Kane felt like a commander who had been racing to ready his troops for battle and then, suddenly, found himself with nothing to do but wait. Franks’ team was setting up the surveillance on Bellingham and preparing for Farber’s promised meeting with Munroe. Kane had gotten his boss to detail a team to handle the phony surveillance on Farber’s fictitious girlfriend though Kane, Farber and Munroe all knew that nothing would come of it. The only person who thought that there was some purpose to the operation was Immerson himself. A few minutes ago Kane had finished his last project, reading everything he could find on Sebastian Wren and his boss, Roger Dawson.
After graduating from Princeton Wren had applied to the FBI and started his career as a lowly field agent. Within two years he’d managed a transfer to the Office of Professional Responsibility, the FBI’s equivalent of a police department’s Office of Internal Affairs. After three years in OPR Wren received a posting to FBI headquarters in D.C. The Department of Homeland Security was created in late 2002 and in late 2003 Wren made the transition to HS where he steadily moved up the executive ladder. If and when his boss, the Deputy Undersecretary, moved on Wren was on the short list to take his job.
Wren’s boss, Roger Dawson, grew up in Rhode Island. His father was an executive in a commercial casualty insurance company that had been founded a hundred years before by one of his ancestors. Dawson, like George Bush (43) attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts then Yale, though Dawson was more than ten years too late to have crossed paths with the former president. Dawson did a brief stint as a junior executive in the insurance industry then followed the path blazed by generations of well-born but not well-heeled New England gentlemen and secured an appointment with the CIA. Melding a combination of family connections, decent intelligence, social skills and political correctness Dawson made the jump to HS’s executive ranks upon its creation halfway through Bush’s first term. The most recent rumor was that Dawson was planning a run for Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional seat once the current occupant announced his plans to run for a soon-to-be-vacant U.S. Senate position.
Kane stared at the clock. It was four minutes after two. He could check on the teams watching Giselle’s home but what was the point in that bit of theater? Calling Franks would be counterproductive to say the least. That relationship was frayed almost to the breaking point as it was. Danny was doing something on the computer, his fingers tapping madly away. Was there any point in asking him what it was? Kane couldn’t think of one. He looked again at the clock. It was still four minutes after two. Fuck it! Kane picked up the phone.
“Allison, it’s Greg. Can you meet me in the lobby of the National Gallery in twenty minutes? . . . I’ll explain when I see you. . . . Good. Thanks.” Danny glanced over just as Kane stood up. “I’ve got a meeting out of the office,” Greg told him. “If something comes up call me on my cell.”
“OK,” Danny said and turned back to his keyboard.
Kane figured it would be faster to take the Metro and half-jogged from the Archives station down 7th to Constitution. Allison was there ahead of him in a black and white outfit that was supposed to make her look like a prim and proper executive assistant and, as far as he was concerned, failed completely. He thought about hugging her but knew that such a public display of affection would upset her. He stopped a polite foot and a half away and smiled.
“Thanks for meeting me,” he said.
“Is someone else after Justice Hopper?”
“Let’s walk and talk.” Kane looked around the foyer then led her into the West Gallery. “I was kind of out of it the last time I saw you. How have you been?”
“I’m fine. What’s this about?”
“Remember when I talked about our taking some time off and looking at the paintings? This is it. It’s about us spending a little time together. Catching up.”
“You called me away from work so that we could catch up?”
“You agreed to it, remember?”
“What is this, a date?”
This was not going well. Kane had not expected it to but he had hoped he might be wrong.
“Some things are going on at the office, an investigation, and I don’t know where it’s all going to end up.”
“Is it something my uncle can help you with?”
“Let’s go in here,” Kane said leading her into one of the galleries along the south side of the corridor. “Remember when I told you that I liked the Impressionists?” Kane pointed to a painting of small boats pulled up on a beach.
Allison glanced at the canvas and then looked back at Kane. “Where is this coming from?”
Greg took a breath. “The last time I saw you I had almost been blown up. It wasn’t a situation that was conducive to conversation. The time before that we were just about to make love and I had to run out because a Secret Service agent had been murdered. This afternoon I had some free time and I thought it would be nice for us to get together and look at some beautiful art and talk like two normal people. That’s not so terrible is it?”
“I have a job,” Allison said, glancing at her watch.
“The Senate is in recess. Your uncle won’t even be back in town until tomorrow.” Allison forced herself to look at the Monet then uneasily turned back to Kane. “Look, I was almost killed doing a favor for your uncle. Are you telling me that it’s too much trouble for you to spend an hour with me wandering around one of the finest art galleries in the world?”
Allison paused for half a second then let her shoulders slump. “Fine.”
For the next five minutes they exchanged polite conversation about the artists, each picking out paintings they especially liked.
“You can have a copy made you know,” Allison said when Kane expressed his appreciation of “The Bridge at Argenteuil.”
“It wouldn’t be the same. I’d pay someone to make me something that Monet might have painted but didn’t,” Kane said.
“Any artist good enough to do that you couldn’t afford.”
“This is nice,” Kane said a moment later, looking at her and getting a confused glance in return. “Just doing something for the pleasure of it. I’ve been trying to dial it back, let things go. It’s supposed to make you happier.”
“Are you trying to tell me something?”
“Someone gave me a book a while ago, about Buddhism. I thought it was all BS but, now I don’t know. I’m not so sure.”
“Buddhism?”
“The idea,” Kane said with sudden enthusiasm, “is that yesterday is gone and that tomorrow doesn’t exist. That we have to stop being tortured by the past and expecting to be happy in the future and instead we need to find the joy in each second today.” Allison stared at Greg as if she suspected that he was cursing her in Chinese. “So, this,” Kane gestured at the paintings, “is about enjoying the moment.”
“Forget the past and live for today. Is that it?”
“It’s–”
“Tradition? Honor? We should just throw them away?”
“I’m just saying–”
“We have a debt to our families, to our loved ones, not to forget them. We owe them that.”
“Remembering someone and trying to live with them in the past are two different things,” Kane said fighting to keep the disapproval out of his voice.
“So, because I won’t pretend that Brian never existed I’m a fool who’s living in the past?”
“I’m just saying that it’s a bad idea to have your emotions all tangled up in the past and in the future because then you can’t be happy in the only place where you’re actually alive, which is now.”
“By ‘now’ you mean my being here with you. Do you actually think you can tell me how to live my life?”
“I’m not telling you how to live your life. I’m just saying that obsessing over something that’s already happened and that you can’t change is a bad idea.”
“Who are you to lecture me? If I want pop psychology I’ll call Dr. Phil,” Allison said, turning away.
“Wait!” Kane reached for her arm but she shook him off.
“Don’t touch me.” She glared at Kane for a moment then held up her hands. “That’s it. We’re done.”
“Allison, please. I care–”
“Don’t!” she half shouted. “Don’t you dare tell me that you care about me.” Kane took a half-step back and held up his hands in surrender.
“I was only trying to tell you about something that seemed to be helping me. I know you’re afraid of getting hurt again and I just want you to be happy.”
“My happiness is not your concern.” Allison started to leave then turned back. “I know what you mean by ‘living in the now.’ You mean replacing Brian with you but that’s not going to happen. I’m never going to turn my back on my husband. Not for you. Not for anyone.”
“You can’t hang on to someone who no longer exists. No matter how much you wish it wasn’t so he’s gone and you can’t get him back.”
“He’s not gone unless and until I say so and that’s never going to happen.”
Allison’s heels made an angry clicking sound as she stormed away.