The Dark Hour (8 page)

He handed her another hundred euros. “If someone comes looking for us, take your time answering the door.”

She smiled. “I can be
very
slow.”

Griffin grabbed Sydney by the hand, led her down the hallway to the back of the house. When he reached the stairwell, he stopped. “Plan B,” he said. “We’re going up.”

“Up? I thought you wanted to get out of here.”

“I do. But first I need to know if we’re being followed.”

The staircase was narrow, steep. He took the stairs two at a time, and heard Sydney keeping pace behind him.

“I don’t suppose you want to tell me what’s going on?”

“I’m trying to figure it out myself,” he said. “What happened back at the house? Did you finish the sketch?”

“Only one. Of the woman. Someone came in while I was in the bathroom. I got out through the window right after they shot Petra.”

“So you think you can reproduce it?”

“The sketch? Not perfectly, but close enough.”

“Good. I’ll need you to do that. Soon.”

“After you tell me what’s going on.”

“When I can,” he said, pausing, holding his hand out for Sydney to stop, listen. He heard nothing. Yet.

“Hurry,” he said, and they continued up to the fourth floor, where a skylight, currently covered with snow, provided access to the roof. Griffin unfastened the latch, shoved the window open. “Stay here,” he said, handing Sydney her bag before he climbed out. A small table and chair stood to one side of the rooftop balcony, which was currently buried in about a foot of snow. He waded through it to the railing at the front of the house, looked down, saw the two men standing in the doorway of the establishment next door. Farther down at the opposite end of the street, two more men approached another door.

Griffin backed up, took out his phone, called Tex. “Tell me those are your men searching this street and not the thugs who killed Petra?”

“They are.”

“What the hell happened to the fifteen minutes you promised?”

“Apparently someone had the bright idea to track your cell phone. Basics, Griff. How am I supposed to fight that?”

“I’ll be in touch.” Griffin hung up, stared at the phone. He should’ve pulled its battery. He hadn’t for the simple reason that until he found Sydney, he wanted to make sure Tex could reach him with any updates. He returned to the skylight. Sydney had climbed out, was standing next to it. “I’ll have to get back to you on that drawing,” he told her. “The men downstairs have been sent here to extract us. They’re here to protect you. They know about Petra.”

“That’s good, then.”

“Yeah. About that . . .” He removed the battery from his phone, dropped both pieces in his pocket, then took her hand in his. Her fingers were warm, soft. “Those men out there. They tracked my cell. If you could stall them. Give me a bit of a head start.”

“A head start? What the hell is going on?”

He looked down, realized he was still holding her hand, and reluctantly let go. “I have to leave,” he said as she glanced back at the stairwell at the sound of someone knocking on the door below, the sound carrying all the way up.

He took a step back, then another, distancing himself. He figured he had maybe two, three minutes before they converged on this rooftop. “I’m sorry. For everything. For not calling you at Thanksgiving to say I couldn’t make it. For dragging you into this.”

“Dragging me— What are you talking about?”

“I wish I could tell you, Syd.”

And then he turned, started across the rooftop, and didn’t look back.

Chapter 12

December 5

Washington, D.C.

M
iles Cavanaugh got up from his desk and crossed the room to the liquor cabinet. Just one drink, he thought, eyeing the bottle of vodka when his aide, Stephen Severin, interrupted him. “A slight problem, sir.”

“What sort of problem?” he asked, pouring himself a glass of water instead.

“The package we were hoping to recover is not there.”

“Not there?” Miles turned, faced his aide. Severin, a slight man with brown hair, stood in the doorway, looking far too calm for a person who knew the consequences if they failed to recover the package. Of course, that was precisely why he’d hired the man, wasn’t it? His ability to remain calm in situations of crisis? “What do you mean it’s not there? Where the hell is it?”

“It wasn’t delivered to the office we thought it would be. By the time the mistake was realized, it had already been moved.”

“Does Griffin have it?”

“We don’t believe so, but we’re keeping an eye out.”

Miles looked at the bottle of vodka, thinking that one small drink would go far toward soothing his frayed nerves. He walked away from the cabinet, took a seat at his desk, stared at the gleaming mahogany surface for several seconds. “This isn’t happening.”

His aide said nothing, merely waited for instruction. And what instruction could he give? All he’d wanted was one man out of the way. To be so close . . .

He leaned back in his chair, glanced over at the liquor cabinet. In that moment, he understood why certain highly placed individuals throughout history had succumbed to the temptation of taking their own lives. Getting into things that were complicated.

Getting caught.

That the very thought occurred to him right then told him he needed to slow down, think about this. Not do anything rash.

Rash.

That’s how he’d ended up here, wasn’t it?

But he was through with rash decisions and he reached for the phone.

“Who are you calling?” his aide asked.

“Bose.”

“I don’t think the CIA will appreciate that.”

“It’s their goddamned fault I’m in this mess, and he’s in Amsterdam right now, which means he can be there within the hour.”

Bose picked up on the third ring. “Yeah.”

“It’s me. The package has been lost.”

“Sounds like a personal problem.”

“And it’ll be your personal problem if it’s not recovered. So think of something clever that won’t point to either of us and get it back. I do not want it falling into Zachary Griffin’s hands.”

Chapter 13

December 7 (two days later)

Foreign Counterintelligence Office (FCI)

FBI Headquarters

Washington, D.C.

“M
ake yourself comfortable,” the secretary told Sydney, indicating she should sit in one of two chairs facing the unoccupied desk of supervising special agent in charge of the FCI squad, Brad Pearson. “He should be back in just a moment.”

“Thank you.” Sydney settled in the right chair and focused her attention on the framed print of J. Edgar Hoover, hoping to empty her mind of the million thoughts swirling through it. There was probably a perfectly logical explanation as to why she’d been called into the FCI office, even though Foreign Counterintelligence was not a part of the Bureau she had ever personally dealt with before. She, unfortunately, couldn’t think of one reason why she was here—unless it had something to do with her trip to Amsterdam.

She’d been back two days, the whole time wondering what had happened to Griffin. Whatever he was working was not the normal case for him. But what the hell was it? Why had he taken off before his team arrived to bring her in?

The ATLAS operatives who came to get her had been tight-lipped. Granted they’d treated her with fairness at the debriefing, trying to determine who had killed Petra and why. All she could tell them was that she didn’t recognize the two men’s voices, and yes, it appeared they were looking for something—what that might be she didn’t know. What concerned her inquisitors the most was Griffin’s involvement, and all she could tell them was that she had no idea what Griffin was about or where he’d taken off to, only that he seemed in a hurry to leave before they’d arrived.

Was there some other connection to ATLAS? She couldn’t imagine one. When the ATLAS agents had debriefed her in Amsterdam, they had informed her that all aspects having to do with the sketch and Petra’s murder were on a need-to-know basis—and no one at the Bureau needed to know. Her cover story, provided by ATLAS, was that she’d gone to Amsterdam for a simple sketch, because the reporter who’d witnessed a murder needed an artist who spoke English. It didn’t matter that English was widely spoken throughout the entire Netherlands; this was the story they were sticking to.
Nothing
was to be revealed about her involvement with ATLAS to anyone outside the organization.

It seemed forever before SSA Pearson walked in. Tall, his salt-and-pepper hair shaved close, his requisite dark suit and tie favored by supervisors, he cut an impressive figure. His gray eyes took her in at a glance as she stood and they shook hands. “Sorry for the delay,” he told her. “You can imagine how swamped we are after Senator Grogan’s murder.”

“I wasn’t aware your office was investigating it,” she said, taking her seat once more.

“We’re assisting. He served on the Intelligence Committee about two years back and we did his background. Just checking to make sure there’s nothing in the files that might have been overlooked. You know they caught the shooter.”

“I’d heard.”

“A schizophrenic who had been off his meds. Apparently he committed suicide in the jail.”

This she hadn’t heard. “He wasn’t under a mental health watch?”

“He was. He made a noose out of his shirt and hung himself from the bed frame. It happens.” Pearson walked around to his desk, sat, straightened his desk blotter, then leaned back in his chair. “Which brings me to why you’re here. Your name came up through one of the intelligence agencies we share data with,” he said. “An MI5 agent.”

“A British agent?” she said, shocked. Then again, maybe this did have something to do with ATLAS. Pearson supervised the Spy vs. Spy branch of the Bureau, which shared intelligence with a number of agencies throughout the world in their fight against terrorism. She had assumed that ATLAS, being black ops and extremely covert, was not one of the agencies on their radar. Of course, some of what FCI did was so top secret, she couldn’t be sure. Not knowing how to respond, she folded her hands in her lap, and said, “My name? Why?”

“That’s precisely what we hope to find out. What I’m about to tell you is confidential. Apparently MI5 has been monitoring chatter from a group believed to be involved in the attempted assassination of one of their politicians from the House of Commons. They think it may be tied to the same group who killed Senator Grogan.”

“Senator Grogan?” Sydney stared a moment, waiting for some sort of explanation. “I thought he was killed by a schizophrenic. I don’t get it.”

“Neither do we. Which is why you’re here. MI5 would like to know what sort of involvement you’ve had with the senator in the past.”

“I’ve never even met him,” she said. “The only involvement, if one could call it that, is the coincidence of my doing a surveillance on the same day as his murder. A botched surveillance at that. So unless someone set up the whole thing to divert attention, I can’t say.”

“We are looking into that angle, but at this point we don’t think they’re in any way connected.”

“Are you sure it was me they were talking about? Fitzpatrick is probably more common over there.”

“Positive.”

“In what context was my name used?”

“That you were an FBI agent working out of Quantico.”

Which pretty much narrowed it down. Rattled, but trying not to show it, she said, “I have no idea what this is about.”

“So you understand why, in light of the circumstances, we’re concerned for your safety.”

“Thank you. I’ll be careful.”

He slid a sheet of paper across the desk.

She picked it up. Saw it was a vacation request, filled out, lacking only her signature. “I don’t understand.”

“We think it best that you took time off until we sort through this.”

“But—”

“Sign the paper, Fitzpatrick. When it comes to promotions, vacation leave looks far better than administrative leave.”

She stared at the document, anger and frustration surging through her. This was Griffin’s fault. ATLAS’s fault.

Take a deep breath, Syd
, she told herself, trying to work past the feeling of utter helplessness. Forced vacation leave because she’d been kind enough to assist an outside agency? What next? Suddenly she wondered about this report from MI5, and what it meant to her career.

“Do you need a pen?”

She nodded once, abruptly.

He handed the pen to her and she signed her name, then left, trying to decide what to do next. If her name was linked to a murdered senator, and she was forced to take leave, what exactly did that mean? That someone thought she was involved?

None of this made sense, she told herself, getting on the elevator and hitting the ground floor button. She knew nothing about the senator or his politics. But she knew someone who did. Her ex, Mr. Fast Track to the Top, Scott Ryan.

And that was enough for her. She got off on Scotty’s floor instead. He was digging through a file box on his desk, pulling out manila folders, flipping through the documents.

“Hey,” she said. “Shouldn’t you be at lunch?”

“Eating in,” he replied. “Too much going on trying to sort through all the files on Grogan before I send them up to FCI.”

“FCI?” she said, casually. “Any idea why they’re involved?”

“Hard to say with those guys. You realize Grogan’s was the first background I ever did when I took this position?”

“No.”

Scotty held up some document. “I remember the day I interviewed his wife. Nice woman. She actually baked cookies for me. Sort of spoiled me for every other background since.”

Sydney glanced at the paper, figuring it was the transcript of his interview with her. “Are you going to Senator Grogan’s funeral?”

“No. It’s in Rhode Island. There’s a memorial service here in D.C. this afternoon for him, though. And a reception at the house.”

Just where she needed to be. “You should go. At least to the reception. Pay your condolences before she leaves for Rhode Island. I’d go with you if you want.”