Raising Abel: An International Thriller Read online

  "Be my guest." He shifted, attention on the crowd behind her. Surveying the packed room, he couldn't detect any interest in Maria's arrival except from the frustrated, and still bipedal, lawyer.

  "I'm sorry. That was supposed to be a joke. Something to ease my tension." She looked at him. "When you get a chance, flag the waiter down. I'd like an eighteen-year-old Macallan. Neat, if you don't mind."

  "Hey, who do you think I am?"

  "You're Special Agent Joe Hanson, Federal Bureau of Investigation. When I called yesterday and explained my problem, they switched me to you. You've got an expense account for greasing snitches. So, grease me."

  "If I wasn't the serious sober public servant that I am, I might be tempted to think that was an unsubtle innuendo."

  "Yeah, well, I feel about as subtle as a brick." She gave him a level stare, an infinity of invitation behind her gray eyes.

  He signaled the white-coated waiter. When the man approached, Hanson shouted over the din, "Macallan. The eighteen, please. Neat, with a water back. And a refill for me."

  The waiter, a dark-haired man, gave an immaculate nod and slipped gracefully into the press the way a mullet wiggled through swamp grass. Joe returned his attention to Maria, aware of the lingering, almost resigned invitation in her eyes.

  He knew that look, knew the kind of woman who used it with a man she'd just met. "Thanks for the interest. It's flattering for an old fart like me."

  "You're not that old," she replied wearily. "If anything, I've got ten years on you."

  The waiter appeared out of the crowd, artfully leaning to place a glass of amber liquid and a tumbler of water on the black marble before Maria. He settled Joe's Coke on a napkin and removed his empty glass before vanishing back into the crowd.

  Joe cocked his head, watching her take a sip of the scotch and savor the taste as she ran it over her tongue. "God, that's good. You don't know how I miss it."

  "Uh-huh."

  She studied him for a moment. "Hell, I'm an alcoholic. What the fuck do you think took me to the church in the first place? I bought into it, and it kept me sober for seven years."

  "And then?"

  Her smile turned crooked. "I got too high up in the church. Started learning things. When I figured out that the Crusade wasn't really about God, but about power, money, and control, I lost my ardor for religion."

  "Why'd you come to us?"

  "What do you know about Billy Barnes Brown?"

  Hanson shifted uneasily. "He's the biggest thing on religious TV. He was a major player in that big multidenominational conference in Jerusalem last week. Has that big solid-glass cathedral outside of Atlanta with all the spires and prisms inside. What's he call his ministry?"

  "The Apostolic Evangelical Church of the Salvation. Me, I work for a subsidiary called the 'Christian Creationist Crusade'. It's huge, international, and the biggest hypocritical scam in the world. Someday, Agent Hanson, someone's going to figure out just how rotten that whole racket is, and when they do, I don't want to get busted along with the rest for fraud, extortion, racketeering, and the rest of it. I'm just on the money-raising side of it, mind you. I don't have the foggiest idea what the political wing is doing. If I did, I'd probably be too scared to talk to you." She pointed a finger at him. "I have something I think you'd be interested in, but first, I've got to know: If I turn over my information, can you get me out? Keep me safe?"

  "Yeah, well, we kind of have a track record to be proud of when it comes to that sort of thing."

  "Maybe." She shook her head. "You might have done all right against the Mafia, but they don't have the resources that the church has."

  "Right." He sipped his Coke. "Okay. You asked for a meeting; I'm here. You're drinking twenty-five-dollar scotch on my tab. You said you were just going to see if you thought you could trust me. I don't think I'm the only guy in DC who will buy expensive scotch for an attractive lady like you. So, that leaves me asking: What do you want with me when you probably need to talk to the guys in the white-collar crimes unit? They handle the RICO stuff. My bailiwick is putting the wraps on guys who like to wear white sheets, burn crosses, torch Black churches, and paint swastikas on Jewish graves."

  She studied him carefully. "I told the lady on the phone I needed to talk to someone about hate crimes. Not fraud. If I give you some papers, can you protect me? Make sure that the church doesn't know the source?"

  "What papers?"

  "Correspondence. A packet I picked up by mistake in Atlanta."

  "By mistake?" he prompted when she hesitated.

  "All right, I thought it was... Hell, never mind why I took it; I just did, okay?" Her gaze slipped off to the side, and her hands knotted.

  "Maybe you'd better tell me where and when you found these papers. If I've got to make a pitch to my supervisor for a major operation, he's going to want to know. Look, Maria, if you really want our help, we have to know just what we're dealing with, understand? If this thing is as big—"

  "I was fucking Billy, all right?" She glared at him. "He saw me at the office a couple of years back. Pulled the whole slick thing." She made a gesture. "Hey, it was a fast track to the top. Maybe once a month I'd get a call, pick up a ticket at the airport, and meet him at some fancy hotel in the Bahamas, or a penthouse in Miami for a couple of days of good booze and wild sex." Her eyes focused on the distance. "Fool that I was, I thought I meant something to him."

  "Wait a minute, isn't he married? Him and what's her name?"

  "Bobby Sue." Maria cocked an eyebrow. "Since when did that mean anything? Him, and his model marriage? Rumor is that she's got her own thing going with her publicist. It's just another prop, a sham to keep the dollars rolling in from the starry-eyed faithful who believe that crap he spouts on Sunday mornings."

  "So, in Atlanta you found out you were a slot machine, huh?"

  She nodded, eyes downcast.

  "And, being pissed, you picked up an envelope that you shouldn't have, something to get back at him with."

  Another nod as she tucked brown hair behind her ears, exposing gold hoop earrings.

  "And now you've figured out that it's too hot to handle?"

  "He'll kill me if he finds out."

  Joe leaned forward, hands laced. "You called me on Monday. This is Tuesday. How long have you had the packet? How much time has he had to figure out that it was you who took it?"

  "I flew back on Sunday." She looked cowed. "He spends that entire day at the cathedral. If he discovered it was missing, it would have been Monday morning at the earliest."

  "Did you have a fight? Anything that would point him in your direction sooner rather than later? Does he know you want to hurt him?"

  Her mouth seemed to shrink. "I don't think so. Hell, I'm not sure he even thinks of me as a person. He...he had two of us there this weekend. Him and that blonde slut that he calls an executive secretary. The one that went with him to Jerusalem. Can you imagine? The three of us in the same bed? I'd heard of such things." She shook her head. "Never thought I'd be part of it."

  "Where was this?"

  "His mansion south of Atlanta."

  Joe studied her, seeing the guilt and self-disgust, reading that she'd swallowed her pride and played along. She was avoiding his eyes, watching the white-paneled ceiling with its big walnut beams.

  "You're not the first. But let's get down to why you called me. Just what's in this packet of papers you stole from old Billy Barnes Brown that would interest me?"

  "I'm not sure." She frowned. "It's a list. Handwritten. Some of the names are Ph.D.s, professors from around the world. And there are women. At first, I didn't think much of it, and then, Sunday night, sitting in the airport in Atlanta, you know those CNN news monitors?" At his nod, she continued, "This Israeli anthropologist. Avi Raad? He was the first name on the list. They showed the Israeli police investigating his murder. They said he was tortured to death, his apartment ransacked, and his laboratory at Tel Aviv University had been burned. Not just set on
fire but burned with thermite."

  "It could be a coincidence." From what he had heard, the Israelis considered it a Hamas hit, but were still a little unclear on the motives.

  Maria was shaking her head, eyes focused on infinity. "His name had a line drawn through it. There were two other names crossed out, too."

  Joe leaned back. "Let me get this straight. You found a list of names in Billy Barnes Brown's bedroom—"

  "Not his bedroom, his personal office. It's just down the hall. They were still passed out on the bed. I was trying to drown the memory. Looking for another bottle of bourbon. I don't know why I picked that envelope up. I just did."

  "Right, okay. In his office. You picked up a list of names that you think are targets of Billy Barnes Brown's Crusade? What's the motive? Why jeopardize an international religious organization to whack a bunch of professors?"

  Maria's gray eyes turned desperate. "I don't know! This Avi Raad is dead, all right? I'm scared. I want out. Taken away. He's going to kill me!"

  "Hey, it's cool. Settle down." Joe made appeasing gestures with his hands. "You got this list with you?"

  She shook her head. "It's someplace safe. You promise me that you can make me disappear, keep me alive, and I'll turn it over."

  He nodded, doing his best to look reassuring. "You know, people could consider this a setup. Revenge for a spurned love affair. A good attorney could make it look like you cooked this up out of spite. You ready for that?"

  She took a deep breath, the action thinning her nostrils. "If those three scientists are dead, do you really think I could have done that? And the list. You have ways of lifting fingerprints and things, don't you? Matching the kind of paper? Police things?"

  He nodded, granting her the benefit of the doubt. "All right, Maria, I'll take your word for it. If you've really got the goods, we'll make you disappear." He was already considering the bureaucratic nightmare looming ahead of him. His boss, Jack Ramsey, would approve it on Joe's word, but from there on up it was anyone's guess. Witness protection involved a literal mountain of paper, including forms, requisitions, reports out the ass, and rubber stamps all the way up to the directors.

  She seemed to deflate with sudden relief.

  "Do you remember any of the other names?" Joe pulled out his notebook.

  "Yes. The ones with the lines drawn through them were Avi Raad, Scott Ferris, and Amanda Alexander. The next name was some Russian I've never heard of. Then came someone called Bryce Johnson. And there are others. Twenty-five in all."

  "Wasn't there anything else? Addresses? Notations?"

  "Ferris was in Colorado. Raad in Tel Aviv. Alexander, someplace in Ohio. Athens, I think. Johnson in...let me see, I think it's New Jersey. It's all on the list."

  "All right, the sooner we get it, the better for all of us." He lifted an inquiring eyebrow. "Do you want to do this now? I can go with you, make sure..."

  She shook her head. "I've got things to do. I need to close my bank account. Do something with my cat. I—"

  "If this is as serious as you believe, I don't want you going home. Not until we set up some protection. Let me make some calls and—"

  "No!" she said firmly. "I'll be fine. I have things to do. Personal things. Tomorrow. At noon? Where should I meet you?"

  "My office. Just walk in the front door. We'll be expecting you. We'll take things from there." He gave her his card, circling the address for the Washington Metro Field Office. "One other thing, Maria: I need your real name and address."

  Her lips tightened; then she reluctantly admitted, "Elizabeth Ann Carter. I live over in Fairfax."

  "Right." Joe grunted. "What does the Christian Creationist Crusade do?"

  "We try to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools." She tossed off the last of her scotch. "It's a great hot-button issue, one that generates a pile of money for the church."

  "Give me your street address and phone." As he wrote down 11256 West Osceola and her phone number, he added, "My number is on the card. If you need anything you call me. Got it? The switchboard will put you through to me."

  She took the card with her left hand and nodded thoughtfully. The long, slim fingers on her right kept rotating the empty scotch glass, and she lifted it again, as if for another drink, hardly realizing it was empty.

  "In the meantime," Joe said firmly, "don't call anyone. Not friends, family, no one. We'll take care of all those things later."

  She nodded, a curious fatigue in her gray eyes. "As much as I'd like another scotch, Joe, I've got to be going. I'll see you tomorrow, and we'll see what can be saved of my fucked-up life."

  She picked up her purse, stood, and nodded to him before pushing through the crowd. Even before she'd pressed between two suited businessmen, the Interior Department lawyer was looking enviously at the chair.

  Joe jerked his head in assent. The chair was quickly slid to the next table. For a long moment, he looked down at his notes, an uneasy feeling crawling around his gut.

  If Elizabeth could be believed, Billy Barnes Brown, the shining icon of the Christian Right, was going around murdering...what? Anthropologists? For teaching evolution?

  Just bring the goods with you tomorrow, Elizabeth. And then we'll see. Tomorrow morning, early, he'd drive by, just to verify that she really lived at that address on West Osceola.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The ringing drove Bryce berserk. After the tenth ring, the operator said, "I'm sorry, sir, but your party doesn't appear to be answering. Thank you for using AT and T. Can I be of further assistance?"

  "No, thank you." Bryce hung up, his fingers still caressing the dark gray plastic of the receiver. He took a deep breath. Around him the clatter and chatter of the McDonald's restaurant created a familiar din. His change dropped musically into the receptacle; he drew it out with a finger before slipping it into his pocket.

  Neither Amanda nor Scott had picked up. What did that mean?

  Bryce ran his hand over his face, skin feeling like a latex mask. He had driven all night and phoned them across half of New York. His resolve had wavered as the morning of the twelfth waxed, to leave him here, at a roadside fast-food joint in Wheeling, West Virginia. He had alternately been desperate that this might be some sort of joke, and then equally certain that the grim, half-fanatical side of Scott Ferris' personality had landed him in some disastrous set of circumstances.

  Amanda would have all the answers. If something terrible had happened, she would know. If it was a joke, she would have enough compassion to tell him before he drove clear across the country. Amanda was like that, intensely serious, considerate, and thoughtful in comparison to Scott's sometimes bulldog determination.

  A joke? It had better be. Though what he'd do to get even with Scott for missing a night's sleep and screwing up his schedule at UNH would take some serious thinking. Stunts like this could wreck a friendship.

  He chewed on his lip for a moment, then dialed the one eight hundred number for his phone service. Moments later he was talking to the answering machine in his department.

  "Hi, this is Bryce. Listen, Dorothy, I need to have one of the graduate students, maybe Mary or Pat, cover my classes for the next couple of days. Something's come up, and I've been called out of town on an emergency. I'll keep in touch."

  He hung up, rubbed his stubble-coated face, and walked over to the counter where he ordered up McDonald's version of breakfast. After he made his way to a table, he studied the map. Depending on traffic and roadwork, he should be at Amanda's by midafternoon. There, at least, he'd finally have real answers.

  A sick sense of despair filled Joe Hanson's gut as he turned onto West Osceola and slowed. Fire trucks, patrol cars, and a throng of onlookers jammed the street. Finding no place to park, he pulled into a driveway, put the Taurus in park, and stepped out as the homeowner, a woman in her fifties wearing a sweatshirt and faded jeans, immediately turned his direction, shouting, "You can't park here!"

  Joe slipped his ID from his pocket, lett
ing her read the plastic-coated card. "I won't be long. I promise. And I'd sure appreciate it. You're not leaving anytime soon, are you?"

  She gave him a nervous glance. "No, I'm not. Yeah, it's okay." As he started toward the fire trucks, he heard her say to a neighbor, "What's the FBI want with Lizzy?"

  His ID allowed him to pass through the police line, and he picked his way across fire hoses and past randomly parked patrol cars. Two referrals brought him to the officer in charge, a Corporal Pete Lzerski. Lzerski might have passed thirty, barely, and wore a neatly pressed uniform. The words "university grad" could have been rubber-stamped on his forehead.

  Joe identified himself, seeing curiosity in Lzerski's mellow brown eyes. "I take it that's what's left of 11256 West Osceola?"

  "That's it." Lzerski cocked his head, looking at the card Joe had handed him. "I don't usually have federal cooperation in an apparent arson, Agent Hanson."

  Joe turned, sucking unhappily on his lower lip. "Yeah, well, it's a little more complicated than that. You wouldn't know where Elizabeth Carter is, would you? This was the address she gave me."

  "She told you correctly. Or, I should say that according to the county clerk's office, she holds the deed to the property. We can't tell you if the body we pulled out of there is her. Not until the medical examiner takes a look."

  Joe felt his stomach flip as he studied the smoking wreckage. "Son of a bitch. Arson, huh?"

  "If you don't mind, sir, what's your involvement in this?"

  "Elizabeth Carter was supposed to bring information to my office today. I just drove by on my way in. One of those bad hunches that seems to have paid off."

  "What was she bringing you?"

  "Nothing that's any good now, Corporal. Her 'instant credibility' just went up in smoke."

  Lzerski gave him a level stare. "Anything you'd care to share with me? Something that might make my investigation a little easier?"