The man was in his fifties and rail-thin. He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up on the bridge of his nose and said, “Fibers in this spot right here.” He pointed to the ninety-degree stone edge of the cap.
“What kind of fibers?” Simon asked.
“I won’t know until I get back to the lab, but they look like the type of fibers used in the construction of climbing ropes.”
Neville nodded, looked back at the vent stack, and then at the spot that Bernard had identified. She could see the discoloration in the stone, as if something had rubbed away the grime. She peered over the edge and directly beneath was a balcony. “I assume that’s the balcony of Tarek’s room?”
“It is,” Simon answered.
Neville looked back at the vent stack. “A rope?”
Simon nodded.
“So where is it?”
“That’s a very good question. In fact, I began asking our people if anyone removed it. No one did, of course. Our people know better than that. But I did find one officer who was on the scene early, who says he definitely remembered a rope running down the side of the building.”
“He’s certain of this.”
“I had him show me the exact spot where he remembered seeing the rope.” Simon pointed down. “He showed me where he parked his car and led me directly to the spot right beneath us.”
Neville looked at the buildings to her left and right. The heights didn’t match but the buildings abutted each other. “So you’re telling me there was an accomplice on the roof when the police arrived who then pulled up the rope and fled.”
Simon looked at the sea of yellow flags across the street. “I’m not sure. There’s another possibility.”
Neville could tell by his expression that he was deeply concerned about something. “What’s bothering you?”
“What’s not bothering me would be a more accurate question.”
She shared the same ominous feeling. “Spit it out.”
“I think someone may have tampered with the rope.”
“You mean removed it?” Neville asked.
“Yes.”
“Shit.” This thing just kept getting worse. “We have a list of all the people who’ve been in and out of here in the last thirty hours?”
“I’m working on it.”
“What about the guests?”
“That was the next thing I was going to talk to you about.” Simon walked away from the edge of the roof with Neville in tow. “Five guests are unaccounted for.”
“What do you mean, ‘unaccounted for’?”
“They checked in earlier in the week and didn’t bother checking out. Their luggage is still in their rooms.”
Neville grabbed him by the arm. “Do we have descriptions of them?”
“Yes,” Simon said with a cautious tone.
Neville thought about the dead bodyguards. “Dark hair, dark skin . . . all in their twenties?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Have you talked to the employees who checked them in?”
“Yes.”
“Have you had them ID the bodies?”
“Not yet. We’re working on getting them to the morgue.”
Neville nodded. It was Sunday and they were still trying to wrap their minds around this thing. She was still trying to see how these new bizarre pieces fit into the puzzle when Simon said he had one more piece of information.
“The room with all of the surveillance equipment down the hall from Tarek’s . . .”
“Yes.”
“The hotel’s computer says the room was unoccupied and being remodeled.”
“Has anyone on the staff confirmed that it was in fact being remodeled?”
“Not so far, but I haven’t talked to everyone.”
Neville thought of the missing rope, the missing guests, who were more than likely lying on cold metal tables in the morgue, the strange behavior of the Libyan Embassy, and now this room full of surveillance equipment. “Has the forensic team finished going over the room with the surveillance equipment?”
“Yes.”
“Tell them I want them to focus on matching any hair samples with the four bodyguards in the morgue. Nice work, Martin.”
“You would have figured it all out,” he said trying to play down the whole thing.
“Maybe . . . maybe not. Let’s see if we can punch some holes in it and keep it between us until we know we have it right.” Neville headed for the steps.
“Where you off to?”
“Remember the guy from the Directorate who showed up last night?”
“Your ex-boyfriend?”
Neville was about to argue the point, but figured it wasn’t worth it. “I have a feeling he and his people know a lot more about what happened here than they’re letting on.”
“I agree,” Simon said, rushing to catch up with her, “and that’s why I’m coming with you.”
“I can handle it on my own.”
“I know you can,” Simon said as he started down the steps. “But it’s always good to have an extra set of eyes when you’re dealing with professional liars from the Directorate.”
CHAPTER 17
CHET Bramble sat in the back of the van and watched the monitors come online one by one. The static of the little ten-inch monitors flickered to black and white images of the interior of the apartment. They now had audio and video on the safe house. He could see his two men move from one screen to the next. He adjusted the lip mike on his headset and said, “You two dildos done dicking around?”
“One more minute,” the voice crackled. “I need to take a crap.”
“Very funny, dickhead.” Normally Chet would have laughed at such a juvenile comment, but not today. “I told you two this guy is a sneaky fucker. Get your asses moving and get out of there. If he walks in on you, you’ll be dead before I can get in there and save your worthless butts.”
The two men began collecting their gear and moving toward the door. Bramble leaned back in the small chair and exhaled, rubbing his right forearm. The temperature was dropping and it was starting to ache. He was a big man—six feet three inches of sculpted muscles and brawn. He had a broad forehead, a thick neck, and a pair of legs that provided a sturdy base to an immovable object. His entire persona exuded violence and he still couldn’t figure out how Rapp had beaten him more than a year ago. By rights he should have wiped the mat with the young recruit, but somehow the sneaky little fucker had put him in some move he’d never even heard of and about two seconds later there was a sound like a dry branch snapping in two. There was a moment of nothing and then searing pain, followed worst of all by the fact that his arm was bent in a way that it was never meant to bend.
Chet Bramble was the son of a Georgia pig farmer. He had only one sibling, Bob, who had spent nearly an hour hung up in his mother’s narrow birth canal. Rather than do a C-section, the country doctor yanked and pulled and twisted with a pair of forceps until little Bob was wrenched from his mother’s womb. The end result was that Bob had a deformed head and was a little slow mentally. He was two years younger than Chet, but from the age of four on, he was nearly identical in size. Bob was his older brother’s shadow for much of their youth. Chet loved him and fiercely defended him against any and all antagonists no matter their age or size, but as he became a teenager he quietly grew to resent him.
Chet’s mother spent her days baking, doing chores, listening to Christian radio, and reading the Bible. His father, Jacob, or Jake, as his friends knew him, was a massive man with a puritan work ethic and absolutely no sense of humor. He drove both his boys hard, but drove Chet harder for the obvious reason that he wasn’t half retarded. As soon as they could walk they were helping feed the pigs, and not long after that they were shoveling shit. So much shit that all these years later, the mere mention of it filled Chet’s nostrils with the overpowering smell.
As far as Chet could tell, none of his DNA came from his mother’s side. She was a frail little thing and her brothers, two law
yers and an insurance salesman, were pussies. Chet was big and strong like his dad, who had played football for the University of Georgia. There was, however, one big difference between father and son. While Jake was a stoic man who was slow to boil, Chet was hot-tempered and prone to flying off the handle with little or no warning. There was one exception—his brother Bob, and his endless simple questions. When it came to him, Chet had the patience of Job, but that was where it ended. The fights started early on and continued all the way through his senior year in high school.
It wasn’t that Chet couldn’t control his temper, it was that he chose not to. He’d learned at an early age that it felt good to pummel another person with his fists. His first real fight was in second grade, and like most fights at that age, it started on the bus. A couple of fifth-graders were picking on Bob, who was a kindergartener at the time. In addition to his odd-shaped head and his simplemindedness, Bob had a speech impediment that Trevor Smith and Nate Huckster simply couldn’t resist imitating. The first day Chet sat in his seat and stewed, worried that if he did what he was thinking he’d end up in such big trouble that his father would whip him. That night he didn’t sleep well. He lay in the bottom bunk, with his brother sleeping soundly a few feet above him, and plotted. He imagined all of the things he would do to Trevor and Nate if they dared make fun of his brother again. Chet decided there would be no warning. He instinctively knew that warnings wouldn’t do a thing—that talking was useless, and that he needed to send a clear message to everyone who even thought about teasing Bob.
Trevor and Nate started in the next day from the moment they got on the bus. Chet was sitting next to his brother when the two goons grabbed the seat behind them and started in with their stuttering and teasing and laughing, and with each passing mile, Chet let his anger grow. Clenching and unclenching his fists, he passed the time by imagining what he would do to these two when they got off the bus.
It went down on the sidewalk in front of Benjamin Lincoln Elementary School. The two fifth-graders followed Chet and Bob as they filed toward the front door with all the other students and continued to heckle Bob, who, although he was a kindergartener, was as tall as the average fourth-grader. Chet was by far the biggest second-grader, and he was unnaturally strong thanks to his father’s genetics and all of the heavy lifting he had to do around the farm. There was one other thing: Chet was quick, lightning quick, from chasing pigs. Without warning, Chet spun to his left, his GI Joe lunchbox clutched firmly in his right hand. He swung it with such force that he broke Nate Huckster’s jaw, knocking him out cold. The fifth-grader slid to the sidewalk like a wet noodle.
Trevor Smith froze as he watched his friend go down. Nowhere in his imagination had he seen this coming. His own fight or flight reflex never had a chance to engage. The dirty little pig farmer was on him like a violent summer storm. A flurry of punches and then kicks were delivered, and Trevor Smith ended up curled on the sidewalk next to his friend begging for the beating to stop. It was a teacher who saved him, by literally yanking Chet off his feet.
The fallout was interesting, and it taught Chet a lesson he would never forget. Chet didn’t care what they were going to do to him. The beating he’d delivered to those two jerks was worth it. He’d never been in trouble before, but he knew what happened to kids who fought in school. They were sent to the principal’s office and usually given detention, which almost always involved cleaning erasers after school. That punishment would be light. He got the feeling he would get a little more than that. They’d probably paddle him, but he was tough enough to take it. There wasn’t a thing they could do to him that could match the wrath of his father. That was the one thing that had him worried—his father. But then again his father had told him on more than one occasion to make sure no one picked on his brother. All Chet knew was that watching his defenseless brother get picked on made him sick to his stomach, and that he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t do something about it. He was prepared to take whatever punishment they gave him. One other very important thing happened that day—Chet realized he enjoyed beating the crap out of other boys.
The principal was nowhere near as upset as Chet thought he would be. Apparently, there was something very novel about a second-grader beating the snot out of two fifth-graders. Chet learned by certain things that he heard in the following days that Trevor and Nate weren’t much liked by the faculty. Evidently, they had been terrorizing the school for several years and the teachers couldn’t wait for them to move on to the middle school across the street. The other thing he learned was that teachers in general don’t take very kindly to kids picking on mentally challenged students. Where Chet had really miscalculated, though, was with his parents. His father barely said a word, while his mother lost her mind. She was obsessed with the fact that Nate Huckster was the son of the preacher at their church. In Chet’s mind, this was all the more reason to give him a beating, since the son of a preacher should know better than to pick on a slow-minded kindergartener. However, that’s not the way Emma saw it. This was an embarrassment to the family. The Hucksters were good people. Great-Grandma Huckster was a founding member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and Trevor Smith’s grandfather owned the bank, which carried the note on their farm.
Chet rode home in the backseat of his mom’s Ford wagon with Bob and listened to her scream at his father about a lot of things that he didn’t understand. When they were finally home, his father took him out to the barn, where he fully expected he would be told to drop his pants and assume the position. It never happened. His father placed his giant hand on his shoulder and nudged him toward a hay bale. He made no attempt to enlighten him on the meaning of social pariah, uncouth dirt farmer, or any of the other things that he had heard his mother scream about in the car. He told Chet in no uncertain terms that he would deal with his mother, he was proud of him that he had stuck up for his brother, and yes, the son of a preacher should know better than to make fun of a gentle boy like Bob, and if he didn’t know better, he deserved to have the snot knocked out of him. As far as the Smiths and the note on the farm were concerned, there was nothing to worry about. Trevor’s father had been an all-conference running back in high school for one reason. Jake Bramble blocked for him and as starting right tackle, there wasn’t a defender in the conference who could stop him. Trevor’s dad was a good man, and when he found out his son was picking on little Bob, he would be delivering a second beating.
Chet couldn’t understand any of it, but something had changed in him. He didn’t tell his father, and he sure as hell didn’t tell his mom. He had enjoyed beating those two boys more than anything he had ever done in his life. He replayed it over in his mind with pure glee, often smiling and laughing aloud to himself. As happens in rural communities, word spread pretty quickly that Jacob Bramble, the three-time all-conference tackle for the beloved Georgia Bulldogs, had a seven-year-old son who had beaten the snot out of two eleven-year-old boys. A period of calm followed where the other boys gave him due respect, not wanting to get smacked in the head with a GI Joe lunchbox by the psychotic pig farmer. The high school wrestling coach, however, stopped by to talk to his dad about channeling Chet’s natural talents in the right direction.
Chet never knew this, but his dad had been worrying about his son long before the fight in front of the school. He had sensed a mean streak in him that was evident when he was around the animals. He would kick the pigs and spit on them when they didn’t do what he wanted them to do, and there was the time he caught him dropping the cat from the rafters of the barn. Jake hoped it was a phase, but in the meantime, he saw wrestling as a way to channel his son’s energy into something with discipline.
At first it worked. Chet devoted himself to wrestling with the zeal of a missionary. By the age of ten, he was Georgia state champ for his age and weight class. As he continued to excel in wrestling, he began playing full-contact football. He was an absolute beast. He played fullback and linebacker. Other teams were afraid
to run against him, and when he carried the ball, he would often choose to run opposing defenders over rather than seek the open field. By the time high school rolled around his body was transformed into a mass of solid muscle. He started for both varsity teams as a freshman, and as a junior he was all-state in two sports. The girls loved him, the boys feared him, and unfortunately, Bob was becoming a bigger and bigger embarrassment. As everyone advanced, Bob’s brain seemed to be stuck somewhere between third and fourth grade. In Chet’s junior year, they were playing their archrivals for the conference championship and one of the linemen on the other team started to make fun of Chet’s brother, calling him a retard and every other cruel thing he could think of. Chet, who was already known as a dirty player, responded decisively. Several plays later the team ran a sweep. Just as the whistle blew, Chet caught the oaf standing around the pile and he buried his helmet in the side of the kid’s knee, snapping it at a ninety-degree angle.
Chet had been extremely proud of himself. To this day, he could put a smile on his face when he remembered that big fat bastard lying on the ground crying like a little girl. The following year, in the same game, the fat bastard’s little brother returned the favor. He performed a crackback block on a reverse and shattered Chet’s knee. At the time, every team in the SEC was recruiting Chet. The following week every single offer was rescinded, and Chet’s football career was over. His grades were never great, so going to college to do anything other than play football seemed like a waste of time. He spent six months in a cast and then another six months lying around growing increasingly bitter about life while he made little effort to rehab his knee.
His father could see what would become of his son if he were damned to the pig farm for the rest of his life, so he drove him to the army recruiting station. Jake Bramble already lived with a bitter woman who ignored the fact that they were steadily building an extremely profitable operation. She couldn’t get past the public embarrassment that she was married to a pig farmer. He wasn’t going to watch his son sit around and waste the rest of his life wondering what could have been.