by Gayle Lynds
As he described the hunt, his deception tactics, and the response of Jerry’s men, there was a small, strange smile on his face, a combination of triumph and knowing. She looked at him and found herself transfixed by strength she suddenly saw clearly.
When he finished telling her about his escape through the woods, he sat up and fell silent, resuming sentry duty. She checked him several times. He was a grand master from a mysterious world she realized she wanted to know. A sort of awe filled her. From the moment they had met, he had been educating her, mentoring her, everything from how to hide well within shadows to the importance of small numbered accounts and how partners could escape multiple pursuers with simple tools—guns, a car, a map, and their wits.
He caught her gazing at him. “You’re looking at me oddly.” For an instant he seemed puzzled. “You’re very young,” he decided. “You have a lot to learn.”
She blinked slowly and studied the deserted road. “Of course I do.”
“I don’t mean tradecraft. What you’re feeling has nothing to do with me. It’s the situation. We’re both pumped up on adrenaline, and adrenaline can make a flicker of an emotion or a thought seem momentous. But the only thing that’s changed is that you’ve had to trust me, and I’ve had to trust you, and it worked. We did our jobs, had some good luck, and saved our own hides—and each other’s. To let that escalate can lead to trouble.”
She said nothing.
His voice softened. “Some operatives react by getting angry and resentful. Some feel a physical attraction. Others feel dependent. An array of emotional responses are possible—and all of them are strong. Look, Elaine, I’m going to make a leap here. Because of everything that’s happened to you in the past, you’ve probably been feeling pretty isolated. And now, after many tense hours of my being your target, you’ve had to accept me as a partner. That’s a huge reversal. It jerks one up short and shows how tissue-thin our most closely held beliefs can be. So, considering all of this, it’s possible your emotions are telling you that I’ve got some kind of special wisdom. Not true. All I’ve got is experience. I paid attention, and I learned, but experience isn’t the same as wisdom. In fact, I’d argue that I don’t have an overabundance of wisdom, or I wouldn’t be where I am in my life.”
She sighed. He was right—something had changed in her when he climbed into the car, dirty and exhausted and jubilant, and told her how he had escaped. Some part of her wanted to give him superhuman qualities.
She straightened her spine. “You’re right. But I still think you were terrific. I’m not going to change my mind. Okay, it’s your turn. We made a deal. Remember? I told you about Rafe. Fill me in about Raina.”
He paused. Then: “There’s not that much to tell. The answer is, I fell in love with her in Germany. The affair complicated both of our lives—and our work. Then she fell out of love with me. But I never regretted any of it. Never. As I said, what I regret are the lousy choices I made.”
She frowned, thinking about Kristoph’s age. That would explain a lot. “Then, was Kristoph your son?”
His eyes closed. For a few seconds his sweaty face seemed bruised, as if the artist had pounded the living clay too hard. “You could say that. And you’re right that the newspaper story activated my escape.” He told her about Raina’s signal and what little he knew.
She asked questions. He answered until finally he grew impatient.
“That’s enough.” He gave her a hard look. “When were you planning to tell me what you did?”
“What I . . . ?” Guilt washed through her.
His voice grew flinty. “You weren’t surprised we had a tail. You expected one—but not that Jerry would be it. And you weren’t surprised when two more cars showed up ahead of us. In fact, you were relieved—until you realized they were with Jerry, and all of them planned to ambush us.” He stared. “What happened?”
She did not look at him. “I have another cell phone. My personal one. I called Laurence Litchfield.”
At the name, Tice gave an almost imperceptible jerk. Then he stilled and settled back inside himself and assumed the mask she had come to know well—unobtrusive but very self-assured, his gray eyes impenetrable.
“Tell me everything,” he demanded.
She repeated the conversation. “I hadn’t gotten around to mentioning it, but Whippet tried to scrub me, too.” She described the attack in Franklin Park then finding the assassin’s corpse on the desk in Whippet house. “I hadn’t connected any of it to Litchfield. But it makes sense now. He personally vetted me before he assigned me to hunt you. It didn’t seem unusual at the time because it was such a special situation. Maybe he’s not the inside source. It could be someone else in his office.”
His mouth thinned into an angry line. “Just before I was arrested, I warned Larry about Hannah. I’d seen a few things that indicated she and her people might be skimming from their front companies. It sounds to me that instead of investigating, Larry threw in his lot with them. Years ago, he was a hotdogger, a real cowboy type. I thought that was behind him.”
“What do you mean?” There was another lit intersection far ahead. Around it spread dark houses and stores.
“In the early eighties I sent him undercover into East Berlin to chase a lead that Carlos the Jackal and Johannes Weinrich were up to something.” The tip had come from Raina, one of her first. “Larry was new. He lost Weinrich on the street. I never got a good explanation about why, and of course experienced operatives lose rabbits, too. The problem was that Weinrich then handed off explosives that were used to bomb the Maison de France in West Berlin.”
She frowned. “When I asked Hannah Barculo about you, she described the same event, but her version was very different. According to her, Litchfield said he developed the intel himself and followed up on his own initiative. You were the one who blew the operation—not him.”
As she related Hannah’s story, a cold wave of outrage rolled through Tice. Litchfield had been one of his protégés, and he was stunned by the lie. At last he sighed. There was nothing to be done about it now. “So Larry rewrote history. I suppose all of us do that occasionally, especially when we’re young. Of course, I reamed him for screwing up, but my job was to develop talent, too, and he was very talented. Have you ever heard of an information broker named Moses? He peaked in the last few years of the Cold War.”
“I vaguely recall the name.” She caught him studying her again.
He looked away. “Moses kept a low profile and was very expensive. Without the knowledge of anyone, Moses tipped Larry that a major international figure was going to be assassinated, but he had two conditions before he’d reveal the details—Larry personally had to pay Moses’s fee, and he had to work it alone, keep it secret so Moses’s name wouldn’t surface until it was resolved. Larry was ambitious, and his family had some money, so he paid and kept his mouth shut. As it turned out, Carlos had put a trio of Iranian Muslims through plastic surgery to make them look less Persian and more Italian and was having them trained to pass as Catholic priests.”
She inhaled. “You said a major international figure—they were going to terminate the pope?”
“Yes, Pope John Paul the Second. He was a lightning rod for anti-Communists, especially in Poland. The Bulgarians had failed to assassinate him, so Carlos figured Moscow could pay him to do the job instead. The pope was home in Rome between trips to Liechtenstein and India. Good timing for Carlos. Larry scoped out the situation, then he slipped into East Berlin with one of our new miniature cameras and crawled through an air duct to where he could record the trainers talking the fake priests through the operation step by step. Larry showed he was daring and smart. With his evidence, we stopped the plot and informed the Vatican and used the intel in several vital ways. To my knowledge, Larry was never negligent again, and that operation launched his career. He got a raise and a promotion to the number two slot in Madrid.”
“That was a hell of a tip. Moses must’ve been something.”
“That may explain some of it. But what does the rest mean? Whippet was taken out by Jerry. Now Jerry is working for Litchfield, or at least Litchfield is feeding him information. Does he know it was Jerry who hit Hannah and the unit? Are he and Mr. G partners in the ‘big deal’? From the way Jerry talked about Mr. G, it sounds as if he’s loyal to him, so I doubt he’d work for Litchfield without Mr. G’s knowing about it.”
“That’s my analysis, too. And in some way, the situation—this deal—is connected to Raina or Kristoph or both. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be coming after me.” They were nearing the intersection. “Turn north. We’re going to one of my oldest contacts. There aren’t many people I trust. Even fewer who trust me these days. He’s one.”
She peeled off onto the road. “Who is he?”
“I’ll let you discover that for yourself.”
Again silence filled the car.
Occasionally he checked her solemn face. There was something about her that reminded him of his daughter, Mariette. It astounded him to think Mariette would be twenty-nine now, the same age as Elaine. She had been a beautiful child, willowy and bright as a rose, with a stimulating intelligence. Aaron would be twenty-seven. With a stab of pain, he wondered what his towheaded son would be like. Aaron had loved books and dinosaurs and soccer. When he allowed himself, he thought longingly of Mariette and Aaron and Kristoph. Three children. All dead. His chest ached. And poor Marie. Tragic Marie. It made no sense he was still alive.
At last he said, “Don’t beat yourself up about Larry Litchfield. Of course you’d go to him. Right now, what matters is you acquired critical information. However it plays out, that’s what you’ve got to remember.”
With a smile, she looked at him. At the same moment, he peered at her. Their gazes met, and unspoken forgiveness passed between them.
She resumed watching the road, thinking. After a while she made a decision: “You must’ve had extraordinary reasons to turn against us, Jay. It makes no damn sense to me, but I won’t ask you about it again. Rest easy.”
He nodded. “Some things can never be explained. This is one.”
Part Three
Intelligence stops when you pick up a gun.
—OLEG TSAREV
former KGB officer,
First Chief Directorate
26
Miami Beach, Florida
Miles Davis’s “So What” played from a small stage where a saxophonist led a combo, his eyes closed, his expression drug-sweet. As Martin Ghranditti watched the performance on the plasma television in his elegant library, the camera panned back. In the TV audience, cigarette smoke and sweat and exhausted intentions fought with overwrought gaiety.
Ghranditti looked away, smelling the stink in his mind. Marie was sitting relaxed on the other end of the sofa. Her eyes were closed, too, as she listened. A small smile played on her lips. For some reason he could not fathom, she liked jazz. Her long, platinum-blond hair was brushed back, as luxurious as silk, to display the fine architecture of her face. He studied the straight nose, the chiseled cheekbones, the high forehead. His gaze slid down the curves of her body, dressed tonight in some clinging black knit. A hot tide rolled through him. Her long legs were crossed at the knees. A sandal dangled precariously from the toes of her right foot, hinting at danger. She was hypnotic. He focused on her naked, gleaming legs.
When the music stopped, she opened her eyes and turned not just her head but her entire body, as if she knew he had been watching her, what he was thinking.
“I closed the deal for the island.” He drank his Grey Goose, neat.
She stared. Her eyes were stunning, an unusual sea green—gemlike and emotional. “I don’t want to move away,” she said firmly. “I told you that. I’ll travel with you, Martin—whenever and wherever you like. Business, vacation, whatever. With or without the children. But I don’t want to move away permanently.” She picked up her glass from the table beside her. Only ice cubes remained. She shook the glass, rattling the cubes. She tilted back her head and sipped the melt.
He watched the way her lips clung to the glass. “We have to move, Marie,” he said reasonably.
“Why?” Again she stared at him, puzzled. “The children are happy. I’m planning to be happy myself. I’ve found a therapist.”
“A therapist?” He felt a tendril of fear. “What kind of therapist?”
“A psychologist. I want to continue to see her.” There was a tremor in her voice. “I want to find out who I am.”
His heart thumped against his ribs. “You’re Marie Ghranditti!” he thundered. “You’re beautiful! Exquisite! You have everything any woman could want. Three healthy children. Wealth and status. You’re safe and loved and admired. You’re perfect!” And at last she had reached the exactly right age—thirty-one.
“I’m perfect to you,” she said quietly. “That’s been your goal. But somewhere along the way, I got lost.”
He noted the stubbornness in her chin. It had been there for days, propelling him to rush closing the purchase of the island. “Did you take your medication? You get like this when you don’t take your OxyContin. You must take it. You don’t need any damn psychologist!”
As if his gaze were too much, she looked away. “I’ve been cutting back. You knew I’ve wanted to make some changes.” She spoke to the long wall of books, to the rich leather bindings, the gold-leaf letters, the rococo designs. “I don’t think anymore. I don’t even remember what I look like really. It’s been so long. Years and years. Do you remember what I look like? What I used to talk about? What I wanted? If you do, please tell me.”
He glared at the back of her platinum head, horrified. “You ungrateful—!” His cell buzzed. He snatched it from his jacket and saw the number. It was Jerry Angelides. “I’ll be back,” he told her and rose to his feet, looming, waiting for her to cringe.
Instead, she looked up over her shoulder with those brilliant green eyes and shrugged. She did not know the power of those eyes.
“You really do work much too hard, Martin,” she said.
Confused, he strode out of the library and across the foyer. As he slammed into his office, he punched the TALK button. “Did you get Tice and Cunningham?”
“We came close, Mr. Ghranditti.”
“You phoned to say that!”
“It’s like every time we get closer.” Angelides’s voice was strong, assured. “I’ve got the boys fanned out. We had some car trouble, so we’re doubling up until everything’s fixed. Tell your Langley man we need better tips. No more of this dumb crap of having to chase Tice all over the place. I figure now’s a real good time for your source to nail where Tice is, because he and Cunningham have gotta be flat on their asses. They’ve gotta go to ground to sleep. But the boys and I are fine. Rarin’ to stay on the road, you might say.”
Ghranditti took a deep breath, collecting himself, his mind still partly on Marie. She would listen to reason, he decided. Eventually she always did, and he would tell her doctor to increase her dosage. The immediate priority was the shipment. And Angelides might well be correct.
“I’ll inform my source,” Ghranditti told him. “Keep up the search. You have the manpower. Use it!”
Outside Herndon, Virginia
The narrow black ribbon of a road curled through the rolling Virginia countryside. The moon was low in the sky, its light thinning. Elaine wheeled the Jag onto an asphalt driveway where a sign announced PRIVATE PROPERTY—KEEP OUT and followed it across a stone bridge and through tangled woodland. Ahead she could see a glen where old stone buildings from the nineteenth century stood around a circular drive. Looking stately and solid, the two-story main house was at the far end, an upstairs window alight. On either side was a single-story cottage, but both were dark.
As the nose of the Jag entered the glen, floodlights burs
t on. Elaine drove around toward the big house and parked, but before she could turn off the ignition, Jay was out of the car.
As she hurried after him, the front door opened. She stared, surprised, and smiled grimly to herself: Now she knew who had enabled Jay’s escape. In the doorway, holding a large, slender dog by her collar, was the Bureau of Prisons lieutenant who had escorted her around Allenwood—David Oxley. Barefoot and dressed in tight jeans and a T-shirt, he no longer seemed slight but wiry, and his black eyes were far from weary—they were steely and sharp. He surveyed the compound then disappeared indoors.
Jay was on his heels, and Elaine followed, locking the door behind. The place gave off a deserted air. They were in a large living room, where cardboard packing boxes were stacked high against a wall. Bedsheets covered sofas and chairs and what looked like a baby grand piano. To her left, on the far side of the room, was a closed door. To her right, a hall extended. On one side, an enclosed staircase rose to the next floor, the door open as if the owner had just run down. On the other side stood a stone fireplace.
Their host smiled. “The CIA has arrived.”
“Indeed I have. And the inside man’s waiting.”
Jay glanced over at her. “Always have a good backup plan.”
“You’ve sure proved that point.” She studied Oxley. “So what’s your real name?”
He gave a low chuckle. “Ben Kuhnert, at your service.” He peered pointedly at Jay. “You look like field trash. What have you been rolling in?”
“Forest duff. But we got away clean.”
“You got away dirty. You both need showers and clean clothes. Zahra’s should fit Ms. Cunningham. Come here, Jay. You’ve got to meet Houri. She’s an important member of the team. Let the nice man shake your paw, Houri.”
The dog sat, her feathered tail whacking the floor, and Jay took the raised paw and shook it. “Smart dog. Isn’t ‘houri’ what a beautiful young woman in paradise is called?”
