"Should I believe her?" she asked carefully.
"The car was there the next day, too!"
"When exactly was this?"
"After I ballocked the board meeting. After I threatened to write to the papers, talk to you." His breathing was louder than his voice.
She pushed her hair away from her face. The place seemed suddenly hot and noisy with empty conversations. Yet it was the wine bar that should have seemed normal, Banks' accusations wild and improbable.
Except for Michael Lloyd's body on the carpet, seen through his letter box, and a girl followed twice by a strange, anonymous car, and two cases of arson.
"When were the fires?"
"Afterwards."
After I threatened to… talk to you, she remembered, her stomach fluttery.
Whatever you do, do nothing, Kenneth Aubrey had pleaded.
Kenneth's world had been very real for forty-five years, for the duration of the Cold War. It had been her father's world in part, too.
It had never impinged on her until that moment. Now, the sense of threat was palpable, as if she had become one of Kenneth's agents, and had placed herself in some vague but immediate danger.
"You bloody come and see what a pig's ear the whole bloody project is behind the fancy facade!" Banks challenged.
"Come and see for yourself then tell me where all the bloody money's gone!"
The office of the deputy director of the NTSB, Jack Pierstone, was on one of the middle floors of the Federal Aviation Administration building on Independence Avenue. Its windows looked towards the Smithsonian, then across to the Mall, the Washington Monument and the Ellipse. The view was like an enhanced, wide screen version of that from his own cramped office. The Washington Monument was bathed in a reddish-gold glow and the part of the Reflection Pool he could see looked like the strip on the reverse of a credit card.
Gant stood stiffly to attention, as if before a military hearing of braided and bemedalled senior officers. He'd done that, too, more than once. Jack Pierstone was having more problems than those senior officers, floundering and blustering as he tried to find the words with which to fire a hero.
'… didn't need this kind of publicity-seeking, this idea we offer insurance and backing to failing airline manufacturers," Pier-stone was saying as Gant continued to stare over his head at Washington.
He offered no assistance, no mitigation, but stood as unmoving as when, all those years ago, a general had hung the Medal of Honor around his neck. He was waiting until whatever was to happen to him was over. His eyes were narrowed against the low sun, not against the situation.
Vance had screwed up his life once more. The thought was as quick as the spurt of blood from a fresh wound. Then, almost at once, the cynicism of the thought What Ye stilled any sensation of pain.
"You took totally unreasonable and unsanctioned risks. You played personalities with this thing." Pierstone's voice was becoming stronger with the outrage of embarrassment and self-justification.
"The TV business it was like an endorsement. You had no authorisation to interfere with a South-Western accident investigation or to wilfully disobey standard procedures. Allot which come before the FBI's allegations…" Once again, the engine of his indignation was on the point of stalling. Gant realised that Pierstone had looked at him and seen again the uniform and the medal, maybe even the flying suit.
"I have to suspend you, Mitchell. These are serious charges, especially the FBI investigation. I can't do anything less."
Gant allowed the silence to continue, to build like the approach of a storm.
Eventually, he said quietly: I'll resign, Jack. It's easier all around." He did not look at Pierstone's small, coiled frame behind the desk, preferring the images of the Smithsonian and the spike of the Monument and the reddish glow of the sun. The thin clouds above the city had moved away like slow fish during the minutes of the interview.
Pierstone cleared his throat, fidgeted with papers on his desk.
"I don't know—"
"Yes, you do, Jack. If this had been for Boeing or McDonnell, maybe a blind eye would have been turned. For an airplane-maker important enough to the economy, we'd have been there like locusts. And hell, why not? It's all for the country and we can wrap ourselves in the flag. It's our job, our patriotic duty, to help out.
Unless it's someone like Vance, maybe—" That's unfair and you know it!"
"Maybe it is. Besides, Jack, you can't be expected to override the Bureau. The FBI could be waiting on Independence Avenue right now to make an arrest. Nobody in Federal employment needs that kind of publicity."
Gant looked down at the desk for the first time. Tiny images of the sun, the museum and the Monument were superimposed for a moment on Pierstone's forehead and cheeks like tattoos.
"I resign, Jack. I'll put it in writing and take my chances with Mclntyre. He's not too bright maybe he'll screw up the investigation, who knows?" His smile was wintry.
"He's just motivated by his own failings, after all. The only reason he didn't get to "Nam was for medical reasons, otherwise he'd have been the first to volunteer. You know how the song goes, Jack."
Pierstone himself had flown in "Nam earlier in the undeclared war than Gant himself, flying bombing missions from offshore carriers. Before the US had gotten into defoliation and bombing Cambodia and the Ho Chi Minh trail. Pierstone, as if the past were some kind of bond between them, grinned sourly and nodded.
"Sure."
I'll go draft a letter."
"OK, Mitchell. I'm — er, sorry…"
"I know."
Gant turned away from the windows and the desk and the man behind it.
At the door, he heard Pierstone murmur:
"You take care, you hear."
Gant waved his hand without turning round.
"Sure."
Even before the door closed behind him, he felt the awareness of another failure surround him like a sudden, thick mist. Another screw-up in a life with more past than future. He passed through the outer office and into the corridor with quick, somehow leaden footsteps.
As he waited for the elevator to the foyer, he felt he wanted to silently scream. He could not be certain whether its cause was Mclntyre's malice, Vance's ox-dumb stupidity in paying money into his bank account, or the sensation of the empty apartment that waited for him. That, and the sense of the aimless days he would be spending there.
CHAPTER FIVE
Social and Anti-Social The effect of money had worn away as easily as that of a sedative. Strickland once more confronted his fear of hurry.
Because of urgency, he had had to fly into Oslo's Fornebu airport direct, rather than to Stockholm or Copenhagen, or even Bergen, where he could have approached the target obliquely and anonymously.
He had disguised his departure from France by flying from Bordeaux to
Geneva, then by changing flights and airlines again at Frankfurt before the journey to Oslo.
But, somewhere, for someone who might look, there was the record of his arrival at Fornebu, the scene of his sabotage. Even with a false passport and identity, a stooping walk and greyed hair and a moustache that aged him a decade, he had arrived in Oslo.
He sat in the arrivals lounge, sweating in his crumpled linen suit, his cabin bag beside him, regretting with venomous bitterness the greed so it seemed to him now that had swept aside his habitual, talismanic caution, his profound resolve that he did not work on site, he must be always hands-off. It was his only, but his adamantine, rule of engagement; his code of professional conduct. It had been forged in the aftermath of a debacle when not only had his own bomb almost killed him but the opposition had been waiting for him. Since then, he had always created while others placed his devices in position. He should not have broken his own code…