Midas

“She didn’t tell me a goddamn thing.”

“You’d tell me, wouldn’t you? If you knew something, you’d tell me.”

“Yes.”

“Because you want to get out of here.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t want to be beaten anymore, do you?”

“No,” Justin said quietly. “I don’t.”

“And you’d like to be clean. And have a good meal.”

“Yes,” he breathed. “I would like that very much.”

“Then just tell me what you know.”

Justin took a deep, long breath. The air that came in through his mouth and his nostrils felt particularly tropical. Warm and wet. “I don’t know anything,” he said. “I don’t know a thing.”

The man in the crisp, starched fatigues looked at Justin, who’d stayed standing during the entire conversation, and said, “I almost believe you.”

Then he left Justin alone again. From the world outside his tiny window, Justin thought he heard a bird screeching. It was a high-pitched noise, piercing and mournful. When the sound came again, Justin wasn’t quite so sure of its source. It was piercing enough to be a bird. But it was also mournful enough to be a human being.

He scribbled all the names into the floor again. He’d done it so often by now, he didn’t have to think or pause while pushing his finger through the dirt. As he’d done each time, he rearranged them in a slightly different order than the previous time. Looking for patterns and connections. To the left he kept the victims in one column. For the first time, he added Elliot Brown’s name to that column. Next he organized any of the names connected to either the military or the FBI-anyone with a connection to the government’s investigation of terrorism. To the right of that column he listed all government officials. In a column all by itself, he listed the Saudi connection and, after a bit of hesitation, added a final column: Midas. At first he left it blank under the company name, then he added Cooke, who worked for them, and then he remembered that Colonel Zanesworth had told him that it was the vice president, Dandridge, who had made the call asking Cooke to be assigned to Midas as a pilot, so he put Dandridge’s name under that column, too.

Collins Zanesworth Stuller Mishari MidasCookeSchrader Dandridge CookeBrown Stuller Anderson Dandridge Heffernan CookePeck Billings Ingles Lockhardt Heffernan T. Cooke R. Cooke H. Cooke

He stared at the columns, saw no new connections to be made. Took a deep breath-almost reveling in the horrible smell; he’d seen how repulsed Mr. Starched Fatigues had been this last time and somehow it gave him a kind of strength to know he was used to it, was no longer overpowered by it-and he went back to the puzzle. .

Step Two: Hutchinson Cooke’s plane is rigged and he is murdered.

Theory: Cooke was on non-Air Force business. He was working for a company called Midas. Cooke flew into East End airport before the Harper’s explosion. Cooke was killed because he’d made a connection between his cargo on the plane and the explosion. He was killed so he couldn’t make that connection public.

Thought Process: What was the cargo? Two choices: the explosives used to destroy the restaurant or the man who used the explosives-the man who made the cell phone call. Or perhaps both.

Where was Cooke flying from? Unknown. Find that out and it should help to know who or what he was carrying.

Why was Cooke killed? Again, find out exactly who or what he was carrying and find out exactly why he was killed. Best bet: Cooke had been suckered into the flight-he didn’t realize quite what he was doing; when he realized the connection between his cargo and Harper’s, he panicked, maybe threatened to expose his bosses-the people who ran Midas? — and so he was killed.

Who killed Cooke? Heffernan either killed him or covered up the killing.

Justin looked at the list he’d drawn into the dirt. He’d put Heffernan down as a government official. True-he worked for the FAA. That counted. One more government connection. One more signal that this whole thing had to be government-connected. . and high up in the government to reach this level of manipulation.

Okay. Time to take a breath.

Plateau Two: Cooke was killed because he was a link to Collins’s murder and to the explosion at Harper’s. The link is the cargo. The key questions: Who or what was Cooke flying into East End Harbor? And for whom? If he was flying for Midas, what is Midas and who is behind it?

Time to start climbing again. .

Step Three: Martin Heffernan is killed in the explosion at La Cucina restaurant.

Theory One: Same as Harper’s. The explosion is an elaborate and deadly cover-up to mask the murder of one man: Heffernan.

Question: What did Heffernan know that got him killed?

Thought Process: He knew about Hutchinson Cooke. If Cooke was the link to Midas-and had to be eliminated to remove the link-then Heffernan was the link to the government. Heffernan had called the Justice Department to pass along information about Cooke’s death. But Cooke didn’t work for Justice-his boss was Martha Peck, FAA. She didn’t seem to be tied in to this. Although. . she was a link to the murderer or murderers. Despite Martha’s protestation, she knew who removed Heffernan’s file from the FAA office in Oklahoma City. She had to know. She had probably removed the file herself at the person’s request. Find that person, find a closer connection to the murderer.

Justin went through the next deaths quickly. Chuck Billings was clear-cut. He’d been brought in through official channels and, because of his expertise, he found out exactly what those officials didn’t want him to find out. He’d been lured to his death, most likely by the same bureaucrats he’d so distrusted. Justin would put money on Hubbell Schrader as Chuck Billings’s killer.

Lockhardt was also simple. He was killed because he was a final loose end in the murder of Hutchinson Cooke. He knew about Heffernan’s connection and that was enough to seal his death warrant. Justin mentally penciled Schrader into the blank space next to the question, Who killed Lockhardt?

Theresa Cooke was killed because she, too, knew something about her husband’s murder. Or, more likely, about her husband’s job. Theresa was dead, Justin was certain, because she knew something about Midas. .

Justin took another look at his markings in the dirt floor and decided to draw in a new column: Organizations.

So at the far right of his scribblings, he added:

Midas

U.S. government

Yale

Saudi government

He decided to go one subset further:

Midas

U.S. government

Executive

Justice

FAA

Yale

Saudi government

He went back and, remembering Stephanie Ingles and her Yale connection to Dandridge and Stuller, added “EPA” under his “U.S. government” heading. And then suddenly he decided to add another organization. A business that seemed to be at the center of all of this. EGenco.

He began scribbling separate columns for each listing: