TailSpin (44 page)

He turned to look at a huge cormorant that had entered the scene, not six feet from the petrel, hovering a dozen feet above the water, lazily scouting lunch. He spotted a surface fish and dove clean and straight. “I’ve watched him before,” Jean David said. “He’s really good. He’s smart. See, that’s a wrasse he’s got. He never misses.”

“Your parents are a mess,” Savich said. “As Agent Crowne said, we haven’t told them you’re alive.”

“Yes, well, I did what I could, now didn’t I? My father was planning to send me into hiding, God only knows where. He kept making excuses for me, saying it wasn’t my fault, it was this evil woman’s fault, and what did it matter anyway since it was only a bit of American intelligence gone awry. I’m French, he said, who cares?

“But I know my parents, particularly my mother. The disgrace would have been more than she could bear. Hell, I couldn’t deal with it, either.” He shrugged.

Jack said, “You’re saying you tried to kill Dr. MacLean to keep him from talking about Anna?”

Jean David laughed. “Finally, something you’ve got all wrong. Those two attempted hit-and-runs, and the bomb on his plane, I didn’t do those things, I wouldn’t know how. It was Anna’s associates, as she called them. Like I said, Anna didn’t leave the country. She and her friends were doing well here. They believed they could contain any fallout, and so they started off by killing that friend of Dr. MacLean’s. They found out about him because they were already following Dr. MacLean.”

“Anna told you that?” Savich asked.

“She told me everything. Then you arrested her, and she was gone from me, forever. I guess I went nuts. Those guys had three chances to get MacLean and failed. I wasn’t going to fail. But I did. You know, I couldn’t believe that nurse shot me.

“By then I’d already staged my own suicide, of course, to solve the CIA’s problem, my parents’ problem, my problem. Everyone would be happy. Using Ty’s speedboat was the only weak point in the plan, but I had no choice. I had to hope the authorities wouldn’t doubt what had happened and dig too deep. They didn’t. But you did.”

Savich said, “Telling your father you were going to kill yourself, that was an excellent touch. You were gone, your parents were safe.”

There was surprise on Jean David’s face. “You got my father to admit I killed myself? I thought he’d go to the grave with that.”

Savich nodded. “He was devastated, he no longer cared about much of anything because his only son was dead. He saw no reason not to tell me. Your mother, however, didn’t want him to.”

Jean David shrugged. “It was better with me dead than standing trial as a traitor. Trust me on that.

“As for my life, it was over once you took Anna. She is the only woman I have ever loved. I’ll bet you’ve got her jailed and being interrogated as a terrorist in some place like Guan tanamo.”

“She is a terrorist,” Jack said. “What’s even better is we got her group along with her.”

“Yeah, well, I love her. All I wanted to do was kill the man responsible but I even failed at that. I saved myself but I couldn’t save her.” Jean David fell silent, watching two pelicans follow in the cormorant’s trail. He said finally, “I understand that if it wasn’t for you, Agent Crowne, MacLean would already have died, scattered in a hundred pieces in the Appalachians.”

“Both of us would be,” Jack said.

Jean David whirled around to face him. “Dammit, my parents were his
friends
! He betrayed all of us.” He gave a harsh laugh and threw a pebble over the cliff. “I should have been the one to execute him, but I didn’t. I even told Anna I wanted to kill him, but she said I wasn’t trained, I’d fail. As if training made a bit of difference when her friends tried to kill him.

“But she was right. And would you look what happened—that corrupt bastard killed himself. I wonder if he saw any irony in that. After all, he believed that I’d killed myself.”

Jean David spat onto the rock just beyond his toe. “He knew me nearly all my life. Damn him, I was fond of him. Do you know he even visited me at college when I was a fresh-man? Just to see how I was doing, he said.” He struck his fist against his thigh. “I tell you, he deserved to die, deserved it. That trip to the hospital to kill him, I knew that was crazy. I knew it even as I was doing it, tried to talk myself out of it even as I walked up the stairs to his floor. But there was An na’s face in my mind, and I knew I’d do it anyway.” He kicked a rock with his foot. “It turns out vengeance isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Savich said, “Do you know why Dr. MacLean killed himself ?”

Jean David picked up a pebble and tossed it from hand to hand. More cormorants flew in and swooped down to the water for lunch. He said absently, “These guys prefer the bigger fish, like snapper, but they’ll take wrasse. I guess Dr. MacLean killed himself because he finally realized he was to blame for all this misery, realized he didn’t deserve to live.”

That was close enough, Jack thought. Why bother to waste his breath explaining about the disease that had robbed MacLean of himself? Jean David undoubtedly already knew about it, and didn’t believe it, or didn’t care.

Savich reached out and grabbed Jean David’s arm.

He winced. Savich dropped his arm. “It got infected, didn’t it, but it’s better now. You saw a Dr. Rodrigo in Montego Bay. He said you left it until it was nearly too late.”

“Yes, it’s better, but who cares?”

Jack said, “Did you know Dr. MacLean was also a longtime friend of my family?”

Jean David said, “I don’t suppose he tried to ruin you and your family, too?”

“Well, you see, I didn’t betray my country and refuse to take responsibility for it.”

Jean David twisted around to face him. “Look, I know you’re thinking I’m a selfish asshole. I’m not sorry about Dr. MacLean, but believe me, I regret passing secure information on to Anna because of what she did with it, sorry about all of it. But I did it, so anything I say comes across as a pitiful excuse, as self-serving, as meaningless to anyone who counts.”

Jack said, his voice emotionless, “It seems you were ready and willing to risk the lives of any number of people. I wonder how many more CIA operatives have died and will die because of the information you passed to your girlfriend.

“This woman you claim you love—she is a terrorist. She kills people. Her name isn’t Anna, it’s Halimah. She’s a Syrian fundamentalist. She’s been trained to seduce young men, to use them. She used you, played you to perfection. What she gave you was a fantasy, and you bought into it. Love? It wasn’t ever about love, and you should know that by now.

“You’re not only an asshole, Jean David, you’re pretty stupid. Talk about letting a woman lead you around by your dick. Aren’t you done with that?”

After a moment of acid silence, Savich said, “But you’ll always be smart to your parents, Jean David—their beloved, precious son who was seduced into making a few bad judgments. I don’t think they’ll ever allow themselves to accept that their son is responsible for the loss of countless innocent people.”

Jean David said, “One of the excuses my father made for me was that I couldn’t be a traitor to this country—I was only born here by accident, after all. No, France is my country, and I owe my allegiance only to France.

“The thing is, he’s dead wrong. Hell, I’m a Redskins fan. America is my country. I would never have done what I did on purpose.” He sighed. “I don’t suppose it matters now. You want to take me back, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Jack said. “We do.”

He was fast. Savich managed to grab his Redskins shirt, but it was so old, it ripped off him. He saw the white bandage on his arm as Jean David Barbeau leaped off the high limestone cliffs on the far west coast of Jamaica. He didn’t make a sound.

Savich was breathing hard, shocked and furious that he’d let him get away from him. He and Jack stood at the edge of the cliff. They saw him floating facedown seventy feet below.

“Do you think he hit those hidden rocks?”

Savich said, “I don’t think it matters.”

“His parents,” Jack said. “They’re going to be destroyed all over again.”

“Only if they find out about it. Let’s retrieve his body, see how we can get him buried here in Jamaica, and try to keep what happened here from getting back to them.”

He heard a loud squawk. Savich looked at the group of cormorants hovering some fifty feet above Jean David’s body. They hovered a moment, then winged their way out over the Caribbean.

Savich turned to Jack. “It’s odd, isn’t it, how both these cases involved obsessions with family honor and family shame. So much needless tragedy.”

“No, not in this case,” Jack said slowly, looking down at Jean David’s body, waves pushing it back and forth against the black rocks. His body would be torn to shreds, he knew, and he didn’t care. “I think it’s about a spoiled young man who found out he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.”

“All right, let’s get this done.” Savich pulled out his cell phone and called the local police captain.

EPILOGUE

I
t was a fine day in Slipper Hollow. By count, nearly half the population of Parlow, Kentucky, had made the five-mile trip to a place few of them had even known about a few short months before.

It certainly wasn’t at all hidden now. There’d been a two-dozen-car caravan driving the two-lane road, winding and turning back on itself, trees pressing in on all sides, mountains hovering, then, all of a sudden, there was a wide turnoff to the right onto another, narrower road, beautifully paved and landscaped with bushes and flowers on both sides. It was a very wide driveway, really, and it led to a beautiful hollow of land in the midst of which sat a magnificent house, built almost entirely by Gillette Janes himself.

It wasn’t to celebrate a wedding that half the town came out on this beautiful, warm fall day, it was the installation of a new cell phone tower right on the property. Now everyone had cell phones, and glory be, they worked. All the time. Deals had been made, Dougie Hollyfield knew, between the newly established Abbott Foundation and the cell phone company.

It was the middle of September, a vivid day, blue sky, the leaves beginning to change color, and the golds and oranges mixed with the remaining green made you weep with the beauty of it.

Rachael and Jack Crowne were engaged now, Sheriff Hollyfield knew, and they sure looked it, always standing close, always touching, even as they greeted people and directed them to the two huge open-sided tents, loaded with tables of food, circular tables and chairs, and hired waiters serving champagne and beer. There was even a band and a dance floor made of plywood.

Agent Dillon Savich stood with his wife, Agent Sherlock. She’d been shot, she’d admitted to Sheriff Hollyfield the day before when he’d asked her about it, and had lost her spleen, but she looked fine now. Their son, Sean, was throwing a football with half a dozen other little boys in the meadow outside the tent.

As for the engaged couple, they’d announced a Christmas wedding here at Slipper Hollow and invited everyone. Sheriff Hollyfield could imagine a White House-sized tree all decorated with lights standing in the middle of the hollow. A bit of snow would be nice.

Dougie Hollyfield, as was his habit, kept his eyes open, watching, and when a little girl ran after a Frisbee and stumbled, he immediately ran toward her. He was so fast he even beat her mother. He looked up to see Gillette Janes speaking to Jack Crowne’s older sister, dark-haired, tall and leggy like her brother, a lawyer. They looked mighty interested in each other.

He remembered how badly the house had been shot up, and he’d had to deal with the aftermath of all those people trying to kill not just Rachael, but Jack Crowne and Gillette Janes himself. What a mess that had been. But it seemed to have changed things here quite a bit, beginning with the huge building project Gillette had begun two weeks later when he’d opened up Slipper Hollow to the world around it.

Dougie Hollyfield’s cell phone blasted out “Born Free,” programmed especially for him by Agent Savich the previous day. He answered it and grinned hugely at the clear, crisp voice of one of his deputies. “What did you say? Mrs. Mick’s car broke down and she’s in labor and alone? Well, why didn’t you call Dr. Post? You don’t have his cell number?” Dougie gave it to him. “Look, he’s here, so I’ll tell him his fun is over and to meet you at the hospital with Mrs. Mick.”

He flipped his cell closed, accepted a glass of very nice champagne from a passing waiter, and walked toward Dr. Post, who was laughing at something Suzette from Monk’s Café was saying to him.

Funny how life worked, he thought, and waved to Dr. Post, who turned and lost his smile.

The cell tower party lasted until midnight. Everyone was calling everyone else, even when they stood three feet apart, and everyone was exchanging cell numbers.

It was a glorious night, a half-moon high in the sky, the music slow and dreamy now, couples dancing.

Dougie Hollyfield didn’t think there was any more champagne in Slipper Hollow.

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E
veryone shut up! All of you—get down and put your faces on the floor!” The man punctuated his order with a half dozen shots fired into the air from a submachine gun. Chunks of ceiling plaster fell onto the marble floor. In a few seconds, everyone lay flat, no one moving a muscle, the echoes of their shocked screams thick in the air.

Savich’s first thought was
Thank God Sean’s not here with me.
He slipped his hand in his jacket pocket, pressed two keys on his cell phone and lay as still as the twenty other people in the First Union Bank of Washington, D.C. He heard some sobs, but for the most part everyone lay on their stomachs in heart-racing, petrified silence, noses against the marble floor.