“What?”
“The police may come asking questions. The thing is, I had to leave the Land Rover in France.”
“France?”
“Yes. Now listen, there were some bodies at the scene.” He heard her inhale. “The police are going to come looking for me.”
“Oh, Gordon…”
“It may take them a few more days to get to you. Here’s the thing: you don’t know where I was going, you only know I said I had to go away on business. You don’t know what I’d be doing in France.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” She wasn’t crying; crying wasn’t her style. Angry was her style-angry and let down.
“I couldn’t. Last time I phoned, there was someone else in the room.”
“Yes, but you could have told me before now. Look, is this all about Jim?”
“I think so.”
“Then why not just tell the police your side of it?”
“Because my side of it, as things stand, doesn’t amount to anything. I’ve no evidence, no proof; I’ve nothing. And the men who did it, the police would have trouble finding them.”
“You know who did it?”
“I know who’s responsible.” Reeve was running out of money. “Look, just don’t tell the police any more than you have to. They may think one of the bodies is mine. They may ask you to identify the body.”
“And I just go along with it, like we haven’t spoken? I have to look at this dead man?”
“No, you can say we’ve spoken since, so you know it can’t be me.”
She groaned. “I really think you should go to the police, Gordon.”
“I’m going to the police.” Reeve allowed himself a small smile.
“What?”
“Only not here.”
“Where then?”
“I can’t tell you that. Look, trust me, Joan. You’re safest if we play it this way. Just trust me, okay?”
She didn’t say anything for a long time. Reeve feared his money would run out before she did say something.
“All right,” she said, “but Gordon-”
The money ran out.
Back in the bar, no one had touched his drink or his paper. He left the paper folded at the crossword, but now opened it up again and read, or at least stared at the headlines. He didn’t think they’d be watching the airports yet-well, the police wouldn’t. Jay and his team might, but he thought they were probably gone by now. Regrouping, awaiting new orders. One mission was over for them, only a partial success. He guessed they’d be back in the States, maybe in San Diego.
Which was exactly where he was headed.
After sixty minutes, he went back out to his car. At first he couldn’t see anything in the trunk. Halliday had tucked it deep underneath the lip. It was nothing really, a small packet-white paper, folded over. Reeve got into the car and carefully unfolded the A4 sheet. He stared at some yellowy-white powder, about enough for a teaspoon. Even with the interior light on, the stuff didn’t look pure. Maybe it was diluted with baking soda or something. Maybe it was just a benzo-scopo mix. There was enough of it though. Reeve knew how much he needed: just over two milligrams a dose. Three or four per dose to be on the safe side; or on the unsafe side if you happened to be the recipient. He knew the stuff would dissolve in liquid, becoming only very slightly opalescent. He knew it had no flavor, no smell. It was so perfect, it was like the Devil himself had made it in his lab, or dropped the borrachero seeds in Eden.
Reeve refolded the paper and put it in his jacket pocket.
“Beautiful,” he said, starting the car.
On the way south, he thought about how Tommy Halliday might have stitched him up, or been stitched up himself. The powder could be a cold remedy, simple aspirin. Reeve could take it all the way to the States and find only at the last crucial minute that he’d been sold a placebo. Maybe he should test it first.
Yes, but not here. It could wait till America.
“Another bloody night in the car,” he muttered to himself. And another airplane at the end of it.
FIFTEEN
ALLERDYCE HAD TAKEN WHAT FOR HIM was a momentous, unparalleled decision.
He’d decided he had to tread carefully with Kosigin and Co-World Chemicals. As a result, there was to be no more discussion of either topic within the walls of Alliance Investigative-not in his office, not in the corridors, not even in the elevators. Instead, Dulwater had to report, either by telephone or in person, to Allerdyce’s home.
Allerdyce had always kept his office and home lives discrete-insofar as he never entertained at home, and no Alliance personnel ever visited him there, not even the most senior partners. No one except the dog handlers. He had an apartment in downtown Washington, DC, but much preferred to return daily to his home on the Potomac.
The house was just off a AAA-designated “scenic byway” between Alexandria and George Washington’s old home at Mount Vernon. If streams of tourist traffic passed by his house, Aller-dyce didn’t know about it. The house was hidden from the road by a tall privet hedge and a wall, and separated by an expanse of lawn and garden. It was a colonial mansion with its own stretch of riverfront, a jetty with a boat in mooring, separate servants’ quarters, and a nineteenth-century ice house, which was now Allerdyce’s wine cellar. It wasn’t as grand as Mount Vernon, but it would do for Jeffrey Allerdyce.
Had he chosen to entertain clients there, the house and grounds would have served as a demonstration of some of the most elaborate security on the market: electronic gates with video identification, infrared trip beams surrounding the house, a couple of very well-trained dogs, and two security guards on general watch at all times. The riverfront was the only flaw in the security; anyone could land from the water. So the security men concentrated on the river and let the dogs and devices deal with the rest.
The reason for all the security at Allerdyce’s home was not fear of assassination or kidnap, or simple paranoia, but that he kept his secrets there-his files on the great and good, infor-mation he might one day use. There were favors there that he could call in; there were videotapes and photographs which could destroy politicians and judges and the writers of Op-Ed pages. There were audio recordings, transcripts, scribbled notes, sheafs of clippings, and even more private information: copies of bank statements and bounced checks, credit card bills, motel registration books, logs of telephone calls, police reports, medical examination results, blood tests, judicial reviews… Then there were the rumors, filed away with everything else: rumors of affairs, homosexual love-ins, cocaine habits, stabbings, falsified court evidence, misappropriated court evidence, misappropriated funds, numbered accounts in the Caribbean islands, Mafia connections, Cuban connections, Colombian connections, wrong connections…
Allerdyce had contacts at the highest levels. He knew officials in the FBI and CIA and NSA, he knew secret servicemen, he knew a couple of good people at the Pentagon. One person gained him access to another person, and the network grew. They knew they could come to him for a favor, and if the favor was something like covering up an affair or some sticky, sordid jam they’d gotten into-well, that gave Allerdyce just the hold he wanted. That went down in his book of favors. And all the time the information grew and grew. Already he had more information than he knew what to do with, more than he might use in his lifetime. He didn’t know what he’d do with his vast (and still increasing) store of information when he died. Burn it? That seemed a waste. Pass it on? Yes-but to whom? The likeliest candidate seemed his successor at Alliance. After all, the organization would be sure to prosper with all that information in the bank. But Allerdyce had no successor in mind. His underlings were just that; the senior partners aging and comfortable. There were a couple of junior partners who were hungry, but neither seemed right. Maybe he should have fathered some children…