Talons of the Falcon

by Rebecca York

  He sighed heavily. He was going to have to deliver, or else. But at least, he consoled himself, he had access to these highly confidential reports through regular U.S. military channels. He’d worked hard for fifteen years to maneuver himself into the right place. And he’d been smart about it. Otherwise he’d have been in deep kimchi long ago.

  Even now, there was a measure of luck on his side. Downing had accepted Marshall’s version of recent events. It could still turn out that the FBI would catch Bradley and Sommers and nail them for murder.

  He found his usually logical thoughts scattering in a dozen different directions—and his mood swinging from optimism to despair and back again. Maybe he was indulging in wishful thinking, after all. It was beginning to look as though they’d gotten away. If so, someone had helped them. He wished he knew who.

  Bradley on the loose was a threat to everything he’d so carefully set up in the Pentagon. Right now the colonel was probably slipping out of the country. The logical mode of transportation for someone in Bradley’s shoes was a slow freighter to Tierra del Fuego. But somehow he didn’t think Bradley was South America-bound. He’d bet his Senior Executive Service bonus that the man in question was on his way to Berlin.

  The thought made him reach into his desk for the bottle of tranquilizers that he’d sworn he wasn’t going to touch again.

  He had to get a message to Moscow—fast. And that meant he couldn’t wait for his biweekly drop at the National Gallery of Art concerts. He was going to have to risk an international call to his contact in Lisbon. But then, what was the risk, really? If Bradley picked up that incriminating evidence in Berlin, he might as well measure himself for a pair of cement shoes.

  Maybe a long lunch was in order—one where he could make that phone call. As he pushed back his chair, he was already starting to compose the message.

  “I’m afraid your prize German shepherd has gotten out of the kennel and is on the loose with his mate. I know it’s a disappointment, but you can get another one just like him in Berlin—or maybe sooner if you act immediately.”

  * * *

  THE LISBON CONTACT dutifully set an international search in motion. Luckily, the Falcon had chosen well when he’d decided to send Mark and Eden via Shannon. They landed a good two hours before word had even reached the agent assigned to keep an eye out for them. After collecting their luggage and clearing customs, they slipped away from the rest of the tour group and headed across the airport to the Emerald Rent-a-Car counter.

  The request for the car reserved for Mr. and Mrs. Frank McKay brought an instant alertness to the young clerk.

  “If you’ll wait out there, our driver will fetch you in a moment,” she said, pointing toward a covered pickup area.

  Almost as soon as they’d set their bags down by the curb, a dark sedan pulled up in front of them. The driver was a rough sort who looked as though he might have stepped right out of an IRA brigade—even though they were far from Northern Ireland. Eden gave Mark a questioning look. But he didn’t seem worried.

  “How’s the weather been up the coast?” Mark asked.

  “Misty as usual,” the driver replied in a lilting brogue that she found a bit hard to understand until she caught the rhythm of the cadences.

  “Perhaps it will change.”

  “I wouldn’t bet a bottle of Guinness on it,” came the good-humored reply.

  To any eavesdropper the exchange would have seemed casual enough. But Eden suspected that if each word had not been precise, Mark would never have opened the door of the car and the young man would never have started stowing their luggage in the boot. His name, she learned, was Ryan O’Connor.

  There were a lot of things that surprised Eden about the ride. It was disorienting driving on the left side of the road—and zipping right past the Emerald Rent-a-Car building to head for the countryside. In almost no time at all, they were barreling along a two-lane road at speeds more appropriate for a superhighway. Ryan apparently took great delight in driving like a lunatic. Eden hung on to the door and tried to think about the scenery instead of the probability of crashing into one of the low stone walls that hemmed in the narrow road.

  The land was incredibly green. But the open fields were strewn with rocks and boulders. Eden knew where the building material for all those walls had come from.

  Only a few kilometers from the airport they were forced to stop and wait for a herd of sheep being ushered across the road. To Eden’s amazement the fleece on their backs looked as though it had been marked with a patch of red spray paint. Other flocks she saw in the distance were similarly adorned in blue.

  The donkeys Gordon had promised were also a prominent part of the rural scene. And more than once she saw a wayward cow being guided back to its herd by a farmer riding a bicycle.

  She had plenty of time to take in the scenery. The men were sitting in front, and their low-pitched conversation didn’t include her. She might have found this annoying if she had not realized that Mark was cultivating their local contact. By the time they had pulled up in front of a stone cottage with a traditional thatched roof, the two men were on easy terms.

  The house, which sat well back from the road, was nestled against a small hill, with green fields spreading down toward the coast. In the distance she could see the jagged shoreline and the blue-gray of the ocean.

  In the side yard was a neat pile of what looked somewhat like dark bricks. Eden eyed it questioningly.

  “Peat,” Ryan explained. “I’ll wager this place is a bit more primitive than you’re used to. But at least you’ve got running water inside.”

  “Just so it’s private,” Mark said.

  Ryan grinned. “Oh, we use this cottage when lads from the battle up north need somewhere to lick their wounds.”

  So she’d been right about this fellow all along, Eden thought. Apparently the Falcon had friends in all sorts of unlikely places.

  The young man carried their luggage inside. “The larder’s stocked with a fortnight’s provisions,” he advised Eden. “I’ll show you how to use the stove. And if you want a wood fire in the evening, there are split logs out back.”

  When he had finished with the domestic explanations, he turned to Mark. “You’ll feel safer with this,” he advised, pulling a rather formidable-looking revolver out of a kitchen drawer. “I assume you know how to use it?”

  Mark nodded and inspected the weapon, noting the well-oiled condition. “Thanks.”

  When Ryan had finally driven off, Eden turned to Mark. “Surely out here we’re not going to need that gun.”

  “I hope not, but it’s always best to be prepared. We’ll move it to the bedroom so it will be close by, just in case.”

  Eden watched him look for a new hiding place for the gun. Finally he settled on a drawer in the bedside table. She was glad he hadn’t felt it necessary to put it under the pillow. The idea of sleeping so close to a deadly weapon unnerved her. She hadn’t fired a revolver since her air force basic training, and she hoped she wouldn’t have to do so any time in the future.

  Mark put their bags in the bedroom wardrobe. There was only one bed, she noted, with rope stretchers and what she guessed was not an innerspring mattress.

  She had to swallow a lump in her throat as she followed Mark back into the tiny living room with its fireplace wall and country furniture. The isolation in these beautiful green hills and the primitive setting held a certain fascination for her. She could imagine having come here to spend her honeymoon with this man.

  “Regrets already?” he asked, joining her by the window.

  She straightened her shoulders. “No. I was just thinking about what I’m going to put you through for the next few days.”

  He tried to make a joke of it. “That bad?”

  “You know it will be.”

  Time was crucial. If there was any possible way to do it, she had to make him remember what had happened in East Germany.

  The next day, somewhat recovered from the franti
c departure preparations at the Aviary—as well as from their jet lag—they got down to work right after breakfast.

  “If the rocks aren’t bugged, there’s no reason why we can’t talk outside,” Eden said. A sunny day was unusual for Ireland, and she felt they should take advantage of it.

  “Whatever you say.” He tossed off the comment lightly, but inside he still felt that familiar tightening in his chest. He watched as Eden spread a thick wool blanket on a level spot on the grassy meadow. Although the air was cool, the sun was warming, and the fisherman’s knit sweaters and jeans from the Peregrine boutique were just the right weight.

  He lay on his back, his hands behind his head. She rolled onto her stomach and looked down at him. The silver still concealed his vibrant dark hair color. But he had washed off the heavy makeup—and with it the ten years that had lined his face. Now his scars stood out again—even more so in this natural light. God, he had been through so much. And she hated to put him through any more pain. With anyone else she would have taken months, maybe even years, to work through the trauma of East Germany. They simply didn’t have that luxury. Yet she wanted to make it as easy as possible for him.

  “Despite what I said, we’ll start slowly.”

  She could see the relief in his eyes.

  “Why don’t you tell me about that evidence? How did you get it and where is it?”

  “There’s an agent in Madrid who’s helped Gordon out on more than one occasion. He’s a Russian and his code name is the Raven. Apparently he’s pretty highly placed. I think if he could have gotten the goods on this guy in Washington himself, he would have. But he has to be very careful of his moves right now, so as not to jeopardize his own position. Gordon had gotten word to him about what I was looking for, and through a contact in Berlin he gave me a pretty good lead on where to start.”

  “And where was that?”

  “Eden, the less you know about this, the better. Let’s just say it arrived in East Berlin in a Soviet diplomatic pouch, and a copy was smuggled out to me. I hope the guy who accepted my money lived to spend it. Double-crossing the Russians does put one at high risk.”

  “But how do you know he was reliable?” Eden questioned.

  “I don’t. My only choice was to trust him.”

  Suddenly the warmth of the quiet Irish meadow had turned bone-chillingly cold.

  “What is it?” Eden whispered tensely, watching Mark’s expression change.

  He didn’t answer immediately. He hadn’t thought about any of this in months—he’d been too busy coping with Downing’s interrogations. Now his mind needed a moment to assimilate the information it had just processed. A part of the picture had just fallen into place like a missing puzzle piece.

  The bomb on the plane. The disappearance of the letter he’d sent to the Falcon. Even Marshall’s presence at Pine Island to make sure he never got off that island alive. The Russians had been tipped off. The man he’d been forced to trust in Berlin must have been working both sides of a very dangerous game.

  So the Russians knew all about Berlin, and they were probably waiting for him there now, as were the East Germans. Lord! He was going to have to keep Eden safe here in Ireland somehow—even if it meant tying her to the bedpost and slipping away in the middle of the night.

  “What is it?” Eden repeated.

  “Nothing important,” he lied.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Maj. Ross Downing, who had been sitting with his chair tipped backward against the wall, let the front legs fall forward to the floor with a resounding thump. His usually immaculate desk was awash with an assortment of manila folders, some spilling their contents onto the polished wood surface. He was still playing chief of station at Pine Island, although the station’s mission had evaporated with the disappearance of Col. Mark Bradley. At the moment, he was commanding a pretty dispirited bunch of men, and he couldn’t pretend he felt much like keeping their morale up.

  Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. He’d always done things by the book. Even his plans to give Bradley the RL2957 had come from someone pretty high up in Washington—he wouldn’t have taken a step like that on his own. Until now, playing it straight had paid off, but not this time. This time he’d gotten a dressing down from air force security.

  Yet the reprimand wasn’t what rankled the most. This was his first failure, and since he’d found Marshall and Hubbard on the beach, he’d been trying to figure out what had gone wrong.

  There were so many things that didn’t add up. Hubbard’s presence on the other side of the island, for example. He’d always had a keen sense of people’s strengths and weaknesses, and he’d written the doctor off as a wimp. He still couldn’t picture Hubbard as a spy. He couldn’t even imagine him getting involved. So what had he really been doing on that beach with a gun in his hand?

  And for that matter, he couldn’t imagine Eden Sommers as a spy—although, in retrospect, there was something fishy about the way she had turned up here. Parts of her records had been sanitized before he’d gotten them. He had assumed the deletions were for clearance purposes. But after the escape, when he’d demanded and gotten the unedited version, the previous association between her and Bradley was there to read. Who had intervened? It must have been someone pretty powerful, someone he didn’t even know about.

  But there were plenty of other leads to follow. Marshall for example. The way he had turned up here wasn’t exactly legitimate, either. Someone in Washington had pulled strings to get him the assignment. That source was now pushing Marshall’s version of the escape. Had the same person sent both Sommers and Marshall? Or were two powerful forces working against each other—with Pine Island and Mark Bradley in the middle? The possibilities were mind-boggling.

  And what about Bradley himself? Downing had been told this was a national security problem involving the Orion weapons project. But was that the real issue? Over the past few days he’d made himself throw out all his carefully nurtured preconceptions about Bradley and consider his own observations.

  He’d been led to believe the man was mentally ill, but Sommers had gotten through to him pretty fast—damn fast. In hindsight, he could believe Bradley was a man with something so important to conceal that he couldn’t trust anyone—least of all a ham-handed security chief named Ross Downing. Or was he just conjuring these possibilities up because he wanted to find a scapegoat for what had happened?

  Damn! He’d bungled this. He hadn’t even figured out who had rewired the hair dryer. And he was a man who didn’t like to see things half done.

  This time he would go with his hunches. He’d be willing to bet Bradley would end up sooner or later in Berlin, where all this had started.

  Downing snapped his fingers. He had a few strings he could pull at the Pentagon himself, and there were some people in NATO who owed him, as well. He wanted to finish this, and he was determined to secure the chance to try to do it.

  * * *

  “MARK, IM NOT buying that,” Eden objected.

  The urgency in her voice brought him back to the Irish meadow where they were lying. He reached up to touch her hair, allowing himself a moment to comb his fingers through the newly shortened strands. He had to bury his new doubts so deeply that Eden would never find them. Yet, with her training, that wasn’t going to be easy.

  “The important thing is that the information was the real McCoy.”

  She studied his face. He was keeping something back. Should she go after it or press on? She made a mental note to come back to this later. “So what did you do with the evidence?”

  He grinned, partly from relief that she was going to let him off the hook, and partly at the memory of his own ingenuity. “Well, you remember that I was always interested in military letters and memorabilia?”

  She nodded, recalling the first time he’d invited her to see his collection. She’d thought it was a ploy. But she’d ended up being impressed with his locked cabinet full of historical letters, orders and diari
es.

  “While I was in Berlin, I visited some estate sales and was able to pick up the three-volume journal of General Ludendorf’s administrative aide. It was written before Ludendorf got to be supreme commander, and it would really only be of interest to a collector like me.”

  She waited to find out where all this was leading. What did a World War I German diary have to do with the evidence that would uncover a mole in the Pentagon?

  “I only had the project Orion specs for a few hours,” Mark continued. “The contract had to put them back before they were missed. So I photographed them and then had a lab reduce them to two microdots. One was in my briefcase. The other is still dotting an i in that German diary, and I’m the only one who knows what page it’s on—I hope.”

  Eden still looked confused. “So where is the diary and why can’t you simply go get it?” she questioned.

  He sat up and looked away toward the distant shoreline. “I couldn’t go rent a safe-deposit box in Berlin. What was I supposed to do, rent another box for the key? So I left the diaries where I knew they would be safe—with the city’s most reputable dealer in historical books and papers, Schultz and Stein. But I couldn’t sell the diaries to them and I couldn’t just deposit them there forever. So I agreed to have them auctioned off if I didn’t come back to collect them within nine months—with the proceeds going to me. That seemed like a safe enough bet at the time. I had the other copy, after all. If I didn’t make it, I had sent a letter to the Falcon telling him where to get the material. It was a double fail-safe plan. The trouble is, I didn’t make it back, and neither did the letter.”

  Eden stared at the rigid line of his back. “I know what happened to you, but what about the letter?” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.” He thought he knew, but he was going to keep that information to himself. Despite his careful precautions, the Russian agent he’d dealt with must have had him under twenty-four-hour surveillance—undoubtedly by several men, so he wouldn’t have known he was being followed. One of them had gotten that letter out of the mailbox right after he’d dropped it in.