by Gayle Wilson
“You were right, by the way,” Griff said, bringing his attention back to him. “Jorgensen didn’t survive Paris.”
A kind of vindication, Rafe supposed. He had gone to France to execute a multiple murderer. It was comforting to know that despite the effects of Amsterdam, he had succeeded.
“Then…who is this?” Elizabeth said. “And why?”
“I think that may provide part of the answer to your questions,” Griff said, nodding toward the folder that lay, still unopened, on the table between them.
Emboldened by the information that whatever was going on now, at least he hadn’t been mistaken about what had happened in Paris, Rafe finally lifted the cover. Inside were documents he recognized as having come from CIA files.
It was obvious they had been heavily redacted, but based on what Griff had told him, he knew that the information he needed to unravel the mystery must be in them. It came down now to recognizing what was pertinent.
“You want to give me a clue what I’m looking for?” he asked, running his thumb along the edge of the stack to point out its thickness.
There seemed no reason to reinvent the wheel. If Griff had found something he considered significant, Rafe was willing to concede it probably was.
After all, Cabot had more experience with this kind of search and discover than he did. His own expertise was more in the nature of the kind of searching he’d done during the year after the embassy bombing.
“Jorgensen had a brother,” Lucas Hawkins said. Once the team’s expert marksman, Hawk, as he was more commonly known, had become Griff’s right-hand man within the Phoenix. “He was only a kid at the time you took out the brother. And according to agency sources, he was there that day.”
“The day Rafe killed Jorgensen?”
Even as Elizabeth posed the question, Rafe was mentally back at the scene. Looking down on that same Paris street, mercilessly lit by a noonday sun. Not a flashback, but a deliberate recreation of an event he had seen far too often in one of those fractional, distorted images. The view of the exact second when his bullet had struck the German terrorist.
Now he concentrated on the people who had been around Gunther Jorgensen. His entourage had converged on their leader as soon as they realized what had happened.
There would have been little they could have done to prevent Jorgensen’s death, not given the precision of planning Rafe had devoted to this attack. In the aftermath, however, their consternation over their failure to protect him had been obvious even from the top of the building from which Rafe had fired his shot.
At that distance he hadn’t been able to distinguish their features or even their ages. He couldn’t now. He shook his head slightly, the gesture unconsciously acknowledging his failure to do so.
“How old?” he asked aloud. “You said he was a kid.”
“Adler Jorgensen was fourteen that day in Paris,” Griff said quietly, his tone devoid of censure.
“My God,” Elizabeth breathed. “Fourteen and he watched his brother die?”
Rafe didn’t regret killing Gunther Jorgensen. Not with the man’s unquestioned record of death and destruction. Not with his stated commitment to continue that reign of terror against innocent people like those who had died in Amsterdam. He did regret that an impressionable child had been witness to the very violence at which his brother had been a master.
“You think he’s responsible for the latest bombings?” Rafe asked. It made sense, despite his youth. He had suspected a protégé or admirer. This boy had obviously been both and more.
“It seems…feasible,” Griff said.
“We know he turned his dead brother into an object of worship,” Hawk added.
“And Jorgensen’s organization was more than willing to use the kid as a rallying point to keep their cause alive,” Griff said. “With the financial backing of the same ideological groups who supported his brother. The bombings in Madrid and Greenland were undoubtedly their work.”
“And the one in Mississippi?” Elizabeth asked.
She sat huddled in her chair, arms crossed over her breasts, as if she were cold. The hand of the uninjured arm was cupped over the bandage Rafe had applied to the wound only minutes before. The posture seemed almost self-protective.
Why wouldn’t it be? Rafe thought. She had been a target from the first.
“The agency, working with the international intelligence community, has made serious inroads in breaking up Jorgensen’s cell, arresting several prominent members in the last few months as well as cutting off their funding. The noose is definitely tightening. We believe that’s what set the boy off. A feeling it was now or never.”
“Hardly a boy,” Rafe said. “Not with that record.”
“Nineteen,” Griff agreed. “He entered this country on a student visa. If it’s any comfort, he seems to have entered it alone, perhaps because there’s no one else left in the organization’s inner circle.”
“Did you know about this when you contacted me? Did you know Jorgensen’s brother might be involved?”
“If I had, I would have told you. You saw and heard everything I was given. The security alert and Steiner’s notation that they believed it had merit.”
“And all along the agency had access to these,” Rafe said, lifting the stack of papers the folder contained. “Are you telling me they couldn’t take them, like you have, and put two and two together?”
“You should probably be warned that I’m not exactly an unbiased observer when it comes to Steiner’s capacity for duplicity,” Hawk said. “I think they did put it together. I think that was their express purpose in passing on the alert.”
“To get me to go after this kid?” Rafe asked. “Using the pretext that it was Jorgensen himself?”
“I don’t think they were trying to get you to react.”
“Then… What the hell was the point of passing the information on to Griff?” Rafe demanded, at a loss about where Hawk was going.
“Steiner wanted Jorgensen to react,” Hawk said.
For several heartbeats no one said anything.
“Are you suggesting he knew Griff would contact me?”
“Perhaps hoping I would,” Griff confirmed.
“So he could track you?” Elizabeth asked. “So you would lead him to Rafe?”
“I think you’re the one they needed,” Griff said, turning toward her. “You were the key to bringing Adler Jorgensen out of hiding.”
“Me?” she repeated in disbelief.
“Part of what those documents contain is his promise to find the people who killed his brother and hurt them in the same way he himself had been hurt,” Griff said. “By having to watch someone he loved die.”
Someone he loved… There was a cold sickness in the pit of Rafe’s stomach, but after all, this was nothing new. Elizabeth had been a target from the beginning.
The only thing that had changed was that now his enemy had a name. And Rafe understood his reason in targeting the one person he might truly say he loved.
“But…” The sentence faded as Elizabeth shook her head, obviously thinking about what Griff had just suggested. “That can’t be right. He was there before Rafe arrived. I felt someone watching me all that week.”
“Someone,” Rafe repeated. “Not necessarily Jorgensen.”
“I don’t understand,” Griff said.
“Did Steiner order that explosion in Elizabeth’s office? Was that somebody’s bright idea of how to get me involved?”
“Despite Hawk’s assessment of Steiner’s motives, I can’t imagine he or the agency would sanction anything like that.”
“Did you?” Rafe asked quietly.
It was a legitimate question. Griff had been the one who had implied Elizabeth might be in danger. The fact that it was legitimate hadn’t made it any easier to ask.
“Steiner reminded me that the elder Jorgensen had no compunction in targeting the families of his enemies,” Griff said. “It was well known in terrorist circles that
the EST had made him a priority. I thought it was reasonable that Carl would want me to pass on the information contained in that alert to the people who had been in on that operation.”
An operation that hadn’t been successful. The CIA hadn’t gotten Jorgensen. His death had been the result of a one-man crusade. A personal vendetta that had consumed a year of Rafe’s life.
“So you’re telling me that as far as you know, whoever blew up Elizabeth’s office wasn’t working for the agency?”
“As far as I know,” Griff said evenly.
“And not for the Phoenix?”
“I’ve been willing to make allowances,” Hawk said, “considering how you feel about Elizabeth. I’d probably be paranoid, too, if someone had been targeting my wife. But you should think about who you’re accusing. If you think Jordan or Drew or any of the rest of us would put Elizabeth in danger, then you’ve gone farther off the deep end than I thought.”
“Hawk,” Griff warned.
“Nobody at Phoenix is involved in this except in trying to figure out what’s going on,” Hawk said.
“I’m the one who suggested the possibility that the Phoenix might be involved,” Elizabeth said. “Whoever set that explosion seemed to have arranged it so that he could be certain I wouldn’t be inside the building. And then there was this.” She glanced down at the dressing on her arm.
“Are you saying whoever shot at you was trying to graze you?” Hawk asked.
That wasn’t anything Rafe had considered, but he could understand, given their speculation that the bomb had been keyed to her car’s remote, why Elizabeth had said it.
“I’m not sure even I would try that,” Hawk said.
The tension eased with Griff’s laughter. If Lucas Hawkins wasn’t willing to attempt that shot, few others would be.
“We weren’t involved,” Griff assured them. “I can imagine that up to this point it’s felt like the two of you against the world, but that isn’t the case. That’s why I sent John to Virginia. I wanted you to know that whatever’s going on, we are trying to help. Maybe we were too slow in understanding what was happening, but…we’re here now.”
“To do what?” Rafe asked bluntly. “If Adler’s targeting Elizabeth in order to get at me, how do we stop him?”
“I’m not sure that’s what he’s doing,” Griff said.
“But the bomb—”
“Was one way he could be sure of flushing you out,” Griff interrupted. “Somehow he found Elizabeth. And we’re still trying to figure out how. I think the explosion, which made most of the national broadcasts, by the way, was simply his way of bringing you to him. I don’t believe he had any idea when he set it off that you were already there.”
It made a kind of sense. Rafe had known he wasn’t followed, and Elizabeth had thought someone had been watching her all week. Instead of arranging the explosion so Rafe would be there to see it and fear Elizabeth had been hurt, maybe it had been set off so Rafe would come to Magnolia Grove. Where Jorgensen would be waiting for him.
If that were the case, then the message on Elizabeth’s answering machine had been more than a taunt. It had been Jorgensen’s way of ensuring she knew who had set off the bomb. After she’d listened to it, she was supposed to contact Rafe and tell him exactly who was responsible.
Thanks to Griff’s warning, he had already been there to receive the call himself. It was ironic now that he’d come so close to missing it. Frantic to get Elizabeth out of town, he had almost left before the terrorist’s communication arrived.
“What about the attack at the summerhouse?” Rafe asked, trying to fit all the pieces of this puzzle into some kind of pattern that made sense.
“Right now, that’s as much a mystery as how he found Elizabeth,” Griff admitted.
“Yet you refuse to believe Steiner’s involved.”
“I can’t imagine the agency would allow a terrorist to go after their own people.”
“But we’re no longer their people,” Elizabeth said softly. “And that was their choice, if you remember.”
“A choice they have since regretted, I assure you,” Griff said. There seemed to be a hint of satisfaction in the comment.
“It’s a regret that comes too late to mean much to any of us,” Rafe said. “Or to the people who have died since.”
“If the agency’s not involved,” Hawk asked, “then where did Jorgensen get the information about Elizabeth’s current location and the safe house?”
Hawk had admitted his distrust of Steiner. That didn’t lessen the validity of his question. Rafe had left the CIA on his own, but for the rest of the team, including Elizabeth, the agency had created the identities they’d assumed.
“If you’re implying Jorgensen gained access to that information through Steiner—” Griff began.
“He couldn’t have. I moved three years ago,” Elizabeth said. “I was careful not to leave any forwarding address. Rafe said you didn’t know where I was. I don’t see how Steiner could.”
There was a silence, prolonged enough to be revealing. Rafe’s accusation broke it.
“You did know where she was.”
“I never told you I didn’t.”
Do you know where she is? Griff’s question in the workshop that day might have implied he didn’t have Elizabeth’s address, but technically he was right, Rafe realized. He had never said that.
“So all the information Jorgensen needed to do what he’s done was available from within the agency.”
“There’s another possibility besides thinking Steiner’s been manipulating this for his own ends,” Griff said. “A little more than a year ago our encryption software was compromised. We can’t be sure who’s had access to any information in the databases. No matter how it was originally classified.”
“However he acquired the information he’s using, there’s still only one way to put a stop to this,” Rafe said.
He didn’t have a problem going after the younger Jorgensen. Gunther’s little brother had proven himself an apt pupil when it came to copying his sibling’s murderous modus operandi. He had at least three bombings to his credit. That the one in Mississippi hadn’t added to the body count was only because it seemed to have had a different purpose.
“I think I can safely promise you’ll have the full support of the agency this time,” Griff said.
“Tell them from me what they can do with their support,” Rafe said. He closed the folder and pushed it back across the table.
“You’re going after him on your own?” Hawk asked.
“I won’t have to. He’ll come after me.”
Even as he said it, Rafe hoped he was right. He couldn’t afford the year he had devoted to the search for Jorgenson’s older brother. Then he had been a faceless, nameless nemesis. The man he sought probably hadn’t even known he was being hunted. At least not by Rafe.
This was something very different. This time Rafe, and through him Elizabeth, had been the terrorist’s prey from the very beginning. And the longer this madman was allowed his freedom, the greater the danger he represented.
“What about Elizabeth?” Griff asked.
“That’s your job. You take care of her, and I’ll give Steiner what he wants.”
“Thank you both for including me in your plans,” Elizabeth said, her voice edged with sarcasm. “I’m afraid I’ve become too accustomed to making my own decisions to go along with them.”
“I can’t do both,” he said, meeting her eyes for the first time since he’d noticed her self-protective posture.
During the time they had been talking, that had changed. Her body was now upright, her chin tilted in challenge.
“No one’s asking you to,” she said. “I don’t believe I’ve asked any of you for anything.”
She hadn’t. Just as she had vehemently resisted being carried into this house, she would resist his trying to hand her over to the Phoenix for protection. And to be fair, no one had ever been less “damsel in distress” than Elizabe
th.
“You’re a target,” Griff said. “Like it or not, Adler Jorgensen will try to use you to get to Rafe.”
Rafe expected her to protest. To argue that there was nothing between them. Or that sentiment shouldn’t have a role in something like this.
She did neither. Her mouth tightened as she considered what Griff had said. Then she turned, looking at Rafe directly.
“Let him.”
It took a second to sink in. “Use you?”
“You want him to come to you. Right now, I’m the best bait you’ve got.”
Chapter Thirteen
She could tell by their faces what they thought of the idea. And her immediate response to the disbelief she saw there was anger that these particular men would react that way. After all, she’d worked with all of them before. Her performance on those occasions hadn’t provided justification for keeping her out of the action now.
“You asked me a question in the car,” Rafe said. “Maybe you should try applying that same standard to this situation.”
She had asked how he’d feel about having to be carried inside. Was he suggesting that she should consider how she would feel if he were used as bait to catch a madman?
While she acknowledged the validity of the comparison, she wasn’t buying into it as an excuse for excluding her. Neither would he if the situations were reversed.
“You use whatever they give you,” she said. “You’re the one who taught me that.”
“You don’t use other people.”
“Why not? If it’s for the greater good.”
“Because that’s what separates us from them,” Griff said.
“What separates us from them is that we’re trying to save lives,” she argued, “and they’re trying to take them. That’s the only moral consideration that has any meaning in this.”
“No,” Rafe said.
“Because you think I can’t take care of myself?”
“Because it isn’t necessary. You aren’t the one Jorgensen wants. There’s no reason for you to be involved.”
She understood the refusal was the product of his concern for her. The cold rejection, not only of her offer to help, but also of the reality of her involvement from the first, still hurt.
