Ли Чайлд - Persuader

“So go for it,” I said.

“I never dance,” she said.

“What?”

“It wasn’t just you,” she said. “In fact, I’d have liked to. I appreciated the invitation. But I never dance with anybody.”

“Why not?”

“Just a thing,” she said. “I feel self-conscious. I’m not very coordinated.”

“Neither am I.”

“Maybe we should practice in private,” she said.

“Separately?”

“One-on-one mentoring helps,” she said. “Like with alcoholism.”

Then she winked and walked out and left a very faint trace of her perfume behind her in the hot heavy air.

Duffy and I finished our coffee in silence. Mine tasted thin and cold and bitter. I had no stomach for it. My right shoe pinched. It wasn’t a perfect fit. And it was starting to feel like a ball and chain. It had felt ingenious at first. Smart, and cool, and clever. I remembered the first time I opened the heel, three days ago, soon after I first arrived at the house, soon after Duke locked the door to my room. I’m in. I had felt like a guy in a movie. Then I remembered the last time I opened it. Up in Duke’s bathroom, an hour and a half ago. I had fired up the unit and Duffy’s message had been waiting there for me: We need to meet.

“Why did you want to meet?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter now. I’m revising the mission. I’m scrapping all our objectives except getting Teresa back. Just find her and get her out of there, OK?”

“What about Beck?”

“We’re not going to get Beck. I screwed up again. This maid person was a legitimate agent and Teresa wasn’t. Nor were you. And the maid died, so they’re going to fire me for going off the books with Teresa and you, and they’re going to abandon the case against Beck because I compromised procedure so badly they could never make it stand up in court anymore. So just get Teresa the hell out and we’ll all go home.”

“OK,” I said.

“You’ll have to forget about Quinn,” she said. “Just let it go.”

I said nothing.

“We failed anyway,” she said. “You haven’t found anything useful. Not a thing. No evidence at all. It’s been a complete waste of time, beginning to end.”

I said nothing.

“Like my career,” she said.

“When are you going to tell the Justice Department?”

“About the maid?”

I nodded.

“Right away,” she said. “Immediately. I’ll have to. No choice. But I’ll search the files first and find out who put her in there. Because I’d prefer to break the news face-to-face, I guess, at my own level. It’ll give me a chance to apologize. Any other way all hell will break loose before I get the opportunity. All my access codes will be canceled and I’ll be handed a cardboard box and told to clear my desk within thirty minutes.”

“How long have you been there?”

“A long time. I thought I was going to be the first woman director.”

I said nothing.

“I would have told you,” she said. “I promise, if I’d had another agent in there I would have told you.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions.”

“It’s the stress,” she said. “Undercover is tough.”

I nodded. “It’s like a hall of mirrors up there. One damn thing after another. Everything feels unreal.”

We left our half-finished cups on the table and headed out, into the mall’s interior sidewalks, and then outside into the rain. We had parked near each other. She kissed me on the cheek. Then she got into her Taurus and headed south and I got into the Saab and headed north.

Paulie took his own sweet time about opening the gate for me. He made me wait a couple of minutes before he even came lumbering out of his house. He still had his slicker on. Then he stood and stared for a minute before he went near the latch. But I didn’t care. I was busy thinking. I was hearing Duffy’s voice in my head: I’m revising the mission. Most of my military career a guy named Leon Garber was either directly or indirectly my boss. He explained everything to himself by making up little phrases or sayings. He had one for every occasion. He used to say: Revising objectives is smart because it stops you throwing good money after bad. He didn’t mean money in any literal sense. He meant manpower, resources, time, will, effort, energy. He used to contradict himself, too. Just as often he would say: Never ever get distracted from the exact job in hand. Of course, proverbs are like that generally. Too many cooks spoil the broth, many hands make light work, great minds think alike, fools never differ. But overall, after you canceled out a few layers of contradiction, Leon approved of revision. He approved of it big time. Mainly because revision was about thinking, and he figured thinking never hurt anybody. So I was thinking, and thinking hard, because I was aware that something was slowly and imperceptibly creeping up on me, just outside of my conscious grasp. Something connected to something Duffy had said to me: You haven’t found anything useful. Not a thing. No evidence at all.

I heard the gate swing back. Looked up to see Paulie waiting for me to drive through. The rain was beating on his slicker. He still had no hat. I exacted some petty revenge by waiting a minute myself. Duffy’s revision suited me well enough. I didn’t care much about Beck. I really didn’t, either way. But I wanted Teresa. And I would get her. I wanted Quinn, too. And I would get him too, whatever Duffy said. The revision was only going to go so far.

I checked on Paulie again. He was still waiting. He was an idiot. He was out in the rain, I was in a car. I took my foot off the brake and rolled slowly through the gate. Then I accelerated hard and headed down to the house.

I put the Saab away in the slot I had once seen it in and walked out into the courtyard. The mechanic was still in the third garage. The empty one. I couldn’t see what he was doing. Maybe he was just sheltering from the rain. I ran back to the house. Beck heard the metal detector announce my arrival and came into the kitchen to meet me. He pointed at his sports bag. It was still there on the table, right in the center.

“Get rid of this shit,” he said. “Throw it in the ocean, OK?”

“OK,” I said. He went back out to the hallway and I picked up the bag and turned around. Headed outside again and slipped down the ocean side of the garage block wall. I put my bundle right back in its hidden dip. Waste not, want not. And I wanted to be able to return Duffy’s Glock to her. She was already in enough trouble without having to add the loss of her service piece to the list. Most agencies take that kind of a thing very seriously.

Then I walked on to the edge of the granite tables and swung the bag and hurled it far out to sea. It pinwheeled end over end in the air and the shoes and the e-mail unit were thrown clear. I saw the e-mail thing hit the water. It sank immediately. The left shoe hit toe-first and followed it. The bag parachuted a little and landed gently facedown and filled with water and turned over and slipped under. The right shoe floated for a moment, like a tiny black boat. It pitched and yawed and bobbed urgently like it was trying to escape to the east. It rode up over a peak and rode down on the far side of the crest. Then it started to list sideways. It floated maybe ten more seconds and then it filled with water and sank without a trace.

There was no activity in the house. The cook wasn’t around. Richard was in the family dining room eating a sandwich he must have made for himself and staring out at the rain. Elizabeth was still in her parlor, still working on Doctor Zhivago. By a process of elimination I figured Beck must be in his den, maybe sitting in his red leather chair and looking at his machine gun collection. There was quiet everywhere. I didn’t understand it. Duffy had said they had five containers in and Beck had said he had a big weekend coming up, but nobody was doing anything.