Silence filled the limo. Belamo started to speak a few times, only to stop.
“Look,” he began finally, “you wanna lay low for a while, maybe I can set you up someplace. I got the right friends owe me favors. You ask me, that’s your best bet.”
McCracken shook his head. “Thanks anyway, Sal. Just get me to LaGuardia before the Blue Code reaches all levels.”
“Where you headed?”
“Atlanta.”
“What’s in Atlanta, pal?”
“The headquarters of the PVR and Mohammed Sahhan.”
The President leaned forward incredulously. “I think I need to hear that again, Bart,” he said to CIA Director McCall.
“We have identified the caller to our box office positively as Blaine McCracken.”
“How?”
“The coding and designation he gave. Each one’s as individual as fingerprints, and even if they weren’t, the voiceprint confirmed it was him.”
“But McCracken’s dead!”
“Only in Stimson’s mind. It was a means to keep him active on this mission without us knowing.”
“And the body at Roosevelt Hospital?”
“A John Doe. I just received a report from the team I dispatched up there this morning. Stimson filled all the holes in neatly. McCracken’s still out there and the box office refused to validate his call because we deactivated his file upon termination.”
“But we know he wasn’t terminated. And right now he’s the only man who can tell us what Andy was on to that led to his death.”
“Finding him won’t be easy,” McCall said somberly. “He’s too good, too professional. He’s got no reason to trust us and he’ll kill any man who gets too close. We’ll just have to hope that he calls in again.”
“What are the chances of that?”
“Slim. He knows he’s alone and that’s the way he’ll plan to keep it now.”
“Goddammit, Bart!” the President fumed. “I can’t believe you’re telling me all we can do with an entire intelligence network out there is to wait.”
“And if he surfaces, hope we can move fast enough.”
“To catch McCracken?” the President posed sarcastically. “Just make sure your boys have their running shoes on.”
The address the caller told Sandy to meet him at was located in a rundown slum section of the steel and glass city known as the Fifth Ward, just past the University of Houston. The population of the Fifth Ward was almost exclusively black, living in shanties and patchwork buildings, some dating back forty or more years. Scattered among them were numerous, more modern apartment buildings constructed at optimistic intervals by men who envisioned that Houston’s great revitalization would stretch to here. It never did, of course, and the buildings had become tax write-offs left to their own fate.
It made no sense, Sandy thought as she gazed up at an abandoned six-story apartment building with boards nailed where most of the windows used to be. Why would the caller have chosen this place to meet?
Sandy had used a rear exit of the Four Seasons to avoid the man in the cream-colored suit or anyone else Dolorman may have had watching her. And now she started across the desolate street with her handbag clutched close, as if she expected someone at any moment to dash by and strip it from her grasp. The steps leading up to the building were still sturdy, and her high heels were grateful for that much. The door had splintered holes where locks had been ripped out. She guessed this building served now as a local youth hangout and perhaps as a temporary haven for squatters passing through the golden South.
The door creaked as she swung it open and the stench assaulted her immediately. It seemed a combination of dust, mold, sweat, and spoiled food. Inside the lobby Sandy noticed a series of steel mailboxes in the wall. They were missing their fronts, and the names of former residents were so dust-covered as to be unreadable. The stairway up lay right before her and her high heels clicked against the wood floor as she approached it.
The caller had instructed her to meet him in apartment 4C. Sandy started up the stairs and grasped for the bannister. The rotted wood wavered, the bannister’s structure standing virtually free and unattached. The steps squeaked as she took them, and she hugged the wall close for support. Finally the first flight was behind her. She started up the second, a bit more confident now.
She was halfway up that one when a step gave out. Her foot plunged right through the wood and most of her leg followed. She groped for something to grab, but there was nothing. Her fingernails scraped futilely at the wall, and she had a vision of plunging all the way down into the cellar and dying among the rats.
In the end she plunged down only up to her thigh. She struggled to still her trembling and began to lift her leg from the hole, careful not to tear any flesh on the ragged splinters rimming the opening. She managed to save her shoe, but her stocking was shredded. Sandy paused briefly to steady herself, got her breath back, and started on again.
This time she was more careful with each step, testing the wood before giving it all her weight. Clearly these steps could take only the weight of the children who used the abandoned building as a retreat. Evidence of their presence in the form of ant-infested candy wrappers littered each level. Nervously she reached the fourth floor, already dreading the trip down.
There were six apartment units on each floor, and most of the labels over the doors were long since missing. She was looking for 4C and had to rely on impressions outlined on the wood to tell which was which. Four C turned out to be the last one down on the left, and the floor leading down the corridor toward it seemed no more sturdy than the stairs. She moved so tentatively that even the clicking of her heels was stilled. She reached the door and knocked lightly.
“Hello?”
No response from inside.
“Hello? It’s Sandy Lister. …”
Still no response. Sandy knocked again.
The door swung open, and Sandy stepped into the murkiness. Surprise clogged her throat. The apartment was actually furnished with several chairs and a couch. She saw a desk, several lamps, and half-eaten boxes of Dunkin’ Donuts and Kentucky Fried Chicken strewn over the windowsills. The lamps weren’t on, so the only light came courtesy of the afternoon sun. Its rays shone softly through windows caked with dirt even a razor blade couldn’t scrape off.
Sandy moved farther inside and switched on a lamp. Its light did little to change the room’s dimness. But there was another room off to the right. She had started for it, when the door behind her closed softly. Sandy spun and saw three men coming toward her. A bald-headed man was one, a brawny hulk holding a huge pistol the second …
And Stephen Shay was the third. Stephen Shay, executive producer of the network news division and her boss at Overview, standing between two men with the promise of death in their eyes.
“I’m sorry, Sandy,” was all he said.
Chapter 23
“Really I am,” Shay added calmly before she had found her breath again.
Sandy tried to ask a question, but there was only air. Her throat felt as if it had been stuffed with tissue paper.
“T.J.,” she managed finally, and it took all the effort she could muster.
“He became a problem, I’m afraid,” Shay told her matter-of-factly. “Too much of a risk that he’d contact the authorities before much longer. We couldn’t have that.”