Girl of Vengeance (36 page)

Karatygin smiled. “He was their confederate, of course. Roshan was highly interested in the effectiveness of the weapons. At the time, the three of them had the idea that they could use them on a large scale against Soviet troops. I was happy to help. But we had to test them first to assess the effectiveness.”

Anthony shuddered. “The incident in Wakhan was a test?”

Karatygin nodded. His eyes were wide. Frightening. “It was. A successful one, wouldn’t you say? Everyone in the village died. Even the dogs and the sheep died. When we realized how deadly it was, Collins and Thompson wanted to do it again, against a Soviet base. But by the time we returned back to our base, we realized we had a bigger problem.”

“What?” Anthony asked.

“The weapons were stored in a cave in Badakhshan. After filling the tanks on the helicopters, the fumes slowly spread through the cave, and killed everyone. We abandoned the cave, and the men who were there.”

“Jesus,” Anthony said. “How many?”

“Twenty or so. Not as many as the civilians we murdered.”

“And what happened to the cave?”

Karatygin gave Anthony a toothy smile. “It’s still there. The barrels are still there, although the sarin is long since gone. Everything is still there. Even the skeletons.”

Dear God
, Anthony thought. He would have done almost anything to get a look at it. But the trip would take hours—or days really, given the road conditions and the violence. If he even survived the trip.

Karatygin leaned forward and said, “You want to see it. Don’t you? I can tell.”

Anthony nodded. Then he said, “I’ve been in the village. I did a story for
T
he
Washington Post
about the massacre three years ago. It’s ominous. Skeletons everywhere. Nobody even went back and buried the bodies. The skeletons of children, in the street.”

Karatygin said, “Sometimes I think those children will come back. I see them coming at me in my sleep.”

Anthony stared at the man across from him. This man, along with the others, had committed a truly evil act.

Anthony said, “Why are you telling me all of this now? I don’t understand. Why?”

Karatygin looked away from Anthony. In a low voice he said, “I’m not fool enough to ever ask for forgiveness. Not for the people I’ve killed. But someone must speak the truth. Shouldn’t they? How are Thompson and Roshan and Collins any different from the men who sent me to Afghanistan to die in the first place? How are they better?”

He looked at Anthony with naked rage in his eyes. “They aren’t different
at all
. For them it is all about power and pride and position. Every one of them went on to become a man of power. It’s time someone brought them down.”

Karatygin shouted in Pashto. A moment later, one of his men appeared. A burst of words from each, then Karatygin began to struggle to stand. He reached for a cane then finally got to his feet, tottering.

He looked at Anthony and said, “The helicopter is on the way. I will show you. You must come.”

Anthony stood. Then he nodded. “Let’s go.”

Bear’s apartment looked much the same as it had for days. Tiny. Empty. Alone.

He slumped into the seat at the tiny table where he’d scanned through Richard Thompson’s personnel file days before. The file had been stolen, and he still didn’t know who had done it. Perhaps Thompson himself. Or Leslie Collins. Whoever it was, this case had moved on from there. Bear didn’t even know where to go or what to do next.

Anthony had left for Afghanistan the previous evening, leaving only a message stating that he’d gotten what he wanted from his talk with George-Phillip. It might have been helpful to know what that was. Marky Lovecchio had been captured in Canada—Bear didn’t know the details behind that, other than the fact that it happened during an attack against Adelina Thompson and her daughters.
Oz
—Oswald O’Leary—had gone missing. At Prince George-Phillip’s request, the National Crime Information Center had issued an alert asking local law enforcement to be on the lookout for O’Leary.

Bear sighed, walked to the refrigerator, and looked inside. No beer.
Crap.

That’s when the phone rang. He walked back to the table and picked up his cell phone. It was an unfamiliar number.

“Bear Wyden.”

“Mister Wyden—this is Wolfram Schmidt.”

For almost a full second, Bear thought,
who the hell is Wolfram Schmidt?
But that didn’t last long. All he had to think of was the humiliation of being
arrested
by the Internal Revenue Service.

“What can I do for you, Schmidt? Is this a friendly call?”

A grunt at the other end, and the fastidious IRS agent said, “It is, Wyden. Actually, I’m calling because I’m boarding a flight back to Washington in a few minutes and I’d like to meet with you this evening. I think we may have information that might be useful to each other. I presume you know Scott Kelly?”

“From DSS? Of course.”

“At Agent Kelly’s recommendation, we’d like to invite you back onto the investigation.”

Bear’s mouth ran away with him. “I’m not doing anything to railroad those girls. They’ve had enough.”

Schmidt said, “I’m not either. It’s clear to me that much more is going on here.”

Bear took a breath. He’d been ready to say something nasty to the IRS agent and hang up the phone, but now he had to pause. “I’m listening,” he said.

“The grand jury is … broadening the scope of our investigation. We’re preparing to offer immunity to Adelina and Andrea Thompson in return for their testimony.”

“Oh yeah? Their testimony against who?”

“Richard Thompson and Leslie Collins.”

“Big fish,” Bear said. “Collins, in particular.

“Mister Wyden, there are no fish too big for the Internal Revenue Service.”

Jesus.
Bear could almost see the evil grin on Schmidt’s face.

“Okay. So you offer them immunity. You’re expanding the scope of the investigation. To what? Thompson raping Adelina when she was a kid? The Wakhan massacre? What’s your plan here?”

“You’ve been paying attention,” Schmidt said.

“I was wondering if you had been.”

“At this point we don’t have enough to make anything stick for Wakhan, at least not for Collins. But we’ve got solid evidence of Thompson’s involvement.”

“Yeah? What evidence?”

“Given that one of our suspects is deputy director of the CIA, I don’t want to discuss that over the phone.”

Bear didn’t answer. Instead, he thought about his missing file. Then he said, “All right. Let’s say he’s listening right now. What would you tell him?”

“I’d tell him he’s as good as convicted.”

Bear grinned. “I like you, Schmidt. When does your flight get in?”

“Eight o’clock at National.”

“I’ll meet you. But I’ve got one other question. What about Julia Wilson? She’s been hounded by you guys. And I don’t believe for a minute that she did it.”

Bear didn’t like the uncomfortable pause that followed. Schmidt finally said, “If this goes where I think it will, Julia will probably be in the clear anyway. But I can’t promise anything.”

Bear sighed. “I guess that’s the best I can ask for. But I gotta tell you. It seems thin.”

“We’ll talk more later.”

“I don’t know what to do, Carrie! You
know
what it was like when he got arrested in New York.”

Carrie half-listened as Alexandra talked. Rachel was listless this afternoon, and her fever had stayed steady at one hundred and one degrees. She’d spoken on Wednesday with the pediatric nurse, who reassured Carrie that the low-grade fever wasn’t that unusual.

“If there’s a change, I want you to let me know,” the nurse had said.

Carrie wanted to demand a battery of tests. She wanted to take her daughter to the hospital and make sure
everything possible
was being done. The nurse brushing Rachel’s fever off had nearly enraged her. But she’d calmed herself and not said anything offensive.

On an intellectual level, Carrie knew the nurse was right. Children got fevers, chills, coughs and colds. They got rashes and stuffed up noses and diarrhea. You had to pay attention and focus on good nutrition and keeping them warm and hydrated and covered up. But not every fever was a sign of severe illness. And not every illness required hospitalization.

That’s what Carrie knew intellectually. She was a scientist, after all.

But what she knew in her heart and in her gut was something else entirely. In her gut, she knew that a series of hideous circumstances had ripped her husband right out of her life before their daughter was born. Before she was even sure that she was pregnant.

She couldn’t lose Rachel too.

So her thoughts were wound deeply around her daughter. She was listless, but was she
too
listless? She had a fever, but was it too high? Rachel had spots of color on her cheeks and hadn’t nursed much.

All Carrie could see was the worst. What if the nurse was wrong? What if she had some horrible exotic disease and the nurse had misdiagnosed over the phone? After all, she hadn’t
examined
Rachel, and what were her credentials to diagnose her daughter anyway? When she closed her eyes all she could see was Ray, his body pale, as with a snap and click, one after the other, the monitors turned off and he was taken from her forever. All she could see when she closed her eyes was losing her daughter.

She remembered talking with Ray, right before he passed. She’d made a lot of promises.
I promise I’ll be a good mother to our child. I’ll be there for her, and tell her the right things. I’ll listen to her problems and sing her songs at night and I’ll teach her to be strong. I’ll tell her about you. I’ll tell her that her father did the right thing, always. That when it really counted, you told the truth, and you inspired other people to do the right thing too
.

That wasn’t all she’d promised him. She’d promised not to smother their daughter with her fears, because she knew that might happen.
And I promise I won’t be like ... I won’t make her miserable either. I’ll teach her to love you and remember you but not to let it overshadow her life. Because I know you wouldn’t do that. You’d want her to be strong.

That was a lot easier to say than do. And Rachel was only six weeks old. How hard would it be when she was six? Or sixteen? How would she deal with it when her little girl got a
driver
’
s license,
or started dating, or—

“Are you even listening to me?”

Alexandra’s question made Carrie jerk. She hadn’t been listening. She’d completely forgotten her sister was there. Alexandra looked—not quite offended—she looked … hurt. Vulnerable and wounded.

“I’m sorry, Alexandra, I just … I’m so worried…” The words didn’t even make it out of her mouth before she started to sob. She choked it back viciously. But she couldn’t force back the tears that had already escaped.

Alexandra sighed. “I’m sorry, Carrie. I’m sorry. I’m scared. I’m really scared. I’ve called the FBI and the IRS and the DC police and no one will tell me where he is, and he hasn’t called and…” Her face looked broken.

Carrie closed her eyes. She needed to pull it together. She whispered, “Look. We’ll figure it out. Maybe Bear knows. Or … or …
shit.”

Alexandra whispered, “I don’t know how much more I can take.”

Dylan Paris ran his hands through his hair and looked around the room for what felt like the ten thousandth time.

No exits had magically appeared. Instead, he was waiting for the return of the two cops who had been questioning him. He didn’t know what agency they were from—Justice Department or FBI or CIA or IRS or whatever—but he did know he’d answered the same questions over and over and over again.

At least it wasn’t like that awful night he’d spent in a holding cell in the New York City jail, crammed in with drug dealers and rapists and God only knew who else. They’d let him take his anti-seizure meds, which was good, because no wanted to see him flopping around on the floor choking on his own vomit.

Dylan sighed. He needed to go home. Badly.

The door opened, and in walked two people. He instantly recognized one of them—the man who had arrested him the previous night. He looked like Crank’s dad, Jack, Irish, with dark hair and a friendly countenance. His partner, though, she didn’t look so friendly.

The man sat down across from Dylan. The woman, with her black suit and silver hair, stood slightly behind the man. Dylan thought she might be prematurely grey. Her skin was smooth, not flawless, but youthful.

“Dylan, how ya’ doing? I’m Scott Kelly, with Diplomatic Security Services. This is my temporary boss, Emma Smith. She’s from hell. I mean the IRS.”

The woman frowned, but didn’t respond otherwise to Kelly’s joke.

Dylan didn’t respond.

“You doing all right?” Kelly asked again.

Dylan shrugged. “I’m in a jail cell. How good do you expect me to be?”

Kelly nodded. “Yeah. I get it. But you gotta understand, when you kill a federal agent, there are some questions that have to be asked.”