Ashes (7 page)

He handed the picture to Robert, who nodded. Sean said, “When I was watching all this happen on TV, it wasn’t shocking to me. We don’t believe that it can’t happen here. But when I saw that poor girl come out of the building and knew she just had seconds if she was going to make it at all ... I can’t explain it even now. I wanted to know that she was all right. I wanted to help her. I cared. When was the last time I cared?

“These last few years, I think I stopped caring about anything. If I let myself feel it would just be missing the work, and people like you and Beatty and Hamilton. But now I care, and it’s driving me crazy. I want to help this girl. I find myself wondering how she’s doing. Is she all right? Is she getting over this? I want to do something for her.”

“You sound like a man in love.”

Sean suppressed a laugh. “No, it’s nothing like that. It’s like someone did this to my sister or my best friend’s wife. That’s all.”

“And that’s why you wanted back in. To get the people who did this, yes?” Robert said, swirling his brandy in its snifter gently.

“Yes. And being out doesn’t change it. I want this, and I will have it.”

“You do know it will be much more difficult.”

“I can deal with that. All I need is where to start. I’ll take it from there.”

“How do you propose to make an arrest if you work from the outside?”

“I don’t plan on making an arrest.”

“Assassination?”

“No.” Sean thought for a moment and the idea that had been forming in his mind during his drive north crystallized fully. He smiled. “I’ll bring him to her,” he said, gesturing to the picture of Jennifer Thomson. “I’ll let her do the honors.”

Robert looked startled, eyes wide over the brandy snifter. Sean could not recall the last time he had seen Robert taken by surprise. “I don’t know whether to praise your sense of honor or doubt your sanity.” Robert shook his head, sat in thought for a moment.

Sean waited. It was a crazy idea, he knew. But he also knew that he could pull it off. He thought of bringing the creep who had done this to Jennifer, thought of putting the gun in her hand, and a surprisingly sweet smile graced his face.

Robert watched him, and smiled back. “It’s utter lunacy. It’s foolhardy and romantic and the last thing I would have expected from you. It’s also completely against the law, and disloyal to our former employers. Therefore,” he sighed, took a large sip of brandy. “I have no choice but to help you. It won’t be much, but it should be enough. One thing I should tell you first. You’ll have to watch your back.”

“You think they’d send someone to take me out?” Sean hadn’t considered that.

“If you go back to Florida, most likely not. They’ll think they can get you back if they wave a tasty enough prize in front of you. But if you strike out on your own, no matter what your intentions are, they’ll see you as a rogue. If they can’t control you, how can they trust you?”

“I see.” He felt he was standing at the midway point on a rickety bridge, danger ahead and behind. Was he putting Robert in danger, simply by being here? “Don’t tell me any more. Please. I probably should go now, I don’t want you to get in any trouble.”

Robert shook his head. “I wouldn’t help you if I didn’t think it was worth a little risk. Besides.” He stared fixedly at his brandy for a moment, downed it quickly in a most uncharacteristic way. “I’m on borrowed time as it is.”

He knew, then. All he needed were the specifics. “What is it?”

“Liver cancer,” Robert replied, calmly.

He felt as he had in his hotel room, that a weight was pushing down on him. “How long?”

“To be honest, I don’t know. They start chemotherapy next week.”

“I’m sorry.” There was nothing else to say. He had been a witness to and bringer of death for longer than he cared to admit, but that had been part of his job. He had accepted that the moment he accepted their invitation. Why did Robert’s news fall on him so heavily? Had he lived with unnatural death so long that a natural end seemed wrong? “Is there anything I can do?”

“No. Thank you, but no. I’m glad you came here. I’ve been thinking about the old days a lot.”

“You said that in your card.”

Robert nodded. “Time brings perspective to things. Tell me, do you see what you’re doing for this young lady,” he gestured to the picture of Jennifer Thomson, “as redemption?”

Sean frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Making up for the sins of the past.”

“No, I understand what you’re asking. But redemption for what? We did our work. We did a damn good job of it. We were the good guys.”

“Were we?” Robert sighed, poured himself another brandy. “I wish I could be as certain as you are. I can’t help wondering if what we did was of any real consequence. Alliances change and power shifts. The game is the same. Even the players are the same. They’ve just shifted their positions around the board. Now I lie awake at night and think of all the things I’ve done and seen, and I cannot shake the feeling that we were used. You, I, all of us. We were used and thrown away when our usefulness was done, and it made no difference in the end.

“I don’t know if I’ll see next winter, and that frightens me. But what makes me even more afraid is the feeling that it was all for nothing. I’ve bloodied my hands and I don’t know what I could do that’s enough to wash the blood away. Nothing, probably.”

Sean watched as Robert turned and stared into the fire. For a moment he felt dreadfully certain that Robert was right, that they had sold their souls for nothing, had been puppets used in a bloody and meaningless show. He could feel the knowledge roll across his mind like a thunderstorm rolling in across the ocean. Then he shoved it away. If he let it in he would never be strong enough to do what he had to.

“Robert,” he said, “you don’t mean that. You’re going through a bad time. You can’t start thinking this way. It’ll drag you down if you do. Please.” He changed his tone, made his voice lighter, jocular. “Come on, let’s talk about the good times. Did I ever tell you about when I was in El Salvador? Nearly got myself killed trying to jury-rig a TV antenna because I didn’t want to miss
Twin Peaks
if you can believe that.”

To his relief, Robert turned his gaze away from the fire, and smiled. “Go on, tell me.”

* * *

S
ean was nowhere near the cook Robert was, but his one specialty was a good corned beef hash. Robert’s dark mood of the night before was gone, and after they finished eating, Robert pushed the plates aside and addressed the problem with his usual aplomb.

“So,” Robert said. “Tell me what you know, I’ll tell you what I know, and we’ll see what we get. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” Sean paused, collected his thoughts for a moment. “I’m going off what I’ve read in the papers, so I wouldn’t bet my life on it, but all the sources say the same thing, so I don’t think we’re too far from the real story. It looks like our friends put plastic explosive around structural support pillars in the parking garage.” He set a candlestick on the table. “And then they directed the charge by arranging some heavy things — probably trashcans filled with water or something easy like that — around the pillars.” He reached over to the cabinet, grabbed a handful of napkin rings, and arranged them around the candlestick in a circle. “That way they have enough weight to direct the charge and your average employee won’t notice or think anything of it if he does. They did enough to take down one half of the building. Whether they knew the other half would come down, I don’t know.”

“Why do you suppose they didn’t take down the entire building?”

“Too much time, too many materials to get. Too much risk of getting caught.” They both gazed at the candlestick and napkin rings, then Sean swept it all aside into a meaningless jumble. “The official line is that it’s the Middle East. I don’t buy it for a minute. They’re more of a smash-and-grab type. Fly a plane into the building, use a truck bomb, something like that,” he said. “This took time. They needed to get materials in and get everything set up without making people suspicious.”

“Perhaps it was a mole?”

“Someone got on the maintenance staff, I’m thinking. Set up a false identity, get inside. Who would notice? The people who work there wouldn’t pay attention. Security’s too busy with the front door. The mole pulls a disappearing act, sets the charge off remotely, and if he’s never found they’ll just say that nice Mr. Janitor was in the wrong part of the building at the wrong time and got vaporized.” He picked up a napkin ring, spun it on one finger like an oversize wedding band. “So that, as far as I can tell, is how. Now the only question is who.”

“Who indeed,” Robert said. He poured himself more coffee. “And you’re right. It’s not the Mid-East. This one’s home-grown.”

“Are you sure? Most of those groups are too mom-and-pop for something like this. Shooting abortion doctors or burning a synagogue is the worst they get. Plus, even if they do pull something off, like McVeigh, they get caught in what was it? Hours?”

“In the past, yes. But there’s been no chatter from overseas, not a bit. And there’s been new stateside groups coming together since we retired. Most, as you say, strictly amateur. But one or two are smart and stealthy. A bad combination.”

“So why aren’t the Bureau or an ops team going after them?”

“Because the only ones in greater denial than the ordinary citizens are the people at the top. It doesn’t reflect well on Homeland Security if it’s found to be fellow Americans who did this. It’s safer politically to blame the Arabs. Even if they didn’t do it.”

“Bombing Afghanistan into the Stone Age won’t hurt anyone’s re-election chances.”

“Precisely.”

Sean sighed, stared down into the black coffee as though it were a scrying mirror. Politics. That was all it was. He wondered if it had always been that way. He hadn’t thought so, back in the early days. Had the world changed or had he? “Well,” he said, “At least I don’t have to worry about a passport. Can you tell me more?”

“I’ll tell you what I know,” Robert replied.

* * *

R
obert had said he was welcome to stay another night, but he declined. For all Robert’s assurances, Sean did not want to put him at risk for any trouble. But he mentioned none of this, and instead lightheartedly said, “I should hit the road. Miles to go before I sleep and all that. Thank you,” he said, shaking Robert’s hand. “And good luck.”

“Good luck to you as well. And thank you for coming by.”

He turned and was halfway down the walk when Robert said, “Sean, wait.” They stood in the late-winter early-spring gloom, a few errant snowflakes landing on their hair and shoulders.

“I have to ask, much as I don’t want to,” Robert said. “Are you sure your girl, this Jennifer ... Are you sure she wants this?”

Sean was nonplused. Barring a saint or two — and he seriously doubted saints existed, God knew he had never met one — who
wouldn’t
want such an opportunity for vengeance? “Yes, as sure as I can be.”

Robert looked him over, a careful scrutiny that Sean had not felt in years. “I hope so. Because all day I’ve been feeling uneasy about this.”

“What’s wrong with the plan? I can change things, it’s not carved in stone.”

Robert shook his head. “No, the plan itself is good. It’s the whole idea. Something does not feel right about it.” Robert hesitated, then said, “I’m afraid for you.”

For the first time since he’d left Washington Sean felt the sting of doubt. Because Robert had always gotten hunches about things. Many had come to naught, and Robert was the first to admit this. But enough of Robert’s hunches had borne fruit to give him pause. He remembered the mission in Tel Aviv, when Robert, acting on one of his hunches, had refused to go back to the safe house. He and Robert had gone to ground elsewhere; Hauser and O’Brien had gone to the safe house. They found Hauser two days later with three bullets in his head. O’Brien they never found at all.

He waited for Robert to say,
It’s probably nothing.

Robert did not.

But not even for Robert could he let himself be dissuaded. “I’ll be careful,” he said. “I promise.”

Robert nodded. “Fair enough.”

“And I promise that when it’s over, I’ll come back here. We’ll take a trip to the Riviera and play baccarat. Like in the movies.” Thinking:
I don’t know if I’ll see you again. If this is the last time we meet, let’s end it all on a good note.

“Only if you buy the tickets. And I insist on first class,” Robert said with a smile. “Be seeing you.”

“Be seeing you,” he replied, turned and left. As he drove away he looked back once at the house behind its ivy-shrouded gate. Though the heat was on in the car he felt cold, for it seemed he was no longer looking at a fortress. He was looking at a prison.

W
hen Katie Granville arrived at the Sunshine Coast Realty office, the client was already there waiting for her. It was the first time Katie had seen the client; until now she had been just a voice on the telephone. Katie put little trust in the first impressions of a voice, and even less when that voice came through so much distance. Katie never felt like she had a true connection with a client until they met face-to-face.

She rummaged on the passenger seat for her glasses, papers, and purse, all the while keeping a covert eye on the client. Mid-twenties. Hair that shade Katie’s mother had always called dishwater blonde. The client would have been pretty had she put on a few pounds, but it seemed to Katie that all the Americans she’d met were either too thin or too fat.

It was strange, Katie thought as she got out of her car and walked toward the client. There had been more and more Americans moving to what they considered the fifty-first state over the last few years, but most of them stayed close to the big cities like Vancouver, as if they were afraid to stray too far into foreign territory. As if they could not feel safe without knowing that their home country was only a quick hop over the border. Not that Katie’s territory was that far from the States. But it was unusual that this client had specifically asked not to live in a big city, but for some place “small, but not too small. Do you know what I mean?”