Reeder and Rogers went over to Lawrence Morris, who was duct-taped in a chair on the kitchenette side of the big room; he wore a gray duct-tape strip over his mouth and a swath of black cloth over his eyes, the wire-frame glasses on the kitchen table nearby, his buy-two-for-the-price-of-one suit hardly rumpled.
Their guest appeared to still be out from the Mickey Finn that had been administered at the Mont Blanc bar by Reggie Wade, who watched nearby on another kitchen chair, looking loose-limbed in dark gray sweats.
“He really out?” Reeder asked.
Wade shrugged. “Could be. Johnnie Walker and roofies make one sweet cocktail.”
“Know anything that might bring him around?”
Another shrug. “Light a match behind his ear, maybe.”
A micro-expression passed over Morris’s face at the prospect, though with the blindfold, it was hard to be sure, his chin down, touching his chest.
“Well, let’s try this,” Reeder said, and ripped the duct tape gag off.
Their guest howled. It rang off the brick walls.
Reeder pulled around another chair. “That was your wake-up call, Lawrence.”
The man was breathing hard now, chin up, obviously awake. Reeder left the blindfold on the man.
Rogers, standing just beside Reeder, a hand on the back of his chair, said, “Joe — maybe we made a mistake grabbing him.”
“How so?”
“What if he doesn’t know anything? What if he’s too lowly a grunt for the other side to trade Nichols?” She was smiling at Reeder in a way that didn’t go at all with her tone.
“Good point,” Reeder said, voice solemn, smiling back. “That puts us in a bad place. I don’t want to end up with this son of a bitch on our hands.”
Reggie, amused, put plenty of nasty into his voice as he said, “That’s what they dig holes in the forest for, bossman.”
“I know things!”
Morris had joined the conversation.
“The only thing that really matters right now,” Reeder said, “is where our friend Anne Nichols is. Who has her, and what we have to do to get her back.”
“I don’t know anything about Agent Nichols.”
Rogers said, “You know she’s an agent.”
The blindfolded man nodded, still breathing hard. “But that’s all. I’m what you’d call... middle management. I don’t know every move. There are cells working various aspects.”
Reeder and Rogers exchanged looks.
She asked, “Aspects of what?”
Morris strained at his bonds, leaning forward. “I’m valuable to them! They’ll trade for me.”
Reeder asked, “Who will trade for you, Lawrence?”
Nothing.
Wade said, “You want me to get the shovel, bossman?”
“The board!” he blurted.
Immediately their captive’s face drained of blood; his mouth was hanging open like torn flesh. He had said too much and he knew it.
Reeder said, quietly, “What board would that be, Lawrence?”
“They’re... they’re powerful people. And they, they value me. That’s all you need to know.”
Reeder scooched his chair closer, the feet making a fingernails-on-a-blackboard scrape. He got the anonymous nine mil from his waistband and he racked the weapon, letting the mechanical music of it sing to the captive.
“You and your people,” Reeder said, “have sacrificed at least six Americans to whatever this cause is, and whoever these powerful people are. Do you think that hypothetical hole in the forest that my friend here mentioned couldn’t become very damn real?”
Lawrence shook his head. “I don’t... I don’t doubt you. But you people aren’t the only ones who can dig a hole.”
“Maybe not,” Reeder said pleasantly, “but we seem to be first in line.”
Reeder tore the blindfold off and the accountant blinked rapidly as his vision adjusted to the loft’s muted lighting. Morris’s eyes moved from face to face.
“You were saying, Lawrence,” Reeder said. “The board? Would that be a board of directors of some kind?”
Morris drew in a deep breath and let it out shudderingly. He was shaking. He seemed near tears. The information this minor figure had was clearly major.
Very quietly, he said, “A board of directors oversees certain activities.”
“That, Lawrence,” Reeder said, “is just a little vague.”
He drew in breath. Let it out. “It’s a group of patriotic Americans. As I said, powerful ones. Movers and shakers, you might say. Captains of industry... no, generals of industry.”
Rogers asked, “A right-wing group?”
“No, no...”
Reeder asked, “A leftist group?”
“No, no, you misunderstand. You underestimate. They have their own interests, but those are the best interests of America. These men are above politics, and yet they are the inheritors of everything our founding fathers put in motion.”
A little hysteria was in Morris’s voice now, the tears ever closer. Reeder hoped the man wouldn’t piss himself.
Reeder asked, “Does this group have a name?”
“It’s... it’s rarely spoken...”
“Speak it anyway.”
Morris swallowed. Barely audible, he said, “The American Patriots Alliance.”
Disgust clenched Reeder’s belly. How many evil bastards in history had wrapped themselves in the American flag? Or any nation’s flag?
Rogers asked, “Who exactly is on this board?”
Morris shook his head. “I have a sense of who they are, but not... exactly who they are.”
“No,” Reeder said, hard, his kinesics skills coming to the fore, “you do know them. Or some of them.”
Morris stiffened. “If I give you any names, I’m a dead man. And don’t threaten me with that hole in the forest again. Just go ahead and kill me. Because I would already be dead.”
Now when Reeder read the man, he knew Morris was telling the truth.
“If you don’t give us those names,” Reeder said, “what do you have to bargain with?”
“Your agent.”
Reeder, Rogers, and Wade exchanged looks. Back to square one...
“If I haven’t told you anything,” Morris said, “they’ll trade. If I talk, they’ll kill me, and you have no lever to get your agent back.”
“Portillium,” Reeder said.
Morris blinked. “What?”
“Portillium — hear of it? Know what it is?”
Morris shook his head. “No. It sounds made up.”
Shit, Reeder thought. He’s telling the truth.
“Well,” Reeder said, “it’s not a new additive in dishwashing powder. It’s a mineral, a very rare one, and almost certainly why the Russians went into Azbekistan.”
Morris squinted at Reeder, as if trying to get him in focus. “They... went to war for a mineral?”
“Does that strike you as unlikely? Haven’t we gone to war for oil? Someone on your board is responsible for sacrificing four CIA agents to that Russian invasion. Either your Alliance is in league with the Kremlin, or they’re trying to start World War III.”
Morris grunted something that was as close to a laugh as he could muster under the circumstances. “Make up your mind, Reeder! Is the Alliance in bed with Russia, or eager to go to war with it?”
“The frightening thing is, either is possible. Because as you said, these ‘powerful people’ do whatever it is that’s in their best interest.”
Another grunt of a near laugh. “You’re making all of this up. That mineral, portobello or whatever, you made it up.”
“Six Americans dead, Lawrence.”
He swallowed. “In war, sacrifices must be made.”
“We’re already at war,” Reeder said. “Your Alliance is at war with the rest of us. They’re calling it patriotism, Lawrence, but it’s treason. And you’re part of it. That’s how you’ll be charged — for treason.”