Mesmerized

by Gayle Lynds

  While they had been exploring deeper into the cavern, he had been laying plastic explosives in the garage and down the ramp into the parking lot. He wanted no one to know about the caves or the mansion and the evidence they contained. At the same time, the blasts would eliminate Convey and Hammond. He smiled. He liked the neatness of it, the efficiency.

  He reached to the console and pushed the first button. There was an ear-assaulting explosion, and the ground shook.

  36

  In Washington, the two FBI cars left the hurtling stream of bumper-to-bumper traffic on the I-495 Beltway at exit 13 and sped along Route 193. Alone in the rear seat of the lead vehicle—his personal Bureau limousine—Director Tom Horn was acutely aware of the weight of the 10mm Smith & Wesson semiautomatic under his left arm. There was an excitement to feeling that weight and knowing what it was. It had been thirty years since he had regularly carried a weapon, not since he was a Denver detective. He had occasionally carried when he was a U.S. attorney, but that was twenty years ago now. The gun gave a strange lift to his spirits. He was in action again.

  He needed that boost, anything to relieve the gloominess of the last few hours and take his mind off what he both feared and hoped he was going to have to do. Ever since Cabot Lowell left his office that afternoon, he had been vaguely depressed as well as excited by the sudden prospect of capturing the elusive, long-hidden mole. More than anything, it was the identity of the man he suspected of being the mole that depressed him. He was the one man whose crimes could easily pass for those of Jeff Hammond. And yet, the unmasking excited him, too. Of course, it did. Thank God the Bureau at last would be rid of this scourge.

  The headlights of oncoming vehicles alternately illuminated the face of the director and plunged him back into darkness as he sat in the backseat, mulling over the situation. His phone call to his suspect to arrange this clandestine meeting had not been all that unusual. Anytime he wished to discuss a subject without creating curiosity inside the Bureau, he would meet the members of his top staff outside the building, occasionally at tonight's location. He had no idea how his predecessors had handled such matters, although he suspected they had done much the same, but he far preferred external meetings to closed-door, in-the-office sessions. In the paranoid, back-stabbing, power-brokering, intrigue-ridden world inside the Beltway, the conspiracies were too often real and the paranoia too often justified.

  "We're here, sir," his agent driver announced quietly.

  Tom Horn looked out at the darkened entrance to Great Falls Park. Here were eight hundred wooded acres alongside the rapids and waterfalls of the Potomac. Less than twenty minutes from the District, it was ideal. Closed after dark, there would be no one to see, hear, or interfere with what he had to do. One way or another, right or wrong, this was the way it must be: Only he and his suspect to know what had happened should he be wrong, and only he and his agents to claim the credit if he were right.

  As he reached for the door handle, apprehension knotted his stomach, a sensation so unfamiliar he did not recognize it for a few seconds. He had not felt such unease since his first few months as a rookie patrolman long ago in Denver. The bull of the Colorado Buffalos was never afraid or even nervous, so he brushed the useless emotion aside, stepped out into the night, and allowed himself to enjoy the thrill and once-familiar adrenaline of physical action.

  "What do you want me to do, Director?" the driver asked, walking around the car to check the flimsy barrier that blocked the entry into the park. "I can remove this if you want me to take you on in."

  The second car had come to a gliding stop directly behind the director's limo, and agents Graham and Thoma joined the director and his driver.

  Graham asked, "What's the plan, sir? Can you fill us in now?" As always, Graham looked as if he had stepped from a store window, so pressed and immaculate were his dark suit, white shirt, and wing-tip shoes.

  "I'm meeting someone in the park near the falls," Horn said in a low voice. "It's an extremely delicate matter, and I have to handle it alone. That's all I can tell you. Your job is to be my backup. I anticipate no trouble, but there's always the chance. I don't need to tell you that."

  "No, sir," Graham agreed.

  Thoma nodded vigorously, so eager to serve the director he would have been wagging his tail if he had one. Thoma had his voracious ambition and simmering violence under close control right now, and the director knew it. But then, tonight's rendezvous was just the sort of assignment for which a man like Thoma was especially useful.

  "How close do you want us?" Graham continued.

  "As close as you can get without being detected. You don't have to worry about witnessing the meeting. In fact, I order you not to. And I don't want you eavesdropping either. This is a very sensitive, very confidential matter. Only if I raise my voice do I want you to be in earshot."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Understand, Thoma?" Horn was concerned, Thoma could be a stupid hothead.

  "Yes, Director. Out of sight, out of earshot. But we've got to be able to hear if you call us. Not a problem."

  "I didn't think it would be." The director checked his Smith 10, reholstered it under his arm, and gave an affectionate pat to the faint bulge in his suit jacket. He nodded to his men and stepped over the barrier to enter the park. As he disappeared into the trees and the darkness and the nighttime odors of pine needles and the cooling forest, he felt that faint uneasiness once more. He had seen no other car. Was his suspect even here?

  Tom Horn moved awkwardly but steadily ahead on the dark, tourist-beaten path. The moon and stars cast sooty shadows, but Horn's eyes had adjusted and the path was wide enough that he usually could see where to place his feet. The ancient songs of rapids and small waterfalls filled the night long before he came in sight of the river. In Colorado, his mountain state, the music of flowing water had soothed him for as long as he could remember. Tonight it would serve a different purpose—to cover the words that would be said in this meeting, hide them from Graham and Thoma or anyone else, in case he was wrong.

  As he reached the broad, silver-black Potomac, he saw movement in a grove of oaks and maples to his left, isolated by a meadow and close to the edge of the water. His old detective instincts kicked in. It was exactly the spot he would have chosen had he wanted to be sure the other fellow was alone, and it told him the suspect knew the reason for his boss's summons, or at least he was prepared for the possibility.

  It gave Horn a surge of confidence. The man had come to cut a deal, and he wanted no one to hear what that deal was. Encouraged, he marched straight toward the grove of trees. There was no sign of Graham or Thoma. Graham knew his work and how to do it, and he would monitor Thoma. As Horn reached the periphery of the circle of shadows cast by the trees, reflected light from the river glinted on the light-colored eyes and white skin of the man waiting in the umbra.

  Without hesitation, Horn strode into the woods and straight up to the waiting man and said, "Hello, Bobby."

  "Director." In the darkness beneath the trees, the assistant director inclined his head toward his boss.

  Tom Horn sensed rather than saw the polite gesture. He took it as a sign of guilt and regret, and softened his voice. "Why, Bobby?"

  "Why what, Director? What did you want to talk about out here in the middle of nowhere?"

  Horn tried to see Kelsey's eyes, the set of his face, his body language, but there were only brief glimpses like reflections in a window lighted by blinking neon. "You can't guess?"

  "Guess? No, sir, I can't. Is it Hammond? I assure you he didn't kill those two kids, and with all three of his Soviet defectors dead, I've got him working on that rumored terrorism our informant told us about. He'll—"

  Horn said, "It's not about Hammond. Well, maybe indirectly."

  "Indirectly?"

  Horn moved his shoulder to feel the weight of the Smith under the arm of his unbuttoned suit jacket. He took a slow breath. "The attorney general and Cabot Lowell have been running a covert
investigation in the Bureau to find our mole. They think they have him now. They say all the evidence points to Hammond. But it's not Hammond, is it? It's you."

  Bobby Kelsey lived in a world of grays. It was no conscious philosophy he had developed over the years; it was simply the result of life. Born on a hardscrabble farm in the panhandle of Texas where the heat and cold were fierce and strong opinions the backbone of everyday events, he had learned early a beating was something you took without ever showing you cared. His father knew all the answers, he had repeatedly told Bobby, and Bobby had too much Irish in him for his own good. So take your licking and learn.

  With his carrot-top head and smiling blue eyes, young Kelsey understood quickly that charm was a potent tool for survival. When he left the farm at age sixteen, it was to go on scholarship to the University of Texas. His father was opposed, which had increased the lure of an education. Ruthless in the pursuit of grades and a good time, he graduated at the top of his undergraduate and law school classes. Which made him a hot recruitment target for the wheeling-spieling law firms of Dallas and Houston. Instead, he had joined the FBI, because it wielded a stick bigger than his father or any law firm ever fantasized. That stick was national government, armed with a badge, a gun, and secrecy. All that he lacked was the big income. He figured that would come eventually.

  Ten years later, after he was transferred out of the field to his first management job at the Hoover building in Washington, Kelsey sold out to the Communists. The Cold War was whimpering to a close, and they were desperate and generous. The dollars rolled in. He was not a jerk like Rick Ames, who threw it around like a flasher with his cash-bought houses and Jaguars. Kelsey banked his offshore, kept his Irish smile and wry sense of humor, and played the game he had learned so well.

  His last Cold War handler had been the notorious Alexei Berianov, head of Yasenevo. When Berianov defected, Kelsey had taken him on as a sideline client; Berianov's private retainer was far too handsome to ignore. Of course, he still performed the occasional job for the Kremlin.

  To earn his release from questioning, Berianov had revealed that Rick Ames had been spying for the Soviets since the mid 1980s. It was the smart thing to do: Ames's carelessness with his espionage income was going to be his undoing soon anyway, and it took the heat off the FBI's pursuit of its own traitor, Bobby Kelsey. But now it appeared Bobby's luck had run out. He knew what he had to do. Maybe the old Irish charm would still work.

  Bobby Kelsey smiled, his teeth glossy white in reflected light. "Why, for money, of course, Tom."

  Taken aback by the matter-of-fact, almost cheerful, reason, Horn blurted, "You admit it?"

  "Why not? That's the nature of a mole. Once they put a spotlight on you, the illusion is broken, and it's over. You'll find the evidence now."

  "And for money? Nothing else?"

  "What would you like better?"

  "Conviction, maybe. Idealism. I might respect those. But money? Sell out your own people, your friends, your family and loved ones, the history of this country, what this country stands for today . . . the flag, for God's sakes! For nothing more than money? Shit, Bobby."

  "That's all there is, Tom. Don't be ridiculous. Everything else is a waste of time. You can't eat religion. Ideals won't keep you warm and dry in an ice storm. Try making your money by digging the rocks that pass for dirt in Texas, and you'll learn what's important and what isn't."

  "Excuses? That's more despicable than the money. We were at war, Bobby! Against an enemy so powerful it could destroy us in an instant. Today it's not all that much better. They still have tens of thousands of nuclear warheads. We're still at war, it's just that nobody will admit it!"

  "Bullshit, Tom. We were never in any real danger from the Soviets. It was all a con job to keep the defense contracts rolling in, keep the good citizens from asking too many questions about how things are run and for whom." Kelsey laughed. "Come off it, you know that as well as I do. It was a shell game, still is. Dwight Eisenhower even warned us about it in the fifties, but nobody listened. 'The military-industrial establishment,' remember? For the past half-century all those people have been getting more than their share, so why shouldn't I get mine now, too?" He laughed again. "Ideals? You're too ingenuous to be believed!"

  Rage shook Tom Horn. The bald gall of this man he had counted among his friends and most valuable associates in the Bureau was beyond all belief. He snarled, "You don't do this because when the game's over, and the money's gone, you'll have nothing, you understand? Nothing. Not even your self-respect to keep you warm."

  "Why should the game ever end? It won't, you know. It's too damn much fun. We all enjoy it. Even you, Tom. Don't pretend you don't. Look at you, out here in the dead of night, in a clandestine meeting that could just as well have been held at a Harvey's. The only idiots who don't like the games and the lethal toys and the secrets—oh, so many secrets—aren't running things. They're farming. Campaigning for city council. Figuring out how to squirrel pennies away so they can afford an RV for retirement. So we're the ones in charge, aren't we, old friend? It's our game after all." He grinned.

  The sound of the falls seemed louder in the director's ear. It started to drown out his thoughts, but then he steeled himself. He needed to stay alert. He despised Bobby Kelsey and everything he stood for. For the damage he had done to America. But Horn was the director of the FBI, he had to think of the future good of his country, too. What had been done, had been done.

  "Let's talk about a deal, Kelsey."

  "Why not? I could work for the Bureau, for the CIA, for NSA. I'd feed my current employers false information and pass on to you the shopping lists they gave me so you could pinpoint their concerns and their weaknesses."

  "If we could trust you."

  "Trust doesn't enter into it, you know that. Just pay me as well as they do—more would be better—and you'll know soon enough if I'm playing it double."

  "We can talk about it, but now I'm taking you in."

  "Just you?" Kelsey laughed again. "That's good. Like J. Edgar and Al Karpis."

  "Something like that, Bobby. The Bureau does its own job."

  Kelsey's voice dropped almost to a whisper. "So do I, Tom."

  The director saw only what seemed like a part of the darkness under the trees move, and at first felt no pain as the knife entered between his ribs and angled upward. Only when it entered his heart, and the pain exploded, and he was already falling, did he feel another human beside him, feel hands propping him up. By the time Bobby Kelsey lowered him to the ground under the trees, Thomas Horn felt nothing at all.

  Alert and wary, Kelsey moved deeper into the impenetrable shadow under the trees and listened. The director had made no sound at all, Kelsey's reward for knowing what to do with one's weapons. There would be backup close by, but not too close. Which was why he had picked the grove in which to wait. Kelsey had counted on the director's silly fantasies to make him foolish. They all wanted to be J. Edgar.

  The instant he had received the phone call and heard what the director wanted him to do, he had guessed what was up. He had guessed, too, from years of experience in counterintelligence, that the director was still not positive he was the mole, which meant the director would come alone, and he would tell no one of his suspicions. What Kelsey had said was true: Once a mole came under any suspicion, he was through. He could not allow himself to be arrested or the director to reveal his suspicions to anyone else.

  Bobby Kelsey listened in the darkness. When he was satisfied no one had seen or heard Tom Horn die, he took a small, flat, air-tight metal box from his pocket, opened it, and removed a specially treated surgical glove. He slipped it carefully onto his right hand, knelt beside the body, and gripped the smooth handle of the knife still in Horn's ribs. He stood again and dropped a swizzle stick from the bar in Stone Point where Jeff Hammond had asked so many questions. Then he turned and padded soundlessly away into the night.

  From inside the edge of the woods, Chuck Graham stared a
cross the meadow in the hazy moonlight toward the grove of trees through which the director had entered. From where he was, he could see nothing in the grove, and he could hear nothing over the rush of the falls.

  "Anything?" Thoma asked nervously.

  The moon had poked above the trees less than ten minutes ago. "Not a damn thing." Graham continued to study the silent grove.

  "How long's it been?"

  "Nearly an hour."

  As he spoke, the moon rose higher and its light angled into the shadowed woods. The two agents could see individual trees emerge by rows until the heart of the grove became visible.

  "I don't see anything. Where are they?" Thoma worried.

  Graham peered. Then he was on his feet. "Come on! Keep low."

  The two agents ran in crouches across the meadow. At the trees, Thoma looked around and said, "There's no one in there."

  "Yes, there is."

  Graham parted bushes and walked slowly until he stood over the body of FBI director Thomas Earle Horn. Thoma joined him. They looked at each other and back down at the man whom they were supposed to have protected but who had made it impossible for them to do their job.

  "Christ," Thoma whispered.

  Graham bent down. "Knife. It's still in him. Bag it."

  While Thoma used his handkerchief to remove the murder weapon, Chuck Graham searched the leaves and grass inch by inch. When he found the swizzle stick—red with gold flecks, half covered with dirt, but the name of the bar still visible—he balanced it on his pocketknife and stood up.

  He extended it toward Thoma. Graham's voice carried a world of hate. "Hammond!"

  37

  At the first shaking of the ground, Jeff pulled Beth down beside an upright support in the tunnel. They crouched together, his arm around her shoulders. Her heart pounded, and her throat tightened. Rock dust rained down, coating them. They sneezed and fought to breathe.

  Before the earth stopped shuddering, Jeff seized her arm and yanked her to her feet. "We've got to get out of here." They holstered their guns and tore up the ramp, heading for the parking area.