Beloved Enemy (14 page)

“And yet you’re—”

“I
chose
my profession. I’m the sole support for my family. I have a small child and no husband. It’s a matter of money, you see. I make more in a week than I could make in three months doing something else.”

Jack, as impressed with her as he was, led her back to Connaston. “He was worried.”

“Yes, always.”

“About what?” Jack asked.

“For one thing, about this man Legere. Leroy was tied to Legere, but he never explained how.”

“And you never asked?”

“He would have become wary, then, you see. No, I said nothing.”

This girl was clever as well as smart, Jack thought. “Go on.”

“He told me Legere was dangerous—very dangerous.”

“In what way?”

“He had contacts in high places, powerful men who would move heaven and earth to protect him, even though Leroy said that Legere was involved in some very dicey business.”

“Dicey?”

“That was his word. I don’t know it, exactly, but—”

“It’s slang,” Jack said. “Connaston was saying that Legere was involved in something that was both dangerous and illegal. Did he say what it was?”

“No. Only that Legere had involved him.”

“Was Connaston anxious about anything else?”

“He was afraid he was being followed, at least that last day—the day he was murdered.”

“Did he say by whom?”

She shook her head. “It’s so sad.”

Jack knew she was speaking of Connaston’s death. Could he have been shot by one of Legere’s enemies? But then why kill Connaston and not Legere? Besides, Jaidee had told him that Legere was protected in high places. He shook his head; he was no closer to finding Pyotr Legere.

“Jaidee, I need to find Legere,” he said. “Do you have any idea where he might be?”

She thought for a moment. “I don’t. Unless…”

Jack’s head came up. “Unless what?”

“Leroy had a flat here. Even though he was in Bangkok for only short periods of time, he came here often enough to want a place of his own. He used to tell me that his life was made up of one anonymous hotel room after another.” She shook her head. “Anyway, it’s possible Legere is hiding there.”

“Do you know the address?”

Jaidee gave it to him. She balanced her spoon on the pad of her thumb. “Leroy was so sweet,” she said in her little girl voice, “always buying me presents from all over.” Her fingers went to a locket on a thin gold chain around her neck. “He gave me this the last time I saw him.” She held up the locket on its chain, a gold heart.

“What did he put inside?”

She frowned. “What?”

Jack pointed. “There’s a hinge on one side of the heart.”

“I … I don’t know.” Jaidee tried to look at it, but couldn’t find an angle. “I never noticed.”

“Why don’t we have a look?”

She hesitated for a moment, then, nodding, opened the clasp at the nape of her neck, set the heart on its chain on the table between them. But her hands withdrew, her fingers interlocked, the knuckles growing white.

“Don’t you want to look?” Jack asked softly.

“I don’t…” Her soft brown eyes lifted to his. “I don’t know whether I want to.”

“Do you mind if I look?”

Again, she hesitated before nodding. Her tiny white teeth gnawed at her lower lip.

She watched, her eyes staring as Jack took the heart between his fingertips. His nail found the tiny indentation along the seam of the two halves, pried them apart.

He laid the open heart down on the table.

“What’s that?” Jaidee said. “What’s in there?”

It was a tiny paper, rolled up very tightly. Jack used the tine of his fork to lift it out, then he carefully unrolled it. The paper was very thin.

“There’s writing on it,” Jaidee said, craning her neck. “Can you read it?”

“It’s an address.”

“Here in Bangkok?”

“No,” Jack said, as he struggled to get his mind to read the single line of tiny letters and numbers. “It’s thousands of miles from here.” He looked up at her. “Zurich, Switzerland.”

*   *   *

Jonatha Midwood, surrounded by tourists taking pictures, shrieking school groups, and wide-eyed families with toddlers, stood on the sidewalk of Constitution Avenue, a stone’s throw from the Lincoln Memorial, waiting. She had heard plenty about William Rogers, the national security advisor. She’d seen his face on TV and in the press countless times, but she’d never actually met him. She’d had no reason to. She was wholly Krofft’s creature, and Krofft, recognizing and nurturing her particular talents, had kept her hidden behind so many layers that most of the Langley CIA contingent had no idea she even existed.

Jonatha’s path to the CIA was a circuitous one. She had graduated Yale with a double master’s in political science and fine arts. She began working at Christie’s auction house in New York, where she familiarized herself with the works of contemporary artists and then forged friendships with the artists themselves. With her brains, personality, and exceptionally fine good looks, this was, for her, an easy and enjoyable task, but it caused no end of jealousy in those above her, so she left.

The
New York Times
employed her as its art critic, but the first time she went on assignment to Washington, she became enamored of life there. She changed horses again, hired away by one Beltway lobbyist after another, but never for long, growing ever more restless the faster she mastered the methods of each firm. She could have had her pick of posts, then, but chose to go another route, entering a PhD program at Georgetown in computer science. She was so skilled that she was allowed to build her own curriculum in a form of electronic statistical analysis that she invented. One of her professors was good friends with Krofft, who had longtime contacts among key academicians throughout the country. Over the years, this elite coterie had been his best recruiters, able to evaluate candidates on psychological as well as academic merit. At the professor’s urging, Krofft was present when she defended her thesis and was so impressed that he offered her a position in the CIA on the spot.

He was in for a long, convoluted negotiation. He scarcely minded; he enjoyed observing Jonatha’s meticulous nature, as well as her wealth of knowledge on subjects that surprised even him. He had never been party to a contract such as she insisted on, and he believed he never would again. There was no one like her. Her professor was correct: she was a polymath, and an exceptional one at that.

Now she was head of Arclight, a construct wholly of her own design. Krofft had only to tell Jonatha what he needed and she, like a sorcerer, would create the method seemingly out of thin air. She never failed any assignment, so she was the logical choice for Arclight, perhaps the only choice to run it.

Now, waiting for the appointment Krofft had set up for her, she wondered what form of grilling she was going to get from the national security advisor. She had achieved a status in a world where such levels were normally closed to women. A world where women toiled in the trenches below their male counterparts. To their male bosses, women were basically family-oriented nesters, not hunter-gatherers, like men. One moment women were working at their job, the next they were home breast-feeding their baby. But Jonatha had discovered another, deeper level of distrust. The men were frightened of women. Women possessed something between their legs men desired. Women could lead them off course. Women could make them feel emotion. What more potent threat to a man could there be?

Jonatha knew all this when she came to Washington, but what she was quick to learn was just how insecure politicians were. And, much to her astonishment, the same held true for those set in high places inside Washington’s shadowy, sprawling clandestine community. For the first time, her instincts about men had been challenged. Logically, spies and their handlers should be the most self-assured people on the face of the earth—how else could they do their dangerous work? But the opposite held true. These outsiders had cut themselves off from family, home, and their own personal history. In becoming ciphers, they were unmoored, adrift in a sea of eternal darkness, without a sense of self to anchor them.

All of this ran through her mind like a bright ribbon as she saw the national security advisor striding toward her. William Rogers held himself erect in the manner of an ex-military officer. Hands plunged deep in his unbuttoned overcoat, hatless, his thinning hair plucked by gusts of wind, he looked like an accountant or a salesman, which, she supposed, in a way, he was.

He had not yet seen her, but before she could enjoy sizing him up, a gleaming black Ford SUV pulled in to the curb directly where she was standing. Before the vehicle could come to a complete stop, the front curbside door was flung open, and a suit with a cordless earpiece and a sidearm at his hip stepped out, opened the rear door, took her elbow, and said, in a low but commanding tone, “This way, Ms. Midwood.”

She turned, startled rather than alarmed. “Who are you?”

“This way, please.”

His grip was firm, his expression insistent.

Still, she resisted. “I have an appointment.”

“Ms. Midwood, it’s a matter of national security. Your presence is required now.”

She took one last look at Rogers, then sighed, and, ducking her head, slid into the rear seat. Immediately, the door slammed shut, dimming the interior further. The suit climbed into the front seat, closed his door. The SUV sat there, idling.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Midwood,” said the man sitting beside her. “My name is Henry Dickinson, director—”

“I know who you are,” Jonatha said curtly. “You’ve got a helluva nerve. I was on my way to meet the national security advisor.”

Dickinson nodded. “Having spotted Bill Rogers, I surmised as much. You have my most sincere apologies, but—”

“Bullshit,” Jonatha said. “This—what shall I call it? Intervention?—was planned.”

“Even if it was,” Dickinson said evenly, “my apologies
are
sincere.”

She turned part way toward him. “Listen, Dicky—that’s what my boss calls you, isn’t it? Dicky.” A smiled curled her lips. “Now I can see why.” Even in the dimness of the vehicle’s interior she could see the color rushing to his cheeks. “So listen to me, Dicky. My time is exceedingly valuable. Say what you have to say and then I’ll be on my way—hopefully before Rogers takes me for a flake who hasn’t the sense to show up on time.”

“Tell me about Airgas.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sorry, I meant Arclight.” He projected a predatory smile onto his face. “It’s your program, right? I want to hear about it.”

“Talk to my boss, Dicky.”

“I chose to talk to you. Was that a mistake?”

“Yes. I don’t know anything.”

“What you mean is you won’t tell me what you know.”

“If you had come to me and asked—”

“Please.”

Jonatha considered a moment, trying to put aside her personal animosity toward this man. He had frightened her, if only momentarily. The innate female instinct to be cowed by a male of the species astonished her. It was fueled by the fear of being aggressive, which would inevitably label her as a bitch.

She wanted out of this situation, and she saw the quickest path was to give him what he thought he desired. “Director Krofft came to me three days ago,” she began. “He was concerned about a leak—maybe inside homeland security—”

Dickinson’s features grew dark, his brows knitted together. “He should have come to me.”

“It was Atlas that was on his mind, and Atlas, as I understand it, is an umbrella operation.”

“We both know that’s not why Krofft took the lead on this.”

Jonatha took a breath. “In any event, he gave me the guidelines and left the rest to me. I’ve worked up a schedule of interviews, psychological and polygraph tests.”

Dickinson seemed taken aback. “We have already ID’d our bad apple—Jack McClure.”

“We need to be absolutely certain there isn’t another,” she said.

“But this method—it’s so old hat.”

“‘Those oldies but goodies remind me of you,’” she sang lightly. “Little Caesar and the Romans. Nineteen-sixty-one.” She slid away from him. “There’s a reason the protocol is still around. It works.” She reached for the door handle. “That’s it, there’s nothing more.”

“What kind of psych tests?”

“You can’t expect me to divulge details. Everyone in the Atlas program is suspect.”

“Even Krofft?”

She smiled as she opened the door and stepped out.

*   *   *

Leroy Connaston’s apartment was in a run-down neighborhood of Bangkok, where cars cruised alongside pedicabs and ancient motorcycles, whose two-stroke engines spewed blinding exhaust into the already hazy atmosphere.

Jack stood on the corner opposite, watching not only the entrance to the building but also the motor and foot traffic, looking for anomalies. The building looked like a drunken prizefighter that had spent too long in the ring, shoulders hunched and heavily sagging against its neighbor. In fact, it might have fallen down had it not been for the spiderweb of bamboo scaffolding around the facade.

Within a few minutes, Jack gave the surveillance up. The truth was, any number of people could be staked out here and he wouldn’t necessarily know it. All he could say for certain was that no one seemed suspicious, and the female cyclist was nowhere in the vicinity.

Still, he waited. He was unhappy that Jaidee had insisted on accompanying him, ignoring his warnings of the danger.

“Leroy wasn’t just another client, as you say,” she told him. “I cared about him. If there is some clue as to who killed him in his apartment, I want to find it.”

“You still don’t see anyone suspicious?” Jack said to her now.

“I don’t.”

He nodded, having decided to trust her. This was her city, after all. For the moment, at least, he was in her hands. Together, they crossed the teeming street, heading into Connaston’s building. It smelled of
mee krob
and overboiled rice.

According to Jaidee, Connaston’s apartment was on the top floor. As they ascended the cramped, almost vertical staircase, they heard voices raised in argument, a baby crying, hip-hop music, and then, as they neared the top floor, silence.