Jad Bell: Bravo Part 29

Bell reads the text message from his daughter.

"Who is this?"

"Master Sergeant Bell?"

"Yes. Who is this?"

"You sound alarmed. Don't be. Your ex-wife has a shotgun pointed at my head, and it's very clear she knows how to use it. Very clear your daughter does as well."

Bell looks at Ruiz, who has a phone of his own pressed to his ear.

"You're wondering about the security team on your house," the man says. "They won't be coming."

"They're dead?"

"That's not relevant, and I am not going to waste time while you try to get a response to your house. Listen carefully. I am going to tell you something, and then I am going to ask a question, and then you will tell me if we can deal. If we can deal, I am going to walk out of your house and leave my phone behind for you. If we cannot deal, your wife will have to kill me."

"Let's hear it."

"In just under eighteen hours, a group of armed men are going to enter a very public location and open fire. These are trained, motivated men. It's going to make what happened in Mumbai look like a parlor game. I can give you everything you need to stop them before they begin. Now the question. Is Jordan Webber-Hayden alive?"

Bell looks to Ruiz. Ruiz nods.

"She is."

"Then I have something you want, and you have something I want. I'm leaving your house now, Master Sergeant. I'll contact you in four hours."

Bell hears Amy's voice, the clatter of the phone as it's picked up. "Jad? Jad? What the h.e.l.l-"

"Let him go, don't let anyone in until I get there." He hangs up, already rising, says to Ruiz, "We willing to do this?"

"I'll know by the time you get there," Ruiz says. "For this to work he's going to have to offer himself up."

"We give her up to get him and shut this down, I can live with that," Bell says.

"Wait a f.u.c.king second," Heath says. "You really think Echo's willing to lay it down for his piece of tail in the interrogation room? Why in f.u.c.k's name would he do that?"

"Here's a crazy thought," Nessuno says. "Maybe he loves her back."

Chapter Thirty.

THE ARCHITECT HAS a horrible moment, walking out of the house, when he fears that he has miscalculated and that Amy Kirsten Carver-Bell is going to shoot him in the back. Then he steps out into the Vermont night, and the door closes behind him, and he hears the locks being thrown. He stops on the lawn and sees the ten-speed bicycle that he presumes Bell's daughter had been riding before coming home. He walks it to the garage, props it against the front, then heads back down the sidewalk and around the bend, through the trees to where he left the car from which the CI men had been watching the house. The car smells of their blood and other fluids.

He had taken their weapons and their phones and wallets before disposing of their bodies. He collects them all now, including his own laptop bag. On each phone, he can see multiple missed calls, no doubt attempts to raise them while he was speaking to Bell.

He leaves the car and starts walking, checks his watch, and sees it's nearly midnight. With military transport and all the stops pulled, he expects Bell to be at his wife's home by two thirty in the morning at the latest, but he tells himself he'll wait until three to make the next call. That's as late as he's willing to push it; time is enemy and ally at once in this, for both Zoya and himself, and for Bell.

He walks in the darkness and sees n.o.body. He takes his time, mindful, ducks out of sight when the glow of headlights rises in the night. Once, a police car pa.s.ses him by, but he had warning as it came around the bend, and he is certain no one saw him.

He makes it to the Church Street Marketplace by one in the morning and is pleased to find lights s.h.i.+ning and people about, and then he remembers that it's a Friday night. He stops at a food stand and buys himself a kebab and a soda, finds a place to sit and people-watch while he eats. By the time he's finished, the night is catching up with his surroundings. He resumes walking, heading back toward Lake Champlain, and he's at the sh.o.r.e and listening to the water when his watch tells him it is three.

He uses one of the two dead men's phones and dials his own number.

"Bell."

"Neither of us has much time if this is going to work," the Architect says. "Obviously you do not trust me, and I would be foolish to trust you. What I propose is that you come and meet me. I pa.s.sed a preschool on my walk on Lake Street, called Heartworks. Meet me in the parking lot there and we can get this process under way."

The Architect throws the phone into the water without bothering to disconnect. Then, one after the other, he sends the collection of wallets and weapons in after them.

He waits until almost three thirty before heading toward the preschool. In the silence, listening, he can hear the sound of the car arriving, stopping, the door opening and shutting. It makes the Architect wonder what he isn't hearing, if there aren't a dozen other men closing on his position right now, if a black helicopter isn't silently watching from above. This isn't paranoia; this is, to him, only logical.

Security lights illuminate the preschool parking lot, creating an orange sodium-vapor glow that catches the moisture in the air and refracts it, making it all seem brighter. He can see the man waiting, light in a pool around him. He's a big man, wearing jeans and a jacket, hands in his pockets. The moment the Architect moves, the man's head turns, finds him almost immediately. But his hands remain in his pockets, and he says nothing as the Architect approaches.

"Jonathan Bell?"

"Yes."

"I want it noted," the Architect says. "I did nothing to your family. I went to them because it was the quickest way to reach you."

"You think that buys you something?"

"I think it's something for you to consider. Let's walk."

Without waiting for a response, the Architect turns, heading south. Bell matches his pace.

"Let's hear it."

"You're going to let Jordan Webber-Hayden go free," the Architect says. "Before you do, you're going to give her your phone number. She is going to send two text messages to your phone from numbers that I will recognize. The first message will be proof that she is free and under way. After that message, I will give you a piece of intelligence to demonstrate good faith. The second message, from a different number, will provide proof that she is safely out of your reach. At that point, I will give you everything you need to stop the attack before it begins."

"You're talking time," Bell says. "We release her right now, how long does it take for her to reach wherever she's going and send that second message?"

"You're worried the attack will occur before she verifies her freedom."

"Correct."

"The attack will commence at eighteen hundred hours in zone."

"Which zone?"

"Not yet," the Architect says. "It's almost four now. Do the math yourself."

Bell answers without pause. "Fourteen to seventeen hours."

"Yes, but I'd advise viewing it as somewhat less than that. You'll need to get your people in position, after all."

"Or we could just grab you."

"You could do that," the Architect says, agreeing. "You could black-hood me and pack me off to Gitmo or anywhere else. You could take my laptop and attempt to breach its security. You could pull out my fingernails and waterboard me. And you might well get what you want, and you might even get it with time to spare. But if you don't, I guarantee you, hundreds of American lives will be lost today. Conservatively. This isn't hyperbole."

Bell is silent for a moment, and the Architect suspects he's listening to traffic in his ear. "I believe you."

"Then let her go. Do it now."

There's another silence, and then Bell says, "She's being released and your instructions are being relayed. Can we give her a lift somewhere?"

The Architect laughs. "That's very generous of you, Master Sergeant. But she's a big girl, and she knows what to do."

"She's a messed-up girl."

"Well, I'm a messed-up boy, so what can you do?" The Architect stops, looks out at the lake again, and Bell, likewise, halts. "It's a big, messed-up world."

"You're not helping unmess it."

"I am, actually. But you wouldn't understand. You're part of the problem."

He turns away from the water.

"We've got a lot of time to kill," the Architect says. "Let's see if we can't find someplace where we can kill it."

They find a cafe on the corner of South Winooski Avenue and Cherry Street, loiter outside for twenty minutes before it opens at a quarter of seven. The sun has been up long enough for the Architect to take a good look at Bell, and his first impression is of incredible fatigue. The man's eyes are faintly bloodshot, the bags beneath them a haze of bruised purple. There is stubble, at least two days' worth, and a faint if unmistakable scent of sour sweat and overworn clothes. There is a tattered bandage around his right palm; the cloth tape that holds the gauze in place is dirty and peeling, and when they walk, the Architect sees hints of a further injury to his left leg or perhaps his ankle. The Architect himself is feeling tired, but Jad Bell looks like he's running, literally, on fumes.

"You should get some sleep."

"Tell me what I need to know and I'll be able to."

They get a table, each of them ordering coffee.

"You're paying," Bell says.

"More than you can imagine. You should get your phone out."

Bell takes his phone off his hip, and the Architect can see the pistol riding there. He expected nothing less. The coffee comes, and Bell lays the phone beside his mug. The Architect looks at the menu, orders the gingerbread pancakes. Bell orders eggs over easy and wheat toast.

His phone chimes, and Bell looks down at it, then shows it to the Architect. "That the number?"

The Architect lowers his mug and looks at the screen. The number matches.

In transit, dorogoy.

"So far so good," the Architect says.

"Your turn."

"You have more time than you think. The target is in the western United States."

"You have something against Californians?"

"I did not say it was California."

Bell pushes back from the table, taking his phone with him. "I'm going to make a call."

"Of course you are." He watches as Bell steps outside. The cafe is filling up rapidly, even given the early hour. The Architect finishes his coffee, finds that he's feeling remarkably calm. Of course, he realizes, this is the easy part. Bell and those he works for will play him along until they have what they need.

He thinks about Zoya, wonders which of the caches she's cleared, what route she is taking. It doesn't matter much, only that she gets clear of the country. The first number, the message that just arrived, he recognized. The second that comes he won't, but Bell has no way of knowing that, just as Bell has no way of knowing that Zoya's run, now, is simply that. When she feels she is safe, she'll let him know.

That she will be safe isn't a question. The calculus of the scenario is absolute. In the grand scheme of things, Zoya means nothing to Bell and his owners, only to the Architect. In the grand scheme of things, they are trading her for him, and he is the prize of greater value.

The Architect watches as Bell speaks on the phone, then he directs his gaze around the cafe as his mug is refilled. From Brock's files, he makes at least one of the men present as another of Bell's team, the one called Chaindragger. He ignores him, and his pancakes come, and the Architect attacks them with vigor.

Bell returns to find his plate waiting for him. They eat in silence.

Finished, the Architect lays a twenty on the table.

"My treat," he says.

Chapter Thirty-One.

BELL DOESN'T KNOW what to think.

At first he thought the walking around was Echo's way of flus.h.i.+ng coverage, of identifying and counting the surveillance, but the man genuinely doesn't seem to care how much of how many are watching them. They've had breakfast, walked much of downtown Burlington, and ended up on a pedestrian mall that has too many people and no vehicle access, and Bell thinks that if Echo wanted to run, this would be a pretty good place to start the race.

But Echo gives no sign of fleeing. He gives no sign of anything, just maintains the complacent calm of a man who knows how to wait. What little he's said seems to both mock and defer, as if he holds Bell in contempt but somehow feels sorry for doing so.

Now it's eight minutes to ten in the morning, and Echo wants another cup of coffee. Bell is happy to oblige, mostly because he can't feel the caffeine anymore. They get their drinks at a shop on Church Street, and Echo himself suggests they take a table outside.

"Easier on the surveillance teams, I should think," he tells Bell.

"Jesus f.u.c.k," Heath says in his ear. "This guy is ice."

"Brickyard," says Ruiz. "Status."

"I've got eyes on." Cardboard now. "Still at Church Street, sharing a table."

"Blackfriars," Nessuno says. "Coming up from the south."

Bell looks past the Architect, sitting opposite him, sees Nessuno, wearing a baseball cap and carrying her jacket over her arm, coming up the pedestrian mall toward them. She stops, window-shopping, and Bell focuses on the Architect, finds the man staring at him again. Every time he looks at him, Bell feels like he's being weighed, measured, and itemized.