Black Rain: A Thriller (8 page)

Danielle weighed Hawker’s words carefully. He was right, of course; Gibbs’ ever-increasing paranoia had led him to call Arnold Moore back to D.C. And for what? It had only made things worse. In Moore’s absence she was vulnerable and exposed—out on an island, exactly as Hawker had described. She peered across the table. Perhaps he was right, perhaps he could be of assistance. “So you’d like to help me?”

Hawker nodded, leaing forward in his chair as if he were bowing. “I offer my services. Meager as they may be.”

The edge of her lip curled almost imperceptibly. “Your services,” she repeated, interested now. She leaned forward, stirring her glass of water with a straw. “And in exchange for such services, you would require … what?”

“A ticket home.”

“A pardon,” she guessed.

“Pardons require charges, conviction actually. Nothing like that exists in my case.”

“What, then?”

“Simple clarity.” He motioned toward her with his hand. “You guys have friends in high places. Over at State, with the NSC, and whether you admit it or not, everywhere in the Agency. They’re the ones who have it out for me. The right words are said, specific assurances
are given and the problems disappear. Then I can go home again. Start living a normal life.”

It was hard to look at him and think of a person living a normal life. It didn’t suit him, or really even seem possible that he could have relatives, family and friends somewhere. His file was blacked out, partially to protect the innocent, of course, but it gave the impression of a person with no past, as if he’d just come into existence out of the ether, fully formed as the man she saw in front of her.

“So you help me see this thing through,” she said, “and I get them to forget your past. So you can go back to Kansas with Toto and Dorothy and Auntie Em? Am I understanding this right?”

He laughed. “More likely somewhere with a beach, and if Dorothy is there, she’d better be wearing a blue and white plaid bikini and sharing a cold beer with me, but yeah, that’s the general idea.”

It didn’t cost her a thing to promise, but she wasn’t sure she could deliver, and in a strange onset of conscience found she didn’t want to lie. “What makes you think I can do all that? I can’t even find out what you did to get yourself into this mess.”

“If this thing’s as important as I think it is, you’ll have carte blanche. You probably do now. You just don’t know it yet.”

She thought about that. Gibbs’ obsession with the project suggested he was right.

Hawker elaborated. “Somewhere back in Washington there’s a file you’ll never see, with the letters R.O.C. stamped in one corner. Those are mission attainment parameters. R.O.C., depending on who you ask, means
Regardless of Cost
or
Regardless of Consequences
. It means this thing is the express train and everything else gets out of the way. You want to pay someone off, done. You want someone to disappear, done. You want to cut a deal with a tragically misunderstood, ruggedly handsome fugitive, fine, just bring us what we want and don’t ask why.”

“Handsome?”

He glared at her in mock disappointment. “You could do worse.”

She nodded. “I suppose.”

“The point is, they don’t tell you about things like that when you’re in the field, but after a while you start to know. I’ll bet your old partner knew.”

Silently, she agreed. Gibbs had given them everything they’d asked for without batting an eye, everything except allowing Moore to stay on. Perhaps Moore
had
known too much. “You’ll be in the dark,” she said.

“I do my best work that way,” he said. “Just tell me what you think I should know. You can start by giving me some info on the guy we met with tonight. I’ll find out who he associates with. Maybe we can figure out who paid him off, or who the payment came through. He seemed like a nervous type, probably not doing this by pure choice. Beyond that, I can arrange a new charter, with someone I know and trust.”

“And how do I know I can trust you?” she asked.

“You can’t,” he said. “Not the way I trust these guys.” He nodded toward the center of the club, indicating the friends who worked and owned the club, providers of their temporary refuge. “But you can trust people to act in their own self-interest. And at this point
you have something to offer me that no one else can match.”

“And assuming that’s true, what makes you think you can trust me?”

Hawker leaned back in his chair and smiled at her. It was the look of a rogue and a cheat, the look of a man who knew just what the next card would bring and had been waiting forever to see it played. Somehow it was charming just the same.

“My options are more limited,” he said. “I can walk away and keep scratching out a life down here or I can take a chance on you. So there it is,” he finished. “Time to roll the bones.”

Danielle failed to suppress a grin. It made sense to her. It fact, it actually seemed fair. The bargain itself would probably infuriate Gibbs, but that almost made it more appealing. “All right,” she said. “I’ll take your offer. I can’t promise anything until I have it cleared, so I won’t. But I’ll talk to the people I know and if there’s a deal to be had, I’ll give it to you. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough for me.”

As Hawker finished, a broad-shouldered man with a thick moustache and deep tan approached. With his impeccably moussed hair and a spotless white dinner jacket, he looked like a movie star from a bygone era. He carried two glasses in one hand and an expensive bottle of Chilean wine in the other. He introduced himself as Eduardo, owner of the club and sometime benefactor of young Mr. Hawker. The two friends shook hands and then Eduardo turned his full attention to Danielle.

“Who is this lovely vision?” he asked. “And what
great misfortune has her spending the evening in such company?”

Hawker feigned distress at Eduardo’s comment even as Danielle held out her hand. “Pleased to meet you,” she said. “My name is Danielle.”

Eduardo smiled, kissed her hand, then turned back to Hawker. “An American,” he noted. “Like you.”

“An American,” Hawker said. “But not like me.”

Eduardo raised an eyebrow. “A good thing for her, no doubt.”

“No doubt,” Hawker said.

Eduardo turned serious. “You ran into a problem.”

“I can’t tell you what they look like,” Hawker said. “Or even what they’re wearing. But I’d guess they’re still searching for us.”

“Don’t worry,” Eduardo said. “I’ll send you home in my car. In the meantime I’ve put some extra men on, friends from the
policia
. They like big paychecks and hassling troublemakers. And I told Diego no one else crosses the ropes tonight.”

Hawker looked pained. “This is your biggest night, that’s going to cost you.”

Eduardo laughed softly and then turned to Danielle. “Our friend Hawker, he’s okay, but not too bright when it comes to business. I know of no better way to attract a crowd than to tell them they can’t get in. I’ll do this again tomorrow night and all through the week and by next Friday, I can double the prices and still fill the place three times over.” Eduardo shook his head softly. “Already I’m asking myself, why didn’t I think of this years ago?”

“I owe you for this,” Hawker said.

“No,” Eduardo said. “Not you.”

His attention returned to Danielle. “I’m afraid I must leave you for a while.” He placed the bottle of wine on the table. “But please, cheer him up while I’m gone. He’s far too serious for one sitting with such a beautiful woman.”

Danielle smiled at Hawker, and then back at Eduardo. “I’ll do my best.”

With that Eduardo bowed and stepped away.

“Your friend is charming.”

“Yeah,” Hawker said, rolling his eyes. “I think he likes you too.” He picked up the bottle of wine, examined the label and then uncorked it and let it breathe. “Looks like we’re going to be here for a while,” he said. “Might as well make the best of it.”

She agreed and pushed her glass across the table toward him.

A
rnold Moore had returned to Washington, his residence in absentia for three decades spent traipsing the world. In all that time, he’d spent less than a thousand days in Washington, and never longer than two months at a stretch. After so much time away, returning felt awkward, like being a stranger in his own land, a guest in his own empty home.

Still, this time it would be different. He’d come back to a career winding down and a superior who appeared to be growing tired of their endless clashes. This time, Moore reckoned, he’d come home for good.

Stuart Gibbs, director of operations, was a fairly paranoid man—paranoid and grossly ambitious, a combination that had led to many a metaphorical beheading of former colleagues and confidants. Based on the deteriorating tone of their last few conversations, Moore guessed he was next on the chopping block.

As if to reinforce the point, Stuart Gibbs had spoken to him only once since his arrival. No explanations had been offered and Moore’s repeated calls since had been blatantly ignored. Now, after a week of such treatment,
he’d been summoned to a meeting. If it was to be his end, then he intended to air his grievances.

To meet with Gibbs, Moore traveled to the NRI’s main office, a sprawling campus known as the Virginia Industrial Complex, or more affectionately the VIC. The VIC consisted of five sleek buildings nestled among rolling hills, winding paths and rustic stone walls. The glass-walled structures were modern and attractive, the paths around them lit and manicured like those at an expensive resort. Even with the trees and lawns dormant for the winter, the complex felt more like a university mall or suburban office park than anything governmental in nature. Only the presence of armed guards in the parking lot, with their bomb-sniffing dogs and long mirrored poles, suggested otherwise.

Looking forward to the meeting, Moore arrived at the lot early and began a determined march through the crisp January air. Because of a quirk in the topography of the land, the five buildings that made up the complex lay spaced at odd intervals, with four clustered on the eastern side of the property and the fifth, housing the Operations Division and its director, Stuart Gibbs, alone on the western edge, separated from the others by a low-lying ridge and a row of seventy-foot oaks. As a result, Building Five wasn’t visible from the street or the main gate or even from the other structures, and one had to make a lengthy winding trek to reach it. It was supposedly a random occurrence, one Moore had his doubts about, but either way it had always struck him as both ironic and perfectly symbolic of the NRI’s dual and conflicting nature.

The NRI had come into existence in the late ’90s, a
Frankenstein’s monster of an organization, divided and charged with two completely separate tasks. The Research Division, its main component, worked with corporate America, universities and leading entrepreneurs. Under that umbrella, corporate members gained access to advanced facilities, specialist personnel and reams of declassified data from NASA and the military. Its purpose was to boost the fortunes of American industry, to counter the subsidies and government assistance that corporations in Europe and Japan enjoyed.

But Research Division was only part of the organization, sometimes referred to as the civilian side. There was another side to the NRI, a darker side, and that was the Operations Division.

Six months after NRI’s creation—and well before the first shovel of dirt had turned at the VIC—a rider was attached to a last-minute spending bill being rushed through Congress. The rider amended the NRI’s charter, effectively dividing the organization in two, or more accurately adding a new division to the NRI’s existing structure. That new entity was called Operations Division, or OpD.

OpD was tasked with a more sinister mission—the active gathering of industrial secrets, including those belonging to foreign powers and entities. In other words, industrial espionage. Appropriately, OpD had been run from its very inception by former members of the CIA, beginning with its director, Stuart Gibbs.

To the outside world the change was invisible. OpD appeared to be almost irrelevant, little more than the support apparatus for Research Division, a handmaiden to its charming and successful big sister. It was Research
Division that garnered all the press, Research Division that senators and CEOs enjoyed being linked to, that articles in
Time
and
BusinessWeek
focused on. To the adoring public, Research Division
was
the NRI; it claimed eighty percent of the budget, ninety percent of the staff and four of the five buildings at the Virginia Industrial Complex. But to the few people who knew the truth, OpD was considered the more important entity.

As Moore walked past the other buildings he couldn’t help but smile. In all his years with the NRI he’d yet to set foot in any of them—a fact that wasn’t going to change today. Whatever the future held, it waited for him on the other side of the hill, with Stuart Gibbs, in Building Five.

At the end of his half-mile trek, Moore felt energized. He bounded up the steps and into the lobby, flashed his ID badge and placed his thumb on the infrared scanner. He cleared a second checkpoint on the fourth floor and a minute later stood in the director’s waiting room.

Gibbs’ secretary barely looked up. “He’s ready for you now.”

Moore set his jaw and stepped inside.

The director’s office was a windowless inside room, well lit and large, but surprisingly spartan for a man who carried such a big stick. As Moore entered, Stuart Gibbs stepped forward, extending a hand. “Welcome, Arnold,” he said, “early as always.”

The greeting was odd and hollow; the smile was uneven, like the jagged teeth of some rabid predator. Moore felt anything but welcome.

“Have yourself a seat,” Gibbs said, steering Moore
toward the visitors’ chairs in front of his desk, one of which was already occupied.

“I’ve asked Matt Blundin to join us,” Gibbs explained. “He has some information that might interest you.”

Matt Blundin was chief of security for the NRI, a huge apple of a man whose sheer volume could not be contained within the arms of the leather vistors’ chair. He was a smoker and known to be a heavy drinker who preferred late nights to early days. At eight in the morning he reeked of nicotine, and his greasy hair and wrinkled suit did nothing to belie the assumption that he’d been out all night.