The Dark Circle, page 26
“One more scar for the gladiator,” she said, smiling down at me.
The sirens and police car yelps continued for almost an hour, coming and going. I fell into a light sleep, awaking in the darkness to a nudge from Lauren. She had changed into pajamas and a bathrobe.
“Brianna’s going back,” she said. “After what she did for us, I told her the truth about our not being federal agents.”
I looked past her, and Brianna stood there wearing the same stained and torn Maid Marian dress and still looking like she had survived a tornado, with disheveled hair and raw scratches on her face. But the strange intensity was gone from her eyes.
“I can’t just disappear,” she said. “I work there. And after they put me in that kind of danger with those pigs, my lawyer should be able to get a good settlement from the casino.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re probably right. Good luck, Brianna.”
“Thanks,” she said. “And you weren’t even there.”
Lauren went to the front of the RV and locked it after Brianna left.
“So what now?” she said when she came back.
“How is the Thai girl?” I asked.
“She stayed in the shower for fifteen minutes. I gave her a mug of hot chocolate with some Lunesta. She’s sleeping in the other bedroom.”
“What are we going to do with her?”
“I used the secure phone to call my managing editor,” said Lauren. “I’d love to expose the connection between the casino and the sex-trafficking trade, but for now we’re reaching out to an agency that provides safe houses for underage foreign sex workers.”
“How much of the opioid did you put in their drinks?” I asked.
“The amount my brother, David, would have wanted me to,” she said, her eyes as cold as the polar ice cap. “And Deborah Chapman and Cheryl Larsen.”
“By now, the press must be crawling all over this place,” I said. “I planted those thumb drives everywhere. Hopefully they’ll blow the thing wide open.”
“As I said, you’re good at blowing things up, Jake,” said Lauren. “You get some rest, and I’ll drive us back.”
“Tomorrow we’ll find out the score,” I said as she turned out the lights.
59
She read the first news clip to me on the secure phone as we lay in bed aboard her aunt’s yacht in Seneca Lake.
“Police are searching for a person of interest after a bizarre chain of events that occurred in the early morning hours at the Stoneberry Casino on the Mattaway Indian Reservation near Chestertown,” read Lauren.
“I never thought of myself as all that interesting,” I said, testing each bodily movement cautiously to see how much it would hurt.
“Me either,” said Lauren, looking over at me as I tried to get comfortable. “How is your head?”
“How’s yours?” I said.
“We’ve both got some lovely bruises.”
“It could have been worse … a lot worse.”
Lauren leaned over and opened her mouth to kiss me while her fingers stroked my chest, my stomach, and beyond.
“My, what’s this?” she whispered.
We kissed for a long time, our tongues probing one another’s lips and mouths. Pulling back, I opened my eyes and took in the delicate contours of her face and the flawless texture of her skin. It was the most intriguing face in the world to me and always seemed to be changing, revealing some new complexity.
“You have a very complicated beauty,” I said, as if it was the most important revelation since Ben Franklin discovered the Gulf Stream.
“You’re remarkably observant,” she whispered back, inserting her tongue into my mouth again and carefully mounting me without putting pressure on my side.
When we were lazing once more, I realized it was only dark in the stateroom because the heavy curtains were drawn over the windows. I had no idea what time it was but knew it had to be late the next day. I had a feeling of total security lying there with her and didn’t want to lose it.
She picked up Billy Spellman’s untraceable phone again and brought up the latest news coverage.
“There’s nothing in the New York Times,” she said.
“Did you send them a copy of the drive?”
She nodded and said, “The Times and every other major news outlet. But it will take time to investigate, if they decide to pursue it.”
“So after all that, they were able to put the lid back on?” I asked.
“This is from one of the networks,” she said.
“Police officials issued a preliminary statement outlining the strange events that took place at the Stoneberry Casino during a charitable foundation gathering made up of prominent New Yorkers dedicated to upholding the principles of the chivalric code epitomized by the Knights of the Roundtable during the legendary time of Camelot.”
“You’re making this up, right?”
“The investigation is being led by Captain Arthur Hirka, the senior detective in the state police investigative arm, who was recently decorated for heroism after being badly wounded in a deadly home invasion in Kinderhook late last month. Hirka cut short his recovery to assist in the current inquiry.”
“Whatever happened to honest journalism?” I said. “Where are the new Woodwards and Bernsteins?”
“Captain Hirka is working closely with the Mattaway Indian Reservation Police Force, which has full authority to investigate criminal acts on reservation lands. ‘If any criminal acts took place,’ said Hirka, ‘they will be fully investigated by the tribal policing authority.’”
“The tribal police force consists of two guys who stand at the entrance in war paint and take selfies with the incoming guests,” I said. “They’re a joke.”
“According to Captain Hirka, someone with an apparent grudge against the charitable foundation was able to introduce a chemical agent into the food served at their ceremonial dinner, causing acute food poisoning that led to a number of the guests being hospitalized. The victims being treated at the Brunswick Hospital in Rochester include Kelsey Briggs, the prominent lawyer exploring a run for state attorney general later this year; Clint Savitch, a senior aide to the governor; Mark Arbogast, the owner of the Arbogast chain of car dealerships; Ken Fineberg, the founder of the Get Smart Yoghurt Company based in Utica; and Brendan J. O’Flynn, the cochair of the governor’s reelection campaign.
“When responding to the question of why the victims were all wearing knight’s robes, Deirdre Harvey, the mother of Mr. O’Flynn, told reporters, ‘As a boy, Brendan always loved the stories of Robin Hood and Richard the Lionheart and their devotion to a chivalrous ideal. Dressing up as young lionhearts while doing good deeds is their way of paying homage to the knights of old.”
“You ever see how playful a real pack of young lions is with their prey? These guys are lionhearts alright.”
“It gets even worse,” said Lauren.
“Also potentially victimized in the incident was a thirteen year old foreign exchange student from Thailand who is studying in the United States and was learning the rudiments of the chivalric code at the foundation. Police are not disclosing the identity of the victim due to the student’s age.”
“Well, we tried to back those lions up with a kitchen chair,” I said. “We couldn’t expect a perfect outcome.”
“The Mattaway Tribal Police are pursuing the theory that the poisoner was a disgruntled man who was denied membership with the foundation, and are asking anyone with information that could be helpful to the investigation to please come forward.”
“What about Goldilocks, the dead guard?”
“No mention … they’re going to be looking for you again.”
“Any news on Fab?”
“I’ve had one of my reporters staked out at the Kimball Clinic since they took him there. He’s still in critical condition. No one is allowed to see him.”
“At least they haven’t murdered him yet.”
“I had another reporter look into the ownership of the clinic, as you asked. The facility is underwritten by the Arbogast Family Charitable Foundation. He’s the guy who owns all the car dealerships. You put him in the hospital last night.”
“They cover all the bases.”
“I think we accomplished a lot,” said Lauren. “The knights have been disbanded, and the cult members have to be terrified that the Times or another news outlet will conduct a serious investigation into the disappearance of Cheryl Larsen and the other girls.”
“Mantcliff was smart enough to cut and run. He was the mastermind of those murders, and he’s still out there untouched. In a few months he’ll probably be running a new cult in London or Prague.”
“He’ll also be coming after you,” she said.
“Thankfully, they don’t know your part in last night’s raid,” I said. “You’ll be fine, but I need to disappear. Today.”
She nodded and said, “Whatever you need, Jake. You know that. For a start, our family lawyer will create another identity for you.”
“You have a good name for me this time?” I said, grinning.
“Vincent Mai.”
“What kind of name is that?”
“French. I did my master’s thesis on him. He was the finest interior designer in Paris before the French Revolution. When the beheadings began, he saved hundreds of women and children from the guillotine by spiriting them out of the country.”
“I thought that was the Scarlet Pimpernel.”
“He was a fictional creation. Vincent Mai was the real deal. And you look almost French,” she said, kissing me again with serious intent.
“One last thing,” I said. “Keep the search on for Bug. That dog lived for years on her own in Afghanistan before that old Mujahedeen was about to put her in his pot for supper. She knows how to survive, even at eighteen.”
“I’ll connect with Ken Macready,” she said.
“And I’d like to take your old Indian Scout,” I said. “A motorcycle gives me more options.”
“My brother would be thrilled. Where are you going?”
“I don’t know, but when I get there, I’ll let you know. It might be weeks. Maybe longer.”
* * *
“I understand,” she said softly, and kissed me again. “Let’s store up some credit at the bank.”
60
As a kid, I loved the smell of burning leaves. In the late fall, my father and I would rake them in the front yard into one big pile. When they were dry enough, Dad would light the bonfire.
It was the end of fall, and I savored the smell of burning leaves again.
I was sitting in the high peaks of the Adirondacks, with my binoculars trained on a home built into a plateau on the side of a mountain. There were no roads going up to the house from the foothills below. Helicopters had been required to ferry all the building materials to the construction site when the house was being built. It was an engineering masterpiece.
I was finishing my fourth day in a camouflaged perch on the same mountain, a thousand feet above the plateau. The vantage point gave me the opportunity to observe both the house and the five-acre compound it sat on.
There was no need to fence it. The back perimeter of the plateau was rock face, and the front and sides led to a sheer precipice that fell two thousand feet to the valley below.
The house looked like something Frank Lloyd Wright might have designed for Adolph Hitler, all steel and glass, with slanted slate roofs and huge plate glass windows facing Whiteface Mountain. One section of the house extended out over the precipice of the cliff. The walls were made of rough-cut stone. A circular helicopter pad had been built on a north site rock ledge at the rear of the compound.
The smokey aroma wafted up from the piles of leaves being burned at the edge of the precipice by the owner’s maintenance crew.
I had been on the road for better than five months, first riding the Indian up to a logging camp in Maine near the Canadian border and getting a job clearing fire lanes. As Vincent Mai, I worked there for two months before drifting into a job with an outfitter along the Allagash River near Churchill Lake. After that I spent another two months as a stern man for a lobsterman near Lubec in the Bay of Fundy. I was in the best shape I’d been in since leaving the army. I hadn’t had a drink since Lauren and I had gone to visit Deborah Chapman after she was released from the hospital.
I never spent too much time in one place. When people get to know you, they want to know more. I’d let my beard grow, and my grayish hair was almost shoulder length. Once a week I made a telephone call to Lauren from Billy’s untraceable phone. She’d kept me up to date on developments after I left.
After four days on the mountain, I knew the daily routines in the compound below. People came and went in helicopters from the landing pad, a mix of business types, young women, and tennis players brought in for matches on the compound’s clay court.
There was a cook, a butler, and three maintenance people. Six male security guards worked eight-hour shifts, two at a time. I knew that someone in the house was ill. I never saw the person but there were three female nurses living in a small guest cottage at the rear of the compound with the security staff, and one of them was always working inside the main house.
The owner played tennis every morning at ten. Even from a distance, through the binoculars, it was clear he was little, maybe five feet six inches. He was deeply tanned and moved with the easy cocksure walk of a rich man. He had the body of an athlete with deep chest, muscled shoulders, and a narrow waist. He played tennis wearing bone-white shorts and no shirt.
He was a definite force in singles, and his opponents were good. A new one arrived every couple days on the helicopter as the last one left. They were all young and athletic and a lot taller than him.
For a little guy, he had a cannon for a serve, and he was consistent. In the fierce volleys, he showed a solid forehand drive with pace and topspin. Whenever he had the opportunity, he charged the net like a little bull elephant, bellowing out a savage cry as he delivered a powerful slam.
I didn’t see him lose.
He spent an hour each afternoon stripped naked on a sun deck outside the bedroom wing on the second floor. Sometimes he was served food out there with a beautiful young woman as the sun was about to disappear over the peaks. The women came and went like the tennis players.
Security was up to current standards. There were two guards on duty at all times, one outside and one inside, with overlapping shifts. I had to assume there were sensors at every door and window, and motion detectors in every room except the bedrooms. At night, I could see shadowy figures moving between them.
At four in the afternoon, the pilot would go out to turn on his helicopter engine. Ten minutes later, the latest tennis casualty and young woman would walk from the house to the landing pad with a small suitcase. The helicopter would take off, and it was quiet again.
I was ready to move.
At ten o’clock on the fourth night, the downstairs lights went out. Two of the upstairs bedrooms remained lit. At eleven, I began climbing down from the promontory where I was hiding, back to the sheer rock face wall of the mountain that led to the rear perimeter of the plateau.
I was wearing a black bodysuit, with extra pockets holding my phone, the Colt .45, a spare clip, two tubes of pills, a Swiss army knife, and a box cutter. To cover my face, I was wearing a long-brimmed black baseball hat with the logo of the Buffalo Bills. Over my hands were the same black leather deerskin gloves I had worn in Afghanistan.
It was a black night, and clouds obscured the stars. I had brought two hundred feet of climbing rope to rappel down the cliff face, and needed every foot of it. I was four feet short of the plateau when I reached the end of the line and dropped to a section of ground screened from the rest of the compound by tall stacks of split firewood.
The shift of the security guard who remained outside during his eight-hour stint ended at midnight. He spent all his time patrolling the acre of the compound close to the house, wearing night vision goggles and carrying a Heckler & Koch submachine gun. The front door of the house was the only one at ground level. The other entry point was from the second-floor sun deck.
I knew the guard headed back to the guest cottage five minutes before his shift ended, to hand over the detail to his replacement. That left the front door entrance unguarded except for the array of infrared cameras that were monitored by the security guard inside the house. That shift ended two hours later.
The nurses’ shift ended at midnight too, and the one coming on duty would leave the guest cottage a few minutes early to walk to the main house.
The interior guard was interested in the nurse who came on at midnight, and they would talk for several minutes before she went on duty. While he was talking to her, he wasn’t monitoring the cameras.
At five minutes to midnight, I was close enough to the house to see the smile on the face of the inside guard as he welcomed the nurse and disengaged the electronic security system covering the main entrance door. Running low to the ground, I skirted the precipice of the cliff in front of the house and slowed up when I reached the rear stone wall. There were no windows in it. I was close enough to feel the tiny extrusions in the rough-cut patterns of the stone.
The flat concrete roof that also served as the sun deck was about ten feet above me. In basic training, we had to run to a ten-foot-high wall, find enough purchase to climb it far enough to grab hold of the top lip, and haul ourselves up and over.
Basic officer training was a long time ago. I had been twenty-two back then. I was pushing forty now. Time waits for no man, I thought as I retreated away from the back wall.
Running flat out toward it, I leapt up the side, grasping desperately for handholds a few feet higher that would allow me to reach the lip of the roof.
You’ve still got it, Tank, I thought as I felt my fingers grip the edge of the second-floor roof and hold there tight. A few seconds later, my chin was over the edge, and I pulled myself up to reach the sun deck.
