The Bride's Protector

by Gayle Wilson

  “Ms. Stewart can verify I had nothing to do with that assassination.”

  “And that is, of course, why you brought her here. All the way from...Mississippi, I believe. To clear you of that charge.”

  Another silence, Hawk’s this time. He didn’t waste much time wondering how they knew about Mississippi. It never did any good to question their sources. And he supposed at this point there was no reason not to admit the truth. By now Tyler would have figured out what was going on. Now she knew why he had intervened that night. And exactly why he had brought her here.

  “It’s one of the reasons,” he agreed. It had been the only one at the beginning, but it was far less important now than the other.

  “Then she’s very valuable to you,” Steiner said. “If she can indeed verify that you had nothing to do with that murder.” His eyes shifted from Hawk’s face to Tyler’s. “Are you prepared to do that, Ms. Stewart? Is that why you’re here? To clear Lucas Hawkins of that charge?”

  Hawk wanted to look at her, to turn his head and find out what was in her eyes, but he didn’t. He had done that in the car, and it had been a mistake. It had weakened him. He couldn’t afford to be weak now. He watched Steiner’s face instead.

  “Hawk had nothing to do with the assassination of Sheikh al-Ahmad,” Tyler said softly. Just on cue, Hawk thought. “I saw the men who did. I believe two of them were Amir al-Ahmad’s personal bodyguards. And there was a man in Western dress. Not Hawk,” she clarified quickly. “That man was the one who had the rifle. The one who fired the shot.”

  “And Hawkins had nothing to do with the assassination?”

  “He couldn’t have. I saw them all. I heard the gun go off. Hawk wasn’t there. He wasn’t involved.”

  “Then why did he set off the fire alarms?” Steiner asked.

  “Because I asked him to help me get out of the hotel.”

  “And why did you need to get out of the hotel? That was, I believe, to be the location of your wedding.”

  “I didn’t know who was involved in the assassination. The shots were fired from the balcony of my fiancé’s room. I had gone there to speak to him, and when I opened the door, I saw them. Because it was his room...” Tyler hesitated, apparently hesitant to accuse Amir without more proof than that.

  “I indicated that Sheikh Amir al-Ahmad now suspects some of his own people might have been involved in this,” Steiner said.

  Tyler said nothing for a moment. Hawk again fought the urge to look at her.

  “But it’s possible, isn’t it,” she suggested finally, “that Amir himself was involved?”

  “In his own father’s death?” Steiner questioned.

  He sounds as if that’s unthinkable, Hawk thought, but it was an act, of course. Nothing was truly unthinkable. Especially to someone like Steiner.

  “Ten billion dollars a year is a lot of incentive,” Hawk said. “There are people in this town who would kill you for your pocket change.”

  “We have no reason to suspect Amir al-Ahmad of having any role in his father’s death,” the assistant deputy director said. “The extremists had long ago targeted their country for a takeover. And they had made at least two previous attempts on the sheikh’s life. Perhaps Ms. Stewart would be willing to make herself available to the new sheikh in order to identify which members of his staff she saw on that balcony.”

  “Ms. Stewart will make herself available to you,” Hawk said. “Not to Amir.”

  “But I’m afraid we are no longer involved in the investigation of the al-Ahmad assassination,” Steiner replied. “Not in any...enforcement capacity.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Hawk asked, his eyes narrowing.

  “We believe that the action taken against the sheikh represented an attempt to carry out an internal coup. A national matter, probably religious in nature. It is in the best interests of the United States not to interfere in any way with the ongoing investigation of the sheikh’s death. An investigation being very competently carried out by his own countrymen and their appointed agents.”

  “They killed a man on a New York City street,” Hawk said. “They blew away a visiting head of state right in the heart of our largest city. Are you saying that’s none of our business?”

  “Visiting is, I believe, the operative word here,” Carl Steiner said, his voice expressing disinterest. “A private visit. Which was not State Department sponsored. Or sanctioned. Perhaps if they had requested security...” He shrugged, letting the suggestion trail, his dark eyes meeting Hawk’s.

  They were triumphant, Hawk realized. The nausea that had formed in Hawk’s throat when Steiner suggested Tyler make herself available to Amir for questioning was joined now by a prickle of ice skating along his spine.

  “However, there are other matters which we, as representatives of the United States, are still very much interested in resolving,” Steiner continued. “Matters having to do with this government’s authority. With...obeying orders,” he said almost delicately, his black eyes still locked on Hawk’s..

  “The assassination in Iraq,” Hawk said, laying out the accusation Steiner was dancing around, probably because of Claire Heywood’s presence. They had wanted Hawk for that all along. They were determined to rein him in. Maybe even to punish him for going against orders.

  “Unless, of course, Ms. Stewart is prepared to provide an alibi for that murder also,” the assistant deputy director said.

  “You know why I went to Baghdad,” Hawk said.

  “I know you had been told not to go. And told that your target there was off-limits.”

  “My target there,” Hawk repeated mockingly, “killed Griffon Cabot and five others in a senseless massacre of innocent people who were on their way to work. I knew who ordered that attack. You knew who ordered it. An international terrorist with enough blood on his hands to float a couple of battleships.”

  “Someone who was off-limits,” Steiner said again.

  “Is he right?” Claire Heywood asked softly.

  Steiner’s eyes shifted to her, and in them was surprise. “Right about what?”

  “About the man in Baghdad being responsible for the Langley incident?”

  “We have no proof of that,” Steiner said.

  “I have proof.” Hawk’s voice was calm and emotionless again. He had himself under control. He could do that as long as he didn’t think about Tyler. He had to convince Steiner to put her into protection, and if the price of that was to let them have him for what he had done in Baghdad, then so be it. “Do you really want proof?”

  “You may present it. It will have to be analyzed, of course,” Steiner said.

  Hawk laughed, the short sound devoid of humor. “Everything has to be analyzed,” he said. “To see who we might offend. To determine if our so-called allies will approve. Whatever happened to right and wrong? Whatever happened to doing the right thing, the right thing for this country, and letting the chips fall where they may?”

  “And you intend to determine what is right?” Steiner asked. “You and you alone will make that decision? The world is more complicated, Mr. Hawkins, than your narrow vision of it.”

  “Only to you,” Hawk said. “Only to bastards like you and your pious bureaucratic brotherhood.”

  No one said anything for a moment. Steiner’s eyes were angry, but still confident. And why the hell shouldn’t they be? Hawk thought bitterly. Steiner held the winning hand. He had apparently known that since the beginning. Because he really did know all about Hawk. All the psychological babble that they had collected on him for years. Somehow they had put that together with the fact that he had taken Tyler Stewart with him from Mississippi and kept her with him. And this time, by putting two and two together, they had somehow arrived at the correct conclusion.

  “What do you want?” Hawk said finally. It was time to give in to the inevitable and make the deal.

  “We want you to agree to answer some questions about what happened in Iraq.”

  “A
nd where does this questioning take place?” Hawk asked, simply as a matter of form.

  “At one of our secured facilities. You will be well treated. I think you know that.”

  Fed and clothed and housed, Hawk thought, at the expense of the state. Not much different from getting the little pension he’d lost. “And what do I get in exchange for my cooperation?”

  “We’re not offering you a deal.”

  “You better be,” Hawk warned softly.

  “Certain terms were set when you agreed to this meeting,” Claire reminded Steiner.

  “The situation has changed,” he said.

  “You son of a bitch,” Hawk said, his voice filled with cold hatred. The men on either side of Steiner shifted uncomfortably, but he seemed unaffected.

  “What do you want?” Steiner asked, his voice amused again.

  It was almost as if he were making a concession. One that they all would know he wasn’t compelled to make. As if the agency was no longer worried about whatever threat Hawk might represent to them, but was willing to give a little out of the goodness of its heart, a concept Hawk knew to be a joke. Or as one might concede some advantage to an outmatched opponent, simply to be sporting.

  Even as he was thinking that, Hawk was amending his demands. After all, there was only one that mattered. And there was no reason why Steiner shouldn’t grant it, especially if Hawk gave them what they wanted. It would be no skin off his nose, and he would leave with what the company had sent him here to get.

  “Ms. Stewart tells her story about what she saw to the proper authorities. Ours, not theirs,” Hawk said. “Then they take it from there. The agency sees to it that the assassins can’t possibly find her. You keep her hidden for as long as it takes to track them down.”

  “Witness protection?”

  “Whatever you want to call it,” Hawk agreed. Whatever will keep her safe. “But she doesn’t tell that story to al-Ahmad. She tells it to our people. And then she disappears until you catch the assassins.”

  “Of course,” Steiner agreed softly. His eyes fell, the dark lashes hiding the sudden gleam of satisfaction that had clearly been in them.

  And why the hell shouldn’t he be satisfied? Hawk thought. He had what he had come for. He had Hawk.

  Hawk didn’t know what the outcome of this agreement would be for him. It didn’t really matter. It wasn’t as if he had had a whole lot of other plans for the future.

  “And we want the tapes from the security cameras. All copies of them, and those pictures are not to be made public,” Claire Heywood said, her voice clear and decisive again. In charge. “And whatever material that file contains.”

  Steiner looked at her, almost for the first time since she had opened the meeting. His lips twisted, a small mocking expression of amusement. He closed the file and pushed it toward her across the expanse of the table.

  “That’s the last of it, you know,” he said.

  “The last of what?” Claire asked, pulling the file to her.

  “The last records of a man called Hawk. As far as the government is concerned—as far as the world is concerned—” he amended, “Lucas Hawkins does not now and never has existed.”

  They had erased everything, Hawk realized, chilled. He had known they would doctor the records so that there would be no connection between him and the agency. But this...

  He supposed he should have known. When they released those pictures from the hotel cameras, they would want to be absolutely certain that nothing could possibly be traced back to them. No matter who was doing the tracing.

  “You can’t do that,” Claire said.

  Hawk wondered if she really believed what she had just said. Because, of course, they could do anything they wanted. He’d thought she knew how things worked here. He did. They could do any damn thing they wanted. To him. To his life.

  “We already have,” Steiner said. “What you hold is all that remains of Lucas Hawkins.” His eyes came back to Hawk’s. “Talk and be damned,” he challenged softly. “There is nothing left, not one line of print, not one computer reference, not one pay voucher, not one record in any file anywhere that can be used to verify your existence. Much less anything you claim to have done during the last ten years. The only thing that going public about those things will garner you is a hell of a lot of enemies. People have long memories when it comes to murder.”

  “I never murdered anyone,” Hawk said.

  “That’s a matter of semantics, isn’t it,” Steiner said. “Or maybe a matter of your politics.” He stood up. Surprised by the abruptness of the movement, the men on either side of him hurriedly rose also.

  “Do we have a deal?” Hawk asked.

  “You walk out that door with us, and we do.”

  “Those aren’t the terms we agreed to,” Claire said angrily.

  “Conditions have changed. You no longer have anything to bargain with. No one will believe whatever stories you tell.”

  “They may believe the story I tell,” Claire said.

  “Let it go,” Hawk said softly. “It’s over.”

  He wouldn’t allow Claire Heywood to sacrifice herself in a crusade she couldn’t win. None of them would win in that case. He put his hand on the edge of the table, preparing to push out of the plush softness of the big leather chair. The sense of fatigue that had haunted him after Baghdad was overwhelming again.

  Tyler’s fingers were suddenly on top of his. They were cold, but not trembling. He almost pulled his hand away. Almost stood, ignoring the entreaty her gesture represented. Something prevented him. Maybe his fatigue. Or the knowledge that this was the last time he would see her. Or maybe, once again, as in that dark bedroom last night, his self-control had broken. He turned his head slowly and met her eyes. In his was nothing that he didn’t intend to be there. And in hers...

  “Is what he said true?” she asked.

  What part of it? Hawk wondered. Calling what happened in Iraq a murder? Saying I no longer exist? All of those things he read out of my file? What he implied about my reasons for bringing you here today? But of course, there was some element of truth in all of those. Enough that he supposed it didn’t matter anymore about the parts that weren’t true.

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  She slowly removed her hand from his, putting it in her lap with the other. He could still feel the imprint of her fingers, however, burning against his skin. Last time, he thought. Last touch. Last chance.

  Then the man who had been called Hawk stood and followed Carl Steiner out of the room. He didn’t look back.

  “WHAT DO I DO NOW?” Tyler asked finally into the silence they left behind. “I thought...” She hesitated, unsure of all her conclusions. Confused by the abrupt ending to this. For one thing, no one had taken down a word she had said about the assassination. They hadn’t seemed even remotely interested in the story she had come here to tell.

  She thought she had been following the conversation, despite the references to people and events she had no knowledge of. The man who was in charge had agreed to put her in Witness Protection. Which was exactly what Hawk had told her would happen. Nothing else, however, had been anything at all like what she had been led to expect.

  “They’ll send someone for you,” the blond woman beside her said softly. “Until they do, we just stay here. I’m Claire Heywood, by the way,” she added, holding out her hand.

  The handshake was awkward because of their positions. They were still sitting on the same side of the conference table, the chair Hawk had occupied during the meeting between them.

  “You’re Hawk’s lawyer?” Tyler asked hesitantly. There had been no introductions. She had assumed that everyone else in the room knew one another.

  “Not really,” Claire said. “Just...a friend, I suppose. A friend of a friend’s,” she added after a moment.

  “Then you knew what that was all about,” Tyler suggested.

  “Some of it,” Claire agreed.

  “Hawk killed a man in
Baghdad.”

  “Yes,” Claire said. Her voice was softer than it had been before, almost reluctant.

  “But why?” Tyler asked, shaking her head. “That’s not...I mean, I know that he’s...” She almost said “dangerous.” He was. She had recognized that from the beginning, but she had thought that was because of his job. Because of being an agent. Now she wasn’t sure exactly what he was.

  It had gradually become obvious that Hawk hadn’t been sent to Mississippi to rescue her. He hadn’t come to protect her from the people who were hunting her. Or even to bring her here so she could identify them. That identification had been made only because she had pushed it into the conversation, and no one had seemed really interested.

  According to the man in the middle, Hawk had brought her here to clear him of the assassination of the sheikh. But he had never indicated to her that he was a suspect. He had saved her life, but apparently even that had been done for his own purposes. Not because he was acting under orders or investigating the assassination, but because she was the one person who could prove Hawk hadn’t done it. Which meant, she supposed...

  That he had been using her, she acknowledged. And it also meant that nothing of what she thought she knew about Hawk was true. At least not his motives for doing what he had done. And one of those involved what had happened between them last night.

  “Who is he?” Tyler asked, pulling away from the pain of that. She was trying to understand what Hawk had done and why. And trying not to judge until she knew everything.

  Claire didn’t answer for a moment, her eyes filled with sympathy. And when she did, it really wasn’t the explanation Tyler had asked for.

  “He’s a man who believes that in order to keep this country safe, sometimes someone has to do things...” She hesitated before she went on. “Things the rest of us don’t always approve of. Or understand. Things that may, on the surface...” She paused again, her eyes full of some emotion Tyler didn’t understand. Maybe some of the same confusion she was feeling.

  “But he is a government agent?” Tyler asked softly.