“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.”
Anthony nodded. “Your daughters will remember some things. What about Chuck Rainsley?”
Adelina swallowed. “Maybe Brianna Rainsley. She didn’t know the extent of it, though. But there is one person who did, if he’s still alive and you can find him.”
“Who?”
“Father Dennis from the Saint Jane Frances de Chantal church in Bethesda. I’m sure he’s moved on somewhere else by now.”
“Will he talk?”
“I’ll give you a letter from me, with written permission.”
“Okay. One other thing. Can you think of anyone who knows about what happened in Afghanistan?”
She shook her head. “Leslie Collins, I’m sure. And Prince Roshan. If I had to guess, it was the three of them. They were thick in the eighties. They thought I was too stupid to understand they were up to something.”
“Anyone else?” Anthony asked.
“There was another name … Karat … Karak…”
“Karatygin? Vasily Karatygin?”
“Yes! I’m sure that’s it. You’ve heard of him?”
“I have,” he said. “He was a Russian special forces major, he converted to Islam and defected in the 1980s, then was the second-in-command of one of the Afghan militias for a long time. He’s still there … keeps a low profile, mostly involved in opium smuggling, I think now.”
She nodded. “I know I heard his name more than once. But I can’t guarantee it’s him. Nor do I know if he’d talk to you.”
“Well, we might have to find out. Do me one favor though.”
“Yes?”
“Prince George-Phillip I have to see. I’ve interviewed him before, but if I go through official channels, it will take weeks. Can you get me in to see him?”
She looked distressed. “We haven’t seen each other in seventeen years. I’m certain he hates me. I broke his heart and never explained why.”
Anthony shook his head. “All right. Maybe through your daughters. I believe Carrie met him yesterday.”
Adelina whispered, “Yes. She told me.”
“All right. I’ll start there. Can we get started with some questions?”
“Yes. But one thing first.”
Anthony raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”
She whispered, “When you talk to him … tell him … tell him I’m sorry.”
Marky Lovecchio. May 7.
The phone ringing was harsh in Marky Lovecchio’s ear. Who the fuck was calling him at six o’clock in the morning?
He took his hand off the tits of the stripper he’d brought back from the bar the night before. He’d flashed several hundred-dollar bills at the club, enough to get the attention of several of the girls. Then he’d made his pick and brought her back to the cheap and nasty motel room.
She was hot, but a lousy lay. Fucking tease. He decided he was going to wake her up with a good fucking whether she liked it or not.
He untangled himself from her then picked up his phone.
“What?”
It was Oz. “Lovecchio. I trust you’re having a good time spending my money?”
“It’s my money now. I took care of him, didn’t I?”
“You did. And that was good work. But I have another job for you.”
Lovecchio muttered a curse. The girl was stirring; bleach blonde hair stringy along her back.
“I’m not in the market right now, Oz. I need a little time to relax.”
“You can relax after you’re finished, Lovecchio. The woman who Larsden let get away? She’s with her daughter at the hospital in Abbotsford.”
“Canada?” Lovecchio blurted.
The girl was definitely stirring now. She slid out of the bed and walked toward the bathroom.
“Yes, Lovecchio. Canada. The woman is in room 201. I don’t care what happens to the daughter, but kill the woman.”
Christ. He said, “How much?”
“We’ll call it half a million. That’s what I was going to pay your friend before he fucked it up.”
“Whatever. Fine. I’ll do it. How soon?”
“By tonight.”
He started to respond, but Oz hung up.
“Hey,” he called to the girl in the bathroom. “Come here!”
She muttered something incoherent. He looked around. Her skimpy dress was on the floor.
A second later she came out of the bathroom. He looked at her, his eyes grazing over her obvious implants, the curve of her hip. He didn’t care if she couldn’t fuck. He’d do the work. “Come here,” he said.
She shook her head, a cigarette dangling out of her mouth. She reached for her dress. Bitch. He stood and walked toward her. “You’re not finished yet.”
Anthony. May 7.
“You look exhausted.” Given that Carrie was pouring a fresh cup of coffee as she said the words, Anthony decided he could forgive her.
“We flew back on the red-eye,” he said. “I came straight here from the airport.”
She nodded. “Cream and sugar are over here. Meet you on the balcony, it’s beautiful today.”
“Okay,” he said.
He put too much sugar in his coffee then noticed the mug. It bore the logo of the United States Army, which reminded Anthony once again that Carrie was a widow, and a fairly recent one at that. The shelves and walls displayed a number of photos, including two from Carrie and Ray’s wedding. From the look on both of their faces, you could tell they were deeply in love. And he’d died only a few months later.
Anthony leaned a little to see out of the kitchen toward the balcony doors. Carrie and Julia were sitting together at a cast iron table. He walked down the hall to the restroom and slipped inside. Out of curiosity and little more he opened the medicine cabinet.
The top shelf had several prescription bottles, including a Xanax prescription for Carrie filled only a few days before. He closed the door to the cabinet. He needed to mind his own business. He was a reporter, but he was also human, and needed to treat people decently.
Two minutes later, he joined Julia, Carrie and Rachel outside. The women sat across from each other as they sipped their coffee. As he seated himself he couldn’t help but notice the contrast between them.
Their appearance, of course, was quite different. Julia was average height for a woman, about five feet four inches. He was used to seeing her brown curly hair tied in a businesslike bun, but here, in her family home, she had her hair down, draping both shoulders. She wore faded jeans and a Trampled by Turtles T-shirt. A rock band of some kind? He didn’t know. Her hair was relaxed, but she didn’t seem to be. Her back was straight, feet flat on the ground, and occasionally she drummed her fingers on the side of her mug.
Carrie, on the other hand, was slouched in her chair. The baby lay in a seat next to her chair, and Carrie’s knees were drawn up in front of her. Her dark hair, almost black, draped over her shoulders.
“So tell me about your trip. Did you learn anything?” Carrie lifted her coffee cup to her lips after she finished speaking. She closed her eyes and inhaled, taking in the rich smell of the coffee, then sipping it slowly, her slightly pink lips touching the mug.
Anthony tore his eyes away from her. “Well … we’ve got a name. But it’s almost certainly a pseudonym. Oz. Your mother’s encountered him twice before, once in the eighties, then again when you all were living in China. We’ve got good reason to believe the same man is responsible for hiring Nick Larsden to kill your mother. Unfortunately, we couldn’t question Larsden any more … he’s dead.”
Julia said, “I thought he was captured. I didn’t hear anything about him being wounded in the news.”
“He wasn’t wounded by the police, he was knifed in the jail. I doubt it’s a coincidence. He’d already told us about Oz though. We’ll track down who he is.”
Carrie sucked in a breath. “So … I don’t get it.”
“Well, here’s my theory,” Anthony said.
“Your theory?” Ju
lia asked.
He nodded. “You’ve got two sets of killers, operating with different but similar motives. One was trying to keep a lid on who is behind the massacre at Wakhan in the eighties. Whoever that was—and my working theory is that it’s Leslie Collins at the CIA, or possibly the head of the Saudi intelligence service—they moved to discredit your father and anything he might say as soon as his name was floated as Secretary of Defense.”
“Okay,” Carrie said. “And the second?”
“Oz. I’m guessing unrelated to the first set of killers. Whoever Oz is, he twice did everything short of killing your mother to keep her away from Prince George-Phillip. I’m guessing those attacks, and Andrea’s kidnapping, have something to do with hiding your parentage, Carrie, and Andrea’s.”
Carrie sat up straight, color appearing on her cheeks. “It’s not George-Phillip.”
He shook his head. “No. I’m certain it isn’t. For one thing, why would he have to threaten her to keep her away?”
“Richard, then,” she said. Apparently she’d settled on calling him that instead of Father.
“That’s what your mother thinks,” Anthony said.
Julia started to speak, then stopped and seemed to reconsider whatever it was she was going to say. Finally, she said, “How does Jessica seem?”
Anthony raised his eyebrows. “Honestly?”
Julia bit her lip. Then nodded. “Yes.”
“She’s really sick. She’s way too thin, and looks … washed out. I think she’s going to be a long time recovering.”
“And Mother?” Carrie asked.
“My impression?” Anthony asked. “That’s a woman on a mission, and I wouldn’t want to be Richard Thompson right now.”
At his response, Julia pursed her lips a little. Her reaction seemed off, and Anthony didn’t understand it. He kept his mouth shut.
“So what’s next?” Carrie asked. He met her eyes. Blue-green. Large, framed by long eyelashes. No wonder her soldier had fallen for her.
“Well, part of it depends on you. I need to get in to see Prince George-Phillip. There are a bunch of points in Adelina’s story he can corroborate. I need at least two sources to run this stuff when it’s this sensitive. I’m going to try to track down your mother’s confessor from the 1980s. She gave me a letter for him with written permission to discuss her. And then I’m off to Kabul to see Vasily Karatygin, who may or may not be able to give me the information I need about what happened in Wakhan.”
“You’re going to Afghanistan?” Carrie asked, her tone a little shrill.
“Yeah. I need sources, I can’t run this story on speculation.”
She looked away, her lips tightly closed. When she turned back to him, her eyes had lost their warmth. Anthony frowned, suddenly feeling off balance. He said, “You’ve got a lot of bad associations with Afghanistan.”
She shook her head in disgust. “Afghanistan reached out and destroyed my life. It took my husband and broke his best friend. It’s still coming back. With all the news that’s been coming out, Ray’s back in the news cycle. Did he do it or didn’t he? CNN called me at midnight to ask if I’d comment on the special report they’re doing on war crimes in Afghanistan. They’re tying Ray in with Robert Bales, who killed all those civilians in 2012, and including a story about Wakhan. As if Ray could have been responsible for something that happened before he was even born. I hate them!”
She said the last few words with such ferocious intensity that Rachel’s eyes popped wide open beside her. The baby immediately began protesting with loud gurgling noises.
“I have to go.” Carrie’s voice cracked, as if she were on the verge of tears. She snatched up the baby and slipped inside the condo.
Anthony exhaled. He hadn’t realized that he’d stopped breathing during her brief monologue. He was shaken by the force of her emotion—and his own reaction to it.
Then Julia said in a low, threatening voice. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, Anthony. But if you mess with my sister, I’ll destroy you.” Then she stood too, leaving Anthony sitting alone on the balcony.
Carrie. May 7.
In the room she’d once shared with Ray Sherman, Carrie sat on the edge of her bed looking down at her daughter. Carrie had tears in her eyes, unbidden tears that did nothing but infuriate her.
Rachel lay on her back on the bed. She was still hot this morning and seemed listless. Carrie sighed. She’d take Rachel’s temperature in a few minutes. She leaned forward and cooed at her baby, then kissed her on the cheek.
Rachel gave her a big toothless smile. Carrie smiled back, ignoring the tears that were threatening to spill over, and kissed Rachel’s other cheek. Rachel gave a small laugh. That escalated to a shower of kisses and loud, happy laughing and gurgling.
Carrie sighed. She was frustrated and confused and more than a little bit angry. Angry because she shouldn’t have reacted that way to Anthony’s announcement he was going to Afghanistan. He was a journalist, and she barely knew him, and it wasn’t really any of her business anyway. But her instant reaction to his news was—fear. Anxiety that he would be hurt.
She sighed a little as she lifted her daughter’s arms, evoking more baby laughs.
Anthony Walker.
She shook her head. He was a foreign correspondent for Christ’s sake, which was just about as dangerous—or even more—as being a soldier. She’d read Anthony’s dispatches from Iraq when he was embedded with a US Army platoon. His life was dangerous, no life for someone with a family, and on top of that, he wasn’t even that good looking. Ray hadn’t even been dead a year and she felt incredibly disloyal to even be thinking of Anthony that way.
Ray hadn’t even been dead for a year! What was wrong with her?
She lifted Rachel to her chest and let the tears spill over. She knew exactly what was wrong with her. She was hideously lonely. She’d met her soulmate and married him and lost him all in the course of nine months. And nothing would ever be the same.
Bear. May 7.
Bear grumbled to himself as he crept forward twenty feet then stopped again. I-66 out of Washington was a parking lot. As far as he could see there was no accident—these were just normal traffic conditions for this early in the morning, just another day in Washington.
Bear hated Washington. But he also knew he was never leaving, because this was where his kids lived. He was going to be here for the indefinite future anyway. His appointment to the Joint Terrorism Task Force hadn’t been endangered yet by his supposed suspension, or the loss of classified documents—but that didn’t mean it wasn’t coming soon.
Ten more feet. Stop. At this rate he wouldn’t get to Leah’s place until ten or ten-thirty. He was exhausted and wore rumpled clothes, eyelids heavy after taking the red-eye back to Washington. But what else could he do? After their arrival at Washington Reagan National Airport at six am, he and Anthony went their separate ways—Bear had gone back to his apartment just long enough to shower and change then get back out on the road.
His phone rang. He fumbled for it.
Scott Kelly.
He answered. “Kelly, what’s up?”
Kelly’s Boston Irish accented voice sounded out of the car speakers. “I hear you had a run-in with the IRS yesterday.”
Bear chuckled. “Yeah, you could say that. Schmidt is not happy that I’m on the case. Not happy at all. What’s up at your end?”
“Small breakthrough actually. Or a big one, maybe.”
“Tell me.”
In the right lane just ahead of him, a rusted red pickup pulled ahead. The driver to Bear’s right—driving a Prius no less—was staring at his phone, probably watching porn or reading a Russian novel. Either way he didn’t move fast enough. Bear launched his car into the opening, achieving nearly forty feet in one stretch.
Kelly continued yammering on, unaware of the deadly combat Bear was engaged in.
“All right. First, you remember kidnapper two? The one Andrea Thompson said was Ameri
can?”
“Yeah. She said he called himself Dan.”
“Right. We couldn’t get a match on his prints, nothing. Nothing in the FBI database, nothing anywhere. Anyway, on Thursday the Pocatello, Idaho police put out a missing persons report. Thirty-one year old Army veteran missing. His mother called it in, but the local police took forty-eight hours to put out an alert. They must have figured he went hunting or something.”
“Yeah?” Bear asked. His reply was laced with sarcasm. “That’s our guy? Some guy who used to be in the Army just randomly hooks up with one of the most dangerous mercenaries in the world to kidnap Andrea Thompson? I need more, Kelly.”
Kelly lashed back. “Let me finish the story, Bear.”
The guy in the Prius was honking his horn. Bear didn’t flip him off, even though he wanted to. But he did goose the car forward. Morning commutes were only won with guts of steel and the instincts of a hunter. Bear laughed at his own idiocy.
“All right,” Kelly said. “So we went to the Army. It was a match. Picture matched. But the Army’s pissed, because kidnapper Dan’s fingerprints don’t show up in their database. And his DNA didn’t match up either.”
“He wasn’t actually in the Army?”
“No, he was. That’s where it gets interesting. His name’s Tyler Coleman. I went and talked to his company commander. Someone deleted the records, Bear. They deleted the computer records, but there are still paper records of his enlistment. This was our guy for sure. He was Special Forces for one enlistment, 2001 to 2005. Then he disappeared, apparently taking his permanent military record with him.”
Bear squeezed the steering wheel. “Fucking CIA.”
“That’s it. Emma Smith—she’s the IRS second-in-command—pulled his social security and tax records. From 2006 until 2011, he supposedly worked as a technical specialist for an outfit called Brennan Holdings in Northern Virginia.”
“Bullshit,” Bear said.
“Yeah, exactly. Brennan Holdings is a CIA front company. We’re trying to find out what he did for them, but during that five-year period Customs and Immigration shows two dozen times he left and entered the United States. And then nothing. In 2001 he paid cash for a big house in Idaho, bought some vicious dogs and basically retired.”
Girl of Vengeance Page 20