by Gayle Lynds
“I remember he was outraged. Demanded a government inquiry into police methodology in handling the case. But I don’t recall anyone’s ever being arrested. In fact, I don’t remember anything more. The serial killer must’ve stopped.”
“Partly true. What really happened was your father took care of it. Sir Robert had seen this sort of thing before—pressure applied, investigations dropped. But none was this serious. He felt something must be done to save other children, so he used discreet channels to hire an assassin secretly. The assassin killed the aristocrat but made it look like a motoring accident. Of course, by then, Scotland Yard was relieved. So was the family. In the end, no one bothered to look too deeply into the ‘accident.’”
Simon was silent, surprised. Then surprised again when he realized he disapproved. Sir Robert had been a fighter for human rights. The idea that he would hire a killer seemed impossible, out of character. And yet…his informant was correct about one aspect: The Miller Street Killer had been a ghoul, with an apparently insatiable appetite for torturing little boys. And at the time, Sir Robert had two young sons and a frightened wife.
“Five years ago,” the voice went on, “someone found out and tried to blackmail Sir Robert.” The voice paused, then continued methodically: “That’s when he slashed his wrists. He killed himself because he would have been arrested, and his reputation ruined. His political career and the only life he knew were over. Of course, he knew the scandal would hurt his family, too.”
Simon felt his body go rigid. He said nothing while thinking that if his father had lived, his mother would have, too. She would have allowed a pacemaker to be implanted. She had died six months later. Simon knotted his hands, the old rage and sadness rushing through him. He had fought to give her a reason to go on, but in the end, her sorrow was too great. She did not want to live without the great love of her life. He had watched her grow thin, her skin yellow, her energy vanish, until she was a ghost. It was an image he carried always, no matter the name he used.
He changed the subject. “What did my father’s blackmailer want?”
“His vote on a free-trade issue, which of course he would not give.”
Simon nodded to himself. “No vote of his was ever for sale. Win or lose, he always took the high ground.” He paused. That was untrue, he realized. His father was flawed after all: He had hired an assassin, and by killing himself, he had also killed his wife. Simon said gruffly, “Politics was everything to him. He would’ve been on knife’s edge, waiting for the next time the blackmailer wanted him to change his vote. How could a blackmailer know about my father and the assassin? You said the arrangement was secret. Was the assassin himself the blackmailer?”
“Impossible. He was dead.”
“Then who was the blackmailer?”
“Have you not been listening?” For the first time, Simon heard emotion in the low voice—barely controlled rage, but it was not directed at him. “No one knows. That’s why I am here. You must investigate. Discover his identity. Stop him.”
Simon’s right hand was resting on the seat of the pew. He inched it toward his thigh and the Beretta hidden beneath. “Why should I believe you? Everything you’ve told me could be a lie. What do you really want?”
“Just what I said—to stop this barbarian. Nothing more or less. You were never trusting, were you, Simmy-boy?”
Simon froze.
“That was what your father called you, wasn’t it? You must find the bastardo who provoked your parents’ deaths. Man or woman, I do not know. I know too little.” Again the voice was affected by emotion—frustration. “Remember your father’s friend Terrill Leaming, the Zurich banker? He can give you more. But take my advice—tell no one. Neither of us knows the power of the forces you might provoke.”
“More about what? How do you know any of this?”
There was no answer.
Simon spun around in the pew, but all he could see was wavering shadows. He jumped up and rushed out, clicking on his flashlight. He aimed the beam into every nook and recess, but the church was empty, as silent as death.
He stood motionless, thinking. At last, he walked briskly away, returning to the corridor that would take him out of the church. He considered the mysterious informer: The voice seemed that of an older man, sixties, maybe even seventies, with a light Italian accent but a sophisticated grasp of English. Simon thought about Italian friends and acquaintances from the past, but none seemed right for this anonymous messenger.
It was not just that the fellow knew his father’s pet name for him—that information could have been learned from a servant or a family friend. But his claim about Sir Robert’s stopping the Miller Street Killer had the ring of truth. So if the man were lying about Sir Robert, the killer, the assassin, and the blackmailer, at least he knew or had learned enough to make his story plausible.
As Simon approached the outside door, he saw it was still ajar. The scent of old stone was heavy here in the narrow corridor. He turned off his flashlight and blew out the candles. As he padded through the darkness, a sense of inevitability swept through him. Ada wanted him out of Central Europe for a while anyway. A trip to Zurich was not what she had in mind, he was fairly sure, but that was where he was going.
He flattened back against the wall and peered through the cracked doorway. The sun was rising, casting the open space around the church in pale golden light.
He looked for surveillance. For the anonymous man. The fellow was enormously skillful to have slid the note into the pocket of someone as trained as Simon without being caught. And there was something else: Simon had been working in deep cover for nearly three years, using a false name. As far as his family was concerned, he was far away and out of touch—in South America, employed by a British petroleum company. So how had the informant found out he was not only in Bratislava, but in the square last night?
Simon did not like any of it. Unsettled, wary, he slipped out into the dawn. He would write the report for Ada Jackson, and then he would fly to Zurich. For the time being, he would follow his informant’s advice and say nothing.
Nine
Conference call from Brussels, Belgium
“Hyperion here. Is there news about the operation, Cronus?”
“This is Atlas.”
“Prometheus. I’m on.”
“Themis. Christ, what an ungodly hour!”
“Ocean here. Let’s have it, Cronus.”
“Very good. Then we’re all assembled. This is Cronus. Atlas asked to be brought up-to-date. I should think you can blame him for the invigorating hour. The answer is that we’ve passed successfully through this critical stage. Sansborough was attacked a second time. Mac was there and witnessed it. She handled herself well. Her tradecraft is adequate for what we need. Afterward, he made contact. She’s agreed to help….”
Aloft, en route to Paris
The jet was a Gulfstream V, debugged and fully fueled, the luxury aircraft of choice for global high rollers. The eight passenger seats were individual chairs that swiveled, each equipped with a multichannel telephone and an outlet for data services via satellite. Of course, there was a powerful onboard PC with wireless Internet connections, too, in a communications center aft. Since the pilot and copilot were busy in the cockpit, Liz and Mac had the rest of the sleek, fast jet to themselves.
At the miniature bar, Mac made a martini in a tall-stemmed glass and poured himself a Red Tail ale. “Belvedere vodka, just as you requested,” he announced, pleased with himself. He gave it to her and settled into the chair beside hers, his hand wrapped around his beer glass. His sigh had the sound of relief in it.
She drank, grateful for the good alcohol and the simple concoction. It would be a long journey, close to eleven hours from takeoff to touchdown, although they were going over the North Pole, the fastest route. The pilot figured they would arrive in Paris no later than 2:55 P.M. local time, perhaps earlier, depending on conditions.
Mac was looking at her. “You’re going
to be a big help. You’ll buy us time.”
She was surprised by his earnestness. There was something about him she liked. Maybe it was all that experience that seemed to have tainted him in his own eyes but made him more palatable in hers. Still, he worked for Langley, was a veteran of that duplicitous world. In fact, she realized suddenly as she drank again that something he had said earlier was not quite right…did not fit in with what she knew. But hard as she concentrated, she could not place what it could have been and when he had said it.
Then it was pushed from her mind by another disquieting thought. “What makes you think Sarah’s still alive?”
“If they’ve killed her, there’s a good chance we’d have heard. Corpses have a way of surfacing.” He glanced at her and then away. “You’re right. We don’t know. But we’re going to act as if she’s alive until we damn well find out different. Look at it this way: Alive, they’re working to keep the kidnapping buttoned down, too. That’d help account for the utter silence in the underground.”
“Of course, even if you deliver the files, the odds are they’ll kill her.”
He shrugged and stared down into his ale. “We’ve got to work as if she’s alive and as if the Carnivore kept files.”
“Good.”
Liz tried to settle back, to relax, but her mind kept fixing first on Sarah and Asher, and then on her responsibility for the trouble they were in now. Without a second of suspicion, she had jumped at the Aylesworth Foundation’s invitation to apply. It had arrived less than a week after Mellencamp’s death. That had launched her sham existence, and she never questioned the coincidence. It was her fault, her weakness, because she had so desperately wanted to be free of her past and find some way to live in an unfamiliar world. Perhaps even to be happy. Now Sarah and Asher were paying.
Mac pushed his table aside and stood up and reached into the overhead bin. “I’ve got something for you.”
He lifted down a metal lockbox, tapped a numerical code, and removed a Sig Sauer like his, 9-mm and compact, much favored by U.S. intelligence operatives. A beautiful weapon, or so she would have thought back when a lethal machine was something she could call beautiful.
He held it out. “It’s untraceable. I was going to bring your Walther—”
Her brows raised. She looked down at the pistol without touching it and then up at him again. “On top of everything else, you cracked my safe?”
“Couldn’t find your gun anywhere else. You may need a weapon. Since I was already there, I figured I’d bring yours. But then I realized it could be used to identify you if anything happened in Paris, God forbid. That wouldn’t be good for Sarah either. So I had Langley arrange for something untraceable to be waiting for us at the plane. This is it.”
“Where’s my Walther?”
“I left it in your glove compartment.”
She sighed. “I don’t want a gun.”
“You almost got killed twice today. Don’t be an idiot.”
“Idiocy is thinking a gun can actually solve problems.”
“In the right hands, a gun can save lives.”
“That’s a tempting appeal,” she told him soberly. “If violence is for something good, then it’s good. If it’s for something bad, then it’s bad. That’s what Mussolini thought—‘There’s a violence that’s moral, and a violence that’s immoral.’ And we know how he turned that philosophy into dictatorship and a partnership with Hitler. The problem is, violence isn’t some kind of impartial raw material like butter or steel. It’s not ethically and politically neutral. Just because someone thinks a cause is worthy, that doesn’t mean the violence that’s ‘necessary’ for the cause is worthy.”
He frowned. “Let me get this straight. All violence is bad. Period.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
“Even when it’s used to stop worse violence? Mob violence, despots, genocide?”
“Look, the only reason the world has such a problem with violence is because we let it. We romanticize it by creating myths about killers like Bonnie and Clyde. We institutionalize it by forming military and police forces and intelligence agencies. You can see this mythologizing in all kinds of small ways. One of the saddest examples I found was the dying soldiers in Vietnam who used to ask medics for a last cigarette, although they’d never smoked. They were reenacting heroic scenes they’d heard about happening in World War Two and seen in Hollywood movies. Romanticizing their own deaths. Heartbreaking.”
“Thank you, Professor Sansborough.”
“It’s unimportant to me whether you think I’m reality-challenged. I’m not going to carry a gun. I know about violence. Been there, done that. Now I’m a scholar in the subject, too. I’ll be damned if I perpetuate it.”
He shrugged. “It’s your funeral. Literally.”
He studied her, but when her expression did not relent, he returned the Sig Sauer to the lockbox. The jet gave a shudder and small bounce as he pulled out a Nokia cell.
“This can’t kill anyone.” He held out the phone.
She took it. “Tell me about it.”
“It’s got special scrambler capacity hard-wired into it, and no numbers are ever recorded. I have one just like it. I’ll be watching you in Paris, following whenever possible in case you run into trouble. If you won’t carry a gun, you’ll make my job harder, but my shoulders are broad. Since it’d be stupid to be seen together, we’ll have our secure cells to stay in touch.”
“I don’t expect you’ll have to rescue me. I was a pretty fair operative in my time. But you’re right: There may be other reasons to talk. What’s your number?”
He told her, and she memorized it. She would not program it into the phone, in case it fell into someone else’s hands.
“One last thing,” he said. “Asher told us you and Sarah hadn’t seen each other in several months. Did you know she’d cut her hair?”
“No.”
He handed her color photos that had been printed off a computer. In the first, Asher and Sarah were smiling widely, their arms wrapped around each other, standing ankle-deep in surf on a golden beach. In the next, they were chasing down the sandy shore, and in the third, Asher was tossing her into the ocean. Their delight in each other shone in each picture. A lump formed in Liz’s throat.
“These give you different angles of her hair,” he continued. “Think you can duplicate the cut?” He held out scissors.
She took the scissors. “Where’d you get the photos? From their house?” They lived in Malibu, about seventy miles south of Santa Barbara. Close, but distant enough that she and Sarah had not seen each other as often as they had intended.
He nodded. “One of my people broke in. They sent the pictures digitally.”
“Figures.”
To the Company, nothing was sacred, even the Constitution. One director once explained to Congress that the agency could not always honor it. That was another problem with violent men and institutions: They tended to destroy what they were created to preserve, the shell more important than the substance.
She headed back to the bathroom, where there was a mirror and good lighting.
Santa Barbara, California
It was nearly ten P.M., and Kirk Tedesco was angry, worried, and drunk as he sped toward home in his Mustang convertible. Where was Liz? They’d had a date, but she had disappeared.
After he and the dean finished their consultation in the garden, he looked everywhere. She was too damn skittish, always had been. He had not admitted to the dean that she thought their relationship was more about friendship than sex, and the sex was far from frequent enough. When he discovered her car was gone, he called her house, but only her answering machine responded. With luck, she was waiting at his condo.
Disgusted, he drank three stiff bourbons, a big improvement over the watered-down affairs he had been nursing all night. Terrible to disrespect Jack Daniel’s that way. Still angry, he had stumbled out of the dean’s house to his Mustang, lowered the convertible top, and,
with a burst of acceleration from the big V-8 engine, took off down the dark foothill street.
Now he was cruising the 101, heading south to his beach place near Summerland. Traffic was light. More cars were going in his direction than north, which was the way it usually was at this hour. People were heading home to L.A., or planning to get there in time for a few hours of hotel sleep before morning meetings.
He was just thinking about that when he realized he had a faithful follower. He liked that—another driver who wanted to go the same speed as he. Both on cruise control, each watching for the Highway Patrol. The other car looked like an SUV, because its headlights were high. He glanced at his speedometer. He was locked in at seventy-eight miles an hour, just where he wanted to be, and so apparently was the other guy.
The wind whistled past, a warm night wind that tasted of the Pacific. The moon was shining out on the ocean, casting a silver funnel across the dark water and fading at the edges into gray. He liked that, too. Nothing should be black and white. It was too damn dull. He turned on KCLU, his favorite jazz station. But instead of music, a National Public Radio report was on, so he tried KLTE, his favorite rock station. Ah, yes. That was more like it.
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel in time to Head Shear and again checked his rearview mirror. He did a double take. The SUV’s headlights were closing in, bombarding his car with light. There was something unnerving about his follower—not just the sudden blazing speed but also the headlights, which were so close and high now that they seemed predatory.
He touched his accelerator, pushing out. As he passed eighty-five miles an hour, he checked his rearview mirror again. The SUV was even closer. Unbelievable. What in God’s name was the guy smoking?
