Brocius figured it had something to do with Morgan’s disappearance, and, if it did, would dragging in the New York State patrol guys make the situation better or worse? Worse, he decided.
And when he thought about it, what could he really say that would justify sending a couple of cruisers out into this nasty winter storm? Assuming they had any to spare on a miserable day like this.
Hi, I’m Hank Brocius of the NSA, and I think one of my people is getting . . . nervous . . . about her . . . houseguest? Can you send a car?
Oh hell, sure thing, Mr. Brocius, we’re on it like lawyers on a widow. Look for us in the springtime with the darling buds of May.
Briony had the Sig, and she had her fallback position. She knew the drill in an emergency—the Agency trained them all for this kind of event—and the Glass Cutters had all been put on official warning right after Mildred Durant’s murder. He didn’t know what Morgan’s disappearance meant from a tactical point of view, and, until he did, he was going to keep the problem inside the Agency where it could be controlled. But his chest was tight and his mouth was dry as he hammered the Escalade down through the driving snow, watching the exits. A few miles west, there was the sign.
ROUTE
9
SOUTH
NELSONVILLE, COLD SPRING, GARRISON
Garrison was ten miles south, but at Nelson’s Corners he’d have to cut west toward the river on Indian Brook and then fork to the left on Avery, which would take him eventually to 9D, known in Garrison as Bear Mountain Beacon Highway. Briony’s house was on the bluffs above the Hudson, number 15000.
That depended on whether or not he could use Indian Brook and Avery at all, both narrow, two-lane roads that switchbacked and twisted over the Hudson Highlands separating Route 9 from the towns of Cold Spring and Garrison. Huge flakes of snow were tumbling down in a mad spiral of driving fleece, and his visibility was down to fifty feet. And the weather was getting steadily worse as he came south on 9, until he was plowing through the blizzard at twenty miles an hour.
Even if he didn’t lose it on a curve or simply get bogged down in a drift, he was sixty minutes away at least. Maybe more.
A hell of a lot could happen in sixty minutes.
AS A PRECAUTION,
Duhamel went to the main board where the phone lines came into the house—he had already established its location, in the pantry off the kitchen—and disconnected the panel, cutting off both the house line and the work line, as well as the high-speed wireless Internet connection that ran throughout the property. Then he walked over to the bottom of the stairs and looked up into the warm light of the second-floor landing. The stillness was profound, as if the old house was literally holding its breath.
“Briony?” Duhamel called her name as he came up the stairs, the blade tucked into his belt in the small of his back, his hands empty and innocent, his tone worried, puzzled—exactly how a human would sound.
He reached the top of the stairs, paused at the landing, looking down the corridor that led to the master bedroom. Although the hallway was in darkness, there was a sliver of light at the far end, a soft yellow glow where the bedroom door was open a few inches.
“Briony?”
No answer.
He stepped onto the carpet and began to walk down the hall toward the bedroom door. He was not afraid—if he was feeling anything, it was anger at the unexpected way this thing was playing out—and a strong sense that he had better have Anton and whoever was with him under control before he settled down to his long-delayed exploration of Briony Keating.
He wondered, idly, who Piotr would have sent.
Bukovac?
Would Piotr risk sending someone like Bukovac to America?
Yes, Duhamel decided.
To win this game, he would risk that.
Well, first things first: locate Briony if possible, then deal with Bukovac when and if he turned up.
Moving lightly but not so lightly as to seem to be stalking her, Duhamel came down the hall, checking the cupboard door on his left as he did so—clear—and then looking into the guest bathroom on the right—also clear. “Briony, sweet, where are you?”
He reached the bedroom door, put out a hand, gently pushed it open. It was a large, low-ceilinged room, done in pale green, with thick wooden beams across the ceiling and a stone fireplace. The heavy mahogany sleigh bed, which had withstood a lot of punishment, was empty, the bedding still tossed and warm from their last—final?—encounter. The room was in shadowy darkness, the curtains still drawn against the cold light of this last morning together, one bedside lamp burning low.
He saw that her cell phone was still lying beside the charger. He picked it up, checked the battery: RECHARGE NOW. This might explain why she hadn’t taken it with her, wherever she had gone.
“Briony, this is not funny. You’re
worrying
me. Where are you?”
He bent down to look under the bed, feeling slightly ridiculous—nothing. The door to the bathroom was open, and cool white light spilled out onto the dark green carpet on the bedroom floor.
He moved around the bed and walked across to the bathroom door, pushed it open carefully, half expecting to see Briony cowering behind it. This room was also empty.
He came back into the bedroom, stood for a while in the center, using his photographer’s eye to see the dimensions of the floor, the room, in relation to the space outside it.
He held his breath for a time, listening carefully for her breathing. Nothing at all, other than the insectile hiss of his own blood in his ears. He walked back to the entrance to the bathroom and stood there, looking at the lines of the built-in closet—fairly recent construction, he thought—comparing the dimensions of the closet to other parts of the room. Then he walked to the leaded-glass windows, pulled back the curtain.
It was snowing—quite heavily now—but there was a pale silvery sun gliding through clouds, and it lit up the broad expanse of lawn that sloped down toward the river, a gray hillside with a glint of pale light here and there on the frozen drifts that lay on the river.
There were no tracks in the snow, no tracks leading across the lawn to the coach house where she kept her office, and he would have heard her trying to start the car—trying, because he had taken a moment to pull the cap off the distributor—he was grateful that she had an
old
car, a large burgundy Cadillac Fleetwood that she had inherited from her father.
Well, he knew one thing for certain: Briony was inside this house, and she wasn’t going to get out without being seen. She had gone to ground—probably somewhere on this floor—and now she was waiting for . . . what?
For
rescue
, of course.
The two o’clock caller with the Maryland cell phone number.
He turned back to consider the room and decided there was one way to clear up any ambiguity concerning the situation. He walked over to Briony’s night table, pulled the drawer open. The indigo scarf was still there—he had once been very fond of indigo scarves but had not wanted to use this one on Briony because a short while ago an indigo scarf had almost gotten him killed—but there was nothing under it. Briony’s lovely little Sig Sauer P-230 was gone. That clarified the nature of this game.
Duhamel—he paused for a blessed moment to shed that name as a snake sheds its skin—shuddered a little as Kiki Lujac came back up from a long way down and stood before him in the mirror next to the bed.
Lujac stared back at himself, running his hands through his short black hair. When this was over, he would grow it long again. He would find the
Subito
and go somewhere warm and sunny. He felt he had lost much of his hard-earned tan in this frigid, sunless place. North Africa was beautiful this time of year, with some of the very best surfing in the world off Casablanca. Marcus Todorovich had told him that once—poor, sweet Marcus. He leaned into the mirror, squinting a little. There was something very wrong with his reflection. Yes, the brown contact lenses.
He leaned over and plucked them out of his eyes, one at a time, threw them onto the rug, where they lay like discarded scales. He leaned close into the mirror, admiring the jade green jewels of his own eyes, a color someone had once described as “Moroccan green.”
“Hello, Kiki,” he said, baring his perfect teeth. “I’ve
missed
you!”
“And I’ve
missed
you,” said Kiki Lujac. “Duhamel was such a bore, a complete cold fish.”
Lujac agreed.
“And rutting around with that . . . cow . . .”
Lujac held up a hand, closed his eyes.
“Please, don’t dwell. The gorge rises.”
“On the whole,” said Lujac, “I don’t really like this work at all.”
“Espionage, you mean?” said Lujac, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes. Why the hell did we get into it anyway?”
Lujac shrugged—a very Gallic shrug—his mouth pursing briefly.
“Let ourselves get talked into it, didn’t we? By that fucking Piotr.”
“The
slug.
I mean, I swear that man leaves a trail.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it.”
“And those lips, like a plate full of squirming earth—”
“Please, no similes on an empty stomach.”
“I apologize, forgive me. But . . . now what?”
Lujac gave the matter some thought, raised a finger.
“First, we find that fucking cow—”
“And her little pistol?” put in Lujac.
He shook his head, frowned in mock disapproval.
“Such a hazard, lying there, and in an
unlocked
drawer.”
“And
loaded
.”
“I mean, what if there had been
children
?”
“Exactly. Handguns in the home are five times as likely to—”
“Kill the owner?”
Lujac nodded.
“Very responsible. We fully approve.”
“So do we. Any sensible adult would have done the same—”
A low, melodious bong rippled through the silence of the house, paused, then sounded again, this time more urgently. Lujac smiled hugely at Lujac, his green eyes showing a deep-yellow spark.
“The doorbell?”
“The doorbell.”
“Company?” he said, his face opening into a delighted smile.
“I believe it is,” said Lujac, smiling back.
“Shall we?” said Lujac.
“We shall.”
LUJAC SWEPT
down the stairs, feeling a little like Scarlett rushing to meet Rhett, the long thin knife still in his belt. Having shed the stifling cocoon of Jules Duhamel, he felt . . . liberated . . . exultant . . . at one with his world. He wondered idly who might be ringing his doorbell—excuse me, the cow’s doorbell—but in his joyful heart he really didn’t care.
Whoever it was, he would be delighted to see them.
Delighted.
He stopped at the door, glanced at his reflection in the hall mirror—what can one say when one sees
perfection
?—turned the latch, hauled the massive slab back on its hinges, and saw in the snowfall on the step a huddled figure, wrapped in a North Face squall jacket, a pinched, gaunt face with wet, hunted eyes staring back at him from under a snow-dusted hood.
“Anton,” he said, pulling the door open and clearing a path, “what a thrill! To what do I owe the . . .”
Anton shuffled into the hallway, snow drifting off his shoulders, and stamped his booted feet on the flagstones.
“She is . . . where?” he said, looking furtively around.
“Sleeping soundly,” he said. “You’re alone?”
Anton gave him a reproving look, his red nose running, his skin blue, the lie steaming off him like a cold breath in the winter.
“Of course. I got your signal. What’s wrong?”
Lujac had almost forgotten. As soon as Briony had gone missing, he had decided to bring Anton and whomever in close where they could help, if needed. Or be handled, if necessary. So he had sent out a text message on the cell: cq911cq.
Which, according to their code, meant “Get here now.”
And, in accordance with their laws, here was Anton the Latvian.
Lujac now had only two minor problems left to deal with.
Where was Briony?
And where was . . . whomever?
“Come in, Anton,” he said. “You’re freezing.”
Anton pushed the door closed behind him, shuffled a little farther into the room, his gaze flicking about the entranceway, peering off into the dim interior of the large main room, seeing the pale light shining in through the wall of windows that looked out over the Hudson. The room smelled of wood fire and cigarette smoke. To his right, the kitchen counter was an island of light in the shadows, with light shining down on Lujac’s laptop, the red letters still glowing vividly on the blue background: