Shoot Him if He Runs (13 page)

Kate watched Lance leave, then sat and thought about this. She should probably discuss it with her husband, since he and the British prime minister were close. He would not want to withhold anything from the British. Well, not for very long, anyway. She’d think about it later.

26

L
ance went back to his office and sat at his desk, gazing out at the Virginia landscape. He had covered his ass with Kate, but he was still worried about Hugh English.

The longtime deputy director for operations would have been gone now, retired to some gated Florida golf community, had it not been for the very inconvenient murder of his chosen successor, Dick Stone. English was not a favorite of the director, since he had opposed her promotion to that office. He had been subtle, having many contacts on Capitol Hill, and, since he had removed himself from the succession, his opinion carried real weight there, but she had been confirmed anyway because of the depth of influence in the Senate of her husband. Still, English’s long history with the Agency gave him broad and deep support internally, and Lance, hoping for promotion to his job, didn’t want to run afoul of the man. Now, however, he had, almost inadvertently, tossed a potential hand grenade under Hugh English’s chair, and he was worried that it might go off at an inopportune moment.

His phone rang; Holly Barker was reporting in. He picked it up. “Lance Cabot.”

“It’s Holly.”

“What have you to report?”

“Nothing; you told me to stay away from Robertson, and that’s what I’ve done. I don’t know why you’d send me down here to find Teddy, then hold me back when we’ve developed a hot lead.”

“Robertson is not your concern, Holly, until I tell you he is. Here’s what I want you to do.”

H
olly punched off the satphone, then walked through the house, stripped off her clothes and joined the others on the beach.

“What?” Stone asked, seeing her face.

“Lance still won’t let us go near Robertson.”

“Then what are we doing here?”

“Lying on the beach, apparently. He wants Pepper to check him out further.”

“Great,” Dino said. “I like lying on the beach better, anyway.”

“I don’t,” Holly said. She stood up, dropped her towel and ran into the sea, swimming strongly a hundred yards out. She looked back to see that Stone had followed her to the water’s edge and was keeping an eye on her. She waved for him to follow, and he entered the water and began swimming.

Holly ducked underwater and swam a few strokes, looking for the sandbar that she knew ran parallel to the beach. She found it after a moment and stood up in waist-deep water.

Stone shortly joined her. “How did you know about the bar?”

“Thomas told me. He said not to go farther out, though.” She splashed water in his face.

“Stand still,” he said.

“What?”

“Just don’t move around. Stand perfectly still.”

He was looking back toward the beach, and she followed his gaze. A large gray fin was slicing through the water inside the sandbar, between them and the beach. “Oh, shit,” she said.

“Just don’t move,” Stone replied. Slowly, he slid under the water for a moment, then, just as slowly, reemerged. “It’s a hammerhead,” he said. “A big one.”

The fin went a few yards past them, then reversed course. “How big?”

“I’m guessing fourteen, fifteen feet. Tell me you’re not having your period.”

“I’m not having my period.”

“Thank God for that; we don’t need that scent in the water.” She looked back toward the beach and saw Dino and Genevieve walk into the water and begin swimming toward them. “They’re splashing,” she said, pointing.

Stone turned and looked at the swimmers and began waving his arms. Dino waved back. Stone, with both hands, began making a pushing motion, waving them back to the beach. It took Dino a moment to understand, then he tapped Genevieve on the shoulder, and they began swimming back. They stood in knee-deep water and watched. Dino pointed out the shark’s fin to his girlfriend.

“This is ridiculous,” Holly said. “Four naked people watching a shark swim.”

“Two of them in the water with the shark,” Stone pointed out. “That’s even more ridiculous.”

“What are we going to do?” Holly asked.

“Wait for it to decide we’re uninteresting.”

“And if it has a different opinion?”

“Hit it with our fists in the eyes, which, I think, are at the ends of the hammer. I wish now I hadn’t missed that field trip to the aquarium when I was a kid. I was home with the flu.”

“I wish I had a gun,” Holly said, looking at Stone. When she looked back at the shark, the fin was gone. “Oh, shit.” She pointed.

“Oh, shit, indeed,” Stone replied. He ducked slowly under the water again, and this time he was under for a full minute before he came up again.

Holly kept looking for the fin. “Could you see it?” she asked.

“No, it vanished.”

“Vanished where?”

“I don’t know, it’s just gone.”

Holly ducked under the water and did a slow three-sixty. She wished she had goggles. She wished she had a shotgun. She came up again. “I can’t see more than thirty feet.”

“Neither could I.” Stone suddenly pointed outside the bar. The fin had reappeared, moving slowly down the beach, away from them. “I think it’s time to rejoin Dino and Genevieve,” he said. “No overhand swimming; breaststroke.”

But Holly was already swimming steadily toward the beach. She had a weird feeling that the big hammerhead was an omen, or maybe a metaphor for what might be waiting for them on St. Marks. She tried to shake off the feeling and failed.

T
hey walked out of the water a few minutes later and flopped down on the blanket next to their friends.

“I’m exhausted,” Holly said. “Too much adrenaline; I’ve used it all up.”

“Looked like a dolphin to me,” Dino said.

Stone shook his head. “I saw it underwater; a hammerhead.”

“Eeeew,” Genevieve said.

“My feelings exactly,” Holly replied. “I’m going to shower, then I have to make a phone call.”

T
wenty minutes later, she dialed Bill Pepper’s satphone number. He answered immediately. “Scrambling,” she said, and pushed the button.

“Okay, I’m scrambled, too,” Pepper said. He sounded as if he was very far away. “What do you want?”

“I’ve got new instructions from Lance,” she said.

“I don’t work for Lance, and I don’t take his instructions, unless I feel like it.”

“This is handed down from the director, bypassing Hugh English.”

“How do I know that?”

“Do you expect the director to call you?”

“Well, that hasn’t happened so far.”

“And it’s not going to happen now.”

“What are these instructions?”

“We’ve got to identify Robertson beyond question.”

“Isn’t a strong suspicion enough to call the cops, or Interpol?”

“The problem is, he may be someone else.”

“Someone else? You mean, besides the Heathrow robber?”

“This never goes to Hugh English or anyone else.”

“I don’t like the sound of this.”

“It doesn’t matter whether you like it; this has to be done.”

“All right, I agree. Now, who does Lance think he is?”

“Maybe Teddy Fay.”

Pepper burst out laughing.

“No kidding.”

He stopped laughing. “He’s not dead?”

“I wish he were.”

“This is nuts.”

“Maybe so, but there it is. Prove he’s not Teddy. Prove he’s Barney Cox or anybody else. We have to know.”

Pepper sighed. “This might be fun, if it weren’t so crazy.”

“I hope you enjoy the experience.”

“Is that why you’re on St. Marks? To track down the maybe mythical Teddy Fay?”

“Yes.”

“Did Lance offer any suggestion as to how I am to proceed?”

“His view is that you’re here, on the ground, you have resources, and you know best how to use them.”

“Great, and what are you going to do?”

“Don’t go near Robertson; those are my instructions.”

“And who do I report my findings to?”

“Me. I’ll report to Lance.”

“This is very weird.”

“I can’t deny that.”

“You were sent here to find Teddy, but you’ve been told not to pursue your primary suspect? Or is he your primary suspect? Is there anybody else?”

“What do you think of Pemberton or Weatherby as suspects?”

“Jesus, I don’t know; I wasn’t looking for Teddy Fay when I checked them out.”

“How did they check out?”

“Okay; they had the usual paper trail; as far as I can tell, they’re who they say they are.”

“Have you ever seen either of them?”

“No; they’re snowbirds; they don’t spend all their time here.”

“Are they worth my pursuing them as suspects?”

“Well, apparently, you don’t have anything else to do.”

“Tell me what else you know about them.”

“Nothing—a criminal record, use of a false identity—has come up.”

“Please let me know if you hear anything else.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

“Bye.” Holly hung up, still pissed off that she wasn’t being allowed to investigate Robertson.

27

K
ate Lee arrived back at the White House, shed her Secret Service detail and went up to the family quarters. Her husband was sitting in front of the big flatscreen TV he had had installed, watching Katie Couric deliver the news. A commercial came on.

She kissed him. “You gave up the guys for a girl?” she asked, mixing them a drink at the bar concealed in the bookcases.

“I alternate,” he said. “If you were home in time to watch the news more often, you’d know that.”

“If I were home in time to watch the news, you wouldn’t talk to me until the news was over, anyway.”

“You have a point, as usual.” They touched glasses and drank.

“What are we doing for dinner?”

“I ordered a pizza.”

“What, we’re having dinner alone together
twice
in one week?”

“Amazing, isn’t it?”

The commercials ended, and Katie returned. Kate knew better than to talk before the news was over. Couric wrapped up simultaneously with the arrival of the pizza.

Will opened the box and looked at the pizza. “Shit,” he said.

“What?”

“Green peppers. I ordered the Extravaganza with no green peppers.”

Kate began picking out the green slivers and putting them aside. “I hope the voters that depend on green pepper growing for their livelihood don’t hear about this,” she said. “You’d never be reelected.”

“You could be right,” he said, picking up a green-pepper-free slice of pizza. “George Bush the elder said publicly that he hated broccoli, and look what happened to him.”

Kate went to the bar, opened a bottle of wine and returned with two glasses. “Maybe Teddy Fay is like the green peppers,” she said.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t order him, either.”

“I mean, maybe we should just ignore him.”

Will’s mouth was too full of pizza to respond immediately. He chewed for a minute, then swallowed. “You really think that? I thought your people were close to nailing him.”

“We’re just guessing.”

“Kate, the man has murdered a dozen people, among them a speaker of the house and a supreme court justice. We shouldn’t catch him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You knew before. What’s changed?”

“I don’t know. I just have a bad feeling about this.”

“You want to call off Lance Cabot and his people?”

“It might be the best thing.”

“Look at it this way: you’re testifying before a committee of Congress: you can testify, truthfully, that you did everything you could to catch him and failed. That’s not a great thing, but it’s not terrible, either.”

“It’s not terrible, if I testify to that
after
the election.”

Will ignored that remark. “But if you’re asked if you gave an order to stop pursuing him, and you answer truthfully, then we’re both in what I believe the most eminent political scientists refer to as deep shit.”

“Not if I answer that I became convinced, after a thorough search, that Teddy is dead.”

“If you thought he was dead, why were you conducting yet another search? That’s what Congress would ask.”

“You mean, now that we’ve started, we’re stuck with it?”

“I think we are, unless he turns up verifiably deceased.” He spat out a piece of green pepper. “You missed one. Why don’t you instruct your Technical Services Department to put together a device that detects green peppers on your pizza before you bite into them?”

Kate took a big bite of pizza to keep from talking, and they both ate quietly for a while.

“What happened today to make you feel bad about this?” Will asked.

“Teddy is creating internal problems for us. I’ve about decided to appoint Lance Cabot as DDO, but he’s had to go around Hugh English to deal with the Teddy thing, and Hugh doesn’t like being gone around.”

“Has he found out about it?”

“No, but Lance is using one of Hugh’s people on St. Marks, and it could get back to him.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and appoint Lance, retire Hugh English and get him out of there?”

“Because people like Hugh English don’t just dematerialize when they retire. If they find out they were unknowingly slighted when they were still at work, they end up giving television interviews and testifying to Congress about what a snake pit the Agency is and what a bitch I am, and it doesn’t do anybody any good.”

“Welcome to Washington,” Will said. “Look, all we can do with this or with anything else is to do what we think is right and let the chips fall where they may.”

She smiled, then leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “That’s what I love about you,” she said. “Your childlike belief that if you do what you think is right, everything will be okay.”

“Maybe that’s why I’m president of the United States,” he replied, taking another huge bite of pizza.

“There’s something else.”

“Oh, God, not something else,” Will muttered through his pizza.

“The Teddy thing is overlapping with a British thing.”