Saving Faith (14 page)

She turned the light on and looked around, surprised. A desk, file cabinets, a sophisticated phone system and shelves filled with manuals surrounded her. There were large pegboards on the wall with memo cards tacked to them. On the desk were neatly arranged files, a calendar and the usual desktop accessories. Apparently, Lee’s home also served as his place of business.

If this was his office, maybe the file on her was here. Lee would probably be gone for a few more minutes. She started to sift carefully through the papers on his desk. Then she went through the desk drawers and then moved on to the file cabinets. Lee was very organized and he had a lot of clients—mostly businesses and law firms, from the file labels she was seeing. Defense lawyers, she assumed, since prosecutors had their own detective force.

The ringing phone made her almost leap out of her shoes. Trembling, she went over to it. The base unit had an LCD readout. Lee obviously had caller ID, because the number of the person calling him was displayed on the readout. It was long distance, with a 215 area code. Philadelphia, she recalled. Lee’s voice came on and told the caller to leave a message after the beep. When that person started talking, Faith froze.

“Where is Faith Lockhart?” asked the voice of Danny Buchanan. Danny sounded very distressed as he fired more questions: What had Lee found out? He wanted answers and he wanted them immediately. Buchanan left a phone number, then hung up. Faith felt herself backing away from the phone. She stopped and stood still, transfixed by what she had just heard. A full minute passed as numbing thoughts of betrayal swirled through her mind like confetti in a parade. Then she heard a sound behind her and whirled around. Her scream was short, sharp, leaving her momentarily breathless. Lee was staring at her.

 

CHAPTER 14

Buchanan looked around the crowded airport. He had taken a risk in calling Lee Adams directly, but his options now were few. As his eyes roamed the area, he wondered which of the people it was. The old lady in the corner with her big purse and hair in a bun? She had been on Buchanan’s flight. A tall, middle-aged man had been pacing the aisle while Buchanan had been on the phone. He too had been on the flight from National.

The truth was Thornhill’s people could be anywhere, anyone. It was like being attacked by nerve gas. You never saw the enemy. A sense of profound hopelessness gripped Buchanan.

Buchanan’s greatest fear had been that Thornhill would either try to get Faith involved in his scheme, or suddenly find her a liability. He might have pushed Faith away, but would never abandon her. This was why he had hired Adams to follow her. As the end drew near, he had to make sure she remained safe.

Buchanan had looked in the phone book, of all places, and used the simplest logic he could think of. Lee Adams had been the first person listed under private investigators. Buchanan almost laughed out loud now at what he had done. But unlike Thornhill, he didn’t have an army at his beck and call. For all he knew, Adams hadn’t reported in because he was dead.

He paused for a moment. Should he just flee to the ticket counter, book the first flight available to anywhere remote and then lose himself? Easy to fantasize about, quite another thing to implement. He envisioned trying to escape: Thornhill’s heretofore invisible army would suddenly materialize and descend upon him from the shadows, displaying official-looking badges to anyone bold enough to intervene. Then Buchanan would be taken to a quiet room in the bowels of the Philadelphia airport. There Robert Thornhill would be calmly waiting with his pipe and his three-piece suit and his casual arrogance. He would calmly ask Buchanan, did he want to die right this very minute? Because Thornhill would certainly accommodate him if he did. And Buchanan would have absolutely no response.

Finally Danny Buchanan did the only thing he could do. He left the airport, climbed in his waiting car and drove to see his friend the senator, to put another nail in the man’s coffin with his smiling, disarming manner and the listening device he was wearing, which looked exactly like skin and hair follicles and was so advanced that it wouldn’t set off the most sophisticated of metal detectors. A surveillance van would follow him to his destination and record every word said by Buchanan and the senator.

As a backup, in case the transmission from his listening device was somehow interfered with, Buchanan’s briefcase had a tape recorder built into its frame. A slight twist on the briefcase handle activated the recorder. It too was undetectable by even the most sophisticated airport security. Thornhill really had thought of everything.
Damn the man.

On the drive over, Buchanan comforted himself with a deliriously inspiring fantasy involving a pleading, broken Thornhill, an assortment of poisonous snakes, boiling oil and a rusted machete.

If only dreams could come true.

*  *  *

The person sitting in the airport was clean-cut, mid-thirties, dressed in a dark, conservatively cut suit and working on a laptop computer—meaning he mirrored about a thousand other business travelers all around him. He seemed busy and focused, even talking to himself at times. He gave the appearance, to the casual passersby, of a man preparing for a sales pitch or compiling a marketing report. He was actually quietly talking into the tiny microphone embedded in his necktie. What looked like infrared data ports on the backside of his computer were really sensors. One was designed to capture electronic signals. The other was a sound wand that collected words and posted them onto the screen. The first sensor quite easily snagged the phone number Buchanan had just called and automatically transmitted it to the screen. The voice sensor had been a little garbled, what with so many conversations going on at the airport; but enough had come through to make the man excited. The words “Where is Faith Lockhart?” stared back at him from the screen.

The man conveyed the telephone number and other information to his colleagues back in Washington. Within seconds a computer at Langley had produced the account holder of the phone and the address to which the phone number was registered. Within minutes a very experienced team of professionals completely in allegiance to Robert Thornhill—who had been waiting for just such a mission—was dispatched to Lee Adams’s apartment.

Thornhill’s instructions were simple. If Faith Lockhart was there, they were to “terminate” her, as it was so benignly termed in official espionage parlance, as though she would simply be fired and asked to collect her personal belongings and leave the building, instead of having a bullet fired into her head. Anyone with her would suffer the same fate. For the good of the country.

 

CHAPTER 15

“You scared the hell out of me.” Faith couldn’t stop trembling.

Lee moved into the room and looked around. “What are you doing in my office?”

“Nothing! I was just wandering. I didn’t even know you had your office here.”

“That’s because you didn’t need to know that.”

“I thought I heard a sound outside the window when I came in here.”

“You did hear a sound, but it didn’t come from the window.” He pointed to the doorjamb.

Faith noted the rectangular piece of white plastic attached to the wood there.

“It’s a sensor. Anybody opens the door to my office, it trips the sensor and triggers my beeper.” He took the device out of his pocket. “If I hadn’t had Max to calm down at Mrs. Carter’s, I would’ve been up here a lot sooner.” He scowled at her. “I don’t appreciate this, Faith.”

“Hey, I was just looking around, killing time.”

“Interesting choice of words: ‘killing.’”

“Lee, I’m not plotting against you. I swear it.”

“Let’s finish packing. Don’t want to keep your bankers waiting.”

Faith avoided looking at the phone again. Lee must not have heard the message. He had been hired by Buchanan to follow her. Had he killed the agent last night? When they got on the plane, would he somehow manage to push her out at thirty thousand feet and laugh riotously while she plummeted screaming through the clouds?

But he could have killed her at any point from last night to now. Leaving her dead at the cottage would have been the easiest move. That’s when it hit her: It would have been the easiest move unless Danny wanted to know how much she had told the FBI. That would explain why she was still alive. And also why Lee was so eager to get her to talk. Once she did, then he would kill her. And here they were flying off together to a North Carolina beach community that would be largely deserted this time of year. She slowly walked out of the room, a condemned woman on the way to her execution.

Twenty minutes later, Faith closed the small travel bag and slid her purse strap over her head and onto her shoulder. Lee came into the bedroom. He had put back on the mustache and beard, and the baseball cap was gone. In his right hand were his pistol, two boxes of ammo and his belt holster.

Faith watched as he loaded the items into a special hard-sided container. “You can’t take a gun on a plane,” she said.

“You’re kidding, really? When did they start that shit?” He closed the container and locked it, pocketing the keys before looking at her. “You
can
take a gun on a plane if you disclose the weapon when you check in and fill out a declaration form. They ensure that the weapon is unloaded and in an approved case.” He rapped his knuckles against the hard-sided aluminum case. “Which it is. They check that the ammo is a hundred rounds or fewer and is in the manufacturer’s original or otherwise FAA-approved packaging. Again, I’m cool. Then they mark the bag with a special tag and it goes to the cargo bay, where it would be real hard for me to get to if I was thinking about skyjacking the plane, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Thanks for the explanation,” Faith said curtly.

“I’m not a damn amateur,” he said hotly.

“I never said you were.”

“Right.”

“Okay, I’m sorry.” She hesitated, intensely desiring to establish some sort of truce, for a number of reasons, her survival being chief among them. “Would you do me a favor?”

He looked at her suspiciously.

“Call me Faith.”

The door buzzer startled them both.

Lee checked his watch. “Little early for visitors.”

Faith watched in amazement as his hands moved like a machine. Within twenty seconds the pistol was out of the container and fully loaded. He put the container and the ammo boxes in his small travel bag and hoisted it over his shoulder. “Get your bag.”

“Who do you think it is?” Faith felt her pulse throbbing in her ears.

“Let’s go find out.”

They stepped quietly into the hallway and Faith followed Lee to the front door.

He checked the TV screen. They both saw the man standing there on the front stoop of the building, a couple of packages in his arms. The familiar brown uniform was clearly visible. As they watched, he hit the buzzer once more.

“It’s just the UPS man,” Faith said, letting out a relieved breath.

Lee didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “Is that right?” He hit a button on the screen that obviously moved the camera, as Faith found herself now staring at the street in front of the building. Something that should have been there wasn’t.

“Where’s his truck?” she said, her fear abruptly returning.

“Excellent question. And the fact is I know the UPS guy on this route real well, and that’s not him.”

“Maybe he’s on vacation.”

“Actually, he just got back from a week in the islands with his new bride. And he never comes at this time of the morning. Which means we’ve got a big problem.”

“Maybe we can get out through the back.”

“Yeah, I’m sure they forgot to cover the rear.”

“There’s only the one man.”

“No, he’s the only one we can see. He’s got the front. They probably want to flush us out the back right into their arms.”

“So we’re trapped,” she managed to whisper.

The buzzer rang again and Lee reached out his finger to hit the intercom button.

Faith grabbed his hand. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m going to see what he wants. He’ll say UPS and I’m going to let him in.”

“You’re going to let him in,” Faith repeated dully. She glanced at his pistol. “What, and have a shoot-out in your apartment building?”

Lee’s face hardened. “When I tell you to move, you move your ass like a T-Rex is breathing down your neck.”

“Move? Move where?”

“Just follow me. And no more questions.”

Lee hit the intercom button, the man identified himself and Lee touched the door release. As soon as he did, he activated the apartment’s alarm system, whipped open the front door, grabbed Faith by the arm and pulled her out into the hallway. There was a door across from Lee’s apartment. It had no apartment number on it. As Faith listened to the UPS man’s footsteps echoing in the building down below, Lee already had unlocked the door. They were through it in an instant and he quietly closed and locked the door behind them. The place was very dark, but Lee obviously knew his way around here. He led her to the back, through another door that opened up into what looked like a back bedroom, from the little Faith could see.

Lee opened another door in the room and motioned Faith in. She stepped through and almost immediately felt a wall against her. When Lee joined her, it was a very tight fit, like a telephone booth. He closed the door and the darkness became blacker than anything Faith had ever experienced before.

He startled her when he spoke, his breath tickling her ear. “Right in front of you there’s a ladder. Here are the rungs.” He gripped her hand and guided it until her fingers touched the rungs. Lee continued whispering. “Give me your bag and start climbing. Take it slow. I’ll sacrifice speed for silence right now. I’ll be right behind you. When you get to the top, just stop. I’ll take it from there.”