“There’s a pattern here, Robert, and Carnegie’s message reinforces it.”
He sighed. “Okay, I’ll bite. What pattern?”
“Official misconduct.”
“Say again?” he asked.
“Somehow, this involves something an agency of the U.S. government has done or become involved in that is so wrong, they’re scared to death of exposure.”
Robert fell silent for a few seconds. “You… aren’t suggesting we’re being chased by an arm of the U.S. government?”
“Oh, Lord no!” Kat said quickly. “But whoever these vermin are, when we uncover the full story, this administration is going to be terribly embarrassed.”
“That’s a sobering thought, Kat, but let’s stop talking about it until we get into Walter’s file. My brain is spinning.” Robert reached over and turned on the radio as they continued on I-90 across Lake Washington, tuning across a variety of stations before settling on a newscast reporting the initial response to a major airline accident in Chicago.
“Turn that up!” Kat said.
… came down in a residential area approximately four miles from Chicago O’Hare Airport. A massive rescue effort is under way at this moment, but there are no initial reports on how many people may have survived. There are numerous eyewitness reports that the Airbus A-three-twenty was about a thousand feet off the ground after takeoff when it did a slow roll upside down and came down nose-first. Witnesses reported a tremendous noise and an immediate plume of smoke from the site. We talked a few minutes ago with an FAA air traffic control supervisor who confirmed that there were no distress calls or any other indication of trouble before the crash. We’ll continue to…
Kat turned the radio off and looked at Robert MacCabe, whose face was as pasty-white as hers. She swallowed hard. “Undoubtedly…” Kat began.
“Yeah. I’m thinking the same thing.”
“Could be something else, of course. Flight control failure, some sort of massive aerodynamic failure of flaps, or… or a speed brake on one side. Could even be an encounter with the wingtip vortex of another large aircraft.”
Robert was nodding slowly. “But it probably isn’t. Accidents don’t happen much anymore. Here’s the third inside six weeks. We know now two were from the same cause. You said last night it was going to happen again.”
Kat hit the dashboard with the heel of her hand, startling Robert. He looked over to see her jaw set, her lips pressed tightly together in anger.
“Damn! DAMN! Damn, damn, damn, damn!”
“Kat?”
“SHIT!” she cried out.
“You okay?”
She snapped her head around to look at him. “NO, I am not ‘okay.’ I hate being asked if I’m okay when I’m obviously not.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be sorry. This is my agony. God! I can’t believe I let you get on that flight in Hong Kong when I should have known you’d be a target, and then I let the evidence, the weapon, and one of the felons slip away in Honolulu because—”
“Because you fell victim to a very professional, very well-done charade that would have fooled anyone.”
“Robert, please don’t try to make me feel better. The one thing my dad drummed into me was personal responsibility. You screw up, you admit it and take the consequences.”
“So how did you screw up, Agent Bronsky? By not being clairvoyant?”
“Precisely,” she snapped.
“Look,” he said, “personal responsibility is appropriate when there’s been a real lapse, but here…”
Kat let out a long sigh and signaled for a right turn. She braked the minivan hard and steered onto the shoulder of the freeway, coming to a lurching halt in a cloud of dust and rearranged gravel.
“What are you doing?” Robert asked in alarm.
“Look at me, Robert.”
“I’m looking.”
“I’m thankful you see me clearly as a female, and I know your male instincts are to protect me, but you’re dealing with someone who is as professional and responsible as you are. Do NOT try to protect me from the consequences of being in the profession I’ve chosen.” She hesitated. “This is why I was going to come alone.”
“Kat, I wasn’t trying to protect you.”
“Yes, you were! You were trying to protect the little girl from feeling bad because she screwed up big-time. I can handle my own self-recrimination.”
“So, if I understand this, I can’t say anything to you that’s supportive?”
“I didn’t say that. I just don’t need you chasing away my faults.”
“Oh, okay. You want only faults? Very well, I’ll give you a fault. You’re too focused on the job to pay attention to the underlying feelings of those around you.”
“What? That’s bull! I’m a psychologist.”
He hesitated, then waved his hand as if to dismiss the subject. “Let’s drop it.”
“Oh, no you don’t. You opened the door. Give me an example.” Robert had shifted his gaze to the road ahead, but Kat leaned around to catch his eye. “You can’t, can you? You know very well I’m sensitive to the feelings of those around me.”
Robert’s eyebrows flared as he turned to meet her gaze. “Really? Then how come you didn’t know how much I wanted to kiss you yesterday?”
A stunned silence followed, Robert as surprised as she by what he had blurted out. His hand went up instantly as he looked away. “I’m sorry, Kat, I didn’t mean… I mean, that just slipped out.”
She reached over and turned his face back to hers. “I’m glad. And I did know, because I was feeling precisely the same way. It was just the wrong place and the wrong time.”
“Wrong time, maybe. Definitely not the wrong place.” He looked at her for several seconds, and a smile slowly spread across his face. “What rotten timing,” he said. “I find a woman who really turns me on, but it’s in the middle of a terrorist crusade.”
“Was that why you came this morning?” she asked quietly.
He shook his head no. “That was part of it, but the major reason was precisely what I told you: the story, the chase, and the need for two minds on the same problem.”
There was a faint electronic warble in the background.
“Is that your beeper?” Robert asked.
Kat reached down to her purse and flipped it open, intensifying the warble. “Yes. I guess I was trying to ignore it.” She adjusted the screen and pressed the button, her expression darkening as she read. “It’s Jake, ordering me one last time to contact him and make arrangements to surrender you and the others as material witnesses.”
“To what?”
She sighed and shook her head. “An act of mass murder, to start with. He’s right. What I’m doing could be viewed as obstruction of justice.”
“Oh, bullshit!” Robert snapped.
Kat was pulling out her satellite phone with a freshly charged battery.
“You’re sure they can’t trace that?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m sure. They can trace it when it uses a ground-based cellular network, but I’m going to program it to stay on the satellite system.”
The phone rang suddenly and she automatically punched the Send button to answer it, realizing her mistake as she did so.
Robert was speaking at the same moment: “Maybe it isn’t such a good idea…”
Kat punched the Off button as fast as possible, hoping whoever was on the other end hadn’t heard anything.
The phone began ringing again, making her jump slightly, and she quickly punched the Off button.