Invasion of Privacy (28 page)

“So has everyone.”

“I mean, I’ve seen it at my house.” Mary stood. “Stay here. I have to go get something.”

Peter Briggs parked his BMW in the shadows of a willow tree a hundred yards past the Grants’ house. Surveying the street, he slipped a pistol from his holster and affixed a noise suppressor. According to the Mole, Mary Grant and her younger daughter remained in the home while the older girl was out with a boyfriend. Briggs’s plan was to enter, gain access to the bedrooms, and execute both targets, leaving the weapon behind to create the appearance of a murder-suicide. Distraught widow takes her daughter’s life before taking her own. It happened every day. The older girl’s absence would only add to the mystery.

Briggs chambered a round, then thumbed the safety on. He did not like disobeying Ian, but he had little choice. Men like Ian were divorced from the everyday nuts and bolts of a problem. They had forgotten that it takes a mower and a man pushing it to cut the grass. They only saw the result: an immaculately manicured lawn. It came down to a question of fundamental beliefs. Ian believed that technology could solve all his problems. Briggs knew better. Some things a man had to do with his own two hands.

Briggs left the car and disappeared into the shadows. He advanced at a jog, keeping close to the homes. It had been a while since he’d been in the field, and the adrenaline was pumping. Once it had been for his country. Tonight it was for his company, but his allegiance was no less fierce. Maybe all that rot that Ian spilled about the source of a man’s loyalties wasn’t wrong after all. Maybe countries were obsolete.

Two minutes
.

Mary let go of the fence, landing awkwardly. She limped to the sliding door, let herself in, and collapsed on the first chair she saw. Her phone sat on the table, a decoy left behind on the chance their pursuers were tracking its location. A check of the screen showed that Jess had not called.

“Two minutes,” Tank had said. “Get in, find what you have to find, and come back.”

With an effort, she made it to Joe’s study. She sat at his desk, retrieved his gadget box, and upended it, sending the flash drives clattering everywhere. In the dark she spotted the phony pack of bubblegum, the heart-shaped pendant, and the car key. Not any car key, she knew now, but the key to a LaFerrari owned by Mr. Harold J. Stark, senior vice president special products of ONE Technologies. Or a replica thereof.

She turned on the reading lamp. The key was fat and black, with the Ferrari insignia printed beneath a translucent orb in its center. She pressed her thumb against the stallion and out popped the flash drive.

Joe’s plan came to her as if it were her own. She saw Harold Stark entering his office, inserting the flash drive into his computer, downloading the evidence Joe had asked him to procure. She saw him again at the end of the day, dumping the key into the plastic tray along with the rest of his personal effects and passing through the security checkpoint, no one the wiser.

A noise interrupted her thoughts. The sound of one of her wooden chairs scooting an inch. Her eyes went to the desk lamp.

The light…

The kitchen door was open an inch.

Briggs stepped inside. His pistol was drawn, held low, finger brushing the trigger guard. Inadvertently he knocked one of the chairs. It squeaked like hell, and hurriedly he lifted it off the ground. He froze, listening, thinking that it had been too long since he’d been operational. He waited until he was satisfied that the house was still and everyone asleep, then set the chair down. He crossed the kitchen and went through the foyer into the garage, wanting to confirm that the car was there. He retraced his steps, noting that a television was on in the family room, muted, no one watching.

Antennas bristling, Briggs raised his pistol and climbed the stairs. The doors to the girls’ rooms were closed, as was the door to the master bedroom at the end of the hall. He stopped by the first door to the right. According to the Mole, it belonged to the younger girl. He steeled himself. It would be fast. He didn’t want things getting out of hand.

He opened the door and stepped inside, activating the pistol’s laser sight, pointing the beam of red light at the pillow. He fired twice, advancing toward his target. The bed was empty, sheets and covers pulled back.

Briggs turned on a heel, wary. He decided that it made sense that the girl wasn’t in her bed. She was a frightened lamb. She needed her mother. He moved rapidly to the end of the hall. A check of the knob confirmed that the door was unlocked. He drew a breath, pushed it open, and walked toward the bed, arm outstretched. This time he did not fire. The room was empty.

He pushed his commo mike to his mouth and spoke to the Mole. “No one’s here.”

“I saw her drive home. I’m still showing her phone on the premises.”

“She’s smarter than we thought.”

Briggs lowered the weapon. Mary Grant had done a runner on them. If she was really smart, she’d get as far away as possible. Not likely. Not her.

Back downstairs, he noted a light burning in a room off the front entry. Had it been on before, or had he missed it?

“Just checking one more thing,” he said, starting down the hall. “Keep the channel open.”

Tank stood at the curtain inside the Kramers’ living room, keeping an eye on Mary’s driveway. Five minutes had passed since she’d left—three more than he would have liked. He didn’t see a reason to worry. No cars had driven past. He hadn’t spotted any figures in the shadows, no silhouettes slipping toward the Grants’ front door. Still, he was unable to dispel his butterflies. It wasn’t Mary’s delayed return that worried him so much as the larger, hopeless predicament they found themselves in. They were in over their heads, and they had no one to turn to. Not the paper. Not the police. Certainly not the FBI. It was down to him and Mary. Alamo odds.

“Tank?”

The timid voice made him jump. “Can’t sleep?” he asked.

Grace stood in the doorway, clutching her stuffed animal. “Where’s my mom?”

“She’ll be right back. She had to get something from your house.”

“I already have Pink Pony.”

“Something else.”

Grace remained where she was, pale and fragile as Meissen china.

“You okay?” he asked.

Grace shook her head.

“Don’t worry about your sister. Jessie’s going to be just fine.”

“It isn’t that.”

“Oh? Would you like to tell me, or do you want to sit down and wait for your mom?”

“My leg hurts.”

“Your leg? Did you sleep on it funny?”

Grace shook her head again. Tank took another look at the Grants’ driveway. Nothing had changed. He had the window cracked a few inches. The neighborhood was silent as a grave.

“Show me.”

Carefully she peeled back the hem of her nightgown to reveal a bruise covering her lower thigh.

“Where did you get this?”

“I fell on the trampoline.”

“Looks like you were hit by a Mack truck.” Tank saw her eyes well up. “I’m sorry, sweetie, I was just joshing. I mean, it looks kind of bad.”

“Jessie said it looked like grackle poo.”

“One mighty big grackle.”

For a moment a smile broke through the pain. “I’m scared.”

“It’s just a bruise.”

“You don’t understand. I might be getting sick again.”

“The flu?”

“ALL. It’s when your body doesn’t make enough white blood cells. The doctors are pretty sure I’ll be okay. Eight out of ten children under the age of fifteen who have it survive.”

“That’s good.” Tank nodded understandingly, hoping that a smile would hide his shock. He knew what ALL was. “I’m sure you’re okay. Let’s go get some ice for that.”

Tank took the child’s hand and together they walked into the kitchen. On the way he checked his watch.

Eight minutes.

Something was wrong.

Mary huddled at the rear of the desk’s kneehole, pasting her body to the wall as the man pounded down the stairs. Footsteps crossed the foyer. She’d had no choice but to leave the lamp burning. Anyone watching the house would surely catch the study going dark.

A pair of boots appeared in the doorway, stopped for exactly three heartbeats, then came toward the desk.

“What’s this, then?” the intruder said in a hushed voice.

In her hurry, she’d left the flash drives on the desktop.

The man sat down in Joe’s chair. His boot shot forward, cleaving the gap between her knees and her head. She sucked in a breath, her face inches from the man’s trousers.

Something thudded onto the desk. For the second time that night she smelled gunpowder, and she knew that it came from the intruder’s pistol and that yes, those were shots she’d heard. He had come to kill her and the girls.

“You check Stark for cached thumb drives?” This time the voice was stronger, and she waited for someone to respond, horrified that a second person might be in her home.

“He must have had something,” the man continued after a pause. “He didn’t drive all the way out to Dripping Springs just to talk to Grant.”

The accent was South African, and she knew he was speaking to someone over a phone or, more likely, a closed-circuit communications net.

“Keefe didn’t know how Stark was bringing out the evidence. That bugger Grant didn’t tell anyone. He knew that Mason was with us. He was a cagey one.”

At the mention of Fergus Keefe’s name, Mary nearly gasped. Now it made sense why she hadn’t seen him at the hospital. Keefe had betrayed Joe.

“You’d better have checked the bodies.”

The South African began swinging his boot like a pendulum, the laces brushing against Mary’s cheeks.

“If any evidence does surface, your name is at the top of the list…I wouldn’t be surprised if Ian thought you sold him out. I might think it, too…I’m glad you’re sure. Then you have nothing to worry about. Because here’s what I’m sure about: Stark had the evidence on him and you rank amateurs missed it.”

Just then Mary’s phone began to ring in the kitchen.

The chair slid back. The boot swung past her nose one last time. “Hold on.”

The South African hurried out of the room as the phone continued to ring.

Jessie
.

Mary looked at her watch. It was two-thirty. Suppose Jessie was on her way home. Suppose she was coming down Pickfair right this instant. Even if she wasn’t, suppose the intruder managed to learn her location. He was a killer. Mary wouldn’t allow her daughter to fall into harm’s way.

She scrambled out from beneath the desk. She didn’t try to move quietly. There wasn’t time. She felt for Joe’s pistol, but it was at Carrie’s with her jacket and her purse.

“Hello,” said the South African into the phone. He’d flattened his accent and sounded like the admiral. Annapolis aristocracy.

Mary picked up the bowl on the entry table. It was an iron cooking bowl from Thailand, heavy, with sloped sides and sharp edges, employed since their return to hold the family’s keys. She entered the kitchen. The intruder was tall and lean, dressed in black, his back to her. One hand held her phone, the other a pistol. If he turned, he could shoot her dead. By all rights he should have heard her approaching, but she knew he was more intent on listening to Jessie, and anyway, he didn’t think anyone else was in the house.

Using both hands, she lifted the bowl high and brought it down on the crown of his skull. She grunted as it struck his cranium, like she grunted when she hit a double in softball, her wrists and forearms aching with the contact. The man buckled at the knee as she lost hold of the bowl and it clattered to the floor. He turned and she saw camouflage on his face, pale blue eyes that shone even in the dark. He blinked rapidly, raising the gun as he collapsed. It was a reflex. He was not trying to shoot but reaching for a handhold even as he lost consciousness. Mary jumped back. He landed hard, leading with his cheek, and lay still.

Mary pried the phone from his hand. “Jessie?” she said. “It’s Mom. Where are you?”

A man answered. “Mrs. Grant? This is Linus Jankowski. I’m returning your message. Calm down, okay? Everything’s just fine.”

“Linus? Is she with you? Can I talk to her?”

“No, ma’am. She isn’t. I thought she might have called to tell you.”

“Where is she? Is she all right?”

“She’s fine, Mrs. Grant. At least, she was when she left. I told her to call you.”

“What do you mean she left? Where is she?”

“Right about now, I imagine, she should be landing in Vegas.”

“Las Vegas?”

“Yes, ma’am. She’s going to DEF CON.”

Ian set down his cup of tea, eyes watering from the strain of staring at so many screens for so long a time. His job was done. In the morning Mary Grant would discover the vastly altered landscape of her living situation. She was prideful and obdurate, to a fault. But she was not stupid. She would choose the carrot, not the stick.

Yawning, Ian crossed the office and sat on the corner of a credenza. You’d be proud, Father, he said silently, eyes on the black satchel. I’m not a bloody savage. You didn’t raise me to do harm. I’m a diplomat like you. Or at least as you had us all believe. I know better, don’t I? That’s why you left your satchel behind. You wanted me to know.

Ian kneeled and with care unfastened the satchel’s brass locks. He opened the case as a scholar might open an ancient text. Inside were files. Day-to-day circulars from the Prague consulate, circa 1988. Upcoming holidays. Office hours. A strictly worded communiqué stating that only the head of station and his assistant were to use the newly installed telefax machine. There was also a checkbook. The balance stood at £750. A study of the register showed regular checks written to one Off-Track Betting. The amounts came to £400 in the register alone. Further investigations had showed the sum total of all Peter Prince’s wagers to be significantly higher: £137,000 over a fifteen-year period, to be exact. Nearly $250,000. Chump change today, but to a diplomat earning £38,000 a year, a tidy sum indeed.

Ian dropped the checkbook. There was one last item inside the case. He picked it up and laid it in his palm. Exhibit A: one Walther PPK nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol. Government issue. Serial number 9987C.

Peter Prince wasn’t a second-rate diplomat or a lousy gambler. He had not simply walked out on his family after squandering their savings, leaving them destitute. Rumors of his suicide were just that. It was all cover. Part of a carefully woven tapestry to obscure the facts of his true position. Ian’s father was a spy. He’d died on duty for Her Majesty’s government. Ian was certain of it.

Tomorrow he would finally gain the means to learn if he was correct.

He smiled in anticipation, replacing the pistol and closing the satchel.

That was when he heard the voice.

“Briggs?” he said. “That you?” Ian looked around, sure that no one else was in the office.

Briggs’s voice was emanating from a screen inside the tower. Ian retook his position inside the curtain of websites. He scanned the tower top to bottom, side to side. Briggs spoke again and he pinpointed the source.

It was a screen displaying the surveillance feed courtesy of the Grants’ desktop.

Ian stood straighter, his fatigue banished to a later time. He was not surprised, only disappointed. For now he paid close attention and watched until there was no longer need.