"And then you killed him," Elizabeth Foster whispered. "That was your way of thanking him."
"He made me think that I'd killed him, Mrs. Foster. He created and forced the situation, and now I understand why. I heard him pull the hammer back while I was standing at the edge of the catwalk. I did the only thing I could do, and that was what Rafferty wanted me to do. I spun around, drew, and fired at him."
It was clear to me now why Lippitt had been willing to risk his life, along with a good number of government secrets, to get Elizabeth Foster and her husband out of the Russian consulate. He'd felt he owed Victor Rafferty at least that; he'd been motivated by guilt. I suddenly felt a great deal of compassion for Lippitt. He was a patriot, and in the cause of patriotism he'd traded one form of mental torture for another.
But it was Rafferty who'd made the supreme sacrifice, I thought. Ironically, in the cause of freedom; his wife's, and his own. He'd given up everything: his wife, his work, his life as he'd known it. Now that sacrifice had been wiped out. Rafferty had betrayed himself with a doodle on a scrap of paper.
"So Rafferty set you up," I said to Lippitt. My voice seemed unnaturally loud in the sudden quiet. "He made you think you'd killed him. That was an alternative you hadn't considered."
"Then Rafferty is not working for the Americans," Tal said, placing the pencil he had been rolling back in his pocket. "Or the Russians. Assuming that Mr. Lippitt is at last telling the truth… where is Rafferty, and what has he been doing for the past five years?"
"We know he was at the U.N., at least at the time of the housing seminar," I said. "The drawing proves that."
"It begins again," Lippitt said bitterly.
"The hunt?" Something in my voice-probably disgust- caused Lippitt to look at me sharply. There was a brief glint of pain in his eyes, and then it was gone.
"I have no choice, Frederickson," Lippitt said quietly. "It is a hunt. The others will be after him, and you should hope that I find him before they do."
As far as I was concerned, he had a point. I knew where Lippitt was, because I was with him. But there were still the Russians, the British, the French with their mysterious agent, and God only knew how many others, all beating the bushes for Rafferty. I had no way of knowing how close they were.
"Let him alone!" Mike Foster said, emotion twisting his voice and features. "For God's sake, haven't you done enough to the man? He's shown that he means no harm to anyone!"
"Has he?" Lippitt said. "He's proved nothing of the kind, and I'm not waiting for a nuclear attack to find out whether our defense network has been penetrated; neither will any other country that knows about him."
"What about Mr. and Mrs. Foster?" I asked. "You plan to lock them away someplace?"
Lippitt looked at Mrs. Foster. "They should come with me for their own protection."
Elizabeth Foster shook her head and moved even closer to her husband. "Go to hell, Lippitt," Mike Foster said evenly.
"The Fosters will be taken care of," Tal said. "And you too, Mongo. There are a lot of people, I'm sure, who will want to ask you questions."
"Thanks, Tal. I'll look after myself."
Mike Foster gently pulled his wife to her feet and supported her as they moved into an adjoining bedroom; he closed the door quietly behind them.
There was a sharp, prolonged buzzing sound from Lippitt's direction. The agent took a small beeper out of his pocket and shut it off. He looked vaguely surprised. "I have to go," he said.
"If it's a telephone you need, you're welcome to use the one here," Tal said.
Lippitt ignored the offer, jerked his head in the direction of the Fosters' bedroom. "You've taken on a big responsibility, Tal."
Tal met the other man's cold gaze. "Then perhaps you should keep silent. If you do, there's no reason why anyone outside this room should know where the Fosters are."
"I have other responsibilities."
"Then you'll just have to weigh them against the safety of the Fosters, won't you? Mrs. Foster has told you all she knows; the Americans have no more need of her. Unless you risk a leak, no one else will have access to her. Think about that when you report to your superiors."
Lippitt walked to the elevator. He paused at the door as if he wanted to add something, but said nothing. In a few moments he was gone. I wondered what his message could be, where he was going.
Tal put his hand on my shoulder. "You should accept my offer, Mongo. I don't think Lippitt will kill you, but he might not be able to stop one of his colleagues from doing so if the order came down. They will want to make sure you don't share the information you have."
"Sorry. I don't feel like being a prisoner any more than Rafferty did. I'll take my chances on the street."
"I understand."
"It's over, I suppose." There was a flat, metallic taste in my mouth. "You found out what you wanted to know."
Tal looked surprised. "You want to quit now?"
"Rafferty's alive, and everybody and his brother is looking for him. Even if he has been working your turf, he's finished there now. He's blown and he knows it; he's going to be on the run. What's the point of our continuing to look for him?"
"Because we have something the others don't," Tal said firmly. "We have the list of people who participated in that seminar, and that gives us an edge."
"That doesn't answer my question. Why should we look for him now?"
He smiled. "Aren't you curious?"
"Rafferty's got enough people looking for him."
"Yes," Tal said seriously. "But you and I are the only ones who might want to help him."
21
Dawn was an hour old, growing into a mean, humid, overcast day. Somewhere out in that gathering light was a man many considered the most powerful and dangerous man who had ever lived, a man from whom no one could keep a secret, a man who could move objects with his mind. A man who could kill with a thought. It was the same man who had rescued me from the farmhouse; I was sure of that now.
I pointed to the papers on Tal's desk. "You want to check out every one of those people who attended the conference?"
"If necessary," Tal said, leaning forward and drumming his fingers on the desk top. "Imagine what a man with Rafferty's capabilities could do for us."
"By 'us,' I assume you mean the Secretary General and yourself?"
"Yes. He'd be able to provide us with vital information. He'd know that we'd use his skills properly."
"It looks as if he already has a job. Maybe he doesn't want to change, or can't."
Suddenly there was a knock on the door behind us. I jumped; I'd thought the door led to a closet. Tal spun around in his chair, a look of astonishment on his face.
"Are you expecting someone?"
Tal shook his head. "Even if I were, he wouldn't be coming through there. That's a second private elevator with a combination warning system-lock on the door leading to it. The only person besides me who knows the entry code is the Secretary General, and he's in the hospital."
There was another knock. I felt the hair prickle on the back of my neck. "Well, aren't you going to see who it is?"
Tal rose from his chair, walked quickly across the room, and yanked the door open. I immediately recognized the man who stood in the elevator portaclass="underline" It was Yuri Malakov, the Soviet Ambassador to the United Nations. He was trying to look dignified and not succeeding; his rotund face was flushed with excitement, and even beneath his beard I could see the muscles in his jaw working.