by Rachel Lee
“That makes sense,” Renate said. “Have you been there before?”
“Once,” he said. “A long time ago. I was ten years old. I guess it was the last vacation we ever took.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“On the vacation? Nothing special that I remember. We drove the Going to the Sun Road, which was beautiful. A couple of months after we got back, Mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She died the next winter, and that was the end of my childhood.”
“I’m sorry,” Renate said. She’d read the basic facts in his file, but she hadn’t asked about any of the details. Now that they were going to be working together, perhaps it was time to ask. “What happened, exactly?”
He looked out at the snowy peaks for a while before answering. “The medical bills cleaned Dad out. He was spending so much time at the hospital with her. Used up all his sick days and more besides. The foreman had to let him go. The union fought it, but by the time they were done arguing, she was dead and he’d mortgaged the house to pay for the doctors and the hospital and the funeral.”
“That wouldn’t happen in Germany,” she said. “But I don’t suppose that makes any difference to you.”
“Not a bit,” he said. “The union finally got Dad his job back, but he wasn’t much for it by then, and he lost it again. He’d taken to drinking. The doctor had prescribed something to help him sleep, but he didn’t want pills. He said the booze did the same thing.”
“Grieving people often self-medicate,” she said.
“Well, he did,” Tom said. “Big-time. I tried to keep him going, keep him looking for work. It wasn’t like it is now. The auto plants hadn’t closed and gone to Mexico. He could have found a job. He did find a couple, but with the drinking, he didn’t stay around long. The mortgage company had long since run out of patience, and he wanted to keep the house. His father had built that house, after all, and he’d grown up there. So he fell in with the wrong people.”
“Drug dealers,” Renate said.
“Yeah.” Tom paused to sip his coffee. “It was easy money, he thought. He started at the bottom, selling dime bags of pot to the locals. A lot of them were ex-hippies from the sixties, so it was popular. Then he started muling. They flew the stuff into Canada, where customs inspections were weaker at the time. He’d drive across the border, load up the trunk and deliver it to the players in Detroit and Pontiac. That’s when the trouble really started.”
“Why?” she asked.
“One player wanted another’s turf. Dad got caught in the middle. Somebody didn’t like who Dad was dealing with, so they drove into town one night and took a couple of shots at him through our living room window.”
Tom laughed bitterly. “The neighbors might have been ex-hippies who wanted their pot for a weekend buzz, but now they had jobs and kids. They didn’t want crime in their town. Dad went from the poor guy who lost his wife and job to the bastard who was putting their little angels at risk. Somebody tipped off the cops, and he ended up in jail. The same pricks who’d been buying from him when he started, turned around and testified at his trial.”
“And you went to live with your aunt?”
He nodded. “I was fifteen by the time the trial was over. My aunt lived a couple of towns away. Everyone in school knew who I was, of course. The dope dealer’s kid. Half the kids wanted to buy from me. The other half treated me like a pariah. I graduated a year early, applied to Georgetown because I liked Patrick Ewing and it was far away, and I got the hell out of Michigan as fast as I could.”
“Patrick Ewing?” she asked.
“The center for the Georgetown basketball team. They were a national powerhouse back then.”
More of the pieces had fit into place. The bare facts she’d read lacked the grim reality of hearing him tell it. Betrayal had been his constant companion in childhood, and that explained a lot about his reactions to what had happened in Los Angeles. And about why he had needed to contact Miriam Anson.
“You did well at Georgetown,” she said, smiling.
He looked over. “Thanks. I guess you’ve read my transcripts, huh?”
She laughed. “Of course. Very impressive.”
“Well,” he said, “I felt like I finally had a chance. Nobody knew who I was. Or who my dad was. I didn’t talk about my past. I didn’t get homesick. I just focused on my courses. I tumbled into a communications law class because I was studying journalism and discovered I was good at law. So I applied for their law school. I guess I thought I’d fix the system that had screwed my dad. Turned out one of my professors was an FBI agent, and he told a lot of stories in class. So instead of trying to fix the system, I became part of it.”
“And then the system betrayed you again?” she asked.
“Maybe,” he said. “I still haven’t worked that out yet. I screwed up. I know that. Breaking my SAC’s nose was definitely a stupid thing to do. I’d made the classic undercover mistake. I’d gotten emotionally attached.”
“Which means you’re human,” she said.
“I don’t know what to make of that, coming from you.”
“You think I’m not human?”
“You try not to be.”
That was true, she realized. She told herself it was essential to her work. She had to be invisible, and people who made emotional connections didn’t stay invisible for long. They talked about old subjects that had to remain buried. They exposed themselves. And yet, she couldn’t deny an emotional connection with Tom. They’d been working together twenty-four hours a day for long enough that she’d begun to find him comfortable.
“I guess I do,” she said.
“Part of the job?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
She drove in silence for a while, keeping an eye on the tour bus, which was little more than a glint on the horizon, disappearing and reappearing as they crested hills. Signs on the side of the road announced the main entrance to Glacier National Park, but the bus continued north.
“Maybe they’re not going into the park,” she said.
“Have to be,” Tom said, digging through a road atlas. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Dixon must be planning to use another entrance, closer to the back trails. But there aren’t many, and he’s going to have to cross the Continental Divide to get into Canada through the parks.”
“Hannibal through the Alps,” she said. “Look for passes.”
“There are only two I can see,” Tom said, studying the map. “And eventually they’ll have to go through Brown Pass. It’s on a park trail. Elevation 6800 feet or so, in the midst of several glaciers. That ought to be a lot of fun at this time of year.”
“It’s also a good place to take them down,” Renate said. “They’ll have to be on foot, and there shouldn’t be any civilians around. It’s about as isolated as we can hope to get them.”
“Should I call Miriam?” Tom asked.
She shook her head. “Wait until they turn into the park. We’ll only get one chance to call that tip line, so we have to be right. If we have to call twice, it’s going to sound very suspicious.”
He looked at the map again. “Once they get up to those lakes, they’ll have to hike the rest of the way. They’ll have twenty-four hours at most to get the intercept team organized and transported up there. That’s an awfully thin margin.”
“Life,” she said, “is an awfully thin margin.”
Watermill, Long Island
Edward Morgan was feeling frantic. Kevin Willis was out of town, according to the FBI, and they refused to do anything except take a message. Wes had phoned and said that one of his comrades in the militia, a former military associate, now insurance agent, had been killed while on sentry duty at the ranch. Someone was watching them. They had taken off for the border, and more than that he would not tell Edward.
And somewhere out there, Bookworm was still alive, doing whatever mischief she could. He knew her as a computer nerd, but suddenly he was wondering if she was capable of killi
ng. And whether she was working for herself for some strange reason, or if there was something else important he didn’t know.
And now his sister, who had just backed out of a cruise in the Mediterranean—a cruise she had summarily refused to take without Wes—was walking into his study looking like an avenging Valkyrie.
“Where is Wes?” she demanded. “I’ve been trying to reach him.”
“How would I know?”
She put her hands on her hips. “Edward Morgan, you’re a lousy liar. What did you get him into? I’ve wondered for years what was going on between the two of you.”
“Katherine, nothing is going on, I assure you.” Which, of course, was why he could feel his collar growing damp.
“Don’t lie to me, Edward. Not any longer. Wes has been getting increasingly…nervous. For months now. And every time he talks to you it gets worse.”
Edward forced a sigh and spread his hands. “Kathy…”
“Don’t you Kathy me.” Her eyes were sparking, and the anger she radiated was an almost physical force pressing him back in his chair. “When he quit the military, I knew it had something to do with you. He had such a bright future before him. My God, he could have been chief of staff by now. And he left all that behind because of you.”
“I swear—”
“Bullshit,” she said succinctly, the first time he had ever heard such an unladylike word pass her lips. “I’ve spent too many years confined to a half-assed sheep ranch in Idaho to believe you any longer. That man didn’t just up and decide to raise sheep. The sheep raise themselves while he’s off doing something else. And it’s consuming him, Edward. It’s eating him alive. And all those military friends of his moving out to join him… What kind of fool do you take me for?”
“I’ve never thought you were a fool.”
“Really? I suppose you think I believed that you and Wes thought a cruise alone would be good for my health. There’s nothing wrong with my health. All that’s wrong with my life is too many secrets and the way they’re consuming the man I love.”
A tear trickled down her cheek all of a sudden, making him feel lower than a worm. “I want my husband back, Edward. I want the man I married back, not this hush-hush, always-looking-over-his-shoulder, secretive… I don’t know what he’s become. But I don’t like it, and I blame you.”
“Wes hasn’t done anything he hasn’t wanted to.”
“No?” She dashed away the tear and glared at him again. “My Wes is a proud man. I’m sure you used that against him, reminding him of the style of life I’m supposedly accustomed to and how he couldn’t provide it. I’m sure you made him feel just awful, then sank your hooks into him somehow, just the way you do with everyone else you want to use.”
Shock struck Edward out of the blue. Had he been that transparent? Or was it just that Kathy knew him so well? Even so, the description of himself struck some long-forgotten ethical chord, and he squirmed just a bit.
She pointed her finger at him. “You get my husband back to me, Edward Morgan. And then set him free to be the man he was meant to be.”
Edward waited a moment, then shook his head. “My dear, I’m afraid that Wes is the man he was meant to be.”
With a gasp that sounded like a sob, Katherine turned and hurried from the room. The slamming of the door behind her reverberated even in the carpeted, book-lined room.
For a moment, only a moment, Edward hated himself. Then he shoved the useless emotion aside and went back to trying to figure out a way to save his own life.
A man had to have his priorities straight.
Columbia Falls, Montana
At Columbia Falls, well before reaching the main west entrance to the park, the bus turned off on a county road headed north. Driving conditions immediately deteriorated, but as Tom studied the map, he felt his spirits rise.
“This is the only road they can take. It runs along the western side of the park as far as Polebridge. Conditions are questionable.”
“At least we won’t have to follow so close now,” Renate answered. She slowed down and let the bus take a huge lead. “What’s at Polebridge?”
“I don’t know if it’s a small town or what. Must be, since it’s outside the park. But from there you can enter Glacier by way of the Polebridge Ranger Station, and there’s a trail there. It goes over the Continental Divide, then turns north toward Canada.”
“Sounds like exactly what they’d be looking for.”
He nodded, feeling as if things were really starting to go their way. “Have you ever been up here before?”
“No.”
“When I was a kid, after we left the park, we drove west toward Libby. It was a lumber town then. Maybe still is. But what I remember most was passing through this tiny spot on the road, a tavern on one side, a couple of mobile homes on the other. And a sign that said “Happy’s Inn, Population 8.”
Renate smiled, then laughed. “I can see why you’d remember it.”
“That was back when the wide-open spaces were still really wide-open. When wilderness wasn’t just a name but a reality. Maybe, after we’re done with this job, we can look around a bit.”
“Maybe.” The word was indifferent, but her smile said otherwise. “As a European, I’m still frequently stunned by the sheer size of your country.”
“I can imagine. I ran into some Swedes once at a campground in Colorado. They needed some help because their car was mired, and then they confessed that they hadn’t realized it was going to take more than two weeks to see everything they wanted to see. They were feeling a bit disappointed.”
“I can imagine.” She slowed down again as the road grew a little more slippery and the tail of the bus came into view in the far distance. Just then the flurries stopped, and a few minutes later, like a blessing from above, the sun came out, bouncing brightly off the new-fallen snow. Renate reached for her sunglasses.
Tom was looking out the side window. “You know, it looks like most of the winter snow already melted. So all we’re dealing with is the fresh stuff.”
“That’ll change when we climb some more.”
“I know. But before we do, I suspect we may be dealing with a lot of mud.”
“Better than ice.” She took a curve carefully. With the clearing, they could now see the peaks within the park, and Tom began to wonder if he was in good enough shape to be a mountain goat. God, it looked forbidding in there.
Renate glanced at her watch. “They’ll leave the bus at the entrance and push into the park for a while. And we’ll be right behind them.”
Given the woman he was with, Tom had little doubt of that. He hoped the return of the sun was a good omen.
29
Boise, Idaho
The tip Tom had promised came in that evening. The stitch replaced at the E.R., Miriam had insisted on remaining at the office with Fred and Terry, and dining on some takeout of indeterminate origin. She nearly leaped up off the sofa when a female agent appeared with a sheet of paper.
“I think I saw that man from the television—Wes Dixon—in a bus with an aluminum trailer,” the tip said. “Headed north of Bowman Lake to Brown Pass.”
At once Miriam asked for a map of Glacier Park. A scramble ensued throughout the office until finally Terry said, “How about looking on the Web?”
Fred immediately turned to his computer, and in less than two minutes had a map of Glacier Park on his screen.
“There it is,” Miriam said, pointing. “Bowman Lake Trail. And Brown Pass. Then the trail turns north into Canada.”
“We’re going to need to get Missoula in on this,” Fred said. He sounded as if something great had just slipped from his grasp. He looked at Miriam. “That’s what you went to Missoula about, wasn’t it.”
She looked at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re too sure of this for it to be just another anonymous tip.”
She hesitated. “Listen, Fred, like you said, we’re going to need help from Missoula. I�
�m sure you have contacts there. Can you help us out?”
He nodded. “Sure. I’ll set it up. And I’m coming with you.”
“Of course.” She pretended surprise that he might consider doing anything else. “I’m sure your team here will find the weapons caches out at the ranch. You don’t need to be there.”
Instantly he was torn; she could see it on his face. And she hated doing it to him. But now he was weighing whether he wanted to be here, so he could announce the discovery of arms caches on the news, or there, so he could be in on the kill.
But he didn’t say anything. Instead he just turned toward the phone and said, “I’ll set Missoula up for you.”
She was pretty sure he had decided to stay here.
Bowman Lake, Montana
Tom felt beads of sweat trickle down his spine, and hoped he and Renate were as invisible as she had promised. But it didn’t much matter. As she had said, this was their one chance to get ahead of Dixon and his men. So he pressed on, trying to lose himself in the rhythm and quiet shushing of cross-country skiing, yet always tempted to glance back over his left shoulder, toward the far bank of the lake.
Bowman Lake was a narrow sliver of water high in the foothills, carved by glacial advance and withdrawal, and eons-old floods of meltwater running off the mountains. In moonlight those mountains ahead loomed huge, menacing and achingly beautiful. They seemed to lean out over the landscape, their steep, jagged faces a deadly dare to adventurous souls. Renate knew better than to take that dare, and knew Dixon would, as well.
“I grew up in country like this,” she had said that afternoon. “You have heard of the Matterhorn and the Eiger. I’ve skied in their shadows. We can’t fight the mountains, and Dixon won’t, either. So if we’re going to beat him to the pass, we’ll have to do it here, on the lake. And we’ll have to do it at night.”