The Silent Places (12 page)

“Well, she is a politician’s wife. And you yourself said her husband was a shitbird.”

“That’s not her fault.”

“She married him. Birds of a feather.”

“Who knows why she married him? Who are we to judge? We’re both divorced.”

“So what?”

Hastings said, “I just think you’re better than this.”

“Better than—what do you mean?”

“Better than hacking on some woman just because she’s blond and pretty. You don’t know her.”

“I know you, though. I know your weaknesses.”

“For what?”

“You know.”

“Oh, that’s right. Superficial blond women. Like Eileen, right?”

“Yes. Like Eileen.”

“You don’t know her, either.”

“And you do?”

“I was married to her. I know her better than you.”

“You do and you don’t, George. Every week it’s the same thing. She does something to piss you off, you get mad at her, she gets mad at you, and then two days later, you’re on the phone with her, laughing at some cute thing she says.”

“Sometimes she’s funny. It doesn’t mean—”

“Yeah, it doesn’t mean anything. I know. I’ve heard it before. But she makes you laugh, George.”

“Don Rickles makes me laugh, too. I don’t want to climb into bed with him.”

“You don’t understand. When I hear that, it hurts.”

“Why? Why should it hurt you? She’s funny, yeah. She’s always been funny. But she’s also a fuckup, and I have no intention of getting back with her. She’s not my wife. She’s not my lover. You have no reason to be threatened by her. None.”

“It’s an intimacy. It’s another sign of intimacy. You always let her off the hook, George. Always.”

“You know, I don’t know what you want. Am I supposed to end every conversation with her by saying ‘I hate you’?”

“You can let her go.”

“Well, now you
are
being dramatic. I did let her go. She’s gone. She’s Amy’s mother. I can’t very well ask her to move to another state.”

Three more customers came into the coffee shop. The line extended and a girl near the back of it took out her BlackBerry to send a text message.

Hastings said, “Carol, you once asked me if Eileen wanted me to take her back, what I would do. Do you remember that?”

“I asked you that a long time ago.”

“And what did I say?”

“You said you wouldn’t.”

“Did you believe that?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you still believe that?”

“I do.”

“Then … what?”

“I just don’t see why you still have to be friendly to her.”

“I’m friendly to her because she’s my friend. And she’s the mother of my daughter. If I’ve given you a reason to distrust me when it comes to Eileen, I’m sorry. But I really don’t think I have.”

“I trust you, George. I do. But I don’t like you being nice to her. I don’t like it when you show warmth to her. I wish I were more adult about this. I wish I could be more understanding about it. But I just … don’t think I can anymore. There. I’ve said it.”

After a moment, Hastings said, “I don’t understand. Are you giving me an ultimatum?”

“No,” Carol said. “It’s not an ultimatum. It’s a realization.” She looked at him for what seemed too short a time. Then she said, “I need a few days, George. We’ve got some problems here and we may not be able to resolve them. I need a few days to think about things. Will you give me that?”

Hastings climbed into his bed an hour later. He got almost four hours sleep before his cell phone rang. He thought it might be Carol calling to patch things up. But it wasn’t.

Eileen said, “Did I wake you?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“Nothing. Do you want to go back to sleep? I can call back later.”

“I’m up now.” Hastings did little to mask his irritation.

Eileen said, “Okay. I just wanted to call and say I was sorry for being a turd the other night.”

“Forget it.” Bad behavior, followed by apologies, followed by forgiveness. Carol was right.

“Sorry,” Eileen said again.

“Really, forget it.”

“I mean I’m sorry I woke you up, too.”

Christ
, Hastings thought. “It’s all right,” he said. “I needed to get up anyway.” Sometimes it was hard to make anger at Eileen last.

Eileen said, “What are you doing in bed? Are you sick?”

Hastings explained his latest assignment to her.

“Geez,” she said. “Did you make someone mad?”

“I sure did.”

“What’s Senator Preston like?”

“He’s a fucking jackass. Is Amy all right?”

“Yeah, she’s at school. Where she should be. If you’re on this guard duty thing, will you need me to keep her until it’s over?”

“I think I will. I should know more today.”

“No hurry. I don’t mind doing it.”

“Thanks, Eileen.”

“It’s all right. How’s your girlfriend?”

“Ahhh … I think she kind of broke it off with me.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, that’s how it looks.”

“Maybe it’s temporary.”

“Probably not. She said she needs a few days to think.”

“About?”

“What a shithead I am, probably.”

Eileen laughed. “Yeah. All that time she wasted with you.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s funny,” Hastings said. “Jesus, Eileen.”

“Sorry. Are you all right?”

“I will be.”

“I’m sorry I laughed. It’s just that I saw it coming.”

Hastings thought for a moment. Then he said, “Do you and Amy talk about her?”

“No more than you and Amy talk about my husband.”

“Okay. Fair enough.”

“Let me guess,” Eileen said. “Something to do with Amy, right?”

“Eileen, I’m really not comfortable discussing—”

“She didn’t want to be a mom. Right?”

“That’s none of your—”

“George, it was obvious. I may be a neurotic mess, but I love my kid. And she’s my kid.”

“Yeah, she’s your kid.”

“You want to get married again, that’s fine. But you’re going to have a hard time finding someone who’ll take on another woman’s daughter.”

“Is that right?”

“Don’t be mad at me for saying it. It’s the truth.”

“You taking a little satisfaction from this, Eileen?”

“I wouldn’t say satisfied. Happy, relieved? … Yeah, kind of.”

“Well, that’s nice of you.”

“Well, I like to think sometimes you still love me. And I guess I was a little jealous.”

“You’re a rather greedy, vain young lady. Isn’t it enough that Ted loves you?”

“Oh, he’s a second husband. You always want to keep the love of the first. But seriously, George, it isn’t about me.”

“Well, that’d be a first. What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean, you idiot? I’m talking about Amy. You think I want the father of my daughter dating a woman who wants nothing to do with her?”

“I think ‘wants nothing to do with her’ is a little extreme.”

“What, then?”

Hastings said, “I think it’s fair to say she wasn’t all that enthused about being a stepmom. I don’t think it helped that she would have been the stepmom of your daughter.”

“So it’s my fault?”

“No, it’s not your fault.”

There was a pause. Then Eileen said, “You sure about that?”

“I’m sure,” Hastings said.

“Listen,” Eileen said. “Ted may have some defects, I know, but I don’t doubt that he likes Amy very much. In fact, he’s nuts about her. He cares for her. Something you never gave him credit for. And still don’t.”

“Well, forgive me for not having warm feelings for the man who stole you from me.”

“Oh, don’t be mushy. It doesn’t suit you. Stole me away—
shit
. You’re probably more grateful to him than anything.”

Hastings laughed. “Yeah,” he said, “sometimes.” And Eileen laughed with him.

“George,” Eileen said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m okay,” he said. “You’re right: It is for the best.”

“Listen,” she said, “enough time’s passed between us … we don’t have to be enemies, you know?”

“I know.”

“And you know I love you.”

“I know that, too.”

“Call me if you need anything.”

They said good-bye. Hastings walked into the bathroom, wondering at the absurdity of his life. Getting solace from Eileen, of all people.

The headquarters of Henderson Aerospace were in downtown Atlanta. At 5:00
P.M.
, the chief of security left his offices at Henderson. He got in his new BMW 760Li and drove out of the building’s parking garage at 5:05. The chief of security’s name was Richard Sinclair. At the age of sixty-nine, he had a trim, athletic figure. He had once been the executive director of the CIA. Before that, he had been the CIA’s inspector general.

At 5:08, Richard Sinclair stopped his BMW behind a bread truck at a red traffic light. That was when his passenger door opened and a man got in the car with him. The man pointed a gun with a silencer on it at him.

The man said, “Mr. Sinclair, my name is John Reese. You may not recognize me, but I think you remember my name.”

Sinclair stared at him for a moment, processing it. Then he said, “There’s been a mistake.”

“No mistake,” Reese said. “I want you to make a right at the light. Then you’re going to get on the interstate and travel north.”

“Wait a minute—”

“Let’s go,” Reese said.

Later, with the city behind them, Reese glanced at the speedometer. They were going eighty-eight miles per hour.

Reese said, “Slow down.”

“What?” Sinclair said.

“You’re trying to get pulled over,” Reese said. “It’s a bad idea. A man like me doesn’t have much to live for. I’ll kill you before a policeman can save you.”

Sinclair let the car decelerate to the limit.

“You won’t get away with this,” Sinclair said. “You’re going to have to be reasonable.”

“I’m being reasonable,” Reese said.

“You’ve just abducted a law-abiding citizen,” Sinclair said. “How did you get out anyway? Early parole?”

Reese observed Sinclair for a moment. God, the man wasn’t the least bit sorry. Confident, in fact.

Reese said, “Don’t you know?”

“How would I know? And why would I care?”

“Well, I think you’re being honest about not caring,” Reese said. “Someone took me out so they could kill me. Then I escaped.”

“They should have left you there.”

“Yeah, they should’ve. But they didn’t.”

Sinclair gave him a side glance, making no attempt to hide his disdain. Reese almost admired him for it.

“So now what’s your plan?” Sinclair said. “Kill every one who ever worked at the CIA?”

“I don’t have that kind of time.”

“You’ll get caught.”

“Maybe.”

“Do you know why?”

“Tell me why.”

“Because you’re a loser. You always were. They made a mistake letting someone like you in. Uneducated, unrefined. After the Church Committee, they lowered the standards to let people like you in the Agency. State-school graduates, army rejects … men with no honor. Men with no sense of duty or country.”

“Right,” Reese said.

“Men like you don’t belong in intelligence.”

“Hm-hmm,” Reese said. “Tell me, Sinclair, did you ever do any field work?”

“In Korea, I—”

“In Korea, you worked in communications. You went from Yale to the CIA, communications to analysis to administration. I know. You think I harbor some sort of working-class grudge against you, you’re flattering yourself. The truth is, you don’t know me at all.”

“Then why kidnap me?”

“Sinclair, you know full well why I’m here. Twelve years ago, in your capacity as inspector general, you signed an affidavit swearing that the CIA did not ask me to perform any contract work after I retired.”

For the first time, Sinclair revealed signs of anxiety. His hands tightened on the steering wheel; his mouth became a grimace. Now he remembered.

In a voice less confident than before, Sinclair said, “That was not my idea.”

“Whose was it?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Somebody made the decision,” Reese said. “Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on.”

“Oh for God’s sake, Reese. You know Agency politics. Nobody ever decides anything. Everything’s done by committee and/or group so that no one has to take responsibility for anything. You want to blame me, but you know—deep down you know—it wasn’t my decision.”

“My defense, Mr. Sinclair, my sole defense against the criminal charges was that I was acting with the authority from and at the direction of the CIA. Woods knew it and I know others knew it, too. Why did you abandon me?”

“We didn’t—”

“You did. You
denied
me. You specifically wrote and signed that affidavit.”

“I didn’t write it. I just signed it.”

Reese, his voice raised now, said, “You
just signed it
? You son of a bitch, do you know what that did to me? Do you understand what that did to me? That was my life you were playing with. I was helping you guys.”

“Look, it was too risky. The politics involved. We didn’t want another congressional investigative committee. We had no choice. Woods was dead. No one else wanted to stand by you. We didn’t know you.”

“Woods knew me.”

“But Woods was dead. We couldn’t be sure you were clean. So we did the—we did the politically sensible thing.”

“‘The politically sensible thing.’ You
lied
, you piece of shit. And I lost everything.”

“Listen to me. Listen to me,” Sinclair said, for now he was genuinely fearing for his life. “We didn’t think it would go that far. We tried to take it back.”

“Bullshit. You bore false witness against me. You who speaks of honor and duty.”

“No, we did. We tried to stop it. Clifford, Jim Clifford, the general counsel at the CIA, he told the prosecutor later that the affidavit was flawed. But the prosecutor wouldn’t listen. The prosecutor said it was ‘essentially accurate’ and that was good enough. He said you were a bad man and you needed to be punished.”

“He didn’t even know me.”

“But he believed it. He said it was too late. ‘The evidence is the evidence.’ That’s what he kept saying. ‘The evidence is the evidence.’”

“And then he went on to become a senator.”