Stone’s hand reached out for the tape, and Matt used his good arm to strike like a cobra against Stone’s wrist, grabbing it and squeezing it in a viselike grip. He leveled his eyes on Stone and began to speak.
“Scumbags like you think you can live in your little soundproof world so that nothing circles back on you. I look at it differently. I’m thinking that maybe Ronnie Wood and Mick Jagger will have a similar fight over these matters? Perhaps go the way of Fox and Diamond?”
Matt squeezed Stone’s arm so tight he thought he might snap the bone. Stone’s eyes fluttered either at the hint that Matt had something to do with the deaths of Fox and Diamond or the palpable desire for revenge transmitted from Matt through Stone’s wrist, like an electrical current.
“You send anyone after me, and I will know about it, Stone,” he said, his voice like granite. “And I will personally come to your little cottage in Orange County. I might be hiding behind the fireplace or perhaps in that nice refinished kitchen, who knows? Or maybe I’ll be at your McLean mansion, where you tried to rape Meredith. But I’ll be somewhere. So be smart. And being smart includes calling that slimy reporter you just told to out me and hang the bullshit failures on my back. I know how your type operates. Call him right now,” Matt demanded.
“Now?”
“I’ve got your E*Trade account that shows you made a fortune shorting stock before Nine-eleven. Rathburn was a meticulous record keeper. Now what are you going to do? Think about it. You’ve got a lot riding on this one, and you are walking on the razor.”
Stone stared at him for a moment, then looked away toward the window.
“I understand,” Stone said. He picked up the phone and dialed a number. Shortly someone answered, and Stone said, “Call it off.” There must have been a protest because Stone shouted into the phone, “I said call it off, or you’re dead, are we clear?”
“Do we have satisfaction?” Matt asked, sar-castically.
In the end, Matt knew there was nothing he could do to Stone that wouldn’t violate his principles or the law, but he would leave the tape behind as a tangible reminder to Stone of his influence.
And on that thought his mind spun to last night.
Matt had watched Diamond and Fox from behind the thick curtains in the bedroom. He had lined up the iron sights of his pistol on each of their foreheads with his good arm. He had a steady aim on Fox, then he would move to Diamond, and back to Fox.
When the moment came to pull the trigger, Zachary’s face flashed in front of him, saying, “Don’t do it. It’s not worth it.”
As he looked back up, though, he saw the glint of steel in Fox’s hand and a pistol in Diamond’s.
“What’s this letter, Dick?” Saul asked angrily, shaking the white paper at his lover as he walked from the study into the bedroom. His voice raged above Diamond’s favorite opera: Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” … None will know my name!
“It’s not mine, Saul. It’s a plant,” Diamond countered, holding up his hands as if to surrender.
The two men were naked except for boxer briefs in Diamond’s case and tighty whiteys in Fox’s. Both men had paunches that overlapped beyond the waistbands of the briefs. Disgusting and comical at the same time, Matt thought.
Of course, Matt had planted the letter and the dossier in Fox’s study once he learned of the Rolling Stones and thought of Dick Diamond’s role as Ronnie. Though he knew Ronnie was merely a cutout for a far-more-powerful person, as he had found a different picture beneath Diamond’s in the file Meredith had opened. It had been password-protected, and nothing could have prepared him for the image staring back at him.
Still, he couldn’t let Diamond or Fox get away with their crimes. Matt knew that, assuredly, the protective cocoon of the political-appointee bureau-racy would shield them from any accountability. Still, Matt had shaken his head at the internecine politics where there were double agents within cliques and power groups inside the Beltway and figured his ploy might work.
But what did that make him, he wondered? As he recalled the scene, he felt his own satisfaction:
“And what’s this?” Fox screamed. “You’re Ronnie? You’re a member of the Rolling Stones? You’ve been double-crossing me? I knew it, you bastard!”
Matt saw him hold the knife the way an orchestra conductor might hold an Uzi. This should be interesting, Matt thought.
“I’m not Ronnie!” Diamond proclaimed.
Matt was surprised to see how quickly Fox leapt toward Diamond, brandishing the knife as he shouted, “Double-crossing bastard.”
This was as much a lovers’ quarrel as it was a dispute about who was supporting which conspiracy. It hadn’t hurt that Matt’s sister Karen had transposed a photo of Diamond and Stone appearing intimate in conversation.
As Matt had watched Diamond respond, he thought, Never bring a knife to a gunfight. He didn’t even wince as Diamond’s pistol kicked back the moment Fox’s knife entered his heart. The bullet from Diamond’s gun caught Fox in the middle of the forehead, killing him instantly. The knife in Diamond’s heart let him live long enough to say, “But I know who Ronnie really is …”
Matt had closed his eyes and lowered his head. Covering his tracks from Fox’s apartment, he stole silently through the night in his old Porsche 944 and did not stop until he reached his home in Loudoun County.
“Yes,” Stone said. “Yes, we have an agreement.”
Stone’s words brought him back to the present. He released the man’s wrist, which Stone snatched back.
When Matt departed Stone’s office, he put the Pentagon in his rearview mirror and the memories of last night in the recesses of his mind as he drove along the George Washington Parkway to Langley. His thoughts turned to Zachary and the daughter who would never get to know her father now … and the brother he would never see again.
When he arrived at Langley, he walked onto the giant seal of the Central Intelligence Agency in the headquarters building and he blew past the security desk, only to be stopped by two large men in gray suits. One of them was the deputy director, Roger Houghton. They had seen him coming, or perhaps someone had been following him. Either way, Houghton was prepared for him.
“Don’t do it, Matt,” Houghton said.
“Lantini. Where’s Lantini?”
“Gone. Nobody can find him. Now go home and rest.”
“I won’t rest until he’s dead,” Matt said. Good operators always relied upon two sources, as opposed to one, to confirm intelligence. In this case Matt had three.
Matt had always wondered why he received the text to keep his ‘feet and knees together’ before Peterson’s airplane was even shot down. Once he discovered Lantini’s role as Ronnie Wood by Lantini’s photo in the file, hidden by the ruse of Diamond’s picture, Matt had developed a plausible theory. The fact that Lantini had fled served as confirmation to Matt that the CIA director had conspired with Stone and the others.
Every time I’m close, I’m moved.
Matt’s 944 Porsche boiled smoke from the burning tires as he sped out of CIA headquarters and back onto the George Washington Parkway.
He stopped at an isolated scenic overlook, gazed across the Potomac, and leaned over the rock wall. Lifting his head, tears running down his cheeks, he shouted, “Zachary!”
Epilogue
A week later Matt stood by himself on a large rock that protruded above the South River at the north end of the 150 acres he called home in Stanardsville, Virginia. He had pushed his rehab a bit too hard, and an admonishing doctor had promised him she would order him to bed rest if he didn’t wear the sling. So, with one arm back in a sling, with his good arm he flung flat pebbles across the bubbling water giving no evidence of the shortstop he had once been.