by Greg Iles
“Damn it, Geli. How could you screw this up?”
Her cheeks burned. “Do you want to have a conversation about who fucked this up?”
“Don’t be insubordinate.”
“If Tennant slips through our fingers here, you can kiss control good-bye.”
“That’s not necessarily true. Give me a moment.”
As Skow pondered the situation, Geli punched up a map of North Carolina on her screen. What would Tennant do after getting on the river? Where could he go? There were five miles of water between the ferry and the sound, and no road on the south bank from which to surveil the river. If Tennant knew that, he could beach the canoe anywhere.
“What do you want to do?” Skow asked.
“I want real-time satellite imagery of that river right now. Highest possible resolution. You authorize it, I’ll give the NRO the coordinates.”
“What else?”
“I need more manpower. I don’t have near the tactical strength to carry out a wide-area search in wooded terrain.”
“That’s a problem. Until we go public with some form of this story, we’re low on manpower.”
“Then you’d better think about going public, and fast.”
“Listen, Geli, if we lose him here, we still have a good shot. I’m going to be giving you some information that could put you one step ahead of Tennant.”
Her internal radar went on alert. “What kind of information?”
“You’ll see when you get it. It’s from an unimpeachable source.”
“There’s no such thing. Is this an NSA source?”
“Yes.”
“The agency hasn’t given me anything reliable so far.”
“That’s about to change. I’m in a hurry. Have we covered everything?”
“No. Rules of engagement.”
Skow took an audible breath. “I’m comfortable with your rescue scenario.”
“I’ll bet you are. I want a shoot-to-kill order.”
Skow did not reply.
Geli felt her temper rising. “Look, we’ve waited—”
“Give me a moment to think.”
“Why are you so damn wishy-washy about this?”
“Look…this is a hostage situation. You have the tactical experience. I have to leave the rules of engagement to your discretion.”
Geli shook her head and muttered, “Be careful what you wish for, right?”
“The burden of command, Ms. Bauer.”
“Command isn’t a burden, Skow. It’s nirvana. The burden is putting up with ass-covering bureaucrats second-guessing every move after the fact.”
Skow chuckled softly. “You sound exactly like your father. I’ll mention it to him.”
This comment stopped Geli cold. “You do that,” she said, covering.
After Skow hung up, she sat in silence, lightly touching the scar on her cheek. So Skow and her father had more than a passing acquaintance. She didn’t like that idea. Not at all.
Chapter
18
I had been paddling steadily for an hour when I spotted the boat ramp. It lay at the foot of the high bridge over the Cashie River, the one we’d crossed on our way to the ferry. The river had widened since the ferry, and sooner or later it would open into the vast expanse of Albemarle Sound. In open water we would be easier to spot from the air. I’d seen no further sign of the surveillance plane, but that gave me limited comfort.
Drifting under the overhanging trees on the right bank, I thought about the ramp. There would be a parking lot there. Trucks and boat trailers. Probably fishermen returning from their day of sport.
Rachel turned on her seat and sat facing me, watching intently as I paddled. “You’ve done this before.”
“What? Been on the run?”
“Paddled a canoe.”
I nodded. “My brother and I camped a lot with my dad around Oak Ridge. Hunted and fished, too.”
She looked into the trees on the bank. The sun hovered stubbornly behind us, but the shadows under the limbs were already deepening to blue-black.
“Are we safe now?”
“For a while. The people who are hunting us depend on technology. If we were out in the world, in a city or on a highway, we’d already have been caught. Here the playing field is more even.”
She toyed with the blue-and-white nylon stern line. “Who is this Geli Bauer person you talked about?”
I was surprised she remembered the name, but I shouldn’t have been. She’d never forgotten anything I told her. “She’s a killer, and she’s hunting us now.”
“How do you know she’s a killer?”
“She was in the army for a while. Geli’s fluent in Arabic, so they dropped her into Iraq with some commandos before Desert Storm. To interrogate captured Republican Guard troops. She executed two Iraqi prisoners because they couldn’t keep up with her unit behind the lines. Cut their throats. Even the Delta Force soldiers with her were shocked.”
“I guess women have come further than feminists think.”
“No. Female assassins are an ancient tradition. Geli gave Ravi Nara a lecture about it one day.”
“She sounds like a sociopath.” Rachel dropped the stern line and wearily rubbed her neck.
“She’d make an interesting case study for you.”
“Do you think she killed Fielding?”
“Yes. She’d know all about drugs that could cause death by mimicking a stroke, and she has constant access to everything at Trinity. The food, the water, everything.”
I paddled harder, and the bridge over the Cashie came steadily closer. Rachel looked over her shoulder at the massive structure. Cars drove onto it every few seconds. That bridge represented civilization. I stopped paddling to give my burning back muscles a break. The silence was almost total.
“Listen to the birds,” she said.
I listened, but the sound my ears picked out of the silence was not natural. A faint rumbling drone was floating down the river. It could have been a boat motor, but my gut told me it wasn’t.
“What is it?” Rachel asked. “You look scared.”
I scanned the right bank, looking for a place to beach the canoe. If a small plane flew right down the river, overhanging branches wouldn’t give us any cover. The engine was growing louder. Even Rachel heard it now.
“That sounds close,” she said.
Just ahead, a diseased tree had fallen into the river. It lay half in and half out of the water, its dead branches and leaves fanning out like ghostly wings. The space between the tree and the bank was the kind of spot where you could expect a water moccasin to drop into your boat if you were stupid enough to pull under it looking for fish. I guided the canoe straight into the narrow chute, feeling a little like Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans. I only hoped I had some of his luck.
Seconds after the bow plowed into the bank, the rumble of the approaching engine became a roar. I peered through the trees and saw exactly what I’d feared: a small plane flying twenty feet over the water, like a Vietnam pilot giving support fire to riverine troops.
“They can’t see us, can they?” Rachel asked.
“Not without thermal-imaging equipment. But they may have that. Get down low in the boat.”
She slid off her seat and lay flat in the bottom. I lay beside her. The plane’s engine vibrated the aluminum skin of the canoe. We stayed in the bottom of the boat, waiting to see if it would circle back for another look. It didn’t.
I climbed back onto my seat and stroked toward the bridge.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Rachel said. “I can’t believe a woman I’ve never met is trying to hunt me down and kill me. How could she do that?”
I thought back to my last meeting with Bauer. “She thinks we’re too close. She thinks you’re in love with me.”
Rachel’s cheeks colored in the fading sun. “Because of the kiss at Lu Li’s?”
“Not just that. When Geli questioned me yesterday, she told me that you never see
anyone.”
“How would she know that?”
“She knows everybody you’ve dated and when you stopped seeing them. She knows who your third-grade teacher was and what your mother used to cook for you when you were sick.”
“What did you tell her when she said I was in love with you?”
“That you think I’m schizophrenic.”
Rachel smiled, her eyes full of sadness.
I panned my eyes across the broad expanse of river, searching for other water craft. I saw none, which didn’t surprise me too much. Fishermen bought big outboard motors to take them to distant fishing spots as fast as possible. I dug in my paddle and pointed the canoe toward the boat ramp.
“We’re stopping?” Rachel asked, looking at the gentle slope of the ramp.
“Yes. When we hit, stay in the boat. I won’t be long.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Take a look around.”
I beached the canoe beside the ramp, then jumped into the shallow water and splashed onto shore. The oyster-shell parking lot stretched from the woods on my right to the huge concrete bridge pilings on my left. I saw no people, but a line of pickup trucks with boat trailers sat parked about forty yards from the ramp. I walked over to them and moved between two trucks.
Ducking low, I felt along the tops of the tires of both pickups, searching for stashed keys. I found none. Moving around the truck on my left, I checked its other two tires. Nothing. I had no luck with the next two trucks either. The next in line was a maroon Dodge Ram. There was no key sitting on its tires, so I changed tactics. Squatting between the rear of the truck and the empty boat trailer behind it, I reached under the bumper and slid my fingertips along the inside of its metallic lip. Something slid toward the fender with a scratching sound.
A magnetic key case.
I opened the small black box and found a key to the Dodge and one for the locking trailer hitch. Quickly disengaging the trailer from the truck, I got behind the wheel and started the engine.
Rachel ducked down in the canoe as I drove up, not realizing I was behind the wheel. I swung left so that my window came to face her.
“Bring Fielding’s box!” I shouted. “Hurry!”
Cradling the cardboard box in her arms, Rachel climbed out of the canoe and splashed out of the river. I ran to the bank and grabbed a handful of mud from the shallows, which I spread across part of the truck’s license plate. Then I washed my hand in the river, set Fielding’s box on the backseat, and helped Rachel onto the bench seat beside me.
“Did you hot-wire this thing?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t know how. Fishermen are honest people. They trust each other. I hate to take it, really.”
“I’ll say a prayer of penance. Let’s go.”
We left a white cloud of oyster-shell dust behind us as we raced out of the lot.
“Are we still going to Nags Head?” Rachel asked.
“No. They could be waiting for us there. Let me use your cell phone.”
She pulled a silver Motorola from her pocket and gave it to me. I dialed the White House number from memory; Fielding had told me long ago to memorize it.
“Who are you calling?” Rachel asked.
“The president, I hope.”
“But you said—”
“I want to see what happens.”
An operator answered on the second ring. I said, “Project Trinity.” There was a silence, then a click, and the man I’d spoken to yesterday said, “State your business.”
“This is David Tennant. I need to speak to the president.”
“Hold, please.”
A hissing silence followed, and I knew that every ticking second gave the NSA longer to track the location of Rachel’s cell phone.
“Well?” she said.
“Count to forty. Out loud.”
She had reached thirty-five when a voice with a New England accent said, “Dr. Tennant?”
“Yes.”
“This is Ewan McCaskell. I’m talking to you from Air Force One.”
My heart thudded. “Mr. McCaskell, I need to speak to the president.”
“He’s talking to the British prime minister now. He should be able to come to the phone in about five minutes.”
I couldn’t sit on an open cell phone for five minutes.
“Will you wait?” McCaskell asked. “The president knows there have been confusing events at Project Trinity. He wants very much to speak with you.”
“I can’t wait. I’ll call the White House again in seven minutes.”
“We’ll have it routed to us.”
I clicked END, my heart pounding.
Rachel touched my arm. “Good or bad?”
“I don’t know. That was McCaskell. He said the president wants to talk to me. But they’ve obviously been talked to already. By John Skow, probably. They only know what Godin wants them to know.”
“Are they back in the U.S.?”
“They’re on Air Force One.”
“On their way back from China?”
“No. That’s a five-day trip, plus a one-day stopover in Japan. I checked yesterday. This summit is sort of a celebration of Nixon’s visit in ’72. A repeat performance, without the Cold War tension.”
“What are you going to say when you call back?”
I shook my head. President Bill Matthews had been the senior Republican senator from Texas when he was swept into the White House on a tide of anti-Democrat frustration. No one had been more surprised than my brother, James, who had known Matthews since their days at Yale. Matthews was a charismatic figure, but not the sharpest arrow in the quiver, according to my brother. As a senator, he had relied heavily on his advisers, and that had not changed in the White House. Still, the general opinion was that he was doing a solid job on both the domestic and foreign fronts. I’d met Matthews once in the Oval Office, then again at a Georgetown reception, when I was filming the NOVA series based on my book. How did he remember me? As a levelheaded physician whose brother he had liked? Or as the delusional paranoid Skow had undoubtedly described?
I drove anxiously along Highway 64 until it was time to call back. This time, when I identified myself, the connection was almost immediate.
“Dr. Tennant?” said the president.
“This is David Tennant.”
“This is Bill Matthews, David. I know it’s been a while since we last saw each other, but I want you to know you can tell me anything. Now, talk to me.”
I took a deep breath and went straight to the point. “Sir, I know you’ve already heard some things about my supposed mental state. I want you to know that I’m as sane as the day we met in the Oval Office. So, please listen with an open mind. Andrew Fielding died in his office at Trinity yesterday. I believe he was murdered. Today there was an attempt on my life. A man came into my home with a gun, and I had to shoot him in self-defense. Project Trinity is completely out of control, and I think Peter Godin and John Skow are to blame.”
There was a long silence.
“Mr. President?”
“I heard you, David. Look, the first thing we need to do is get you to a safe place.”
“There is no safe place.”
“Well, somewhere has to be safe, doesn’t it?”
“Not when the NSA is trying to kill you.”
“Don’t worry about the NSA. I can arrange for the Secret Service to pick you up somewhere, and they can take you to a safe house while you wait for me to get back.”
This sounded attractive, but I knew I couldn’t risk such a rendezvous. Getting to it alive would be close to impossible. “I can’t do that, sir.”
“You don’t trust the Secret Service?”
“It’s not that. The point is that I don’t know any Secret Service agents by sight.”
“I see.” Silence. “Well, couldn’t we set up a code or a signal or something?”
“It wouldn’t be secure from the NSA. Nothing like that will be safe.”
“We could pick one right now.”
“We have to assume the agency is listening to this call. They can pull it right out of the ether over China.”
Mathews sighed. “All right, David. Tell me this. Do you trust Ewan McCaskell?”