The Directive (19 page)

“I love you,” I said, standing beside the open car door.

Bloom pulled me in by my belt. “Come on, Romeo.”

She put her arm around my shoulder and smiled across the passenger seat at Annie. She gave her a little wave as she kissed me. Then we pulled away.

“THAT’S ANNIE, HUH?”
Bloom said, and wrinkled her nose. “Is she always like that? Seems like a drag.”

“Pull your men back,” I said.

She raised Lynch on the radio and confirmed the order. In the rearview, I saw the cars line up behind us as we pulled out of my neighborhood.

“Keep your enemies close,” I said, shaking my head.

“Something like that.”

“Who’s paying you?”

“This is my show, Mike. Give me a little credit.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Believe what you want.”

“So you’re the police
and
the thieves?” I said, and thought it through for a moment. “I guess it makes your investigations a lot easier. Bloom Security, always somehow able to penetrate the underground, to navigate the most corrupt nations on earth. And if you have any criminal competition, you just snitch them out, burnish your credentials with law enforcement at the same time.”

“I wish it were that easy. But you know how these things go. There are no bright lines on the ground. Sometimes we’re bad guys pretending to be good guys, sometimes we’re good guys pretending to be bad guys. Sometimes we do the necessary evils the good guys can’t. Half the time I don’t know what the fuck is going on. I just cash the check.”

“Don’t even try to sell this as some elaborate undercover job. You’re a criminal.”

“If you work in this field your whole life, you find that straight/criminal distinction less and less meaningful. I imagine you can relate. Let’s just say I’m a pragmatist. An opportunity seeker. A good American entrepreneur.”

“You forgot murderer.”

“No. As far as the Sacks business goes, I’m a general contractor with some quality assurance issues in one of my subs.”

“Was your billion-dollar inheritance not enough? You needed more?”

“It’s not about money, Mike. After the first ten million or so, it’s all the same hamburger. You just start to worry about how not to fuck up your kids with all the cash around.”

“Bloom senior clearly did a bang-up job.”

“My family’s been doing this sort of thing a long time. You have to get your hands dirty. We were losing our soul, turning into a handmaiden for a bunch of law firms and hedge funds.”

“A rich girl steals for thrills. What could be more obnoxious? You just like slumming?”

“I do, actually, and so do you. But the point was to buy back the company. I needed to revisit some revenue streams we’d turned away from. And sure, I get bored sometimes. What am I supposed to get excited about? Dining room tables? A new place in Mustique? Trying really, really hard to earn a pat on the head from the board, a bunch of old men who divvied up my family’s legacy and sold it off to the highest bidders? It’s just my nature. And it’s important work. You can’t have the white market without the black. There needs to be a go-between. That’s where we come in.”

“You seem so on the ball, and yet this is so fucking crazy.”

“So I’ve heard,” she said. “It’s the times. The government’s outsourced everything. Intelligence. Interrogations. It’s one of the downsides to privatizing security. You end up with a lot of grays.”

“You end up with paid enemies who do better the worse things get.” I watched the cars following us in the rearview. “All very interesting. You should write something up for the Outlook section after you dump my body.”

We were driving out near where the Beltway intersects 395, an agglomeration of recently built apartment complexes and office parks tangled between highway overpasses and cloverleafs.

“I like you, Mike. This isn’t a kidnapping.” We pulled into an underground garage. “It’s a corporate apartment, a pretty nice one. Think of it as an off-site meeting, some team building. We’re just going to do the job you agreed to do.”

The rest of the convoy trailed in and parked beside us. Lynch searched me thoroughly, taking extra care to poke me hard in my fresh stitches. We trooped over to the elevators.

It was a brand-new apartment tower. We took the elevator up to twelve and entered a beautiful open-floor-plan apartment that looked like a realtor’s model. The only thing I had going for me was that there was an espresso machine built into the cabinetry next to the fridge.

“Welcome,” Bloom said. “And since I believe you were just tossed out of your house, you can crash here until we head up to New York for the job.”

“The job? You’re unbelievable. You just shot me—”

“It didn’t even go in that far.”

“—you threatened my fiancée—”

“Ex-fiancée.”

“—and you nearly killed my brother.”

“Only because you tried to be sneaky with us, Mike. So those are all good reasons to cooperate this time. See how easy it can be.”

She walked over to a bowl on the granite counter, lifted an apple, and bit a chunk out of it.

“And who knows where this will lead?” she continued. “You’re a competent guy. I’m very impressed so far. You do dirty. You do clean. You’re fun to have around. So come work with us. You already have been, so what’s the big deal? We’re crooks, Mike. You can’t change your nature. Stop being tortured and have fun with it. I wish somebody had told me that fifteen years ago. It would have saved me a lot of time and pain.”

She offered me a bite.

“Very subtle,” I said.

“You’re angry. I get it. And this isn’t the Soviet Union. It’s your choice.”

“What’s the choice? What if I say no?”

She waved that notion away. “Let’s keep it positive. That’s the key to success. One day I asked myself, why should cops and robbers be going round and round in a zero-sum game? So much entrepreneurial spirit wasted. Let’s make it win-win. Grow the pie. And right here, Mike,” she said, pointing back and forth between us, “I see a lot of synergies. Let’s focus on those.”

That was the nicest way anyone has ever threatened to kill me. It was almost possible to forget that this was coercion at the point of a gun.

“I’m sorry about how this all worked out,” she went on. “I was hoping to bring you in without the unpleasantness. You should rest up. We’re heading to New York tonight or tomorrow morning. Then it’s Fed Day. So what do you say? This is in your blood, same as mine. So stop lying to yourself and just go with it. Are you in?”

“You don’t know a goddamned thing about me.”

“Don’t I? I know about what happened to your father, Mike. You know the thieves have more honor than the law. So why bother with their bullshit distinctions? Don’t try to pretend you’d be happy with fantasy football and rote sex twice a month. You need this, haven’t you realized? You try to live between the lines, you’ll die of boredom.”

Bloom was speaking out loud the thoughts that kept me up at night, staring at the ceiling of my American dream house, the thoughts that haunted me when I nodded over china patterns or picked out the gold ring I’d wear until I died.

The moves I had tried against Lynch and Bloom had left me with my life in shambles and a hole in my back. I had one out left. The only option was to play along. I could take them all down, but I would have to take myself down with them, and I would have to pull the heist first.

“I’m in,” I said.

“Excellent.”

“I’ll need help.”

“Jack will go in with you. He’ll be ready. It’s only fair he has some skin in the game.”

“There are some supplies. ID cards, a few other things. I need to get them from my guys before we head up to New York.”

“Tell me their names,” she said.

“A guy named Cartwright, and my father. I don’t think they’ll be ready until tonight.”

“Your father?”

“Nobody’s better with paper.”

“We’ll get them.”

“They can be a little jumpy. I can go—”

“Not a chance.”

“Then at least call first. I’ll give you the numbers.”

“Sure. You need anything else. Breakfast?”

“I’m not hungry,” I said. “But there is one thing. You know the crypto cards the feds use? I think they’re called Fortezzas.”

“Sure.”

“Can you get me one of those? It doesn’t have to work. It just has to look okay.”

“That’s no problem,” she said, and started for the door.

Bloom had set me up in the alley, back when she popped up to save me from Lynch. It was all so I would trust her, the Good Samaritan con, so she would be able to intercept me when I tried to go to the law. She had set me up at the Four Seasons. She must have known Annie would see us. And this morning, she had gone out of her way to break up my relationship with Annie beyond fixing. I’d like to think I’m just catnip for the ladies, but there was something more going on. Why salt the earth? So I would have no legit life to go back to?

“Tell me one thing,” I said. “Why me? You must have half a dozen crews who could pull off something like this. Why bring in an amateur? Why am I so goddamned special?”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Mike,” she said. “You’re the right man for the job. I told you. This is just business.”

She and her men left, then shut and locked the door.

I LEANED OUT
over the twelve-story drop, my hands gripping the rail behind me. It had seemed like a much better plan this afternoon. I stood on the edge of the terrace, outside the railing, like a kid too scared to plunge into the water after his friends. I turned, grabbed the vertical bars, and started to lower myself. Dangling from the bottom of the railing, my feet were still six inches from the railing below.

At least it was better than sitting trapped inside that apartment, feeling numb, unable to think about anything but the fact that Annie was gone for good.

The man in glasses was guarding my room, posted just outside the door. I had tried to stall by saying I needed gear and maps from my house for the heist. But they must have broken into my place the night before. Everything from my office was at the apartment complex, in file boxes in a room down the hall.

They seemed to control the whole floor. I had heard a tenant below me, watching basketball all afternoon. After dinner, once his apartment went quiet and I could see there were no lights on, I slipped out onto the terrace. It was recessed into the side of the building.

I didn’t want to escape, but I needed a few items before we headed up to New York, and now seemed to be my only chance.

I let go with my right hand and gripped the edge of the cement floor of my terrace. I brought my left hand down. I had my toes on the railing of the downstairs apartment terrace, but I was angled back, leaning out over the drop. A cold gust pulled me back.

The stretching tore at my stitches. My hands were slick with sweat, and the cement edge was slipping past my second knuckles. I let go with my left hand and began to teeter back toward the cement sidewalk a hundred and fifty feet below. I dragged my left hand on the underside of my terrace, uselessly, as I began to fall, and then against the brick wall on the side of the terrace below.

That gave me a small amount of the momentum I needed. I grasped again, found some purchase in the mortar, and pulled myself forward as I jumped onto the floor of the terrace under my own.

Sliding glass doors are easy. You install them by lifting them up and in, so you can get past them by lifting them up and out. If that doesn’t work, you gently apply a brick. But here on the eleventh floor, this guy hadn’t even bothered to lock his.

I went in. It was a classic DC workaholic setup. The furniture was rented. I could see the tall movers’ boxes full of hanging suits, and one bowl and one glass drying near the sink.

There was a desk in the corner, piled with papers. I scanned the apartment. The occupant was gone, for now. I picked up the phone and called my dad.

“Hey, Dad,” I said. “It’s Mike.”

“You okay? What the hell happened over at the house?”

“A little banged-up, but okay overall,” I said. “Can’t talk much now. Can I ask you for something?”

“Please. I’d hate to be the only Ford who hasn’t been sent to the hospital this week. You should have asked for help, Mike.”

“I’m not getting you sent back. I’ve got it under control.”

“Clearly.”

“I have to be quick. Some people may call you. They’ll ask for some gear for the break-in. It’s okay. Can you get the ID badges from Cartwright and give it to them? Bring it to me yourself if they let you?”

“Sure.”

“And could you sneak a couple other things in there, just in case? I’m worried they’re going to try to pull something on me after the job.”

“Tell me where you are, and we’ll get you out.”

“They have an army, Dad. And they’ll come after everyone. I have a plan. There’s no time. You just have to trust me. I want to go through with the job. It’s the only way out.”

We bickered for a while until he finally gave in. “Fine,” he said. “What do you need?”

“Picks. I broke mine. When you’re getting the package together, you don’t have to hide them. I’ll say they’re for the Fed. And I need a razor blade and a handcuff key, hidden in the same package with the picks. Nonmetal, if you can manage. You think you can keep them from finding it? They’ll probably search it.”

“I spent sixteen years inside, Mike. They won’t find a thing. You’re really going to do this?”

“I have no choice. They’ll kill Annie. They’ll get you. They can put a murder on me.”

“But you know too much now. They’re not just going to let you walk. It doesn’t make sense. Why would they send in someone who hates them, who is dying to get back at them, to get something they need?”

“They must have me covered. I’m going to take the fall, or they’ll kill me after.”

“What are you thinking?” he said.

“I’m going to pull the switch, beat them at their own game. They might be expecting it. I just have to hope my tricks are better than theirs.”

“Does Jack know?”

“I haven’t told him.”

“Will you?”

“He was conning me this whole time.”

“He’s not an evil guy,” my father said, pained. “But sometimes he might as well be.”

“Maybe he’s their insurance. He’ll watch me on the inside and sell me out if I try anything.”

“You think he’d go that far?”

“They nearly killed him,” I said. “That definitely wasn’t part of his con. So now he’s either scared to death and will do anything they want. Or he’s scared and angry, and will do anything to get back at them.”

“I can’t tell you what to do, Mike. You’re a good guy, and that’ll get you killed in this world.”

“I just wanted to believe I could get us all back together, bring Jack along, help him get himself sorted out. I wanted to believe he could change.”

“You can’t save him, Mike. He has to save himself. And you are your own man. If he stumbles, that doesn’t mean you will.”

“Thanks. I sneaked out to a phone. I’ve got to run, but I love you. Hopefully I’ll see you tonight.”

“You too.”