Dallas glanced at Graham to make sure he knew that she was planning to answer the question. “About five days, maybe six. There are four of us, plus Kat and another man.” She pointed to the broken window and related the bear story.
“Yep,” Donohue said, looking at the window. “We’ve been having trouble with that bear for the last few months, which is one reason I came by to check the cabin. Sorry about the hour. I get up early.”
“You know that bear?” Dallas asked.
“Unfortunately, we all know that critter. I’m afraid the rangers are going to have to relocate it.” He paused and looked carefully at Graham. “Uh, was one of you folks outside late last night, down by the river?”
“Why do you ask?” Dallas replied, hoping to hear the right response.
“Well, I came down to check on our little hydroelectric mill in the river, and I found some footprints in the snow. They looked lighter than you, though,” Donohue said, gesturing to Graham.
Dallas shook her head and sighed loudly. “Thank heavens! That was one of us. I found your footprints over his and thought someone was stalking us.”
Don Donohue laughed. “No, not much stalking going on around here, although we got a group in last night I’m not too sure about.” He turned toward the window. “Say, let me get a hammer and some plastic from the shed, and I’ll seal that pneumonia hole for you.”
“Ah, what do you mean about a group last night?” Graham asked, sitting down with a tired thunk in a smaller chair.
“Oh, down at the dock. Four men came in on a rented cabin cruiser from Chelan, asking a bunch of odd questions about who was up here and who wasn’t this time of year, pretending to know nothing about the area.”
“Pretending?” Dallas asked.
He nodded. “Yeah. See, we get these fellows from the government coming every now and then disguised as mild-mannered civilians trying to catch us locals violating Park Service rules.”
“I’m not following you,” Dallas said.
“Back in the late seventies, a bunch of hunting buddies of Senator Jackson wanted to run us locals out of here so they could have it as their private hunting preserve. Some of us, like the Cavanaughs, been here since the late eighteen hundreds. We fought ’em and compromised on a brand-new animal called a National Recreation Area, sort of a national park with squatters. Ever since, we and the Park Service have had a love-hate relationship.”
“So, you think the men you saw are plainclothes Park Service?”
“Well, they don’t fit the mold. Cold eyes, you know? Really bothered me.”
“We’re…” Dallas began, “… uh… did you talk to them?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Donohue said quickly. “I said nothing about this place, and I didn’t know anyone was here anyway.”
“They weren’t armed, were they?”
“I didn’t see any guns, but you never know. They looked more like FBI agents than anything else.”
Jake Rhoades thanked the agents in the conference room and hurried out into the hall and back to his office. He shut the door behind him and stood for a moment, trying to imagine what was going through Kat Bronsky’s mind.
There was a tapping on the door and Jake turned to yank it open, irritated that someone was failing to honor his request for a few minutes of uninterrupted quiet.
“Yes?” he said, pulling it open, somewhat taken aback to find the director of the FBI standing on the other side.
“Jake, got a minute?”
“Sure. Come in.”
The director moved to a plush leather chair on the other side of Jake’s desk and sat down. “Give me a quick update, Jake.”
“On the Bronsky situation?”
The director nodded and listened intently as Jake explained the latest developments, and the near brush with capture by the other group at the Seattle-area motel.
The director leaned forward. “The political pressure on this has passed critical mass. The FAA administrator and I, plus the Secretary of Transportation, think it’s only a matter of days before we have enough terrorist warnings shutting down enough airports to cause a general explosion of public opinion that we can’t do our job and that airline flying is tantamount to suicide. The economic damage to the airline industry is already incredible, and the fact — as you know — that we have no formal ransom or extortion demand from this group means they’re going to zap someone else out of the sky before they communicate again.”
Jake sighed. “Director, I don’t know what else we can do but what we’re doing.”
“How close is she, Jake?”
Jake Rhoades cocked his head and came forward slightly in his chair. “I’m sorry?”
“Kat Bronsky. She’s gone autonomous, we’re trying to capture her before the other side does and all that, but she’s out there trying to solve this riddle. You relayed that yourself.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“So how close is she?”
Jake shook his head slowly. “I honestly don’t know.”
“Well, she believes she’s chasing down a solid lead, and frankly — unless you can tell me otherwise — that’s about the best this entire Bureau has at this point, right?”
“Well, Sir, we’ve tasked a large part of the Bureau and the investigation is roaring away on numerous fronts—”
“But,” the director interrupted, “the only one who thinks he or she’s got a lead is Bronsky, am I right?”
“As far as I know, yes.”
“All right. So my orders are changing. When you find her, form up the entire Bureau around her to help, but don’t get in her way. Give her every resource we have and, in essence, put her in charge of a special team effort. But if she wants to work solo, let her.”
Jake’s jaw had dropped. “Ah, very well. But first we have to find her.”
“The prime directive here is don’t crowd her, don’t suspend her, don’t threaten her, just support her.”
The director got up to leave and Jake stopped him with a question. “May I ask what precipitated this rather abrupt change, Sir?”
The director turned. “Sure. You can ask, and I probably shouldn’t answer, but I will, since this is the opposite of my wishes yesterday.”
“Yes, it is.”
“With the understanding that this doesn’t get passed to anyone, including her.”
“Certainly.”
“I received a very unusual call a while ago from the acting Secretary of State, Jordan James, who’s known Agent Bronsky all her life. He was CIA director for a long time, you may recall, so he knows his way around the intelligence community, and I’m half convinced he’s still on their payroll.”
“Really?” Jake interrupted. “He called me two days ago saying he suspected we had a leak and that he was setting up a relay through Langley.”
The director nodded, unsurprised. “Well, Jordan severely twisted my arm to call off our dogs and leave Bronsky alone. He said we were going to get her killed.”
“What?”
“I know. On its face, it makes no sense to me, either, since we’re trying to bring her and those survivors in to keep them alive, first, and extract any information they have, second.”
Jake was shaking his head. “He wants us to back off from trying to find her? She just missed being killed in Seattle! The next time she may not be as lucky.”
“Jake, what James’s call tells me, between the lines — since I suspect she’s talking to him more than she’s talking to us — is that she’s working the right leads. I think his network of spooks is still feeding him good information, and I think his loyalty to her is greater than to the Company.”