Wisdom Spring (32 page)

“Just so somebody is thinking how illogical it is.”

“Well then it’s time to put some logic to it,” I said. “I wonder if Hillstrom knows he’s going to be assassinated. I bet he doesn’t. He doesn’t strike me as the willing terrorist martyr type. I wonder how pissed at these people he’d be to find out. Maybe we need to get off the sidelines and get in the game. I think it’s time to shake things up a bit.”

“And I think,” said Joe, “it’s time to bring Mill in on all of this. We’re going to need his help.”

“He’s going to have to come up here,” I said. “Right now, this is a safe haven. If he can get up here without being seen, he can be right in the middle of it.” I looked at Scott. “Do you mind one more person here?”

“He’s not sharing my room. He gets the couch.”

We talked about it for a few minutes, then Joe dialed Mill’s cell phone.

After verifying through a series of questions that he was really Joe and was not under duress, and Mill doing the same, Joe gave him some bare bones information in the unlikely event that someone else was listening. He assured Mill that it was necessary for him to come to us. It was agreed that Mill would borrow a friend’s jet and fly to Anchorage, where Scott and Joe would pick him up.

“What’s next?” asked Jess.

“We have the phone number of the security guards’ boss. I think it’s time we use it,” I said.

“Who are we calling?” asked Joe.

“How about Hillstrom?”

“We’ll never get through to him Why don’t we just call the press now?” asked Jess.

“I’d rather leave that to Mill,” I said. “That’s his area of expertise. No, I suggest we spend the rest of the day scouring through these files. Pull out the name of every influential person we can find. Somewhere in those boxes is our invitation to Hillstrom.”

We got back to work. Occasionally someone would bring up some big name politician or news reporter. There were a number of news people with folders in the boxes. It just proved to me beyond a doubt that the press was equally involved. Unfortunately, we got no further in figuring out who was behind it. There were no folders on the masterminds, as far as we could see.

About an hour into it, Scott asked, “Has anyone else found any asses?

“What?” I asked.

“So far, three of my files have the word ‘ass’ somewhere near the end of the file, followed by a colon, then someone’s name, with what looks like a date. One of the guys has three asses in his file, followed by names.”

“I did see a couple of files that had that in them,” I answered. “I kind of dismissed them because I had never heard of the person, and I was trying to concentrate on the files of people I was familiar with.” I shuffled through until I found them. “I have three. So far, at least. I still have more files to go.”

Meanwhile, Jess and Joe were doing the same. They each found one.

“I was curious about that too,” said Jess. “I figured I’d look at it more closely later. So what does it mean?”

We all looked over the eight files. None of the subjects were familiar to us. They weren’t politicians or famous businessmen. Joe, however thought two of the names after the “ass:’ seemed vaguely familiar.

“Do you mind Googling them?” he asked Jess. She got up, went to the computer and started typing.

“You have a theory?” I asked him.

“I do,” was all he would say.

After a few minutes Jess said, “Well, if I have the correct people, both of these guys are dead. One was the president of a big ad agency in England…”

Joe interrupted her. “Did he die on January 7, 2010?”

Jess looked at him, nodded her head, then continued typing. It was beginning to dawn on us all what these were.

“The other guy was the mayor of a small town in Colorado. He died in a car accident May 12, 2011. But then, you already knew that.”

“I did.”

“Why would the mayor of some hick town be familiar to you?” I asked.

“Because he was in the news. It was a big deal. Some company wanted to buy up water rights in the area and he was leading the fight against it. Then he died in a crash, but I kind of lost track of the story after that.”

Jess asked us for the other names and went to work. As we suspected, all of the names following the “ass:” were deceased.

“‘Ass:’ stands for ‘assassinated’,” said Joe. “I bet as we go through the files we’ll find more names of dead people, and I can guarantee that the subjects of the files will be people we’ve never heard of. You see, they weren’t just training future politicians and corporate heads at Wisdom Spring. They were training assassins.”

Chapter 39

This was getting scarier.

“So you’re saying that anyone who has an ‘ass:’ in his file is an assassin, and those are the people he’s killed?” I asked.

“That’s what it looks like,” answered Joe. He had just pulled out another file. “They’re not all guys, though. Here’s a woman, and she’s responsible for two kills.”

“I don’t see anywhere in these files where they are referred to as assassins,” said Jess.

“You have to read between the lines,” replied Joe. “And I’m betting if we compared them all, we’d find some consistent label they’ve all been given. It really doesn’t matter though. There is no doubt that they are assassins. And from what I’ve seen so far, their missions aren’t to take out high profile figures, but more obscure targets.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I think if we investigated a bit further, we’d see that whoever took their place was somehow connected to this organization. They’ve probably discovered that it’s important to replace lower-level—but strategically-placed—people, as well. That’s probably how most of the Wisdom Spring graduates are being used. Not everything is accomplished at the top.”

We needed to stop for a while to absorb it all. Jess and I went for a quick walk to clear our heads, while Joe retreated to his room. Scott, meanwhile, decided it was time to feed us something healthy and got to work in the kitchen on an early dinner. “We’ve all earned it,” he said, and prepared a feast of salmon and crab legs, finishing it up with crème brulee.

The break did us all some good and when the meal was ready, we came to the table in much better moods.

“Is there anything you can’t do?” Jess asked Scott, cracking open a crab leg.

“Yeah, find the perfect woman. And now, after watching you and Jon interact, and how perfect you seem for each other, my standards can only go up, which will make it even harder to find the right person.”

I felt a little sorry for Scott at that moment. Jess was right, Scott seemed to be without limits. He deserved somebody as amazing as Jess. But in typically brotherly fashion, I could only respond with, “Hey, I think my ex-wife might be available.”

He made a face.

“So what did we learn from all the folders?” I asked.

“That we can’t trust anybody,” answered Joe. “It’s as simple as that. I think we need to make a list, filed under categories, of everyone we’ve found who’s involved in this. We have media people, politicians, corporate executives, and now, assassins.”

“I’ll make the list,” said Jess. “After all, I am the researcher.”

“No argument there,” I said.

“And you say there are more boxes still in the mine?” asked Joe.

“Yeah, six more,” I said. “This was all we could take, though. And of course, I shot the keypad, so we can’t go back for them. But, all of those contained the really thin folders. Using the thin ones we have here as examples, some are the children who died or were sent away, but most seem to be those from the lowest level of the organization—insignificant, for the most part. If I had to guess, I’d say we’ve got most of the important ones right here.”

Jess and I went to work. I read out the names and categories, while she typed. If I had never heard of them and we couldn’t determine a category, we put them under “unknown.” Scott and Joe cleaned up after dinner, then read through files after we listed the names, hoping to find something we had missed the first time.

It was seven o’clock, We had done enough for one day were all were all slumped in chairs in the living room. Jess and I had the couch and I was massaging her feet.

“Well, there was no clear link to Hillstrom,” said Joe. “The only avenues we seem to have to contact him are through the guard’s cell phone, or this Corbin Mays guy, the head of Exchange Systems. I think we’d get the furthest by calling the number the guards had to call. By the way, I checked Billy’s phone. It doesn’t have any kind of GPS on it. It’s real basic, and nothing has been added. So they can’t find us that way.”

“Then I say we should get this ball rolling,” said Scott. “Let’s call the number.”

We discussed the strategy for a few minutes and decided Jess should be the one to make the call, that Hillstrom would be more likely to respond to her.

Jess took a deep breath and dialed the number listed in the recent calls. She put it on speaker. It rang twice before it was picked up.

“Yeah?”

“This is Jessica Norton. You know who I am?”

There was silence. He was deciding how to respond. Finally he said, “Yes.”

“I’m calling from outside Wisdom Spring. You’re familiar with that, right?”

“I am.”

“Before your people destroyed the mine, I made it out with a box of very interesting material.”

The longer we could keep them thinking the mine was destroyed, we hoped the longer it would take them to send someone to check it out.

The person on the other end said nothing.

“I want to talk to Gary Hillstrom.”

“Who?”

“Don’t play stupid.”

“I’m not. Do you mean the guy who’s running for president?”

“I do. I want you to have him call me at this number.”

“Why me? I don’t know that guy. How the hell would I get in touch with him?”

Obviously this contact was way down on the ladder, told only what he needed to know.

“You can’t, but your boss can, or his boss, or his boss’s boss. Somewhere up your chain of command, someone has direct contact with Hillstrom.”

“I don’t thi…”

“Trust me,” she interrupted. “They do, and I suggest you get started. You had orders to have me killed, and you’ve got to know from the news reports that I worked for Hillstrom. That should give you a hint. So here’s what you tell them: I want to hear from Hillstrom himself within twenty-four hours on this line. That’s seven o’clock tomorrow night Alaska time. If he doesn’t call me directly by that deadline, I make the contents of this box known. Got that?”

“I’ll pass along the message.”

“You do that. Remember, twenty-four hours or everything is going to come tumbling down.”

Chapter 40

At two o’clock in the morning Florida time, Mays and Hutch sat uncomfortably in Hillstrom’s suite at the Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel. They were alone. Hillstrom had finished off a campaign speech in downtown Tampa and was huddled with his advisors twenty-seven floors below them. The two men were watching the replay of Hillstrom’s speech on local TV. The rally ended amid thunderous applause. Like the other candidates, Hillstrom’s handlers had made sure his followers were out in force. Unlike the other candidates, they didn’t have to work very hard to keep out the detractors. Hillstrom seemed to have very few. Although not everyone would vote for him, even those who opposed his message seemed to like Hillstrom the man.

“Why are you nervous?” asked Hutch. “Haven’t you known him for years?”

“I mentored him for years,” corrected Mays. “In many ways I probably know him better than anyone. I’m not nervous about seeing him. I’m nervous about the message. This is going to be my call, and I’m not sure yet how I’m going to call it.”

He must be nervous
, thought Hutch. With just that one sentence Mays had opened up more to Hutch than he ever had in the past.

“How could you have let her escape from there?” asked Mays.

He’s back
, thought Hutch. “The word I got was that she was dead and sealed in the mine. Why should I have doubted it? It came through the regular channel. The guy who took the call didn’t sense any problems.”

“Have you talked to the guy who made the call from the mine?”

“No. He was one of the back-ups from Anchorage. He, along with the others, seems to have disappeared.”

“And that doesn’t raise a red flag for you?”

“It’s not uncommon for some of those low-level guys to quit and take off. They don’t have the same loyalty as some of the other employees, and they’ve learned that the best way to quit this organization is just to vanish.”

“And you canceled the second group that were on their way up there?”

“I did. Based on the information, there was no reason for them to be there.”

“May I suggest that you send someone up there to check anyway?”

“I will.”

Five minutes later Hillstrom opened the door. Knowing Mays and Hutch were in the room, he had instructed his security staff to wait outside.

“Awesome event,” he said, closing the door and shaking hands with both men. “Did you watch it on TV? They loved me.” Getting no response, he looked quizzically at them. Then he turned serious. “Something’s wrong, isn’t there?”

“Jessica Norton is still alive,” said Mays. Hutch had decided to let Mays do all the talking. “And she wants to speak to you.”

Hillstrom sat down. He felt a sudden knot in the pit of his stomach.

“How? I thought…”

“Yeah, we did too. But that’s not important now. What is important is that I have to decide whether to let you talk to her. She says she has a box of the material from the mine, and if she doesn’t hear from you by,” he looked at his watch, “eleven o’clock our time tomorrow night—or rather, tonight, she says she’ll release it.”

“Why does she want to talk to me? Why doesn’t she just release it now?”

“I don’t know. That’s why you’re probably going to have to talk to her.”

“What if she wants to meet?”

“We’ll set it up. And if she doesn’t suggest it, you will. Then Hutch, here, will take care of it. Of course you’re not actually going to meet with her—we just want her to think that. But we have to find out what she wants.”