The Scorpio Illusion (57 page)

It was funny in a way, he mused as he sat on the couch in their glassed-in sun porch, that he should think in nautical terms. The only time he had been on the water was during his final year at Annapolis, when all the graduating midshipmen had to endure ten hellish days on some huge sailing ship, pretending to be seamen from the goddamn nineteenth century. He could barely remember those ten days for, in truth, he’d spent most of the time throwing up in the toilet—the head, the
head
.

Seamanship notwithstanding, the navy came to recognize his other talents, organizational talents, bureaucratic talents. He was one hell of a desk sailor, spotting mediocrities and incompetents, dismissing them out of hand without suffering their feeble explanations. If there was a job to be done,
get
it done; if there was a problem he or she could not solve, come to
him
, do not wallow
in the shallows of indecision. He had been right—most of the time.

And once—just once—he had been wrong. Fatally. In Amsterdam he had told Phyllis about Hawthorne’s wife, Ingrid, and she had said simply, quietly:
You’re wrong, Hank, you’re wrong on this one. I know Tyrell and I know Ingrid, and you’re missing something
.

And when Ingrid Hawthorne’s dead body was pulled out of the Amsterdam canal, his wife had come to his office from the embassy.

Did you have anything to do with this, Hank
?

Good God, no, Phyll! It was the Soviets, the markings were all there
!

I hope so, Henry, because you’re about to lose the finest intelligence officer the navy has ever had
.

Phyllis never called him Henry unless she was furious with him.

Goddamn it! How could he have known? Logged out of the system! What kind of crap was
that
?

“Hank?”

Stevens snapped his head around to the door of the sun porch. “Oh, sorry, Phyll, I was just sitting here thinking, that’s all.”

“You haven’t slept since that phone call. Do you want to talk about it—can you talk about it, or am I out of the loop?”

“It concerns your old friend Hawthorne.”

“Is he back in the system? If so, that’s a real stunner, Hank. He’s not very fond of you.”

“He always liked you.”

“Why not? I programmed his travels, not his life.”

“Are you saying I did?”

“I don’t really know. You told me you didn’t.”

“I didn’t.”

“Then the chapter is closed, isn’t it?”

“It’s closed.”

“What’s Tyrell doing for you, or can’t you tell me?” There was no resentment in Phyllis Stevens’s remark, for
it was understood that wives and husbands of high-level intelligence personnel were vulnerable; what they did not know could not be extracted from them. “You’ve been working around the clock several times over, so I assume it’s a red alert.”

“I can give you a couple of brush strokes, the leaks probably go beyond them anyway.… There’s a terrorist out of the Baaka Valley, a woman who’s sworn to assassinate the President.”

“That’s
cartoon
time, Hank!” interrupted the wife, suddenly stopping, her head tilted in thought. “Or maybe it isn’t. In fairness to my gender, there are an awful lot of things we can do and places we can go that men can’t.”

“She already has, leaving a number of very strange deaths and ‘fatal accidents’ in her wake.”

“I won’t ask you to amplify that.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“And Tyrell? Where does he fit in?”

“For a while the woman operated from the Caribbean, from the islands—”

“And Hawthorne has his charter business down there.”

“Exactly.”

“But how did you ever get him back? I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”

“We didn’t, MI-6 did. We’re just paying his plus per diems; he got his contract from London.”

“Good old Tye. Third class never appealed to him unless it was necessary for his cover.”

“You really liked him, didn’t you?”

“You would have, too, if you’d ever given him a chance, Hank,” said Phyllis, sitting down in a rattan armchair opposite her husband. “Tye was smart—covert smart, street smart—but not in your class, not a MENSA candidate with an IQ of a hundred and ninety, or whatever, but he had the instincts and the strength to
follow them, even when upstairs thought he was wrong. He was a risktaker.”

“You sound like you were in love with him.” “All the youngsters were, hardly me. Like him, yes; fascinated by what he did, of course, but ‘love’ in any sense of the word, no. He was like a talented, off-the-wall nephew, not even close enough to be a brother, but someone you watched with interest because he broke the rules and every now and then brought in the borscht. You yourself said that.”

“Yes, I did. And he did get results. But he upset a lot of networks which took considerable work to put back together. I never told him about those assets who temporarily fled from us because they said there was a maniac loose in our underground. They were frightened; he was trying to make deals with our enemies—no more
killings
, that’s what they told us he was saying to them. But we weren’t doing the killings, others were!”

“And then Ingrid was killed.”

“She was killed. By the Soviets, not by us.”

Phyllis Stevens crossed and recrossed her legs under her silk nightgown, studying her husband of twenty-seven years. “Hank,” she said softly, “something’s eating the hell out of you, and I know by now when not to intrude, but you’ve got to tell somebody. You’re living with something you can’t handle, but I have to tell you, dear, no one in the navy could have done what you did in Amsterdam. You held the whole organization intact, from the embassy to The Hague to NATO. You were the brains behind all our accomplishments in a time when one superior intellect was required to guide clandestine operations. You did that, Hank, rotten temper included, but you
did
it, dear. I don’t think anybody else could have, Tye Hawthorne, least of all.”

“Thanks for that, Phyll,” Henry said. Suddenly, he sat forward on the couch, bringing both hands to his pallid face, his fingers spread, covering the tears that
began to fall from his eyes. “But we were
wrong
in Amsterdam, I was wrong. I killed Tye’s
wife
!”

Phyllis leapt out of the chair and sprang to the couch beside her husband, cradling him in her arms. “Come on, Hank, the Soviets killed her, not you. You said it yourself, and I saw the reports. The markings were there!”

“I led them to her.… And now he’s here, and because I’ve been wrong and wrong and wrong again, he may be killed too.”

“
Stop
it!” shouted Henry Stevens’s wife. “That’s
enough
, Hank. You’re exhausted, but you’re better than this, stronger than this. If that’s what’s eating your insides away, bring Tyrell in; you can do it easily.”

“He’ll fight me; you don’t know how he feels. Friends of his were killed, too many friends.”

“Send a unit and force him in.” And then a telephone rang, its bell deep-toned, unnatural. Phyllis rose from the couch and crossed to a small alcove on the sun porch, where, behind a short, louvered panel, three phones stood side by side; they were beige, red, and dark blue. “The Stevens’s residence,” she said, picking up the red phone, its light pulsating.

“Captain Stevens, please.”

“May I ask who’s calling? The captain’s been up for nearly seventy-two hours and really needs his sleep.”

“Okay, I guess it doesn’t matter at this hour,” said the youthful voice on the line. “I’m Lieutenant Allen, N.I., and the captain should know that Commander—former Commander—Hawthorne was shot outside a diner in Chesapeake Beach, Maryland. As near as we can determine, the wounds may not be life-threatening, but until the ambulance and the paramedics get here, we can’t be sure. However, the woman air force officer—”

“Henry
!”

25

H
awthorne and a tear-stained Poole sat opposite each other in the corridor outside the hospital operating room, Tyrell in a chair, crutches by his side, the lieutenant on a bench, leaning forward, his head in his hands. Neither spoke; there was nothing to say. Hawthorne’s thigh wound had required extraction of the bullet and seven stitches, which he barely lay still for on the table, demanding to be brought to the waiting area where, inside, Major Catherine Neilsen was fighting for her life.

“If she dies,” said Poole, breaking the silence, his voice strained, barely audible, “I’m gettin’ out of this goddamned outfit, and if I have to, I’ll spend the rest of my life trackin’ down the fuckers who killed her.”

“I understand, Jackson,” said Tyrell, looking over at the distraught lieutenant.

“Maybe you don’t, Commander. One of ’em may be you.”

“I can even understand that, as misdirected as I believe it to be.”

“
‘Misdirected’
? You son of a bitch.” Poole removed his hands and raised his head, glaring at Tye. “In my vocabulary, which is a hell of a lot superior to yours, that’s as exculpatory as you can get. You’re not blameless, Mr. Hawthorne. You didn’t even tell Cath and me what this whole thing was about until I forced you to on that lousy island after Charlie was killed.”

“Would it have made any difference—after Charlie was killed?”

“How do
I
know?” exclaimed the lieutenant. “How do I know anything? I just figure you weren’t straight with us.”

“I was as straight as I could be without unnecessarily jeopardizing your lives with information you shouldn’t have.”

“That’s spook bullshit!”

“It certainly is, but then, I was once a spook, and I saw men and women killed because they knew things—even fragments of things—that sealed their death warrants. I’ve been away a long time, but those people still haunt me.”

The door to the operating room opened, and a white-jacketed doctor emerged, his loose-fitting hospital outfit splotched with blood. “I’ve been up here a long time,” he said wearily. “Which one of you is Poole?”

“That’s me,” replied Jackson from the bench, his breath suspended.

“She told me to tell you to cool it—that’s what she said.”

“How is she?”

“I’ll get to that.” The surgeon turned to Tyrell. “You’re Hawthorne, then, the other patient?”

“Yes.”

“She wants to see you—”

“What the hogdamned hell are you talkin’ about?” Poole leapt to his feet. “If she’s gonna see anyone, it’s me!”

“I gave her a choice, Mr. Poole. I didn’t even want to do that, but she’s a very stubborn lady. One visitor, two minutes maximum, and less is medically advisable.”

“How
is
she, Doctor?” said Tye, repeating Jackson’s question but with an authority that required an answer.

“I assume you’re replacing her immediate family?”

“Assume whatever you like,” Hawthorne continued quietly. “We were brought here together and you’re certainly aware of the government’s concern.”

“I certainly am. Two admissions off the books, no
police reports, any and all inquiries turned aside by our having no knowledge of the events suggested … and the patients involved were shot. Highly irregular, but I can’t question the authority. I never spoke to anyone with such credentials in the intelligence community.”

“Then answer my question, please.”

“The next twenty-four hours or so will tell.”

“Tell
what
?” Poole exploded. “Whether she’ll die or not?”

“Frankly, I can’t promise you she won’t die, but I think we’ve eliminated the probability. What I also can’t promise is that she’ll be a whole person, with full mobility.”

Poole sank down on the bench, his head again in his hands. “Cath, oh Cath …” he sobbed.

“Spinal?” asked Tyrell coldly.

“Then you know about such wounds?”

“Let’s say I’ve been here before. The nerve endings after trauma …?”

“If they respond,” nodded the surgeon, “she could be in normal convalescence in a couple of days. If they don’t, what can I say?”

“You’ve said enough, Doctor. May I see her now?”

“Of course.… Here, let me help you up, I understand you had a bit of an invasive procedure yourself.” Hawthorne got to his feet, precariously balancing himself, and started for the door. “Your crutches,” said the surgeon, holding them out.