Blown (9 page)

Chapter 16

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA, 3:38 A.M.

She’d been called into the Agency in the middle of the night many times, but it was always unnerving to see the vast parking lots empty under rank upon rank of brilliant lights. The electrified barbed wire that surrounded the compound was less obvious in daylight, and the SPOs—the security police officers who manned the gates—walked right up to the car window to stare intently at her badge and face before waving her through.

She and Cuddy would do what they could in the last few hours before Sophie Payne’s funeral. There might be some clue Cuddy had overlooked in the disc full of data Eric had sent out of Budapest—or a name lost in the thousands of pages of 30 April files. A link between the neo-Nazi group and somebody here at home—an academic conference where two men had met, a stint in a jail cell where two killers joined forces.

“I’ll get out a tasking cable to Berlin,” Caroline was saying as she and Cuddy swung into the Counterterrorism Center at 3:14
A.M
. “Wally may have some assets left he can query—”

She stopped short, staring at the silver-haired man seated in her cubicle. He had a pile of her files—the ones she’d yet to destroy—before him on the desk and was systematically going through them, half-glasses resting on his nose, red pen poised.

“Berlin has already been tasked,” he said, holding out a copy of a cable. “They have all they need to wrap up this investigation.”

Caroline took the sheet of paper.

C/CTC ADVISES THAT CASE OFFICER MICHAEL O’SHAUGHNESSY/NIGEL BENNING DECLARED DEAD APRIL 1997 IS ALIVE AND MEMBER OF 30 APRIL TERRORIST
GROUP . . .

“You burned him,” she said hollowly. “Cuddy—he’s blown Eric sky high. There’s no cover left.”

Cuddy took the copy of the cable and scanned it rapidly. The core of Caroline’s body had deadened, as though all function of heart and bone had suddenly shut down. There was no way back. No help to be found.

“Pity you tossed so much in the incinerator, my dear,” Scottie said easily. “These files are sadly incomplete. That will look
very bad
when the Inspector General investigates what you knew, and when. Rather as though you had something to hide.”

“Get out of my desk,” she said with effort. “Please.”

Scottie laughed and swiveled in her chair. “I received your letter of resignation, Carrie. It saved me the trouble of firing you. But I must say I’m rather surprised to see you here. I’d have thought you’d borrow a page from Eric’s book—and turn up dead.”

“That’s not funny,” Cuddy said sternly, as though Scottie were a little boy with a bad sense of humor. “You know Dare Atwood has been murdered. Why weren’t you at the White House?”

“I had documents of my own to incinerate,” Scottie replied comfortably. “Sad about Dare. Who’ll take the dog, I wonder? We all know who’ll take her office. I must make my obeisance to Rinehart sometime this morning.”

Caroline was holding the shreds of her temper in both hands. Cross Scottie now, and she’d lose her final slim hope of bringing Eric home safe and alive. “I’m withdrawing that resignation. I’m here to help.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Scottie replied. “I’ve already informed the Inspector General’s office of your decision, and added my own Memorandum to the Record detailing Eric’s survival. I’m sure there will be quite an extensive investigation, Carrie. Of how you managed to cover up this sordid mess for so long.”

“You know I knew nothing about it! Dare—”

Dare was dead, and any truth she might have believed had died with her. The only other person who understood how Eric had been used—how Caroline had been deceived—was Cuddy Wilmot. And he was easy enough to destroy.

“Under the circumstances,” Scottie said dryly, “I cannot possibly allow you access to classified information. Your clearances are completely compromised.”

“You wouldn’t dare do this.” Somehow she managed to keep her voice level. “I know enough to end your career, Scottie. Enough to ruin everything you’ve worked for.”

“But it would be simply your word against mine. And I’ll make very sure your word is dirt.” Scottie reached for his phone. “I’ll call the SPOs now. They’ll escort you to your car.”

“You realize you’re prejudicing this entire investigation? That Eric is the only possible lead we’ve got to the 30 April cell in D.C.? You
need
Eric, Scottie. He’s the one person who can save your ass.”

He gazed at her pityingly. “You don’t really think he’d bother, Caroline, after all we’ve been through? Having burned my bridges with Eric, as it were, I had no choice but to burn
him
.”

“Scottie,” she lashed out, “people are dying out there.
Innocent
people. They’re dying because of
you
. The evil you’ve done for your own amusement. You
owe
it to Eric—to everybody in this institution—to try to put things right. To find this killer before he does further damage.”

A buzzer sounded at the entrance to the vault; Scottie rose briskly from Caroline’s desk. “I have no intention of supporting this investigation. I want it to spin out as long as possible, Carrie. I want the Bureau to make their usual hash of it and I want the media to come calling. While the bodies fall and the nation screams in panic, our jobs are the most secure they’re ever likely to be. The President will be forced to admit just how much he needs us.”

“Good God,” Cuddy said blankly. “You don’t mean that, Scottie. You’ve spent your life—”

Their chief reached for a cardboard box sitting at his feet. It held a jumble of items: a cup full of pens, a framed photograph of William Webster shaking Caroline’s hand; an award for merit she’d earned five years ago. He handed the box to Cuddy.

“That’ll be the SPOs buzzing. Walk Caroline to the car, will you, Wilmot? And decide on the way whether you want to leave with her. It’s a decision you shouldn’t make lightly.”

Chapter 17

ARLINGTON, 2:33 A.M.

Daniel had crept from his own bedroom in the black heart of night often enough to know that the quality of silence in a sleeping house is different from an empty one. There were the times he’d lain awake and the times he’d wanted to be sure that Dolf was blissful and unaware in his own small room; times later, when Dolf was in the ground, that he’d sprawled on the boy’s sterile bed and cursed Bekah for washing the sheets. He craved the scent of his son like another man craved drink or sex, and sometimes he huddled in the boy’s closet, just to breathe in the elusive memory of him. It took Daniel only three seconds in Caroline Carmichael’s pitch-black room to know she wasn’t there.

As the realization came, he was passing in front of her full-length mirror, and the sudden unexpected reflection of his own shoulder, his head beneath the tight wool cap, startled him so much that he swung around and smashed at the figure staring back at him. The hard metal haft of his M16 slammed straight through the plasterboard wall and the mirror shivered into a hundred pieces, glancing off his face like the most vicious of kisses. He stood panting, engulfed by disappointment.

After that it was enough to pull the covers from her bed and hurl a lamp to the floor before he turned and fled down the narrow stairs to the side window he’d cut open. He tossed the rifle through the opening and slid one leg out onto the grass. Thinking:
Where the fuck is that bitch I come all this way to kill her maybe she knew maybe she knew I was coming and ran Jesus H. Christ I’ve got to find the girl there’s no time left I—

He stood still, balancing on one leg, aware suddenly of the flashlight’s beam edging around the back of the house, a small perfect orb of light that bled an elliptical trail like a comet’s. Bobbing. Shifting. A man searching with a flashlight for a burglar who might just be there.

Daniel sank like a stone into the narrow space between the house’s outer wall and the juniper trailing sharp fingers across his cheek. A neighbor’d heard or seen him. How many trackers were there? One? Five? He disregarded the M16 lying blatantly on the frost-tipped lawn. The comet was bobbing closer, and he could hear the man’s breathing now. Footsteps. The light circled the gun.

If the guy turned and sprinted back around the house toward whatever vehicle had brought him, or if he reached for a radio and called in backup, it would all be over. Daniel was cut off from his motorcycle and his road home, his road forward. He teetered slightly on his haunches but with the luck that sustained him, the cop—a uniformed patrol officer on the night shift, Daniel could see his stubble in the flashlight’s beam—was bending forward, a handkerchief in one hand. Reaching for the M16.

Daniel sprang.

He landed heavily on the man’s shoulders, pitching him forward so that his chin butted painfully against the ground. The cop gave a grunt of surprise but Daniel’s left hand was over his mouth by that time and the knife was curving around the front of the throat, nicking at the flesh as the man’s head strained against him. He smelled cigarette smoke and shampoo and the tang of fear, then the knife slashed confidently through the jugular and the windpipe and the head was just a latex mask dangling from his hands.

The body slumped forward and blood spurted over the frozen grass. Daniel wiped his knife on the cop’s jacket and dragged the M16 from beneath his hip. With a burst of static the man’s radio went off and Daniel jumped as though he’d been shot. His hands were shaking and slick with blood. He’d have to toss his gloves somewhere. But first, he had to get to the bike.

Chapter 18

BERLIN, 7:39 A.M.

Wally hoisted Eric to his feet. “You’re dead. Aren’t you?
Dead?
”

“Nearly three years.” His broken lips were painful to look at. He swayed where he stood. “I can tell you everything, Wally, but I can’t make it much farther.”

“Come inside. There’s an elevator.”

He helped him negotiate the steps and the heavy door, noticing the grimace of pain when he touched Eric’s ribs. Broken, probably. Once Eric had taught Wally how to march three days without food, how to creep silently over an enemy and throttle him without a sound, how to lie in ambush and avoid forward-looking infrared. Wally had tried to be worthy, to live up to Eric’s toughness and physical courage, to win a word of praise from this man he and his buddies regarded with awe. They’d vied for the right to buy Eric a beer at the Farm’s bar. And now here he was, slumped like a bum on Wally’s doorstep. Both of them middle-aged.

When he’d heard of Eric’s death in that bombed plane, Wally had left his station’s vault at a run and taken shelter for half an hour in the embassy’s men’s room. Swallowing the pain that hardened his throat and attempting to believe that a man like Eric could be gone. Dead like anyone else.

“Who beat you up?”

“Don’t know.”

He thrust back the ancient lift’s iron grille and steered Eric inside. Pushed the button for number four and waited for the elevator to ascend. Eric sagged against the cage, his eyes closed. “Thanks, Wally.”

“You weren’t on MedAir 901. When it went down.”

“No.”

“Caroline—”

“Knows now. She didn’t until last week.”

“—When she came to Berlin chasing Sophie Payne,” Wally said. Remembering the feeling he’d had that Caroline was holding something back—that he was denied access to the ops in her mind.
Fuck. This is fucking going to get me fired.
“Who else knows?”

“Scottie,” Eric said vaguely, and clutched at the elevator’s bronze bars as the cage lurched to a stop.

Wally sighed inwardly with relief. If Scottie Sorensen had brought Eric back to life, everybody else could go to hell.

Chapter 19

LANGLEY, 3:54 A.M.

“I’ll resign.” Cuddy strode beside Caroline and the security police officers toward the parking lot. The SPOs said nothing, but they held her elbows as though she were a prisoner who might break for daylight.

“No. You need to be here.”

“And work for
him
? Caroline—” Cuddy stopped, too aware of the presence of outsiders. “I’ll call you at your hotel tomorrow. We’ll discuss this.”

“But you’ll go back inside now. You’ll tell Scottie you’ll stay. Understand? You have to, Cuddy. Otherwise we’re all screwed.”

He understood in those few syllables what she expected. Not blind loyalty to the institution or the martyrdom of leaving by her side, but a far crueler sentence: She was asking him to turn traitor. To double back against the only family he could name.

As they walked briskly toward her car she added, “And get that disc.”

The one Eric had sent out of Budapest last week, Cuddy thought; the single shred of proof he’d actually been working for the good guys.

“What are you going to do?” he asked her.

“Call Shephard. And volunteer.”

Tom’s voice, when she reached his cell phone, was like a lifeline unreeling through the predawn darkness. She clung to the careless confidence of that voice, the thoughtless strength, without allowing herself to consider why he was so necessary right now.

“Did you know your house’s silent alarm went off an hour ago?” he demanded.

“No.”

The fiber-optic system Eric had installed while the house was under construction was undetectable to the naked eye. Threaded through the frame of the building itself, and monitored remotely by a crack government security contractor. She’d never had to use it.
Until tonight.

“Ricin Boy?”

“There’s a dead cop lying in your backyard, Caroline. He’s stripped to his underwear and his head’s nearly cut off. You realize what this means? He found you. He
found
you.”

“Just like he found Dare,” she said bitterly. “Now he’s got a police uniform he can use. We’ve got to warn the Secret Service detail working Payne’s funeral.”

“Already done. Where are you?”

She was driving toward Chain Bridge, under the canopy of oak trees arching down to the Potomac River, where the rapids furled white against the concrete supports. Nearly four
A.M
., and no sign of morning on the horizon. Sophie Payne’s funeral in approximately six hours. She was due to pick up Jozsef at Bethesda Naval soon.

“Where should I be?”

“On your way downtown. Carl Rogers—he’s head of White House Security—wants you at a briefing. Before this show gets started at Arlington.”

“What time?”

“Soon as you can. Carrie—he could have murdered you in your bed.” Tom sounded strained to the breaking point, and she remembered the intensity of that drive to the White House, the emotion that had kept her firmly on her side of the car, terrified of what might happen if she touched him. “Once Payne’s funeral is done, you need to get out of this city. Have you heard anything about Atwood’s request for federal protection?”

“Ain’t gonna happen, Tom.” She swallowed hard, concentrating on the steep upgrade to Arizona Avenue. “I was just fired.”

“What?”

How to explain? Tom believed Eric was dead. He thought she was a widow. He knew nothing of the many ways she’d deceived him. But he’d hear the truth in a matter of hours—or one version of it. Dare was gone and nobody with clout was left to help her. Scottie’s next move would be an international manhunt for Eric. It was a brilliant plan: Divert the public’s attention from Ricin Boy, and win a knighthood from Jack Bigelow for his pains.

“Fired? Are they
nuts
? You’re the only person in Langley who knows her ass from a hole in the ground!”

“We’d better talk, Tom.”

“I’ll meet you at the Bureau in twenty minutes.”

When a whistling Scottie Sorensen swung out of the office at four-thirty
A.M
., bound for the DCI’s corridor and his meeting with Cory Rinehart, Cuddy Wilmot decided to smoke his first cigarette in nearly two years.

The darkness was still heavy as he fumbled for a match in the chill morning air of the courtyard that linked New Headquarters and Old. It was filled with daylilies in the summer; marble statues of an indeterminate modernist type; a plaque or two commemorating something already forgotten. Ducks, in spring weather, paddling in the fountains. The Agency—buildings, memories, people—felt like his whole life; but tonight it was all simply smoke and ash.

He’d watched Caroline’s taillights disappear through the back gate and then he’d walked directly back to CTC and informed his chief he was backing him up the whole way. It was then Scottie had asked for Eric’s CD-ROM. Cuddy had taken it from his desk and watched while Scottie snapped it neatly in four and tossed the shards in his burn bag.

Cuddy inhaled greedily and watched the end of his cigarette flare like hope in the darkness. What was the nature of loyalty, after all? Was it dedication to country . . . to the safety of a bunch of people who didn’t even realize they were targets . . . to an idea he’d once had of justice or integrity? Was it blind adherence to a chain of command—or did it come down to a few people you knew and loved, the few people who’d watched you bleed?

In the end there was nothing but the ear you gave to that inner voice, the one that refused to steer you wrong. He was listening now, had been listening for hours, and with his blood singing the old familiar nicotine chant, he felt clearheaded and unequivocal. He pulled out his cell phone.

It was the easiest kind of electronic transmission to intercept, but Cuddy trusted this palm-sized bit of circuitry more right now than all the lines running in and out of Scottie Sorensen’s Counterterrorism Center.

“Steve Price?” he asked as the
Post
journalist picked up. “It’s Cuddy Wilmot out at the CIA. There’s a piece of the 30 April story I think you need to know.”