by Gayle Lynds
As the sound of her gunfire assaulted her brain, she watched amazed as the man flew back from the power of the 9mm bullets and landed hard against a tree. Blood burst from his chest.
Hammond was back at her side. "Jesus Christ, Convey! I wanted him alive!"
He yanked open the front door on the passenger side of the old station wagon, threw her inside, and tore around to jump in behind the wheel. As he raced the wagon away, she stared out the window at the dead man and then, as if in a dream, lifted her gaze and saw Adam Hoogensen, the UPS man who made regular deliveries on her street. Their eyes connected, and she saw the horror in his. She had killed a man. Not her heart. She. Just as in her nightmare. And he had seen her do it.
She averted her gaze. Neither she nor Hammond saw the squat, burly man with the Mongol face run to the dead man as if he were trying to help and give him medical attention. No one in the gathering crowd saw Ivan Vok take the dead man's cell phone and pistol and slip them into his own pocket. Nor did they see Vok slide a wallet into the pocket of the victim's ripped and bloody jacket.
Beth sank back against the car seat. Her eyelids closed involuntarily, and she began to shake. She was cold, freezing. Colder than she had ever been. As the station wagon moved with the traffic, revulsion hit her. What had she done?
"I knew the man I killed," she whispered. "I recognized his face." She looked at Hammond as if he could help.
Hammond drove on steadily. "How?"
"I saw him in my nightmares. I don't know his name, but I saw his face."
"Nightmares? What are you talking about?"
She shook her head and closed her eyes again. She retreated inside. Could not think her usual analytical thoughts. Had to feel.
"You idiot." His voice was soft now. "Why do you think I didn't shoot to kill? He could've told us who he was. Who he worked for. Why he wanted you."
She said nothing. The shaking decreased to shudders.
"Do you have any idea what you're involved in?"
She heard his voice as if he were far away. She was grieving. There was so much to regret. She had lost her heart. It had been sick, but it was hers. Her very own. Now a new, demanding one beat in her chest. She had seen two people die. She had killed a third. She did not know who she was. Something familiar and basic was gone about herself. She was new. A new person. What do you do when you are new, and you kill someone?
He was talking in that same quiet voice. ". . . things you don't know about me. I can't go into it all. There isn't time, and anyway you don't need to hear all that nonsense. But you seem to be stuck on the idea I'm dangerous. Well, I'm not. At least not to you. Last Wednesday I met secretly with Anatoli Yurimengri because he said he had important information for me. I was supposed to meet him again at Meteor Express that night, but when I arrived, you were running out the front door, being chased by a man with a silenced gun. I had to make a quick decision. Whether to help you or go inside to find Yurimengri. I decided to help you."
Beth roused herself. She turned to look at him. "Help me?"
"Yes. Help you." He glanced at her and looked away. "Just as you stumbled and fell, I tackled the man who was chasing you. Then all of a sudden there were more men, all armed. By then, I had the first guy's pistol, and I used it to hold them off while I hauled you away. I didn't know what you had to do with Meteor, and I didn't have time to wait for you to wake up and tell me. So I took you to a motel where I have an arrangement with the owner." He hesitated. The owner was one of his former girlfriends, but Convey had no need to know that. "By the time I got back to Meteor, the place was empty. No sign of Yurimengri. I drove your car to the motel, walked back to pick up mine, and drove to my office at the Post, hoping Yurimengri had phoned. Instead, the night editor gave me the bad news his corpse had been found downtown."
He checked her response. Her eyes were blinking slowly. She looked miserable and stunned, not so surprising since she had just shot and killed a man.
He frowned. "Did you follow what I said? Are you okay, Convey?" He was beginning to worry. She was obviously shocked. "Look, what you did was self-defense. Considering you're not trained, you did remarkably well to have stopped him and survived."
Her eyes narrowed. "You expect me to believe that fairy tale? I would've made up something a lot more credible. It's not just Colonel Yurimengri's murder you have to explain. You think I don't know about those two kids you killed in West Virginia?"
"I was framed. Obviously, someone wants very badly to get me out of the way."
"Framed? Oh, please. The next thing you're going to tell me is there's a real Santa Claus."
His jaw muscles hardened. "I can't explain more than that. I don't know who did it. Or how. You'll have to believe me."
"Right. Back to Santa Claus again."
He turned the station wagon east on M Street, heading toward Foggy Bottom. There was more than a hint of anger in his voice: "I also saved you from the sniper today." He described how he had spotted the metallic flash in the woods, and how he had brought down the lurking shooter. "But I suppose that's not enough to convince you either."
She studied the three black boxes on the floor, the long rifle in her lap that he had dropped there as he rushed to get behind the wheel, and the pistol that lay beside it. The same pistol she had fired at the man.
She asked, "What was his name? The man I killed?"
"Sorry. Don't know. You're the one who remembered him." His voice became sarcastic. "From your dreams. And you think my story sounds like a fairy tale?"
Beth lapsed into a silence again.
Hammond felt instant remorse. He was beginning to sense something far out of the ordinary was occurring. It was not just that she had killed someone and that it had sent her into a tailspin. After a killing, most police departments put the shooting officer on leave, not only to investigate the incident, but to give the officer time to digest what had happened and recover emotionally. Killing was antihuman, despite what some primitive peoples believed, and the healthy spirit rebelled against it, no matter how necessary. But with Convey, there was more.
He said, "I can tell you one thing, though. The man you shot was there the night Yurimengri was killed. That guy was the one chasing you. If it's any comfort, if you hadn't gotten him today, he'd have killed you, possibly me, and gone on to continue killing if I hadn't been able to stop him either."
"You said he could have told us who he worked for. He was a professional? That's why you wanted to capture him?"
"It seemed like an idea."
They had left Georgetown and were now driving in the section of the District called Foggy Bottom, where the crown prince of government—the Department of State—arose stark as a large, white shoe box from what once had been an unlivable swamp. Hammond pulled the station wagon to the curb near the Watergate complex, turned off the ignition, grabbed the Beretta from beside her before she could object, and slid it into the holster under his jacket.
"Stay here," he ordered and opened the car door. He had no idea whether she would, but he doubted he was going to learn anything from her anyway.
She bit back an angry retort. Let him think she would wait in the car. Let him believe she was a sucker who believed everything he said. She nodded mutely, afraid her voice would betray her.
He was peering at her. His blunt features seemed to contract in concentration. She gazed levelly back, never quite meeting his eyes. A whiff of testosterone seemed to come at her, testing. She ignored it.
He got out of the car, glanced all around, then headed into the vast Watergate complex, made famous by the bungled burglary of Democratic headquarters back in the days of President Richard M. Nixon. The temporary home of travelers as well as the permanent residence of some of the city's elite and notorious—everyone from Bob and Liddy Dole to, at one time, Monica Lewinsky—it was a rabbit warren of luxury shops, apartments, and hotel rooms.
As Jeff disappeared down the concrete stairs that led to the lower level, Beth opened her car doo
r and stepped out onto the sidewalk.
Hammond strode through the sunken courtyard, past Mail Boxes Etc., a grocery store, a deli, and up another flight of stairs. He watched all around, moving only his eyes. He kept expecting to be recognized. Kept waiting to have someone shout his name and scream for the police. Wondered when the next killer would arrive, for there would be another one. Professionals like today's sniper always had employers determined to achieve their ends.
He left the Watergate complex on the south side just above the Potomac, trotted across the street, and slowed to a casual stroll as he climbed the wide drive toward the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Tall and imposing, the building was a commanding presence above the Potomac. He glanced up as if he were a tourist admiring it . . . and stopped. He leaned over to pull up his cowboy boots and adjust his jean's leg. There were two of them again—a man and a woman, though not the same pair who had staked out his condo. They stood in the shade of a tree, reading sightseeing brochures, but they made none of the little chitchat or showed the impatient frowns of those who had been kept waiting too long. By the way they watched the building and scanned the drive, they had a motive different from simply meeting late family members or friends.
Hammond's uncle was director of the Kennedy Center. He hoped to convince him to loan them a car and let them stay at his weekend bungalow on Chesapeake Bay.
As he watched the watchers, he wondered whether he could be wrong. Maybe the pair was innocent; maybe he had grown too jaded. After all, he had managed to walk through the whole Watergate complex without being noticed. The baseball cap had helped, but even greater was the contribution of human nature: People were preoccupied with themselves and their problems, not on the alert for a mad killer they had seen for perhaps thirty seconds on a TV screen. He was a sound bite now. At least, he was until word spread and the news reports reached a tipping point where his face and name were on too many worried Washingtonians' minds.
The couple split up. The woman moved toward the entrance to the center, while the man folded his brochures and stuck them into the hip pocket of his shorts. Both wore knee-length shorts with light windbreaker jackets zipped halfway up. A breeze gusted along the drive. Yes, he could see the faint outline of a holster beneath the nylon jacket. The man was strolling in his direction.
Hammond turned and retreated down the drive. There was no point in forcing a confrontation, in case they were police. And now he was even more concerned. Where could he take Convey that was safe? He returned across the parkway. It was obvious his contacts and usual places were being watched.
He moved quickly past a patio filled with tables where couples sat drinking coffee, eating scones and croissants, and chatting companionably in the mild April air. It was Friday, and they were winding down for the weekend.
As he pushed through the Watergate's glass doors, he had a peculiar feeling. He looked around. Adrenaline surged through him. Two men were close on his heels, and one was the male "tourist" from the Kennedy Center. These two were a pair now, the woman off somewhere else. Grimness settled over him. The good thing was that his instincts had been right. That was the bad thing, too.
He hurried across the lobby, out another door, and down a corridor that led to still another outside door. He exited again, and they were still behind him, now with their hands inside their jackets. His breathing began to speed up. He passed people. He wanted no one to get hurt. He had to keep his pursuers away from Convey.
He ran halfway down another flight of stairs, and suddenly one of the men appeared ahead, standing at the foot of the landing. He glanced back and felt a wave of panic. The other man was behind and above him. He reached for his pistol, but they had pulled theirs. He was caught. Trapped between their weapons.
"Halt, Hammond. You go no farther. Take hand from jacket. Be slow. Be nice. Maybe you live." A Russian accent, at last.
25
"I'm certain now. Jeffrey Hammond's got to be our mole."
The hulking architectural monstrosity that was the J. Edgar Hoover Building dominated the view from Assistant Attorney General Donald Chen's office. On Pennsylvania Avenue, the FBI headquarters rose seven stories in what looked like bullet-riddled concrete, while at the rear, toward E Street, it loomed even larger and more unfortunately—an eleven-story Quasimodo, the misshapen hunchback of Washington.
Today, Assistant AG Chen was dressed debonairly in a charcoal Brooks Brothers suit elegantly tailored to his short, portly frame. His black hair had its usual immaculate side part, but his round, Buddha face was unsmiling. He glared through his window at the FBI building as if he could see the mole lurking inside, a dangerous artifact of the grotesque building and of the even more dangerous and grotesque Cold War.
"How certain are you, Eli?" Chen asked.
Eli Kirkhart assured him, "Shall we say one mere step from absolute proof?" His bulldog face was as severe as Chen's. He seemed today more muscular in his dark-blue, single-button suit as he leaned back in the comfortable armchair reserved for guests in Chen's office. He felt triumphant and expansive, an unusual indulgence for him, particularly the English side of him, as he added, "It won't be long. Days, at the most."
"I don't know, Eli. Sounds like you're still missing a damn big step to me."
Kirkhart shrugged. "Have a bit of faith in me, and withhold judgment until you've heard my entire tale."
"Go ahead then. Let's hear it."
"While I was following him on Wednesday, Hammond took a bunk to a village named Stone Point in the godforsaken mountains of West Virginia. When I arrived, he was doing his usual routine of asking around for Alexei Berianov, so he could grill him for that series he's writing. Then suddenly he was arrested by the Bureau for the double murder of two local juveniles. I couldn't very well reveal myself at that point, since they would've asked what on earth I was doing in the ridiculous hamlet myself, eh? So I followed them as they drove Hammond back through the night to D.C. to a state-of-the-art safe house in Adams Morgan that I knew nothing about. The safe house surprised me. I'm usually kept in the loop about them."
Chen folded his hands across his ample stomach. "Why weren't you this time?"
"Under the circumstances, I can't very well ask without revealing myself. I suspect the safe house is either extremely new, or—my thought is—it's very high level and known only to the director and perhaps a few other officials. In other words, known probably only to Hammond's secret bosses in the Bureau."
Chen rotated in his chair. He considered the view out his other window, this one overlooking the corner of Ninth and Pennsylvania and the Navy Memorial, where the summer concerts would soon begin. "I don't see how that proves he's undercover—"
"He escaped."
"Escaped?" Chen turned back sharply to stare. "Hammond? From a safe house?"
"Slick as a weasel. Out and gone." Kirkhart detailed the exact method and route.
"Holy hell. How did he know there was an escape route under the house?"
"Yes," Kirkhart nodded. "Indeed. My question precisely. There's only one logical conclusion: He must've been told what to look for before he got there—some secret mark or other visual sign. We both know prearranged signals are standard with any police or government agency that's running someone undercover. Plus, Graham told me the underground route appeared to be recently set out, and that there was even a new flashlight down there with Hammond's prints. Only Hammond's prints, although he'd had no access to a flashlight. That tells me the flashlight must've been conveniently waiting. Too conveniently. Someone with the power to get into that safe house had to have secretly arranged the whole thing. Yes, Hammond's definitely undercover, and he's still operating for the Bureau."
Chen chewed a lip as he contemplated all the implications. "True, unless Hammond's working for the mole, and the mole made the escape arrangements for him."
"Impossible." Eli was emphatic. "No deep mole would ever take such a large risk that he could be discovered. For a deep-cover mole, everyone's
expendable. Everyone has to be expendable, or he wouldn't be able to work long or even survive. Friends, wives, children. If the mole were someone else, then Hammond would be swinging in the wind right now."
"What about this business of Hammond's killing the young couple? Did he do it?"
"I can't be certain, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if that weren't arranged, too. Someone else was probably the killer, but Hammond's handler in the Bureau saw the perfect opportunity to make it appear he'd done it. I've learned there's some evidence the deaths may have occurred earlier than was reported, which means someone created time to get Hammond into Stone Point so he could be blamed for the murders."
"Why in God's name would the Bureau want to do anything like that?"
"Maybe they had some critical assignment in mind for Hammond in a prison somewhere. It's a natural—make Hammond out to be a mean, nasty killer and escape artist, and then assign him as the cellmate of some convict who has information they haven't been able to get. At that point, they sit back and wait for Hammond to worm his way into the fellow's confidence."
"It's been done successfully before," Chen agreed soberly. Then considered further. "Okay, so we think Hammond's still working for the Bureau. But ten years—and under the stewardship of three different directors—that's a hell of a long time to be undercover. Sounds fishy to me. A crazy setup at best." He shook his head and concluded reluctantly, "I'm still not convinced Hammond's the mole."
Kirkhart took a notebook from the jacket pocket of his suit. "Before I went to Stone Point, I spotted Hammond with a woman outside the Post building. They talked on the street. Serious talk, I'd say. When he went back inside, she drove off but then circled back and staked out the building in her car. When Hammond drove out of the garage, she tailed him. Naturally, I was curious."