The Bricklayer

NINE

KATE STOOD OFF TO THE SIDE, NOT WANTING TO BE NOTICED AS SHE watched Vail. They were in the L.A. FBI’s major-case room. Tom Demick, the tech agent who had so deftly opened Bertok’s apartment door, was taping a microphone wire to Vail’s bare chest. He looked over at her briefly and rolled his eyes in silent prediction that the Pentad’s ingenuity during the first two drops had already rendered the predictable device a waste of time. She smiled back obligingly and continued to search his face and body language for any sign of fear. His hands hung loosely at his side as Demick clipped the radio’s body into the back of his waistband. Vail turned back toward her, and she could see his heart beating against the lean muscle of his chest. She timed it—about forty beats a minute. She thought about the moment he had been asked to make the drop, even though West had died and Bertok had disappeared; he had shown no surprise or apprehension, almost as if he had expected it.
Vail leaned closer to the tech agent. “Did you get the pen register on Bertok’s phone?” he asked quietly.
“It’s up and running. I’m checking it as often as I can. Other than the ex-wife and brother, you want to be notified of any calls, right?”
Abruptly the door opened. The SAC, Mark Hildebrand, walked in and stepped to the side to allow Assistant Director Don Kaulcrick to pass. Kate and Vail looked at each other. Neither of them had any idea he was coming.
The two men were followed by three other people, one a female agent. She had in her hand one of two straps that were connected to a large canvas bag. A male agent, who stood well over six feet tall and was powerfully built, held the other. They both had on suit coats which rode up over holstered handguns and spare magazine pouches. Evidently the three million dollars had arrived.
The other man was older, almost completely bald, and dressed in a pair of slacks and a golf shirt. There was an air of confidence about him. He was carrying a large brown leather carryall the size of a small suitcase. Demick introduced everyone as Vail pulled on his shirt and buttoned it. The older man in casual clothing was a technical agent from headquarters and was introduced only as “Bob.” He asked Vail, “You’re making the drop?”
Vail looked at the athletic-looking agent holding the bag and then at Kaulcrick. “Unless the assistant director knows something I don’t.”
“You’re making the drop, Steve. But as a matter of fact I do know a little something that might change the way we’re going to do this.” Kaulcrick pulled a folded document from his coat pocket. “The lab has matched not only the paper from the pad you and Kate found hidden in Bertok’s bathroom to the last Pentad note, but its torn edge as well.”
“Then this is all Bertok,” Kate said.
“That seems like a fairly safe bet.”
Vail said, “So the money is just a way to catch him.”
“Can you think of a better way for us to get our hands on him?” Kaulcrick said.
“Does this mean we can go public if we catch Bertok?” Kate asked.
“The director, being a former federal judge, doesn’t want to take anything for granted. If we gave a big, splashy news release, the Pentad might kill someone else just to remain in character. If there is a Pentad beyond Bertok. Plus the demand note is very specific should anything go wrong. But let’s not worry about that until we get him into custody.” Kaulcrick handed Vail a sheet of paper. “This is a copy to keep with you.”
FBI,

Your agent’s greed has complicated everything, so contingencies have become necessary. If you fail to deliver $3M, the sum will be increased to $5M, and that would mean we owe you two more bodies. Two prominent D.C. area newspeople have been selected. As before, should any of this find its way to the media, there will be two less of them to write about it.
34.344 N 118.511W at 7:17 P.M. on September 2. Look in the sub.
No guns. No cell phones.
The Rubaco Pentad
“So I am going to drop the full three million?” Vail asked.
“Again, the director doesn’t want to take any chances, so yes. Make the drop, and the agents covering you will take care of grabbing Bertok.”
Vail looked at the headquarters tech agent and pointed to his bag. “Is there something in there for me?”
“Because of what happened in the past, we want to be overly cautious. That transmitter you’ve got on has a GPS capability, but I’ve brought two other items for you to carry in case they try to render the primary transmitter inoperable. The first time a river was used to neutralize it. Who knows what it’ll be this time.” From his case, he took out what looked like a wallet. “This is also a GPS transmitter, very new, very micro. If you’re patted down, it looks and feels just like a wallet. It’ll tell us exactly where you are at all times. And it’s waterproof.” Vail took out his own wallet and handed it to Kate, and then put the transmitter in the same back pocket. “Also, we used canvas to fabricate the moneybag because of its thickness. There’s an overlapping seam at the bottom that’s hiding another GPS, which has the same microtechnology as the wallet. It’s even thinner because it doesn’t need the leather to disguise it. The hope is that because this bag weighs almost seventy pounds, the bad guys won’t be picking it up over their heads to check the bottom. Even if they do, it’s extremely difficult to detect.” He reached into the side pockets of the bag and took out three items: an underwater flashlight, a knife with a regular blade and an equally long saw blade, and a low-light monocular.
“What’s with the knife?” Vail asked.
“If nothing else, it’s a backup weapon. The letter said no guns. We thought we’d include one with the saw blade because who knows what you’re going to run into. It was developed for clandestine military units.”
Vail snapped the flashlight on and off and opened both knife blades. He took his own lock-back knife out of his pocket and handed it to Kate. Opening the mason’s knife and seeing its honed sharpness, she said, “I’m surprised you thought you needed a gun.”
Vail was reading the demand note and didn’t appear to hear her. “Is that ‘sub’ as in submarine?” he asked.
Tom Demick pulled out a map and laid it on a desk as everyone gathered around. “We’ve reconned the area only by satellite and map. Didn’t want to go stumbling around there with GPSs. It’s in West Hollywood. As close as we can figure, it’s this clear area right here between Lucas Avenue, South Toluca Street, and Beverly Boulevard. There’s no water or submarines around there, but I’ll keeping working on it.”
Kate said, “Seven seventeen is the exact minute of sunset, so you will be working in the dark.”
“I’ll hope that’s not a metaphor.”
“This is the FBI—everything’s a metaphor.”


VAIL LAY HIDDEN in the tall grass between two overgrown shrubs that were against a ten-foot-high chain-link fence. It surrounded a huge vacant lot. According to his wallet GPS, he was still about a hundred yards short of the exact West Hollywood coordinates given in the demand note. He had crawled as far forward as he could. Using the low-light monocular, he searched the area in front of him. When he radioed the information to the major-case room and the covering surveillance cars, he heard Kaulcrick’s voice. “What’s inside the fence?”
“Nothing I can see worth protecting. It looks like a giant vacant lot, maybe the size of one and a half football fields but shaped like a triangle.”
“Do you see anything inside?”
“Nothing.”
“Can you get in?”
“There’s barbed wire coiled all along the top as far as I can see. But the ground inside is not overgrown, so the kids around here probably have a way in and use it to play ball. I guess it’s time to let whoever’s waiting see me.” Vail tucked the monocular into the moneybag, which he hoisted onto his shoulder once he stood up. He started skirting the fence. About sixty yards from where he had parked the car, next to a small footpath that had been worn through the underbrush, he found a hole in the chain link that had been snipped away from the post. He reported what he had found on the radio. “Hold on, Vail, we’re trying to get a satellite picture of the area,” Demick said.
Technology, while providing remarkable advantages to law enforcement, had a crippling side. It could make investigators lazy, keeping them from remaining flexible. Vail was worried that the agents surveilling him were finding it much easier to track him through the GPS monitors in the major-case room than trying to follow him through the dark, irregular terrain. And those were the kinds of vulnerabilities that the Pentad somehow understood and exploited. He pulled back the corner of the fence, pushed the bag in ahead, and squeezed through.
He took out the wallet GPS again to check his position. The destination coordinates had been locked in and an arrow on the screen pointed toward a thirty-foot rise in the ground still almost a hundred yards ahead. He picked up the bag and started toward it. The radio’s earpiece crackled with Tom Demick’s voice. “I think I’ve figured out where you’re going. I should have thought of it before when I heard Toluca Street. It’s the Toluca portal to the old Pacific Electric Railway. I pulled it up on the Internet. It stopped running in the fifties. It used trolley cars. The kind that had the poles that reached up to the overhead electric lines. You’re at the beginning of a mile-long tunnel that was built to circumvent traffic back then, but both ends were sealed off years ago. Located at your end is Substation 51. That’s got to be the ‘sub’ in the note.”
“Very nice, Tom. I’m on my way.”
One of the surveillance teams came up on the radio. “Command, this is One-three, we’re at the fence, and it doesn’t look like we can follow the package without being made. The terrain is too open.”
Vail answered, “I’m good here. The last thing we want is to get burned. I’ll let you know if I need anything.”
“Copy,” One-three answered.
In the major-case room, Kate looked at Kaulcrick. “I don’t like this.”
“Uncertainty is exactly what Bertok wants. Quit worrying. Vail wanted to do this. We’ve got him surrounded. It has to be far enough away that we won’t be made. We’re in far better shape than that debacle in New Hampshire. And we’ve got three monitors up here, each one tracking the different GPSs. Nothing can go wrong.”
Vail’s voice interrupted. “I’m at the substation. It’s a small square building, every inch covered with graffiti.” Involuntarily, his hand went to where his gun should have been, but then he remembered he wasn’t armed. “Let’s go to radio silence until I see what’s inside.” He carefully stepped up onto the landing in front of the door and then moved against a wall as he listened. He couldn’t hear anything. He peeked inside.
Three glowsticks formed an arrow like he had read about in the naval-prison report. Next to it were two others holding down a sheet of paper. The room was otherwise empty. He went in and picked up the note. Underneath it was a walkie-talkie with the transmission key soldered into a permanent transmission position. The extortionists were now listening to him. He read the note:
Do not transmit one more word on your radio.
Take this radio, clip it to your belt, and leave yours here. Follow the arrow.
After carefully folding the note and putting it in his pocket, Vail opened his shirt and peeled the microphone from his chest, pulling the Bureau radio from his waistband. He dropped it loudly on the floor so the extortionist’s radio could hear it being discarded and then attached their radio to his belt. That answered the question why they didn’t want him to bring a cell phone—it could be used for silent text-messaging.
The arrow was glued to a couple of rocks. It pointed toward the sealed entrance of the railroad tunnel. But the rocks used seemed to have a secondary direction. Their difference in height also made the arrow rise, almost as if it was pointing to the top of the tunnel. Vail stepped out of the building and stood still for a moment, making sure the satellites could once again lock onto the two remaining GPSs. He starting walking slowly toward the entrance to the tunnel.
“Steve, what’s happening?” Kate said into the mike. “Steve?”
“Something must have happened to his radio,” said the agent watching the monitor for the GPS on his body transmitter. “Even though he’s moving away from the substation, the monitor shows the radio’s still in the building.”
The headquarters tech agent had been hovering between all three monitors and said, “They must have had him take it off and leave it there. It’s okay. That’s why we gave him two backups. They’re still working fine.”
“But we can’t communicate with him,” Kate said.
Kaulcrick spoke into the radio mike. “One-one, do your people have the area surrounded?”
“As best we can without getting too close.”
“Just make sure if he leaves that fenced-off area, he can’t get by you.”
“I don’t like this,” Kate said again. “At each turn, we’re losing more control.”
Vail had reached the mouth of the tunnel. The arched entrance was an almost perfect half circle about twenty feet high. It had been sealed up with cinder block and coated with a concrete plaster. Like the substation, it shimmered electrically with graffiti of all colors in the low light.
The glowstick arrow in the substation indicated that Vail was supposed to go to the top of the opening. Around the left side of the entrance was a small pathway up the steep grade. It ran between the huge concrete frame of the tunnel and the chain-link fence. He shifted the heavy bag more toward the middle of his back and maneuvered up the thirty-degree grade. At the top of the structure, he started walking, following the tunnel’s spine along its mile-long length, looking for the next instruction.
Seventy-five yards farther he found another glowstick, attached to a small metal door in the ground. It appeared to be a hatch for maintenance workers if access became necessary to work on the electrical lines that ran along the tunnel’s ceiling. A rusty padlock that had secured the hatch had been cut and lay next to it. The thick metal door was ajar. Judging by the piles of dirt and stone around it, the entrance had been covered over and somehow the extortionists had found it and dug it out.
Under the glowstick was another note.
Remove the other tracking device and leave it next to the opening. Then take the money and enter the tunnel. Do not use lights—tunnel rigged with explosives and photocell trigger.
Once again, the Pentad had anticipated more than one tracking device. Vail took out the low-light monocular and scanned the surrounding area to determine if any of the surveillance agents were close enough to observe where he was going. He couldn’t see any.
Down inside the hatch were individual U-shaped ladder rungs that were anchored into the concrete wall. Below them, another glowstick arrow sat flat on the floor, pointing toward the remaining mile of the tunnel. Vail then used the monocular to look more closely at the floor of the tunnel. He could see small glints of light surrounding the luminescent marker. Taking a handful of pebbles that had been cleared from around the hatch, he tossed them in as long a pattern as possible. The sound of stone plinking off metal echoed lightly from below. He refocused the monocular to get a better look and could now see that the floor was booby-trapped with long nails hammered up through boards.
Vail wondered if it was a bluff that the tunnel was rigged to explode. The glowsticks wouldn’t give off enough light to trigger a photocell, so he had no choice but to assume it was true. The one thing that was certain was they wanted him to proceed in the dark. Was it so he would jump down onto the punji boards? Or was there another reason?
He eased the GPS wallet out of his back pocket and set it down carefully to mark where he was last aboveground for the surveillance teams. Then he lowered the bag through the hatch ahead of him and started down the metal rungs. Once he was completely clear of the hatch, he pulled both straps of the bag over his head so they sat cross-chest and then shifted the weight completely behind him.
He stepped down two more rungs, and as he was testing the next one, the hatch was slammed closed. Then he heard a lock being snapped shut. It was followed by dirt and gravel being shoveled back over the hatch.


IN THE MAJOR-CASE ROOM, the headquarters tech agent watched the monitors intensely. “What happened? We’ve lost transmission for the GPS in the bag. He must have dropped it and the weight of the money disabled it. Wait, the wallet device is still moving.”
“Which way?” Kaulcrick asked.
“It’s moving east.”
“All units, the package is moving east from the last location,” the assistant director barked into the microphone. “Can someone get an eye on him? Don’t lose that money!”
“This is One-four. It’s pretty dark, but I see something moving. Let me try to get over there.”
“Don’t get too close, we don’t know who’s around.”
The tech agent, watching the grid on the monitor, said, “He’s now walking up Emerald Street.”
“Does anyone have him?” Kaulcrick asked, his voice starting to rise. No one answered. “Does anyone have him!”
Again all the radios were silent. The tech agent said, “He’s turned onto West Second Street.”
“One-four,” Kaulcrick called, “have you caught up to him?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“One-one, flood that area with your people. Find him. And that bag.”