Дэвид Балдаччи - The Collectors

“I think you might be.”

“I’ll go back to New York, then. I’ll leave this afternoon.”

“I think that would be wise.”

“I suppose the police will let me. I had to give them my passport, though. I suppose I’m a suspect. I am the wife, after all. My alibi is ironclad, but I suppose I could have hired someone to kill him while I was away.”

“It has been done before,” Stone conceded.

They sat in silence for a minute or so. “You know, CB really did love me.”

“I’m sure he did,” Stone said politely.

“No, I know what you’re thinking. But he did love me. The other women, they were just playthings. They came and they went. I was the only one who got him to walk down the aisle. And he left everything to me.” She took another sip of her coffee. “You know it’s ironic, he made a fortune building tools of war, but CB actually hated guns, never even owned one. His background was in engineering. He was a brilliant man, and he worked harder than anyone else.” She paused. “He loved me. A woman can tell, you know. And I loved him. With all his faults. I still can’t believe he’s gone. A part of me died with him.” She wiped away a tear from her right eye.

“Mrs. Behan, why lie to me?”

“What?”

“Why lie to me? You don’t even know me. So why bother?”

“What the hell are you talking about? I’m not lying. I did love him.”

“If you really loved him, you wouldn’t have hired a private detective to watch your house from across the street. Was he taking pictures of the comings and goings of the women your husband enjoyed?”

“How dare you! I had nothing to do with that. They were probably the FBI spying on CB.”

“No, the FBI would’ve been smart enough to have a team of agents there, at least one man and a woman to make it seem like a normal household. They would’ve also taken the trash out and performed other ordinary tasks, and they wouldn’t have let themselves be seen during the surveillance. And why would the FBI be watching your home? Would they think it even remotely likely that your husband would meet with some incriminating person there ? Not even the FBI has an unlimited budget to cover every base, however implausible.” He shook his head. “I hope you didn’t pay the firm a lot of money, since they were hardly worth it.”

She half rose from her chair. “You bastard!”

“You could’ve just divorced him. Gotten half and walked away a free woman.”

“After he humiliated me like that? Paraded those whores through my house? I wanted to make him suffer. You’re right: I hired a private detective and set him up in that house. So what? And the pictures he’d already taken of my husband and his paid bitches? Well, with those I was going to make old CB bleed and force him to turn over everything to me. Otherwise, it all comes out, and let me tell you, the federal government doesn’t like its contractors putting themselves in compromising positions. CB had top-secret clearances. Maybe he wouldn’t have if the government knew he was doing something he could be blackmailed for. And after he signed everything over to me, then I was going to dump him. He wasn’t the only one playing around. I’ve had my share of lovers, and I’ve picked the one I’m spending the rest of my life with. But now I get everything without even blackmailing him. It’s the perfect revenge.”

“You might want to keep your voice down. As you said, the police no doubt still consider you a suspect. And it’s not smart to give them unnecessary ammo.”

Marilyn Behan looked around at the people in the café staring at her. She paled and sat back down.

Now Stone stood. “Thanks for your time. Your information was very useful.” He added with a completely straight face, “And I’m sorry for your loss.”

She hissed, “Go to hell.”

“Well, if I do, I surely won’t be alone, will I?”

Annabelle was waiting for her connecting flight out of Atlanta. As she looked over her new itinerary, she inwardly seethed at Leo’s stupid move. How could he have done that? If she had wanted Freddy to know who she was, she would have told him herself.

Her flight was called, but she waited as the passengers lined up. Even though she was in first class and could have boarded early, out of old habit she liked to see who was getting on the plane. As the line thinned, she picked up her carry-on bag. She had dumped most of her clothes back in D.C. She never checked a bag when flying; it was an invitation for someone to snoop on her. She would buy more clothes when she got to her destination.

As she was walking up to the line to get on the plane, she glanced over at an airport TV tuned to CNN and stopped moving. Reuben’s face peered back at her. She hurried over closer to the TV and read the subtitles. Vietnam vet Reuben Rhodes arrested. Defense contractor magnate Cornelius Behan and a woman murdered by shots fired from the home next door. Rhodes being held...

“My God,” Annabelle said to herself.

Over the PA came, “Last call for flight 3457 nonstop to Honolulu. Last call for passengers on flight 3457 nonstop to Honolulu.”

Annabelle looked at the departure gate for her plane. They were about to close the door. She turned to look back at the screen. Shots from the house next door? Behan dead. Reuben arrested. What the hell was going on? She had to find out.

Then her thoughts just as suddenly swung the other way. This is not your concern, Annabelle. You need to go. Jerry Bagger is coming for you. Let the old guys handle it. There was no way Reuben could have murdered Behan, but they’ll figure it out. And if they don’t, it’s not your problem. It’s not.

Still, she stood there frozen. Never before had she been so indecisive.

“Last call, door’s closing for flight 3457.”

She whispered desperately, “Go, Annabelle, damn it, just go. You don’t need this. It’s not your fight. You don’t owe these people anything. You don’t owe Jonathan anything.”

She watched as the door to her flight from Jerry Bagger slammed shut and the ticket-taker marched off to another gate. She watched ten minutes later as the Boeing 777 pulled away from the gate. As it soared into the sky right on schedule, Annabelle was booking another flight north taking her squarely within the vicinity of Jerry Bagger and his wood chipper. And she didn’t even know why. Yet somewhere in her soul maybe she did.

Albert Trent was finishing up some things at his office at home. He’d gotten a late start after a long night of work and decided to catch up on some things before he drove in. The tasks were all related to his position as the senior staff member on the House Intelligence Committee. It was one he’d held for years now, and he was well grounded in nearly all aspects of the intelligence business, at least the part the agencies shared with their congressional overseers. He smoothed his few strands of hair down, finished his coffee and cheese Danish, packed his briefcase and a few minutes later pulled down the street in his Honda two-door. Five years from now he would be driving something much nicer in, say, Argentina, or he’d heard the South Pacific was truly paradise.

His secret account now contained millions. He should be able to double that in the next half-decade. The secrets Roger Seagraves was selling were at the very top end of the payment scale. It wasn’t like the Cold War where you dropped a package off and picked up twenty thousand bucks in return. The people Seagraves was dealing with operated only in the seven-figure range, but they expected a lot for their money. Trent had never questioned Seagraves either about his sources or the people he was selling to. The man would never have revealed anything, and, in fact, Trent didn’t want to know. His sole but critical piece of the equation was getting the information Seagraves passed to him to the next leg of the journey. His method for doing so was unique and probably foolproof. Indeed, it was the main reason the American intelligence community was currently in shambles.