The Bancroft Strategy (25 page)

Belknap's gaze softened a little.
That makes two of us
, he thought. “I don't know whether I should believe you,” he replied warily, but he reholstered the pistol. “You called, I answered, you hung up. Let's start there.”

“Yeah, let's. Someone hangs up on you, so you travel halfway around the globe and hunt them down with a gun.” Andrea held his gaze. “I'd hate to see what you do when someone steals your parking space.”

Despite himself, Belknap laughed. “You've got the wrong idea.”

“Maybe we both do,” she said.

“And maybe,” Belknap said, tension entering his voice again, “there's a way to sort things out.”

She shook her head slowly: marveling, not dissenting. “Let me get this straight. You sent someone to my house in Carlyle. Um, checking to see if I removed a mattress tag illegally? Sorry, I'm still not getting this.”

“I had to know whether you were behind Jared Rinehart's abduction.”

“And Jared is…?”

“Jared?” He stopped.

“Because it's hard to follow without a scorecard.”

Belknap grimaced with impatience. “You know what? It doesn't really matter if you understand.”

“Doesn't matter to whom?”

“What matters is that we figure out why this cell number appears on that phone bill. That's what I'm going to need your help with.”

“Of course,” she said with a brittle smile. She tossed her curtain of blond hair back and gave him a hard look. “Now, you want to remind me again why I should give a shit?”

Belknap stared at her, anger mounting. “Goddammit,” he started. Yet she had a point to make: she had no idea what his concerns were, and he had no idea what hers were, either. “Okay, listen. There are security issues involved here. Highly classified information. I wish I could say more.”

“You're trying to say that you've got government clearance and I don't.”

“You got it.”

“What kind of an airhead do you take me for?”

“Huh?”

“You heard me. You're supposed to be some secret a gentman? Give me a goddamn break. I really don't think U.S. intelligence officers run their operations this way. Like, where's your team? Why are you by yourself? Best I can tell, you've got some Charles Bronson
Death Wish
thing going on and I just got caught in the middle of it. On the other hand, if I'm wrong, I'd be happy to meet you at your government offices and hash the whole thing out with your superiors.”

Belknap exhaled heavily. “Maybe we got started off on the wrong foot.”

“Oh, you
think
? What little social faux pas of yours did you have in mind? The part where you waved your pistol in my face and threatened to blow my brains out? Or the part where you practically crushed both my collarbones? Why don't we check Amy Vanderbilt's etiquette guide, see if either one violates any of her little rules?”

“Please listen to me. I'm not in the service right now. You called
that right. But I
was.
A career operative, okay? I don't expect any of this to make a lot of sense to you. I know a certain amount about you. You don't know anything about me. But maybe, just maybe, we can help each other.”

“How sweet. That makes everything all right, then.” Andrea Bancroft spoke with heavy sarcasm. “A goddamn psycho thinks we can be of mutual assistance. Break out the champagne.” Anger glinted from her eyes.

“You honestly think I'm a psycho?”

She stared at him for a long moment, then looked away. “No,” she said quietly. “Oddly enough, I don't.” She paused. “How about you? You honestly think I'm part of some conspiracy to kidnap your friend?”

“You wanna know the truth?”

“Might make a nice change.”

“I think probably you're not. But I also think it's a little too soon to say.”

“A man who's afraid to commit.” A mock simper. “The story of my life.”

“Tell me more about this foundation,” Belknap said. “What does it do, exactly?”

“What does it do? It's the Bancroft Foundation. It does…good deeds. Global public health, that kind of stuff.”

“Then why did you ask if I was from the foundation?”

“What? I'm sorry, I can't even think straight just now.” She put a hand on her forehead. “All of a sudden I'm feeling a little dizzy. I need to step out, just walk for a few minutes, breathe some fresh air, or I'm going to pass out. This has all been a lot to deal with.”

“Fine,” Belknap said mistrustfully. “Take some air.” Maybe she was telling the truth, but he had serious doubts. She might well be trying to collect herself while she contemplated a countermove. He would keep an eye on her as she walked through the copse of firs, alert to any sudden movements. At the same time, he did not want her to feel
that she had been taken prisoner; if her account was honest—and his instincts told him that, for the most part, it was—he might indeed need to gain her confidence.

She had her back to him, was walking, shoeless, in a steady, deliberate gait, and when she finally circled back, he could tell from her face, instantly, that something had changed. In his mind, he replayed what he had seen, and not seen, and, in a flash, he knew. She had her purse with her, had dialed 911 from her cell phone, had murmured a distress call into it.

“Shall we go?” Belknap asked her.

“In a few minutes,” she said. “My stomach, you know. All this stress. I just need to settle down. Do you mind?”

“Why should I mind?” He took a step toward her and, in a sudden movement, plunged a hand into her purse and retrieved her small cell phone. He mashed two keys, got the
DIALED CALLS
log to display. Just as he thought: The first number to appear was 911. He tossed the phone to her. “Summoning the cavalry?”

Again, she held his gaze. “You said you needed help. I figured we'd get some professionals on the case.” There was only the faintest quaver in her voice.

Dammit!
From a distance—but not a great distance—he heard the siren of a patrol car.

He threw the car keys on the ground.

“Did I do something wrong?” she ask, a trace of a taunt in her voice. She turned toward the highway.

The siren grew louder.

Raleigh, North Carolina

Andrea Bancroft finally checked into her hotel two hours later than she had expected to.
The trip from hell,
she thought mordantly.

She remembered how relieved she felt when she heard the sirens, how she had turned toward the highway, and how, when she turned back, the burly man had vanished. It was eerie: She hadn't heard a thing, no sounds of a man scrambling, no huffing or puffing. One moment he was there; the next moment he was gone. It was like a conjurer's trick. No doubt it could all be easily explained. For one thing, she noticed that the ground was covered not with leaves but pine needles, which dampened sound while making hardly any noise when stepped on. Plus, the man had claimed to be an “operative,” whatever that was, exactly. Maybe this was the kind of thing they were trained to do.

“Your credit card, ma'am,” prompted the woman at the desk—auburn hair teased high, a sprinkling of light acne on her cheeks.

Andrea took the card back and signed the form she was given. Not at the Radisson, where she had planned to stay, but at the Doubletree. There seemed little chance that the man would chance another meeting—if he had any sense, that was the last thing he'd want—but the elementary precaution seemed prudent.

The police made every appearance of being helpful, but they clearly regarded her account with a certain skepticism, which only deepened when they tried to check it out. She had claimed that she had been picked up by a driver, and yet they were able to determine, with just a couple of phone calls, that the car was actually a rental.
Not only that, but the records say you're the one who rented it, Ms. Bancroft.

They started to ask questions that seemed designed to elicit a “relationship” with the stranger. And some of the details she reported did not go over well.
You're saying he just disappeared?
And how was it that she didn't get his name, if she seemed to know so many odd facts about him? After an hour in the District 23 police station on Atlantic Avenue, she almost felt that she had been the suspect, not the victim. The policemen's Southern politeness scarcely wavered, but she could tell that she represented an unwelcome kind of anomaly. Further inquiries would be made with the rental car company, they promised. Prints would be taken from the vehicle, and her own prints would be recorded for elimination purposes. They were to let her know if there were any developments. But it was plain that, from their point of view, the likeliest explanation was that they were dealing with a hysteric.

At the fifth floor, she let the bellhop point out the bathroom and closets and let him go with his tip. She unzipped her overnight bag, hung its contents in the closet near the door, and then turned back to the window.

She felt her heart miss a beat an instant before she realized why.

The man. The burly man with the gun.
He was in her room.
Silhouetted by the window. Arms folded on his chest.

She knew she should run, should turn around and race out of her hotel room. Yet the man was standing perfectly still, not posing an obvious threat. She fought down the panic fluttering in her chest. She could remain another few seconds without worsening her odds, and perhaps she might learn something of value.

“Why are you here?” she asked stonily. She could have asked him
how
he got there, but she had a better chance of working that out on her own. He must have been hiding behind the heavily lined drapes gathered to one side of the window when she came in. He could have called all the major hotels in the area, learned that she was staying here, and obtained her designated room by means of some simple ruse. No, how was not the hard question. The hard question was why.

“Just picking up where we left off,” the man replied. “We weren't introduced properly. The name's Todd Belknap.”

Andrea felt another jolt of panic. Her eyes widened. “You're a stalker.”

“What?”

“You've got some kind of sick sexual fixation—”

“Don't flatter yourself.” The man cut her off with a contemptuous snort. “You're not my type.”

“Then—”

“And you're not a very good listener, either.”

“The whole abduction-at-gunpoint thing was kind of distracting.” Her eyes narrowed. Curiously, her sense of fear was ebbing. She could turn around and flee—she knew that. Yet somehow she felt no direct sense of threat.
Play out the line a little,
she told herself. “Look, I'm sorry I called the cops,” she lied.

“Are you? I don't know that I am.” The man's deep baritone was calm and commanding. “It told me something.”

“How do you mean?”

“It's exactly the kind of damn-fool thing that a clueless civilian would do. I don't think you're duping me. Not anymore. I think
you've
been duped.”

Andrea was quiet, but her thoughts were loud, clamoring for her attention. Finally she spoke. “I'm listening now. Tell me again who that cell phone belongs to. The one whose number I got from the foundation's records.”

“It belonged to a man who was in the killing business. A professional, combat-seasoned killer.”

“Why would anybody at the Bancroft Foundation call anybody like that?”

“You tell me.”

“I don't know.”

“Yet you don't seem utterly shocked.”

“I am shocked,” she said. “Just not…utterly.”

“All right, then.”

“You said you were a career operative. Who can I call at whatever your place of employment was?” A tight-lipped smile.

“You want references?”

“Something like that. Is that a problem?”

He gave her an appraising look. “First, why don't
I
call the Bancroft Foundation? Ask what you're doing here down here. More specifically, Research Triangle Park. Your initial reservation was at the RTP Radisson, after all.”

“That might not be a good idea,” Andrea said.

A chilly smile. “Then we seem to be at an impasse.”

“This conversation is over.”

“Is it?” Again, the man did not move. It was as if he realized that his absolute stillness was the only thing that convinced her to postpone flight. “From where I stand, it hasn't really started. In the past couple of hours, I've had a chance to think some about our encounter, starting with different premises. A man threatens you with a gun. You ask him whether the Bancroft Foundation sent him. What does this tell me? That there's something about this institution that worries you. Something that makes you fear the worst. Whatever that is, it stands to reason, is connected to this sudden trip to RTP. You booked the tickets the same day you boarded the flight. That's a little irregular. You're looking for something, same as me.”

“What I'm looking for isn't the same as what you're looking for.”

“There could be a connection.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no.”

“Until I know more, I'm bound to agree with that. Let's explore the ‘maybe yes' possibility.” The man gestured toward a nearby chair. “May I sit down?”

“This is crazy,” Andrea said. “I don't know who you really are. You're asking me to take chances I have no reason to take.”

“My friend Jared used to say, ‘Roll the dice, or you're not in the game.' Let's say you and I go our separate ways. We never see each
other again. And so we missed our one chance to set things right for both of us. My point is, missing a chance is another way of taking a chance, and sometimes the worst one.”

“I'll let you sit down,” Andrea finally said, “but you can't stay here.”

“Got news for you, Andrea Bancroft. You better not stay here, either.”

 

The couple who checked into a nearby Marriott used neither the name Bancroft nor the name Belknap, and the shared room resulted not from intimacy but the simple demands of security. The two, for all their lingering mistrust, had recognized each other as fellow seekers; the conversation had to continue.

Communication did not result in clarity, however. Any hope that the two accounts would match like two adjoining pieces of a jigsaw puzzle soon evaporated. Instead of answers, they found themselves confronting a deepening mystery.

Paul Bancroft. Was
he
Genesis? Going by her account, he struck Belknap as a figure of extraordinary benevolence, or perhaps the opposite. The resources he commanded, not to mention his intellectual capacities, could make him an incredible ally or adversary.

“So Genesis was the code name of the guy who started this Inver Brass,” Belknap repeated.

“Or more like a title. It referred to whoever happened to be in charge at any time.”

“Inver Brass—could someone have revived it?”

Andrea shrugged.

“Could Paul Bancroft have done so?”

“I guess so. Though he sounded pretty disapproving when he talked about the whole organization, pretty disapproving when he talked about Genesis. Not that that proves anything.”

“A friend of mine liked to say that all saints must be considered
guilty until proven innocent,” Belknap mused. He had stretched out on one of the two beds.

“He was quoting Orwell.” Andrea had seated herself on a fake antique chair by a fake antique secretary desk. By her elbow was a scattering of colorful pamphlets about activities in the nearby cities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. The phrase “family fun” received a considerable workout. “I'm going to have to reserve judgment. Maybe there's an innocent explanation. Maybe it's all some big misunderstanding. Maybe…” She gave him a sharp look. “It's on your say-so, about the man in Dubai. Maybe you're making it up.”

“Why would I?”

“How the hell would I know? I'm just enumerating possibilities. I'm not taking sides.”

“Well, stop.”

“Stop? Stop what?”

“Stop not taking sides.”

The set of the woman's jaw suggested resolve and displeasure. “Listen, it's late. I'm going to take a shower now. Why don't you order room service for us? We'll eat, and then—we'll figure something out. But dammit, if you're going to keep me prisoner, at least give me my own cell.”

“Not gonna happen. And it's for your own good, believe me. You could be in danger.”

She knitted her brows. “For the love of God…”

“Don't worry. I'm not going to use your toothbrush.”

“That isn't what I'm talking about, and you know it,” she snapped.

“I just prefer knowing you're where I can see you.”

“Is that what you prefer? How about what
I
prefer?” Andrea slammed the bathroom door behind her.

As he heard the shower start, he picked up a phone and called an old contact of his at Cons Ops sig intel. Her name was Ruth Robbins, and she had started out at the State Department's INR, the intelligence and research bureau. It was Belknap who had gotten her a
promotion and arranged to have her transferred to the more exclusive conclave that was Consular Operations. He had recognized her wit, her judgment, instincts that went beyond the mere ability to collate and compare. In some ways, he recognized a kindred spirit, even though her natural domain was not the field but the office, the realm of cables and transmissions and computers. Now in her fifties, she was a heavyset woman with a sensibility as astringent as witch hazel. She had raised two boys on her own—her husband, a military man, had been killed in a training exercise—and had a maternal eye for the foibles of the male-dominated establishment in which she had made her career.

“Castor,” she said when she heard his voice. “Always meant to ask—was it the
oil
you were named for?” There was warmth beneath the witticism. It was irregular to have phoned her at home, but she understood the urgency at once. “Just a sec,” she said, and though she was obviously covering the mouthpiece with her hand, he could still hear her call out, “That's enough television, young man! Time to march yourself to bed, and no back talk!” A brief pause. Then she got on the phone again: “You were saying?”

Quickly, Belknap mentioned a few key words, a few indices of his current conundrum. At the name Genesis, he could hear her sharp intake of breath.

“Listen, Castor, I can't talk on the phone. But yes, we do have that term in our databanks—there's a history there. And yes, we've recently intercepted some chatter having to do with Genesis after years of silence. You know the procedures in our shop—I couldn't get in after hours if I wanted to. But when I'm logged in tomorrow morning, I'll do an all-sources review. Not something to be discussed over an open line—I'm probably already in violation.”

“We need to meet, then.”

“I don't think so.” There was unease in her voice.

“Ruth, please.”

“It would be my ass. If I'm spotted having lunch with you, the way
things are, I could get decertified. End up sorting underwear at one of the training facilities.”

“Noon tomorrow,” Belknap said.

“You're not hearing me.”

“Rock Creek Park. A public, safe meet, okay? A brief encounter. Nobody will ever learn about it. Remember the bridle trail by the ravine at the east? I'll see you there. Don't be late.”

“Dammit, Castor,” Robbins said, but there was acquiescence in her voice.

Ruth Robbins was a riding enthusiast, he knew, and often spent her lunch hour on the trails in Rock Creek Park—two thousand forested acres in northwest Washington. It was prudent to choose a regular haunt of hers: There would be nothing out of the ordinary for anyone to notice, and she could give a truthful account of her movements if there were ever an inquiry. But it was also a location where they were unlikely to be observed.

He could take an early flight into Ronald Reagan or Dulles and be there in plenty of time. He stretched out on the sofa and willed himself to sleep; his field-honed ability to sleep at will was proving less reliable these days. He lay awake in the darkened room, conscious of Andrea Bancroft's breathing in the bed several feet away. She was pretending to be asleep, as was he, and what seemed like hours passed before consciousness waned. He dreamed of loss. Of Yvette, taken from him before she was truly his own. Of Louisa, blown up during an operation in Belfast. A procession of faces flitted through the recesses of his mind: friends and lovers he had survived, friends and lovers who had left him behind. Only one had stayed with him through the years, Pollux to his Castor.