But Karen was shaking her head, her face turned away to conceal her fear. “I don’t want to go-home I just now,” she said. “Not after yesterday. Not after this.” She waved the yellow slip.
Train seized on what she had just said to follow through on Mccarty’s suggestion. “Okay, look. I’ve got a sixbedroom house down in Aquia. It’s a pretty secure situation.
There’s even a housekeeper. You’re welcome to hole up there for as long as you want. Or until we sort this business out. Unless you have-“
“That would be fine,” she said quickly, surprising him again. She turned away from him, her hands fluttering.
“Train, I’m scared,” she said. “It embarrasses me, but there it is.
After everything that happened yesterday, and now with Admiral Sherman missing … There were two of’them yesterday, at least down by the river. That means that Galantz-if that’s who this is-has help. I know they’re watching me. They can get in and out of houses like smoke.
They-” He realized that she was starting to unravel, her eyes shooting from side to side and her voice rising. Finally, he just reached for her, turning her around and pulling her gently into his arms as she stifled a cry. He stood there holding her, patting her on the back while she let it out, babbling through a stream of tears, her words becoming incoherent, her breasts heaving against his chest and her shoulders trembling. He comforted her and held her for a few minutes until she became still. Then, with an embarrassed expression on her face, she backed away, pushing her hair out of her tear streaked face. Her skin was blotched with patches of red, and mascara had run down her cheek on one side. She saw his look and put a hand up to her face.
“I’m so sorry, I don’t know what’s the matter with me.
Of course I can go home. I don’t have to bother-“
“No way. You’re coming home with me,” he said. “the hell of it is you’re right. This guy has been able to do anything he damn well pleases.
There’s no way you should be alone, especially isolated in Great FAII5.
Besides-“
“What?” she asked, pulling a Kleenex out of her skirt pocket and wiping her cheek.
“Besides, that’s my tasking. Or what’s left of it. The one Carpenter wouldn’t say out loud when he started speaking in tongues back there.”
“Train, what are you talking about?” That suspicious look was back in her eye.
“My tasking, and these are the Great Man’s very words, is to keep Karen Lawrence safe.”
“And what was that other business, the things he was going to order you not to do?”
“Finding Galantz and interfering in anyone else’s efforts to find Galantz.”
She sat down, continuing the damage control on her makeup. “Are we just going to quit? Let Sherman swing in the wind?”
“No. Galantz almost got us both killed last night. I take that personally.”
She nodded but said nothing for a moment. “I guess I feel the same way,” she said. “But after that, that bag, I’m not as confident as you are. We should also remember what Admiral Carpenter said: Sometimes we have to assume our boss knows what he’s doing with this thing.”
Train shook his head. “if he or any of these admirals knew what they were doing with this case, last night wouldn’t have happened. I don’t think they do know what they’re doing. I think they’re flailing, hoping like hell it will all just go away. That the people who created this monster will clean it up sooner rather than later.”
“But if Galantz is out to ruin Sherman, why in the hell would he be trying to kill me?”
“I don’t think he intended to kill you. Just take you off the boards. it wasn’t until I showed up that you went in the river. I thought it was because he thinks you’re close to Sherman, Karen. But the attack on you happened after we talked to Jack Sherman. There has to be a tie-in there, somewhere, somehow. I say let’s go back and squeeze that punk again. He lives near Triangle-that’s not far from My place in Aquia.
Nobody’s given me orders about Sherman’s son.”
“Spoken like a true sea lawyer,” she said.
“Yeah, well. So let’s go get my dog out of hock.”
It was six on the nose when T - rain turned in through the tall brick gates of the von Rensel estate. Karen, following in her Explorer, stared in appreciative silence as they drove up along a curving gravel drive bordered by ancient river oaks overlooking a wide expanse of lawn.
Beyond a low brick wall at the far edge of the lawn, the Potomac River glinted in the sun, almost a mile wide. Ahead, a moderately sized two-story white house surrounded by columned porches appeared from behind massive boxwood hedges.
“Wow,” she said to herself. Train had told her a little bit about the family property on the way out to retrieve Gutter, but this was obviously something very special. She was suddenly glad she had asked Train to take her by the house in Great Falls to get some more clothes and her car.
As they pulled up in front of the house, they were met by a slim Japanese man, who came over to her car and opened her door, bowing politely. Karen got out and bowed back, and Train introduced her to Hiroshi. She was struck by the enormous physical contrast between them, the tree-sized Train and the slim but wiry Hiroshi, who could have been anywhere from fifty to seventy years old. She could see at once that there was a very special bond between them.
Hiroshi extracted her bag and hanging gear, gave Train’s disheveled clothes a lifted eyebrow, and went up the steps.
Train then introduced Karen to Hiroshi’s wife, Kyoko, who was waiting on the front porch. Kyoko took Karen inside and showed her upstairs to one of the guest rooms to freshen up. Train went to his own room on the riverfront side of the house and changed into clean clothes. Then he went looking for Hiroshi. He found him in the back pantry, doctoring Gutter’s leg, and told him about the events of the preceding night. He explained that Commander Lawrence would be staying with them for. a few days. Hiroshi, ever the great conversationalist, nodded once and continued his examination on the dog.
Train left him to it and went back in time to meet Karen as she came downstairs. He gave her a tour of the downstairs of the house. “About half the house dates back to the 1790s,” he told her. “This is one of two reception rooms.
Sort of eclectic in style, after many generations of taste and circumstances. Started out as a smaller copy of Mount Vernon, up the river, and then it was modified several times through the years. It’s not that big, really.”
“How did your family come to have this land?”
“The first von Rensel came to the United States in the retinue of the Baron von Steuben. By the end of the American Revolution, he had risen sufficiently in General Washington’s esteem to be granted a four-hundred-acre parcel of land down river from Mount Vernon. My family alternated between prosperity and near financial ruin over the generations, but a strict observance of the rule of primogeniture ensured that the original land grant survived intact well into the twentieth century, when my grandfather Heinrich finally seized the opportunity-to turn four hundred acres of riverfront property into a secure family fortune. These are the original kitchens.”
“This place has four hundred acres?” she asked.
“Not. anymore. Heinrich struck an adept political deal with the local county government that basically secured the serenity of the family estate. In return for the sale of the remaining acres of riverside lands to the county for a park, the county agreed never to permit development of that land.
By the time I was born, only ten walled acres and the house remained of the original eighteenth-century plantation, along with a structure of family trusts, which pays for all this.”