She walked into the living room, where her daughter was still on the couch. “Alex,” she said, “do you trust me?”
Alex looked at her quizzically, appearing slightly worried. “I . . . guess?”
“I’m serious, Alex. If I ask you to do something without asking me why, would you do it?”
“Mom, what’s wrong?” Alex asked, alarmed. “You’re scaring me. Are you okay? Did something happen? Is Dad okay?”
“As far as I know, your father is fine, and so am I. But I don’t have time to explain. I need you to pack a suitcase as quickly as you can. We need to leave home for a few days. Pack warm.”
Alex laughed in disbelief. “What’s going on? What is this about?”
“I don’t know. But please, Alex, trust me, and do it now. We could be in danger.”
The fear must have been obvious in Jenny’s voice, because Alex’s demeanor became completely serious, and she didn’t raise any further objections. She just asked, “When do we leave?”
“Right away.”
“Okay,” she said. “Are we taking Neika?”
“I’ll take care of Neika,” said Jenny. “Just hurry.”
Jenny rushed to the master bedroom and tossed together a bag as quickly as possible, filling it with comfortable clothes, a jacket, and some winter items in case the cold returned. She rummaged through her sock drawer and found the stun gun that Dan had given her years ago, which she hadn’t felt comfortable carrying around with her. She picked it up, checked the charge, and dropped it into her purse.
Just then, the doorbell rang, and her heart sank with foreboding.
Jenny breathed deeply as she walked downstairs, trying her best to calm her nerves and appear normal. Whoever it was, it would be better to dispatch them quickly and coolly, without arousing suspicion. With one more deep breath, she turned the doorknob. Standing at the door were two men in black suits.
“Mrs. Morgan?” said one of them, stepping forward. “I’m Agent Baird, and this is my partner, Agent Pace. We’re with the FBI.” They held up their badges. “We’d like to ask you a few questions about your husband.”
Their badges looked legitimate enough, and if she had any doubts, she would have asked to examine them closely and take down names and numbers. But she knew immediately and instinctively that it wouldn’t have helped, because these men weren’t really from the FBI. “Is he in trouble?” she asked, hoping that her feigned apprehension was convincing.
“Not as far as we’re concerned, ma’am,” said the one who called himself Pace, who was skinny, had a shaved head, and spoke in a Texas drawl. “We’d just like to talk to him. And you might be able to provide us with information about an ongoing case.”
“Is this about the cars?” she said, doing her best impression of a worried, naïve housewife.
“No, ma’am,” said Pace.
“He isn’t in trouble, is he?” she asked again, wide-eyed.
“That’s not what we’re here for, Mrs. Morgan,” said Baird, who was short and stocky and had eyes that seemed too close together for his face.
“I don’t know what I could help you with, then. Dan’s the one you really want. I’m afraid he’s out of town, but I’ll certainly let him know you came by next time I talk to him.”
The two men exchanged a look. “Actually, Mrs. Morgan,” said Baird, “you’re the one we want to speak to. May we come inside?”
She hesitated before saying, with all the cordiality she could muster, “Yes, yes, of course. Come in.” She stepped aside to admit the two men into the foyer. “Can I offer you gentlemen anything to drink?”
“No, thank you,” said Pace.
“So how can I help you?” she asked, obligingly. “I don’t know what I could possibly tell you that might be of any—”
“Mrs. Morgan,” Baird cut in testily, “do you know the whereabouts of your husband?”
“Yes, of course!” she said. “He’s in Seattle, advising a client at a car show.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Why, yes, as far as I know. When you’re married to a man, Mr. Baird, you do tend to know these things.”
“I’m sure, Mrs. Morgan,” said Pace. “Now, has your husband attempted to contact you in the past two days?”
“He called me, if that’s what you’re asking. He left me a message this morning telling me he might be away for a few more days. Do you want to hear it? It’s right—”
“That won’t be necessary, Mrs. Morgan,” said Baird.
“Could you tell me what this is all about?”
“We can’t reveal too much,” said Pace. “This is an ongoing investigation. But your husband might have key information about a murder case. Our chief suspect is a client of his, you see.”
“Oh, dear,” she said. “I hope it’s not anyone I know. I couldn’t bear to think I knew a murderer.”
“Do you know of any way we can contact him?” asked Baird.
“Not if you’ve already tried his cell phone. You can leave a card if you’d like, and I’ll have him call you as soon as he’s available.”
The two men looked at each other and then back at her. “Actually, ma’am,” said Pace, “we’re going to need you to come with us.”
“Excuse me?” she asked, feigning outrage, her increasing alarm showing through her façade.
“You heard us, ma’am. Just cooperate, and everything will be fine.”
Jenny looked at the men, not knowing how to respond. At that moment, Alex walked into the foyer with her backpack, holding Neika on a leash.
“Were you going somewhere, miss?” said Baird.
“Who are these people, Mom?” she said. Neika was straining gently at her leash, growling under her breath at the two strangers in her territory.
“Ma’am. Come with us now, please,” said Pace. “You, too, miss,” he said to Alex.
“Me?” asked Alex. “What is this? Mom, what’s going on?”
“She’s not going,” said Jenny. “If you need me to go, I’ll go, but she stays.”
“It’s for her own safety, ma’am,” said Pace.
“Mom?” insisted Alex.
“We’re not asking, Mrs. Morgan,” said Baird.
“Okay,” said Jenny. “We’ll come. Alex, darling, these gentlemen are from the FBI. We’re going to go with them so they can ask us a few questions about your father.”
“What about Dad?” asked Alex. “What about what you told me five minutes ago—”
“Alex, it’s okay. We should cooperate with them.” She turned to the two men. “Let me just grab my purse.”
Pace nodded in assent, and Alex just stood there with a perplexed look on her face. Jenny picked up her purse and walked back toward them. As she drew within an arm’s length of them, she slipped her hand into her purse and clutched the rubber handle of her stun gun.
She flicked the switch and jabbed Baird with the twin electrodes; he fell backward with a startled yelp. She turned to do the same to Pace, but before she could, he grabbed her arm and twisted it. The stun gun zapped ineffectually in the air and fell to the floor. Neika was now snarling and tugging at the leash. Alex let go.
Barking and growling savagely, Neika bounded toward Pace, knocking him onto his back. Jenny looked at Alex and shouted, “Garage!” Both of them dashed for the door, and Jenny grabbed the keys from the kitchen on the way. Alex followed her into the garage.
“Mom, your car isn’t in here!”
“We’re not taking my car.”
Jenny pulled the tarp off a hulking shape on the opposite side of the garage to reveal her husband’s classic 1967 Pontiac GTO. As Alex clicked the button to open the garage door, Jenny got into the driver’s seat. She turned the ignition, and the muscle car rumbled to life.
“Neika!” Alex cried out, and a couple of seconds later the German shepherd came galloping from the kitchen. She jumped in through Alex’s open door and onto the backseat.
As the outside door rattled open, Jenny looked towa
rd the kitchen and saw Pace storm into the garage, his suit jacket ripped wide from Neika’s attack. She looked back at the garage door, just open enough now for them to make it out. Jenny stepped on the gas pedal, and they lurched forward and stalled.
“Mom, can you even drive this thing?” Alex exclaimed.
Jenny turned the key. In the rearview mirror, she saw Pace draw a gun.
“We’ll see.” She stepped on the gas pedal, and the GTO roared down the driveway past her SUV and onto the street.
The wheel was a lot stiffer than she was used to, but, man, the thing could go! They tore down the road, soon leaving their street and the unmarked white van behind, and headed for I-93. They didn’t speak for several minutes, sitting quietly except for their heavy breathing, the atmosphere in the car laden with tension, fear, and exhilaration. Even Neika panted restlessly in the backseat. After a few minutes, Alex broke the silence.
“Mom,” she said, still breathing heavily. “Who the hell were those guys?”
CHAPTER 20
Morgan arrived at the Philadelphia International Airport early the next morning. From Istanbul, he had hired a driver to take him to Thessaloniki through Bulgaria, and from there he took a commercial flight to the United States with a connection in Zurich under the third alias he’d used in the past two days. While at the airport, he bought two disposable prepaid cell phones—burner phones. The first he used to call home, Jenny’s cell phone, and then Alex’s. If he knew anything about how the CIA operated, they were by now tapping all of his family’s lines, and he had just effectively announced his location to everyone who was looking for him. But if there was a chance that Jenny and Alex were still at home, that meant they were in danger. He was only partly relieved when no one picked up at his house and both Jenny’s and Alex’s cells went straight to voice mail. He hoped they had gotten his message and were by now safely hidden away in his father’s tiny hunting cabin in Vermont, where Morgan had instructed Jenny to go, many years ago, in case something ever happened.
He dropped that phone into the open backpack of a teenaged traveler who was headed for the check-in counter. If they were going to track him, let them try. By the time they realized they had the wrong scent, he’d be long gone.
He looked up the address of a used car lot in the phone book and took the commuter rail into the city. Airport cabs were much too easy to trace. Once inside the city, Morgan switched to buses. He kept an eye out for tails and took the usual evasive precautions, getting on and off vehicles at the last minute and making frequent, unexpected turns.
About an hour and a half later, he arrived at the Mercado used car lot, where a man in a yellow jacket approached him and asked, “What can I do to get you to drive out of here in your new car today?”
Morgan grinned.
Half an hour later, he was driving away in a 1999 Sebring convertible. From there, he made a stop to pick up some supplies at a drugstore to replace his bandages. In the parked car, he laid out the fresh rolled-up bandages, surgical tape, and scissors on the passenger seat and carefully undid the older dressing. He examined the wound, which had been restitched by a doctor in Istanbul. Considering the circumstances, it was healing fine.
Once finished, he sat in the car and mulled over his next step. He had a visceral urge to go north to reunite with Jenny and Alex, who were alone, scared, and possibly in danger. All he wanted was to be there to protect them.
But things, of course, weren’t that simple. He couldn’t just forget what had happened in Kabul. He took out the little memory card he’d received from Zalmay and clutched it in his fist. He’d looked through the rest of the photos, and they just got more and more incriminating. Several featured T approaching the airplane and talking to a man that he recognized as Bacha Marwat. The last few showed T, still at the airfield, speaking to a man whom he did not recognize, with a face that reminded Morgan of a bulldog.
As far as Morgan was aware, he was now the last living person who knew about the Acevedo International conspiracy who wasn’t also in on it. Even if he chose to ignore the fact that Acevedo was funding the enemy and reported nothing to no one, he would still be too dangerous to them at large. Morgan could take his family and disappear, but how long could he stay vanished? How long until he slipped up and T or someone else came knocking? No, he couldn’t let this go. He needed to get answers, and the answers wouldn’t be up north.
He picked up the second phone and dialed. It was a shot in the dark, and like any shot in the dark, it could go terribly awry.
“Is this line secure?”
“Is this who I think it is?” asked Plante.
“Is this line secure?” he insisted.
“Hold on,” Plante said. Morgan heard a click, and a low hum came over the line. “It’s safe now. Cobra, you need to come back in. Where are you?”
“Isn’t that the million-dollar question?” he said bitterly.
“Why are you on the run? And why did you shoot up a zoo?”
“Will it help if I say I didn’t start it?”
Morgan could imagine Plante’s disapproving stare. “I hope for your sake there’s a good reason for this. And if there is, you need to get back here and explain before they send an operative to kill you.”
“It wouldn’t be the first in the past few days.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Someone was waiting for me in Kabul,” he said. “Someone knew I was coming. I met Conley’s asset, and they killed him. He left me with a memory card that would make a lot of very powerful men very uncomfortable.”
“Oh, God. What are you going to do?”
“Who knew, Plante? Who knew I was in Afghanistan?”
“I thought I was the only one.”
“Well, you weren’t. Someone sold me out. I bet it’s the same person who sold Cougar out. And I bet it’s someone inside the CIA.”
Plante went silent.
“Do you know something I don’t, Plante?” asked Morgan.
“I have . . . suspicions. Compromised agents and missions, signs of leaks . . . But getting ahold of any evidence has been like grasping at smoke. Nothing concrete, only suggestions and vague wisps of clues.”
“Does it have anything to do with Acevedo International?”
There was another long pause that said that the answer was yes. Plante said, “I have something to show you. When can you meet me?”
“How do I know you’re not setting me up?” said Morgan.
“You don’t know,” said Plante. “Honestly, there’s nothing I can say to prove it. You’re just going to have to trust me.”
“Trust is something I’m not exactly brimming with right now,” said Morgan. “But as I see it, I don’t have much of a choice. I can make it to DC by tonight.”
“Good. Then do it,” said Plante. “My house, nine o’clock. I have lots to show you. Maybe together we can get to the bottom of this.”
“And find the son-of-a-bitch who sold out Conley and me,” added Morgan. “There’s just one thing that I need to know right now, and God help you if you lie to me. Do you know where my wife and daughter are?”
“Kline sent two agents to bring them in, but they gave our men the slip. It looks like you taught them well, Cobra.”
Morgan couldn’t help smiling with pride as he hung up and removed the battery from the phone. He tossed it out the window and turned the key in the ignition. As he drove out of the city, he tried to focus on Plante and the possible connection between Acevedo and the CIA, but his heart was elsewhere, with his wife and daughter, wanting to protect them from all those who would harm them to get at him.
CHAPTER 21
It was early afternoon, and Nickerson was sitting in his office, with his feet up on the desk, annotating a draft bill, when in stepped Roland Vinson, a burly, greasy man with bulbous, heavy-lidded eyes and back hair that crept down the back of his neck. Nickerson swung his feet to the ground and leaned forward in his chair.
“Sit down, Roland,
” he said. “We need to discuss what to do about this Lamb situation.”
“What situation is that, sir?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t follow C-SPAN, Roland,” said Nickerson, pausing for a beat. Vinson looked at him blankly. Nickerson continued. “It seems that he decided to grow something that vaguely resembles a backbone and come out in favor of greater Intelligence oversight. This makes him rather, well, ungracious in light of our kindness toward him, does it not?”
“Must be losing your touch, boss.”
“Let’s call this a rare slip,” said Nickerson, with a hint of irritation.
“So now what? Do we nuke him?” asked Vinson.
“No. Send a copy of the photos just to his wife. Tell him next time it’s the Washington Post. Hopefully he’ll get the message.”
Vinson nodded. “Sir, there’s also the matter of this McKay woman. What are we going to do about her?”
“It will be taken care of,” said Nickerson tersely.
“Sir, she didn’t back down. We need to do something to—”
“I said it will be taken care of,” interrupted Nickerson. “I have taken care of it. I am well aware of the threat she represents. She is popular and inflexible. She can inspire other senators to do things against their best interests. Against my best interests. But I’m not concerned. She won’t be a problem for long.”
Vinson shifted in his chair. “And what, exactly, is your solution?”
“That’s for me to know, Roland, and you to find out—if and when it’s necessary. Are we done here?”
A scowl played for an instant on Vinson’s face, and then he said, getting up, “Yes. I’ll deal with this Lamb situation.”
“Good, good,” said Nickerson from his seat. “Be sure to keep me updated. And shut the door on your way out, will you?”
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