Jericho's Fall (7 page)

“Of what?”

“That he’s who he says he is.”

Beck looked at the closed door. From the kitchen came quarreling voices: the two sisters, not quite getting along. It occurred to her that Audrey had barely said hello to her father’s oldest friend, and had not come out to say goodbye. Maybe nuns, like other people, held grudges. Maybe Dak was the reason for the fight. She wondered what the grudge could be.

“All I know is what he told me,” Beck said. “I didn’t ask him for ID.”

“In the future, maybe you should.” He puffed out a lot of air, then unlimbered himself. He tufted his hair some more, and the deep-blue eyes grew warm again, so suddenly that Rebecca knew it was an act.

“You know him. I saw it in your face.”

“I met him a few years ago. He wanted to interview me for a book on the Agency. I said no. And, so far, no book. He’s nobody, Rebecca. A hack writer. Forget him.”

“He said he’s working with Jericho.”

“Once upon a time, I’d have said that Jericho wouldn’t give the time of day to a twerp like that. Now? Who knows?”

He opened the door. Chilly wind snapped in. She felt his alertness tauten, and stretch outward, farther even than his eyes could see. He was like an animal, scenting the air for predators; or prey. Evidently satisfied, he drew her onto the front step. He was concerned about microphones, she decided. Just like Jericho.

“What’s going on, Dak? Is there something we should know?”

But Phil Agadakos had Jericho’s trick of answering the question he wanted to rather than the one you asked. “Tell you what.” He pulled a notebook from his pocket. “If you’re worried, I’ll have somebody give the state police a call. See if they can’t put a car down at the end of the driveway. How does that—”

He stopped. His head jerked upward. Her gaze followed his. The cold rain had taken a hiatus. In the glowering sky, the helicopter was passing overhead. Dak had heard the engine before she had; and the expression on his tired face was one of such utter contempt that if he’d had a gun, he’d have been trying to shoot it down.

“This is not a good moment,” he said, “to know what Jericho knows.”

(ii)

Very gently, Dak took her hand and led her down the steps, until she was standing beside him. “I need you to do something for me,” he said.

“Something like what?”

“Keep an eye on him.”

“That’s why I’m here.”

He shook his head impatiently. “That’s not what I mean, Rebecca.” He glanced at the house. “Jericho hasn’t been entirely right for a long time. In the head, I mean. He hasn’t been right for a good fifteen years.” He read her dark thoughts on her face. “No, honey, no. It’s not your fault. It’s not. Okay? If anything, what happened with you was a symptom, not a cause. Okay? I’m not saying what he felt for you wasn’t genuine—isn’t still—only that the Jericho I used to know would never have yielded to his passions, no matter how powerful, or pure.”

Beck turned her gaze aside. She said nothing. They were standing beside his car.

“I don’t mean he would never have cheated on Lana. He would. He did. You must know that. Before you, yes, he had his flings. In our business, well, when you have a fling, you report it. There’s even jargon for it. Unveiling, we call it. That’s what you do, you unveil your relationships to a security officer. We say, it’s better to unveil than to be unveiled. And Jericho, well, Jericho did a fair amount of unveiling. But he never left Lana. He never wanted to hurt her or the kids. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“He had his flings, he unveiled them, and life went on. That’s the key. Life went on.”

“I said—okay.”

Maybe it was the rising wind that made Dak’s voice seem harsher. Or maybe, old spy that he was, he had sensed her shrinking, and was in pursuit. “Now, Rebecca, let’s do the hard part. Flash back to fifteen years ago. He left the Agency and went to Princeton because he had to. He was being pushed out. He could call it a sabbatical, but it was intended all along to be permanent. That isn’t in his official bio, and it hasn’t shown up in any of the unofficial ones, either, but it’s a fact. Whatever is wrong in his head was going wrong that last year or eighteen months of his term as Director. Okay? Now. This is what happened. We didn’t tell anybody. How could we? Washington still remembers Angleton.”

Beck, as it happened, did not, but she was not about to break the spell.

“So, we kept it in-house,” Dak continued. “Some people went to see him. Maybe I was one of them. The delegation told him what had to happen. Told him why. Jericho was no fool. He left the Agency. Told the President it was time to give the academy a chance, at least for a while. He went to Princeton, the Institute for Advanced Study. He didn’t take his family with him. He left them down in Virginia. He fell in love with you. He left them, brought you up here. You remember those days.”

“Faintly,” Beck said, wiping her eyes. Still, she remained alert. Dak might be doing the talking, but she was the one under interrogation.

Philip Agadakos was not a man one could tease. At least, he was not a man who teased back. “I remember them, too. But for a different reason. You can’t imagine it, Rebecca. The storm he left behind. The Director of Central Intelligence seems to be losing his bearings. Then he takes up with—I’m sorry—with a sexy teenaged seductress. That’s what we thought. Once I met you, yes, you were very sweet, but, from Langley, it looked like a setup. As if our enemies, say, had wind of Jericho’s mental problems, and had put you in his path. You can imagine the panic. The former DCI, former SecDef, former everything, sleeping with a nineteen-year-old. Not just a fling. Leaving his wife. Buying a house so she could move in with him. What secrets was he whispering to you in bed? What was your motive? Who were you, really? You were under a microscope, Rebecca. Every second of your life was studied. And, I’m sorry to say, when the two of you were together—every time you were together—we were listening in. It wasn’t legal, and it wasn’t the behavior of gentlemen, but we had to know. I’m sorry, Rebecca. You asked.”

She would cry later, she decided. Cry, throw things, slit her wrists, whatever came to mind. Right now, however, at this crucial moment, she would be—well, what Jericho would have been. Rock solid. Even disdainful. She was close. Everything was about to pivot. She could feel it.

“That’s not all,” she said. When Dak waited, she fed him the next piece of the story. “You got down in the gutter, you listened to us in bed for a year and a half. Well, if you were listening, you heard Jericho tell me you were listening. Two, three times a day, he would remind me. First I thought he was playing games, then I decided he was nuts after all. But he wasn’t. You were listening. And if you listened, you know he didn’t betray any secrets. The only thing you heard in bed was Jericho telling me which way he wanted it tonight. So—that isn’t why you’re worried. There’s more.”

“You were always smart.”

“Tell me the rest.”

Again he looked down the road, then off at the woods, cut back the regulation fifty yards on every side. Nothing stirred in the cold mountain afternoon; or nothing to rouse an old spy’s suspicions.

“There isn’t any more,” Agadakos said after a moment. His smile was kind, and a little sad. “He’s an old man, Rebecca. He’s dying. He’s not sure what his life meant, so he wants to make sure his death means something.” He laughed. “And he sure has a lot of people paying attention, doesn’t he?”

Beck refused to be deflected. “But what is it? What does he want his death to mean? He’s plotting something, Dak. Maybe the two of you together. And we”—waving toward the house—“we’re caught in the middle.”

“There’s no danger, Rebecca, if that’s what you’re wondering. It’s nothing like that.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“The truth is, Jericho’s malady isn’t that unusual. The work we do, especially the people at what we call the hard end—there have been a few serious problems over the years. Not just from post-traumatic stress. The tension in general.” A look of pain flitted over his face, then was gone. “And even at the soft end, well, we don’t put it on our Web site, but there are people who survive our psychological screening but still can’t take the pressure.”

“Including Jericho?”

“Nobody knows what triggered his illness. But we have to deal with the reality. So, please, Rebecca. Just keep an eye on him. He’s lying there with a head full of secrets. I’d hate to think that—in his illness— he’d start to babble about some attempted coup from thirty years ago.”

Rebecca’s eyes, like Dak’s, were on the gravel drive, where it wound into the trees, but her gaze was on the past. In their year and a half together, Jericho had never let a secret slip through his lips. Not once. “That’s why you’re here,” she said flatly. “In case he tells what he shouldn’t.”

“Something like that.”

“So I suppose the helicopter is keeping an eye on him, too, huh?” No answer. Emboldened, she crossed the line. “And what if Jericho does talk about some coup from thirty years ago? What are you going to do? Euthanize him?” Still Agadakos said nothing. “There’s something else going on, Dak. Why don’t you tell me?”

He had the car door open. An experienced interrogator, like a good stage magician, knew when to leave them wanting more. “Because you haven’t earned it.”

“How do I do that?”

“You have my numbers,” he said, face toward the distant craggy peaks. “I’m at the Red Roof Inn in Bethel, but it’s better to use my cell, because I’m constantly up and down these mountains. Call me if anything changes.”

“Cell phones don’t work up here.”

The ghost of a smile. He had the door of his rental car open. “Mine does.” Dak climbed in and started the engine. Beck stood in the forecourt, watching as he vanished down the drive, wondering if a single word of his story was true.

MONDAY NIGHT

CHAPTER 7
The Summons

(i)

Audrey was explaining how to prepare Jericho’s macrobiotic meals. Beck made careful notes about the shoyu soup and raw vegetables, and even kept a straight face when they reached the hemp milk, but was forced to stifle a giggle when, working through the various whole grains, the nun showed her something called psyllium husk, which sounded less like a cancer-killing food than the name of a radio superhero from the old days. They were going over the rules for brewing Jericho’s tea when Pamela walked in.

“Sean’s definitely not coming,” she said, crossly, marching past them to hang up the portable phone. She did not excuse herself. She did not ask if this was a bad time. She launched herself immediately onto the subject she wanted to discuss. It was a bit past six, and the sun had long since dipped behind the peaks. “I talked to him three times today. Do you know what he said? ‘That old bastard lived fine without me. He can die without me, too.’ I said, ‘This is our father, Sean.’ And Sean said, ‘He was never my father. He only ever wanted daughters.’”

“That’s not true,” said Audrey, pleasantly. She was still munching on pieces of the bread from supper. She had shopped in town this morning. A huge pot was simmering, a soup, she promised, that they could all four eat tomorrow: meaning it would be suitably unseasoned, and tasteless. “He loved all of us the same.”

“They never got along,” her sister persisted. “Even when Sean was a baby, he never let Dad hold him if he was crying—remember, Aud? Mom had to hold him, or even you or me, but never Dad. You wouldn’t know this, Rebecca—not unless Dad told you—but when Sean was a boy, they had this terrible fight, I forget over what, and Sean told Dad he hated him for the way he’d treated Mom—you weren’t his first little fling, Rebecca, not by a long shot, but I guess you know that—and, well, anyway, Dad hit him—”

“Not all that hard,” cautioned Audrey.

“Three stitches. That’s what they put in his forehead. His own son. If it had been anybody but the President’s Deputy National Security Advisor”—she frowned, perhaps not sure precisely which title Jericho had held at that particular moment—“well, they would have had him up on charges.”

“He was repentant,” said Audrey. “He got down on his knees and asked Mom to forgive him.”

“Mom wasn’t the one he hit.”

“He stopped using his hands after that,” Audrey persisted. “He was a changed man.” She was fixing herself a sandwich. “And he never laid a finger on Mom.”

“He hit Rebecca, though,” said Pamela, eyes glittering in malicious triumph. “Didn’t he?”

Rebecca met her old adversary’s gaze. She shook her head, but said nothing.

“He confessed to Mom. This was later, after he came to his senses and was trying to get her back. Dad told Mom, Mom told me.”

“That’s absurd,” said Audrey, and looked to Beck for confirmation.

Beck took her time. Pamela had touched a nerve, but not the one she thought. Yes, Jericho had a temper. No, he had never laid a hand on Rebecca: not in anger. The DeForde household of her youth had been stormy. Beck had seen how her father treated her mother. She would not have spent five minutes with a man who behaved that way. “I’m sorry, Pamela. I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed.”

Pamela nodded. With satisfaction. “You know what? You lie just
like he does. The same words, the same intonation, the same everything.”

An awkward silence, which the nun at last tried to break: “Nobody knows what’s become of Mr. Lobb. I asked all over town. Everybody said they assumed he was up here. I even went to his house. No truck, no Jimmy Lobb, not even that mad dog of his. It’s weird.”

“Too weird,” muttered Beck. The others barely reacted, perhaps thinking her comment intended to reinforce Audrey’s. But she was thinking about how Dak had come but not stayed, how Sean was refusing to leave New York, how Jimmy Lobb, after years of faithful service, had vanished into thin air. It was almost as if somebody wanted the three women alone in the house with no male present but Jericho himself.

The notion was absurd, and sexist to boot, but she could not get it out of her head. And Dak—it seemed to her that he had thought she knew something, or that Jericho was going to ask her something—

Why don’t you tell me?