Still, the speed and fury of the response surprised her.
The men who burned down her house had come to kill her; she was convinced of that. The intruder who had removed his mask before destroying her paintings was the same man who had led his fellow soldiers to attack her back in Iraq. A jerk named Clayton. She thought she had dealt with him when she salted his record with child pornography and couldn’t believe he had come into her life again.
She started to shiver.
Get a grip, she told herself. They know who you are, but you know who they are, too.
Rather than look for new data, with its inherent risks, she called up the Trask file.
Trask had been born in a small town in Oklahoma. He had graduated from a run-of-the-mill university with average grades. His private practice floundered within months. No surprise. You’d have to be crazy to go to a faker like Trask. He had gone to work for the military training soldiers how to survive as prisoners. He might have disappeared into obscurity if not for 9/11 and The New York Times, which had published a report on the CIA use of water-boarding and sexual humiliation in interrogating terror suspects.
Trask’s work became public because of a complaint filed against him with the Oklahoma State Board of Psychologists. The complaint came from another Oklahoma shrink, working with a lawyer and law professor. It documented in detail Trask’s role in the harsh interrogation techniques, asking that his license to practice be pulled. It said he had misrepresented his qualifications and that his torture techniques, in addition to being immoral and illegal, lacked a scientific basis.
He was described as working as a private consultant, never replied in public to the charges, and a funny thing happened to the complaint. The state board tabled the accusation after the three filers failed to pursue the case. She looked into the background of the complainers. The professor had retired, the lawyer moved to another state and the psychologist who instigated the complaint was dead.
Cold fingers clutched at her heart. The psychologist had died in an accidental house fire.
She forced herself to keep reading.
According to the Arrowhead website, he was involved with the children’s project after his work with the CIA. But in the years in between, when he supposedly worked as a consultant, he did the psychiatric evaluations of Sutherland and Hawkins that led to their discharges.
Arrowhead was a private foundation, but Sutherland was aware from her Iraqi experience that contractors occupied a twilight zone, neither civilian nor military, but something in between.
She went back to the website where she had discovered the link between Trask and Murphy. She called up the photo of Trask and the teddy bear, with Murphy guarding him from the little girl. There was another man standing in the field behind Murphy, also wearing a flak jacket.
She enhanced the photo using computer software. His mustachioed face came into focus. It looked vaguely familiar.
Hell, it couldn’t be.
She opened the folder for the Newport Group. She had given each member of the group his or her own file and established preliminary bios with photos.
She clicked on the bio for Captain Michael McCormick. Hawkins had said the guy had acted like a jerk. The photo showed him wearing a navy officer uniform and his lip was clean-shaven. Instead of dark sunglasses he wore heavy-rimmed spectacles. His mouth was spread wide in the same wolfish grin he wore on the Arrowhead site.
Sutherland placed the two pictures side by side, and then looked at them upside down. They showed the same man; she was sure of it now.
Captain McCormick had worked for Arrowhead.
Trask had worked for Arrowhead.
Murphy had worked for Arrowhead.
McCormick worked for Arrowhead and the Newport group.
She started to sift in earnest through the lives of everyone in the group, following links to look for other connections to Arrowhead or to each other. It would take hours of tedious work, and she was aware her queries could be traced back to their source, but tip-toeing in and out was the kind of thing she was good at. She looked forward to the challenge. She would need to prepare herself for the task ahead, though.
She set the laptop aside, got off the sofa, went into the kitchen and cut herself another piece of apple pie.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The odd-looking convoy wound its way through a series of linked valleys, snaking between scraggly hills, eventually breaking out into countryside that was open and relatively flat. The antique Cadillac was in the lead, its convertible top down. Amir was behind the steering wheel. He had insisted that Hawkins ride beside him. Cait sat in the back seat. Next in line was the DPV, and then came the troop carrier and the Russian jeep.
Amir had quizzed Hawkins about his stiffness of leg.
“Got too close to an IED,” Hawkins said. “Crude but effective. The crew at Walter Reed patched my leg back together, more or less.”
“We may have had the same doctors at Reed. They reassembled my body parts after I failed to outrun a Russian rocket.”
“You must have been in the hospital a long time to pick up that American accent,” Hawkins observed.
“Several months, but I also spent a year studying at Georgetown University while I recuperated.”
“Is Georgetown your connection with Dr. Everson?”
“Indirectly, yes,” said Cait, who had been listening to the conversation.
Amir glanced in the rear-view mirror. “I’ve been looking at the vehicle your friend is driving. It looks very utilitarian.”
“It is. Fast, too.”
“This car too is fast. I’ve replaced the original V-8 engine with a much more powerful one. The suspension and wheels have been strengthened and the tires customized to allow for higher speeds, especially on rough terrain.”
“I’ll bet you it still isn’t as fast as the DPV, even with the load the buggy is carrying,” Hawkins said. He regretted the comment the second it left his lips. Amir didn’t seem to be the type who would turn down a challenge, even one that was only a figure of speech. He was right.
“The wager is accepted,” the warlord said.
Hawkins stalled. “We haven’t agreed to the stakes.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” Amir said. “Please hold tight, Dr. Cait.”
Then he nailed the gas pedal.
The two-ton touring car didn’t exactly accelerate with a whoosh, like a later model high-performance car would have done. The heavy body seemed to be waiting for the engine to persuade it to pick up speed, which it did gradually, as befitting its dignity, and quickly gained velocity. They were emerging from the valleys and the terrain was changing into an arid, grass-covered plain that allowed for faster driving.
Hawkins checked the car’s speedometer. The needle was at seventy miles per hour. The Caddy was leaving a thick brown rooster tail a hundred yards behind it.
“Cal’s not going to like breathing dust,” Hawkins yelled at the sheik.
In reply, Amir grinned and pushed the car’s speed up to eighty, but the smug smile left his face after a quick glance in the mirror revealed a pair of halogen headlights close on his tail. He gave the touring car another ten miles of speed. The headlights disappeared, only to reappear a second later off to the left as the desert vehicle emerged from the cloud.
Calvin was hunkered down low behind the wheel. Abby held onto her cap with one hand and the underside of her seat with the other.
Amir depressed the gas pedal to the floorboards, but Calvin paced them for a moment. Then he gave a wave, and passed as if they were in reverse, enveloping the Caddy in a cloud of dust.