Going to another door at the end of the room, Buchanan removed the chain locking this door and opened it. He went up the stairs and then opened a hatch-like door, which revealed a ladder leading up. Buchanan put his feet on the rungs and started climbing. At the top, he popped another hatch and found himself on the roof of the Capitol.
The attic room was how the pages accessed the roof to change the flags that flew over the Capitol. The inside joke was that the flags were constantly changed, some flying only for seconds, so that members could send generous constituents back home a continuous supply of Stars and Stripes that had “flown” over the Capitol. Buchanan rubbed his brow. God, what a town.
Buchanan looked down at the front grounds of the Capitol. People were scurrying here and there, running for meetings with people they desperately needed help from. And with all the egos, factions, agendas, crisis upon crisis and stakes greater than anything that had come before in the world’s history, everything somehow seemed to work out. A large anthill came to mind as Buchanan looked down upon the scene. This well-oiled machine of democracy. At least the ants did it for survival.
But maybe in a way, we do too,
he thought.
He looked up at Lady Liberty on her century-and-a-half perch atop the Capitol’s dome. She had recently been removed via helicopter and stout cable, and the grime of a hundred fifty years had been thoroughly cleaned away. Too bad the sins of people weren’t as easy to scrape off.
For one insane moment, Buchanan contemplated jumping. He might have too, except the desire to beat Thornhill was simply too strong. And that would be the coward’s way out anyway. Buchanan was many things, but a coward was not one of them.
There was a catwalk that ran across the roof of the Capitol, and it would take Buchanan to the second part of his journey. Or, more accurately, his escape. The House wing of the Capitol building had a similar attic room, which its pages used to raise and lower its flags. Buchanan quickly went across the catwalk and through the hatch on the House side. He climbed down the ladder and into the attic room, where he removed the hard hat and gloves, but kept on the glasses. He pulled a snapbrim hat from his briefcase and put it on. Pulling up the collar on the raincoat, he took a deep breath, opened the door to the attic room and passed through. People milled here and there, but no one really gave him a second glance.
In another minute he had left the Capitol through a rear doorway known only to a few veterans of the place. A car was waiting for him there. A half hour later he was at National Airport, where a private plane, its twin engines revving, awaited its sole passenger. Here was where the friend in
high
places earned his money. The plane received clearance for takeoff a few minutes later. Soon thereafter Buchanan looked out the window of the plane as the capital city slowly disappeared from view. How many times had he seen that sight from the air?
“Good riddance,” he said under his breath.
Thornhill was heading home after a very productive day. With Adams now in the fold, they would soon have Faith Lockhart. The man might try to dupe them, but Thornhill didn’t think so. He had heard the very real fear in Adams’s voice. Thank God for families. Yes, all in all, a productive day. The ringing phone would soon change all that.
“Yes?” Thornhill’s confident look vanished as the man reported to him that somehow, some way, Danny Buchanan had utterly vanished, from the very top floor of the Capitol, no less.
“Find him!” Thornhill roared into the phone before slamming it down. What could the man’s game be? Had he decided to begin his escape a little early? Or was it for another reason? Had he contacted Lockhart somehow? That was intensely troubling. Shared information between the two was not good for Thornhill. He thought back to their meeting in the car. Buchanan had displayed his usual temper, his little word games—mere bluster, really—but had otherwise been fairly subdued. What could have precipitated this latest development?
In his agitation, Thornhill drummed his fingers on the briefcase he had in his lap. As he looked down at the hard leather, his mouth dropped open. The briefcase! The damn briefcase! He had provided one for Buchanan. It had a backup recorder in it. The conversation in the car. Thornhill admitting he had had the FBI agent killed. Buchanan had tricked him into betraying himself and then taped him. Taped him with CIA-issued equipment. That two-faced sonofabitch!
Thornhill grabbed the phone; his fingers were shaking so badly he misdialed twice. “His briefcase, the tape in it. Find it. And him. You must get it. You
have
to get it.”
He dropped the phone and slumped back in the seat. The master strategist of over a thousand clandestine operations was absolutely stunned by this development. Buchanan could take him down with this. He was running loose with the evidence to crush him. But Buchanan would go down too, had to, there was no way around it.
Wait. The scorpion! The frog! Now it all made sense. Buchanan was going to go down and take Thornhill with him. The CIA man loosened his tie, wedged himself into the seat and fought the panic he felt flooding his body.
This is not how it will end, Robert,
he told himself.
After thirty-five years this is not damn well how it’s going to end. Calm down. Now is when you need to think. Now is where you earn your place in history. This man will not beat you.
Slowly, steadily, Thornhill’s breathing returned to normal.
It could be that Buchanan would simply use the tape as insurance. Why spend the rest of his life in prison when he could quietly disappear? No, it made no sense that he would take the tape to the authorities. He had as much to lose as Thornhill, and he couldn’t possibly be that vindictive. Thornhill had a sudden thought: Perhaps it was the painting, the idiotic painting. Maybe that was what had started this whole thing. Thornhill should never have taken the damned thing. He would leave a message on Buchanan’s machine at once, telling him his precious object had been returned. Thornhill left the message and arranged for the painting to be brought back to Buchanan’s home.
As Thornhill sat back and looked out the window, his confidence was restored. He had one ace in the hole. A good commander always held something in reserve. Thornhill made another phone call and received some positive news, a piece of intelligence that had just come in. His face brightened, the visions of doom receding. It would be all right after all. His mouth eased into a smile. The snatch of victory from the jaws of defeat; it could either age a man several decades overnight or give him bronze balls. Or sometimes both.
In another few minutes Thornhill was getting out of his car and going up the sidewalk to his lovely house. His impeccably dressed wife met him at the door and gave him a perfunctory peck on the cheek. She had just come back from a country club function. In fact, she was always coming back from a country club function, he thought, muttering to himself. While he agonized over terrorists sneaking into the country with nuclear-bomb-making materials, she lounged at fashion shows where young, vacuous women with legs stretching to their inflated bosoms pranced about in outfits that didn’t even bother to cover their derrieres. He was out every day saving the world, and his spouse ate finger sandwiches and drank champagne in the afternoon with other ladies of considerable means. The idle rich were as stupid as the uneducated poor—more brainless than cows, in fact, was Thornhill’s opinion. At least cows had a reasonable understanding that they were the slaves.
I’m an underpaid civil servant,
Thornhill mused,
and if I ever let my defenses down, the only thing left of the wealthy and powerful in this country would be the echoes of their screams.
It was a mesmerizing thought.
He barely heard his wife’s inconsequential ramblings on “her day” as he put down his briefcase, mixed a drink and escaped to his study and closed the door. He never told the woman about
his
day. She’d chat about it to her one-name, oh-so-chic glorified barber, who would tell another client, who would let it slip to someone else and the world would stop tomorrow. No, he never talked shop with the wife. But he did indulge her in just about everything else. But finger sandwiches indeed!
Ironically, Thornhill’s home office was much like Buchanan’s. There were no plaques, testimonials or souvenirs of his long career on display. He was a spy, after all. Was he supposed to act like the idiotic FBI and wear T-shirts and hats emblazoned with CIA? He almost choked on his whiskey at the thought. No, his career had been invisible to the public, but highly visible to those who mattered. The country was far better off because of him, though the ordinary folk would never know it. That was all right. To seek accolades from the great and ignorant public was the vice of a fool. He did what he did because of pride. Pride in himself, in his devotion to his country.
Thornhill thought back to his beloved father, a patriot who carried his secrets, his distinguished triumphs to the grave. Service and honor. That was what it was all about.
Soon, with a little luck, the son would notch another triumph in his own career. When Faith showed up, she would be dead within an hour. And Adams? Well, he would have to die too. Certainly Thornhill had lied to the man on the phone. Thornhill understood quite clearly that deceit was nothing more nor less than a highly effective tool of the trade. One just had to make sure that lies at work didn’t interfere with one’s personal life. But Thornhill had always been good with compartmentalization. Just ask his country club wife. He could initiate a covert action in Central America in the morning and play, and win, at bridge at the Congressional Country Club in the evening. Now, dammit,
that
was compartmentalization!
And whatever anyone said about him within the confines of the Agency, he had always been good with his people. He pulled them out of situations when they needed to be pulled. He had never left an agent or case officer spinning in the wind, helpless. But he also kept them in the field when he knew they could carry it home. He had developed an instinct for such things, and it had hardly ever proved wrong. He also didn’t play political games with intelligence collection. He had never told the politicians simply what they wanted to hear, as others at the Agency had—sometimes with disastrous consequences. Well, he could only do what he could. In two years it would be someone else’s problem. He would leave the organization in as strong a state as he could. His parting gift. There was no need to thank him. Service and honor. He lifted his drink in memory of his late father.
“Stay low, Faith,” Lee said as he edged close to a window overlooking the street. He had his gun out and was watching a car drop a man off out front. “Is that Buchanan?” he asked.
Faith anxiously peered over the windowsill and then immediately relaxed.
“Yes.”
“Okay, answer the front door. I’ll cover you.”
“I told you it was Danny.”
“Great, then go let
Danny
in. I’m not taking any unnecessary chances.”
Frowning at this remark, Faith went to the front door and opened it. Buchanan slipped through and she closed and locked the door behind him. They exchanged a prolonged hug as Lee watched from the stairs, his gun in plain sight in his belt clip. Their bodies shook together, and tears streamed down their faces. He felt a pang of jealousy at this embrace. It quickly passed, though, as he sensed the exchange of affection was clearly that of a father and his daughter; a reunion of souls separated by life’s circumstances.
“You must be Lee Adams,” Buchanan said, extending his hand. “I’m sure you regret the day you ever took on this assignment.”
Lee came down and shook his hand. “Nah. This one’s been a piece of cake. I’m actually thinking about specializing in this area, especially considering no one else would be stupid enough to do it.”
“I thank God you were there to protect Faith.”
“Actually, I’ve gotten pretty good at saving Faith.” Lee and Faith exchanged smiles, then Lee looked back at Buchanan. “But the fact is we have one additional complication. A very important one,” Lee added. “Let’s go to the kitchen. You might want to hear it over a drink.”
As they sat at the kitchen table, Lee filled Buchanan in on the situation with his daughter.
Buchanan looked furious. “That bastard.”
Lee eyed him keenly. “This bastard have a name? I’d love to know it, for future reference.”
Buchanan shook his head. “Trust me, you don’t want to go down that route.”
“Who is behind all this, Danny?” Faith touched his arm. “I think I have a right to know.”
Buchanan looked at Lee.
“Sorry,” Lee said, putting up his hands, “that’s your call.”
Buchanan gripped Faith’s arm. “They’re very powerful people and they happen to work for this country. That’s all I can really say without endangering you even more.”
Faith sat back astonished. “
Our
own government is trying to kill us?”
“The gentleman I’ve been dealing with tends to go his own way. But he does have resources, lots of them.”
“So Lee’s daughter is in real danger?”
“Yes. This man will usually say rather less than what he actually intends.”
“Why’d you come here, Buchanan?” Lee wanted to know. “You got away from the guy. At least for our sakes I hope you did. You could’ve lost yourself in a million different places. Why come here?”
“I got you both into this. I intend to get you out.”
“Well, whatever plan you have better include saving my daughter or else you can count me out. I’ll park myself inside her skin for the next twenty years if I have to.”
Faith said, “I thought I could call the FBI agent I was working with, Brooke Reynolds. We can tell her what’s going on. She could place Lee’s daughter in protective custody.”