Joe Gores - Glass Tiger

‘Friends in high places,’ said Thorne.

Hatfield frantically ran the people who knew his unlisted address through his mind. How could Thorne pressure any of them into giving him up? A threat to their children, maybe?

‘I know all the secrets. Jaeger’s. Wallberg’s. Yours.’

Had Thorne somehow discovered whatever it was that Wallberg had kept hidden from everyone? The thing Hatfield ached to know himself, to give him some ironclad hold over the President?

‘Jaeger’s dead,’ said Thorne, ‘so his secrets don’t matter. What I know about Wallberg may not be enough to take him down without proof. If I went to the press, I think he’d survive the charges. But you—’

Hatfield tried bluster. ‘Don’t be so sure I can’t—’

‘You lied to him about me being dead, you lied to him about who really shot Corwin and saved his life, you threatened Sharon Dorst with illegal detention, you ran illegal surveillance on Victor Blackburn down at Fort Benning, right now you’re illegally detaining Janet Kestrel. Wallberg obviously knows all of it — except about me. All I have to do is let him know I’m alive and you’ll be gone in the flick of an eyelash.’ He paused, very deliberately. ‘Or...’

Hatfield couldn’t help it. He burst out, ‘Or what?’

‘Or at noon tomorrow, California time, Janet Kestrel walks out of the Federal Building in Westwood a free woman.’

‘Noon? Tomorrow? I can’t possibly—’

‘If charges were filed against her, expunge them. If any surveillance tapes were made, destroy them. If anyone follows her, if anyone tries to grab her again, I go to Wallberg. Free her, leave her and Dorst and Blackburn alone, countermand the order to arrest me if I go back to Kenya, and I’m gone. Wallberg keeps on being President. You become Director of the FBI.’

‘What guarantee do I have that you’ll honor your—’

‘None. But it’s the only deal you’re getting. All you have to do is go back to being the sort of FBI Agent you swore to be in the first place.’ He stepped closer, lowered his voice. ‘Are we clear on all of this?’

‘We... we’re clear.’

‘Make yourself a new drink. You dropped your last one.’

Hatfield made his drink. As he did, he saw the room reflected in the picture window. Thorne was gone. He knew with a bitter certainty that even as Director, he would never again cross the man in any way. He didn’t have the stones for it.

He was Sharon Dorst’s glass tiger.

Friday night, Whiskey River was jumping. The TV was blaring, in the back room their weekend rock band was warming up its instruments for the night’s work. Kate had even managed to not think about Janet for over an hour. The house phone shrilled. She grabbed the receiver from under the counter with one hand while pouring a shot of vodka with the other.

‘Be waiting across the street from the Federal Building in Westwood at noon tomorrow. Jet Blue has morning flights out of Oakland to Burbank that will get you there in time.’

She recognized Thorne’s voice. Someone was shouting in her face. She stuck a finger in the ear without the receiver to it.

‘Janet will walk out at noon sharp. Just get her away from there, quick as you can. Take her wherever she wants to go.’

‘That Indian casino in Hopland offered her a job dealing blackjack. But she’ll want to see you and talk to you, Thorne.’

‘Tell her I’m like... a kestrel. In the wind.’

Janet was doing pushups on the edge of her bunk when she heard the familiar sound of her cell door being unlocked. It swung wide. Framed in the opening was her chief interrogator. She didn’t know his name. None of them ever gave her a name. He was holding something out to her.

‘Here is your watch, Ms. Kestrel.’ It was the first time he had addressed her by name. ‘It’s eleven-forty a.m. on Saturday, June eleventh. You are free to go. All charges against you have been dropped. I’m... I’m very glad it worked out this way.’

He was gone. Another man stepped in with the clothes she had been wearing when they had grabbed her. All of the items had been freshly washed and ironed.

Ten minutes later, Janet was squinting against the dazzling noonday sunlight outside the monolithic black tower of the Federal Building, sucking in huge gulps of free air, dazed, totally disoriented. Someone called her name. She looked quickly about, saw a familiar figure far across the weekend-empty parking lot.

‘Kate!’ she cried, and was running toward her friend.

Sammy Spaulding stood at his office window watching Janet Kestrel and the other woman, trying to imagine Janet’s feelings. He was still stunned by the phone call from Hatfield he had received at home the night before, ordering her release. But as he had told her, he was glad she was free.

In fact, he felt as if he too had been set free. Free from Terrill Hatfield’s insinuating presence, free from the dazzling heights of power Hatfield had implied would be his. He took me up on the mountain, Sammy thought, and showed me what could be mine. Assistant Director of the FBI. Any Agent’s wet dream. But now the spell had been broken. It was so simple when he thought about it. Just be the FBI Agent he had sworn to be when he had graduated from Quantico.

Just blow the whistle on Terrill Hatfield.

Fort Snelling National Cemetery, where so many of Minnesota’s dead heroes were buried, lay between the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and Highway 5. It was the Fourth of July, and in the adjacent Fort Snelling State Historical Park, President Gustave Wallberg, Edith at his side, was taking his ease in a picnic area under a stand of elm trees a hundred yards from the Minnesota River. They were surrounded by his entourage, which in turn was encased in a cocoon of Secret Service agents.

It felt wonderful to be the centerpiece of an old-fashioned birth-of-our-nation VFW picnic. The speech he had been working on a month ago during the Memorial Day weekend was now finished. And damned good it was, hitting all the right patriotic notes.

He checked his watch. Almost show time.

Twelve-hundred yards away, Brendan Thorne was literally up a tree. A week earlier, before the unobtrusively elaborate security preparations had begun, he had climbed thirty feet up into this huge old oak to jam a three-foot one-by-twelve board between two branches to form a makeshift sniper’s platform.

He had also cut a keyhole in the foliage so he could scan the picnic grounds through his spotter scope. He wore shooter’s gloves, and an earphone radio so he could listen in on the speeches.

Hatfield was honoring their agreement. Janet was free, Dorst and Blackburn were no longer under even clandestine surveillance, and he had talked with Squealer Kemoli in Nairobi. The Kenyan arrest order had been rescinded. So he, too, was honoring their agreement. Distasteful as he found it, he would do nothing directly to hamper Hatfield’s rise to power.

The veterans and their families were already drawn up around the bunting-bedecked platform to hear their President speak. There was one important amendment to the speech that no one knew about except Wallberg. He would not be announcing Terrill Hatfield’s elevation to Director of the FBI as previously hinted to the press corps. He had received signed e-mails from two high-ranking Bureau officials, each alerting him to, and giving him the details of, separate pending investigations of misconduct by Hatfield.

He had expressed his thanks and his profound shock at Hatfield’s actions, and had assured each of them that Hatfield’s name would be withdrawn. True, Hatfield had saved his life by shooting Corwin at the critical moment in the Bitterroot Range. True, everything the man had done, including the unlawful detention of Janet Kestrel, had been done on behalf of Wallberg and with his knowledge.