by Tom Clancy
Douglas read his lieutenant’s mind and nodded. Somebody took the time to get her well. That was a starting place.
“I’d appreciate it if you could send me anything that might be useful. It’ll work both ways,” Ryan assured him.
“Some guy went way out of his way to murder them. We don’t see many like this. I don’t like it very much,” the detective added. It was a puerile conclusion, but Ryan fully understood. How else did you say it, after all?
It was called a safe house, and it was indeed safe. Located on a hundred rolling acres in the Virginia hills, there was on the estate a stately house and a twelve-stall stable half-occupied with hunter-jumpers. The title for the house showed a name, but that person owned another place nearby and leased this one to the Central Intelligence Agency—actually to a shadow corporation that existed only as a piece of paper and a post-office box—because he’d served his time in OSS, and besides, the money was right. Nothing unusual from the outside, but a more careful inspection might show that the doors and doorframes were steel, the windows unusually thick and strong, and sealed. It was as secure from outside assault and from an internal attempt at escape as a maximum-security prison, just a lot more pleasant to behold.
Grishanov found clothing to wear, and shaving things that worked but with which he couldn’t harm himself. The bathroom mirror was steel, and the cup in the holder was paper. The couple that managed the house spoke passable Russian and were just as pleasant as they could be, already briefed on the nature of their new guest—they were more accustomed to defectors, though all their visitors were “protected” by a team of four security guards inside who came when they had “company,” and two more who lived full-time in the caretaker’s house close to the stables.
Not unusually, their guest was out of synch with local time, and his disorientation and unease made him talkative. They were surprised that their orders were to limit their conversations to the mundane. The lady of the house fixed breakfast, always the best meal for the jet-lagged, while her husband launched a discussion of Pushkin, delighted to find that like many Russians, Grishanov was a serious devotee of poetry. The security guard leaned against the doorframe, just to keep an eye on things.
“The things I have to do, Sandy—”
“John, I understand,” she told him quietly. Both were surprised at how strong her voice was, how determined. “I didn’t before, but I do now.”
“When I was over there”—was it only three days before?—“I thought about you. I need to thank you,” he told her.
“What for?”
Kelly looked down at the kitchen table. “Hard to explain. It’s scary, the things I do. It helps when you have somebody to think about. Excuse me—I don’t mean—” Kelly stopped. He did, actually, mean that. The mind wanders when alone, and his had wandered.
Sandy took his hand and smiled in a gentle way. “I used to be afraid of you.”
“Why?” he asked with considerable surprise.
“Because of the things you do.”
“I’d never hurt you,” he said without looking up, yet more miserable now that she had felt the need to fear him.
“I know that now.”
Despite her words, Kelly felt a need to explain himself. He wanted her to understand, not realizing that she already did. How to do it? Yes, he killed people, but only for a reason. How had he come to be what he was? Training was part of it, the rigorous months spent at Coronado, the time and effort spent to inculcate automatic responses, more deadly still, to learn patience. Along with that had somehow come a new way of seeing things—and then, actually seeing them and seeing the reasons why killing sometimes had to be. Along with the reasons had come a code, a modification, really, of what he’d learned from his father. His actions had to have a purpose, usually assigned by others, but his mind was agile enough to make its own decisions, to fit his code into a different context, to apply it with care—but to apply it. A product of many things, he sometimes surprised himself with what he was. Someone had to try, and he most often was best suited to—
“You love too much, John.” she said. “You’re like me.”
Those words brought his head up.
“We lose patients on my floor, we lose them all the time—and I hate it! I hate being there when life goes away. I hate watching the family cry and knowing that we couldn’t stop it from happening. We all do our best. Professor Rosen is a wonderful surgeon, but we don’t always win, and I hate it when we lose. And with Doris—we won that one, John, and somebody took her away anyway. And that wasn’t disease or some damned auto accident. Somebody meant to do it. She was one of mine, and somebody killed her and her father. So I do understand, okay? I really do.”
Jesus, she really does. . . better than me.
“Everybody connected with Pam and Doris, you’re all in danger now.”
Sandy nodded. “You’re probably right. She told us things about Henry. I know what kind of person he is. I’ll tell you everything she told us.”
“You do understand what I’m going to do with that information ?”
“Yes, John, I do. Please be careful.” She paused and told him why he had to be. “I want you back.”
32
Home Is the Prey
The one bit of usable information to come out of Pittsburgh was a name. Sandy. Sandy had driven Doris Brown back home to her father. Just one word, not even a proper name, but cases routinely broke on less than that. It was like pulling on a string. Sometimes all you got was a broken piece of thread, sometimes you got something that just didn’t stop until everything unraveled into a tangled mess in your hands. Somebody named Sandy, a female voice, young. She’d hung up before saying anything, though it hardly seemed likely that she’d had anything at all to do with the murders. One might return to the scene of the crime—it really did happen—but not via telephone.
How did it fit in? Ryan leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling while his trained mind examined everything he knew.
The most likely supposition was that Doris Brown, deceased, had been directly connected with the same criminal enterprise that had killed Pamela Madden and Helen Waters, and that had also included as active members Richard Farmer and William Grayson. John Terrence Kelly, former UDT sailor, and perhaps a former Navy SEAL, had somehow happened upon and rescued Pamela Madden. He’d called Frank Allen about it several weeks later, telling him not very much. Something had gone badly wrong—short version, he’d been an ass—and Pamela Madden had died as a result. The photos of the body were something Ryan would never fully put from his mind. Kelly had been badly shot. A former commando whose girlfriend had been brutally murdered, Ryan reminded himself. Five pushers eliminated as though James Bond had appeared on the streets of Baltimore. One extraneous killing in which the murderer had intervened in a street robbery for reasons unknown. Richard Farmer—“Rick”?—eliminated with a knife, the second possible show of rage (and the first one didn’t count, Ryan reminded himself). William Grayson, probably kidnapped and killed. Doris Brown, probably rescued at the same time, cleaned up over a period of weeks and returned to her home. That meant some sort of medical care, didn’t it? Probably. Maybe, he corrected himself. The Invisible Man . . . could he have done that himself? Doris was the girl who’d brushed out Pamela Madden’s hair. There was a connection.
Back up.
Kelly had rescued the Madden girl, but he’d had help getting her straightened out. Professor Sam Rosen and his wife, another physician. So Kelly finds Doris Brown—whom would he take her to? That was a starting place! Ryan lifted his phone.
“Hello.”
“Doc, it’s Lieutenant Ryan.”
“I didn’t know I gave you my direct line,” Farber said. “What’s up?”
“Do you know Sam Rosen?”
“Professor Rosen? Sure. He runs a department, hell of a good cutter, world-class. I don’t see him very often, but if you ever need a head worked on, he’s the man.”
“And his wi
fe?” Ryan could hear the man sucking on his pipe.
“I know her quite well. Sarah. She’s a phartnacologist, research fellow across the street, also works with our drug-abuse unit. I help out with that group, too, and we—”
“Thank you.” Ryan cut him off. “One more name. Sandy.”
“Sandy who?”
“That’s all I have.” Lieutenant Ryan admitted. He could imagine Farber now, leaning away from his desk in the high-backed leather chair with his contemplative look.
“Let me make sure I understand things, okay? Are you asking me to check up on two colleagues as part of a criminal investigation?”
Ryan weighed the merits of lying. This guy was a psychiatrist. His job was looking around in people’s minds. He was good at it.
“Yes, doctor, I am,” the detective admitted after a pause long enough for the psychiatrist to make an accurate guess as to its cause.
“You’re going to have to explain yourself,” Farber announced evenly. “Sam and I aren’t exactly close, but he is not a person who would ever hurt another human being. And Sarah is a damned angel with these messed-up kids we see in here. She’s setting aside some important research work to do that, stuff she could make a big reputation with.” Then Farber realized that she’d been away an awful lot in the past couple of weeks.
“Doctor, I’m just trying to develop some information, okay? I have no reason whatever to believe that either one of them is implicated in any illegal act.” His words were too formal, and he knew it. Perhaps another tack. It was even honest, maybe. “If my speculation is correct, there may be some danger to them that they don’t know about.”
“Give me a few minutes.” Farber broke the connection.
“Not bad, Em,” Douglas said.
It was bottom-fishing, Ryan thought, but, hell, he’d tried just about everything else. It seemed an awfully long five minutes before the phone rang again.
“Ryan.”
“Farber. No docs on neuro by that name. One nurse. though, Sandra O’Toole. She’s a team leader on the service. I don’t know her myself. Sam thinks highly of her, or so I just found out from his secretary. She was working something special for him, recently. He had to fiddle the pay records.” Farber had already made his own connection. Sarah had been absent from her clinical work at the same time. He’d let the police develop that themselves. He’d gone far enough—too far. These were colleagues, after all, and this wasn’t a game.
“When was that?” Ryan asked casually.
“Two or three weeks ago, lasted ten working days.”
“Thank you, doctor. I’ll be back to you.”
“Connection,” Douglas observed after the circuit was broken. “How much you want to bet that she knows Kelly, too?”
The question was more hopeful than substantive, of course. Sandra was a common-enough name. Still, they’d been on this case, this endless series of deaths, for more than six months, and after all that time spent with no evidence and no connections at all, it looked like the morning star. The problem was that it was evening now, and time to go home for dinner with his wife and children. Jack would be returning to Boston College in another week or so, Ryan thought, and he missed time with his son.
There was no easy way to get things organized. Sandy had to drive him to Quantico. It was her first time on a Marine base, but only briefly, as Kelly guided her to the marina. Already, he thought. You get home for once with your body in tune with the local day/night cycle, and already he had to break it. Sandy was not yet back on I-95 when he pulled away from the dock, heading out for the middle of the river, advancing his throttles to max-cruise as soon as he could.
The lady had brains to go with her guts, Kelly told himself, sipping his first beer in a very long time. He supposed it was normal that a clinical nurse would have a good memory. Henry, it seemed, had been a talker at certain moments, one of them being when he had a girl under his direct control. A boastful man, Kelly thought, the best sort. He still didn’t have an address to go along with the phone number, but he had a new name, Tony P-something—Peegee, something like that. White, Italian, drove a blue Lincoln, along with a decent physical description. Mafia, probably, either in it or a wannabe. Somebody else named Eddie—but Sandy had matched that name with a guy who had been killed by a police officer; it had made the front page of the local paper. Kelly took it one step further: what if that cop was the man Henry had inside? It struck him as odd that a senior officer like a lieutenant would be involved in a shooting. Speculation, he told himself, but worth checking out—he wasn’t sure yet exactly how. He had all night for it, and a smooth body of water to reflect his thoughts as it did the stars. Soon he passed the spot where he’d left Billy. At least someone had collected the body.
The ground was settling over the grave in a place that some still called Potter’s Field, a tradition dating back to someone named Judas. The doctors at the community hospital that had treated the man were still going over the pathology report from the Medical College of Virginia. Baro-Trauma. There were fewer than ten severe cases of this condition in the whole country in a year, and all of those in coastal regions. It was no disgrace that they hadn’t made the diagnosis—and, the report went on, there was no difference it could have made. The precise cause of death had been a fragment of bone marrow that had somehow found its way into a cerebral artery, occluding it and causing a massive, fatal stroke. Damage to other organs had been so extensive that it would only have been a matter of a few more weeks in any case. The bone-marrow blockage was evidence of a very large pressurization imbalance, 3-bar, probably more. Even now police were inquiring about divers in the Potomac, which could be very deep in some places. There was still hope that someone would eventually claim the body, whose location was recorded in the county administrator’s office. But not much.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” General Rokossovskiy demanded. “He’s my man! Did you misplace him?”
“Comrade General,” Giap replied sharply, “I have told you everything I know!”
“And you say an American did it?”
“You have seen the intelligence information as well as I have.”
“That man has information that the Soviet Union requires. I find it hard to believe that the Americans planned a raid whose only result was the abduction of the one Soviet officer in the area. I would suggest, Comrade General, that you make a more serious effort.”
“We are at war!”
“Yes, I am aware of that,” Rokossovskiy observed dryly. “Why do you think I am here?”
Giap could have sworn at the taller man who stood before his desk. He was the commander of his country’s armed forces, after all, and a general of no mean abilities himself. The Vietnamese general swallowed his pride with difficulty. He also needed the weapons that only the Russians could provide, and so he had to abase himself before him for the sake of his country. Of one thing he was certain. The camp wasn’t worth the trouble it had caused him.
The strange part was that the routine had become relatively benign. Kolya wasn’t here. That was certain. Zacharias was sufficiently disoriented that he had difficulty determining the passage of days, but for four sleeps now he hadn’t heard the Russian’s voice even outside the door. By the same token, no one had come in to abuse him. He’d eaten and sat and thought in solitude. To his surprise it had made things better instead of worse. His time with Kolya had become an addiction more dangerous than his dalliance with alcohol, Robin saw now. It was loneliness that was his real enemy, not pain, not fear. From a family and a religious community that fostered fellowship, he’d entered a profession that lived on the same, and being denied it his mind had fed on itself. Then add a little pain and fear, and what did you have? It was something far more easily seen from without than from within. Doubtless it had been apparent to Kolya. Like you, he’d said so often, like you. So, Zacharias told himself, that’s how he did his job. Cleverly, too, the Colonel admitted to himself. Though not a man accustomed to fa
ilure and mistakes, he was not immune to them. He’d almost killed himself with a youthful error at Luke Air Force Base while learning to fly fighters, and five years later, the time he’d wondered what the inside of a thunderstorm was really like and nearly ended up hitting the ground in the manner of a thunderbolt. And now he’d made another.
Zacharias didn’t know the reason for his respite from the interrogations. Perhaps Kolya was off reporting on what he’d learned. Whatever the reason, he had been granted the chance to reflect. You’ve sinned, Robin told himself. You’ve been very foolish. But you won’t do that again. The determination was weak, and Zacharias knew he’d have to work to strengthen it. Fortunately, he now had the time for reflection. If it was not a real deliverance, it was something. Suddenly he was shocked into full concentration, as if he were flying a combat mission. My God, he thought. that word. I was afraid to pray for deliverance. . . and yet . . . His guards would have been surprised to see the wistful smile on his face, especially had they known that he was starting to pray again. Prayer, they’d all been taught, was a farce. But that was their misfortune, Robin thought, and might yet be his salvation.
He couldn’t make the call from his office. It just wouldn’t do. Nor did he wish to do so from his home. The call would cross a river and a state line, and he knew that for security reasons there were special provisions for telephone calls made in the D.C. area. They were all recorded on computer tape, the only place in America where that was true. Even so, there was a procedure for what he had to do. You were supposed to have official sanction for it. You had to discuss it with your section head, then with the chief of the directorate, and it could well go all the way to the “front office” on the seventh floor. Ritter didn’t want to wait that long, not with lives at stake. He took the day off. not unreasonably claiming that he needed the time to recover from all the travel. So he decided to drive into town, and picked the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History. He walked past the elephant in the lobby and consulted the YOU ARE HERE plate on the wall to find the public telephones, into one of which he dropped a dime and called 347-1347. It was almost an institutional joke. That number connected him to a telephone that rang on the desk of the KGB rezident, the chief of station for Washington, D.C. They knew, and knew that people interested knew they knew. The espionage business could be so baroque, Ritter told himself.