He jerked away and turned on her, his eyes red and angry. He shouted, “You were supposed to protect us!”
The outburst made her jump. “Keep your voice down.” She imagined that the paint on the walls was thicker than the walls themselves.
“If you’d done your job, none of this would have happened!”
“Graham, that’s not true.” As she spoke, she wondered if agreeing and shouldering the blame might have been the smarter move, might have defused things.
“This is your fault, Jolaine.”
“You have to keep your voice down,” she whispered. “We’re in a lot of trouble here. You have to—”
“Don’t tell me what I have to do! You can’t tell me what I have to do. You work for us, remember? We tell you what to do. And right now, I’m telling you to go to hell!”
He stormed into the bathroom and slammed the door.
Jolaine made a move to stop him, to explain, but stopped herself. He had every right to be angry. He was scared. Everything he knew was coming unglued. The trauma and the loss were at a scale that was beyond his imagination. If the only way for him to process that was by lashing out at her, then what was the harm? She wasn’t here to be liked, after all. She was here to do her job.
As the water came on in the shower, Jolaine moved to the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed nearest the door. A call to the police might end this whole thing. Why did that seem so wrong?
Her mind replayed the events of the past hours — the past days. She remembered the building tension in the house, the quiet, intense conversations between Bernard and Sarah. The stifling sense of paranoia, particularly in the past five days.
Clearly, they knew that their family was in danger. If the solution were really as simple as a phone call, why hadn’t Bernard or Sarah made it? And if the reason for all of the mayhem was the string of numbers Graham had swirling through his head, why in the world would Sarah have burdened him with them?
For now, she and Graham were safer than they’d otherwise be because no one knew where they were. A phone call would create a new trail that would lead directly back to them. That wasn’t going to happen. Not tonight, anyway.
A seam of light painted the ceiling as a vehicle nosed into a parking space next to hers out front, and an alarm bell rang in her head. She rose from the bed and drew her weapon, but did not go to the window. This was probably nothing, but if it was indeed a threat, she didn’t want to expose herself to an easy shot.
Across the room, on the other side of the bathroom door, the shower continued to run. She checked the knob and was not at all surprised to find that he’d locked the door. That hollow-core paneled door wouldn’t stop a knife, let alone a bullet, but it was something.
Jolaine’s concern deepened when the lights on the vehicle out front continued to shine. She could hear the engine running through the window.
The shower stopped three seconds before someone rapped on the door.
“Excuse me, Ms. Bernard?” a voice called from the other side of the door. The tone was all business, neither friendly nor aggressive. “This is the police. We need to talk with you.”
Philip Baxter stood on the walkway alongside the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. He looked out over the Potomac River, Virginia on his left, Maryland on his right. The lights of Old Town Alexandria shimmered on the water. He wore his blue seersucker suit not so much to honor the formality of the moment, but rather to cover the 9 millimeter Walther P99 that he carried in a holster at the base of his spine. The amount of traffic at this hour—0130—surprised him. He expected the big trucks, but the number of passenger cars was more than he would have expected at this hour. Where did these people have to go?
This was his meeting, so the protocol demanded that he arrive first and wait in plain sight. Like that of the man he waited for, his was a paranoid profession. To ask a man to meet alone to discuss the kind of subject that lay ahead required a generous leap of faith. This spot in the center of the massive bridge span offered full visibility and made an ambush unlikely. A drive-by was always a possibility, but the presence of so many witnesses rendered that option impractical.
More to the point, the meeting spot was a mile away from any feasible sniper’s nest, and the darkness, combined with the complexity of the air conditions over the river, made such a shot impossible for even the most talented shooters. Throw in the fact that traffic noise made it impossible to record a conversation from a distance, and this was the perfect place for a covert meeting.
Precisely at 01:30, his contact made himself visible at the Virginia end of the bridge. At this distance, he was only a silhouette, devoid of individual features, but there was no mistaking the awkward, limping gait that Philip knew was the result of a very close encounter with a 7.62 millimeter bullet fired a number of years ago by an American Special Forces operator. Because Philip had read the after-action report, he also knew that this man who approached had killed said operator with an amazing ninety-yard pistol shot before he slipped into unconsciousness.
As the man approached, Philip paid attention to the details. He knew the man was right-handed, and he noted that the right hand swung a little less easily than the left. That meant two things — first, he was armed, and second, the man was half-expecting to have to draw down. That kind of awareness translated to nervousness, which put a special burden on Philip to be benign and predictable. This was the most fragile moment of any meet. Any errant look or sudden movement could ignite a gunfight that no one wanted.
Philip continued to watch the river, his hands on the guardrail as he monitored the new man’s approach.
Two minutes later, Anton Datsik was at Philip’s left side, and together they looked at the vista before them.
“Good morning, Philip,” Datsik said. His voice was leaden with an Eastern European accent.
“Hello, Anton. Thank you for agreeing to meet at such a ridiculous hour on such short notice.”
“You’re welcome. My instincts tell me that this is not to be a pleasant conversation. Even your chosen location speaks of violence.”
Some time ago, a team of terrorists had wreaked havoc at this spot during a frigid rush hour. The walls of the high-end Jersey barriers that separated them from the traffic still bore the scars of that shooting spree.
“You’re overthinking,” Philip assured. “I promise that there is no symbolism or implied threat in the locale.”
Datsik nodded, seeming to accept Philip at his word. “I shall pretend not to know why you called me here,” he said.
Philip got right to it. “A lot of people got killed last night in Indiana. Did you have anything to do with that?”
Anton pivoted to face Philip full-on. “We know each other long time, Philip. I don’t trust you, you don’t trust me. That is the one fact we both count on, and as a result, we form what you people like to call a bond. This is true, yes?”
It had long been Anton’s way to thicken his accent and slow his speech when he was trying to make a controversial point. Now he sounded like Boris from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. “This is true, yes,” Philip said.
“Over years, we have many conversations. Sometimes I speak to Philip Baxter, colleague — fellow spy — sometimes I speak to Philip Baxter, enemy to my country. Which one do I speak to tonight?”
It was a test question, of course, an invitation to lie. But even as the relations between the United States and the Russian Federation continued to deteriorate, Philip understood that the ability for people like him and Datsik to communicate honestly with each other could one day spell the difference between peace and Armageddon. He liked the guy, and he suspected that Datsik liked him back. The reality that either might one day get the order to terminate the other kept the relationship at arm’s length.