End of Secrets (39 page)

SIXTY

Though sh
e’d
awakened before dawn, too wired to fall back asleep, Kera was careful to arrive at the Hawk offices at her usual time. It had been a month since Gabby had made her an agent and given her access to the Control Room. Kera could remember the private exhilaration she used to feel each time she cleared the retinal scanner, heard the soft click of the lock, and pushed through the doors into the electric din of activity beyond. That feeling had been pride. Now her heart skipped anxiously as she went through the motions.

Kera and Jones did
n’t
speak to each other all morning except for a few benign exchanges related to the
A
TLANTIS
case. Ker
a’s
attention was divided between keeping up the appearance of work and watching the time. She had calculated that it would take her fifteen minutes to walk to the meeting spot Travis Bradley had picked out in Central Park. That meant that she would drop everything and leave no later than 11:45
AM
.

At 11:20
AM
two Hawk security guards came through the Control Room door. When Kera looked over at them, the nearer of the guards tapped his partne
r’s
arm. Then they approached.

“Kera Mersal?” one of the guards asked. “Can you come with us? Deputy Director di Palma would like a word.”

“Can it wait?
I’m
in the middle of something important.”

“No, m
a’a
m. Follow us, please.”

“Really,” Jones cut in from his workstation. “I need her help for a little while longer.”

“Di Palm
a’s
orders. Le
t’s
go,” the guard said.

Kera gave Jones what she hoped was a reassuring glance, though she was
n’t
feeling so assured about the situation herself.

They brought her to a room sh
e’d
never seen before. The walls were metallic gray. Inset into one of them was a rectangle of one-way glass. The roo
m’s
only furnishings were a bare table and five chairs. It was a lopsided arrangement—a hard wooden chair on one side of the table that faced four sleek, ergonomic office chairs on the other. Kera was invited to sit on the wood. When the security guards had gone, she turned and tried to look through her reflection in the mirrored glass. There was nothing to see there but herself staring back. For what it was worth, she thought she looked more composed than she felt.

A hurried clack of heels on the tile in the hallway preceded Gabb
y’s
entrance. Sh
e’d
brought three men to fill the chairs on her side of the table. Kera could
n’t
have named any of them, but their faces were familiar. Two worked the
V
INYL
case, the third was with internal security. Gabby appraised Kera from across the table while the security man set up a laptop where they could all see it. When he was finished, Kera glanced at the image on the screen. Then she looked away.

“You went to Rafael Bolíva
r’s
apartment last night,” Gabby said. “Why?” Her voice was calm, the curiosity in her question sincere. When Kera did
n’t
respond, Gabby nodded at the security man, who flipped through more images. There were video clips of Kera talking to the doormen in Bolíva
r’s
lobby and photos of her at the media pioneers event where she had first spoken to Bolívar. The last clip was of Kera coming out of Bolíva
r’s
apartment building the previous week at two thirty in the morning. The security man froze the footage on that image and left it there with the time stamp conspicuously displayed. Gabby leveled her gaze on Kera. “W
e’l
l come back to the implications of all this. But first, we need information. Rafael Bolívar vanished yesterday. Do you know where he is?”

“No,” Kera said, relieved to be able to tell the truth.

“Then he has
n’t
contacted you?” Gabby said.

“No. Why would he do that?”

Gabb
y’s
gaze slid to the frozen security camera footage and back, but she changed tacks. “Did you know about what Bolívar was doing to Alegría?”

“The acquisition, you mean? I heard about that yesterday.”

“ONE acquired Alegría, yes. But that wasn’t what I was referring to.”

“I do
n’t
understand.”

Gabby squinted slightly, as if trying to gauge whether Kera was telling the truth. If Gabby was desperate for information and believed Kera had it, sh
e’d
dance around things to try to give Kera a chance to cooperate. If sh
e’d
already made up her mind that Kera had turned, she would
n’t
waste any time. This would be a short meeting—and it would not end well for Kera. “Bolívar never discussed it with you?”

“No. As your surveillance tapes show, I only met with Bolívar on a few occasions. We were
n’t
confidants.”

Gabby again eyed the laptop screen and the image of Kera coming out of Bolíva
r’s
building at two thirty
AM
. But again she let that go. “Did you discuss Alegría North America with Bolívar at all?”

“No.”

Gabby glanced at the two
V
INYL
men before turning back to Kera. “Then you did
n’t
know that it was worthless?”

Kera stared back at her. “I do
n’t
understand.”

“Alegría North America is worthless. The compan
y’s
media holdings were worth barely a fraction of what ONE valued them at.”

“Tha
t’s
impossible,” Kera said.

“Unfortunately not. The company was, until recently, extraordinarily successful. But Bolívar ran it into the ground before handing it over to ONE—intentionally and in secret.”

“How?” Kera asked.

“I do
n’t
know the details and do
n’t
really care. Apparently, he created millions of fraudulent digital customer accounts and other company assets that existed online but had no real value.”

“Did
n’t
ONE do due diligence before acquiring all of that?”

“Of course. And Bolívar had built in mechanisms to deceive them during that process. H
e’s
a criminal, Kera. Where is he?”

“I do
n’t
know.”

“You were right all along about these missing people. You must have some idea of where they are.”

“Yo
u’r
e assuming Bolívar is with them?” Kera said.

Gabby ignored this. If she had discovered Bolíva
r’s
thesis, she was not ready to reveal that. “W
e’r
e all on the same team here, Kera. You knew something that made you go to his apartment last night. Now would be the time to share that information with us.”

“Or else?”

This caught Gabby off guard. Sh
e’d
clearly expected a
confrontation—otherwise
, why stage this in an interrogation room? But she had
n’t
expected the first aggression to come from Kera. “
I’m
not asking,” Gabby said, adapting her tone to the circumstances. “Let me phrase it a different way. Last night you went to the apartment of a suspect in an open investigation, which, I should
n’t
have to remind you, makes that a crime scene. There you tampered with evidence and tried to keep it from us.”

“That is
n’t
true.”

Gabby smiled. “That is
n’t
the point, Agent Mersal. It does
n’t
matter if i
t’s
true. What matters is what it looks like, or can be made to look like. And on this surveillance footage, it looks a lot like you were having an affair with a suspect who is now on the run. It does
n’t
take much of an imagination to see that you went to his apartment last night, without authorization, to alter evidence in an effort to clear his name.”

What she wanted to say was:
Bolíva
r’s
not on the run. He is
n’t
a coward
. Instead, she said, “Why are you doing this to me?”

“I
t’s
all in the spirit of teamwork, Kera. You want your career. I want Bolívar. We can both get what we want.”

“I do
n’t
know where he is,” she said.

One of the two
V
INYL
men spoke up. “You can still help us. You went there last night. You saw the room?” He did not need to clarify which room he was talking about. Kera nodded. The man looked to Gabby, who nodded her approval for him to continue. “We have new evidence that suggests Rafael Bolívar is the man behind Gnos.is. We think he might have been developing the site out of that heavily fortified room in his apartment. Do you know anything about that?”

What she knew was that they had found the thesis, and that they must not find Bolívar. For the first time, she let herself hope that he was far away. “No,” she said. She was eerily calm. She imagined a polygraph needle. It was controlled by her mind and nothing else.

“What
do
you know about him, then?” Gabby said.

“For a brief period, Bolívar was a person of interest in the
A
TLANTIS
case. I arranged for us to cross paths on a few occasions to gauge his involvement. But the evidence was never there. As far as we could tell, he had no meaningful role in the disappearances.”

“But you got to know hi
m . . .
personally,” Gabby said. “You spent time with him. You spoke with him on several occasions. Let me ask a different question. Wha
t’s
your read on him? What do you
think
h
e’s
up to?”

“I would
n’t
know. This is the first
I’v
e heard about this business with Alegría North America. And from what yo
u’v
e just told me, it sounds like Bolívar fed into ON
E’s
obsession with valuing everything digitally. It appears that he played me as much as everyone else.”

“What about Gnos.is?”

“Yo
u’r
e the ones saying h
e’s
involved with that, not me.”

The two
V
INYL
men leaned back in their chairs. Both Gabby and the security man leaned forward. Kera looked once at the security man to show him that she was
n’t
intimidated, then glared at Gabby.

“
I’d
advise you to do nothing further that undermines this investigation,” Gabby said. “And tha
t’s
just to keep you out of jail. If you want to restore your chances for a career, I suggest you make an effort to pull your weight around here. W
e’r
e looking for Bolívar. Either you help us or you do
n’t
.”

Kera stared at the spot on Gabb
y’s
neck where her jugular was most vulnerable. After a moment, she said, “Well, h
e’s
not in this room. If w
e’r
e done wasting our time, can I go?”

When no one challenged her, she rose and left.

As she hurried down the narrow hallway, she looked at her watch. It was 11:51
AM
. She did
n’t
have time to go back to the Control Room. She headed straight for the elevators.

SIXTY-ONE

Kera spotted the tail the moment she stepped off the elevator. He was seated at one of the small tables in the lobby of Starbucks, reading a magazine. As the elevator doors parted and she made her first hurried steps toward the revolving exit, the man took an involuntary look in her direction. It was sloppy work on his part, sloppy enough that at first she thought sh
e’d
simply caught the eye of an admirer. But then, once she was outside on the sidewalk and heading west, she glanced back through the lobby window to see that the man, who before had been comfortably leaning back in his chair, semi-engrossed in the periodical, was now on his feet. She kept her eyes on him long enough to let him know h
e’d
been made.

She turned up Broadway. Two blocks later she saw him again in the reflection of a storefront. It was
n’t
the camera-toting ONE goon who had followed her in the past. This man was something different and, considering the interrogation sh
e’d
just come from, she suspected Gabby had something to do with his presence. This was not good news. Until now, all of Haw
k’s
surveillance of her and Jones had been passive—watching them via cameras, scanning their e-mails, listening in on their phone calls. The only exception had been when the voice mail Parker had left for her had been deleted from her phone seconds after it appeared. Seeing this man on the street, Kera felt the same horrible premonition that sh
e’d
experienced then, but this time it was followed by the burst of gruesome images of Parke
r’s
body in that tub that seized her mind several times each day.

The man was about twenty yards behind her, wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses.
Dammit,
she thought. She used the urgency of the situation to steer her mind back into focus. She could draw him into an alley, where she would appear more vulnerable, to try to get a read on his intentions. But she did
n’t
have time for that. She walked two more blocks until she saw her best chance to lose him. A cab pulled over to discard a fare, allowing Kera to jump quickly into the backseat. Before the tail could even raise an arm to hail a cab of his own, Ker
a’s
driver beat a yellow light and slipped another block uptown. She told the cabby to go east to Park Avenue. When they were there, she told him to cross back across town on Fifty-Ninth Street. By the time they reached Columbus Circle, Kera was confident that sh
e’d
forced the tail to give up pursuit.

A few minutes after noon, she entered the southwest corner of Central Park. She was walking quickly, faster than she should have been. In the field it was best to avoid behavior that might attract attention. Speed walking at a near jog in her work clothes clearly challenged that principle. But it was too late to do anything about that. The chat with Gabby, followed by the evasive detour to lose the tail, had spoiled her plan to arrive early and do things by the book.

Under normal circumstances she should have waited to see where Travis Bradley would turn up next and then approached him on her own terms. Bradley was not a professional; he would be easy to find. But she and Jones needed what Bradley had, and they needed it today.

Kera slowed as she neared the rendezvous point and veered onto a path that wound its way over a small rise. From there she could get eyes on Bradley before she approached. He was seated on a park bench overlooking an empty softball diamond. A few large trees provided shade, but there were open sight lines in almost every direction. Bradley wore a baseball cap, large sunglasses, and an overcoat too warm for the weather. He looked like a man trying hard to disguise himself. He had nothing in his hands, but there was a black backpack under the bench by his feet. Kera watched a jogger run by and wished there were more people around. This was a relatively quiet, low-traffic pocket of the park.

She would have preferred to watch him from a distance for several more minutes, but by now she was nearly fifteen minutes late. She could
n’t
risk him bailing. After a quick 360-degree glance to make sure there was no sign of the tail, she retraced her steps down the rise and turned onto the path that would take her to Bradley. Ker
a’s
walking pace was casual now, just a midday stroll in the park to clear her mind. Every ten paces or so, she glanced up at him. She saw him check his watch and look around, away from her first and then toward her. Even though he was wearing sunglasses, she saw the moment he spotted her. He hesitated, registering her before looking forward again, and then he sat waiting for her to close the distance.

She kept walking, checking right and left. There was a woman in running shorts and a T-shirt a hundred meters up the path. Thirty meters to the left, two men stood on the grass playing fetch with a golden retriever. Beyond them another man wearing sunglasses and a Yankees cap strolled along a path, talking into a phone.

When Kera looked again at Bradley, she was no more than twenty paces away from him. He must have been sweating in that jacket. He had the collar pulled up around the back of his neck, as if that could render him invisible. It was then that his throat tore open. Even as she watched it happen, it seemed impossible. After a bizarre second, his head tipped forward, and his chin slumped against his chest where blood from the ragged hole in his neck had started to darken his shirt and jacket. Retroactively, she registered the soft whiz and a dull thump from somewhere nearby, where the bullet had lodged in the ground, finally halted by something more substantial than human flesh. The approaching jogger noticed the blood then too and screamed, drawing the attention of the other onlookers as she ran in the other direction. The two men on the grass looked up and paused, unsure how to react. Kera was too distracted to register the reaction of the fourth onlooker, the man who had been farthest away.

The window to do something would be open for only seconds. The first thing Kera felt was her mind retreating to that bathroom and Parke
r’s
mutilated body cradled in the tub. Whenever her mind went there, it shut down.
Not now,
she told herself. Sh
e’d
arrived too late to that bathroom to discover whatever Parker had wanted to show her. She could
n’t
let that happen again. In the unpredictable gray area between training and reflex, Ker
a’s
mind began to pair things quickly into simple decisions. Either the shooter knew she was here to meet Bradley or the shooter did
n’t
. Either there would be a second bullet intended for her or there would
n’t
. Either she had the slight advantage of countersurprise or she did
n’t
.

She turned sharply and ran a dozen steps away from Bradle
y’s
slumped body, mimicking the panicked flight of other pedestrians. And then, just as abruptly, she pivoted back and sprinted toward the bench. Bradle
y’s
clothes were dark with blood down to his lap, where his sunglasses had fallen. She could see his eyes. A naive glimmer—the very early beginnings of surprise—had been frozen into his retinas as they went dead. She reached for one of the backpac
k’s
straps and, without slowing down, swooped up the bag from beneath the bench.

With the pack in hand, she made two sharp zags that took her through the trees providing the nearest cover. Just as she cleared those, her mind processed two thoughts in quick succession. First, she identified the fourth onlooker, the man in the Yankees cap and dark shades. Second, she registered that he was jogging calmly but purposely, not away from Bradle
y’s
body, but toward it. He noticed her at almost the same instant, and at first proceeded forward. But then suddenly his head whipped back in her direction, and he stopped. Kera did not linger to see his next move, but she imagined that in the several seconds that passed before she looked back again to see him chasing after her, he had glanced at Bradle
y’s
park bench, seen that the backpack was missing, and then confirmed that it was in her hand.

Picturing her location, she sprinted toward a path that she judged to be the shortest distance out of the park. Looking back was costly, speed-wise, and she only permitted herself one strategic glance at her pursuer. The man was up to full speed and had closed the gap to within a few dozen feet. But she must have surprised him as much as h
e’d
surprised her. He did not appear to be armed. His only role had been to retrieve the backpack.

Breaking into a clearing, Kera had a direct shot to Central Park West, where a taxi was idling at a red light. But she could hear footsteps behind her now. She would
n’t
make the cab in time. Her eyes began to search the ground, low tree branches, and the arms of pedestrians for a makeshift weapon.

Instead, she spotted two NYPD officers on bicycles, pedaling full tilt into the park.

“He has a gun! H
e’s
the shooter!” she yelled at the cops, who braked obediently and drew their weapons on the man she was pointing at. She did
n’t
bother to hang around and give a statement. She was in a cab and rolling away from the curb before the cops even approached the man, who had been ordered to lie facedown with his hands on his head.