Chapter 4: The Man Who Wasn't There
Raymond Webb had not existed officially for six years.
No driver's license.
No tax record.
No address.
As far as any federal database was concerned, Harlan's younger brother had walked out of a field operation in Sarajevo in 2018 and simply ceased to be.
Harlan had signed the paperwork himself.
He stood now in the mobile command unit parked at the garage's north exit, the tablet on the table in front of him, the frozen image of his brother's wrist on the screen.
Reyes stood to his left.
Marcus sat in the corner with a splint on his wrist and a foil blanket around his shoulders that he clearly didn't want.
Nobody was speaking.
Harlan broke it.
"How long have you been in contact with him?"
Marcus pulled the foil blanket tighter.
"Eight months."
"Eight months." Harlan repeated it without inflection.
"He reached out to you?"
"He showed up at school.
Just — outside the gate.
I almost didn't recognize him.
He looked different." Marcus paused.
"Thinner."
"What did he want?"
"He said he needed me to trust him.
That he was working something that you couldn't know about yet.
That if I told you, it would fall apart and people would get hurt." Marcus looked up.
"He said you'd understand eventually."
Reyes made a short sound that wasn't quite a laugh.
Harlan put both hands flat on the table.
"And you believed him."
"He's Uncle Ray."
"He's a man who has been operating outside federal oversight for six years, who just walked a classified case out of a secured vehicle in a public airport, and who used your connection to me to get close enough to do it." Harlan straightened.
"Whatever he told you he was doing — that is what he was actually doing."
Marcus shook his head.
"You don't know that."
"I know Garrett Voss.
I put him away.
And I know that the case in that SUV contained the only physical evidence linking Voss to three separate operations that are currently under sealed indictment." He looked at his son steadily.
"If that evidence disappears, Voss walks.
And the people who helped him walk with him."
The silence in the command unit was different now.
Heavier.
"Ray wouldn't do that," Marcus said.
But his voice had lost its certainty.
"Did he ever tell you what was in the case?"
A pause.
"No."
"Did he tell you who else was involved?"
"No."
"Did he ever ask you to do anything other than be at this garage today?"
Marcus hesitated one beat too long.
Harlan saw it.
"What did he ask you to do?"
"He asked me to make sure the second SUV was unlocked."
The room went very quiet.
Reyes turned away and pressed his earpiece, already moving.
Harlan looked at his son for a long moment.
Not with anger.
With something that was almost grief.
"Marcus.
The SUV is on a secure federal motor pool.
The only way you could have unlocked it remotely is if someone gave you access credentials that did not belong to you."
Marcus said nothing.
"Where did you get them?"
"Ray sent them.
Through a messaging app.
It deleted after I read it."
"Which app?"
"I don't know the name.
He installed it on my phone six weeks ago."
Reyes turned back around.
"Sir.
We just pulled the app.
It's a modified platform.
Encrypted, self-deleting, and it's been routing through a server cluster registered to a shell company out of Zurich." He paused.
"The same cluster flagged in the Voss financial investigation."
Marcus stood up.
The foil blanket fell to the floor.
"That doesn't mean Ray is working for Voss.
It doesn't mean—"
"Sit down," Harlan said.
"Dad—"
"Marcus.
Sit down."
His son sat.
Harlan picked up the tablet.
He looked at the tattoo on his brother's wrist one more time.
He had been there the day Ray got it.
A cold November in Berlin, the two of them twenty-three and twenty-six, celebrating the end of Ray's first successful op with bad coffee and a street artist who charged forty dollars.
He set the tablet face-down on the table.
"Get me a location on Raymond Webb," he said to Reyes.
"And get the Voss case prosecutor on the phone.
We have about four hours before this becomes a catastrophic breach of a sealed federal proceeding."
Reyes nodded and stepped outside.
Harlan looked at his son.
Marcus was staring at the floor, his splinted wrist resting on his knee.
"I trusted him," Marcus said quietly.
"I thought I was helping."
"I know."
"Is he going to be okay?"
Harlan picked up his coat from the back of the chair.
"That depends entirely on what he does in the next four hours."
He walked to the door of the command unit and stopped with his hand on the frame.
"And on whether he still remembers which side he's on."
He stepped out into the garage without looking back.
Behind him, Marcus reached down and picked up the foil blanket.
He folded it into a small, careful square.
May you like
Set it on the chair.
And sat very still, staring at nothing, while outside the tactical team began to move.
