Thornhill gave one brief shake of his head. “She’s disappeared.”
Winslow summed it up. “So we take out one of the Bureau’s finest and
let the real target get away.” He clinked the ice in his drink. “Not
good, Bob. The others won’t be happy to hear that.”
“Just to get all the good news out, our man was also shot in the
process.”
“By the agent?”
Thornhill shook his head. “No. There was someone else there tonight.
Unknown as yet. Serov has been debriefed. He gave a description of
the man who was at the cottage. We’re doing computer generations of
him right now. We should know his identity shortly.”
“Could he tell us anything else?”
“Not at present. Mr. Serov is being detained, for now, in safe
quarters.”
“You know the Bureau will go after this tooth and nail, Bob.”
“More precisely,” Thornhill said, “they will do everything in their
power to find Faith Lockhart.”
“Who do they suspect?”
“Buchanan, of course. It’s logical,” Thornhill replied.
“So what do we do with Buchanan?”
“For now, nothing. We’ll keep him informed. Of at least our version
of the truth, that is. We’ll keep him busy at the same time we keep
close tabs on the FBI. He has a trip out of town this morning, so were
covered there. However, if the FBI’s investigation gets too close to
Buchanan, we’ll provide him with an early death and provide our
professional brethren with all the sordid facts of how Buchanan tried
to have Lockhart murdered.”
“And Lockhart?” Winslow asked.
“Oh, the FBI will find her. They’re quite good at that sort of thing,
in their limited way.”
“I don’t see how that helps us. She talks, and Buchanan goes down and
takes us with him.”
“I hardly think that,” Thornhill said. “When the FBI finds her, we
will be there as well, if we don’t find her first. And this time we
won’t miss. With Lockhart gone, Buchanan will soon follow. Then we
can move forward with our original plan.”
“God, if it could only work.”
“Oh, it will work,” said Thornhill with his usual optimism. To last as
long as he had in this business, one had to have a positive attitude.
CHAPTER 10
LEE PULLED THE CAR INTO THE ALLEYWAY AND STOPPED. His gaze swept over
the darkened landscape. They had driven around for over two hours
until he felt reasonably sure they had not been followed, and then he
had made the phone call to the police from a pay phone. Although they
seemed relatively safe now, Lee still kept one hand resting on the grip
of his pistol, ready to pull it in an instant, to terminate their
enemies with the salvos from his deadly SIG. That was a joke.
These days you could kill from a sky away, with a bomb smarter than a
man, taking the most important thing a human being had without so much
as a “Hello, you’re dead.” Lee wondered if, during the millisecond it
took to cremate the poor bastards, the brain moved fast enough to spark
the thought that the Hand of God had struck them down instead of
something manufactured by man, the idiot. For a crazy moment, Lee
scanned the sky looking for a guided missile. And depending on who was
involved in all this, maybe it wasn’t so crazy after all.
“What did you tell the police?” Faith asked.
“Short and sweet. The location of the place and what happened.”
“And?”
“And the dispatcher was skeptical but did his best to keep me on the
line.”
Faith looked around the alley. “Is this the safe place you mentioned?”
She took in the darkness, the hidden crevices, the garbage can and the
distant tap of footsteps on pavement.
“No, we leave the car here and walk to the safe place. Which, by the
way, is my apartment.”
“Where are we?”
“North Arlington. It’s being yuppified, but it can still be dangerous,
especially this time of night.”
She stayed right next to him as they made their way down the alley and
out onto the next street, which was an avenue of old but nicely kept-up
attached rowhouses.
“Which one’s yours?”