The neurologist’s name was Dr. Pine. His house in Marblehead was everything a prestigious New England doctor’s home should be—three stories painted an appropriately coastal gray-blue with gleaming white trim and plenty of windows, exquisite brickwork on the driveway and sidewalks, massive brass light fixtures styled to look like old gas lamps. Lisa Boone waited an hour before he finally arrived, pulling up to the house in an equally appropriate Range Rover. He parked in the garage and put the overhead door down behind him, so Boone walked up the brick path that ran to the door on the side of the garage and waited for him to emerge. When he saw her, he stopped short, startled, and took a step back before determining that she posed no threat—an attractive white woman, thank goodness, no danger here.
“May I help you?” he said. His voice was deeper than his stature would suggest.
“Probably not,” Boone said, “but I have to try.”
“Pardon?”
“You have a patient named Tara Beckley. I need to speak with you about her.”
He frowned and studied her, wary now.
“I can’t talk about my patients,” he said, “and I’m curious why you’re at my home.”
“Because the United States government needs you to understand that your patient might have been a casualty of—and, if she lives, potentially a witness to—an execution killing.”
His jaw didn’t quite drop. His mouth parted and then closed. He took a breath, then gave a little shake of his head and a half laugh. “I expect to encounter new things every day,” he said, “but this one is really something. What branch of the U.S. government needs me to understand this?”
“May we go inside, Doctor?”
“What branch?”
“Department of Energy.” She smiled. “Surprised you twice, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” he said. “Come on in.”
She followed him up the back steps and into a kitchen with thick wooden counters and a massive center island. He pulled a stool up to the island, offered one to her, then unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his shirtsleeves slowly and precisely. He seemed to be moving methodically to gather his thoughts, and Boone was pleased by his demeanor. She’d expected a flood of questions, but what she needed was someone who could listen.
When he looked up again, he said, “I don’t want to seem foolish or paranoid, but it would probably be prudent to ask you for some identification.”
Wise man. She showed him her ID card, and he studied it with care, even tilting it so that the hologram caught the light.
“‘Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence,’” he read. “I’ll admit I didn’t know the DOE had their own investigations division. I’d have guessed they’d farm that out.”
“Sometimes. Not always.”
“So what brings the DOE intelligence division into the game?”
Boone knew he was testing her, asking a question that achieved multiple things at once. He wanted to learn how legitimate she was and how much information she’d share, and he wanted to buy himself time to consider the situation while he listened.
“The office protects vital national security information and technologies that represent intellectual property of incalculable value,” Boone said in her best public-speaker-introducing-a-bullshit-politician-at-a-ribbon-cutting voice. “Our distinctive contribution to national security is the ability to leverage the Energy Department’s unmatched scientific and technological expertise in support of policy makers as well as national security missions in defense, homeland security, cybersecurity, intelligence, and energy security.”
“Are you required to memorize that or is it your unique sense of humor?”
“It’s on the website.” She shrugged.
“Nicely done. Not exactly what I was hoping for, though. Would you give me an example of your work?”
Killing a man in a hotel room in Tokyo with a garrote, Boone thought, but the first example to come to mind wasn’t usually the one you should share. She said, “Serving on a joint task force with the FBI and CIA using legal vulnerabilities to motivate employees of a chemical corporation to reveal the covert sharing of patent secrets with the Chinese military.” She paused. “Hypothetically. Of course.”
“Of course,” he said, never looking away from her.
“Do you need another?”
“I’m not sure that I do.” He gave a wan smile. “‘Using legal vulnerabilities to motivate,’ you said? That’s quite a phrase. Distill it and one might say it means blackmailing employees.”
“One might,” Boone acknowledged. “But one would be wrong.”
“Sure.” He nodded, studying her, and then said, “Tara Beckley was a student escort. A creative-writing major. Neither she nor her family seems to have any expertise that would interest the Department of Energy. I know far less about her charge, simply that he was a guest speaker and that he was killed. Your belief, then, is that this man was assassinated—is that the idea?”
“I wouldn’t use that term, but that’s the gist.”
“A killing with political intent isn’t an assassination?”
“You’ll note that I’ve said nothing about politics, sir. Pardon me, Doctor.”
He waved that off. “No assassination, then. Fine. My understanding was that it was a car accident, and a driver admitted guilt. Rather unusual way to commit a professional execution. He even called the police himself, I believe.”
“Do you know that he’s dead?” Boone asked.
That stopped him.
“Police in Brighton just found his body in a car,” Boone told him. “Shot twice in the head. This unfortunate development paired with his uniquely cooperative admission at the scene means there will be no investigation into the death of Amandi Oltamu now, no trial. Do you see?”
After a lengthy pause, the doctor said, “And who is Amandi Oltamu to you? What value did he have that you were hoping to use legal vulnerabilities to motivate?”
Boone smiled. “This is where we get to the unpleasant part. You have questions, I have answers, but I can’t share them. And the less you know, the better for you.”
His eyes narrowed. “For my safety?”
“Yes.”
“So you want me to violate patient confidentiality—which means breaking the law, you know, not to mention the Hippocratic oath—and in exchange I get…nothing? Because of your deep concern for my safety, of course.”
“That’s the idea.”
He gave that little disbelieving half laugh again, then stood up. “Mind if I pour myself a glass of wine?”
“By all means.”
“Join me?”
“No, thank you.”
He poured from an opened bottle of pinot noir on the counter, took a drink, then looked at the clock on the microwave. “My wife will be home in about fifteen minutes,” he said. “If there is any chance that what you intend to tell me will put me in danger, well, such is life. The same philosophy does not apply to my family, though.”
“I understand.”
He turned back to her but didn’t return to the island, just leaned against the counter.
“You don’t have a witness,” he said. “I can tell you that much, because you’ll be able to find it out from other sources, and I can spare you that trouble, and we can spare ourselves the back-and-forth bullshit about the greater good in service of my country. That’s what I’d get if I tried to hold out, right?”
Now it was Boone’s turn to laugh. “Pretty much.”
“Thought so.”
“So there’s no chance she’ll regain consciousness?” Boone asked. “No chance of recovery?”
“Oh, I certainly intend to see that she has every chance at recovery. But at the moment, she is not going to offer you any help. If she has memories that could be of use to you, they’re sealed up tight.”
Boone nodded. “That was my understanding, but I had to try. What I need you to know is that if she wakes, she’ll be not only a potential asset to me, but also likely in harm’s way. I don’t intend to ask you to break any laws or oaths, Doctor. What I want from you is your assurance that if anything changes with Tara Beckley, I’ll be notified immediately.”
“Why not ask that of her family? Why me?”
“Because I don’t want to terrify them,” Boone said. “And because the stakes on this require the poise of professionals. What I’ve heard about you suggests that you’d be good under pressure.”
He tried not to look flattered, but he was. Everyone liked an ego stroke. Doctors too.
“It’s beyond unorthodox,” he said. “This shouldn’t be my role.”
Boone removed a business card from her purse and slid it across the gleaming hardwood surface of the island. “Just a phone call,” she said. “If there’s a change in Tara Beckley’s condition, I need to know. Tara will need me to know. At that point, I’ll deal with the family. Not until then. I wasn’t fully honest with you a moment ago, Dr. Pine. I said I was holding off on contact with them because I didn’t want to scare them. That’s true, but it’s not everything. I also can’t afford too much conversation about this. You are, as you’ve already made clear, a man who understands the need for confidentiality, for professional silence. You know what breaking that silence can cost people.”
He picked up the card and slid it into his shirt pocket. “What if there’s no change in her condition?”
“Then you don’t need to worry about me.”
“That’s not my point. If there’s no change, when do you deal with the family? When do you let them know the truth about what happened to Tara?”
Boone didn’t answer. She just gazed back at him, and he nodded.
“Right,” he said. “That’s where we’ll reach the bullshit about the greater good, isn’t it?”
Boone got to her feet. “You’re asking questions above my pay grade, and I think you know that. What you decide to do here is up to you. But be aware that you’ve got something more than a patient in Tara Beckley. You might have the key to some vital intelligence.”
“I have a human life. She’s no different than any patient.”
“Wrong. Tara is very different.”
“I can’t look at it that way.”
“You’ll need to.” Boone bit her lower lip, looked at the floor for a moment, then back at him. “I’ll give you this much perspective: Billions of dollars at stake, and dozens of lives. Maybe hundreds of lives. Still think she’s no different than the rest?”
“What she saw is worth that?”
“Potentially,” Boone said.
He didn’t have a response.
Boone thanked him for his time and consideration and let herself out the back door. If she drove fast, she could make it to the airport and catch the last flight back to DC. Her asset was dead, the witness was unresponsive, and the Brighton cops were clueless about Carlos Ramirez. That meant that unless something changed, Lisa Boone was on to her next assignment. She’d spent nearly a year on Amandi Oltamu, but sometimes this was how it went. There was always more work, and you couldn’t brood over lost causes.
But she wanted to know what he had. All this time, all this careful recruiting and secrecy, and she still didn’t know what he’d been able to produce. She’d heard only his guarantees.
Still a chance, though, she thought as she pulled away from Dr. Pine’s home. If that man is one hell of a neurologist, I suppose there’s still a chance.