The Program Page 16

  5

  The phone still in her hand, Andrea walked to the sliding glass doors and stared at the waters of the Gulf. She drained her wineglass and placed it on the cute little rattan bistro table by the window before she punched in Dave Curtiss’s number and waited for him to answer.

  While the phone was ringing she paced in front of the glass doors and ignored her cat. As soon as she recognized Dave’s voice, she said, “Meet me in twenty minutes. You know where.”

  “No. I’m alone with the kids. I can’t leave. Anyway, I can’t stand this any longer. I’m an absolute wreck. Vicki says I’m getting hives. Do you know I had a chance—I mean a real opportunity—to go into investment banking instead of law? I ever tell you that? Well, I did. And I should have done it. I wouldn’t be in this pickle, I’ll tell you. There’s no capital punishment in investment banking. If you have something, for God’s sake tell me now.”

  “I’m at home, Dave. This isn’t Pay-Phone City.”

  “Don’t push me, Andrea. I’m not up for it. I hope this means you finally talked to her?”

  “I did.”

  “Then tell me what she said.”

  “She accidentally told me she’s in Colorado. Someplace close to the mountains. She’s working in a restaurant in a hotel. That’s all I know.”

  “Restaurants need lawyers?”

  “Bad ones do, I imagine. No, she’s learning to cook. Oh, and wherever she is, isn’t too far from Littleton.”

  “Littleton?”

  “You know, where Columbine High School is.”

  “Jesus. My daughter’s in junior high. I don’t even like to think about Columbine High School. What did Kirsten say about Khalid?”

  “Not much. She’s Peyton now, by the way. We ran out of time. She said she’ll call back. But I think she may have some doubts.”

  “What kind of doubts? Death-penalty doubts?” His voice actually bordered on being hopeful.

  “She had to hang up and go back to work at the restaurant. I don’t know what kind of doubts.”

  “She’ll call you back when?”

  “I don’t know, Dave. Soon, I hope.”

  AN HOUR AND fifteen minutes later, Prowler’s phone rang in the Atlanta suburbs. He answered on the first ring.

  “Forget Indiana,” the caller said. “My tap finally produced. She’s in Colorado. Get your people moving now.”

  “Of the three possibles, that would have been my last guess. You have confirmation?”

  “Yes. She just now told her friend she’s in Colorado, somewhere near the mountains. She’s working in a hotel restaurant. So, of your three possibles, it has to be Boulder.”

  “How certain are you?”

  “One hundred percent. I have it on tape. Do you want to hear it?”

  Prowler considered listening to the recording, but said, “That won’t be necessary. Did you get additional details? The name of the restaurant? The name of the hotel? Anything useful?”

  “No, I can’t walk you right to her door. But I found the haystack she’s in. And I located the section of the haystack she’s in. All your people have to do is find the damn needle.”

  Prowler processed the criticism and chose not to respond. He said, “As long as all of your information is reliable, you can consider that your original request will be accomplished in a timely fashion.”

  “Don’t worry, my information is golden. But my friend doesn’t want any deviation from the original plan. No deviation. This has to be coordinated. You’ll send me photos before you take any action?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Good.”

  Prowler added, “If the second payment is delayed like the first one was, you won’t like the consequences.”

  “Don’t worry. It was just an account number mix-up on my friend’s part. I told you that already.”

  Prowler said, “Tell your friend I don’t worry. I act.”

  chapter

  five

  BARBARA BARBARA

  1

  The United flight from Indianapolis to Denver was approaching DIA from the north, which afforded Barb Turner an inspiring view of the mountains from her window seat on the starboard side of the plane. This was Barb’s first visit to Denver, and she was mesmerized by the sight of the light fracturing above the mountains as the sharp teeth of the distant Rockies gnawed on the liquid underbelly of the setting sun.

  While the plane taxied, Barb reached down and checked her carry-on bag to be certain nothing had been tampered with during an earlier trip to the lavatory. She felt for both of her cameras. She touched her wallet. Everything was in its place.

  She found the Denver airport disconcerting. Bright, brash, new. And big. Too big for the city she expected to find. In advance of viewing Denver for the first time, she’d already concluded that what they had built was a size-fourteen airport for a size-eight city. Barb especially didn’t like the new airports that had their own train systems. But she had done her homework, had memorized the layout at DIA, and she quickly found her way around. Her rule-of-thumb was to follow a herd of business people off the plane. One lone traveler might be as lost as she was. A whole herd usually meant familiarity. Turn right if they turned right. Follow them straight to baggage claim or to ground transportation.

  As always, the strategy worked. Within minutes—using pedestrian walkways, escalators, and the dreaded train—she covered what felt to her like miles and found herself standing in front of the fountain in the center of the main terminal. She craned her neck and examined the soaring translucent roof above her head. She was intentionally acting like a tourist. She faced the fountain and saw an Avis counter to her right.

  BY THE TIME Barb Turner had retrieved her solitary suitcase from baggage claim, signed for her rental car, and picked her route from the airport to Boulder, night was almost done replacing day. The mountains were silhouetted against a pale charcoal sky, and the peaks appeared much farther away than they had when she was gazing at them from the window seat of the plane. The woman at the car rental checkout booth had told her to expect about a forty-five-minute journey to Boulder.

  She played with the radio controls, trying to find a station from the town she was about to visit, and began to prepare herself for the reality that was Boulder. She felt as though she already knew the town but was cautious about her knowledge because she knew that she knew Boulder the same way she knew Brentwood.

  Brentwood was O.J.

  Boulder was JonBenet.

  Towns like Brentwood and Boulder had become infamous because of the work of amateurs. Barb Turner wasn’t an amateur. She was a professional. And she planned to leave no mark during her visit. No one on MSNBC would be talking about the mess she left behind.

  SHE HAD NO hotel or motel reservation in Boulder. Although she was a planner at heart, she insisted on doing some things by feel. Picking where to spend the night was one of those things.

  She stayed on Highway 36, the Boulder Turnpike, until it turned into Twenty-eighth Street and curved north into Boulder. As she made the transition into town, she noticed a motel on her right called the Broker Inn. Next came the Boulder Inn, followed by a Ramada Inn and then a slightly funkier place called the Lazy L. She felt a moment’s magnetism for the Lazy L but wasn’t fond of the locale. Twenty-eighth Street was too much of a main drag. Down the road a bit, on her left, she spied a multistory place called the Regal Harvest House.

  No. None of them felt right to her. The cross street at the next big intersection, Arapahoe Road, was lined with commercial and retail activity, so she turned left there. But the retail district turned out to be small. Within a couple of blocks she found herself driving on a two-lane, tree-lined road that was a mix of commercial and residential properties. It could have bisected a thousand small towns anywhere in the Midwest. She passed a big school that a stone sign identified as Boulder High School. The school was followed by a few more shops.

  Barb drove on, hesitating at the intersection at Broadway,
another big street, searching left and right from the corner, trying to spot another motel. On the other side of Broadway, Arapahoe Road became mostly residential. Brick bungalows mixed with some stately Victorian homes and some anachronistic apartment buildings and condos. She guessed that the brick homes were as old as the house in which she’d grown up in Iowa.

  She passed a new library and then a turn-of-the-century school as Arapahoe Road climbed gently toward the west. The mountains loomed large in front of her. After a few more blocks, she had to lean forward over the wheel and crane her neck upward to even begin to glimpse the dark sky above the vaulting peaks. The mountains were close and they beckoned. She drove on, slowing to circumvent a series of traffic circles that were placed in locations that made no sense to her at all. She was about to acknowledge that her instinct had failed her when she came upon another small commercial district. Some small office buildings. A couple of little stores. A park along a stream.

  Arapahoe Road narrowed and became one-way. And then, on the left side of the road, a red “Vacancy” sign emerged from the darkness. The adjacent “NO” was unlit. The rest of the sign was dark. She drove closer until her headlights illuminated the marquee. It read, FOOT OF THE MOUNTAIN MOTEL. AAA APPROVED. HBO. Above the sign, on a little rise, she spotted the motel. She guessed there were a dozen rooms in three or four old log-faced buildings. Barb counted six cars in the meandering lot.

  She pulled in front of the cabin marked OFFICE and killed the ignition on her car. She was confident that she’d found her temporary home away from home.

  • • •

  THE LITTLE OFFICE was dimly lit by an old desk lamp. Some tourist brochures and flyers were stacked on a rack that was placed on the counter along one wall. The high counter separated the room roughly in half. A young woman sat at the small desk behind the counter. She was pecking away on a laptop that was surrounded by open books and reprints of articles from journals.

  Barb knew that Boulder was the home of the University of Colorado. She asked, “Writing a paper?”

  “Due tomorrow. I’m a procrastinator. May I help you? Are you looking for a room?”

  “Yes, I would like a room. Please. And please tell me you’re not full. I don’t have a reservation.”

  “We are full but I just had a cancellation, a family that had booked two rooms. Let me see …” The young woman grabbed a loose-leaf notebook full of sheets covered with a calendarlike grid. “We have … a tiny double … and a double with a killer view but old plumbing. I can give you either of those. The one with the view is my personal favorite. But you can only have it until…” She checked the same sheet of paper. “You can have it for four nights.”

  Barb asked. “That’s not a problem. How old is the plumbing? Are we talking flush toilets?”

  The girl laughed and stood from the desk. She towered over Barb, who guessed that the young woman was at least six-one. “Don’t be silly. Some of the others have new fixtures. The owners haven’t remodeled that one yet, that’s all. The bathtub’s a little funky but everything works fine. Sometime before football season they promise they’ll get to it.”

  “If it’s your personal favorite, I’ll take it.”

  “Good. Want to fill this out, please?” She slid a registration card toward her new guest. “How long will you be staying?”

  “I’ll take all four days,” Barb said. “That should work out to be just about right for me.” Barb expected to be gone in two.

  “Where are you from?”

  Barb momentarily lifted her eyes from the registration form and made fresh eye contact with the young clerk. “I’m from Indianapolis,” she said.

  “You here on business?”

  “Yes,” Barb Turner said. “I have some meetings at the university. What’s the paper on?”

  “Abnormal psych.”

  Barb said, “I’m in education. I’m afraid I don’t know anything about that.”

  HOW CLOSE TO the Rocky Mountains was the Foot of the Mountain Motel? The next morning at first light Barb could see that if the motel were a house, the Rocky Mountains would start in the middle of the motel’s backyard. The Foot of the Mountain Motel was actually in the mouth of a wide canyon. Another steep ridge of rock rose a few hundred feet from the front door.

  Before getting ready for bed the night before, Barb had used the local Yellow Pages to prepare a list of the establishments in Boulder that called themselves hotels, and that offered their own restaurants. There weren’t many. One was the Regal Harvest House, one of the places she had passed the night before on her way into town. But the closest hotel on her list was a place called the Boulderado. She planned on going there for breakfast.

  She was confident that she would find the woman she was searching for before the day was done.

  IT TURNED OUT that Barb was right.

  Earlier that day, Barb had used a pay phone to call both the Harvest House Hotel restaurant and Q’s, the restaurant at the Boulderado Hotel. Each time she asked to be connected to the kitchens and each time she asked to speak to Peyton in the kitchen. She was told that no one by that name worked at the Harvest House. But whoever answered the phone at Q’s said that Peyton wasn’t working right then, but that she was working a short shift later, from one to five.

  That’s how hard it was for Barb Turner to locate Kirsten Lord in Boulder, Colorado.

  AT THREE-THIRTY, BARB used a public phone on Spruce Street to call a familiar phone number in Georgia. Prowler answered after a solitary ring.

  “Prowler,” he said.

  “Hey, it’s me. I found her. She’s working at a restaurant called Q’s. Just capital Q, then apostrophe s. She’s like an intern or something. I haven’t actually seen her yet. As soon as she shows up for a shift, I’ll get a picture to you. Afterward, I’ll follow her home and begin to put together a plan for the next phase.”

  “The name I provided is correct?”

  “Yes. Peyton something. No address yet, though. I should have it and a last name by tonight, tomorrow at the latest.”

  “After you transmit the file, our client should be able to confirm her identity within hours.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Good work, Barbara.”

  Barb said, “It’s why I get paid the big bucks.”

  Prowler laughed. Barb enjoyed the moment. She knew Prowler’s laughter was an infrequent sound.

  2

  Ron Kriciak thought that he might have met Fenster Kastle on one of his training junkets for the U.S. Marshals Service. That seminar in Dallas, maybe. Didn’t Kastle do a talk on something? Security issues in traffic? Was that it? Ron really felt he should remember. Fenster Kastle? The guy’s name sounded like some monument in Great Britain, for God’s sake. Ron prided himself on his ability to remember people, and when he ventured into his mental archives for an image of Fenster Kastle, he retrieved a picture of a round black man with small teeth and dark button eyes. A man who was round the way ex-athletes are round. But Ron didn’t remember Kastle as a soft man. Quite the contrary.

  He remembered Fenster Kastle as the kind of guy Ron would be reluctant to arm wrestle in a bar.

  Ron hadn’t enjoyed an opportunity to test his memory for accuracy, though. Every one of Ron’s recent contacts with Fenster Kastle had taken place by phone or e-mail. And every one of those recent contacts had concerned their mutual WITSEC charge, Peyton Francis.

  Kastle was the headquarters honcho who was coordinating Peyton’s participation in WITSEC.

  This latest contact that Kriciak received from Kastle was as impersonal as the ones that had preceded it. The e-mail read, “We need to talk. Call me on a secure line. ASAP.”

  “Fenster? Ron Kriciak in Denver.”

  Ron could hear muffled voices on the other end of the phone along with the scratchy sound that people make when they’re trying to cover the microphone with their palm. Finally, after one long last screech, Fenster Kastle said, “Listen, I just have a minute. Things are crazy here, an
d I need to alert you to some fresh red flags in regards to our friend.”

  Ron grabbed a pencil. “Yeah.” He didn’t want to sound like a supplicant but immediately questioned his reply. Too casual? Not sufficiently deferential to Kastle’s authority?

  “We’ve detected a couple of attempted internal searches in our computer system. Basically it appears that someone’s been trying to identify her placement location. The firewall caught both of the attempts, but the user was sophisticated enough that we haven’t been able to detect the source of the inquiries. Just that they were internal. The geeks are checking to see if they can do better on the tracing and to see if they can reassure me that nothing actually pierced the veil, but for now you and I need to be aware that we have some people trying to find her. At this moment we think they’ve been thwarted, but we’re concerned that they’re looking.”

  “You’re certain that it’s our people?”

  “That’s affirmative. It’s internal.”

  Ron decided to grab the lead in the conversation. “Any rumors I should be aware of?”

  “We still have a lot of colleagues who don’t think we should be protecting this woman. That hasn’t changed. The popularity of that point-of-view may actually be increasing. Beyond that, I don’t have anything new.”

  “The number of people who know her new identity and know where she is? Has it changed?”

  “It’s stable.”

  Ron pondered the news from headquarters. Decided he wasn’t too surprised or too alarmed by it. His own assessment was that one of his colleagues in the U.S. Marshals Service was trying to be the first to be able to say he tracked down Kirsten Lord within WITSEC. Ron had seen it happen before with some of the bigger Mafia fish after they were buried in the program. Ron called the practice deep-sea fishing and knew it was all about bragging rights.

  It didn’t mean that anyone was actually thinking about hurting anybody. But it might mean that one of the other marshals might be trying to compromise Peyton’s security. That happened sometimes.