Riptide (23 page)

She looked at Thomas Matlock, who was also looking at the baby and smiling. Her father, who hadn't eaten much pizza because, she knew, he was so worried. About her.

My
father.

It still felt so very strange. He was real, he was her father, and her brain recognized and accepted it, but it was still too new to accept all the way to the deepest part of her that had no memories, no knowledge of him, nothing tangible, just a couple of photos taken when he and her mother were young, some when they were even younger than she was now, and stories her mother had told her, many, many stories. The stories were secondhand memories, she realized now. Her mother had given them to her, again and again, hoping that she would remember them and, through them, love the father she'd believed was dead.

Her father, alive, always alive, and her mother hadn't told her. Just stories, stupid stories. Her mother had memories, scores of them, and she had stories.
But she kept quiet to protect me
, Becca thought, but the sense of betrayal, the fury of it, roiled deep inside her. They could have told her when she was eighteen or when she was twenty-one. How about when she was twenty-five? Wasn't that adult enough for them? She was an adult, a real live independent adult, for God's sake, and yet they'd never said a thing, and now it was too late. Her mother was dead. Her mother had died without telling her a thing. She could have told her before she fell into that coma. She would never see them together now. She wanted to kill both of them.

She remembered many of those times when her mother had left her for maybe three, four days at a time. Three or four times a year she'd stayed with one of her mother's
very good friends and her three children. She'd enjoyed those visits so much she'd never really ever wondered where her mother went, just accepting that it was some sort of business trip or an obligation to a friend, or whatever.

She sighed. She still wanted to kill both of them. She wished they were both here so she could hug them and never let them go.

Savich said, “I've got the latest on Krimakov. A CIA operative told me about this computer system in Athens that's pretty top-secret and that maybe MAX could get into. Well, MAX did invite himself to visit the computer system in Athens that keeps data on the whereabouts and business pursuits of all noncitizens residing in Greece. It is top-secret because it also has lists of all Greek agents who are acting clandestinely throughout the world.

“Now, as you can imagine, this includes a lot of rather shady characters that they try to keep tabs on. Remember, there was nothing left in Moscow because the KGB purged everything on Krimakov. But they didn't have anything to do with the Greek records. This is what they had on Krimakov. Now, recognize that we've already learned most of this, that it was pretty common knowledge. However, in this context, it leads to very interesting conclusions.” Savich pulled three pages from his jacket pocket and read: “Vasili Krimakov has lived in Agios Nikolaos for eighteen years. He married a Cretan woman in 1983. She died in a swimming accident in 1996. She had two children by a former marriage. Her children are dead. The oldest boy, sixteen, was mountain-climbing when he fell off a cliff. A girl, fifteen, ran into a tree on her motorcycle. They had one child, a boy, eight years old. He was badly burned in some sort of trash fire and is currently in a special burn rehabilitation facility near Lucerne, Switzerland. He's still not out of the woods, but at least he's alive.” Savich looked up at all of them in turn. “We've had reports on some of this, but not all of it presented together. Also, they had drawn conclusions, and that's what was really interesting. I
know there was more, probably about their plans to act against Krimakov, but I couldn't find any more. What do you think?”

“You mean you have those programs encoded so well you couldn't get in?” Thomas asked.

“No. I mean that someone who knew what he was doing expunged the records. Only the information I just told you was left, nothing more. The wipe was done recently, just a little over six months ago.”

“How the hell do you know that?” Adam said. “I thought it would be like fingerprints. They'd be there but there was no clue when they were made.”

“Nope. I don't know how the Greeks got ahold of it, but this system, the Sentech Y-2002, is first-rate, state-of-the-art. What it does is hard-register and bullet-code every deletion made on any data entered and tagged in preselected programs. It's known as the ‘catcher,' and it's favored by high-tech industries because it pinpoints when something unexpected and unwelcome is done to relevant data, and who did it and when.”

“How does this hard register and bullet code work?” Becca said.

Savich said, “What the system does is swoop in and retrieve all data that the person is trying to delete before it can be deleted. It's funneled through a trapdoor into a disappearing ‘secret room.' That means, then, that the data isn't really lost. However, the person who did this was able to do what we call a ‘spot burn' on the information he deleted, and so, unfortunately, it's really gone. In other words, there was no opportunity to funnel the deleted data to safety.

“Now, the person who supposedly wiped out the bulk of Krimakov's entries was a middle-level person who would have had no reason to delete anything of this nature, much less even access it. So either someone got to him and paid him to do it or someone stole his password and made him the sacrificial goat in case someone discovered what he had done.”

“How long will it take you to find out this person's name, Savich?” Thomas asked.

“Well, MAX already did that. The guy was a thirty-four-year-old computer programmer who was in an accident four months ago. He's dead. Chances are very good that he was set up as the goat. Chances are also good that he knew the person who stole his password. I wouldn't be surprised if the guy talked about what he did to someone who took it to Krimakov, who then acted.”

“And just what kind of accident befell this one?” Thomas asked.

“The guy lived in Athens, but he'd gone to Crete on vacation, which is where Krimakov lived. You know the Minoan ruins of Knossos some five miles out of Iráklion? It was reported that he somehow lost his footing and fell headfirst over a low wall into a storage chamber some twelve feet below where he was standing. He broke his neck when his head struck one of the big pots that held olive oil way back when.”

“Well, damn,” Adam said. “I don't suppose Krimakov's former bosses in Moscow have any information at all on this?”

“Not that MAX can discover,” Savich said. “If they have any more, and that's quite possible, they're holding it for a trade, since they know we want everything they've got on Krimakov. You know what I think? They've got nothing else useful. There hasn't been a peep out of them in the way of exploratory questions.”

“You found out quite a lot, Savich,” Thomas said. “All those accidents. Doesn't seem possible, does it? Or very likely.”

“Oh, no,” Savich said. “Not possible at all. That was the conclusion their agents drew. Krimakov murdered all of them. Hey, wait a minute, when you knew him, there weren't any computers.”

“There wasn't much beyond great big suckers, like the IBM mainframes,” Thomas said.

Sherlock said, “I wouldn't even want to try to figure out
the odds of all those people in one family dying in accidents. They are astronomical, though.”

“Krimakov killed all those people,” Becca said, then shook her head. “He must have, but how could he kill his own wife, his two stepchildren? Good grief, he burned his own little boy? No, that would truly make him a monster. What is going on here?”

“He didn't kill his own child,” Adam said.

“No, he didn't,” Sherlock said. “But the kid won't ever lead any kind of normal life if he survives all the skin grafts and the infections. Was his getting burned an accident?”

Thomas said, “Listen, all of this makes sense, but it's still supposition.”

Savich said, “I've put Krimakov's aged photo into the Facial Recognition Algorithm program that's in place now at the Bureau. It matches photos or even drawings to con-victed felons. It compares, for example, the length of the nose, its shape, the exact distance between facial bones, the length of the eyes. You get the drift. It'll spit out if there's anyone resembling him who's committed crimes either in Europe or in the United States. The database isn't all that complete yet, but it can't hurt.”

“He was a spy,” Sherlock said. “Maybe he was a con-victed felon, too. It's just possible he's done bad stuff other places and got nabbed. If that's so, then there'll be a match and just maybe there'll be more information available on Krimakov.”

“It's a long shot, but what the hell,” Adam said. “Good work, you guys.” Adam paused a moment, then cleared his throat. “Maybe it wasn't such a lame idea for Thomas to bring you guys on board. Hey, you've even got a cute kid.”

The tension eased when they heard Sean sucking his fingers. Sherlock said as she lightly rubbed her son's back, “Hey, Becca, I like your hair back to its natural color.”

“I don't think it's quite the right color,” Adam said, stroking his fingers thoughtfully over his chin. “It still looks a little fake, a bit on the brassy side.”

Becca got him in the belly with her fist, not hard, since
he'd eaten at least four slices of pizza covered with olives and artichokes. Of course he was right and she just laughed now. “It will grow out. At least it's not a muddy brown anymore.”

Thomas thought she looked beautiful, her hair, just like Allison's, straight and shiny to her shoulders, held back from her face with two gold clips.

Becca cleared her throat and said in a short lull in the conversation, “Does anyone know how Krimakov found me?”

The chewing continued, but she could nearly feel the strength of all that IQ power, all that experience, turned to her question.

Her father took a drink of Pellegrino, then set the bottle down on the Japanese coaster at his elbow. “I can't be certain,” he said. “But you're more in the public view now, Becca, what with your speech writing for Governor Bledsoe. I remember several articles about you. Maybe Krimakov read the articles. Naturally he knows the name Matlock very well. He must have checked into it, found out about your mother, seen her travel plans to Washington. He's a very smart man, very focused when he wants to be.”

“It makes sense,” Sherlock said. “I don't have another more likely scenario.”

Sherlock was looking very serious, but one eye was on her small son. Becca remembered Adam saying something about Sherlock taking down an insane psychopath in some sort of maze. It was hard to imagine until she remembered Sherlock clipping Tyler on the jaw with no fuss at all.

“No matter how he finally managed to find out who she was,” Adam said, “he did find out and then he set up this elaborate scheme.”

“Krimakov was always so straightforward,” Thomas said, “back then. No deep, murky games for him.” Then he sighed. “People change. It's frightening in this case. He's taken more turns than a byzantine maze.”

Hatch, just a bit of mozzarella cheese clinging to his chin, rose and said, “I'm going to go out and see what our
guys are doing. They were eating their way through three large pizzas the last time I saw them.” His pepperoni pizza box was empty, not even a cold thread of cheese left.

“If you smoke out there, Hatch, I'll smell it on you and I'll fire your butt. I don't care what you've found out, your butt's on the line here.”

“No, Adam, I swear I won't smoke.” Then Hatch sighed and sat down again.

Adam, satisfied, turned to Becca. “As for you, Becca, eat. Here's my last piece of pizza. I even left three olives on it. I didn't want to, but I looked at your skinny little neck and restrained myself. Eat.”

She took the pizza slice and sat there holding it, even as the cheese cooled and hardened. She picked off an olive.

Savich said, smiling at everyone, perhaps preening a bit, “Oh, yeah, I've got something that's not supposition. MAX found Krimakov's apartment. It's just a small place in Iráklion. Mr. Woodhouse knows about it. He's sent agents in.”

Everyone stared at him a moment, gape-mouthed.

Savich laughed. He was still laughing when the phone rang minutes later. “That's on my public line,” Thomas said as he rose. “The tape recorder will automatically kick on and it will tell me who's calling.” He saw Becca blink and smiled. “Just habit,” he said as he picked up the phone.

He didn't say a word, just stood there, listening. He was pale as death when he nodded and said to the person on the other end of the line, “Thank you for calling.” Becca jumped to her feet to go to him. He held up a hand and said in a very low, contained voice, “The two agents guarding Becca's room are dead. Agent Marlane is dead. The agent posing as me is dead, shot through the head, three times. I shot Krimakov's wife through the head,” he added unemotionally. “The security cameras are smashed. There's pandemonium at the hospital. He got away.”

A
dam came into Becca's bedroom at just after midnight to see her sitting up in bed, her arms wrapped around her knees, staring blankly at the wall. A single lamp was turned on and in the dim light he could see that she was pale, her face strained. She looked over at him and said, guilt weighing her down, heavy in her voice, “I still can't believe it, Adam. Four people dead and it's because of me.”

He quietly closed the bedroom door and leaned back against it, his arms crossed over his chest. Her feelings weren't unexpected but it still made him angry. “Don't be a damned fool, Becca. I'm the one who carries most of the blame because it was my fucking plan in the first place. What no one can figure out is how the bastard managed to walk right up to the guards outside the room, close enough to see the color of their eyes, and shoot them. Of course he used a silencer. Then he waltzed into the hospital room and kills the other two agents before they can react. To top it all off, he shot out the security camera. And poof—he's gone, escaped, and no one can figure it out.

“Everyone knew he was coming, it was a trap, contingencies all covered, and sure enough he walked right into
it, only it didn't stop him. We lost. Whatever his disguise, it must have been something. My God, four people are dead.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that, they're gone. Damn him, how did he do it? What did he look like to make them lower their guard?”

She shook her head numbly. “Tellie Hawley still doesn't know anything?”

Adam shook his head. “They've been studying all the security cameras all over the hospital, and they've spotted some men who might be possibles. I told him that didn't make sense. Track down the little old ladies, track the folk on the cameras who no one in his right mind would take for Krimakov.” He moved away from the door and walked to the side of her bed. He leaned over and lightly touched his fingers to her cheek. “I came to check on you. I imagined you would be blaming yourself, and I was right. Stop it, Becca, just stop it. It was a good plan, a solid plan. Any fault for its failure comes right to my door, not yours.”

She turned her face into the palm of his hand. She whispered against his skin, “He doesn't seem human, does he?”

“Oh, he's human enough. I want him very badly, Becca. I want to kill him with my bare hands.”

“So does my father. I've never seen anyone so enraged, and yet his voice remained calm and controlled. But it was so cold, so deadly. I wanted to shriek and yell and put my fist through a wall, but he didn't.”

“Control is very important to your father. It's saved his life on several occasions and other people's lives as well. He's learned not to let emotion cloud his thinking.” He cupped her face in his hand. “I haven't learned it yet, but I'm trying. A terrible thing happened, Becca, but please believe me, it wasn't your fault. We'll catch him. We have to catch him. We've both got to get some sleep.” He kissed her mouth, then immediately straightened. It was hard because he wanted to kiss her again, and not stop. He wanted to ease her back down and pull up that virginal nightgown of hers and get his mouth on every bit of her he could get naked. He wanted to make both of them forget the horror,
for just a little while. But he knew he couldn't. He took a step away from the bed. “Good night, Becca. Try to get some sleep, all right?”

She nodded mutely. The pain in her eyes, the god-awful guilt that was still burrowed deep inside her—he just couldn't stand it. He kissed her again, hard and fast, and before he lost his head, he was out of her bedroom in a flash.

In the hallway, he was frowning, rage at Krimakov roiling away in his belly, when he walked straight into Thomas, who was just standing there, watching him, a thick dark brow arched.

Adam came to a dead stop. “Dammit, I didn't touch her.”

“No, of course not. I never thought you did. You were in there to ease her guilt, weren't you?”

“Yes, but I doubt I was successful.”

“There's enough guilt for all of us to wallow in,” Thomas said. “I'm going downstairs for a while. I've got some more thinking to do.”

“There isn't any more thinking to do, there's just worrying and second-guessing, all sorts of worthless shit like that. Wait a second—it just occurred to me that he's got to be pissed, rattled. After all, he was expecting to find both you and Becca in that hospital room, but you weren't there. He has to doubt himself now, his judgment, his take on things. He's been meticulous up until now, but this time he wasn't able to be thorough enough. He screwed up big-time. He was wrong. I don't know what he's going to do next, but whatever it is, he might make another mistake. He's also got to contend with the fallout of his cold-blooded murder of four federal agents. They'll mount the biggest manhunt in a decade. He can't believe he's so good he can just walk away from this, that he's somehow immune from capture. We're not alone in this anymore. Everyone and his aunt knows about him and what he is.”

“I know that, Adam.” Thomas shoved his long fingers
through his hair. “You know how quick he is, how clever. Look at how he flushed all of you out of that house in Riptide and then snuck in and hid in Becca's closet. That took balls and cunning. And luck. It is possible that you could have missed Chuck when you were all scouring the area for him, possible that you would have found Chuck tied up and gagged, but you didn't. He was lucky there and he got her.

“I hate to say this, but I firmly believe he'll evade capture. He knows I'll be at the center of things, trying to figure out how to get him. He'll come to Washington. He's going to try to find Becca and me. He's got nothing else to do.”

“I still can't figure out why he threw Becca out of his car in New York. He had her. He could have announced it and had you knocking on his door to try to save her. But he let her go. Why? Shit, I'm making myself crazy. But if he's as smart as you say he is, he won't come down here, at least not yet, not until things cool down a bit.”

“There's one thing I am sure about now, Adam. I'm his reason for living, probably his only reason now. That's why he's leaving a trail of death. He doesn't care about himself anymore. He just wants me dead. And Becca, too. I'm thinking that Becca should head out to Seattle or maybe even Honolulu.”

“Yeah, right. You be the one to convince her of that, okay? She's just found you. You believe for a single second that she'd just pull out now, be willing to say
sayonara
to the father she just met?”

“Probably not.” Thomas sighed. “She's still so wary of me. It's like she can't make up her mind whether to hug me or slug me for leaving her and her mother.”

“I'm thinking she wants to do both. At least now you two are together. The rest will come, Thomas, just be patient. For God's sake, she's known you for twenty-four hours.”

“You're right, of course. But—never mind. Jesus, Krimakov just went right in there and killed everyone,” Thomas said. “Everyone, without hesitation. To flush me out that first time, he released Becca. I can't imagine what
he'd do to her now that she's with me. Well, yes I can. He'd kill her with no more remorse than when he killed all the others. And yes, there's no doubt in my mind that he believes she's with me now. Damnation, he had a silencer on the gun, Adam.”

“Yes.”

“Agent Marlane had six shots pumped into her. He saw that the male agent wasn't me, knew he'd been set up, and went berserk. Dell Carson, the agent playing me, had his gun out, but he didn't have time to fire. Neither did Agent Marlane.”

“Yes. I know.”

“How the hell did he get away? Hawley had undercover folk stationed all over that floor and the exits.”

Adam shook his head. “His disguise must have been something else. Maybe he even dolled himself up as a woman. Who knows? Do you remember if Krimakov did disguises back then?”

Thomas leaned against the corridor wall, his arms crossed over his chest. “No. But it's been so many years, Adam, too many. What troubles me, and I know I can't let it, is that Becca just can't be sure that the guy who took her, the guy on the phone to her, was older.” Thomas shook his head. “Another thing. Vasili was fluent in English, but I've read the transcripts of the conversations he had with Becca. It sounds so unlike him. And what he wrote, what he said to her, what he did. Calling himself her boyfriend, murdering Linda Cartwright, then digging her up, smashing her face, all as a sick joke to drive Becca over the edge. That's the behavior of a psychopath, Adam. Krimakov wasn't a psychopath. He was supremely arrogant, but as sane as I was.”

“Whatever Krimakov was back then, he's changed,” Adam said. “Who knows what's happened to him during the past twenty years? Don't forget all those killings: a second wife, two children, the guy whose password he used to get into the computer system to expunge all his personal data, killing someone to fake his own accidental death in
that car accident. How many more we don't know about? And that brings up another question. You said that you believe you're now his only focus, his purpose for living. What about his son? He's in that burn clinic in Switzerland. He doesn't care about him anymore? Or maybe that wasn't an accident, either, and he tried to kill him, too?”

“I don't know.”

Adam said, “Maybe he was always over the top and he's just gotten more so, and maybe that goes to explain why he appears not to be worrying about his son. No, Thomas, don't argue with me. He's now here—in a foreign country to him—no longer in Crete. He's on our turf, and he probably hasn't been here for all that long.”

“Listen, Adam, we don't know that. Officially, Vasili Krimakov hasn't come into this country in the past fifteen years. He was here once back in the mid-eighties, checking around, trying to sniff me out. That was when he killed that assistant of mine simply because he'd seen her with me and decided that she was my mistress. But I got away that time and he left, returned to Crete. We've learned he went to England a number of times, but he hasn't gone back there recently. Unofficially, he could have bounced in and out of the United States with a dozen different phony passports. Who in Greece would catch on to that? Or if they did, even care?”

“Still, we have to assume that he was in Crete most of the time. For God's sake, he was married. He eventually had a kid with this woman. So he simply can't know his way around here all that well.”

Thomas said, “Becca is right. He's a monster, no matter the excuses I make for the man I knew more than twenty years ago. Of course I didn't really know him. He was just a target to me, always on the opposite side, the black king to checkmate. Now we're forced to wait, to gnaw our elbows. Krimakov will find us, count on it.

“Oh yeah, Tellie Hawley and Scratch Cobb are coming tomorrow morning to speak to Becca. Maybe that'll be good. I think she liked them both when she met them in
New York. Maybe she'll remember more talking to them. They're pretty desperate, as you can well imagine. Hawley is eating himself alive with guilt. They were his agents, all four of them, and now they're dead.”

“Yes,” Adam said, and streaked his fingers through his hair, sending it on end. “Since Savich found Krimakov's apartment in Iráklion, our people will go in. Just maybe they'll find something.”

Becca leaned her forehead against the closed door, listening to their voices as they moved off down the hall. She turned then and leaned back against the door, her arms crossed over her chest, just as Adam had done when he'd first come into her room. She closed her eyes.

He'd murdered four more people. Like Thomas, she knew Krimakov would find them. It was as if he were somehow programmed to find Thomas and kill him. And her, too, of course. He would do anything, go anywhere, kill anyone in his way, to gain his objective.

How could he have killed his wife and her two children, his stepchildren? And his own son was in a burn hospital in Switzerland. Had that one truly been an accident? No, there were no accidents when it came to Krimakov. It was beyond terrifying.

She returned to her bed, curled up, hugging her arms around her knees. It was warm, very warm, but she was cold all the way to her bone marrow. Suddenly, she heard her mother's voice, sharp with impatience, telling her that if she even considered going out with Tim Hardaway—that juvenile delinquent—she would lock her in a closet for a month. Now she smiled with the memory; then, at sixteen, she had believed her life was over. She wondered what her mother would think of Adam. She smiled, then shivered a bit, remembering that hard, fast kiss. Her mother, she thought, would love Adam.

Suddenly, she heard a whispery sound. She jerked up in bed, her heart pounding, and looked toward the window. Again, that whispery brushing sound. Her heart pumping fast and faster now, she walked over and forced
herself to look outside. There was an oak tree there, the end of one leaf-laden branch lightly brushing its leaves over the windowpane.

But he was close, she knew that. On her way back to bed, she kept looking over her shoulder out the bedroom window. She didn't want to speak to any more agents. Oh God, just how close was he?

How close?

 

N
ow everyone in the world knew about Krimakov. Adam watched the old photograph of him flash on CNN and all the major networks. Then it was set beside the photograph the CIA artist had aged, showing what Krimakov would probably look like today. It was a fine job. With luck, it matched enough so he could be recognized. Becca hadn't remembered anything more, however, when she'd looked at the photos.