"Yeah, sure," he said with the distrust of the dishonest.
I followed her out of the store and we found an empty bench near a fountain.
"I heard about Lucy's accident and I'm sorry about that. I hope she's all right," Carrie said coldly as she sipped her coffee.
"You don't care in the least how Lucy is," I said.
"And there's no point in wasting any of your charm on me because I have you figured out. I know what you did."
"You don't know anything." She smiled her frosty smile, and the air was filled with the sounds of water.
"I know you made a cast of Lucy's thumb in rubber, and figuring out her Personal Identification Number was simple since you were with each other so much. All you had to do was be observant and note the code she punched in. This was how you accessed the biometric lock system the early morning you violated ERF."
"My, don't you have an active imagination?" She laughed and her eyes got harder.
"And I might advise you to be very careful making accusations like that."
"I'm not interested in your advice. Miss. Grethen. I'm interested only in giving you a warning. It will soon be proven that Lucy did not break into ERF. You were smart but not smart enough, and you made one fatal oversight." She was silent, but I could see her mind racing behind her icy facade. Her curiosity was desperate.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said with self-confidence that was beginning to waver.
"You may be good with computers, but you are not a forensic scientist. The case against you is very simple. " I put forth my theory with the certitude of any good lawyer who knows how to play the game.
"You asked Lucy to assist you in a so-called research project involving the biometric lock system at ERF."
"Research project? There is no research project," she said hatefully.
"And that's the point. Miss. Grethen. There is no research project. You lied to her so you could get her to let you make a cast of her thumb in liquid rubber." She laughed shortly.
"My goodness. You've been watching too much James Bond. You don't really think anyone would believe" - I cut her off.
"This rubber thumb you made was then used to get into the lock system so you and whoever else could commit what amounts to industrial espionage. But you made one mistake." Her face was livid.
"Would you like to hear what that mistake was?" Still, she said nothing, but she wanted to know. I could feel her paranoia radiating like heat.
"You see. Miss. Grethen," I went on in the same reasonable tone.
"When you make a cast of a finger, the print impression on it is actually a reversal or mirror image of the original one. So the print of your rubber thumb was an inversion of Lucy's print. In other words, it was backward. And an examination of the print that was scanned into the system at three in the morning will show this quite clearly." She swallowed hard, and what she said next validated all that I conjectured.
"You can't prove it was me who did that."
"Oh, we will prove it. But there's a more important bit of information for you to go away with this day." I leaned closer. I could smell her coffee breath.
"You took advantage of my niece's feelings for you. You took advantage of her youth and naivete and decency."
I leaned so close I was in her face.
"Don't you ever come near Lucy again. Don't you ever speak to her. Don't you ever call her again. Don't you ever think about her. " My hand in my coat pocket gripped my. 38. 1 almost wanted her to make me use it.
"And if I find out you were the one who ran her off the road," I went on in a quiet voice that rang like cold surgical steel, "I will personally track you down. You will be haunted by me the rest of your wretched life. I will always be there when you come up for parole. I will tell parole board after parole board and governor after governor that you are a character disorder who is a menace to society. Do you understand?"
"Go to hell," she said.
"I will never go to hell," I said. "But you are already there."
She abruptly got up, and her angry strides carried her back into the spy shop. I watched a man follow her in and begin to speak to her as I sat on the bench, my heart beating hard. I did not know why he made me pause. There was something about the sharpness of his profile at a glance, the V-shape of his lean, strong back, and the unnatural blackness of his slicked hair. Dressed in a splendid midnight-blue silk suit, he carried what looked like an alligator skin briefcase. I was about to walk away when he turned toward me, and for an electric instance our eyes met. His were piercing blue.
I did not run. I was like a squirrel in the middle of a road that starts to dash this way and that only to end up where it began. I began walking as fast as I could, then began to run, and the sound of water falling was like feet falling as I imagined him in pursuit. I did not go to a pay phone because I was afraid to stop. I thought my heart would burst as it hammered harder and harder.
I sprinted through the parking lot, my hands shaking as I unlocked my car. I did not reach for the phone until I was moving fast and did not see him.
"Benton! Oh my God!"
"Kay? Jesus, what is it?" His alarmed voice crackled horribly over the phone, for northern Virginia is notorious for too much cellular traffic.
"Gault!" I breathlessly exclaimed as I slammed on my brakes just before rear-ending a Toyota.
"I saw Gault!"
"You saw Gault? Where?"
"In Eye Spy."
"In what? What did you say?"
"The shop Carrie Grethen works in. The one she's been connected to. He was there, Benton! I saw him walk in as I was leaving, and he started talking to her, and then he saw me and I ran."
"Slow down, Kay!" Wesley's voice was tense. I couldn't recall him ever sounding this tense.
"Where are you now?"
"I'm on 1-95 South. I'm fine."
"Just keep driving, for God's sake. Don't stop for anything. Do you think he saw you get into your car?"
"I don't think so. Shit, I don't know!"
"Kay," he said with authority.
"Calm down." He spoke slowly.
"I want you to calm down. I don't want you getting into an accident. I'm going to make calls. We'll find him." But I knew we wouldn't. I knew by the time the first agent or cop got the first call, Gault would be gone. He had recognized me. I had seen it in his cold blue stare. He would know exactly what I would do the minute I could, and he would disappear again.
"I thought you said he was in England," I stupidly said.
"I said we believe he was," Wesley said.
"Don't you see, Benton?" I went on because my mind would not stop. Connections were being made left and right.
"He's involved in this. He's involved in what happened at ERF. It may be he's the one who sent Carrie Grethen, who got her to do what she did. His spy."
Wesley was silent as this sank in. It was a thought so terrible that he did not want to think it. His voice began to break up. I knew he was getting frantic, too, because conversations like this one should not be conducted over a car phone.
"To get what?" he crackled.
"What would he want to get into there?"
I knew. I knew exactly what.
"CAIN," I said as the line went dead.
16
I got back to Richmond and did not sense Gault's malignant shadow at my heels. He had other agendas and demons to fight, and had not chosen to come after me, I believed. Even so, I reset the alarm the moment I entered my house. I went nowhere, not even to the bathroom, without my gun. At shortly after two p. m. " I drove to MCV, and Lucy traveled by wheelchair to my car. She insisted on wheeling herself despite my insistence that I propel her prudently, as a loving aunt would. She would have none of my help. But as soon as we got home she succumbed to my attentions and I tucked her in bed, where she sat up dozing.
I put on a pot of Zuppa di Aglio Fresco, a fresh garlic soup popular in the hills of Brisighella, where it has been fed to babies and the elderly for many years. That and ravioli filled with sweet squash and chestnuts would do the trick, and it lifted my mood when a fire was blazing in the living room and wonderful aromas filled the air. It was true that when I went long periods without cooking, it felt as if no one lived in my lovely home or cared. It almost seemed my house got sad. Later, beneath a sky threatening rain, I drove to the airport to meet my sister's plane. I had not seen her for a while, and she was not the same. She never was from visit to visit, for Dorothy was acutely insecure, which was why she could be so mean, and she had a habit of changing her hair and dress regularly. This late afternoon as I stood at the US Air gate, I scanned faces of passengers coming off the jetway, leaving myself open for anything familiar.