Final Crossing: A Novel of Suspense (30 page)

Is Anne hurt? Would Rudiger hurt her before he gets what he needs? Will he hurt her after?

Jonas jumped out of the shower, dried, and threw on his suit. It took him less than a minute to shave and he was ready to go. He still had nearly forty-five minutes before the meet time. He grabbed his BlackBerry to call the Senator.

The screen glared at him.

One missed call.

Jonas cursed. It must have been when he was in the shower.

No messages. He checked the call log.

Anne Deneuve

Jonas stared at the phone in his hand like it was an alien artifact. Is this real, he thought. Did Anne really call?

He immediately called back. He could feel bile creep up his throat when her voicemail greeted him.

“Anne, it’s me. Jesus, you just called.
Where are you?
I’m...I’m going out of my mind here. Listen, I’m meeting with—”

A thought stuck him. Was Anne with Rudiger? If she was, he was going to hear this message. He didn’t want to tell Rudiger too much.

“—well, never mind,” he said into the phone. “Just call me back immediately and let me know you’re okay.”

As soon as he hung up the phone rang again. In his haste to answer, Jonas almost hit the button to ignore the call.

Unknown number. Fuck!

“Hello.”

“Jonas, it’s David. We heard that call.”

“So you saw that Anne called?”

“We did. Her phone is off again. But we were able to track it within a city block.”

“
Where is she?
”

Jonas heard papers rattling in the background, but no other voices.

“Jonas,” Preiss said, his voice low and steady. “We think she’s in the hotel.”

Jonas felt the need to sit down. “So...so she’s okay? He doesn’t have her?”

“We don’t know, Jonas.”

“Has her room been searched?”

“Yes, she’s not there. Jonas, you need to come sooner. This hotel is going to be swarming soon, and it’s going to affect the Accords. There needs to be a change of venue.”

“Impossible,” Jonas breathed.

“Jonas, call the Senator and get everyone here immediately. It has to happen now. We don’t have any time to lose here, do you understand me?”

The reply was a reflex. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” The call disconnected. Jonas dialed the Senator.

He got voicemail. Jonas cursed, hung up, and dialed again.

Sidams answered on the fourth ring.

“What is it, son?” The Senator’s voice was gravelly with sleep but his tone was serious. Both men knew Jonas wouldn’t wake his boss for an unimportant matter.

Jonas gave him the highlights in less than a minute, as professionally as any solider ordered to provide a concise
sit rep
.

Sidams was silent for a long period.

“Give me fifteen, then come up to my room.” He hung up.

Jonas spent the next fifteen minutes sitting on the corner of his bed, feeling as useless as a dead man on a battlefield.

WHEN ROBERT
Sidams opened his door, he was as polished looking as if he’d had two hours to get ready. The lights were still dark in the room and Jonas knew the Senator’s wife, Patricia, was probably still sleeping.

Sidams stepped into the corridor and closed the door behind him.

“What did you tell her?” Jonas asked.

“She didn’t even hear me get up. If she wakes up before

I get back, she’ll call me.”

Good, Jonas thought. No need to worry her prematurely. Sidams walked toward the elevator and Jonas followed. “Morning, Brian.” Sidams nodded to the security agent in the blue blazer standing next to the elevator. “Good morning, Senator. Early for you, isn’t it?”

Sidams nodded and smiled. “That’s an understatement.”

“Need a detail?” Brian raised his radio.

Sidams put a hand up. “I’m meeting with a bunch of Feds in the hotel. I don’t think I need a security detail.”

“Hope everything goes well today,” Brian said. “Me too, son. Me too.”

Jonas and Sidams stepped into the elevator, and Jonas marveled at his boss’s coolness.

“Did you get a hold of the Ambassador?” Jonas asked. “No need,” Sidams said.

Jonas looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean let’s see what our friends want to tell us before we start getting everyone in the world involved with this.” Sidams checked the cuffs on his shirt, pulling them down a fraction more.

“Preiss was pretty insistent.”

“Well, Jonas, I can’t say I know who David Preiss is, but he sure as hell knows who I am. That makes me the one calling the shots here. So until he earns my trust and confidence, I’m not in the mood to start taking orders.” He looked at his watch. “Christ on a Ferris wheel, it barely past six o’clock.”

“You don’t seemed concerned.” Sidams shrugged.

“You don’t think this is a real threat?” Jonas asked. “Might be. Might not be. Don’t have enough information to tell. Until I do, no real use fretting about it, is there?” The elevator slowed as it reached the fourth floor. “I agree,” Jonas said. “But I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t worried sick about Anne.”

Sidams looked over at him and his face softened for the first time during the conversation. “I know you are, son.

Let’s just talk to these boys and see what they want us to do.”

He didn’t say
Anne will be fine
. The Senator didn’t like making promises he couldn’t keep.

The elevator doors opened and the men took a left toward room 407. Thick corridor carpet muffled their footsteps, and the faint smell of room-service leftovers wafted from a collection of trays left outside of guest room doors. Copies of
USA Today
papers lay like doormats in front of nearly every door.

The two men walked nearly the length of the entire corridor before reaching their destination.

There was no paper in front of 407.

Jonas could hear the sound of the television bleeding through the door. A news program. What he didn’t hear was a team of FBI agents discussing an action plan.

The Senator cleared his throat and knocked on the door. “Hope this is fast,” he muttered. “I’ve got enough horseshit to do today.”

Jonas took a step back from the door and looked at the rooms to the left and the right. They were spaced evenly apart, as were the ones directly behind him on the other side of the corridor. If 407 was a suite, it certainly didn’t seem any wider than any of the other rooms. Unless all the rooms on this floor were suites.

Something wasn’t right.

The Senator checked his watch again. Jonas heard footsteps inside.

“Senator...” Jonas started, not knowing what his next words should be.

The pinpoint of light in the security eye disappeared as the person inside looked through it.

It was wrong, Jonas thought. All wrong. There was no team of FBI agents in there.

The lock on the door slid open.

The Senator turned to Jonas, a tired look on his face. “Hmm?”

There was no time to react. The door opened wide and on the other side stood Rudiger, holding a 9MM handgun in his right hand and a Taser in his left.

Both were pointed at Senator Sidams.

“YOU HAVE
three seconds to move into the room.” Rudiger took a step back and held the door open with his foot. “You first, Senator.”

Jonas felt his stance reflexively shift to a defensive one as the Senator remained motionless.

“Don’t, Lieutenant,” Rudiger said, training the gun on him. To Sidams: “Now, Senator.”

Sidams walked into the room, his steps small. Jonas followed, and Rudiger’s gun remained pointed at Jonas’s head. Rudiger stepped away as Jonas entered the room, giving more space between the men.

In the room Rudiger ordered them to sit next to each other on the bed with their hands on their knees.

“Where’s the Ambassador?” Rudiger said.

Jonas listened to the voice. It was lower than the one on the phone, but he could sense the familiarity. Same drawl. “It was you,” Jonas said. “There is no David Preiss.”

“There is a David Preiss. You jes weren’t talking to him. I asked a question. Where’s the Ambassador?”

“I didn’t call him.” It was the first time Sidams spoke. “And I’m goddamn glad I didn’t. What the hell do you think you’re doing, anyway?”

Rudiger’s face was a blank canvas as he stood silently, pointing the weapons with both hands. Jonas studied the man and tried to reconcile him with the person he remembered. He was older than the young soldier in Somalia, but that was a given. He was more than just older. His face showed the lines of a lifetime—not wrinkles, but deep creases of someone who spent his life never looking in the mirror. His hair was shaved to a blonde fuzz that sloped in a V down the top of his forehead. Except for the shark-grey scar running down the left side of his head, the man’s skin was the color of milk. Rudiger wore a tight grey t-shirt over dark grey suit pants, and his physique was even more impressive than what Jonas remembered. The muscles in his arms could have been sculpted by an artist.

Rudiger was completely motionless, the weapons raised at eye level.

“We need to get him,” Rudiger finally said. “I specifically told you to bring him.”

Jonas noticed Rudiger struggled with eye contact. “Where’s Anne?” Jonas asked, keeping his voice as calm as possible.

Rudiger pulled a cell phone from his front pocket and handed it to Jonas. There was a picture on the screen.

Anne.

All he could see was her face, lit up in green, like a nighttime video shot with an infrared camera. The camera was close to her face, and her eyes dated back and forth, but her head barely moved. Her pupils were dilated, so Jonas knew she must be in the dark. She looked desperate. Panicked.

Rudiger pulled the phone away.

“You see, Lieutenant. She’s running out of air.”

“I swear to God I’ll kill you.”

“Maybe you jes will, sir. Maybe you jes will.” He turned to the Senator. “Call Stages.”

The Senator asked blandly, “And if I won’t?”

“Then she dies. Don’t believe me?”

Sidams nodded. “I believe you.”

Jonas looked at his boss. He wanted to tell him not to make the call, but he couldn’t.

Sidams picked up his phone. Before he could dial, Rudiger spoke.

“If you call anyone else, I’ll shoot both of you. Then she dies.”

No you won’t, Jonas thought, soaking Rudiger’s image into his mind. You need us, and you need Stages. You can’t just kill us in this hotel room—that would be meaningless to you. You need us for your special event.

Sidams dialed and spoke in a normal voice into the phone. “Bill, yeah, it’s Robert. Listen, I know it’s early, but I need you to come to room 407 in the next ten minutes. It’s important.” He listened as Stages asked something. “I’ll explain when you get here. And...sorry.” Rudiger raised the gun a fraction of an inch. “Sorry...um...for waking you.”

He disconnected the call. “He’s on his way.”

“If he brings anyone else, the other person will have to be killed.” Rudiger made the pronouncement as more of statement of fact rather than threat. “I just need the three of you. Anyone else will be left in this room.”

Sidams looked down at his hands. “What do you want?” Jonas marveled at how calm the Senator’s words were. “Want you to listen to me and stop asking questions.”

“But now we have ten extra minutes you hadn’t planned on. Seems like a good time for you to tell us what you intend to do.”

“Unnecessary. You’ll either do what I ask or people will die.”

“Not much for conversation, are you?”

Jonas thought of something. He turned to the Senator. “Some people think Rudiger here has Asperger’s Syndrome. It’s a form of autism. People who have it are usually...socially awkward.”

Rudiger lowered his weapons and checked his watch. “Doesn’t matter what you think my psychological condition is, neither.”

Jonas continued. “Some people think Dahmer had Asperger’s. That guy thought he was doing some kind of important work, but at the end of the day all he did was cook up some skulls for dinner.”

Sidams gave Jonas a look Jonas knew well.
What are you doing?

Jonas gave his boss the slightest of nods, telling him to go with it.

He looked up at Rudiger. “You think you’re doing God’s work, Rudy? Is that it?”

“You have no idea what God’s work is.”

“When you killed that family in the Mog, that was God’s work, too?” Jonas stiffened his spine and leaned forward on the bed. “When you cut that baby’s head off, God told you to do that?”

“That,” Rudiger said in a hollow voice, “was a test.”

“A test? Is that what that was? Biting that little girl’s ear off—that was a test, too? Because it sure as shit just makes me think you’re crazy.”