Vanished Read online

  A little less than two hours later, the rented Ryder truck pulled in to the Ordnance Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland, the U.S. Army’s oldest testing and evaluation facility for weapons and explosives. A couple of eager soldiers, students at the Ordnance Center & Schools, hopped onto the back of the truck and helped unload the safe.

  They were all very much looking forward to learning how to use controlled explosives to open a high-security safe without damaging its contents. It was a rare educational opportunity.

  A professional “safe engineer,” as they’re called, would surely have refused to do the job. He’d have made me fill out all sorts of forms and maybe even asked the local police to witness the opening of the safe. The situation—a large high-security safe brought to him on the back of a rented truck—would have rung every warning bell. But my old friend, Staff Sergeant Patrick Keegan, one of the instructors, was grateful to me for offering up my old safe so they could practice on it.

  We all stood back a few hundred feet while Keegan finished wiring the blasting cap to the small morsel of C-4 explosive that he’d molded to a corner of the safe’s rear panel.

  He joined the rest of us and pressed the detonator, setting off a loud explosion with the sharp concussive sound of a rifle shot. The back of the safe flew into the air and landed maybe twenty feet away from us.

  But the RaptorCard inside was unharmed.

  “I WANTED to grab that keyboard,” Dorothy said as we drove the truck away about an hour and a half later.

  “Off Eleanor Appleby’s desk? The one with the keylogger in it?”

  “Yeah. So we still have to get back in there.”

  “That probably wouldn’t have been a good idea. They might have wondered why a couple of HVAC repair people stole a keyboard.”

  “Yeah. So let me ask you something.”

  “Yeah?”

  “How the hell did you come up with the idea of stealing the whole damned safe?”

  “Not sure,” I said. “Maybe it was that cargo job I did in L.A.”

  My cell phone suddenly emitted four beeps, alerting me to a text message.

  I pulled over to the side of the road and flipped the phone open.

  NEW TXT MESSAGE

  From: [email protected]

  You have something of ours We have something of yours Let’s trade

  83.

  My heart began to pound.

  Paladin, of course.

  From a blocked e-mail address. I hit REPLY. I struggled with the keypad, with how to enter letters. Teenage girls text on their pink Razrs like court reporters on speed—OMG! BRB! LOL! ROTFLOL!

  It took me a while. Finally, I was able to enter: “What do you have?”

  “What’s going on, Heller?” said Dorothy.

  I held the phone, waited.

  Then, a minute later, four beeps. A photo appeared on the phone’s display.

  My brother.

  Taken at an odd angle, in low light. He looked haggard, seemed to have aged five years. But it was definitely Roger.

  A picture that could have been taken at any time. Hardly proof of life.

  Dorothy said, “My God.”

  I entered: “Proof?”

  The answer came back a minute later:

  No time

  Not good enough, I thought. This smelled like a setup. I thought for a few moments, then entered: “What R’s nickname for me?”

  If, as I suspected, this was Koblenz’s trap, that would trip him up. He—or whoever was holding my brother hostage—would have to ask Roger. And if Roger wasn’t cooperating, he would either refuse to reply or give a wrong answer.

  The four beeps came less than a minute later, and then the words:

  RED MAN

  “Jesus,” I said aloud. “It’s him.”

  “How do you know, Heller? Talk to me.”

  “Do me a favor,” I said. “Drive the truck.”

  Dorothy took over behind the wheel, and I thought, staring at the phone. What if Roger had used the phrase in some e-mail to me years ago? Had he? I certainly didn’t remember, and it wasn’t as if he’d e-mailed me much at all in the last few years. A couple of times, maybe. But if he had, and they’d captured his e-mails to me and analyzed them…

  It wasn’t impossible that they’d discovered Roger’s nickname for me that way. So this wasn’t really proof. Though maybe there was no definitive proof.

  I tapped out: “What on back of Dad’s gift to R?”

  That they couldn’t know without asking him. No way. He never put anything like that in an e-mail to me. We never talked about the Patek Philippe watch, Mom’s gift to Dad, which he’d handed over to Roger when he entered prison.

  The text-message alert took much longer this time. I imagined Roger telling his captors, spelling out the Latin words repeatedly. His frustration at the ignorance of the men who’d taken him prisoner. Men who didn’t know Latin the way Roger did.

  If, of course, they truly had Roger.

  But then came the four beeps.

  AUDNTES FORTUNA JUVT

  A couple of typos. Missing a few letters, like the Latin inscription on the pediment of an old building. Typed out rapidly. But close enough. Fortune favors the bold.

  I entered: “Where?”

  The answer came back quickly:

  Union Station Center Cafe 6:00 pm Alone

  I looked at my watch. It was 4:30. That left me barely enough time to return to Washington and make the arrangements I needed to make.

  I texted back: “OK”

  84.

  In normal circumstances, I’d always found Union Station to be one of the most beautiful places in Washington, and one of the most impressive train stations in the world. It was meant to evoke the Arch of Constantine in Rome. The barrel-vaulted ceiling in the main waiting room was almost a hundred feet high, with gold leaf all over the place. Not that long ago—twenty, twenty-five years ago—the station had been boarded up. Mold grew on the ceiling, toad-stools in the bathrooms. Now it gleamed, freshly painted and re-gold-leafed.

  Just then, though, it seemed a teeming, chaotic place. Dangerous. The Paladin people had deliberately set our rendezvous for rush hour, when hordes of commuters flowed through the main hall, in and out of shops, up and down the escalators, to and from the train platforms and the metro station.

  They wanted to watch me without being seen themselves. Though I wasn’t likely to recognize any of them anyway. The ones who’d already gone after me were probably collecting disability and spending a lot of time in chiropractors’ offices.

  I’d found a space on the second level of the parking structure adjacent to the terminal. As had become my habit recently, I’d done a quick check for any concealed GPS tracking devices on the undercarriage of my car. There were none.

  I took the escalators down, then went through the sliding glass doors to the mezzanine level. There I stood at the balcony and looked down over the main hall. It was impossible to identify anyone who might be watching me. There were far too many people here, moving in irregular patterns or just standing around and browsing. I descended the winding staircase to the main level and crossed the west hall, past a sports-memorabilia shop.

  In my peripheral vision I noticed a man in his sixties wearing an old Baltimore Orioles baseball cap pulled down low over his head and a pair of black-framed glasses. Lt. Arthur Garvin of the Washington Metropolitan Police Violent Crime Branch was inspecting a Washington Redskins coffee mug.

  He glanced vaguely in my direction, didn’t acknowledge me, and I kept going.

  By the time I returned to the main pavilion and was circling the Center Cafe, my phone vibrated. I glanced at the number, answered it.

  “Yeah?”

  “Nothing?” Garvin said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Twenty-two minutes. There’s a couple of stores within direct sight line of the Center Cafe.”

  Koblenz, I assumed, was counting on my eagerness to see my brother making me sloppy.
I hated to disappoint him. But this whole thing felt more and more like a setup.

  I was now convinced that they really did have Roger. Between the photo they’d sent to my cell phone and the two pieces of information, one of which no one but Roger could possibly have known, there was little doubt.

  But that didn’t mean that they actually planned to turn him over. As much as Koblenz wanted his RaptorCard back, he wasn’t going to give up leverage like that. At least not so easily.

  Instead, they were probably planning on grabbing me, too. He’d use men I didn’t recognize. They’d get me somewhere and stick a needle in me and, finally, they’d be rid of the last threat of exposure.

  That was, I assumed, their plan, anyway.

  But plans are made to go wrong.

  Garvin had his department-issue Glock. I had the Ruger .45 I’d liberated from Taylor, the Paladin guy. It was perfectly good, and if there were any legal complications later, I preferred to have the firearms trace lead back to Paladin rather than to me. The Ruger was tucked into an ankle holster, under a loose-fitting pair of jeans.

  Still, it was just the two of us, and Garvin was not exactly in shape. He was a desk jockey. Nor could he call in any of his friends on the force, assuming he still had any. On the off chance that Koblenz’s swap was actually on the level, we didn’t want an unusual police presence in Union Station scaring his men off.

  At five minutes before six, I stood in front of the information booth next to the Center Cafe, pretending to study the arrivals-and-departures board. The crowd surged, making it difficult to identify any obvious Paladin types nearby—ex-SEALS or ex–Special Forces guys wearing surveillance earpieces with the distinctive coiled audio tube running down the backs of their necks. Or holding mobile phones to their ears. Or wearing Bluetooth headsets.

  There were a number of beefy guys talking into cell phones. Any of them could be Paladin. Or stockbrokers, for that matter.

  But none of them seemed to be looking in my direction. Or if they were, they were being subtle.

  Garvin was standing at the end of a bar. He looked like he was caught up in an argument with another patron.

  At exactly six o’clock, my phone beeped four times, and I checked the text message.

  Alone?

  I texted back: “Yes.”

  I waited. A row of gray statues high above gazed down, solemn Roman legionnaires.

  Then another message:

  Enter code on reverse of card

  I understood at once. They wanted to confirm that I really had the RaptorCard with me, that I wasn’t trying to pull off a swindle. I took out the card and noted the eight-digit serial number on the back, which I assumed was a unique code. Then I entered it on the phone keypad.

  And waited.

  Then came the four beeps, and a message:

  OK Buy ticket Camden Line to Laurel

  Tickets to the commuter trains were sold just outside the doors at the back of the main hall. I walked through a set of glass doors and got in the long line that wound around stanchions to a ticket counter. No marble grandeur here; it could have been a Trailways bus station in Poughkeepsie.

  About a minute later my phone beeped again.

  No time Use machine

  They were watching.

  But where were they?

  I looked around, saw dozens of people milling around, waiting for trains, standing in line. None of them familiar, none of them obviously a Paladin type. Garvin was in range, talking to a shoeshine guy, laughing. As if he had all the time in the world. But he was watching.

  Maybe I’d underestimated him.

  On either side of the counter was a bank of electronic ticketing machines. The lines there were much shorter. I chose a machine to the right of the counter. Only one person ahead of me; I had to wait just a few seconds. I inserted my credit card and selected the Laurel, Maryland, stop on the northbound MARC train.

  I looked around again, trying to catch someone suddenly looking away, averting his eyes. Someone with a cell phone, punching away at the keys—texting, not talking on it.

  But saw no one.

  I considered calling Garvin’s cell to let him know where I was going but decided that was too risky. They were watching. Maybe they’d hear his phone ring, see him answer it at the same time that I was placing a call. I didn’t want to endanger him that way. Let him figure out what I was doing.

  I’d offered Garvin the use of a tiny Bluetooth microearbud from Merlin’s stash. It was government-grade, used by the Secret Service, not available commercially. You slip it into your ear canal, and it’s just about invisible. But Garvin was old-school, and he wasn’t comfortable sticking something that tiny into his ear. He was afraid it would get stuck.

  I wished at that point that Garvin had taken me up on the offer.

  The ticket popped out. I grabbed it, found the track number on the departures board. Through the automatic doors at Gate A and outside to the platform. The air was cool and crisp and acrid from uncombusted diesel fuel and smoke. The Camden train was idling, its doors open. Already crowded with passengers. Some of them had put briefcases on the vacant seats next to them. I found a seat in a row of two on the right side, next to an elderly lady. The compartment was just about full to capacity. Passengers started having to take their bags off the empty seats, letting people sit next to them.

  Garvin, who’d been following me at a discreet distance, walked past my compartment, decided to board the next car down. A smart move: He didn’t want to be recognized.

  An announcement came over the train’s P.A. system warning that the doors were about to close. The train was about to depart.

  My phone beeped, and I flipped it open.

  Get off train now Do not take this train

  I sighed in annoyance: I didn’t like being toyed with. But I jumped out of the train just as the doors began to close with a pneumatic hiss. Garvin, in the next compartment, saw what I was doing a few seconds later and pushed at the doors, tried to force them open. The train picked up speed and several seconds later was gone. Along with Garvin.

  My phone was beeping again. The message said:

  Penn Line train

  Across the platform.

  I entered: “To where?”

  I was getting good at texting. By then I could have given a teenage girl a run for her money.

  The answer came at once:

  Just get on

  85.

  The Penn Line train was about to depart, a minute or so after the Camden Line. I raced across the platform and found a seat, and my phone vibrated. A call, not a text message.

  “Dammit,” Garvin said, “what was that all about?”

  “I think that was their way to make sure I’m alone,” I said as quietly as I could.

  “Where are they sending you now?”

  “I don’t know. This train heads into Baltimore. Terminates in Perryville.”

  “Call me back when they tell you which station you’re getting off at,” he said. “I’ll grab a cab or something.”

  “I’ll call you when I get off,” I said. “I have a feeling the games aren’t over yet.”

  The conductor came by with a handheld punch and asked for my ticket. I didn’t know how far I was going, so I bought a ticket for the end of the line, Perryville.

  And for a long while the phone stayed quiet. No text messages; no calls from Garvin.

  The train was old and decrepit, the seats worn and permanently soiled. The man next to me kept ripping out articles from the Washington Post. I wondered whether he was senile. Very few passengers were talking on cell phones. It was quiet, the silence of people who were depleted after a long day. A few snoozed.

  We passed the used-car dealerships in Seabrook, then the landscape became rural. Twenty-two minutes out, we reached Bowie State. Five minutes later, Odenton.

  And still no text message with instructions. I’d begun to wonder whether I was being led on a pointless errand, a mind game. The next stop w
as BWI Marshall Airport. Most of the other passengers got out there, probably to board buses to the airport.

  Five minutes later the train stopped at Halethorpe. The suburban outskirts of Baltimore. Tract housing. Residential. A cemetery on the west side.

  So maybe they wanted to meet in Baltimore. In seventeen minutes the train would arrive at Baltimore’s Penn Station. But still no text message. I wasn’t going to call Garvin; not yet. Not until I was certain of the destination.

  Just three passengers remained in my car. The old man next to me, obsessively ripping out swaths of newsprint. He looked like the kind of guy who lives in a studio apartment surrounded by towering stacks of dusty yellowed newspapers until one of them topples and he’s crushed to death. A young guy, too small and nerdy and fragile-looking to be Paladin. A middle-aged black woman, likely a government worker.

  Five minutes later my phone came to life, signaling a text message.

  Exit here W Baltimore

  An announcement came over the loudspeaker: “Next stop, West Baltimore. Doors open on the last car only. Passengers wishing to depart here should move to the last car.”

  I got up, walked into the next car and the one after that, and as I did, I hit redial to call Garvin.

  “West Baltimore station,” I said.

  “Jesus Christ. I’m at Annapolis Junction. I’ll grab a cab if I can find one.”

  The train came to a stop, the doors opened, and I got out along with the middle-aged black woman from my car and a young, black-haired guy in a hooded sweatshirt wearing a backpack.