Challenge (3 page)

2.

Natalie Shufman reached Union Station’s great hall and looked around for her handler. She bristled at the idea of being babysat, but that was how these people did things. They took extreme care to isolate one thing from another, one person from another. She could pretty much guess who the briefcase was intended for, but she would never be told. If any one of them were arrested or taken into custody, he or she would have so little of the big picture as to be useless to authorities.

Sounds of track announcements echoed off the high ceiling. People milled about. Spotting him at last—recognizing the intense though common enough face beneath short-cropped hair—she headed over to him. At twenty-eight, he was slightly older than she was, and she feared him, for he was no one to mess with. None of these people were. Had they not rescued her from her stupidity—the possibility of a drug charge they still held over her—she wouldn’t have been a part of any of this. But here she was, and there was no undoing it.

“So?” he said.

“I should have just given it straight to our guy.”

“It’s not how it works. No one is to see his face. It went okay?”

“Why is he doing this, anyway?” she asked, inferring she already knew who was the intended recipient. “Why would a guy as high up as he is play the part of a lowly courier? It doesn’t make sense.”

“We don’t question something like that.” It was a stern warning, but she didn’t take it to heart.

“It has to be something hugely important or hugely valuable. What do you suppose it is?”

“I asked you if it went okay,” he said pointedly.

She considered not telling him, but he might have been watching—this could be some sort of test.

“There was a boy.”

He glanced at her, and she felt his intensity.

She said, “He saw me leave the briefcase and he came after me with it. Out onto the platform.”

He seethed next to her, blood coloring his face in anger. “Go on.”

She spoke quickly, hoping the explanation might satisfy him. “I told him he was mistaken. That it wasn’t mine and he should put it back where he’d found it. I’m sure he did.”

“Did you get his name?”

“His name? No, of course not. I told him to put it back, and that was the end of it.”

“Describe him to me.”

“Why?”

He stared silently at her, and she felt he might hurt her if she didn’t do as he said.

“Thirteen, fourteen. Thin. Kind of nerdy. He’s wearing a sweatshirt for the National Science Challenge. That’s why he’s going to Washington—this challenge. He’s not going to be a problem. It wasn’t anything. Really. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“No, you did right. Go on. Get outta here. Head back as planned,” he said. “You can go.”

As she walked away from him, her stomach turned. Why had she mentioned the boy? What had she started?

She thought of the train ticket in her pocket. She checked the huge board listing all the trains and tracks, the departures and arrivals.

The train to Washington was still in the station.

What if they now planned to hurt the boy? Wouldn’t that make whatever happened to him her fault?

She eyed the gate to track seven, then stole a glance back at the man she’d just spoken to. He was talking on his cell phone, his back turned to the gate.

If she hurried, she might have a chance.

3.

“Wait a second! Back it up,” Roland Larson instructed. He and Trill Hampton, both United States marshals assigned to the Fugitive Apprehension Task Force, occupied uncomfortable chairs in a cigarette-soured windowless room with
TERMINAL SECURITY
written on its door. Between them sat a security guard who controlled the video.

Hampton, an African American with a kind face and a football player’s neck, smacked loudly as he chewed french fries laden with ketchup, withdrawn one by one from an oily paper bag. Larson battled impatience. He had a rugged face, sharp blue eyes, and dirty-blond hair. He was too big for the chair.

Chicago’s Union Station had trains coming and going at all hours. As part of the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Apprehension Task Force, Larson’s present assignment was to track down and capture a suspected gang leader, a man believed to have ties to a terrorism cell in Chicago. A joint FBI and Secret Service investigation had uncovered the gang’s connection to a series of minor bank robberies. It was now believed that stolen money had reached the terrorist cell. The disappearance of a small plane over Lake Michigan had given rise to the discovery that a much bigger plan to raise money for the terrorists was currently underway. Larson had never seen the man he was after. There were no existing photographs of him. All Larson had was a vague description provided by an undercover agent: broad-shouldered, five feet eleven inches, intense eyes, and a possible name that could easily be an alias: Aaron Grym. It wasn’t much to go on.

They were reviewing train station surveillance video. The known gang member was approached by a woman, possibly in her mid-twenties. Her face had not been caught by the overhead camera. The two spoke with an undeniable intensity. Then the gang member used his cell phone, and shortly thereafter left the station.

“The only train boarding at that time is the overnight to Washington.” The station’s security man pointed to the television monitor. The smell in the room was mostly his. “There is one that leaves for St. Louis ten minutes later. Another for Minneapolis on the half hour. But at that time, it is Washington, D.C.”

“Can you give us any platform cameras you might have?”

It took the security guard a few minutes to organize himself. Hampton finished the french fries. Finally the video started, and Larson went back to watching the small screen. The camera looked out from the terminal down track seven’s long platform. The train to Washington, D.C., was to the right of the platform.

“There! Stop the tape!” Larson shouted, a little too loudly for the small room. Of the two dozen passengers frozen in black-and-white, all but one had their backs to the camera as they headed toward the train. The only one facing them was a woman—a woman wearing jeans and looking like the same woman who’d been seen with the gang member out in the terminal. The woman was walking
away
from the train.

Hampton sat up in his chair. “She’s leaving.”

“Yeah,” said Larson. “I noticed.”

“She saw someone off?” Hampton inquired.

The security guy said, “Only ticketed passengers are allowed on the platform. If she’s on the platform, then she bought a ticket.”

Larson said, “She decided not to take the trip.”

“It happens,” the guy said. “Plans change. Schedules change. People get sick.”

“Madrid,” Hampton muttered.

A few years earlier, terrorists had blown up a commuter train in Madrid, Spain, killing hundreds of innocent passengers.

“London,” Larson said. Two summers earlier, bombs had exploded in the London Underground.

“I want to see her when and if she
entered
the train,” Larson advised the security man. “Back it up.”

Hampton reached for the desk phone because cell reception was poor in this basement office. He asked someone on the other end to arrange transportation to Toledo—the Washington train’s next stop. He knew in advance that this was what Larson would want. They worked well as a team.

“Freeze it!” Larson shouted, again too loudly. He pointed out the same woman, now walking
toward
the train on a video shot well before the other one. “That’s her!”

“No it’s not,” Hampton said, cupping the phone. “Same clothes, but that woman’s carrying a briefcase. The woman we saw wasn’t—” but he caught himself.

“—carrying a briefcase,” Larson finished for him. “Because she left it on the train.”

“I know what you guys are thinking,” the security man said. “But if there had been a bomb in that briefcase, we’d have caught it. Forget about it.”

“What about money?” Hampton asked. “What about a pile of money being delivered to the wrong people?”

“We want to follow that bag,” Larson said. “It could lead us to our man.”

Hampton still had the person on the line. He said, “We’re going to need a private jet, and you gotta get a VCR on board.” He checked his watch. “Have it standing by in forty minutes.” He hung up.

Larson told the security man, “We’re going to need every surveillance tape from every camera in the station from two hours before that train departed. Find a box. We’re taking them all with us.”

“When does the train arrive in Toledo?” Hampton asked the bewildered security man.

The man typed some information into a laptop, ran his finger along the screen, and said behind a defeated face, “Government jet or not…it’ll take a miracle to catch that train.”

“Not a problem,” Larson said, coming to his feet.

Hampton pointed first to Larson and then to himself. “Miracles-R-Us.”

4.

Aaron Grym fought the temptation to speak to the boy and his mother, and reclaim the briefcase. He wasn’t sure how it might play out, and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself, to give them a face to remember. Yet he needed that bag.

At some point the kid was certain to put the briefcase back where he’d found it. At the very least, the mother and son would eventually fall asleep. It was a long way to Washington, D.C. Opportunity would present itself. He would wait it out.

In the meantime, he would change his looks. The backpack in the overhead rack was filled with clothing and various elements to help with his disguise: several wigs, makeup, contact lenses. Nothing that took too long to apply. He’d learned the art of disguise from a community center in his neighborhood that had offered acting classes. He’d spent two summers at the center, his last playing Tony in
West Side Story.
Now he would
become
Tony. Life imitating art.

People could be after him. People with badges. People with radios. A lot of people. He kept firmly in mind that an informer had penetrated his organization’s ranks. There was no way to know how much of what they had planned had been compromised—including this train ride.

If possible, he’d get the briefcase from the boy ahead of the Toledo stop. Disembarking the train there, he’d find another way to reach Washington.

Temptation pulled at him to make a simple introduction to the boy and his mother: “I believe you have my briefcase.” The boy would bring up having seen the woman with the case. “Ah, you mean my wife!” he could say. “Yes. She had to leave suddenly. Her mother. An illness. I have a key to the briefcase. Isn’t that proof enough?”

If they called his bluff, if they made him open the briefcase, then he would have to take care of them before Toledo. The expression “Cancel their tickets” crossed his mind and caused him to smile.

He and his group had been told that Homeland Security had installed hidden wireless security cameras on all Amtrak trains as well as most commuter lines. Wireless, so the cameras could be monitored and studied from a land-based office.

He didn’t know if it was true or not, but he kept his head down as much as possible. It seemed doubtful that the cops or feds could identify him from just his face: he’d never been arrested, so no mug shots existed. His driver’s license and passport were forgeries; there were no documents that he knew of tying his real name, Grym, to any photograph of him. Part of the reason for him undertaking this assignment was because he was “clean.” The other part had to do with trust. But no matter what, he had no desire to test his face with the authorities; he couldn’t afford to get caught.

He reached the door to the toilet at the end of the car and stepped inside. He didn’t want to take his eyes off the boy and the briefcase for too long, so he did everything quickly.

He locked the door. Kneeled. Reached into the garbage bin—a metal flap marked
TRASH
. He found the small key exactly where she’d left it: stuck beneath a piece of duct tape on the back of the stainless steel flap.

He now had absolute proof the briefcase belonged to him, if it came to that. The key warmed in his hand. He slipped it into his pocket.

He left the foul-smelling restroom and returned to his seat.

The boy and the woman hadn’t moved. Just as he’d hoped.

Everything in its own time. He sat down.

At that same moment, the boy stood and waved at an approaching conductor.

The conductor caught up to the boy, who then spoke in an animated way to the man. The conductor looked up at the overhead rack. The boy bent down and produced the briefcase.

More talk. The boy passed the briefcase to the conductor, who looked it over, thanked the boy, and moved on.

This was Grym’s chance. He would stop the conductor, explain that the briefcase was his, and produce the key to confirm it.

But if the man made him open the bag, what then?

Kill a conductor?

The conductor walked by him holding the briefcase.

Grym told himself to do this now—get the briefcase, get off the train. But it was hours yet until Toledo. Did he want the conductor to have all that time to think about any conflict with the boy’s story? Did he want him making a radio call up the track to authorities at the next station?

He’d wait.

There was plenty of time.

5.

The train had been under way for the better part of two hours, Steel having long since turned the briefcase over to the conductor. Even so, he found that the case was all he could think about. It had wormed its way into his thoughts. In his mind’s eye, he saw the woman arrive onto the train and place the briefcase in the overhead rack. He watched her sit down. He witnessed her leaving the train without it. He recalled his pursuit of her out onto the platform. Her refusal of the briefcase. Curiosity mixed with confusion, and, as always, his mind sought answers.

The conductor had been pleasant enough. He’d thanked Steel for his powers of observation, his honesty. But the mystery that now shrouded the briefcase tugged at a bored teenager who found himself stuck on a long train ride with little to do.

“There’s plenty to do,” his mother said. “You can practice your speech again. It counts as twenty-five percent of your overall score.”

“Mom.”

“I’m just suggesting.”

“How ’bout I go see Cairo?” he asked.

“Maybe in a while. We need the conductor.”

He didn’t press it. If he challenged her too much, she’d deny him just for the sake of asserting her authority. He knew to wait it out and try again in a few minutes. Repetition won the game.

Farmland slipped past in a blur. Seeing the cows in the fields reminded Steel of his father and a car game they played called Hey, Cow!, where you rolled down a window and shouted “HEY, COW!” at the top of your lungs. You tried to pick out the first cow that would lift its head and look toward the car. It cracked up his father every time they played.

“When do you think we’ll see Dad?” he asked his mother.

She did that thing where her face bunched all up: half anger, half frustration. He understood that he should
not
ask that question again.

Her cell phone rang. His mother was a long talker, and Steel once again saw a golden opportunity.

“Boys’ room,” he mouthed, as she listened to the caller.

She nodded and turned to face the window for privacy. Steel made for the aisle. As he reached the restroom door, he glanced back: his mother hadn’t moved an inch. Her head remained turned toward the window. He saw his chance and took it, tripping the button that opened the door and making his way into the next car.

And the next.

By the third car, he’d caught up to a conductor whose name tag read
CHARLIE
. He was the same conductor who’d taken possession of the briefcase.

“Excuse me? Do you think it might be possible for me to see my dog?”

Charlie stole a look at his wristwatch. “Not supposed to, but…don’t see why not,” he said. Charlie had something of a potbelly, and warts under his eyes. He led Steel back, talking over his shoulder about baseball the whole time. A fan of the Chicago Cubs, he couldn’t shut up about them.

As they drew nearer to the rear of the train he explained to Steel how he wasn’t supposed to let anyone inside the baggage car. Steel wondered if he was supposed to tip him or something. His mother had given Steel twenty dollars, but it was two fives and a ten, and he thought five dollars was too much to tip a person.

Charlie’s next subject was dogs. He’d had a dog when he was a kid, a neighborhood mutt that had made its home on a vacant lot up the street. Charlie’s voice was deep as a lake. Steel caught bits and pieces of his randomly told story. Whenever Charlie looked back at him, peering over those rows of small, black warts, Steel nodded thoughtfully.

Unlocking the baggage car door, Charlie said, “Typically we only allow service dogs on our trains. You must be special.”

“My dad died,” Steel lied.

This had the desired effect.

“Couple weeks ago,” Steel said, adding to his story.

“I’m so sorry, kid,” Charlie said.

“Yeah, me too,” Steel said, feeling bad to see Charlie look so sad.

Steel saw Cairo’s crate and hurried down the car to it.

“Listen, kid,” Charlie said in a softer voice than just a minute ago, “I got me some business to attend to.” A pack of cigarettes showed through the chest pocket of his thin shirt. Steel thought that was probably the business being mentioned. “This door locks from the outside when it shuts, but you can let yourself out anytime. Stay as long as you like.”

“Thanks. Actually, I can’t stay very long,” Steel said. “My mother thinks I’m bothering you. But I’d like to come back if I could.”

“Anytime, kid. No problem. I’ll let your mom know it’s no problem. You just come and find me anytime.”

“Actually, it might be better if my mother was left out of it. She’ll think you’re just being nice because of…you know. And that’ll just make her sad all over again.” He felt like a real twit for toying with Charlie this way, but adults were such suckers, he couldn’t help himself.

“I’ll tell you what—it’ll be our little secret. ’Kay?”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Just leave when you want.”

“Got it,” Steel said, thanking the man again.

Charlie left. Steel heard the door click shut with authority. Locked.

Having been left alone for hours in a strange environment, Cairo reveled in Steel’s attention. She seemed frightened by the rumbling and shaking of the car, so Steel coaxed her out of the crate and gave her a big hug. She shook and sneezed, and Steel laughed. She wagged her tail so hard she folded herself in half. Then she drilled her cold, wet nose in under Steel’s chin and pushed him off balance. He fell back and caught himself with both hands.

That was when he saw it: the briefcase. It was sitting on a shelf marked
LOST AND FOUND
. There was no mistaking it.

Cairo continued to compete for Steel’s attention, but it was a lost cause. Steel gently pushed her away as she wagged and danced around him.

“Not now, girl,” he said. She launched into a nose patrol of the car.

The briefcase stared down at him. It had eyes and a voice that called out to him:
Open me. Solve the mystery.

He fought to resist, but quickly returned Cairo to the crate and secured the door.

He checked from one end of the car to the other, just in case Charlie might be spying on him. His sense of guilt rose, but he ignored it.

He pulled the briefcase down from the shelf and placed it on the floor in front of him. Studying it thoughtfully, he walked once fully around it. Then he kneeled and touched it. The leather smelled like the inside of a shoe store. It felt smooth to the touch.

He spun it around. Cairo studied Steel from inside the crate as Steel in turn studied the briefcase.

“I’m just curious,” he told her.

Oh sure,
she returned with a look that was all brown eyes.

He grabbed hold of the case and tried the two latches. Locked.

He had expected this, and yet it fanned the flame of his curiosity. He spun the briefcase around a little more intensely. Picked it up: it felt as light as he remembered. Shook it. Something moved inside, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple sheets of paper. He tried the latches again. Locked.

Steel was a problem solver. His teachers reacted to him in nearly the same way, year after year: impressed at first, wary of him as the year wore on. Afraid he might be smarter than they were—which was ridiculous; he was smart enough to know he wasn’t smarter than anyone: he just had a photographic memory.

He felt up to the challenge of the briefcase. He’d heard about picking locks—seen it done in movies, but knew nothing about it.

He considered prying the latches open, but he’d only break them. And then what? It wasn’t as if Charlie wouldn’t figure out who’d broken them.

He flipped it around and upside down and studied the hinges. Nothing available there besides breaking them as well.

Think
!

He noticed the four small, metal feet. Half domes of stainless steel, they occupied the four corners, allowing the bag to stand level when placed down. He examined the four feet. He tested one, trying to turn it, but his fingers spun and it didn’t move. He lacked a good grip.

He tried using a corner of his shirt, but it didn’t help. He looked around for anything else—a pair of pliers would do just fine. He walked the length of the car but didn’t see a toolbox or anything useful. Sitting down again with the briefcase, he spotted a small chunk of chewed rawhide inside Cairo’s cage—the remains of a chewy bone. He pinched it between his fingers and tried to gain friction on one of the feet. But it was no use. Not one to give up once he put his mind to something, Steel tried another of the four feet.

This one broke free of the leather and turned. Excited by the victory, he quickly unscrewed it. The piece came off in his hand: a circle of stainless steel with a smooth-topped bolt through it.

He put his eye to the bolt hole in the bottom of the case. No wider than the diameter of a straw, it was nonetheless a perfect peephole. But with so little light inside the briefcase, he saw nothing but shifting gray shadows. Still…
there was something in there.

He tried to loosen another foot: it too unscrewed.

“We’re getting it, girl,” he said to Cairo, who followed his every movement, shifting in the crate and cocking her head.

Now with two holes, he put his eye to the first and angled the case toward the light. A soft gray cone of light spread inside. He angled it in another direction. He saw a newspaper article, some papers, and what looked like a postcard. He tilted the briefcase, working the postcard to a spot where he could see it. Then he tipped the briefcase to let more light inside.

The card wasn’t a card at all, but a photograph—a Polaroid, maybe…. He adjusted the briefcase a second time, and more light filtered in through the foot hole.

From beyond the door came the sound of men speaking.

Steel couldn’t pull his eye away—he was so close, so curious….

The voices grew louder. They were at the baggage-car door.

At that same instant the photograph shifted and came into better view. Steel gasped.

It showed a woman in front of a row of broken windows, her mouth covered with duct tape, her eyes wide in terror, her hair stringy and sweaty. Her face looked like a horrific mask of fright. Across the bottom, written in black marker, was:

G23: 3–4

The sound of keys tinkled. The men were coming inside.

Steel pulled his eye away from the bottom of the briefcase, his mind reeling from the horrible image of the woman with her mouth taped.

Then, with the door rattling as if about to open, he scooped up the two stainless steel feet and looked for a place to hide.