True Devotion (11 page)

“Joe!”

He strode over to the window, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck. Picking up her sweater, Kelly folded it and placed it in the open suitcase on the bed. Joe acted like he had been up all night. Had he dealt with a page? It would at least explain his surly mood. Great. Now she was worried about him as well as irritated with him.

She sat down on the bed and slapped the mattress beside her. It was time to find out if she could still be that friend. “Sit down.”

He gave a rueful smile and then did so. Tentative at first, she dug her hands into the tense muscles of his shoulders, working out the knots. The feel of the tension in him was a bit of a shock. It wasn’t like him to react this way. He rolled his neck, silently asking her to tackle where the muscles had tightened the most. She smiled as she complied; it felt good to be able to help him out for a change. She used the heel of her hand to apply pressure between his shoulder blades and wondered how she could ask without stepping across a line she tried to avoid. “Anything happen last night you can’t tell me about?”

“No.” He rotated his shoulder and he finally began to relax. “I’m sorry I growled.”

She wrapped her hands around his waist and hugged him from behind, resting her chin against his shoulder. He was such a solid man, durable. It felt good to have the friendship back on its old footing, if only for the moment. “You’re forgiven. But you owe Charles the apology not me.”

“I’ll think about it.”

His reaction puzzled her. “Go find the doctor and help me check out of here. I’m ready to go.”

“In a minute.” He reached into his pocket. “Hold out your hand.”

She moved to sit beside him and did so. He closed her hand around what he held. “Your wedding ring.”

Kelly was relieved the swelling had gone down enough she could wear it again. “Thank you.”

“Your hand looked bare without it.”

“It felt bare. I’ve worn this ring for over ten years.”

“It belongs there.”

She slipped it on. “Yes. Losing the ring would have been a disaster.”

Joe squeezed her hand, then set a manila envelope down on her open suitcase. “Nick’s eagle medallion. Are you sure you’re ready to leave?”

“If I’m going sailing with you tomorrow, I’d better be.”

“Seriously.”

She still had a low-grade headache, but it was one caused by a lack of caffeine. She was gutting it out, deciding now was probably as good a time as any to cut back. The room felt cold, and the second-day muscle soreness made her grit her teeth, but she was going to bury it rather than admit it. “I’m fine, Joe. Not even a sniffle.”

He wasn’t totally buying it, but he finally nodded. “I’ll go find your doctor.”

Kelly watched the door close behind him.

What was Joe going to say when he brought up those three fateful words she had said? She couldn’t contain the jitters in the pit of her stomach. One of the things she liked about him was his willingness to be kind to her after she had made a blunder. And she had blundered by saying those words. They were friends. It was going to be a difficult conversation to have.

Lord, I’m asking a favor. Please don’t ask me to deal with this subject today. I’ve got enough to worry about just thinking about sailing and facing the sea again. And I need some time to sort out with You all my past problems. I lean on Joe; please don’t let my words shake that relationship at a time when I need it the most.

She let go of her wedding ring and got up to finish packing. It was time to go home.

Eight

* * *

Charles took the return call on the encrypted line in his home office. “Your device has been found,” he said tersely.

“How soon can it be delivered?”

“Eight days.”

“No sooner?”

“Patience,” he cautioned. “There is more paperwork with this one.” He was already far out on a limb. Arranging to smuggle a nuclear warhead out of a secure Russian weapons lab took the finesse of a negotiator and a deep pocket of cash. He was a thief, a good one, but this was one deal he wished he could walk away from. “Eight days. It’s the best I can do.” He could see his son in the backyard and fear coiled in his gut.

He still couldn’t believe it had evolved to this point. Several years ago, a similar deal had gone bad and men had died. He had gotten out of the stolen arms business after that, retired abruptly, relieved to be able to walk away. Now he was being pressured into coming out of retirement to pull together a similar deal.

The general was using a very effective weapon. Fear. Charles knew he wasn’t the only one watching his son.

The device would be ready to move in four days, but the general didn’t need to know that. Charles needed the extra time to get precautions in place—he wasn’t going to let anything happen to Ryan.

He turned the gold pen in his hand. “My money is ready?” Getting to the warhead was an expensive proposition. He might not be able to refuse the deal, but he was going to make it as costly as possible. The general wasn’t in a position to quibble over details. He wanted a nuclear warhead smuggled into Taiwan territory. If it could be done, and Charles had his doubts that the general could maintain the necessary secrecy at his end, it would not be a cheap endeavor. Charles planned to pay enough to ensure there was silence among thieves. It wasn’t his money he was spending.

“Yes.”

“Begin assembling your team. I’ll put the shipment in motion as soon as the money appears in my account.”

“You are confident this delivery will not be intercepted?”

His hand tightened on the pen; the threat was less than subtle. They had been having this conversation too often. “I’m inside with more than one resource. I’ll know before they move.”

He’d been forced to involve his son to make that second contact, and when it had gone bad Charles nearly had a coronary. Ryan was not supposed to be surfing. He was supposed to just hang out at the beach where Kelly worked, playing Frisbee with his friend. Charles had planned to swing by after work, then ask Kelly a couple casual questions as he collected the boys. The door to a later conversation when they just happened to bump into each other at a local bookstore would have happened without her thinking anything about it. Instead there had almost been a tragedy of epic proportions.

It wouldn’t have been necessary to try and get that second contact for a means to monitor the SEAL teams if he had made a better original choice. But his first source was becoming too chatty, too . . . attached. He had made that contact too early, kept it too long, chosen poorly—in hindsight all those facts were obvious. He had no choice but to stop seeing her and go with a new source at this late date. While he regretted who he had been forced to select, he accepted it as necessary. He needed a way to keep track of Lieutenant Baker and his men, and Kelly was the only way to accomplish that with any degree of certainty. He’d been pushed into a corner and there wasn’t another option. “There are contingencies in place.”

“We will need time for the assembly.”

“And I’m staying put to give you that time. You’re getting a bargain considering the risk involved.” When the device was stolen and shipped, he would have a hard time creating an airtight alibi when he couldn’t catch a plane and be occupied elsewhere. He wasn’t making this deal happen only to get caught and have Ryan pay the price of losing his father.

“Considering our last attempted purchase, you owe us.”

If the Americans were good enough to intercept a shipment occasionally, it was inconvenient, but from Charles’s perspective not a disaster. It only made the asking price on the black market higher. Before his retirement, he had even been known to help the Americans out on occasion with a nudge in the right direction. This man would not appreciate that insight. “You’ll get your device.”

“Call when the shipment is ready.” The call was abruptly terminated. Charles returned the phone to its cradle.

Eight days.

He would be relieved when this was over.

He had considered going to the authorities early on, but he had secrets to hide that went back three decades. He could handle the general. It was a business deal, a nasty one, but he could deal with it. The threat to his son arose only if he didn’t deliver the device, and this was one deal he was going to make certain went off without a hitch. He would deliver.

He had seriously considered sending private security after the shadows watching him, then reluctantly dismissed it. The general would only send others to replace them.

And putting a bodyguard with his son—Charles wanted to wrap Ryan in a cocoon of security, but he knew reality. If the general decided to make good on his threat, a bodyguard would merely be an annoying pause in the hit. And one bodyguard or ten, it would change his son’s image of him forever. For the illusion of safety it would offer, it wasn’t worth the price. He had managed to get out of the business before without Ryan knowing he had ever been in it. He wouldn’t allow this crisis to change that.

He had begun stealing arms to pay for his wife’s cancer treatments, so nervous about the first transaction he sweated over the stealing of a single stinger missile. She thought the money was coming from a promotion and a series of good investments. The illness let him cloud the details; the job he held allowed him to cover the travel. His wife had died. And the anger had become a willingness to take risks, to make money and stash it away for his son should anything ever happen to him.

It had been a foolish time in his life, and fools eventually paid the price. He just hoped he gained a little wisdom in the intervening years. He would need it to get himself and his son out of this spot.

He had never been caught because he had infiltrated the network of arms dealers before he stole his first weapon. His clearances and past in-depth security checks had held against the few things that might have otherwise raised interest. The men he had stolen weapons for were the same men who on another day he sold weapons to with his government’s blessing.

He had been inside the business long enough to understand the circles and subcircles necessary to protect his identity. His networks evolved and disappeared afresh with each deal. Compartmentalizing information was second nature and served him well.

The problems with this deal were myriad. He had been out of the business too long. His contacts were stale, his resources for information limited. This was not only the most complex deal he’d ever faced; it also carried the highest risk. And he had to find ways to moderate it.

The situation on the ground in Taiwan might work in his favor. The U.S. defense department was acknowledging a gap in what they knew about China’s military capabilities regarding Taiwan. He had a copy of the report summary on his desk, pulled from the defense department’s own Web site.

For the first time the U.S. was admitting in a public document that they couldn’t predict what would provoke a conflict between China and Taiwan or how either side would respond. China had always said it would use force to unify Taiwan with the mainland if Taiwan declared its independence. The report noted that China had recently added that it would use force if Taiwan acquired nuclear weapons.

If he could carefully tip off the U.S. military to this deal at the right time . . . maybe there was a way out of this. If he could ensure the right information leaked without jeopardizing his son’s safety, maybe the U.S. military could quietly take down the general.

He’d have to pass the information along after the deal was done but before the device was operational. And given the distance to the nearest deployment of U.S. forces, he was either going to have to give them some other reason to move forces into the area early or arrange his leak through safe channels so the general wouldn’t realize it had been made.

Joe Baker was going to be key before this was over. Charles was glad Kelly had the man as a friend. If he could somehow figure out how to tip the SEAL to what was happening . . . Charles was under no illusions. Joe was still hunting him, the man he called Raider, hoping to extract revenge for Nick’s death.

Joe would deploy the SEALs if there was any indication the man responsible for Nick’s death could be caught. Charles had stayed deep underground, moving from Hong Kong to the SEALs own backyard so he could watch them and make sure his trail stayed closed. It wouldn’t be easy to leak the name Raider without it leading back to him, but it was one possible way he could go. He had to find a plan that would work.

He would have to play both sides of the fence and hope he could somehow keep his balance. The general could not be allowed to acquire a working weapon. But Charles was under no illusions. If the general was at all suspicious he was trying to disrupt this deal, the man would kill Ryan. And that risk was unacceptable. If he had to let the deal go through to protect his son . . . Charles opened the bottom drawer of his desk, his keepsake drawer, and with care lifted out Amy’s photo and beneath it her diary.

His wife had written the diary while she had cancer, and when reading it he could hear the sound of her voice. She never suspected what he had done in order to arrange the cancer treatments. All the guilt he felt over his activities could not change the fact he still would have done it. For all its promise, the treatment had only been able to buy him some more time with her. Precious time. But not enough of it.

He missed Amy . . . beyond words. He had promised her he would watch out for Ryan. Starting a war would be easier to have on his conscience than breaking his word to his wife.

Nine

* * *

Kelly shifted the phone so she could reach for another Kleenex. If she caught a cold to cap off her return home, it would ruin what had been a nice day.

“Did you get my flowers?”

Kelly glanced around at the six dozen roses now occupying every table in her living room and dining room and smiled across the room at her friend Liz. “Yes, Charles, I did. They are . . . exquisite.”