Chapter 59
Chapter 59
T he words exited my mouth, and the memory returned. We were in Spain. I was still green. Finding my way. Only a few names inked on my back. And I carried the pain of Marie daily. She was ever with me.
We were staring through binoculars from a twenty-story balcony at another balcony two stories below just across the street. A man and his wife sipping coffee. Reading the paper. Their feet were touching. They were playful. A couple of kids wearing footie pajamas played with a train set just inside the glass door. Oddly, the kids were held within a ten-by-ten net. A square prison. Something they couldn’t get out of.
Bones got a call, said, “Yes, sir,” then said it again, followed by, “I understand.” He hung up and said, “Let’s go.”
We descended the elevator, crossed under the street using the parking tunnels, rode the elevator up, and exited at the eighteenth floor. Bones was quiet. Troubled. Normally, he’d tell me the plan before it was time to execute it. This time, he said nothing. The closer we got to the door, the more defined the wrinkle between his eyes. Standing outside the door, Bones shook his head, said, “Nope. Not doing it,” and then picked the lock of the empty apartment next door to the happy couple. We wound our way to the balcony, and Bones snaked a camera around the corner. Focusing the image, we watched as the happy couple entered back into the apartment and started fixing pancakes. The kids had spread syrup and powdered sugar everywhere.
Bones studied the video for almost five minutes. Just watching. Then without explanation, he looked at me and said, “Some orders you don’t follow.” Then he held up a finger, which was shaking in anger. “No matter what.”
Twelve minutes after we’d left our balcony perch across the street, Bones dialed the number from his last call. The voice on the other end answered and Bones simply said, “Target extracted. En route to rendezvous.”
The voice said, “Check,” and hung up.
Bones pointed at the elevator. “In about ninety seconds, bad men are going to exit that elevator and enter next door. I’m not quite sure what they want, but they wanted us to do their dirty work.”
Seventy-eight seconds later, I discovered he was right. Three men exited the elevator and approached the door. Bones met them in the hall. One guy got tough; Bones let him know he wasn’t. The other two were turned back toward the elevator when I met the first one with a fire extinguisher in the face. The third put his hands up and began backpedaling.
Interrogation a few hours later uncovered what Bones had suspected. Someone had electronically copied one of his contacts in government and used that voice to communicate to Bones that our loving couple had kidnapped the two kids and were putting on a ruse. The net was confirmation.
In fact, our happy couple was actually a happy couple. One of their kids was on the spectrum and had a tendency to run around a bit. Oh, and the net was, in fact, an indoor batting cage.
With the three goons singing like canaries, we arrested the voice a week later—in California. A billionaire investor who owned businesses around the globe, including some very fast cars. The husband of our happy couple happened to be an engineer for a Formula 1 team and had developed an algorithm that somehow improved the performance of the car. The voice owned a rival team.
Bones and I spent the evening on the balcony back across the street. As the couple returned to their porch, wineglasses having replaced coffee mugs, kids watching a movie on the couch inside, Bones sat quietly a long time. When the sun fell behind the other end of the earth, Bones sipped an old Spanish red and then sat up, placing his elbows on his knees, swirling the wine, watching as the legs formed. “I can’t train you this. Either you have it or you don’t.”
“What’s that?”
“Which orders to obey and which... not to.”
“How will I know?”
He tapped the side of his head. “You won’t always.” Then he poked himself in the gut. “You have to know.”
“That’s not much help.”
He touched his heart. “There is a voice inside each of us that knows what is true and what is not. You have to learn to listen to it.”
“What if it’s not speaking?”
“It’s always speaking. The question is whether we’re listening.”
“What if I can’t hear it?”
He stood, stared down, then out, then at me. “You will. It’s out there, out beyond the noise. But don’t expect it to rattle you and demand your attention. It won’t. Won’t shout over competing voices. Won’t make a power play to be heard. The truth is a whisper. Usually spoken amid storms. And that whisper lies at the heart of what we do and who we are. It’s the plumb line. If we ever lose it, we would do well to find another line of work.”
“What if stuff is coming at me fast and I don’t have time?”
He shook his head. “No excuses. What we do is life and death. We have to hear. Have to know. Every time.”
“But that’s impossible.”
The memory of Bones’s face lingered. I could still see it. And I could hear his echo. “So is what we do.”