Betrayal (8 page)

The intercom on his desk beeped and his assistant’s squeaky soprano shattered the silence. “Agent Carr is here, Director.”

Wiley zipped over to his desk and keyed his response, noting that the knot in his throat was now as tight as the one on his tie. “Send her in, Kate.”

Cassi was beaming as she walked through the door, causing Wiley to swallow hard. She really could brighten a room. She paused halfway to his desk to look around. “You know I’ve never been inside this office before. It looks bigger than my loft. What do you have back there?” She nodded to the door he had just come through. “The secret files, or a private bath?”

“Have a seat,” Wiley said, gesturing to the chair before his desk rather than the suite of armchairs by the window to the left. He knew that it was best to be quick and clean in situations like this. Delivering bad news was like ripping off a Band-Aid.

A cloud dimmed Cassi’s radiant face, but she complied without comment, sitting with her hands in her lap.

“Cassi, I—”

The intercom cut Wiley off. “Excuse me, Director. I’ve got Commander Potchak here at my desk. He says it’s urgent.”

Wiley gave Cassi an apologetic shrug. “Send him in.”

As the commander of the Counterterrorism Response Team marched into the office, Wiley could not help picturing General Patton’s bull terrier. There was just something about Potchak’s dull eyes and long flat nose that always invoked that particular canine image. Potchak, usually unflappable as a manhole cover, did a double take when his eyes landed on Cassi.
 

She stood and said, “I’ll leave you two.”

Wiley nodded but Potchak said, “Actually, it’s expedient to have you here, Agent Carr. This concerns you as well.” Potchak reached out to hold the back of Cassi’s chair. She sat back down and he took a seat himself.

Wiley felt his mouth go dry. He had been dreading the breakup moment, but now that it had arrived he was anxious to plow through. Furthermore, Potchak’s news was bound to be bad. Urgent news always was. He wanted to skip any further pleasantries and get this over with. “What’s on your mind, Commander?”

Potchak looked uncharacteristically uncomfortable, but he nodded once and commenced. “Counterterrorism Response Team Echo was ambushed last night during a reconnaissance mission in Iran.”

Wiley nodded, wearing his best poker face and keeping his gaze on Potchak to avoid Cassi’s eye. “Do we know who ambushed them?”

“The details are still coming in, but since they were investigating a potential al-Qaeda training camp, our working assumption is that it was terrorists.” Potchak paused as Wiley and Cassi both frowned in silence, then he pivoted to face Cassi with guilt writ large on his bellicose face. “As you must know, Echo’s Team Leader was your brother, Odysseus, Agent Carr.”

Cassi nodded.

“I’m afraid there were no survivors.”

Chapter 12

Alexandria, Virginia

E
VEN
AS
SHE
stood teary-eyed before the cold oak casket and scores of familiar mourners, Cassi could not convince her psyche that she had been forever cleaved from her twin. She took a deep breath. The aromas of white lilies and freshly turned earth took her tumbling back to her parents’ funeral. It seemed at once like only yesterday and yet so long ago. As then, today felt neither real nor right.
 

A tremble began to overtake her. She closed her eyes for a moment to calm herself before attempting to speak. She held her hand to her belly and thought of the circle of life. Odi’s essence would live on—in Wiley’s child.

“My brother—” Cassi choked up. She paused and readjusted her grip on the edges of the Lucite lectern. She tried to look over the crowd and block everyone out, but a small group to the far left kept drawing her eye. She wondered who they were. She thought she knew all of Odi’s friends. They were not with the bomb technicians or the counterterrorism crowd. She began to take a mental tally of the other groups affected by Odi’s life and the identity of the mysterious guests came to her in a flash. She smiled.

“My brother—” Cassi paused again, but this time it was for a different reason. Suddenly her speech did not feel right. Odi had lived his life unscripted. His funeral was no place to start. She reached out and tore up the sheet of ivory paper. “I can’t do it,” she said. “You already know all this.” She shook the shreds of paper and then let them flutter to the ground. “You know Odi was nationally renowned as a bomb technician, and considered the best in the FBI. You know he switched to the FBI’s elite Counterterrorism Response Team after our parents died on Flight Ninety-Three because he felt that a reactionary job was not enough anymore. What most of you do not know is the remarkable man behind those accomplishments. I think I owe it to Odi in this final hour to tear down his modest façade.

“The real Odysseus Carr is well represented by the five mourners off to my left.” Cassi gestured with her arm as she looked out to a crowd of confused faces and a subset of approving nods. “Odi was not truly a bomb technician or a professional at counterterrorist assault—any more than he was a dishwasher or a cook. Those were just functions he performed. In his heart, Odi was a scientist, a peacemaker, a humanitarian.” Cassi saw more confused faces, more approving nods.

“My brother invented Divinylpolystyrene, a compound more commonly known by its trade name: ArmoWrap.” Cassi saw about half the mourners’ faces light up with shock and surprise. “For those of you who don’t have experience disarming bombs, ArmoWrap is a quick-setting Styrofoam-like spray that encases pipe bombs in a highly-adhesive shock-absorbing shield. Sixty seconds after it is sprayed onto an improvised explosive device, ArmoWrap will have cut its destructive power by an average of seventy-three percent. Every Humvee and police car operating beneath the American and NATO flags now carries a can of ArmoWrap in the trunk beside the spare, and Odi’s invention is already credited with saving hundreds of lives.

“Odi developed ArmoWrap when he was just twenty-three and still working at Johns Hopkins on his first PhD. Although he never spoke of them—when was the last time one of you referred to Odi as Doctor Carr—he had PhD’s in chemistry and biomolecular engineering. He could have retired on his royalty checks to a yacht or a beach to live the rest of his life in luxury and peace. But being the scholar that he was Odi chose to heed the lesson of his hero Alfred Nobel instead. He donated the ArmoWrap patent to the International Association for the Assistance of Victims of Landmines. Then he one-upped Nobel by insisting that the IAAVL keep his name out of the news. The Board of the IAAVL kept that promise, but obviously they did not forget. They are here today.” Cassi nodded toward the small group as a murmur broke out in the crowd.

“I’m glad that my parents got to see Odi’s triumph while they were still alive. They were very proud of him for what he did. To be honest, my reaction at the time could best be described as confused. I would never have given up a life of luxury in lieu of a dangerous job and government pay the way he did. Even though he had a twin, Odi truly was unique.

“Eventually I did figure it out, although it took me years. You see, despite his contrary outward appearance, Odi was an extraordinarily peaceful man.

“I see your skeptical faces. You’re wondering if grief has somehow affected my mind. The key to understanding Odi was this: He was aggressively peaceful. Wanton violence caused him such moral outrage that he felt compelled to fight back. He did not fight for glory or medals or even the adrenaline rush. He fought for peace. Like Mother Teresa who condemned herself to living among the wretched of Calcutta, Odi condemned himself to a violent life so that others could live in peace. And he was very good at what he did.

“I will miss my brother in ways that I can only begin to express. I know that you will too.”

She abandoned the lectern to stand beside the casket. Others closed in around her in a show of support. After a moment of silence, she placed a single red rose on the polished oak. “I love you brother.”

Cassi wanted to walk into the crowd and fall into Wiley’s arms, but such a public display was out of the question. Oddly enough, Odi’s death had pulled them apart more than it had drawn them together. Perhaps since Wiley was the ultimate man in charge of that fateful mission, she held him vaguely responsible for Odi’s death. Likewise he probably felt a little guilty.

Cassi heard a chorus of distant beeps as she backed away from Odi’s grave. She looked up to see a few of her HRT colleagues gathering around Jack to talk in familiar animation. Inappropriate though it might be, she felt a strong urge to throw herself back into work.

Cassi accepted a few “beautiful-eulogy”s and a dozen encouraging arm pats, hugs, and nods as she made her way toward the dispersing hostage-rescue team. “Jack, hold on. What’s up?”

Her boss stopped the beeline he was making toward his car and turned. “We’ve got an incident, Cassi. Nothing for you to worry about.”

“But I want to worry. I think the distraction would be the best thing for me.”

“Not today,” Jack said, compassion in his eyes. “You go home and get some rest. Really, that’s the best thing for you. Trust me.”

Cassi had half a mind to just hop in her Toyota and follow them wherever they went, but she had parked two hundred yards away by the chapel. She would never catch up. She was wearing a long dress and, on this rare occasion, heels.

So what was she going to do then? Cassi wondered. She had not thought past the funeral. Wiley had told her that he had to spend the day in the office. The last thing she wanted to do was watch the minimum-wage ditch diggers plant Odi’s casket in the ground. Nor was she in the mood for more “I’ll-miss-him”s and “I’m-sorry”s and condoling pats on the back. She could call Quantico to find out where the current crisis was, but that would probably be a waste of time. The crime scene was likely a helicopter-ride away. She decided to take Jack’s advice and go home.

Cassi arrived at her block twenty minutes later to find a police barricade and crowded sidewalks. She felt a lump growing in her throat as she pulled out her gold shield and asked the beat cop what was up.

“We got an anonymous tip that a man was trying to break into the art-restoration workshop over the daycare center. Dispatch sent two units, code two, but the perp saw them coming in time to take hostages. He’s got a bomb and a couple of kids.”

Chapter 13

Orumiyeh, Iran

O
DI
HEARD
SCREAMS
and moans and strange voices muttering all around him. He could not understand a word and he could not see a thing. Panic tried to seize him but he fought its grip. Was he in hell? He tried to think of the last thing he could remember. His mind was operating excruciatingly slowly, as though his synapses were sopped in molasses. He remembered the ground-shaking explosions ... and being hit in the shoulder ... and then he found Adam. He had a very clear recollection of the look in Adam’s eyes as he died in his arms ... and then ... nothing else. That was all he could remember.

Odi began to scream. He did not know why. There in the dark with those voices all around it was a primordial reflex. He screamed and gasped, gasped and screamed. Finally he felt a demon claw at his arm until the voices faded away.

~ ~ ~

Odi heard, “Wake up,” and felt something moving around his head and face. “Wake up. You have to leave the hospital right away.” Now someone was shaking his arm. Had it all been a dream? He wondered. Oh please, let Adam be alive.

Odi slowly opened his eyes. The light was painful, although once his eyes adjusted he saw that the room was relatively dim. Looking off to the side as he lay on his back, he saw an old rolling partition to the left of his bed, a white sheet strung in a chrome frame. It had grown gray and frayed with service and age. As he studied it a face moved in above his and Odi thought for a minute that he had been rescued by Tom Selleck—Tom Selleck holding a big wad of dirty gauze.

The face towering above him was kind and intelligent and aged about forty years—with curly dark hair, blue eyes, and a thick mustache. The only thing he needed to look like “Magnum P.I.” was a Tigers baseball cap. Although Odi did not have a mustache, he too was often compared to Selleck. They shared a tall athletic frame, lively eyes, and mischievous grin. For a freaky second Odi thought that maybe he was looking in the mirror. Maybe he had been asleep for years and Cassi had asked the nurse not to shave his mustache. She had always encouraged him to grow one. That ridiculous notion vanished as quickly as it appeared. The face above him was not that similar.