Volcano (11 page)

It was a sacred miracle Au Yang had not entirely lost his
mind. But during that time, he’d later told
Tom,
he’d
used the empty hours as occasions to restudy his mental lessons. Retrain his
mind in the art of Manchurian warfare. Retrace, in his head, each sacred
passage. For, as Buddha would have it, Au Yang had been gifted, from an early
age, with a photographic memory. So, what once had come as a curse in
cluttering the mind Au Yang often struggled to keep free in peaceful
harmony,
had effectively become Au Yang’s salvation in
prison. And the prolonged study had served him well. When Au Yang was drafted
onto Tom and Albert’s task force, he’d had a number of ready suggestions as to
how they should proceed with their plan and conquer not only the Far East but
the crumbling Eastern European Bloc as well.

For it was the group’s unanimous suspicion that the Soviets,
as
dissipated
as they’d become, still housed an
unarticulated agenda against the West. An agenda that, rather than evaporating,
had merely gone underground. And over time, Tom thought with a shake of his
head, had found more and more ways of seeping out in weed-lie sproutings in the
Middle East, an area ripe for the taking by opportunistic Soviet supporters...

Au Yang’s plan had been classic. Right back to Section
Thirteen in Sun-tzu’s strategic Art of War: The Use of Spies. Au Yang’s
proposal involved the positioning of an internal threat to intelligence. Some
sort of global scare, that would make those in key analytical positions less
apt to do their jobs leaving a giant vacuum in the national defense mechanism
of every targeted government. It was Kane who had envisioned the utility of a
systems invasion. Even at the dawn of the computer age, Kane had foreseen the
important application of computers toward the collection and dissemination of
intelligence. By 1989, the DOS had become quite accomplished at
wide-spread
computer warfare waged against the Soviets. Now,
if the United States could only concoct a way to infiltrate the intelligence
gathering machinery of other nations on a grander scale.

But Mooney had insisted that information warfare alone would
never be enough. It was Mooney, in fact, who had proposed and insisted upon the
complimentary escalation of violence. While Kane and Au Yang had inclined
toward the basic Chinese model, which minimized bloodshed, Mooney had countered
that without a basic level of brutality, idol threats would ultimately prove
ineffective.

Tom took a final swallow from his cup and crushed the soggy
mass into a weeping ball.
God dammit, if things just hadn’t taken this turn.
If Joe, for once in his God-forsaken life, had simply stayed in place and done
what he was told to do...

But Joe hadn’t stayed put, Tom thought, chucking his mangled
cup into the
trash can
. And now, one AWOL operative
Joe McFadden was in just as much danger as the rest of them- if not more. And
there was not one goddamned thing the head of INR, Tom Mooney, could do about
it.

***

“So, you’re saying,”
Mark
said,
gripping the wheel. “All this is an old US intelligence plan turned back in on
itself?”

“Precisely,” Albert said, biting into his top lip. “The similarities
are just too uncanny.”

“Who else knew about this?” Mark asked, studying his
father-in-law.

“Only the three of us: me, Tom and Au Yang. Plus the
President, the top brass at the Pentagon and the DOS.”

“Bush’s aides? Anyone still around who might
remember
anything?”

Albert shook his head. “There were no official briefings.”

Mark slumped back against his seat. “Where’s Au Yang now?”

Kane looked out his window. “Last I heard he’d gone back to
China.”

“...
in
?” Mark asked.

“Nineteen-ninety-nine.”

Mark pummeled the wheel with his fist. “Back to Chinese
Intelligence
?!
Oh that’s rich! And when, pray tell,
were you planning to advise people of this threat?”

“I didn’t think there’d
be
one, Mark,” Albert said,
his voice rising a decibel.

“Right,” Mark said, cranking the ignition with a jerk of his
wrist. “And the code name?” he asked, swinging the car back onto the highway
without even turning to look at his father-in-law.

“Volcano,” Albert said, his voice a low rumble.

Ana huddled her arms around herself and shuddered against
the tree that served as her single backdrop from the cold. All around her,
December winds hollered, clawing with witch-like fingers at her ineffectual
clothing. She had no way of knowing whether Hay Long had survived; she’d left
him for dead in his own pool of sickly blood, sirens just starting to bellow
outside the window. Someone at the hotel must have heard the gunfire and called
the police. Fortunately for Ana, she’d managed to slip out the door and back
her way down the fire escape unnoticed.

Though why she was running from the police, Ana wasn’t
certain. All she had left on this bitter moonless night was her burning love
for Isabel and an instinct that told her she’d done the right thing.
Confronting the police would have somehow brought trouble.
Either
to Joe or the DOS as a whole.
And, despite what she’d gone through-
everything she’d gone through, including three years ago in Spain- Ana wasn’t
ready to sacrifice the top-secret intelligence organization to her personal need.
There was too much good that came from the work there, too much that was being
accomplished on such a subversive level and that even those being benefitted by
certain operations were kept effectively unaware.

Ana stared through a thicket of pines, trying
to get her bearings.
She’d run from sunup to sundown, but the charcoal
winter sky had done little to dry her drenched clothing. Ana shivered and
mentally tried to calculate the distance she’d gone, hoping her sense of
direction hadn’t failed her. All she wanted to do was get home. Home to her
chalet-styled house in the woods where she’d be able to find Mark. The only one
she could trust to somehow make things right.

Ana thought again of Isabel and something agonizing twisted
inside her. She knew her baby girl was being taken care of. Mark would have
ensured it. But still, she ached to hold her, to feel that baby soft breath
upon her neck.

And Mark. What would he be thinking all this time? Had he
been contacted? Would he have been told she was dead, in accordance with the
order Joe had failed to carry out? Ana clutched herself around her middle, her
brutal two days’ hunger fleeing her in an instant. Had Mark been right to
discourage her from getting so intimately involved in DOS affairs? Because of
her own bullheadedness, had she now endangered her family?

Ana Kane was a strong woman, strong because she had to be.
The only time she’d ever allowed herself to feel weakness was when she’d been
embraced in the security of Mark Neal’s arms. She’d felt it from that very
first touch, known it from their telling walk in Santiago, when Mark, in all
his wisdom, had pulled a shattered Ana into his arms. No man had ever made her
feel so vulnerable, yet so completely at peace. She needed him and needed him
desperately. But, in these past few months, she’d given him reason to doubt
that. Given him cause to call into question the solidity of all that existed
between them.

Especially now, Ana had to believe that any troubles they’d
been experiencing were only temporary.

Ana hadn’t been lying when she’d told her father she loved
Mark. Nor had she sought to deceive when she’d claimed the feeling was mutual.
But sometimes, as she’d often heard from divorced friends, love just wasn’t
enough. When people grew, people changed, and far too often that change led to
a fork in the road rather than a continued convergence of paths.

Ana was sure now, as sure as God gave her breath, that the
course she and Mark had taken wasn’t irrevocable. Yet, that hadn’t been the
impression she’d been giving him. As of late, how could Mark have interpreted
her behavior as anything less than her having one foot out the door?

But the truth was, Ana didn’t want to go...didn’t want to
run anywhere except for straight into Mark’s arms and the promise they had once
held.

Ana turned at the sound pelting through the leaves and
realized it was raining. She needed to go on, but was weakened by hunger,
disoriented in the woods, bruised and battered from her alarming altercation
with Hay Long... And
cold
. Never in her entire life, had Ana felt so
very
cold
. And it was more than the wind and the rain and her terror. It
was in knowing she might never again see her baby daughter, in the realization
that, if she were to die here and now, she’d leave Mark with the false illusion
she’d no longer cared.

Ana huddled forward and let the tears come. For not even the
driving force of the rain, or the fire in her rapidly breaking heart, could
stop them now.

***

Major Carolyn Walker picked up the phone on the secured line
then set it back in its cradle for the fourth time. If she told Neal the truth,
he would kill her. But if she didn’t, he’d make certain her life within Defense
Intelligence was worth nothing anyway.

Carolyn had been given an assignment and promised to handle
it. And so far, when she cut herself some slack, she saw, she’d been doing
reasonably well. Maria’s indiscretions hadn’t been Carolyn’s doing after all.

All blast.
Carolyn rammed a fist into the desk,
knowing that was a lie.

What Maria had done
before
she’d been Carolyn’s
charge had certainly been out of Carolyn’s control. But the nanny’s last
communication, and potentially her most damaging one, had,
dammit all,
been
made on Carolyn’s watch. And if she were half the officer she pretended to be,
Carolyn Walker would make no excuses, suck it up and face the music!

But, did
facing the music
mean making an already
dismal holiday abysmal by calling her boss now? How much difference could two
days make? Maria was already in DOS custody, would be restrained from making
further calls or contacts with the outside world. The damage that had been
done,
was done.

Mark was sure to be beyond grief over Ana. Why add fuel to
that fire?

Because if she didn’t, Carolyn realized, picking up the
receiver for the fifth and final time, and somehow the information she withheld
could have led to the solving of the case sooner, Mark Neal and the DOS would
never forgive her.

***

Ana sucked in her breath and stopped crying. As rain beat
heavy streams down her forehead, she heard a crackle in the darkness.

Then another.

Ana’s eyes frantically searched the night, weighing her
options: run or stay hidden.

Another
crackle
, this one
weightier- crushing through fallen brambles.

Could be an animal...

Another.
Closer.

Rain streaked and
an overhead curtains
of leaves collapsed under pressure.

A rustle in a nearby tree.

Ana’s heart rose in her throat, as she summoned the courage
to run.
Move,
she told her paralyzed legs.
Move, dammit!

Another rustle- closer still.
This
time close enough to see
thinly-veiled
movement
through a nearby tree.

Ana futilely dug her fingernails into her thighs, willing
her novocained legs to cooperate.

Nothing.

Tears blistered her cheeks and water rushed from her
nostrils, as his shadowy form emerged from the underbrush.

Maybe if she stayed very still.

An outline...a head turning in her
direction.

Ana’s heartbeat hammered her to the tree behind her.

A slow, steady perusal panned in her direction.

No, not here, Ana begged silently, as the form appeared to
scan the edge of the clearing near her feet.

Then, it stopped: a sinister shadow angling toward her.

And Ana’s legs finally
did
something; they gave way
beneath her, hurtling her into an even blacker darkness.

Mark stared out the large, plate glass window into the
blinding night. Outside, rain pounded, streaking the pane with its fury. In the
distance, the hazy bubble of the illuminated Capitol dome was little more a
vague sketch in the night. Christmas Eve and all of Washington was melting.
But not half as fast as Mark’s rapidly drowning heart.
Major
Walker had advised him of the situation and he was furious. Not at Carolyn, but
at himself for becoming so reckless. There was a day when even the minutest of
details couldn’t pass him by without notice.
But now
this
.
This, and every indication that Ana had been telling the truth these past
several weeks when she’d said she’d no idea why the house had been so
disorganized, no clue as to who’d left open the doors, have moved things about,
misplaced, reset and tampered with appliances...

He’d played the lunatic, fairly
railed
at his wife
for her inefficiencies. And when she’d looked at him with that blank stare,
he’d found himself beginning to doubt so many things. Not just her competency
at home, but the essence...Mark felt his slackened jaw tremble...of who she
was.

Mark pressed his palms to his temples and cradled his head
in his hands, elbows down on his desk. In the blur of time that had clipped
past since Isabel’s birth, Mark had scarcely slowed down enough to notice the
change. Though
Ana
, he now saw, had tried to tell him,
he’d been oblivious to the welling darkness around them.
Oblivious, or
purposely ignorant,
Mark wondered, feeling the shame break over him like a
wave over the bow of a sinking ship.