“Sure I can’t convince you to have a brandy?” Judd asked as he walked him to the front door. “Mom will join us.”
“Wish I could, but I need to get home. Karen is going to think I’ve gotten myself lost.”
Judd gave an understanding nod, and they shook hands.
Tucker went out to his old Oldsmobile. He liked the car. It had a powerful eight-cylinder engine and ran like a well-oiled top. He climbed inside and drove the rest of the way around the circular drive and out past the electronic gates and onto the street, heading to his far more modest home in Virginia. Since he was working, he had not brought Karen to the funeral. But she would be waiting for him, a fire burning in the fireplace. He needed to see her, to remember the good times, and to forget for a short while the fear in Jonathan’s voice for some impending disaster he had not had time to name.
Earlier, when he followed Jeannine and Judd’s limo to their place, he had thought a black Chevy Malibu was dogging him most of the way. He had slowed the Olds as he drove in through the Ryders’ gate, watching in his rearview mirror. But the car had rolled past without a glance from the driver, his profile hard to see beneath a golf cap pulled low over his forehead.
Now as he drove, Tucker went into second-stage alert, studying pedestrians and other cars. After ten blocks he made a sharp turn onto a quiet street. There was a car again, maybe the car, behind him. A dark color. A motorcycle turned, too, trailing the car.
Tucker made another sharp right, then turned left onto a silent residential avenue. The tailing car stayed with him, and so did the motorcycle. He hit the accelerator. Shots sounded, smashing in through the rear window. Glass pebbles sprayed, showering him. He crouched low and pulled out his 9-mm Browning, laying it on the seat beside him. Since Jonathan’s death, he carried it all the time.
Flooring the accelerator, he felt the big eight take hold, and the car hurtled forward into the night. Houses passed in a blur. No more bullets, but his tail was still with him, although falling behind. Silently he thanked the Olds’s powerful motor. Ahead was a hill. He blasted up it, the front wheels lifting at the crest, and over. The front crashed down, and he raced onward, turning onto one street and then the next.
He looked around, hoping… there was an open garage, and the attached house showed no interior lights. He checked his rearview mirror. No sign of his tail-yet.
He slammed the brakes and shot the car into the garage, jumped out, and yanked hard on the door’s rope. The door banged down.
Standing at the garage’s side window, gun in hand, he watched his pursuer rush past. It was the black Chevy Malibu, but he saw only the right side of the car, not the driver’s side, and could not quite make out the license plate number. He still had no idea who was behind the wheel. Immediately following, the motorcycle whipped past, its rider’s face hidden by a black helmet.
Tucker remained at the window, watching. A half hour later, he slid his Browning back into its holster and went to the center of the big garage door. With a grunt, he heaved the door up-and froze, staring into the mouth of a subcompact semiautomatic Beretta pistol.
“Don’t reach for it.” Judd Ryder’s face was grim. He had changed out of his funeral clothes and was wearing jeans and a brown leather bomber jacket.
Tucker let the hand that had been going for his weapon drift down to his side. “What in hell do you think you’re doing, Judd? How did you find me?”
Ryder gave a crooked smile. “You learn a few things in military intelligence.”
“You put a bug on my car?”
“You bet I did. Why didn’t the sniper in Stanton Park kill you, too?”
“I got lucky. I dove under the bench.”
“Bullshit. You claim to be a paper pusher, but paper pushers freeze. They wet their pants. They die. Why did you set up Dad?”
Tucker was silent. Finally he admitted, “You’re right-I’m CIA. Your father came to me for help, just as I said. After I got away, the sniper tried to shoot me, too. He was run down in traffic while chasing me. But when I went back, the body had disappeared. Either he survived and got out on his own, or someone picked him up. He’d seen me, which is why I shaved my beard-to make myself more difficult to identify. Someone just tried to kill me again, maybe the same asshole.”
“What exactly did Dad say?”
“That he was very worried. He told me, ‘I stumbled onto something… an account for about twenty million dollars in an international bank. I’m not sure exactly what it means, but I think it has to do somehow with Islamic terrorism.’ ”
Judd inhaled sharply.
Tucker nodded. “He was shot before he could say anything more than he’d found the information in the Library of Gold.”
Judd’s eyebrows rose. “He told the story about the library to me as if it were fiction. You’re certain he said he found out in the library?”
“He said the library was key. That he’d been there.” He saw a flicker of hurt in Judd’s eyes. “Everyone has secrets. Your father was no exception.”
“And this one killed him. Maybe.”
“Maybe.” An idea occurred to him. “Were you on the motorcycle behind me?”
“It’s parked up the block. I got the license tag of the Chevy that was chasing you. I can’t have it traced-you can. He lost me in Silver Spring, dammit.” He slid his gun inside his jacket. “Sorry, Tucker. I had to be sure about you.”
Tucker realized sweat had beaded up on his forehead. “What’s the plate number?”
Judd gave it to him. Tucker walked back through the garage to the driver’s side door of his car.
Judd followed. “Let’s work on this together.”
“Not on your life, Judson. You’re out of the game, remember? You’ve got a row house on the Hill, and you’re taking some time off.”
“That was before some goddamn sniper killed Dad. I’ll find his killer on my own if I have to.”
Tucker turned and glared. “You’re impetuous, and you’re too close to this. He was your father, for God’s sake. I can’t have anyone working with me I can’t trust.”
“Would you really have handled it any differently?” Before Tucker could answer, Judd continued. “It’s only logical I’d be suspicious. Maybe you were responsible for Dad’s death. You could’ve tried to liquidate me, too. Look at it another way: You don’t want to be tripping over me. I sure as hell don’t want you in my way, either.”
Tucker opened the car door and sighed. “All right. I’ll think about it. But if I agree, you take orders from me. Me, get it? No more grandstanding. Now rip that bug off my car.”
“Sure-if you drive me to my bike.”
“Jesus Christ. Get in.”
5
AS SOON as he dropped off Judd Ryder, Tucker Andersen phoned headquarters.
“I’m coming in now.”
Watching carefully around, he parked the Olds at the back of a busy mall outside Chevy Chase, caught a taxi, and phoned his wife. Then he hailed another cab, this time directing it back to Capitol Hill.
The headquarters of the highly secret Catapult team was a Federalist brick house northeast of the Capitol in a vibrant neighborhood of lively bars, restaurants, and one-of-a-kind shops. This sort of busy neighborhood provided good cover for Catapult, a special CIA counteroperations unit-counterterrorism, counterintelligence, countermeasures, counter-proliferation, counterinsurgency. Catapult worked covertly behind the scenes, taking aggressive action to direct or stop negative events, both in triage and planning.
Tucker let the taxi pass the unit’s weathered brick house with its shiny black door and shutters. The porch lamps were alight. The discreet sign above the door announced COUNCIL FOR PEER EDUCATION.
Three blocks later, he got out and strolled back as if nothing was on his mind. But once inside the fenced lot, he hurried past the security cameras to the side door, where he tapped his code onto the electronic keyboard. After a series of soft clicks, he pushed open the door. It was heavy steel, engineered to protect a bank vault.