31

 

Denver, Colorado

 

In his office two levels underground, Roger Brinkman leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He had to admit he was feeling his age. Managing his organization’s search for the Preening Peacock had worn him down. Then Kristin Halvorsen’s sighting one of the Staab brothers had triggered another telephonic scramble.

His own assets had been committed to finding the ship. Government reinforcements would arrive too late to support Kristin, so he’d had to hire private investigators in Spokane. Then he’d committed Sledge and set up more PI help for him.

Soon afterward, Kristin’s report from Mineral Creek required a further request for government help. Thankfully, Brian Novak was coordinating that. If everything worked out, the FBI would soon have a sizeable force on site.

Brinkman’s quick mind still rose to the battle like a seasoned war horse, but his aging body no longer held up under stress. The body said it was time to pass direction of his organization to a younger man. Novak looked like the best candidate if he could be convinced to retire from the CIA.

The ringing phone called Brinkman back to the present.

“Señor Brinkman,” said the voice of his friend in Balboa, Panama, “the Preening Peacock has passed through the Miraflores Locks and is heading for the Pacific. I apologize for my failure to find it sooner. My contacts did not notify me when the ship entered the canal.”

“Thank you, Miguel. I’ll take it from here.”

Brinkman did not grant himself the luxury of a sigh, but phoned Brian Novak. The information could be passed within minutes. But could the government react quickly enough?

If it could not, the ship would disappear in the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, a nameless blip on radar screens among hundreds of other nameless blips.

Then Kim Jong-un and his generals would receive those deadly weapons to use against American soldiers.

 

****

 

Mineral Creek, Idaho

 

At Staab’s instruction, one of his henchmen drove the Chevrolet away to dispose of the two bodies. The other got into the driver’s seat in the Jeep. Without relaxing his grip on Kristin’s hair or arm, Staab forced her into the rear seat. Remaining behind her, he pushed her face into the seat’s cold vinyl. She managed to turn her head enough to breathe, but that cost her another violent twist of her arm. After that she lay unresisting, unable to see anything except a few square feet of the Jeep’s stained plastic seat covers.

The vehicle halted and she heard the driver shift into four-wheel drive. Afterward, the slow labor of engine and gears told her they were climbing on a rough trail that bounced her face repeatedly on the seat. Each bounce brought a cruel laugh from Staab. His grip on her hair and arm never relented.

Were they climbing east or west of the valley? She could see no shadows in the jeep. Apparently, the sun had not yet climbed above the eastern mountains, so she guessed they were climbing the western slope. But how far had they come?

The Jeep halted and Staab hauled Kristin outside. They were in deep woods, but she also saw a high chain-link fence topped by barbed wire. Like a prison, she thought, as Staab marched her through a group of five gibing toughs into a one-room cabin. A man seated at a battered desk looked up in obvious irritation. He had raven-black hair with a touch of lighter color at the roots. The morning light reflected from copper-colored stubble on his jaws. With a jolt, Kristin realized he was the dark-haired man she and Sledge had sighted at the weapons factory.

“Well, Staab?” The man’s tone dripped sarcasm.

“She and two men were tailing us.” Staab spoke with a harsh German accent. “Fifty miles that we know of, but maybe from Spokane. They’re pros—drove past the turnoff to throw us off, then waited for daylight to make a move. We set up on the hill above town and watched them come in, then took care of them before they could leave.” At the other man’s questioning glance he added, “No fuss in town. We used silencers. Joe’s ditching the car and bodies. Rob has gone to pick him up.”

“Why didn’t you dispose of this one?”

“She used the payphone before we could close in. I thought we ought to know why.”

The man at the desk showed a grim smile. “Then let’s find out.”

Staab pushed Kristin into a straight-back chair and released his hold. Relief flooded through her as the pain in her shoulder eased. Staab stared down at her from a position in front and to her right.

The man at the desk swiveled his chair around to face her and spoke in a teasingly cruel voice. “Suppose you tell us what you and your friends were doing.”

Kristin took a few breaths and turned up the collar of her coat, hoping that would make it harder for Staab to seize her hair again. She knew Brinkman was planning some action against this place, but she didn’t know when. Her best course was to stall for time and try to stay alive.

“I was on a date with my boyfriend,” she said, adopting the tough blonde act she and Jocelyn had amused each other with in college. “My boyfriend’s name is Mike, and he’s a private investigator. So last night we’re doing dinner when he gets this hurry-up call for a job of tailing somebody. He doesn’t have time to take me home, so we follow that silly Jeep and wind up here. I phoned my mother ’cause I knew she’d worry when I didn’t come home.”

As she spoke, Kristin scoped out her surroundings. The room held only the desk, a table beside it, and a few scarred straight chairs. On the table rested two portable file boxes brimming with tightly stuffed file folders. With windows on three sides, the room was connected on the fourth side by a door into a longer frame building. Through the window beyond the black-haired man, she saw that the other building extended some fifty feet. She had a fleeting impression that it stretched about the same distance in the other direction.

“So you followed my men from the Spokane airport?” The man at the desk tapped a pencil on his desk.

Kristin worked her jaw as if she were chewing gum. “My boyfriend did. I was along for the ride.”

The thug who’d been detailed to dispose of the Chevrolet entered and spoke to the man at the desk. “I left the car in a gully near Bonner’s Ferry, Mister…uh…Williams. The two guys were in it.” He held up a gloved hand. “No fingerprints. And I found this in the car.” His other gloved hand held Kristin’s purse.

Her heart hammered as she waited for them to find out she’d lied. The man—Williams—emptied her purse on his desk. He ignored its feminine clutter and went directly to her identification cards.

“So you’re really Kristin Halvorsen from New York.” He held up her driver’s license, then one of the Panorama Weekly business cards she hadn’t discarded. “And a journalist for a national magazine. You came a long way from New York to date a private investigator.”

Kristin said nothing.

“And you didn’t need this passport to come to Spokane.” He held up the guilty document, then thumbed through her receipts from San Juan and Chicago. “Quite the international traveler, aren’t you?”

Kristin silently chided herself for keeping the receipts to claim reimbursement. Her heart pounded again as Williams studied her airline ticket.

His face showed an evil grin as he spoke. “Staab, did you know you had a traveling companion? She’s been with you all the way from Saint Kitts.”

Staab cursed and slapped her across the mouth. Her head snapped back, and she tasted blood.

“Enough!”

The sharp command stopped Staab even as his hand cocked for another blow.

“There are better ways.” Williams resumed his low-key sarcasm as he addressed Kristin. “Will you tell us now, or must we persuade you?”

“I’ll tell,” Kristin said, her voice almost a whisper. Anything to gain more time. How long would it take Brinkman to mount his operation? Had she given enough information for him to move? She still tasted blood, though it didn’t seem to be flowing.

She took a deep breath and began a story she didn’t think they could disprove.

“Yes, I’m a journalist. I was on vacation in Saint Kitts. About a week before, a friend in the FBI showed me this man’s picture and said he was a wanted criminal. When I happened to see him in Saint Kitts, I thought it would be great for my career if I followed him and tipped off the FBI when he lighted somewhere. The trouble was, he never lighted.”

Williams began tapping the pencil again. “And of course you called in during those long layovers in San Juan and Chicago.”

Kristin thought fast. “I tried to, but I never made contact. The FBI is such a bureaucracy that it’s tough to get the right people on the phone.” She gave a sad half-laugh. “You ought to try it some time.” Before he could retort, she continued. “When I had no luck in Chicago, I called a private detective I knew in Spokane. He set up the tail from the airport.” She hoped they wouldn’t ask her Mike’s last name.

They did not. Williams probed again. “And whom did you call from that payphone?”

“The FBI.” She looked him squarely in the eye and showed a disgusted face. “All I got was my friend’s voicemail that said he’d be back in a couple of days. I hope his system doesn’t bump the old messages when it reaches capacity.”

“You can’t believe her, Mr. Williams,” Staab said angrily.

Williams gave a sarcastic laugh. “I don’t, really, but I know a way to find out. Take off her coat and bring her into the lab.”

Kristin tried to get it off herself, but Staab ripped it off of her, wrenching her shoulder again so that she cried out. A surprised look of recognition crossed his face as he viewed the leather coat she’d bought in O’Hare International Airport.

“I’ve seen this woman,” he said. “She got on the plane in Chicago. I’d recognize that leather outfit anywhere.”

Williams paused in the doorway to the larger building. “You only noticed her in Chicago, Staab? Have you forgotten that she followed you all the way from Saint Kitts? You’re slipping.”

Staab seized Kristin’s hair and arm again and thrust her along behind Williams. This half of the long building consisted of one large room filled with equipment that looked like an elder brother of the chemical lab she’d known in her college days.

Williams pointed to an ordinary-looking sink. “Hold her arm over that.”

He walked a few paces farther while Staab’s grip kept Kristin from seeing what he was doing. Williams returned a few minutes later carrying a bottle of clear liquid and wearing latex gloves that extended to his elbows.

“Hold her arm over the sink,” he ordered again.

Staab hesitated. “I want no part of that chemical stuff.”

Williams gave a derisive laugh. “It’s only a simple acid. I won’t spill any of it, but it’s easily counteracted if I should.”

Reluctantly, Staab took Kristin’s right elbow and forced her hand palm-down against the bottom of the sink. As if he knew what was coming, he twisted the other arm up behind her and used his body to pin hers against the sink’s outer rim. She fought against him, but his bulk and strength held her immobile. As in a dream, her situation triggered the memory of being pinned against the wall by the high-school football player. With it came the terror she’d felt then, magnified by her terror in contemplating what these men were about to do to her.

But this time there was no panic. Somehow, in a flash of relief beneath the terror, she realized Staab’s dominating her at close quarters had not brought back the panic. Her schoolgirl prayers had gone unanswered for so long that she’d eventually given them up in despair. But now something—perhaps Sledge’s tenderness, perhaps some power beyond her comprehension—had brought the deliverance she’d prayed for those many years ago. She might die in the next few minutes, but at least she would die released from that specter of the soul that had haunted her these many years.

“It’s only a simple acid,” Williams said again as he held the bottle in front of her eyes, “but it will leave a permanent mark on that lovely hand of yours. Now, Miss Halvorsen, have you told us the complete truth?”

“I have,” she gasped. “I swear it.”

“I don’t think so,” Williams said. “For now we will give you a small souvenir to think on. Tomorrow we will talk again.”

He removed the glass stopper from the acid bottle and rubbed it in a circular pattern on the back of Kristin’s hand. She screamed as the fiery liquid seared into her flesh. She remembered, as a child, when she had touched a hot frying pan. Reflex had jerked her hand away before she had time to think, but this pain burned as if she couldn’t let go of the frying pan. She screamed again, fervently wishing she could pass out. Better yet, just die. But she received no relief. The pain grew until her life shrank to nothing but pain and the screams it wrung from her.

She must have fainted then, for her next consciousness was of Williams humming an off-key tune as he put the stopper back in the bottle.

“That’s enough for now,” he said. Aided by Staab, he moved her hand under the tap and flooded it with water. “This isn’t proper handling of an acid. I shouldn’t let it go down that drain, even in dilute form, and even if it only goes into a septic tank. But in two more days I won’t need this place any more. Then someone else can worry about it.”

Staab sucked in his breath. “Two days? We have to get out of here now. Someone’s onto us. They already killed Capozzi. And this broad called the FBI.”

Williams turned off the water. “Capozzi had it coming. He and your brother Dietrich botched the job on that Colombian in New Orleans.”

“But that note on Capozzi’s body. All it said was that he was impolite. That’s no reason to kill somebody. It doesn’t make sense.”

“No?” Williams laughed. “Since when have you and Dietrich needed a reason to kill? But forget about the FBI. Bureaucracies can’t react. They’ll take a day to decide if the woman’s call is genuine and another to come up with a plan. They’ll use a third for reconnaissance and a fourth to evaluate the results. No, we have three or four days at our disposal, and I require only two to complete my work. The new weapon will be twice as deadly as the present one.”

“Let’s play it safe and get out now. We can go out the back way into Canada and disappear.” Staab’s tone was surprisingly pleading for a man with his history.

Williams’s voice grew iron-hard. “It’s worth risking two days. If I stop now, I’ll have to do two months’ work all over again. My clients grow impatient.”

Staab’s silence indicated acquiescence. Kristin moaned as pain overwhelmed her again.

“Now, my dear,” Williams said, “we will render a bit of elementary first aid.” He turned off the water and poured baking soda onto Kristin’s hand. It fizzed and bubbled as it came in contact with the remaining acid.

Her hand still flared in pain, and Kristin gritted her teeth, determined not to faint again. The fiery round spot on her hand showed angry red against the light-pink sunburned skin around it. Williams took another bottle from a shelf and used a cotton swab to paint the back of her hand with a brown liquid.

“Now,” he said in a tone of feigned tenderness, “that will soothe the burning after a while. Meanwhile, you can think of all that you will tell us at our next meeting.” His voice again grew hard. “You will tell us everything, because you can imagine what this simple acid will do to your face.”

“Let’s get it all now,” Staab said.

Williams waggled a finger. “Patience, my impulsive friend. Her imagination will do more to loosen her tongue than all the beatings you can deliver.” His glance returned to Kristin. “You’ll be kept in a locked room inside a fenced enclosure manned by armed guards, so don’t think you can escape. Spend your time thinking how that acid will feel on your beautiful face, and think of all the things you will tell us to keep from feeling it.”

He turned to Staab. “You know which room.”

Staab yanked Kristin from the sink. She staggered, all combativeness drowned in the sea of pain from her seared hand. The great brute led her to a bare, unfurnished room just past the office where she’d first met Williams. Without comment, Staab slapped her twice across the face and threw her onto the floor. Half-conscious, she lay motionless, her head buried in her arms. Behind her, the door closed and a key turned in the lock.

The pain in her hand burned until she thought she could bear it no more. But worse than that was the thought of acid on her face. Despair came quickly, for she had no more strength to call upon. She had fallen among men more ruthless and cruel than Diego Contreras. She knew too much, and they could not afford to let her live.

The question was how much torture they would inflict before they killed her.