David Hewson (27 page)

The
question fascinated her. She'd never met Leapman before this assignment. He
came out of nowhere, throwing so many demands and orders in her direction that
she'd never thought about his background.

Fielding
answered his own question. "You don't, do you? Well, let me tell
you one thing, Emily. I recognize that kind of guy. If you could pull out his
FBI records--and that's a big if, I doubt even I have clearance to
get that far--I'd put good money on the fact he started life
elsewhere. Military maybe. I don't know. Don't care either. I can
live with the FBI, most of the time. You're just a bunch of people with a
job to do. Leapman. He's something else. Something private's eating
that bastard alive. Don't know what it is. Don't care. But if
it's not him burning you up, tell me what is."

She
pulled up a chair and sat next to his desk. "I'm here to ask a
favour. I want you to tell me about my father."

"Right
now?" Fielding asked. "This sounds like social. I like social. Just
not on company time. Couldn't we have dinner sometime? After the
holiday?"

"Yes,
we could. But I'd like to start the ball rolling. Being here... it
brings back memories."

"I
don't understand the urgency." He looked baffled, reluctant to go
along with this.

"Let's
say I have a sudden curiosity. I wondered what you felt about my father. I was
wondering what he did while he was in Rome. I was so young. And he wasn't
exactly forthcoming about things."

Dan
Deacon had been a military attache. Strictly speaking, that meant his
role was to liaise with his counterparts in the country where he was stationed.
But it could be one of those catch-all jobs too. She'd learned enough
about that from scanning the newspaper files after he died. There was nothing
specific about him. But there were stories everywhere, in reputable journals
around the world, which made it plain the job could be a cover for something
else.

"I
didn't work alongside Dan," Fielding replied cautiously. "We
just knew one another. He spent a lot of time with the military people here. Really,
Emily, I'm the wrong guy. Ask your mom."

"They
divorced ten years ago. Not long after we left Rome. It all got...
difficult around then. He was kind of cranky a lot of the time. Didn't
you know?"

"I'd
heard," he said shiftily. "All the same, you should ask her."

"I
have. Either she doesn't know or she doesn't want to say."

Fielding's
good-natured expression dropped for a moment and, for the first time, Emily
felt the distance in years between them. Thornton Fielding had always had
something boyish about him. Now it was an effort to keep up the act. "Maybe
she's got her reasons."

"Maybe
she has. But if that's the case, don't I have the right to know,
too?"

"Jesus,"
Fielding murmured, then got up and stood with his back to her, staring out of
the window, out at the torrent of snow.

She
came to join him. It was an extraordinary sight: a cloud of soft white flakes
pouring from the sky, creating a world that was cold and bereft of colour.

"Will
you look at that?" Fielding murmured. "I've not seen anything
like it in twenty years. I doubt I'll see it again either."

"Why
not? It's just weird weather. It happens from time to time."

He
glanced at her. "All kinds of weird things happen from time to time,
Emily. You just have to sit back, do your best, watch and learn, then put the
whole damn circus behind you when it's over."

"Meaning?"
she wondered.

"Meaning
your father was a good, brave man who served his country. It's a tragedy
he's dead. I'm sorry."

It
wasn't enough. She wouldn't leave it at that.

"Everyone's
sorry, Thornton, but sympathy doesn't help. I'm trying to
understand something here. You can help me."

His
fine eyebrows rose. "You're sure of that?"

"Absolutely!
You were here. You knew him. It wasn't just a casual acquaintance. I was
a kid back then. I remember you coming round. There was music. We laughed. I
think..."

It
was a distant memory, one so odd it stuck out.

"We
used to dance."

He
laughed. "The beer used to flow in the Deacon household, Emily. Dancing
was just a part of it."

"I
know. I wasn't blind, deaf and dumb. I remember things, not the exact
detail but the feeling, the atmosphere."

He
wasn't taking the bait.

"I
remember how bad that atmosphere got in 1991," she persisted. "So
bad it was what led them to divorce a few years later, I think. So what was it?
I know he went away. I remember. It was my birthday. He wasn't there.
That kind of thing never happened. He always came back for my birthday. He used
to say..."

The
memory was so sharp, so real, it brought tears to her eyes.

"
"When you've only got the one kid spoil "em rotten." He
said it all the time. You must have heard it."

"Must
I?"

He
cast an uncharacteristic look, one that just might have been fear, and returned
to his desk.

"Have
you asked Leapman about any of this?" he asked.

"No.
What's the point?"

"He's
your boss, isn't he? This is business, Emily. There are rules."

Fielding
assumed she knew something. Maybe that was only to be expected.

"Thornton,
I don't think you understand. Before I came here I was a trainee geek in
systems. They put me there because I was so lousy out in the field. I'm
in the Bureau because it's what I was supposed to do. Dad fixed it for
me. I don't pretend I'm good at it. Then, all of a sudden,
I'm on a plane to Rome with Joel Leapman in the next seat, staring hard
at his copy of
The New Republic
, not saying a damn word about
anything. Maybe I'm here because of my Italian. Maybe because I have that
degree and I know a little of the background to this pattern he keeps obsessing
about."

The
pattern. That magic weave of curves and angles. She couldn't get it out
of her head.

"What
pattern?" Fielding wondered.

"This."

She
picked up a pen and started sketching a sacred cut on his notepad, outlining
the part that made the shape of the beast. The man, Bill Kaspar, couldn't
have done it more quickly, more fluently, she thought.

"I
don't know anything about some damn pattern," Fielding complained,
waving a hand at her. "This is your business, Emily, not mine."

"Yes!
It
is
my business." Her voice rose. "But believe me.
I
don't know what the hell's going on
."

He
thought about that, trying to measure if it were true or not. "Are you
kidding me?"

"No!"

Fielding
rubbed his hand across his mouth, thinking. "OK. Let's say I
believe you. Here's the first piece of advice: don't ask Leapman
any of these questions. You're right. You won't get an answer. And
it may just make things worse between you."

"Fine,"
she persisted. "So let me ask you. Again. What happened in 1991?"

An
uncharacteristic sourness crossed Thornton Fielding's face. "You've
got books, haven't you, Emily? You
know
what happened in 1991.
Desert Storm. A bunch of allies got together to kick the Iraqis out of
Kuwait."

"My
dad was involved in
that
?"

"He
was the military attache. What did you expect him to do? Stay here
counting paper clips?"

So
that part of her memory was accurate. He had gone away, and for some time.

"You
mean he
went
there?"

Fielding
shifted uncomfortably. "I don't know the details. It's a
million miles from my job and I don't
want
to know the details. Let
me just say this. Rome's a great place for putting together certain kinds
of projects. Particularly ones that have to do with the Middle East. You've
got the communication. You're near the action. You don't have the
security issues you hit somewhere like Greece. There are facilities, too, out of
town. That's as much as I know."

"He
was in Iraq?" she pressed.

"Maybe.
Probably. Hell, I don't know and I'm not about to start asking. There
was a whole bunch of spooky people around at the time. I kept clear. I
didn't like what was going on. We had a casus belli there
anyway--Saddam had invaded another country, for God's sake. But we
hadn't thought it through. Which was kind of the opposite second time
round, in my opinion. With that we'd done the war games over and over
again and never quite found the reason to use them. Not in all truth. I very
nearly resigned over that one."

She
was shocked. The idea of Thornton Fielding walking out of the embassy after
twenty years seemed incredible.

"You
thought about quitting?"

Her
bafflement seemed to offend him. "Is that so odd? Do you think we just
sit here taking orders, never questioning them? I wasn't the only one.
Some guy in the visa department just left his desk the day the first bombs
fell, went outside and joined the crowds. Guess he's making coffee in a bar
or something right now. Stupid move. I can't believe I nearly joined
him."

His
eyes slid towards the closed door again. Suddenly she felt guilty for putting
this decent man in such an awkward position.

"It's
not always easy to do what's right, Emily. You have to marry up your
conscience with your duty. Sometimes they don't match too well. One has
to make way for the other. Either that or you just start all over again at
something new and I'm too old for that. Hell, I'm too
good
for that. You can walk away or you can wait for another day to fight. I chose
the latter."

She
tried to think back to the blur that was her childhood.

"He
was gone a long time, I think. I remember it was odd. My mom cried at night. She
was worried."

"He
was gone for almost three months," Fielding said bluntly. "But he
came back, Emily. At least you got that. They didn't all make it."

"And
now he's dead. This creep killed him anyway. In a temple in Beijing. Killed
him, then carved this crazy pattern out of his back, just like all these
others."

The
connection hovered just out of reach... Fielding was waving a hand in front
of his face. "I thought I told you. No details. Don't give me any
details..."

"Without
details I'm lost, Thornton. And I can't get a single piece of
useful information out of the damn system, because it's blocked off to
underlings like me. The moment I get near anything I hit the same barrier: no
security clearance. I can't talk to Leapman. All I've got is you
and some local cops who maybe know more than they're letting on."

"I
haven't got any more, Emily," he said with resolution. "I
shouldn't have said what I did. Forget it. You want my advice? Go home.
Get sick. Lay a complaint against Leapman or something. You won't have a
problem making them believe that. Get back to Washington, find yourself a comfy
desk somewhere and get on with your life. Leave Rome and all this shit behind.
There are graves around here you don't want to start digging up."

"That's
not possible."

He
looked into her face and there was no mistaking his expression. Thornton
Fielding was begging her to be gone.

"Why
not?" he asked.

"Because
I met him last night, Thornton, and I can't just walk away from this now.
He could have killed me, but he didn't. Why? I don't know. I
have
to know. Because of who I am. Because... Shit. He's smart. Maybe he
thought that's why I was here in the first place? To lure him out. And he
just didn't want to play someone else's game."

He
put his hands together and asked very slowly, "You met who?"

"Bill
Kaspar."

Fielding's
handsome face drained of expression. "Jesus Christ, Em. Where the hell
did you get a name like that?"

"From
the guy last night," she lied. He'd only given her a surname. Her
early memories provided the rest. "He called me that, too. "Little
Em..." "

Bill Kaspar. What a guy
.

They'd
all said that of this man once upon a time. She didn't know how she
remembered that or why. Just that it was true. Her father thought that. Perhaps
Thornton Fielding did once too.

"
"Little Em..." " she repeated. "But I'm not
little anymore, Thornton."

"I
can see that," he murmured. "We've all grown up a lot over
the last few years."

"So
tell me. What the hell's going on around here?"

"Can't,"
he sighed, shaking his head. "I'm not even sure I know myself. I
just know this:
you steer clear of this shit
. Otherwise it will eat
you up, like it did..."

He
fell silent and looked at the door. It was different now. He
wanted
someone to intervene.