The Silent Places Read Online Free PDF Page A

the inexperienced eye, it would appear normal. A trained drug dog would be able to sniff narcotics if they were placed in the secret compartment. But Reese had not made the compartment to store narcotics.
    Reese left the car alone, telling himself he would check the spot welds the next day.
    He went into the house and made a pot of coffee. He drank the coffee with sandwiches he had bought at a deli. While he ate, he read the Indianapolis newspaper. He read all the stories about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. At times, he shook his head, wondering when the clowns had taken over.
    Reese had been an agent for the CIA when the CIA was run by the current president’s father. Like most people in the intelligence community, Reese thought the father had some sense. The father was not an ideologue. Like Eisenhower, Bush senior would look at all the options presented to him and carefully consider the possible consequences of each. Then he would choose the alternative that offered the maximum chance of success with the minimum chance of disaster. This was standard intelligence procedure. It wasn’t especially pretty and it required a certain dispassionate worldview. But it was realistic and, more importantly, it worked. There was nuance back then, as there always should be in intelligence work. But Bush the Younger proudly proclaimed he didn’t do nuance.
    Reese finished his dinner and put the dishes in the sink. Then he set about dyeing his hair.
    He finished the job around ten o’clock. He rearranged his now-dark hair, cutting bits here and there. Then he put on some clear eyeglasses. The same man he was before, with the same build. The same, but different. The change was effective. He looked like Paul Bryan now.

FOUR
    Ronnie Wulf, the chief of detectives, had asked Hastings if he would have a cup of coffee with him, and Hastings would later tell himself he should have seen it coming then. Hastings had butted heads with Wulf on a serial-killer investigation once. But whatever tension had been between them was resolved at the end when Wulf took measures to protect Hastings from the chief of police, who had not been happy with the way things went down. They were not close friends, but Hastings thought Ronnie Wulf was basically all right.
    Now they sat in the small snacking area in the basement of the police department.
    “George,” Wulf said, “the chief wants you and your team to take an assignment.”
    Hastings said, “Regarding homicide?”
    “No. Not exactly.”
    Hastings said nothing. Waited for the man to add something.
    Ronnie Wulf said, “Senator Preston. Alan Preston. You know who that is, don’t you?”
    “Of course.”
    Senator Alan Preston, Republican-Missouri. He had been elected to the U.S. Senate eight years earlier. He had had only token opposition in his reelection campaign. Hastings had voted for him the first time, against him the second time.
    Wulf said, “Years ago, before he was a senator, he was an assistant U.S. attorney in Washington. He prosecuted an ex–CIA agent for selling arms to Syria. The agent, this ex-agent, his name was John Reese. A very bad guy. Betrayed his country, probably had agents killed. Agents who were working for the United States. Preston tried the case against him and got him sentenced to prison for life. At sentencing, the judge told Reese that if he could have, he would have sentenced him to death.”
    Hastings said, “For murder?”
    “No. Apparently, they never actually charged him with murder. What they got him on was the arms-selling thing. Treason.”
    “So he got a life sentence?”
    “Yeah. But, two days ago, he escaped. From a maximum-security federal holding center in North Dakota.”
    “How?”
    “I wasn’t told. I don’t know if the chief was, either. He assaulted a private security guard, put him in the hospital. No one’s seen him since. The guy’s some sort of Rambo or something. He was an army Ranger, then a CIA agent, and then an ex–CIA agent,