Chapter 49
The reception was billed as a small, finger-food and wine booze-up at a row house in Georgetown.
Its purpose was to welcome an Argentine writer whose book on seventeenth-century Dutch barn design in the New World was being published by Potomac.
As an assistant editor, Rae Claire had to be there, and since she was about to get married her groom had no choice in the matter.
She promised they would stay an hour max, then head off to a new Sri Lankan restaurant she’d heard about.
In the Uber, in traffic, they struggled to find something to discuss.
They settled on the wedding and who was coming and who wasn’t.
His mother and sister had been completely shut out of the planning and were miffed.
Her mother and sister were getting stiff-armed too, but they didn’t seem to care as much.
Rae Claire wasn’t close to either one and was unconcerned with their thoughts.
She was thirty-two, headstrong as always, and things would be done her way.
“Determined” was another word for it, in Stuart’s opinion, and another reason to hit the road as soon as possible.
Studying her phone, she said, “Looks like about forty-five guests, which is perfect, don’t you think?”
Stuart didn’t care one way or the other.
He didn’t want his friends at the wedding because he didn’t want a thousand questions six months later.
His current plans were to take the money, whatever they finally agreed on, and disappear into the Caribbean for as long as he could afford it.
He was done with spy work and souring on the life of a bureaucratic lawyer.
But then being a hostage volunteer didn’t promise much of a future either.
“Sounds good to me,” he said, as cheerfully as possible.
The car was a late-model Chevrolet Malibu sedan, with an air freshener that was too strong and reeked of pine.
The driver was a thirty-year-old Asian woman who had yet to say a word.
As she weaved through the narrow streets, she deftly pulled a cord.
From an aerosol can hidden under her seat, nitrous oxide vaped out in silence and quickly flooded the rear seat.
The driver suddenly jerked the wheel to the right and stopped in a driveway.
Rae Claire braced herself and said, “What are you doing?”
Stuart barked, “Hey, what’s going on?” Then both got a noseful of the gas. He yanked the door handle but the child locks were set. He hit the window and yelled. The driver walked away to the muffled sounds from the rear seat.
—
Rae Claire had assumed an attack was imminent, just part of the training, but she was still frightened and caught off guard by how easily they were knocked out.
She had read and studied the lengthy debriefs of Milly Stockman, Beth Snyder, and Chelsea Tanner, and was comforted by the knowledge that they survived unharmed.
Rae Claire awoke in blackness, with a thick hood tied tight over her head and her wrists bound in front. Her arms and shoulders ached from the strain of being tied up for so long. How long? She had no idea. The room was hot and her breathing was warm. She thought she might suffocate.
Just part of the training, she kept telling herself. She kept remembering the descriptions given by the first three brides, especially Chelsea Tanner, the most recent.
Across the hall, Nash awoke in pretty much the same condition. As his head cleared somewhat, he assumed he was back on The Farm, but listening hard he heard no roosters crowing, no tractors puttering. He drifted off again.
Time seemed to pass, though there was no way to really tell. Not a sound anywhere, just the heaving of his sour breaths.
Two women entered Rae Claire’s cell, and without a word untied her wrists and ankles.
She wanted to say something, to at least register her displeasure, but she knew they wouldn’t respond.
Bitching at them would serve no purpose.
One yanked the hood off and she exhaled mightily.
The darkness was thick but she managed to focus and see the two women, both wearing all black.
One placed a bowl of bread and fruit on a table next to a bottle of water. Just as Chelsea said.
Nash was half awake when two men entered his room. They did not remove the ankle and wrist cuffs, nor the hood, but instead jabbed him in the back of the neck with a needle, then waited until he was still again.
He was given no food and little water for seventy-two hours.
When the lights came on, and the drugs wore off, and he was free to move around, they led him down a hallway to a room where he sat at a metal table and waited for something.
Eventually a man in khakis from head to foot entered, took a seat, and smiled at him.
“How you doing?” he asked, a bit too chipper for the occasion.
“Never felt better.”
“It’s Monday night. You’ve just gone seventy-two hours with no food.”
“What’s the world’s record?”
“Well, Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights in the wilderness.”
“Yeah, I read that somewhere. What’s your name?”
“Doesn’t matter. Are you hungry?”
Stuart kept rubbing his wrists, which were numb. “No. Let’s go for seventy-three.”
Mr. Khaki smiled again. All fun and games.
He reached in a drawer, grabbed a small paper bag, and removed a thick sandwich, a banana, and a bottle of water.
Stuart had been in a cave with no concept of time and the hunger cravings had passed.
Or so he thought. One look at the sandwich, though, and his mouth watered in anticipation.
In two bites he could devour it, along with the banana, peel and all.
But he sat on his hands. “Ham or turkey?”
“Well, the file says turkey. Want something else?”
He could have eaten the paper bag. “You guys didn’t knock me around. Paul Tanner got punched hard before his video. Alan Stockman was slapped so hard his lips were bleeding when he made his first video. Jason Snyder had a swollen eye when he spoke to his momma. You going soft on me?”
“They got roughed up because they wouldn’t shut up. That, plus we really like you and want you to stay on the team.”
“I’m all in. When’s the next kidnapping?”
“Tell me about the gas in the car, the nitrous oxide. What was it like?”
“Pretty wonderful, actually. Can’t see or smell it. Hits fast and you’re gone, don’t even get the high of drifting away. Isn’t that what the girls said? You don’t realize it until it’s too late.”
“No hangover?”
“I’ve done hangovers. This was nothing. But what was the juice in the needles?”
“We tried several. Got a favorite?”
“It’s hard to keep ’em straight for some reason.”
“We don’t know what they’re using. Pretty sure about the nitrous oxide, given the testimonies from the victims. But beyond that we’re only guessing about the stronger stuff, probably a sedative like diazepam, a ramped-up Valium.”
“I think my mother sneaks that one.”
“It’s easy to find. Again, we’re just guessing.”
“Any more injections for me?”
“No, nothing planned. We’re quite pleased with your performance so far, Stuart. We think you’ll make an excellent hostage.”
“Just serving my country.” He reached over, took the banana, stripped off the peel, and had a small bite. “How’s my bride?”
“Great. She left yesterday, spent today at the office as if nothing happened.”
“Good. I kinda like her.”
“That’s nice to hear now that you’re about to marry her.” They shared a laugh as Nash finished the banana and picked up the sandwich.
“My name is Nyall Leblanc, career CIA, Rae Claire’s case officer. We’ll take you back to your apartment now, if you want, or you can stick around for a little session.”
“Why am I nervous?”
“No need for that. We need to talk about some dental work with two of our technicians.”
“My teeth are fine.” At that moment his teeth were working on the turkey and cheddar.
“It’ll take about an hour and will be completely pain-free. Finish eating and we’ll walk down the hall.”
“As you wish. I’m free for the evening, now that I’m awake.”
Down the hall was another small room where two technicians were waiting beside a table with some tools and other equipment.
The older one, in a lab coat, said his name was Dunbar.
After introductions and handshakes, Dunbar said, “We’re in charge of surveillance and monitoring, most of which is boring and irrelevant to your situation. ”
Freddie, in a white shirt and tie, was eager to speak.
“We’re operating with a lot of assumptions, the most important of which is that these guys are fairly sophisticated.
Once they have you in custody, and you’re properly medicated, they’ll inspect you from head to toe.
They’ll examine everything, down to your underwear, socks, and the soles of your shoes.
They’ll go even further and look for implants, something like this.
” He picked up a tiny flat device, slightly smaller than a dime.
“We can sew this into your skin somewhere, probably in your nether regions. It will emit a signal for about ninety hours before it dies. That may be long enough, maybe not.”
Stuart was thinking about his nether regions, but asked, “How strong is the signal?”
“Strong enough to track with a surveillance drone.”
Dunbar added, “And we have satellites that can catch a man farting in his basement.” He and Freddie laughed as though they had never used that line before.
Stuart deadpanned, “Why would you want to do that?”
The laughter stopped and Dunbar said, “If things go as planned, we’ll know exactly where you are when you and Russo are abducted.
You’ll be separated, of course. There will be several surveillance drones watching it all, and you’ll be followed closely.
However, there is a good chance the drones will lose you at some point as your buddies take you underground.
At that point, the drones will just hover and wait. ”
Freddie kept a fiendish grin on his face as if he couldn’t wait to play with his toys.
He picked up a device about the size of a television remote control.
“This is a little magic wand that can detect oscillating waves of electromagnetic signals. Assuming they’ll use one of these, it can probably detect one of these. ” He held up the dime.
“Even buried in my nether regions?”
“Anywhere.”
“Then what happens?”
“Bad things. The operation is blown. They’ll know you’re a plant, and they’ll probably shoot you on the spot.” He said this with a twinkle in his eye.
“Okay, I’ll veto that one,” Stuart said, pointing to the dime.
“We’re not going to use it.”
“Thanks.”
Dunbar said, “We have a better plan. Recognize this?”
“Looks sorta like a tooth.”
“Exactly. We’ll implant two of these. According to your dental records, you lost your wisdom teeth when you were twenty-seven, right?”
“Something like that. I tried to forget.”
“We’ll remove number fifteen, upper left side molar, and number eighteen, lower left side molar, and replace them with these perfect replicas.
Each one contains a tiny transmitter, sometimes called simply a bug, that, when activated, emits a microwave pulse signal strong enough to wake up the drones and alert the satellites. ”
“You’re taking my teeth?”
Freddie quipped, “Well, could be worse. We could ask for your testicles.”
They laughed some more and Stuart mumbled something about too many comedians.
Dunbar said, “Only two of them, and when you get back home we’ll remove the bugs and outfit you with state-of-the-art implants that’ll last forever. You won’t be able to tell the difference.”
Stuart stared at his new teeth and didn’t know what to say.
Freddie said, “We’ve used them before and they worked perfectly.”
There being no way to verify this, Stuart let it pass. “Okay, but what about that little magic wand there? If they do a full body scan, how do my new molars avoid detection?”
Dunbar said, “Great question.” He picked up the two teeth and touched them together.
“Number eighteen and number fifteen are activated only when you click them together, twice.” He took a step closer to Stuart, opened his mouth, and gave an exaggerated chomping of his molars.
“Like this. Twice to activate, twice to deactivate.”
Stuart instinctively mimicked the chomping.
“See, it’s easy. When they’re examining you, you’ll probably be in la-la land.
Out of it. So the bugs will not be activated and the scanner detects nothing.
Your new friends will not be suspicious.
When you wake up, click twice, and we pick up the signal.
Give it five minutes, count to three hundred, then deactivate to save power. ”
Freddie said, “There’s no way they can detect anything as long as your new teeth are deactivated.”
Stuart was overwhelmed. He had studied several training manuals and espionage handbooks and thought he had a working knowledge of electronic monitoring. But teeth?
He asked, “How long will the power last?”
Dunbar said, “Depends on how much clicking you do. Probably a month. Long enough for them to start moving you out of the country. Ideally, plenty of time for us to track you to your new destination.”
“Which, we assume, is where the other three are being held, right?”
“Correct.”
“Then what happens?”
The two technicians looked at Nyall Leblanc, who said, “That gets into the rescue operation, which is not our territory.”
Freddie quipped, “We’re just lowly dentists.”
Another round of laughter, though a nervous one.
Dunbar said, “We should do the dental work as soon as we can. You’ll need some time to grow accustomed to your new teeth.”
Freddie added, “And it’s best to start eating softer food and chewing on the right side.”
“Perfect.”