by Gordon Kent
The memorial service was at eleven. She had debated not going but had decided that her own bitterness was better hidden, so she would go and be solemn. Now, the committee chair, Clyde Partlow, kept looking at his watch to make sure he wound things up in time to get there, too. They all had copies of the agenda, which he forced with the brutality of a cowhand pushing cattle through a chute. Shreed said almost nothing.
Then they got to “Security in the 21st Century,” and Shreed went through the ceiling. His face flushed a dark, ugly red, and his eyes got bigger and his lips pulled back to show his teeth.
“How dare we discuss security when our own Internal Investigations can’t stand the heat being turned up by one goddam accused spy!” he shouted. The meeting had been very low-key, and his voice made people jump.
It wasn’t like Shreed to shout. What the hell, she thought. Had grief deranged him?
“Afraid I don’t follow you, George,” Partlow said, checking his watch and making sure that the proper note of respect for the bereaved rang in his voice.
“Peacemaker! Two years ago! It tanked because somebody tipped the French and the Libyans, and now our goddam Internal Investigations doesn’t give enough of a shit to pursue it!”
Other people thought this was odd behavior, too. She could hear it in the silence, in the changed breathing.
“Uh, well, George, that’s certainly a serious matter. Maybe you ought to share your concerns with—”
“I’m sharing my goddam concerns with you, Clyde! You’ve got Security in the 21st Century on your agenda, or is that just a Partlow nod to trendiness? Goddamit, Peacemaker was my project and you know it, and I’ve never had the support I’m entitled to!”
He’s trading on his wife’s death, she thought, and then, For Christ’s sake, give him the benefit of the doubt; the man’s so upset he’s lost it. But if he wanted to behave badly and be forgiven, he had the perfect opportunity, she thought. Partlow was more or less Shreed’s superior, but, like everybody, he was afraid of Shreed, plus Partlow was a placator and a fence-mender. She knew Shreed’s tactics, and, damn it, what he was doing was using his bereavement to force Partlow to action.
Plus, she thought, Shreed really was angry. Enraged, in fact.
“What would you have us do?” Partlow said. He glanced around at the other members of the committee, who were trying to escape by not looking at him.
“I’d have us goddam well tell Internal Investigations they can’t dump a spy charge just because some smartass inside-the-Beltway lawyer holds a flame to their assholes! Look!” He began to tap the table with a long finger. “You approved Peacemaker! This committee approved Peacemaker! It failed! Why? Because word leaked out and the international community of peace-loving, no-balls, third-world nations bitched to the White House! Now we’re on the track of finding out who and why, and Internal says to their suspect, ‘Oh, we didn’t really mean it, sorry, we’ll just back off and you can go betray some other project!’ Eh? Well?”
Partlow checked his watch. “If you have a recommendation, George—”
“Yeah, I recommend we shove a poker up our ass so we have some backbone.”
“Oh, George—”
“All right, I recommend we vigorously protest to Internal their canceling of this investigation, and we go on record with the Director that they continue or show cause why not, which won’t sit well because they’re already in the Director’s shit book because of past failures. Okay?”
“Is that a motion, George?”
“You bet.”
A tall man from Ops seconded it with a louder voice than seemed called for. Sally wanted to say that she didn’t understand the motion because she didn’t know what or whom Internal was investigating, but either everybody else knew or they were so snowed by Shreed’s grief that they didn’t dare ask. The motion passed on a voice vote.
What the hell is he up to? she asked herself.
When the meeting was adjourned, she lingered. Shreed had gone right to Partlow and was hammering at him about the thing. Even though he’d won, he wanted more. “Now, Clyde, do it now! I don’t give a good goddam if you’re late for Janey’s memorial service, what d’you think I do, take attendance at the door? You want to show some sympathy, get on the line to the head of Internal, he’s a buddy of yours, tell him we’re not taking No for an answer, either he reinstates the Siciliano investigation or he’s dead. Dead, d-e-a-d, as in one too many failures! Do it!”
Siciliano, she thought. That’s the name of Alan Craik’s wife. What the hell? Sally had been there when the rift between Shreed and Craik had opened, something about an event in Africa years ago. Was Shreed still angry, was that what all this was about? Was he trying some petty revenge on Alan Craik through the man’s wife?
“Goddamit, just do it!” she heard Shreed shout.
The man’s ballistic. But why?
NCIS HQ, Washington.
Mike Dukas was sitting at a borrowed desk in an office already being used by somebody else. The desk wasn’t really a desk, only an old typing table from the days of IBM Selectrics, and the chair was a mismatched typing chair that already hurt his back.
“You Dukas?” a voice said. He looked across the room. A black male agent was holding up a telephone.
“Yeah.”
“Phone call.” He held out the telephone. “Make it quick, will you? I live on that thing.”
Dukas took the call standing by the guy’s desk. “Dukas.”
“Dukas, it’s Menzes. CIA Internal Investigations.”
“Yeah, yeah, I remember.”
“The deal’s off.”
“Hey—”
“We had a go, then we had no-go. From the top: no deal, definitely pursue, by the book. Your lawyer lady wants to go public, that’s her prerogative; it won’t change a thing.”
Dukas was thinking hard. He couldn’t see what had changed the dynamics, but he was a realist; if Menzes said the deal was dead, it was dead. “You kicking it to us?” he said.
“Exactly. ‘By the book,’ that’s what I was told, and the book says it’s the Navy’s to pursue.”
“We oughta talk.”
“Nothing’ll change, man. This isn’t my doing. But, yeah, there may be things to talk about. This case—”
“What?”
“I don’t want to talk on an open phone.”
“Jesus, Menzes, this is gonna hit the woman hard.”
“It hit me hard; I don’t like to be second-guessed.” Menzes was angry. He was a standup guy, a hardnose, and somebody above him had jerked his chain.
“We’re talking everything here? No change of orders? She goes to Big Turd, West Virginia? No Houston?”
“Back to square one. Only it’s NCIS’s baby now.”
“Yeah, but we wouldn’t—” Dukas gave up; there was no point in going over it again. But he wanted to talk to Menzes, so he arranged to meet him next day at someplace called the Old Commonwealth Tavern, aka “the Agency Annex.” When Dukas hung up, the black agent said, “Oh, thank you,” in a prissy voice. “I thought I was going to have to charge rent.”
Dukas wasn’t sure he could tell Rose. He walked along the corridor, looking into offices until he found an empty one, and he went in and used the phone there. First he called Peretz and told him the bad news, and Peretz said they had to have a council of war, the sooner the better. Dukas said he’d think about it, and he called Emma Pasternak, but she was out somewhere.
Then he called Rose.
She was happy. It was in her voice, that husky female sound that made his knees shaky. Before he could say anything, she burbled, “Guess who’s in town! He’s taking me to dinner!”
“Al?”
“No, asshole, Al’s on the boat! Harry!”
Harry. O’Neill. Another of the friends who circled the wagons for her when she was in trouble. Of course. Could he get O’Neill to tell her? No, of course not. “Hey, Rose—”
“Harry wants to see you, Mike. I told him my prob
lem is over, that’s why he’s in DC, was to help me, but he wants to see all you guys, anyway.”
“It isn’t over.”
“I know, there’s the investigation part, but—”
“The deal’s off, babe. The Agency backed out.” He heard her breathing as she put it together. “We’re back where we were on Monday,” he said. “I’m sorry as hell.”
“You mean—everything?” Everything meant only one thing—the astronaut program.
“Everything,” he said. “I tried to call your lawyer, she’s out. I talked to Abe—”
“GODDAMIT TO HELL!” she shouted. “They fucking can’t!”
“Abe thinks we should have a skull session. It’s not a bad idea, especially with Harry here; he understands this stuff. What d’you say?”
“Oh, Mike. Oh, shit!”
“Yeah. But we can’t just sit still for it, babe. We gotta move.”
“Whatever.” The happiness had gone out of her voice.
“I’ll get Emma,” he said. I shouldn’t have said “Emma,” he thought. He hoped Rose wouldn’t notice.
Dukas went back to his borrowed typing table. Last night, he had thought he might really wind this up and be back in The Hague in a few days. Now, he knew, he was in for the long haul.
E-mail, Rose to Alan.
it isn’t over after all. Mike just told me. deal fell through. Oh shit, i love you so much and i miss you so much and i want to kill somebody for this. I keep saying why me why me but it doesn’t do any good. I’m so sorry i’ve dragged you down with me but dont despair we’ll come through we always have. I love you and that’s a lot. But goddamit i keep saying to myself who is doing this to us who who who?
8
Rose’s motel.
Harry O’Neill was putting beer bottles into plastic tubs of ice. He was a big, handsome black man who came from money and behaved with the confidence of a Harvard education and a family of big-time lawyers. He had been a CIA case officer, now had his own security company, and he had flown in from Dubai to help her.
“We’re going to get you out of this,” he said, as if he had all the confidence in the world. He held out a bottle. “Have a beer.” They were in Rose’s motel room, waiting to have the skull session with Dukas and Peretz and Emma Pasternak.
She shook her head.
“Come on, Rose! It isn’t the end of the world!”
She started to snap at him but caught herself. Harry really knew about the end of the world: he had lost an eye to torture two years before in Africa. She gave him an apologetic grin, accepted a sweaty bottle.
He winked at her, as if to say: See? You can fall in the shit and come up holding a diamond. He was wearing a linen blazer and an electric-blue T-shirt that Rose suspected was real silk, and he was handsome and breezy and rich-looking.
“Sorry,” she said. Her smile was half-hearted.
Then Abe Peretz arrived, and Dukas and Emma Pasternak came in right behind him. After a lot of shouted introductions and greetings, people shoved chairs around and grabbed beer and sat down, all but Dukas, who took up the space between the beds and announced loudly, “I’m taking charge of this meeting.” Emma started to protest but he waved her down. “I’m the NCIS investigator and it’s a Navy case, so I’m in charge.” He pointed a finger, the thumb cocked like a hammer, at Emma. “You’re here by my permission.”
“She’s my client, and she remains my client wherever we are! She says nothing unless I okay it. She—”
Dukas put his hands on the arms of her chair and leaned his face down very close to hers and said in a tone like a dog’s growl, “Shut up or get out.”
Before either of them could do something terrible, Rose grabbed Emma’s arm and said, “Emma, please! Mike’s my friend!”
Emma glanced at her, then locked eyes with Dukas again. Something passed between them. At last, she mumbled, “But no taping. Nothing she says can be used in court. Okay?”
Dukas grinned, patted her arm. He straightened. “So here’s what I want to do tonight. I want to chew on it and come up with a way to attack. I mean, we’re all clear that Rose is being smeared and her husband’s getting screwed by association, are we all agreed on that? Okay, so what we want to find is how and why. Rose, I want everything you have on Peacemaker, because this whole thing seems to start there. The word is you gave Peacemaker secrets to—well, we don’t know who to. You got reports, printouts—disks—?”
Emma started to say, “What’s Peacemaker?” but Rose jumped in ahead of her. “Mike, Peacemaker was more than two years ago! I haven’t got anything!”
“Sure, you have. People always keep stuff. It’s in a box in a closet or the cellar—bullshit awards they gave you, photos from the Christmas party—”
“Oh, that sort of shit.”
“Yeah, and I want it. All.”
Angered again by her own lack of control, Rose growled, “It’s all on its way to Houston, remember? I don’t have a cellar or a closet!”
Harry O’Neill uncrossed his long legs and said, “Computer.” He looked at Dukas. “What d’you think?”
“I never used my home computer for Peacemaker,” Rose cried. “Everything was classified.”
Dukas bored in. “You never brought anything home and worked it on your computer? Tell me another, Alphonse!”
Emma half-rose from her chair. “I object—!”
“You stay out of it!”
“This is typical cop bullshit; you’re tricking her into making statements to incriminate her.”
Dukas stared at her. He stuck his lower jaw out, his tongue running over his upper teeth. “Do you want me to take her into an interrogation room with a tape recorder and a witness? Would that be better? Goddamit, we’re here to help her!”
Again, Rose put her hand on Emma’s arm. “I’ll answer, Emma.”
“I don’t want you to!”
“Well, deal with it.” Rose looked up at Mike. “What was the question? Did I put Peacemaker stuff on my home computer? No, I didn’t. I’m a good little naval officer, Mike; I follow the rules.”
“Rosie, we got a former Director of National Intelligence who put stuff on his home computer. Everybody does it! I want your computer.”
“It’s on the way to Houston! And it’s clean. Clean.”
“Okay.” He talked it as he wrote. “Find—truck—en route—Houston—”
The telephone rang.
“Oh, shit—” She sprang up, reaching for it, knocking over her beer. “Goddamit—!” O’Neill and Peretz were both there, mopping at the carpet, and she stepped over them. “Hello!” She sounded enraged, and she hoped, therefore, that it wasn’t Alan.
And it wasn’t. It was a woman.
“You don’t know me,” the female voice said. Rose’s first thought was that it was some sort of telemarketer, an idea that was gone as fast as it came; telemarketers didn’t do motel rooms. Did they?
“Who is this?”
“I want to help you.”
The voice was soft, as if she didn’t want somebody on her end to overhear. A little tense. Guarded. Around Rose, the room had fallen silent, and the men were watching her.
“Who is this, please?”
“George Shreed is behind what’s being done to you.”
Rose heard the click as the woman hung up. Even so, she spoke into the phone again. And got nothing.
When she turned back to the room, they were all looking at her.
“A woman I don’t know said that George Shreed is behind what’s happening.”
Abe Peretz exploded. “Sonofabitch—!”
Emma was saying, “Who’s George Shreed?” to Dukas, and O’Neill was frowning at Rose in a way that meant he knew exactly who Shreed was, and what was the connection? Suddenly the room was electric where before it had been sullen.
Rose sat down. “I don’t get it. Why would somebody—?”
“Agency,” Harry said. “She’d have to be Agency to know anything about Shreed. Or she’s an o
ld girlfriend with a grudge. Which isn’t his style.”
“Yes, yes, but—” Peretz was so excited that he was waving one hand like a kid trying to be called on in class. “It’s exactly what I was going to say! Shreed was deep, deep in Peacemaker.”
“Wait!” Emma was on her feet. She had a real bellow when she needed it. “What the hell are you all talking about?”
So, while O’Neill and Peretz murmured together, Rose and Dukas sketched it in for Emma Pasternak: Peretz, who had started a routine, two-week Naval Reserve stint at Peacemaker two years before, had got suspicious of the sort of data he was seeing and had begun nosing around, tracking things back to Shreed and the Agency, a search that had been ended by the mugging that had cost him the hearing in one ear.
“Shreed got him beaten up?” Emma said.
“Oh, no,” Rose cried, “I never believed—” Then she looked at Dukas.
“They never followed up that idea,” he said. He made a note.
“Well, I would have!” Emma shouted.
“Yeah, you would have.” Dukas whacked O’Neill on the knee. “Harry, you think Telephone Girl’s Agency?”
“Likely.”
“You got any way to find her?”
“Put a tap on Rose’s phone.”
Emma was screaming, “No way!” Dukas turned back to O’Neill. “Poke around, will you?”
“I have to be in Nairobi on Saturday, Mike.” He turned to Rose and started mumbling something about tape-recording telephone calls.
Dukas was making notes. “Abe, I want everything you got on Peacemaker.”
“Hey, how about polygraphing Shreed?” Peretz said.
“Not yet.” He made a note. “The Agency wouldn’t let me polygraph its people without a hell of a fight, and I’m not ready for a fight. Yet.” He looked at his notes. “Rosie, does it make sense that George Shreed would go after you because he has an old rhubarb with Al?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, does it?”
Peretz shook his head. “He’s a high-powered guy, but he’s very personal—he fought the Cold War that way, his personal enemies. A big thinker in terms of geopolitics, but he personalizes everything. Can be very petty.”
