the prosthetic, removed the mustache, hairpiece, and gloves, and jammed them into his pocket as he ran to where Vacario lay. Sam knelt, slipped an arm under her, rolled her onto her side, then sat her up on the gravel.12:38 P.M. Sam felt the suspension of O’Neill’s vintage Mercedes give as the car left black macadam and veered onto the three-tenths mile of rutted gravel lane that led to Rand Arthur’s Round Hill estate. He lay stuffed rudely onto the rear floorboard, the driveshaft hump wedged uncomfortably against his kidneys, his long legs tucked fetal, his body hidden under a stadium blanket, his mind producing an unsettling series of memories concerning the last time he’d been in this position.
But now things were different. O’Neill was driving, not some young consular officer. And John Forbes was riding shotgun, his Glock stowed at the ready under the fed’s left thigh. And Sam could feel the warmth of Ginny Vacario’s legs on his rib cage as the car bounced along the washed-out road. This time Sam was in control.
They’d traveled in convoy from Washington. Forbes drove with O’Neill; Ginny and Sam followed behind in the G-man’s Bureau wheels, a huge silver Mercury with concealed red and blue flashers behind the grille and five radio antennas on its trunk lid. Three miles north of Round Hill they’d stashed the big sedan and transferred into O’Neill’s ride.
It all began to make sense now. O’Neill’s sudden illness in Moscow—giving him time to receive instructions from an SVR officer masquerading as a room-service waiter. And the outrageous performance at the police station in the Ukrainian quarter. It was designed to make sure they’d be PNG’d.
Except Sam had managed to find Ed Howard’s materials. And Howard, ever the incompetent, had provided Sam with the clues to pursue the truth—or at least a shard of the truth. Which ultimately had led them here—back to the start of the maze Sam had entered on his forty-fifth birthday in Moscow.
“We’re here,” O’Neill said. “ ‘Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill.'” He paused. “Robert Louis Stevenson, y’know.”
Sam was wary of O’Neill’s puckishness. “Be smart, Michael,” he growled from under the blanket.
“Don’t you worry, Cyrus. I am with the program.”
Forbes said: “Car ahead.”
“I’ll flash my lights twice, just as I always do.” O’Neill’s voice was calm and even.
Sam felt the Mercedes slow and felt a rush of cool air as O’Neill lowered his window and called out to the rolling roadblock. “Hi, guys—just me and a couple of friends.”
Still, Sam held his breath until O’Neill picked up speed and he felt the ruts and potholes of the road give way to the scrunch of the pea gravel that covered the long, arced driveway.
As the car came round the top of the curve, it gained some speed. Then O’Neill slowed to make the tight turn that Sam remembered would take him onto a small circle in whose center stood an ancient willow. Except O’Neill applied the brakes—hard, and the vehicle came to an abrupt stop.
Sam muttered: “What’s up?”
Ginny said, “Stay quiet,” and shifted her position, adjusting the stadium blanket that covered her legs—and most of Sam’s body.
O’Neill’s voice: “Hey, Desmond, happy Thanksgiving. Whassup, guy?”
“Sorry to have to hold you up, Mr. O’Neill, but you weren’t expected.”
“No prob, man.” There was a pause. “Just some lastminute details Ms. Vacario and I have to work out with the senator. Brought the feds with me, too—this is FBI Assistant Director John Forbes. John, this is Sergeant Desmond Reese of the U.S. Capitol police. Nation’s finest.”
Forbes’s voice: “Nice to meet you, Sergeant. I’ll bet you’d like to be home with your family instead of standing post out here.”
“Roger that, sir.”
“Well, me, too. You stay safe now, Sergeant.”
“Thank you, sir—you, too.” Sam could hear the muffled sounds of radio transmission. Then Reese’s voice: “You’re clear to go ahead, Mr. O’Neill. Senator will meet you in the library. Happy Thanksgiving.”
“You, too.” Sam felt the vibration as O’Neill raised the window, put the car in gear, and drove ahead slowly. Forbes said, “The senator must be a little nervous these days, Elbridge. Think you have anything to do with that?”
The car slowed to a crawl. John Forbes said, “Pull around there, Michael, out of the cop’s direct line of sight.” The Mercedes moved what Sam figured was another fifteen feet, then stopped. Forbes’s voice stage-whispered, “Michael, I’m turning the ignition off and taking the key. You open the driver’s side door, then keep both hands on the steering wheel while I get out and come around to your side of the car. Got it?”
“Affirmative, John.”
“Good.”
Sam heard the doors open. Then he felt the front seat move forward. Ginny’s legs lifted off Sam’s frame. “Sam, you can get out now.”
Sam went to his hands and knees and crawled from the back onto the cold gravel of the driveway. He stood up. Stretched. He reached back inside and pulled the long metal box he’d taken the previous night from the Senate Select offices and cradled it in his left arm.
Ginny said, “Disguise,” and Sam reacted, straightening the mustache and adjusting the hairpiece and prosthetics.
Forbes crooked his index finger to summon O’Neill out of the car. The lawyer adjusted the chain that hung across his vest. “I’ll need my briefcase, John. It’s in the trunk.”
“I’ll get it for you.” The G-man unlocked the boot, retrieved an ancient leather briefcase, opened it, peered inside, riffled the papers, poked the bottom, then closed the bag up and thrust it into O’Neill’s arms. “Here.”
The lawyer clutched the big case like a football and turned toward the hand-finished door adjacent to the big garage, his polished brogues scrunching on the gravel. “This way, please.”
2:43. They entered a long corridor redolent of cinnamon, apples, and roasting turkey that led past the Spainsh-tiled kitchen where a trio of women in starched white chef’s tunics were preparing the senator’s Thanksgiving dinner. O’Neill turned into a narrow passageway. They marched through a pantry and small wet bar, then made their way to the thick, ornate library door. O’Neill punched the cipher lock, waited for it to click, turned the handle, pushed the door open, and stood aside. “After you, gents.”
“No way, Michael.” Forbes nudged the lawyer through the doorway first.
Rand Arthur was standing in front of the huge stone fireplace, flipping through the pages of a leather-bound book as the mournful tones of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder reverberated through the high-ceilinged room. He turned as the group came through the door, his left hand signaling that he was in the middle of something and he’d be with them as soon as he was finished. His eyes flickered in Sam’s direction, but there was no sign of recognition, even as Sam was closing the door behind them and quietly throwing the dead bolt.
The senator slapped the covers of the book shut, then turned to face his attorney. “Michael, what was so urgent?”
O’Neill stood aside for John Forbes. “Senator Arthur,” the G-man began, “I’m Assistant FBI Director John Forbes.” He brandished his credential so Rand could see it. “We have some disturbing news relating to national security. I wonder if you’d join us over here.” He indicated the kilim-covered sofa.
The senator gave Forbes a quizzical look. “I’d be pleased,” he said warily. Then he set the book on the edge of the ornate wooden mantel, crossed the room, and dropped into the black leather wing chair facing the door.
Forbes indicated that Michael O’Neill should sit on the edge of the desk. The lawyer complied, dropping the briefcase between his feet.
The G-man turned to Virginia Vacario. “Perhaps you might take notes, counselor.”
That was when Rand Arthur realized what Sam was cradling in his left arm. And that it was indeed Sam.
“You,” he gasped. “You!”
Rand Arthur tried to push himself out of the wing char. Forbes forced him back. “You stay right there, sir, please.”
Sam pulled on his latex gloves, lay the metal box on the coffee table, and flipped the lid open. “You’re SCARAB, Senator. Remember SCARAB? Ed Howard told us about SCARAB—he was sitting on this sofa.”
“Impossible.” Rand Arthur bristled. But his face had turned ashen. “Even if I were this SCARAB, there’s very little you can actually do, my boy,” he said.
“I don’t see it that way, Senator.”
The color returned to Rand Arthur’s cheeks. “You don’t get it. None of you people get it.”
Sam said, “Perhaps you’d like to explain yourself, then.”
“It’s quite simple actually. Consider the implications of frog-marching me out of here in handcuffs. A high-ranking member of the president’s party. Incoming chairman of SSCI. The Bush administration would be DOA, Sam. There’d be calls for impeachment. The war on terror would be fatally affected. Iraq? The invasion would never happen. Saddam Hussein would go on building up his weapons programs until the Israelis decided they couldn’t allow things to develop further and launch a nuclear strike against him, starting a regional conflict that could go on for years. And I can tell you truthfully, Sam, that I never passed a single document. Not one. All I ever did was give Moscow a sense of what the U.S. position might be—and I emphasize the word ‘might.’ I provided Moscow a heads-up. Nothing more. I turned over no more information than any political officer at the Moscow embassy when they gossip with their Russian counterparts at a cocktail party.”
Sam said nothing.
“Now,” he continued, “the question of Michael O’Neill is something else to consider.”
Sam said, “Oh?”
“I can’t condone what Michael has done.”
“You idiot,” O’Neill exploded. “Mudak. Zalupa.”53
Sam cast a quick glance at O’Neill. The lawyer’s Russian was pretty good for someone who wasn’t supposed to speak any.
“Michael O’Neill asked me to have you killed,” Rand Arthur continued. “The contents of that safe-deposit box belong to Michael, not to me. I swear it.”
“Oh, Senator!” Ginny’s voice was so loud she startled herself. She looked at Forbes. “It’s not true, John.”
“Not to worry, Ginny.” Forbes looked down at Rand Arthur. “So we won’t find your fingerprints on the money, Senator, or the inside of the lid?”
The expression on Rand Arthur’s face told Sam the senator hadn’t thought of that particular detail.
Forbes continued: “Or on the agreement form signed by the cop outside.”
“That was Michael’s idea, too,” Rand Arthur said, his eyes imploring. “He panicked after Moscow—told me you were a double. Said everything was compromised and you had to be eliminated.”
Sam looked contemptuously at Rand Arthur. “Tell me the truth, Senator. Give me something I can believe.”
“You have to understand, Sam. I was telling the truth when I said I never gave them anything more than cocktail-party gossip. That’s all they asked for.”
“How did they hook you, Senator?”
Rand Arthur’s tone grew desperate. “I was never hooked, Sam.”
Sam’s fingers rapped the metal box. “So you received what’s in here for being a nice guy.”
Rand Arthur’s eyes swept from Sam to Forbes. “There was one thing and one thing only they ever asked me for.”
“Which was?”
“When I became chairman of SSCI—”
Vacario said, “When you became chairman?”
“I always knew, Ginny. I always knew I’d get the chairmanship if the elections went right.” Rand Arthur looked in her direction. “And even if I was only ranking member, I was still to put pressure on the White House to get rid of Nick Becker.”
He swiveled toward Sam. “With justification, Sam. Believe me, I have been doing CIA oversight for six years now and the Agency is completely dysfunctional. Just look at everything that’s happened on Nick’s watch. CIA gave NATO the wrong coordinates, so we bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Until after we invaded Afghanistan, we had no unilateral assets there. We still have no unilateral assets in Iraq, either, Sam—not a one. They all belong to the Brits, the French, or to Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. The station chief in Riyadh doesn’t even speak Arabic. The Moscow Station chief has two-level Russian—which means he speaks it like a four-year-old. I had no problem with that request, believe me, Sam. Nick Becker is an utter disaster.”
“That was all?”
“Everything.”
It didn’t make sense. Sam hooked his head in Rand Arthur’s direction. “Senator,” he began, “the night back in 1993 you met Primakov. Did anyone from the Russian delegation speak to you?”
“Just Primakov—on the receiving line.” Rand turned to Michael O’Neill. “Isn’t that right, Michael?” The senator swiveled back to face Sam. “Michael was with me that night.”
Which is when the ten-thousand-watt flashbulb went off in Sam’s head. Rand Arthur wasn’t SCARAB. Rand was another in the long list of disposables. An agent of influence. A stooge. A puppet. Michael O’Neill was SCARAB. The degree of loathing and rage Sam felt at that instant could not be quantified. And then, like the pins falling into place when he’d picked the lock on Hart 211, Sam’s brain turned the plug and rolled the figurative dead bolt open. “Senator, whom would you have pushed to replace Nick Becker as DCI?”
Rand Arthur blinked. “Why, Michael, of course. For years Michael has told me he wants the job. He would have gotten it, too.”
That was Klimov’s goal. Charlotte had called it correctly. Everything had begun in Paris, when the Russians spotted, assessed, and recruited Michael O’Neill. Klimov’s long-term operation to put Moscow’s man on the seventh floor of Langley. Moscow’s man. Michael O’Neill. Sam’s protégé.
Sam started to hyperventilate. He was so enraged he couldn’t bring himself to look at the … creature who’d betrayed him. Who’d lied every step of the way. Who’d blown the church mailbox op in Moscow on purpose. Who’d had Pavel Baranov murdered. And Edward Lee Howard. And Irina. And Alexei Semonov, and who knew how many others. “Senator—”
Rand Arthur cut Sam off. “Isn’t that right, Michael?” The senator looked over to the desk where O’Neill had parked himself. “Michael has always said—oh, my God!”
Sam jerked around. O’Neill was holding Sam’s suppressed Browning Hi-Power on his right thigh. The mouth of the briefcase at O’Neill’s feet was open.
Sam’s eyes flashed toward John Forbes, whose expression instructed Sam not to do anything rash.
“I told you never to talk about our secret handshake, Rand.” As the lawyer slid off the desk he brought the pistol up in a two-handed grip. He took two steps, bringing him six feet from Rand Arthur’s chair. The gun bucked in his hand as he shot the senator twice in the side of the head.
Vacario screamed.
Rand Arthur, already dead, twitched half a dozen times and then folded onto the floor.
Sam started toward the lawyer, but O’Neill had already backed around behind Virginia Vacario. He put the fat suppressor muzzle up against her head. “Don’t screw with me, anybody.”
He looked at John Forbes. “Take your pistol out, John, throw it on the couch, and step away to the fireplace.”
Forbes did as instructed.
“Now you, Sam.”
“I don’t have a gun, Michael.” Sam had returned the backup pistol, as well as the bogus FBI ID and shield to Forbes as soon as they’d left the Idaho Avenue apartment.
“Show me.”
Sam opened his suit coat, spread the jacket wide, and turned all the way around.
“Okay—stand with him.” O’Neill watched as Sam joined John Forbes by the fireplace. “Counselor, you walk with me to the door.” With O’Neill holding her by her upper arm, pistol muzzle to her head, the two of them started across the room.
Action was useless of course. Sam had taken enough self-defense classes to understand that in the split second it would take to pull the Hi-Power’s single-action trigger, Ginny would be dead before he’d gotten five feet closer to O’Neill.
The lawyer punched the cipher combination into the lock, opened the door, and backed out, pulling Vacario with him.
Sam didn’t waste a millisecond. He dashed for the door, Forbes followed, picking up his pistol on the way and shoving it into its holster.
The damn door opened inward. There was no way to kick it off its frame.
Forbes said, “We knock the hinge pins out.” Then he looked at the hinges and saw the pins were enclosed.
Sam said, “O’Neill won’t be taking the Mercedes very far, John. He has an escape plan—got to. That’s the tradecraft.”
The G-man cocked his head. “How do you know?”
“Edward Lee Howard. He disappeared from this room. Had a car stashed somewhere—probably in the same general area O’Neill has one stashed.”
“How did Howard get away?”
Sam pointed toward the window behind Rand Arthur’s desk. “He pried the lock.”
The two men ran to the window. The cheap lock had been replaced with a heavy, double dead-bolt arrangement.
Forbes said, “Jeezus, Elbridge.” He sprinted to the fireplace and grabbed the big brass poker from its rack. “Goddammit, Sam—time to rake and break.”
Then he snatched one of the arm protectors off the big padded arm of the couch, vaulted onto the heavy credenza behind the desk, wrapped his left hand with the arm protector, held the poker in a two-handed bayonet grip, thrust its tip through the upper-right-hand corner of the window, and using the wooden stile as a guide, raked the heavy shaft down the glass, across the bottom, then up the opposite stile and across the top rail, shattering the pane and splintering the wooden sash bars.
“Follow me.” Forbes lunged over the glass through the empty frame. Sam was two steps behind, and like Forbes, plunged headfirst into the ornamental hedge of thornbushes planted outside.
“Oh, goddammit to hell.” Sam brought his arm up to cover his eyes as he rolled onto the ground, found his footing, scrambled to his feet, and got his bearings. He looked left, then right, then pointed toward the side of the mansion leading to the front drive. “This way.”
Forbes had his pistol drawn as they came around the corner. O’Neill still had Vacario by the arm. They were heading for the Mercedes. Just beyond them, he saw Desmond Reese.
Sam shouted, “Michael—”
Just as O’Neill brought the pistol up and fired half a dozen quick shots at the Capitol police officer. Sam could hear the suppressed shots popping as the rounds missed and ricocheted off the gravel. Reese rolled to his right and ducked behind the willow in the center of the circular driveway.
Sam shouted, “Ginny—get down. Hit the deck!”
Vacario twisted out of O’Neill’s grasp and fell prone. The lawyer tried to grab her arm and stand her up but she was deadweight now and not moving. He left her lying where she was and scrambled for his car.
Forbes screamed at the top of his lungs, “Reese, Reese—O’Neill shot the senator. Stop him!” He dragged Sam to cover behind a tree. “Reese?” He dropped to one knee. “Christ, I think he was hit.”
Sam snuck a look. O’Neill was crouched at the rear of the Mercedes, his left hand working under the bumper, the right still clutching the pistol. “Michael’s looking for a spare key.”
That was when Reese emerged from behind the willow tree, his pistol in a two-handed combat grip. O’Neill looked up. But it was too late. The cop advanced, firing again and again until he’d emptied his gun into the lawyer. He stood above O’Neill’s corpse, dropped the magazine from his weapon, loaded a new one, released the slide to chamber a fresh round, then holstered the Glock. He rolled O’Neill over with his foot, knelt, roughly pinioned the dead man’s arms behind his back, and handcuffed the wrists together.
Forbes and Sam emerged from behind cover. “I’ll deal with the police stuff, Elbridge,” Forbes rasped. “This has just become one bodaciously humongous crime scene. You go grab the lady.”
“Gotcha.”
“And take off all the spy crap.”
“Wilco.” Sam the prosthetic, removed the mustache, hairpiece, and gloves, and jammed them into his pocket as he ran to where Vacario lay. Sam knelt, slipped an arm under her, rolled her onto her side, then sat her up on the gravel.
He brought her close. “Lean on me.”
“I’d like that, Sam.” She turned to him. She had tears in her eyes. “I’d like that very much.”
Sam held her close and kissed her gently on the forehead. Then he brought her to her feet.
He glanced toward O’Neill’s corpse. Sam was torn. Part of him was glad the son of a bitch was dead. But the intelligence professional in Sam wanted O’Neill alive so he could be debriefed. Sucked dry. Left desiccated. He shifted his attention to Vacario, holding her tightly as the two of them made their way across the gravel.
“It’s over,” she said.
Sam knew better. He looked back at O’Neill then at her. “It’s never over, Ginny.”
“What do you mean?”
Sam’s head jerked toward the traitor’s body. “SCARAB’s dead.”
“Precisely. So it’s over.”
“No. SCEPTRE’S still out there.”
“Christ almighty, isn’t it time to let someone else worry about SCEPTRE? If there really is a SCEPTRE.” She stopped in her tracks, turned to face him, clasped his hand between her palms, and brought her hands and his to eye level. “It’s time to let go, Sam. You’re retired.”
He looked at her face and all that it promised. “Maybe,” he said. “But then again … maybe not. You heard what they say at Moscow Center, Ginny. They say retirement’s just another form of cover.”