“We’re far too early. From what we learned online, Silva has a wife and kids. They will all be up for a while, so we have time to kill. Now that we know where he lives, let’s go back into town and have something to eat before we return here. Then I’ll check the layout and figure out how to proceed.”
“Sure,” Rusty said, trying to tamp down his excitement.
Garrett lowered his coffee cup. “Oh. I meant to tell you. I heard back from the FBI about the bloodstain on that towel. You guessed right.”
“Boggs,” Annie said, an edge in her voice.
He nodded.
Hunter picked up his napkin from his lap. He folded the white cloth precisely, along its original fold marks. Placed it on the table next to his plate. Lined it up carefully with the edge of the table. Smoothed it slowly.
When he looked up, Garrett was watching him.
“What?”
Garrett ignored him and dug into his slice of apple pie. “Annie, this is just unbelievable. Brava.”
“Thank you, for the hundredth time.”
“Come on, Grant. You have that look.”
The spymaster remained bent over his plate. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Hunter decided to let it go and changed the subject.
“Annie tells me you think you have another mole.”
Garrett straightened. “That’s right. I thought it had ended on the day you iced Muller. But more has happened since. Things that just don’t add up. Things involving Ivan.”
“The Russians? I thought you dismissed that line of speculation when you figured out that I was the shooter, not them.”
“We did. But lately the Kremlin has been acting in ways that suggest they know, in advance, what we are up to. Things involving our C.I. ops.”
Hunter caught himself absently running his forefinger along his jawline. Along the scar. He lowered his hand to his lap. “So, you have a leak in counterintel? Or how exactly do you read it?”
Garrett was working on a mouthful of pie, so Annie answered.
“Working in the Office of Security, Muller had access all over Langley. We think he had a contact on the inside—somebody giving him assistance, protection, and serving as a conduit to Moscow for his information.”
With sudden clarity, Hunter grasped something that neither Annie nor Garrett had ever brought up to him before.
“But I blew your investigation, didn’t I?” he said slowly. “I killed Muller before you could interrogate him. Before you could get him to flip—perhaps rat out his contact … the second mole.”
Garrett and Annie exchanged a sober look, but didn’t answer.
“So it’s true,” Hunter continued, his voice low. “When I heard that you had him, all I could think of was revenge. So I went off half-cocked and shot him. Before he could open his mouth to you.” He felt like hell. “I may as well have been working for the Kremlin myself.”
“Don’t be hard on yourself,” Garrett said. “You couldn’t have known. And there is no certainty that Muller would have spilled his guts about an inside contact, anyway. He was a congenital liar and manipulator. He loved jerking us around. He could very well have continued to play us.”
Hunter shook his head. “Look, I appreciate that you’re trying to make me feel better. But let’s face it: I blew it, big time.” He sighed. “In retrospect, it’s too damned bad that your sniper didn’t spot me sooner than he did, and just take me out.”
“Dylan!” Annie looked horrified. “Don’t say that!”
Garrett frowned. “What do you mean, ‘sooner’? My sniper team never saw you. And from where they were positioned, a mile away on the opposite hillside, they couldn’t have hit you, anyway.”
It was Hunter’s turn to be puzzled. “No, I mean the guy you had positioned on my hill.”
Garrett stared at him. “What guy?”
It took them the next half-hour to sort it out. Garrett paced around Annie’s living room, looking jittery. Hunter knew he was having a nicotine fit but didn’t want to break this off and go outside for a smoke. Abruptly, the spy chief halted at the fireplace and turned to face them.
“So. The long and short of it is that a second shooter was present. Since hunting season was long gone, that eliminates the possibility he was out there for deer or bears. You didn’t recognize him, perhaps because of his camo. But he carried a sniper weapon that you think may have been a Dragunov, plus a sidearm. You even waved at the guy before escaping—but he just stood there and did nothing to stop you. Do I have it all right?”
“That about sums it up. I never could figure out why he didn’t take a shot at me, if he was part of your team. He had me cold, if he’d wanted to.”
“Because he was not on our team … Look, nobody else had a motive or means to take out Muller, except you and the Russians. I figured that Muller’s shooter had to be you, because I didn’t think the Russians could possibly know where the safe house was. But if there is a second mole at Langley, that could explain how they knew. Ergo, that other guy you saw had to have been dispatched by Moscow. To do exactly what you did.”
“You simply beat him to it,” Annie interjected. “Do you see, Dylan? Muller would have been shot and silenced, anyway.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Hunter replied. “You’re still just trying to make me feel better.”
“Speculating about whether their man could have made a shot is pointless,” Garrett said. “But you’ve just done us a huge favor by revealing the existence of this second sniper.” To Hunter’s questioning look, Garrett answered: “You’ve explained why the Kremlin had to have Muller silenced. Not just for the secrets he had stolen and passed along to them, but—”
“—to keep secret the existence of a second mole,” Hunter finished.
“Exactly.” He coughed a bit, then eyed the front door. “Look, I want to continue, but I need a smoke break. And I want to check in with HQ. Would you excuse me for about five?”
Annie said, “Sure. Just watch out for snipers.”
Garrett gave her a mock-scowl, grabbed his overcoat from a rack near the door, and left.
Rusty pulled up past Silva’s driveway and slowed to a stop. A few lights still glowed through the trees from the house.
“All right,” Zak said, checking his watch. “I’ll wander around in there and try to determine where his office and lab are. I hope it’s in a detached structure.”
“Yeah.” Rusty recalled the internet profiles of Silva and the photos of his wife and two kids. “No point in doing the whole family if you don’t have to.”
Zak looked at him. “That’s not the issue. My concern is that it will be impossible to break into an occupied house and plant the bombs without being heard. And for all we know, they may have a dog. But if his lab and office are separate from the house, I can enter, rig the bombs, then draw him out there and set them off when he goes inside.”
“Oh.”
“Just make sure to be back here in exactly forty-five minutes. I should have it all worked out by then. And don’t do anything suspicious. With what you’re carrying in the back, the last thing we need is for a cop to stop you and search the truck.”
Rusty licked his lips. “Gotcha. I’ll be careful.”
He watched Zak get out, close the door quietly, and move into the darkness of the trees.
“I was watching you watching him,” Annie said after the door closed. “You miss working for him, don’t you?”
Hunter shifted around toward her on the sofa. Took her hand. “A little. But I couldn’t tolerate it anymore. He understands why.”
“You hated the Langley office politics. And the betrayals.”
“Those things were a big part of it.” He looked around her living room. At the tasteful furniture. At the expensive Oriental rug spanning most of the polished hardwood floor. At the large Impressionist print hanging above the fireplace. All of it from her previous marriage to a rich guy named Frank Woods who had cheated on her.
His gaz
e moved to those large gray cat’s eyes. To the full wide lips. To the curves of her breasts beneath the soft pale blue sweater. To the long bare legs stretching from her pleated skirt to a foot rest. It returned to those incredible eyes, and to what he saw revealed in them: intelligence, spirit, wit, courage, character …
How could any man betray a woman like her? He ran his thumb over the diamond of her engagement ring. She felt it and smiled, closing her other hand over his.
“So, that’s part of it. What’s the rest of it, then?” she asked.
“I went into the Agency expecting to be able to fulfill a specific motive. But I found that I couldn’t do it there.”
“Let me guess: Matt Malone expected to be able to mete out justice.”
He shrugged.
“But you couldn’t,” she added. “Because of—what, Dylan? You say office politics and betrayals were only part of it. What else?”
He thought of the night when his Princeton professor of Politics and International Studies—on contract for the CIA—first approached him with the pitch.
“When Don Kessler recruited me, he already knew I was pretty much a loner.”
“‘Pretty much’?”
“Okay, a loner—period. I’m sure Grant told you that they never wanted me to be stuck under official cover in some embassy, making the rounds of diplomatic cocktail parties. They specifically recruited me to be a NOC. No official cover, out in the field, cut off from regular contact with station chiefs and ambassadors and—above all—the bureaucracies at Langley and at State.”
“He told me. Grant was to shield you from all that.”
“Exactly.” Through the diamond-shaped, leaded panes of the Tudor living room’s casement window, he watched Garrett’s silhouette in the front yard, hands in his coat pockets. A red dot glowed at his lips, then faded. “And for the most part, he did a fantastic job. I ruffled a lot of feathers. He was always there to smooth them for me. So I got away with plenty … But still, I couldn’t accomplish what I set out to do there.”
“They weren’t interested in justice.”
“It’s not that they weren’t interested. As you know, the Agency has a lot of good people. A lot of great people. It’s just that they were—are—captives of politics. The seventh floor—what Grant refers to, collectively, as ‘the Corner Office’—answers ultimately to politicians. And justice is the last thing on the minds of politicians.” He saw her weak smile, realizing that it must mirror the one he felt on his own lips. “I tried to do the right things, Annie, the things the Agency is supposed to do: You know—make sure our friends were rewarded, our enemies punished. But I was thwarted at every turn. Again and again, simple justice was sacrificed for political expediency and bureaucratic convenience. It took me a long time to realize that I didn’t belong there. That bureaucracy and justice just don’t mix.”
“God. You make me want to resign.”
“Don’t even joke about that. Look, it’s just me. I’m temperamentally unsuited for work inside an organization. Any organization, really. But you and Grant—you’ve learned to navigate the bureaucracy. To turn it to your own purposes and be effective. I can’t tell you how much I admire you for that. It’s a skill I lack. Annie, I’m glad you’re both there, doing what you do. You and he are keeping the wheels from falling off.”
She ran her warm palm over the back of his hand. “But you—you need to be autonomous.”
“As Kipling said: ‘He travels the fastest who travels alone.’”
She pouted. “Alone, huh? And how autonomous?”
He raised both her hands to his heart. “Not that autonomous, Annie Woods.”
They heard the door. Garrett entered, coughing, and saw them.
“Oops. Am I interrupting something?”
“Just a discussion about the boundaries of Dylan’s autonomy,” she said.
“Ah.” He looked straight at Hunter. “Something I wanted to chat about with him myself.”
“Well, let me give you that opportunity,” she said, rising. “I need to freshen up, then put on some going-home coffee for you and the gentlemen you left freezing outside.”
Rusty parked the truck behind a large pine off the opposite side of the road from the Silva place. He made sure it was invisible to the rare passing cars.
A few minutes later, Zak was back inside with him, explaining what he had found. Then they sat quietly for a while. Through a gap in the overhanging branches Rusty could make out a single glowing rectangle across the road.
“It won’t be much longer,” Zak said, giving voice to his own thoughts. “When that bedroom light goes out, I’ll wait ten more minutes, then go in and set the charges.”
“I’m sure glad he does have a separate lab,” Rusty said. “But how are you going to get him to go out there?”
“I’ll set off a small incendiary device in the back of his office, away from its entrance. Then I’ll phone him, posing as a passing neighbor, and tell him about the fire. I know his type: He’ll order his wife to call the fire department while he rushes out there to save his work.” Rusty watched a slow smile form on his friend’s lips. “But unlike what happened at the Flynn cabin, I’ll be hiding in the trees, watching it all happen.”
Zak picked up the cell phone resting on his lap and tossed it lightly in his hand. His smile broadened.
“And this time, I won’t depend on the bombs going off all by themselves. All I’ll have to do is place a call.”
NINETEEN
Garrett took a seat in a recliner beside the sofa. He nodded toward where Annie had just left the room.
“You’ve got yourself a great future there, fella.”
“Don’t I know it. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me, Grant.”
“Then don’t blow it.”
The harsh tone startled him even more than the words.
“What in hell makes you think I’d ever want to do that?”
“I didn’t say you’d want to.” Garrett eased back the recliner and settled his hands onto the armrests. “But if you aren’t careful, you might do that anyway.”
Hunter fought down a jolt of anger. He was about to speak, but Garrett raised a hand.
“Hear me out. I speak from experience … In all the years you’ve known me, you must have noticed that I don’t talk about my personal life. Ever. Want to know why? Because I don’t have one.”
He looked past Hunter, into the distance.
“But I did, once. A long time ago. When I was in my thirties … A wife and a daughter. A really cute little girl …”
He paused. The jaw muscle was working again.
“I had it all, Dylan. Beautiful wife. Adorable daughter. The proverbial house in the ’burbs with the proverbial picket fence and the proverbial dog. A loving little mutt named Taffy … But I blew it. She put up with me for about seven years before she had enough. Because I was never around. Never on the important days. Never on the unimportant ones, either—which are just as important, if you think about it. No, Grant Garrett was always off somewhere in Africa or Asia or Europe, on some grand adventure, some holy mission for God and country. You know—those sacred missions of lying to people, stealing their secrets, corrupting them so that they will betray their countries. And sometimes killing them.”
He coughed a few times.
“I was like you, then, Dylan. An idealist. I always did all those things, those nasty and terrible things, for the noble cause. Or so I told myself … But do you want to know the truth? The truth was that normal life bored me. I was an adrenaline junkie. Danger was my drug of choice. The rest—the noble cause with its high-minded oaths, its codes of conduct, its mission statements—that was all just bullshit rationalizing. The pathetic fact was that I loved living on the edge. I became addicted to it. And you can’t make a normal life with a wife and a kid and a dog, and expect them to live out there on the edge with you. Or to wait forever until you come back from it. If you come back.”
He cleared his thro
at again.
“You’re not quite like that, though, are you, Dylan? No, I don’t think you’re in love with danger for its own sake. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have your own addiction.”
Hunter thought about it.
“It doesn’t feel that way to me, inside,” he said. “But I’ll bite: What do you think I’m addicted to?”
Garrett moved the recliner upright; rested his forearm on his knee. “Not a feeling. But an abstraction. An ideal. What you call ‘justice.’”
Hunter looked at him while he searched his feelings some more. Then shook his head.
“What I call ‘justice,’” he said, “isn’t an abstraction. Not to me.”
Garrett said, “So when you take action, it’s mostly personal.”
“When I take action, it’s always personal.”
“All right,” Garrett said after a while. “Good. That means you aren’t a fanatic. You only respond to personal provocations. When someone you care about is involved. Victimized.”
“That’s right.”
“Well then. I guess it’s only a matter of establishing some priorities.” Garrett’s eyes tracked down the hallway where Annie had disappeared. “Just make sure you keep your priorities straight, Dylan.”
“I’ll try to do that.”
“I’m worried about that word ‘try.’”
Hunter nodded slowly. “I hear you.” He heard Annie moving in the kitchen. “Sometimes—” He stopped.
“Sometimes what?”
“Sometimes it’s hard to know where your highest loyalty should lie.”
“You mean, whether it should be to the person you love—or to your own sense of personal honor.”
It startled him.
“Dylan, I get that. You sometimes wonder if you’d be able to love her as much as you do—or if she’d love you as much as she does—if you were the kind of man who could just ‘walk away’ from things, as you like to put it. You wonder if she could possibly understand why you sometimes feel compelled to do things that you know she would hate. Things that could threaten your relationship. Like all that vigilante stuff last year.”
BAD DEEDS: A Dylan Hunter Thriller (Dylan Hunter Thrillers) Page 17
