Mesmerized

by Gayle Lynds

  "Back door. The lock's a bleeding farce. Would you mind if I lowered my arms now? I'm not as young as I used to be, and they're going to sleep."

  "Sure. Go ahead," Beth told him.

  Eli Kirkhart rubbed his arms. "Ah, yes. Assistant Director Bobby Kelsey. You've been reporting to the mole all these years without knowing it, Jeff. You didn't tumble, and neither did I. But then, no one else did either. Now the bugger's out there with a fully weaponized team to 'arrest' you."

  Jeff shook his head, disgusted. "Some arrest. He can't afford to let me live, not if he hopes to get away with blaming me for what he's done." He fought back the queasy sensation of being betrayed. He had liked Bobby, had admired the way Bobby had braced the director of a decade ago and insisted he be allowed to go underground for the Bureau. But it had all been a sham. Bobby and he had not been on the same team. No, all the while Bobby had been disloyal to the country, to the Bureau, and to Jeff. He had used and betrayed all of them.

  Beth asked, "How many are there?"

  "Six, including me. I convinced Kelsey to send me and Thoma to cover the alley and the rear of the house. Thoma's napping, thanks to a little encouragement from me. And shazam, here I am. I'd appreciate it if you two would take a bunk out the back and let me deal with our busy mole."

  There was a knock on the front door. Not loud, but firm, and the raised voice was unmistakable: "Jeff, it's Bobby. I got your phone call. Let me in. I'm here to help."

  Inside the bungalow, all four silently looked at one another. Jeff checked through the slit between the drape and the window and saw Kelsey on the front porch, looking innocent. His three men were no longer beside him. One was hiding behind the large tree in the front yard, his elbow and the muzzle of his rifle intermittently showing. Another hunched next to the porch, also carrying a rifle, while the third was out of sight somewhere. Bobby, however, appeared unarmed, but Jeff had no doubt his pistol was in his jacket.

  "It's clear out back," Kirkhart said in a low voice. "I'll delay Kelsey and his pals until you're safely away. Remember, they don't want me or the gentleman on the floor. Actually, you'll be doing us both a favor. As long as you're around, we're in danger."

  Beth looked at Jeff and spoke rapidly. "He's right. Plus we've got to reach the Jefferson Memorial before seven A.M. with the invitations. We're going to be late if we don't leave now."

  Evans Olsen had been listening to everything. "Take my car," he urged.

  Kirkhart nodded. "Once you're away, we'll surrender. I'll tell Kelsey I came in the back, and you were both already gone. Without you, Kelsey won't take the risk of shooting us. Will you kindly get the hell out of here?"

  Beth decided. "We're going. Give me your keys, Evans." She took the thrown keys and touched Jeff's arm. "We've got to stop Berianov. You said yourself that he's not going to give up. He'll have another plan. Come on, Jeff. We need to get to the Jefferson Memorial before we lose this opportunity to stop Berianov once and for all."

  From the front porch, Bobby Kelsey's voice was louder this time: "Jeff? We've got to talk. I need your report about what you found out, and I want to know what you've been up to. They think you're the mole. Did you know that? I'm here to help. Let me in, Jeff!" He rattled the doorknob.

  "Will you go?" Kirkhart demanded impatiently "Bobby's going to figure out soon that there's something wrong with the troops at the rear of the house. The sooner you're gone, the sooner we can give up."

  Jeff holstered his Beretta and grabbed Beth's hand. "I hate to leave you . . . but thanks, Eli."

  They ran through the kitchen, out the back door, and across the tiny yard in the chilly dawn. Thoma was motionless, lying face up in tangled weeds, his jaw red from a blow. The sun was rising, sending pastel yellows and pinks across the horizon. Olsen's blue Oldsmobile Cutlass was parked behind the house at the side of a ramshackle garage. Beth slid behind the wheel, and Jeff jumped into the front passenger seat. The car stank of old liquor and cigarettes, but to them it was a king's carriage. As Beth accelerated away, Jeff, full of misgivings, stared back over his shoulder.

  It was 6:35 A.M., and traffic was light. Much of the bustling city still slept, enjoying the arrival of the weekend. As Beth drove them into more middle-class neighborhoods where jobs and careers played a large role in life, a few people were already picking up newspapers from their yards and climbing into cars with coffee mugs in their hands. Both automatically watched for trouble.

  As they drove on through Washington, he had the disorienting sense that the firm foundation on which he had based his most critical decisions over the past decade was disintegrating into ash. For a moment, his head swam. His stomach knotted.

  Then: "I've been a damned fool." His voice crackled with bitter anger. "How did my fingerprints show up in Stone Point at the murder scene of those teenagers? Besides, how would anyone even know I was going to Stone Point? But Berianov could've known if he were already checking up on me. And he would've been, since I was the one who saved you after you stumbled onto Yuri's body. His goons probably recognized me, and that would've made Berianov feel I was getting too close."

  "You think Bobby Kelsey got your fingerprints to Berianov, and then Berianov killed the teenagers and planted the prints to incriminate you?"

  He gave a furious nod. "Bobby had access to the Bureau's technology. They know how to not only steal fingerprints but plant them. God knows, he could've taken mine dozens of times." He hesitated. "It was his idea I go undercover. Now that I think about it, it was a good way to get rid of me and all my questions about the defectors without raising any red flags, which is exactly what would've happened if I'd had some fatal 'accident.' "

  Beth tried to focus on her driving. "What that man could've passed on to the Kremlin. And if he's working with Berianov—" She stopped. Her insides were shaking at the enormity of it all . . . a spy that high and trusted inside the FBI for God-knew-how-many years.

  He nodded again. "He had access to so many secrets I don't even want to think about it. The names and addresses of our agents. Their assignments. Operations we were planning." In his lap, his hands involuntarily flexed as if they gripped Kelsey's throat. "It explains a lot of the 'unfortunate incidents' we saw happening at the Bureau when suddenly a vital source just disappeared or some bizarre development brought a crucial mission to a screeching halt. And now there's Ty. . . . The only way Berianov could've known he was taking the belts to the Secret Service was if Kelsey knew and told him. Bobby Kelsey, the mole. He's the one who really murdered Ty." He mourned Ty and all the lost years. Regret made him ache. Regret for everything.

  The atmosphere in the Oldsmobile was tense and silent. As Beth drove, they passed through downtown Washington with its neoclassical architecture and magnificent statues set back among great lawns and spring flower beds. Traffic was picking up, but compared to a weekday, the capital city was quiet. The morning sun cast cool, gray shadows from structures and trees onto the streets. At this hour, there was an oddly peaceful atmosphere, as if nothing bad could ever touch the city.

  Beth looked at Jeff. "Bobby Kelsey has probably already alerted Berianov that we found Evans. My guess is, he's gotten the whole story of the invitations from him. Berianov will figure the invitations are either destroyed or we have them. His whole plan's blown, and he won't be at the Jefferson Memorial or the Rose Garden. He'll have to come up with a new plan. Or he'll give up."

  Jeff shook his head. "I wonder. Today was supposed to be the culmination, the high point of his life. It's cost him years and a fortune. He's murdered two of his oldest comrades and taken enormous risks that would've destroyed most men." He paused, thinking. "He may think we'll show up at the memorial to catch him, but still, all his history says one thing to me: He won't give up. So on the chance the invitations will be delivered, he'll have to send someone to pick them up. Which means we have to get there first, leave them, and tail the courier back to Berianov."

  "He'll assume we'll try that, Jeff," Beth reasoned.

&nbs
p; "And his courier will work to lose us. I agree. We'll just have to make sure that doesn't happen."

  Beth frowned. "I doubt Berianov would send anyone. My guess is he'll come himself, probably with that KGB assassin we saw with him in Pennsylvania."

  "Ivan Vok."

  "Yes. That way they can get the invitations and eliminate us. He may decide to arrive before we do in hopes of trapping us."

  He said, "We'll have to play it by ear. Outwit the bastard."

  "Maybe not. What if we get there late, after the memorial has opened? We'll have a better chance that there'll be guards, park rangers, tourists. He'll try to scare us and get the invitations, but he'll be a lot less likely to kill us and risk exposing himself to capture."

  "But we won't care about any ruckus. He'll be vulnerable to us."

  "I could be wrong," she said. "He could decide not to wait when we don't show up. Or maybe he has some entirely different plan."

  "If he leaves, he won't get the invitations, and we'll be no worse off."

  She nodded. "This whole thing has got me to thinking. We like to believe an evil person is one-dimensional—a monster who commits monstrous acts, an aberration. That's a comfortable target, because the monster isn't at all like us, right? But the truth is, the bigger threat comes from regular people like you and me. We can become so trapped in our fears and hopes that outside ideas, outside questions, anything or anyone different from us . . . feels like an assault. Fanaticism is simply attachment taken to an extreme. But uncritical devotion allows zealots to rise up on scales large and small. That's when leaders who seem so very human to followers at the time—like a dog-loving Hitler, or a sincere revolutionary like Stalin, or a patriot like Berianov—can take hold."

  "Yes, and threaten the very foundations of our world," he agreed. "Alexei Berianov's absolutely committed to his vision of a restored Soviet Union. He's such an ideological Communist that even in the nineteen-ninety-one coup, he was prepared to sacrifice his life. He never hid his feelings from us about that, but at the same time he never argued against the consensus during his debriefing that he was simply an aging tiger with little bite. Plus, of course, he seemed eager to sell out and become a 'Capitalist pig' like the rest of us. What none of us realized—not even me—was he was planning to bankroll and organize some long-range political plan."

  "But you sensed it. You knew he was up to something."

  "I don't get a lot of satisfaction from that." He shrugged. "When fanatics triumph, it's because their dreams and promises have caught others in their snare. Somehow Berianov did that in his role as Caleb Bates. Look how he manipulated and used the Keepers. But on the other hand, it sounds as if they ran willingly into his arms, too, fueled by their own bigoted visions."

  She checked her watch. "We've got only a half-hour." She pressed the accelerator, weaving among the traffic and speeding through yellow lights.

  As she rounded a corner, the tires gripping the pavement, Jeff said, "If I ever rob a bank, I know who I want as my getaway driver."

  She glanced at him and gave a small smile. "Mikhail Ogust might've had something to do with it, too."

  As they continued south, the nearly two thousand blooming cherry trees that rimmed the Tidal Basin came into view. It was almost the end of the flowers' peak, but still they formed a radiant pink wreath around the mirror-like lake. The sight of them in glorious flush reminded Beth of the promises she had made herself as she lay dying in the transplant center, hoping for a new heart. She had told herself if she survived she would earn partnership in the firm, fall in love again and make it work, and take time to enjoy life—like walking again among the cherry blossoms. The first was a definite failure, but she had a chance to succeed at the other two.

  Then she saw the Jefferson Memorial. As she studied it, an idea occurred to her. She glanced at Jeff. "Before we get there, I have a thought. It's a ruse. Maybe . . . just maybe, it will help."

  Ten minutes later, trying to shake off a sudden sense of impending catastrophe, Jeff walked toward the white marble Thomas Jefferson Memorial, whose dome towered above the Tidal Basin. This Saturday morning, the circular, colonnaded memorial had barely opened. Joggers and bicyclists passed by on the path around the basin, an older couple stood on the bank fishing, and a park ranger picked up trash with a long stick beside the monument's steps. Few cars were parked in the lot, and Jeff saw no one among the shadows of the great memorial. He studied the cars, but none looked familiar or suspicious.

  Disappointed, he decided Berianov might have sent someone else to collect the invitations after all. Or maybe Berianov was hidden somewhere and waiting for Jeff to appear. As he strode toward the steps, a bicyclist shot past, leaning low over his handlebars. Jeff stopped to study him, but the man rode on out of sight.

  He climbed the marble steps and entered the hushed quiet of the tall, open rotunda. The floor was pink marble, and in the center stood a six-foot-high, black-granite pedestal topped by a spectacular bronze statue of President Jefferson. From between the marble columns he could see a panoramic view across the Tidal Basin to the Washington Monument and the White House beyond.

  As he moved through shadows toward the pedestal on which he was to leave the four invitations, an uneasy feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. It was nothing to which he could point directly—no sound, no odor, simply the accumulation of the years. More from instinct than anything else, he pulled out his pistol and whirled.

  He stared at the figure behind him. It was the park ranger, who had been picking up trash outside. But instead of the litter bag and stick, he held an Uzi submachine gun aimed straight at Jeff. The gun must have been hidden in the burlap litter bag. The man wore an official ranger hat and large reflecting sunglasses. But now that he was erect and looking directly at Jeff, there was no mistaking him. Jeff's head suddenly ached, and he trembled with anger. He desperately tried to control the rage and anguish that welled up inside him.

  "Berianov!" he snarled.

  47

  Dressed in his park ranger disguise, General Alexei Berianov, former head of the FCD at Yasenevo, future chief of state of a new Soviet Union, gave a cool smile of satisfaction and stepped into the shadows with Jeffrey Hammond, his cocked Uzi steady on the enemy. "Good morning, Mr. Hammond. A fine morning, wouldn't you say? Yes, a very fine morning indeed. But where is the lady? The persistent Ms. Convey?" Not a trace of an accent. The man sounded as American as jazz and bubble gum.

  Berianov appeared relaxed, the Uzi steady in his grip, but inside he was livid. Bobby Kelsey had phoned not long ago to report he had gone to kill Hammond and Convey at Evans Olsen's bungalow but found neither there. Instead, Eli Kirkhart had tried to persuade him the pair had tired of waiting and left. But Kelsey had not believed it. No, Hammond would have stayed put until his phone call was answered. Which meant one thing—Eli Kirkhart, the mole hunter, must have figured out everything and warned Hammond. When Kelsey realized that, an altercation errupted, and Evans Olsen was killed. "There was a trail of blood leading out the back door," Kelsey had reported, "but then it disappeared in the weeds. We didn't see any cars moving. My men are still searching for Kirkhart. They'll find him."

  Because Berianov had kept much of his plan secret, never trusting Kelsey enough to fill him in completely, Kelsey was unaware keeping Evans Olsen alive was vital. At this point in the conversation, Berianov coldly hung up and ordered Ivan Vok to park on Ohio Drive where he could think.

  Soon he calmed himself. All was not lost. In fact, that weakling Evans Olsen was sure to have told Convey and Hammond about the Rose Garden invitations. Which meant the invitations would have been either destroyed or lost by now, or else Convey and Hammond had taken them in order to trap him. Fortunately, he had already planned to arrive early in disguise in case anything went wrong and because he had never intended to let the White House aide live beyond delivering the invitations.

  Dressed in the park ranger uniform, Berianov had watched Hammond arrive. But now he was concer
ned. He scanned the shadowy memorial. Where was Convey?

  Jeff laughed. "You didn't seriously think I'd bring her here? We expected you to try something. If I don't return in a half-hour, she'll go to the police, the Bureau, the Secret Service, the marshals . . . to everyone. You'll never escape Washington."

  Berianov scowled at the tall American, who looked like some menacing rural gangster in his flannel shirt and jeans. He decided Hammond was probably lying: Beth Convey was in no position to run to the authorities. She was a wanted felon, and by the time anyone listened to her, it would be too late. Hammond would know that.

  "No, she'll go to no authorities," Berianov assured him. "But I'll ignore the insult to my intelligence of that specious bit of reasoning as long as you've brought the invitations. Where are they?"

  Jeff shook his head. "Not so fast. First you've got to tell me exactly what you're planning."

  "Really, Mr. Hammond? Are we back at that remote safe house for defectors where you kept us jailed for your interrogations?"

  When Jeff and Beth had seen the mock-up of the Rose Garden and Oval Office, they were certain it was part of a plan to assassinate President Stevens. But now Jeff wondered, and he had to know. So he ignored Berianov's attempt to provoke him. "Who's your target?" he demanded. "My president. . . or yours?"

  The two men were motionless, glaring, weapons pointed at each other, the tension between them electric, while out on Ohio Drive traffic sounds were increasing as Saturday workers and visitors streamed into the nation's capital. On the paths below the shadowy rotunda, strollers and joggers continued their constitutionals, still unheeding of the two combatants, who each desperately wanted something from the other. It was only a matter of time until sunlight illuminated the pair, or some venturesome soul decided to climb the steps.

  "Okay," Jeff said, making his tones even when all he wanted to do was empty his gun into Berianov and watch him die in an ocean of blood. He spoke quickly. "You can see the invitations if you answer my question. Who's your target?"