by David Wind
Prologue
Her knuckles turned white on the door handle. Cold air rushed across her fingers. She breathed in short gasps, which puffed outward in misty clouds.
“Please.”
“Out!” The driver’s voice was as menacing as the tip of the knife pressing into the underside of her jaw.
The car was on the side of the road. A three-quarter moon illuminated the icy lake, twenty feet distant.
She opened the door further. Her fingers cramped with tension. A shrieking paralyzing horror reverberated through her, with knowledge of what was going to happen.
Tell him what he wants to hear! Tell him anything!
She wanted to turn to face him, but the knife prevented any movement.
“It’s not too late… It doesn’t have to be this way.”
She heard the lie in his words. Strangely, it gave her the strength to accept what was happening. She turned to him, ignoring the knife biting into her neck. “It won’t work.”
The pressure from the knife lessened. A flicker of hope rose. Then he backhanded her, the force of it knocked her against the door. Her head hit the glass. Pain turned the night amber. She lost her grip on the door handle and fell to the frozen ground.
With a desperate cry, she scrambled to her feet. But her muscles were stiff, disobeying. She used her hands to push herself up. Her right hand caught on a rock. Two nails bent back and snapped off. The pain cleared her head. She slipped on the ice-crusted snow of the embankment, floundering and fighting her way to the blacktop. She knew the drugs he’d fed her were slowing her.
She reached the blacktop, sensing him close behind her. She stumbled blindly into the night, fear acting as her guide. Behind her came the sound of footfalls.
Oh, please, no, she prayed, refusing to look back, reaching for the strength to keep on running.
Pain seared her abdomen. Her lungs screamed against the freezing razor blades of air slicing into her with every breath. Her mind mired in the fear pounding at her temples.
The road curved to the right. Tall evergreens lined the side of the road. She knew she had to get to them. They were her only chance for sanctuary, for life.
She angled toward the trees. Her legs ached; her feet were numb. Her right foot sank in the snow when she left the road for the trees.
Then, with safety looming close, an intense pain exploded on her scalp. Her head snapped back and her feet flew out from beneath her. For an instant, her body floated parallel to the ground.
She slammed down, her back and head hitting at the same time. She felt consciousness slipping away. She fought it, unable to move yet unwilling to give up.
The man was above her now, his face obscured by the dark.
He scooped her into his arms and carried her back toward the car. But he did not go to the car; he worked his way down the snow-covered embankment until he was at the lake’s edge.
The ice was thin at this point. The lake was long and deep. There were only a few places along its shoreline shallow enough to wade. This was not one of them. Inches from where he stood, the water was five feet deep. A few feet farther out, the bottom dropped thirty feet.
It suited his plans perfectly.
He set her unconscious form on the ground. He looked around, spotted a large rock, and hefted it. He went to the water’s edge and, going to his knees, slammed the rock against the ice. A shattered spider web of cracks spread out. He struck repeatedly. The hole widened, the broken pieces of ice reflecting diamond-like in the moonlight. He stopped only when the opening in the ice was large enough to satisfy him.
He looked at her. She was beautiful. But she had looked where she should not, and had learned things she could not be allowed to speak of.
He took off his right glove and caressed her face. His fingers traced her high cheekbones, moved to her mouth, and then followed the smooth curve of her lips. He sighed and put his glove back on.
He lifted her and kissed her mouth. “Goodbye, Eleanor.” He thrust her away from him.
Her body arched through the air, striking the ice and water at the exact spot he had prepared. She hit hard, broke the remaining ice, and sank quickly.
The water’s biting coldness snapped her back to full consciousness. Her eyes opened as the water swept over her head. Terror moved her muscles. She flailed her arms and opened her mouth to scream. Water flooded in, choking her. She fought, spitting and kicking toward the surface.
Her head broke free. She gasped for air. Suddenly a hand was on her head, grabbing at her hair, his face contorted with madness. He pushed her down, but not before she had a chance to take a breath.
Panic overrode her when she failed to break his grip. Then, with the sudden clarity of someone who knows there is only one possibility, she acted.
She stopped fighting and hung limp. She exhaled half her air in a forceful push. A few seconds later, his hand was gone.
She kept herself under, her heart battering her ribs until her lungs rebelled and she could no longer feel any sensation in her legs.
Be gone, she prayed, holding her panic at bay when the top of her head broke the surface. Knowing that if he saw her, there would be no second chance. The instant her mouth was out of the water, she took a deep breath.
She saw the lights, two hazy bright circles in the blackness. “Someone. Help me!” she screamed, but no sound emerged from her frozen larynx.
The lights came closer, moving fast.
The headlights wavered, bounced, and straightened as the car moved inexorably toward her. She pushed back. Her head hit the ice, stunning her.
Then the car slid sideways and hit a tree. A glimmer of hope rose, only to die when she realized the tree had only slowed the car a little and it was still coming at her.
Before she could send herself under water, the right front fender of the black Pontiac came down on her head.
<><><>
Steven Morrisy drove along M Street, passing the closed shops and open pubs lining the main district of Georgetown. Behind them flowed the Potomac River. He stopped in a parking lot lit by old-fashioned street lamps casting more shadow than light and shut off his engine.
“Now, we wait,” he told Carla after sweeping the lot for other cars.
“Steven, it’s not too late to get out of here.” She looked around nervously. “Coming back to Washington was crazy and—”
She stopped speaking when the two black Mercedes pulled into the lot, drove slowly past them, and parked twenty feet away. Three men emerged from the first limousine, two men from the second. They conferred briefly before one of the group broke away and walked to the darkest spot along the abutment on the river.
“Cover me: do not leave the car.” Scanning the lot, he got out of the car, took a deep breath of the cold night air, and walked to the waiting man. He stopped three feet away and bowed from the waist. The Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China did the same.
Without further amenities, Steven said, “I am going to ask you a question. The only answer I want is the truth. Without it, both our countries may perish.”
“Please Mr. Morrisy, I have come as you asked. There is no need for melodrama.”
“I can assure you this is not melodrama. The FBI considers me a spy, a traitor, and murderer. Someone is trying to kill me as they did to two of my friends. This is no game, and you know so for a fact.”
The ambassador turned to look out over the dark river, then after a brief moment, said, “How can I help my country?”
Chapter One
The phone rang. Startled, Steven glanced suspiciously at the instrument. Only a half dozen people knew where he was. Two of them had left a few hours earlier and had no reason to call now. The others would only call him there was an emergency. Steven Morrisy, legal counsel and advisor to one of the most powerful senators in the country, was not a man with whom to play games.
He put down his pencil, picked up the receiver, and said hello.
“Why didn’t you call me? Wha
t the hell happened?” The voice of Arnold Savak, the senator’s chief of staff, was unmistakable. “I haven’t called because nothing’s happened.”
“You—oh my God, you don’t know.”
“Know what?”
There was silence. Then Savak said, “Steven, there’s been an accident.”
An inkling of dread turned Steven’s voice skittish. “What accident? The senator?”
“No, not the senator. It was last night. Ellie’s car went off the road, into a lake.”
Ellie’s car went off the road, into a lake. The statement was so simple, so easy to say, and so hard to hear. He looked at the window across from his desk. An elongated vee of Canada geese crossed the horizon.
“Where the hell is there a lake in DC?” he asked, holding back his growing panic.
“Not in Washington. Her car went into Lake Pompton last night. That’s why—”
“–Here?”
“What the hell happened?” Savak asked.
A warning chill rippled across his back. “I haven’t seen Ellie since last Monday, when I dropped her off at the office.”
“But the note she left on Pritman’s desk that night said she was coming to Greyton to meet you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Arnie. What hospital—Greyton?” Steven demanded, a vision of Ellie, hurt and desperate, filled his mind.
“Yes. I just got the call from Chuck. Steven, she’s in critical condition.”
He slammed down the receiver, his mind stuck in fear.
Then the pain hit. For years, he’d kept himself immune from such pain; but loving Ellie had made him open up.
The sudden pain diminished, replaced in part by a growing numbness. He reached for the phone; his first thought was to call the hospital. He changed his mind. He would go to the hospital instead of wasting time on the phone.
Still, he made no move to stand.
Why? It made no sense. Ellie would never surprise him by just showing up in Pennsylvania, especially now, when she knew how important it was that he be able to work undisturbed—it wasn’t her way. She certainly wouldn’t have come last night, knowing he was returning to Washington today. Something was terribly wrong.
He shuffled the papers into a neat stack and put them into the waiting attaché case. He locked the case and went into the front hallway.
Steven was zipping up his parka when the phone rang again. In his need to get to the hospital, he almost ignored it. Changing his mind at the last instant, he picked up the living room extension. “Yes?”
“Steven, its Chuck. I didn’t know about the accident until I got in, a little while ago. Steven, I’m sorry.” Chuck Latham was the head of emergency medicine at Greyton Memorial. Chuck, Arnie Savak, and he had grown up together. “I’m on my way, Chuck. Arnie just called. How is she?”
The weight of Latham’s pause was almost unbearable. “Not good, Steven.”
<><><>
Perched on the corner of his desk, Arnold Savak glanced at the clouds massing over the nation’s capital. “… I’m afraid so, Senator. I have reliable confirmation that it’s Ellie. I don’t have all the facts, but the preliminary report is that she lost control of the car and skidded into the lake.”
“How badly is she hurt?” Senator Philip Pritman’s normally deep voice was tinny over the speakerphone.
“They don’t know if she’ll make it.”
“Dear Lord. Have you spoken to Steven? Is he all right?”
“He didn’t know about it until I called him.”
“But she was with him.”
Savak hesitated before answering. He stared across the room, at a man sitting on the couch, and said, “Steven says she wasn’t with him. Senator, can you do without me for a day or two? I want to fly to Greyton. Steven will need me.”
“Of course,” Pritman said. “Perhaps I should go as well?”
“Absolutely not,” came a third voice. “Sir, you must not involve yourself in this. Not yet.”
“Simon, is that you?”
“Yes, sir,” the senator’s press secretary replied. “I’m sorry, Senator, but until we know more about the circumstances of the accident, I must caution you against personal involvement.”
“I’m afraid I agree with Simon,” Savak said. “Steven wouldn’t want it either. And you have appointments.” Savak looked his desk calendar and ran a finger down a page. The notations, in his secretary’s handwriting, leapt out at him.
“You’ve got the Foreign Relations session this afternoon and dinner with Speaker McDonald tonight. Senator, you must get his support for the new arms bill. He’s the key man. Tomorrow you meet with Harold Gibbons in Langley. Senator, you simply can’t go to Pennsylvania.”
“I suppose,” Pritman said uncertainly.
“I’ll extend your sympathy to Steven.”
“Keep me posted on this, Arnold, any time, day or night.”
“I will,” Savak promised before shutting off the speakerphone. He went to the window, his thin frame and five foot-eleven height accentuated by a royal blue pinstripe suit. Savak ran his hand through thinning light brown hair before turning to Simon Clarke. “Well?”
Pritman’s press secretary wore a crisply pressed suit and fresh shirt. In contrast to his clothing, Clarke’s face was unshaven, evidence of his haste to get to the office after receiving Savak’s call.
“I’ll make sure the senator has a statement prepared. One of those ‘we are saddened by…if she dies, or an ‘our hearts are with her...tada tada’, if she makes it. But you’ve got to get back to me fast. This sort of thing can turn into a nightmare. If the press is already there, you’ll have to do something to get around it.”
Savak stared at Clarke, a look of distaste settling on his features. “It was an accident, Simon. The media won’t be there. Greyton isn’t Washington.”
“Neither was Chappaquiddick. Arnie, Ellie is the senator’s personal assistant. Steven is the second ranking staff advisor as well as the senator’s legal counsel. Can you really take the chance that some hotshot reporter looking to make a rep won’t hear about the accident? A hungry reporter can turn this into something it isn’t. With the rumors of Pritman’s announcement forthcoming, don’t think it couldn’t happen.”
“This isn’t political,” Savak said, rubbing the side of his sharp nose.
“I’m sure it’s nothing more than an accident,” Clarke said. “But Arnie, we’ve spent too damn many years getting to this point to leave anything to chance. The least little thing can trip us up and it’s all over.” He snapped his fingers. “Poof, like that.”
Savak stared out the window, his hands clasped behind his back. “I’ll make sure all our bases are covered in Pennsylvania.”
“Arnie, I don’t want to be a hard ass about this. I know how close you and Steven are—”
Savak whirled, riveting the press secretary with an intense glare. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“Yeah, I do, along with most everyone else around here. We know what the two of you have been through together. Nevertheless, my job is to make sure the media is good to Senator Philip Pritman, nothing more, nothing less.”
Clarke stood to face Savak. “So, Arnie, I’d suggest you find out why, if Ellie said she’d be in Pennsylvania with Steven, he says she wasn’t there. That worries me. We can’t afford an uncontrolled situation.”
Chapter Two
Steven parked, shut off the car, and stared through the windshield. The four story brick structure of Greyton Memorial Hospital, built bold and modern twenty years before, loomed menacingly before him. He tried not to think about what awaited him inside.
He got out of the vehicle and locked it, catching his reflection in the tinted glass. His dark hair was messy. His eyes were shadowed by the missed night of sleep. He shrugged and went to the back of the Bronco to make sure his attaché case was not visible.
Too early for regular visitors, the lobby was quiet as he walked past the closed gift shop a
nd rows of empty chairs. A middle-aged woman entered figures on a sheet of paper at the reception desk.
“Eleanor Rogers’ room, please.”
Without looking up, the woman turned to her computer console and entered Ellie’s name. A moment later, she glanced at him from over the rim of her clear plastic glasses. “Are you a relative? Her husband?”
“No. My name is Steven Morrisy.”
“I’m sorry” she said, her face evincing professional sympathy. “Miss Rogers is in neurology ICU. She’s permitted no visitors other than immediate family.”
“Doctor Latham is expecting me.”
“Oh yes,” she said, tapping a pink memo slip on the white Formica desk. “I’ll call Doctor Latham.”
He paced the confines of the lobby while he waited, his mind filling with unwanted scenarios. Just as his patience came to an end, and he went toward the bank of elevators, Chuck Latham emerged from a stairwell.
An exclamation mark of straight blond hair hung over Latham’s left eyebrow. His features, set in a cherubic face at odds with the tall athletic body, were tainted with what Steven thought foreboding.
“Chuck, is she—”
Latham, the head of emergency medicine at Greyton, put a hand on Steven’s shoulder. “It’s touch and go. Ellie’s been in a coma since they found her.”
“I want to see her,” he said, starting toward the elevator.
Latham’s grip tightened. “Not yet.” He drew Steven away from the reception desk. “I need to talk with you first.”
Steven pulled free. “I don’t want to talk. I want to see her. Chuck, what the hell’s going on?”
“That’s what I have to find out,” Latham said. “Steven, what happened between you and Ellie?”
He was surprised by Latham’s reluctance, and nonplussed by the unexpected question. “Nothing’s happened, Chuck. Now, will you tell me just what the hell is going on?”
Latham’s eyes clouded. “She wasn’t with you last night?”
“The last time I saw Ellie was a week ago in Washington. And now, if you’re finished playing twenty fucking questions, I want to go to her.”
