Jeff Abbott - Collision

“How exactly is Hector helping us?”

“I told you, providing infrastructure to help us ID the off-the-books agents.”

“And when you find these agents?”

“Then they’ll be arrested. You act like this is news. Are you doubting my word?”

“No. I’m doubting his. Has he given you a single name other than that of Pilgrim?”

“No.”

“Yet Adam Reynolds is dead. His girlfriend is dead.”

“Because the Cellar’s trying to silence them.” She said this as though stating the obvious.

“Adam Reynolds found them, didn’t he? He gave the names to Hector. But Hector’s not giving them to you.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“You didn’t even tell me about Reynolds’s software to find aliases through financial trails. At least Pilgrim and Ben told me. Why didn’t you?”

Pritchard waved a dismissive hand. “We didn’t know if the software would even work.”

“That’s not the reason. The reason is that for it to identify likely false identities, it had to work across a huge range of databases that Adam Reynolds had no access to. But you got him the access. Illegally.”

No noise but the hum of the air conditioner. “I told you we have leeway to find these people.” She practically spat the words at Vochek.

The disappointment Vochek felt toward Pritchard welled up in her chest. “If we break every law to find these people, Margaret, we’re no better than they are. We’re turning into them.”

“Spare me the lecture on civil liberties.”

And I wished my mom was more like you? More poised, more perfect? “We need to see Hector’s service record at the CIA. Pilgrim claimed he’s an assassin.”

“So what if he was?” Pritchard said. “It has nothing to do with his current work.”

“His clients might feel differently,” Vochek said. Her cell phone rang. “Yes?”

“Vochek? It’s Ben Forsberg.”

“Where are you?”

“Nearby. Sorry we ran.”

“I’m not sure I blame you,” she said quietly.

“Are you with your boss?”

“Yes.” She glanced at Margaret, who stood with crossed arms.

“I have evidence tying your boss to Barker, the guy who betrayed the Cellar, and to Adam Reynolds. I believe she might be able to clarify this situation, how the pieces fit together.”

Vochek didn’t look at Pritchard but she could sense Pritchard tensing, standing close to her. Vochek turned and walked to the window. She glanced down to the darkened sidewalks as though she expected to see Ben watching her window. “I think you’re right.”

“Are the two of you alone?”

“Yes.”

“I want to talk to you both. Together. Because if she wants to save her career, she better help bring Hector to justice. I want a deal, hashed out between us.”

Evidence. It would either damn Margaret or it could be explained, but either way, Ben would be in her custody. “Suite 1201,” she said.

He hung up and Vochek folded her phone. She thought, suddenly, of the lost Afghan kids and wondered if she’d gone to work for a woman who was not the cure but part of the problem.

“Who was that?” Pritchard asked.

Vochek spoke to her boss with cool authority: “Sit down, Margaret, we’re going to have a talk.”

Vochek said nothing to Ben when she opened the door and he came into the room. He handed her the list of phone numbers and the gun he’d had on the plane, the one they’d fought for. “Vote of confidence in you standing by me,” he said.

Vochek took the gun and carried it into the bedroom.

Margaret Pritchard watched and then she got up from the couch and moved toward the phone.

Ben stepped between her and the phone and picked it up, pulled the cord from the wall.

“You’ve already been on the phone quite enough,” he said.

“You have some nerve.”

“I’ve gotten a lot more recently. You hired Hector to help you find these clandestine groups. He’s gone off the books himself.”

She looked past his shoulder to Vochek. “If you want to keep your job, Joanna, you’ll arrest this man.”

Vochek didn’t move. “I think we’ve become too much like the people we’re hunting, Margaret. Let’s get all the facts out.”

“The Cellar agent Barker called you in this room. If you didn’t know about the Cellar, how did you know Barker?” Ben asked. “He’s a computer hacker who went underground rather than serve time. You’ve been consorting with a fugitive criminal. Terrible at congressional review time.”

“The phone record is wrong.”

“Fine. One of my clients does a lot of consulting work for the Department of Justice and has great connections there. I’ll be glad to call the attorney general at home tonight and let you explain all this to her.”

Margaret Pritchard went back to the couch, stood, arms crossed. “I hear you want a deal. I’m listening.” She said it like she was the one doing him a favor.

“Hector goes down. Hard. He’s a murderer and he’s hired murderers to kill people for him.”

“If I give up Hector, it’ll be news, and our operation goes public. The whole point of stopping groups like the Cellar this way was to keep it out of the public eye.”

“I don’t care if the government gets embarrassed. It’s not fatal.”

“We hardly want our enemies and our allies to know details of our most illicit operations, and if we go public with him, all his work for me goes public, too.”

“Then give him to us privately.”

“You want me to let you kill him? Forget it.”

“You don’t care about the numerous people he’s killed.”

“I don’t know that he’s killed anyone!” Pritchard yelled.

“He showed me proof that he killed my wife.” Ben put his hands on Pritchard’s shoulders and pushed her into the chair. She didn’t resist. “You protect him, you’re protecting a murderer. How did you know Barker?”

Pritchard’s mouth worked as if she were unsure that she could form the words. Finally she said: “Barker wasn’t ex-CIA. He came to Homeland and got steered to me. He wanted to betray the Cellar, for payment and for a pardon.”

“And you steered him to Hector.”

Pritchard nodded. “Barker was our foot in the door. He only knew of Teach, but not her specific location; he couldn’t hand us any of the rest of the Cellar. But he gave us a couple of identities the Cellar had used-that he had set up for agents-and they let us test Reynolds’s software to find more of the IDs used by the Cellar. Barker called me Monday to let me know the operation was starting to draw out Pilgrim and the rest of the Cellar, that they had gotten wind of Adam Reynolds trying to track down their accounts and their identities. But I had no idea Hector was working any other angle, such as targeting Pilgrim. Or you.”

“Except Barker betrayed you, too, Ms. Pritchard. He fed you limited information while giving everything to Hector. He hired the sniper who killed Reynolds and tried to kill Pilgrim. He hired the gunmen who killed Kidwell and Delia Moon and kidnapped Teach-and Hector never gave Teach to you, which would have handed you the entire Cellar immediately. He killed her right in front of my eyes. Not what you wanted, is it?”

Pritchard put a hand to her mouth.

“Why would he kill Reynolds?” Ben leaned down and yelled in Pritchard’s face. “Tell me!”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“I thought…” Ben stopped. “Adam Reynolds originally designed this software to find terrorists. Did he call you Monday because he found, not the Cellar, but actual terrorists?”

Pritchard rubbed her temples, as if fending off a migraine.

“Answer him, Margaret,” Vochek said.

“He made a mistake,” she said. “He found suspicious activity centering on a group of men using suspect IDs traveling to New Orleans. But they’re not terrorists.”