Over the Edge (17 page)
He’d throw her to the wolves. No doubt about it.
“I will count to three,” Backstreet said. “One.”
They probably all would. Gina couldn’t even say that—if Karen Crawford were here—she herself wouldn’t be pointing her out to the gunmen right this very moment.
“Two.”
Gina had always thought of herself as strong and principled, but it was easy to be strong and principled without guns held to your head.
The presence of those guns changed things a whole lot.
“Three.”
No one moved.
Backstreet sighed wearily.
Gina had thought the shorter, more ferocious, snarly pantherman was the leader, but now she saw Backstreet give him a signal. Go ahead.
Pantherman pulled back the butt of his gun, ready to pulverize Trent Engelman’s pretty head.
And Gina yanked herself free from Casey and stood up, stooping to keep from hitting her own head on the overhead luggage compartment. “Don’t!” The word was out of her mouth almost before she realized what she was doing. What the hell was she doing?
She was looking at Backstreet, but she could see Trent from the corner of her eye, his face incredulous. She could also see Mr. McGann gaping at her, too.
“I’m Karen,” she said. Her voice shook, so she said it again. Louder. “I’m Karen Crawford. Please don’t hurt anyone else.”
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Eight
Stanley Wolchonok had Marte’s smile.
As far as Helga could tell, SEAL Team Sixteen’s senior chief hadn’t stopped moving since his plane had set down in Kazabek, but she’d caught enough of a glimpse of him to see that he had his mother’s smile. And the glint of sharp intelligence in his eyes—that was pure Marte as well.
Out of all her regrets in her life, not searching more strenuously for Marte back in the 1960s, when they both would have been about the age Stanley was now, was exceedingly high on the list.
But Helga had been afraid it would hurt too much.
And here she was now, an old woman, forced to find Marte in her grown son’s smile.
She was going to come face-to-face with Stanley later. At a meeting with FBI negotiator Max Bhagat and the SEAL commanders, whose names she had to consult her memo pad to keep straight.
I know your secret.
Every time she opened her pad, the words Des had written there seemed to jump out at her.
Her secret. That she was losing her mind—her brilliant, wonderful, God’s gift of a mind.
Helga didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to acknowledge it, hoping that if she didn’t call it by name, it would disappear.
Knowing that that wasn’t going to happen.
Des had said nothing more to her. But then again, he hadn’t had time to. He’d vanished upon arrival in K-stan, and she could only guess where he’d gone, whom he might be contacting, what he might be doing.
Because she knew his secret, too. He wasn’t formerly with Mossad. He was still with Mossad.
She tried to imagine him slinking around in the shadows like James Bond. Like the games Marte used to play—always moving silently and eavesdropping on everyone from the butcher to her sister, Annebet. She’d forced Helga to learn to climb out of her window and creep around without being heard.
“You never know when this will come in handy,” Marte had told her, in complete seriousness.
And it had. Her ability to move soundlessly had come in very handy on that night when her parents and Hershel had fought.
At first it had been all loud voices. Poppi shouting about gold diggers after the family money. Her mother outraged that Hershel would even consider any kind of liaison with a girl like Annebet Gunvald. She wasn’t even Jewish.
But then her mother stormed upstairs, leaving Hershel and their father. Their voices calmed and Helga had silently crept closer—close to the door of her father’s study.
“She’s a beautiful girl,” she heard Poppi say through the door. “Very tempting. Particularly if she offers—”
“She hasn’t offered anything,” Hershel cut him off, his voice tight.
“These girls at university,” Poppi continued, “freethinking young women who believe, what? That they’re actually going to be doctors . . . ?”
“Yes,” Hershel said. “Annebet believes that, and I believe it, too. She’s wonderful, Father—”
“If it’s marriage you want—”
“Marriage? I just met her.”
“A man in your position must wait until marriage to . . .” Poppi cleared his throat. “Still, you’ve become a man and a man has needs. . . .”
Hershel was silent.
“As you get older, you’ll learn to see beneath the obvious outward trappings of a girl like this. With age, you’ll see her coarseness, her . . . lack of the more lasting virtues. Taking a girl like this as your mistress might seem like a good idea now—”
“Her name is Annebet, and I have no intention of insulting her by making her my mistress.” Hershel was angry. He usually didn’t get loud when he was very angry. He got quiet. Poppi didn’t realize that, but Helga did.
“Good. That’s . . . good.” Poppi cleared his throat again. “Your mother and I weren’t intending to arrange a marriage for you, like our parents did for us. We hoped you would pick your own wife. But if you’re . . . hesitant to approach a certain girl, a Jewish girl from another well-to-do family, we could speak to her parents and—”
“Well, that’s a hell of a reason to get married, isn’t it?” Hershel sounded strangled. “Simply to get laid?”
“Don’t use that language in my house!” Poppi exploded, and Helga shrank back from the door. “How dare you?”
“How dare you?” Hershel shot back quietly, intensely. “You don’t even know Annebet, and you assume because she’s not Jewish and because her family has to labor for a living that she’s less than we are. Well, she’s not. She’s more. She’s so much more. And I pity you for not being able to see that.”
“I forbid you to see her again!”
“Or you’ll do what?” Hershel asked. “Write me out of your will? Fair enough. Consider it done. I don’t want your money. I have better things to do than sit around counting something that doesn’t really exist.”
Hershel pulled open the door. He didn’t slam it behind him. He shut it instead with a much more final-sounding click. He took the stairs up to his bedroom calmly. If Helga didn’t know him as well as she did, she wouldn’t have guessed that he was furious.
She followed him up and into his room, watching as he started to pack, throwing his leather bag onto his bed and taking all of his undergarments from his drawer, putting them inside.
“I can’t believe he still thinks I’m—” Hershel cut himself off.
“What?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Never mind.”
“Are you really leaving?” Her heart was in her throat. “If you go back to Copenhagen, how will I know you’re safe?”
Hershel sat down on his bed, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. He sighed, looking at his suitcase. “Annebet told me she’s not going back to university this term—I think the Gunvalds’are struggling more than ever to make ends meet. If I leave, I won’t be able to see her again.” He looked at Helga. “I’m dying to see her again.”
“What does it mean—get laid?”
“You heard that, huh, mouse? Terrific.” He stood up, dumped the contents of his bag back into his drawer.
“You’re not going to tell me?” she asked, relief clogging her throat. He wasn’t leaving.
“No.”
“Are you sure? I suppose I could always ask Poppi . . .”
He laughed at that—as she’d hoped he would—some of the tension leaving his face. But he didn’t tell her.
It didn’t matter. She’d ask Marte. Marte knew everything.
Helga turned to leave, but Hershel stopped her.
“Does Annebet . . . Has she ever . . . mentioned me?”
Helga shook her head. “I haven’t seen her since the day in the barn, and today in the store.”
He looked so disappointed. “But Marte says Annebet looks at you like she wants to kiss you,” she continued.
Her brother’s face lit up. “Yeah?”
“Mrs. Shuler? Mr. Bhagat is ready to see you, ma’am.”
Helga blinked.
An earnest young man stood in front of her. He couldn’t have been more than twelve. Okay. Twenty-five. He just looked twelve.
Helga flipped through her notepad, skimming the words written there in her own familiar handwriting.
Hijacked plane. One hundred twenty passengers. Terrorists from the People’s Party. Demanding release of prisoners, one in Israel. Max Bhagat—FBI negotiator.
I know your secret, in Desmond’s bold hand.
Merde. When had he written that?
She rose to her feet and followed the young man into the other room.
“They haven’t contacted us again,” Max Bhagat was saying. “Not since they spoke to the tower in Kazabek before they landed. We’ve tried to raise them a number of times, but they’re not talking.”
Stan stood near the door to this room in the airport terminal that had been set up as the negotiators’headquarters. The building overlooked runway two, where the hijacked plane was parked.
This room had no windows, but just down the hallway was a waiting area with a floor-to-ceiling view of the 747. And, of course, the negotiators’room had banks of video screens, upon which were broadcast images of the plane from every imaginable angle, courtesy of the cameras put into place by the SEALs in Jazz Jacquette’s surveillance squad.
They were out there right now, four men hidden on their bellies in the swampy grass surrounding runway two. Two teams of two on two-hour shifts, rotating out every hour.
“They haven’t pulled the window shades,” Bhagat continued, “so we’ve got a pretty clear look into the cabin. There appears to be only five terrorists—”
“I wouldn’t set that into stone just yet,” Lieutenant Jacquette interrupted. “Wait until we get the minicams and mikes into place in the body of the plane. I have a three-man team all set to move in after 0200.”
The SEALs in Jazz’s squad would approach the aircraft from its blind side—the rear—and work their way forward, staying beneath it. It would take time, moving slowly so as to make no noise, but they’d gain access to the luggage compartment and thread miniaturized cameras and microphones up into the passenger compartment and the cockpit of the plane.
Stan tried to stay focused, tried not to let his thoughts slip to Teri and Muldoon, who had surely finished dinner, even if they’d lingered over coffee. They were probably both in bed by now.
Maybe even together.
God damn it.
He was tired and cranky.
So what if Teri had hit it off so well with Muldoon that she had invited him back to her room? So what if he were there right now, skimming his hands and mouth across her naked body? So what if he were pushing himself inside of her as she clung to him, eyes closed and head thrown back, sweat glistening on her perfect breasts?
Ah, Christ. Stan wanted to double over from the longing and envy that gripped him. Instead he pushed it away, forcing himself to stand tall, to stand strong.
It would be great if Muldoon and Teri hooked up. He knew that was true. Because then Teri would be Muldoon’s problem. Stan could stop thinking about her once and for all. He could stop trying to figure out how the hell to help her deal with not just the big threats in her life, but the day-to-day ones as well.
Stan could be her friend, period, the end. No obligations, no responsibilities, no temptation. Yeah, all temptation would be gone. Because no way in hell would he mess around with Mike Muldoon’s girlfriend. No way. He could want her so badly he was bleeding from the ears, but he wouldn’t touch her if she were involved with Mike.
Lieutenant Paoletti and Max Bhagat were deep in a conversation about timing and best and worst case scenarios—nothing Stan didn’t already know. Still, he needed to pay attention, so he tried to wake himself up by standing a little straighter and resolutely pushing the last of the images of Teri Howe getting it on with Mike Muldoon out of his head.
Mrs. Shuler, the envoy from Israel, was watching him—apparently he wasn’t the only one whose attention had wandered. She gave him a smile and a nod before they both focused on Max Bhagat.
But then the conversation and the meeting was over. And Stan followed Paoletti to the door. If he were lucky, he’d encounter no more emergencies between this building and his hotel room pillow.
Please, God, let him get just an hour of sleep tonight. . . .
But Mrs. Shuler intercepted him, turning to greet him with a handshake in the hallway.
The Israeli envoy was a small, pleasantly round woman in her midsixties with soft gray hair that curled around a still-youthful face.
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