The Painted Messiah (5 page)
There was no answer. He had lost his headset and goggles when he hit the water. He whistled, failing miserably, then found his flashlight and signaled once, hesitated, then twice more. Kate flashed her light once, and Ethan heard the outboard motor purr. He looked up toward the top of the cliff again. Still empty. Kate brought the raft to him and leaned over with her hand held out. He took her wrist and the grab line. Rearing up out of the water he fell across the raft.
Corbeau could hear them pulling away with a small outboard motor as he climbed aboard his cruiser. He signaled Bremmer toward one of the Jet skis and pressed the keypad by the pilot's wheel to open the gates of the dock. The cruiser's triple engines roared to life, but the gates did not move.
'Open the gates!' he shouted.
Bremmer pulled forward and tried the key pad. 'Jammed!' he called.
Corbeau swore angrily and killed the motor. 'Call the police!'
While Bremmer spoke on the phone, Corbeau cursed his folly and paced the deck. For days he had been waiting for another attempted kidnap, never imagining the real danger.
And now it was too late.
October 3, 2006.
Because she had never gotten the field out of her blood, Jane Harrison came in from the west side of the park and took a piece of high ground for no better reason than to observe Thomas Malloy reading his newspaper. Malloy did his best not to notice. Jane had been his boss too many years for him not to play to her vanities.
He was seated under a canopy of golden leaves by one of the roads running through Central Park just off Fifth Avenue. Malloy had boulders at his back, a stream and woods covering his left flank. The weather was cool and cloudy and it was early, so there were not too many people in the park yet. At precisely the moment he had indicated they should meet, Jane walked down the hill, crossed a piece of pavement and sat beside him. Looking like an Upper West Side matron she arranged herself comfortably and began to work on a fairly impressive piece of needlework. It was a skill Malloy had not known she possessed. 'You've become a trusting soul since retirement, T. K.'
Jane Harrison was sixty-two years old, as trim and plain as the day Malloy had met her. She had not changed her hair in twenty-five years. Even the colour, a dull salt-and-pepper, remained a constant. Jane had been at Langley so long everyone imagined it was where she had started, but Malloy's father had told him years ago that Jane began her professional life playing the part of a disaffected expatriate wandering through Europe.
Following a series of raids and bloody assassinations of the Italian Communists, who were 'knee-capping' American tourists among their other victims, Jane transferred quietly into Langley, trading in her beads, long hair, and free love credo for the bureaucrat's uniform. She worked for a while as an analyst, then crossed the hall and rejoined operations at a supervisory level. Malloy had never confirmed the story, but legend had it that Ted Kennedy in his younger days had struck out with her at a party. Complaining bitterly about it, he had called her the Iron Maiden. True or not, the moniker attached itself, and that was still how most people referred to her. At least behind her back.
Malloy had met Jane shortly after Reagan began his second term. A young operative, Malloy's first tour of duty overseas had ended disastrously. He was expecting a life sentence inside Langley, probably as the Iron Maiden's Boy Friday. To his astonishment, Jane offered him a chance to redeem himself with the most coveted overseas assignments in the agency, a three-year tour of duty in Switzerland as a NOC, a NOC being any officer operating with No Official Cover. Years later Malloy realised what kind of courage it took for her to do that, but even as a young man he had been impressed by her confidence in him.
'I'm meeting the deputy director of operations for a notoriously paranoid government agency in Central Park, Jane. That means we've got guardian angels all around us. Why shouldn't I take advantage of the extra security and enjoy my newspaper?'
'Assume nothing, my friend. Didn't I teach you that?'
Malloy folded his paper and began scanning the classifieds. Jane's message to him was running again. So was his response.
The last time Malloy had seen Jane Harrison had been at his retirement party. Jane had told him when the time was right she would be able to offer him all the contract work he could handle, but for a while he was on his own. It was not the kind of promise supervisors offered at the typical thirty and thirty-five-year retirement parties. Malloy wasn't an old warhorse turned out to pasture and given promises so he could keep his dignity.
He had been an accomplished operative sidelined by the new director of operations. Rather than get old behind a desk he had taken his twenty-year-pension and walked. Jane made the promise. Like a good operative Malloy settled down with his cover and waited. He read the classifieds every morning, the
Times
when he was stateside, the
Herald Tribune
when he was abroad. Two days ago, Jane had finally run the lonely hearts advertisement they had agreed on. Malloy's answer ran the following morning setting up the rendezvous.
'What do you have for me?' he asked.
Jane concentrated on her needlepoint. 'You're not going to like it.'
'I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you've got something that involves breaking a number of federal laws without benefit of immunity.'
Jane ran a couple of stitches through her needlepoint while another jogger passed them. 'Nothing outrageous, I don't think. About as felonious as crossing against the light, but given the present political climate it's probably to our advantage to have a bit of credible deniability, just in case. An ex-operative with a chip on his shoulder, a grudge in his heart, and a history of pissing in the wind ought to be sufficient for the occasion.'
'I fit the profile.'
'I assume you know J. W. Richland?'
'The televangelist?' Malloy fought the urge to complain, but Jane caught his tone.
'A friend of the Administration, T. K.'
'Tell me you want me to cut his tongue out. I'll work for free.'
Jane was a good soldier, but even she smiled at this. 'Nobody has to know about this. We're sure not going to put it on paper, and I don't think Richland will either.'
'I'll know. Isn't that enough?'
'Don't tell me you've gone out and bought a conscience?'
'I've been thinking about getting one ever since I left the agency - as long as they don't cost too much.'
'They cost plenty, T. K., and give you nothing but grief.'
'Voice of experience?'
Jane looked out across the park, the shadow of a smile playing at her lips. Italy - living her cover? It was hard to imagine Jane with a sex life, harder still to think of her belonging to the free love generation. 'I gave up the Girl Scouts years ago, T. K.'
'Could have fooled me.'
'Richland had a painting stolen from his estate. A few weeks ago he got a telephone call from an art dealer in Zürich who wants to sell the thing to him.'
'A ransom?'
'The preacher hands over twenty-five million, and he gets his painting back.'
'Million?'
'Who knew the Lord paid so well?'
Malloy thought about it for moment, and finally decided to ask the obvious question just to hear Jane's explanation. 'Why not go to the police?'
'Some question of provenance, I take it.'
'The Reverend J. W. Richland dealing in black market paintings? Wouldn't the
Times
love a piece of that?'
'Black market is such an ugly expression, T. K.'
'Almost as bad as smuggling.'
'Smuggling is the one thing you don't have to do. Charlie has asked Bob Whitefield to carry it in a diplomatic pouch. All you do is make the exchange and pass it to Whitefield at the Zürich Airport. Once he clears customs stateside, you take the thing back and make the delivery.'
'Why not just get Whitefield to take care of the whole thing?'
'If anything goes wrong, it won't be at customs, not with a diplomatic pouch. The risk falls to you.
Richland knows he's going to have to pay for this, by the way. As a favour to me I hope you charge him plenty.'
'Any indication that something might go wrong?'
'I got to be an old woman because I always expect something will go wrong.'
'Didn't I read that Richland is dying?'
'Old news, T. K. The doctors gave him six months to live eight or ten months ago. According to his new book, the preacher fired them all and went down on his knees.'
'Right.
Pray for a Miracle.
I tried it, but he's still on my TV.' Jane was silent, waiting. Not that he was considering a pass. Malloy had committed himself the moment he answered Jane's classified. If he walked away from this, he walked away for good. He wasn't ready to do that. 'So where do I find him?'
Jane tipped her head toward the south end of the park. 'He's at the Plaza. Ask for Mr Gideon.'
Slipping his city gun, a Sigma .380, out of its holster, Malloy tried to hand it to the muscle-bound plainclothes security officer guarding J. W. Richland's suite.
'That's okay,' the young man named Mike answered with an oddly soft voice, 'but I'll need this.' He reached tentatively for Malloy's cell phone. Malloy nodded permission and slipped his gun back into its tiny holster at the small of his back. The big man set the phone on a table delicately and brought a wand out of his hip holster. He passed it over Malloy's body, again with Malloy's permission. He was checking for transmitting devices.
'It's a funny world,' Malloy offered pleasantly, 'when a telephone is more dangerous than a gun.' Mike touched him lightly just to make sure Malloy was not wearing something as old fashioned as a miniature tape recorder, and agreed affably. It certainly was. Stepping away, he rapped his thick knuckles on the door, and Malloy heard the muffled voice of J. W. Richland.
The suite was a study in antique white: carpet, walls, furniture and curtains. At the window overlooking the park, a silver haired man turned cheerfully to receive Malloy. A young woman perched on a settee close by. Richland was average height, somewhere in his sweet- sixties. He wore a dark blue suit without the jacket, a white shirt, a scarlet tie and matching suspenders. The woman was a year or two beyond thirty. She had black hair pulled back tightly, not a lock of it out of place, lustrous dark eyes that missed nothing, and sensuously thick lips. Malloy was guessing she had bought the breasts.
She studied Malloy briefly with the air of one inspecting the hired help, then turned her attention back to Richland. It was enough to break the heart of a lesser man.
'Mr Malloy!' Richland shouted affectionately. He had his TV smile turned on, the Southwestern accent toned down. He met Malloy's gaze with intelligent blue eyes, and Malloy decided Richland didn't look like a man with a medical death sentence hanging over his head, no matter what his doctors said. Perhaps it was that thing the born-againers nurtured in abundance, overweening optimism. 'Thank you for coming on such short notice!'
Malloy was fairly sure no one in the last couple of decades had refused a meeting with J. W. Richland, short notice or not, but he answered in the spirit of the remark. 'My pleasure, Reverend.'
A curious thing happened as they shook hands. Richland met Malloy's gaze and let the moment stretch out a beat longer than necessary. He was not sure what the preacher expected to accomplish with this, but then it came to him. It was pure habit. This was supposed to be a great moment for Malloy, not a ceremony to be hurried through. Surely someday he would want to tell people about it. Shaking hands with J. W. Richland! Love him or hate him, it didn't matter. Richland was that big.
'You come highly recommended among people I respect,' Richland announced.
'Glad to hear it.'
Still holding Malloy's hand, he added, 'Are you as good as they say?'
There was a peculiar hint of challenge in this, but Malloy let it go. 'You know how it is these days,' he smiled and broke Richland's hold on him. 'A man is only as good as the PR firm he hires.'
Richland laughed with a bright explosion of mirth Malloy had a hard time disliking. 'Trust me, the real danger comes when you start believing your own press!'
'I'm a determined skeptic, Reverend, especially about my own press.'
'But you get the job done? That's what they tell me.'
This was serious. He wanted assurances. Malloy had not expected this and tucked it away to think about later. 'When I was twenty-four years old, a G. I. doctor
in Beirut told me "l don't die easily, sir. That's all I can promise you."'
Richland laughed grandly and clapped his hands. This was a gesture Malloy had seen him perform on TV. Usually when he did it he would say, 'Can I hear an Amen?'
'Don't die easily! My, that's good! He turned to the woman, who was still seated by the window. 'A man after my own heart, Nikki!' Then to explain himself, as if that were necessary, he said, 'Eleven months ago I had three doctors sit me down and tell me there was no way I was going to live another six months, Mr Malloy. You know what I did?'
