CHAPTER 24
Manhattan, NY Tuesday, June 29, 2021
WALT JENKINS WATCHED THE TALL, ATTRACTIVE JOURNALIST HE’D SEEN a thousand times on television walk out of the Rum House. It had been a week since his old Bureau boss tracked him down at a cliff-side café in Jamaica, and here he was now, sitting in a dark bar in Manhattan. The contrast was startling. After just three years in Negril Walt realized how accustomed he’d become to island life and how far removed he was from his time as a surveillance officer. But still he found himself laying the groundwork, brick by brick, like he’d done so many times before, not sure where he was headed or what the next piece of road looked like.
The plan was to be up-front and honest about his past if Avery Mason broached the subject. She was an investigative journalist, and attempting to hide anything about his career in the Bureau would be a mistake. It seemed to rattle her just momentarily when he mentioned his past connection with the FBI, but she brushed it off quickly. He was certain she would spend the time between now and the next time they met looking into his story. It would all check out. The only thing he hadn’t mentioned was that he was back on the FBI’s payroll. Jim Oliver had been careful to explain that they were paying Walt as an independent consultant, and not refitting him with his old title of special agent. If Avery Mason got nervous and started snooping, Oliver wanted Walt’s connection to the Bureau to end where it had three years ago—retired in good standing and with full pension.
He took a sip of rum, a Samaroli Jamaican Rhapsody that was too big for his wallet. Thankfully, the government was picking up the tab. He rubbed the scar on his sternum, like he’d been doing thirty minutes earlier while he waited for Avery to arrive. The scar still bothered him from time to time, producing a gnawing itch that drove him mad. The doctors promised it would eventually fade, but warned that until it did he should work to identify the triggers that brought on the symptoms and do his best to avoid them. As Walt sat at the Rum House in Times Square he realized that the last time the scar bothered him was a couple weeks earlier when he sat on his front porch pretending to read a John Grisham novel but really contemplating his upcoming trip to New York for the survivors meeting. Was the city itself a trigger, or all the baggage that waited here?
He finished his rum with a final tilt of the glass. This city held the mistakes and pains of his past, and he believed, like most, that to overcome those mistakes and ease the pain he needed to run from them. But that wasn’t true. To make things right, he needed to face things head-on. As he was settling on the best way to do that, out of thin air an operation had developed. His first in years. It was an opportunity to pick himself up, dust himself off, and get back in the saddle. Whether it was an opportunity to put his past behind him or an exercise in procrastination, he hadn’t figured out yet.
He waited another minute and then strolled out of the bar to keep tabs on his new subject—a woman who happened to be one of the most popular television journalists working today. If he hadn’t been making a concerted effort to limit his alcohol intake, he might have thought the rum was getting to him.
CHAPTER 25
Manhattan, NY Wednesday, June 30, 2021
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, AVERY WAS UP EARLY. DRESSED IN SKINNY jeans and comfortable walking shoes, she tucked her purse tight to her side, adjusted her Prada sunglasses, walked out of the lobby of her hotel, and headed toward the nearest subway hub. She took the F train from Midtown to Brooklyn, riding for thirty minutes until she exited at Fourth Avenue in the Park Slope neighborhood. She’d planned her route the night before and could practically close her eyes and find her way. Still, she pulled the small piece of paper from her purse as she walked and looked at the address one more time. The brownstone was six blocks from the train. She tried to control her nerves as she walked. She eventually turned on Sixteenth Avenue, where halfway down the street, she found the address. Climbing the front porch steps, she rang the bell and clutched her purse to her side as if she was worried she may be mugged.
The front door opened and a man stood in pajama pants and a white ribbed shirt under a long bathrobe. His hair was greasy, an unlit cigarette dangled from his lips, and the fingers of his right hand curled around the handle of a coffee cup. Tiny oval glasses, the lenses of which were streaked and dirty, shielded his eyes.
“Five hundred,” the man said in a German accent that had been Americanized over the years and then tainted further by his time in Brooklyn.
“I’m sorry?” Avery said, confused by the random statement.
“Five hundred,” he said again, the mumble making the cigarette flutter between his lips.
Avery raised her eyebrows, took a conspicuous look up and down the street. “Are we going to do this on your front stoop?”
“Five hundred gets you inside. Then we talk.”
Avery nodded, reached into her purse, and produced five crisp hundred-dollar bills. The man snatched the cash out of her hands like a hungry dog nipping a treat from its owner’s fingers, stepped to the side, and pushed the front door the rest of the way open. Avery walked inside as a cool prickle of apprehension moved in a slow wave across the back of her neck. The man pointed to a worn couch as he headed to a safe that stood against the far wall. He hunched in front of it, spun the dial, and pulled the door open. Depositing the cash inside, he removed a folder and slammed the safe door shut. The man turned around and sat in a side chair, placing his coffee cup on the table in front of him.
Avery hadn’t moved from her spot just inside the front door. The man looked at her with a confused expression. He pushed the petite glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“Sit,” he said. “I don’t bite.”
Avery walked to the couch and sat down.
“I’m André,” the man said. “I hear we have a mutual friend?”
Avery nodded. “That’s why I’m here.”
“So here’s how this works. Passports are difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. At least, if you want them done right. You want something. . .” He waved his hands, searching for the correct English word. “Shit.” He shrugged his shoulder. “You go anywhere. You want something good, you come to André. That’s why my price is my price. So I’m going to ask, even though I know the answer due to our mutual friend’s . . . background, I guess you’d say. But there’s a lot of work involved for me producing a believable passport. Some liability, too. So, I must ask, can you afford?”
“Yes,” Avery said without hesitation.
This man charged $5,000 to produce a single American passport. Legitimate, believable passports that would, André claimed, pass scrutiny by any customs agent on the planet. Of course, the validity of that claim could only be proven in practice. It could only be confirmed when the one using the passport handed it to a customs agent as they tried to enter another country. At that moment, André’s claim would be either true or false. At that moment it would also be too late to complain if things went wrong. If some sensor beeped when the document was scanned, and some warning was triggered, their “mutual friend” was shit out of luck.
“I figured the price was not an issue,” André said. “Now, timing. When do you need this?”