James Patterson - Alex Cross 10 - London Bridges

by London Bridges

  In a way, I was glad it wasn't over. I was still in touch with several of my contacts on the case: Martin Lodge in England, Sandy Greenberg with Interpol, Etienne Marteau in Paris, but also police and intelligence in Tel Aviv and Frankfurt. Everybody I talked to had possible leads, but no one had anything hot, or even what I would consider lukewarm.

  The Wolf, or maybe al Qaeda, or some other clever, homicidal bastards were out there with close to two billion dollars in their coffers. Among other things, three city blocks in Paris had been destroyed. Political prisoners had been released. There had to be some slipup, some way to find them, or at least some way to discover who they were.

  My second day back, the analyst Monnie Donnelley and I made a paper connection that interested me enough to drive all the way out to Lexington, Virginia. I arrived at a two-story contemporary on a back road called Red Hawk Lane. A Dodge Durango was parked in the driveway. A couple of horses grazed in a nearby paddock.

  Joe Cahill met me at the door of the house. The former CIA agent was all smiles, just as I remembered him from past meetings about the Wolf. Joe had told me over the phone that he was eager to help the investigation in any way he could. He invited me inside and had coffee and a store-bought crumb cake waiting in his den. The room had views of an outlying pasture, a pond, and the Blue Ridge Mountains off in the distance.

  "I guess you can tell I miss the job," Joe said. "Some days, anyway. You can do only so much hunting and fishing. You fish, Alex? You hunt?"

  "I've taken the kids fishing a couple of times," I said. "I hunt some, yeah. Right now, I'm hoping to bag the Wolf. I need your help, though, Joe. I want to go over some old ground. Something has come up."

  Chapter 93

  "All right, you want to talk about him again. How we got the Wolf out of Russia? What happened once he arrived in America? How he disappeared after that? It's a sad but well-known and documented story, Alex. You've seen the files. I know you have. Almost ended my career."

  "Joe, I don't understand why nobody seems to know who he is. What he looks like. His real name. That's the story I've been getting for over a year now, but how can it be? How could we work with England to extricate an important KGB guy, and not know who he is. Something bad happened in Paris-but nobody knows what. How is it possible? What am I missing? What has everybody missed so far?"

  Joe Cahill spread his large workingman hands, palms up. "Look, I obviously don't have all the pieces, either. It's my understanding that he was undercover when he was inside Russia. Supposedly, he was a young, very cagey agent, which would mean he's still only in his early forties. But I've also read reports that he's in his late fifties or sixties now. That he was actually pretty high up in the KGB when he defected. I've also heard that the Wolf is female. I think he spreads the rumors himself. I'm almost certain that's what he does."

  "Joe, you and your old partner were his controls once he got here."

  "Our boss was Tom Weir, who wasn't the director yet. Actually, the team included three other guys-Maddock, Boykin, and Graebner. Maybe you should talk to them."

  Cahill rose from his easy chair. He went and opened French doors leading out to a stone patio. A cooling breeze swept into the room.

  "I never met him, Alex. Neither did my partner, Corky Hancock. Or the rest of the team-Jay, Sam, Clark. That's the way it was set up from the beginning. It was the deal he brokered when he came out of Russia. He'd help us bring down the old KGB, name names there, and here in the U.S. But nobody got to see him. Believe me, he delivered names and information that helped bring down the evil empire."

  I nodded. "Right, he keeps his promises. But now he's on the loose, and he's established his own crime network-and a whole lot more."

  Cahill took a bite of his coffee cake, then talked with his mouth full. "Apparently, that's exactly what he did. Of course, we had no idea that he would go bad. Neither did the Brits. Maybe Tom Weir did. I don't know."

  I needed some air. I got up and walked to the open doors. A couple of horses were hugging a white wooden fence under the shade of oak trees. I turned to face Joe Cahill.

  "Okay, so you can't help me with the Wolf. What can you help me with, Joe?"

  Cahill frowned and looked confused. "I'm sorry, Alex, not much. I'm an old plow horse, not good for much of anything anymore. Coffee cake's good, right?"

  I shook my head. "Not really, Joe. Trust me, store-bought's never the same."

  Cahill's face sagged, then he grinned but his eyes weren't smiling. "So now we're gonna be honest, I guess. Why the hell are you here? What's this about? Talk to Uncle Joe. What's going on? I'm kind of lost. You're playing way over my head."

  I stepped back into the room. "Oh, it's all about the Wolf, Joe. See, I think you and your old partner can help us a lot-even if you never met him in person, and I'm not so sure that you didn't."

  Cahill finally threw up his hands in frustration. "Alex, this is a little crazy, you know. I feel like we're running around in circles. I'm too old and ornery for this shit."

  "Yeah, well, it's been a tough couple of weeks for everybody. A lot of craziness going around. You don't know the half of it." But I'd had enough of "Uncle" Joe Cahill's crap. I showed him a photograph.

  "Take a good look. This is the woman who murdered CIA Director Weir at the Hoover Building."

  Cahill shook his head. "Okay. So?"

  "Her name is Nikki Williams and she's former army. She operated as a mercenary for a while. A sniper, a good one. Lots of private contracts on her r‚sum‚. I know what you're going to say, Joe- so?"

  "Yeah. So?"

  "Once upon a time, she worked for you and your partner, Hancock. Your agency shared your files with us, Joe. New era of cooperation. Here's the real twist- I think you hired her to kill Weir.

  "Maybe you did it through Geoffrey Shafer, but you were involved. I think you work for the Wolf. Maybe you always have-maybe that was part of his deal, too."

  "You're crazy, and you're dead wrong!" Joe Cahill stood up and brushed crumbs from his trousers. "You know what else, I think you'd better leave now. I'm sorry as hell I invited you into my house. This little talk of ours is over."

  "No, Joe," I said, "actually, it's just getting started."

  Chapter 94

  I made a call on my cell phone. Minutes later, agents from Langley and Quantico swarmed onto the property and arrested Joe Cahill. They cuffed him and dragged him out of his nice, peaceful house in the country.

  We had a lead now, maybe a good one.

  Joe Cahill was transported to a CIA safe house somewhere in the Alleghenies. The grounds and the home looked ordinary enough: a two-story fieldstone farmhouse surrounded by grapevines and fruit trees, the entryway thick with wisteria. But this wasn't going to be a safe house for Uncle Joe.

  The former agent was bound and gagged, then left alone in a small room for several hours.

  To think about his future-and his past.

  A CIA doctor arrived: a tall, paunchy man who looked to be in his late thirties, horsey, WASPish. His name was Jay O'Connell. He told us that an experimental truth serum had been approved for use on Cahill. O'Connell explained that variations of the drug were currently being used on terrorist prisoners at various prisons.

  "It's a barbiturate, like sodium amytal and brevital," he said. "All of a sudden the subject will feel slightly drunk, diminished senses. After that, he won't be able to defend himself very well against prodding questions. At least, we hope not. Subjects can react differently. We'll see with this guy. He's older, so I'm fairly confident we'll nail him."

  "What's the worst we can expect?" I asked O'Connell.

  "That'd be cardiac arrest. Oh hell, it's a joke. Well, actually, I guess it isn't."

  It was early in the morning when Joe Cahill was moved out of the small holding room and brought into a larger one in the cellar with no windows. His blindfold and gag were removed, but not the binds around his wrists. We sat him in a straight-backed chair.

  Cahill blinked hi
s eyes repeatedly before he could tell where he was and who else was in the room with him.

  "Disorientation techniques. Won't work worth a crap on me," he said. "This is really dumb. Nonsense. It's horseshit."

  "Yes, we think so, too," said Dr. O'Connell. He turned to one of the agents, Larry Ladove. "Roll up his sleeve for me anyway. There we go. This will pinch. Then it'll sting. Then you'll spill out your guts to us."

  Chapter 95

  For the next three and a half hours, Cahill continued to slur his words badly and to act like a man who had half a dozen drinks or more in him, and was ready for more.

  "I know what you guys are doing," Uncle Joe said, and shook a finger at the three of us in the room with him.

  "We know what you're doing, too," said the CIA guy, Ladove. "And what you've done."

  "Haven't done anything. Innocent until proven guilty. Besides, if you know so much, why are we talking?"

  "Joe, where is the Wolf?" I asked him. "What country? Give us something."

  "Don't know," Cahill said, then laughed as if something he'd said was funny. "All these years, I don't know. I don't. "

  "But you've met him?" I said.

  "Never seen him. Not once, not even in the beginning. Very smart, clever. Paranoid, maybe. Doesn't miss a trick, though. Interpol might have seen him during the transport. Tom Weir? The Brits, maybe. Had him for a while before we got him." We'd already checked with London, but they had nothing substantial about the defection. And there was nothing about a mistake in Paris.

  "How long have you been working with him?" I asked Cahill.

  He looked for an answer on the ceiling. "Working for him, you mean?"

  "Yes. How long?"

  "Long time. Sold out early in the game. Jesus, long time ago." Cahill started to laugh again. "Lot of us did-CIA, FBI, DEA. So he claims. I believe him."

  I said, "He gave you orders to have Thomas Weir killed. You already told us that." Which he hadn't.

  "Okay," he said. "If I did, I did. Whatever the hell you say."

  "Why did he want Thomas Weir killed?" I continued. "Why Weir? What happened between them?"

  "Doesn't work that way. You just get your job. You never see the whole plan. But there was something between him and Weir-bad blood.

  "Anyway, he sure as hell never contacted me. Always my partner. Always Hancock. He's the one who got the Wolf out of Russia. Corky, the Germans, the Brits. I told you that, right?" Cahill said, then winked at us. "This stuff is good. Truth serum. Drink the grape juice, boys." He looked over at O'Connell. "You, too, Dr. Mengele. Drink the fucking grape and the truth will set you free."

  Chapter 96

  Had we gotten the truth out of Joe Cahill? Was there anything to his drug-induced ramblings?

  Corky Hancock? The Germans, the Brits? Thomas Weir?

  Somebody had to know something about the Wolf. Where he was. Who he was. What he might be up to next.

  So I was on the road again, tracking down the Wolf. Joe Cahill's partner had moved out to the central Idaho Rockies after he had taken early retirement. He lived on the outskirts of Hailey in the Wood River Valley, about a dozen miles south of Sun Valley. Not a bad life for a former spook.

  As we drove from the airport to Hailey we passed through what the Bureau driver described as "high desert." Hancock, like Joe Cahill, was a hunter and fisherman, it seemed. Silver Creek Preserve, a world-famous catch-and-release fishing area, was nearby.

  "We're not going to bust in on Hancock. We'll keep him under surveillance. Try to see what he's up to. He's off in the mountains, hunting, right now. We'll run by his place. Let you have a look," said the local senior agent, a young Turk named Ned Rust. "Hancock is an expert shot with a rifle, by the way. Thought I'd mention that."

  We drove up into the hills, where several of the larger houses seemed to be on five-to-ten-acre lots. Some homes had well-manicured lawns, which looked unnaturally green in contrast to the ashen hills, which, of course, were natural.

  "There have been avalanches in the area recently," Rust said as we drove. He was just chock full of information. "Might see some wild horses. Or Bruce Willis. Demi and Ashton and the kids. Anyway, there's Hancock's house up ahead. Exterior's river rock. Popular around here. Lot of house for a retired agent with no family."

  "He's probably got some money to spend on himself," I said.

  The house was large all right, and handsome, with spectacular views in three directions. There was a detached barn that was bigger than my house, and a couple of horses grazing nearby. No Corky Hancock, though; he was off hunting.

  Well, so was I.

  Nothing much happened in Hailey for the next few days. I was briefed by the senior agent in charge, a man named William Koch. The CIA had also sent a heavy from Washington, Bridget Rooney. Hancock returned from his hunting outing, and we watched his every move. Static surveillance was set up by an operations group that had been flown in from Quantico. There was a mobile team whenever Hancock left the house. We were taking him very seriously. After all, the Wolf was out there somewhere, with close to two billion dollars. In winnings.

  But maybe we finally had a way to track him: the CIA agent who brought him out of Russia. And maybe it was all connected to whatever had happened between the Wolf and Thomas Weir.

  The mistake in Paris.

  Chapter 97

  It just wasn't going to happen overnight. Or the next night. Or the one after that.

  On Friday I got permission to take a trip out to Seattle to visit my boy. I called Christine, who said that it would be fine and that Alex would be happy to see me-and so would she. I'd noticed the edge was gone from Christine's voice when we talked these days; sometimes I could even remember how it had been between us. I wasn't sure that was a good thing, though.

  I arrived at her house in the late morning and was struck again by what a warm and charming place it was. The house and the yard were very Christine: cozy and light, with the familiar white picket fence and matching handrails hugging the stone steps leading to the front door; rosemary, thyme, and mint filled the herb garden. Everything just so.

  Christine answered the bell herself, with Alex in her arms. As much as I tried not to, I couldn't help thinking about the way things might have been if I hadn't been a homicide cop and my life as a detective hadn't violently derailed the two of us.

  I was surprised that she was home, and she must have recognized the look in my eyes.

  "I won't bite you, Alex, I promise. I brought Alex back from preschool to be with you," she said. Then she handed over the Boy, and he was all I wanted to think about right then.

  "Hello, Dada," he said, and laughed shyly, which is his way at first. I smiled back. A woman I know in the D.C. area calls me "a saint," and she doesn't mean it as a compliment. I'm not, not even close, but I have learned to make the best of things. My guess is that she hasn't.

  "You're such a big boy," I said, expressing my surprise, and I suppose, my pride and delight in my son. "How old are you now? Six? Eight? Twelve years old?" I asked.

  "I'm two, almost three," he said, and laughed at my joke. He always gets me, at least he seems to.

  "He's been talking about seeing you all morning, Alex. He kept saying, 'Today's Daddy day,'" Christine said. "You two have fun together." Then she did something that surprised me: she leaned in and kissed my cheek. That kind of threw me. I may be cautious, even a little paranoid, but I'm not immune. First Kayla Coles-and now Christine. Maybe I looked as though I needed a little TLC. That was probably it.

  Well, Alex and I did have some good times together. I acted as if Seattle were our hometown, and I went with it. First we rode over to the Fremont area, where I had visited a retired detective friend a few years back. Fremont was full of older buildings, lots of vintage clothing and furniture shops, character, if such a worthy trait can actually be traced to architecture and style. A lot of people seem to think it can, but I'm not so sure.

  When we got there, Little Alex and I shared a scon
e with butter and blackberry jam from the Touchstone Bakery. We continued on our walking tour, and closely examined the fifty-five-foot-tall Fremont Rocket attached to one of the local stores. Then I bought Alex a tie-dyed kite, and we took it for a test flight at Gas Works Park, which had a view of Lake Union and downtown Seattle. Seattle has parks galore. It's one of the things I like so much about the city. I wondered if I could ever live out here and imagined that I could, and then I wondered why I was entertaining that line of thought at all. Because Christine had given me a quick little peck on the cheek? Was I that starved for affection? Pitiful.

  We did some more exploring, and checked out the sculpture garden and the Fremont Troll, a large sculpture that reminded me of the singer Joe Cocker clutching a Volkswagen Bug in one hand. Finally we had a late lunch-organic, of course-a roasted vegetable salad, plus peanut butter and jelly on Ezekiel bread. When in Rome, and all that.