Krell swallowed hard. “I’ve told you everything I know. You’ve got to let me go.”
Blaine said nothing, just started to tighten his finger on the trigger. Krell had to die.
“You promised!”
And in that moment of hesitation, Blaine knew he couldn’t pull the trigger. Not now, not like this. Krell was a dead man anyway. He had talked and that meant someone else would be along to do the job.
McCracken pulled the gun back and lifted Krell up with one powerful arm.
“Get out of here, fat man! Disappear! They’ll be taking numbers to burn your ass before long.”
Krell looked back just once, shocked but grateful, then stumbled around the corner and was gone.
Andrew Stimson met McCracken in the backseat of another cab ninety minutes later, accepting the details of McCracken’s report with grim reserve.
“You’ve certainly lived up to your reputation, Blaine.”
“You get what you pay for, Andy. There’s no time to fuck with these people. This is the only way I know to get the job done.”
“I wasn’t criticizing. I know what we’re dealing with here.” Stimson hesitated. “But I can’t say I approve of your exposing yourself to Sahhan.”
“It got me to Krell, and that made it worthwhile. I’m not worried.”
“I gather your impression of Sahhan wasn’t favorable.”
“He’s a fanatic, Andy, and all fanatics with a following as large as his are dangerous. When it comes to organizing this Christmas Eve business, though, he’s had lots of help. Somebody’s using him and that same somebody set up Krell as a middleman for the arms deals with Deveraux.”
“Our friends who hired Chen and Scola?”
Blaine nodded. “The very same. The one thing out of place is Deveraux. He sets the standard for respectable arms dealers, the ones who don’t operate out of a garage. A couple of yachts, a villa in the south of France. Definitely the good life. He’s sold lots of bullets.”
“Know where to find him?”
“He conducts all his business from Paris. I’ve got contacts who can bring me the specifics.”
A look of concern crossed Stimson’s face. “Be careful who you talk to, Blaine. This is a one-man game you’re playing.”
“Right. What’s the latest from General Peachtree?”
“It’s Peacher. His teams are starting to move into the cities. It’ll take some time before he has anything to report.”
“Then I guess I’d better get to Paris fast.”
“Just try not to leave too many bodies in the streets,” Stimson warned. “I won’t be able to cover for you with my people over there. You’re totally on your own.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Part Three
San Melas
Saturday Afternoon to Tuesday Morning
Chapter 14
The past day had been an exercise in total frustration for Sandy Lister. The only bright spot had been the call to Stephen Shay she had promised T.J. Brown. Shay listened attentively to her story, from the moment she received the computer disk to its disappearance after her interview with Hollins in Billings. Somehow Shay’s silence made Sandy feel all the more tense. During the course of her story, her mouth got drier and drier, and by the end a thin taste of blood coated her tongue.
“You should have filled me in on this at the beginning,” Shay said when she had finished. “You broke procedure.”
“I know.”
“You jeopardized a police and possibly a federal investigation by withholding evidence, and then you breached national security by talking to that man Coglan. Not to mention the fact that you pursued a story totally out of your jurisdiction without prior network approval and—”
“Say no more, Steve. I’m on my way home. If you want my head on a platter, you’ve got it.”
“Wait a minute, you didn’t let me finish. I’m not applauding your methods, but the fact remains you’re on to a hot story here and I was a journalist a long time before I became a producer.”
“All I’ve ever been is an interviewer, remember? Smile at the right times and dig out fresh responses from basically boring people.”
“No, San, the connection to Krayman makes this your piece, so I want you to stay with it. And as for the disk, well, possession is nine tenths of the law, and we haven’t got a damn thing anymore.”
“But who stole it, Steve?”
“That’s what I expect you to be able to tell me by Christmas.”
“It had to be someone from inside the network. And T.J. thinks he’s being watched.”
“Probably his imagination. But I’ll put our security people on it to be on the safe side. You’ve got to stay in touch with me on this from now on, San. Call in regularly. I want to know every move you make. I want to know where you’re going before you get there.”
Sandy breathed a sigh of relief and barely managed to hold back tears of gratitude. “I’m on my way to Texas now,” she told Shay, “on the trail of Simon Terrell, Randall Krayman’s chief assistant until a few years before he pulled out.”
“Terrell … Never heard of him. Why bother pursuing the Krayman angle anyway now that you’ve got the space shuttle bit?”
“Because they’re connected. I just don’t know how yet. That interview with Hollins raised a lot more questions than answers. Randall Krayman wanted very badly to have total control of that ultra-density memory chip used in telecommunications. He’s got his hand in every television, telephone, and radio in the country and there’s something very wrong about that.”
The line went silent briefly.
“That’s quite a mouthful, San.”
“You should have heard Hollins.”
“I will … when you return to tape the interview.”
“Thanks, Steve.”
“Just make sure I don’t regret this.”
As it turned out, Sandy might have felt better if Shay had pulled her off the story. Her flight from Billings was airborne only forty minutes Saturday afternoon when a snowstorm forced it to land in Wyoming. She spent four miserable hours in a miniature airport eating prepackaged vending machine food with smudged expiration dates.
She finally made it to Dallas early Saturday night only to find that Simon Terrell was no longer at the address T.J. had given her. His new one meant a drive up Route 35 toward Denton in a rented car which overheated twenty miles down the highway. It was replaced by the rental company quickly enough with a sub-compact that changed lanes based on the whims of the wind.
Things got no better in Denton. Simon Terrell had vacated his apartment there nearly six months before and had left yet another forwarding address, this time hundreds of miles away in Seminole, Oklahoma.
Sandy spent the night in a roadside motel and left for Seminole early Sunday morning. She stopped for breakfast at a diner and bought a road map of Oklahoma at the gas station where she filled up the car. It was already blistering hot as she headed north. The air conditioner was a blessing for a while, but then the car’s temperature needle climbed dangerously toward the red and forced Sandy to use the windows instead. The hot breeze gave her a headache, drowned out the weak radio, and drenched her back with sweat to the point where she felt herself sticking to the vinyl upholstery.
Incredibly, though, she found Seminole with little trouble and quickly located Simon Terrell’s latest forwarding address.
“You’re sure this is the address you’re looking for?”
“Absolutely,” Sandy told the caretaker of the Green-leaves Cemetery.
A wry smile crossed the man’s face. “Then you’re gonna find it mighty tough to get yourself an interview. Most of our tenants don’t have much to say.” And he laughed.