Dead on Arrival

screaming tantrums, no kicking over chairs and tables when things got sticky. No matter how complex a job might be, no matter what last-minute changes had to be engineered, no matter how much pressure the authorities were putting on him, he always kept his head — and, he liked to think, his sense of humor. But this, this demand from Pugh … well, it made him very angry.

This redneck was ruining his life. The one poor photograph that he’d taken had been enough for the FBI to consider him a prime suspect in the terrorist attacks. The good news was that Pugh’s original photo hadn’t been enough for an arrest. The bad news was that the investigation was tearing him apart. His lovely home had been ransacked, he’d paid his lawyer three hundred thousand dollars to date, and, because he was being watched so closely, he couldn’t set up any other jobs to bring in more income. He had just turned down a very lucrative job in Nigeria, a simple thing related to ensuring the outcome of an election.

And now he had a demand from Pugh for $4.2 million. The odd number puzzled him, but it didn’t really matter. He didn’t have anywhere near that much money, at least not in the United States. He had money in offshore accounts, but if he tried to access those accounts the FBI might catch him, and then they’d start badgering him all over again about the source of his income. At a minimum they’d notify the IRS, and the taxman would kill him with penalties on back taxes or, even worse, send him to jail for tax evasion. To pay Pugh — not that he had any intention of paying Pugh — would mean he’d have to sell his home.

The photo. Was it real or not? It certainly looked real, but then King Kong swatting biplanes out of the sky also looked real. No, it had to be a fake. In the photo he wasn’t wearing his sunglasses and he was almost sure he hadn’t removed them the day he met with Pugh. He could get an expert to examine the photo, but ultimately that would be a waste of time and money. The photo was irrelevant. Jubal Pugh had to be eliminated.

He couldn’t have Pugh hanging over his head for the rest of his life like some rusted sword of Damocles. Whether the photo was real or not, whether the witness existed or not, Pugh had to go. If the FBI ever managed to get any real evidence tying him to the terrorist attacks, Pugh would testify against him, and Pugh would be the last nail in Lincoln’s legal coffin.

But he did need to confirm that the photo was fake. If it wasn’t, he needed the memory card from the camera and he needed to know if other copies existed. He also needed the name of this supposed waitress witness. And the fact that he needed to know these things was really too bad for Jubal Pugh.

He raised the champagne flute to his lips and noticed for the first time that there was a slight chip in the rim. Now that was vexing. The flutes had been made to his personal specifications by a glassblower in Venice and the man was now dead. Those FBI … apes! They must have damaged the glass the last time they searched his house.

Take a breath. Take a deep breath.

Pugh had said he wanted the money in two weeks. If the man had had any brains at all he never would have given Lincoln that much time. Finding Pugh wouldn’t be a problem; he could do that with a single phone call. The primary problem was convincing the Cuban to take the risk, which meant it would take a lot of money, money he would have to pay out of his own pocket, money he didn’t have on hand. He might actually have to sell a few of his possessions to raise the money for her fee. Yes, Jubal Pugh made him very angry.

Lincoln hit the button on the house intercom. ‘Esperanza, sweetheart, can you please tell Juan to pull the Porsche up to the door. I’m going to Miami. I’m in the mood for a lovely Cuban dinner, a nice polla a la barbacoa with negros dormidos.’

‘Are you insane? What are you doing here?’ the Cuban hissed.

‘Relax. If they’d connected me to you, you’d have been arrested or questioned by now.’

‘You’re an idiot to come here,’ she said.

‘Sticks and stones. If you’d returned my phone call, we could have met somewhere else.’

‘I’m not talking to you. Finish your dinner and leave.’

‘Two hundred thousand,’ Lincoln said.

The Cuban stared at him for a moment, then she blinked, then she blinked again — and Lincoln had the image of an old-fashioned adding machine, the lever going down, the machine going ka-jing as the Cuban added two hundred thousand dollars to her hoard.

She sat down with Lincoln and snapped her fingers at a waiter.

‘Bring me and Mr Lincoln a Calvados,’ the Cuban said, and then added, ‘Put both drinks on Mr Lincoln’s bill.’

68

Emma assumed that when Lincoln received the blackmail demand from Jubal Pugh, he would try to kill Pugh. He wouldn’t, however, do the killing himself.

‘Lincoln had somebody kill Rollie Patterson,’ she’d told DeMarco. ‘And maybe that same person killed William Broderick.’

‘And maybe tried to kill me too,’ DeMarco said.

‘Yes,’ Emma said. ‘You got lucky.’

Emma’s plan was to catch the killer that Lincoln sent to murder Pugh in the act of killing him, hopefully before he succeeded. The killer, to avoid a long jail term for attempted murder, would give up Lincoln, and Lincoln, in return for a reduced sentence, would give up whoever had paid him to organize the terrorist attacks. The other thing that Emma figured was that Lincoln’s killer wouldn’t just shoot Pugh with a rifle from three hundred yards away or blow up his mobile home. He could, but Emma didn’t think he would. Lincoln needed to know if the photo Pugh had sent him was a fake and he needed the name of the witness that could place Lincoln and Pugh in the restaurant together. To get that information the killer would have to torture Pugh, and while he was being tortured, they’d catch the killer. But they might have to let Pugh get tortured for just a little while to make the case, which didn’t bother Emma at all.

Yes, it was a pretty simple plan: one killer after another falling over like a row of dominoes. However, neither Emma nor DeMarco thought it was going to be easy. And something that neither of them said out loud was that keeping Pugh alive wasn’t as impor tant as catching the person who tried to kill him — or succeeded in killing him.

DeMarco had never been involved in anything resembling a military operation, but he was involved in one now. And Emma was the general.

The same day Patsy Hall mailed the photo to Oliver Lincoln, DeMarco, Emma, and four men arrived in Victor, Montana. The four men were ex-military, men that Emma knew, and they were professional bodyguards. Usually their clients were celebrities worried about lovesick stalkers or wealthy people visiting countries where kidnapping was a cottage industry.

Emma introduced the men to DeMarco as Bob, Stan, Harry, and Stew. They didn’t look alike, yet at the same time they did. Stan and Stew were both short and stocky and had weight lifter’s muscles. Bob was tall and rangy and bald. And Harry was just sort of average — average height, average build. The thing that made the men look alike was their eyes, eyes that said they’d been to hell and back when they’d worked for Uncle — and they weren’t afraid to make the trip again.

And Emma’s guys came well equipped. They had binoculars and night-vision goggles and.22-caliber pistols machined for silencers. They had sniper’s rifles and radios and bulletproof vests. They were a mini-militia; they were ready for anything.

Patsy Hall had told Pugh to tell Lincoln to send the four million to a post office box in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in two weeks. Jubal had asked why she wanted to give Lincoln so much time and she explained that Lincoln would need that long to round up the money. She didn’t tell him the real reason was so Lincoln would have time to plan Pugh’s murder. Hall would then pick up the cash, telling Jubal it would be best if she made the pickup because (a) she was a trained government agent and (b) Lincoln had never seen her. Jubal, being the trusting guy that he was, wanted to know what was to keep Hall from absconding with his half of the money and leaving him to rot in Montana. Hall explained that if she did, all Jubal had to do was place an anonymous phone call to the DEA and tell them that a certain unpopular agent had suddenly become very rich.