Mesmerized

by Gayle Lynds

  Jeff grabbed Beth's arm. "Come on!"

  As they ran, he pulled out his pistol. She yanked open the Ferrari's front door. The approaching car, a sedan, screeched to a halt twenty-five feet away on the shoulder, facing them. The headlights were blinding.

  "Get in the car!" Jeff bellowed. He scrambled over to the driver's seat and turned on the ignition.

  Beth jumped into the passenger seat, her pulse hammering, and slammed the door. Two bursts of gunfire shot out the Ferrari's front tires. The front end dropped, and two men leaped out of the sedan. Weapons firing, they dashed toward the Ferrari.

  39

  "Ferrari claims these things are nearly indestructible," Jeff growled. "Let's find out." He threw the car into gear and tromped the gas pedal. Lumbering on its front rims, the powerful sports car rushed forward on the shoulder. The two attackers were almost impossible to see, black shadows against the glare. They dove to either side—left, onto the road, and right, into the bushes. It appeared that one carried a rifle, the other a pistol.

  Jeffs chin jutted. He gripped the steering wheel and bore the Ferrari straight at the sedan.

  "You're crazy!" Beth took a deep breath and held on.

  If he had learned anything, Jeff told himself grimly, it was never to do the expected when your life was on the line. He had watched Ivan Vok give Perez enough time to dodge the worst of the van's onslaught. Jeff would not make the same mistake.

  The attackers froze, indecisive, not sure whether the Ferrari had become a two-thousand-pound suicide torpedo and was about to fulfill their assignment for them.

  At the last second, Jeff spun the steering wheel, and the low-slung Ferrari arced ninety degrees and roared straight at the attacker frozen on the road. The move had been so swift the thug had no time to run. The car slammed into him. His eyes and mouth opened wide in a terrified scream that never left his throat. The impact flung him high onto the Ferrari's hood. Still reflexively gripping his rifle, he skidded toward them face down. The crown of his crew cut crashed into the windshield inches from their faces, spraying blood across the glass. He was no longer a problem.

  From the side of the highway, the second man fired his pistol. A bullet smashed through Beth's window and out through the windshield. The glass shattered onto the prone attacker. The shards coated him and sparkled like ice in the glare of the sedan's headlights.

  Beth had watched it all, tense but noting each detail vividly, almost as if time had stood still: The sedan to the right. . . the man now sliding off the Ferrari's sloping hood like a limp punching bag . . . the remaining attacker with his pistol raised to fire again.

  Another bullet blasted through the Ferrari, this time nicking Jeff's knuckles. He swore, jammed the gearshift into reverse, and hit the gas pedal. The car roared backwards, rear tires squealing.

  Before the second attacker could shoot again, Beth leaned out the window, aimed, and fired. He went down with a loud curse. She had hit only his thigh, but her 9mm bullet packed enough force to knock him off his feet. Still, he had managed to hold on to his gun.

  Jeff yanked up the emergency brake and vaulted out of the car just in time for the fellow to be up on one knee, aiming his weapon. The man's finger closed on the trigger. The weapon was pointed at Jeff—

  Beth and Jeff fired simultaneously. The bullets exploded the attacker's chest. He pitched back against the ironwood brush, arms flung open. Black-red stains erupted on his jacket as he was caught suspended in the stiff, woody claws.

  Beth gulped for air. Was suddenly exhilarated. She had shot so fast to save Jeff that she'd had no time to think, to figure out the repercussions, to weigh the morality of the act. To censor or to consciously free herself. Nevertheless, this time she had not continued to squeeze the trigger. She looked down at her hands as they held the Walther. She was trembling. But the terrible drive to empty her gun . . . keep killing . . . had not taken her over.

  When she finally stopped shaking and looked up, Jeff was bent over the man they had shot. "He's dead."

  She ran to the other one. "This one is, too."

  Jeff was searching the attackers' Buick. "This explains a lot—an electronic reader. I'll bet there's a tracking device on the Ferrari, and that's how they found us. But I don't see how they could've planted it."

  "Berianov or Vok must've spotted us as we were going down the hill after they tried to run over Perez. At least, that's what makes sense. That way they would've known we'd survived."

  Jeff nodded. "You're right. And if they had a tracking device with them, all they had to do was look around for our car."

  She turned from the Buick to study the once-sleek red Ferrari. It was lying on the shoulder with its nose so close to the ground it looked as if it were a dog asleep on a carpet. Its front tires had shredded off, and the rims were dented. The windshield was gone. Bullet holes riddled the expensive body.

  She said, "No way is that Ferrari going anywhere now." She felt a stab of guilt. The Ferrari was Michelle's most joyful toy. But Michelle would not complain—not if Beth went back to her. In any case, Michelle was insured to her waxed eyebrows, and she would just buy another. "Can we take their car?"

  "It's not a good idea. There could be a tracking device on it, too, and I don't have the equipment to sweep for one." He shook his head, disgusted.

  Then she remembered. "I think we passed a phone a quarter-mile back. I'll go look for it if you want to finish checking their sedan and searching these guy's pockets. Should I call your boss? Maybe it's time we asked for some help."

  "No. But there's an old family friend you can call." He gave her the number and instructions.

  Beth nodded, memorized the information, and trotted away along the highway. She was exhausted, but she pushed herself on. Her mind was heavy with the events of the past few days, and her eyes were tired of constantly searching for danger. As she slogged onward, watching all around, she worried about the president. They had to stop Berianov's plot against him.

  When at last she found the roadside telephone, she was panting. She grabbed it and . . . stopped. There was no dial tone. Then she saw the telephone wire was cut. Someone had deliberately clipped it, a nice, smooth slice. Berianov's crazies? To discourage anyone from loitering too close to the farm? She shook her head, frustrated.

  She reversed course and resumed her tired run. Gray clouds scudded across the night sky, hiding stars and the moon. She was dripping with sweat. Minutes later, she neared the place where she had left Jeff and the two damaged cars. She could see the dark shapes of the vehicles, and as the cloud floated out of the way overhead, moonlight illuminated the silhouettes of two men. Her chest contracted, and she felt a wave of nauseating fear. She crouched low to watch. Down the road, between the Buick and the Ferrari, a man held a gun aimed straight at Jeff.

  * * *

  Jeff had heard the sound an instant too late. He had been gathering up various items of disguise and other tools of the assassin's trade from the black boxes in the Ferrari's trunk and had packed what he wanted—plus Beth's purse—into the smallest black box. As he worked, he had heard a soft rustling in the bushes, but with no car in sight, he had ascribed it to a rabbit or a squirrel. Only when he heard a twig snap close behind did he spin around, reaching for his Beretta.

  "That's quite far enough, Jeff." Eli Kirkhart stood behind him with his Smith 10 pointed. "I'll take the Beretta, thank you. Carefully. Butt first, if you please."

  "What the hell is this, Eli?'

  "I'm afraid I'm taking you in." Kirkhart motioned impatiently with the Smith. "The Beretta. Now!"

  Jeff completed his turn and handed it over. "How the hell did you find me?"

  "Give me some credit, old man. You've given me the slip all year. Fortune was bound to change eventually and shine down her beatific smile on me."

  "All year? You've been trying to tail me a whole year?'

  "Off and on. What do you think happened after I agreed to meet you in the shopping center?"

  Jeff s
tared. "Since when is the Bureau interested in a reporter with an obsession that got him kicked out of the sacred bosom?"

  "What utter hogwash. Start walking. That way, if you please." Kirkhart motioned with his gun toward the trees and bushes on the west side of the road.

  Jeff walked. "What does that mean—hogwash? And who sent you after me?"

  "I'm not working for the Bureau on this, not exactly. And 'hogwash' means I know your name's still secretly on the roster, and that you've been undercover the entire decade, using your job and your 'obsession' to stay close to the defector community."

  Jeff said nothing. Kirkhart had startled him. How many others, inside or outside the Bureau, knew? Did Berianov? It would explain how Berianov seemed always a step ahead of him. But how? Kirkhart had said he was not working for the Bureau on this, but he was clearly still in the Bureau. So who was in charge of the inquiry?

  "All right," Jeff said, "I'll bite. So who are you working for, and how did you find me?"

  "It's really the same question, Jeff. I spotted you when you were talking with that Convey woman at the paper and tailed you to that miserable little hamlet in West Virginia where I saw Graham and Thoma pick you up. After that, of course, was the safe house where you took a bunk. That was the real tip-off. It was obvious you had an ally in a high place, and that your escape had been prearranged. Ergo, you were still in the Bureau on undercover duty. Then I picked you up during that fracas at Convey's picturesque Victorian, lost you again, but recalled Convey worked with the Philmalee Group. I went there, and lo, there you and the lady were. And, now, here I am."

  "Okay, I'm still on the job. Then you know I didn't kill those two kids, so—"

  "This has nothing to do with them. Although you could've killed them, I suppose, considering all the rest."

  Now Jeff was totally confused. "Given what 'all the rest'?"

  But Kirkhart said, "Ah, here we are. If you'll just step into the car, we can be off." He took handcuffs from his pocket. "Sorry, but you know the drill."

  They had emerged onto a dirt road that seemed to lead to a distant farmhouse, lights still on in its first-floor windows. A sturdy gray Volvo—hardly the traditional Bureau car—was parked at the side of the road. Eli opened a rear door.

  Jeff made no move to get in. "I asked you a question, Eli. What is this 'all the rest' you're talking about. As far as I know, what I've admitted is everything there is. I'm undercover, have been—"

  "Oh, you're undercover, right enough. But it's not just for the Bureau, is it?"

  "What the hell are you talking about? Has your brain turned to cottage cheese?"

  "Hardly," Kirkhart snapped, his smooth voice suddenly cold, his bulldog face and muscular shoulders belligerent. "You asked who I'm working for? For the last two years I've been on special assignment for the president and the office of the attorney general." He related the names of his three most direct bosses—Millicent Taurino and Donald Chen at Justice, and National Security Adviser Cabot Lowell. "I've been searching for the mole burrowed inside the Bureau, old pal. And now I've found him."

  Jeff was stunned. "The mole?" There had been rumors that a mole might be at work inside the Bureau, but he had given them little credence. Over the years, he had heard them repeated, but with the arrest of Aldrich Ames over at Langley, and Pitts in the Bureau, he figured the issue was put to rest.

  Kirkhart said impatiently, "Why else would you be so interested in Beth Convey, right? The Philmalee Group, HanTech, Uridium, and, of course, Minatom. I imagine you've been having a field day sniffing out tidbits to pass on to Minatom about all that rather lucrative but dangerous business. Potentially globe-shaking, isn't it? Which reminds me . . . where is our Ms. Convey? Have you—?"

  Beth's voice came from the night. "Right behind you. My gun's aimed at the middle of your back. Your spine, to be specific. I'm not a terrific shot, so I go after . . ."

  Kirkhart whirled, and without hesitation Beth slashed the barrel of her Walther down on his wrist, sending his Smith flying. At the same time, Jeff chopped a fist into Kirkhart's half-turned jaw. Eli Kirkhart collapsed sideways. He lay unmoving.

  Jeff inhaled. "Nice timing. Thanks."

  "A little melodramatic, but I had to be careful he didn't hear me."

  "You saw him grab me?"

  She nodded and explained about the cut telephone line. "So I was hurrying back to tell you the latest lousy news. After that, it wasn't hard to follow you here. He's a grandstander, isn't he? Likes the sound of his own voice. I caught on pretty fast he was FBI and he knew you. What was all that about a mole?"

  "Damned if I know. There was a suggestion every year or so that a deep mole might be responsible for a lot of our intelligence failures. But I never heard a word about an outside investigation, and I sure as hell have no clue why Eli picked me. A secret outside probe into the Bureau is unheard of. At least, I never heard of one."

  "You have now." She nodded at the fallen Kirkhart. "What do we do with him?"

  "Leave him." He picked up the handcuffs from where Kirkhart had dropped them and found the key in the agent's pocket. He hauled the inert figure up and dragged him to a young oak. "I'll hold his arms around the tree. You cuff him."

  She snapped the cuffs onto Kirkhart's wrists, Jeff retrieved the keys to the Volvo from Kirkhart's pants pocket, and they left him locked to the tree and beginning to groan. He was in sight of the dirt road and would be found in the morning.

  "By then we'll be in D.C., and we can get rid of the Volvo," Jeff told her. "Luckily, Eli wouldn't use a company car on this job because he'd be worried I'd spot him. It's probably a rental. Let's go."

  She took the wheel, and Jeff climbed into the passenger seat. As she drove back onto the highway, he checked the glove compartment and found the papers that confirmed the Volvo was indeed a rental. She paused the car where the Ferrari still rested nose down on the side of the road, the Buick facing it from the shoulder.

  He jumped out, retrieved the sniper's black box, and dropped it into the backseat. As he climbed back inside, he told her, "Your handbag's in here, along with all the makeup and spy tools I thought we might need."

  "Good. Let's go get those belts." She pressed the accelerator and sped them off toward the place where they had left the two corpses. "We'll have to watch for cops."

  "Right. Assuming we can get the belts, we'll take them to my old family friend. I have an idea, but the problem is, it's not going to be easy to talk him into helping us."

  "Why?"

  "Because he thinks I'm a murderer."

  "Him and everyone else. Nothing new there."

  He grinned at her. "No one ever said this was going to be easy, counselor."

  "No," she smiled, but her chest was twisted into a knot. Was life ever going to make sense again? As if to answer her silent question, a harsh, intermittent buzzing filled the car. A cell phone.

  "Where the hell is it?" Jeff looked through the dark as the maddening buzz continued. At last he found the phone clipped under the driver's seat.

  She told him, "They'll expect a man to answer. Pretend you're Kirkhart."

  He searched rapidly through his memory of Eli and the sound of his voice answering a phone. "Yes, hello. Kirkhart here."

  "What the hell took you so long?" An angry male voice swore. "Never mind. Get back to the Bureau. Now!"

  "Can't. I'm on a vital—"

  "Yes you can. Listen up! We just learned from the attorney general's office that an outside investigation has closed in on the Bureau mole, and the director was informed of the identity this afternoon. The director said he'd take care of it, and then, a few hours later, he went off on a deep-cover meeting. Since nothing else was on his docket, and the two agents he took for protection said it looked like unusually serious business, we think the director was 'taking care of it' right then and there. Only the mole killed the director instead. Stabbed him to death, and the prints on the knife belonged to Jeffrey Hammond. Same name as we had for the mole. You
remember him—your old partner. Well, Hammond's the fucking mole. As of now, everyone's on this operation, including you. Where the hell are you?"

  Shocked, Jeff made himself think fast. "Among the haystacks, I'm afraid. Iowa."

  "Be here tomorrow!"

  The line went dead. Jeff handed it to Beth, his face blanched of color. "I'm wanted for the murder of FBI director Thomas Horn. It's not just Kirkhart. . . the entire Bureau thinks I'm the mole."

  "Wonderful. The whole country will be looking for you."

  "The whole world."

  A tense silence descended on the Volvo. It appeared the answer to Beth's question—was life ever going to make sense again?—was definitely no. She said, "Don't you think it's time you went in? You could call the man who handles you, couldn't you? We need help, Jeff. It's not smart for us to go on alone. The stakes are too high now. This is the president's life we're talking about."

  "Damn!" Jeff slammed the dashboard with the palm of his hand. "I wish I could! I wish I bloody well could phone Bobby! But now not only does the Bureau think I'm the mole, they think I killed the director. There's a chance even Bobby would believe that. So say I phone him. . . . If no trigger-happy agent picks me off and I survive the first five minutes, they're still not going to listen to anything I say that remotely smacks of distraction or excuse. Not now that they've got my prints on the weapon that killed the director. They'll think I concocted an assassinate-the-president story to throw them off. By the time I convince someone to listen, the president could be dead." He scowled with frustration. "The only way it can work is for me to go in with solid information, no suppositions or guesses. Where, when, how. Everything. They'll listen to specifics, so we've got to stick to our plan. It's just going to be harder. A lot harder."

  40

  It was the early hours of the morning in Moscow, and word had reached the glittery Russian Roulette nightclub of a tragic accident in which a big Mercedes 600 carrying famous publisher Oleg Dudash, two security men, and a driver had been sideswiped by one of the city's anonymous cowboy taxis. The big luxury sedan had been going so fast that it had blasted through the guardrails of the Tver Street bridge and plunged into the Moscow River, shattered an ice floe, and sunk, drowning everyone in the frigid water long before the car could be hooked and hauled to shore.