The Book of Fate - Brad Meltzer [159]
“There’s no way he’ll even be there,” Dreidel said, looking down at his watch. “I mean, name one doctor who works past five o’clock,” he added with a nervous laugh.
“Stop talking, okay? We’re almost there.”
With a sharp left that took them under the overpass of I-95, the blue Toyota headed west on Griffin, past a string of check-cashing stores, two thrift shops, and an adult video store called AAA to XXX.
“Great neighborhood,” Rogo pointed out as they passed the bright neon purple and green sign for the Fantasy Lounge.
“It’s not that ba—”
Directly above them, a thunderous rumble ripped through the sky as a red and white 747 whizzed overhead, coming in for a landing at Fort Lauderdale Airport, which, judging from the height of the plane, was barely a mile behind them.
“Maybe Dr. Eng just likes cheap rents,” Dreidel said as Rogo reread the address from the entry in Boyle’s old calendar.
“If we’re lucky, you’ll be able to ask him personally,” Rogo said, pointing out the front windshield. Directly ahead, just past a funeral home, bright lights lit up a narrow office park and its modern four-story white building with frosted-glass doors and windows. Along the upper half of the building, a thin yellow horizontal stripe ran just below the roofline.
2678 Griffin Road.
95
During the first year, Ron Boyle was scared. Shuttling from country to country . . . the nose contouring and cheek implants . . . even the accent modification that never really worked. The men in Dr. Eng’s office said it’d keep him safe, make his trail impossible to follow. But that didn’t stop him from bolting upright in his bed every time he heard a car door slam outside his motel or villa or pensione. The worst was when a spray of firecrackers exploded outside a nearby cathedral—a wedding tradition in Valencia, Spain. Naturally, Boyle knew it wouldn’t be easy—hiding away, leaving friends, family . . . especially family—but he knew what was at stake. And in the end, when he finally came back, it’d all be worth it. From there, the rationalizations were easy. Unlike his father, he was tackling his problems head-on. And as he closed his eyes at night, he knew no one could blame him for that.
By year two, as he adjusted to life in Spain, isolation hit far harder than his accountant brain had calculated. Unlike his old friend Manning, when Boyle left the White House, he never suffered from spotlight starvation. But the loneliness . . . not so much for his wife (his marriage was finished years ago), but on his daughter’s sixteenth birthday, as he pictured her gushing, no-more-braces smile in her brand-new driver’s license photo—those were the days of regret. Days that Leland Manning would answer for.
In year three, he’d grown accustomed to all the tricks Dr. Eng’s office taught him: walking down the street with his head down, double-checking doors after he entered a building, even being careful not to leave big tips so he wouldn’t be remembered by waiters or staff. So accustomed, in fact, that he made his first mistake: making small talk with a local ex-pat as they both sipped horchatas in a local bodega. Boyle knew the instant the man took a double take that he was an Agency man. Panicking, but smart enough to stay and finish the drink, Boyle went straight home, frantically packed two suitcases, and left Valencia that evening.
In December of that same year, the New Yorker commissioned a feature article about Univar “Blackbird” computers showing up in the governments of Iran, Syria, Burma, and Sudan. As terrorist nations unable to import from the United States, the countries bought their computers from a shady supplier in the Middle East. But what the countries didn’t know was that Univar was a front company for the National Security Agency and that six months after the computers were in the terrorist countries’ possession, they slowly broke down while simultaneously forwarding