The Protégé (33 page)

22

GILLETTE HAD BEEN
waiting two hours for Derrick Walker on the ground floor of the same Georgetown parking garage where he’d met Ted Casey, the CIA cutout specialist, a few days ago. They must have gotten Walker, too, he realized. Walker had had a day and a half to get here, but he was a no-show.

Gillette had spent the last two nights outside in the elements. Saturday night, beneath a railroad bridge in southwest Washington fighting a torrential rain; last night, beneath the stars on a steam grate near the Washington Monument along with three indigents, bundled up in blankets. It had turned unusually cold for early October after the rain had passed through. He hadn’t used his credit cards, cash card, or cell phone until this morning, not wanting to give anyone any clue to where he was. Now he didn’t care.

It was five after ten, and he needed to get to Tysons Corner out in northern Virginia—a twenty-minute cab ride from here. He let out a frustrated breath. He really could have used Walker.

TYSONS CORNER
was fifteen miles west of downtown Washington, D.C., and only a few miles from where Gillette, Boyd, and Ganze had first met. One anchor of the Dulles Corridor—the area’s high-tech center stretching to Dulles Airport fifteen miles farther west—Tysons was also the location of two large, popular shopping malls—Tysons I and II—that were less than half a mile apart.

Tysons II, built on a hill overlooking the area, was a sprawling three-level structure full of upscale shops and restaurants, all attached to a Ritz-Carlton Hotel and two office buildings rising up on either side of the Ritz. Gillette had stayed at the hotel several times in the last few years for technology conferences, so he knew the mall well. Also called the Galleria, the mall would be crowded now at lunchtime, which was perfect for what he was planning.

It was twelve-twenty. Gillette had called Boyd and Ganze forty minutes ago, giving them until twelve-thirty to get here. They’d agreed to come immediately. Gillette now knew how important the flash drive was.

He grimaced. Mary was so timid, but she’d shown so much courage in giving him the drive. He had no doubt they’d gotten to her. Davis, too. Getting to Mary and Davis was the only way they could have connected the dots and known about the flash drive so fast. He just hoped they’d been merciful and ended it quickly for both of them. And he hoped that if something went wrong in the next few minutes, they’d do the same for him.

Gillette walked slowly, a Washington Nationals baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, looking around constantly as he approached PF Chang’s, a popular, high-end Chinese restaurant located at the mall’s northwest entrance. He wasn’t worried about Boyd’s people—including the Carbone family—trying to kill him. Boyd needed the flash drive almost as badly as he needed his next breath, so they weren’t going to do anything stupid. Not yet, anyway. But the police or some bystander might. If he was still being accused of Becky Rouse’s murder, the cops would be on the lookout for him, even over here on the western side of the bay. And if his face had been on the news, there was always the chance some do-gooder might try to take him just to get his name in the paper.

Gillette moved through the mall to the escalator and took it up to the third level, then followed the concourse to a Hallmark store in front of the south escalators. Boyd was standing in front of the store, alone, as Gillette had instructed.

“Well, well, look what the cat dragged in,” Boyd said as Gillette stopped ten feet away. “You look like crap.”

“But I’m alive.”

“Only because I want you that way. Now give me the drive,” Boyd demanded.

“Not yet.”

“I told you, pal, I have a lot of friends in the right places. I can take Everest down in a heartbeat. Find something wrong with it and you in no time.” He sneered. “Hell, there’s already a kiddie porn aggregator on your hard drive at Everest, Christian, pulling enough nasty videos onto your machine to put you away for a few years. We installed it yesterday, remotely. But no one will ever know it was done that way. All the feds will know is that Christian Gillette is into kiddie porn. How’s that gonna look in
The New York Times,
pal?”

“I have the flash drive. The rest will take care of itself. The truth will out.”

“I’m glad you think so. I’m glad you’re that naÏve.”

“You live in your world, Norman, I’ll live in mine.”

“And of course,” Boyd continued, “you’ve got that little issue of murdering the Rouse woman down in Chatham.”

“You know I didn’t kill her.”

“But the cops think you did. That’s all that matters.
Now, give me the damn drive.
”

Gillette moved a few steps closer. “What? You think I’m going to just hand it over so your Carbone friends can pop out of a couple of these stores and mow me down?” He saw shock register on Boyd’s face. “That would be pretty stupid, wouldn’t it? Those guys don’t mind making a hit in a public place. They don’t mind killing anyone anywhere, right?”

Boyd shook in silent rage.

Gillette could tell he’d hit a nerve. His suspicions were dead-on. “Look, all I want is closure, Norman. That’s all I’ve ever wanted from you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want answers. Answers you and Ganze promised to give me about my mother and father.”

“I don’t know anything about that. You’ll have to talk to Daniel, but you didn’t want him with me.”

“But he’s here at the mall, right?”

Boyd nodded. “Like I said, I don’t know anything about those questions of yours.”

“I think you do. I think you made Ganze and everyone else believe you didn’t, but I think you know everything. I think you threw Marilyn McRae to Ganze and me. I’m sure she would have sworn to Ganze and me until the day she died that she really was my mother, but I know she’s not. What did you give her, Norman? Money? A career? Promise her the world if she’d do a few favors for you and your government cronies? You’ve probably manipulated her for years.” Gillette hesitated. “Like you manipulated the sale of the Vegas franchise to Everest so your Carbone buddies could get their money through Carmine Torino, and ultimately get their claws into the casino. We were the only ones who put in a bid that included a casino, weren’t we, Norman?”

Boyd smiled slightly.

“It was perfect. You’re always looking for ways to pay the Carbones back for the dirty work. The tortures and the assassinations. Right? You called a few of the owners you have in your hip pocket and influenced them to give Everest the nod in the auction, even though there was another bid that was fifty million dollars higher. You rigged that thing, didn’t you?”

Boyd shrugged. “You’ll never prove it.”

“How can you possibly influence NFL owners?”

“A favor here, a favor there. Make a woman who’s about to file a palimony suit disappear, help a father when his kid gets into drug trouble. There’s all kinds of ways, Christian. Everybody has their problems. As long as you know about them, you can make things go your way.”

“How long have you been working with the Carbones?” Gillette asked.

“All right, that’s enough. Give me the fucking drive.”

Gillette stared at Boyd hard. “Is that what my father really uncovered, Norman? That you were working with the Mafia? Is that why you killed him? There wasn’t any plot to kill the president. You were the plot.”

Boyd’s eyes flashed to Gillette’s. “What?” An odd expression came over his face.

“Is that why you killed my father?” Gillette repeated, louder this time.

“Are you out of your mind? What kind of question is that?”

“I have pictures of you and Lana sitting on the patio at the house in Bel Air just weeks before my father was killed. That’s when Lana gave you the names of the women my father had children with. You tried to extort my father, telling him you were going to leak the details of his affairs to the newspapers so he’d have to resign his Senate seat. But it didn’t work, did it? He was going to expose you no matter what. Expose your relationship to the Carbones, all the things you’d stolen from the government, then sold. Like you’re trying to steal the nanotechnology now. You’ve murdered innocent people in the name of national security, but it has nothing to do with national security. It’s all about you. All about making you and your pals rich.”

Boyd’s face went blank.

Gillette moved closer, until their faces were just inches apart. “Tell me if I’m right, Norman. I have to know.” He nodded slowly, submissively. “I know you can take me down. I know you can nail me for Becky Rouse’s murder. I’m sure you’ve done a lot worse to people who’ve done a lot less.”

“You’re damn right I have.”

“So tell me if I’m right. Then you get your drive.”

Boyd’s mouth slowly broke into a slight grin, then he chuckled. “You’re a smart man, Christian. Brave, too. You could have worked for me.” He took a deep breath. “Now, give me my goddamn drive.”

Gillette spotted two men emerging from the Hallmark store. He slammed Boyd’s chin with a right cross, then turned and raced toward the escalator, leaping four steps at a time, bowling over two men in front of him. As he reached the second floor, two more men came at him from Bebe, a woman’s clothing store. One of them hit him high and the other low, and the three of them tumbled to the ground, knocking over a young woman who shrieked as she rolled away. Gillette felt them forcing his hands behind his back roughly.

Then suddenly a stream of agents poured out of several stores, wrestled the two men off Gillette, lifted them to their feet, and slammed them up against the wall facefirst.

As soon as he was free, Gillette jumped to his feet and sprinted down the concourse to the entrance to the Ritz. He raced inside it and through the main lobby to the elevators that would take him to the hotel’s arrival lobby.

BOYD TOUCHED
his chin and moaned. Gillette’s punch had knocked him out, and he was just getting his senses back. He made it to his hands and knees groggily, then stood up slowly. As his vision cleared, he noticed a man standing in front of him.

“Hello, Mr. Boyd. I’m Ted Casey. I’m with the Central Intelligence Agency.” Casey signaled to several men behind him. “Take him away.”

GILLETTE MOVED
through the main entrance of the Ritz-Carlton and trotted across the courtyard toward the ground floor of the office building to the right of the hotel. Once inside the revolving glass door, he turned left toward the Palm restaurant.

“Tim.”

The host looked up from behind the stand. “Yes?”

“I’m Christian. I was here about an hour ago. I rented a wine box.”

“Oh, of course.”

“I need to get in there.”

“Sure, follow me.”

Tim led Christian to the wine boxes—ten across and ten high, available for personal wines people wanted to have on hand for a special meal. “Which one is yours?”

“Twelve.”

Tim handed Gillette a key.

Gillette unlocked the small door and reached inside for the flash drive. It was there, exactly where he’d left it. “Thanks.”

Gillette moved out of the restaurant and turned left, past the elevators toward the parking garage. Casey was to have left him a car on the third level. He moved out the back door, then headed up the steps.

“Stop right there.”

Gillette’s eyes snapped up from the steps. Daniel Ganze stood in front of him on the first landing, gun drawn.

“Give me the drive, Christian.”

Gillette stopped short, shocked, glancing from the gun to Ganze’s eyes. Finally, he shook his head. “It’s over, Ganze. Boyd’s in custody by now.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about Boyd.”

Gillette shook his head. Ganze didn’t understand. “You don’t have to go down, too. It’s Boyd they want.”

“And it’s the drive I want. We have to make sure it’s protected.”

“There was no spy, Ganze,” Gillette assured him, “no terrorist outfit. That was all part of Boyd’s cover.”

Ganze smiled. “Perfect, wasn’t it?”

Gillette’s eyes narrowed. “Huh?”

“I can assure you that there absolutely is a terrorist connection,” Ganze snapped. “And it’s about to pay off.” He stepped forward and grabbed the flash drive from Gillette’s shirt pocket, then stepped back, raised the gun, and aimed it at Gillette.

The explosion was deafening in the stairwell. Gillette dropped to his knees, bracing for excruciating pain. But there was nothing. Nothing but the sound of Ganze falling to the ground and his gun clattering down several steps.

Gillette opened his eyes and looked up the stairway. Quentin Stiles was looking back.

23

GILLETTE AND STILES
sat on a courtyard bench in front of the Ritz-Carlton. It had been three hours since Stiles had shot Daniel Ganze dead. Ted Casey’s men had removed the body, and the flash drive was back in Gillette’s pocket.

“Okay, thanks,” Gillette said, ending the call.

“Who was that?” Stiles asked.

“Casey,” Gillette replied curtly.

“Oh, yeah? What did he say?”

Gillette bit his lip. He was overjoyed that his best friend was alive, but torn up by what he’d been put through. Made to think Stiles was dead. “His people just finished interrogating one of the Carbone guys they shot at the mall.”

“They find out anything good?”

Gillette stretched. In a few minutes, he was getting a room at the Ritz and sleeping for two days. “David Wright killed a woman in a West Village sex shop a couple of weeks ago.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“The Carbones knew about it. That’s how Celino got Wright to do what he wanted. They had pictures and a tape of Wright doing it.”

“What’s going to happen to him? They gonna prosecute?”

“Casey’s already turned everything over to the New York Police Department. He doesn’t know anything more than that. But I’m sure David will end up behind bars.”

“What about Miles Whitman?” Stiles asked.

“The Carbones killed Whitman in France at Boyd’s direction. Tortured him until he told them how to find Tom McGuire. Whitman was feeding McGuire money once a month from the forty million the CIA helped him stash away before he ran last year.”

“Why was the CIA helping Whitman?”

“He let them use North America Guaranty as a cutout for years. Basically helped them spy on a lot of individuals in this country, especially high net worth people.”

Stiles spat. “Nice world we live in, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“But why would the CIA tell Boyd where Whitman was?”

“Agencies cooperate. But the CIA brass obviously didn’t know Boyd was working with the Carbones.”

“What about Allison Wallace?” Stiles wanted to know. “Was she working with the Carbones like Wright told you?”

“No,” Gillette answered. “That was Celino disinformation. He was just trying to manipulate Wright with that one. She’s straight. Turns out her assistant, Hamid, is okay, too.” He held up his hand. “Oh, wait a minute, you don’t know about Hamid. You’ve been dead for a week.”

Stiles chuckled. “Derrick Walker told me about that. How Allison was out in the lobby and my guys wouldn’t let him in.” He laughed louder.

“It isn’t funny, Quentin.”

“Come on, Chris, ease up.”

“Fuck you,” Gillette snapped. He’d been wanting to say that for three hours.

“Hey, I just saved your life,” Stiles shot back. “You could at least be a
little
grateful.”

“You put a lot of people through a lot of pain.”

“I had to. It was the only way.”

Gillette gritted his teeth. “Why? Why’d you do it?”

Stiles looked out over the courtyard. “My guys swept the yacht the morning of the cruise and we found a rifle in the bunkroom. We figured out pretty quick it was the mate’s. We took him downstairs before you got there, did a little influencing. He came clean about how he’d agreed to kill me for the Mob, so we decided to use it. Put the guy into ‘protective custody’ so the Mob figured he’d run because he thought they’d knock him off. I told you, I was working something in Philly with my contacts, and I figured I might be able to find out more quickly if the guys I was investigating thought they’d killed me. What I was on to was basically what you figured out. That the Carbones were working with the government. I just didn’t know which agency. Like I said, Walker kept me up to speed about was going on. He called me from Chatham right before they put him in jail. That’s how I caught up with you.”

Gillette shook his head and stood up. He’d heard enough, and he could barely keep his eyes open. “I’m going to bed.”

“You better take a shower first,” Stiles said, standing up, too. “You need one.”

Gillette started to walk off without answering.

“Yo, Chris!” Stiles called.

Gillette turned around. “What is it?”

Stiles moved slowly to where Gillette stood, hesitated a moment, then embraced him. “I’m sorry, man. I’m sorry I did that to you. I was just trying to help.”

Gillette took a deep breath, then hugged Stiles back. Life was too short to be angry at your best friend for long. “I know.”

After a few moments, they stepped back.

Gillette swallowed hard. “Quentin, I um . . . I, well . . .” He could feel his heart pounding. He wanted to say it, but he didn’t know how. “You know I—”

“Yeah, I know,” Stiles interrupted, grinning.

“Thanks,” Gillette said quietly, letting out a long breath. “Hey, where you going?” Stiles was heading off across the grass.

“Chatham. I gotta get Walker out of jail.”