Before the Fall(81)
“Should I be worried?”
“No, sir, just an overview for the week.”
Condor nodded, stood. He knew Gil didn’t like to talk shop in casual settings. They went into the parlor. It was lined with books that Condor had actually read. Old maps lined the walls, photos of Condor with notable global figures—Nelson Mandela, Vladimir Putin, John McCain, the actor Clint Eastwood. There was an autographed baseball in a glass case on the desk. Chris Chambliss’s tenth-inning blast from that game, because who in the tristate area didn’t remember the way the stands emptied onto the field, the way Chambliss had to push and twist through civilian lunatics to round the bases—did he even touch home plate?
“Sir,” said Gil, “would you liked me to get command central on the line to do a more formal briefing?”
“God no. Just run it down for me.”
Condor sat behind his desk, picked up an old football. He juggled it mindlessly, hand to hand, as Gil spoke.
“Sixteen email threats intercepted,” he began, “sent to mostly public addresses. Your private lines seem uncompromised since our last reshuffle. At the same time, corporate is tracking some specific threats against American media companies. They’re working with Homeland Security to stay up to the moment.”
Condor studied him as he spoke, spiraling the ball from left to right and back.
“You were in the Israeli army.”
“Yessir.”
“Infantry, or—?”
“That’s not something I can talk about. Let’s say I did my duty and let that be that.”
Condor flipped the ball, missed the catch. It bounce-rolled in a sloppy parabola, settling under a curtain.
“Any direct threats?” he asked. “David Bateman, we’re going to kill you. That type of thing.”
“No, sir. Nothing like that.”
Condor thought about it.
“But okay, so this guy? The one we don’t talk about who took my girl. When did he ever make a threat against a media conglomerate or send a bullshit email? This was a scumbag who thought he could get rich and didn’t mind murdering the maid.”
“Yessir.”
“And what are you doing to protect us from those guys? The ones who don’t make threats.”
If Gil felt dressed down he didn’t show it. To him it was a fair question.
“Both homes are secure. Cars are armored. Your protection detail is visible, high-profile. If they’re looking for you, they see us. We’re sending a message. There are easier targets.”
“But you can’t guarantee?”
“No, sir.”
Condor nodded. The conversation was over. Gil headed for the door.
“Oh, hey,” said Condor. “Mrs. Bateman invited the Kiplings to fly back with us later.”
“Is that Ben and Sarah?”
Condor nodded.
“I’ll let command know,” said Gil.
The key to being a good body man, he had decided over the years, was to be a mirror: not invisible—the client wanted to know you were there—but reflective. Mirrors weren’t intimate objects. They reflected change. Movement. A mirror was never static. It was the part of your environment that shifted with you, absorbing angle and light.
And then, when you stood flush in front of it, it showed you yourself.
*
He had read the file, of course. What kind of bodyguard would he be if he hadn’t? The truth was, he could quote certain sections from memory. He had also spoken to the surviving agents at length, looking for sensory details, for information on how the principals comported themselves—was Condor calm under pressure or explosive? Did Falcon succumb to panic and grief, or did she show a mother’s steel? The kidnapping of a child was the nightmare scenario in his line of work, worse than a death (though—to be realistic—a kidnapped child was, nine times out of ten, a dead child). But a kidnapped child removed the normal human safety mechanisms from a parent’s mind. Survival of the self was no longer a concern. Protection of wealth, of home, became secondary. Reason, in other words, went out the window. So mostly what you fought with in the kidnap-and-ransom scenario (other than the clock) were the principals themselves.
The facts at the time of Robin’s kidnapping were these: Twenty-four hours earlier the nanny, Francesca Butler (“Frankie”), had been taken, most likely while traveling on foot on her way home from the movies. She had been coerced at a second location to share information about the Batemans’ rental home and routines—most important, which room was the baby girl in? On the night of the abduction (between twelve thirty and one fifteen a.m.), a ladder had been removed from a shed on the property and propped against the south wall, extending to the lip of the guest room window. There were signs that the window lock had been jimmied from the outside (it was an old house with original windows and over the years they had swollen and shrunk until there was a healthy gap between the upper and lower frames).
Later, investigators would conclude that the kidnapping was the work of a single perpetrator (though there was some dispute). And so the official story was that one man set the ladder, climbed up, retrieved the girl, and took her back down. The ladder was then re-stowed in the shed (what had he done with the child, placed her in a car?). And the child removed from the property. In the words of the principals, She disappeared. But of course, Gil knew that no one really disappeared. They were always someplace, bodies at rest or in motion in three-dimensional space.