CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Richard Tolman headed the arm of the National Security Agency where both Renita Gallant and Kelly Kramer worked. He was a career bureaucrat, a family man and a fair man. Still, he didn’t like the idea of Kelly and Renita using government data for what was, in effect, a private investigation into Alan Bestwick’s disappearance. His arms were crossed and his jaw set as Kelly made his pitch. If body language were any indicator, they were out of luck.

Taylor sat in Tolman’s office, listening and watching as Kelly presented his case for why they should have access to the satellite imagery. Kelly was convincing, playing to Tolman’s sense of right versus wrong. While Kramer portrayed Taylor Simons as a woman who had been more than just slightly wronged, he barely touched on what Alan had done to her emotionally—NSA didn’t base its decisions on emotion. Rather, he gave Tolman every detail on the crime. How Brand and Alan had stolen millions of dollars from her. When Kelly finished speaking, the room was silent.

Tolman uncrossed his arms and set his hands on his desk in front of him. He was a gangly man with thinning hair and wire-rimmed spectacles and would have looked right at home at a CPA convention. There was a wedding ring on his left hand. He glanced at all three of them, then locked eyes with Taylor.

“Was there ever any indication that Alan Bestwick wasn’t who he seemed to be?” Tolman asked.

The question surprised her. “Never. Alan and I were married and lived a very normal life as husband and wife. He worked, I owned a business, we came home every day and had dinner together and took vacations a couple of times a year. That’s why Alan’s involvement in this is so devastating. I trusted him—as my husband.”

Tolman’s eyes didn’t flicker. His gaze bored into her, stripping off the layers and searching for the truth. Under that stare, Taylor realized that while this man may appear to be an accountant, he most certainly wasn’t.

“It is within my authority to grant access to the satellite imagery you want, Ms. Simons,” he said, his voice even but not monotone. “I’m reluctant. This almost appears to be vigilante action. I do not want to be party to anything even remotely resembling that.”

Taylor returned the gaze, not threatening or pleading, just eye to eye. “I need to put this to rest.”

“And if you find he is alive? Then what? Do you go after him? Do you use Mr. Kramer’s connections inside the intelligence community to find someone to kill Alan Bestwick?”

Taylor was shocked at the words. “Of course not.”

Tolman nodded slightly and held up one hand in a stopping motion. “Don’t get upset, Ms. Simons. You have to understand where this could go. You can imagine my position if it were traced back to this office that I had assisted you in finding a man who subsequently died. I’m not sure I want to do that much paperwork. Or retire early.”

“I want to know,” Taylor said.

Tolman broke off his eye contact with Taylor and turned to face Kelly. “Give me your word you won’t involve your contacts at Langley in this.”

Kelly shifted slightly. “That’s difficult, Richard. I may need logistical help that I can’t get here. I’d hate to say for certain I won’t ask anyone at the CIA for help. At some point I may need to.”

“You know what I mean, Kelly. I don’t care if you ask them to run a license plate number. I care if you sanction Mr. Bestwick. If you have him killed.”

“That I can promise you. No harm will come to Alan Bestwick. At least, nothing will happen to him because of what we do.”

Tolman was thoughtful. Finally, he said, “I’ll authorize you to access the satellite data we have stored on the hard drive for the southernmost thirty miles of the Cabo region for two hours on either side of when the car went over the cliff. That’s it. No more.”

“Thank you,” Kelly said. Taylor nodded and smiled.

“Don’t make me regret this decision, Kelly,” Tolman said as they all rose.

“I won’t, Richard.”

They shook hands and left the office, closing the door behind them. They walked down the hall to the elevator in silence. Kelly’s and Renita’s offices were two floors below Tolman’s, and they punched the appropriate button. It wasn’t until they were in Renita’s office that they spoke.

“I can’t believe it,” Taylor said. “I never thought we’d get the okay.”

Kelly grinned. “Richard Tolman and I go back a long time. He was my boss before I took the leave of absence and worked for you at G-cubed. We’ve got a mutual respect for each other. He trusts me. That’s why his final decision was made on my promise that we wouldn’t remove Alan if we found him.”

“Remove Alan,” Taylor said. “Christ, do you have any idea what you sound like when you say that? You talk about killing people like you’re ordering breakfast at a Holiday Inn.”

Kelly was quiet for a minute, then said, “Taylor, this is a different world than the one most people live in. We deal in national security. When it comes to the nation’s well-being, individual people are expendable. It’s that simple. Cross the line and there’s a good chance you will not live. When you’ve got those kinds of resources at your fingertips, you’ve got to be careful how you use them. That was Tolman’s concern. Alan Bestwick is not a threat to national security, and other than analyzing the satellite data, we leave him alone.”

“I know what Tolman was saying,” Taylor said. “I’m just a bit shocked at the offhand way you and he refer to killing someone. That’s all.”

“I’ve never been involved in anything like that,” Kelly said. “I never want to be.” He turned to Renita, who had been mute for the entire meeting. “When can you start analyzing the download from the hard drive?”

She shrugged, brushing her hair behind her ears. “Anytime. I’ve got a hundred things to do, but nothing on the front burner. As soon as the authorization comes through, I can start working on it.”

Kelly smiled. “It’s already through. I know Tolman. The moment we stepped out of his office he was on his computer setting up the access codes.”

Renita checked her watch. “I’m going to grab some lunch. Meet you in the situation room on twelve in an hour?”

Sixty minutes later they met up with Renita Gallant outside the darkened computer room on the twelfth floor. She punched in her code, and they entered. Taylor sat in a chair near a bank of computer terminals facing the large screen on one of the walls. Renita took the seat at the center console and began typing on the keyboard. After a couple of minutes, she leaned back and smiled.

“Up and running. I’ve got a four-hour chunk of satellite data from November third, between three-thirty and seven-thirty. The GPS coordinates cover the tip of the Baja Peninsula, to about thirty miles up from Land’s End.” She worked the keyboard for a minute, and an image flashed on the large screen. It was the exact stretch of land she had just mentioned and the surrounding water, the Sea of Cortez to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south. “Okay, point to where the car went over the cliff.”

Taylor walked up to the screen and traced the road from San José del Cabo northward along the coast. She asked Renita to enlarge the area so she could see the details better. The screen changed, now showing the east coast from San José del Cabo and a few miles north. Taylor ran her finger along the road, pausing at a tiny dot she thought might be Buzzard’s Bar.

“Can you zoom in on this?” she asked. The image changed again, this time gaining great detail as Renita zoomed in on the precise location. With eleven million pixels in each frame the satellite recorded, the quality of the picture didn’t diminish in the least. “Okay, that’s Buzzard’s. Alan went over the cliff about four miles up this road.”

She waited while Renita recalculated the distance into GPS positioning, then realigned the image. When the new picture flashed on the screen, the section of road where the car had plunged over the cliff was near the top. Taylor put her finger on the corner.

“This is it. He went over right here.” Again the image shifted, sharpened up.

“Okay, when did it happen?” Renita asked.

“Five-ten,” Taylor replied. “Give or take about five minutes.”

There was a pause, then a slight blip and the time in the lower right hand corner changed by one hour and fifty-two minutes. They watched the section of road and coast in real time, the individual stones on the road surface clearly visible. Waves crashed into the base of the cliff and the image was so clear they could see the spray from the surf. Then Taylor sucked in her breath. The cars had just come into view.

She watched as Brand parked the Explorer and slipped out the driver’s side of the vehicle. He stood by the door, but he was not looking out over the ocean. He was watching the road—waiting for her and Alan to arrive. A minute later their rental car rounded the corner and came to an abrupt stop. Brand jumped back into the Explorer and a second later their car rammed the SUV, driving the rear tire over the edge of the cliff. The car backed up, and Taylor watched as she tumbled out of the car onto the road. The car roared ahead, kicking up dust in its wake. The Explorer surged forward just as the car reached the edge of the cliff. A few milliseconds later it was airborne. Then it hit the surf, sending up a plume of water. Moments later the car disappeared beneath the choppy waves.

“Good God,” Renita said, staring at the screen. “No wonder you thought he was dead. That was one hell of a convincing crash.”

Taylor’s eyes followed Edward Brand’s car as it careened back onto the road and headed north. A few seconds and it was out of view. Then she watched herself as she ran to the edge of the cliff and looked down. She saw herself fall on the ground. And she relived every second of what she had thought was her husband dying. But this time there were no tears. Just anger.

Renita concentrated on Brand’s vehicle as it headed northward along the coastline. “We’re almost at the end of our coverage to the north. If he goes any farther, we’re going to lose him,” she said after a few minutes of tracking his SUV as it moved up the coast. They got a short distance farther, and the screen froze. It wouldn’t move any more. They had reached the north end of the data Tolman had authorized. The Explorer disappeared. “That’s it. We’ve lost him.”

“We need more,” Taylor said. “We need to know where Brand went.”

Kelly shook his head. “Not going to happen. Tolman authorized us to find out what happened to Alan, not Edward Brand. He’s not going to give us any more of the satellite data than what we have here.”

“Now what?” Taylor asked, frustrated.

The image on the screen rewound until it was centered on the crash. Then it shifted ever so slightly so the section of water where the car impacted was dead center on the screen. Renita positioned the time to precisely when the car went over, and they all watched again as it tumbled over the cliff and hit the water. She let the video run for about three seconds, then froze the picture.

“I’m going to try applying a polarizing filter to the data,” she explained as she worked on the keyboard.

“What’s that?” Taylor asked.

“It’s really a very simple filter. Photographers use it all the time when they’re shooting something under the surface of a body of water. Say for example you’re on the side of a lake and you see a large trout sunning himself next to a log. He’s maybe six to ten feet underwater. You pull out your 35mm camera and snap the shot. When you get it processed, all you see is the surface of the water and whatever reflection is on it. But put a polarizing filter on the lens and turn it until the filter aligns with the light reflecting off the water’s surface and suddenly the fish is visible on the picture.”

“So you’re going to adjust this filter so we can see beneath the surface?” Taylor asked.

“Exactly.”

Renita worked for a minute or two. The image began to mutate. The tops of the waves disappeared and the entire sea took on a homogenous blue tone. She let the video run, the underwater picture now visible and undulating with the flow as the waves hit the rocks and the undertow forced the water back from the rocky shore. The impact from the car hitting the water dissipated, but they could see the distinct outline of the vehicle as it sunk beneath the waves. Then something appeared from the left side of the screen—from under the rocks at the shore’s edge. Two figures, moving quickly toward the car, towing a bag behind them. Scuba divers.

“Oh, my God,” Taylor said. “Look. Divers.”

Renita pulled the image in a little closer and sharpened it. The car, still sinking to the bottom, was dead in the center of the screen. Bubbles poured from the driver’s window as the air inside the vehicle escaped. The divers reached the car, and one of them pulled on the driver’s door while the other dug in the bag they had brought with them. Because Alan had cracked the window, the pressure between the sea and the inside of the car was equalized, and the door opened easily. Alan appeared, and in a flash the second diver had a scuba regulator in his mouth. A steady stream of air bubbles floated upward as Alan began rhythmic breathing. One of the divers fitted him into a buoyancy control device, weights, flippers and a mask; the other worked on attaching the severed hand to the dash. Then, when Alan was in complete scuba gear, the three figures began to move. They swam south from the wreck, paralleling the shore.

“Son of a bitch,” Taylor said as they sat watching the divers round a set of rocks. Renita kept the image focused on them as they swam, slowly moving the positioning so the divers stayed in the center of the screen. Since they were moving south, there was no chance the NSA computers would run out of data before the divers had to surface. They swam underwater for the better part of an hour, covering well over a mile before surfacing. Moments after they broke the surface, a twenty-foot speedboat appeared from off the screen. The divers pulled themselves and their gear into the boat. The smile on Alan’s face was not lost on Taylor.

“You bastard,” she hissed as she watched the speedboat take off toward San José del Cabo. Another boat appeared as Renita followed the first one. Moored just offshore, the yacht was waiting for the smaller boat to arrive. As it pulled up alongside, Taylor sucked in her breath. Standing on the deck, waiting, was Edward Brand. He must have doubled back on an inland road, driven into San José del Cabo, then taken a shuttle boat to the yacht. As Alan climbed up the ladder and onto the yacht, Brand walked to the top of the stairway. When they met, they shook hands, both men all smiles. Then they disappeared inside the vessel.

Taylor sat staring at the screen. She was in complete shock. Even though she had known in her heart that Alan was involved in the scam, the definitive proof was overwhelming. But again, there were no tears. Her emotions were in overdrive, but empathy or understanding weren’t part of them. Loathing and anger topped the list. She continued to stare at the screen as Renita further adjusted the sharpness and zoomed in on the stern of the yacht. There was lettering and it was clearly visible.

Mary Dyer.

Edward Brand had just left them an opening. Taylor glanced over at Kelly and he nodded.

“Got him,” he said quietly. There was a hint of a smile on his face.