Greg Rucka - Patriot acts

It was his way of dealing with his guilt, I knew, though what, precisely, he felt guilt over was less clear. He knew he'd bought himself a murder, and that couldn't have sat well on his already weakened heart, no matter how much he wanted Natalie's death answered. Or perhaps it may have come from the fact that Alena and I were now his surrogates, commissioned to do the thing he wanted done, but could not himself do.

It didn't matter; we were staying, whether we liked it or not. While unspoken, the implicit threat of what would happen if we refused was perfectly clear. It was Panno who drew the line from Hayner to Alena, from Alena to Gorman-North, and from Gorman-North to Jason Earle.

Panno had run back to the hotel the previous night to gather our things and check us out, and had gone out again early this morning to chase down the shopping list Alena had prepared. The list wasn't anything fancy, but it had been specific, with the groceries we wanted, the nutritional supplements and the like that she and I both now made a habit of taking. Panno had rolled his eyes when he'd looked over the list.

While he was out, we tried to get some exercise in without actually leaving the house. There was some workout equipment in a sunroom on the first floor, an elliptical trainer and rowing machine, both of them with only the barest signs of use. We did our yoga and then used the machines, and Panno returned from his errands as we were coming up on ninety minutes. Seven minutes after that, according to the timer on the elliptical, he joined us in the sunroom, a cup of coffee in his hand. He walked slowly around us, watching Alena rowing steadily away and me running at a good clip to nowhere. Then he sat on the windowsill in front of us, so we could both see him.

"You killed him," Panno told her. It was a simple statement, devoid of judgment.

"Who are we talking about?" Alena asked. She asked it the way you ask after the health of someone you barely know, as a courtesy, a little breathless from her exertion.

"Kurt Hayner, with Der Spiegel. You turned him into a crispy critter."

She continued rowing, staring at a point past his shoulder, then nodded slightly.

"You killed him for Gorman-North," Panno said.

"When was this?" I asked.

"Six years ago," Panno said. He was watching Alena for a reaction, and not finding one. "She toasted him in Berlin, made it look like an electrical fire. Took everything in the house, including his notes."

"Yes." Her expression hadn't changed, nor had the pace of her strokes, and for a moment there was only the clack of our respective machines and the resistances they posed. Panno was watching her exactly as before. Today he was wearing blue jeans and a black T-shirt, and in the daylight, I could make out the details of the dragon living on his upper left arm. The scale work on it was excellent, and it must have taken a lot of ink and a lot of time, and a fair threshold for pain.

On the face of it, the murder of Kurt Hayner gave Jason Earle his motive for wanting Alena, and by extension me, dead. GSI had wanted Hayner dead and Earle had been the head of GSI at the time of the murder. She was carrying knowledge that could certainly destroy Earle and, depending on how it came to light, even collapse the administration in which he served. Knowing that I had been with her for several months, suspecting that she had taken me into her confidence completely, he had added my name to Earle's hit list right beside hers.

It was a motive.

I just wasn't certain it was a very good one, and at this point I knew Alena well enough to see that she didn't, either. Yes, it was possible the truth of Kurt Hayner's death could threaten Earle, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that was really all it could hurt. The administration would survive it, the way administrations seemed to more and more. Unless there was oral sex involved or photographs or video, the public would let it pass, and the rest of the White House could spin it any way they wanted to; they could disown Earle, fall on him like the proverbial ton of bricks, even ignore it.

That was without considering whether or not Earle could truly be damaged by such an allegation. His reputation would take a hit, certainly, but I couldn't see the man himself facing criminal proceedings. Where was the evidence? It wasn't as if Alena could be relied upon to testify in court about Earle's involvement, assuming he'd been directly involved in commissioning the murder at all.

I tried not to think too much or for too long about Kurt Hayner, whom Alena had taken money to kill for doing his job.

"Doesn't work," I said. The elliptical was on a random hill climb, and I took that moment to raise both the angle and the resistance I was working with. I tried to, literally, take it in stride.

Panno sniffed, squinting at me, as if surprised I had anything to offer. "You don't buy it?"

"This guy may be chief of staff, but he's been burning through favors and money for three-plus years now trying to get at us. That's a huge expense, not just in dollars but in influence. Jesus Christ, first the guy covers up murders in Cold Spring, then he dumps the media on us in Montana? That's not done through official channels, not most of it, at least. It doesn't track. You don't burn that much power just because you're afraid either she or I might go talking about something we probably couldn't prove to begin with."

"You're talking like you know the guy," Panno said. "You don't know the guy."

"I know the job," I said. "I know what the White House chief of staff does, at least in the abstract, and we're talking about a man who's been in that position for nearly seven years, now. Most chiefs of staff make it for, what, two or three? This guy's smart, he's discreet, he's not going to go to these lengths on the basis of something that never would happen."

"You both had heat coming down on you." Panno pointed a finger at Alena. "She had a goddamn book coming out about her. How long you think it was going to be before someone connected the dots?"

"Until the end of time. You hire one of The Ten, one of the things you're buying is their silence. That's assumed, it's part of the contract, or else the whole mechanism falls apart, nothing is ever done. Even if Alena had been taken into custody and interrogated, she never would have copped to the crime, nor named names. Not in a million years."

"I never met with Jason Earle," Alena added. "I would not have been able to indict him directly even had I desire to do so. The job you're speaking of was acquired through the channels. It was delivered by a woman named Audrey Daudin, a Swiss national and private banker. She had many clients, and I was unable to determine which of them I was serving."

From behind us, a voice said, "God, you're both such arrogant fucks, it disgusts me."

Panno grinned. Past him, in the reflection on the window, I could see Trent standing in the doorway behind us. He was dressed, a coffee mug in hand.

"Bowles called me the same thing," I said, without turning around.

"That's because Bowles knew more than the both of you put together about what's going on."

"Obviously," Alena remarked, still continuing her steady row.

Trent moved between the machines. Panno got to his feet as he approached.

"That's decaf?" he asked Trent.

"It's what was in the pot," Trent countered, and I took some pleasure in the fact that he sounded as bitchy to Panno in that moment as he sounded to me and Alena in every other.

"You want another heart attack?" Panno took the mug from Trent's hand and set it on the sill. "Lay off the caffeine."

"Greed," I said. "Money."

Both Panno and Trent looked at me. Alena didn't, but said, "It would have to be an incredible amount of money."

I switched off the elliptical, stepped down from the rails. I was sweating, and I didn't have anything to wipe my face with, so I used the front of my shirt.