Fielding’s eyes immediately went to the glass door. There was no one there. He held his long, slender arms out wide in a gesture of bafflement. “I guess so. Do you know what that job is exactly?”
The question fascinated her. She’d never met Leapman before this assignment. He came out of nowhere, throwing so many demands and orders in her direction that she’d never thought about his background.
Fielding answered his own question. “You don’t, do you? Well, let me tell you one thing, Emily. I recognize that kind of guy. If you could pull out his FBI records-and that’s a big if, I doubt even I have clearance to get that far-I’d put good money on the fact he started life elsewhere. Military maybe. I don’t know. Don’t care either. I can live with the FBI, most of the time. You’re just a bunch of people with a job to do. Leapman. He’s something else. Something private’s eating that bastard alive. Don’t know what it is. Don’t care. But if it’s not him burning you up, tell me what is.”
She pulled up a chair and sat next to his desk. “I’m here to ask a favour. I want you to tell me about my father.”
“Right now?” Fielding asked. “This sounds like social. I like social. Just not on company time. Couldn’t we have dinner sometime? After the holiday?”
“Yes, we could. But I’d like to start the ball rolling. Being here… it brings back memories.”
“I don’t understand the urgency.” He looked baffled, reluctant to go along with this.
“Let’s say I have a sudden curiosity. I wondered what you felt about my father. I was wondering what he did while he was in Rome. I was so young. And he wasn’t exactly forthcoming about things.”
Dan Deacon had been a military attaché. Strictly speaking, that meant his role was to liaise with his counterparts in the country where he was stationed. But it could be one of those catch-all jobs too. She’d learned enough about that from scanning the newspaper files after he died. There was nothing specific about him. But there were stories everywhere, in reputable journals around the world, which made it plain the job could be a cover for something else.
“I didn’t work alongside Dan,” Fielding replied cautiously. “We just knew one another. He spent a lot of time with the military people here. Really, Emily, I’m the wrong guy. Ask your mom.”
“They divorced ten years ago. Not long after we left Rome. It all got… difficult around then. He was kind of cranky a lot of the time. Didn’t you know?”
“I’d heard,” he said shiftily. “All the same, you should ask her.”
“I have. Either she doesn’t know or she doesn’t want to say.”
Fielding’s good-natured expression dropped for a moment and, for the first time, Emily felt the distance in years between them. Thornton Fielding had always had something boyish about him. Now it was an effort to keep up the act. “Maybe she’s got her reasons.”
“Maybe she has. But if that’s the case, don’t I have the right to know, too?”
“Jesus,” Fielding murmured, then got up and stood with his back to her, staring out of the window, out at the torrent of snow.
She came to join him. It was an extraordinary sight: a cloud of soft white flakes pouring from the sky, creating a world that was cold and bereft of colour.
“Will you look at that?” Fielding murmured. “I’ve not seen anything like it in twenty years. I doubt I’ll see it again either.”
“Why not? It’s just weird weather. It happens from time to time.”
He glanced at her. “All kinds of weird things happen from time to time, Emily. You just have to sit back, do your best, watch and learn, then put the whole damn circus behind you when it’s over.”
“Meaning?” she wondered.
“Meaning your father was a good, brave man who served his country. It’s a tragedy he’s dead. I’m sorry.”
It wasn’t enough. She wouldn’t leave it at that.
“Everyone’s sorry, Thornton, but sympathy doesn’t help. I’m trying to understand something here. You can help me.”
His fine eyebrows rose. “You’re sure of that?”
“Absolutely! You were here. You knew him. It wasn’t just a casual acquaintance. I was a kid back then. I remember you coming round. There was music. We laughed. I think…”
It was a distant memory, one so odd it stuck out.
“We used to dance.”
He laughed. “The beer used to flow in the Deacon household, Emily. Dancing was just a part of it.”
“I know. I wasn’t blind, deaf and dumb. I remember things, not the exact detail but the feeling, the atmosphere.”
He wasn’t taking the bait.
“I remember how bad that atmosphere got in 1991,” she persisted. “So bad it was what led them to divorce a few years later, I think. So what was it? I know he went away. I remember. It was my birthday. He wasn’t there. That kind of thing never happened. He always came back for my birthday. He used to say…”
The memory was so sharp, so real, it brought tears to her eyes.
“ ”When you’ve only got the one kid spoil “ em rotten.” He said it all the time. You must have heard it.“
“Must I?”
He cast an uncharacteristic look, one that just might have been fear, and returned to his desk.
“Have you asked Leapman about any of this?” he asked.
“No. What’s the point?”
“He’s your boss, isn’t he? This is business, Emily. There are rules.”
Fielding assumed she knew something. Maybe that was only to be expected.
“Thornton, I don’t think you understand. Before I came here I was a trainee geek in systems. They put me there because I was so lousy out in the field. I’m in the Bureau because it’s what I was supposed to do. Dad fixed it for me. I don’t pretend I’m good at it. Then, all of a sudden, I’m on a plane to Rome with Joel Leapman in the next seat, staring hard at his copy of The New Republic, not saying a damn word about anything. Maybe I’m here because of my Italian. Maybe because I have that degree and I know a little of the background to this pattern he keeps obsessing about.”
The pattern. That magic weave of curves and angles. She couldn’t get it out of her head.
“What pattern?” Fielding wondered.
“This.”
She picked up a pen and started sketching a sacred cut on his notepad, outlining the part that made the shape of the beast. The man, Bill Kaspar, couldn’t have done it more quickly, more fluently, she thought.
“I don’t know anything about some damn pattern,” Fielding complained, waving a hand at her. “This is your business, Emily, not mine.”
“Yes! It is my business.” Her voice rose. “But believe me. I don’t know what the hell’s going on.”
He thought about that, trying to measure if it were true or not. “Are you kidding me?”
“No!”
Fielding rubbed his hand across his mouth, thinking. “OK. Let’s say I believe you. Here’s the first piece of advice: don’t ask Leapman any of these questions. You’re right. You won’t get an answer. And it may just make things worse between you.”
“Fine,” she persisted. “So let me ask you. Again. What happened in 1991?”
An uncharacteristic sourness crossed Thornton Fielding’s face. “You’ve got books, haven’t you, Emily? You know what happened in 1991. Desert Storm. A bunch of allies got together to kick the Iraqis out of Kuwait.”
“My dad was involved in that?”
“He was the military attaché. What did you expect him to do? Stay here counting paper clips?”
So that part of her memory was accurate. He had gone away, and for some time.