by Rachel Lee
“Now wait a minute,” Tom said, sitting up. “Kevin’s a good agent. He may have known Wes Dixon years ago, but that doesn’t prove he’s connected to what’s going on.”
“He pulled you off the case,” Renate said. “And sent Miriam Anson to Guatemala to make sure she was out of the way. That smells connected to me.”
Tom shook his head. “I lived with Miriam and Terry after I came back from L.A. I know them. I’d trust them with my life. If they thought Kevin was dirty, he wouldn’t be with them.”
“And maybe they simply have no reason to suspect him.”
“Maybe,” Tom said. “And maybe there’s a monster under this bed. But maybe this is a good thing. Now we have a way to get the Bureau to take Dixon down. And if I know Kevin and Terry, they’ll find a way to turn the Dixon ranch upside down when they get there. But we need to give Miriam all we know, Renate. We can’t leave her working blind.”
“You say you trust Miriam with your life,” Renate said, looking at him. “Do you trust her with mine?”
“Yes,” Tom said. “Look, you contacted your parents because you didn’t want them to grieve a dead daughter who wasn’t really dead. I don’t have any family. But Miriam and Terry are as close as I’ve got. I honestly don’t want her to go on thinking I’m dead.”
“I told you what happened when I contacted my parents,” she said. “It’s not going to make your life better.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “But if it’ll help us get Dixon, it’s worth it. Who else do we have to turn to?”
She studied him for a moment, as if measuring his soul. Finally she nodded. “Okay. Let’s contact her. But I want to see every word before you send anything.”
“Fair enough,” Tom said. “How do we do it?
Boise, Idaho
Miriam, Terry and Kevin entered the Boise FBI field office together and soon were in a private meeting with Fred Milgram in the conference room. Kevin took the lead, trying to wend his way through a potential minefield of politics. Fred, after all, was the SAC of this office, and he might well perceive Kevin as stepping on his toes if this weren’t handled carefully.
So he started out the safest way possible. “I need your help, Fred.”
Fred nodded slowly, an acknowledgment of the request, but not an answer.
“A case we were working on has mushroomed,” Kevin continued. “Special Agent Anson just returned from Guatemala, where she learned that one of your local ranchers has been training and outfitting Guatemalan rebels on his land. I also have reason to believe that Agent Lawton discovered the training camp and was killed because of it.”
Fred Milgram’s whole demeanor changed. “Are you saying this was going on under my nose and I had no hint of it?”
Kevin realized toes had been stepped on, anyway. Sighing inwardly, he pushed on. “Put it this way, Fred. One of our agents had to go to Guatemala to find this out. This guy is apparently very smart and very careful. None of us had any idea that he was up to anything.”
“What about Lawton? Why was he working here without informing me?”
Miriam spoke. “Agent Lawton was on suspension. He told everyone he was going fishing.”
“Damn.” Fred rubbed his chin. He was a good agent, a good man, but Boise was a bit of a backwater as field offices went. Consequently, even he knew he was protective of his turf. However, this time he pushed aside his feelings.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Wesley Dixon.”
Both of Fred’s brows rose. “Wes Dixon? The guy’s got a five-man militia group that likes to play army on weekends. You’re telling me that’s a cover?”
“Apparently so. We need a warrant to go out to his ranch and find his training facility.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Fred said. “And my guys are in on it.”
“This whole office is in on it,” Kevin said. “If anything is found, it will be found by you. We just need to know.”
Just then there was a knock on the door and an agent stuck his head in. “I have a message for SA Anson. It came by e-mail.”
Fred nodded and motioned him to give the message to Miriam. She accepted it with thanks and began reading.
Then she folded the paper and looked up. “Is there somewhere I can make a phone call? Personal business.”
“Sure,” said Fred. “Use my office, two doors to the right.”
“Thanks. I’ll use my cell.” She rose and left. The others resumed their discussion of what they would need to do at the Dixon ranch.
In Milgram’s office, Miriam took a chair near the window, away from his desk. Then she opened the cryptic e-mail again, her heart pounding. All it said was, “Check your voice mail,” followed by a phone number with a Washington area code. Anyone would have supposed that the number was hers. What was going on?
Deciding to follow the instructions, she punched up her own voice mail and listened. Sometime while they had been en route to Boise, a message had been left for her. Tom’s voice was as clear as a bell.
“I’m in Missoula. We need to talk, but no one else can know. Get here as fast as you can. There isn’t much time.”
She immediately deleted the message, then sat for a few minutes with her phone to her ear, listening to the mindless repetition of the voice mail menu, while trying to absorb her second major shock in two days.
Yesterday she had been told Tom was dead. Now she had heard him on her voice mail, clearly time-stamped today, while she was flying to Boise.
He was alive and apparently in hiding. There was no question about how to handle it. Slapping her phone closed, she rose and returned to the conference room. Everyone stopped speaking as she entered.
“I have a personal emergency. How fast can I get to Missoula?”
“They’re having some bad weather heading that way,” Fred Milgram answered. “Traffic’s barely moving, if it’s moving at all. Heavy snow.”
“Can I fly in?”
Milgram thought for a moment, then leaned forward. “Let’s find out. Are you all going?”
“No,” said Miriam. “Kevin and Terry need to stay here and see what can be found at the Dixon ranch. I have a sister up there. She’s in a bad way.”
She knew Kevin wouldn’t know much about her family, but Terry did. The look that passed between them was brief and invisible to anyone else, a look between soul mates that communicated everything that needed to be said. He would cover for her if things got squirrelly here. Thank God for that, she thought. She had to get to Tom and find out what was going on.
As it turned out, getting a flight to Missoula proved relatively easy. A commuter run was scheduled, and the forecast was for clearing conditions. At her own insistence, Miriam took a shuttle to the airport and boarded the puddle jumper, a plane that could carry no more than twelve passengers.
The ride over the mountains was rough enough to be extremely uncomfortable and at times terrifying, but the pilot persisted in making jokes about it, including one to the effect that they had nothing to worry about until they hit the ground.
As luck would have it, they didn’t hit the ground until they landed in Missoula. The runway had been cleared, but the heaps of snow on either side told the story. And now, as they slowed, she could see that flurries were falling again.
She passed through the charter arrivals terminal and was reaching for her phone when a woman appeared at her side and spoke quietly.
“Special Agent Miriam Anson? Don’t look. Just keep walking and nod.”
Miriam nodded and continued toward the glass doors.
“The picture doesn’t do you justice,” the woman said. “Get a cab at the curb and ask to go to the Lonely Cowboy Lounge. Ask the bartender where the rest rooms are. They are in the back of the lounge, on either side of a hallway. You’ll find a service entrance at the end of the hallway. Go out that door, and I’ll be waiting in a pickup truck to take you to Tom.”
“Why all the—”
“I knew you were arriving, didn’t I? Our enem
ies have their own contacts. I’d bet your life that you’re being watched right now. Would you?”
Miriam stepped aside as a crowd of college students came in through the glass doors, all wearing maroon and gray, many with their faces painted, as well. They were doubtless on their way to an athletic event of some kind. She turned to look at the woman who had been speaking to her, but she’d melted into the crowd.
Deciding she had no choice but to follow the mysterious directions, Miriam waded through the press of students and made her way to the curb, where she flagged down a cab.
A little while later, the driver deposited her in front of the Lonely Cowboy Lounge, and she stepped inside. The bar was everything and nothing she’d expected. Yes, there was the obligatory mechanical bull in the center of the room, but it was a surprisingly upscale establishment and seemed to cater more to wanna-bes than to cowboys themselves. As instructed, Miriam asked the bartender for directions to the rest rooms, then made her way back through the crowd in the direction he had pointed. A commotion began behind her as a man in khaki slacks and Top-Siders took his turn on the mechanical bull, but she left the noise behind as she stepped out into the alley.
26
Missoula, Montana
Renate prided herself on having a cold detachment that allowed her to keep a clear head in a deadly environment. But she wasn’t feeling detached now, and she had to fight to contain her emotions. As soon as Miriam was in the truck, Renate jammed her foot down on the accelerator, causing them to fishtail as they started down the alley.
Allowing Tom to call this woman and bring her here had been a dangerous mistake. The woman’s beauty also made her uneasy in ways that were utterly absurd, yet which she found herself utterly unable to dismiss.
She slammed on the brakes and skidded up to the stop sign at the end of the alley. They were clear to the left, and she jammed down on the accelerator again, turning right onto the street.
“I’m Miriam Anson,” the agent said. “And you’re…?”
“Renate.”
“A friend of Tom’s?”
“No. Colleague.”
“Ah.”
Renate kept her eyes on the road but noticed as Miriam looked her over, noticed as she took in the maroon and gray that Renate wore, which had allowed her to vanish into the crowd of college students.
“So what is it with mechanical bulls?” Miriam asked. “Why send me to an Urban Cowboy bar?”
“We had to shake the tail,” Renate said.
“What tail?”
Renate glanced over at her. “The tail you picked up the instant you made flight arrangements to come here. I wasn’t the only one to meet you at the airport. I paid the guy who climbed on that stupid bull a hundred bucks. The commotion gave you time to slip out the back before your followers could catch up to you.”
“Would it offend you if I told you that sounds paranoid?” Miriam asked.
Renate forced herself not to flinch, blink or even shrug. “Think whatever you want. I’m trying to stay alive and keep Tom alive. And now I have to keep you alive, too.”
“I think I can handle myself,” Miriam said.
“You did well in Guatemala,” Renate said. “But this is a different kind of jungle. And more dangerous.”
“How do you know about Guatemala?” Miriam asked. She was obviously taken aback by the statement, which was exactly what Renate had intended. She had the advantage now, and she had no intention of giving that up.
“I have sources,” Renate said, making her voice as cold and flat as she could. “Tom and I are involved in an investigation that reaches farther than you can imagine. It’s also more deadly than you can imagine.”
“I know that Wes Dixon is training guerillas at his ranch,” Miriam said. “I know Tom suspected something was wrong there. And I know damn well it was dangerous enough for him to almost get killed, then fake his own death.”
“I faked his death,” Renate said. “To save his life.”
“Then I must thank you.”
“You know,” Renate said, keeping her voice cool, “once your friends in Boise go out to the Dixon ranch, Dixon will hear about it. He’ll put two and two together, and my job will get a lot more dangerous.”
“Your job?”
“Yes,” Renate said.
“And just what is your job?” Miriam asked. “Who do you work for?”
“Not yet,” Renate said, glancing in her rearview mirror as she made another turn, finally convinced that anyone following them had long since been shaken. “I don’t know whether to trust you yet. And until I do, we play by my rules.”
Minutes later, they emerged onto a main road and soon parked at a rustic motel. Miriam had kept her silence for the remainder of the drive, weighing what Renate had said, drawing tentative conclusions. The woman was obviously in the intelligence community. Her actions were clearly the product of training and experience. But that didn’t make Miriam any more comfortable. Quite the contrary. Her experience of the intelligence community had been that they manipulated those around them to their own ends, and those ends were often morally ambiguous, to say the least. This woman had a lot of questions to answer before Miriam would let Tom stay with her.
When Tom opened the door to the room, Miriam’s heart both warmed and sank. His face and arms were bruised, and he moved with a pained stiffness.
“You look like hell,” she said, hugging him.
“I feel like hell,” he replied, ushering her in and taking her coat. “Still nice to see you, though.”
Miriam sat in one of the two faded armchairs and watched as Renate headed into the bathroom to change. She left the bathroom door open, so Miriam spoke softly.
“I take it the car accident wasn’t faked?”
“Unfortunately not,” Tom said. “The only thing fake about it was that I didn’t die.”
He briefly recounted all he said he remembered of the accident and the days since. There were gaps, Miriam noted, but she wasn’t sure what to make of them. He’d undoubtedly gotten at least a minor concussion in the accident, so memory gaps were to be expected. Or he could be holding back. With Tom, it was always difficult to know.
“So what happened to you?” he asked. “I hear you had some problems in Guatemala.”
“You might say that,” Miriam said. “There’s a civil war going on, and I got caught in the middle of it. I guess you know I was wounded.”
He nodded. “And that the Bureau doctors say you’re healing well. That’s good to hear, at least.”
“I’m glad they think so,” she said. “This cold is making things hurt like hell.”
“Tell me about it,” Tom said, half smiling. “Riding in that truck when your body feels like you’ve been a tackling dummy for the Vikings’ defensive line is no fun.”
“So what’s going on?” Miriam asked. “Why fake your death?”
Tom glanced over her shoulder, and Miriam turned to see Renate emerge from the bathroom in jeans and a sweater. She sat on the edge of the bed and met Tom’s eyes for just an instant, but Miriam could see that the glance both spoke and concealed volumes.
“What do you know?” Renate asked.
Her face and voice gave no offer of quid pro quo, and Miriam considered whether to answer at all. She wasn’t going to jeopardize an FBI operation to sate the curiosity of someone whose agenda and reliability she did not know. Nor did she think she had to prove herself to Tom. So she turned to him.
“What do you know?” she asked.
He glanced at Renate again, then shook his head. “It can’t work that way, Miriam. I’m sorry. Trust me when I say the Bureau is out of its depth on this one. I’ll need you, yes. And you’ll get the credit. But this isn’t going to be a two-way street.”
She could hardly believe what she had just heard. This was her protégé, an agent she’d shepherded through the difficult early years of his career, befriended, taken in when his life had gone to hell. And now he didn’t trust her? This woman ha
d gotten to him somehow.
“This is absurd,” Miriam said, turning to Renate. “We can sit here and play verbal games all day, but it won’t get us any closer to what we want. If you want to play it that close to the vest, I’ll call a cab and go back to Boise. At least there people trust me.”
“But do you trust them?” Renate asked. “That’s the real question. And if so, you don’t know as much as you think you do.”
“You mean Kevin Willis,” Miriam said. She looked over at Tom, who nodded almost imperceptibly. “When did you find out?”
“Before I left to come out here,” Tom said. “In fact, that’s why I came out here. He’s a mole for some dangerous people. People who tried to kill me.”
“That’s not true,” Miriam said. “Look, Terry and I talked with Kevin about this. Yes, he screwed up. He said so. He knew Wes Dixon in the army, and Dixon introduced him to Ed Morgan. Morgan was a source on some key cases Kevin worked. When all of this came up, Kevin thought it was absurd. So he called Morgan to ask him about it.”
“Christ,” Tom said. “He set me up.”
“No,” Miriam said. “He didn’t. Not intentionally.”
“Even if what you say is true,” Renate said, “intentions are irrelevant. He leaked key facts in an investigation to the very people you were investigating. He took you off of the investigation, sent you to Guatemala, and cut Tom loose for the wolves. This isn’t a man I trust.”
Miriam realized that, from their perspective, Kevin Willis was a mole. But they hadn’t seen his face as the truth came out. Still, she knew there was no way she could convince them. Tom was never going to trust Kevin again. And Renate didn’t seem inclined to give second chances.
“Kevin doesn’t know why I’m here,” Miriam said. “I told him I’m up here visiting a sick sister.”
“He’ll figure out that’s bullshit,” Tom said. “He’s not stupid.”
Miriam shook her head. “No, he’s not. So you’ll have to give me something I can spin. A way to work things so I don’t have to tell him you’re alive.”
“You think you can lie to him?” Tom asked.