Authors: Douglas Preston
Dajkovic raised the gun and looked him in the eye. Gideon felt desperation take hold: if he died, his father would never be vindicated, and Tucker would never get his comeuppance.
“You’re not a killer,” he said.
“For you, I’m going to make an exception.” Dajkovic’s finger tightened on the trigger.
“If you kill me, at least do me this one favor: take that envelope. Look into the story I told you.
Follow the evidence
. And then do what you think is right.”
Dajkovic paused.
“Find someone who was there in 1988. You’ll see. My father was shot down in cold blood—with his hands up. And that memo—it’s real. You’ll discover that, too, eventually. Because if you take my life you’ll also have to take on the responsibility of finding the truth.”
He found Dajkovic peering at him with a strange intensity. He wasn’t pulling the trigger—yet.
“Does it sound likely to you? Not that a guy with a top-secret security clearance at Los Alamos would be passing secrets to al-Qaeda—that’s possible. No—that General Tucker would know about it? And ask
you
to take care of it? Does that really make sense?”
“You have powerful friends.”
“Powerful friends? Like who?”
Slowly, Dajkovic lowered the shotgun. His face was slick with sweat, and he was pale. He looked almost sick. Then—kneeling abruptly—he reached for the knife in Gideon’s shoulder.
Gideon turned away. He’d failed. Dajkovic would cut his throat and leave his body in the dirt.
Grasping the knife, Dajkovic pulled it from the wound.
Gideon cried out. It felt as if his flesh had just been seared by a hot iron.
But Dajkovic didn’t raise the knife to strike again. Instead, he removed his own shirt and used the knife to cut it into strips. Gideon, head swimming in mingled pain and surprise, watched as the man used the strips to bind his shoulder.
“Hold that down,” Dajkovic said.
Gideon pressed the strips against the wound.
“We’d better get you to a hospital.”
Gideon nodded, breathing hard, gripping the bandaged shoulder. He could feel the blood soaking through already. He tried to overcome the searing pain, worse now that the knife was gone.
Dajkovic helped Gideon to his feet. “Can you walk?”
“It’s all downhill from here,” Gideon gasped.
Dajkovic half carried, half dragged him down the steep slope. In fifteen minutes, they were back at Dajkovic’s car. He helped Gideon into the passenger seat, blood smearing over the leather.
“Is this a rental?” Gideon asked, looking at the car. “You’re going to lose your deposit.”
The old soldier shut the door, came around and got in the driver’s seat, started the car. His face was pale, set, grim.
“So you believe me?” Gideon asked.
“You might say that.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Easy,” Dajkovic said, backing out of the parking spot. He threw the car into gear. “When a man realizes he’s going to die, everything is stripped down to essentials. Purified. No more bullshit. I’ve seen it in battle. And I saw it in your eyes, when you believed I was going to kill you. I saw your hatred, your desperation—and your sincerity. I knew then you were telling the truth. Which means…” He hesitated, gunned the engine, the rubber squealing on the macadam, the car shooting forward.
“Which means,” he resumed, “Tucker lied to me. And that makes me angry.”
W
hat the hell’s this?”
Tucker rose quickly as Dajkovic pushed Gideon into the study, hands cuffed. The general stepped around from behind his desk, pulling a .45 and training it on Gideon.
For the first time, Gideon came face-to-face with his nemesis. In person, Chamblee Tucker looked even more well fed and well watered than in the dozens of pictures he had studied over the years. His neck bulged slightly over a starched collar; his cheeks were so closely shaved that they shone; his hair was trimmed to crew-cut perfection. His skin bore a spiderweb of veins marking the face of a drinking man. His outfit was pure Washington: power tie, blue suit, four-hundred-dollar shoes. The soulless study was of a piece with the man—wood paneling, interior-decorator antiques, Persian rugs, power wall plastered with photos and citations.
“Are you crazy?” Tucker said. “I didn’t tell you to bring him here. My God, Dajkovic, I thought you could handle this on your own!”
“I brought him here,” Dajkovic replied, “because he told me something completely different from what you said. And damned if it didn’t sound plausible.”
Tucker stared hard at Dajkovic. “You’d believe this scumbag over me?”
“General, I just want to know what’s going on. I’ve covered your back for years. I’ve done your work, clean and dirty, and I’ll continue to do it. But a funny thing happened on the side of that mountain—I began to believe this guy.”
“What the hell are you trying to tell me?”
“I’m beginning to have doubts, and the minute that happens, I’m no longer an effective soldier. You want me to get rid of this man? No problem. I’ll follow your orders. But I need to know what’s going on before I put a bullet into his head.”
Tucker stared at him for a long time, then broke eye contact and passed a hand over his bristly scalp. He stepped over to a well-polished cabinet, slid open a drawer, pulled out a glass and a bottle of Paddy, slammed them on the mahogany, and poured himself a few fingers. He swallowed it in one gulp. Then he glanced back at Dajkovic.
“Anyone see you come in?”
“No, sir.”
Tucker looked from Dajkovic to Gideon and back again. “What did he tell you, exactly?”
“That his father wasn’t a traitor. And that he isn’t a terrorist, or in league with them.”
Tucker carefully set down his glass. “All right. Truth is, I did tell you a bit of a story. His father didn’t pass secrets to the Soviets.”
“What did he do?”
“You got to remember, Dajkovic, we were in a war, a Cold War. In war, ugly things happen. You get collateral damage. We had a problem: an error was made. We rolled out a flawed code and some operatives died as a result. If that had come out, it would have taken down the entire cryptology section at a time when we desperately needed a new set of codes. His father had to be sacrificed for the greater good. You remember what it was like: them or us.”
Dajkovic nodded. “Yes, sir. I remember.”
“So now this fellow here, Gideon, more than twenty years later, is threatening me. Blackmailing me. Trying to tear down everything we’ve built, to destroy not only my reputation but the reputation of an entire group of dedicated, patriotic Americans. That’s why he has to be eliminated. You understand?”
“I get it,” said Dajkovic, with a slow smile. “You don’t have to work around the facts to get me to do something for you. I’m with you one hundred percent, whatever you need.”
“Are we clear what needs to be done?”
“Absolutely.”
Gideon said nothing and waited.
Tucker glanced down at the bottle and glass. “Drink on it?”
“No, thanks.”
Tucker poured himself another, slugged it back. “Trust me that this is for the best. You’re earning my eternal gratitude. Take him out through the garage and make sure no one sees you.”
Dajkovic nodded and gave Gideon a little push. “Let’s go.”
Gideon turned and headed toward the door, Dajkovic following. They passed into the front hall and headed toward the kitchen, walked to the back where a door evidently led out into the garage.
Gideon placed one handcuffed hand on the knob, realized it was locked. At the same moment he saw a quick movement out of the corner of his eye and instantly realized what was happening. Throwing himself sideways, he pitched himself into Dajkovic’s shoulder just as Tucker’s gun went off, but the round still caught Dajkovic in the back, slamming him forward into the closed door, the gun knocked from his hand. He sank to the floor with a grunt.
As Gideon spun and dove, he caught a glimpse of Tucker in the kitchen doorway, isosceles stance, pistol in hand. The gun barked again, this time aimed at him, blasting a hole in the Mexican tiled floor mere inches from his face. Gideon leapt to his feet, making a feint toward the general as if to charge.
The third shot came just as he made a ninety-degree lunge, throwing himself atop Dajkovic and grasping the .45 that lay against the far wall. He swung it around just as a fourth shot whistled past his ear. He raised the .45 but Tucker ducked back through the doorway.
Wasting no time, Gideon seized Dajkovic’s shirt and pulled him to cover behind the washing machine, then took cover there himself. He thought furiously. What would Tucker do? He couldn’t let them live; couldn’t call the cops; couldn’t run.
This was a fight to the finish.
He peered out at the empty doorway where Tucker had been. It led into the dining room, large and dark. Tucker was waiting for them there.
He heard a cough; Dajkovic suddenly grunted and rose. Almost simultaneously, rapid shots sounded from the doorway; Gideon ducked and two more rounds punched through the washing machine, water suddenly spraying from a cut hose.
Gideon got off a shot but Tucker had already disappeared back into the dining room.
“Give me the sidearm,” Dajkovic gasped, but without waiting for a reply his massive fist closed over the .45 in Gideon’s hand and took it. He struggled to rise.
“Wait,” said Gideon. “I’ll run across the room to the kitchen table, there. He’ll move to the doorway to get off a shot at me. That’ll put him right behind the door frame. Fire through the wall.”
Dajkovic nodded. Gideon took a deep breath, then jumped from behind the washing machine and darted over behind the table, realizing too late how badly exposed he really was.
With an inarticulate roar Dajkovic staggered forward like a wounded bear. Blood suddenly came streaming from his mouth, his eyes wild, and he charged the doorway, firing through the wall to the right of the door. He pulled up short in the middle of the kitchen, swaying, still roaring, emptying the magazine into the wall.
For a moment, there was no movement from the darkened dining room. Then the heavy figure of Tucker, spurting blood from half a dozen gunshot wounds, tumbled across the threshold, landing on the floor like a carcass of meat. And only then did Dajkovic sag to his knees, coughing, and roll to one side.
Gideon scrambled to his feet and kicked Tucker’s handgun away from his inert form. Then he knelt over Dajkovic. Fumbling in the man’s pockets, he fished out the handcuff key and unlocked the cuffs. “Take it easy,” he said, examining the wound. The bullet had gone through his back, low, evidently piercing a lung but, he hoped, missing other vital organs.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, Dajkovic smiled, bloody lips stretching into a ghastly grimace. “You get it on tape?”
Gideon patted his pocket. “All of it.”
“Great,” Dajkovic gasped. He passed out with a smile on his face.
Gideon snapped off the digital recorder. He felt faint and the room began to spin as he heard sirens in the distance.
G
ideon Crew picked his way down the steep slope toward Chihuahueños Creek, following an old pack trail. He could see the deep pockets and holes of the stream as it wound its way through the meadow at the bottom. At over nine thousand feet, the June air was crisp and fresh, the azure sky piled with cumulus clouds.
There would be a thunderstorm later, he thought.
His right shoulder was still a little painful, but the stitches had come out the week before and he could move his arm freely now. The knife wound had been deep but clean. The slight concussion he’d suffered in the tussle with Dajkovic had caused no further problems.
He came out into the sunlight and paused. It had been a month since he’d fished this little valley—just before going to Washington. He had achieved—spectacularly—the singular, overriding, and obsessive goal of his life. It was over. Tucker dead, disgraced; his father vindicated.
For the past decade, he had been so fixated on this one thing that he’d neglected everything else—friends, a relationship, career advancement. And now, with his goal realized, he felt an immense sense of release. Freedom. Now he could start living his life like a real person. He was only thirty-three; he had almost his entire life ahead of him. There were so many things he wanted to do.
Beginning with catching the monster cutthroat trout he was sure lurked in the big logjam pool in the creek below.
He breathed deeply the scent of grass and pine, trying to forget the past and to focus on the future. He looked around, drinking it in. This was his favorite place on planet earth. No one fished this stretch of creek except him: it lay far from a forest road and required a long and arduous hike. The wild cutthroats lying in the deep pools and under the banks were skittish and shy and hard to catch; a single false move, the shadow of a fly rod on the water, the heavy tread of a foot on the boggy grass, could ruin a pool for the rest of the day.