“I blame myself,” said Renard. “I gave myself away. The telephone call to Jennifer’s phone. The cameras at Tetra maybe. I don’t know. I’m sorry. Forgive me.”
Louis called Sarah to warn her. After hearing that Jennifer had not showed up for work and might be in danger, Sarah began shouting at Louis. He had brought this all down on their heads by leading a life of duplicity and intrigue. He had placed the lives of his own children in jeopardy. What kind of insane person was he? What kind of insane people had he been involved with? How could anyone do such a thing? Finally she just wept.
Louis could think of nothing to say that might console her. “Please, Sarah,” he said finally. “I am doing what I can to find her. The best thing you can do for her is to protect yourself. Please. Leave town. For yourself and for the children. Go somewhere where you don’t know anyone or have any connections. Do it as quickly as you can manage. Just for now. Will you do that? Sarah? Please.”
She had stopped sobbing. “Yes,” she said. “I will do that.”
Louis called Michael, who listened to his admonitions and to his apologies in silence. When Louis had finished, Michael said, “Well, what are you going to do?”
“Me? I’m going to try to find Jennifer,” said Louis.
“How? Do you even know where to look?”
“No, not exactly,” said Louis. “But I have some leads.”
“Leads?” said Michael.
“Ideas,” said Louis.
“In other words, you don’t have anything,” said Michael.
Louis was silent.
“Meet me,” said Michael.
“What?”
“Meet me. Meet me. Right now.”
“Michael, I can’t… They’re probably listening to us right now. You should stay out of it. You and Rosita should leave town if you can. You shouldn’t … Wherever we chose to meet, they would be there before we were.”
“Come on, Dad, you’re a stranger here. You think you know your way around, but you don’t. Listen, I know the city, and I can help you. Don’t be so … stubborn. Meet me. Rosita is away,” he added. “She’s safe. I’ll tell her to stay put.”
“You’ll be followed.”
“Right now, Dad. The rope swing where we used to swing.”
“Michael, do you have a passport?”
Michael was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I’ll bring it.” Before Louis could object, Michael hung up the phone.
It had begun to rain by the time Louis and Renard pulled up at Potomac Heights Park. “Wait here,” said Louis. “I’ll be right back.” Louis turned up the collar of his jacket and hurried across the playground and playing fields. No one was there. From behind the picnic shelter, trails led off in different directions, and, after a moment’s hesitation, Louis followed one into a grove of sycamores. The rain rattled on the thin canopy above his head, and a few sycamore leaves drifted to the ground.
After a short distance the ground began to fall away more steeply, and the river came into view below the trees. Beyond the river he could see Georgetown. Louis stopped. Though it had been thirty-five years, he suddenly saw himself pushing Michael on a rope swing until the little boy seemed to fly out over the river: a few running steps and then the big pushing motion. “Higher,” Michael would cry out in his high, sweet voice. “Come on, Dad! Higher!”
An airplane passed low overhead on its way to Reagan National. “Dad,” said a man’s voice from behind him. Louis turned and embraced his son.
“Michael, you don’t have to …” Louis tried to object one last time, but Michael would not let him.
“Come on. Stop it. Let’s go.” The two hurried back to the car.
“Michael,” said Louis when they arrived, “this is my friend, Renard.”
“The French cop?” said Michael.
“The French cop,” said Renard with a laugh. He liked the sound of it.
Michael suggested they go to a small Lebanese restaurant in Arlington where they could eat something and make plans. “You better tell me what’s going on, Dad.” Louis hesitated once again. He wondered whether there was any way he could avoid endangering his son. But it was a foolish thought; it was too late for that. As they drove, Louis told Michael about the burglary, about Hugh Bowes and Pierre Lefort, and about having been Louis Coburn many years ago.
They found the restaurant and took a corner booth. They ordered quickly and then sat gazing through the window. It was dark outside, and the rain was coming in torrents. Michael studied his father’s face, then he looked at Renard. But Renard just looked back at him, his eyebrows raised in a sort of shrug, as if to say, “Don’t ask me. I don’t understand it any better than you do.”
“I never met this Coburn,” said Michael. “Never even saw him. Jenny said he was very shy. I couldn’t figure it out. Now I know why. She said he was good-looking too. Clean-cut, athletic. A good tennis player. Looks really young.”
“That’s right,” said Renard. “I saw him. He is tall and handsome. I saw them together.”
“The son of a bitch,” said Michael. “Who do you think he is? What do you think he’s up to? Do you know what’s going on?”
Louis put his fork on his plate and looked at his hands. “He might be an earlier me,” he said, drawing small circles on the damp tabletop with one finger. “Maybe he is the wages of my sins, the payback for my earlier life,” he said. “Divine retribution, or something like that. Other than that, I don’t know who he is. Whether he’s a freelancing renegade or simply a straight-up agent who has been persuaded that I am a dangerous terrorist … an abduction like Jenny’s doesn’t imply one explanation or the other … I just don’t know who he is. The thing is, you never know who anyone is in that world, so it doesn’t really matter.
“What we have to do is find Jenny before they even know we’re getting close. They know we’re here, and they know we’re looking. But if they even think we’re close, they’ll … I don’t think they have … done anything to her yet. I believe she is more useful to them alive …” How could a father even think this way about his own daughter? Tears welled in Louis’s eyes. He continued looking at the two men across the table, though their faces swam in front of him. He pressed ahead. “They are using her to draw me further into the open. I have … I may have a plan. Or at least it seems like a plan. Or maybe it is just my own desperate madness.”
The man known as Lou Coburn sat in a wingback chair in Hugh Bowes’s Watergate apartment. He sipped from a glass of ice water while Hugh Bowes sat at his dining table and ate his dinner. Coburn uncrossed his legs and smoothed the crease on his khaki slacks. “Morgon’s ex-wife has left town,” he said, “although we can find her if we have to. It means Morgon warned her, which is good. He’s afraid. That’s what you hoped would happen, isn’t it?” Coburn shifted slightly in his chair, so he would not have to watch Hugh Bowes eat. Outside, the rain was flying past the window in sheets and washing across the balcony.
“We know Morgon’s here,” Coburn continued. “He’s in Washington. And the French cop is here too. He—the cop—showed up at our Tetra office. We’ve got him on videotape. A few nights after he showed up, the alarm at Tetra went off. I don’t know whether that was Morgon’s doing or not. There’s nothing on tape. If they did it, I don’t know how they did it, but it accomplished nothing. Also, a window was broken at Jennifer’s, the daughter’s, apartment. The father got in. He left fingerprints everywhere, like he didn’t even care.”
Hugh took one more bite, chewed a few times, swallowed, and looked up. He put his fork down and took a sip of water. “If he left fingerprints,” said Hugh, “I promise you it was not because he didn’t care. It was because he meant to.”
“He also took the telephone,” said Coburn.
“The telephone? For the caller ID?” said Hugh.
“Maybe,” said Coburn.
“And last-call redial. And the programmed numbers. And the wiretap,” Hugh said.
“The phone was clean,”
said Coburn. “I cleaned it.”
“What does he know about you?”
“Nothing,” said Coburn, smiling.
Hugh gave Coburn a long look. He took the heavy white napkin from his lap and wiped it across his mouth in two deliberate motions, from right to left, then from left to right. He placed it back on his lap and smoothed it with both hands. He studied Coburn’s face.
“Coburn,” he said finally, “he knows where your office is. I’m guessing he knows where you live. He may even have been inside your place by now.”
Coburn sat up straight in his chair. “I’d know if he had,” he said.
“Would you,” said Hugh. It was not a question. “You know, Coburn”—Hugh did not want to know the man’s real name—”you worry me. I’m quite certain you are good at what you do. You came to me highly recommended and with an excellent record. But Louis Morgon is a serious adversary, and you had better take him seriously. He did what you do long before you ever did, and he was very good at it. He knows all the tricks, and then some.
“He may still be here, or he may not. At any moment he may be where you think he is, doing what you think he is doing. But chances are, he will be doing what you don’t think he is doing, somewhere where you don’t expect him to be. Killing his daughter will rattle him, but it won’t stop him. It won’t put him off course. Be very careful. And do not be smug.”
“No sir,” said Coburn.
At that very moment Louis was inside Coburn’s Dupont Circle apartment. He had simply rung the bell, and when nobody answered, had let himself in. Coburn lived alone and kept a clean and orderly place, but it was also a completely anonymous place, a home without an occupant. There were no pictures of family or loved ones, no notes by the telephone, no files or folders, in fact, very few papers of any kind. Michael checked the computer as best he could and found nothing there. “Sorry, Dad,” he said. “I don’t know how to hack computers. And his e-mail is secure.”
In the top dresser drawer Louis found half a dozen cell phones. What is it, Louis wondered, that makes dresser drawers so appealing as hiding places? He took the cell phones, turned them on, and spread them out on the dining table in case any of them rang.
The telephone answering machine was clean, and there were no numbers on the telephone speed dial. The caller identification did not show any calls from Jennifer’s number or from the clinic. “He probably uses a cell phone for the stuff that would give him away,” said Michael.
“Let’s try these numbers anyway,” said Louis. First he pressed redial, to dial the last number Coburn had dialed, then, one by one, he dialed the numbers on the caller ID.
Some of the numbers had answering machines. When a person answered, Louis listened in silence for a long moment. “Hello? … Hello?” the other person said and then hung up. Louis went through all twenty-five listed numbers.
“Shouldn’t we go, Dad?” said Michael, sounding nervous. “We’ve been in here a long time.”
“We’re fine,” said Louis. “Renard will let us know if anyone shows up. Let’s just wait a minute and see if anyone calls back.” And a moment later, the telephone rang. Louis picked up the receiver. “Yeah,” he said softly. There was silence at the other end of the line and then that person hung up. The caller ID revealed the number and its address: Perryville, Virginia.
Louis gathered up the cell phones and put them in his pockets. He unplugged the telephone from the wall and tucked it under his arm. “I can’t believe we’re doing this, Dad,” said Michael, his voice a mixture of astonishment and excitement. “I can’t believe that you did this for a living …”
“Don’t be charmed by it, Michael. It’s a reprehensible business. I am ashamed that I ever did it and that I have to do it now. I am ashamed that I ever thought it was a good or useful thing to do. They call it intelligence, but it seems just the opposite to me now. To my way of thinking, it is stupidity. It is nothing but lies stacked upon lies. We’re finished here. Let’s go.”
Once they were in the car, Louis turned back to Michael. “If we were gathering intelligence, then that would make us smarter, wouldn’t it? We should know more now than we did when we started. But look at us. If anything, we know less. And it’s always that way. We think we know more, but we know less.”
“And what do we do now with our tiny knowledge?” said Renard.
Louis gave him a look. “I can tell you what might have happened, what I hope has happened, but it would just be a guess. I hope that the person who called back called because he was surprised or alarmed to receive a call from Coburn. Then that person called back and realized it wasn’t Coburn, and realized he had given something away by calling back. Then, with any luck, whoever it was called Coburn on his cell phone to tell him what had happened and that someone was in his apartment using his phone. Now, whoever it was gave away three things. He gave away his phone number, which is of little use to us. He gave away his address, which he must believe to be of some use. And he gave away the fact that he believed this connection to Coburn was secure. Otherwise, he would have suppressed his number and location.
“The only reason the number or location could be of any use would be that something secret or important is going on there. Although it might have something to do with us, chances are it doesn’t. Still, I suggest we go to Perryville.”
“Perryville? That’s a long way off. And how do we even know where to look once we’re there?” said Michael.
“And we have no reason to think that Jennifer is there,” said Renard.
“That’s all true. It’s a wild-goose chase,” said Louis. “I know that. But it’s all we’ve got. Wild-goose chases are for when you only have guesses and no facts. My recollection is that Perryville is a small town on a through highway. If we get there quickly and wait on the north end of town, and if Coburn, once warned, rushes down there from here, then we have a chance of picking him up as he goes by.” Louis paused. “I know it’s not much,” he said again.
“It is nothing,” said Renard.
“It’s a lot of ifs. But what else have we got?”
“And I am getting a tour of America,” said Renard as he started the car.
Louis would have been surprised to learn that luck had fallen his way, although it had happened differently than he imagined, and nothing would have come of it if Lou Coburn had not made two mistakes. Coburn had been walking through the basement garage of the Watergate apartments on his way to his car when his cell phone rang. He was alarmed to see his home telephone number flashing on the blue screen.
He thought of Hugh Bowes’s admonition that Louis might have already been in his house. He did not answer. Instead, he clapped the cell phone shut. “Son of a bitch!” he said. Then he made his first mistake. If Louis already had this number, he thought, then he gave nothing away by calling his house. He heard a soft voice say “Yeah,” and realized too late that Louis would see Perryville on the screen, which was where this phone was registered. He hung up.
“Son of a bitch!” said Coburn again, slamming his hand against the steering wheel. The parking garage gate went up. Coburn pulled out into traffic, turned right, accelerated past the Kennedy Center, and sped across the Roosevelt Bridge. In another minute he was on Interstate 66 going west. Going to Perryville was his second mistake.
Louis, Renard, and Michael were crossing the Roosevelt Bridge barely five hundred yards ahead of the man who called himself Lou Coburn. “Slow down,” said Louis. “The last thing we need is to get arrested.” Renard slowed down. But then he sped up again.
“Slow down,” said Louis again.
“Do you want to get to …?”
“Perryville,” said Louis.
“Do you want to get to Perryville before this Coburn does?” said Renard.
At that moment a large, white SUV sped past them on the right and maneuvered into the left lane in front of them.
“Look how fast he is going,” said Renard.
Louis leaned forward. A small stic
ker on the right of the SUV’s rear bumper had caught his eye. It had no identifying logo or words, only a number. Louis recognized it as being like the sticker he had had on his car when he had been at the CIA. He was about to urge Renard to catch up so that he could get a look inside when a police car passed them, switched on its flashing lights, and directed the white SUV to the shoulder. Louis tried to see the driver’s face as they passed, but the windows were dark, and he could not even tell whether it was a man or a woman.
XIV
By the time Louis, Renard, and Michael drove into Perryville, Lou Coburn had already sped through the village despite having been stopped by the state police. After going a few miles on State Road 17, he turned onto an unmarked gravel road, which he followed steeply up the side of the mountain. He stopped at a green metal gate, got out, and swung the gate open. He drove through and got out again to close the gate behind himself. He continued up a narrow dirt drive, and a log cabin came into view in a small clearing in the pine trees.
Good. No one was there. He had been unnecessarily alarmed. Everything looked all right. Jennifer would be asleep inside, happy in the belief that she was on her honeymoon. Coburn congratulated himself on his successful ruse. He parked the car, climbed the stairs to the porch, and let himself into the house. He latched the door and went to the bedroom at the back of the house. Without turning on the light, he leaned over the bed and kissed Jennifer’s cheek. She stirred briefly. “Hi, honey,” he whispered. “I’m back.”
She moaned happily and smiled in the dark. “Oh, good. Did everything go all right?”
“Perfectly,” he said.
“The clinic?” she said.
“I told you already. They were fine with everything. I promise. They got Sally to fill in. They just want us to have a wonderful time, that’s all. They were delighted. They’re a bunch of romantics. Just like you.”
“Are you sure, Lou? Shouldn’t I call?”
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