Primary Valor Read online

  “What are you saying?” Luke said.

  “Human traffickers,” Trudy said. The tone of her voice said she was surprised he even had to ask. “Talk to them. Ask them what they’ve heard.”

  “Not the most forthcoming people,” Luke said.

  “Lean on them,” Don said. “That’s part of your skill set, is it not? You and Ed both have that ability. If you work together…” Don trailed off and shrugged.

  Luke glanced at Ed. Ed looked like a dog that just had spotted a bone. Luke suppressed a smile. Was Don really sanctioning this? Extralegal interrogations? If so, it couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people.

  “Let me get this straight,” Luke said. He looked at Don. “You would like Ed and I to go out and… ahem… question human traffickers as to what, if anything, they know about this missing girl?”

  Don stared at Luke. He didn’t smile at all. “I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people like that. If one of them knows something about what happened here, I would like him to share that information with us. It’s a start, and time is against us, as Ed indicated. The trail is already going cold.”

  There was silence in the room. When Don spoke again, his voice was low.

  “A couple of points, and they’re important. I don’t want to see a typewritten report about this afterwards, and I don’t want to read your names in the newspapers. Otherwise, do what needs to be done. Is that clear enough to you boys?”

  “Clear as a bell,” Ed said.

  Luke looked at Trudy. “Can you find us someone to talk to?”

  She shrugged. “I already have. Louis Clare, fifty-four-year-old white male. Also known as Louis Clark, also known as Lew Clark, also known by the nicknames Spark and Sparky. He spent eighteen years of a twenty-six-year sentence in federal penitentiaries for kidnapping and trafficking in underage girls. He was paroled for good behavior four years ago. He’s thought to be rehabilitated, and long out of the game. But as far as I can see, he has no visible means of income or support.”

  “He’s doing something for a living,” Luke said.

  Trudy nodded. “Yes, he is.”

  “Where is he?”

  Trudy glanced at her computer. “He checks in with his parole officer in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, every month. His official address is a motel there. Myrtle Beach is approximately ninety minutes by car from Wrightsville Beach, where the Richmond girl abduction took place.”

  Luke looked at Don. “We’ll need somewhere to interview him. Private.”

  Luke almost couldn’t believe the words that had come out of his own mouth. Already they were speaking in code. The word private carried a great deal of meaning in this kind of work. Private was a place away from other people, a place that few people knew existed, a place where loud noises, like screams, would not reach anyone else’s ears. When you took someone to a private place, you owned that person.

  Of course Don knew all this.

  He nodded. “Consider it done.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  1:40 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

  Myrtle Beach International Airport

  Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

  They were never here.

  They flew in on a private plane that belonged to a company called Apex Digital Management. The plane left from an unmanned airfield just south of Langley, for a flight that took little more than hour. Ed’s name was Luther Sykes. Luke’s was Sem Goethals. Apparently, Luke was not from this country.

  Not that any of it mattered. No one would hear Luke speak, or see his face. They didn’t check in anywhere, and no one in the Myrtle Beach terminal, crowded with beachgoers and golfers dressed in pastel colors, looked at them twice.

  Luke glanced at the Arrivals and Departures boards. The “international” in Myrtle Beach International Airport seemed to stem from the fact that a handful of flights came in from Canada. Private flights were not listed.

  A car was waiting for them in the parking lot. It was a dark blue Ford sedan stashed in short-term parking. Folded inside the driver’s side sun visor was a machine-generated terminal parking stub. The first thirty minutes parking in the terminal were free. This car had arrived here seventeen minutes ago. They left without incurring any fees, so they didn’t have to pay anyone anything. The parking lot attendant didn’t care. He barely glanced at them. He was more interested in something that was happening on his computer screen.

  “Every time you go away, it terrifies me,” Becca had said before he left.

  “I know,” Luke said. “I know that. But this investigation is exactly the kind of thing we’ve talked about. It’s what you’ve wanted for me. It’s here in the United States. It’s police work. We’re going down to interview one person, and we’ll see where that goes. The guy isn’t even a suspect, just someone who might have information. Maybe Trudy Wellington will find us more people to talk to. Maybe she won’t. We’re not supposed to interfere with the local cops, so there’s only so much we can do. It’s basically a nothing assignment. Easy-peasy. We’ll be down there for a day, maybe two. Then we’ll be back. Heck, it’s an hour away by plane.”

  The things he told her were not technically lies. They were sins of omission. Everything he said was true. It was the things he left out that made the difference. He did not tell her they were going down under assumed identities. He did not tell her they planned to disappear someone. He did not say a word about alligators.

  “Don got us a little shack about half an hour from Myrtle Beach,” Ed had told Luke just before Luke spoke to Becca. “It’s on a swamp.”

  Luke thought about that. It only took a few seconds.

  South Carolina… Swamp…

  “Alligators.”

  “Yes.”

  The way Ed said it was long and drawn out, almost as if the word yes had several undulating syllables, and very much as if Ed savored each one. Yyye-ehhhh-esssss.

  “Is he dangerous?” Becca had asked.

  “Who?” Luke really didn’t understand the question. “Ed?” Of course Ed was dangerous. Ed might well be one of the most dangerous people on Earth.

  “No. Not Ed. The man you’re going to interview.”

  “Oh.” Luke shook his head. “Nah. He’s fifty-four years old. He spent nearly twenty years in prison. I’m sure he doesn’t want any trouble. And anyway, most people get one look at Ed, and they’re ready to tell us everything that happened since their fifth birthday.”

  He paused, then he took her in his arms.

  “We’re not going to have any problems at all.”

  * * *

  “Nice place,” Luke said.

  “Yeah,” Ed said. Ed was sitting low, staring out the passenger side window with a small pair of binoculars. He was uncharacteristically quiet, responding to Luke with one-word answers. Luke didn’t relish the role of the talkative guy trying to carry a conversation, so their stakeout kept devolving into total silence.

  It was getting to be dusk. The sun was lowering to their left, dropping behind a flat landscape of parking lots and low slung buildings. They were in the lot of an abandoned fireworks store. The showroom windows were boarded over, but a faded sign loomed over the crumbling lot, with the image of a cartoon cat with its back arched, and the words Black Cat still visible.

  Diagonally across a dead-end street was the Adventurer Motel, a two-story wreck of a place decades past its prime, and quietly going to seed. There were thirty-eight rooms and less than a dozen cars in the lot. One of the cars had four perfectly flat tires.

  The motel’s sign depicted a cartoon pirate holding a sword, with his foot up on a chest spilling gold coins. People around here apparently viewed the world through the lens of cartoons. A red neon sign advertising VACANCY was on and blinking, but the office was closed, and a piece of paper taped to the inside of the window had a phone number scribbled on it.

  According to Trudy, Louis Clare lived in room nineteen. It was a first-floor room, on the end closest to where Luke and Ed were parked. The door was
clearly visible from here, maybe fifty yards away.

  Clare didn’t seem to be home. There were no lights on inside his room. There was no vehicle parked in front of his door.

  As they watched, an old blue whale of a car pulled into the spot in front of the door.

  “What is it?” Luke said.

  “Mercury,” Ed said. “Marquis.”

  “Plate?”

  “South Carolina. ESB-435.”

  Luke glanced at the paper lying on the dashboard. Swann had gotten Clare’s car registration hours ago, and Trudy had passed it on to them.

  “That’s him.”

  The Mercury’s front quarter panel was a darker shade of blue than the rest. The car itself had rolled off the assembly line in 1992, and had four previous owners. If Clare had gotten a big payday recently, he was doing a good job of pretending he hadn’t.

  He was alone. He was a thick-bodied man, balding with gray around the edges. He was wearing a white T-shirt and workpants. He busied himself getting things out of the car. He pulled out a twelve-pack of beer and some plastic bags filled with various items. It looked like he had just gone grocery shopping.

  “See you in a minute,” Luke said.

  “See you,” Ed said.

  Luke got out of their car without shutting the door. He was wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, the hood up, with a black Oakland Raiders baseball cap protruding from it, and pulled down over his face.

  As Luke crossed the parking lot toward the Adventurer Motel, Ed came around to the driver’s side of the car.

  Luke walked fast and light, his feet in black sneakers.

  He did not look directly at Clare, and angled toward the motel as though he was not headed in that direction.

  Behind him, the car pulled slowly out of the Black Cat parking lot.

  Clare was at the door to the room, hands full, finagling with his keys. Luke made a sharp and sudden right turn and moved directly toward him. Clare got the door unlocked, pushed it open with his foot, and then Luke was running.

  He reached into the rear waistband of his jeans and came out with the gun. Clare was just inside the room and the door was closing when Luke arrived. He stuck his foot in the crack just before it shut. He shouldered the door open.

  Clare was just ahead of him. The man half turned, the beer still under his arm, still holding the bags with the other hand. Luke absorbed the surroundings in an instant. The room was a tiny efficiency, with a small refrigerator, a microwave, and a hotplate. There was one king-sized bed, and a TV bolted to the top of a dresser.

  Clare’s eyes went wide. His mouth made a big round O of surprise.

  Luke punched that mouth with his left hand. He pointed the gun at the man’s head with his right.

  “Turn around! Don’t look at me!”

  Clare did exactly as he was told. His voice was gravelly from long years of smoking.

  “I don’t know what you—”

  “Shut up! Drop the food. Hands in the air, where I can see them.”

  The beer hit the floor with a thunk. The bags did the same. A can of soup rolled out of one of the bags. Clare raised his hands. He’d played this game before.

  “Is anyone else here?” Luke said.

  “No.”

  “So help me, if you’re lying…”

  “There’s no one here.”

  Luke pushed him. “Face down on the bed. NOW.”

  Clare lay on the bed. Luke pulled a pair of zip-cuffs out of the front pocket of his sweatshirt. He yanked Clare’s arms backwards and cuffed his wrists tightly.

  “You a cop?” Clare said.

  “You wish,” Luke said.

  He reached into the pocket of his sweatshirt a second time. He pulled out a black canvas mask. It zipped in the back. It had air holes that were located roughly where a person’s nostrils would be. One size fits all. He pulled it down over Clare’s head and zipped it closed. Clare gasped.

  Luke glanced in the grocery bags and spotted something he might need—a pack of American Indian cigarettes. He went to the drawers in the kitchenette, opened a couple, and found Clare’s lighter.

  “Listen, man,” Clare’s muffled voice said. “I didn’t…”

  The damping effect of the mask made it sound like so much mumbo jumbo.

  “Up,” Luke said.

  He pulled Clare to a standing position, then walked him to the door. He opened it and glanced outside. Ed was here with the car. The trunk was already open, Ed standing beside it. Ed was also wearing a hoodie and a baseball cap.

  Luke walked Clare outside into the gathering darkness of evening. The room door slammed shut behind them.

  Ed grabbed the man by the back of his T-shirt and the waistband of his workpants. Ed lifted him like a bag of rice and dumped him into the trunk of the car. Clare’s legs hit the side as he went in. He was a poor fit for the trunk, but Ed managed to stuff him in there. Clare rolled over onto his side, groaning in pain and surprise.

  Luke slammed the trunk shut and looked at Ed. Even this close, Luke could barely see Ed’s face under the hat.

  “Let’s go,” Ed said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  6:15 p.m. Central Standard Time (7:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time)

  La Sierra de San Simon (St. Simon’s Saw)

  Near Honduras

  The Caribbean Sea

  The heat was like an oven.

  When the door opened, Darwin King stepped from the sleek private jet to the top of the stairway. The sun was far to the west, but it didn’t matter. He wore a handmade suit of summer linen, and the air conditioning on the plane had let him forget how hot it could get here on the island. He climbed down the narrow steps to the airstrip’s tarmac.

  He held a satellite phone to his ear, listening to information that annoyed him. As soon as the plane’s wheels had touched the ground, he was on the phone. He had an empire to run, and empires didn’t like to wait. The information annoyed him because he didn’t understand it yet. The man on the other end was talking too fast.

  Darwin was a large man. He stood about six foot two, and he weighed 220 pounds. His shoulders were broad, and his hands, his feet, all of his extremities, were huge. His head was big. His jaw protruded. Everything about him was big.

  He liked to say that he inherited his father’s size and his mother’s good looks.

  He was one of three passengers disembarking from what had probably been designed as an eight- or ten-seater, but was now laid out like someone’s living room. The other two passengers were big men like himself. One had dark hair and a goatee. One had a blond crewcut. Their faces were blank and impassive. They had hard eyes, devoid of things that Darwin didn’t like—things like hesitancy, nuance, empathy. These men were here to remain alert, and when the time came to act, to act without thought, or remorse, or judgment.

  Darwin was fond of the Eastern concept of non-action. It didn’t mean not acting. It meant acting completely, naturally, without the emotional baggage humans liked to carry around. Think of a lioness chasing down, killing, and eating a wounded gazelle.

  The men were obviously younger than he was, and slightly larger, but those weren’t the only differences. Hidden under their sports jackets were shoulder holsters and handguns with high-capacity magazines.

  Bodyguards. Darwin King did not like surprises, unless he was the one springing them. And on the rare occasions when he was surprised, he liked the surprise to be neutralized quickly.

  “Tell me again,” he said into the telephone. “But more slowly, and strip out all the nonsense this time.”

  “The deal fell through,” a man’s voice said. “Our guys were there with the product. We were on time, in the appointed place, everything we promised.”

  Darwin pictured the product in question. Soviet-era mortars, anti-tank rounds, heat-seeking missiles. It was good stuff, still functional, and kept all these years in climate-controlled conditions. It was not up to date in the sense of being “smart,” of course. These were not weapons with t
iny high-tech brains, weapons that could think for themselves. But the people who wanted them could barely think for themselves, either.

  Darwin’s clients—Third World despots, ragtag rebel militias, Central African security firms guarding precious metal deposits in dense jungles—tended to live in the past. Their worlds reminded Darwin of photographs he used to see in magazines during his childhood in the late 1950s. The United States was surging into the space age future, while much of the human race stayed right where it had always been.

  It was still there now. And it needed weapons.

  “And the client?” Darwin said.

  “The bag man disappeared,” the voice said. “Just gone. Never made it to the meeting place.”

  “Any idea where he is?”

  “No one seems to know,” the man’s voice said.

  Darwin sighed. “He’d better be dead.”

  “That’s what I told them.”

  Darwin looked at the pale blue sky and sighed. The veins stuck out on his thick neck, and on his forehead. For a moment, it seemed like he could feel the blood pulsing through them. He took a deep breath. It could be stressful, running an empire. But so what? An empire required an effective, confident emperor, and he was that.

  “What else?” he said.

  “They think we did it.”

  Darwin’s free hand balled into a fist.

  “They think…”

  “Yes, that we disappeared their bag man before he reached the meet.”

  “And the money?”

  “Yes.”

  Darwin thought about it. Something unspoken began to dawn on him. A smile broke out on his face. He gave certain of his field lieutenants a great deal of latitude to seize opportunities. It depended on the client, and what the potential pushback was. In this case, the client was weak, a disloyal politician with a long history of corruption, who was trying to stockpile weapons for a run at the throne. The man’s position was precarious, to put it mildly. Who was he going to complain to, the United Nations?