Right then Davis reached a decision. He put on his boots and stood, then ordered his phone to check for e-mail. He didn’t wait for the results. Leaving the phone on the nightstand, he pocketed his room key and closed the curtains. Davis slipped outside, closing the door softly and leaving the room light on.
It was seven that evening when Davis bypassed the restaurant across the street, postponing an urgent request from the well of his stomach. He took a cab downtown, asking the driver to drop him in an area where retail stores remained open late. Twenty minutes later he was delivered to someplace called Centro Comercial Andino. It was on the east side of town near the base of the mountains, a three-story mall whose directory boasted the likes of Pandora and Swatch, a place that would have looked right at home in Indianapolis or Atlanta. Davis settled with the driver in dollars and walked west along a wide boulevard, a four-lane affair that was busy in the early evening.
His countersurveillance tactics were rudimentary at best. Davis was not a trained spy, but he doubled back twice and watched for anyone who mirrored his movements. He drifted with the flows on the sidewalk, kept an eye out for recurring faces, and, perhaps in an ode to paranoia, even went to the trouble of stepping on and then off a municipal bus. Satisfied he was alone, he turned away from the mall, passing a busy faux British pub, and rounding a cemetery where every mildewed grave marker seemed to be topped with fresh-bundled flowers. After fifteen minutes of maneuvering he found what he wanted, a second-tier commercial strip. He steered into a family-operated convenience store that sold a little bit of everything, and emerged, one hundred and fifty U.S. dollars later, with two prepaid burner phones.
Walking back toward the mall, Davis activated the first phone. He boarded a busy escalator, and as he rose dialed one of the few phone numbers in the world etched into his private cloud memory.
On the third ring Anna Sorensen answered.
FIFTEEN
Anna Sorensen was blond, attractive, and had been immovably lodged in Davis’ head for the better part of three years. They’d met while investigating a crash in France, Davis assigned to the inquiry by Larry Green, and Sorensen by her own government handlers. The truth behind that air accident had been both spectacular and combustible, as was the on-again off-again relationship the two of them had managed ever since. Their union was a tectonic thing — stable and hopeful for periods, but fracturing regularly along the fault lines of their professional lives. Davis was often on the road, and recently had been sidetracked by getting Jen out of the house and settled in college. Sorensen kept an equally unstable existence, one that had recently seen her move to the Far East, then back to Virginia in a matter of months.
For all their disconnects, however, the connects were worth it. Intimate highs outweighed crashing lows. Davis had not heard her voice in two months, after an awkward chapter in which he’d floated the idea of them sharing his suddenly too-large house. Sorensen had nearly accepted, but wavered over a possible reassignment to Europe. Three awkward dinner dates later, the new rift finalized.
Two months was their customary interval of separation — the point at which one of them generally found an excuse to call the other. Setting aside the sine wave of their romantic mingling, Davis felt he and Anna were increasingly close friends. Which was what he needed tonight. Someone he could trust, someone he could talk to.
And, if he were completely honest, someone who worked for the CIA.
Sorensen picked up. “Hello?”
“The caller ID must have shown an unknown caller.”
A pause. “Hey, Jammer. How are you?”
Davis pulled a deep breath. It was nice to have somebody ask that. Somebody who cared about the answer. “I’m not good.”
“What’s wrong?”
He thought he might have heard music in the background, something soft and melodic. He told himself it wasn’t any of his business.
“It’s about Jen.” He covered the purgatory that was the last three days of his life, and Sorensen listened in silence. At one point, he was sure he heard a male voice in the background.
When he finished, she said, “Dear God, I’m so sorry, Jammer. I know how close the two of you are.”
An awkward silence fell, and he said, “Did I call at a bad time?”
“Oh, no. My sister and brother-in-law are staying the week.” Davis felt a curiously strong wave of relief. Had it been more than two months since they’d talked? Whatever the interval, it was too long.
“So you’re in Colombia looking for her?” she asked.
“The Hotel de Aeropuerto in Bogotá. Larry managed to assign me to the investigation.”
“Any luck yet?”
“Yes and no. When I first got here… Christ, Anna, I thought she was dead. Now I don’t know what to think. Twenty-one passengers and three crewmembers got on that airplane, but two are missing from the wreckage, Jen and another girl.”
“So you don’t even know if she’s alive? That’s got to be tearing you apart, Jammer. Are you okay?”
“No.”
“What can I do to help?” Her sincerity was absolute, and Davis was glad he’d called. It felt good to have backup.
“I was hoping you’d ask that. First I should warn you that I’m not talking on the phone I was issued. I bought a couple of burners.”
“Do you think someone is listening? The Colombians?”
“Somebody is very interested in what I’m doing here. Unfortunately, I think whoever it is lives closer to you.” He told her about the first-class service he’d been getting.
“That doesn’t sound like any government I know,” she agreed. “I can’t get a box of copier paper without the written approval of two supervisors.”
“Tell me about it — I spent a career in the military.”
“But how is that a problem? If you’re getting too much cooperation, just run with it.”
“Nothing comes without a price, Anna. I want to know who I’m running up a tab with, and for what reason.”
“Maybe you could find out by putting it to a test. Call their bluff.”
“How’s that?” he asked.
“Ask for a bigger Gulfstream. If that shows up, go for a million in uncut diamonds. Sooner or later somebody’s going to say no.”
Davis came the closest to laughing he’d been in fifty-five hours. “That’s not a bad idea — maybe I’ll try it. But finding Jen is my priority, and that’s going to take a little more subtlety.”
“You? You’re about as subtle as a concrete—”
“Please, Anna. I don’t have much time. I need to find out who’s so interested in this investigation. It’s got to be somebody with a stake in the outcome, which should narrow things down. I need a name, an organization — something.”
“And you want me to get it.”
He sighed. “I don’t know. Knocking on doors in D.C. when we don’t know what we’re up against… it has the potential to stir up a lot of trouble. Maybe if you could make it look like a standard dig. I don’t want you putting your career on the line over this.”
“I would, Jammer. I’d do that for Jen.”
This caught him by surprise. “I know you would, Anna. And that means a lot. For now, I’d like you to concentrate on one thing — find out whatever you can on a guy named Thomas Mulligan.” Davis spelled the last name.
“There’s probably only about a thousand of those in the world.”
“Five hundred if you don’t count Ireland. He was on the flight with Jen, TAC-Air Flight 223. That should narrow things down. Only this guy didn’t die in the crash — somebody shot him at point-blank range during the flight.”