by Gayle Lynds
“It is. And Houri’s a beautiful dog. Also smart, as you say. It’s the nature of her breed. In fact, she’s so smart that her philosophy is kul kalb yijji yoomo.” He translated the Arabic: “ ‘Each dog’s day will come.’ It usually means there’ll be a reckoning, but she translates it literally.”
Elaine walked to framed photographs standing on the fireplace mantel and picked up one. She looked across at Kuhnert. His cheeks and chin and prominent nose were broad and sturdy. His skin was neither pink nor dark but lightly golden. The array of pictures showed what looked like five generations, not only from the Middle East’s windswept deserts and mosques to the green hills of Virginia and the Islamic Center on Massachusetts Avenue, but from Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate and Town Hall to Washington’s Capitol Building. No one was dressed in Bedouin robes or burqas, but some wore hijab, traditional clothing. From the photos, it looked to her that Kuhnert was Arabic on one side and German on the other—and Muslim on both.
“I hope you have good security.” Jay surveyed the room.
“Motion sensors, floodlights, a few other tricks, and Houri. Among her many talents, she’s an early-warning system. She let me know you were here before you were close enough to trigger the lights.”
“Have you packed up your computer?”
“Not yet. It’s in my office.” Ben Kuhnert nodded across the living room, and Jay hurried toward the closed door.
Ben’s office was about ten by fifteen feet and mostly bare—two dozen cardboard boxes were packed near the door. Tice strode past. There were two desks, one with a laptop and the other with a powerful desktop computer. Worrying about Raina, he sat at the PC, flicked it on, put on his reading glasses, and tapped the keyboard. It had been hours since he was last able to check for a message from her.
He called up Internet Explorer, typed in www.iht.com, and soon the online version of the International Herald Tribune appeared. He clicked CLASSIFIEDS and went to INTERNATIONAL REAL ESTATE MARKETPLACE and then to PARIS AND SUBURBS. There were dozens of places listed for sale or rent. That was a good sign. His heart rate accelerated.
A voice interrupted from the doorway. “Elaine seems like a good one,” Ben said.
“I wouldn’t have brought her if she weren’t. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
“Meet us in the kitchen when you’re finished. I’m going to show Elaine where to hide her car.” He vanished.
Jay leaned close, hoping. When he saw an ad signed “Billie B, owner,” his breath caught in his throat. Billie Burke had played Glinda in The Wizard of Oz. The name was one of his and Raina’s recognition codes. The Realtor in another was R. Bolger. Ray Bolger’s role was the Scarecrow. When he found a third listing describing a villa with a “garland” of roses carved into each pillar, excitement coursed through him. He hit the PRINT button. Judy Garland had played Dorothy. He studied the three ads. Each related in code a different time and place to meet in the D.C. area.
Raina would try to go to all, and he would, too. If they missed each other, they would use the same schedule the next day, and the next if need be, until they connected. But if Mr. G’s shipment went out today, and Raina and Kristoph were involved, tomorrow would be too late.
He sat back and lifted his chin and closed his eyes. Still, after eleven long years, he would see her again, talk to her, watch the way her nose crinkled when she laughed—and it would not be next week or next year, but very soon. If all went well.
Before he could stop it, the grief for Kristoph he had been forcing away shot through him, piercing as a stiletto, and he was back in Berlin during those grim days when his marriage imploded and he had fallen in love with and turned Raina. Three years later, after Marie and the children were killed, Kristoph was born. Kristoph had grown into a terrific kid, interesting, full of so many questions you thought you would lose your mind. But he had loved every minute he was able to be with Kristoph.
He remembered strolling through the Tiergarten when the boy was a lanky five-year-old, holding his hand. Odd how vulnerable a young hand was, and how strong. And how devastatingly brief childhood was. Years passed in the beat of a heart, and children were too old or too busy or too blasé. Or they were halfway around the planet, as Kristoph had been. He had looked over the boy’s blond head that afternoon and into Raina’s eyes, as blue and deep as the ocean, at the love brimming for both of them. He ached for the past, for them.
It was not good to dwell. In an act of iron will, he pushed aside his grief and checked the fake e-mail address he had created after escaping Allenwood. He paused and stared. Raina had sent a message. Excited, he leaned close and read:
K worked for Milieu Software. Our old Company is interested in purchasing it. Tried to jog, but it’s too hot out.
He inhaled sharply. So Kristoph had worked for Milieu, and Raina was being hunted. His chest tight, his gaze roamed the small office as he thought uneasily. Finally he decided there was only one thing to do—call his contact. He listened to the house’s silence—Elaine and Ben were still outdoors. He took out one of his disposable cell phones and tapped in the number.
The sleepy voice was suspicious: “Yes?”
“It’s me again.” He watched the office door. “There’s some kind of big deal going down today. Someone called Mr. G is one of the principals. His people took out Whippet, and now they’re trying to erase Elaine Cunningham and me. Milieu Software and Larry Litchfield are involved—Kristoph worked for Milieu. Also, you should know Raina’s coming in. She’s hot, so she’s probably using a legend. . . . Yes, dammit, I’m sure! Anything about Moses?”
“Still nothing.”
Disappointment surged through him. “I’ve got to go. They’ll be back any minute.”
He hung up, turned off the computer, and stood. Feet firmly planted, he took a moment to center himself. This was the most critical operation of his life, and it was about to enter its final, perilous stage. He could not afford even the smallest mistake. Planning carefully, he strode to the door.
27
Milan, Italy
In her white wig and body padding, Raina Manhardt stepped out of the Alitalia tunnel with the last of the passengers from Geneva. Bent over, walking slowly on the blue-green carpet, she was in her persona of Melissa O’Dey. She carried her suitcase in one hand, listing toward it, infirm. She watched from the corners of her eyes as people hurried off to claim their baggage or check the monitors for their next flight. She checked her flight, too—it was on time. She had a one-hour layover.
As she moved away, her mind kept racing ahead to whether Jay would meet her in Washington. She had never expected to see him again. But now she hoped to, dreaded to. The conflict was nothing new. She remembered November and December 1985—first Pavel Abendroth had been assassinated, then Jay’s whole family was murdered in a car bombing. Jay and she met twice shortly afterward, but guilt about Dr. Abendroth loomed between them. Neither wanted to see the other again.
Then in late December her husband had visited, and they decided to divorce. He was a colonel in the Soviet Army. Six months later, in May, he was killed, too, in a skirmish with mujahideen outside Kabul. When Jay heard, he added a personal note to his usual coded packet. With an exchange of more messages, they arranged to meet far from anyone who might recognize them, in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia.
Perched on cliffs above sapphire waters, Dubrovnik was a medieval port city on the Adriatic, with storybook houses and ancient battlements and limestone pavement polished to a smooth sheen by centuries of wear. Jay rented a small pension for them, with feather beds and rock fireplaces.
Nervous, unsure, she found him waiting in the rose garden. He jumped to his feet and froze, shocked, as he stared at her swollen belly. Then his eyes misted, and he was holding her, his arms locked around her, crushing her close.
His breath was warm against her neck. “I’m happy. Are you happy about this?”
“Very,” she had whispered. “But I should tell you that you’re not—”
&
nbsp; “Don’t.” His voice was husky with emotion. “You’re here. A baby’s coming. That’s all I need to know.”
The geography of love was mysterious and bewitching—until betrayed. As she thought about that in the Milan terminal, she forced her attention back to the crowds. A babel of languages filled the air. Boarding announcements sounded from the airport’s speakers. She stopped at a currency-exchange booth to trade her euros and Swiss francs for dollars.
But as she walked off, her shoulders tightened. She had noticed abrupt movement to the side and behind. It was a man bending over to tie his shoelaces. He had been just slow enough for an experienced operative to make him.
She pretended to peer into the window of a Dufry store as he straightened up. Although handsome in a rough-hewn sort of way, he exuded a characterlessness that discouraged anyone from looking twice. Perhaps thirty years old, he wore dark pants, a knit shirt, and a loose sports jacket. There was a muted bulge under his left arm.
He had not flown in with her, nor did she recognize him from anywhere else. She stepped into a café and asked for a table. The problem was serious—if he were tailing her, that meant the CIA or the BND or both would be waiting for her at Dulles. As she turned to be seated, she glanced back at the café’s entryway, hoping she was wrong. Hoping he had continued down the concourse. Her hands were suddenly sweaty. There was someone else asking for a table—the man.
Outside Herndon, Virginia
It was the last few lonely hours before dawn, and the night felt like a black abyss. Following Ben’s directions, Elaine drove the Jag around his big stone house, her headlamps off. Ben had deactivated the outside floodlights while they were outdoors, and darkness cloaked the car.
At last she saw him, waiting alertly beside the smaller of two stone-and wood garages, Browning in hand, a silhouette visible only because of starlight. Houri circled him, then paced toward the house, her long nose raised, sniffing suspiciously. Elaine parked inside the garage, grabbed her SIG Sauer, and stepped out. She surveyed the drive and trees as she joined Ben.
He closed the garage door. “While we’re here, I want to show you an escape route. With luck, you won’t need it.” He led her around to the rear, where he described the system he had invented.
As they walked back along the drive, she asked curiously, “Why have you been helping Jay?”
“A lot of reasons. One is that I owe him a large debt.” He turned over his wrist. In the faint light, the scar he had told her in prison was the result of a pipe cut looked even uglier. He held up the backs of both arms. Welted scars indicating deep wounds began at his elbows and vanished up under the sleeves of his T-shirt. “I have them all over, courtesy of the KGB. They decided to test some experimental interrogation techniques on me. Jay got me out of that mess.”
There was a lump in her throat. “How horrible for you.”
He shrugged. “I worked with Jay off and on for years. Never met anyone I respected more. I retired from the DO a while ago, so when Jay was sentenced, I had the time to put together the documents I needed to go deep cover and get a job with the Bureau of Prisons. Then I arranged a transfer to Allenwood. Of course, the FBI will eventually figure out I was the one behind Jay’s escape.”
“That’s why the house is packed up. And Zahra? Who’s she?”
“My wife. Between shifts, I’d live here as Ben Kuhnert. I had an apartment near Allenwood where I was David Oxley. Zahra’s found us a new place far away. Maybe someday we’ll be able to come back.” His gaze swept over the lawns and trees and old stone buildings with an intimacy that announced emotional claim. “Hope so, anyway.”
“Maybe you can answer a question. . . . Why do you think Jay turned on America, Ben?”
He glanced at her, surprised. Then he nodded to himself. “You haven’t worked with Jay enough yet to realize he’s an enigma. He’s capable of anything within reason—his reason. He’s brilliant, witty, egotistical, impatient, and—above all—courageous. As a spymaster, he exuded an optimism that was contagious, and his people developed a sense of pride and an esprit de corps others envied. Partly that’s because he’s got such a strong sense of who he is that he doesn’t bother much about what a bureaucracy’s going to think. But that fed his reckless side, too. If he did sell us out to the Russians, he had a good reason—or thought he did.”
“If?” It was the first time anyone outside her own mind had expressed doubt.
“There’s always an ‘if’ in our world.”
“But you don’t know what that reason could be.”
“I’ll probably never know. That’s where loyalty comes in. It reveals character, and it’s a measure of whom one can trust enough for friendship and, ultimately, whether one can trust oneself. The Russians have a good saying—‘Tell me who your friend is, and I’ll tell you who you are.’ ”
They turned onto a brick path beneath tall oaks and cut across the side lawn toward the kitchen. Houri ran ahead, feathered ears flying. As soon as they were indoors, Ben reactivated the floodlights, and Elaine hurried to the big kitchen window to keep watch. From there she had a complete view of the circular drive and the two stone houses on either side.
Ben took eggs and cheese from the refrigerator and put a frying pan on the gas stove. As he turned on the burner, he considered her. There was a forlorn quality to her as she stood against the dark glass in her dirty T-shirt and pants, gripping her weapon, staring out, her blond hair wild. A smudge of dirt streaked down her cheek.
“You like him,” he decided, “but you’re having a hard time getting past the idea that he’s a traitor.”
“I may never.”
He nodded. “If it’ll help, I believe he’s a good man. Fair. Decent. And a hell of a liar. Intelligence systems are based on secrecy, so lying’s necessary. You know that. But it does wear on you, change you, especially since you’re doing it in hopes of creating a better world, and a better world can’t be based on lies. If you’re on the firing line long enough, you’ll forget who you used to be, and then you won’t care. Because if you care, you can’t keep doing the work.”
She peered at him, her pale blue eyes large, then she gazed back out the window into the daunting night. “I thought I understood that.”
Ben raised his voice. “Hello, Jay. Aren’t you tired of standing in the doorway? Come on in.” He looked behind him.
Jay did not move. His skin was dark with grime, the bristle of his growing beard an iron-colored mat. He was studying Elaine, his eyes soft, not hiding his fondness for her. “The key is belief. You have to believe in something worth caring about. Something good. But first you have to figure out what that is for you.”
She gave a small, unsure smile and nodded.
Ben noisily set a bowl of scrambled eggs and a plate of whole-grain toast onto the wood trestle table. “Sit down and eat,” he ordered. “Both of you.” Sharp cheddar cheese blanketed the eggs, melting. The savory aromas filled the kitchen.
“Thanks, Ben.” Elaine pulled out a chair and settled gratefully onto it.
When Jay said nothing, Elaine and Ben turned to watch as he padded toward them, his gait light, almost menacing. His face was more than sober, it was grim, and he radiated hyperwariness. He skinned off his jacket so that he was wearing only his shirt and his holstered Browning. The flap was open so he could pull the gun out quickly. He tossed the jacket onto a chair and put a hand into his jeans pocket and withdrew it.
Mystified, Elaine watched him open his fingers. Her breath caught in her throat—a triangle-shaped gold piece glittered on his palm. She remembered the photo she found in his cell in which he was wearing the piece as a pendant. Jay let it drop onto the tabletop, where it spun like an arrow. She touched it, stopping the spin. She looked up at Ben, saw his expression had grown detached, cold.
Jay’s hazel eyes were dark pits. “Ben?”
Ben stared at Jay a moment. Then he nodded. Never taking his gaze from Jay, he went to the fireplace mantel, picked up something small, a
nd shot it in a fast slide across the table. It came to rest next to Jay. It was another gold triangle.
Ben announced, “In case you don’t remember—Palmer’s fits one side of yours. Mine fits the other.”
Jay did not respond. He adjusted them until their toothy sides joined. He lifted his head and smiled widely.
Ben grinned back. “Okay, fill me in.”
As the tension evaporated, Elaine exhaled: She had just witnessed something almost primitive.
Ben went to the kitchen window, taking over her post. Jay sat across from her and piled scrambled eggs onto his plate. But he did not eat. “I’ll start at the beginning, Ben. The reason I asked you to break me out of Allenwood was a story in the Herald Tribune about the accidental death of Kristoph Maas.” He hesitated. “He was Raina Manhardt’s and my boy.”
“You and Raina Manhardt? I had no idea. How long were you and she—?”
“Not long enough.” Again Jay hesitated. “I didn’t see them after ’94. Raina and I sometimes phoned. At Christmas she’d send photos.” He almost smiled. Then he recalled how difficult it had been to have a normal conversation with her. The last time was the worst, when he told her about his arrest.
“I’m really sorry about the boy, Jay,” Ben said. “Must be terrible for you.”
“It hasn’t been great,” he admitted. He described the news story and photos that included Raina’s signal that she needed help. “It seemed logical that whatever had happened, it involved Kristoph. I planned to lie low after you busted me out and wait for her to get in touch. Instead, Theosopholis tried to scrub me as I was leaving the prison, a janitor attacked when I stopped to pick up supplies, and another janitor was waiting at Palmer Westwood’s place. He tried to wipe me, too. When a wet squad arrived, Palmer and I barely escaped. But that time I was in luck—I recognized two of the shooters. Both were Whippet.” He paused. “Whippet is a Langley unit.”