Rule #1? Don’t talk into the mike, otherwise known as the third button down on my new NSA-brand shirt. Fifty percent cotton/poly blend with a five-hundred-foot range. If Karcher — or whoever he might send — was scouting me, I could ill afford to be seen talking to myself. The wire was so Crespin could hear what I heard.
“It’s going to be fine, Mann,” he was now assuring me. “Everything’s going to be—”
The way his voice suddenly cut out, my first thought was that the transmitter in my ear had failed. But Crespin was just seeing what I couldn’t.
“Don’t turn around, don’t even flinch,” he said. “He’s approaching you from behind at twenty feet... fifteen... ten...”
A voice boomed over my shoulder. “Is this seat taken?”
It was now.
Frank Karcher sat down before I could even look up. Jesus, he had a big head. It was even bigger in person.
I feigned surprise as best I could. I was supposed to be waiting for Brennan, after all.
“Excuse me, I think you have the wrong table,” I said.
Karcher broke into a wide grin. “No, this is definitely the right table. You just picked the wrong fight,” he said, glancing at his watch. “The only question now is how long you’ll pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Said question hung in the air as I pretended to be thinking it over. But I already knew my answer. So far, we were right on script.
“I know exactly what you’re talking about,” I said finally. “I know who you are and what you’ve done. I also know it’s all about to end.”
Again with the grin. Those had to be veneers. “Interesting choice of words,” he said. “Do me a favor, though, will you, Mr. Mann? Take a good look under the table.”
“I don’t need to,” I said. “You’re not the first person this week to point a gun at me.”
“You’re right,” he said. “But I am the last.”
Chapter 101
It was my turn to smile, forced and short-lived as the smile was. You can only pretend for so long that you don’t have a gun aimed at your crotch.
“If the only thing you wanted was me dead, you would’ve killed me by now,” I said. “We both know that.”
And there it was, the only way I’d been able to convince Valerie and Crespin that I wouldn’t be a complete sitting duck, if you will, at the Mallard Café. Karcher desperately wanted Owen — “the kid” — and I presumably knew where he was.
Fitting irony that I actually didn’t.
Not that Karcher was about to be told that. As long as he thought I knew Owen’s whereabouts, he believed there was the chance he could get it out of me.
That’s the folly of arrogant men, isn’t it? They always overestimate their talents.
“Are you really that much of a hero, Mr. Mann?” he asked. “I don’t know what the kid told you, but it’s not what you think.”
“No, it’s exactly what I think,” I said. “Somewhere along the line, you convinced yourself that you’re above the law, that you get to decide who lives and who dies. But the biggest lie of them all? It’s when you claim you’re simply protecting freedom.”
“Freedom? Just where the hell have you been this century? We should be so damn lucky,” he said. “That’s what you self-righteous pricks have never understood, not ever.”
“Then why don’t you enlighten me?”
“Why don’t you shut the fuck up?”
“Easy now...” came Crespin’s voice in my ear.
Crespin was right. On a risk scale of one to ten, I was already pushing eleven. My letting Karcher lose his temper was upward of just plain dumb. Sure, maybe he’d slip up and admit everything. Or maybe he’d just get pissed off and kill me right there at the table.
I leaned back in my chair, hoping to let a little air out of the moment. Diffuse the tension. But it was too late. Karcher was revved up, and like a pit bull, he wasn’t about to let the point go.
“Do you know what I remember most about that day? It’s not the image of the towers coming down. Not even close. What’s seared into my brain, what will stick forever, are the people on the street watching it happen,” he said. “And do you know what they were all doing as they were looking up in horror? They were all mouthing the same three words. Oh, my God.”
“I was one of those people,” I said. “I was there.”
It was as if he didn’t hear me. “Now, I’m a devout Christian, but I know for a fact that the God they were all invoking that day wasn’t there. And for those who say he was, and that his job is not to intervene, I ask... whose job is it? If God won’t prevent the next time, who will? And trust me, there will be a next time.”
“So that’s it, then?” I said. “You’re now God’s understudy? It doesn’t matter who you kill — a reporter for the Times, a doctor with a guilty conscience, or even other people from your company picnic — because it’s all part of a bigger plan, one that the rest of us couldn’t possibly understand?”
“Every war has casualties, Mr. Mann. But I’m guessing you’ve never fought in one, have you?”
“That makes me lucky, not brain-dead,” I said. “What’s your excuse?”
Damn. Wrong button.
Karcher’s face flushed red in an instant, the veins in his stumplike neck bulging out above his collar.
“You know what? Fuck the kid,” he said. “I don’t care if you know where he is, you can take that to your goddamn grave.”
But all I really heard was Crespin’s panicked voice in my ear. “Quick, tell him you know where Owen is!”
Crespin didn’t need to see the deranged look in Karcher’s eyes. He could hear the craziness in his voice, the way he referred to my grave as if it were imminent.
I needed to stall.
But again, it was too late. With the slightest flinch — small but telling — I’d just broken Crespin’s second rule. Whatever you do, don’t look like you’ve got someone talking in your ear.
“Jesus Christ,” said Karcher. “You’re not alone, are you?”
Chapter 102
“No, he’s definitely not alone,” she said.
I turned to see Valerie pulling up a chair to our table. She couldn’t play the waitress, but her being seated nearby was the next best thing. And with her mirrored sunglasses and jet-black wig, there was no way Karcher would’ve recognized her.
He still didn’t.
The Beretta in her lap, however, he spotted instantly, and it sure as hell wasn’t pointed at me.
Give the prick some credit, though. Karcher barely blinked. “Friend of yours, Mr. Mann?” he asked coolly.
“One of many,” said Valerie. “Which is why you need to wrap your weapon in that napkin and place it slowly on the table.”
Karcher looked down at the napkin in front of him like it was a piece of enriched plutonium. He had no intention of touching it.
“Thank you for the suggestion, young lady, but I think I’ll pass,” he said. “It might be a good idea for you to do it, though.”
Those should’ve been the words of a madman, a last-ditch effort to buy some time in this chess match, using little more than misdirection and a touch of outright confusion. Call it Karcher’s Gambit.
But the tone was more cocky than confused. He was too sure of himself. He knew something we didn’t, and I couldn’t stop the feeling of pure dread that was suddenly spreading from the pit of my stomach.
I looked at Valerie, and for the first time, she took her eyes off Karcher to look back at me, if only for a split second. But that was all the time it took.