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Mariah grimaced and nodded.
“Had he been in touch since you got back to the States?”
Mariah shook her head. “He came to the hospital in Vienna a couple of times, but I hadn’t seen him in months before he showed up yesterday.”
“Does Chaney know you’re CIA?”
“No, I’m sure he doesn’t. David wouldn’t have told him—he was absolutely discreet. During the entire three years we were in Vienna, there was never the slightest hint that my cover was blown, with Chaney or anyone else. As far as anyone knew, I was simply an embassy administrator. Chaney always seemed more interested in David’s work at the IAEA. He often turned to David to demystify some of the complexities of nuclear issues, and he knew that David was working to beef up the agency’s policing role.”
“So what do you think Chaney’s on to now?”
Mariah glanced at him sharply. “That’s what I was hoping you’d tell me,” she said. She came forward and stood in front of his desk, leaning closer, hands planted in the middle of his papers. “Frank, you told me—you swore—that the truck hit our car by accident. You knew I wasn’t in any position, between David’s and Lindsay’s injuries, to pay close attention to the investigation. But you promised me that every angle would be looked into.”
“And it was.” Frank brought his hammy fists together and stared at them intently for a moment before looking back up at her, his voice low. “Dammit, Mariah—don’t you think I was blown away by what happened? I felt responsible. I recruited you, helped you get that assignment in Vienna. I felt bloody awful when things ended up the way they did.”
Mariah’s shoulders slumped as she watched his gruff old face transformed by guilt. She reached out and squeezed his hand. “It wasn’t your fault, no matter what. But now, with Chaney, I’m wondering again….” She sank down onto a chair and stared at the floor. “It was just a fluke that I wasn’t in the car. David should never have been there. He normally jogged to work, but at the last minute that morning we changed plans. Lindsay had a science project that she needed help carrying in and I had an early meeting with an asset, so David drove her to school. If they hadn’t dropped me off first, neither of them would have been there when the brakes failed on that truck.”
Frank nodded. Mariah knew she had told him this before, but the awful irony of it never left her. David’s life had been destroyed in her place because she’d been too busy that morning to drive their daughter to school. Now, what if it wasn’t an accident, after all?
“I’ve been thinking—was I the target?” she asked quietly, her eyes fixed on his. “Was it the CHAUCER operation? Was someone trying to kill me and made a mistake?”
Tucker’s eyes held hers for a second and then his glance shifted away. Mariah flinched. They had known each other too well and for too long.
“Frank!” she said, alarmed. “Tell me, for God’s sake!”
“I’m not sure.”
Her focus moved from Tucker’s face to an invisible point somewhere between them, but she saw nothing. Beyond the office door, the clatter of voices, the tramp of feet and the hum of office machinery faded, replaced by a cottony stillness. Then a wave came out of nowhere, washing over her, and she felt herself drowning. She fumbled for the arms of the chair and gripped them tightly.
She never saw Frank jump up out of his chair and move around the desk, nor did she feel his hand on her shoulder. It was only when he planted himself squarely in front of her and bent down to peer into her eyes that she began to rise again to the surface. Her gaze flitted from side to side, coming finally to rest on Frank’s face when he had called her name for the third time, his voice urgent.
“Mariah! Are you all right?”
“All right?”
She was breathing, she knew—her shoulders rose and fell heavily with the effort of her lungs to grasp oxygen. But all right? No, she definitely was not all right.
“Who was it?” she asked, her voice husky. She clenched her fists, pulling in hard on the reins of self-control. Tucker’s face came into focus and she held his eyes, her voice firm now. “Who did this to my family, Frank?”
He sat back on the desk and studied her for a long time. Then he walked around behind it. He stood, banging his knuckles on the green baize desk pad. “Leave it alone. You can’t change what happened, and you need to concentrate your energies on Lindsay and David. Let somebody else worry about the other stuff.”
Mariah leaped from her chair and leaned across the desk between them. “Don’t patronize me!”
His head snapped up. “I’m not patronizing, goddammit!”
“Then what kind of answer is that?”
“It’s the only answer I can give you.”
“It’s not good enough!”
“It’s the only answer you’re gonna get. This is a closely held file and you have no ‘need to know.”’
He might just as well have slapped her face. She recoiled and stared at him, dumbfounded. His sharp frown held her momentarily, then his eyes shifted away and skimmed across the ceiling before coming to rest on her face again. “Look, I honestly don’t know for certain whether what happened in Vienna was an accident or not. I thought it was at first, but now I’m not sure. If it wasn’t, then your family got caught in the middle of some bloody dangerous business and you don’t want to know about it, believe me.”
“Oh, yes, I do,” Mariah said firmly. “If someone did this deliberately, I definitely do want to know about it.” His expression remained glumly resistant. “Frank! Dammit! Let me in! If I can do something—anything—to make sense of what happened and help bring down whoever did this, at least I won’t feel so helpless. Give me a break, please?”
Tucker shook his head. “I can’t. Even if I wanted to—which I don’t—it’s not my decision. Operations is handling the file and access is severely limited. Besides which—I’m dead serious here—you’ve got Lindsay to think about. You put yourself in the line of fire and she could end up an orphan. Is that what you want?”
“As opposed to what? As opposed to the life of a fatherless cripple that I’ve already managed to give her?”
“Don’t do this. Don’t punish yourself for something you weren’t responsible for.”
“If not me, who? Tell me who—I’d love to punish someone else. I’d like to rip them limb from limb. I’d like to blow their goddamn heads off!”
Tucker dropped into his chair. “And that’s exactly why you’re no good for this case. You’re personally involved. You’ve got no distance or objectivity, and that’s a recipe for getting yourself killed. Now, I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Go do your job and let me do mine.”
Mariah watched him as he opened a file in front of him and pointedly ignored her. She stood still, glaring at him, fists clenched. Then she wheeled around and headed for the door, throwing it open with such energy that it bounced back against the wall with a bang.
Pat Bonelli had finally arrived for work and was sitting at her desk when Mariah stormed out of Frank’s office. She jumped as the door crashed. “Mariah! You scared the shit out of me!” She stopped cold as she caught sight of Mariah’s face. “Are you all right?”
It was the second time she’d been asked that question, Mariah thought. What did people think? Of course she wasn’t all right!
Pat arched her neck to look in on Frank, almost as if she expected to see blood on the walls. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” Mariah muttered as she stormed into her own office next door.
5
Even Dieter Pflanz had to smile when he thought back on it later.
There was Angus McCord, billionaire industrialist—one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful—wearing a green surgical gown over his suit and a gauze mask over his face. A cotton cap rested heavily on his not-insignificant ears, forcing them to flap even more than usual. He looked like a diminutive cross between Marcus Welby, M.D., and Dumbo the elephant. Only the tiny, wizened baby girl whose hand McCord held through the porthole of an isolette, and the simultaneously proud and anxious expression on the faces of her similarly gowned parents, revealed the serious nature of the business at hand.
The Newborn Intensive Care Unit was a large room, full of high-tech equipment and bustling staff. It had been functioning for several weeks now, even though the neonatal clinic of McCord General Hospital was not yet officially open.
The isolette stood near the unit’s big plate-glass window. To Pflanz, standing with dignitaries in the hall outside, the preemie looked like a baby bird, lying on her back, arms and legs splayed. Her skin hung loose and wrinkled, and her spindly rib cage was protruding—she had been born too soon to have built up any healthy baby fat. Repeated sticking for blood samples had left bruises all over the little body. When McCord arrived at the NICU, the baby was wearing patches over her eyes to protect her retinas from the bili lights set up over the isolette to treat her jaundice. The lights were turned off for now and the patches removed for the benefit of the visitors, but a tangled network of plastic tubes extruded from her minute nose and arms, and several wires were taped to her chest.
Cameras outside the glass enclosure whirred and snapped as McCord gently stroked the frail baby, listening as the neonatal specialist beside him described the prognosis for the three-pound, eight-ounce preemie—iffy, but looking better with each passing day that she managed to cling to life. McCord looked up at the baby’s parents, his eyes smiling over the mask, and then back down at the tiny fighter in the isolette.
“You show ’em, little one,” he whispered.
A few minutes later, he emerged from the NICU, soberly stripping off the hospital garb as he made his way toward the lounge that marked the entry to the McCord Neonatal Unit. His entourage fell in step behind, photographers and television camera retreating before his advance. When he reached the red ribbon strung across the lounge, McCord stopped and the hospital’s chief of staff, Dr. Emory, pulled up alongside him. A hush fell over the assembled group of doctors, nurses, local politicians, community activists and media representatives.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Emory began, “this day has been a long time coming. It was almost seven years ago that the city of Fargo first expressed a desire to build an advanced neonatal care unit to serve this region. For the people of this community, it wasn’t enough to say that this is a small city—that we couldn’t afford the ‘luxuries’ of big cities like Boston and San Francisco. Our children deserve nothing less than the best. And so, the people of Fargo set out to acquire the finest neonatal facility that love and dedication—and yes, money—could build. And they did it with the generous support of North Dakota’s most famous offspring—Mr. Angus Ramsay McCord. This fine hospital already stands as a testament to this native son’s boundless commitment to our community.”
A murmur went through the crowd in the lobby and heads nodded.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, it is my very great pleasure to extend a warm welcome and our deepest appreciation to Mr. and Mrs. Angus McCord, and to call upon them to open this fine new addition to McCord General Hospital.”
A round of applause accompanied Gus McCord to the front of the room. His face became flushed as he looked around and waited for the clapping to die down, but it went on and on. He grinned sheepishly and rubbed the bump on his nose, then looked over at his wife and shrugged. Turning back, he raised his hands and made a dampening wave.
“Thank you. Thank you all,” he called above the noise. But the group showed no sign of letting up. Gus passed his hand over his brush cut as the applause rolled on. Then he seemed to have an inspirational flash.
“Shh!” he whispered loudly, his finger to his lips. “You’ll wake the babies!”
The audience laughed, but the noise finally died down. There was a long silence as they waited expectantly for him to say something, but he seemed to be lost in thought, examining his shoes and shuffling awkwardly. One or two nervous throat-clearing sounds rose up from the room. His voice, when he spoke at last, was soft.
“I have a confession to make,” he said, eyes still on his toes. “It’s not an easy thing to say, for an old coot like me. But I’m here to tell you that I’ve fallen in love again.”
A few chuckles sprinkled the room.
“The lady in question,” McCord went on, stronger now, looking up at the crowd, “has the face of an angel and a form so exquisite it takes your breath away. Of course, there are those who will say she’s too young for me, that these May-December romances never work out. But I don’t care. Because when I look in her eyes, I know that she is the culmination of everything that is good and beautiful in this world. Her name is Jessica Boehm, ladies and gentlemen. She is five days old and she weighs just three and a half pounds. But she’s a spunky little lady, and I am the luckiest man in the world for having met her.”
McCord reached out a hand to the mother of the baby he had been caressing in the isolette. “And this is Mary Boehm, the mother of that wonderful young lady down the hall.” Mrs. Boehm, tears streaming down her smiling cheeks, held on tightly to Gus’s hand as the audience applauded warmly.
McCord’s other arm reached out to embrace his wife, who had been standing off to his left. “And this beautiful lady, for those of you who don’t already know her, is my wife, Nancy. We have been married for forty years. She is my courage, my inspiration and my best friend. She is also the mother of our four sons and the grandmother of five beautiful grandchildren. We have a good life. But like the parents of little Jessica, we have known the fear and pain of a baby’s illness.”
He and Nancy exchanged glances and squeezed hands.
“I believe,” McCord went on, “that the sheer force of Nancy’s mother-love saw our sick children through their darkest hours. But sometimes, when a baby is born too soon, or with special problems, even a mother’s love needs a little help. This clinic is dedicated in ensuring that even the littlest ones like Jessica will survive and grow and thrive.”
There was a round of applause.
“I would ask my wife, Nancy, and Mary Boehm—two of the finest and most determined mothers I know,” McCord said, “to jointly do the honors of cutting the ribbon to open the McCord Neonatal Clinic.”
Mary Boehm’s surprise showed through her tears, but she quickly wiped them away as Gus stepped back. Nancy McCord moved beside her, offering a smile and a hug, and then handed Mrs. Boehm a pair of large surgical shears and held up the ribbon. Mary Boehm’s hand was trembling as she reached out and snipped the wide red sash. It fell to a cheer and a hearty round of applause.
Dieter Pflanz looked around the room and noted that several full-grown men were conspicuously swallowing lumps in their throats. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place. For a fleeting second, he felt the instinctive bristle rise up his spine as the crowd rushed forward to surround McCord, but then he relaxed again. It was obvious that there was nothing but goodwill toward Gus McCord in that room.
Watching the milling crowd, scanning those who were approaching McCord from all sides, Pflanz paid little attention to Jerry Siddon, who had moved next to him.
“That was a neat trick, wasn’t it?” Siddon said.
Pflanz glanced down at him. “A neat trick?”
Siddon waved his hand toward McCord. “That performance,” he said, grinning. “And turning the ceremony over to the baby’s mother. Focusing the attention on himself by seeming to turn it on someone else. Very neatly done.”
Pflanz arched one eyebrow. “You’re very cynical today, young Siddon.”
“Not cynical, just overawed at the man’s skill.” He glanced up at Pflanz, who was watching him closely. “You know what I mean. This guy’s tough as nails. You know it, and so do I. That’s how he made his fortune and his name. But look at him now.”
They both turned back to McCord, who was guffawing with a group of old cronies, his hands buried deep in his pants pockets.
“He looks like he just drove in from the farm in the family pickup,” Siddon continued. “Yet this is the same man who, in a few hours, will be standing toe-to-toe with the sharks and vultures in Washington. The man who may have done more than any other American to throw the Reds out of the Kremlin. I tell you, Dieter, this is the one. This is the guy we’ve got to put in the White House. He’s the one who can make things happen.”
The corners of Pflanz’s mouth angled up ever so slightly. He doesn’t need to be elected, Jerry boy, he thought. Things are happening already.
When Frank’s secretary tapped on her door a few minutes after she had stormed out of his office, Mariah was standing at the window, staring down on Langley Woods situated beyond the high fence surrounding the Agency’s headquarters.
“Mariah?” Pat hesitated, her hand on the door. Finally, she stepped in and shut it behind her. “What happened? Frank’s in there bellowing on the phone and you look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s going on around here?”
Mariah glanced at Pat and then stared back across the trees, denuded now of their leaves. It was a bleak landscape this time of year.
Tucker’s secretary was one of her closest friends, as was Frank himself. But Patty Bonelli and Frank were also an item—undeclared, discreet. It was a relationship that only Mariah and a few others in the office knew about. Mariah wasn’t altogether certain when Pat and Frank’s relationship outside the office had begun—for the first few years after his wife died, Frank had been too preoccupied with finishing the job of raising his kids to have time for anything else—but it had been going on for some time now. They seemed to be comfortable with it just as it was, neither one showing any sign of needing or wanting a more public commitment.
There was no way of knowing whether Pat was aware of the covert operation Frank had alluded to. As a senior secretary, she was privy to many of the compartmented cases that Frank and Mariah had worked on in the past, providing clerical support. But Frank had said that Operations was leading on this, and they always kept knowledge of their files to a minimum. If they had allowed Tucker in, it could only be because they had required his expertise. It was doubtful Pat knew anything, even if she were prepared to defy Frank and tell Mariah. On the other hand, Mariah thought, if Chaney had stumbled onto something, then it wasn’t as closely held a secret as Frank thought.
“Do you know if Frank has been working on any major cases with the Ops people over the past ten months?”
“He and George Neville have been working on a file,” Pat said. Neville was the CIA deputy director for operations—DDO. “I’m not cleared for it, though. I thought you were.”
“Why did you think that?”
“Because Neville was in Frank’s office the other day. Frank asked me to bring them coffee and when I opened the door, I heard Neville mention your name.”
“What was he saying?”
Pat shook her head. “He clammed up when I walked in. What’s this about, Mariah?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. I think it’s got something to do with the accident in Vienna.”
“What do you mean?”
“Apparently, it was no accident.”
“What?”
Mariah sighed and settled down on the edge of her desk. “Look, Patty, I don’t know what’s going on, but I shouldn’t be saying anything. You know Frank—he’d throw a fit if he knew I’d told you this much, so do me a favor and don’t mention it, okay?”
“I won’t say anything. But what do you plan to do?”
Mariah turned back to the window. “I don’t know. But I have to find out what really happened.”
With Frank or without him, she thought.
When Pat left her office, Mariah stood at the window a few minutes longer, struggling against the pain and black fury that were threatening to short-circuit her brain. Forcing herself to turn away from the window, she caught sight of the computer terminal next to her desk. She sat down and flicked it on, her mind racing as the monitor raised its greenish glow.
After a short delay, the screen prompted her to enter her password, the first line of defense against unauthorized access to the Agency’s data banks. All employees had a personal access code, known only to themselves and the computer. Security procedures required that the password be changed every month.
Mariah punched in her current personal code— “SIGMUND,” the name of her neighbor’s cat. After the mess she had found in her tiny garden, the feline had been on her mind the last time she had changed her password. The cursor moved across the screen as she entered the cat’s name, but only Xs appeared—another security measure.
After a brief delay, the monitor flashed a message: “PASSWORD VALID. FILE SEARCH MODE. ENTER FILE NAME.”
She returned her gaze to the keyboard and punched in “CHAUCER.”
There was another short delay. Her stomach flipped when she saw the reply: “RESTRICTED FILE. ACCESS DENIED. ENTER NEW FILE NAME.”
“Access denied, my foot!” she muttered. “That’s my file.”
