“And for that you want to fire him? Because you’d never quite trust him again, and you don’t want to hand over a million bucks in case he goes AWOL, knowing we don’t dare come after him?”
“Correct.”
“Okay. I can’t really argue with that. A million greenbacks is a lot of cash to mislay. What do we do now?”
“I have another old buddy who went into some foreign-based security outfit. I’m going to try to find him.”
“And what about Raul’s fifty grand?”
“I sorted that out last night. He’ll have his money by now, and I took accurate notes on the information he gave me about Foche and his hometown and all that. Give me twenty-four hours, and I’ll see if I can get something moving.”
“Let’s have another cup of coffee,” said Harry, and then he reached into his drawer and pulled out a magazine. “Someone sent me this,” he said. “It’s a London magazine. A big article on Foche. It’s interesting. Give it a read later, and let me know what you think.”
Mack took the magazine and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. He sipped his coffee and admitted, “Harry, I’m in this a lot deeper than I ever wanted to be. Which I guess is inevitable, since there’s only you and me, the only two people in the world who know what’s going on. But it’s a worry, and I don’t really want to get in much deeper.”
“These hoodlums in Marseille have no idea who or where we are, do they?”
“Definitely not, so long as your space-age cell phone holds up.”
“Look, Mack, I know that in the end, this is my problem, and I guess you’ll never know how much I appreciate what you’ve done so far. All I can say is, if I have to, I’ll go it entirely alone. But any help you can give me, I’ll never forget it.”
“It’s just that right now I’ve got a whole lot on my plate,” said Mack. “Tommy’s so ill, Anne’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown, the bank won’t help me, and the insurance company is out of the game when it’s a foreign clinic.”
“Hey! I just solved it,” chuckled Harry. “Why don’t you pop across to France and hit Foche between the eyes with a bullet, and then I’ll give you all the cash, and we can save Tommy?”
“Great idea,” said Mack. “Can you save something for Anne and Tommy to fly over to Paris and visit me in the fucking Bastille, where I’ll be locked up for the rest of my life like the goddamned Count of Monte Cristo?”
“Mackenzie Bedford,” replied Harry mysteriously, “may I remind you, the Count got out.”
“And may I remind you, the Count was fiction,” laughed Mack. “And the one thing we know about this Foche character, is, he’s real. And I have to get moving.”
“Okay, Mack, great to see you. Do your best, and if you could just get me the phone number, I’ll go the rest of the way by myself.”
Mack made a dismissive gesture, which meant,
Get out of here, Harry. I’m still in your corner.
He drove back through town, picked up the mail, and arrived home in time to see Tommy and hand over the car to Anne for the drive to the hospital.
“I wish I’d seen the game with you last night, Dad,” Tommy said. “I just saw the paper—the Red Sox beat the Yanks by 15 to 1. That must have been great.”
“Guess so. I only lasted through the seventh, and they scored twelve runs in the final two innings. Didn’t finish ’til way after eleven o’clock. Too late for you.”
“And you, right?”
Mack laughed and picked up the little boy. “We going fishing tonight?” he asked. “Save Mom buying our supper.”
“Sure. You want me to catch another one of those blues?”
“Darned right I do. So does Mom.”
“Hey, what happens if there’s no fish? Does that mean we don’t get anything to eat?”
“Hell, no. Not us. We’ll just dig out a bucket of clams and get Mom to fry ’em.”
“Can we get french fries as well?”
“I bet we could, if we ask her nicely.”
Mack carried Tommy out to the car, lowered him into the backseat, and fastened the seat belt.
“See you around noon,” said Anne. “I’ll bring sandwiches back from the store.”
Mack wandered disconsolately back onto the screened porch. He could see there was a letter from the bank, which was not a regular statement. He opened it with dread, and the news was bleak. After due consideration, the directors felt that Lieutenant Commander Bedford’s was a case in which they could not intervene. The bank’s normal policies must be upheld in accordance with Federal Reserve guidelines—no loans for customers with little possibility of repaying the money.
His heart sank. This was their last hope. All they could do now was to wait for some kind of a medical breakthrough, some miracle cure that would arrest Tommy’s ALD, the satanic disease that seemed to be eating him alive. All he could do this morning was to hope to hell the news from the hospital was better. Whether it was or not, he would have to tell Anne the bad news from the bank, and he was uncertain how much more bad news she could take. Anne was on the edge. Anyone could see that. If Tommy died, he did not know how she could ever recover. Come to think of it, he was not sure how he could recover himself.
He leaned back on the comfortable wicker furniture and absentmindedly turned on the radio. He was just in time to hear the precise kind of news bulletin he did not wish to know about:
Twenty-three U.S. military personnel were either killed or injured in the northern suburbs of Baghdad last night. A U.S. marine convoy making its way back to base after a successful mission against insurgents was hit by two tank-busting missiles. Reports coming in suggest several of the men were burned to death.
The missiles, which hit two armored vehicles, were believed to be Diamondheads, the ones banned six months ago by the United Nations Security Council. This is believed to be the fourth instance of Iraqi insurgents opening fire on U.S. personnel with a weapon that the UN unanimously declared to be a crime against humanity.
The supply line is believed to lead from southwestern Iran across the Tigris and then to Baghdad. The missile is French made, and the Pentagon is uncertain whether there were stockpiles in Iran or whether there has been an illegal new delivery.
Last night the French Ministry of Defense stated that export shipments of the missile have been deemed illegal in France, and, so far as they know, there have been no shipments leaving any French airport, or seaport, for many months. Certainly not since the UN ban was formalized.
U.S. military commanders in Iran confessed they were mystified by the continuing onslaught of this missile. But they were perhaps even more mystified about their own inability to locate and break the supply line if such a system exists.
A U.S. Marine colonel, unidentified because he is still serving in Iraq, last night stated, “This is the fifth or sixth time we’ve been hit by this outlawed weapon, and every time, I guess we think it’s the last of them. And every time they come back at us with more. I can say that the U.S. High Command in Iraq is convinced there are still Diamondheads coming into Baghdad. But we don’t know whether there is a large supply still in Iran, or whether new ones are coming in from elsewhere.”
The U.S. secretary of defense has sent an official complaint to the United Nations protesting in the strongest possible terms. A spokesman for the Defense Department said earlier today, “Perhaps the Iranian government should remember we went to war against Saddam Hussein because he consistently defied edicts from the United Nations.” He added that U.S. Navy SEALs recently returned from Iraq have been ordered to pack down in readiness for immediate redeployment to Baghdad. It is understood that veterans from SEAL Team 10 will be the first to leave.
“
Jesus Christ!” snapped Mack to the empty porch. “Those sonsabitches. Those goddamned sonsabitches!” And even as a civilian, here on this tranquil North American shore, he felt within him the rising of the “hours of the wolf.” It was only the second time he had been aware of burgeoning rage since the bridge. But he could not control it.
Right now he could not tell for whom he was most concerned—Anne, Tommy, the shipyard, the town, or “his guys” going back to that cauldron of pure hatred around the Tigris and the Euphrates. He knew he should remove himself from the situation, but all the years as a Navy SEAL had forged him into a part of this steel-rimmed brotherhood of men, who, when the bugle sounded, would come out fighting. Barry Mason and Jack Thomas were as much a part of him as Anne and Tommy and Harry. And now they were going back to the battlefield without him. And none of it was his fault. But if anything happened to either of them, he would somehow blame himself for all of his days. He would blame himself for not being there for them. He would blame himself for being unable to take command, to issue the orders, and if necessary to face the enemy right up front on their behalf.
It wasn’t rational. He was perfectly aware of that. But the hearts of SEAL commanders aren’t rational. They’re not supposed to be rational. They’re just supposed to care. And Lieutenant Commander Bedford
really
cared. The memories of “his guys” stood stark before him. And still there surged the burning flame of the “hours of the wolf.”
He turned off the radio and checked his watch. It was almost time to call Raul. He had told him either today or tomorrow, to remain on standby for the final plans. But he was unable to rid his mind of the man’s dishonesty. Raul had attempted to renege. Which meant he ought never to be trusted. It reminded him of an old joke of Charlie’s, the one about the very pretty young secretary riding on a train and her copassenger, a handsome, slightly older man asking her, “Would you go to bed with me for one hundred thousand dollars in cash?”
The girl looked suitably shocked, but then smiled and said, “One hundred thousand dollars. I suppose I would.”
“Well,” said the man, “would you go to bed with me for five bucks?”
The girl almost yelled at him, “What the hell do you think I am?”
“I thought we’d already established what you are, and now we’re just haggling about the price.”
Mack was not absolutely certain which end of this moral outrage he was on. But he definitely considered Raul to be a whore, and not a man to whom he should entrust one million dollars of Harry Remson’s money. Not today, at any rate. Maybe tomorrow he might feel differently. But not today.
He slipped the super-cell phone back into his pocket and mildly congratulated himself for never having revealed one single detail about either himself or Harry, or even which country they were in, throughout the negotiations with FOJ.
He passed the remainder of the morning on the house phone trying to locate the two ex-SEALs he believed to be either mercenaries or involved in security. The trouble was he did not want too many people to know he was trying to locate these men, because words leave a trail, and names leave an even bigger one.
It took Mack one hour to discover his first choice, a chief petty officer named Dave Segal. He had never gone into security, but had been offered a job training combat troops in the Israeli army. He had gone with the blessing of the U.S. military, relocated his family in the Holy Land, and been presented with a full commission. Colonel Segal was now a very highly paid and aboveboard Israeli officer, well regarded and expected to rise even further in that perpetual war zone.
Mack’s old buddy Segal was out of the running. But the second SEAL had left the military entirely, and had returned to his home state of Colorado, where he was a partner in a new and productive coal mine, and fully expected to make a financial killing.
Both of them were an entire waste of time, and Mack decided to make no more calls today. Instead, he’d just have a cup of coffee and read the papers until Anne brought Tommy home. Generally speaking, he was rapidly arriving at the view that locating some foreign-based Murder Incorporated was not precisely his game.
Harry Remson stopped by shortly after eleven and wondered if Mack had made any progress.
“Not yet,” he replied. “But I’m on it.” Mack did not think Harry was ready for the double whammy of losing FOJ and then not finding a replacement. And this was important to the former SEAL, because this town could not afford for Harry to go into some sort of decline. Nonetheless, there was a profound sense of relief in Mack’s mind now that he was a few steps further away from going into some insane partnership with a band of international assassins.