Mesmerized

by Gayle Lynds

  "Of course. Go on."

  "I got her license plate number and had my team identify her." He flipped open his notebook. "The name's Elizabeth—'Beth'—Convey, and she's a high-level lawyer with Edwards & Bonnett. I did some digging around. Last year, she won a billion-dollar divorce settlement for a wealthy businesswoman named Michelle Philmalee. In it, Mrs. Philmalee was awarded control of the Philmalee Group. Now it seems a company in the Group—Philmalee International—has a contract worth nearly five-hundred million dollars to broker the sale of unenriched uranium that will go to Russia. But the Russian agency, Uridium, backed out of the deal with Philmalee. So Philmalee's filed suit to force Uridium to live up to its contract. But another company—"

  "HanTech," Chen interrupted, nodding. "That's the other company. Very interesting. That deal's part of a government project to remove nuclear-weapons-grade uranium from Russia's arsenal. We blend the highly enriched uranium into harmless fuel for nuclear power plants, and in exchange we give Russia cash and unenriched uranium. Uridium's run by their Ministry of Atomic Energy."

  "Minatom." Kirkhart whistled. "And Uridium. Aha . . . a mole would be damned interested in keeping close tabs of our side in a deal like that. No way would our government tell any Russian agency or official everything when we're trying to manipulate their country's nuclear capabilities. For both economic and military reasons, they'd love to get their hooks into what we're holding back."

  "Exactly." Chen stood up. "And you say this Beth Convey is a lawyer for Philmalee, and that she was talking to Hammond and tailing him?"

  "That's what I saw."

  "She's suspicious of him. Or she's worried in some other way about him. Maybe you've got something important after all." Chen headed for his door. "Let's go."

  "Where?"

  "Taurino's office."

  Under the stern gaze of Chief Justice John Marshall, Millicent Taurino leaned against her stand-up reading desk, scowling over a dense and wildly overwritten analysis of a case pending before the Supreme Court. It had been prepared for the attorney general but farmed out to her on the pretext that he had to make a critical appearance before the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco instead. The truth was, the attorney general found lengthy analyses tedious.

  The deputy AG's fingernails were a dark purple today, her business suit a pale mauve, her red ponytail tied low on the nape of her neck, and her expression verging on suicidal when Donald Chen burst into her office leading Special Agent Eli Kirkhart.

  "Boss lady, I think Eli's uncovered a bombshell this time."

  For once Millicent Taurino was grateful for her subordinate's disregard of the niceties of protocol, although she was not about to let him know that. Despite her thankfulness for the reprieve from the boring analysis, she had to attempt to instill a stronger sense of the dignity due her office. Besides, she had her hard-nosed, razor-tongued image to uphold.

  So she said, "Tell me, Donald, what don't you understand about knocking on a closed door? Is it the position of your knuckles? The correct amount of force to be applied? Or perhaps a fear of injury to you or the door?"

  Chen grinned. "Sorry, Millicent. I guess I just get carried away by my eagerness to serve you."

  Taurino laughed. So much for her famed despotism. "Sit down, Donald. You too, Kirkhart. Now, what's this bombshell? I take it something further has developed concerning our elusive mole?"

  "You bet," Chen enthused. "Tell her, Eli. All of it. Chapter and verse."

  Kirkhart recited the entire story—spotting Beth Convey with Hammond, following him to Stone Point, seeing him arrested by Chuck Graham and his FBI team, and then escaping from the safe house.

  Taurino understood immediately. She rubbed thoughtfully at the butterfly tattoo on her neck. "So he had a signal in case he fell afoul of agents who couldn't know he was actually still in the Bureau but undercover. Good deductive work, Special Agent Kirkhart. However, none of what you've said proves he's our ubiquitous mole."

  "Maybe not, Millicent," Chen said. "Tell her about Minatom, Eli."

  "Minatom?" Taurino came alert at the name of this important Russian agency.

  "Yes, ma'am," Eli confirmed. He explained about Beth Convey, Philmalee International, Uridium, HanTech, and the meeting he observed between Jeff Hammond and the Convey woman.

  The deputy attorney general returned slowly to her desk. "This Convey is an attorney here?"

  "With a blue-chip firm. Edwards & Bonnett. Zach Housley's piranhas."

  But Taurino had stopped listening to Chen, lost in her own thoughts. She sat behind her desk as if on auto pilot, hardly aware of the chair, the desk, the office, anything at all. Her voice was measured as she spoke, heavy with a tentative concern. "We've been monitoring that project, of course, since it's vital to our interests to reduce the nuclear threat to this country. But in the last few days, NSA has uncovered two situations that are disturbing. Very disturbing, as a matter of fact." She stopped, as if reconsidering what she was about to reveal.

  "What situations?" Eli Kirkhart asked bluntly. "Could the mole be involved?"

  "That's what I'm wondering." Taurino turned her face to look at the agent, still pondering. Finally, she let out a slow breath and gazed up at the exacting visage of John Marshall. "First, it looks possible that HanTech—on orders from Uridium—may be doing a lot more than brokering a sale of unenriched uranium. It appears they're buying up weapons-grade uranium from Third World countries like Iraq and Libya, to whom the Kremlin sold it in the nineties when it was, as usual, desperate for money. NSA has evidence Philmalee International's rival, HanTech, is shipping that weapons-grade uranium back to Russia."

  Chen swore. "That's totally illegal! Not to mention dangerous as hell. Why would one of our own companies do such a thing? And why would Russia sell weapons-grade uranium to us to lower its stockpiles, then turn around and buy it up from Third World nations?"

  "Yes," Millicent Taurino agreed. "Why?"

  Kirkhart said, "Is it possible one group of Russians is doing one thing, and another group the opposite? Perhaps the left hand hasn't a clue what the right is doing."

  Taurino nodded. "Could be."

  Chen asked, "What's the second situation, Millicent?"

  "Philmalee International just filed an affidavit today alleging HanTech is now owned by a group of former Soviet nationals, émigrés and defectors to this country."

  The silence in the office was like a vacuum after a massive explosion. None of the three spoke. Finally, it was Eli Kirkhart who said, "Our mole could certainly have been useful in that entire deal. Perhaps he passed insider information to Uridium or Minatom that facilitated the takeover and switch to HanTech."

  "I'm thinking along those lines, too," Taurino agreed. "Mr. Kirkhart, find this Hammond, wherever he is, and don't let him out of your sight. Report everything he does. You understand?"

  "Absolutely."

  Donald Chen suggested, "We'd better have NSA check out Stone Point, too. We need to know whether Hammond went there for some reason we haven't discovered, and whether he did kill those kids. Who they were—and what, if anything, they were part of that would attract the interest of a mole."

  Millicent Taurino nodded and reached for her phone. "Abby? Get me Cabot Lowell at the Pentagon."

  26

  It felt to Beth as if it had been a long time since she could distinguish right from wrong easily. But the truth was, she still had been confident about it until Tuesday—just three days ago—when she called Meteor Express, heard the Russian accent, and threw herself ignorantly upon a journey that with each step shredded more of the fabric of her carefully thought-out life. And now she faced another stop sign on that journey: Jeffrey Hammond. Was he telling the truth?

  As she stood on the sidewalk beside the battered station wagon, her hand on the door handle, her body angled to turn away, in her mind she was already running to look for the nearest phone booth to call for help . . . while something else inside her shouted no.

  She misse
d the comfort of an effortless decision. But she was also beginning to realize she had too little information to decide anything anyway. She stared a moment longer at the station wagon, trying to make up her mind. That was when her gaze settled on the black boxes on the floor of the passenger side. She frowned, climbed back into the vehicle, locked the door, and popped up the lid of the black case nearest the steering wheel.

  What she saw surprised her: On top was a makeup tray containing a variety of foundations, eyebrow pencils, mascaras, creme sticks, creme liners, puffs, brushes, and sponges. A small compact contained two sets of contact lenses—one blue, the other green. Beginning to understand, she lifted the tray. Beneath were eyeglasses with uncorrected lenses, latex gloves, liquid latex, a wig, hair whitener, and the kind of skin-colored putty that actors used to reshape noses. There was also an empty bottle of thin glass wrapped in Styrofoam packing. Assuming this box was the killer's, it was obvious he had been a devotee of disguises and, by the range of possibilities, adept.

  Nodding to herself, she opened the next box, which was long and narrow. It contained layers of foam rubber in which cavities had been carved. By their shapes, the holes were made to hold rifle parts, which made sense. It was intelligent to transport a sniping weapon broken down, protected, and out of sight. She picked up the rifle Hammond had been carrying. It looked as if it should fit into the hollows if it were disassembled. How interesting, she thought with a thin smile—this wasn't Hammond's car, and these weren't his black cases.

  She closed the lid and opened the last box, which was rectangular and high. Inside, the graphic display brought back all the death and pain of the last two days: Here were more tools of the killer's bloody trade—three extremely sharp throwing knives with different blade lengths, clips of ammunition, vials of chemicals, a hypodermic plunger and needles, and other small items.

  There was also a notepad with words scribbled on the top sheet in the Cyrillic alphabet. Among the words were numbers. Her pulse raced as she stared at the numbers of her house address. Then she saw Stephanie Smith's as well. The dead man knew not only where she lived . . . but where Stephanie had, too. How—and why—had he known Stephanie's address? No one could have known she had visited Stephanie last night . . . unless someone had followed her. Someone like the man she had just shot.

  Uneasy and yet oddly relieved, she continued to explore the case until she found what looked like an electronic detonating cap and fuse. She studied it. Somehow it was important. If she could only figure out how and why. . . . She recalled the thin glass bottle in the first case and found it again. The cap fit perfectly, and she noticed a strange color to the glass. She studied it closely and saw the glass was filled with tiny metallic filaments that all ended in a kind of metal collar in the neck, exactly where the detonating cap and fuse fitted. It was a circuit. When the glass broke, an electronic signal would be sent to the cap, which would detonate.

  When she was twelve years old, her father had taken her to a shooting range for the first time. Despite returning alone for months to practice, she had never become a good marksman. Still, it had kindled an interest in firearms and munitions that had paid off many years later in several legal cases. Combined with her undergraduate degree in world history, she knew one of the cheapest, most reliable, and easiest-to-make weapons of the Russian revolution—and in most wars since—was the Molotov cocktail. It was still a popular guerrilla weapon around the world.

  The glass bottle . . . the detonating cap . . . plus gasoline siphoned from a car's tank was, in fact, a sophisticated Molotov cocktail. It could create an inferno that would turn a vehicle into a scorching cauldron, if the thrower's aim were good. Certainly it would set a little Ford like Stephanie's afire.

  She nodded soberly to herself. The driver of this car had all the grisly accessories of a paid assassin. Of a man who could have planned and executed Stephanie's death. Plus he owned a sniper case, and whoever had fired at her from the woods across the street would logically have used a rifle not a pistol, since a rifle was more accurate at a long distance.

  But assassins made good money. Why would he drive an old heap, unless he had stolen it to hide his identity. Which could explain the mysterious black van from last night. Probably stolen, too, and maybe by the owner of these three black boxes. If the man she killed was the one who had killed Yurimengri and had been stalking her all along, then Hammond might be telling the truth about her and about his being framed in West Virginia, too.

  She closed both cases, thinking. She studied the traffic and the scattering of pedestrians strolling along the sun-dappled sidewalk. A flush crept up her throat as she mulled the situation. If she ran away, she would have no real way to find out what this was all about and why, and she might never be safe.

  Yet, she was still unconvinced Hammond was innocent. Could she risk giving him the benefit of the doubt? Risk her life on her judgment in something unlike anything she had ever faced, a situation for which she had neither training nor experience?

  She inhaled deeply, and her gaze settled again on the black boxes. As she thought about their contents, she knew her answer: Yes, she should give Hammond a chance, at least for a while. She glanced at her watch, suddenly worried. Where was he? He had been gone too long.

  In the Watergate's cool, shadowed stairwell where Jeff Hammond's hand was reaching into his jacket for his pistol, the Russian's orders seemed to hang in the air: "Halt, Hammond. . . . Take hand from jacket. . . . " Unmoving, Hammond stared up at him, recognizing at once the long face and dark eyebrows of the man in the pickup who had been following him on the Beltway last year. But the information had little relevance now, because Hammond was the man in the middle, trapped between an armed man at the top of the cement steps and another at the bottom. The only advantage he had was gravity.

  As traffic sounded out of sight on the street above, a single pedestrian walked past on the sidewalk and glanced casually down. Then hesitated and did a double take. In a panic, he ran just as Hammond pretended to follow orders. Displaying an innocent smile, he withdrew his hand from his jacket. "Sorry."

  For a split second he saw the pair relax. That was when he tore down the steps. The one at the top recovered first and fired. Pop! The silenced shot exploded concrete chips beside Hammond's right leg. But before the man above could fire again, Jeff had slammed into the man at the bottom, regained his footing, and yanked the man around, making him a shield.

  Unable to fire because he might hit his partner, the man at the top conceded, "Ladno, zalupa." Okay, dickhead. He ran down the steps, his gun trying to home in on Hammond.

  At the same time, Beth Convey appeared at the top of the stairwell. For an instant, time seemed to freeze. Hammond was riveted by the cold face, the shadowed cheekbones, the furious eyes, all outlined by the tousled white-blond hair. His gaze connected with hers, and he had an abrupt sense something crucial about her had changed.

  She stared back and decided she had been very wrong. Here he was in danger again, just as she had been. Defending himself, just as she'd had to do. Some inner voice demanded she throw aside her lawyerly caution. That she quit being so suspicious of everyone's motives. That she give up the idea she had to know and understand everything completely. That hard facts were always the answer. Still, she knew she believed him. From the beginning, she had sensed a core of integrity in him that she admired. Even more, that she had always wanted to trust him.

  She plunged down the steps. The descending attacker must have heard her, because he turned and looked up. She took him by surprise, kicked his gun away and stiff-armed a karate punch to his head.

  All this happened in seconds, but the man Hammond had turned into his shield took advantage of Hammond's inattention and slammed his arms up, broke his hold, and whirled around. Hammond reacted instantly. He rammed his fist into the man's ribs just as another silenced shot went pop. The man's eyes flashed open in astonishment, and he fell back against the metal railing, flipped over it, and landed hard on his
face, unconscious.

  A woman shouted from above, "Stop, Mr. Hammond. You, too, Ms. Convey. Now!" No Russian accent this time.

  Higher up on the steps, Beth feinted as the second assailant rushed her again. Above them, Hammond saw the female "tourist" from the Kennedy Center, the one who had disappeared into the building when her male partner followed Hammond. She aimed her Walther coolly and steadily at Hammond and Beth Convey as she trotted down the steps.

  Hammond grabbed for his Beretta, but the woman's pistol spat a silenced bullet whining past his ear. "Drop it!" she commanded. "Stop, Convey. I'll shoot."

  She was only two steps above Convey. Hammond saw apprehension pucker Beth Convey's face. But it was gone instantly, and she smashed her foot into the second man's jaw, sending him sprawling against the gray concrete steps and into the legs of the woman. The woman fell.

  Beth ripped away her Walther and turned the gun on her. In that instant, a powerful urge swept over her to shoot again. To kill. In the few seconds she hesitated, she was back again beside the station wagon, emptying Hammond's pistol into the sniper. She had lost control. She knew she'd had to fire, that he would have killed her if she had not. But she had gone too far: She had committed not a rational but a savage act by emptying her gun into him and enjoying the fact that she did it. That she could kill him. The strange new part of her that warred with the old liked violence, found volcanic release in it, and in that moment when life became death, it felt truly vital. Like a gnawing hunger, it demanded she kill again. Now.

  She fought back a shudder as she resisted the voice. Whether it was from her new heart or some primitive part of her she had never explored no longer mattered. Nothing mattered right now but who she really was. And she was no killer. She refused to be. This is it, heart. I'm not going to murder to satisfy you. You're going to have to learn to live with me, not the other way around.

  But as she gazed at the woman at her feet, who was staring up at the gun, Beth felt doubtful. It was a promise easy to make, but could she keep it? The problem was, she had to eliminate the danger posed by the woman, who was likely another killer.