Riptide

by Catherine Coulter

  “There isn’t any more thinking to do, there’s just worrying and second-guessing, all sorts of worthless shit like that. Wait a second—it just occurred to me that he’s got to be pissed, rattled. After all, he was expecting to find both you and Becca in that hospital room, but you weren’t there. He has to doubt himself now, his judgment, his take on things. He’s been meticulous up until now, but this time he wasn’t able to be thorough enough. He screwed up big-time. He was wrong. I don’t know what he’s going to do next, but whatever it is, he might make another mistake. He’s also got to contend with the fallout of his cold-blooded murder of four federal agents. They’ll mount the biggest manhunt in a decade. He can’t believe he’s so good he can just walk away from this, that he’s somehow immune from capture. We’re not alone in this anymore. Everyone and his aunt knows about him and what he is.”

  “I know that, Adam.” Thomas shoved his long fingers through his hair. “You know how quick he is, how clever. Look at how he flushed all of you out of that house in Riptide and then snuck in and hid in Becca’s closet. That took balls and cunning. And luck. It is possible that you could have missed Chuck when you were all scouring the area for him, possible that you would have found Chuck tied up and gagged, but you didn’t. He was lucky there and he got her.

  “I hate to say this, but I firmly believe he’ll evade capture. He knows I’ll be at the center of things, trying to figure out how to get him. He’ll come to Washington. He’s going to try to find Becca and me. He’s got nothing else to do.”

  “I still can’t figure out why he threw Becca out of his car in New York. He had her. He could have announced it and had you knocking on his door to try to save her. But he let her go. Why? Shit, I’m making myself crazy. But if he’s as smart as you say he is, he won’t come down here, at least not yet, not until things cool down a bit.”

  “There’s one thing I am sure about now, Adam. I’m his reason for living, probably his only reason now. That’s why he’s leaving a trail of death. He doesn’t care about himself anymore. He just wants me dead. And Becca, too. I’m thinking that Becca should head out to Seattle or maybe even Honolulu.”

  “Yeah, right. You be the one to convince her of that, okay? She’s just found you. You believe for a single second that she’d just pull out now, be willing to say sayonara to the father she just met?”

  “Probably not.” Thomas sighed. “She’s still so wary of me. It’s like she can’t make up her mind whether to hug me or slug me for leaving her and her mother.”

  “I’m thinking she wants to do both. At least now you two are together. The rest will come, Thomas, just be patient. For God’s sake, she’s known you for twenty-four hours.”

  “You’re right, of course. But—never mind. Jesus, Krimakov just went right in there and killed everyone,” Thomas said. “Everyone, without hesitation. To flush me out that first time, he released Becca. I can’t imagine what he’d do to her now that she’s with me. Well, yes I can. He’d kill her with no more remorse than when he killed all the others. And yes, there’s no doubt in my mind that he believes she’s with me now. Damnation, he had a silencer on the gun, Adam.”

  “Yes.”

  “Agent Marlane had six shots pumped into her. He saw that the male agent wasn’t me, knew he’d been set up, and went berserk. Dell Carson, the agent playing me, had his gun out, but he didn’t have time to fire. Neither did Agent Marlane.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “How the hell did he get away? Hawley had undercover folk stationed all over that floor and the exits.”

  Adam shook his head. “His disguise must have been something else. Maybe he even dolled himself up as a woman. Who knows? Do you remember if Krimakov did disguises back then?”

  Thomas leaned against the corridor wall, his arms crossed over his chest. “No. But it’s been so many years, Adam, too many. What troubles me, and I know I can’t let it, is that Becca just can’t be sure that the guy who took her, the guy on the phone to her, was older.” Thomas shook his head. “Another thing. Vasili was fluent in English, but I’ve read the transcripts of the conversations he had with Becca. It sounds so unlike him. And what he wrote, what he said to her, what he did. Calling himself her boyfriend, murdering Linda Cartwright, then digging her up, smashing her face, all as a sick joke to drive Becca over the edge. That’s the behavior of a psychopath, Adam. Krimakov wasn’t a psychopath. He was supremely arrogant, but as sane as I was.”

  “Whatever Krimakov was back then, he’s changed,” Adam said. “Who knows what’s happened to him during the past twenty years? Don’t forget all those killings: a second wife, two children, the guy whose password he used to get into the computer system to expunge all his personal data, killing someone to fake his own accidental death in that car accident. How many more we don’t know about? And that brings up another question. You said that you believe you’re now his only focus, his purpose for living. What about his son? He’s in that burn clinic in Switzerland. He doesn’t care about him anymore? Or maybe that wasn’t an accident, either, and he tried to kill him, too?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Adam said, “Maybe he was always over the top and he’s just gotten more so, and maybe that goes to explain why he appears not to be worrying about his son. No, Thomas, don’t argue with me. He’s now here—in a foreign country to him—no longer in Crete. He’s on our turf, and he probably hasn’t been here for all that long.”

  “Listen, Adam, we don’t know that. Officially, Vasili Krimakov hasn’t come into this country in the past fifteen years. He was here once back in the mid-eighties, checking around, trying to sniff me out. That was when he killed that assistant of mine simply because he’d seen her with me and decided that she was my mistress. But I got away that time and he left, returned to Crete. We’ve learned he went to England a number of times, but he hasn’t gone back there recently. Unofficially, he could have bounced in and out of the United States with a dozen different phony passports. Who in Greece would catch on to that? Or if they did, even care?”

  “Still, we have to assume that he was in Crete most of the time. For God’s sake, he was married. He eventually had a kid with this woman. So he simply can’t know his way around here all that well.”

  Thomas said, “Becca is right. He’s a monster, no matter the excuses I make for the man I knew more than twenty years ago. Of course I didn’t really know him. He was just a target to me, always on the opposite side, the black king to checkmate. Now we’re forced to wait, to gnaw our elbows. Krimakov will find us, count on it.

  “Oh yeah, Tellie Hawley and Scratch Cobb are coming tomorrow morning to speak to Becca. Maybe that’ll be good. I think she liked them both when she met them in New York. Maybe she’ll remember more talking to them. They’re pretty desperate, as you can well imagine. Hawley is eating himself alive with guilt. They were his agents, all four of them, and now they’re dead.”

  “Yes,” Adam said, and streaked his fingers through his hair, sending it on end. “Since Savich found Krimakov’s apartment in Iráklion, our people will go in. Just maybe they’ll find something.”

  Becca leaned her forehead against the closed door, listening to their voices as they moved off down the hall. She turned then and leaned back against the door, her arms crossed over her chest, just as Adam had done when he’d first come into her room. She closed her eyes.

  He’d murdered four more people. Like Thomas, she knew Krimakov would find them. It was as if he were somehow programmed to find Thomas and kill him. And her, too, of course. He would do anything, go anywhere, kill anyone in his way, to gain his objective.

  How could he have killed his wife and her two children, his stepchildren? And his own son was in a burn hospital in Switzerland. Had that one truly been an accident? No, there were no accidents when it came to Krimakov. It was beyond terrifying.

  She returned to her bed, curled up, hugging her arms around her knees. It was warm, very warm, but she was cold all the way to her bo
ne marrow. Suddenly, she heard her mother’s voice, sharp with impatience, telling her that if she even considered going out with Tim Hardaway—that juvenile delinquent—she would lock her in a closet for a month. Now she smiled with the memory; then, at sixteen, she had believed her life was over. She wondered what her mother would think of Adam. She smiled, then shivered a bit, remembering that hard, fast kiss. Her mother, she thought, would love Adam.

  Suddenly, she heard a whispery sound. She jerked up in bed, her heart pounding, and looked toward the window. Again, that whispery brushing sound. Her heart pumping fast and faster now, she walked over and forced herself to look outside. There was an oak tree there, the end of one leaf-laden branch lightly brushing its leaves over the windowpane.

  But he was close, she knew that. On her way back to bed, she kept looking over her shoulder out the bedroom window. She didn’t want to speak to any more agents. Oh God, just how close was he?

  How close?

  Now everyone in the world knew about Krimakov. Adam watched the old photograph of him flash on CNN and all the major networks. Then it was set beside the photograph the CIA artist had aged, showing what Krimakov would probably look like today. It was a fine job. With luck, it matched enough so he could be recognized. Becca hadn’t remembered anything more, however, when she’d looked at the photos.

  Everyone wanted to interview Becca Matlock, but no one knew where she was.

  The New York cops wanted to talk to her, but this time, she didn’t have to put up with Letitia Gordon. The FBI had told them to stuff it after the murder of the four FBI agents in NYU Hospital. There was a lot of name-calling, a lot of rancor, but at least she wasn’t in the middle of it now. She’d been lost in the shuffle. She was safe.

  As for Thomas Matlock, his identity had leaked quickly enough, but at least no one knew where he was, either. If there had been a leak, they knew media vans would be parked in the yard and microphones would be sticking through the windows of the house.

  As it was, everything was quiet. The agents posted all around the house and the neighborhood checked in regularly, reporting nothing suspicious.

  Ex-KGB agent Vasili Krimakov—who he was exactly, where he was at present, what his motives were, anything and everything that could possibly be tied to him—was discussed fully, exhaustively, on every news show, every talking-head show. Ex–CIA operatives, ex–FBI antiterrorist agents, and three former presidential aides spoke authoritatively about him with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts, Tim Russert, and William Safire. The question was: Why did he want Thomas Matlock so badly? The question remained unanswered until there was some sort of anonymous release from Berlin about how Thomas Matlock had saved Kemper’s life and in the process accidentally killed the wife of the Soviet agent, Vasili Krimakov, who’d been sent to present-day Belarus to assassinate Kemper. The press went wild. Larry King interviewed a former aide to President Carter who remembered perfectly and in great detail the incident when CIA Operative Thomas Matlock had a face-off with Krimakov in the faraway land, killed his wife by accident, and the resulting brouhaha with the Russians. No one else could seem to recall any of it, including President Carter himself, and everyone knew that President Carter remembered everything, including the number of rubber bands in his Oval Office desk drawer.

  An ex–United States Marine who had served with Thomas Matlock back in the seventies spoke authoritatively about how Thomas had refused to be intimidated by the enemy. Which enemy? Didn’t matter, Thomas would go to hell and back before he’d ever break. This wasn’t at all relevant, but nobody really cared. The bottom line was that all the folk interviewed were ex- or former somethings. The current FBI and CIA directors had put a seal on everything. The president and his staff weren’t saying a word, at least officially. Everything was working as it had always worked. Speculation was rife, theories were rampant, but nothing could be proved.

  As for Rebecca Matlock, the governor of New York was quoted as saying, “She was an excellent speechwriter with a flair for humor and irony. We miss her.” And then he’d rubbed his neck where Krimakov had shot him.

  NYPD continued with their “No comment” when there was any question from the press about her. There was no more talk about her being an accomplice to the shooting of Governor Bledsoe. Thank God, Becca thought, that no one had found out about Letitia Gordon. She’d bet Detective Gordon would be glad to trash-talk her.

  Every murder Krimakov had committed was brought out and examined publicly and exhaustively. There was public outrage.

  But no one knew where Rebecca Matlock was.

  No one knew where or really who Thomas Matlock was, but the world was coming to believe that he was a dashing, quite romantic James Bond sort of guy who had kept the world safe from the Russians and was now being hunted by a former KGB agent who didn’t hesitate to murder people to draw him out.

  Becca wondered aloud later to Adam about what the United States Marine had said about Thomas on TV. Adam, who was cleaning his Delta Elite at the kitchen table, said, “It means that this ass got paid maybe five hundred bucks to say something so the ratings would spike.”

  “The guy said Thomas would never break. What does that mean?”

  Adam shrugged. “Who cares? I just hope that Krimakov is watching. Talk about misdirection. Maybe he’ll come to believe that Thomas is invincible.” Adam snorted, then buffed the handle of his pistol. “We couldn’t do it better if we scripted it ourselves.”

  “I wonder if Detective Gordon still thinks I’m somehow responsible for all of it.”

  “I think once she makes up her mind, it’d take an avalanche to change it. Yeah, she still thinks you’re a big part of it. I spoke to Detective Morales. I could see him shaking his head over the phone. He’s depressed, but glad you’re safe now.”

  “It was the murder of Linda Cartwright that got everybody going.”

  “Yes. She was an innocent. A very nice middle-class woman. Everyone wants him to fry for what he did to her. Don’t forget that older woman in Ithaca. Another innocent. Krimakov has a lot to answer for.”

  “Does anyone know yet how Dick McCallum was involved with him?”

  “Yeah. Hatch found out that McCallum’s mother had an extra fifty thousand bucks in a checking account.”

  “That doesn’t seem like so much money if you have to die to get it. Did she tell the police or Hatch if Dick told her anything?”

  Adam shook his head, lifted his gun, looked at a face that needed a shave in the reflection of the barrel. “Nope. She was upset about it, but he wouldn’t tell her anything, except to keep the money quiet, which she did until Hatch tracked her down and got her to talk.”

  “The FBI are coming soon.”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry, both Thomas and I will be there.”

  She smiled at him. “That’s nice, Adam, but unnecessary. I’m not a child or helpless, you know. And I do know Mr. Cobb, and poor Mr. Hawley, who’s got hemorrhoids.”

  He grinned up at her. “Nope, it’s Cobb with the hemorrhoids. Now, you were helpless, don’t try to rewrite the past, and I don’t care what you say, I’ll be there.”

  “I should probably go dig out my Coonan and buff it.”

  “I’d just as soon never see that pistol anywhere near you again.”

  “Scared you but good, didn’t I?”

  Thomas appeared in the kitchen doorway, frowning. “This is odd, but a man named Tyler McBride called Gaylan Woodhouse’s office with the message that you, Becca, were to call him immediately. Nothing more, just that instruction.”

  “I don’t understand,” Becca said, “but of course I’ll call him. What’s going on?”

  Adam was on his feet in an instant. “I don’t like this. Why would McBride call the director of the CIA?”

  “I’ll find out, Adam. He’s probably really worried and wants to make sure I’m okay.”

  Adam said, “I don’t want you to call Tyler McBride. I don’t want him anywhere near you. I’ll call him, find out what th
e hell he wants. If he wants reassurance, I’ll give it to him.”

  “Look, Adam, you told me he was really scared for me. He just wants to hear my voice. I’m not going to tell him where I am. Now, I’m calling him. Let it go.”

  “Why don’t you two stop bickering?” Thomas said. “Call the man, Becca. If something’s wrong, Adam, she’ll tell us.”

  “I still don’t like it. Another thing: I’ve been thinking that maybe you would be safer at my house. At least you could stay there some of the time.”

  Her left eyebrow went up. “Where do you live, Mr. Carruthers?”

  “About three miles down the road.”

  She stared at him. “Then why are you staying here? Why aren’t you going home at all?”

  “I’m needed here,” he said, studiously rubbing the barrel of his Delta Elite to an even higher shine. “Besides, I do go home. Where do you think I get clean clothes?”

  “Get over it, Adam,” she said, and went to get her small address book.

  “Use my private line,” Thomas said. “It’s untraceable. Adam, your gun looks good.”

  “You’ll like my house,” Adam called after her. “It’s a showcase, it’s the prettiest place you’ve ever seen. Plants don’t like me, but everything else does. I have a housekeeper come in twice a week and she even makes me casseroles.”

  Becca turned to face him. “What kind?”

  “Tuna, ham and sweet potato, whatever. Do you like casseroles?”

  “You bet,” she said.

  He heard her laugh as she walked away.

  He wanted to hear what she said to Tyler McBride, he really did, but he didn’t move. Neither did Thomas, who stood there leaning against the refrigerator, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “I’m giving her privacy,” Adam said. “It’s tough.”

  “Yeah, and you want her to think about your house, don’t you?”

  “It’s a very nice house—an old Georgian brick two-story, lovely yard that I pay a big chunk to keep looking good. Remember I told you how my mom talked me into buying the property some four years before, told me it was a good investment. She was right.”