She moved back into the rabbit warren of cubicles, rapping loudly on the partition separating her from the nearest Bureau tech. “I need everything you can get me on this number,” she ordered, shoving the phone toward him. “I need to know if it’s a cell. I need location history. Everything.”
“How soon do you need it?” the young man asked, taking a glance at the screen of his own phone.
“Yesterday,” came the acid reply.
A warm breeze drifting across the terrace. The shadow of a man falling across her table. A man old before his time, worn by the decades. Made old by sorrow.
An awkward half-smile. “It’s been so many years.”
Carol closed her eyes, remembering that first time — the first meal she had shared with her father after her arrival at Langley. Lunch there at the Ardeo in Cleveland Park.
That smile.
Alive. It was impossible, as impossible as his death had been a few short days earlier. She seemed to move as in a dream, afraid of waking. Afraid that, even yet, his tenuous hold on life might be broken.
“I need to go to him,” she whispered, more to herself than anyone else in the room.
Richards shook his head, glancing over at Thomas Parker. “I can’t do that. Sorry.”
Thomas cleared his throat. “The director needs to remain in complete isolation until either his…injuries have healed to the point where we can move him without risk, or the threat against him has been eliminated.”
“My orders,” Tex said, walking over to where Harry sat, “are to get you back to Camp Peary. No idea how to do that with the hornets’ nest you’ve stirred up. The roads to LAX are a nightmare.”
Harry glanced down at his cuffed hands, the zip ties cutting into the flesh of his wrists.
He had escaped from them before, it wasn’t hard. But this wasn’t something he could fight his way out of. Not without dropping the hammer on men that had followed him into hell.
Prioritize. “That’s the least of your worries,” he announced, looking up into his friend’s eyes.
The Texan took a cautious step back, wary of guile. Of danger. “Go on.”
“Tarik Abdul Muhammad is in-country. In Vegas.”
“Is he planning an attack?”
From across the room, Han spoke for the first time. “That’s the general impression.”
Silence. Kranemeyer exhaled, watching as his breath evaporated into the darkness of the surrounding trees. A brook gurgled beneath the snow-covered footbridge upon which he stood, icy water splashing over the rocks.
He stared off toward the small parking lot, the single light there providing the only illumination to be seen.
Foxstone Park was no stranger to treachery, to deceit.
It had once been a favorite haunt of Soviet FBI mole Robert Hanssen, up until his arrest in 2001. It was also only a scant three miles from Senator Coftey’s Washington-area residence.
The sound of a vehicle from the entry road, lights swinging through the trees. Kranemeyer drew his H&K, holding it out to his side as an SUV pulled into the parking lot. Its lights dimmed, then went out completely as a man emerged, his form swathed in a heavy overcoat.
Kranemeyer heard the sound of the driver’s side door being closed, watched as the figure strode through the sleet toward him.
“Given the history of this place, I’d compliment your sense of irony, but I thought I made myself clear, Barney. Better for both of us if we give each other a wide berth. No calls, no meetings.”
“You did,” Kranemeyer replied, looking the senator full in the face. “Shapiro and Haskel are dead.”
Coftey blanched. “Haskel?”
“As far as it takes, Roy,” came the grim rejoinder. “Or were those just words?”
The older man shook his head, his face hardening. “No…it’s time people were taught a lesson. Have you covered your tracks?”
“I used three phones over the course of the evening. All of them at the bottom of the Potomac now. Director Haskel was the victim of a stroke and—”
“I don’t need details. Why am I here?”
The DCS extracted the thumb drive from the pocket of his trench coat. “This isn’t over.”
“Who?”
“Roger Hancock.”
A string of curses escaped Coftey’s lips. “Do you realize what you’re saying?”
“He was willing to sacrifice a nation on the altar of ‘peace,’ Roy. He was willing to kill my men to conceal his treason. And he’s skating toward a second term. I want him brought down.” Kranemeyer paused, letting his words hang there between them. “You…or me?”
The implication couldn’t have been more clear, but he could see the hesitation in the senator’s eyes. The President.
They were standing on the edge of a precipice — long way down.
Coftey reached over, taking the USB drive from his hand with a heavy sigh. “Never been one for idle talk, Barney. Let’s burn it down.”
Chapter 23
The room seemed to swirl around him, dragging him down into the abyss. Pain — fire shooting through his body.
Fear. He looked down to see something dark, red, staining the front of his tailored shirt.
A stain pulsating, spreading ever wider with every beat of his heart.
Hancock came awake with the sound of the clock striking midnight, his eyes opening almost convulsively, his heart thudding against his ribs. Again.
His eyes darted around the darkened bedroom as he struggled to calm himself, a slick sheen of sweat covering his chest, his fingers entwined in the sheets.
Danger. He swung his legs out until his feet touched the floor, casting a brief glance back at the undisturbed, still-sleeping form of the woman who shared his bed.
Drawing his housecoat around him, the president padded barefoot into the adjoining bathroom, staring at his reflection in the mirror. Hollow eyes gazed back, rimmed with darkness. People were starting to notice, first among them the woman who did his makeup.
His fingers dug into the rim of the countertop as he forced his breathing to slow. He was the safest man in the world. The Secret Service made sure of that.
But if they knew…what then?
And Valentin Andropov was dead, butchered by that rogue CIA officer. The one variable no one had seen coming.
Variable? They had all been variables, leading him down this road. To this place. Hancock closed his eyes, swearing softly. What had happened to him?
“I know what you’ve done.” The voice of David Lay, drifting through his mind. That morning in the Oval Office, two weeks after Election Day. “I don’t know why — not yet, but I have the evidence of your treason.”
The words that had sealed his fate.
“Kranemeyer still isn’t answering his phone.” Tex looked up from the laptop as Thomas re-entered the room, cellphone in hand. “I tried the back-up number as well — no joy.”