False Witness Read online

  When they finished, it was time to make the call.

  Kumari took his post in front of the laptop computer on the card table. Clark needed to pace, stepping over and around the tangle of cords and machines. “Ready,” Kumari said, and Clark felt his hands go cold.

  Clark pulled the cell number out and began dialing. His stopwatch registered 25:42:12. He had captured Kumari with more than ten hours to spare. He could only hope it was enough time to save Jessica.

  The number rang four times without an answer. Finally a recorded voice kicked in—instructing Clark to leave a message at the tone.

  “I’ve got Professor Kumari,” he said. “Call me back immediately. I want to speak with Jessica.”

  Clark hung up and tried to control a cauldron of emotions. “Voice mail,” he said, more to himself than Kumari. He stared at his phone as if it had betrayed him. “What does that mean?”

  “He will call back,” the professor said. Clark noticed the professor had opened some type of e-mail program.

  “What are you doing?” Clark asked.

  “Getting ready.”

  “For what?”

  At that second, the phone rang. Clark nearly dropped it as he fumbled to answer.

  “Hello.”

  “Nice work, Mr. Shealy.” It was the grating voice of Huang Xu. “But why did you discard the phone I told you to use?”

  “I was tired of being tracked with it.”

  As was his custom, Xu paused. These conversations drove Clark mad, but he supposed that was the whole point. “Very well, Mr. Shealy. Let us see if you truly have the professor. Write down this number . . .”

  Clark nodded at the professor, letting him know the plan was on track. “Ready,” Clark said.

  “4-9-2-7-9-5-4-2-8-7-9-8-2-9-1.” Xu repeated the number twice and had Clark read it back to him. “That number is the product of two prime numbers, Mr. Shealy. Professor Kumari should be able to factor that number in a matter of seconds and tell us the primes. Call us back when he does. And, Mr. Shealy?”

  “Yes.”

  “The next time you take unilateral action, like tossing away my phone, you might want to consider the effect such actions have on your wife.”

  “Keep your hands off her,” Clark warned, but he was speaking to dead air. Incensed, he restrained himself from calling back until he had the answer. The professor hunched in front of his computer, formulas scrolling back and forth on the screen.

  “We do not need the network for this one,” Kumari bragged. “A fifteen-digit number?” He scoffed, as if Xu had insulted his intelligence.

  “How long?” Clark asked.

  “Would this very minute be soon enough?” Kumari wrote the numbers down and handed the paper to Clark. 10245751 and 48097541.

  “You sure?” Clark asked.

  Kumari nodded.

  “This is my wife’s life on the line. You don’t want to double-check your math?”

  Kumari looked insulted.

  “Okay,” Clark said. He dialed Xu.

  This time, the triad leader answered immediately, and Clark read the numbers. “That’s a good start,” Xu said.

  “Let me talk with Jessica,” Clark said firmly.

  “You don’t make the demands,” Xu replied, his voice low but threatening. “But just for your information, even after the way you treated Johnny Chin, I have chosen not to retaliate against your wife. However, if you insist on making demands and acting against my instructions, I will.”

  The reference to Chin momentarily threw Clark. How did Xu know these things? His words were not empty threats; Clark could feel that much in his bones. Worse, his mind pictured it vividly. He couldn’t afford to say or do anything that might set this man off. “Okay,” Clark said reassuringly, “give me the next number.”

  “You want to hear from your wife?”

  “No, no. Just tell me the number.”

  Without warning, Clark heard Jessica shriek in the background. His blood turned to ice. “Stop,” he insisted. “Just give me the number.”

  There was another scream, louder than the first. He closed his eyes, balled his fist, and ground his teeth. He felt like he might literally explode from the tension. He had never hated anyone, anything, as much as he hated this man on the phone right now. Clark would kill him with his bare hands, spitting in his face as he died, or Clark would die trying.

  “Make it stop,” Clark begged, his voice despondent.

  The response was silence. No screaming, no answer from Xu. Nothing.

  “Please!” Oh, God, please!

  More silence. A few seconds stretched into a minute. Clark hardly dared to breathe, much less talk. What had they done to her? Where had they taken her? What were they doing to her still?

  “I will not let them hurt her, Mr. Shealy. But you must play by my rules, not yours. Now . . . are you ready for the next number?”

  23

  The phone calls changed the mood in the cramped apartment. Kumari apparently divined what was happening from listening to Clark’s side of the conversation and didn’t say a word other than to offer a sincere apology. In silence, the professor put his machines to work processing the second number that Huang Xu had provided, over three hundred digits long. Clark paced the apartment, lost in introspection as the professor plugged numbers and letters into some kind of formula. At one point, Clark glanced at the screen and thought he saw a digital Bible open, one with English and some other language side-by-side. But Kumari quickly shrank that window. As long as the formula worked, Clark didn’t care.

  But even if the formula did work, the harsh realities were almost unbearable, though Clark needed to face them. Denial would serve no purpose; it sure wouldn’t save Jessica. No matter how well things went from here on out—and he had serious doubts about Kumari’s plan—it was already too late to keep Jessica from harm.

  Jessica was young and strikingly attractive, though she would be the last to admit it. When Clark called her beautiful, she would correct him. “I’m cute. Maybe attractive,” she would say. “But you’re the only one who says I’m beautiful.” She thought her nose was a bit too broad, her lips a little too thin.

  She was wrong about that, Clark knew. He had always been pleased when men swiveled their heads as Jessica passed. But now, the thought of those leers made him sick. Since the triad members undoubtedly planned to kill both her and Clark anyway, there was little chance they would resist molesting her in the meantime.

  Jessica. He might get her back, though even that was a long shot. But she would never be the same. Emotional scars would replace the innocence. Clark had always heard that women needed security more than anything else from their husbands. He had failed her at her deepest point of need. He felt a crucial part of himself dying along with her. He was quickly losing hope.

  It took nearly ten minutes for Kumari to generate the answer. When he was sure he had the right factors, he gave his seat in front of the laptop screen to Clark. During the ensuing call, both Clark and Xu were all business. Clark swallowed the words he wanted to say and instead recited with precision the digits in each of the prime factors. Xu congratulated him on the correct answers, then said, “It is time for us to exchange prisoners, would you agree?”

  “Yes.”

  “What will you be driving?”

  “A gray Durango.”

  “At 7:00 p.m., bring Professor Kumari to the third level of the parking garage at the Bellagio. Pull your vehicle into a spot facing the south wall and lift the back gate. A white Lincoln Navigator will pull behind you and stop momentarily. Follow that vehicle at a safe distance. It will lead you to our meeting place.”

  Clark had a million questions, but he knew better than to ask even a single one. He wanted to meet sooner—to get Jessica away from these men as quickly as possible—but he knew a little more time could work to his advantage.

  “If you involve the authorities or anyone else, Mr. Shealy, you know what will happen to your wife?”

 
; “I know.”

  “Maybe you ought to say it, Mr. Shealy, just to make sure.”

  “You will kill her,” Clark said softly.

  Xu laughed, the mocking laughter of a bully taunting his victim. “She should be so lucky,” he said. “Death has a way of dulling pain and ending humiliation. No, for a beautiful woman like that, death would be a squandering of her many, many talents.”

  Xu immediately hung up, and Clark stared at his phone. He felt weak and helpless, desperation crowding out his saner emotions. He thought about what he had done to Johnny Chin, the look of anguish when he blew out the hit man’s knee, the wailing when they hit the bumps in the dirt road a few minutes later.

  These phone calls had changed Clark. Something had snapped. He suddenly found himself proud of what he had done to Chin. While Kumari typed away on his computer, Clark fantasized about what he would do to Huang Xu. He would blow the man’s head off his shoulders for making Jess scream. He would protect his wife.

  Clark was not the same man who had crawled out of bed yesterday morning, focused on chasing the American dream while living on the slippery outer slopes of legality.

  He had a killer’s mentality now. And as he and Kumari made their preparations for the next phase of battle, Clark no longer wondered whether he would have the guts to take somebody’s life in order to save Jessica. The only question now was whether he’d be able to stop.

  24

  Later that evening, following the white Navigator north on I-15, Clark felt neither fear nor anger, just a surprising sense of grim determination. Feelings of revenge and desperation had been torched into a solid weld of fate—a sense that tonight he would either save Jessica or die trying. Tonight could be his own personal Alamo—he was outgunned and outmanned, but honor allowed him no way out. It didn’t hurt to have the optimistic little professor, the smartest man Clark had ever met, riding shotgun.

  Earlier today—what seemed like an eternity ago—Clark had been on this same interstate, looking for an obscure place to torture Johnny Chin. As they drove north now, Kumari told the story of Rajat Singh, the professor’s young protégé who lost his life to Huang Xu and his cohorts. Kumari stared out the window as he talked, his voice thick with emotion. They were going about eighty-five, but with the scorched desert flatlands stretching out on both sides of the interstate, it seemed like they were barely moving.

  “Rajat was only a young man,” Kumari said. “Young and full of promise. I gladly would have traded my life for his.”

  What could Clark say? It seemed that this algorithm had already caused so much pain. “You should be proud of him” was the best that Clark could offer. He was not good with comforting words.

  They rode in silence for a few minutes, each lost in his own thoughts. Clark pondered the reality that the triad would kill for the algorithm. Had killed for the algorithm. What chance did he and Kumari really have?

  He glanced at the charismatic man in the passenger seat. Clark respected the professor, even felt a growing attachment to him. But in a few minutes, perhaps an hour, Clark would be required to act. Mercy, pity, and remorse could cost him split seconds of decision time, the difference between success and failure. For Jessica’s sake, he would remain unemotional . . . and unattached to his accomplice.

  “In my apartment, I sent the algorithm to your e-mail,” Kumari said. Clark looked at the professor in total surprise, as if Kumari had just pronounced himself an alien, but Kumari pretended not to notice. “I found your business address on the Internet when you were on the phone with Xu. I have used a protocol that will delay delivery for forty-eight hours. If our plan works, I will recall the e-mail before then, Mr. Shealy.”

  Kumari’s voice became frail, barely audible. “If not, you will be receiving the algorithm, but I have encrypted it with a code that will be impossible to decipher. I also sent a second e-mail from a remote server. Later this year, a man I trust more than any other will contact you with the key. Until the two of you make a connection, both pieces will be worthless. The triads have been known to use torture—but you cannot reveal what you do not know.”

  The Johnny Chin sequence flashed in front of Clark’s eyes again. Defiance. The gunshot. Agony. Fear. Like PowerPoint images, one after the other.

  “Make me a promise, Mr. Shealy, please. When you understand completely the formula, you will sell it to the top Internet security companies. You keep 10 percent for a commission. Send the rest to the church in India so that they might build more schools for the Dalit children who will otherwise have no chance.”

  “How can I do that?” Clark asked, dumbfounded by the request.

  “This man who contacts you. He will know.”

  “You’re going to make it,” Clark said, though the words sounded hollow. “We both are.”

  “Does that mean yes?” Kumari asked. “Is this how Americans promise?”

  “I’ll do it,” Clark said. “If anything happens.”

  Kumari’s face was deadly serious, the swollen eyes staring straight ahead. “Thank you, my friend.”

  25

  Clark followed the Navigator down the exit ramp toward the small town of Apex, close enough to Vegas that you could make out the shapes of the casinos in the rearview mirror, the Stratosphere Casino towering above the rest. As Clark pulled up behind the Navigator at the end of the exit ramp, he could make out the backs of only two heads inside—both in the front seat. Jessica could be lying down, of course, and in the backseat of that vehicle. Or maybe not.

  The thought of her possibly being that close made his skin tingle, a combination of anxiety and excitement.

  The Navigator turned left onto a small paved road that headed back under the interstate. After a few hundred yards, the vehicles made another left, this time next to a large mound of rock that sheltered the area from I-15. A sign warned against trespassers and declared the land to be a blasting area owned by Las Vegas Paving.

  The Navigator continued around to the back of the rock and gravel pile, driving on a wide swath of packed soil and compacted rock that looked like it had been scraped clean by a bulldozer. To Clark’s left, standing on top of the large rocky hill, two men stood watch. One used binoculars to keep an eye on the interstate; the other drew a bead on Clark with a sniper’s rifle.

  The vehicles came to a stop in the middle of a flat plateau about the size of a football field, discreetly tucked away behind the rocks. An abandoned set of railroad tracks ran across the back of this property. Clark’s cell phone rang—a different number from the last time he had talked with Xu. Kumari had his head bowed in prayer.

  “Step out of the car, Mr. Shealy. Have Professor Kumari step out on the other side. Keep your hands on top of your head and tell him to do the same.”

  It was not Xu’s voice this time. “Where’s Jessica?” Clark asked.

  “You’ll see her soon. But only if you follow instructions.”

  Clark hung up the phone and nodded at the professor.

  “God be with you,” Kumari said.

  “Thanks,” Clark replied. “Same to you.”

  Clark dialed the number programmed into his cell phone, and Kumari’s own phone chirped in response. Kumari picked up the phone, connected the call, and hooked it on his belt. He opened his car door, grabbed his laptop computer from the floor, and climbed out of the car, holding the laptop in front of him. Around his chest, taped outside his shirt for all to see, were several small plastic containers connected by thin wires. The hunch-shouldered professor looked small and frail as he took a few steps toward the back of the Navigator.

  He might have been the bravest man Clark ever knew.

  Two large men, dressed in black and wearing ski masks, jumped out of both sides of the Navigator. They crouched next to the car, aiming a pistol at Kumari, another at Clark’s front windshield. That’s two guns aimed at my head, maybe more. Kumari stopped in his tracks. The gunman on the left side of the Navigator pulled out a cell phone, and Clark’s phone buzzed.


  Clark put Kumari on hold and picked up the call.

  “I said out of the car!” the man hissed.

  “Change in plans,” Clark said calmly. “I’m not getting out.” He could almost feel the red dot on his temple, the sharpshooter on top of the rocks taking aim. Clark wondered if he would even feel anything when the bullet ripped through his skull. He had only a few seconds to convince this clown on the other end of the phone to call the sharpshooter off.

  “The professor is a walking suicide bomb,” Clark said quickly, rushing through the script. “He’s wired with enough Semtex to blow this entire gravel pit off the map. My finger is on the trigger of the detonator.” He took a quick breath. This next part was a lie, but it would take too long to explain the truth—and the truth was just as deadly. “If you shoot me, we all die together.”

  The goon in the ski mask barked some instructions in Chinese to his companion on the other side of the car and the sharpshooter on the mountain. Clark hoped it was an order not to shoot. Kumari took a few steps closer to the Lincoln, and Clark saw the gunman on the right side of the Navigator stiffen. Clark put his own car in reverse and backed up a few feet.

  “Where are you going?” the gunman shouted into the phone.

  After thirty yards, Clark stopped, leaving Kumari standing by himself, halfway between the Navigator and Clark’s Durango.

  “Where’s Jessica?” Clark asked the gunman. He could sense that the element of surprise had given him a fleeting advantage. “If I don’t see her walking toward my car in thirty seconds, I’m detonating this baby.”

  With that, Clark ended the call. The fact that Clark was still alive—that the sharpshooter hadn’t blown his brains into the passenger seat—showed that the mutually assured destruction plan was working. At least so far. “They won’t kill me until they have the algorithm,” Kumari had insisted when he told Clark about the plan. “For you and Jessica to survive, we must tie your lives to mine.”