by Greg Iles
“Listen for chopper,” Tom whispered, and then his heart hammered in his chest. The hard-pumping blood made his shoulder scream with pain, but two seconds later he was on his feet with his .357 in his hand. He wanted to call out to Melba, but she hadn’t answered the first time, and if there were men in the house, his shout would only bring them to him.
As quickly as he could, Tom moved toward the darkest part of the living room, a short pass-through that led to the hall that ran half the length of the great house. His only hope was to find Melba and get outside into the dark, then into the nearby forest. A SWAT team would have night-vision devices, but the dense trees might be enough of a shield to conceal two fleeing figures.
As Tom reached the spot where the pass-through made a T with the main hall, a man wearing a black mask and body armor appeared in profile less than a foot away from him. Knowing the head would turn toward him at any moment, Tom jammed the .357 under the man’s chin and said quietly: “I’ll pull the trigger if you do anything but drop your gun.”
He meant it, for surrender would mean not only his death, but Melba’s also. Tom jabbed the barrel of his pistol hard under the mandible of the SWAT officer and kept pressing until he heard the thud of metal hitting carpet.
“Now what?” the man croaked, his eyes obscured by his insectile face mask. “You’ve got no play, Doc.”
“Where’s my nurse?”
“Who?”
Tom didn’t like being exposed in the hall. He was about to drag the guy back into the pass-through when a voice with an accent he recognized from medical school in New Orleans shouted from the kitchen at the right end of the corridor.
“Let him go, Doc! Nuttin’ to be gained by killin’ nobody.”
Tom looked up the hall at the man who’d yelled at him. He, too, wore a mask and body armor and carried a short submachine gun in his hands. His accent was pure New Orleans—Brooklyn sautéed in crawfish.
“Then why’d you bring all the guns?” Tom asked.
“We didn’t know what we’d find here.”
Tom felt panic kicking like a crazed animal in his chest. Having lived through last night, he didn’t fancy dying here, and he couldn’t live with Melba’s death on his account.
“Where’s my nurse?” he shouted. “Bring her out here where I can see her!”
As he stared down the hall, waiting, the man raised his right hand as though trying to calm him down. While Tom’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, he realized there was another man standing behind the first, and he held a large bulbous rifle in his hands. A sniper rifle.
“Who’s your senior officer?” Tom called.
“I am,” said the man with his arm up.
The animal in Tom’s chest was kicking harder. With every passing second he became more certain that he had no way out of this situation—not alive, anyway. He heard a sliding sound from down the hall behind him. He turned, careful to keep his gun at the masked man’s head, and saw Melba Price lying motionless on her side while a SWAT trooper dragged her across the carpet. They were trying to hide her body from him!
“You sons of bitches!” he yelled, nearly pulling the trigger on the man under his power. “You killed her!”
“No!” shouted the commander. “She’s not dead. We just darted her.”
“Bullshit!” Tom screamed.
“I swear to God, Doc! We’re just here to pick you up, to deliver you to Colonel Knox—alive. He wants to talk to you.”
“That’s a lie! That wasn’t the deal. The deal was that if he wanted to talk to me, he’d call off the APB first. I saw the news twenty minutes ago, and they’re still running an alert!”
“I don’t know anything about that,” the commander shouted, his hand still in the air. “But you’ve got to see there’s no point shooting anybody. Just put down your gun and go take the woman’s pulse.”
“Sure,” Tom said, almost unable to think. “And this bastard breaks my neck on the way down the hall.”
“Take him with you. Keep your gun on him.”
“Why are you holding your arm in the air?” Tom asked, sensing something wrong. “Is that some kind of signal?”
When the man didn’t answer, Tom turned to try to gauge his chances of dragging his hostage down the hall to check Melba’s pulse.
He’d never make it.
The sight of her prone body brought tears to his eyes. “Bring her to me!” he yelled. “Tell your man to drag her down here, or I pull the trigger. I’ve got nothing to lose. I’m going to die anyway.”
His hostage shouted, “He won’t kill me, Major. Take him!”
Tom moved the gun two inches to the right and fired a round into the ceiling. His hostage screamed and recoiled, but before he could break away Tom stabbed the gun barrel into his neck again.
“Next one goes into your brain,” Tom said, his whole arm alive with energy.
“Don’t move, Sergeant,” called the commander. “I know that tone well. Doc, you take it easy. I’m going to take off my helmet so you can see my eyes.”
Tom heard the sliding sound behind him again. When he turned, he saw the trooper at the other end of the hall dragging Melba out of sight. A wild emotion he’d never experienced surged through him.
“Stand down!” shouted the commander. “Let that woman lie!”
Grief and fury had taken possession of Tom. Whirling back toward the commander, he felt his gun hand tense to pull the trigger. But even as he did, the commander dropped his right hand, and a flash blanked out Tom’s dilated eyes. Pain exploded in his right shoulder, and his gun arm went limp as boots pounded toward him. His hostage twisted the .357 from his hand, then propped him up before he could fall.
“Target taken!” shouted the commander. “Air one, exfil at the front crescent.”
Tom blinked again and again, his thoughts scrambled into chaos.
“Get everything he had!” someone yelled. “Clothes, drugs, phones—everything.”
“What about the nurse’s car?”
“Leave it.”
In the confusion of Tom’s mind, one clear image rose: Melba lying motionless while men leaped over her as though she were no longer worthy of notice. Pain radiated through him like arcs of fire, and when he looked down, he saw a single bright bloom of blood on what had been his good shoulder. Someone jammed two fingers under his jaw to feel his carotid, but by then his last reserve of strength had given out, and everything went black.
CHAPTER 43
CAITLIN WAS WORKING alone in her office when Jordan Glass knocked, then slipped inside with two go-cups from Hammer’s Drive-Thru in Vidalia.
“Vodka and cranberry,” she said. “You up for it?”
Caitlin hesitated, suddenly remembering her pregnancy, but a perverse instinct, combined with her deep anxiety, made her reach for the sweating plastic cup with the colored umbrella sticking out of it.
“How’d your errand work out?” Jordan asked.
“Awful and wonderful at the same time, I’d say. Does that make sense?”
“In my experience, it’s always that way. Nearly every great photo I ever shot cost me dearly, one way or another.”
“This is costing me, all right. I’ve never been as torn about something as I am tonight.”
“Should we go back to the ladies’ room?”
“No need. I just had this room swept by someone who knows what he’s doing.”
“Good. So . . .” Jordan slid into the seat opposite Caitlin’s desk. “You’re holding things back, right?”
Caitlin hesitated, then nodded.
“From John and the Bureau? Or from Penn?”
“From everybody.”
Jordan turned up her palms. “Well, that’s the job, isn’t it? At least until it’s time to publish. The question is, who and what gets hurt by you holding back? Is it just a matter of bruised male pride? Or will trust be damaged long term? Are you risking someone’s life by withholding information?”
“I honestly don’t know. I�
�m definitely risking Penn’s trust. As for the rest . . . haven’t we all been at risk from the moment we took on the Double Eagles? After what I saw last night, how do you even gauge the risk? You know the stakes in this story. How much risk is justified?”
“I’m afraid only you can answer that. Or your loved ones, if you wind up getting killed.”
Caitlin looked deeply into the photographer’s eyes. “John did something that really shook your faith in him, didn’t he?”
Jordan took a deep breath and sighed. “Yes. It was an end-justifies-the-means kind of problem.”
“I can relate.” Caitlin drank her first swallow of vodka, puckering from the cold sting. “Right now I’ve got a problem with conflicting promises. To keep one, I have to break another. The question is, do I keep the one to my future husband, because he is my future husband? Or do I keep the one that I feel is right?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“Do I?” She thought of Tom and Melba hiding in the forest in Jefferson County. “The thing is, the path I think is right could lead to disaster. Unforgivable disaster.”
Glass rattled the ice in her cup. “You’re in a war. There are going to be casualties. The real question is motive. What is it you’re working in service of? Justice? The truth? Revenge for Henry Sexton? Or is it just the story?”
“All the above. But the story means a lot to me, I won’t lie about that.”
Jordan smiled knowingly. “No need, girl, not with me. But I warn you, not everyone else will be sympathetic to that choice.”
Caitlin sagged in her chair. “I know.”
“You told me you had a plan for tomorrow. A lead of your own. Are you still going to follow through with that?”
“Will my answer leave this room?”
Jordan gave her a conspiratorial shake of the head. “Not via me. Scout’s honor.”
“Were you a Girl Scout?”
“For about five minutes. Oxford, Mississippi.”
Caitlin laughed, and the laughter felt good. “I can’t believe it.”
“I can build a fire in the rain like that,” Jordan said, snapping her fingers. “That’s what I got out of that experience.”
“Good thing to know.”
“It saved my ass more than once.” Jordan hung her hands over her knees and leaned forward. “So are you up for company on this quest of yours?”
Caitlin sipped her vodka to hide her expression. The plain truth was, she needed somebody with her on tomorrow’s trip. She’d promised Henry Sexton she wouldn’t go into the Lusahatcha Swamp alone, and she’d be a fool if she did. Yet some juvenile compulsion urged her not to tell a soul about her trip. The lure of whatever Henry had called Frank Knox’s “insurance” against Carlos Marcello made her heart beat faster, and she swallowed some more vodka. Then, before she could second-guess herself, she said, “Be here at five thirty tomorrow morning if you really want to know. If we find what I’m hoping to find, you’ll be hanging another Pulitzer on your wall.”
Jordan waved her hand dismissively. “I’m over that crap, honey. But I’d like to see you get a second one. That’s when you know you’ve proved yourself.”
Caitlin couldn’t help but grin.
“The only problem,” Jordan said, “is my Havana trip. I need to get to the New Orleans airport by four thirty P.M. Can I go with you and still make that?”
Caitlin nodded. “The place we’re going is south of here, so it’s on the way. I can ride with you, then call one of my reporters to pick me up while you drive on to New Orleans.”
Jordan tilted her head and pursed her lips in thought. “I know of two interesting things south of here. The Lusahatcha Swamp and the Valhalla hunting camp.”
Caitlin ignored this bait. “What are you going to tell John?”
Jordan looked into her drink and thought about it. “That I got an earlier flight to Havana. The Castro brothers can’t wait to see me again.”
“Again?”
“I met Fidel about twenty years ago, and he flirted shamelessly with me.”
Caitlin laughed, wondering what it would be like to move in Jordan’s journalistic circles.
“John will want to send an escort with me, so I may have to get creative.”
Caitlin drank off the last of her drink. Then, emboldened by the alcohol buzz, she asked, “Did John say anything about his meeting with Dwight and Penn?”
The photographer shook her head. “John’s still at Dwight’s hotel. I think he’s afraid Dwight won’t survive tomorrow’s surgery. And even if he does, he’s facing a liver transplant.”
Caitlin shut her eyes, trying to push away premature grief. “God, I hate that. Dwight’s one of the good guys. Maybe that’s why Penn was so upset tonight.”
“What do you mean?”
“He kind of flipped out earlier. He tried to pick a fight with Sheriff Byrd, and there was no real reason to do it. Something had pushed him to a place where he was ready to lash out, regardless of the consequences.”
“You couldn’t find out what it was?”
Caitlin shook her head. “He wasn’t in the mood to answer questions. We made love, and he worked his anger out that way. I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever seen him this tense.”
Jordan looked thoughtful. “John, too, in his own way. I’ll tell you something you might find interesting. John gave me a couple of questions to ask Fidel if he shows up at the shoot.”
A fillip of excitement went through Caitlin. “Seriously? About what?”
“The Kennedy assassination. What else?”
Caitlin’s pulse picked up and stayed there. “Jordan, what the hell’s going on? Are they really close to breaking new information about the assassination?”
“I don’t know. John’s pretty good at his job, and Dwight’s no slouch.”
“What were the questions he gave you?”
Jordan winked at her. “Sorry. I can’t go that far. Even if we are partners.”
Caitlin groaned in frustration.
“I may only see Raúl, depending on Fidel’s health. Rumor is, the maximum leader is drifting toward the minimum state. But I hope I get both of them.”
“You’ll really ask Castro about the JFK assassination?”
All the levity went out of Jordan’s face. “What year were you born, Caitlin?”
“1970.”
“I was born in 1960.”
Caitlin had a feeling she knew where the photographer was headed. “Surely you don’t remember anything about President Kennedy?”
Jordan shook her head. “No. But do you know who my father was?”
“Sure. Jonathan Glass. He disappeared while on assignment in Vietnam. In . . .”
“1972,” Jordan finished. “He was actually in Cambodia, just over the Mekong River. But he started as a photojournalist at the age of twenty. He was actually in Dealey Plaza the day Kennedy was shot.”
Caitlin sat up. “Really?”
“Mm-hm. He took a famous photograph of two Secret Service agents guarding Jackie Kennedy at Parkland Hospital.”
A brief black-and-white image flashed through Caitlin’s head: the Praetorian Guard and their widowed queen. Caitlin no longer knew where Jordan was going.
“Daddy wasn’t home much when I was growing up,” Glass said. “He was always on assignment somewhere, from Asia to the Congo. But after that day in Dallas, he came home to Oxford and stayed almost a month. All he did was drink. I remember him lying on the couch, stinking of gin, unshaven, his eyes glued to the TV while the phone rang and rang. I asked my mother about it when I was older, and she said everything I described was accurate. She also told me that he’d been within two hundred feet of the limo when Kennedy was shot. I don’t know exactly what he saw . . . but whatever it was wounded him in some way. We’re talking about one of the best war photographers in the world, remember—a man who’d seen everything. But something went out of him that day. He was collateral damage of those gunshots. Daddy was no gullible romantic
; he was as cynical as they come. But he’d believed in Kennedy and the possibilities he represented.”
Jordan stared into her cup as if at a screen playing footage from her past. “When I was older, I found a cache of pictures from that trip. JFK and Jackie getting off the plane, the president speaking at the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth the previous day. Daddy didn’t save many prints, but he kept those. And every shot communicated either resolve or optimism, which definitely wasn’t what he usually memorialized on film.”
Caitlin expected the story to go on, or to end with some insight or revelation, but Jordan simply stopped speaking. As she stared into the cup, Caitlin said, “Did you ever get to ask him about it?”
Jordan shook her head. “He’d already been missing for four years when I discovered the pictures. I found out a few years ago that he survived his wound and lived on until 1979. Over there. But I never saw him again.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. He wasn’t the same man. I doubt he even remembered me.” At last Jordan looked up, her jaw set tight. “As for your question . . . yes, I will ask Fidel Castro John’s questions. This new line of inquiry could be bullshit, but somehow I don’t think so. And if I can help get to the truth, then I intend to.” Jordan reached out and set her empty cup on Caitlin’s desk. “Do you keep any vodka at the office?”
Caitlin shook her head. “Sorry.”
“That’s a tragedy.”
Caitlin smiled, but her brain was racing. As soon as Jordan left, she was going to get out Henry’s letter and journals and highlight every fragment of information about John and Robert Kennedy, Carlos Marcello, Marcello’s contacts with Brody Royal, and the “insurance” Frank Knox had kept to protect himself against Marcello. Perhaps most tantalizing of all was Snake Knox’s statement to Morehouse that the “insurance” document had been written in Russian. Something told Caitlin that while she’d been focused on the civil rights murders that had preoccupied Henry Sexton for so many years, the real story had been unfolding at a much deeper level.