Freefall Page 29

  One pricey sandwich, two bottled waters, and three hours later, Melissa Rathlin came hurrying into the lobby. She was wearing a three-quarter-length formal herringbone coat and elegant high heels. Her glossy brown hair hung over her shoulders and looked as though it had been freshly styled. She seemed quite different from Bailey’s recollection of her in Albright’s office: more sophisticated entrepreneur than hard-bitten newshound. Even through the haze of medication, he hadn’t lost the sense to know that she looked gorgeous.

  “Ms. Rathlin,” Bailey called out as she passed him.

  She seemed unnerved by the sound of her name and stopped dead, her fearful expression shifting to surprise as she clocked Bailey.

  “What are you doing here, DI Bailey?” she asked, her heels tapping out a gentle rhythm as she approached.

  “Sylvia Greene left me a message. Said she was working with one of her reporters,” Bailey revealed. “I’m guessing it was you. Why else would Francis bring you into the meeting with me?”

  “He didn’t,” Melissa responded, and for an instant Bailey felt he’d made a mistake. “I asked to be there. I wanted to see whether I could trust you.”

  “And?” Bailey asked.

  “You don’t know, do you?” Melissa countered. “Francis is missing.”

  Bailey instantly felt guilty. He should have warned Albright that he might become a target. The men who’d tortured him, they wouldn’t know who Sylvia Greene had been working with. Once they cracked the code, they’d apply pressure in the right places to find out the name of her collaborator.

  “I think I might know why he’s been taken,” Bailey confessed. “Can we go to your room?”

  Melissa’s room was located by the elevators on the fourth floor. Every exposed surface was spotlessly clean, and the double bed was neatly made, but the floor and chairs were covered with clothes and shoes, and the laptop on the desk was surrounded by scraps of paper.

  “It’s a bit of a state,” Melissa said as they entered.

  “We’re not staying,” Bailey told her. “We need to go. Get your stuff and your passport.”

  “What? What are you talking about? What do you know about Francis?”

  “I think he’s been taken by people who know Sylvia was working with you,” he revealed, registering her dismay.

  “How? Francis doesn’t know anything,” she protested, but Bailey noticed that she’d started packing.

  “Sylvia left me a coded message,” Bailey said. “She wanted me to know she was working with someone. They got hold of it.”

  “How?” Melissa asked. “How could you let them have it?”

  She paused when she saw Bailey hesitate, and she looked down at his damaged hand.

  “I was kidnapped from Belmarsh Prison,” he confessed. “They had my stuff. They tortured me . . . I couldn’t . . .” He choked on the words, recalling his ordeal. It wasn’t the pain that bothered him, it was the sense of powerlessness.

  “I’m sorry,” Melissa said, her tone softening. She resumed packing while Bailey told her about the investigation into Sylvia Greene’s death, his arrest, abduction, and ensuing torture.

  As he spoke, the air in the room seemed to become inert, and Melissa eventually stopped packing and fell still, watching him intently as she listened to the horror of his experiences. The confession was cathartic, and by the time he’d recounted his escape, Bailey felt lighter, as though a burden had been shed.

  “I’m sorry you’ve been dragged into this,” Melissa said. “And you’re right, we need to leave,” she added, tossing the last of her clothes into a scuffed brown leather holdall.

  “Dragged into what?” Bailey asked.

  “During your investigation, did you ever come across Freefall?” she asked, slinging the holdall over her shoulder and grabbing her laptop bag.

  Bailey shook his head.

  “There’s a group trying to railroad the international community into adopting the Online Security Act, the Blake-Castillo Bill, as a global standard. I think Freefall is the code name for their operation.” Melissa began to head toward the door.

  “Who’s behind it?”

  “I don’t know,” she said as she stepped into the corridor. “I’m due to meet David Harris in . . .” She checked her watch. “Shit! Now. He’s one of the British negotiators. I’ve been working with him for weeks. He said he’d found out about a blackmail plot. He had the security services do some digging and I think he knows who’s behind it. Come on.”

  Melissa started down the corridor at a blistering pace, and, inspired by her energy and the seriousness of what she’d revealed, Bailey ignored his aching body and hurried to keep up.

  49

  Deon Reeves had made the call to Harrell the moment Wallace had hung up. Harrell had told Reeves to phone Summersville and instruct the Sheriff’s department to protect Ash and to only discharge her into the custody of a specific FBI agent who would be dispatched from the Pittsburgh office to collect her. Harrell had phoned ten minutes later to give him the name of the agent, Alejandro Luna, and Reeves had relayed the information to Summersville’s sheriff, who seemed shocked to learn that Ash was what she claimed to be, an FBI agent. Reeves got the sense that she hadn’t come quietly. But that was her all over, tough and troublesome.

  Reeves believed that Harrell harbored a grudging respect for Ash, but the special agent in charge had no idea just how astonishingly brilliant she could be. Reeves had a serious professional crush on his boss. He wasn’t interested in her romantically, she was far too damaged, but he’d fallen in love with her work ethic and ability. She was more creative, tenacious, and inspiring than anyone he’d ever worked with, and he was determined to keep his word to Wallace and make sure she came home safely. Which was why the second call from Harrell had been so unsettling: Alejandro Luna’s car had been run off the road and he’d been attacked by four masked men who’d abducted Ash.

  The injured Luna had been airlifted to New York and admitted to Presbyterian Hospital, where he’d been placed under police guard. As Reeves pulled into a space on Spruce Street, he cursed himself for not insisting that he be the one to collect Ash. Part of him had believed that Ash’s paranoia was rooted in her warped childhood. He’d never spoken about it with her, but most of the New York office had seen the Nightfile report that had exposed her true identity and the nature of her awful childhood. He kicked himself for dismissing her paranoia. It was now beyond question that her fears were grounded in reality. He prayed that he’d have the chance to set things right and get her back.

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened?” Reeves asked the groggy man who sat on the bed. “If you feel up to it.”

  Alejandro Luna was in a hospital gown that exposed his hairy legs, which dangled over the edge of the bed. He ran his hand through his thick black hair and winced. According to the doctor Reeves had spoken to, the Pittsburgh agent had a concussion, some minor bruising and abrasions, but nothing life-threatening.

  “They want to keep me in for observation. I feel like a fraud,” Luna confessed. “I should be out there looking for her.” He nodded toward the door, beyond which sat a uniformed cop. “We were heading for Summersville Airport,” he continued. “Your boss, SAIC Harrell, had arranged the flight. This van came out of nowhere and ran us off the road. Four guys in those Pendulum masks jumped me—”

  “You get a look at any of them?” Reeves interrupted.

  Luna shook his head. “Masks, black clothes. Nothing distinguishing. I’ll be honest, it all happened so fast, I’d struggle to even give you height and weight. I thought I was a dead man. They smashed the window, dragged me out . . .” Luna’s voice trembled as he tried to find the strength to continue. “And beat me until I passed out. I didn’t think I’d be coming back, but I did. Maybe twenty minutes later. They were gone and so was Agent Ash. Were you guys close?”

  “She’s my boss,” Reeves replied.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You tell anyone about the transfer?
” Reeves asked.

  “No. My boss SAIC Parry said Agent Ash needed to be brought to safety, so I volunteered. He ordered me not to tell anyone about the travel arrangements.”

  Reeves considered Luna’s response. That gave them three possible sources for the leak: Harrell, SAIC Parry, who ran the Pittsburgh office, and Luna himself. Reeves studied the man and tried to gauge whether he was lying. He was troubled by a nagging thought: the group that had taken Ash had killed her neighbor and slaughtered innocent bystanders in the street. Why had they left Luna alive?

  “You don’t think someone inside the Bureau is talking to these guys, do you?” Luna asked.

  “Hard to see how else they found out,” Reeves replied, holding the man’s gaze. “Listen, I’ve got to get going. Here’s my number if you think of anything else.”

  He handed Luna his card.

  “You don’t think it was me, do you?” Luna said, his tone light and jokey. “You New York types are all the same: suspicious and untrusting. I had a heck of a time trying to convince Agent Ash that she’d be safe with me.”

  “And yet she wasn’t,” Reeves noted. “Sometimes it pays to be suspicious,” he added pointedly, before turning for the door.

  As he reached for the handle, Reeves caught sight of Luna’s reflection in the picture window. Something about the way the Pittsburgh agent was watching him didn’t feel right, and Reeves resolved not to ignore the feeling and to subject Luna to the full force of Bureau scrutiny. By the time he was through, he would know absolutely everything about Special Agent Alejandro Luna.

  50

  Alice crouched behind the lawnmower, playing with a twig she’d found snared in one of its wheels. Light shone through a small window, creating a golden corridor in which dust danced. She imagined they were little people at a fairy-tale ball, the one bowing to the other before they began their whirl. Nicholas said stories filled the mind with nonsense, that they crowded out penitent thought. Years ago, her mother had ignored Nicholas’s rules and had read stories to her in secret, but one night he’d discovered them huddled under Alice’s covers laughing at Green Eggs and Ham. Alice had been given three days in a disciplinary cell and her mother had been beaten so badly that their secret pleasure died that very day. She never picked up a book again, and never once spoke to Alice of anything but the real world.

  Without her mother to share them, secrets became a lonely business. The shed was one. When the Clan was engaged in group therapy, she’d usually be given two or three hours’ worth of chores. She’d whizz through them as quickly as possible and retreat to the sanctuary of the shed, knowing that no one would ever come looking for the lawnmower, or a shovel or rake during one of Nicholas’s sessions. Nicholas taught Alice the ways of the Clan, but she was forbidden from participating in services until her first bleed. In addition to group sessions, all members underwent individual instruction, which often left Nicholas tired and irritable, vexed by the hours he spent listening to their doubts and failings. He took his ministry seriously and worked hard to try to make his followers’ lives whole, but for every two steps forward, he often complained that they would take a step back, and he begrudged them this wasted effort. He was showing them the path to enlightenment, a way of living that would change the world, but their small thinking prevented them from striding alongside him as equals. They stumbled and fell and he had to expend his energy helping them along the way.

  Group therapy happened in the devotion hall. All forty-six members of the Clan were obliged to attend. Alice often wondered what happened in those sessions. She’d see people emerge weeping as though they’d lost a loved one. Other times, the Clan spilled out of the hall, bubbling like children high on too much sugar. Alice was wary of growing old enough to begin proper devotion, but a part of her wanted to know what could provoke such extremes of emotion.

  She was also curious about what would become of her when she passed into adulthood. Would she still live with Nicholas and her mother, or would she be required to move into the main house with the acolytes? There were four bungalows in the compound and she and her parents lived in the nicest. The other three were inhabited by the most senior members of the Clan, including Seer and Muse, Nicholas’s second and third wives. Newcomers lived in the main house, which had once been the home of a big movie producer who’d fallen in love with Nicholas and left him the compound and all her treasure when she’d finally made the great journey. Nicholas always talked of her fondly, as a model of serenity and selflessness that they should aspire to.

  Alice could not find the serenity Nicholas often described. He said it was an emptiness that could be felt; it lay beyond bliss or any other human emotion; it was pure existence that cared not what happened to it nor whether it continued. Freed of desire, one was freed of all sin, no more capable of wrongdoing than a tree. Alice had tried but she’d never felt the emptiness; her mind was always bubbling with dreams, her imagination cramped by the confines of the compound. She longed to play on the beach, to see the vast city that lay beyond the mountains, to experience the world from which her parents had withdrawn. Of course, she never shared such thoughts with anyone, not even her mother. After they’d stopped reading stories, Alice knew that her mother would never have the strength to resist Nicholas. There were to be no more shared secrets.

  She looked down at the twig to see that her thumbnail had gone green from peeling away the bark. The exposed heartwood reminded Alice of bone, and she dug her nail deeper to see what lay beneath.

  She froze when she thought she heard a noise. It was a sound so slight that she would later believe she’d sensed rather than heard what was coming. The dust danced, untroubled, but she stayed utterly still, adrenaline rising, familiar fear heating her body. The tiny dancers vanished as their world was cast into shadow: someone was peering through the small window directly above her, blocking the light. She couldn’t see who it was, but she didn’t have to. There was only one person who could leave a group session. He never had, so she’d thought he never would.

  The door swung open to reveal Nicholas, standing silhouetted against blinding sunlight.

  “What are you doing in here?” he asked.

  Alice trembled at the sound of his voice. It was low and hard, the overture to rage.

  “You were given chores,” he continued, his voice slowly swelling, anger inflating it. “I thought we could trust you, Alice.”

  He stalked forward, stepping into the corridor of golden light, and Alice could see his face was twisted and red. She knew the signs. This wasn’t about her. Someone else had angered him.

  “I give myself to you. All the knowledge I have, hard won by me at great cost. Do you have any idea how much I have suffered so that I can commune with the divine?” he spat, the walls seeming to shake with his passion. “I give and I give, and all you do is take, take, take! No more!”

  A slap punctuated his tirade. It was the first time he had hit her, and Alice was in such shock that she couldn’t even be sure that it had happened. The second and third left her in no doubt, and when his hands balled into fists and began pounding her the same way he hit her mother, Alice tried to focus on the dancing dust, knowing that crying, resisting, pleading only made things worse.

  The pain almost compelled her to yelp, but she swallowed the urge, and when his fury was finally spent and her body was tender and bruised, he turned for the door without looking back.

  “Three days’ discipline,” he said, passing judgment on her failings.

  He didn’t check to see whether she’d heard. He knew that his pronouncements were divine law and that they would be followed as such. When she was sure he had gone, Alice wept, sobbing uncontrollably as the pain finally found release. She cried with horrible anticipation, knowing that this would be the first of many beatings to come.

  The blow startled Ash, and for a moment she straddled the border between reality and nightmare. She thought she’d buried her father’s memory in the deepest recesses of her mind, imag
ining it would vanish like smoke on the wind. But his dark shadow would always be with her, its tendrils reaching into every part of her life. Another slap, and as her eyes focused she half expected to see his twisted, hateful face, spittle on his lips, about to spew yet another zealot’s tirade. Instead, the blurry world took shape and presented her with another figure from her nightmares. The dim light caught the features of the Pendulum mask, as the man who wore it leaned toward her.

  “Where’s John Wallace?” he demanded, his voice angry and raw.

  Ash ignored the question, trying to channel the adrenaline that flooded her system to productive ends. She looked beyond her interrogator and saw two other men, dressed all in black, their faces covered by replica masks. They were in a dark space covered with pockmarked tiles, and it took Ash a moment to realize that they were the kind used to soundproof recording studios. A metal cable cover ran around the room at waist height and frayed wires poked through broken sections. Splintered remnants of furniture lay on the floor, and a few fragments still clung to the walls, attached by screws too stubborn to have been broken by whoever had demolished this place. Ash couldn’t see any windows; the only light came from a desk lamp that had been placed on the floor in the far corner of the room. Despite the soundproofing, she could hear the deep rhythm of a pounding bass: she was in or near a club, probably in the basement, which had once been used as a recording studio.

  “I said, where’s John Wallace?” her interrogator continued.

  She turned her attention to the man, who wore the same black uniform as the others. He had a pronounced New York accent, but it wasn’t the nasal, clipped speech of Wall Street or Madison Avenue; this was the languid drawl of the street.

  “Where’s John Wallace?” he repeated, drawing closer.

  The slaps had been to wake her. He hadn’t touched her again, which unsettled her. Thugs and gangsters usually believed they could beat their way to what they wanted, and would pile on the violence. Professionals knew that anticipation was the best way to break a mind.