She felt suddenly empty.
“I suspect that was by design,” Feeney said. “He was a private sort of feller. I tried getting the lowdown on him a little, but he was reluctant to talk.”
“But… why?” she said. “He did nothing but put his own life on the line for me, for my father, for a week. And then he just leaves? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe there’s history there we don’t know,” Feeney said. “Some of the most helpful folk I ever knew had a ton of guilt behind it. Maybe… well, maybe the reason he cleans up so good is that he’s spent a lot of time in the mud.”
Sharmila felt a tear track its way down her cheek. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
WASHINGTON, DC
Eddie Stone knocked on the ajar office door, waited a moment, then entered.
“Don’t wait for an answer or anything. Just come right in,” Andrew Kennedy said dryly. He was seated behind the ornate, carved mahogany desk, the chair turned slightly sideways to accommodate his midsection girth.
“The door wasn’t completely closed. I didn’t realize you were having a private moment.” Stone looked around the office. He hadn’t seen it in… months? Years? It had been long enough that he couldn’t be sure. “Rare seeing you behind a desk, even your own.”
“There are… pressures from above right now,” Kennedy said.
“You saw the paper this morning? Benji Usmanov bit the big one.”
“I heard. Heart attack in his sleep.”
“And how are we feeling about that?”
“He was a friend. It’s a shame. But he was in his eighties.”
“He was a Russian asset,” Stone said, “and a willing one at that. You know as well as I do that he signed the checks on the failed Tehran mission. There are a few folks who think he had more than two of Team Seven on the payroll.”
“It doesn’t matter now, does it?” Kennedy said wearily. ‘It’s history.”
“Perhaps,” Stone said. “Although maybe it’s still too early to say.”
That got his boss’s attention. Kennedy straightened up and turned head on, leaning on the desk. “And what does that mean, exactly?”
“Well… Singleton’s still out there, for one. He’s the last of them, the last guy who might still have questions. Discounting the two of us, of course. And I’m certainly not worried about my ties to Usmanov.”
“And you think I should be?”
“Only you can answer that, Andy. We’ve worked together a long time. Maybe, sometimes, the Singletons of the world are unavoidable, an avenging conscience that always shows up, to right old wrongs.”
“Perhaps. But perhaps for not much longer. Our outside contractor—”
“Is dead. Again.”
Kennedy winced. “How?”
“In a hotel room in Bakersfield, California.”
“Singleton?”
“Would be my guess, sure. But we have no indication it was even related. I have a line on a freelance handler out of Dallas who might know more.”
“Anyone familiar?”
“Adam Renton. He was a digital spook over at NSA a few years back. My sources say he was working a lucrative freelance gig for a South African hitter. Can’t be too many in the US right now meeting that description at that level.”
“See what you can find out.”
“And then? Do we keep this up? I mean, sure, chances are eventually one of them catches him cold. But Van Kamp cost us two million dollars, a spend so large we had to create paper and be inventive to wash it. And he did no better than those who went before.”
Kennedy looked uncharacteristically befuddled as he considered the question, Stone thought. Shaken, almost.
The older man took off his glasses and rubbed his tired eyes. He ran his fingers through his thinning silver hair. “Leave it for now,” Kennedy said. “This is going to take a more creative fix than just throwing money at assassins. He’s too unpredictable, too much of a survivor for that to be the best approach. If nothing else, after fifty years in this business, you’d think we’d both know when to cut our losses.”
“Sure. You’d think. But… we’re both on the wrong side of seventy, both working on an age exemption. You ever wonder if maybe we shouldn’t have both stepped aside a long time ago?”
Kennedy just shrugged. “What else is there?”
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
The hire car dropped Bob at the LAX departure terminal. He tipped the man an extra ten dollars for respecting his desire for silence on the long drive.
It beat taking the bus. He’d seen enough of them, from DC to Pahrump, Nevada, to last a lifetime.
The flight to Seattle wasn’t scheduled to leave for another two hours, but he was content to grab a tea, find a new book. Anything to take his mind off Dawn and Marcus.
It ate at him. He didn’t understand why, really. Outside of his mother and Maggie, he’d never had caring relationships. And those had been different. A mother’s love was something unique, and Maggie had been as much about crazy passion as anything likely to last. They were like puzzle pieces that had found each other.
