The Kill Order (11 page)

16

G
riffin had spent the night at Lisette’s, because Marc and Donovan were out on a surveillance that took most of the night. He drew the second watch, slept in late, and when he awoke, showered, and went in search of coffee, Lisette was sitting at the kitchen table, looking at Sydney’s sketch. The TV was on, but the sound off. Piper was still asleep.

He poured himself a fresh cup. “Marc’s not back yet?”

“Should be here any time.” She held up her mug. “And yes, I’d love a refill.”

He took her mug, topped it off, then brought it back to her.

“No eggs with my coffee?”

“How do you take them?”

“I was kidding. I’m not expecting you to cook me something.”

“Well, I’m fixing myself some anyway.”

“Scrambled, then.” She slid the rubber band off that morning’s newspaper, shook it open, then made a scoffing noise as she perused the front page. “I’ll bet this ruins McNiel’s weekend.”

“What does?”

“The president’s announcement to appoint Parker Kane as the deputy national security adviser.”

“He’s a firm believer in not only knowing your enemy, but also knowing what part of the government they’re working in at any given time.”

“Who would have guessed that Manuel Torrance would have to step down after being caught in an extramarital affair while on the job?”

Griffin walked over, looked at the paper. “Talk about conspiracy theory. I heard that Parker Kane introduced the two of them. Torrance and his flame.”

“You think he did it on purpose? Set Torrance up?”

“This is Washington. Would you put it past him? What I can’t understand is why someone in Torrance’s position would ever compromise himself to begin with, so that the Parker Kanes of the world can swoop in and take advantage of it.”

“They can’t help themselves,” she said, handing him the newspaper. “Position of power, and suddenly women are throwing themselves at their feet? They’re not used to being . . . what’s the term you American men are so fond of? Chick magnets. It goes to the wrong head.”

Piper’s bedroom door opened, and Griffin bit back the sarcastic retort, saying instead, “Too bad. He wasn’t a bad adviser. Let’s hope that Kane makes his peace with McNiel once he is appointed.”

Griffin tossed the paper onto the kitchen table, as Piper walked in. “Making some scrambled eggs. You want some?”

She shook her head. “Lisette said there was cornflakes. I’d rather have that if it’s okay?”

“Cornflakes it is.” He handed the box to her, as well as a bowl, spoon, and then the milk from the refrigerator. “Coffee?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She took everything over to the table, sitting next to Lisette where she could see the TV. Suddenly she stood, knocking over the cereal box in her haste. “That’s him!”

“Him who?” Griffin asked, momentarily confused. Her gaze was riveted on the television screen.

“That Brooks guy you’re looking for.”

Griffin eyed the television, saw a short film clip of Parker Kane standing with a bevy of other political hotshots in the background while the newscaster announced that he was most likely next in line to take Torrance’s spot as deputy national security adviser.

When Griffin glanced at Lisette, she sat there, looking as stunned as he felt.

The girl had to be mistaken, and he watched her closely, looking for some sign that she was lying, making this up. “Why do you say that?”

“Because I know who I saw. And I saw him.” She got up, walked toward the television. “Who is he? Why is he on TV?”

There was a knock at the door, and Lisette said, “That’s got to be Marc. I’ll get it.”

Griffin glanced toward the door, then back at Piper. “It is very, very important that you don’t discuss with
anyone
what you saw at your friend’s shop or on the TV just now, do you understand?”

She didn’t answer.

He walked up to her and leaned over. “We are going to investigate this thing, but what you
think
you saw complicates things.”

“How? Why can’t you just arrest him?”

“If this is the man you saw, we’re all in danger. We can’t protect you if you don’t do exactly as we say, and right now I need you
not
to say anything to anyone. Until I say so. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

Lisette gave Marc a kiss when he walked in.

“Sorry about the delay,” he told her. Then to Griffin, “Thanks for covering.”

“Actually it worked out for the best. Lisette? Hope you don’t mind if I skip making the eggs?”

“I’ll get over it.”

“Why the rush?” Marc asked.

Griffin grabbed his things on his way to the door. “Because we are now in way deeper than we ever thought.”

“How so?”

Griffin showed him the photo on the front page.

“What about him?”

“Brooks.”

“
The
Brooks?”

“That’s who Piper thinks he is. Saw him on TV.”

“She has to be wrong.”

“We’ll obviously have to verify that. Sydney did a drawing. Before any of us saw the news.” He pulled the sketchbook from his bag and showed it to Marc. Sure, there was a resemblance. But who would ever suspect a man like Parker Kane?

Marc whistled softly. “That is what you call a game changer, no?”

“Definitely. I’m on my way to inform McNiel.”

“Better you than me.”

Griffin called McNiel the moment he drove out of the parking garage. “I need to see you at the office.”

“Is there some reason whatever this is can’t be dealt with over the phone? I’m just leaving the White House and I have a couple of stops I need to make first.”

“You’re going to want to see this.”

“Give me half an hour.”

ATLAS Headquarters

M
cNiel was waiting in his office when Griffin arrived. “The least you could do is bring me coffee,” he told Griffin. “Tex does.”

“Do I look like Tex?”

“Not even close. It’s been a bad morning. So what do you have?”

“Sydney’s sketch.” Griffin pulled out the book, flipped the cover up, then turned the pad so McNiel could see it.

“This is who the girl saw?”

“Yes.”

“Brooks?”

“Allegedly.”

“And do we have someone in mind as a suspect, because I’m not seeing anything pop out.”

“Parker Kane.”

McNiel stared in disbelief. When the momentary shock apparently wore off, he said, “Okay, it
resembles
him, but it also resembles any number of gray-haired men in their early fifties.”

“The girl has no idea who he is. She saw
him
on TV. She might be a liar and a thief, but I don’t think she could fake a reaction like that.”

“She’s young, impressionable, and you know as well as I that you throw faces at someone, memory is fragile.”

“Top right corner. Read Sydney’s notes. She described him to a T.”

McNiel took the pad from him, read the notes, then set it down on his desk. “
If
this is Kane, and trust me, I’d like nothing better than to bring him down, I don’t think we have a snowball’s chance in hell of proving our case before he’s appointed.” He stared at the drawing for several more seconds. “Thank God we didn’t have this conversation before my meeting this morning. I ran into Kane when I was leaving the building.”

“He knows about her?”

“Someone forwarded the report. He knows about her, but
not
about her eidetic memory.”

“What if someone tells him?”

McNiel paused as though considering the matter. “I don’t think they will. And definitely not before his appointment is made.”

“So what should we do about the sketch?”

“We can’t let anyone see this. Most of all Kane. If it is him, if he
was
there, last thing we need is to spook him, because
he’s
going to see himself even if no one else does. As for the rest of the intelligence world, this does us no good. We need a solid case with irrefutable evidence. He has a lot of powerful friends in the government who wouldn’t think twice about shutting us down if they thought we were stepping out of line. We’re already close enough to the brink as it is.”

“You think they’d go that far?”

“Much farther,” McNiel said. “For over twenty years I’ve been searching for this man, and he’s been right in front of us. No wonder he’s slipped through our fingers every time we’ve gotten close. He’s been here. Watching us. Safe and secure that we were clueless, while he monitored our every step.” He took a breath, his gaze fixed on the sketch. “Our only saving grace these last several years was that the right hand doesn’t talk to the left, so we’ve actually managed to keep a few secrets.”

“And we now are holding on to the one person who can ID Kane in the vicinity of a crime connected to him.”

“Her life’s not worth a damn if he thinks she’ll be able to place him at the scene.” McNiel picked up the sketch. “If it is him, we’ve been searching for Brooks because
that’s
the name we’ve heard. His middle name is Bruxton. ”

“B-R-U-X?” Griffin doubted he would have ever made the connection if not for the sketch. “I’m guessing we don’t want that spelling of Brooks mentioned outside this room.”

“Definitely not. We have a very small and fragile window to investigate this.” He tossed the sketchbook onto his desk. “General Woodson’s right. This girl you picked up is a walking time bomb. Just not in the way we expected.”

“One advantage. Kane doesn’t know that we have the sketch.
Or
that she identified him.”

“If he has any idea that we have this . . . she’s dead.”

“And what happens if he discovers she has a head full of numbers that he probably wants? Especially if he finds out what she’s capable of?”

“Good point,” McNiel said. “Either way,
we’re
dead.”

Donovan walked in at that moment, Griffin having called him in right after he phoned McNiel. “Pretty serious in here. Something happen while I was gone?”

McNiel showed him the sketch. “It’s Kane.”

“
Parker
Kane? Holy . . .” He sat, stared at the drawing, shaking his head. “I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around this.” They all were, and the three of them studied the sketch for several seconds, until Donovan broke the silence. “Okay . . . so, what’s the plan of action?”

McNiel let out a slow breath, as though trying for some sense of calm. “This couldn’t be any worse. Here I was worried about Thorndike, when I took the lot of you from the CIA. Kane was just a pompous ass. I always thought it was a grudge thing. Sour grapes on Kane’s part, because I was given ATLAS and he wasn’t. Apparently I was wrong.”

Griffin thought about the implications of such an appointment. ATLAS, being an entirely covert group, had a certain autonomy not afforded to other government agencies. “Imagine if Kane
had
been appointed instead.”

Donovan gave a cynical laugh. “And here we thought keeping the right hand from knowing what the left is doing was a bad way of running the government.”

“Exactly what I said,” McNiel replied. “Now that I’ve had time to think about it, what about those times when we
have
shared? How many operations has he managed to sabotage? We have no idea what he’s been privy to.”

“So we assume he’s been privy to a lot,” Griffin said.

McNiel eyed the drawing. “He’s had twenty years to gain the upper hand. Twenty years of watching our every move in the investigation of W2. What better way to stop us than shut us down?”

“You think he’ll try that?” Donovan asked.

“It’s not only a matter of when, but how. Budget cuts? Merger? Sudden plane crash with all of us aboard? Piper saw him, and he knows we have her. He’s been threatened in a big way. His advantage is that he knows we won’t say a thing until we have proof, and the word of a twenty-year-old girl with a police record is not going to cut it. I can tell you this. Once he’s appointed, our days are numbered.”

“Then we get to him before he gets to us.”

“I wish it were that easy. God help us if anyone who is working with him learns we are looking into this,” McNiel said. “Therein lies our biggest problem. We don’t know who we can even bring in.”

“We can trust Pearson.”

“If this goes south, Pearson’s greatest advantage will be staying well away from us.”

“Hell,” Donovan said. “We have to go public. This drawing goes out to everyone. We state who we think it is—not that it’s Parker Kane—that it’s Brooks.”

“No,” McNiel said. “I’ve already thought of and dismissed that idea.”

“Why? At least if something happens to us, it’s on record.”

“He’s had the president’s ear over the last three years, never mind where he’s worked. You’re talking decades of having a spy in the midst. What administration is going to want that to come out?”

Donovan gave a sarcastic laugh. “Which administration
hasn’t
had a spy in their midst? What about Miles Cavanaugh? He was actually advising the president in security matters.”

“Not for very long.
And
he’s conveniently dead, which makes it easy for the president’s office to close the book with none the wiser. This . . .” McNiel shook his head.