Betrayal (18 page)

Now he set the thing on his table and gave it a quick once-over. Satisfied that it couldn’t be traced back to him, he walked back through his apartment to his bedroom, turning off the lights as he went. Lying down on the bed, his clothes still on, he pulled a blanket up over his shoulders, turned on his side, and closed his eyes.

A
LITTLE WHILE
after it was truly dark, Tara called Evan’s mother, Eileen, and got his address. She waited and thought and second-guessed herself and eventually left her place sometime after eleven o’clock and drove. Parking out in the dark street across from his apartment, she sat for another five minutes or so with her car windows down, her hands in a prayerful attitude in front of her mouth.

By the time she got to the door, she barely heard her own timid knocking over the beating of her heart. After a minute, she knocked again, harder. And waited.

A light came on inside and hearing his footsteps, she held her breath.

The door opened. He’d been sleeping in his clothes. His hair was tousled, his eyes still with that sleepy look she remembered so well. She looked up at him, realizing that she loved having to look up, had missed that; loving the size of him, so different from looking across at Ron Nolan. Everything was so different and so much better with Evan. How could she have forgotten that?

She couldn’t get her face to go into a smile. She was too afraid, the blood now pulsing in her ears, her hands unsteady at her sides.

He just looked at her.

“Is it too late?” she asked. “Tonight, I mean.”

“No.”

“I needed to talk to you some more. Would that be all right?”

“Everything’s all right, Tara. You can do whatever you want. You want to come in?” Stepping back away from the door, he gave her room to pass and then closed the door quietly behind her as she kept walking through his living room, stopping by the counter that delineated the kitchen and turning back to face him. Her shoulders rose and fell.

From over by the door, he said, “I can’t guarantee talking too well. I’ve been having some trouble sleeping, so I’m a little doped up. Plus I’ve had a couple of drinks. I’m drinking too much. I need to stop.”

“Are you in such pain?”

He managed a small shrug. “Sometimes, but that’s not it really.” He took a second to continue. “I know that whatever they say, I’m not all the way back. Maybe I’ll never be. To tell you the truth, it freaks me out sometimes. When I’m alone mostly. But I don’t want to have anybody feel like they have to be with me all the time either.”

“Your mom?”

“For one example, yeah. Anybody, really. But it’s”—he shrugged again—“it’s just what I’m doing now, Tara. Holding on. Getting better, I hope. Getting over what happened.”

Evan still stood by the door, making no effort to close the space between them. She felt the distance tugging at her, causing a pain of its own, and took a step toward him, then another.

“But that’s all just me,” Evan said. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Ron. I never…I wanted to tell you that it was never like it was with us. It was just a completely different thing.”

“Was? Past tense?”

She let out a heavy breath. “Yes. After what you told me today.”

“Okay. And how was it with us that was so different?”

Tara put her hands together at her waist. She deserved that question. And he deserved the real answer. “Because we connected, Evan. So basically.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“I don’t think that ever goes away.”

“No. Me neither.”

She looked across the living room into his eyes. “Why are you staying over there? It’s almost like you’re afraid of me.”

“I am. As much as I need to be.”

“How much is that?”

“That depends on how much being done with Ron means you’re back with me.”

She waited another few seconds and then closed the space between them. Looking up at him again, now the smell of him so close. “Does it hurt you to touch the scar?” she asked.

“It’s just a scar.” But he inclined his head so that she could see it. Almost a perfect circle, slightly indented.

Slowly, she reached out her hand and brought it up to his head. As soon as she touched it, she felt something give in her legs. As she traced the shape of the scar, tears sprang into her eyes and she made no effort to stop them. Evan brought his head down, leaning into her.

Bringing her other hand up into his hair, she cradled his head in both her hands.

Holding on to her, his arms behind her, he went to his knees in front of her, his face first pressed to one side against her thigh. But then, her hands on his head now directing him, she turned him to be up against her, his hands gripping her from behind, pulling her into him, while she pressed herself against him. She pulled him gently away for an instant, only long enough to let her step out of her clothes, and then brought him back to where he’d been.

Beyond any time, then, she was on the floor with her legs around his neck, until the surge of blood and heat she’d only known with him took her and then there was the taste of her on his mouth and his own cry as everything between them came back and came again and left them both flung out on the floor, wasted and sated, and connected in every part.

T
HE RELEVANT PORTION
of the e-mail from Jack Allstrong that had put Nolan on the road had read: “When the CPA hands over the government to the Iraqis, Uncle Sam is going to be shipping over $2.4 billion—that’s right,
billion—
in shrink-wrapped 100s. That’s twenty-eight
tons
of greenbacks, Ron, almost all of it earmarked for infrastructure and rebuilding, which means us. My standing directive to you is to recruit as many qualified personnel as you can find. Starting now.”

Now Nolan was just getting back home from a productive couple of days. Frequenting the bars around some of California’s military bases—Pendleton, Ord, Travis—he’d recruited four men for Allstrong’s ongoing and growing operations in Iraq. Though Allstrong’s security work was dangerous and demanding, ex-officers who were bored or broke or both in civilian life often jumped at the chance to resurrect their careers, their self-esteem, and their bank accounts, and to once again utilize the special skills that had served them well in the military.

And nowhere were they needed more than in Anbar. As Jack Allstrong had predicted in August, the rebuilding of the electrical tower infrastructure in that province was turning out to be a gold mine for the company, albeit a costly one in terms of human life. Allstrong had by now put more than five hundred men to work on this latest contract, which initially bid out at forty million dollars, although it had grown to more than one hundred million in the past seven months. Allstrong Security, Jack liked to point out, was in 2003 the fastest-growing company in the world, outstripping Google, compliments of U.S. largesse and Jack’s ability to surf the chaos of the reconstruction.

But in Anbar, the company also had already lost thirty-six of Kuvan Krekar’s men, and Kuvan’s supply chain of bodies was growing thin and dispirited. Beyond that, Kuvan had been facing severe competition from another broker named Mahmoud al-Khalil, who was not only supplying cheaper workers but was perhaps terrorizing and even killing Kuvan’s people to discourage others from signing on. Why? So that Mahmoud and not Kuvan could pocket the extremely lucrative cash commissions. Well, with the recent untimely demise of his paterfamilias in Menlo Park, Mahmoud would hopefully soon conclude that competing directly with Allstrong’s chosen subcontractor was not a sound business decision.

Hefting his duffel bag, Nolan let himself into his townhome through the garage door to the kitchen. He walked through the living room, stopped in his office and turned on his computer, then went into his bedroom, where he dropped the duffel bag on his bed, then returned to his desk and checked his e-mail and—first things first—made sure he’d been paid. He had.

With that taken care of, Nolan went back into his bedroom and started to unpack. Grabbing a pair of pants, he turned and opened the closet, and stopped short.

Something was not right.

Nolan didn’t spend much time thinking about his military-ingrained penchant for order, but when he woke up in the mornings, he automatically made his bed with hospital corners so that the covers were tight enough to bounce a coin off them. The spare shoes were always shined and perfectly aligned on the floor of the closet. He hung his shirts and pants in order from light to dark, the hangers spaced with an automatic and practiced precision.

Now he stared at the row of hangers. He didn’t specifically remember taking down the shirts and pants that he’d packed for his trip, but could not imagine that he would have taken down his clothes and left the hangers spaced unevenly as they were now. His eyes went to the backpack on the top shelf. He had lined it up exactly with the break in the hangers between his shirts and his pants, and now it was clearly centered over the shirts. Reaching up, he pulled it toward him, relieved by the familiar weight. He opened it and saw that nothing—not the grenades, the gun, or the ammo—was gone.

Which was weird.

Maybe he’d imagined that the hangers had been moved. It didn’t seem possible that someone would have broken in here and not taken the grenades and the gun.

But it wouldn’t be smart to take chances. Reaching into the backpack, he removed the Beretta and slammed one of the clips into place, then racked a bullet into the chamber. He dropped the backpack next to the duffel bag on his bed and went to check the bathroom, where an intruder might still be lurking. Finding no one there, he went back out into the living room to the front door, where the piece of Scotch tape that he’d laid over the connection between the door and its jamb was now stuck under the jamb.

Somebody had definitely been here.

Methodically now, he went back out to the garage, where he patted down the empty backpacks hanging against the wall. He was about to start opening the drawers when he straightened up, stopping himself.

He didn’t see how it could be remotely possible, but it occurred to him that if one of the members of Khalil’s extended family could have somehow traced the patriarch’s execution back to him, their method of retribution might include a bomb—open a drawer and it goes off. By the same token, his experience with IEDs in Iraq told him that if there was a bomb, someone would have been hiding somewhere outside, seen him drive up, and sent an electrical pulse to detonate the device after he was inside. Alternatively, Nolan could trigger the bomb himself by switching on any one of a dozen electrical connections in the house. But any of those scenarios contemplated the possibility that someone had identified him as the Khalils’ killer.

Which from Nolan’s perspective was flatly not possible. He’d made no mistakes. Therefore, there was no bomb. He’d also already turned on his computer, and several lights. Walking back out to the garage, this time he opened all the drawers. Back in the kitchen, he did the same. Opened the refrigerator. He had no idea what, if anything, he was looking for, but someone had been in his house in his absence, and if it hadn’t been to take something, what did that leave?

He just didn’t know.

Back in his office, he sat at his desk, laid the gun on it, and stared for a minute again at his computer. Picking up his telephone, he got the pulsing dial tone that meant he had messages, and entered his password.

The first message was from an obviously very distraught, though composed, Tara, who had called him on Monday night. “Ron. Evan Scholler came by to visit me today at the school. We had a long talk with one another and he told me some things that shocked me—you probably have a good idea what they were.

“I don’t know what to say to you, other than that I just want you to know how completely violated I feel. And how used. I don’t know how you could have lied to me so much. I’m leaving this message on your machine on purpose because I don’t want to talk to you, or even see you anymore. I can’t believe you’ve done this. It just doesn’t seem possible that anyone could be so cruel and so selfish. I’m so sorry for who you are, Ron, but not for what I’m saying. Good-bye. Don’t call me. Don’t come by. Just stay away. I mean it.”

The phone still at his ear, he hadn’t let up his grip yet on the receiver when the next message began. The call had come this morning, about six hours ago. “Mr. Nolan. My name is Jacob Freed. I’m a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and I wondered if we might be able to take a few minutes of your time to talk to you about a routine matter involving national security that’s come to our attention. I don’t mean to be unnecessarily vague, but I’m sure you understand that these days some things are best left unsaid over the telephone. If you could call me for an appointment at your earliest convenience when you get in, or alternatively, I’ll try to get back to you in the next day or two. My number is…”

When Nolan finally hung up, he sat unmoving with his right arm outstretched and his hand covering the Beretta. After a minute or two, he let go of the gun and moved his hand over to the mouse. As soon as he saw the “My Pictures” icon, he realized that he’d made an error by not erasing that file before he’d gone away. Opening it now, intending to close the barn door after the horse had escaped, he checked the access record and saw that someone had, indeed, looked at the file two days before—the same Monday that Tara had spoken to Evan Scholler.

Though it might be too late, he still thought it would be better to delete the file now, so that if the FBI came and looked…

Except he knew that there wasn’t really any such thing anymore as truly deleting something. Experts could always retrieve whatever it was from the hard disk.

Still, his finger hovered over the mouse as he stared at one of the many pictures he’d taken of Mr. Khalil’s house while he was working on access and egress. One click and all of that would at least be gone for now.

Sitting back, his eyes narrowing, he took his hand abruptly off the mouse. Suddenly, he decided that he did not want to delete the picture file after all. Although he would have to remove the memory chip from the digital camera in the desk drawer and get rid of it. Tapping his index fingernail against his front teeth, he sat as if in a trance for a full minute, and then another one.

The idea looked perfect from every angle.

He reached again for the telephone.

“A
GENT
F
REED,
please.”

“This is he.”

“Agent Freed. My name is Ron Nolan. You left me a message about a national security matter and asked me to call for an appointment.”

“Yes, sir, I did. Thanks for getting back to me.”

“I think maybe I should be the one thanking you, sir. I’ve just returned from a business trip. While I’ve been gone, somebody let themselves into my house. I was going to call the regular police, but then I got your message. I don’t know if you know it, but I do some sensitive work with Allstrong Security, a government contractor in Iraq, and I thought what you wanted to talk about might have something to do with that.”

“Well, as I mentioned, perhaps it would be better to meet in person to talk about the issue that’s come up with us, although if you’re reporting a robbery or burglary, you should probably call the regular police. That’s not really our jurisdiction.”

“Agent Freed, this wasn’t a robbery. Whoever it was didn’t take anything. They left something. Plus, they messed with my computer. I don’t know what it’s all about, but it’s almost like somebody’s trying to plant something on me.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I just found one thing, but there might be more. I’m afraid to look in case he’s planted a bomb someplace.”

“Who’s he?”

“I don’t know. I mean the person who broke in.”

“Okay. So what’s the one thing?”

“This is what’s so weird. It’s a backpack full of ammunition and, you’re not going to believe this, it looks like about a half dozen hand grenades.”

“Hand grenades?”

“Yes, sir. As you may know, I’ve been over to Iraq several times. I know the ordnance. And these look like fragmentation grenades to me.”

F
REED AND HIS PARTNER,
a middle-aged fireplug named Marcia Riggio, sat with Nolan on the small, oak-shaded back patio. Inside the townhouse, a three-man team of forensics specialists, having already confiscated the backpack with its contents, were fingerprinting every clean surface and cataloging anything that might be of interest—Nolan’s other gun from the bed’s headboard, the digital camera in the desk drawer, downloading his hard disk.

Nolan didn’t want to rush anything with these federal cops. He didn’t want to appear to point them in any specific direction. But now, as Agent Riggio looked up from her notepad, Nolan decided that it was getting to be the time. “Let me ask you something,” he said. “Is there any scenario you can think of that makes any sense of this to you?”

The two agents exchanged a glance. Riggio got the nod from Freed and took point. “Do you have any enemies?” she asked.

Nolan frowned. “Even if I did,” he said, “what does this do to hurt me? Unless I pulled the pin on one of those grenades, which anybody who knows me knows I’m not going to do.”

“Maybe it’s not about hurting you,” Riggio went on. “Maybe it’s about framing you.”

“For what?”

But Freed stepped in. “Before we get to that,” he said, “let’s go back to your enemies.”

This time, Nolan broke a grin. “I don’t see it, really. I like people. I really do, and they tend to like me. My boss thinks it’s a flaw in my character.” He shrugged. “So I’d have to say no. No enemies.”

“Okay,” Riggio said. “How about rivals?”

“In business?”

“Business, pleasure, whatever.”

He took his sweet time, savoring the anticipation. “The only even remotely…” He shook his head. “No, never mind.”

Freed jumped on it. “What?”

“Nothing, really. Just a guy I knew in Iraq who used to date my girlfriend. But that was a long time ago.”

“If he’s in Iraq,” Freed said, “he’s out of this.”

“Well, he’s home now. Here.”

“And he’s not over her? Your girlfriend?” Riggio asked.

“I don’t know. He had a hard time with it at first, but now I haven’t seen the guy in months. But, look, this is a dead end. He’s a good guy. In fact, he’s a cop. He’d never—”

Freed interrupted. “He’s a cop?”

“Yeah, here in Redwood City. His name’s Evan Scholler. He got hurt over there and they let him out early.”

“So he would have had access to these types of grenades over there?”

“Yeah, but he wouldn’t have taken any home. He did a few months at Walter Reed before he came out here.”

“Soldiers have been known to send illegal ordnance and contraband stateside as souvenirs on the slow boat,” Riggio said. “It’s a problem. It happens all the time.”

“Well, I don’t know what Evan would have…I mean, what’s the point of putting hand grenades in my closet? I’m not going to blow myself up with them. It’s not like they’re going to get rid of me as his rival.”

Riggio and Freed again shared a glance, and again exchanged the imperceptible nod. Riggio came forward, elbows on her knees. “Do you know a man named Ibrahim Khalil?”