Necessary Evil (27 page)

"Oh." After taking another bite of peach, she continued. "Why are you so aloof? With women, I mean."

"How did we get from cloning to . . . ?"

"Biology to love? I think for most men that's the natural sequence of events, except maybe they don't usually get to the second part. So don't change the subject. We're on aloof now."

"Maybe I'm not altogether sure."

"But you admit it?"

He nodded.

"Of course, you're sure. You've had years to think about it. You are introspective. You can't fool me with those terse Tilokisms of yours. Tell me. I want to know."

"I suppose my dad dying the way he did, coated me with emotional veneer. I suppose if I am numb I wouldn't know, after all these years, that there is anything but numb."

"I don't agree. I think you understand stir the oatmeal as a no-risk deal. To understand that, you've got to understand the possibility of something else."

Kier shrugged and touched her face. She didn't pull away.

"At this point I nod and you talk," he said.

She laughed hard.

"You're attractive when you're demanding telephones."

"You think you can sidetrack me with secret eyes?" she asked. "What do you take me for?"

"Who gets the bed?" Kier asked, abruptly sliding back his chair slightly as if to stand up.

"You. I can fit on the couch," she said.

As before, Kier wore only jockey shorts, she his T-shirt with her panties, while the rest of their clothes dried. She glanced at him as she sipped the cup of instant coffee they had borrowed along with the ham and peaches. She wasn't going to badger him any further. She was tired of badgering men. This time Kier did not try to make love to her with his gaze. He sat circling his coffee mug with a finger.

"Well, we should sleep for a few hours before I take off."

"Meeting's not until nine a.m. the day after tomorrow."

"I'm arriving before daybreak."

"Really. And why are we arriving before daylight?"

"I am arriving before daybreak to take Tillman hostage. It's the only way to find out what is going on."

This engendered a thirty-minute argument in which neither of them made a single new point.

"Well, at least you can't win the debate by locking me in a hole," she said finally.

"Wine cellar. But forget it. You wanna come, you come."

Now she could feel herself squinting, suspicious that she was being tricked.

"When you do that, it makes each little line in your face get deeper," he told her.

They smiled, and she inexplicably knew that he wouldn't trick her again. She held his gaze for as long as she dared. In his eyes she found a knowing strength that reached to her core. On the kitchen table his large brown hand contrasted with the whiteness of hers. She wished to feel his rough hand moving over hers. Such a simple thing, she imagined, would be so pleasurable. But she felt guilty for the wish. Each move they made toward one another, each little intertwining of emotion and personality, would in the end be undone, leaving neither the better for it.

''Frank Bilotti,'' she blurted out without really having made up her mind to do so.

"Who?" he asked.

"My boss."

"Yes," he said after a long pause in which she struggled to gather her thoughts.

''And Grail is my best friend from way back. I would have trusted either of them with my life. No question. You gotta understand. Frank was my mentor. We never crossed the line, but we felt deeply about each other—or I thought we did. After I introduced them, Gail had an affair with him. He's married to Eva. First big mistake."

Kier's eyes scrutinized her.

"Got your attention, didn't I?"

He nodded slowly.

"It had been going on for months. Frank is rich, by the way. Frank inherited lots of money, and unlike most of us, he doesn't need to work. The Bureau was an interesting hobby in more ways than one. He was bringing her travel brochures and talking honeymoon when there wasn't even a divorce in sight. He said they could take their honeymoon even before they were married. I begged Gail, pleaded with her to forget him."

Kier's eyes were somber, intent. She could feel herself about to cry, and tried to hold everything still from her stomach to her lips. "Gail, my dearest friend, was such a schmuck." Now tears were running hot down her cheeks. She paused to catch her breath. "She just ignored the facts. He was never going to leave his wife. She actually began thinking I was jealous. And maybe I was, but not the way she thought.

"See, I couldn't work with him like I used to. All his help, all his insight, the coaching about how to deal with the bureaucracy . . . it was gone, dried up. I suppose my disapproval about the whole situation was just oozing out of me. My respect for him disappeared, and he could feel it.

"I was supposed to meet Frank and two other agents at his summer home for a brainstorming session on a tough case. They were going to raid a place I had identified electronically. Anyway, I show up unexpectedly early by several hours, and even from the patio I can see that Frank and these two guys are watching this video.

"I'm a little quiet, wanting to surprise them, and they're so busy watching the TV they don't even see me. The window is cracked an inch and I can hear them. At first I think it's like an X-rated film or something. I'm embarrassed. Then I'm horrified. It's a video of Gail having sex with Frank, and these three guys are watching. And get this—Frank is
commenting
on it, and it's sick. All of a sudden I realize he's this cold detached bastard who's just using Gail in the crudest possible way. Frank's face is conveniently blurred on the tape, some special effect, but Gail's isn't. And believe me, from Frank's commentary for the boys you know it's Frank. And you knew Gail never had a clue about this."

Jessie had finished her coffee long ago, but she held the empty cup in a death-grip.

"I blew sky-high, barged in and told them what I thought of them." She stopped for a moment. "Frank turned on me. Just like that. My mentor, this man I would have trusted with my life, says that if three top agents say it didn't happen, it didn't happen. Then he threatens me. He actually threatens me if I say anything."

"What did he threaten you with?"

"You know this case we were supposed to be meeting about?"

Kier nodded.

"I had done some sweeps on the computer that required permission from above. Frank had given me the authorization. It's like a wiretap sort of, only with respect to a hacker's computer. I didn't do much of it, but another gal in our section did, and he was going to say it was all my doing. That I was trying to get ahead and it was all unauthorized. He said I'd get a failing performance review because of it. He would tell everyone that I had concocted this crazy story about the tape when all they were doing was watching an adult movie to pass the time."

"Usually the truth comes out."

"Oh yeah, right. Sure it does. But you've got no idea how somebody as powerful as Frank, with as many friends as he has, can screw up your career. And in the end I didn't have the tape. When I grabbed it, they took me down. Beat the shit out of me."

Jessie pushed the coffee cup aside and looked away.

"So what did you do?"

"It got bad, Kier. I had to use my gun to get out of Frank's summer home. Then I just walked out of the New York office, took a leave of absence, and came up here, but not without telling Frank's boss, Grady White. He's the head of the region. I told him the whole thing—off the record. He's sweating like hell. He believes me, but he says I gotta make up my mind: Do I want to leave this for Gail to deal with or file a formal report?"

"What does he think you should do?"

"I think he just feels sick, and trapped, and he probably thinks I should come forward and nail the bastards. Either destroy their careers or let them destroy mine. Without me, there probably won't be anything official. I'm not sure Gail would or could do it alone. If I talk, a holy war's gonna break out in the ranks of the Bureau. We can't all survive, but we could sure all go down."

Kier leaned back in his seat. ''After all that, you think there's no way the government could have sold out to Tillman?"

"I promise you, Kier, this is different. This is three guys and their twisted sex lives. It's hormones. It's not bribery. It's just not the same. And Frank Bilotti is
not
the institution."

Kier nodded as if he understood. "So when I met you on the road, when we were in the barn, all this time you've had this inside you. And you've kept it there."

''Yeah. Until now.'' She let herself begin to cry, completely weary of containing it. The fear, the anxiety, the heartache, the lost affection for Frank, it all wanted to squeeze its way out through her eyes.

She knew that Kier's hand would not move. At the other cabin he had rebuked himself; he would not allow himself to be drawn to her again. Sorrow and depression had replaced desire and settled over her. But now there was something worse than Frank Bilotti and his betrayal. Jessie could see the disappointment in all of her tomorrows: the mornings she would awake and wonder if she were in bed with the wrong person. Of course, she realized, that would be the lucky result. Just as likely, she would die—die missing this last opportunity to finally connect with this man, this guileless man. And outlive her cynicism, if not her singleness. She did not know how to begin.

In his fingers Tillman held the picture of Jessie, and his eyes periodically darted to it. A great pressure was building in his mind. Outside he saw a faint movement in the blackness. It was the llama wandering across the front porch. A man went quickly by the table, obviously trying to avoid him.

"When's somebody gonna butcher that damn llama?" Tillman asked. "Walking around like that gets the sentries used to movement. It's dangerous."

"I'll see that she's put in the barn, sir."

Tillman grunted as if he was half satisfied. Obviously the man had developed some ridiculous attachment to the animal.

Ready at last to talk, he called for Doyle, who came immediately with his mug of coffee. Doyle sat heavily as though the struggle were equally his.

"So what will he do?"

"I think he'll come." Doyle spoke without hesitation. "You've got his family and he's smart enough to know it. But I don't think he'll come when he says. And he won't come peacefully, that's sure. He'll come to take you."

"When do you think he'll get here?"

"Tonight sometime."

Tillman leaned back in the chair and poured himself another cup of coffee from the Donahues' pot. Only Doyle knew that Tillman had been on the mountain. The others thought he had just returned from Johnson City. He hadn't even told Brennan.

"I don't think we dare do anything until he arrives here. These men aren't smart enough to ambush him without being detected," Tillman said.

"With a chap like this who knows the terrain, it's nearly impossible to move on that mountain without tipping him off. Especially when we don't know where he's going to leave that cavern."

"I'm going to go out by myself tonight."

"I have an idea," Doyle said.

"Go ahead." Tillman took another sip and let his stare test the man.

"I'd like to talk to Kier and the woman alone. I'd like them to think I'm an undercover FBI agent."

Tillman lowered his chair to the floor, intent on Doyle's every word. "I'm listening."

"When I worked for Her Majesty's government, one of the things they taught us was FBI procedure. Even went to Quantico for a fortnight. Their antiterrorist course was supposed to be the finest in the world. If I could get with the FBI woman, talk to her, I believe I could convince her that I'm on her team. Maybe I could convince Kier. If either of them believed me, it would be over quickly."

Tillman reappraised Doyle. "Why does a man with your background go to work as a mercenary?"

"Had a run-in with my supervisor. He had strong feelings about my taking some favors from some rich business types. Just vacations. They were recruiting for private security. It was the one really thick thing I did, but believe me, it was enough. Got demoted very quietly. At first I thought it was a disaster. Until I learnt the private money was a lot better, if you don't count the lost pension."

Tillman was silent while he thought about it. Something made him slightly uncomfortable, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Maybe it was the way Doyle told the story so easily, as if he'd never lived it.

"How do you propose to do this?"

''Tonight we leave the greenest men in the house. You and I get on the most likely trails. We put a few more men, the best ones, in the woods around the house. We try to capture him or her—either one. Preferably the bird. But we've got no control over that. If anybody gets either of them at gunpoint, I come along and promise to save them when I can. Then I pitch them."

"You turn them loose?"

"Certainly not. But if I convince them I'm on their side— maybe I can get the sixth volume."