“Sir, do you know your location?”
“Uh . . . no.”
“Stand by, sir.” Five seconds passed. “All right, sir, I have your location near Black Road, west of Princess Anne in Maryland.”
“Yeah, that sounds right.”
“I’ve alerted the 911 dispatcher in your area. Help is on the way.”
“How long?” Sam croaked, doing his best injured-driver impression.
“Six to seven minutes, sir. I’ll stay with you. . . .”
But Sam was already moving, slipping back out of the car and shutting the door behind him. Using his pocketknife he punched a hole in the left rear tire’s valve stem. He then crawled around to the opposite side, repeated the process on the other tire, then sprinted back to the trees and rejoined Remi.
“OnStar?” Remi asked with a smile.
Sam kissed her on the cheek. “Great minds.”
“How long until the cavalry arrives?”
“Six, seven minutes. It’d be great if we were gone before then. I’m not in a question-and-answer mood.”
“Me neither. I’m in a warm brandy mood.”
“Ready for a little hide-and-seek?”
“Lead on.”
They had little hope of following any footprints in the mud so he and Remi dashed across the clearing and began picking their way through the paths and tunnels formed by the boiler graveyard. Sam found two pieces of rebar and gave the shorter one to Remi and kept the longer one for himself. They’d gotten only fifty feet or so when they heard a faint voice through the falling rain.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about . . . what piece?”
It was Ted.
A male voice said something in return, but neither Sam nor Remi could make out the words.
“That thing? It was a piece of a bottle. Nothing important.”
Sam turned his head, trying to catch the sound and narrow in on where it was coming from. Using hand gestures, Sam pointed ahead and to the left, under an arch formed by a boiler that had half collapsed against its neighbor. She nodded. Once they were through the arch the voices became more distinct.
“I want you to tell me exactly where you found it,” the unidentified man was saying. The voice was accented, either eastern European or Russian.
“I told you, I don’t remember. It was somewhere on the river.”
“The Pocomoke River?”
“Right,” Ted replied.
“Where?”
“Why are you doing this? I don’t understand what—”
There was a slapping sound, something hard striking flesh. Ted grunted, followed by a splash as he obviously fell over in a mud puddle.
“Get up!”
“I can’t!”
“I said, get up!”
Sam signaled for Remi to wait as he crept ahead, pressed himself against the wall of the boiler, then slid ahead until he could see around the curve.
There, in a space between a pair of pickup truck-sized boilers, was Ted Frobisher. He was on his knees, arms bound behind his back. His assailant stood a few feet in front of him, a flashlight in his left hand, a revolver in his right. He was pointing the gun at Ted’s chest.
“Tell me where you found it and I’ll take you home,” the man said. “You can forget all about this.”
There’s a lie if ever I’ve heard one, Sam thought. Whoever this man was he hadn’t brought Ted all the way out here only to take him back home and tuck him safely into bed. So sorry about all this, have a nice night. . . . Whether or not the man got what he’d wanted, Ted’s fate was sealed unless they acted quickly.
Sam thought for a few seconds and formulated a rudimentary plan. He would have preferred a more elegant solution, but they had neither the time nor the resources for that. Besides, simple was often the most elegant. He slid back along the boiler and returned to where Remi was waiting.
He sketched out the scene he had witnessed, then his plan.
“Sounds like you’re getting the most dangerous part,” Remi said.
“I have absolute confidence in your aim.”
“And my timing.”
“That, too. I’ll be right back.”
Sam disappeared into the trees for half a minute, then returned and handed her a rock about the size of a grapefruit.
“Think you can climb that one-handed?” he asked, nodding at the rusty maintenance ladder rising up the side of the nearest boiler.
“If you hear a big thump in the dark you’ll have your answer.” She leaned forward, curled her fist around his shirtfront, and drew him in for a quick kiss. “Listen, Fargo: Try to look harmless and for God’s sake be careful. If you get killed I’ll never forgive you.”
“That makes two of us.”
Sam hefted his piece of rebar and took off at a half sprint, heading back the way he came, then veered right and began circling around. He stopped to check his watch. Six minutes had passed since his OnStar call. He couldn’t wait any longer.
He tucked the rebar into the waistband at his back, then took a calming breath and started walking until he came around a boiler and the pool of light from the flashlight appeared in the darkness. Sam stopped and called out.
“Hey, there, howdy, is everything okay?”
The stranger whipped around, shining his flashlight in Sam’s eyes. “Who are you?”
“I was just driving by,” Sam said. “I saw the car. Thought maybe somebody broke down. Hey, how about not shining that in my eyes?”
In the distance came the faint sound of sirens.
Gun raised, the man spun back to Ted, then back to Sam.
“Whoa, fella, what’s the gun for?”
Sam raised his hands and took a careful step forward.
“Don’t move! Stay right there!”
“Hey, I’m just trying to help.” Breath held, Sam took another step forward, closing the gap to fifteen feet.
Be ready, Remi. . . .
He raised his voice to make sure he could be heard over the rain and said, “If you want me to leave, no problem. . . .”
Remi took her cue, and to his right Sam saw a shadow arcing out of the dark sky from atop the boiler. The stone seemed to hang for an impossibly long time, then landed with a sickening crunch on the man’s right foot. Remi’s aim was dead-on. Though a head shot would have made things much easier, it would have also likely killed the man, a complication they didn’t need.
Even as the man groaned and stumbled backward, Sam was moving, drawing the rebar from his waistband with his left hand as he charged ahead. Arms windmilling, the man was trying to regain his balance and had almost succeeded when Sam’s perfectly timed uppercut caught him squarely in the chin. The gun and flashlight flew up and away, the former landing with a plop in the mud, the latter rolling toward Ted. From the corner of his eye Sam saw Remi appear behind Ted. She lifted him to his feet and together they started running.
The stranger was lying on his back, half sunken in the mud, groaning. Tough customer, Sam thought. That uppercut should have solidly shut off his lights. Sam switched the rebar to his right hand.
The sirens were coming closer now, not two minutes away.
Sam picked up the flashlight and cast it around until he spotted the man’s pistol half buried in the mud a few feet away. Using the tip of his shoe, Sam pried it free, slipped the top of his foot beneath it, and kicked it far into the trees.
He turned back and shined the light into the man’s face. The man stopped moving, eyes squinting against the glare. His face was lean and weathered and he had small, mean eyes and a nose that had clearly been broken many times over. The white line of a scar ran from the bridge of his nose across his right eyebrow and ended just above his temple. Not just tough, Sam now thought. But cruel, too. The eyes told him that much.
Sam said, “Don’t suppose you’d care to tell me who you are or why you’re here, would you?”
The man blinked rapidly, clearing away the cobwebs, then focused on Sam and spat out a word. Russian, Sam thought. Though his Russian was passable for tourist purposes, he didn’t recognize the word. Still, it was a safe bet it had something to do with either his mother, some form of carnal knowledge, or both.
“That had a distinctly unfriendly sound to it,” Sam said. “Let’s try this one more time: Who are you and what’s your business with our friend?”
Another curse, this one a full sentence.
“Didn’t think so,” Sam said. “Well, better luck next time, pal.”
With that he leaned forward and swung the rebar in a tight arc, tapping the man behind the ear with what he hoped was just enough force. Rebar wasn’t the most delicate of weapons. The man grunted and went limp.
“Here’s hoping we never meet again,” Sam said, then turned and started running.
CHAPTER 6
Here, Ted, drink this,” Sam said, handing Frobisher a snifter of warm brandy.
“What is it?” Frobisher grumbled. Surprising neither Sam nor Remi, Ted’s adventure in the boiler graveyard had done nothing to improve his disposition. Then again, Ted wouldn’t be Ted if he were sunny.
“Just drink it,” Remi said and gave his hand a pat.
Frobisher took a gulp, scrunched up his face, then took a second gulp.
Sam put another log on the fire, then joined Remi on the love seat. Frobisher sat opposite them in a wingback chair, wrapped in a flannel blanket and fresh from a hot shower.
After leaving Frobisher’s mystery man lying in the mud, Sam had sprinted back to the BMW, which Remi had turned around and pulled up to the driveway. His decision to leave before the police had been an instinctive one: Though they’d done nothing wrong, being embroiled in a police investigation would also entangle them with Frobisher’s attacker. Sam’s gut told him the more distance they put between themselves and the man, the better.
With Sam back in the car they’d sped back down Black Road, then headed west on Mount Vernon Road. Thirty seconds later they saw flashing lights come around the corner behind them and pull onto Black Road. At Sam’s direction Remi did a quick U-turn, pulled over to the shoulder, and doused the headlights, waiting until the emergency responders—a police cruiser and a fire truck, it appeared—reached the boiler graveyard. She then pulled out and headed back toward Princess Anne. Forty minutes later they were back in their room at the B&B.
“How do you feel?” Sam asked Frobisher.
“How do you think I feel? I’ve been kidnapped and assaulted.”
Frobisher was in his mid sixties and bald save a monk’s fringe of silver. He wore a pair of Ben Franklin half-glasses; behind them, his eyes were a pale, watery blue. Other than being wet and cold and shaken up, the only leftover from his ordeal was a badly bruised and swollen right cheek where the man had pistol-whipped him.
“Kidnapped and assaulted is better than kidnapped, assaulted, and killed,” Sam observed.
“I suppose,” he replied, then grumbled something under his breath.
“What was that, Ted?”
“I said, thanks for rescuing me.”
“I bet that hurt to say,” Remi replied.
“You have no idea. But I mean it. Thanks. Both of you.” He drained the last of his brandy, then held out the snifter for more. Remi obliged.
“So what happened?” Sam asked.
“I was dead asleep and I woke up to someone pounding on my door. I asked who it was through the door and he said, ‘Stan Johnston, from down the road.’ He said Cindy—his wife—was sick and their phone wasn’t working.”
“Is there a Stan Johnston?” Sam asked.
“Of course there’s a Stan Johnston. The next farmhouse to the north.”
This meant something, Sam knew. Judging from the attacker’s accent it seemed reasonable to assume he wasn’t a local, which meant he’d planned out his raid of Ted’s house, going as far as finding out the names of his neighbors for use in his ploy.
During his time at DARPA Sam had had enough interaction with case officers from the CIA’s Clandestine Service to know how they thought and how they worked. Everything Frobisher’s attacker had done screamed “professional.” But a professional for whom? And to what end?
“So you opened the door . . .” Remi prompted Frobisher.
“So I opened the door and he rushes in, pushes me to the floor, and shoves that gun in my face. He starts asking questions, shouting at me—”
“About?”
“Some shard of glass. It was nothing, the punt from a wine bottle. He wanted to know where it was, so I told him. He tied up my hands with some kind of tape, then went into the shop, rummaged around—broke God knows what in the process—then came back with the piece and started asking where I’d found it.”
“Where did you find it?”
“I don’t remember exactly. I really don’t. It was on the Pocomoke, somewhere south of Snow Hill. I was fishing and—”
“You fish?” Sam asked, surprised. “Since when?”
“Since forever, you idiot. What, you think I just sit around the shop all day fondling plates and doodads? As I was saying . . . I was fishing and I snagged something. It was a boot, an old leather boot. The shard was inside it.”
“You still have the boot?”
“What am I, a garbage man? No, I threw it back. It was an old rotted boot, Sam.”
Sam raised his hands, palms out, in a calming gesture. “Okay, okay. Go on. He started shouting questions at you and . . .”
“Then the phone rang.”
“That was me.”
“He asked if I was expecting anyone and I said yes, thinking he would leave. He didn’t. He dragged me to the car and drove me out to that place, whatever it was. That’s it. The rest you know.”
“He had it on him,” Sam muttered. “I should’ve searched him.”
“How many times do I have to say this, Sam? The piece was nothing. There was no label, no writing—just some kind of weird symbol.”
“What kind of symbol?”
“I don’t remember. There’s a picture on my website. I posted it, thinking someone might know what it was.”
“Remi, do you mind?” Sam asked.
She was already up, retrieving their laptop, which she set on the coffee table and powered up. Thirty seconds later she said. “Here, is this it, Ted?” She turned the laptop for him to see.
He squinted at the screen, then nodded. “Yep, that’s it. See, it’s nothing.”
Sam scooted closer to Remi and looked at the picture. As described, it looked like the concave bottom, or punt, of a green wine bottle. In the center of the punt was the symbol. Remi zoomed in until they could make it out:
Sam said, “That doesn’t look even remotely familiar. You?”
“No,” Remi replied. “And this doesn’t mean anything to you, Ted?”
