by Gayle Wilson
“And now you think I’ve changed my mind. Is that it?”
“I don’t know. You tell me, Griff. Are you drumming up a conspiracy because you miss it? Because you miss the team? The excitement? The thrill of the chase?”
“Which effectively reduces what I did for the past ten years to some macho bull-crap exercise in self-aggrandizement.”
Steiner’s snort of laughter relaxed the tension his previous questions had created. “Yeah? Well, there are a lot of people who think that about all of us in the agency. It wasn’t a personal accusation.”
“I want my people taken care of,” Griff said softly.
“We’re trying,” Carl said. “They are sometimes...shall we say, difficult to protect.”
“Difficult to control,” Griff suggested, again fighting an urge to smile.
“I told you. Their loyalty was personal.”
“Is that what this is about? Getting rid of them because they were my men?”
“As far as I can ascertain—and believe me, I’ve tried—no one is trying to get rid of them. The team itself is a different story. You’re aware of the current thinking about its function.”
“Yeah, I’m aware,” Griff said mockingly. “Suddenly everybody in the world loves one another. No more bad guys. No more madmen.”
Steiner looked down at his hands, which were lying, totally relaxed, in his lap. Night was falling outside, and the room had darkened. Griff supposed that as a good host he should turn on some lights, but there was something about the dimness that invited confidences.
Griff Cabot’s position meant he had been well trained in all the psychological tricks. In getting people to do what he wanted. In bringing out the best they had to offer in any situation. And sometimes in pulling things out of them that they didn’t want to reveal. It was always easier to be truthful about painful things in the darkness.
When Carl looked up again, Griffs eyes were on his face. Carl didn’t look away. It was obvious to Griff that Steiner was assessing him as well, maybe assessing his motives, even across the distance that separated them.
“A lot of people think the members of your team are the bad guys,” Carl said.
“Not a lot of people,” Griff said, fighting the familiar rush of rage at the old argument. “Most people don’t think about what we do. Most people don’t care.”
“The ones now making the decisions do,” Carl said.
Again, neither of them said anything for several long seconds. The era of intelligence in which Griff Cabot and his team had functioned was over. They both knew it. One of them didn’t want to accept it. Which didn’t change anything.
Finally, Steiner stood up. The raindrops that had glistened in his dark hair hadn’t completely dried, but it was obvious he believed he had said everything he had come here to say.
And it was obvious that this had been a warning as well, Griff thought. A warning sent by those in charge, and deliberately, it had been delivered by a friend. They had hoped, apparently, that the message would have more effect coming from Carl, who was his friend. As well as his successor.
“If you’re having second thoughts about your retirement, I’d advise you to keep them to yourself,” Steiner said, almost as if he had just read his mind.
He walked across the room, however, and held out his hand. Cabot could see, despite the low lighting, that the skin under Steiner’s eyes was dark with fatigue, discolored like old bruises, and the lines in his face were deeper than they had been twelve months ago. Of course, it was the end of a long, hard week. The end of a long hard year, Griff amended.
Griff remembered what that felt like. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he envied his successor those days of turmoil and hard decisions. Maybe Steiner was right. Maybe his anxiety and anger were simply the result of being so far out of the loop. Out of the seat of power he had occupied for so long. After a moment Griff leaned his cane against his thigh and took the outstretched hand.
“My advice is to keep any future accusations to yourself as well,” Steiner added softly. “The days of running the world to suit ourselves are over. It’s a new ball game.”
“With new players,” Griff said. “Is that what you’re suggesting?”
“With new players,” Steiner repeated. “New rules. And like them or not, we’ll have to learn to play by them.”
“I won’t,” Griff said.
Steiner took a breath, and his lips flattened again. Then they relaxed into a smile. “Get a hobby, Griff. Something besides this. Besides living in the past. If your men are as smart as I think they are, they’ll do the same. But don’t be looking over your shoulder. Nobody from the agency is after them. Or you. Boredom’s not an excuse for paranoia.”
Griff Cabot’s eyes narrowed at the last comment, but after a second, he laughed, the sound of it again breaking the tension that had grown with the darkness. Then he nodded, releasing his friend’s hand.
“Thanks for coming all the way up here,” he said.
“I didn’t mind. I know what you meant to the agency. I don’t want to see you do anything to destroy the memory of what you accomplished there.”
“I appreciate that,” Griff said.
“And I know the way out,” Steiner said. “So don’t even offer.”
It was the closest Carl had come to referring to his injuries, and Griff appreciated his sensitivity. Maybe Carl was even right about the other, he thought, as he watched his guest open the door to the study and then close it softly behind him. Maybe Griff had read too much into a couple of unrelated incidents simply because he didn’t have enough to do. Or enough to think about.
Hawk and Jordan Cross were certainly capable of taking care of themselves. Even in intelligence work, he acknowledged, there had always been the occasional chance mishap. Now, like a bored old maid with a new pair of binoculars, he had created himself some excitement. Imagined a mystery.
Old maid, he thought again, the phrase especially unpleasant. Maybe hermit was a better choice of words. But that life-style wasn’t really necessary. His isolation had been a matter of choice. Probably an unhealthy one, he admitted.
He hadn’t gone the route they had chosen for Jordan. His face had never been that well known, not outside the inner circle of the intelligence community. He was not a public figure, so a change in appearance hadn’t been considered necessary.
The other had been easily accomplished. A change of location. A new identity. He had done that countless times for other people. Now the agency had done it for him.
He stood up, wincing at the resultant protest from his leg, and walked away from the window. Looking out at the rain was almost as depressing as the isolation. Despite the subject of their conversation, he had enjoyed Steiner’s brief visit. Someone to talk to. Someone who...
He blocked the thought, knowing from long experience that thinking about Claire wasn’t something he could afford to do tonight. And after all, it had been quite a leap from Carl Steiner and the team to that other lost relationship.
He supposed it was the holiday. Holidays always seemed a time for nostalgia. For remembering.
Grateful he didn’t have to hide his discomfort anymore, he eased carefully down into the chair behind the desk, looking at the blank computer screen. Carl’s question about how he had known what was happening to his men had been legitimate. He had just been headed in the wrong direction. Steiner had been right, however, about the ethics of what Griff had been doing.
Old spies don’t die, he thought, paraphrasing badly. They just lose their integrity. But of course, most people thought that was an oxymoron to begin with. Spies and integrity. The CIA and ethics.
He swiveled the chair away from the temptation of the keyboard. He supposed he should have been expecting Jake Holt, the team’s systems expert, to show up out here, instead of Steiner. Jake had taught him all he knew about getting information out of the system, even how to get in and out without leaving footprints. At least, Griff amended, without leaving a trail that w
ould be obvious to anyone except the Jake Holts of the world.
And if Jake had found his footprints, he was probably going crazy trying to figure out who had left them, Griff imagined. Which meant that at least Jake had something to do. “Get a hobby,” Steiner had advised.
And screw you, too, Griff thought.
He savagely punched the remote button, and the TV screen across the room blinked into life. It was almost time for the evening news. He could watch what was happening around the world just like everyone else. No longer a player, but an observer. That message had come through loud and clear.
Despite the pictures flickering across the screen, his mind began wandering again, mulling over the recent conversation. Then something the announcer said connected, and suddenly Griff’s entire concentration was engaged by the picture on the TV.
The house they were showing was familiar. Too damned familiar. His finger found the volume control, his eyes never leaving the visuals marching across the screen as the announcer talked.
Images of a woman now. The same woman in a variety of settings and backgrounds. In different groups. Or looking straight into the camera. Talking. In one scene she was standing outside the Supreme Court building, the wind whipping strands of blond hair out of the neat chignon into which it had been confined.
With a gesture so familiar it closed his throat, she lifted a slender hand to brush a tendril away from the oval perfection of her face. Claire, he thought, unable to draw another breath as he watched. Claire.
And finally, when the words the reporter was intoning managed to break through the spell Claire Heywood had cast over him since the first time he had seen her, Griff began to realize what had happened. And why the face of the woman he loved, a woman who believed, along with the rest of the world, that he was dead, was once more appearing on his television screen.
As soon as he had, Griff Cabot picked up the phone on his desk and, without hesitation, without considering the wisdom of what he was doing or its possible effects, punched in the number Carl Steiner had just warned him never to call again.
Chapter Three
“Because according to the agency, those men you asked me to find don’t exist,” Claire’s grandfather said. “Apparently, they never have,” he added softly.
“But...that’s not true,” Claire said, feeling despair seep in. It dampened the hope that had been created by the thought of being able to put the nightmare of her daughter’s kidnapping into Hawk’s and Jordan Cross’s capable hands. “I met them. I talked to them. They worked for Griff.”
“If they did, there’s no record of it now.”
“He told me they were going to do that,” she said, remembering the meeting she had helped Jordan arrange when the man called Hawk had been targeted by his own employer.
“They were going to do what?” her grandfather asked, obviously puzzled by the reference he couldn’t possibly understand.
“Destroy the records. At least...destroy the ones on Hawk.”
“Cabot told you that? Even if that were true, it sounds like something that wouldn’t be discussed outside the agency.”
“Not Griff. A man called Steiner. An assistant deputy director. He told Hawk that when he got through, there wouldn’t be anything left there with his name on it. Not a pay voucher. Not a memo. Nothing.”
“It seems he was right,” her grandfather said, his eyes bleak.
Tonight he looked every one of his seventy-eight years, Claire realized, and that was something she had never thought before. Montgomery Gardner’s slender, erect figure, with its almost military bearing, never seemed to change with the passage of the years. To Claire, he had never seemed to age, appearing no different than he had been in her earliest memories of him.
Although his hair was white and the lines in his beloved face were deeply drawn, she had never thought of him as an old man. Not until now. Tonight his shoulders were slumped, his normal confidence subdued.
But she didn’t know how she would have managed today had he not come to help. Her parents had been spending the holidays in Europe. Although they had begun scrambling to get a flight home as soon as she had gotten in touch with them, they hadn’t yet been successful because of the holiday traffic. And she wasn’t sure when they would finally arrive.
But she could bear even that, Claire had thought when her father called to tell her. She had been reared in her father’s highly liberal ideology, but her sternly conservative grandfather had always been the calm, stable rock in her world. He had seemed prepared to fill that role again when he had opened the front door this morning, full of plans and suggestions.
Now, however, despite everything they had done, they were no closer to a solution to Gardner’s disappearance than they had been then. And her grandfather appeared almost defeated. As despairing as she was.
It hurt her to see how much this had shaken him. And it frightened her even more to realize that the clever and ruthless Monty Gardner was afraid. Afraid for Gardner.
All day Claire had fought the images. Pushed them from her head because she couldn’t stand to have them there. Images of her baby. Would there be someone to comfort her when she cried? If she were cold or hungry? Did she miss her mother?
And yet Claire had been forced to acknowledge that there was nothing she could do about any of those. She was powerless to change a thing about Gardner’s situation. So she had fiercely concentrated on doing everything she could to get her back from the people who had taken her. Whoever they were. Whatever they wanted. And Hawk and Jordan Cross had been her best hope—the one she had clung to throughout the afternoon.
“So...what can we do now?” she asked her grandfather.
The idea that they might be able to appeal to Steiner for the information they needed had crossed her mind. But remembering the cold fury in his eyes the day Hawk had tried to bargain for Tyler Stewart’s life, Claire believed he wouldn’t tell her anything. The agency had made its decision where Lucas Hawkins was concerned. Apparently they had done the same thing with Jordan, as well.
“I’ve requested that the DCI put me in touch with any members of Cabot’s team who are still working for the agency, but frankly...”
Her grandfather’s lips tightened. He shook his head slowly, revealing his frustration with his contacts within the intelligence community, about whom he had been so hopeful this morning.
“You don’t think he will,” Claire suggested softly. “Not even for you.”
“As far as they’re concerned, this is a private matter, Claire. Something that has nothing to do with the agency, of course. The people Griff Cabot worked with aren’t detectives who can be called in to solve the odd crime or two. I suppose I should have known better than to ask him. I would probably have done the same thing—given a polite brush-off to someone asking a personal favor that has nothing to do with the mission of the agency.”
She knew that was over thirty years of intelligence work speaking. And a desire to be fair. It had nothing to do with his love for her or her daughter. Her grandfather would do anything to get Gardner back, but apparently he, too, had no idea where else to turn. And despite Detective Minger’s assurance this morning, no one had called demanding ransom. Or demanding anything else.
This had been the longest day of her life, Claire thought. Every minute had been a battle to contain her frustration and control her growing terror, at least enough to be able to function, enough to think, enough to give information to all the people who had asked for it. Now, as night fell, she had no more idea of who had taken her baby or why than she had had this morning when she’d opened the door of that empty nursery.
Since he’d arrived, her grandfather had spent hours on the phone line the police had set up. And he was the one who had urged her to call the FBI To talk to the media. To issue a plea to the public for their help in finding Gardner.
Maddy and Charles had agreed with that idea. After all, they had argued, her celebrity might be a blessing in this situation, despite
the fact that Claire had chosen to keep her daughter out of the spotlight.
Only her family and closest friends even knew of Gardner’s existence. That had been fairly easy to accomplish, since Claire had been out of the country during all but the earliest stages of her pregnancy. She had always tried to keep her private life separate from her professional one, and up until now, she believed she had been successful. But maybe, she had been forced to acknowledge, she had been wrong about that.
So she had gone over and over each case she had worked on. And she had thought through every on-the-air pronouncement she had ever made. Reviewed mentally every political story on which she had commented.
Since she wasn’t a criminal lawyer, the odds of a client or someone connected with a client having had anything to do with Gardner’s kidnapping seemed so small as to be inconsequential. As for the bits and pieces she had done in front of the camera, there was nothing in the fairly dry political commentary that seemed threatening or dangerous. Nothing that should provoke this kind of outrage. And she was again right back to where she had been this morning.
“Griff’s people would help me find her if they knew,” she said.
She was still as certain of that as she had been when she’d suggested to her grandfather that they should try to contact Hawk and Jordan. But if they couldn’t reach them, the only hope she had was that they would see the TV interview she had done this afternoon and contact her. It seemed the one remaining chance to solicit their help.
She tried to think of anyone else they might appeal to. If only she knew what had triggered this. If only she understood the seemingly senseless motivation in taking a six-month-old baby. If it had not been done for money—
The shrill of the phone interrupted those circling thoughts. Her eyes lifted quickly to meet her grandfather’s, which had widened in shock at the unexpected sound. She found the same sense of expectation she felt reflected in his face.