Glass Tiger
- Автор: Горес Джо
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Quercus
- ISBN: 978-1-84724-072-9
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «Glass Tiger». Краткое содержание книги:
‘I need transportation,’ said Thorne. ‘Something four-wheel and off-road.’
‘They got a Hertz and an Avis here in town.’
‘I don’t like car rental outfits. I don’t like credit cards. I like cash.’ Thorne took out his roll. ‘Like this.’
Up close, the kid smelled of sweat and motor oil and cigarette smoke. He kept wiping his hands on a greasy red rag he took from the back pocket of his coveralls, over and over again, staring at Thorne’s roll as if mesmerized by it.
‘I’ve got a ’94 Dodge Dakota four-wheel out back. Thirty-a-day, $500 security deposit, pay for your own gas.’
‘Five hundred? A ninety-four?’
The blond kid grinned. ‘Three-fifty.’ He paused. ‘Back country. Off-road. It ain’t hunting season, and some terrorist fuck took a shot at the President of the United States down by the Bitterroot ridge a couple of days ago. Wouldn’t be that you’re some sort of journalist, would it?’
‘Wouldn’t be.’
The kid stuck out a hand. ‘Andy Farrell.’
‘Brendan Thorne. I’ll tell you tonight whether I’ll need your Dakota tomorrow too.’
‘I usually eat dinner at The Spice of Life on Second Street. You can get me there. They close up at nine o’clock.’
Thorne turned in at the Motel Deluxe on Salmon’s Church Street. He flashed his badge and commission card with the FBI seal on it at the dark chunky woman behind the desk. Although they now were outlawed, his ‘creds’ worked like a dream. He asked the woman about any man who had stayed there for a week or so, maybe left before dawn two days ago.
She already had the old-fashioned sign-in register open flat on the desk and was turning pages. ‘You got a name?’
‘Hal Corwin?’
‘No Corwin. We did have a guy reserved for two weeks, then checked out early.’ She turned the register, pointed to an entry. ‘Hal Fletcher. As in arrow-maker. My people know about fletching arrows. He the loony tried to shoot the President?’
‘A person of interest,’ said Thorne.
‘He sure wasn’t any sort of an Ay-rab. He seemed a nice guy, too. In his fifties, lean, sorta tall, looked like he spent a lot of time outdoors. Had a limp.’ She smiled at a memory. ‘He played catch with our son in the parking lot every evening.’
‘What was he driving?’
She checked the register again. ‘Nineteen-ninety 4-Runner. California license 5-C-W-D-0-4-6. I ’member it as dark green.’
Andy Farrell was having a beer at a table by the window when Thorne got to The Spice of Life. The blond hair had been washed, he’d switched to slacks and a sport shirt and a windbreaker and was having a cheeseburger and fries and a Caesar salad. A skinny twenty-year-old waitress with hair dyed bright scarlet and a ring through her lower lip was flirting with him. Thorne slid into the chair across the table from him.
‘They only got beer and wine here,’ said Andy almost apologetically, as if he were the host and Thorne was a guest.
‘All I need is a cup of coffee.’
Andy waved at the waitress. ‘I eat here because they use organic greens and veggies, and their burgers are damn good.’
Thorne grinned and jerked his head toward the waitress.
‘And here I thought maybe she had something to do with it.’
Andy’s face flamed almost as scarlet as the girl’s hair. When she came with Thorne’s coffee, Andy asked for apple pie à-la-mode for dessert. Thorne did too. After the table had been cleared, Andy leaned across it to speak in a low voice.
‘I been thinking, you ain’t no newsman.’
‘Said I wasn’t. Maybe I’m one of those alphabet-soup guys from the government. You’re a hunter, right?’
‘How’d you know that?’
‘The gunrack in your Silverado. Since you hunt, you must know the back country around here pretty well.’
‘Try me.’
‘Okay. Below the western side of the ridge above the meadow where the President gave his speech, there’s a sub-alpine valley. Do you know it? I need to find a—’
Andy exclaimed, ‘Jesus Christ! The bastard went up that valley to the massif, didn’t he? He wasn’t any Muslim, he had to be a local who knew the terrain.’
‘Knew the terrain, yeah. Local, no. Now, if he needed to stash a four-wheel SUV within a five-mile radius of that valley so he could get out of Dodge quick, where would he put it?’
Andy stood up, said, ‘Be right back,’ and left the cafe. He came back with a topo map from his truck. He opened it out on the tabletop, tapped a finger on one of its squiggles.
‘See that minor national-park road right there? I’d look up any one of those little dirt tracks going off of it.’
‘You should have my job.’ Thorne stood up. ‘If I’m not back with the truck within a couple of days, you’ll find it hidden under that stand of fir trees at the mouth of the valley. The keys will be on the left front tire. Will the security deposit cover going over there and getting your truck back?’
‘Christ yes, more than. But...’ He paused. ‘I’d sure like to be in on whatever it is you’re doing, Mr. Thorne.’
Thorne shrugged and grimaced. ‘I wish you could, Andy. I’d feel comfortable with you covering my back. But...’
‘I know,’ said Andy, crestfallen. ‘National Security.’
Thorne scattered too much money on the table. ‘My treat.’ He stuck out his hand. They shook. Before he knew he was going to say it, he added, ‘I kill people for the government, Andy.’
‘I figured maybe you did,’ said Andy solemnly.
Walking out of the place, Thorne thought, Maybe that’ll be my epitaph: he killed people for the government. Maybe, in this case, the wrong person?
Corwin’s 4-Runner was the key to everything. If Thorne couldn’t find it, he’d painted himself into a corner and would just have to flat-out go on the run. He had to believe that if he found it, he would find something to point toward something he could use as leverage against Hatfield’s scheming.
In the morning he walked up the street for breakfast, came back, and used the room phone to make a reservation to fly Northwest from Missoula to Minneapolis the next night, then on to D.C. Give the Feebs something to chew on.
For the same reason, he drove the Cherokee and Franklin’s GPS transmitter to the Ravalli County Museum in the old county courthouse on Bedford Street. If they bothered to track him there, they would figure he was just killing time.
He let a collection of American Indian artifacts fascinate him for an hour, then went out the ground-floor men’s room window, leaving it unlocked, and went shopping. To buy more time, he needed to give Hatfield something tough to explain away.
In a variety of stores, he bought underwear, shirts, socks, a waterproof pouch to use as a wallet, two pairs of pants and one warm jacket, shaving gear, a pair of shoes and a pair of ankle-length boots, a belt. He also bought a wood rasp, Providene-Iodine 10 % topical antiseptic microbicide, gauze bandages and adhesive tape, and thin opaque medical gloves. At the last minute, he bought two more $10 phone cards. They could be traced but it took time. He paid cash for everything. At the bank, he cashed the FBI’s severance check, and drew out his day’s limit of cash on his ATM card. After today, his money belt would have to see him through.
Everything fit into two grocery shopping bags he left under the men’s room window at the museum while he hauled himself back up inside. He walked sedately out the front door, drove around to pick up his purchases, and went back to the motel. No messages on the phone. No intrusions into the room. He hadn’t expected any. They were so damn sure of him, like his FBI taggers in D.C., that he felt only contempt for them. And anger.
He paid through the next day, telling the room clerk not to bother making up the room in the morning, and put out the DO NOT DISTURB sign before going to bed.