The Old Man Read online

  He closed his eyes and let sleep take him too. When he woke in the darkness, the dogs were both on their feet, staring at the closed door of the room. One of them began a low growl, and the other added to it.

  Caldwell slid out from under Zoe’s arm, stood, and put a hand on each of the dogs to silence them. He stepped into his pants and shoes, picked up the gun he had hidden under them, then slipped his shirt on over his head. He kept glancing at the dogs. They weren’t agitated, just standing alert and ready, staring at the door as though they were awaiting a person’s approach. But the dogs wouldn’t imagine an intruder. They had heard or smelled something.

  Caldwell opened the bedroom door an eighth of an inch and looked out into the hallway and past it to the living room. The room was empty and the apartment’s front door was still closed. He opened Zoe’s door farther and the dogs slithered out ahead of him. He stayed low as he moved into the open.

  He slipped into his bedroom and looked at the monitor of his security system. The screen was divided into quadrants, and when he scanned them, he was relieved at first. What the four cameras were seeing wasn’t a street full of Chicago police cars or a federal assault team suiting up in military gear. But he saw movement. It looked like the shape of a man coming toward the front of the house. He tucked in his shirt and put on the sport coat with the extra ammunition, because it was dark gray and would make him harder to see. He looked at the monitor more closely.

  Three human figures were on the front steps, one of them kneeling by the door, and the other two standing behind him to shield him from the street. Caldwell watched the man manipulating something with both hands. The dogs lowered their heads. Their approach must have been what the dogs had heard earlier. Now it looked as though the man was moving a pick and tension wrench in the front door lock. The man put something in his pocket, fiddled with the doorknob, and then stood up.

  Caldwell slipped out of his room and closed the dogs inside. He hurried to Zoe’s room and shook her awake.

  “Zoe, there are men breaking into the building. They’ll be through the front door and coming up the stairs in a minute. Get dressed, lock yourself in the bathroom, and lie down in the tub. Go!” He snatched up the clothes she had left on the chaise, took her arm and pulled her to the bathroom, pushed them into her hands, and shut the door.

  He stepped into the kitchen and turned on the water in the sink, then went down to the end of the hallway and lay on his belly, the pistol in his hand.

  There was the clicking of metal on metal, this time at the door of the apartment, twenty-five feet from him, then the clack as the dead bolt retracted into the door. The door opened slowly and a pair of male shapes stood in the doorway, silhouetted in the dim light from a streetlamp shining through the first-floor windows. They each held something in one hand, and he knew the objects had to be guns, but they looked longer than pistols.

  From behind Caldwell’s bedroom door the dogs began to bark and snarl, and both men turned toward the bedroom and braced themselves for an attack, their guns ready. The dogs scratched at the bedroom door, but couldn’t get out. The scratching told the two intruders that the dogs weren’t able to get at them, so they stepped deeper into the apartment.

  Now the men heard the sound of running water coming from the kitchen, and it seemed to puzzle and distract them. They turned and stepped toward the kitchen, their weapons raised.

  Caldwell picked that moment to emerge from the hallway and stop behind them. “Stand still and drop the guns.” He squatted and aimed at the man on the right.

  The two turned in unison and fired, spraying sparks from the muzzles of their weapons. Both shots went high, and Caldwell squeezed his trigger. He had chosen the man on his right because he knew he could fire and move his aim to the left faster than to the right. The man went down, and before the man’s partner could lower his aim Caldwell fired at his chest.

  The second man was hit, but he was still on his feet. Before he could slip into the kitchen for cover, Caldwell fired again and the man dropped.

  Caldwell checked the two men and found neither had a pulse. He picked up their pistols and set them on the coffee table. The barrels were elongated by the addition of silencers, and it occurred to him that the only shots he had heard were his own. He frisked the bodies and found wallets and passports, but it was too dark to look at them, so he pocketed them and hurried to the bathroom door. “Zoe. It’s me, Peter. Come out.”

  There was a click of the lock and Zoe peered out. “Are you okay? That sounded like gunfire.”

  “That’s why I wanted you in the tub, where you wouldn’t get hit with a wild shot. Those two were the shooting team, but there will be other men outside. We’ve got to get out of here before they realize we’re alive.”

  “Have you called the police? We can wait right here for them.”

  “We can’t wait,” he said. “Please. Just do what I ask, without any questions. Our lives depend on it right now.”

  “What should I do?”

  “We’ve got no more than five minutes. Throw anything with your kids’ pictures or addresses into a bag. Don’t call anybody, or turn on any lights. If they see you, they’ll kill you.”

  “Why would they kill me?”

  “Because it’s their job. I’ve got to go out there for a minute, but I’ll be back for you. Don’t let the dogs out of the bedroom.” He held up the small Beretta he had fired. “The safety is off. If anybody but me comes in the door, aim and fire.” He set the gun on the bed and hurried out.

  He stopped at the coffee table, picked up one of the pistols he’d taken from the two dead men, and hurried down the stairs to the ground floor landing. He had seen a third man on the security monitor, and knew there might be others. He went to the windows at the sides of the house. There was nobody visible out there. He picked a window, opened the sash slowly, then unlatched the screen, slipped out, and crouched beside the shrubs that grew there.

  Caldwell remained motionless for a few seconds and then a few more as he stared into the night in one direction then another, waiting to identify the shape of a man or for a shadow to move. He made his way along the side of the house, crouched again, and looked around the corner. He could see a man in the shadows, leaning against the garage and facing the back stairway of the house. As Caldwell watched, the man took out his phone and checked its screen, apparently expecting a text message from the men inside. In the glow Caldwell could see the man’s face. He was the young man who had tried to rob him, James Harriman.

  Caldwell thought about trying to go back around the house to get behind him, but the young man had taken a position with his back to the garage, facing the stairs to the kitchen door. Caldwell took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and stepped away from the corner of the house aiming the pistol with its silencer at the man’s head. “Hello again,” he said.

  The young man spun his head to look. “Hey!” he said. It was simply an expression of shock, with no other meaning.

  Caldwell could see him lean away from the garage, shifting his weight forward, bending his knees a little as he began to raise his hands. The young man was preparing to make a move. He ducked and lunged toward Caldwell, trying to take him down in a quick tackle.

  He was fast and powerful, but Caldwell had been prepared. He sidestepped and batted the young man’s arm down with his free hand, so he could keep the pistol aimed at the man’s upper body. When the young man’s momentum brought him up against the house, Caldwell was still with him, the silenced pistol still between them.

  Caldwell said, “Put your gun down and step away from it.”

  “I don’t have a gun.”

  “Then when I search your body I’ll find nothing?”

  “Okay, okay,” the young man said. He took a pistol out of a shoulder holster and set it down, then stepped back with his hands up. “What happened upstairs?”

  “They weren’t good enough for this,” Caldwell said. “Now I’m going to ask you a few questions. You’ll
live as long as you answer and don’t move. Who were they?”

  “They’re foreign. I was told to bring them to where you lived and then get them away when they were done.”

  “You work for the government?”

  “Yes.”

  “Show me an ID.”

  “I don’t carry one.”

  “Why?”

  “You know,” the young man said. “I bet you didn’t either.”

  “You’re working for military intelligence. What do they want from me after all this time?”

  “I think they’re trying to do a favor for somebody. Whoever sent those guys.”

  “How did they know I was Daniel Chase and living in Vermont after all these years?”

  “The intelligence guys told me it was time and technology. Even old records got computerized after you disappeared. Now it’s easy to find out that the serial numbers of the money you took had turned up over ten or so years, most of them in New England. They found your old service pictures and used a new algorithm to age your face, and then searched public surveillance recordings in New England with face recognition programs for a year or so. A bunch of guys who looked like you got spotted, but agents eliminated all of them but you.”

  “Why were the two killers upstairs carrying passports?”

  “I was supposed to get them to the airport and put them on a plane tonight, right away.”

  “A plane to where?” Caldwell said.

  “They’re from Libya.”

  “If I leave you alive, will you give the intelligence people a message?”

  “Right now that sounds like a good deal.”

  “All I was trying to do from the start was take back the money and return it to the government. My bosses cut my communication, and then set me up to get arrested. The offer is still open. I give them the full amount I delivered to Libya and brought back. They tell whoever sent these guys that they killed me. Nobody ever sees me again. Got it?”

  The young man hesitated. “What happened to the two guys upstairs? Are they dead?”

  “Of course.”

  “That means your count is up to five.”

  Caldwell shrugged. “I didn’t go after them. They came after me.”

  “Look,” said the young man. “When you could have shot me or thrown me to your dogs as a chew toy you gave me eating money and let me go. I’ll say what you want. But if they don’t buy your deal, don’t be surprised.”

  “I won’t be. Humor me.”

  “Suit yourself. But can you at least make me look right?”

  Caldwell moved instantly and struck him across the forehead with the pistol. He fell to the ground, unconscious. Caldwell opened the garage, backed in, and came back with a roll of duct tape. He wrapped the man’s wrists and ankles, dragged his unconscious body a few feet from the garage, and propped him against a tree. He used a length of baling wire he found in the garage to tie him to the tree. He could see that he’d hit Harriman in the right spot, just at the hairline. It was the hardest part of the skull, but the wound bled freely down his face to his shirt.

  Caldwell ran back up to the apartment. He calmed the dogs and let them out of his room, put on the topcoat that held the cash and identification kit, and went to Zoe’s room.

  She was sitting dazed on the bed. Beside her was a leather overnight bag with a shoulder strap. He said, “Ready?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “No?”

  “Those two men are dead,” she said. “You shot two men to death.”

  “They came here to murder me, and they would have murdered you too.”

  “Why? Why did they come here? Just because you’re rich? There are thousands of rich people in Chicago.”

  “Please, Zoe. I’m trying to save your life. As soon as we’re away from here I’ll tell you everything, and answer any question you can think of. But the danger isn’t over. It’s coming closer and closer.”

  “Go if you want, but I can’t be part of this. And in about two minutes I’m calling the police.”

  He picked up the pistol she had left untouched on the bed, and pocketed it. He went into his bedroom, put a few things in his coat pockets—wallet, keys, pocketknife—and returned to Zoe’s room.

  She was standing now, facing the window. She shook, as though she was sobbing, but he couldn’t hear her, and in the dark he couldn’t be sure. As he approached, she started to spin to face him.

  The duct tape was already in his hands. He wrapped the first strip over her mouth and around to the back of her head. As her hands came up to tear it away he spun her around again so she couldn’t face him, threw her down on the bed, wrenched her wrists around behind her, and wrapped them with duct tape too. He continued the tape upward to her elbows, so she had no hope of wrenching her hands free. She rolled to try to kick him away.

  Caldwell put his arm around both legs and stepped down to her ankles, wrapped them around and around with duct tape, then put the rest of the roll in his topcoat pocket. He took her bag. “Others will be here soon. I had hoped you’d cooperate, but either way I can’t leave you here to die.”

  He lifted her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and hurried to the door. The dogs ran ahead of him to the back stairway and down to the ground. They went immediately to the young man propped up against the tree, sniffed at him a little, and returned to Caldwell.

  He put Zoe in the passenger seat of the car and secured her there with the seat belt. He opened the back door of the car and the dogs jumped up onto the seat. Then he got in, started the car, and drove. When he reached the street, he did not pause to watch for approaching cars. Their headlights would have lit up the block, and stopping for them would have been more dangerous than pulling out in front of them. He accelerated up the street before he turned his headlights on.

  Caldwell stared into the rearview mirror watching for a car to appear from around a corner, or to pull out from the curb and follow. But nothing moved. As long as he could, he kept glancing in the mirrors at the long gray strip of pavement, as straight as a surveyor could make it, with pools of light from streetlamps stretching back hundreds of yards. When he came to the turn, he took it, and headed south along streets that were deserted at this time of night.

  After a few minutes he pulled into a driveway, then quickly turned up a narrow alley behind a row of buildings. They were all old, redbrick structures that seemed to date back to the building boom after the Great Chicago Fire. When he neared the end of the block he stopped the car.

  He reached for the tape at Zoe’s mouth. She tried to lean away, but the seat belt held her. He peeled the tape off her mouth, and he could tell from her expression he was hurting her. “You kidnapped me,” she said. “Are you going to kill me now?”

  “No,” he said. “I’ve only bought us a few minutes, and I’m not going to waste one of them killing you. I’m going to tell you what’s happening. About thirty-five years ago I worked for army intelligence. I was assigned to smuggle twenty million dollars to a man in Libya who was supposed to deliver the money to rebel guerrillas trying to overthrow the government. Instead the middleman kept it. He bought fancy cars, started building a big house, and hired bodyguards. The guerrillas in the mountains ran out of supplies and ammunition, starved, and got killed or captured.”

  “Peter, I just saw the men you shot to death. You tied me up and abducted me. How can any lie you dream up make any difference to me?”

  Caldwell kept talking. “I recovered what was left of the money from the middleman. Instead of helping me get back to the US with it, my supervisors cut off my communication and left me to be caught and tortured to death. I brought the money home by myself. When I tried to turn it in, I learned they’d already declared me a thief and a murderer.”

  “Why would they do that? And what has this got to do with anything?”

  “They may have been saving themselves from the blame for a failure. They may have felt that the man who had tried to keep
the money was more valuable to national security than I was. It doesn’t matter now. Even though I hurt nobody in getting the money back, the official story was that I had murdered Libyans to steal money that was vital to an American operation. Once they were after me, I felt that all I could do was run.”

  “For all this time? Over thirty years?”

  He shrugged. “Once you run there isn’t any possibility of not running. I was careful, and lived a quiet life. They found me in Vermont last winter. Instead of arresting me they sent a shooter to kill me. The dogs heard him, or smelled him, just the way they did tonight. So here I am. The people who sent me to Libya were all much older than I was thirty-five years ago. Even if I’d known their names, by now they’re all retired or dead. The people who are after me now have no reason to ever stop. The record, if there is one, can never be corrected because the people who wrote it are long gone. It’s fossilized.”

  “You must think I’m really stupid to try to make me believe this stuff.”

  “You saw those two men in our apartment,” he said. “Did you invite them?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Neither did I. You might have noticed that they brought guns with silencers and shot at me. And I swear to you that if you are in that apartment when the follow-up team comes looking for their two shooters, you will die. They can’t leave people behind who know about any of this. The two men in the apartment were Libyans. The one outside is American special ops, working for military intelligence.”

  She said, “How can you do this to me? I was in love with you. I don’t know what the truth is, but I know this is a collection of lies. It’s crazy.”

  He patted his pockets. “I took their passports.” He took out two bright green folders with gold Arabic writing and a gold heraldic eagle. He held one open in front of her face and opened the car door so the light would come on. Then he held up the other passport for a few seconds, and shut the door. “They were expecting to get on a plane and leave the country right after killing me.”