Deutsch tried her best not to look like a jackrabbit trying to stare down an eighteen-wheeler. “No, but-why didn’t he call in his position or ask for backup?”
The robotic Scandinavian wasn’t going to be deterred that easily. “Maybe he didn’t get the chance. Maybe Reilly jumped him before he had a chance to call it in.”
“But why didn’t he-”
“What?” He cut her off firmly. “Reilly already assaulted you and Lendowski once. It’s not like he has an aversion to using force. And if I may offer some advice here, Agent Deutsch-I wouldn’t go out of my way to defend an agent who escaped while under your expert custody. It might make people wonder.” Without giving her a chance for an indignant rebuttal, the CIA agent turned to Gallo. “We need to bring in Chaykin. She knows what happened. We need to question her.”
Gallo glanced at Deutsch, frowning, then swung his gaze back on Henriksson. “I agree, Chaykin’s lying to us. I mean, that whole story she gave Agent Deutsch about her feeling trapped and needed to clear her head-it’s total bullshit. No question. But we can’t prove otherwise and we can’t just wheel her in here based on conjecture. Her lawyer would have a field day.”
“Then don’t give her a chance to lawyer up. In case you’ve forgotten, this is a national security matter. In fact, we wouldn’t be sitting here today if you’d handed Reilly over when we asked you to instead of giving in to his Fifth Amendment bullshit.”
Gallo adjusted his position in his seat, visibly uneasy with where this was going.
“Reilly’s history here might be checkered, but it’s only checkered in terms of his unswerving commitment to getting the job done. And I don’t appreciate your coming in here and-”
Deutsch slammed her hand down on the table, harder than she had meant. The noise succeeded in gaining her the attention of everyone present. “He’s not a killer,” she said.
Henriksson looked at her like she’d sprouted a second pair of eyes. “You do realize he’s wanted for murder?”
“This isn’t some crazy psycho we’re talking about, OK?” She glanced around the table. “You know this guy. You’ve worked with him for years. I mean, Christ. Doesn’t that count for anything around here?”
She looked around the table. She seemed to have struck a nerve.
“Look, I agree,” she continued. “Tess Chaykin probably did give us the slip to see him. I can’t see any other reason for it. But I don’t think Reilly is a cold-blooded murderer. There’s more going on here. You must know that.”
She hazarded a glance at Henriksson and felt like slapping that narrow-eyed, immutable expression off his face.
He ignored her outburst and turned to Gallo. “I don’t think it’s advisable to keep Agent Deutsch on this case. I think her perspective is, at the very least, skewed by her-”
It was Gallo’s turn to interrupt. “You know what? It’s not your decision, is it? The last time I checked, the FBI wasn’t a wholly-owned subsidiary of the CIA. So how about you rendition your ass out of my bureau and leave this case to us, given that this is a domestic situation which, I think, just happens to be outside your agency’s remit?”
Deutsch sat back and breathed out, zoning out of the tail end of the confrontation.
33
Richmond, Virginia
Roos guided his Cessna Skyhawk through the low-lying clouds and landed at Chesterfield County Airport without difficulty. The bad weather that currently had the East Coast in its grip was giving Virginia a break, and his time in the air was only marginally longer than the two-hour flight to which he had become accustomed.
Ten minutes later he was in a rental car on his way up the Richmond Beltway toward Midlothian.
He and his old partner had felt the need to discuss the current crisis face to face. They’d met at the golf club many times; it was a convenient midway point for them both, as far by plane for Roos as it was for Tomblin to drive to from his home further north in Virginia and his day job at CIA headquarters in Langley.
While in the air, Roos had exiled the call, the one that had awakened him well before he had planned to get up, from his mind. Instead, he allowed himself to savor skimming the frothy blanket of clouds below him, totally cut off from the complications of the world below.
Now that he was back on the ground, the facts as he was aware of them had rushed back into sharp focus, and they required his urgent attention.
He took the Midlothian Turnpike into an area to the west of Richmond which had morphed from having originally produced the very first commercially mined coal in what would become the United States to becoming home to several golf clubs. In the decades that he had known the area, the last remaining forests had almost entirely given way to suburban sprawl, leaving a couple of small parks and the lush, undulating hills and managed woodland of the clubs as the only reminder of how the land had looked. This continuing spread of subdivisions-and the highways that serviced them-was one of the prime motivating forces in his move to the Outer Banks and then later to Ocracoke, the simple fact being that the island had extremely limited capacity for development along with a community that understood the raw beauty of their environment.
Salisbury Country Club had genuine history, something he always looked for when selecting a location where he would regularly spend even the smallest amount of time. The clubhouse, built along Colonial lines in the 60s, had replaced the original eighteenth century hunting lodge which had burned to the ground in 1920.
Roos waved to the valet as he pulled up to the clubhouse. Although he came here fewer times with each passing year, he was still well known by the staff, and they kept the formalities to the barest minimum whenever he was here. The club was civilized enough to have no need for security cameras, except at the perimeter, the member vetting process alone being enough to ensure this would suffice. None of them would be signing in or out. If anyone asked, none of them had been here.
The door swung shut softly behind him as Roos walked into the largest of the wood-paneled private rooms. A large oil painting of Thomas Jefferson-who had saved the property from being confiscated by the British when its owner was captured coming back from Scotland on revolutionary business-hung over a massive stone fireplace, which took up most of one wall.
Edward J. Tomblin was sitting in a burgundy leather armchair drinking tea. He wore a dark brown tailored corduroy suit, handmade loafers and a forest-green V-neck sweater over a cotton shirt that appeared to be at least ten years old. Along with his Yale University tie, his attire made him more like a college professor than one of the most powerful men in the intelligence community-a position few people who met him would suspect, as he exuded the kind of easygoing authority that had always perfectly complemented Roos’s more intense manner. As befitted his position, though, Tomblin was a very shrewd operator. He had the influence and inside knowledge to move between the agency’s often warring factions and always come out on the side that appeared to have won, even if it hadn’t. Running the National Clandestine Service was the culmination of his career management skills. The only step up from there would be running the whole agency, which was a remote but not an inconceivable possibility.
Tomblin looked up from his tea. “I’m not sure I approve of what they’ve done to the back nine.”
Roos sat down on the floral-patterned couch to the right of his friend. “I’m not sure someone with a handicap that’s almost as high as his age is entitled to an opinion on that matter, Eddy.”
Tomblin snorted. “Maybe, but I still have to look at it every time you drag me down here. Are you going to join us for Christmas this year? Mary was asking.”