The Escape (John Puller 3)

“That’s just the point. I don’t know where. But something…was off back there. I just don’t know.”

“Well, that neatly sums up where we stand on everything to do with this case, doesn’t it?” she said grimly. “We just don’t know.”

CHAPTER

52

KNOX PARTED COMPANY with Puller at Fort Belvoir, where INSCOM was located. She wanted to check in and she had some paperwork to complete. They made arrangements to meet later at her hotel.

Before driving back to Quantico, Puller stopped at a coffee shop and pulled out a phone he had recently purchased, one of a pair, actually. His brother had the other one. Over coffee he took his time to thumb in a long message and then sent it off.

His brother’s unbreakable code would be put to the test, he thought. But then again, he had considerable confidence in Robert’s skills.

As he was pulling in to his apartment complex his new phone buzzed. He parked and pulled it out. His brother’s response matched the length of the original message. He hurried to his apartment and, using a pad of paper and a pencil, was able to decode the message in about thirty minutes.

His brother had come up with the code when they were boys. He had based it on the concept of a one-time pad key he had read about, but one that could be reused. It really was unbreakable, because it was similar to a substitution cipher but based on a story that Robert Puller had created and then taught, word for word, to his younger brother over and over until even all these years later Puller could remember it in detail. If one didn’t know the story, one couldn’t break the code. And the only ones who knew the original story were the two Pullers.

Puller had told his brother of the results of their meeting with Reynolds and then Carter and Sullivan and also the facts of Reynolds’s financial history. Robert’s decoded message was succinct: She covered her tracks well. Find out what you can on the death of her husband. That fact that he was an FBI agent is intriguing. She never mentioned that to me or anyone else I know that knew her. The more that I understand her hostility to me, the more likely it is that she was the one Niles Robinson was alluding to on the phone call I had with him. But jealousy could not be the primary motivation. It was to replace me with Tim Daughtrey. So you need to investigate him in greater detail. Everything about his career that you can uncover, John. And I mean everything.

However, the last part of his brother’s message was the most surprising, and intriguing: Reynolds being part of the START verification team is also of importance. She told me that when we “met,” but I didn’t focus on it then. But you mentioning her relaying that to you when you saw the photo in her office brought it back to my mind. Find out what you can about that, because it may very well tie into her present assignment. And that may well be the brass ring we’ve been looking for.

Puller stared down at this part of the message for another moment or two before deleting it all. He could see what his brother might be getting at. If Reynolds was a spy, then spies didn’t just spy on one thing over the years. They went where the most was to be gained by their treachery.

But it couldn’t be just Reynolds. There had to be someone else who had an ocean of juice. And there could only be a few at that level.

And one of them might be Donovan Carter.

The head of DTRA could have listened to them last night during the nightcap just to learn what they knew. He could have told Reynolds everything, so that she would be fully prepared for them today. And while her financial picture seemed perfectly logical and would have normally convinced Puller, he knew the woman was a liar.

He wrote his brother a short message and pocketed the phone. He had a lot of work to do and he better get to it.

Starting with the late Brigadier General Tim Daughtrey.

After numerous phone calls, Internet searches, and a quick trip to Bolling Air Force Base in D.C., Puller had accumulated a great deal of material on the dead man. He sifted through this information while sitting in the W’s hotel lobby. He had still not heard from Knox, but expected to at any time. He figured he would meet up with her at the hotel.

Daughtrey’s career had proceeded along a tried-and-true formula of nose to the grindstone, checking off all the boxes for continued promotion, and going to where he needed to go and doing what he needed to do at each of those stops in his relentless chase for the shoulder stars. In that regard he was like many men and women who had done the very same thing over the years. His strengths and experiences, however, had not been in the battlefield, but rather in technology, which might be the battlefield of the future. At least that’s what everyone at the Pentagon seemed to be saying. The general consensus was that Daughtrey was well liked and his death had been a huge loss to the country’s defenses.

Puller collected all of these facts and then sent them in a coded message to his brother.

He next turned to the issue of Reynolds’s dead FBI agent husband. He found some old news clippings on the Internet. Adam Reynolds had been an agent in the Washington, D.C., Field Office. He was only in his early thirties when he was hit and killed by a car near his home.

Puller had a contact at the Bureau and made a call to that person, who remembered the case and had actually worked briefly with Adam Reynolds many years before. Reynolds had been one of the few FBI agents ever killed, although it had not been in the line of duty.

“He was walking back from a coffee shop in a strip mall near his house,” said the agent.

“How do you know that?”

“If I remember correctly, they found the coffee cup about ten feet from his body. And someone from the coffee shop remembered him coming in.”

“Where was this exactly?” asked Puller.

“In Burke, Virginia. His wife said he walked there all the time. Adam liked his coffee, like most of us.”

“Was his wife home at the time?”

“No, I don’t believe so. No, that’s right. She was out of the country. She worked for Uncle Sam too. Don’t remember where.”

“But they had young kids back then. Who was with them?”

“I’m not sure about that. They might have been old enough to stay by themselves for a few minutes. You know things were different back then. You could leave your kids for a bit without people screaming at you or seeing it posted on Facebook.”

“And they never found the driver?”

“Never did. It was pretty late at night. Where he got hit there were no houses, so no one saw anything.”

“Did you think he was targeted? That it was work-related?”

“We always think that initially. But the official conclusion was that it was probably some drunk who hit him and then took off. Damn shame, because Adam was a good guy.”

“Good marriage? Everything okay on that end?”

“As far as I know. But we weren’t best friends or anything. I’d met his wife a few times. Seemed like a nice sort. She was gone a lot, according to Adam. Why do you ask?”

“No reason. Just groping around for a few leads on something.”

“Something to do with Adam’s death? After all these years?”

“It might tie into something I’ve got going on. I suppose you don’t know where their kids are? I think her son is a lawyer.”

“He is. With the Bureau actually. I guess he wanted to follow in his dad’s footsteps. At least partly.”

“You got contact info for him?”

“I can look it up right now. I’ll give it to you on the condition that one day you tell me what the hell this is all about, Puller.”

“I promise I will. And thanks.”

Puller wrote down the information and clicked off. He called Dan Reynolds, who was in the FBI’s D.C. office. When Puller explained who he was and what he wanted to talk about, he expected the young man to either ask a lot of questions or hang up on him. But instead Reynolds said, “In about twenty minutes I can meet you at the Dunkin’ Donuts around the corner from WFO.”

Surprised by this, Puller qui

ckly agreed and headed to his car. On the way to the parking garage he texted Knox about this development.

The Dunkin’ Donuts was fairly busy when Puller got there. But he had no problem spotting Dan Reynolds, for the young man had taken after his mother in height and looks. Puller introduced himself and they bought their coffees and headed outside to sit at a small table on the sidewalk.

Dan Reynolds, in addition to inheriting his mother’s good looks and height, had her penetrating gaze. He took a sip of coffee and stared at a car passing by.

“So why is an Army CID agent looking into my father’s death all these years later? He wasn’t in the military.”

“It might be connected to another case of a military nature,” Puller answered.

“Mind telling me which one?”

Puller mulled this over. “A former colleague of your mother was murdered at Union Station.”

“Niles Robinson,” said Dan.

“That’s right.”