They went back to the stern to have another beer together, looking out at the water and enjoying the fact that there was no one and nothing else around them for as far as the eye could see; Henry certainly enjoyed it, anyway. He looked up at the smooth blue bowl of the sky.
Except it wasn’t perfectly smooth. Henry saw a small spark, sunlight on metal. It was like a metal splinter ruining the otherwise flawless blue and for some reason, it gave him a bad feeling. But after what Jack had told him, he thought, there wasn’t much to feel good about.
“You took a big risk contacting me,” Henry said, turning away from the glint far above them. “I wish you hadn’t.”
“I know but what else was I supposed to do? I love you, brother.” Jack’s voice broke on the last four words.
“Love you, too, man,” Henry replied, now thoroughly disconcerted. Sometimes when you were in the field together, your emotions could blindside you. But Jack had always been one of the steadier guys, good at keeping a lid on his feelings and staying focused on the immediate situation.
But then, this wasn’t the field. Or rather, it wasn’t supposed to be. That glint in the sky, however, suggested otherwise.
CHAPTER 5
“…they tell you who he was?” said Jack’s voice.
“Valery Dormov, terrorist,” said Henry.
“No, Valery Dormov, molecular biologist, who worked here in the States for over thirty years.”
Jack Willis’s voice was as clear as if he’d been right there in Janet Lassiter’s office with her and Clay Verris, and not actually coming in via a live feed from a drone four thousand feet above the yacht and the tiny boat tethered to it in Buttermilk Sound. The camera was zoomed in close enough to give Lassiter and Verris a perfect view of whoever came out on deck.
Willis and Brogan were still talking when the woman appeared. Lassiter grimaced; she had almost forgotten Willis hadn’t come to see Brogan alone. It was probably too much to hope that his lady friend would decide to spend the afternoon shopping in Savannah and follow that up with a leisurely, expensive dinner.
The woman climbed to the top deck, removed her cover-up, and settled into a small whirlpool right behind the helm, folding her long legs and fanning her shiny gold hair out on the deck to keep it glamorously dry. Lassiter herself was bewildered as to why anyone would put a whirlpool there of all places.
Well, to show what money could buy, of course. Anyone with enough money could buy a big expensive boat, but why bother if it looked like every other big expensive boat in the catalog? It wasn’t about buying a big expensive boat—it was about buying a big expensive statement. Regular people had to settle for bumper stickers or tattoos.
In any case, Lassiter felt sorry for the woman. She must have taken one look at Jack on that yacht and thought she knew exactly what she was signing up for. But then, she had probably thought she knew who Jack Willis was. She’d had no idea what she was getting herself into, which Lassiter thought was an experience common to a great many women, if not most. Lassiter, however, didn’t consider herself one of them.
She’d had no illusions about the line of work she had chosen. Intelligence had always been a boys’ club and the DIA was no exception. From the outset, Lassiter had known that if she wanted to get anywhere, she would have to claw, push, and punch her way up through the ranks, and she had spent her career doing exactly that. There hadn’t been a glass ceiling—there had been a whole series of them, one after another. The only thing you could do was bang your head against each one until either the ceiling broke, or you did.
The higher you went, the thicker the glass became, and the harder your head had to be, because no one was going to help you. No one—which was to say, no man—was going to weaken the glass for you by giving it a couple of hard whacks, or slip you a glass-cutter on the sly, or show you a secret passageway to get around it, not even your own father. Just as well—then she would never have been anything but Daddy’s Girl.
If any of your male colleagues did actually step up for you, of course, everyone else would say you’d slept your way to the top. Which was ridiculous—Lassiter had seen with her own eyes that women couldn’t sleep their way to the top in the agency. Some managed to sleep their way to the middle, but Lassiter’s goals had always been much loftier.
After a great deal of punching, pushing, and clawing, she was now in the stratosphere, where the air was a whole lot colder and thinner. But she was damned if she’d let anyone see her shivering or gasping for breath. Every morning she got up, put on her game face, and headed into work an hour earlier than everyone else, telling herself that yes, it absolutely, positively, and without a doubt had been worth it; she had no second thoughts, no feelings of disappointment or letdown, none whatsoever. She had made it. She was a director. That was godhood, not a dead end or a sinecure or a hamster wheel designed to make the average, the shortsighted, and the uninspired worker bee believe they were getting somewhere until they keeled over and died.
And if she really was a ‘soulless bitch-demon from the ninth circle of hell,’ as someone had described her to a co-worker in a ladies’ room that hadn’t been as empty as either of them had thought, it was still a lot better than being a gossipy, glorified secretary who called herself an executive assistant.
But the one thing the jumped-up wage slaves from the steno pool had going for them was, none of them ever had to deal with the man who was currently sitting in her office and breathing her air.
When Lassiter had met Clay Verris, it had been enmity at first sight. Repeated contact over the years had deepened her animosity into a profound, unshakable loathing. But she didn’t have to like him. Clay Verris loved himself, no doubt a hell of a lot more than she detested him. He saw himself as a visionary—a Steve Jobs of the military. A weaponized Steve Jobs, locked and loaded, minus the whimsy.
People in intelligence tended to be dispassionate but Clay Verris was cold-blooded on a level that made a python look like a puppy. He could also turn it on and off at will; in a line of work filled with dangerous people, it made him lethal. Lassiter knew she had to tread carefully around him but she refused to be afraid.
“It’s a pity,” Verris said, abrupt but casual, as if he were engaging in a conversation only he could hear. Lassiter wouldn’t have been surprised; she imagined the voices in his head got pretty loud. She waited to see what else was going to come out of him.
“I always liked Henry,” he added.
For a moment, Lassiter wasn’t sure she’d heard him right, then realized she only wished she hadn’t.
“Henry is DIA, Clay,” she said sharply. “He’s one of mine.”
Verris glanced at her, annoyed. “He knows you lied to him.”
“We have a tail on him,” Lassiter replied. “That’s standard protocol for a retiring agent. He’ll be contained.”
“Contained?” Verris gave a short derisive laugh. “Henry Brogan? Did you hear the same conversation I did? He’s got Dormov’s contact now and he’s going to pull that thread until he ends up pointing a gun in our faces.”
Lassiter shook her head. “Still—”
“What about his handler—the bald guy?” Verris asked.
“Patterson?” Lassiter shrugged. “He won’t be happy but he won’t cross me. He’ll fall in line.” She wasn’t actually sure that was true but it would keep Verris from planning Patterson’s death for the time being. At least, she hoped it would.