Saving Faith (5 page)

In truth, Buchanan had no response to this statement. And Thornhill’s intractably calm demeanor only reinforced the helplessness he felt.

“Any questions about the meeting with Milstead?” Thornhill asked.

“You have enough on Harvey Milstead to put him away for three lives. What are you really after?”

Thornhill chuckled. “I hope you’re not accusing me of having a hidden agenda.”

“You can tell me, Bob, we’re partners.”

“Maybe it’s as simple as wanting you to jump when I snap my fingers.”

“Fine, but a year from now, if you pop up like this, you may not leave under your own power.”

“Threats from a solitary lobbyist to
me
.” Thornhill sighed. “But not so solitary. You have an army of one. How is Faith? Doing well?”

“Faith is not a part of this. Faith will never be a part of this.”

Thornhill nodded. “You’re the only one in the crosshairs. You and your fine group of felonious politicians. America’s best and brightest.”

Buchanan stared coldly at his antagonist and said nothing.

“Things are coming to a head, Danny. The show will be coming to a close soon. I hope you’re ready to exit cleanly.”

“When I leave, my trail will be so clean, not even your spy satellites will be able to pick it up.”

“Confidence is inspiring. Yet so often misplaced.”

“Is that all you wanted to tell me? Be prepared to escape? I’ve been ready to do that since the first minute I met you.”

Thornhill stood. “You focus on Senator Milstead. Get us some good, juicy stuff. Get him to talk about the income he’ll have when he retires, the nominal tasks he’ll have to perform as window dressing. The more specific, the better.”

“It heartens me to see you enjoying this so much. Probably a lot more fun than the Bay of Pigs.”

“Before my time.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ve made your mark in other ways.”

Thornhill bristled for a moment and then his calm returned. “You’d make a fine poker player, Danny. But try to remember that a bluff when one is holding nothing of value is still a bluff.” Thornhill put on his trench coat. “Don’t trouble yourself, I can find my way out.”

In the next instant Thornhill was gone. The man appeared and disappeared at will, it seemed. Buchanan leaned back in his chair and let out a quick breath. His hands were trembling and he pressed them hard against the desk until the quivering stopped.

Thornhill had thundered into his life like an exploding torpedo. Buchanan had become, essentially, a lackey, now spying on those he had been bribing for years with his own money, now collecting a wealth of material for this ogre to use as blackmail. And Buchanan was powerless to stop the man.

Ironically, this decline in his material assets and now his work in the service of another had brought Buchanan directly back from whence he had come. He had grown up on the illustrious Philadelphia Main Line. He had lived on one of the most magnificent estates in that area. Stacked fieldstone walls—like thick gray brushstrokes of paint—outlined the grass perimeters of the vast, perfect lawns, on which was situated a sprawling twelve-thousand-square-foot house with broad, covered porches, and a detached quadruple-car garage with an apartment overhead. The house had more bedrooms than a dormitory, and lavish baths with costly tile and the luster of gold on something as commonplace as a faucet.

It was the world of the American blue bloods, where pampered lifestyles and crushing expectations existed side by side. Buchanan had observed this complex universe from an intimate perspective, yet he was not one of its privileged inhabitants. Buchanan’s family had been the chauffeurs and maids and gardeners, the handymen, nannies and cooks to these blue bloods. Having survived the Canadian border winters, the Buchanans had migrated south, en masse, to a gentler climate, to less demanding work than that required by ax and spade, boat and hook. Up there they had hunted for food and cut wood for warmth, only to watch helplessly as nature mercilessly culled their ranks, a process that had made the survivors stronger, their descendants stronger still. And Danny Buchanan was perhaps the strongest of them all.

Young Danny Buchanan had watered the lawn and cleaned the pool, swept and repainted the tennis court, picked the flowers and vegetables and played, in a properly respectful manner, with the children. As he had gotten older, Buchanan had huddled with the younger generation of the spoiled rich, deep in the privacy of the complex flower gardens, smoking, drinking and exploring each other sexually. Buchanan had even acted as pallbearer, weeping sincerely as he bore two of the young and the rich who had wasted their privileged lives, mixing too much whiskey with a racing sports car, driving too fast for impaired motor skills. When you lived life that fast, often you died fast as well. Right now Buchanan could see his own end rushing headlong at him.

Buchanan had never felt comfortable in either group—the rich or the poor—since then. The rich he would never be a part of, no matter how much his bank account swelled. He had played with the wealthy heirs, but when mealtime came, they went to the formal dining room while he trudged to the kitchen to break his bread with the other servants. The baby blues had attended Harvard, Yale and Princeton; he had worked his way through night school at an institution his betters would openly mock.

Buchanan’s own family was now equally foreign to him. He sent his relatives money. They sent it back. When he went to visit, he had found they had nothing to talk about. They neither understood nor cared about what he did. However, they made him feel that there was nothing honest about his life’s occupation; he could see that in their tightly drawn faces, their mumbled words. Washington was as foreign as hell itself to all that they believed in. He lied for money, large sums of it. Better he had followed in their tread: honest if simple work. By rising above them, he had fallen far below what they represented: fairness, integrity, character.

The path he had chosen during the last ten years had only deepened this solitary confinement. He had few friends. Nevertheless, he did have millions of strangers across the world who deeply depended on him for something as basic as survival. Even Buchanan had to admit, it was a bizarre existence.

And now, with the coming of Thornhill, Buchanan’s foothold had dropped another rung on the ladder leading to the abyss. Now he could no longer even confide in his one indisputable soul mate, Faith Lockhart. She knew nothing about Thornhill, and she never would know of the man from the CIA; this was all that was keeping her safe. It had cost him his last thread of real human contact.

Danny Buchanan was now truly alone.

He stepped to the window of his office and looked out at majestic monuments known around the world. Some might argue that their beautiful facades were just that: Like the magician’s hand, they were designed to guide the eyes away from the truly important business of this city, transacted usually for the benefit of a select few.

Buchanan had learned that effective, long-term power came essentially from the gentle force of rule of the few over the many, for most people were not political beasts. A delicate balance was called for, the few over the many,
gently
, civilly; and Buchanan knew that the most perfect example of it in the history of the world existed right here.

Closing his eyes, he let the darkness envelop him, let new energy spill into his body for the fight tomorrow. It promised to be a very long night, however, for in truth, his life had now become one long tunnel to nowhere. If he could only ensure Thornhill’s destruction as well, it would all be worth it. One small crack in the darkness, that would be all Buchanan needed. If only it could be so.

 

CHAPTER 4

The car moved down the highway at precisely the speed limit. The man was driving, the woman next to him. Both sat rigidly, as though one feared a sudden attack from the other.

As a jet, landing gear down, roared over them like a swooping hawk on its way in to Dulles Airport, Faith Lockhart closed her eyes and pretended for a moment that she was on that plane, and instead of landing, it was beginning some far-flung journey. As she slowly opened her eyes, the car took an exit off the highway and they left the unsettling glare of sodium lights behind. They were soon sailing past jagged rows of trees on both sides of the road, the wide, grassy ditches deep and soggy; the dull pulse of flat-looking stars was now their only source of light other than the car’s twin beams stabbing the darkness.

“I don’t understand why Agent Reynolds couldn’t come tonight,” she said.

“The simple answer is, you’re not the only investigation she has going, Faith,” Special Agent Ken Newman replied. “But I’m not exactly a stranger, am I? We’re just going to talk, like the other times. Pretend I’m Brooke Reynolds. We’re all on the same team.”

The car turned onto another, even more isolated road. On this stretch the trees were replaced by denuded fields awaiting the final scrape of the bulldozers. In a year’s time there would be almost as many homes here as there had been trees before, as suburban sprawl continued its push. Now the land simply looked ravaged, naked. And bleak, perhaps because of what was to come. In that regard, the land and Faith Lockhart were as one.

Newman glanced over at her. Although he didn’t like to admit it, he felt uneasy around Faith Lockhart, as though he were seated next to a ball of wired C-4 with no idea when it might explode. He shifted in his seat. His skin was a little raw where the leather of his shoulder holster usually rubbed against his skin. Most people developed a callus at that spot, but his skin just kept blistering and then peeling off. Ironically, he felt that the twinge of pain gave him an edge because he never relaxed; it was a clear warning that if he let down his guard, that small discomfort could become a fatal one. Tonight, however, because he was wearing body armor, the holster wasn’t scraping his skin; the pain and heightened sense of awareness were not nearly as strong.

Faith could feel the blood rush through her ears, all senses elevated, the way they were when you were lying in bed late at night and hearing a strange, troubling sound. When you were a child and that happened, you raced to your parents’ bed and climbed in, to be wrapped up, consoled by loving, understanding arms. Her parents were dead and she was now thirty-six years old. Who was out there for Faith Lockhart?

“And after tonight, it’ll be Agent Reynolds instead of me,” Newman said. “You’re comfortable with her, aren’t you?”

“I’m not sure ‘comfort’ applies to situations like this.”

“Sure it does. It’s very important, in fact. Reynolds is a straight shooter. Believe me, if it weren’t for her, this thing would be going nowhere. You haven’t exactly given us much to go on. But she believes in you. So long as you don’t do anything to destroy that confidence, you have a powerful ally in Brooke Reynolds. She cares about you.”

Faith crossed her legs and folded her arms across her chest. She was about five-five, and her torso was short. Her bosom was flatter than she would have liked, but her legs were long and well shaped. If nothing else, she could always count on her legs to get attention. The defined muscles in her calves and thighs, visible through her sheer stockings, were enough to cause Newman’s gaze to flicker over them several times with what appeared to be mild interest, she noted.

Faith swatted her long auburn hair out of her face and rested her hand on the bridge of her nose. A few white strands of hair floated among the darker. They were not yet noticeable, but that would change with time. In fact, the pressure she was under would undoubtedly accelerate the aging process. Besides hard work, agile wits and poise, Faith’s good looks, she knew, had helped her career. It was shallow to believe that one’s features made a difference. Yet the truth was they did, particularly when one dealt with an overwhelmingly male audience, as she had for her entire career.

The broad smiles she received when entering a senator’s office were not so much due to her gray matter, she knew, as to the above-the-knee skirts she favored. Sometimes it was as simple as dangling a shoe. She was talking about children dying, families living in sewers in far-off lands, and these men were fixated on toe cleavage. God, testosterone was a man’s greatest weakness and a woman’s most powerful advantage. At least it helped to level a playing field that had always been tilted in favor of the males.

“It’s nice to be so well loved,” said Faith. “But picking me up in an alley. Coming out here in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night. That’s a little much, don’t you think?”

“Your walking into the Washington Field Office just wasn’t an option. You’re the star witness in what could be a very important investigation. This place is safe.”

“You mean it’s perfect for an ambush. How do you know we haven’t been followed?”

“We’ve been followed, all right. By our people. If anyone else had been around, believe me, our people would’ve noticed it before sending us on. We had a tail car until we turned off the highway. There’s nobody back there.”

“So your people are infallible. I wish I had that kind of people working for me. Where do you find them?”

“Look, we know what we’re doing, okay? Relax.” Even as he said this, though, he checked the mirror again.

He glanced at the cell phone lying on the front seat, and Faith could easily read his thoughts. “Suddenly wanting backup?” Newman glanced sharply at her but said nothing. “Okay, so let’s get to the principal terms,” she said. “What do I really get out of all this? We’ve never quite nailed it down.” When Newman still didn’t respond, she studied his profile for a minute, sizing up his nerve. She reached over and touched his arm.

“I took a lot of risk to do what I’m doing,” she said. She felt him tense through his suit jacket where her fingers rested. She kept her fingers there, applied slightly more pressure. Her fingertips could now distinguish the material of his jacket from that of his shirt. As he turned slightly toward her, Faith was able to see the bulletproof vest he was wearing. The saliva in her mouth suddenly evaporated, along with her composure.