The Vulture Page 8

  “That is the fu…sorry, Ike. That is the absolute last place on this earth I would go to right now. Surely you haven’t forgotten last May?”

  “No, I have not. Will they know about that? They might. They seem to know everything else about your movements so far. But will they know that you might be concerned enough about that scuffle to stay away? I mean why would you make a connection like that? I don’t think they will guess you are still discommoded about what happened up there.”

  “Did you just say, ‘discommoded,’ Charlie? Jesus, my old Granny used to say things like that. ‘Discommoded and kerfuffled.’ Would I not be kerfuffled, too? But you’re right. They probably won’t. They would have to be deep inside my head to figure that out. So, okay, then what?”

  “Then, this is how we will play it. We will assume they believe that you are headed there. They may have second thoughts and think it’s a trick because it is the obvious place for you to go, but they dare not chance it. They will send people to check. We will be there first, waiting. In the meantime, they will have to deploy more people to track you en route, if for no other reason than to be certain it isn’t a ruse. The more people they put in the field, the more chatter they will create and the easier it gets to trace the line back to the source.”

  “This sounds way too complicated to me.”

  “It is. That’s the beauty of it. So, that’s that. What do you need, Ike?”

  “Okay. First we will need to be disguised a bit when we travel. Ruth, which would you like to be, a redhead or a blonde?”

  “You’re kidding. How do we do this? Are there CIA cosmetologists and hair stylists on tap, Charlie?”

  “Well, now that you mention it, there are, but I think Ike is thinking wigs and appropriate clothing.”

  “I am. A gray ponytail for me and something nice in red or gold for you. Then, Charlie, I guess you already have or can acquire a safe house somewhere in that tower’s broadcast area.”

  “I can.”

  “Wait.” Ruth stood and leaned over Ike. “You’re forgetting something. What about the rest of the family?”

  “What?”

  “Listen, the attempt to blow me into tiny bits means the game isn’t just about you, right? So what about my mother? What about Darla? She is part of the equation, now, too.”

  “Oh.”

  “Not to interrupt this tête á tête, but what are you talking about and who is Darla?”

  “I’m saying the people who seem intent on killing me off may not be satisfied with just the two of us. Doesn’t it stand to reason that anyone with that much anger would not stop at the two of us? Wouldn’t he or she or they also want to hurt the rest of my…our family, my mother, and Darla Smut? She is our ward, a reclamation project, if you will, but still family.”

  “Oh, right. I’d forgotten. We will scoop them up and whisk them away to someplace safe for the duration of this program. Where would they be most comfortable?”

  “You’re kidding. Comfortable? How is that possible under the circumstances?”

  “Okay, ignore the last part. Where do you think they’d be least inconvenienced?”

  “Chicago. My mother loves that city. Darla would see it as a great adventure.”

  “That, I doubt, but there is nothing for it. So okay, Charlie fix that up,” Ike said. “Also, returning to the main plan, get both of us North Carolina driver’s licenses, a rental car out of Lewiston, and a smallish plane. I will fly us out. It will take a couple of days. In the air or in some hotel near an FBO nobody will find us. If anyone asks, we’ll be a couple of misguided realtors from Raleigh looking for investment property in Idaho. Once we’re established in the safe house, you can send Sam to us with all her stuff. She can work as well out there as back here, and it will give us an extra gun, if we need it.”

  “Gun? Oh, no you don’t, buster. I told you before, I am not playing Violette Szabo for you or anyone else ever again. I have seen enough mayhem to last a lifetime.”

  “It won’t come to that, but if I have to leave, it would make me feel better if Sam was there. She has fewer scruples when it comes to pulling a trigger.”

  “We might set up another place close by with some of our people, too. A business, I think, would work. Real estate brokers? What do you think?” Charlie said. “So, okay, you need licenses, a plane, and a house. Give me a few hours. You can be on your way tomorrow.”

  “And appropriately awful clothes.”

  “That too. Short or long?”

  “Short or long what?”

  “Wigs. You want a short hair style or longish? Red or blond?’

  “Surprise me.”

  ***

  The following morning, the Picketsville Sheriff’s Office released a statement on behalf of the family of the late Ike Schwartz:

  Mrs. Harris-Schwartz expresses her thanks to the community for all their prayers and letters. There will be a memorial service a week from Friday to be held at the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Episcopal Church in Picketsville. Prior to the service Mrs. Harris-Schwartz will be traveling for a few days and has requested that they respect her need for privacy at this trying time.

  At about the same time and a hundred miles south and east, a King Air 400 piloted by a Mr. Marvin Gottlieb with his wife, June, sitting right seat, took off from a small airstrip outside Raleigh, North Carolina. They had filed a flight plan which would take them west to Idaho by way of New Orleans, El Paso, and Phoenix. Subsequent plans, filed along the route supported the original. In the meantime a woman answering the general description of Ruth Harris-Schwartz traveled north on her way, it seemed, to Maine. In three days she, and two other women, thought to be her cousins or close friends, alit on the scree at Scone Island and took up residence in her cottage. One or two of the island’s permanent residents did not look too happy to hear that. There had been some talk back in the spring about a terrible helicopter accident on the island and its aftermath and some speculation that she and the man she had travelled to the island with were somehow involved in it. That’s how rumors get started. Coincidentally, a group of businessmen from Manhattan rented the old Staley Place for a retreat, although how anyone would find that old wreck of a house a place to get any work done was a mystery, for sure.

  ***

  Except for a brief foray to Scottsdale Fashion Square to buy more clothes, Ike and Ruth stayed in motels close to the stopovers when they put down for the night. Charlie had no concept of size and style. Ike had said awful. He’d complied. Three and a half days later, and enduring a very long leg from Scottsdale Airpark to Lewiston-Pierce Nez Airport, they put down and secured their rental car and disappeared. The clerk at the rental car counter told her friends that she didn’t see how the marriage would ever make it.

  “The man was, like all gray and old and, you know, like, grizzly and the woman was, like, this bleach blonde type, only red-haired.”

  “Trophy wife?” her friend asked.

  “Prolly. Those ole geezers are, like, dirty old men. I hate ’em.”

  “Yeah, Doris, but I bet if one of them rich dudes offered you a house in the mountains and a diamond ring or two, you’d hop out of your panties in about a nanosecond.”

  How can you even think such a thing? I am in, like, a permanent relationship and you know it.”

  “Benny Stazic is a loser and the sooner you wake up to that the better. You ain’t getting any younger, kid, and he ain’t gonna take you nowhere but downhill. Hey, the old clock is ticking away. Tick tock, tick tock…”

  “What do you know about Benny? You’re just jealous because that check runner with the Beech Bonanza dumped you for Betsy Figs.”

  “He never. Besides, Figarelli is butch. And another thing, hotshot, did you know that your you’ll-never-see-a-ring-from-me boyfriend is bonking Franny Nyquist?”

  “Shut up, you’re—”

&nbs
p; Except for a brief mention on the Lewiston police blotter reporting a domestic disturbance at the Stazic residence, it is unclear how the ongoing affairs of Franny, Benny, Doris, and her friend concluded but the guessing was, not well.

  ***

  Sam knocked on the office doorjamb. “Frank, you asked if calls could be retrieved weeks after they’re made and I told you in some special cases they might.”

  “You found a call made that night?”

  “Not exactly. The transmission had been erased but I found a transcript of one from a burn phone that utilized a local tower at the right time. It could be our guy. Unfortunately, we can’t identify the recipient or run a voice recognition scan.”

  “What’s it say?”

  Sam shoved a slip of paper across the desk. “You can read it yourself.”

  Voice 1: It’s done.

  Voice 2: Like we agreed? Schwartz and the mansion?

  V 1: (pause) Right, like we agreed. I need a payday.

  V 2: I can move the money tomorrow.

  V 1: Not what we agreed. Tonight.

  V 2: It’s late and the banks don’t open ’til…

  V 1: Cut the crap. You don’t need the banks to open and you know it. You have my bank number, move the money.

  V 2: If I don’t?

  V 1: I just blew a cop to kingdom come. You think a big-shot business man wouldn’t be easy?

  V 2: Okay, I’ll move it. Get off the line.

  Both hang up.

  “Well, I guess that’s something, but not much. The phones?”

  “Like I said a burn phone to the tower in Idaho. The first phone dialed a Bank in the Caymans right after that, an account ID and a password. I guess he was checking to see if the money was delivered.”

  “We already knew it was a hit and who did it. Damned shame we can’t identify the second voice.”

  “Yeah. Maybe the FBI can retrieve the cash or the account it came from.”

  ***

  Ruth and Ike settled into their cabin late that night. Charlie’s people had thoughtfully provided a meal and enough supplies to last a week. Ruth unpacked and headed for the bathroom.

  “I need a soak, Marvin.”

  “Enjoy. Have I told you how sexy you look as a redhead?”

  “Like, every three hours for the last three days. What is it with men and their wives in wigs? You know what I think? I think it makes men feel like they’re cheating with another woman, but without the guilt.”

  “You are uncannily perceptive for a redhead. I will certainly recommend the practice to those whose marriages are flagging in that department. And come clean, don’t you feel a little kinky too? You change your looks, and you can be someone different for a while.”

  “June Gottlieb, heiress to the Gottlieb Beer Pong fortune. Whoopee, and speaking of changed appearances, you look like a gone-to-seed Semitic Jesse Stone. Who’d want that in her bed?”

  “Point taken. Speaking of Chief Stone, doesn’t Tom Selleck have a ranch out here somewhere?”

  “Is he a Republican?”

  “No idea, why?”

  “If he’s a Republican, his ranch is in Idaho. If he’s a Democrat, it will be in Nevada.”

  “And if he’s an Independent?”

  “Maine, obviously.”

  “Obviously? Oh, because that is where your cottage is. So, what about someone of my political persuasion?”

  “I’m guessing Antarctica.”

  “I’m hurt.”

  “I calls ’em like I sees ’em.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Karl called Charlie with his personal iPhone. It wouldn’t do to have his superiors know he was in communication with the CIA off the record and without authorization. Interagency cooperation is a concept that plays better at the top and in theory than in practice. What the FBI had uncovered about the radio repeater tower in Idaho, he said, was good news and bad news.

  “Give me the good news first,” Charlie said.

  “The good news, if you can really call it that, is that the broadcast from the tower is generally directional. That is, it is beamed in a north by northwest direction and it only has any real strength for thirty miles or so. That could limit the search for the people we want somewhat.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “There are two parts to that. First, all of the signals it transmits are encrypted or scrambled. My people say it is at a very sophisticated level. Second, it does not send a single signal. It seems that there may be as many as a dozen subscribers to the service on as many frequencies.”

  “Wait a minute. What do you mean subscribers?”

  “The tower is owned and operated by a company registered as Dexiplex, Inc. We are trying to establish its corporate profile now, but the wonks in that department say they’re being stonewalled for some reason. We do know it is a subsidiary of a larger media group. We haven’t been able to uncover who. Dexiplex owns and operates several of these towers around the country in areas where a market has been created by folks who are paranoid and/or fear the intrusive practices of the NSA, which they are convinced are ongoing. Probably with some justification, if the news reports are right. And then, some of them are people who believe that the telephone equivalent of paparazzi are tapping into their private phone conversations or soon will be tapping. Since the Murdoch dust-up in Great Britain, that possibility seems increasingly real to them. That being the case, it’s a fair assumption that at least one or two of the end users of the service are celebrities, movie stars of one sort or another, and their wannabes. Anyway, they have their calls routed through the tower and rendered undecipherable. They pay a pile for the privilege. The tower then sends the encoded message and the person buying the service receives a device that unscrambles it and is specific for his line only.”

  “That’s interesting. Am I to assume that the encoding works in the reverse? If the owners of the system wanted to, they could be privy to all the calls. Is that right? When they purchase the service, they must have a high level of trust in the company.”

  “I suppose so, yeah.”

  “Hmmm…Okay, then if we want to find the one recipient of the calls we are sure were made to the person responsible for the two bombings, we will have to sort through…how many channels?”

  “Hard to say for sure. If there are weekenders who only use the service occasionally, we wouldn’t have picked them up yet, but on this tower I’m thinking fifteen or maybe twenty.”

  “That creates a problem on top of a problem. Okay, I hate to do this to you, Karl, but you’re going to have to move up Sam’s trip to Idaho. She can tap into some of the NSA programs that, as we all know, don’t exist, and start breaking into those encrypted messages.”

  “Understood.”

  Charlie hung up and stared out the window which had been washed for a change. He could see the license plates on the bumpers of the cars parked in his section of the parking lot. That is if he looked up. Basement offices did not offer much in the way of aesthetics. On the other hand, no one coveted his office and he knew he’d keep it and all the odds and ends he’d accumulated over two decades. He thought a moment and then called Ike.

  “Marvin Gottlieb, hello.”

  “Marvin,” Charlie said. “How are you and June settling in? Not too much mountain air for you, I hope. Listen, you know that bit of real estate we talked about out there?”

  “Good to hear from you too, Chuck. Are you speaking of the ranch house itself or the structure that may be connected to it?”

  “Very good, you haven’t lost your touch, Marv. The latter. Renovating it will be a tiny bit more complicated than we thought at first. I was wondering if we should send Sammy out to help with the deal. She knows more about the particular construction than any of us and also has access to the assets needed to untangle it.”

  “You think?
Did you check with the spouse? Everybody okay with this?”

  “Absolutely. Sammy’ll be on the next plane. Say hello to June for me. I’m sending you an e-mail.”

  Charlie hung up. “He called me Chuck. Nobody calls me Chuck.”

  ***

  New Star Ranch spread across four hundred acres of pricy Idaho landscape. The entrance to it, as with nearly every other ranch in the West, seemed innocuous enough—two upright eight-by-ten-inch creosoted beams with a one-by-two-by-fifteen-foot crossbeam spanning the distance between them set at the Department of Transportation-recommended sixteen feet of vertical clearance. The word NEW and a large star had been burned into the crossbeam. They were the only indicators of what or who might lie beyond. Unseen but very much a part of the gateway was an array of surveillance equipment which would be triggered when the simple plank-and-truss gate opened. A car stop consisting of tire-puncturing spikes and hidden in the parallel pipes of a cattle guard could be deployed if the person or persons attempting to enter were deemed by the owner or his agent to be presenting threat. A quarter mile beyond the gate a copse of eucalyptus hid a large ranch house and a plethora of outbuildings. Persons seeking to enter this area by any means other than the driveway would find themselves confronted by at least two armed men with questions. The ranch owner was particular about who visited it.

  Among the trees a second array of antennae fed a sophisticated communications room to one of the outbuildings. It enabled the ranch’s residents to reach nearly any location in the world. Martin Pangborn did not like to be left in the dark on matters he felt to be important. Most, but not all, of the incoming signals were scrambled or encrypted in some way. He felt certain that the federal government was monitoring him. In a way, he was correct. Anyone with the connections he had with certain political and television figures would raise a few eyebrows in the Office of Homeland Security. So far, they had not done anything beyond placing his name on a watch list. The political connections were sufficiently important to maintain a “look but don’t touch” stance. A change in the Administration could alter that, but for the moment, he was off-limits.