that belonged to you. I don’t know, in a basement or something. Said he wanted to get them back to you.”

New flavor: acid. The next mouthful almost made him gag. He kept his Navy Cross and Distinguished Service Medal in their original cases, hidden in a hole he’d dug under his tent. He fought the urge to bolt from his barstool and tear for the door.

“Now that I see you, though, that might be bullshit,” said Denim. “He must be twenty years older than you. I have a hard time seeing you two serving in the same unit. You might want to be careful.”

Harvey eyed the denim guy carefully, then shrugged it off. He wanted this conversation to end.

“I think we all need to be careful,” Chris said, absently wiping the bar top even though it didn’t need it. “That stuff at Resurrection House the other day. I don’t like stuff like that happening around here. If little kids aren’t safe, then nobody’s safe, know what I mean?” He shook his head sadly, and then seemed to realize he was bringing the mood down, so he became a little too cheerful. “So, where are y’all from?”

Harvey’s gut jumped again. He’d assumed that Denim was a regular.

“I’m from everywhere,” Denim said. “I’m willing to hang my hat wherever I can find work.”

“Oh yeah?” Chris said, clearly intrigued by the prospect. “What kind of work do you do?”

Denim shrugged. “None, right now. I’m sort of looking around.”

Was Harvey imagining things, or was this guy glaring at him as he spoke? One of the problems with being a diagnosed paranoid is that you never know when the paranoia is justified.

“For what?” Chris pressed. “What’s your specialty?”

“I was in the weapons business for a long time,” Denim said. “But this new outbreak of peace is killing me.”

Chris laughed, but Harvey’s hand started to shake. Weapons business. New in town. Happened to be here right at this moment. Coincidence or strategy?

“And you, Harvey?” Chris asked. “Where do you come from? What do you do?”

He knew the kid was just trying to be friendly, but Harvey wanted to shove a wad of napkins in his mouth. He should have prepared an answer for this. “I used to work for a charter fishing company,” he lied. “I got laid off, though.”

Chris looked concerned. “Which one? I didn’t know charters were laying off.”

“In Georgia,” Harvey clarified. He had no idea why he’d just said that. He’d never even been to Georgia. “Out of Savannah.” Please, God, let Savannah be on the coast.

“Well, that’s a great line to be in around here if you’re any good at it,” Chris said. “Where are you staying?”

Jesus Christ, did he not have an off switch? “With friends.”

The kid’s smile brightened even more. “Anybody I know?”

Harvey opened his mouth to say something, but no words formed. His library of lies had just checked out its last edition. He found himself staring.

“Give the guy a break,” Denim said. “He just found out that a stranger is looking for him, and you keep leaning on him for information. Would you want to be answering your questions if you were him?”

A lightbulb went on over Chris’s head. Almost literally. “Oh, jeeze, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push too hard. I was just-”

Harvey waved him off. “Don’t worry about it,” he said.

“Sure looked spooked, though,” Denim said. He toasted him with what looked to be a pint of Coca-Cola.

Harvey forced a smile, and tried to devise an exit strategy. Denim worried him. Assuming he was a bad guy, Harvey would be foolish to leave a public place. The guy would only have to follow him, wait for the right moment, and then do whatever he came to do. On the other hand, waiting would guarantee a meeting with the big Bostonian.

Even if Harvey did leave, where would he go? He wasn’t the most selfless guy in the world, but there’s no way he could lead killers back to the mansion.

When you’ve got no good options, all you can do is hope to choose the least shitty one. In this case, it meant finishing his Harp and getting out of here. He waited a couple of minutes after he drained the pint to ask for the check. While Chris rang the order, Denim defused everything by dismissing himself from his stool and heading to the men’s room.

“I hope our friend isn’t stepping out on his bill,” Harvey quipped as he slipped a twenty into the little plastic folder embossed with yet another set of ass-kissing fish.

Chris smiled and shook his head. “Nah, he looks honest to me.” As he cashed out the change he added, “Sure you don’t want to stick around for your friend?”

Harvey spun himself off the stool. “Chris, I gotta tell you. I don’t know anybody who fits the description you gave, and I’ve never won any medals. If he comes back, feel free to forget you ever saw me.” He eyed the cash in Chris’s hand. “Keep the change.”

The kid’s eyes saucered at the three hundred percent tip. “Forget I saw who?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Jonathan settled into his chair at the head of the conference table in the War Room and gave the floor to Venice. Behind her, at the far end of the room, Evan Guinn’s face continued to watch them from the projection screen. It disappeared only when she began to speak, replaced by the face of a man in his mid-forties, shot at an oblique angle, clearly through a telephoto lens.

“This is Mitchell Ponder,” she began. “Of the few pictures of him that are available in any of the databases we can access, this is both the most recent and the most identifiable.”

Identifiable was a relative term, Jonathan thought. Sure, the guy had features-he had a nose and a mouth and a set of eyes just like everyone else, but nothing about him truly stood out as unusual, which meant that even the best facial recognition software would be only marginally useful.

Venice clicked the remote control in her hand, and the image on the screen changed to a much younger version of the same plain vanilla face, but this time accompanied by a complete set of fingerprints. “This is his Army induction photo from twenty years ago,” she explained. “His service record is unremarkable. In and out in six years with an honorable discharge as an E-5.”

Jonathan recognized E-5 as the Army’s rate of sergeant. To achieve a third chevron in six years was admirable, but nothing special.

“The big break,” Venice went on, “is the set of prints. Since we know who we’re looking for, and we know where to look for him, I was able to trace him down.” She clicked again, and brought up a picture that could have been snapped at any immigration counter at any airport in the world. Obviously shot by a security camera, the photo showed the same man as the other pictures-Mitch Ponder. “Because the Colombians are still pissed at us for our hundred years of meddling, they require fingerprints of any American, Brit, or Frenchman coming in and out of the country.” The time stamp on the photo showed he’d been in country for just over eighteen hours. “He’s traveling under the name Robert Zambrano. I don’t know if there’s significance to the alias.”

“Who else arrived on the same flight?” Jonathan asked.

“Too many to help us,” Venice said. “He came in on a commercial flight from Houston with about a hundred of his closest friends.”

“Houston?” Boxers asked. “Not Dulles, which would have been much closer.” He looked to Jonathan. “I guess they took their collapsible chopper to a private airport somewhere and then took a private jet to Houston? Why not just fly him to Colombia?”

Venice explained, “The Colombian government pays very close attention to incoming civil aviation traffic. And the U.S. government pays even closer attention to outbound civil aviation traffic.”

“But why Houston?” Jonathan wondered aloud. “Of all the outbound connections, why there? Were there any children who look like our boy?”

Venice shook her head. “I’ve done an initial run-through of faces and didn’t see anything that even came close.”

“So where could he be?” Boxers asked.

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