At Any Cost (10 page)

Normally when Fallon worried about her parents it was because there was something at stake that involved her. In this case, the entire United States of America was depending on a man who had got where he was because of raw ambition rather than any genuine political talent. He had hitched himself up the ladder step by step without any clear idea of what to do once he got to the top. A grimmer prognosis for a successful resolution, Fallon could not imagine.

When the world discovered what kind of man her father really was, it was going to be a disaster, and not even Jerry Chambliss was going to be able to salvage it.

She shut her eyes, trying to order her thoughts. When she felt the car stop, she opened them and found she was at home.

Once inside the elevator where they had a little privacy, Tom leaned in and kissed her. A flood of mellow joy coursed through her body, softening the tension. When she pulled back and looked into his eyes she felt like it might all be bearable. “You and I … I know its crazy, but it's the also the sanest thing in my life right now.”

“That's really sad,” Tom said with a little smile.

His expression and sweet sense of humor coaxed a smile from her. She followed him down the hallway and he playfully took her hand, pulling her along.

At her door, she turned to Tom. “So you're just going to stand out here?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

Tom shrugged. “About an hour. I'll call one of the other guys to come up, and I'll go to the control room.”

“Can you come in?”

“No. Today was a onetime thing because you thought the FBI was in your house. I can't do it again.”

She frowned. “Okay. I'll be right back.” Inside her loft, Fallon set her purse on the bar and got herself a bottle of water and one for Tom. When she handed the bottle to him, he shook his head. “I can't. My hands have to be free.”

“In case someone is going to come out of the apartment next door and attack?”

Her neighbors were doctors, lawyers like herself, and lobbyists who led quiet, discreet lives. The co-op board would frown on terrorists and assassins.

Tom looked at her carefully. “You should be more cautious. Walking yesterday was unnecessary. You're a little too available, in my professional opinion.”

“You really think I'm in danger from someone besides the FBI?”

“I think something is happening that neither you nor the Secret Service has a handle on yet. I did some checking while you were meeting with your father,” Tom said. “Antoine Campbell had an old conviction. He was prosecuted for hacking into the Army's network a few years ago. The fact that he mentioned the deputy director of the NSA when he called you and he has a background in hacking computers is interesting.”

“Electronic surveillance … hacking … seems like there might be a connection.”

“Do any of your clients have something to do with hacking? Is that why he called you?”

“My clients steal money, not information. I don't know why he called me.” The elevator doors opened and a neighbor stepped out. Fallon coolly said hello to the older woman, hoping she and Tom looked completely ordinary standing outside her door, chatting.

After the door closed, leaving them alone again, Fallon looked back to Tom. “Today completely sucked except for the time with you.”

A strained look crossed his face, and Fallon tensed in response. “Today was nice,” he replied slowly. “I just …” He looked toward the door where the woman had gone. “This is very dangerous.”

Fallon smiled. “It's okay. We can be careful.”

After a moment he nodded. “We have to be.”

Sixty-five miles west of Washington, D.C., on a black top road that wound through the vast, bucolic horse farms that populated the rolling hills of Front Royal, Virginia, Collin Whitcomb turned onto a winding private drive until he came to a small gray stone gatehouse. The security guard and surveillance cameras were mostly for show; the real security regime began half a mile back when sensors placed in the asphalt conveyed to whomever was working security that a car was approaching. The redirected microphones at the gate would record any conversation inside the car. Cameras placed in the trees and bushes were the size of bumblebees, so even if an intruder damaged the ones at the gate, the people inside still had eyes.

Collin tapped in the security code on the keypad and the heavy black gates swung open. A long treelined driveway winded to a stately Georgian-style manor. He drove to the rear and parked in the garage, a precaution in case helicopters or satellites happened to be hovering overhead.

He grabbed Fallon Hughes's laptop from the passenger seat and hurried inside the safe house.

A guard standing at the kitchen door had watched him on the monitors as he approached. They were former security forces mostly from Georgia and Bosnia. A few were Chechen. Collin was the only official American, but he was not the leader of the ragtag group of soldiers from the former Soviet republics. He was a follower, a role he was outgrowing very quickly. It could have accurately been said that Collin took his orders from Omar Koss, though that was becoming uncomfortably constricting, like a costume that no longer fit. Koss was good—but he was too careful. Koss occasionally admonished him and reminded him that to create real change, one must be patient. One should not simply jump at the first chance to kill. One must have a plan and a strategy to maximize every strike at the heart of the enemy. Everyone respected Koss—even Djvebe Malkhazi, who had fought the Russians with his own two hands and had been the leader of a group who had taken eleven hundred people hostage in September 2004 in Beslan. Malkhazi was famous for his exploits, and every time he opened his mouth, Collin sat, rapt, listening, thrilled by his passion and his vision.

Presently Malkhazi sat on the sofa, watching the news on a giant plasma screen television. This safe house belonged to him, purchased with the profits from a small arms dealing operation.

Collin's parents had been Chechen. When Collin was seven years old, his parents uprooted him to immigrate to California, where they Americanized the family. They changed their names; young noble Kaskyrbai, meaning
wolf
, morphed to Collin. They bought a minivan and watched baseball games and for most of his formative years, he was fully integrated into middle class American society. Collin certainly looked like a San Diego surfer kid with his blond hair and golden skin, but he was not one of them. His looks were a gift from Allah, a weapon to be used against the infidels. By blending in with them, he would perform jihad in the United States from the sheltering arms of the Commonwealth of Virginia—the heart of the beast.

He was devout, of course, but the fight had become less about Islam and more about the simple pleasure of war. He enjoyed having some big, overarching objective. It could be dressed up as Chechen independence, or Islam, or any number of things but when it came right down to it, what he really wanted to do was blow stuff up. He was a natural born radical.

Koss and his infernal urging to slow down made Collin crazy with impatience. Koss was born with what Collin's mother would have called an “old soul.” He had the patience of rock. Collin didn't know how he could stand it, knowing the world was becoming more and more obscene every day, and still he urged patience.

But that might change now that Collin was in possession of Fallon Hughes's laptop. This was very powerful leverage indeed.

It had been simple enough. Impersonating an FBI agent consisted of being stiff and wearing polished shoes. His network of contacts had come through for him in procuring FBI identification and an authentic FBI search warrant. It would be a few days until they figured out that the judge's signature was from an autopen and by then, they'd have absolutely no clue how it got on a warrant for Fallon Hughes's computer. With all the work that went in to it, surely Koss would give credit where credit was due.

If Fallon had told anyone what she had learned about the map of the keys, it was imperative to shut her up—sooner rather than later. Collin planned to kill her before Koss returned from Europe. Koss had demanded to do it himself, but he would thank Collin later. It was so urgent that it could not be left to Koss's ever-patient, ever-delaying leisure.

Not that he really believed Koss was in Europe handing over the map of the keys. Antoine Campbell had caught them too late; the contacts in Europe already had it. The mission was now in play.

Collin said hello to Malkhazi, then proceeded upstairs to the lab where electronics were kept and tested. While booting up Fallon Hughes's computer, he found a thumb drive to copy her hard drive.

He navigated directly to her email program, the very soul of a computer's user. In this case, the soul was a little more cloaked than he'd have liked. Most of the correspondence in Fallon's email went to others at the law firm of Johnson Sloan Pruitt. There was some discussion about Robert Chandler, the hedge fund manager who had bilked investors out of billions of dollars. Various defense strategies were discussed. Collin smirked. Only in the USA would the obviously guilty have a shot of evading the punishment that they so richly deserved. Personal email was sent to someone named Gwen Atwell. Fallon also corresponded with her parents.

Collin didn't see anything to do with Antoine Campbell. Maybe she used a personal account for that. Spontaneously he typed gmail.com into the URL bar. Instantly, Fallon Hughes's private email popped up. She didn't even have it set to ask for a password. A cakewalk.

And there, in an email to Gwen, was a question that sent his blood racing: “Do you know what a map of the keys is? I've gotta talk to you. Tonight?”

Whoa.

Collin exhaled with a hiss, seething at Omar Koss. He simply could not allow this girl to run around with this information. It was dangerous, and if he did not act, his negligence would get a lot of his people killed.

A rather ingenious idea had begun to coalesce. The perfect set of circumstances had presented itself. Easy access to Djvebe Malkhazi. Omar safely out of town.

Fallon Hughes would be perfect leverage to force the US government to hand over Mahomet Ayrzu. Ayrzu had fought with Malkhazi. After the war for Chechen independence, he had organized enormous terror attacks all over the globe, targeting full soccer stadiums, embassies, cruise ships, and skyscrapers. His most notorious act, however, was the unsuccessful attack on Air Force One. From Roosevelt Island, a tiny thumb of land in the middle of the Potomac, while Air Force One was climbing from Andrews Air Force Base, he shot at the giant aircraft with a Stinger missile. He winged it, but it had been a decoy and nobody was killed. The expert pilot had flown the burning wreckage to Reagan National Airport and landed safely. Nevertheless, his followers were awed and the public was mortified—the audacity alone was dazzling.

Ayrzu had been captured in Pakistan after the start of the War on Terror, though the United States denied it. The attack on Air Force One was blamed on someone else, someone already in custody who had been involved in the Bojinka plot, a story that satisfied most people. Americans felt safer. Airlines began to make a little money again with the terrorist in custody.

Meanwhile, Mahomet Ayrzu languished in custody unacknowledged. He was locked in one of the CIA's infamous black sites, possibly Gitmo, or perhaps a Navy brig, but nobody knew for sure.

Djvebe Malkhazi burned with a cold fire to see him free. Collin himself would enjoy watching the United States attempt to deny Ayrzu's existence while they held Fallon Hughes hostage. A delightfully roguish game, made all the more enjoyable because he knew the USA would blink first.

He would have to work around Omar, however. Not an easy thing. Collin had been Koss's protégé; Koss trusted him, or to put a finer point on it, Koss trusted him not to be a reckless fool when he wasn't around to clean up Collin's messes.

An opportunity like this came along once in a lifetime. An opportunity to move politics, to become his own man and operate on his own terms. The notion appealed to him. But actually betraying Koss would be another matter altogether. Could he do it? To his surprise, he actually felt a little guilty even considering it. It would be difficult for Koss to see the brilliance of this plan, but he felt certain that it would work.

Collin looked warily at the open door. At that moment it appeared to be an invitation. He could not hear the television from the far reaches of the mansion, but he knew Djvebe Malkhazi was downstairs watching news and growing fat on American food. Yes, Collin thought, Malkhazi would go for it. He would even admire Collin for thinking of it.

Downstairs, Collin took a bottle of water from the fridge and wandered into the living area. One guard with a Borz automatic weapon stood at the rear of the room. Another stood beside the terrorist leader, also armed to the teeth with a long gun, a hip holster, and probably a knife or another gun strapped to his ankle. One could never be too careful.

“Father,” Collin said in Chechen, using the term of utmost respect. “I must speak with you about an urgent matter.”

Tom cruised up G Street in his bland government car, past Fallon's office, and took a left onto 15th Street. To his amazement, he was able to nab a rare parking space. Standing at the trunk, he pulled off his jacket and tie, then placed his Sig Sauer in its holster and covered it up with his jacket. He waited for a few cars to pass then jaywalked across the street to Old Ebbit Grill.

As soon as he entered the elegant bar, he recognized lawyers and feds. Agents were easy to spot because they kept their jackets on while they were drinking, mindful of the weapons on their hips. Lawyers looked like self-congratulating assholes. Except Fallon, he thought miserably. Thanks to her, he might have to revise his opinion of the second oldest profession.

Brett Hitchcock, a friend who worked in Electronic Crimes, was seated at a banquette with a young woman that Tom didn't recognize. He wasn't expecting Hitch to bring anyone else tonight. She was pretty with huge brown eyes framed by a fringe of long dark hair. She looked young enough to be an undergrad at Georgetown U. Upon seeing Tom, she flashed a quick, genuine smile. Hitchcock introduced her as Lisa and said she was a new trainee at the Washington Field Office.

Tom sat down across from them and politely inquired how Lisa's training was going. She chatted about her weapons retention class then asked who he was protecting.

“Fallon Hughes,” he answered, surprised at the little starburst of pleasure at saying her name out loud. Just saying it made his insides ping and light up like a pinball machine. He was in serious trouble.

Her eyes rounded with lurid excitement. “Oh my gosh, what is the deal with that search warrant? Did she really kill her boyfriend?”

Tom looked around for a waitress.

“Seriously, I read on Drudge Report that she's about to be arrested.”

“She's not going to be arrested.”

“She is so pretty,” the girl was saying. “Is she that pretty close up?”

Tom was glad she didn't really expect an answer. She continued uninterrupted. “I also think the First Lady is gorgeous. I am dying to meet her. Can you imagine? Elizabeth Hughes. I swear,
Moneymaker
is one of my favorite movies. Did you see it? She won an Academy Award for it. She is so versatile …”

He couldn't talk about Fallon in front of Lisa the Trainee, so when it became obvious that she was here to stay, Tom excused himself. In the men's room, he sent a text to Leah Lennox to tell her he'd be home earlier than expected this evening: DO YOU WANT TO RUN TONIGHT?

Tom washed his hands and returned to the table. A moment later, his phone buzzed. It was Leah: RUN SOUNDS GOOD. CALL WHEN YOU GET HOME.

“Work,” Tom said, palming the phone into his pocket.

“Dude, are you serious?”

“Is it Avalon?” Lisa asked, a little too eagerly.

“I have to get going. I'll catch up with you guys later.” He dropped some money on the table to cover the beer he'd ordered but not touched and left.

Leah Lennox and Tom Bishop met their freshman year at college. Though romance had never sparked between them, they often joked that they were fated for one another—words so true that they felt like a bolt from the divine blue.

Leah was like a sister to him. A sweet, complex, troubled little sister. Stalked by periodic black depressions that would devastate her for weeks at a time, Tom had appointed himself on call for her suicidal fits. Tom believed he could rescue her, though he had no idea what to do. Mostly, he just held her. His presence did seem to calm her. A few days or weeks later, the blackness would lift, and she would once again be the fantastically engaging companion he loved.

When he met Bethany Cabrerra their junior year, Leah was happy for them. She liked Bethany and the two women got along well. When Bethany died, Tom suddenly understood, in horrifying detail, how completely
alone and sad
Leah felt in those desolate canyons of despair. He understood it so well that it shook the very bedrock of his life. Friends assured him the pain of losing Bethany would subside in time, but it was Leah in that permanent midnight who never uttered a platitude. Instead, she listened to him talk in halting, agonized speech because sometimes he literally had no words. It was Leah who cooked meals, and made sure he ate them, and reminded him to sleep. Her friendship during that horrible time was the most solid, tangible thing he possessed.

She now lived across from his condo in an apartment where he sometimes paid the rent for her. After six months of unemployment, she finally secured a position as a journalist at the
Washington Post
, fulfilling one of her lifelong dreams. Because of that, she had been in a great mood lately, but Tom still watched for the signs of depression.

The Court House Plaza was a large, cobblestone square surrounded by lunch shops, with benches for people watching. In the center of the frozen square was a beautiful fountain, though tonight it was turned off and silent. Leah was jogging in place on the steps of the fountain, trying to keep warm.

In companionable silence, they jogged a seven-mile tour of Washington that was Leah's favorite route. Back in the plaza, they returned to the fountain steps and stretched.

“Anything interesting happen at the newsroom lately?” Tom asked. He grabbed his ankle behind him to stretch his quadriceps.

Leah shrugged. “You mean besides us being on the precipice of war with Russia and Fallon Hughes being fingered for bloody murder?”

Tom ignored her piquant sarcasm. “Did you see the story about Antoine Campbell?”

She shrugged. “I heard something about it, but I was focused on the Russia situation all day. He was the suicide, right?”

“Yeah.” Tom scrutinized her face for any sensitivity. Leah didn't wince at the subject. She had never had been particularly ashamed of her suicide attempts. She was even toying with the idea of writing a “memoir of suicide,” as she called it.

“What was your first instinct about it?” Tom asked.

“I don't know. I hadn't thought about it.”

“Allow me to fill you in. A guy commits suicide in the middle of D.C. Broad daylight. But the interesting thing? He chose to jump from a six-story building.”

“Six stories?” A frown crossed her pretty features.

“Exactly.”

“I wouldn't do it from six stories,” she said. “There is no guarantee of death. If you do it and survive, you have to deal with the fact that you're going to be hauled off to the psych ward. But most importantly, I think that if you jumped and survived, it would cut off one of the available avenues of death. You don't want to experience the fear of impending death before you actually do it. You'd probably never try again.”

As always, he was amazed at the fearless way Leah discussed death, particularly voluntary death. He admired her openness, even as he did not understand how she could stand to spend so much time fantasizing about her own oblivion.

“So if you were going to jump …”

“Tall building, definitely,” she finished for him.

“You're not going to jump though, right?”

She smiled. “No thanks, not tonight. Jeez Louise, you don't have to ask me that.”

“I know,” Tom said, and spontaneously hugged her, enjoying her thin frame in his arms. “I want you around for a long time, that's all.”

Leah stood on her tiptoes to kiss his nose. “I'm here. I have no plans to go anywhere.”

“Promise?”

She rolled her eyes. “Do you really need a promise right now?”

“I really do.”

“Then I promise.”

It was nine o'clock when Tom Bishop said goodbye to Leah at her apartment and walked across the street to his condo. At the small desk in his bedroom, he turned on the ancient gooseneck lamp and scrolled through his phone for any Maryland State Police numbers. He had worked with Joe Bennett on a drug task force a few years ago and considered him a good guy, though they were not exactly friends.

After a few minutes of catching up, Tom asked what was going on with the Antoine Campbell case.

Bennett sniffed. “What do you mean, what's going on with it? Suicide, cut and dry.”

“How do you know it was suicide?”

Tom could hear the sudden curiosity on the other end, that distilling of attention. Undoubtedly Bennett's territorial instincts were tweaked by the question. The fact that Tom was federal law enforcement would either relieve Joe because it would mean there was no competition from the feds to make a case, or it would cue him that he should be looking for wider implications in the case. No cop wanted to be caught out of the loop by another cop.

“There were eyewitnesses,” Bennett said. “He'd stolen something, led the Maryland State Police on a chase, and then jumped off a building. Hundreds of witnesses verify it.”

“Hundreds?”

“Well, plenty.”

The witnesses could be anyone who worked in the area. Coming or going into the building in the course of their regular business, they would have seen Antoine Campbell ditch the car, run through the building, somehow knowing to enter the roof from the fifth floor, and then leap. Tom needed to talk to one of those witnesses.

“What did he steal, by the way?” Tom asked.

“I don't know. Drugs probably, but it's not my case so I don't have all those details.”

Seeing there wasn't going to be a lot of revealing info forthcoming, Tom thanked him and ended the conversation.

If drugs were in the kid's system, it would be persuasive evidence that he really was out of his mind when he called Fallon. Tom wasn't quite sure what to do think yet. He was not one to jump to conclusions, especially when the conclusions were horrible.

He stood and paused, looking around the bedroom as if suddenly seeing it for the first time. It was very Spartan. After Bethany was killed, he'd gotten rid of all the pieces she had lovingly collected from showrooms and antique shops and replaced them with cheap, anonymous stuff. It had been a mad effort to divest himself of Bethany—but the joke was on him. The absence of her effects just made him miss her more.

After today with Fallon, the guilt was very near the surface. It felt pervasive and suffocating; he wished he had more self-control. He missed Bethany with a sudden acute jab to the chest that left him dizzy.

He could feel the despair gathering, then the spiral downward was swift and certain. He despised this ache, and, as he always did, he tried to fight it.

There were several palliatives but no remedy. Work, often. Driving, sometimes. But now he needed air, needed to breathe and think and try to dislodge the locomotive of guilt that was bearing down on him.

Spontaneously he grabbed the house key and ran down the two flights of stairs to the lobby. Straight out of the lobby doors, he began to run. Faster and harder than he had been able to with Leah, he ran through the plaza and along Wilson Boulevard. Legs pumping, heart pounding, he ran like he was being chased, the fury and missing and all the soft, sweet things he felt for Fallon building into a vortex of energy that fueled him through the neighborhood in a mindless, furious rush. He was two miles away, in front of the Key Bridge Marriott, before he allowed a single complete thought into his head.

Key Bridge would take him straight into Georgetown. Straight to Fallon. Somehow all roads led to her even when he didn't want them to. He'd been so sure that he would be able to simply say no when that attraction flared between them—yet his resolve had crumbled almost immediately. Four years, and he'd managed just fine. He'd turned down how many women? When Bethany died in those towers there was something about his grief that proved irresistible to women; they'd bring over cakes and casseroles, sweetly lingering, asking if he wanted company. He'd become adept at evading questions designed to prompt personal revelations, quite skilled at gracefully but firmly allowing women to know that he was permanently unavailable.

He missed sex grievously but he didn't want love or a relationship and he just wasn't built to have casual sex. It had never appealed to him and was unthinkable after knowing the intimacy and love he'd experienced with Bethany. Between the morning Bethany died and the day he met Fallon Hughes, he'd slowly hardened to quartz. Then Fallon melted him down to lava. With her, he was voracious, wanting her in every possible way, all the time. But that had been the opposite of a casual fling. He had been completely “in” with that one. Heart, mind, and body.

The experience with Fallon had burned him to the core. It had finally cured him of wanting intimacy with anyone in any degree. He'd learned to control his sex drive instead of it controlling him. He thought it very Zen.

After Fallon, he knew better than to play with fire. No sex. No flirting. Messy entanglements served only to protect fools from the reality that world was ultimately meaningless. He didn't need to be protected from that fact. He didn't even want to be. Even so, one had to pass the time and he chose to do so with work.

Once again, all she had to do was show up and his grip on his steely resolve vanished, like sand through a fist. It was much worse this time because he could not leave her without leaving his job—the one thing that sustained him at his lowest point and the one thing he lived for. He had to figure out a way to be close to her without giving himself completely over to her.

With Fallon, he could not muster the ruthless streak that enabled him to simply dismiss women without another thought. God no, even the thought of hurting her like he had on Paxos filled him with revulsion. How was he going to untangle this?

The memory of this afternoon's indiscretion left him dismayed. How had he just thrown away all his the resolve he'd acquired, year over year, not to mention professionalism, to fuck her in a small, dank little closet space in the middle of an office building? That risky behavior was seriously out of control and not like him at all. He was filled with disgust at his own lack of self-possession even as he undeniably wanted her again, right now. Maybe not like this afternoon, as hot and wild as it had been. He wanted her slower, so he could luxuriate in the experience. She would twine her slender limbs around him, press those petal-soft breasts against his face, let him nuzzle and kiss and lick. She would cradle his head, croon comforting things, and he would melt into her. Dissolve into her tender warmth.