Sidney Sheldon's Reckless

by Sidney Sheldon

Hunter took on a nostalgic expression. “More than friends. Kate was probably my first really big love.”

  Tracy was fascinated. “What was her background? Was she a radical in college?”

  Hunter laughed. “Radical? Hell, no. If you could have picked one girl out of the yearbook least likely to get involved with an organization like Group 99, it would have been her. Kate’s family were from Ohio. Good people, Christian, Republican. And rich. Her dad owned a local newspaper, but he’d made most of his money on Wall Street. Needless to say, he didn’t approve of me one bit.”

  Tracy asked the obvious question. “So how does a nice, rich, Midwestern girl end up on the CIA’s Most Wanted list?”

  Hunter’s face suddenly darkened. “She loses everything,” he said bitterly. “That’s how. The CIA destroyed Kate’s life, so she figured she’d return the favor.”

  Tracy waited for him to explain.

  “After Kate and I broke up she started dating a guy called Daniel Herschowitz. About a year later, she married him. I didn’t know the guy well, but everybody said Dan was a great person. Solid, reliable. Everything I wasn’t, basically.” He smiled briefly. “He was also crazy smart, just like Kate. She was brilliant with computers—that’s why they brought her in to track you—and Dan was some kind of math prodigy. They both got recruited into Langley before they even finished grad school.”

  The way he told it, it sounded like such a happy story. Gilded, gifted American couple fall in love and dedicate their lives to their country. Yet somehow, somewhere along the road between then and now, it had ended in tragedy. In terror and murder and misery.

  Fighting to control her emotions, Tracy asked Hunter, “What happened? What went wrong?”

  “I don’t know all the details. But the summary is Dan was in Iraq, embedded on some deep cover mission for the agency. Something went wrong back home—some kind of security leak—and his identity was compromised. He managed to make contact with his handler and arranged to meet at a safe house in Basra. He got there expecting to be smuggled out of the country. Instead he was met by three Al Qaeda operatives, horribly tortured, and eventually beaten to death.”

  Tracy put a hand over her mouth. “Oh my God. But how did Al Qaeda know about the safe house?”

  Hunter shrugged. “That’s an open question. Kate’s always been convinced it was an inside job. That the CIA sold Daniel out. She was still working at Langley at the time. She claims she hacked into files, right up to the director’s office, that prove her husband was betrayed and murdered. But it was all covered up. The doctors said she was deranged with grief and she spent the next year in a secure mental facility in upstate Virginia.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Yeah. It was bad. She was tortured by grief, destroyed by it. And everybody she trusted had betrayed her. That’s what she believed anyway. What she still believes.”

  Tracy wasn’t sure why, but she believed what Hunter was telling her. From the little she already knew about the CIA and the FBI and the way the intelligence community closed ranks when they felt under threat, Kate Evans’s story sounded horribly plausible.

  “When she finally got out of the hospital she was on a mission. The only thing she cared about was destroying the CIA. Getting payback on everyone who had conspired in Daniel’s murder and what followed. That’s what led her to Group 99 and everything that happened next. Kate never bought into their whole communist, punish the wealthy ideology. She’s always been rich. She liked them because they were running rings around the CIA and costing the U.S. government millions of dollars. Plus she was a gifted hacker, with invaluable inside information on how the agency worked. Kate was the one who transformed Group 99 into a global force. She took a ramshackle bunch of angry kids from the slums of Athens and Paris and Caracas and got them organized, funded and ruthlessly focused.”

  Tracy sat back in her chair. For the first time, doubts began to creep in.

  “You sound as if you admire her.”

  “I do.”

  “But what about the violence? The murders of all those innocent people?” With a supreme effort, Tracy forced Nick’s face out of her mind. “What about Neuilly?”

  “That wasn’t her,” said Hunter. “Kate expressly forbade the attack on the school. But by then she’d lost control to Apollo—Argyros—and his cronies.”

  “Henry Cranston, then.”

  “Cranston deserved to die,” Hunter said flatly. “But Kate didn’t plant that bomb either.”

  “She was there!” Tracy protested.

  Hunter shook his head “She was set up. I’m telling you, it wasn’t her.”

  “All right then,” Tracy said. “Bob Daley. Kate personally authorized his murder. I heard the recording myself. She told Argyros to shoot him. That is a fact.”

  Hunter sighed heavily. “I know it is.”

  “So then how can you defend her? I thought Bob Daley was your friend.”

  “He was. I admit, Kate was wrong about Bob.”

  Wrong? The understatement was so shocking, Tracy wasn’t sure how to react. Wrong? They blew his brains out. The guy’s skull exploded!

  Hunter stood up suddenly.

  “Let’s go outside. I could use some air.”

  THEY WALKED BACK ALONG the corridor to the drawing room, the way Tracy had come in earlier, and out into the garden through the French doors. In the last hour the breeze had gone from cool to distinctly chilly. Tracy shivered in her skimpy dress. Darting back inside, Hunter grabbed a cashmere throw off one of the armchairs and draped it around Tracy’s shoulders, making no reference to the fact that she’d brought her pistol with her and held it tightly in her right hand. She was beginning to trust Hunter more, but there were limits.

  “Thank you,” said Tracy.

  Hunter reminded her in so many ways of Jeff. Both men were immensely charming, but both used their charm to manipulate others. In this case, me. It was a bizarre feeling, knowing you were being lulled into a false sense of security, but letting it happen anyway.

  It struck Tracy that Hunter had been talking solidly for almost an hour, yet she still didn’t know why Group 99 had kidnapped him or what his relationship to the group really was. As for Kate Evans, and her connection to Tracy and to Nick’s death, she was still foundering in the darkness.

  Below them, the still waters of Lake Maggiore shimmered silvery black. Above, poplar trees loomed and swayed like dark giants, their feathered fingers rustling ominously in the wind. On the other side of the lake the lights from the town twinkled prettily, cozy houses, bustling restaurants and hotels, an enchanting world of safety and normality and peace.

  It’s just a couple of miles across the water, thought Tracy, but it might as well be outer space.

  She lived in a different world now. A world of torture and betrayal. Of lies and secrets.

  A world of death.

  Hunter walked beside Tracy along the graveled path. “I think you still have the wrong impression of me, Miss Whitney,” he said. “Your friends at Langley have convinced you that I sympathize with Group 99. That I support their aims and objectives and approve of their methods.”

  Lifting up his shirt, he displayed a painful crisscross of scars, welts, knife wounds and burns cutting a swath across his chest, ribs and back.

  “I experienced Group 99’s methods firsthand. Believe me when I tell you, nobody hates them more than I do. These people kidnapped me. They beat me. They robbed me of a year of my life. Alexis Argyros, undoubtedly the most sadistic, straightforwardly evil human being I have ever met, is somewhere out there right now, tracking me down, still trying to kill me. And you honestly think I’m on his side?”

  “I think you’re on Kate’s side,” Tracy said quietly.

  “That’s different.” Hunter’s voice grew more urgent. For the first time this evening, Tracy heard anger there. “Kate is ill. The CIA made her ill.”

  “That’s no excuse . . .”

  “I think it is. The CIA broke her mentally.
If they hadn’t, Argyros would never have been able to manipulate her the way he did.”

  Tracy stopped walking. “What do you mean?”

  “Argyros convinced Kate that Bob Daley was working for the CIA. That he was part of a joint British American task force in Iraq who deceived Daniel and left him there to die. Kate did order Bob’s execution. But only because she believed he’d murdered her husband.

  “The way I see it, the CIA and Argyros and his bully boys both have Daley’s blood on their hands. Argyros is the one who turned Group 99 into violent terrorists, not Kate. He led his little group of angry boys exactly where they always wanted to go.”

  Angry little boys . . . who else had said that?

  Tracy’s mind rushed back to Geneva, to her first dinner with Cameron Crewe. She heard his voice now as if he were standing next to her: Group 99 are just a bunch of angry young men . . . They aren’t fighting for a cause. Fighting is their cause. They turn to violence because it makes them feel good. Simple as that. I call them the Lost Boys.

  They walked back inside. Hunter closed the French doors behind them and drew the drapes. Then he went over to the bar and returned with two cut glass tumblers of whisky.

  “Here.”

  He handed one to Tracy. She looked at it for a moment but the time for caution seemed to have passed. She downed it in two swift gulps then asked him the question that had been forming in her mind all the time they were outside.

  “Why were you kidnapped? You’re working on your fracking story. The industry don’t like it. The U.S. government don’t like it. But Group 99 are kind of on your side, presumably? Anti-corruption, anti-wealth. Why did they abduct you?”

  Hunter looked at her with renewed respect.

  “Now that, Miss Whitney, is a good question. That is the question, don’t you agree? Why did Group 99 abduct me?”

  “And the answer is . . . ?”

  “Simple. Although I’d really like you to get there yourself. I was kidnapped because somebody commanded it. Somebody very rich and very powerful. Somebody who knew I was on to them and had a lot to lose.”

  “Not President Havers?”

  “No, no. Kidnap’s far too messy. He’d have had me killed.”

  “Kate?”

  Hunter shook his head.

  Tracy frowned. “Then who?”

  “Me.”

  Tracy and Hunter both spun around.

  Cameron Crewe lounged in the doorway, smiling broadly. He had a drink in one hand and a Colt Python Elite in the other.

  It was pointed directly at Tracy’s head.

  CHAPTER 31

  GUN PLEASE, DARLING.”

  Cameron was still smiling at Tracy. It was the same easy, warm smile she remembered, from Geneva, and New York, and Hawaii and Paris. The smile that had made her feel safe. That had brought her back to life after Nick’s death.

  It was true Tracy had never felt the same deep passion for Cameron that she had with Jeff. But Cameron had given her something else in their short time together.

  Contentment.

  Kindness.

  Hope.

  Now Tracy felt all three slipping through her fingers like so many grains of sand.

  “Your gun, Tracy. Put it on the table, please. Slowly.”

  Cameron’s tone was calm, gentle even. But his pistol was still pointed firmly between Tracy’s eyes.

  “Do as he asks,” Hunter said softly.

  Cameron watched like a hawk as Tracy stood up and carefully placed her gun on the walnut coffee table next to the fireplace. With each step she struggled to adjust to the new reality.

  Cameron Crewe wasn’t her protector.

  He wasn’t her friend.

  He hadn’t come here to “save” her from Hunter Drexel or anything else.

  He was the one Tracy needed saving from.

  “Thank you,” Cameron said. “Now sit. You too.”

  He jerked his gun casually towards Hunter, who sat down next to Tracy on the couch. If Hunter was afraid he didn’t show it, crossing his legs and making himself comfortable, as if the three of them were old friends settling in for a fireside chat.

  Cameron turned to Tracy. “I’m sorry it has come to this, darling. I really am. I’d hoped for a different ending. But when you ran out on me after Paris . . . when you insisted on going after Drexel alone . . . you really left me no choice.”

  Tracy fought back an unhelpful urge to laugh. The entire situation suddenly seemed so ridiculous. The three of them here in this magnificent room, like characters in a play, acting out a scene. Except they’d all been given the wrong lines. Now Cameron was playing the evil terrorist, and Hunter the misunderstood hero.

  And what does that make me? Tracy wondered. The damsel in distress?

  I don’t think so.

  When she looked up at Cameron, there was no fear in Tracy’s eyes. Only curiosity. Now, at long last, she was to learn the whole truth.

  “So it was you?” she asked him. “You had Hunter kidnapped?”

  “I did. A mistake in retrospect. I should have had him killed. But you live and learn.”

  Tracy had never heard him speak like this before, so callously. It was as if a completely different person had somehow invaded Cameron’s body.

  Was this the person Charlotte Crewe knew? The man that she tried to warn me about?

  Was this why Charlotte had gone “missing”?

  “So you were bankrolling Group 99? They worked for you?”

  “Pond scum like Alexis Argyros will work for whoever writes them the biggest check. These people’s life blood is greed. Greed and envy, prettily packaged as social justice. Isn’t that right, Mr. Drexel?”

  “It is. That’s what I found out, after I spoke to Prince Achileas at Sandhurst,” Hunter explained to Tracy. “Group 99 were taking bribes too. Even the so-called good guys were corrupt. Crewe Oil totally owned them, and Apollo and his cronies were making out like bandits from day one. They carefully targeted all Crewe’s competitors but left him untouched. They took out Henry Cranston specifically so that Crewe would wind up with the Greek shale gas, and at a bargain price too.”

  “You murdered Henry Cranston?” Tracy could no longer hide her shock. “Is that why you were in Geneva?”

  Cameron shrugged. “I’m a businessman. I protected my business interests.”

  “By bombing your competitors?”

  “If necessary. I wouldn’t waste your tears on Henry though, darling. Believe me, he wasn’t worth it.”

  Tracy stared at him. She didn’t say a word but her face spoke plainly: Who are you?

  How was it possible that she’d read a person so wrong, so terribly, fatally, completely wrong?

  Jeff had tried to warn her, but she’d assumed he was simply jealous.

  She owed Jeff an apology.

  She wondered if she would live to give it to him.

  “Let me get this straight,” Tracy said. “Hunter knew that you controlled Group 99?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that you were using them to launch attacks on your competitors?”

  “And on governments where he wanted to exert leverage,” Hunter interrupted, “including the U.S. and Britain. It was Cameron who recruited Kate into Group 99. He got close to Greg Walton, wormed his way in as a CIA asset, and then helped orchestrate the devastating cyberattack on the Langley systems, as well as a whole slew of embarrassing government leaks.”

  “But . . . you were a donor to Jim Havers’s election campaign,” Tracy said. “You supported him.”

  “Openly, yes. And he supported me. But there’s no such thing as trust in politics. Or in life for that matter. One must keep one’s friends close but one’s enemies closer.”

  Hunter said, “The day I was kidnapped, I was on my way to Crewe’s offices. I wanted to confront him with the evidence, to hear his side of the story. By then I already knew that Group 99 were receiving major cash injections from a U.S.-based source. Althea—Kate, as I later learned—
was being set up to look like that person. But she was obviously a cover. I quickly realized there had to be someone else behind her, someone far wealthier, and with far more to gain. Crewe made sense. His fracking interests had miraculously never been hit by Group 99, yet his competitors had all suffered heavy losses. Cameron had both the means and the motive to buy control of Group 99 and that’s exactly what he did. Within two years, Crewe Oil became the most profitable fracking company on earth.”

  Cameron nodded appreciatively at Hunter’s description of his boardroom prowess.

  “He was smart about it too,” Hunter went on. “He made sure he developed excellent connections on both sides of the fence. Back in the U.S. he had the CIA eating out of his hands. They already considered him an asset, so it never occurred to them to dig in that particular backyard. As for the Havers administration, Crewe Industries had made a vast contribution to the president’s campaign. Plus everyone in the fracking industry saw him as one of the good guys. He had all these charities, all these NGOs . . .”

  “That’s right,” said Tracy, turning to Cameron. She was still clutching at straws, trying to piece something back together of the Cameron Crewe she first met, the man she’d liked from the first moment she saw him. “You gave back. You did. You cared about the local communities where you operated.”

  He looked back at her pityingly.

  “It’s a charming idea, Tracy. But no.”

  “Most of them weren’t charities,” Hunter explained. “They were fronts. Money laundering operations designed to help fund a variety of terrorist or extremist groups, often with conflicting aims. Crewe’s policy was a simple one: he gave cash to everyone. So there was Group 99, who specifically opposed the wealthiest one percent; but he also supported extreme rightwing, anti-immigration groups. He gave money to political separatists, pro-Islamic groups, anti-Islamic groups, republicans, nationalists. The idea was to do everything possible to destabilize the regions he’d targeted—and that could be anywhere that was rich in shale gas. Poland, Greece, China, the U.S.—and then exploit that political uncertainty to push out his competitors. In my piece I called it ‘chaos economics.’ ”

  “Chaos economics!” Cameron grinned. “That’s very good. I like that.”