Top Ten (12 page)

“Two things you’re going to have to do, Ariel,” Jack Hale said. “Without letting on why, you need to accelerate Task Force Ten to max speed.”

“I don’t run Task Force Ten,” she reminded Hale.

“It’s going to be difficult, I know, but Bernie Jaworski respects you, otherwise he wouldn’t have forwarded your report to the director after having worked with you only a few days.”

Director Weaver chimed in on this point. “Plus, if he becomes unable to carry out his duties...”

She knew what was being said, and she didn’t want to hear it. Not even under these circumstances. “I can push from where I’m at. Special Agent Jaworski isn’t going anywhere.”

They were forceful words. Kellerman and Weaver both thought there might be command material in there, somewhere.

“What else do you need me to do?” Ariel asked Jack Hale.

“We need you to get to Mills DeVane and fill him in on the situation.”

“We’re going to try and keep Michaelangelo’s dalliance to the most wanted list under wraps as long as we can,” Kellerman said. He sounded less than sure of that possibility.

“I repeat my belief,” Director Weaver began, “that stopping Michaelangelo, that focusing efforts on him, is the best way to resolve this situation without risking compromise of Mills DeVane.”

“I agree, sir,” Kellerman said. “But we have to be prepared for the instance that that might not happen fast enough. We need to get to DeVane and brief him on what we’re doing to stay between him and Michaelangelo.”

“What about the father,” Director Weaver suggested.

Jack Hale seemed to consider that for a moment before dismissing the possibility with a shake of his head. “DeVane said he’d pull out without hesitation if we ever involved his father.”

“Do you know any other way?” Kellerman pressed him. Hale didn’t.

“It’s your call, Jack,” Director Weaver said.

“It can’t be me who tries to convince him,” Hale said.

All eyes fell on Ariel. “His father knows how to find him?”

Jack Hale was the one to answer her question. “When he began this operation, Mills DeVane had one condition. Only one. That he be able to keep some connection to his old life. To his true self. His father.”

“How does he stay in contact?” Ariel asked.

“He used to do it through the
Atlanta Journal Constitution’s
classifieds,” Hale explained. “But he changed pattern after the scare you gave him.”

“The motels,” Ariel said, and Hale nodded.

“His father is precious to him, Ariel. Putting him at risk could make DeVane give it up. So you have to be careful.”

“And you should probably hurry,” Kellerman said.

“Why?”

“Because Lee Tran, the number eight man on the list, his lawyer went missing late last night.”

“He’s killing his way up the list.” Director Weaver shook his head at those with him. “If he gets Tran, that only leaves two between him and DeVane.”

It was a sobering thought. But it was not what Ariel was going to let herself dwell on. She turned to Jack Hale. “How do I get in touch with his father?”

*   *   *

Arlo Donovan looked through the peephole after the knock on the door. All he saw was newsprint, and, as that came down, the smiling face of his boy.

He opened the door and had his arms around Mills before he was all the way in.

“God, God, God, I had a scare when you didn’t show up the other night,” Arlo said, clutching his son tight, hands spread across his back, holding him there, just holding him, not wanting to ever let him go again. Wanting to entertain that impossibility as long as he could. “I didn’t know what had happened.”

“I got warned off, pop” Mills told him.

Arlo released the hug and held his boy’s face in his hands. “Warned off. By who?”

“Probably Jack Hale,” Mills told him.

Arlo Donovan did not want to afford much thanks to Jack Hale. Did not want to think much about him at all, and so he would not. “I’m just glad you’re here. That you’re okay.”

“So am I,” Mills said, though one day he would ask Jack Hale just why he’d let his agents get so close. And how had they in the first place? “You feeling good, pop?”

Arlo let go his son’s face and sat himself on the bed. Mills sat next to him. “I’m good. Just fine. How are you?”

Mills nodded and managed a smile. “I’m hanging in there.”

Arlo studied his son’s face. “How much longer you gonna have to hang in there, sonny?”

“Not long, I think,” Mills said. His father noticed no joy, no relief in his son’s answer.

“Yeah. Well, that’s good. Not much longer.” Arlo stood from his place on the edge of the full size bed and walked to room 124's small round table. He already had two chairs at it. Already had the deck of cards shuffled and cut. But he neither sat nor paid attention to the cards. He simply stood there with his back to his son, to his boy who he could not call by name, and fiddled with the buttons on the front of his sweater.

Mills could only stand to watch it for a few seconds before his heart began to break. He stood and came up behind his father, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Pop...”

“Not much longer,” Arlo Donovan told his son before stepping away to the other side of the table. There he stood behind the chair he’d placed for himself. “Soon no more newspaper ads, and precautions, and...” He put his hands up and smiled at his son with wet eyes. “It’ll just be over, soon. Soon.”

Mills nodded. He could not smile.

After a moment Arlo Donovan was able to compose himself, sniffling the threat of tears away and sitting himself down at the table. Things would be fine. It would all be over soon. Soon. He reached for the cards and began to shuffle them.

“Did you have any trouble with the new paper, pop?” Mills asked his father.

“Nah. Just like we planned it. One paper don’t work no more, switch to the next. No trouble.” The cards slipped from his hands and he hurriedly tried to gather them up.

“Let me get those, pop,” Mills said, and took his own seat. His hands found his father’s and he eased the jumbled cards from them. “I’ll shuffle.”

Arlo Donovan put his hands to his lap and watched his son put a mix on the cards just like he’d shown him when he was twelve. Fast and smooth, the boy had the touch, didn’t he?

“Pretty good, pop, eh?”

“You always did remember the important lessons,” Arlo Donovan said, drawing a chuckle from his son.

Mills fanned the cards one way, then another, and his father applauded.

“What’s your game gonna be, father old boy old chum old pal?”

Arlo held up a full hand, fingers spread.

“Stud or draw?” Mills inquired.

“Stud is for imbeciles.”

“Stud it is,” Mills said and began to deal the cards. They would play for hours. And they would laugh. And they would pretend they had forgotten that it was all going to end.

Eight

The Fix

Arlo Donovan stood with hands on hips at the front of his 85 Reliant K and frowned at the uncooperative engine. His back to the street, he never saw the woman approach through the open garage door.

“Mr. Donovan?”

Arlo spun quickly around. She had that official sound to her voice. To him ‘official’ could mean nothing good.

This Monday evening he wasn’t far wrong in that belief.

“What? Who are you?”

Ariel approached him and pulled back the left side of her blazer. Her Bureau shield was clipped to her belt.

Arlo’s eyes flared upon seeing it. “Wha— What are you—”

“He’s all right sir,” Ariel said, sensing his worry, though she also realized that she was not being truthful. He might not be all right. She had no way of knowing. Which was a problem she was here to fix. “As far as I know everything is fine, sir.”

Arlo backed warily away from her, down the rust stained side of his vehicle. A plane descending toward Charlotte International roared low overhead. Ariel waited for the sound to fade but did not advance. “Who’s all right? Who are you talking about?”

“You know who I’m talking about,” Ariel said. His backward progress was stopped by a pile of boxes marked in childish script ‘x-mas decorashuns’. “Jack Hale told me where to find you.”

His head cocked quizzically to one side. “I don’t...”

Ariel came closer now. “I’m here about your son, Mr. Donovan. He could be in great danger, and I need to get to him.”

“I don’t know who you’re—”

“Mills, sir,” she said. “I’m here about Mills.”

His hand reached over toward the door to the house and pressed a button on the wall. The garage door tipped slowly down, locking in place with a thud, closing them off from the street.

“Who are you?” Arlo Donovan demanded. “How do you know about my son?”

“My name is Ariel Grace,” she said, stepping right up to him now and showing her Bureau ID. “Jack Hale sent me.”

“He wouldn’t do that. Tedd— Mills told him that I was not to be contacted.”

“Something’s happened, sir,” Ariel told him, slipping her ID back inside her blazer. “Something extraordinary that makes it necessary that we contact your son.”

Arlo Donovan rubbed his hand over his head and walked past her, his fingers kneading at the back of his neck. He stopped and stood at the front of his car, thinking. Thinking.

“What kind of danger?” he asked her.

“It’s better you don’t know.”

He shook his head as he looked at her. “I can’t believe you people.”

Ariel approached him again, but he moved around the car. He looked at her across the Reliant K’s open engine compartment.

“I need your help, Mr. Donovan. I need your help because I need to help your son.”

“How can you help Teddy...Mills.” He stopped there, tripped up by words. By a name. He balled a fist and held it before him as if to strike, to strike something, anything, was his wish, his most fervent desire right then. “Dammit, I don’t even know who he is or what I should...”

“Sir, he needs my help.”

Arlo Donovan relaxed his fist and nodded his head derisively. “All anybody from the FBI has ever done is push him in deeper. A little farther. Go a little bit more, Mills.” His angry eyes began to glisten. “He’s my Teddy. My son. He’s not Mills DeVane. He’s Teddy Donovan.”

Obviously it was hard for this man, but the operation was important. What she’d heard from the director and assistant director made that clear. “Sir, he volunteered for this. He was qualified. His situation was right. His—”

“His situation?” Donovan said, nodding sharply, angrily. “They told you about his situation, did they, that Jack Hale and his bunch? What was his situation that they told you about, Ms. Grace?”

“Experienced pilot. Not married. No children.”

Donovan shook his head and sniffed back tears. “Ms. Grace, he
was
married.”

Her expression asked
What?

“He had a wife, Ms. Grace. A beautiful wife. A good woman.” Memory choked his words briefly. “They would have had a family. I would have had grandchildren. He would have...would have...”

Something stirred in her chest. It was warm and sour, like the prelude to sickness. It wasn’t a lie what they had told her about this man’s son, but it also was not the truth.

Arlo Donovan composed himself after a moment. “She died, Ms. Grace. Died in a stupid accident. And my... my Teddy, his world was gone. He was devastated. He had nothing.” And the sorrow that had tinged the man’s expression changed right then. Changed as though something inside, deep inside him, had been set to burn. Smoldering hate fanned to full flame by the winds of memory. “And you know what Jack Hale and his bunch did? They said, here, Teddy, give yourself over to a mission. Engross yourself in
this
mission. Focus on
your
mission.” Tears flowed now down Arlo Donovan’s aging face. Tears of loss, tears of anger. “He lost his wife, the light of his life, and they gave him a
mission
.” What came next Arlo Donovan practically growled. “And they knew he’d take it! They knew he’d give himself over to their mission if for no other reason than he might die carrying it out.”

“But he didn’t, sir,” Ariel reminded him. Reminded the father about his son. She had to try and get this on track. She had a mission, too, and though this man did not want to trust her, he would have to. Would have to if he wanted to protect his son. His Teddy. “And I don’t want him to. I know you don’t. I have to talk to him to see that that doesn’t happen.”

Arlo Donovan reached up and rested his hands on the open hood of his car, his head hanging. Tear drops spattered on the fender’s old paint.

“Help me, sir,” Ariel repeated. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t imperative.”

He slammed the hood down suddenly and looked up at her, his pained eyes raging. “What’s imperative is that I get my son back! MY SON TEDDY!” He clutched his hands to his head as if in agony. “My, God, I just want to be able to call him that again. I just want to be able to call him by name. I don’t want to pretend that he’s someone named Mills DeVane. That’s not his name. His name is Teddy Donovan! That’s important. It’s who he is.”

He stopped and half collapsed forward to the cold steel hood, his hands planted wide for support.

“Sir, please...”

“This has to end,” Ms. Grace. “My son said it would be over soon. It has to be.”

“I want to help him get back to you,” she said. “The only way I can do that is to protect him.”

“From what, Ms. Grace? From what?”

She thought ‘what’ was the proper term, but she could not explain that to Arlo Donovan, grieving father. Grieving for a son not dead. For a son she did not want to see end up dead.

“I wish I could tell you, sir, but just believe me that he could be in danger.”

“He’s always in danger, Ms. Grace.”

“He could be in more, now. Much more.”

Arlo Donovan looked at her. At this new person. She seemed unlike Jack Hale. Unlike any of his kind. The suits, the functionaries, the ‘rules of engagement’ types. Unlike them, yes. She seemed a human being.

“Please, sir, help me.”

He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his sweater. “I don’t know where he is.”

Her shoulders sagged.