All In

Book 0: 6:20 Man

by David Baldacci

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

The newest thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci.

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 416

Sample

THE WARMTH GAVE WAY TO a sudden chill as a beast of a storm rocketed straight at New York City after pounding neighboring Newark.

Delays had already popped up on the electronic displays at JFK and LaGuardia, much to the annoyance of a sea of already-weary air travelers.

This one was going to be something until it wasn’t and the storm limped off into the Atlantic to die.

And yet with all that, the young woman’s nimble steps on the pavement were unhurried, her slim briefcase swinging casually by her side. Surrounding her were some of the tallest buildings in the world, concrete, brick, and stone veneers, with steel skeletons and heavy bottoms sunk right into the New York City bedrock. Her obliviousness to the coming storm could have been these same buildings’ collective fault. You really couldn’t see much of the sky right now, at least the parts that were looking to unload on the Big Apple. As far as she was concerned, everything was right as rain, and without a chance of it.

Thus, later, when the first low rumble of thunder appeared, she looked up in surprise at the rapidly darkening sky.

The woman immediately looked around for a cab. There was always one around, right? Nope, not when you really needed it.

She defaulted to her ridesharing apps. However, after consulting two of them she found the closest driver was ten minutes away. She knew that was no sure thing because better offers for the gig operators might just crop up, especially with the heavens about to open.

The woman picked up her pace and turned left and then right, her shortest route to get to where she was going, but she was ultimately heading straight into the deepening darkness.

Even those few people relatively close by were shadowy presences in the dimness. It was all quite eerie, she decided. Yet she’d been in battle-torn countries as a war correspondent. This hardly compared to that.

Lightning bolts started to lick the sky. The accompanying sounds of thunder reminded her of the bombs dropped nearly on her head in distant places. She had never imagined herself dying in such circumstances, but looking back she realized it was a miracle she hadn’t.

She hurried on and approached a low-rise brick building with a covered niche that would provide adequate relief from the rain until it passed. She was about to duck into it as the first few drops started to fall, when a man stepped out from the space and confronted her.

THE GENTLEMAN WAS IN HIS late forties and tall, with thick, wavy hair. He wore an expensive, dark suit that hung baggy on him, as though he’d recently lost weight. The accompanying Patek Philippe watch, manicured nails, and glistening rock on his ring finger marked him as a man of means and perhaps style. He also wore rimless specs that gave him a professorial air. His face was thin and his skin pale, almost translucent. His expression was calm and neutral. He held a stout black umbrella with a sharp, pointy end.

All in all, he looked a bit intimidating there in the stormy darkness. Despite that she smiled in recognition, her expression happy.

Then he started speaking. And as he did, the woman’s smile faded. And her expression turned to disbelief, and next, to disappointment; finally, her features welled to anger. It was a transformation so complete that, on observing this, the suddenly alarmed man’s final words tumbled out like the empty casings from a machine gun feed.

As the storm exploded like fireworks over both their heads, neither seemed to notice or, if they did, to care.

When he had finished speaking and fell silent, he looked at her with fear and expectation flitting over his wan features. For her part, she looked like a human Vesuvius about to pop right there in Manhattan.

Yet she ended up saying nothing. Trembling, she turned and marched down the street directly into the face of the approaching weather. She was now moving with the urgency of a person who needed to get away from something patently uncomfortable. Her expression had been full of anger, but now she only seemed deeply disappointed.

To complicate matters, the rain started to fall in sheets as the storm unloaded all that pent-up moisture. She lifted the briefcase to shield her head and again scanned the street for a cab. Quickly soaked, as her flimsy briefcase failed to keep the wind-flung rain off her, she flitted down a side street, hoping for a better option in that direction. This turned out not to be a good decision, she soon realized. It was ill lighted, empty of any people, and the storefronts held no illumination; she couldn’t even see the end of the street through the rainy haze.

Stupid, she thought, but there was no going back now.

Then, like the stalker in a Hitchcock flick, the man made the turn onto the street, his umbrella open and raised; seeing her, he increased his pace. She was fit, limber, and far younger than he was, but she wore heels and his legs were much longer than hers. That made it a fairer contest than it otherwise might have been.

“Theresa,” he called out. “We need to talk it out. We can’t leave it like this.”

“Not interested in talking, Bill,” she called over her shoulder. “You’ve said all that needs to be said and I have no words, okay? No words.”

“But I need to explain in more detail,” he shouted over the noise of the storm.

Now she turned her head to look at him, though she kept striding along. “Same answer.” Then she flipped him off as the exclamation point.

“Just give me a chance,” he pleaded. “Don’t you owe me that?”

This salvo did what his previous words had failed to do.

Theresa stopped, whirled, and waited for him, her soaked, long brown hair hanging in her face, her mascara transformed into dark rivulets meandering crookedly over her high cheekbones. She looked like a painted high priestess of some sinister religion about to drop the curse of all curses onto the man determinedly heading her way.

As a bolt of lightning shot diagonally across the sky and nearly speared the faraway Empire State Building, they faced off on the empty street like gunslingers.

For the next thirty seconds they went verbally toe-to-toe. It was difficult to tell who was more of an aggressor as the battle ebbed and flowed like the storm above. Theresa finally barked, “Bill, you screwed me over like I have never been screwed over before. So go fuck yourself!”

“I’m sorry, but there was nothing I could do,” said Bill. “And I want to make amends.”

Something seemed to occur to her. “Wait a minute. How did you know where I was?”

His expression, along with his shoulders, drooped. “What?”

“In this great, big city, you just happen to run into me? You were following me, admit it, you bastard.” Then her expression changed to one of even greater shock. “Or else you knew where I was going.” Angry suspicion crept across her expression and held there. “Oh my God, please do not tell me—”

He cut in, “Look, I—” He stopped when the first man appeared from out of the gloom like a shadow given sudden, magical life by the storm’s energy.

He was dressed in dark clothes with a black ski mask covering his head and face.

“Oh, shit—” Bill closed his umbrella and pointed its sharp end threateningly at the man, but a decent weapon it clearly was not. “I’m warning you—”

He did not finish because three more men appeared, dressed identically to the first.

Bill now had the look of a man who knew his life was over. His shoulders tensed and he pulled his phone from his pocket.

Theresa took a step back as well, her chest heaving, her expression now holding only terror. “Bill? What’s happening? Who are—”

“Run, Theresa, run!” he cried out as he launched himself at the first man.

But his opponent pulled something from his pocket, pointed it at Bill’s chest, and fired. Bill started shaking uncontrollably, his arms and legs flopping around like a fish dying on land. His balance gone, he dropped to the ground, but kept gyrating as the residual electrical current from the Taser worked fiercely through him.

Theresa had turned to run. Only now she was staring down the muzzle of a .45 semiauto held by one of the masked men; a suppressor can was attached, and that was all one needed to know about his intent. No Taser for her; she was apparently going to receive a far more permanent outcome on the wet streets of inclement New York.

She screamed, and threw her briefcase at him, at the same instant that he fired. The round tore right through the briefcase, entered and then exited out her hand, and then was re-embedded in her shoulder in the often freaky trajectory of bullet versus bone. She fell to the ground face down, writhing and screaming in pain. The shooter stood over her and calmly pumped another round into the center of her back. She gasped, relaxed, and then became completely still. He was about to fire a third time just to make sure when the sounds of a siren cut through the gloom.

“Move,” shouted another masked man. “Now.”

They gathered up the incapacitated Bill, including his phone, and carried him to a windowless van idling at the end of the street. A minute later all was quiet except for the fall of the rain and the occasional crack of thunder while the storm expended its energy. Ironically, the siren that had caused the men’s fast departure had passed on to another emergency, leaving this one all by its lonesome, for now.

Theresa lay on the pavement, her blood continuing to spread.

Because her heart was still beating.

TRAVIS DEVINE DID NOT CARE for hospitals of any kind. He had been in too many of them fighting for his life. Both while in the Army as a result of combat and also as a civilian, from another form of combat that crept into his life more often than was good for him.

My job.

Devine had graduated from West Point and completed the arduous U.S. Army Ranger training at Fort Benning in Georgia, earning his Ranger “tab.” He had later been assigned to the Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment, meaning he was Ranger “scrolled” as well.

So I’m Ranger tabbed and scrolled, a high achievement by any measure, and it means jackshit right now.

Devine thought this because while he had always intended to make the Army his career, he had left after about a decade in uniform, during which he had fought in the sands of the Middle East, been wounded more than once, and attained the rank of captain.

And then his military world and dreams had collided with an unforgiving dilemma, and he had been forced to leave the profession he loved.

Devine had then chosen to earn his MBA and go to work on Wall Street. He had not done so to reap riches one day. He had done it as penance for the way his Army career had ended. He was not blameless. He had guilt. He required punishment. Wall Street had been it. And it was a good decision because he had hated it.

And that was where things stood while he was working at a firm called Cowl and Comely in New York City. That was when Devine had become a suspect in the murder of a woman he had dated at the firm.

As Devine was embroiled in that, a retired two-star general named Emerson Campbell had arrived on the scene. And he knew the truth about the unseemly end of Devine’s Army career. Campbell had given Devine a choice: work for him or go to Leavenworth Prison.

Some choice. But maybe I’ll be back in uniform one day, Devine thought.

The beeps, hums, and whines of the various machines hooked up to the woman did nothing to make him feel better, but he was well aware that his discomfort paled in comparison to that of the unconscious woman. Her throat was pierced with an intubation tube, and med ports and IV lines were draped over her like a funeral shroud as she fought to stay alive. The grim vitals Devine was looking at on the monitor showed that unfortunately the woman was slowly losing that battle.

Next to Devine stood his boss, Emerson Campbell. The man ran the Office of Special Projects, or OSP, a small subagency within the gargantuan platform that was the Department of Homeland Security. Its core mission was to protect the national security of the United States. And that mission had taken Devine around the world. Because it was always best, the thinking went, particularly after the horrors of 9/11, to stop the bad guys before they reached American soil.

Sometimes Devine had found himself at loggerheads with other government security agencies, basically all the alphabet ones, when missions by each overlapped and quite often devolved into jurisdictional pissing contests. Devine didn’t know much about this mission yet, but he could see such a quagmire cropping up. If it did, his action was simple: Keep going until someone with undisputed authority over Devine told him to stop.

Campbell, a gruff, tough vet built like a quartet of telephone poles welded together, had led men into battle and seen more than a few die. He now gazed down at the young, badly injured woman with deep empathy. The man had daughters older than her.

Two armed sentries were posted just outside the door to make sure that the men who had tried their best to murder the woman did not get a chance to complete the job.

“They don’t think she’ll make it,” Campbell said quietly. “She was unconscious when they brought her in. The docs put her into a medically induced coma to give her a fighting chance of surviving. It’s a miracle she’s even still alive. Nearly bled out before help got there. Apparently, the bullet to her back hit a metal clasp or button on her dress and then collided with a bone, and that diverted the round just enough to where it missed her heart. But even with that, and while they stopped the internal hemorrhaging, it might be too late. But whoever did this made a mistake by not making sure she was dead. That shows they’re fallible.”

“Fallible, but as yet unknown,” said Devine.

“It’s our job to make them known. And then hold them accountable.”

“What do we know about her?” asked Devine.

“Theresa Lee, aged thirty-one. Investigative journalist, the last four years with a consortium of independent journalists arrayed around the globe. She’s based here in New York, but travels extensively for her stories. Been doing this work since she graduated from Northwestern. Hit the ground running once she got her degree and never looked back. Covered lots of the big events of the day—wars, human and drug trafficking, political and corporate corruption. She was actually here in New York on 9/11. Just a little kid on vacation with her family from Wisconsin. Apparently, that’s when she decided to become a journalist. You know, finding the truth and holding people accountable.”

Devine already had every incentive to find who had done this. That incentive just got a little boost with that detail of the woman’s backstory.

“Not a bad way to live your life,” he said, thinking that perhaps he and Theresa Lee had that in common. And Devine felt another measure of solidarity with the critically injured woman.

He and his family had seen the smoke rising from Manhattan that day all the way from their home in Connecticut. The whole world had seen it, one way or another. If that had driven the little girl to grow up and subsequently risk her life to expose the truth, well, she was his kind of heroine for sure.

“I assume her family’s been notified?”

“They have. Her parents still live in Wisconsin, but they were out of the country on a trip. They’re on their way here.”

“And our specific interest?” asked Devine.

As a nurse came in to check on Lee the men moved off and huddled in a corner of the private room.

Campbell said in a confidential voice, “CCTV caught some of what happened. Grainy because of the rain and the quality of the feed. But this thing was clearly planned and executed. Strike team of four, with Lee apparently collateral damage. We believe the actual target was the man she was meeting with, William C. Walker Jr. They tased and took him.”

“No witnesses?”

“The block they were on is in the midst of redevelopment and all the businesses shuttered. No one was on-site at the time. And the weather didn’t help. She and Walker were apparently the only two there other than their attackers.”

“What do we know about Walker?”

“He has ties by marriage to an enormously wealthy family in Australia. But we’re involved because Walker was a top analyst at Five Eyes. That puts us squarely in the playing field because there is nothing that Five Eyes does that is not connected to our national security.”

“Right.”

Devine knew that Five Eyes was the fanciful name given to the Anglosphere alliance for intelligence collection and integration among the U.S. the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It was mostly unknown to the public and it kept that blissfully unaware public far safer than they otherwise would be.

“You said was a top analyst?”

“He was part of a Five Eyes joint task force operating out of Australia for the last two decades. But he recently left to take a job with a private company engaged in the field of intelligence.”

“Is he Australian?” said Devine.

“No, American. He moved to Australia after he got married and transitioned to the task force.”

“If he was kidnapped, how come the FBI’s not involved?”

“They are. But if this thing has international components that strike at homeland security? Well, that’s our name and wheelhouse, Devine. If we don’t get called up for that, what the hell do we get called up for?”

“Why were he and Lee meeting?”

“The CCTV footage we’ve spliced together from various cameras shows not an arranged meeting but what appears to be Lee suddenly running into Walker. From her reaction on the video she was initially pleased to see him, but then things changed after he spoke for a few minutes. She then walked off. He followed her, they argued, and then the strike team did their thing.”

“No audio captured?”

“No. We were lucky to get what we did. I’ll send you the footage.”

“Any idea why anyone would want to snatch Walker?”

“Walker has vast institutional knowledge of Five Eyes and all intel collected there right up until he left to join the private outfit here in New York. A file will be sent to you so you can come up to speed on what we know so far.”

Devine glanced over at Lee. “Any chance she’ll be able to tell us anything?”

“From what I’ve been told it would take a miracle.”

“Well, miracles sometimes do happen.”

“But we can’t count on that.”

“You have her place-of-work details in the file I’m being sent?”

“Of course. I say that Walker was the presumed target, but we can take nothing for granted right now. The strike team was masked,” he added with a significant look at Devine.

“Meaning they didn’t have to shoot her because she couldn’t ID them. Just tase her like they did Walker.”

“Which might mean she’s not just collateral damage.” Campbell paused. “You have your work cut out for you.”

“I’ve never had an occasion working for you when it was otherwise,” replied Devine.

Campbell stepped outside the room to make a call, while Devine continued to look down at Theresa Lee, who might not reach the age of thirty-two unless it were days or even hours away. Nothing about this was fair. All he could do was try to make it a little less unfair.

The whines, hums, and beeps of machines that were likely foretelling the fast-approaching demise of a young woman who should have had at least fifty more years of life ahead of her followed him out of the room and down the hall. Each sound was like a funeral dirge to him.

This woman had risked her life to see the truth come out over the years. That alone deserved his respect. The fact that someone shot an unarmed woman with the intent to kill her?

Devine exited the building and went to work.

THE HOTEL ROOM WAS CHILLY, cramped, in a not-so-nice part of town, and with few amenities. Which was par for the course on a government per diem in an expensive city, even with the Non-Standard Area bump factored in.

Devine sat on his bed with his old, battered government-issued laptop in front of him. Having read every page of his briefing twice, Devine had become as familiar with Walker and Lee as one could with only digital data as his guide.

The real investigation would come from old-fashioned legwork. Asking questions, Devine seeing things for himself, dissecting the worlds of Bill Walker and Theresa Lee, and then exploring the overlap between those two worlds that must clearly exist.

He’d gone through the CCTV footage first at normal speed, then half speed, and finally frame by frame, like game film, looking for anything that might give him a clue. It actually raised more questions than it answered.

Devine rested his head against the bunched-up pillows and thought things through. Walker had been stationed as an American liaison and joint team analyst at the Australian HQ for Five Eyes, which was located in the capital city of Canberra. Walker had traveled widely with his job, and he had frequently “jumped the ditch” to Wellington, New Zealand, where that country’s Five Eyes facility was located.

Then several months ago he had left his position with the American government and joined a private outfit based in Brussels, but which also maintained an office in New York.

After all those years, why jump to a different continent and time zone?

The file had also informed Devine that Walker was in the midst of a divorce.

New job and jettisoning a marriage at the same time? Most people would be overwhelmed by just one of those major life changes.

And then there was the matter of the family Walker had chosen to leave behind. His wife, Charlotte Woolwine, was the only child of billionaire Carlton Woolwine, a widower and second only to Rupert Murdoch in Australia in terms of influence. Although Devine had learned that the Woolwines had recently leapfrogged the Murdoch clan in terms of sheer wealth. Her mother, Martha Woolwine, had died more than two years ago. Interestingly, Martha Woolwine had died by homicide, a crime that had never been solved.

Who kills billionaires and gets away with it?

Devine’s naturally suspicious mind probed whether there might be a connection between Walker’s abduction and the woman’s unsolved murder. But the timing and background of both events seemed to make that possibility remote.

Charlotte Woolwine had married Walker in her early twenties and had their three children in fairly rapid succession. Their son was in college in California, while the two younger daughters were at a private academy in Melbourne. Charlotte Woolwine resided mostly in Sydney in what Devine was sure were luxurious quarters.

For the present they couldn’t rule out that Walker had been kidnapped because of the Woolwines’ financial position, but something in Devine’s gut didn’t think that was it. And there had been no demands for money or any other communications from his captors.

Theresa Lee worked at the New York office of The Focus Is Liberty, an international news reporting service that specialized in investigative journalism. While it looked like she was not a target and had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, Devine would have to find definitive proof either way.

Early the next morning, after a workout in the hotel gym and an hour-long jog down empty and slickened streets when the city was just beginning to awake for another busy day, Devine showered, changed, and grabbed some breakfast at a diner next to his hotel.

After chowing down, he took a Lyft over to the New York office of The Focus Is Liberty. It was located in Harlem on a quiet residential street where the real estate prices had not yet gone into the stratosphere but were merely outrageously expensive. The narrow building was nondescript—and maybe that was the intent, he thought.

A brass plaque on the wall next to the door read simply TFIL .

The door was locked. He hit a button and a buzzer sounded. A voice came on; he produced his credentials to the overhead camera and told of his appointment with the director. The door clicked open to reveal a small foyer, with one desk that had been wedged into the space along with a yellowing, stalky plant in a cracked pot.

The twenty-something slender woman at the desk rose and extended a hand in greeting.

“Agent Devine, I’m Helen Clark. I’ll take you back to meet with Ms. Kendall. She’s the ED here.”

He shook the offered hand. “Thank you.”

As they walked down a narrow, carpeted hall Devine noted the newspapers framed on the walls. They represented one big global story after another, a number of which he had read about.

He pointed to the framed stories and said, “You folks really get around.”

“Full disclosure, I’ve only been here a year. I graduated from Brown and part of my job is manning the front desk, but I’ve been doing research on some of the stories we’re currently working on.”

“You have to start somewhere. Did you know Ms. Lee?”

The woman stumbled, almost bumping into the wall. She glanced up at the tall, broad shouldered former soldier who gazed keenly at her. “We were… friends. Are good friends,” she corrected, holding her head up and squaring her shoulders.

“Then I may want to talk to you after I speak with Ms. Kendall.”

“Whatever I can do to help, I will.”

“Thank you, Ms. Clark.”

They headed on.

LYNN KENDALL WAS PETITE, IN her fifties, with a bulldog expression and a no-nonsense manner to match, which Devine figured one needed to run a place like this. She motioned Devine to sit across from her desk before plopping back in her ergonomic chair that also had a thick foam seat cushion to protect the tortured backsides of the sedentary inclined, which included most people these days. But not Devine. While on a case he was usually past ten thousand steps by lunchtime.

The space was cluttered but maintained a sense of organization in its careful stacks and piles. Two identical computer screens were set on Kendall’s desk, like rectangular eyeballs keeping vigilant watch.

To Devine, Kendall seemed like a woman in a hurry who had just hit an unexpected wall and didn’t know quite what to do about it.

“I’ve heard from the hospital.” She looked out the window and shook her head. “I guess the song’s right—only the good die young.”

“She’s not dead yet,” Devine pointed out.

Kendall turned back and drummed her fingers on her desk. “What do you need?”

“Any stories she was working on that might have led to this sort of attack?”

“I thought Bill Walker was the target.”

“We can’t assume that.”

Kendall sat up and started tapping on the computer. A few moments later she shook her head. “Nothing that jumps out. She had finished an assignment that took her to the Middle East. But that story already ran and it wasn’t that controversial.”

He took out his phone and showed her part of the CCTV footage.

“You can see that their meeting doesn’t look like a coincidence, nor did it end as a friendly conversation. I take it you know Walker?”

“He’s been here several times to see Theresa.”

“And the nature of their relationship?”

“He saved her life.”

Devine wondered why that detail had not made its way into his brief. “How?”

“Theresa is a dedicated and experienced journalist. Intense, a risk-taker, idealistic, disciplined. Which made her perfect for this field.”

“Do I sense a but coming?” said Devine.

“But in her enthusiasm she rushed things sometimes. And on occasion she relied on people she shouldn’t have.”

“And Walker saving her life?” prompted Devine. He had a lot of ground to cover and time was never his friend.

“She had a source in Somalia on human trafficking. He got her in to see some people. Only she nearly ended up being trafficked herself. That’s what Bill saved her from.”

“How did that come about?”

“He’s apparently connected in the intel field somehow, which I’m sure you know and is the reason you’re working to find out what happened to him. He picked up some chatter. He drilled down to where he identified Theresa as a target. His contacts alerted the local authorities, who prevented a truly horrible scenario from happening to her.”

“When did this take place?”

“Over six months ago, I think. They became friends after that.”

“The CCTV footage does not show two people who are friendly.”

“Well, situations change, Agent Devine.”

“Do you know what did change?”

“No, only that Theresa could be mercurial.” She paused. “I’m just so worried about her.”

Devine asked her some additional questions, didn’t get much that was helpful in return, and ended by passing her a card. “Anything occurs to you, please contact me.”

She glanced at the card. “Do you think Bill is dead?”

“Doesn’t really matter what I think.” He rose. “I’ll make the rounds here, ask questions. Then swing back to you before I leave.”

“Just do all you can to find out what happened to Theresa.”

“So any hot stories cooking here?”

“Always. You see, some people just can’t help trying to screw other people.”

He left and walked back to the foyer to meet with Helen Clark.

He started off the conversation with a few general questions. Over time Devine had gotten better at conducting these sorts of interviews. You had to read the people being questioned and structure your queries accordingly.

And as he started asking questi