Jade glanced at her watch, sighed. “All right, shitheads,” she said in a low, even tone as she looked at each man in turn, “here’s the bottom line. You don’t seem to be all that worried about your present situation, and you don’t care to say who sent you to kill me. That was a bit extreme, by the way, and it leads me to believe there’s a lot more to this business than just a bunch of hotheaded, idiotic Navy people overreacting to a netted Jolly Roger. Besides, you fine lads are too long in the tooth by ten or fifteen years to be Navy SEALS. Frankly, shitheads, I don’t give a damn what your employer is up to, but you’re the jokers who blew up my friend’s boat and killed a family of four, and I definitely do give a damn about that. I especially give a damn that you tried to kill me, and I can assure you that you won’t get a second chance. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I definitely do know what’s going to happen when you’re cut loose, on bond or whatever, in a day, a week or twenty years. I’m going to be waiting for you outside, and each one of you is going to be dead ten minutes after he hits the street. That’s my sentence on you. The only way it can be commuted for any one of you is for somebody to give up the people you’re working for, and tell me where I can find Henry Bolo. You seem to know a lot about me, in which case you’ll know I don’t make idle threats. This is the last conversation we’re going to have. Anybody who has hopes of being free and alive sometime in the future better tell me what I need to know right now. Otherwise, the next time I look at any one of you will be through a sniper’s lens. Any takers?”
Jade waited, but the three men only continued to stare at her in silence. She abruptly turned and walked from the cellblock.
iii
Roy looked up as Jade walked into the small office he was using to write up his report on the incident. As had been happening recently whenever he saw Jahli Aden, and often when he merely thought about the beautiful, statuesque woman with the emerald eyes, lithe body and panther movements, he got a firm erection almost immediately. He found this phenomenon rather astounding for a man of his age, and he was grateful to the woman for making him feel like a rutting teenager.
He was always careful to shield his reaction, for he did not believe the riverkeeper would be amused, especially under the present circumstances. He quickly glanced down to make certain that his swollen crotch was hidden from view under the desk, then motioned for Jade to sit down in the swivel chair across from him.
Jade eased herself into the chair, which she swung around so that she was looking out the window into the burnished glow of the afternoon. “Thanks for letting me talk to them, Roy,” she said after a pause, her tone somewhat distant. “I appreciate the courtesy.”
“No problem,” Roy replied, studying Jade’s profile. Even when she was at rest Roy found she somehow suggested fluid movement, a great cat that was beautiful but decidedly dangerous and ruthless—a gleaming, breathing, deadly weapon capable of putting out a man’s eye in a moment, apparently without any qualms and without giving the brutal maiming a second thought afterward. “Did they say anything to you?”
“No.”
“Are you all right?”
For a few moments Roy wasn’t sure Jade had heard him, for she continued to stare out the window, seemingly lost in thought. But finally she turned to look at him with a quizzical expression on her face. “Sure,” she said easily. “Why do you ask?”
Roy leaned back in his chair, carefully crossing his legs to make sure his erection remained out of sight, then shook his head and laughed. “Why do I ask? Let’s see, now, why should I toss out such a damn fool question? Not too many hours ago you were ambushed out on the river by three very big, very strong, apparently well-trained killers. Not one guy, mind you, but three. This was not their lucky day. You put one man’s eye out—”
“That’s because I’m getting rusty,” Jade said in the same distant tone. “I was aiming for both eyes. I’m not practicing enough.”
“Do tell. You also smashed the nose and cheekbone of another man, and twisted the third guy’s testicles so badly he’ll probably need surgery to put them back where they belong. And all that fuss was just a warmup to leading the poor fools in their big old boat smack into a concrete caisson. I thought you might be just a bit edgy after your day’s work. Silly of me to ask if you’re all right.”
Jade smiled and laughed easily. “As a matter of fact, I do feel a little edgy.”
Roy’s smile faded. “You’re a very dangerous lady, lady.”
“Really? How would you describe me if I were a man?”
“I’d say you were a very dangerous man, man. Hey, you’re not one of those hyper-sensitive, pain-in-the-ass feminists, are you?”
“The Navy tends to do that to a girl.”
“I’m beginning to suspect you may be the most dangerous person I’ve ever met.”
Jade turned back to again look out the window, said, “I doubt it. I’m not dangerous to anyone who’s not trying to harm me or my children.”
“I know that. I meant it as a compliment.”
“Actually, the fact that I’m a woman is the only reason I’m alive right now. Boys like the ones you’ve got locked up in the back are contemptuous of women. It caused them to underestimate me. Their contempt gave me the element of surprise, which was the edge I needed. If I were a man they’d have been a lot more cautious, and I’d be dead.”
“Maybe, maybe not. You’re good, Jade.”
“It was the Navy that made me a dangerous person; in fact, the Navy insisted I become a dangerous person. With specialized training, it was just like finding your way to Carnegie Hall—practice, practice, practice.”
Roy blinked in surprise, then slowly straightened up in his chair and studied the woman’s profile. Considering what he suspected about the close-mouthed Jahli Aden’s Naval career, he found what she had just said to be a most uncharacteristic, even startling, admission. He also considered it a kind of gift, her way of saying she was coming to trust him with her secrets. He wanted to hear more, and he waited hopefully, but as time passed he knew this was not the moment, and he knew better than to try to press her.
“Thanks for getting to Upper Nyack so quickly, Roy,” Jade continued, turning back to look at him. “My thinking was that if you and Jeff were holding them in custody, I’d have a better chance of being in the loop if and when they started talking. Now it looks like a wasted exercise. I hope you’re not going to get any flack for poaching in somebody else’s jurisdiction.”
“It wasn’t a wasted exercise, Jade. Even if they aren’t the guys who blew up Jack’s boat and killed the family, they have to know who did do it. And nobody’s going to make any ugly noises about jurisdiction. The Orangetown cops would have handled it if they’d arrived first on the scene, but, strictly speaking, anything that happens anywhere on the river is under Coast Guard jurisdiction, and the Coast Guard doesn’t care for playing cop. It’s like a jurisdictional no-man’s land out on the water, and both the Coast Guard and Orangetown police are probably happy I took care of it.”
“What happens now?”
“Tomorrow they’ll be transferred to the County Jail in New City—but I’m the arresting officer, so I’ll have access to them, and I’ll be in the loop as more information is developed. I’ll make sure you’re kept informed.”
“Thanks, Roy.”
“The problem is that, in the end, it’s going to be their word against yours about what happened out there today. I was hoping we might get some calls from people living along the shore who might have witnessed what happened, but so far we haven’t heard from anybody. The District Attorney is going to have to make some tough decisions about what to do with them. If and when they do call a lawyer, it’s even possible they could be cut loose on bail”
“Right now,” Jade said in a low, hard voice, “that’s exactly what I’m hoping will happen.”
Roy frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing.”
Roy leaned back in his cha
ir, crossed his arms over his chest. “Want to tell me now what this is all about, Jade? It won’t go in my report.”
“Make them tell you, Roy. Then it can go in your report.”
“Of course, it all comes back to that damn fish thing Jack pulled out of the river, doesn’t it?”
“Make them tell you, Roy. That’s why I wanted it to be you who took them into custody, so you could finally get some answers to your questions.”
“They don’t seem inclined to answer questions. They’re three very hard cases. I guess I’m going to have to have a serious conversation with that jolly Navy public relations man whose number you gave me.”
Jade shook her head. “Besides creating great difficulties for me, you’d be wasting your time.”
“Why would I be wasting my time? Because he wouldn’t talk to some local cop?”
“I’ve changed my mind about the Navy having any official involvement in this.”
“Changed your mind?”
“At one time I was certain the Navy was responsible for what happened, but now I’m having serious doubts.”
“That’s an interesting admission from someone who until very recently was denying she had the foggiest notion of what was going on.”
“You must be wearing me down. I hope you’ll remember a few of the other things I’ve said to you.”
“I will. Why have you changed your mind?”
“It has to do with knowledge and experience. First, those three men are too old to be active duty Navy SEALS who’d be used for field operations. Military men, yes, but almost certainly retired. Second, they tried to kill me. The Navy can wreak all sorts of havoc through stupid command decisions. That’s true of all the services, but the Navy just seems more prone lately to bureaucratic blunders. Part of their recent history is that they can lose entire ships and scores of sailors, and then only compound these errors by attempting to cover them up by laying the blame on somebody else. I could see them using SEALS to blow up Jack’s boat to erase the evidence of what was on board, and killing the family by accident, but there’s no way the Navy is going to send out a three-man team of retired sailors to assassinate me on the Hudson River.”
“The Navy doesn’t engage in covert operations?”
“Not like this. The Navy doesn’t use cutouts or freelancers to assassinate civilians. The Navy might still cut off my pension and try to send me to prison, but they wouldn’t try to murder me. These men depend on rules and regulations to run their lives, and what happened out on the river today is just not proper procedure.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Yes. The U. S. Navy didn’t send those assassins.”
When Jade once more swung around in her chair and resumed staring out the window, Roy rose and went into another room. He poured a cup of coffee from a pot on a hot plate, brought it back into the office and set it down on the edge of the desk near Jade. “Who are you, Jahli Aden?” he asked quietly.
Roy didn’t really expect an answer, but Jade surprised him. “Just an All-American girl,” she replied, turning to him and smiling warmly. “At least I used to be.”
“I’d very much like to hear about it,” he said in the same quiet tone as he went back around behind the desk and sat down in his chair.
Jade sipped at her coffee, then set the cup back down on the edge of the desk. She leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms over her chest, leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling. “I was born in Brooklyn to very religious parents who are first generation immigrants. I was never religious, and my lack of piety deeply hurt my mother and father. They wanted to send me to a private Moslem school in the neighborhood, but they couldn’t afford the tuition. I ended up in the public schools. I was a good student, and a star athlete. I made the girl’s high school All-American teams in both gymnastics and track in my sophomore, junior and senior years. I was considered a smart, good-looking jock.”
“You’re more than good-looking; you’re beautiful.”
“If you want to hear my life story, Roy, don’t hit on me.”
For a moment Roy considered making a joke about valuing his eyesight too much to risk trying to go anywhere with her where he wasn’t invited, but he quickly thought better of it. He said, “I didn’t mean to offend you. I was just stating a fact. It’s the cop in me.”
Jade was silent for some time, and Roy was afraid that his interruption would cause the woman to remain so, but finally Jade said, “I attracted a lot of outside attention. It was a time when all the military academies were under increasing pressure to admit more women and minorities. Well, I fit their bill perfectly because I was a woman and a minority. I talked American and I loved America, so I was an ideal candidate. I had my congressman and both state senators talking up my case, and I ended with my pick of all the academies. I jumped at the chance for a career in the military, not only because I would be getting a free college education but also because I saw it as a chance to escape all the mosques and mullahs I’d grown up with. I wanted to be what I thought of at the time as a real American, and my native culture seemed foreign to me.
“I’m not sure why I chose Annapolis - maybe because I took a kind of perverse pride in going into the belly of the beast of an academy that had the worst reputation for the way it treated women, and maybe because I was amused at the idea of a woman with a desert cultural heritage putting out to sea. I pretty much aced it there. I managed to ignore all the shit the men threw at me, and I graduated twelfth in my class. I was a Lieutenant J. G. in the United States Navy, and I was one proud sailor. I. wanted to be a helicopter pilot for air-sea rescue teams. I did get my training as a pilot, but the Navy had other plans for me. I was a Palestinian-American who spoke fluent Arabic, and there weren’t too many of those around.”
“And so they decided to make you into a dangerous person.”
Jade nodded.
“You were a spy, weren’t you?”
“I can’t tell you about that, Roy.”
“May I ask about your husband?”
“You may. Max and I met at Annapolis, fell in love, and married at graduation. Max was a very brave man, spiritually as well as physically. He hurt a lot people in his family by marrying me, and hurting people who loved him was not something Max enjoyed. He paid a big price. My parents had been angry and disappointed in me for years for what they saw as my turning my back on my religion and my heritage. They probably weren’t all that surprised or more upset by my marrying a Jew, since they’d already given up on me by the time I was a teenager and they almost expected me to behave in ways that were offensive to them. That wasn’t the case with Max’s family, who are Orthodox Jews. Nice Jewish boys from Orthodox homes don’t marry non-Jewish girls, period. It would have been bad enough if he’d married some Christian shiksa, but to marry a Palestinian, a member of a group considered to be mortal enemies of the Jews, was unthinkable. It didn’t make any difference that the Moslem girl wasn’t really a Moslem. His parents said kaddish. They disowned him, and to this day they haven’t laid eyes on their grandchildren, or even so much as sent them a birthday card. Max must have been very deeply hurt inside most of the time, but he never let it show. I loved him like a schoolgirl right up until the day he died. I still love him like that. I miss him terribly.”
“I’m sorry, Jade.”
“Thank you.”
“You didn’t serve together?”
“Max was a test pilot. He flew experimental combat fighters. He died when one of them crashed.”
“Again, I’m sorry.”
Jade abruptly leaned forward in her chair and looked hard into the detective’s eyes. “Roy, I need to ask you a favor,” she said in a tone that had suddenly become terse and businesslike.
The quick change in Jade’s voice and demeanor took Roy aback slightly, and he could literally see tension rising in her. She had clenched her fists and was resting them on the edge of the desk. “What is it?” he asked carefully.
“I’d like y
ou to leave me alone with one of those men.”
“You just were alone with them.”
“I need to be alone with just one of them, in a separate room that’s relatively soundproof. Where’s Jeff?”
“At a police chief’s symposium in Syracuse. Why?”
“I need about half an hour to pick up some equipment, and then I’ll be back. I’d like you to take the man whose eye I put out down in the basement, if you’ve got one, or into another room and tie him in a chair. Then you’ll take a walk. I don’t think it will take me more than ten or fifteen minutes to extract the information I need. That man is the most vulnerable because I’ve already put out one of his eyes, and he knows I’m perfectly willing to put out the other one and permanently blind him. I’m promising you I won’t do it, but he doesn’t know that. I won’t leave any marks. Nobody will know.”
Roy’s mouth had gone dry, and he swallowed hard. He felt a chill run up his back. “Jesus H. Christ,” he said softly.
“Will you do it for me, Roy?”
Roy laughed nervously. He felt oddly disoriented, and he found himself moving his chair back from his desk slightly. “Nobody will know? For Christ’s sake, he’ll certainly know. Don’t you think he might raise some strenuous objections to Jeff, not to mention the media, if I let you torture him?”
“He won’t say anything to anybody.”
“Oh, really? And why not?”
“Because the people those men are working for don’t want any more attention to this business than it’s already gotten. That’s why not one of them has spoken a word about what happened. They’re hoping to somehow slip out of this thing without having to give up the people who hired them to the police. The redhead will know I don’t intend to give any information he gives me to the police, just use it for my own purposes. He’ll give up the information I need, because I’ll make him, but he won’t talk about it afterward, not even to his buddies. Now, will you help me?”
Roy’s erection had disappeared. “I will not,” he said coolly. “I can’t believe you’re asking me to let you torture a man, Jade.”
The Keeper Page 10