Harvath heard Cordero’s partner laugh, but as he looked up, he couldn’t tell if the man was laughing with him, or at him.
CHAPTER 59
Betsy Mitchell felt the vehicle, probably a van of some sort based on the sliding sound the door had made once they had gotten into it, bump and jostle along through traffic. She had no idea where they were. Based on the drugs she had been given and all of the takeoffs and landings of the plane she had been on after her abduction, she had no idea if she was even in the United States anymore. She could hear car horns outside, but she couldn’t see anything. A hood had been placed over her head.
Despite a split lip and an eye that felt painfully swollen from the blows she had suffered, the rape Betsy had feared back at the warehouse never happened. After tearing away her blouse, the man in the mask had left the room. He came back with a small camera and microphone combination, a third the size of a lipstick tube, and showed it to her. He then taped it to her chest, and that was when he had placed the hood over her head.
As he removed the collar from around her neck and began to dress her, he used the digital recorder to relay a message explaining what was about to happen.
Her ransom had been agreed on. Within a matter of hours she would be free, if she did everything she was supposed to do. That was the purpose of the video camera and microphone. Though she couldn’t see it with the hood over her head, she could feel him adjusting her clothes around it. He explained that he would be able to see and hear everything she did. He also explained what would happen if she veered even one inch from her instructions. Her blood froze in her veins. Once she found her voice again, she swore she would do exactly as he asked. She promised them that in no condition would she waver from what she had been told to do.
When the voice on the digital recorder asked her to repeat the rhyme she had been taught, she did, repeating it perfectly, word for word. Once he was satisfied that she was ready, he had loaded her into the vehicle and they departed.
She lost track of how long they had been driving. It could have been an hour. It could have been ten. All she could think about was doing everything he demanded, exactly as he had demanded it. All she wanted was her freedom. All she wanted to do was go home.
The vehicle turned for the umpteenth time, but began to slow and then eventually pulled over to the side and stopped. The man with the mask joined her in the back of the van and removed her hood. His eyes bored into hers for several moments before he produced the digital recorder and pressed PLAY. The words she had first heard it speak poured forth again.
“Please repeat after me. Lucy Lockett lost her pocket, Sally Fisher found it. Not a penny was there in it, just a ribbon ’round it.”
Betsy dutifully complied. The man then rewound the recording and played it again. Betsy repeated the phrase again. In fact, she kept repeating it. It was her mantra. If she said it enough times, she would be free.
The man in the mask produced a knife and cut the nylon EZ Cuffs from her wrists and ankles. Then tapping her chest to remind her of the camera, he slid open the door and gestured for her to step out onto the sidewalk.
Wherever in the world she was, it was evening. That was all she knew. Her instructions had been quite specific. With her hand first in the right pocket of her coat and then the left, she began walking away from the van. As she walked, she continued to repeat the rhyme over and over again, hoping the man in the mask hadn’t lied to her.
“Lucy Lockett lost her pocket, Sally Fisher found it. Not a penny was there in it, just a ribbon ’round it.”
• • •
“Here you go,” Cordero said, handing Harvath a bottle of water she had just purchased for him. “See anything new?”
Harvath took the water from her and screwed off the cap. “Nothing yet. What did the SWAT commander say?”
“He asked the same thing he did an hour ago. How much longer do we think this is going to go on.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him not to worry. His team will be home for Christmas.”
Harvath smiled. At least she still had her sense of humor, but it was fading. It had taken all day to set the operation up, most of it with the FBI going back and forth with their headquarters in Washington as to how everything should be handled. A lot of time, in Harvath’s opinion, had been wasted on where everyone should be placed, how many Boston PD versus FBI agents should be in plainclothes, et cetera. By the time everything was settled, it was already late afternoon.
“These kinds of ops aren’t easy,” he said, referring to Cordero’s interaction with the SWAT team leader. “Scanning rooftops and windows is mind-numbing work. You can burn out fast and lose your edge. The commander is just looking out for his guys.”
“Like I said, they’ll all be home for Christmas.”
Harvath nodded. Everyone was on edge, their nerves a bit frayed. They were anxious for something to happen. And unlike other types of stakeouts, they had to keep moving.
Cordero’s partner had helped coordinate changes of clothes so she and Harvath could rotate in and out of the area with different appearances. He was also coordinating the plainclothes cops and FBI agents.
There had already been a couple of false alarms as people bearing a similar resemblance to Jonathan Renner or Betsy Mitchell had passed by. It had sent everyone into high-alert mode, only to turn out that it wasn’t the people they were looking for.
As the evening wore on, Harvath could see the fatigue begin to eat away at the corners of Cordero’s mind.
“What if somehow we tipped our hand?” she asked. “What if they figured out we’re here?”
Harvath looked at his watch. “It’s still way too early for you to be going soft on me.”
“I’m not going soft. But what if I’m right?”
“You know, I once lay in a hole, not much bigger than the trunk of a car, for four days waiting for the right guy to go past. I didn’t have a café half a block away with cold sodas and a bathroom so clean, people from the third world would think they were at the Ritz-Carlton.”
“I guess it could be worse,” she admitted.
“Yeah. There could be snakes and truckloads of guys shooting at you.”
Cordero looked at him. “At some point, you and I are going to have a long talk about who you actually are.”
Harvath took a sip of his water and screwed the cap back on. “We’ll have to do it over coffee. You’ll need it to keep you awake.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.”
Harvath was just about to change the subject when a voice crackled over their earpieces. It was Sal.
“We just got a heads-up from a patrol officer in the area,” he said.
“What is it?” Cordero asked.
“Seems he found a couple of cards like the one you found in the warehouse.”
“Where is he?”
“Hold on,” said Sal. “I’ll get him on this frequency.”
A moment later, the male detective said, “You’re on with Detective Cordero. Go ahead.”
“Detective Cordero?” a voice said. “This is Officer Kaczynski.”
“What have you got, Kaczynski?”
“We were told to keep our eyes peeled for anything with a skull and crossbones on it with a crown on top. I’ve found several black cards with the skull and bones on one side and the sentence I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny, followed by the letters S.O.L.”
Harvath tucked his water bottle into his pocket and looked at Cordero.
“What’s your location?” she asked the patrolman.
“I’m headed north on Devonshire, almost at Quaker Lane.”
She looked at Harvath and said, “He’s about half a block south.”