“I guess I can give him up for a little while,” she murmured as she touched L.J.’s chin and smiled again.
“I’ll take good care of him while he’s down here.” They couldn’t continue until she left, and Troy could see that Bill was getting impatient. “Don’t worry.”
“That’s my cue,” she said as she turned to leave. “I get it.” When she made it to the door she stopped. “See you later.” She smiled up at Bill. “Do tell whoever’s in the closet I said hello.”
“What?”
Cheryl pointed at the table and the chairs around it. “Six chairs at the table, and three of them are pulled out. I only see two of you.” She gave Bill another quick kiss. “I’ve been around you too long. I’ve learned to analyze everything. Don’t ever forget that,” she called good-naturedly as Bill closed the door after her.
As Travers emerged from the closet, Troy eased back down into his chair and gave Little Jack his finger to squeeze. The baby had a nice strong grip and a wave of pride surged through him. Then the guilt fell in behind the pride. Cheryl was right. The little guy needed a father, every little guy did. But that was going to be very tough if he stayed with RCS. Maybe trying so hard to please his father shouldn’t be as important anymore. Jack had spent his whole life doing that, and where had it gotten him? Six feet under.
“Where were we?” Bill asked when they were all seated again.
“Who’s that?” Travers asked, pointing at L.J. with a wide grin.
“We were talking about what happened in North Carolina,” Troy said, avoiding the question. “One thing you should be aware of, Dad, is that Maddux knows you’re running RCS now. He made that clear.”
“He doesn’t know. He was just guessing.”
“It didn’t sound like he was guessing,” Travers spoke up respectfully but firmly.
“It sure didn’t,” Troy seconded. “The other interesting thing about that whole deal in the basement down there was that Maddux wasn’t going to kill me. He was going to leave me locked up, but he wasn’t going to take me out.”
Bill grinned thinly for the first time. “Think he’s going soft in his old age?”
“It had nothing to do with personal loyalty, Dad. He made that very clear. He said the reason he wasn’t taking me out was that he didn’t want to piss you off. It had to do with his personal survival and nothing else.”
Troy and Travers had covered a great deal in the plane on the way up, including what had happened in Alaska; Maddux killing Lisa Martinez; and how Jack had died on the porch of this house. Troy had told Travers about Lisa but not about Little Jack. He was still getting used to being a father, and he hadn’t mentioned the baby. Well, he wouldn’t avoid the subject ever again, he promised himself as he gazed down into his son’s bright eyes. “And Maddux claimed he didn’t shoot Jack.”
Bill raised one eyebrow triumphantly. “I told you.”
“Just because Shane says he didn’t kill Jack, I don’t think we should necessarily—”
“Tell me about the young man you recently interrogated,” Bill interrupted, pointing at Travers.
Troy rolled his eyes. He hated it when Bill cut him off like that.
“I believe you told me his name was Kaashif when we spoke about him.”
Travers nodded. “Yes, sir, that’s right.”
“Did you find out anything important while you had him in custody?”
“Well, I—”
“First off, why were you suspicious? Who put you onto him?”
Travers stared at Bill steadily for several moments, then glanced at Troy. He started to say something — twice — but stopped each time.
“What’s the problem?” Bill demanded.
“I can’t give you my specific source, Mr. Jensen. I don’t want you to get angry, sir, but I won’t give my sources up to anyone. Mr. Carlson and I had an understanding on that.”
“That’s fine, Major. Just say what you’re comfortable saying.”
“Look, we all know people, right? I went into the Marines in 1991, and since then some of the guys I was in with landed on different boxes of the intel game board, you know? All the usual destinations you’d figure. CIA, NSA, ONI, and a few others I’m sure you two would suspect. Maybe one or two you wouldn’t as well.”
“Go on.”
“I keep in touch with those guys,” Travers explained. “Like Carlson always said, work every relationship we have to find out anything we can.”
“We emphasize that from day one,” Bill agreed. “So, what did you find out?”
“Six months ago one of my guys who reports into Langley tells me about this kid, Kaashif, who’s a high school student up in Philly. Says I should check him out. That’s it, that’s all he says, just check him out. Claims he tried to get his superior up the Potomac to do the same thing, but the boss wouldn’t listen. The guy told him they don’t have time to chase down leads on teenagers because there’s too much else to do. So he begs me to do it, because he’s got a feeling something’s there, and he’s usually right. I trust this guy with my life. In fact, he saved it one time in Iraq, so why wouldn’t I?
“So I try doing some prelim back-channel work on the kid, but it all comes up empty. I don’t mean negative, I don’t mean the kid’s all innocent or anything and my guy was wrong. I mean I can’t find anything about Kaashif before he enrolled in that Philly high school last September. There’s nothing on him before that. It’s like footprints ending in the snow in the middle of a field. So I try getting information on his parents, but nothing comes up on them, either. It’s weird, just another trail ending in the middle of nowhere.
“He’s got a social security card and a birth certificate. He’s got a driver’s license, so he had to have them. And I got copies of them. But get this: They’re completely phony.”
“How do you know?” Troy asked.
Travers gave him an ironic smile. “Kaashif’s birth certificate says he was born at Point Pleasant Hospital in Point Pleasant, Wyoming.”
Bill nodded as if he knew where this was headed. “And there’s no Point Pleasant Hospital.”
Travers snickered. “There’s no Point Pleasant, Wyoming.”
“Jesus.”
“Anyway,” Travers continued, “I figure I’ll just turn their names over to immigration. Those people can be an epic pain in the ass for a family like this, and hey, maybe that’s as far as it goes. A family getting into this country that shouldn’t have, and I’ll do something about it by putting immigration on them. But right before I make the call, the kid’s name shows up in a transmission a contact of mine in London calls me about. It’s a message the Brits skimmed from a group in the Middle East our government isn’t fond of, to put it mildly. So I follow the kid a little, when I have some spare time.”
“And?”
“And nothing happens for a while. But then it all breaks loose. One morning the kid walks into his high school through the front door and then two minutes later comes out the back. I’m lucky I see him, too; it’s completely by chance. I mean, I’m driving away from the building when I catch the kid duck out. I’m not even sure it’s him at first, but then I see it is.
“So he climbs in his car and drives off with me in his shadow. I figure he’s going home, or he’s meeting up with some girl, but that’s not it. He gets on I-95 and heads south down to northern Virginia. I follow him all the way down there past DC, all the way to a house in Manassas, which is about forty miles west of the White House. An hour later he gets back in his car, and I follow him all the way back up to Philadelphia.