Steven Gore - Final Target

“Was this Matson’s idea?”

She nodded. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”

Alla set her purse on a Regency mahogany writing table, then turned back toward Gage, who was standing just inside the threshold. She followed Gage’s eyes, which were focused on a highball glass resting on a pedestal secretaire. He walked over and picked it up, revealing a white water ring on the forty-thousand-dollar piece of furniture.

“He’s not coming back,” Gage said.

Alla walked across the room and through an open door. She returned moments later. “His clothes are gone.”

They searched the apartment, collecting phone records, airline ticket stubs, and notes on scraps of paper. Gage stuffed them into a paper bag while Alla packed.

“Is there anything else you want to take?” Gage asked, as Alla carried a battered brown suitcase toward the door. “I imagine this place will be seized by the UK government. You may never get back in again.”

“Nothing here ever really belonged to me. I’m just taking what I came with.” She sighed as her eyes swept the apartment. “Sometimes life is completely absurd.”

They rode in silence back to the hotel.

“I think I need to be alone for a while,” Alla said, as they walked down the carpeted hallway toward their rooms.

“That’s fine. Maybe we’ll meet for dinner this evening.”

Alla slipped her key card into the lock and pushed open the door. She paused, then turned toward Gage and looked up at him with searching eyes.

“Is there something wrong with me?” she asked.

Gage knew the answer, but responded with a question. She needed to say it for herself to make it real. “What do you mean?”

“My husband. Stuart. They were the same greedy, conscienceless men and I didn’t see it.” She looked down, frowning. “That’s not true. I refused to see it. Stuart started to emerge from the clouds of my juvenile imagination and I looked away. I should’ve gotten out of this when he came back here after SatTek went public.”

Tears formed in her eyes as she looked up again. “I’m really no different than him. A self-deceiving little rat. You must think I’m pathetic.”

“No, not at all.” Gage was tempted to wipe away the tears, but held back, fearing that she’d seek salvation in him, rather than in herself. “You do the right thing when it affects others. You just seem to get lost when you try to create a world you can be happy in.”

“But what am I supposed to do?”

“I can’t tell you how to live. All anybody can do is try to think about what they’re doing, and not lie to themselves. Beyond that, I have no other answer.”

Special Agent Zink was waiting near the customs scanners when Gage and Alla walked from passport control in the international terminal of the San Francisco Airport late the next afternoon.

“Don’t say anything,” Gage told her, “except your name. You can show him your passport and the copy of the letter if he asks. Nothing else.”

Confusion, verging on panic, flashed in her eyes. “But aren’t you required to talk to the police here?”

“No. Name, passport, letter. That’s all.”

Gage and Alla handed their customs declarations to a uniformed agent, who directed them to the green line and toward the exit. Zink stationed himself in their path as they approached the automatic doors.

Zink pulled his shoulders back. “I need to talk to your friend, Gage.”

“Sorry, we’re late for an appointment.” Gage took Alla’s arm and stepped to Zink’s left. “Why don’t you give me a call next week, I’ll see if I can fit you in.”

Zink moved over to block them. “You’re forcing me to pull rank.”

“Pull rank? I’m not in your chain of command, and neither is she.”

“She can talk to me now,” Zink said, “or I’ll subpoena her to the grand jury.”

“Do what you gotta do.”

“You’re verging on obstruction, Gage.”

Gage held out his hands as if waiting to be cuffed. “Take your best shot.”

Zink reddened. “In time.” He looked at Alla, then back at Gage. “Where’s she staying?”

“It’s on her arrival card, go take a look.”

Gage fixed Zink in place with a forearm in front of his chest, then signaled Alla to precede him to the exit.

“You don’t like that guy,” Alla said as they emerged into the arrivals hall.

“He’s a lousy investigator and a snake. He got into the FBI during the height of the cocaine epidemic. Back then they took anybody who knew what crack looked like. Now they’re stuck with him. Even worse, he’s badged his way out of a DUI and a prostitution arrest.”

“What’s badged?”

“It means he used his badge, used his position as a federal agent to talk his way out of being arrested.”

“And he was a prostitute, too?” Alla asked, drawing back and grinning.

“No, not a prostitute. A john.”

“Are you still speaking English?”

“A john is a customer. A DUI is driving under the influence.”

“Of what?”

“No one knows. As I said, he badged his way out, both times claiming he was undercover. Ever since he’s been trying to prove to the Bureau that he’s a real cop. For him, Jack Burch is just a statistic he needs to get back on the promotion trail.”

Gage hailed a taxi that took them on the forty-minute ride to the East Bay hills. The sun had set by the time it pulled into the driveway next to the redwood stairs rising up from his house.

As the cab door shut, Gage spotted Faith climbing the steps, now lined with tiny Christmas lights. She threw her arms around Gage, who flinched when her hands pressed against his wounds.

“I’m sorry, dear,” Faith said, unwrapping herself. “I got excited.”

Faith’s motherly look at Alla told Gage that she’d understood his e-mail describing both the courage Alla had shown and her need for a woman in whom to confide. Faith hugged her, then picked up her suitcase. “You must be very tired. All you’ve been through.”

“I’m fine, really. I rested in London.”

“Not like you’ll rest here.” Faith tilted her head toward the stairs. “Come on, I’ll show you to your room.”

Faith led Alla through the house to a lower-level bedroom. Alla walked directly from the door to the corner windows facing the bay.

“Is that San Francisco?” she asked, wide-eyed at the floor-to-ceiling view that extended from Mount Tamalpias in the north to the airport in the south. The first bit of evening fog was easing its way through the Golden Gate, but had yet to mute the twinkling lights of the city or the sapphire blue of the bay. “It’s like a postcard.”

“It’s real and it’s yours as long as you can stay with us. You can freshen up down the hallway, then come back up.”

Gage was sitting at the kitchen table when Faith walked in. She took a bottle of Budweiser out of the refrigerator and handed it to him. “From Professor Blanchard. He said you’d understand.”

Gage twisted off the top and took a sip. “Sweetheart of a guy.”

“He feels indebted to you,” Faith said, sitting down.

“It’s the other way around.”

“That’s not how he looks at it. He spent his whole career worrying that his research was being used to make weapons that would end up in the hands of the wrong people. He feels like you gave him a chance to use his knowledge for good.”

“Well, he did good. I couldn’t have gotten this far without him. I just don’t know whether it was enough.”

Faith reached over and rested her hand on Gage’s forearm. “You look beat.”

“A little jet lag, it’ll be gone tomorrow.”

“You think you can force Peterson to indict Matson for the devices?”