Mosaic

by Gayle Lynds

  In Georgetown, Vince felt better. His father's barrage of analyses and orders was like a reassuring shower. "I've just found out Keeline's cell phone number, too. We'll watch for it. I'll send out a description of his car. We'll find them."

  "Damn right you will." Creighton paused. "What about Staffeld?"

  "Everything's arranged to handle him. I've sent Helen and the kids to the ranch as a precaution in case Staffeld really does have a pit bull." Vince allowed himself a short laugh. Once Staffeld had discovered his hotel room was bugged, he'd figured all he had to do was get out of there without being tailed. He hadn't realized Vince had wanted him to find the surveillance devices. Inside the clasp of the briefcase waiting for Staffeld at Heathrow had been a tracking apparatus. Now Staffeld felt relatively safe in his "secret" hideout, not realizing he'd been tailed, which made him even more vulnerable. "Maya Stern will take him out tomorrow as planned."

  Creighton nodded to himself. This morning the first salvo of the Douglas Powers scandal had hit, thanks to the eager reporter from the London Sunday Times. Now all afternoon and evening the media had been barraging the public with Chief Superintendent Staffeld's evidence that Powers was a child molester and possibly a murderer. By tomorrow afternoon the crisis would need another boost, and Staffeld, although he didn't know it, was going to provide it. With that, Creighton was sure his election was guaranteed.

  He said, "You have protection assigned to you?" He thought Staffeld's threat of a private pit bull was probably empty, but he didn't want to take any chances.

  "Of course. Don't worry about me. I can take care of myself." Vince had pulled out his SigSauer pistol from his operations days. He was wearing it in a shoulder holster, and he wouldn't remove it until he was certain all danger

  "I know, son."

  They hung up. Creighton sat in the plush chair a moment longer, then he rose. He was like a thoroughbred before a Triple Crown win. He could almost smell the heat of the sun on the track, hear the crowds cheer in the stands, see the great, shiny trophy awaiting him at the finish line. He strode toward the door. Only Julia and his father stood between him and victory, and he'd crush them both. He swore it to himself.

  44

  10:15 PM, SUNDAY

  WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NEW YORK

  The wind had grown wild. It screeched through the swaying trees like a mad demon. Branches lashed out at the highway. The white funnels of car headlights showed dead leaves and twigs spinning and tumbling across the road. Concentrating on the dangerous conditions, Sam sped them away from the nursing home, trying to push his accelerator to greater and greater speeds.

  "My hero," Julia told him. She was beginning to warm in the car's heat, and the wound on her leg throbbed only lightly.

  "Christ. When I saw you surrounded—" His muscular face was tight.

  "I was scared, too. Sorry I was too fast to let you rescue me."

  "You were terrific. But you nearly gave me cardiac arrest." He felt a trickle of sweat under his collar. "I had barely enough time to get back in and pick you up."

  "I never saw a better sight than your crabby face. Thank God we agreed to go to the nursing home next." She grinned. "Listen, I learned a lot back at the theater as well as here. Do you want to hear it all now?"

  Sam smiled. "I've got a couple of things to tell you, too. You first."

  She sat back and began to talk. He watched her from the corners of his eyes as he listened and drove. She'd changed. The blue eyes, the slender nose, the high cheekbones, and the full lips were distractingly the same, but the expression was different. She'd gotten tougher. She was sitting calmly beside him, intense and articulate as she related the events in the theater when she'd discovered the pictures in his old Königsberg book of her ring, her mother's earrings, and her grandfather Redmond's box.

  He nodded. "So now you've identified three pieces of the Königsberg treasure that were in the Redmond and Austrian families."

  Her blue eyes were sad. "It looks as if you may be right that Grandpa Austrian knew all about the Second Himmler Treasure, and so does Grandpa Redmond."

  She contemplated her grandfathers. Neither had been the warm grandfather of children's books who read aloud and took their grandchildren for ice cream and walks in the park. Once when she was eight years old, she'd tried to sit on Lyle Redmond's lap, but he'd made a friendly joke, patted her head, and sent her off to find Marguerite. Sometime later she'd held Daniel Austrian's hand when she'd needed comforting for some reason. His hand had been cool, dry, and utterly unresponsive. The hand had offered no comfort. He'd simply let her hold it until she felt an unnameable hurt and released it. It had been rejection, of course. She'd never tried again, with either grandfather.

  Sam sensed her troubled thoughts. "Tell me how you lost your sight again."

  As the wind buffeted the car, she described her relapse into blindness triggered by the sight of the ring. Then the attack by Maya Stern and her Janitors.

  She said quietly, "I killed him." She regretted it, but she knew she'd had to.

  Sam nodded. "The corpse was gone when I got there. I found the pool of blood. I'm glad it wasn't you who'd died and they'd carted off."

  "Me, too."

  He glanced at her again. "Is there anything else you've got to report?"

  She told him the rest of what she'd deduced about Creighton and Vince, and then what she'd learned about her grandfather Redmond. "Mrs. Schwartz was a gold mine of information. She said Grandpa had always wanted to leave the nursing home and that he was still a rabble-rouser. If that's true, and especially if he planned and executed an escape, I doubt he could be the demented wreck my mother described when we visited. One of the guards told Reilly that cameras caught Grandpa and the priest dressed alike. Then the priest left through the lobby, but Grandpa got out through the same side door I used. I saw a priest drive out in a VW van."

  Sam gripped the wheel as another heavy gust of the dark wind rocked them. "So what you're telling me is you think Creighton's behind everything, with Vince as his right hand. And your grandfather Redmond's involved somehow, too."

  "Yes. Somehow there's also a connection to the night of my debut when I went blind. Creighton made sure I went to a psychiatrist who wouldn't help me and would later turn on me. Creighton must be hiding something that happened then—"

  Outside the car's windows the windstorm continued to wreak its indiscriminate havoc. The car rocked from side to side. The air howled. An uprooted bush blasted past alongside the road. Then a branch seemed to crash down from nowhere.

  Instantly Sam swerved the car.

  When they were driving steadily in the right lane again, he said, "Your father died that night, right? Maybe that's the connection."

  "I've thought a lot about it. But the night was storming with high winds, just as it is now. He'd driven Grandpa Austrian all the way home to Southampton. It was after four o'clock in the morning, and he was alone in the car, returning to Arbor Knoll. He must've been exhausted. Then something happened—maybe a limb blew across his path just as it did ours. He lost control and slammed off the road and into a telephone pole." She swallowed. "The car erupted in flames."

  Sam was quiet. "It's not easy to see a connection to Creighton in that."

  "My take, too." She forced the lingering pain of her father's death away. She continued her analysis: "Creighton got the packets back before anyone could read them, except for the couple of lines you saw. He used Vince and Maya Stern to do it, and now I think I know why the packets were so vital. Mrs. Schwartz said Grandpa was writing a journal about his life, but the guards found it and destroyed it. The packets sent to you and Mom might've been parts of it that he somehow smuggled out."

  Sam's elation increased. "Maybe he really was going to tell me about the Amber Room."

  She grabbed his cell phone from its holder. "I'm going to call the Franciscan church in Mount Kisco. Reilly thought the priest could've taken Grandpa there."

  Sam stopped her. "Now that we'
re sure Vince is involved, he'll know everything about me, including my cell phone number, the make and model of my car, my magazine subscriptions, my habits, my credit cards, all my sins and vices. We'll have to ditch the Durango as soon as we can and be even more careful about leaving a trail. With Vince and Creighton, we're up against not only the Janitors but the resources of the most powerful intelligence agency in the world."

  10:32 PM, SUNDAY

  MOUNT KISCO, NEW YORK

  The Saint Francis of Assisi Catholic church stood on the corner of Green and Main in Mount Kisco, bathed gray and pink in the light of streetlamps and the bright moon. The church was a graceful structure of brick and stone, with a high, pointed roof. A statue of the founder of the Franciscan order, Saint Francis, looked down from a ledge above the triple front doors. Evergreen shrubs weaved around the small campus. To the side stood a sign: COME JOIN US EACH SUNDAY AT THE LORD'S TABLE.

  Julia and Sam scrutinized the street and church. Traffic was light, and there were no pedestrians. They stepped out of the Durango. The high wind had lessened, but it seemed as if the slower-blowing dark air moved with lurking danger. They hurried around to the side entrance of the church.

  Julia rang the bell. Chilled again, she stamped her feet and waited, while Sam moved closer to the sidewalk to keep watch. Their breath was white steam in the night, quickly blown away. Julia kept looking nervously over her shoulder.

  The priest who opened the door had the tranquil, composed look of a man at peace with life and his god. "What can I do to help you?"

  Julia remembered Reilly's describing the priest to the security guard he'd sent off to find him and her grandfather. "I'm looking for a Franciscan friar," she told him. "Father Michael. He drives an old Volkswagen van and has a German accent."

  The priest looked her up and down. There was an edge of suspicion in his voice. "You're the second one tonight who's asked about this man. Why do you want him?"

  Julia debated with herself. In the end she felt she had far more to gain than to lose, so she told him the truth. "He's with my grandfather, whom I'm trying to find. He was at the Rolling Hills Retirement Home. You know, it's about four miles—"

  The priest nodded. He seemed to deliberate. "Very well. I'll tell you what I told the other one. I know all the Franciscan priests in the state, and I can say categorically there's no Father Michael in our order who fits your description."

  As they ran to the car, Julia related the bad news. "Maybe this Father Michael's not a real Franciscan."

  "Or maybe the priest you just talked to is simply wrong." They climbed into the car, and Sam drove rapidly away. "We'll deal with it. But first we've got to take care of ourselves. I brought fake ID with me, and we'll get rid of this car. Then we've got to find a place to stay so we can make phone calls. It's worth checking with the other Catholic churches in the area. Now all we need is a place—"

  "Won't Vince know about your ID?"

  He chuckled. "No way. I got it from private sources." He glanced at her from the corners of his eyes. "In the field, you learn quickly there are some things you have to do for yourself."

  "When are you going to tell me why you really switched over to research?"

  He paused, surprised at her insight. And suddenly he wanted to tell her. "There was a woman I knew." He hesitated, remembering. The old pain washed over him, and in an instant he saw in his mind Irini's pretty pixie face with the freckles and emerald eyes. He'd loved everything about her, from her curly red hair to the sweet-smelling spot between her breasts. Her moods had been as changeable as the weather, but her laughter had been so infectious it'd wiped the clouds from the sky.

  He shook his head, forcing himself to say the truth: "There was a woman I loved. . . Irini Baum. She worked for East German intelligence, but she'd crossed over to us. It was just before the wall came down in Berlin. She went back to East Berlin to pull files from Stasi headquarters for us, and she got killed in one of the mob uprisings—" The horrible violence reverberated in him.

  Julia said quietly, "Tell me what happened."

  His long fingers turned white on the steering wheel. "I should've known she'd go without me. But I had an important source I had to meet. A KGB officer I was on the verge of convincing to defect. The Company wanted him badly. So I told her I'd be back soon, and then we'd go together."

  "She didn't wait."

  He shook his head roughly. "Dammit, no. There were all kinds of mobs forming and disbanding in East Berlin at that time. They were breaking windows and going after the businesses and homes of anyone who'd had anything serious to do with the Communist government. Lots of people were being injured, and a few were killed every day. And of course Stasi headquarters was a magnet for it all. Everyone hated Stasi spies, and with good reason. For those last few days and then for a week after the wall went down, the streets around Stasi headquarters were never quiet. There were always mobs. Always crimes. And in the morning there'd be corpses. That's what Irini was walking into."

  Julia studied him, caught by the deep pain on his handsome features. His tanned skin seemed suddenly to have paled, and the crease between his brows was as deep as the Grand Canyon. His gray eyes burned with passion and guilt, and she wanted to reach out and stroke the jaw that jutted bravely out at a world that had hurt him so much.

  "Do you mind telling me what happened to her?"

  He swallowed. He glanced at her. Why was he talking about Irini after all these years? He'd locked her in a corner of his heart and promised himself she'd always be safe there, where no one could ever get at her again. But now he was telling everything to Julia, a relative stranger.

  "Irini was successful," he said. "Covert ops heard through a source that she slipped out of one of Stasi headquarters's side entrances with two briefcases stuffed with documents. That's when the mob grabbed her. They beat her up, ripped apart the documents, and—" He stopped. His throat closed. He looked at Julia again, at the understanding that was brimming like tears in her eyes. "They raped her." His voice choked. "Over and over. The wound that killed her was a knife wound. Then they tried to burn her body. She was found in the morning in a nearby alley."

  Julia took a deep breath. She wiped her eyes with her bandaged hands. "She must've suffered terribly."

  "Yes."

  "I'm so sorry." She touched his cheek. "I mean it, Sam. I'm really sorry. I know how hard it is to lose someone, and then to have it happen because of violence. . . . It makes it all so much worse. You must feel terribly guilty."

  He nodded. His mouth was grim. "I knew it was a big risk. I should've blown off the KGB guy and gone with her."

  "You blame yourself. And that's why you transferred out of the field into intelligence?"

  "I was sick of field work. I didn't want to be involved in it anymore. It all seemed so pointless." His face was hard.

  "But maybe you did the right thing by going off to your meeting and trusting her to make her own decision. Maybe it was just what you said about yourself—it was something she had to do. What if you'd gone with her and been killed, and she'd lived? Or you both had died? No one could've controlled that situation without at least an armed squad, and if you'd been there it's possible you could've made it even worse for her. It sounds to me as if she knew the risks, and she chose to take them. You had no right to deny her that decision, just as she shouldn't have denied you."

  He grimaced. "Maybe."

  She turned, leaned her left cheek against the headrest, and stared somberly at him. "I know you feel very protective about me, and I'm flattered. But you've got to understand you can't transfer your feelings about not doing enough to save Irini onto all other women. You'll make yourself nuts, and you'll make us nuts. Quite honestly, considering the woman you're describing, she wouldn't have wanted you with her. She was independent, right? And I'll bet that's one of the reasons you were attracted to her. True?" When he didn't answer, she poked his arm. "Right, tough guy?"

  She saw the corners of his mouth turn up
a fraction in a smile.

  Emotions churned Sam's gut, and his head seemed to be swimming with ideas and pain. But there was something else, too . . . it was an odd feeling of release. He'd never told anyone as much of the story as he'd just told Julia. Briefly he wondered why he'd wanted to. But then, keeping it so very private made less sense now, too.

  As he was meditating on it, he had an abrupt sense of distance. As if his pain and love for Irini had somehow receded a little.

  "One thing you've got to get into that head of yours, Julia," he growled, "is that you need help. Unlike Irini, you're not trained. You barely know how to shoot."

  She found herself smiling. She liked the deep growl in his voice. Very sexy. They were approaching the Mount Kisco train station. She spotted a car rental sign, and suddenly she knew where they could stay. "We can go to the Holiday Inn. It's near here, and it's big and busy so we won't be as noticeable there. With your fake ID and your disguise, we should be fine for a few hours. Besides, it's the only hotel in town I know about."

  They stopped at the car rental company first. It seemed to Julia eyes were watching everywhere. But in his new dark hair and glasses, looking very professional, Sam strode in. He rented a Mustang with automatic transmission so Julia could drive, too. He paid with cash. Back outside, she got into the Mustang and drove it behind him up into the hills. They transferred his things to the Mustang and left the Durango on a quiet, treelined street of old Victorian houses where neighbors weren't likely to report it for several days.

  Then they drove to a telephone booth.