Riptide

by Catherine Coulter

  “In the Bronx. Under an assumed name. To be honest, I didn’t have time to go through my mother’s stuff. I just piled everything into boxes and hauled the stuff to the Bronx. Now, Adam, where would they come up with the idea that I’d be in North Carolina?”

  He smiled sweetly at her. “Fiddling. I enjoy it and I’m good at it.”

  “By ‘fiddling’ you mean you scammed them?”

  “Right. Sometimes con men use it when they get something over on their marks. Ah, sometimes law enforcement uses it, too.”

  She shook her head at him. “I don’t want to know which you are. You’re kidding about this, right? You yourself didn’t feed them that information, did you?”

  “No. I got one of their best snitches to feed it to them. That way they wouldn’t have any doubts at all. I even planted some evidence in your apartment in Albany to show that you knew all about North Carolina, that you’d even vacationed on the Outer Banks, your favorite town, Duck. Agents were swarming all over Duck within four hours of the FBI getting the information.”

  “I have been to Duck. I’ve stayed at the Sanderling Inn.”

  “I know, that’s why I selected it.”

  “But I don’t think I kept any souvenirs or books or anything like that.”

  “Oh yeah, sure you had souvenirs. There were a couple of T-shirts, some shells with ‘Duck’ etched on them, a couple of Duck pens, and a cute little candy dish showing ducks marching. Now the Feebs will scour the Outer Banks all the way down to Ocracoke. Did you hear about the Cape Hatteras lighthouse being moved?”

  “Yes. Do you want more coffee?”

  “Please. Oh, yes, Becca, give me the name of the storage locker and the assumed name. I’ll get all your stuff out of there and to a safe place.”

  She snapped her fingers at him. “You can get things accomplished just like that?”

  “I can but try.” He tried to look modest, maybe even humble, but he couldn’t pull it off. “What’s the name you used and what’s the storage locker name?”

  “P and F Storage in the Bronx, and the name is Connie Pearl.”

  “I don’t think I want to know where you got that name.”

  He watched her walk to the sink with the empty coffeepot and rinse it out. When she turned to reach for the coffee, her head slanted in a certain way. He blinked. He knew that certain set of the head very well. He’d seen her father do that not six days before. He watched her closely and saw that her movements were economical, graceful. He liked the way she moved. She’d inherited that from her father, too, one of the smoothest, most elegant men Adam had ever known. He clasped his hands behind his head, closed his eyes for a moment, picturing Thomas Matlock clearly in his mind’s eye, and thought back to that meeting between the two of them on June 24.

  Washington, D.C.

  The Sutter Building

  “She still believes you’re dead.”

  He nodded. “Of course. Even when Allison knew she was dying, we decided not to tell Becca about me, it was just too dangerous.”

  At least, Adam thought, Thomas had been in close contact with his wife since e-mail had come along. They were online every night, until his wife had gone into the hospital. Adam said, “I don’t agree with that, Thomas. You should have contacted her when her mother fell into a coma. She needed you then, and the good Lord knows, she needs you now.”

  “You know it’s still too risky. I haven’t known where Krimakov is since right after I shot his wife. I realized soon enough that I would have to kill him to protect my family, but he simply disappeared, with the help of the KGB, no doubt. No, I can’t take the risk that Krimakov could find out about her. He would slit her throat and laugh and then call me and laugh some more. No. I’ve been dead to her for twenty-four years. It stays that way. Allison agreed with me that until I know for certain that Krimakov is dead, I stay dead to my daughter.” Thomas sighed deeply. “It was very hard for both of us, I’ll be honest with you. I think if Allison hadn’t slipped into that drugged coma, she might have told Becca, so that she’d know she wasn’t really alone.”

  The pain in his voice made Adam silent for a long time. Then he said, all practical again, “You can’t stay dead to her now and you know it. Or haven’t you been watching CNN?”

  “That’s why you’re here. Stop frowning down at me. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and sit down. I’ve done a lot of thinking. I’ve got a favor to ask.”

  Adam Carruthers poured himself some coffee so strong it could bring down a rhino. He stretched out in the chair opposite the huge mahogany desk. A computer, a printer, a fax, and a big leather desk pad sat in their designated spots on top of the desk. No free papers stacked anywhere, no slips or notes, just technology. He knew that on this specific computer, there were no deep, dark secrets, just camouflage. Even he would have a hard time getting through all the safeguards installed to protect any hidden files on the machine, if there had been any, which there weren’t. Thomas Matlock had stayed at the top of his game by being careful and smart.

  Adam said, “The governor of New York was shot in the neck two nights ago. The man was lucky to be surrounded by doctors and that he’d promised more big state bucks for cancer research, otherwise they might have let him bleed to death.”

  “You’re cynical.”

  “Yeah, well, you’ve known that for ten years, haven’t you?” Adam took a drink of the high-test coffee and felt a jolt all the way to his feet. “Everyone is after her now, particularly the Feebs. She’s gone to ground. They’ve pulled out all the stops, but no sign of her yet. Smart girl. To fool everyone isn’t easy. She’s your daughter, all right. Cunning and sneakiness are in her genes.”

  Thomas Matlock opened a desk drawer and pulled out a 5x7 color photo set in a simple silver frame. “There are only three people alive who know she’s my daughter, and you’re one of them. Now, her mother got this to me just eight months ago. Her name’s Becca, as you know, short for Rebecca—that was my mother’s name. She’s about five feet eight inches tall, and she’s on the lean side, not more than one hundred twenty pounds. You can see that she’s in good shape. She’s athletic, a whiz at tennis and racquet-ball. Her mother told me she loves football, not college but professional. She’d kill for the Giants, even in their worst season.

  “You’ve got to find her, Adam. I don’t know if Krimakov will connect her to me. It’s very probable he’s known all along that I had a wife and a daughter, no way to bury that, and we didn’t want to do the witness protection program. But you know something? I still don’t have a clue where he is or what he’s been doing the past twenty years. I’ve got tentacles all over the world but no definite leads on his whereabouts. Now I’ve upped the ante, but still nothing.

  “But you know he’s on top of American news, all of it. The instant he hears the name ‘Matlock,’ he’ll go en pointe. She’s in deep trouble. She doesn’t even realize how deep, that the cops and the FBI are the least of her worries.”

  “Don’t worry, Thomas. I’ll find her and I’ll protect her, from both the stalker and Krimakov, if either of them shows up.”

  “That’s just it.” Thomas sighed. “This stalker bothers me. What are the odds that a stalker would go after Becca? Too great, I think. What I’m thinking is that just maybe Krimakov already found her, just maybe he’s the stalker.”

  “Jesus, Thomas,” Adam said. “I guess it’s possible, but unlikely, I think. If he’s the stalker, then that means he found her even before your wife died.”

  “Yes, it scares me to my toes.”

  “But there’s no proof at all that it’s Krimakov. Now, first things first. I’ve got to get the locals and the Feds off her trail once and for all.”

  “You’ve already begun to track her, then?”

  “Sure. The minute I heard her name, I got all my people working on it. What would you expect? You’re the one who always has to look at the big picture. I don’t. Let me make a phone call right now, let Hatch know you’ve approved everything, g
et all my people on this.”

  “And if I hadn’t called you?”

  “I’d have taken care of her anyway.” Adam turned to pick up the phone. “She’s your daughter.”

  Adam knew that Thomas Matlock was looking at him as he lifted the receiver of the black phone and punched in some numbers. He knew, too, that Thomas had worried and worried, tried to figure out the odds, determine the best thing to do, but Adam had simply stepped in and begun protecting his daughter from a stalker who could be, truth be told, Krimakov, although to Adam the odds were that Krimakov was long dead. But it was a lead. It was something, the only thing they had.

  Thomas should have known that he didn’t have to even ask. Adam also imagined that Thomas Matlock felt a goodly amount of relief.

  As he spoke quietly on the phone, he saw the jolt of pain cross Thomas Matlock’s face, and he knew it was because Thomas would never again see Allison. And more than that. Thomas Matlock hadn’t been with his wife when she died. He’d wanted to be, but Becca was there, always there, and he couldn’t take the chance. The pain and guilt of that had to be tearing him up inside.

  Oh yeah, he’d try to save Thomas’s daughter.

  Only one mistake in the seventies, and Thomas Matlock had lost any chance at the promising life he’d begun. He’d had to hold himself private. He’d kept his position in the intelligence community so he would know if Krimakov ever surfaced. But he’d had to remain alone.

  Jacob Marley’s House

  Adam slowly opened his eyes. He was in the same room with Allison and Thomas Matlock’s daughter, and she was looking at him with an odd combination of helplessness and wariness. Damn, she looked so very much like her father. He couldn’t tell her yet. No, not yet. He said on a yawn, “I’m sorry, I guess I just sort of flashed out for a while.”

  “It’s late. You’re probably exhausted what with all your skulking around spying on me. I’m going to bed. There’s a guest room at the end of the hall upstairs. The bed might be awful, I don’t know. Come on and I’ll help you make it up.”

  The bed was hard as a rock, which was fine with Adam. His feet didn’t hang off the end, another nice thing. He watched her trail off down the hall, pause for just a moment, and look back at him. She raised her hand. Then he watched her close the door to her bedroom.

  He’d wondered about Becca Matlock for a very long time, wondered what she was like, how much she’d inherited from her father, wondered if she was happy, maybe even in love with a guy and ready to get married. He discovered he was still wondering about her as he lay on his back and stared up at the black ceiling. All he knew for sure was that someone had put her in the center of his game and was doing his best to bring her down. Kill her? He didn’t know.

  Was it Vasili Krimakov? He didn’t know that either, but maybe it was time to consider anything that put even a shadow on the radar.

  He woke up at about four A.M. and couldn’t go back to sleep. Finally, he booted up his laptop and wrote an e-mail:

  I told her about McCallum. She really doesn’t know anything. I don’t either, yet. You know, just maybe you’re right. Just maybe Krimakov is the stalker and the one who shot the governor.

  He turned off the compact and stretched out again, pillowing his head on his arms. To him, Krimakov was like the bogeyman, a monster trotted out to scare children. To Adam, the man had never had any substance, even though he’d seen classified material about him, been briefed about his kills. But hell, that was over twenty-five years ago. Nothing, not even a whiff of the man since then.

  Twenty-five years since Thomas Matlock had accidentally killed his wife. So long ago and in a place that was no longer even part of the Soviet Union—Belarus, the smallest of the Slavic republics, independent since 1991.

  He knew the story because once, just once, Thomas Matlock had gotten drunk—it was his anniversary—and told him about how he’d been playing cat and mouse back in the seventies with a Russian agent, Vasili Krimakov, and in the midst of a firefight that never should have happened, he’d accidentally shot Krimakov’s wife. They’d been on the top of Dzerzhinskaya Mountain, not much of a mountain at all, but the highest peak Belarus had to offer. And she’d died and Krimakov had sworn he would kill him, kill his wife, kill anyone he loved, and he’d cursed him to hell and beyond. And Thomas Matlock knew he meant it.

  The next morning, Thomas Matlock had simply looked at Adam and said, “Only two other people in the world know the whole of it, and one of them is my wife.” If there was more to the tale, Thomas Matlock hadn’t told him.

  Adam had always wondered who the other person was who knew the whole story, but he hadn’t asked. He wondered now what Thomas Matlock was doing at this precise moment, if he, like Adam, was lying awake, wondering what the hell was going on.

  Chevy Chase, Maryland

  It was raining deep in the night, a slow, warm rain that would soak into the ground and be good for all the summer flowers. There was no moon to speak of to shine in through the window of the dimly lit study. Thomas Matlock was hunched over his computer, aware of the soft sounds of the rain but not really hearing it. He had just gotten an e-mail from a former double agent, now living in Istanbul, telling him that he’d just picked it up from a Greek smuggler that Vasili Krimakov had died in an auto accident near Agios Nikolaos, a small fishing village on the northeast coast of Crete.

  Krimakov had lived all this time in Crete? Since Thomas had found out about his daughter’s stalker, after the man had murdered that old bag lady, he’d put everyone on finding Krimakov. Scour the damned world for him, Thomas had said. He’s got to be somewhere. Hell, he’s probably right here.

  Now after all this time, all these bloody years, he’d finally found him? Only he was dead. It was hard to accept. His implacable enemy, finally dead. Gone, only it was too late, because Allison was dead, too. Far too late.

  Was it really an accident?

  Thomas knew that Krimakov had to have enemies. He’d had years to make them, just as Thomas had. He’d gotten messages from Krimakov back in the early years, telling him he would never forget, never. Telling him he would find his damned wife and daughter—yes, he knew all about them and he would find them, no matter how well Thomas had hidden them. And then it would be judgment day.

  Thomas had been terrified. And he’d done something unconscionable. He escorted a very pretty young woman, one of the assistants in his office, to an Italian embassy function, then to a Smithsonian exhibit. The third time he was with her, he was simply walking her to her car from the office because the skies had suddenly opened up and rain was pouring down and he had a big umbrella.

  A man had jumped out of an alley and shot her between the eyes, not more than six feet away. Thomas hadn’t caught him. He knew it was Krimakov even before he’d received that letter written in Vasili’s stark, elegant hand: “Your mistress is dead. Enjoy yourself. When I discover your wife and child, they will be next.”

  That had been seventeen years before.

  Thomas had considered seeing Allison that weekend. He had canceled, and she’d known why, of course. He sat back in his chair, pillowing his head on his arms. He read the e-mail from Adam. Consider Krimakov.

  But Krimakov was finally dead. The irony of it didn’t escape him. Krimakov was gone, out of his life, forever. It was all over. He could have finally been with Allison. But it was too late, just too late. But now someone was terrorizing Becca. He just didn’t understand what was going on. He wished he could learn about Dick McCallum, but as of yet, no one had seen anything out of the ordinary. No big deposits, no new accounts, no big expenditures on his credit cards, no strangers reported near him, nothing suspicious or unexpected in his apartment. Simply nothing.

  Thomas remembered telling Adam how there were only two other people—besides Adam—who knew the real story. His wife and Buck Savich, both dead now. Buck had died of a heart attack some six years before. But there was Buck’s son, and he was very much alive, and Thomas realized now that he ne
eded him, needed him very much.

  The man knew all about monsters. He knew how to find them.

  Georgetown

  Washington, D.C.

  Dillon Savich, head of the Criminal Apprehension Unit of the FBI, booted up his laptop MAX and saw there was an e-mail from someone he didn’t know. He shifted his six-month-old son, Sean, to his other shoulder and punched up the message.

  Sean burped. “Good one,” Savich said, and rubbed his son’s back in slow circles. He heard him begin to suck his fingers, felt his small body relax into his shoulder. He read:

  Your father was an excellent friend and a fine man. I trusted him implicitly. He believed you would change the course of criminal investigations. He was very proud of you. I desperately need your help. Thomas Matlock.

  Sean reared back suddenly and patted his father’s whiskered cheek with his wet fingers. Savich stroked his son’s small fingers and dried them on his cotton shirt. “We’ve got a neat mystery here, Sean. Who the hell is Thomas Matlock? How did he know my father? He was an excellent friend? I don’t remember ever hearing my father mention his name.

  “MAX, let me get you started on this. Find out about this man for me.” He punched in a series of keys, then sat back, Sean bouncing from foot to foot on his stomach, watching MAX do his thing.

  Savich reached up and flicked the drool off Sean’s chin. “You’re teething, champ. It’s not going to be a pretty sight for the next several months, so that book says. You don’t seem like you’re feeling any pain. Believe me, that’s a relief for both of us.”