I cradled the telephone and drained the last of the cognac.
Emerick jerked his head at one of his agents. “Get him out of here,” he said, pointing at Royston.
They cuffed Royston’s hands in front of him. “Listen, Emerick—” he began.
“Can it,” the director shot back. “They’ll read you your rights down in the car.”
“For God’s sake — my wife! My kids!”
“You’ll get your telephone call after they book you.” Emerick again jerked his head at the agents, and they hustled Royston out of the room.
Dorsey shrank into a fetal position in one corner. I wondered if I ought to try to say something comforting, but the truth was I was in no condition to even walk over to her. Time passed — I don’t know how much — while everyone in the room stood around waiting… waiting for Zooey to slit her wrists in the tub or come strutting out of the bedroom dressed for a press conference, I guess.
How long they stood there looking at each other I don’t know. I remember thinking I should have said something to the president — I had missed my only chance to talk to a head of state. Somewhere in there the evening ended for me. I passed out about that time and did a header off the stool. Never did have much of a head for liquor.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The ambulance crew was still in the suite loading Carmellini on a stretcher when Mikhail Goncharov whispered to Callie, “May I leave now?”
“Certainly.” Callie didn’t know what the CIA or FBI honchos would think of Goncharov’s departure, but she didn’t intended to ask them. They were huddled in the corner with Jake Grafton.
After catching her husband’s eye, Callie followed Goncharov out into the corridor and through the crowd in the hallway to the elevator. Secret Service, police, FBI agents, paramedics, and hotel executives — the crowd was beginning to thin now that the first lady and Royston had been taken away in handcuffs. Callie and Goncharov boarded the elevator, watched the door close. No one made any move to stop them.
They made their way through the lobby. People were whispering, watching the paramedics and police hustling about, speculating on what had happened.
Outside the main entrance on the Avenue of the Americas, under the awning, Goncharov told Callie, “I don’t want to go back to the CIA or British intelligence.”
“I don’t think they really need you,” she said. “The British copied your files.”
Goncharov snorted. “I suppose I knew they would.” He laughed without humor. “I was very naive.”
Callie ignored that comment. “Where do you want to go?” she asked.
Goncharov took a deep breath as he considered it. He looked right, then left, looked up at the buildings, then back at Callie. “I don’t know. Somewhere. I don’t speak a word of the language, I have no money, but this is what I want. This—.” He gestured grandly with his hand.
Callie opened her purse, took out all her cash, and held it out to him. “Here.”
“No.”
“Yes.” She said the word in English. “Yes.” Then in Russian, “This isn’t much, but it will feed you for a while. Tens of millions of people have come to America and started over — thousands do it every day — and you can, too. A little money will help.”
“Yes,” he said, trying the English word.
“Yes.” She echoed him, still holding the money in her hand, offering it.
“Yes.” He reached for the cash, inspected the bills, then put them in his pocket.
Callie Grafton smiled and held out her hand.
He shook it. “Good-bye,” she said in English.
“Gude-by.” The archivist, Mikhail Goncharov, turned and walked away into the night, into the great city of New York, into the heart of America.
The second day after my operation, the hospital moved me from intensive care to a private room. I thumbed the television on and flipped channels until I found a baseball game. I was just drifting off to sleep when Jake Grafton came into the room and shut the door.
“Hey,” he said. “We almost waited too long to get you to a hospital. The doctors had some real nasty things to say to me.”
“It was worth it,” I said. “After all the shit I went through, I really wanted to see Reactor and Zooey take the fall.”
“Reactor?”
“Royston was a fast breeder.”
Jake Grafton nodded and lowered himself into a chair.
“That scene in Dorsey’s suite — I was really surprised when you trotted out the DNA results. I thought those tests were going to take a week.”
“That’s right. We still don’t have the results. Should have them tomorrow.”
It took a long ten seconds for me to get it, what with my delicate condition, generally honest nature, and low mental ability. “You mean you lied to them?”
“Yeah.”
“And that red folder. Was that really it?”
“Oh, no. That was just one we had at home. What the hell — none of those people could read Russian.”
“‘Rollo’?”
He shrugged. “Goncharov couldn’t remember O’Shea’s code name, and I doubted if O’Shea ever knew it. I made that one up.”
I had to smile. Jake Grafton gave me a grin in return.
“How come I haven’t had every reporter in the free world in here today offering me millions for my story?”
“The story the FBI gave the press was that Zooey and Royston were lovers. I don’t think the press understands who was in the suite or what was said. Perhaps that could have been explained better, but the FBI didn’t bother. Zooey has held three jailhouse press conferences, and the media is having a field day. The country is eating it up. Royston’s lawyer refuses to let his client say a word and refuses to say a word for him. The bail hearing isn’t until next week, and the prosecutors will oppose it, they say. Some opposition senators and representatives are promising an investigation. The president refuses to discuss the matter.”
“He’s a cold-hearted bastard,” I remarked, remembering his short conversation with Zooey. But perhaps that wasn’t fair — he knew her a lot better than I did.
“This election is going to become a circus,” Grafton predicted. “It’s going to make the California governor’s recall look like a tea party. Politics has become an afternoon soap opera. In an era when the country is deeply divided over complex issues without easy answers, perhaps that is inevitable.”
I took a deep breath and moved on to the most important question. “Am I going to be arrested?”
Grafton chuckled. “Apparently not. I am informed that you are still a valuable employee of the CIA.”
“Long as I’m getting paid.”
We talked for a while about this and that, about Mikhail Goncharov and Kelly Erlanger and Dorsey O’Shea and my former boss, Sal Pulzelli.
“Was Joe Billy really Stu Vine?” I asked.
“I think so,” Jake said. “The CIA holds little tidbits like that very tightly indeed.”
“How come he was assigned to my shop?”
“I think the decision was made somewhere to bring him inhouse. They just needed a place to stash him for a while. What the agency didn’t know was that he had agreed to do a job for Royston. Do you remember? Pulzelli was told to send Dunn to be a guard at the safehouse. Since Dunn was scheduled to go to a training session, Pulzelli changed the assignment without telling anyone.”
“That was Sal… the born administrator. He lived his life by the schedule and thought we should, too.”
We were still chatting when a nurse came in and told the admiral he would have to leave. “See you, Tommy,” he said.
“Thanks, Admiral, for everything.”
“Any time.”
“You and Callie going flying?”