The Accident (23 page)

He nudges her upper arm. “Isabel”—quietly—“were here.”

She doesn’t budge, doesn’t stir, doesn’t alter the rhythm of her breathing.

He looks back at the road, sees the exit looming. The traffic had thinned over the length of the Long Island Expressway, from the urban blight in Queens—the housing complexes and cut-rate motels, the crumbling community centers and seedy shopping plazas—to the dense sub-urbanity of Nassau County, then the thinning throughout Suffolk, till the unpopulated stretch of the Pine Barrens, the turnoffs to the Hamptons, and finally the sign that Isabel had mentioned, before she fell asleep:
EXPRESSWAY ENDS 4 MILES
.

“Hey, Isabel,” he says, less quietly. “We just passed the sign.”

“Mmm.”
She moves her mouth and shifts her weight, but doesn’t open her eyes.

He rests his hand on her upper arm, soft and warm under the smooth blouse. He squeezes. “Isabel, wake up.”

She opens her eyes, blinks. “What?” Confused.

“We just passed the expressway-ends sign. A minute ago.”

She rubs her eyes, licks her lips. This is a vision he wants to imprint on memory: the sight of the woman he loves, waking up.

“At the bottom of the ramp, turn left,” she says. “There’s a gas station. Stop there.”

Jeff pulls the car into the station, but stops short of the pumps.

“What’s the problem?” she asks.

He looks over at her. “What do you want me to do?”

“Now? Fill up the tank.”

Jeff looks at the dashboard. “But we don’t need gas.”

Isabel unbuckles her seat belt. “Sure we do,” she says. “We just don’t need a
lot
of it.” She hands him a credit card, one of Judy’s that she was willing to lend—give—to her suddenly erratic literary agent. “I’m going to the restroom.”

Jeff stands at the pump, barely remembering how this works. He inserts the nozzle, squeezes its trigger, stares at the reflection of himself in the rear window. His satchel is there behind the glass, in the backseat. But Isabel has taken her handbag to the bathroom.

CHAPTER 29

H
ayden deplanes with his small duffel over his shoulder, puts on his sunglasses to shield against the bright glare of the summer-solstice sun reflected from the vast expanse of light-gray asphalt, the long row of hangars.

A black SUV speeds through a gate in the chain-link fence that separates the airfield from the rest of the military base, and comes to a halt in front of him. The driver’s window lowers, and a young man turns to him, at first unfamiliar because of the wrap-around sunglasses, but then Hayden recognizes him. “Hello Tyler,” he says. Hayden had just met this guy a few months ago; he’s from the musclehead school. Not so much an agent as an enforcer, which is probably what’s needed here.

“Hello Mr. Gray.”

Hayden sees another youngish operative in the passenger seat.

“Who are you?”

“My name’s Colby, sir.”

“That your first name or last?”

“Colby Manfield, sir.”

Staffing here in the homeland was a delicate challenge. Hayden needed to secure a lot of bodies for all this surveillance, both electronic and physical, with techs and a mobile command unit in New York City, and teams
of floaters on standby to keep track of other personnel tendrils—such as the publisher, or the lawyer in DC, and that poor girl this morning—who might present problems, not to mention possible players in other locations, such as Los Angeles, where that inconvenient sub-rights director is creating Lord knows what mischief. It was a lot of people Hayden needed on this operation, in a territory that’s not his own, on a mission that’s not exactly legal. Not remotely legal.

In the end, the most efficacious thing had been for Hayden to sub out to private contractors for his stateside needs. After 9/11, the personnel landscape had changed dramatically, with paramilitary organizations proliferating, merging with one another, going out of business, renaming themselves, redefining their scopes of operations, obfuscating their ownership and mandates and recordkeeping. There are plenty of crew-cut guys looking for work in America, guys who pride themselves on their discretion, on the sacrosanct honor of sworn secrecy, on an unwavering conviction that the right to security outweighs the right to privacy, at least where other people are concerned. Or if not on any of these principles, on the much more straightforward consideration of cash.

A boom era for mercenaries.

And here’s the result, sitting in the front of the big black truck, into whose back Hayden hoists himself. He wonders what type of satisfactory explanation he’ll need to produce for these thugs. But he knows it doesn’t really matter, and he doesn’t need to tell them much. These guys will do simply what they’re told—that’s who they are, that’s what they’re for. And afterward Hayden will probably kill them.

“Tell me what’s happening,” he says.

The driver accelerates while the man in the passenger seat turns to look at his boss. “The agent and the editor have borrowed a car from Judy Thompson.”

“Who’s she?”

“A television personality, and book author, and who knows what else. They went to see Thompson at her East Side house. Reed admitted she
was terrified and wanted someplace to hide; said that someone had murdered her assistant. So she asked for Thompson’s beach house, and her car, as well as cash and a credit card. They just used this plastic to buy gas along the route from New York City to that destination, which is in Amagansett. The Hamptons.”

Hayden looks at his watch, trying to orient himself to the change of time, change of continent. He’s on a military base in New Jersey, which is a very different place from where he woke up this morning. “How far of a drive for us?”

“Too long. Three and a half hours. Maybe four. So we’re not driving.” The guy points ahead, at a helicopter in the distance. “There’s a base in Westhampton. Close enough.”

“Good. What else?”

“There’s that woman on her way to Los Angeles, the subsidiary-rights director.”

“We have a team in position?”

“Yes, waiting near the rental-car facility.”

“And dare I ask?”

“The plan is for a carjacking gone awry, on the stretch between the facility and the freeway. Two cars, one coming from either direction.”

Hayden envisages the screeching tires, the ski masks, the
tat-tat-tat
of the 9-millimeters, the blood splattered across the front seat and the dashboard and the windows.

He hates this. It’s one thing to kill a lone girl in New York City, by mistake. It’s another to start shooting up Los Angeles, on purpose. Opening fire on civilians in the United States of America. Hunting down innocent Americans to mete out their undeserved comeuppance to his unexpected corruption. What a fucking disaster.

“Do you have the item?” he asks the front seat.

“Yes sir.” The passenger-seat goon reaches down, retrieves a canvas bag, passes it over the back of the seat.

Hayden pulls the stack of paper from the bag.
The Accident
. He knows
immediately what the title refers to, and his stomach does a somersault. There goes any hope that this manuscript might be benign.

His phone rings, a 202 number, Washington. “Hello.”

“Good afternoon. This is Trey Freeley.”

“Oh hello. How can I help you?”

“Do you remember that matter we discussed? The manuscript.”

“Of course.”

“It has landed, with exactly the person I expected it would.”

No shit. “Yes. Do you have any additional information?”

“A portion—a small portion, I believe—of the manuscript is with the editor’s boss. The publisher of the outfit. Do you know who that is?”

“I do.”

“He’s worried.”

“I imagine so.”

“I happen to be meeting him for a drink tonight, at the Maritime in New York. You familiar with that club?”

Hayden’s father had been a member of the Maritime; this is where they’d stayed, the two of them, when they’d visited New York for Hayden’s sixteenth birthday. Another era, in a different century. “No, can’t say that I am.”

“We’ll be there at seven o’clock.”

Hayden hangs up. The three of them transfer from the SUV to the helicopter. As soon as he’s buckled in, Hayden starts to read.

H
ayden had met with Buford Freeley III when this operation began, back in December.

“You can call me Trey,” the lawyer said in an aggressively Southern accent, holding out his big hand, taking a firm grip of Hayden’s. Too firm, something to prove. “Everyone does. We been tryin’ to shake the name Buford for three generations now, but can’t seem to ditch it.” He gestured at a chair. “Please.”

Hayden took his seat, glanced out the windows at the Washington skyline, such as it was, with the monument to the city’s namesake just a few blocks away, puncturing the sky, dividing it. Hayden had taken a good walk around Penn Quarter, the Mall, Capitol Hill. It’d been a long time since he’d wandered the capital. Washington reminded him more of a European city than an American one: the radiating streets and the traffic circles, the parks and squares, the lowness of the buildings relative to the height of the monuments. It’s the least skyscrapery big city in the States; would fit right in on the Continent.

He let his eye wander over Freeley’s ego wall, framed hand-shakings with dozens of dignitaries, including more than one president of the United States. Law degree from Duke, undergrad from Princeton.

“The farthest north any self-respectin’ Southern gentleman would consent to attend college, isn’t that right?”

“I wouldn’t know, Mr. Freeley. I myself am not a Southerner.”

“No, I guess you’re not.”

“And only marginally a gentleman.”

Freeley squinted across his wide, cluttered desk. “So what can I do for you?”

“People tell me you’re a man who can be trusted.”

Freeley had an easy laugh, a genuine one, a Southern laugh. “As much as any Washington, DC, lawyer. Isn’t that right, Mr.—what was it again? Mr. Lyons?”

“That’s right.”

“Mm-hmmm.”
He peered over the rim of his glasses, dubious. “And your message said this is about a book project? Mr.
Lyons
?”

“Yes?”

“You gonna stick with that name, now that you made it into my office? Or you gonna tell me who you really are?”

Hayden was ready for this, but didn’t feel the need to show it. Which is what separates the pros from the amateurs: pros don’t need to prove how smart they are.

“What did you think?” Freeley shook his head. “I bill at eight hundred dollars an hour. When I do a book deal, I take fifteen percent off the top, and the top for my clients is usually in the seven-figure range. It takes me a day or two to make one a those deals. And that’s when I’m havin’ an off-day.”

Hayden nodded.

“Which is to say, Mr. Lyons, that I make a lotta money. And do you know
how
I make a lotta money?” He kept his eyes on Hayden, but didn’t wait for an answer. “I make a lotta money by
not
wasting time takin’ meetings that will make me
no
money. Which is to say, Mr.
Lyons
, that I have a staff whose job it is to research the people who want to walk into this office. To find out who they are.”

Hayden was amused by all the unnecessary bluster. “And who am I?”

“You are no one. You don’t exist. There is no one meaningful named Joseph Lyons in Washington. Or in the United States of America.”

“Didn’t someone tell you I’d be calling?”

Freeley snorted. “Of course. Someone
always
tells me someone will be callin’. A senator, congressman, lobbyist.”

Hayden allowed himself a full, broad smile of bona fide enjoyment. “But this was from the director of Central Intelligence.”

“Oh, is he the one person in Washington who don’t lie?”

Hayden couldn’t help but laugh. This was exactly the type of guy who he wished he could work with. But guys like this don’t work for a hundred grand a year, occasionally getting shot at, sometimes in hellholes.

Trey Freeley had launched himself in the capital as a white-shoe associate, who soon became a famously aggressive literary agent, who then translated his success into a law-firm partnership, where he carved out a unique niche for himself, representing nearly everyone inside the Beltway with a big book deal to make.

“I could”—Hayden leaned forward—“tell you another, more complicated, and more difficult-to-verify set of lies. But they’d just be more cover. So for the purposes of this billable hour, let’s just assume that I’m
a prospective client who will turn out to be not worth your trouble.” Hayden took an envelope out of his pocket, handed it over to Freeley. “And I expect we will not meet again.”

The lawyer opened the envelope, pulled out a piece of paper, a cashier’s check.

“I also do homework, Mr. Freeley. And your hourly is
seven
hundred, not eight.”

“Touché.” Freeley put the check on his desk. “This is not about a book deal?”

Hayden shrugged. “That doesn’t matter, does it? Why I’m here is because people say you know more about the book-publishing business than anyone in DC, and you collect the New York gossip without being a part of it.”

Freeley couldn’t disagree with this assessment. He shrugged.

“I’m here,” Hayden said, “for you to explain it to me.”

“Explain what?”

“Book publishing.”

“What about it?”

“Everything,” Hayden said, smiling broadly again. “That is, everything we can cover in”—he glanced at his watch—“the next fifty-four minutes.”

Freeley leaned back in his chair, getting comfortable. “That should just about do it,” he said. “It ain’t a very complicated business.”

CHAPTER 30

A
cross-continental flight provides ample reading time, especially headed west, into the wind. But
The Accident
is on the long side, as submissions go. So even though the plane is inexplicably delayed, and the trade winds fierce, when the seat belt light extinguishes and the passengers stand and Camilla slips the manuscript back into her
MCNALLY & SONS
tote, she’s still a hundred pages shy of the end.