The Domino Game (22 page)

They strolled down the corridor as a group, taking their time, like four old friends returning together from an evening at the theatre, stringing it out, making it last. But by that time, beneath her outward composure, Kelly could feel the panic beginning to take hold. She had drunk too much and now she was dizzy. Dizzy and confused as to why she seemed to have become the center of attention, the focal point of the silent smiles exchanged around her. She remembered glancing at David then at the man and then the woman and seeing the same excitement in each of their eyes. The excitement of anticipation.

Well, whatever they had been anticipating, one thing was certain, they had all been pretty disappointed, because what followed had been a complete disaster.

She had tried. Gone along with it all until, like tonight, after half an hour she had realized that this wasn’t her. Not only wasn’t it her, her head just couldn’t deal with it, and she needed to get out of it right then and there. That minute.

The courage to do it came suddenly, surprising her as much as it had the others. She had just broken free and pushed them all away. Silently gathered up her clothes with what little dignity she could still manage, carried them to the bathroom, dressed, tidied her hair and make-up – as best she could through vision blurred by alcohol and tears – and left… the suite, the hotel, the couple from the coast and – specifically – David.

It had taken three years to complete the formalities but that was the actual moment at which the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. David Rengard had come to an end.

When she turned up on the doorstep of her father’s house at Tarrytown the next day, clutching a suitcase in either hand, he had been bemused but unashamedly delighted. Her dad never had liked David, she knew that. Perhaps that was because he’d always had a special ability to read people like no one else Kelly had ever known. To see right through skin and flesh to a person’s core.

He’d been back in the States for almost three years then and just getting into the stride of his new career. His first book had hit the stores and the media and the establishment were still poring over it, digesting it – the former with relish; the latter with a kind of awkward discomfort. In fact, the first review had shown up in the
New York Times
just a few days before and Kelly remembered how thrilled and proud she had been as she read it.

Organized crime meets big business and shady
politics.

Ho-hum … heard it all before, right?

Well, sorry to disturb you but you’re wrong. Very wrong, according to former long-term CIA officer, Jack Hartman… And if he’s telling even part of the truth about what he knows then we’d all better sit up and start taking
notice.

In his just-released book, “Situation Critical”, Hartman examines the history of Russian organized crime and blows the lid on what he considers to have been the orchestrated cover-up of this latest threat to American society. Forget about the mob and the triads and the yakuza! According to Hartman, they’re just amateurs compared with the Russians. If we believe this veteran of the shadow world, these guys are smarter and meaner than all the rest put together… Sophisticated, efficiently ruthless, masters of the arts of compromise and corruption. Most disturbing, according to the author, their operations now pose a clear and present danger to our society, one that has the ability to touch us all. A danger our government has long been aware of, Hartman contends, but has assiduously avoided doing anything
about.

… So, how
come?

That’s just one of the questions raised in this compelling new work and what’s more, the author has the guts to offer a chilling answer that is unlikely to endear him to the folks in
Washington.

An absolute must
read.

That was in the fall of ‘98. Before the other reviews and the articles in
Newsweek
and
Time
and the Larry King interview and the other talk shows that had ended up making Jack Hartman just about famous.

It was Kelly who had pushed him to take the Russian posting when it had come up three years before, so she had played a part in reshaping her father’s career without even being aware of what she was doing. Strange, she reflected, how random events could connect to form a chain of energy capable of instantly and completely redefining someone’s future. She’d seen it at work in her role at the Foundation… the political unknowns who let loose some off-the-cuff comment that suddenly propelled them from obscurity into the national spot-light. Of course it was what happened
after
that determined greatness. Maybe she was a little one-eyed, but she had always believed her father was great.

They had lived in Moscow as a family when Kelly was a teenager and despite the weirdness of the place she still remembered those years, as happy times. Good times. Then after her mother’s death her dad had been so lost and despondent that Kelly hadn’t known what to do with him.

They were as close as they had ever been – perhaps even more so – but the pull of her own life was starting to tug her away from him. She had been living in New York for almost five years then and was wrapped up in the excitement of her first job at the UN. And by that time David had been on the scene for almost a year and she was beginning to believe that she was falling in love.

So, with her prompting, her father had taken the Russian job. And then, just two months later – and more significantly it seemed to Kelly, only a few days after she had called him to tell him that she and David were engaged – he had suddenly and unexpectedly returned to the States.

He made contact with her the day after he arrived. Told her he’d taken leave from the Agency and was going up to Tarrytown for a while. When she asked why he had come back so soon all he would say was that he needed a break. Needed some time out for himself.

He wanted her to go up to Westchester and spend the weekend with him but she and David had already made plans so instead he told her he’d come down on the Friday and they arranged to meet for dinner at a restaurant in Little Italy. He was already there when Kelly arrived, tucked into a corner booth, playing with a breadstick, an untouched glass of red wine by his elbow. When he saw her his face lit up like a lantern but then after they embraced the smile folded, almost as though it had been a strain to manage it in the first place.

It wasn’t a successful evening. The food was lousy and the conversation worse, with her father uncharacteristically quiet, almost morose. When Kelly pressed him on the reason for his sudden return he had avoided the issue, shifting the discussion someplace else, and for the first time in her life it felt as though some bleak void had begun to open up between them. A dark crevice that was absorbing their emotions and spreading wider, forcing them apart.

Given the absence of any other explanation, the conclusion she reached seemed the only logical possibility. She held it in until they left the restaurant then, when he was walking her home to her apartment in the East Village, she decided she just couldn’t stand it any longer. On the corner of Prince and Mulberry, outside Old St Patrick’s Cathedral, she stalled, thrusting her hands into her pockets and turning to him with a look of defiance.

“It’s David, isn’t it?” Her gray eyes tried to challenge his. “You don’t like him and you don’t think he’s right for me. Well let me tell you something. You’re just a jealous father who doesn’t think anyone is good enough for his little girl!”

He had seemed genuinely surprised at her outburst. Looked at her for a long moment as if his mind had been elsewhere and was trying to catch up, before the comprehension dawned and one of those soft grins spread across his face, the kind that melted her completely and made her feel like a ten year old again. Then he reached for her and closed his arms around her and wrapped her in an enormous hug. He held her like that for a long moment then let her go. Looked at her for a while in that stern way she remembered but thought he had forgotten, then gave her a little lecture. Told her that ever since she’d been a teenager there was just one thing about her that he’d been concerned was just a fraction too big… her ego… otherwise she was almost perfect. And that even though she had grown up a lot since then, the ego still needed a little work. That she still hadn’t learnt that the whole world didn’t revolve around her, that there were other things happening to other people that might even, at any given moment, actually be more important than what was going on in her life. That she was grown up now, and if she wanted to make a mistake by marrying an asshole then he’d back her up all the way, because that was what fathers were for.

As for the fact that he was a little down… He glanced aside and she saw his thoughts wander for a moment, then he swung his gaze back to her and locked it in that way that made her remember that whenever it came to a war of wills between them she was always the loser. That was something else, he told her. Not something he could talk about right then; in fact, maybe not ever. But it was something that meant he now had a lot of thinking to do.

About the past, the present, and the future.

She and David had been married in December, six months later.

It was a fairytale day. Everything Kelly had ever wanted and dreamed of.

The service was held in the Old Dutch Church at Sleepy Hollow, at four o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. Outside the snow was sifting down, settling lightly on the windshields and gleaming paintwork of the automobiles that lined the rising driveway, while in the stone chapel it was warm and deliciously cozy, the air scented with the fragrance of old timber and books and wax, the light burnished by the glow of a hundred candles.

When the minister got to the
who gives this woman
part, Kelly remembered how strong and decisive her father’s voice had been.

“
I
do.”

And then he had stepped away and returned to his place in the front pew, where her mother’s younger sister, June, and her husband waited with their son and daughter, and that was the sad part. Because while there were almost one hundred and fifty people crowded into the little church, and the pews on the right were filled to bursting, those on the Hartman side of the aisle told their own story.

Kelly’s friends were there in strength, of course, but as a courtesy they had left the first few rows vacant, expecting them to be taken up by her relatives and her parents’ closest acquaintances. The problem was, apart from June and her family, they were almost empty. Of the couple of dozen friends from Virginia and DC who’d been asked to the wedding – men and women her father and mother had grown close to over his twenty-eight years with the Company – all but a few had declined their invitations. They just didn’t want to be there because they were scared. Scared of career contamination. Of the consequences of being seen fraternizing with someone who might be about to become the enemy. Because by then Jack Hartman had finished his thinking, come to his decision and quit. Two years short of his thirty he had told them he was leaving and then – to make matters worse – that he intended going public. Not in any way that would violate his secrecy agreement – he’d already gone through that with his attorneys – but that he’d had enough and now he intended to speak out. To use his background and experience to draw attention to some things he believed the public needed to know.

Predictably they’d panicked then – Tom Gaines, the DDO, the DDCI – all of them. In a last-minute attempt at damage control, even the Director himself had stepped in, inviting her father to a private lunch in his suite at Langley, alluding to all sorts of promotional prospects. Then, when that didn’t work, finally pleading with him not to do it. Not to make this terrible mistake. But he had walked anyway because he’d had enough. And because it was time, he’d told her, to do something worthwhile with what was left of his life. So by then Jack Hartman knew who his friends were. And there weren’t too many of them.

Kelly had been more concerned for her father than she had been for herself, but the rebuff hadn’t seemed to worry him. He had been the perfect father of the bride.

The reception was held at Tappan Hill, the beautiful old stone mansion overlooking the Hudson where Mark Twain had once lived a century before, with the party going on until midnight, while the snow fell outside. Towards the end of the evening Kelly had gone looking for her father and found him standing alone on a covered terrace, gazing out across the lights of the Tappan Zee Bridge to the opposite bank of the Hudson, deep in his own thoughts. She had borrowed David’s white tuxedo jacket, tossed it across her shoulders and slipped out to join him, coming up behind him so silently she didn’t think he’d heard her, but when she slid her arm around his waist he showed no indication of surprise. Just reached out with his own arm and drew her to his side. She snuggled up against him and followed his gaze, into the shimmering night.

“Beautiful, isn’t it,” she murmured.

He nodded slowly. Said nothing. She nestled in closer.

“Thanks, Dad. For everything.” She watched him. Saw him bite his lip. Her eyes lowered with her voice. “I was just thinking…”

He finished her sentence. “If only Mom could be here.” He turned to her and smiled.

She tipped her head away from him a fraction and narrowed her gaze. “How did you know that was what I was going to say?”

He squeezed her again. “I’m your father. I know everything, remember?”

She turned back to the lights and nodded slowly. “Sometimes I think maybe you do.”

He drew a long breath and let it go. The warm mist lingered in the air a few seconds then floated away. When he spoke again his voice seemed distant, almost as though he were talking to himself.

“I don’t really. In fact, the older I get, the less certain I am about anything.”

Kelly pondered that. Thought about the meaning. Glanced sideways at him.