London Bridges: A Novel (22 page)

I stepped back into the room. “Oh, it's all about the Wolf, Joe. See, I think you and your old partner can help us a lot—even if you never met him in person, and I'm not so sure that you didn't.”

Cahill finally threw up his hands in frustration. “Alex, this is a little crazy, you know. I feel like we're running around in circles. I'm too old and ornery for this shit.”

“Yeah, well, it's been a tough couple of weeks for everybody. A lot of craziness going around. You don't know the half of it.” But I'd had enough of “Uncle” Joe Cahill's crap. I showed him a photograph.

“Take a good look. This is the woman who murdered CIA Director Weir at the Hoover Building.”

Cahill shook his head. “Okay. So?”

“Her name is Nikki Williams and she's former army. She operated as a mercenary for a while. A sniper, a good one. Lots of private contracts on her résumé. I know what you're going to say, Joe— so?”

“Yeah. So?”

"Once upon a time, she worked for you and your partner, Hancock. Your agency shared your files with us, Joe. New era of cooperation. Here's the real twist— I think you hired her to kill Weir.

“Maybe you did it through Geoffrey Shafer, but you were involved. I think you work for the Wolf. Maybe you always have—maybe that was part of his deal, too.”

“You're crazy, and you're dead wrong!” Joe Cahill stood up and brushed crumbs from his trousers. “You know what else, I think you'd better leave now. I'm sorry as hell I invited you into my house. This little talk of ours is over.”

“No, Joe,” I said, “actually, it's just getting started.”

I made a call on my cell phone. Minutes later, agents from Langley and Quantico swarmed onto the property and arrested Joe Cahill. They cuffed him and dragged him out of his nice, peaceful house in the country.

We had a lead now, maybe a good one.

Joe Cahill was transported to a CIA safe house somewhere in the Alleghenies. The grounds and the home looked ordinary enough: a two-story fieldstone farmhouse surrounded by grapevines and fruit trees, the entryway thick with wisteria. But this wasn't going to be a safe house for Uncle Joe.

The former agent was bound and gagged, then left alone in a small room for several hours.

To think about his future—and his past.

A CIA doctor arrived: a tall, paunchy man who looked to be in his late thirties, horsey, WASPish. His name was Jay O'Connell. He told us that an experimental truth serum had been approved for use on Cahill. O'Connell explained that variations of the drug were currently being used on terrorist prisoners at various prisons.

“It's a barbiturate, like sodium amytal and brevital,” he said. “All of a sudden the subject will feel slightly drunk, diminished senses. After that, he won't be able to defend himself very well against prodding questions. At least, we hope not. Subjects can react differently. We'll see with this guy. He's older, so I'm fairly confident we'll nail him.”

“What's the worst we can expect?” I asked O'Connell.

“That'd be cardiac arrest. Oh hell, it's a joke. Well, actually, I guess it isn't.”

It was early in the morning when Joe Cahill was moved out of the small holding room and brought into a larger one in the cellar with no windows. His blindfold and gag were removed, but not the binds around his wrists. We sat him in a straight-backed chair.

Cahill blinked his eyes repeatedly before he could tell where he was and who else was in the room with him.

“Disorientation techniques. Won't work worth a crap on me,” he said. “This is really dumb. Nonsense. It's horseshit.”

“Yes, we think so, too,” said Dr. O'Connell. He turned to one of the agents, Larry Ladove. “Roll up his sleeve for me anyway. There we go. This will pinch. Then it'll sting. Then you'll spill out your guts to us.”

For the next three and a half hours, Cahill continued to slur his words badly and to act like a man who had half a dozen drinks or more in him, and was ready for more.

“I know what you guys are doing,” Uncle Joe said, and shook a finger at the three of us in the room with him.

“We know what you're doing, too,” said the CIA guy, Ladove. “And what you've done.”

“Haven't done anything. Innocent until proven guilty. Besides, if you know so much, why are we talking?”

“Joe, where is the Wolf?” I asked him. “What country? Give us something.”

“Don't know,” Cahill said, then laughed as if something he'd said was funny. “All these years, I don't know. I don't. ”

“But you've met him?” I said.

“Never seen him. Not once, not even in the beginning. Very smart, clever. Paranoid, maybe. Doesn't miss a trick, though. Interpol might have seen him during the transport. Tom Weir? The Brits, maybe. Had him for a while before we got him.” We'd already checked with London, but they had nothing substantial about the defection. And there was nothing about a mistake in Paris.

“How long have you been working with him?” I asked Cahill.

He looked for an answer on the ceiling. “Working for him, you mean?”

“Yes. How long?”

“Long time. Sold out early in the game. Jesus, long time ago.” Cahill started to laugh again. “Lot of us did—CIA, FBI, DEA. So he claims. I believe him.”

I said, “He gave you orders to have Thomas Weir killed. You already told us that.” Which he hadn't.

“Okay,” he said. “If I did, I did. Whatever the hell you say.”

“Why did he want Thomas Weir killed?” I continued. “Why Weir? What happened between them?”

"Doesn't work that way. You just get your job. You never see the whole plan. But there was something between him and Weir—bad blood.

“Anyway, he sure as hell never contacted me. Always my partner. Always Hancock. He's the one who got the Wolf out of Russia. Corky, the Germans, the Brits. I told you that, right?” Cahill said, then winked at us. “This stuff is good. Truth serum. Drink the grape juice, boys.” He looked over at O'Connell. “You, too, Dr. Mengele. Drink the fucking grape and the truth will set you free.”

Had we gotten the truth out of Joe Cahill? Was there anything to his drug-induced ramblings?

Corky Hancock? The Germans, the Brits? Thomas Weir?

Somebody had to know something about the Wolf. Where he was. Who he was. What he might be up to next.

So I was on the road again, tracking down the Wolf. Joe Cahill's partner had moved out to the central Idaho Rockies after he had taken early retirement. He lived on the outskirts of Hailey in the Wood River Valley, about a dozen miles south of Sun Valley. Not a bad life for a former spook.

As we drove from the airport to Hailey we passed through what the Bureau driver described as “high desert.” Hancock, like Joe Cahill, was a hunter and fisherman, it seemed. Silver Creek Preserve, a world-famous catch-and-release fishing area, was nearby.

“We're not going to bust in on Hancock. We'll keep him under surveillance. Try to see what he's up to. He's off in the mountains, hunting, right now. We'll run by his place. Let you have a look,” said the local senior agent, a young Turk named Ned Rust. “Hancock is an expert shot with a rifle, by the way. Thought I'd mention that.”

We drove up into the hills, where several of the larger houses seemed to be on five-to-ten-acre lots. Some homes had well-manicured lawns, which looked unnaturally green in contrast to the ashen hills, which, of course, were natural.

“There have been avalanches in the area recently,” Rust said as we drove. He was just chock full of information. “Might see some wild horses. Or Bruce Willis. Demi and Ashton and the kids. Anyway, there's Hancock's house up ahead. Exterior's river rock. Popular around here. Lot of house for a retired agent with no family.”

“He's probably got some money to spend on himself,” I said.

The house was large all right, and handsome, with spectacular views in three directions. There was a detached barn that was bigger than my house, and a couple of horses grazing nearby. No Corky Hancock, though; he was off hunting.

Well, so was I.

Nothing much happened in Hailey for the next few days. I was briefed by the senior agent in charge, a man named William Koch. The CIA had also sent a heavy from Washington, Bridget Rooney. Hancock returned from his hunting outing, and we watched his every move. Static surveillance was set up by an operations group that had been flown in from Quantico. There was a mobile team whenever Hancock left the house. We were taking him very seriously. After all, the Wolf was out there somewhere, with close to two billion dollars. In winnings.

But maybe we finally had a way to track him: the CIA agent who brought him out of Russia. And maybe it was all connected to whatever had happened between the Wolf and Thomas Weir.

The mistake in Paris.

It just wasn't going to happen overnight. Or the next night. Or the one after that.

On Friday I got permission to take a trip out to Seattle to visit my boy. I called Christine, who said that it would be fine and that Alex would be happy to see me—and so would she. I'd noticed the edge was gone from Christine's voice when we talked these days; sometimes I could even remember how it had been between us. I wasn't sure that was a good thing, though.

I arrived at her house in the late morning and was struck again by what a warm and charming place it was. The house and the yard were very Christine: cozy and light, with the familiar white picket fence and matching handrails hugging the stone steps leading to the front door; rosemary, thyme, and mint filled the herb garden. Everything just so.

Christine answered the bell herself, with Alex in her arms. As much as I tried not to, I couldn't help thinking about the way things might have been if I hadn't been a homicide cop and my life as a detective hadn't violently derailed the two of us.

I was surprised that she was home, and she must have recognized the look in my eyes.

“I won't bite you, Alex, I promise. I brought Alex back from preschool to be with you,” she said. Then she handed over the Boy, and he was all I wanted to think about right then.

“Hello, Dada,” he said, and laughed shyly, which is his way at first. I smiled back. A woman I know in the D.C. area calls me “a saint,” and she doesn't mean it as a compliment. I'm not, not even close, but I have learned to make the best of things. My guess is that she hasn't.

“You're such a big boy,” I said, expressing my surprise, and I suppose, my pride and delight in my son. “How old are you now? Six? Eight? Twelve years old?” I asked.

“I'm two, almost three,” he said, and laughed at my joke. He always gets me, at least he seems to.

“He's been talking about seeing you all morning, Alex. He kept saying, 'Today's Daddy day,'” Christine said. “You two have fun together.” Then she did something that surprised me: she leaned in and kissed my cheek. That kind of threw me. I may be cautious, even a little paranoid, but I'm not immune. First Kayla Coles—and now Christine. Maybe I looked as though I needed a little TLC. That was probably it.

Well, Alex and I did have some good times together. I acted as if Seattle were our hometown, and I went with it. First we rode over to the Fremont area, where I had visited a retired detective friend a few years back. Fremont was full of older buildings, lots of vintage clothing and furniture shops, character, if such a worthy trait can actually be traced to architecture and style. A lot of people seem to think it can, but I'm not so sure.

When we got there, Little Alex and I shared a scone with butter and blackberry jam from the Touchstone Bakery. We continued on our walking tour, and closely examined the fifty-five-foot-tall Fremont Rocket attached to one of the local stores. Then I bought Alex a tie-dyed kite, and we took it for a test flight at Gas Works Park, which had a view of Lake Union and downtown Seattle. Seattle has parks galore. It's one of the things I like so much about the city. I wondered if I could ever live out here and imagined that I could, and then I wondered why I was entertaining that line of thought at all. Because Christine had given me a quick little peck on the cheek? Was I that starved for affection? Pitiful.

We did some more exploring, and checked out the sculpture garden and the Fremont Troll, a large sculpture that reminded me of the singer Joe Cocker clutching a Volkswagen Bug in one hand. Finally we had a late lunch—organic, of course—a roasted vegetable salad, plus peanut butter and jelly on Ezekiel bread. When in Rome, and all that.

“Life is pretty good out here, huh, buddy?” I said as we munched our food together. “This is the best, little guy.”

Alex Junior nodded that it was good, but then he stared up at me all wide-eyed and innocent, and asked, “When are you coming home, Daddy?”

Oh man, oh man. When am I coming home?

Christine had asked that I have Alex home before six, and I did as I'd promised. I am so responsible, so Alex, it drives me a little crazy sometimes. She was waiting for us on the porch, in a bright blue dress and heels, and handled everything as well as I could have expected her to. She smiled warmly when she saw us, and hugged Alex against her long legs when he ran up to her squealing, “Mommy!”

“You two look like you had some fun,” she said as she stroked the top of the Big Boy's head. “That's nice. I knew you would. Alex, Daddy has to go to his house now. Back to Washington, D.C. You and I have to go to Theo's for dinner.”

Tears filled his eyes. “I don't want Daddy to go,” he protested.

“I know, but he has to, sweetheart. Daddy has to go to work. Give him a hug. He'll come visit again.”

“I will. Of course I will,” I said, wondering who Theo was. “I'll always come see you.”

Alex ran into my arms, and I loved having him close and didn't want to let him go. I loved the smell of him, his touch, the feeling of his little heart beating. But I also didn't want him to feel the separation that was already making my heart ache.