to find him.”

“It's no wonder you can't,” Steve said.

“I don't understand.”

“Carl died three years ago.”

“
Died?
”

“I'm surprised you didn't know.”

“We had an argument. We stayed out of touch.”

“Shame about arguments, especially when it's too late to repair them. He stopped going to the Blade Show about the same time
you
did.”

After he was fired from Global Protective Services
, Cavanaugh thought. Cavanaugh had stopped going to the Blade Show in order to avoid crossing paths with Carl.

“I asked around, wondering what happened to him,” Steve's voice continued. “The word I got was that he'd been killed.”

“
How?
” Cavanaugh pressed the phone harder to his ear.

“A car accident in Thailand. Or maybe the Philippines. I heard two different versions. Carl was a construction worker, right?”

That had been Carl's cover story, the theory being that it paid to pretend to have a white-bread business that no one felt a compulsion to ask many questions about.

“I heard he saved enough money to take a vacation, and that's where he got killed,” Steve said. “I checked our subscription list, and sure enough, he didn't renew. Sorry to break the news to you. Even if you had an argument, I'm sure you still thought of him as a friend.”

Cavanaugh didn't reply.

“I guess you won't need the list now,” Steve said.

“Better send it anyhow. I've got other names to check.”

7

They spread the printouts across the floor and studied them.

“Here,” Jamie said. “Duran's name.”

“Three years ago,” Rutherford said. “But not later.”

“When you're trying to disappear,” Cavanaugh said, “the rule is, abandon everything about your former life. Some people can't make a complete break, though. They have ties they can't give up.”

“Such as a passion for knives,” Jamie noted.

Cavanaugh nodded. “Carl got fired because of discipline problems. Maybe those problems carried over into his attempt to disappear. He'd have tried to be careful. He might have used intermediaries. But I'm betting that, under another name, he continued to subscribe to knife magazines. He's been getting
Blade
since he was a kid.”

“After he dropped the subscription, maybe he just bought the magazine in a store,” Rutherford suggested.

“When he was working for a drug lord in South America?” Jamie looked skeptical. “A specialty English-language publication would be almost impossible to find down there.”

“Then maybe he had somebody buy it in the States and mail it to him,” Cavanaugh wondered.

“A big nuisance needing to depend on somebody,” Jamie said. “Plus, that probably wouldn't be the only knife publication he'd want. The easy way is to subscribe, have the publishers mail them to a drop site in the U.S., and then have them forwarded.”

“John, can the Bureau investigate the background of anyone who subscribed after Carl's name disappeared from the list?” Cavanaugh asked.

“No,” Jamie said. “Not
after
his name disappeared from the list.
Before.
”

Cavanaugh and Rutherford looked puzzled.

“Suppose Duran anticipated that someone might try to find him this way,” Jamie explained. “What if he took out a new subscription using a different name
before
he pretended to be dead? It's a better way to hide his trail.”

“Smart,” Rutherford concluded.

“That's why I married her,” Cavanaugh said.

“It's all a long shot, of course,” Jamie admitted.

“But it's the only lead we've got.” Rutherford picked up the phone.

8

Atlanta, Georgia.

His hands in his windbreaker, caressing a special folding knife he'd crafted, Carl sat on a bench and watched pedestrians crossing the expanse of Centennial Olympic Park. In summer, children were able to skip back and forth through what was called a dancing water fountain, a wide area of water jets that gushed twenty feet into the air. Now, ignoring a cool October breeze, Carl imagined youngsters scampering through the spray. He could almost hear their laughter.

Wouldn't it have been great to have something like that when you and I were kids, Aaron?
He remembered the two of them bicycling to the swimming pool at Iowa City's park. Below, the tree-lined river meandered toward the low, summer-hazed buildings of downtown. He remembered an afternoon when they chained their bicycles to a post, and when they returned from the pool, they found four kids trying to break the chain and steal the bikes. When Aaron shouted at them to stop, the kids attacked, but Carl showed Aaron that nobody could push them around. He pulled out his jackknife, causing the kids to gape when he opened it and chased them through the trees. He remembered how surprised Aaron was. He remembered—

A man sat down next to him. Nondescript clothes. Thin. Mid-forties. Mustache. Swarthy skin. From the Middle East. “This location is too exposed.”

“It shows we've got nothing to hide.”

“A directional microphone can easily overhear everything we say.”

“Not with my associate playing with that miniature battery-powered car.” Carl indicated Raoul a hundred feet away, the young Hispanic working a remote control that made a tiny Jeep go this way and that.