“No problem,” he said.
He closed the office door, turned, and folded his arms. “They’ve just released Tanner in Boston.”
“Who, NSA?”
He nodded.
“What do you mean, ‘released’ him? I didn’t even know they’d found him. Didn’t you say they’re looping you in?”
“They agreed to keep me apprised of their efforts to locate the guy, yes. But they didn’t say they’d do it in a timely fashion.”
“Damn them. I don’t understand — what’s the point of releasing him?”
“It’s a deal they made with him. He’s agreed to retrieve the laptop and bring it to them.”
“That cannot be allowed to happen.”
“I know.”
“Will, when someone tells me something is handled, I expect it to be handled.”
Will didn’t answer. He just waited for her to speak again, as he knew she would.
“Did he talk to them?” Robbins said. “Do they know whose laptop it is? They’ve got to know.”
Will closed his eyes, shook his head. “If they knew, we’d know.”
“What are you—?”
“One of their legal folks would have been in touch with you already.”
“All right, then, can we — can you—?”
“Susan, this guy isn’t going to cooperate. I don’t know what he’s up to, but he refuses to admit he even has it.”
“Is it possible he doesn’t?”
“No. He has it, and NSA knows that too. Problem is, he’s got it hidden somewhere. I tried the sneaky approach; I tried the direct approach; nothing works. When—”
“Olshak,” she said abruptly.
“Bruce Olshak? The—”
“He owes me a favor.”
“Bruce Olshak does?” That was one of those names you didn’t let pass your lips casually, Will reflected. Not, at least, in this town. Bruce Olshak was a notorious, near-legendary lawyer and fixer for the New England crime family. He was involved, in some way, with the Teamsters’ East Coast operations. He was known for paying off judges. It had been said of him that he lost his moral compass when Roy Cohn died. Olshak was basically Lord Voldemort with a collar bar. What was remarkable about him was that he’d never been caught doing any of the things he was famous for doing. He had never once been indicted for anything. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be calling a guy like that.”
“We’re friends.”
“It doesn’t look good.”
“Get me his phone number,” she said.
“But you’re not talking about—”
“Desperate times,” she said. “Desperate measures.”
53
They gave Tanner his shoes and belt back. Then the contents of his pockets: his phone, his wallet, his keys. Then his gym bag, which he hiked over one shoulder.
They put the headphones and the blacked-out goggles on him and ushered him out of the room. Someone held each of his elbows. They’d obviously done this many times before. They had their choreography down, sidling Tanner through what he guessed was a doorway, and then straight ahead for a long time.
In a while he was brought to a stop. Walked some more. Pulled to one side and then the other. Up a flight of stairs, then straight ahead again.
It was the strangest sensation: he saw only darkness and heard just the faintest electronic buzz, feeling dislocated and disengaged, yet he was able to walk, to propel himself just fine. He remembered reading that they did this to the prisoners in Guantanamo. No more black hoods.
He said, “Now, is this really necessary, gentlemen?”
He didn’t know how loudly he’d just spoken. Could anyone hear him? He kept walking. Soon he felt cold air and smelled gasoline, the odors of a parking garage.
He was juked first one way, then another. Then he was stopped again.
With considerable difficulty, he was pulled and pushed and tugged until he was seated. On a car seat, it felt like. He could smell the kind of air freshener that comes in the shape of a pine tree that people dangle from their rearview mirrors. Pretty soon he felt a rumble and a vibration and he knew the vehicle was moving.
He was driven somewhere for about ten minutes. The vehicle came to a stop.
Suddenly his goggles came off and everything around him was blindingly bright. His eyes ached at the dazzling light as shapes began to emerge. He was sitting in the same Suburban he’d been taken away in. They were parked on the side of a street at a busy city intersection. He could hear the metronomic ticking of the emergency flashers.
He knew right away where he was: at the corner of Washington and Milk Streets. They were double-parked in front of a Chipotle. All around him were the skyscrapers of Boston’s financial district. Up ahead on the left was the Georgian steeple of the Old South Meeting House.
The guy on his left, who had a shaved head, was working with a strange metal tool, snipping the flex-cuffs off of him. When he had finished, the guy on his right, with a blond buzz cut, got out and opened the car door and held it open for Tanner.
“See you in twenty-four hours,” said the guy on the right.
Tanner got out, and the blond guy got back in and swung the door closed and the Suburban gunned its engine and took off.
Standing unsteadily in front of Chipotle, he looked around, disoriented, at the lunchtime throngs. Someone jostled him out of the way. The wound on his lower back throbbed.
Now where?
He pulled a phone from his pocket. It was one of the disposable phones he’d bought. They’d taken it away from him and handed it back at the end. It indicated he had three voice messages. He listened to them. They were all from Lucy, mostly about small issues, nothing urgent.
He looked at the phone, wondered if they’d done something to it. He assumed they did, put in a bug or a tracker or something. Maybe that was why they had let him go. Because they could always find him. They were probably still surveilling him, watching where he went.
And they wanted the laptop.
He was fairly certain they didn’t know whose it was. If they did, they probably would have focused on that. Talked about it, brought it up, threatened him some more. A senator’s computer. A government big shot.
So the first order of business was to get some new disposable phones. He passed a Falafel King and Vitamin Shoppe and Subway and eventually found a CVS, where he bought an assortment of phones. Maybe the cashier figured him for a drug dealer. At the front of the store he was surprised to find a pay phone. They were getting more and more rare, used mostly by the few who didn’t have either landlines or cell phones.
This gave him an idea. He wrote down the pay phone’s number.
Since he was no longer on the run, he could now safely return home, for the first time in days. He walked — it was a crisp, clear day, Boston postcard weather — and arrived on Pembroke Street half an hour later. The alarm was still on. He entered the house carefully, looking around, sniffing like a dog. Nothing seemed, or smelled, different or unexpected, as far as he could tell.
But how did he know the place hadn’t been wired for sound and video, implanted throughout with bugs?
In his bedroom he stripped and showered and dressed in a fresh set of clothes. He examined himself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. Bruises were starting to emerge on his chest and his upper arm. There was a small bandage on his lower back, and a bruise on the back of his arm that was really starting to hurt. Interesting that they’d bandaged up his wounds. Because they hadn’t avoided hurting him in the apprehension.
He finished dressing. Just as he was about to put on his usual leather belt, he stopped and looked at it. They’d taken this away from him, this and his shoes. He held it up and examined it. Nothing was attached to it. The buckle was brass and solid. He inspected the buckle end, where the leather strap was looped around the middle post. They might have inserted a miniature tracker or something like that in here. Possibly. He hadn’t seen anything, but it was best to assume they did. He hung the belt up in the closet, selected another one just in case, and put it on. He picked out another pair of shoes.