Thriller (46 page)

hadn’t been paying much attention to her. While Sergeant Blake

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took their driver’s licenses and headed back to his patrol car,

Harold had stomped up to the highway to see what evidence had

been marked in rubber. After surveying the damage to his pickup

once more, Harold shook his head, making that annoying
“tsk,

tsk”
sound Maggie’s mother had used earlier.

Maggie stayed in her own territory, wanting to tell Harold

that he should be grateful. His damage was minimal compared

to her ripped-off bumper and smashed driver’s side. The gaping

wound in her car’s front end now had protruding pieces of metal

shards like daggers. What a mess! There was no way she was taking the blame for any of this. So it had been several minutes before Maggie noticed her mother now standing in front of the

opened passenger door of the pickup, her hands on her hips, tilting her head and nodding as if concentrating on what the old

woman inside the vehicle had to say. Just then her mother looked

back, caught Maggie’s eyes and waved her over.

Maggie’s first thought was that the poor woman was injured.

Harold hadn’t even bothered to check on her. Why hadn’t she

thought of it sooner? She rushed to the pickup, glancing over

her shoulder, but both men were focused elsewhere.

The two women were whispering to each other. From what

Maggie could see of the old woman, she didn’t look as if she was

in pain. However, there were several old bruises on her arms—

old because they were already turning a greenish yellow. Her

arthritic fingers tapped the seat with an uncontrollable tremor.

She seemed even smaller and more fragile inside the cab of the

pickup, curled into a hunched-over position.

“He does scare me sometimes,” the woman said to Kathleen

O’Dell, although her eyes were looking over at Maggie.

“It’s not right,” Maggie’s mother told her, and then, as if only

realizing Maggie was by her side, she said, “Rita says he hits her

sometimes.” She pointed to the woman’s bruises, and Rita folded

her thin arms over her chest as if to hide the evidence.

“The accident was his fault, Kathleen,” Rita said. “He slammed

right into your car. But you know I can’t say that.” She rubbed

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her shoulders as if they, too, were sore and bruised underneath

her cotton blouse.

Maggie watched the two women, surprised that they spoke to

each other as if they were old friends. Why was it that Kathleen

O’Dell could so easily befriend a stranger but not have a clue

about her own daughter?

“Rita says that sometimes he comes after her with a hammer

at night,” Maggie’s mother whispered while she glanced around.

Feeling safe, she continued, “He tells her she might not wake up

in the morning.”

“He’s a wicked boy, my Harold,” the old woman said, shaking

her head, her fingers drumming out of control now.

“What’s going on?” Harold yelled, hurrying back from surveying the skid marks.

“We’re just chatting with your mom,” Maggie told him. “That’s

not a problem, is it?”

“Not unless she’s telling you lies,” he said, a bit breathless.

“She lies all the time.”

Maggie thought it seemed a strange thing to say about one’s

mother, but Harold said it as casually as if it were part of an introduction, just another one of his mother’s personality traits. He

didn’t, however, look as casual when he noticed Sergeant Blake

approaching.

“Funny, she was just saying the same about you,” Kathleen

O’Dell said. “That you’re the liar.”

Maggie wanted to catch her mother’s attention long enough

to shoot her a warning look. No such luck.

“What’s going on?” This time it was Sergeant Blake’s question.

“She says you beat her.” Kathleen didn’t back down from confronting Harold, probably feeling safe with Maggie standing between the two of them.

“Kathleen, you promised,” Rita wailed at her, another panicked screech.

Maggie met her mother’s eyes, again hoping to stop her, but

she continued. “She said you’ve come after her with a hammer.”

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There was no grin on Sergeant Blake’s face now, and Harold’s

had resumed a softer crimson color. This time Maggie knew it

was anger, not embarrassment, and saw his hands at his sides,

his fingers flexing and closing into fists.

“For God’s sake,” he muttered with an attempted laugh. “She

says that about everybody. The old lady’s crazy.”

“Really?” Sergeant Blake asked and Maggie noticed that the

young trooper’s hands were on his belt again, but now only

inches from his weapon.

“Two days ago she said the same thing about her mailman.”

Harold wiped at the sweat on his forehead. “For God’s sake, she

lies about everything.”

Maggie looked back at Rita, who had pulled herself deeper inside the pickup. Now she had her cane in her shaking hands as

if worried she might need a weapon of her own.

Maggie wasn’t sure what happened next. It all seemed like a

blur even to a trained law officer like herself. She had seen it happen before. Words were exchanged. Tempers flared and suddenly there was no taking back any of it.

She remembered Sergeant Blake telling Harold he’d need to go

with him to the station to answer some questions. To which

Harold said he had had enough of “this nonsense.” Harold started

to walk away, going around to the driver’s side of the pickup as

if to simply leave. Maybe a more experienced state trooper would

have been more commanding with his voice or his presence, but

Sergeant Blake felt it necessary to emphasize his request with a

shove. Of course, Harold shoved back. Before Maggie could interfere, Harold lay on the ground, the back of his head cracked

against the ripped metal of his own pickup. His wide eyes and

that blank stare told Maggie O’Dell he was dead even before she

bent over him to take his pulse.

Three hours later Maggie and her mother took Rita home, following the woman’s directions, despite those changing several

times en route. Maggie recognized her behavior as shock, and

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patiently waited for the old woman to issue a new set of directions. Otherwise, the woman hadn’t said much. Back at the state

police station, Kathleen O’Dell had asked her if there was someone they should call. Even after it was decided that Maggie would

drive Rita home, Kathleen still kept asking if there was anyone

who could come stay with her. But Rita only shook her head.

Finally they pulled up to the curb of a quaint yellow bungalow

at the end of a street lined with huge oaks and large green lawns.

“I don’t know what I’ll do without that boy,” Rita said suddenly. “He was all I had.”

There was silence. Maggie and her mother looked at each

other. Was it simply the shock?

“But you said he beat you?” Kathleen O’Dell reminded her.

“Oh, no, no. Harold would never lay a hand on me.”

“You said he came after you at night with a hammer.”

This time both Maggie and her mother turned to look over the

seat at the woman who sat up in the back, grabbing for the door

handle.

“My Harold would never hurt me,” she said quite confidently,

and she swung open the car door. “It’s that wicked Mr. Sumpter,

who brings the mail. I know he has a hammer in that mailbag.

He’s threatened to hit me in the head with it,” she said without

hesitation as she slammed the car door behind her.

Maggie and her mother stared at each other, both paralyzed

and speechless. It wasn’t until Harold’s mother was climbing up

the yellow house’s front porch that Maggie noticed the woman

no longer struggled. She was walking just fine, despite leaving

her cane in Maggie’s back seat.

In his debut novel,
The End of Enemies,
Grant Blackwood introduced his hero Briggs Tanner, who, after witnessing the

murder of a stranger, finds himself embroiled in a plot that

takes him from Japan, to a remote island in the Pacific, and

finally to the bullet-ridden back alleys of Beirut. In
The Wall

of Night,
as the world marches toward a catastrophic war, Tanner returns to China to solve a mystery that has haunted him

for twelve years. In
An Echo of War,
Tanner’s search for a missing family member turns into a race to secure a biological

weapon born in a secret bunker during the dying days of the

First World War.

Here, in
Sacrificial Lion,
Blackwood introduces Henry

Caulder, a British spymaster who slips into cold war East

Berlin on an impossible mission. In the balance hangs the fate

of Europe, and perhaps the world. But
Sacrificial Lion
is not

just a tale of espionage, it’s also a legacy of sorts, for Henry

Caulder is the grandfather of Blackwood’s newest hero, Sam

Caulder, who, fifty-five years after Henry’s fateful mission,

will find himself entangled in a manhunt that pits him against

rogue spies, mafia kingpins, Washington’s power elite and a

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billionaire intent on controlling America’s future. Blackwood plans several Sam Caulder adventures.

For both Caulders, past and present, the fate of the world

hangs in the balance.

But each man is up to the task.

Moscow, January 1953

Henry Caulder knew by the sound of their footsteps they were

coming to kill him.

Whether the spectacle was designed to instill fear or to uphold the image of Stalin’s inescapable grasp, he didn’t know, but

every inmate in Lubyanka Prison recognized the ponderous

march of the guard’s boots in the corridor. It was a terrifying

sound and an impressive sight, but Henry had been preparing

for this day, and now all he felt was a sense of completion.

At least three men—perhaps many more—had gone before

him, each receiving a single bullet in the head from a Makarov

pistol. As most prisoners do, each man would have screamed his

innocence to the end, until that last moment when he felt the

cold steel circle of the muzzle come to rest on his skin.

The boots stopped outside his door. Henry took a last look

around. His cell was a bleak cliché: no windows, a straw mattress and a brimming waste bucket in the corner. The walls were

painted a mottled gray and pus yellow. His only illumination

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came from what little light seeped around the edges of the door.

He hadn’t seen sunlight in forty days. To his surprise, that’s what

he missed the most. More than the torture, more than the starvation, more than the cold, he missed being outdoors.

His body was failing him. Since they’d started on him, he’d lost

so much weight his ribs and collarbone poked from his skin. His

nose and right hand were broken and his testicles…well, he

hadn’t been able to bring himself to look at them. The soles of

his feet were bruised and swollen, his toes turning black.
Going

to lose the nails on all of them
, he thought, chuckling.
Never be

able to wear sandals again
.

He’d also developed a deep, racking cough. Pneumonia, perhaps. Perhaps something else.

The latch was thrown back. He let his shoulders slump and

his face go slack. The door swung open. Standing there in fulldress uniforms were the two guards he’d dubbed Boris One and

Boris Two. “You will come now,” Boris One said.

Henry hobbled forward and fell in between them. He’d long

suspected he was the only occupant of this block and now he

saw he was right. Each door stood yawning, dark inside. Bare

bulbs hung from the ceiling and trailed down the corridor to a

gate. When they reached it, Boris One called out in Russian,

“Open. Prisoner one-zero-nine-two.”

The gate rattled back. They walked through and turned left.

Henry felt his hands begin to shake. He clenched them.
You’re

okay…you’ve done some good
. They reached a stairwell and

started down. With each step, the light from above faded until,

at the bottom, he found himself in darkness. Ahead was a lighted

doorway. He stopped, his feet frozen. Behind him, Boris Two

placed an almost gentle, coaxing hand on the small of his back.

It was the first kind touch he’d felt in forty days. He felt tears

well in his eyes.
Come on, Henry
.

He shuffled forward. At the door Boris One stepped aside,

heels clicking together as he snapped to attention. Henry gulped

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a lungful of air and stepped up to the threshold.
Two months,
he

thought.
God, was that all?
He’d come a long way since this had

begun….

Knowing the Brahmins at MI6 wouldn’t sign off on his plan,

Henry took the first available plane out of London for Washington, D.C., where he took a taxi to the E Street offices of the

recently christened CIA. He still thought of it as the OSS and

probably always would. He had friends there, many of whom he’d

jumped with behind enemy lines during the war as part of the

Jedburgh commandos.

At the security shack he asked for Lucille Russo. The guard

made the call, gave him a badge and directed him to Lucille’s

Quonset hut. She was waiting for him. “Henry, as I live and