Дэвид Балдаччи - Long Road to Mercy

“And my caring about my country?”

“The framed letter over there from a past president thanking you for your service.”

Russell seemed to appraise her in a new light. He sipped his drink and nodded. “All right. I may be all of those things. What do you want from me tonight?”

“Do you have any idea what Ben was working on that could have led to his being in trouble?”

“We didn’t work together.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

“Then you obviously heard wrong.”

“You never discussed work matters with him?”

“There was no reason.”

“And he never did with you?”

“I thought I just said that.”

“He lives in Alexandria and you live here. How did he come to get you to join the church league?”

“Probably some dreary party where we ran into each other and were bored enough to talk about church and basketball.”

“So, I guess you have no idea about the other guy then?”

“What other guy?” he said sharply.

“Or about the password-protected message Ben left behind.”

Russell was now watching Pine closely as he softly jiggled the ice in his tumbler.

“What happened to your face?” he asked.

“Ran into a door.”

“You ran into something. Maybe a fist.”

“Comes with the territory.”

“How did you come to be involved in this, may I ask?”

“It’s my job.”

Russell cleared his throat. “Are you in the National Security Branch at the Bureau? Or the Intelligence Branch?” He paused. “But if I can make a deduction, you don’t strike me as the type. I mean National Security or Intelligence.”

“So you know those types. And you’re aware of those branches within the Bureau. At least that’s some information you’ve shared.”

When he said nothing to this, she added, “What type do I strike you as?”

“Rogue,” he said immediately.

Pine pointed to the bookshelves. “You’ve got books there written in Russian, Chinese, Korean, and Arabic. Do you speak all of them?”

“As do many people in this town.”

“I came to you as a shortcut. I take those when they present themselves.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“So you’re just casual b-ball teammates?”

Russell took a long drink before answering. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand he said, “He’s a good small forward. Can pass effectively off the dribble and create his own shots. Midrange jumper is like clockwork. I’ll give him that. With my height, I live in the paint. Turnaround jumpers, hooks, pound the boards, and grab the rebounds. I used to be able to dunk. Now my knees no longer cooperate.”

Pine put her drink down and rose. “Well, thanks for the tonic.”

Russell looked up at her. “Are you even really with the FBI?”

She took out a piece of paper and wrote something down on it. “Here’s where you can reach me if you have a change of heart.”

Russell took the paper without looking at it and set it down on a table next to the couch.

“You’ve actually given me a lot to think about,” he said, once more jiggling the ice in his glass while the gas flames threw his sharp-edged features into stark relief.

“I wish I could say the same. I’ll see myself out.”

She didn’t walk back to her car because she knew he would be watching her from the window. Instead, she turned left and walked briskly down the street and turned right at the next corner. Then she took up a position by a tree that allowed a sight line of his front door.

She had gotten nothing from Russell except the weirdest of vibes.

Twenty minutes later the possibility arose that that status might change.

The man came out the door and walked off in the opposite direction.

Pine walked quickly to her car, pulled out onto the street, and followed.

Pine’s decision to follow by car paid off, because Russell had gone only about two blocks when a black SUV pulled up to the curb and he climbed in. They quickly left the Capitol Hill area and proceeded north through the city.

Pine knew DC well because of her time there. They headed west, passing through the business district, and then arced farther north into some of the most affluent areas of the city.

When they entered Cleveland Park in Upper Northwest the SUV slowed. Pine followed suit. Even at this late hour the traffic was brisk, for which Pine was appreciative, because it allowed her to blend in. But she also knew how to tail a suspect, and she was confident no one in the SUV was aware of her surveillance.

When they turned onto International Place, Pine stiffened.

She thought she knew where they were going.

When the SUV slowed and then stopped at a checkpoint, her hunch was confirmed.

Though the famed architect I. M. Pei had consulted on the facility’s design, Pine had always thought it looked like a fortress.

But then again, what did you expect from the embassy for the People’s Republic of China?

The SUV pulled through the entrance and disappeared from sight.

Pine couldn’t follow, so she drove down the street, hit a U-turn, and found a spot on the street to park. She cut her lights, hunkered down, and waited.

The Chinese. Could the guy who had beaten her up have been Chinese?

And what did Simon Russell, and presumably Ben Priest, have to do with the Chinese?

Pine had no jurisdiction to enter the embassy, even if she had been officially working as an FBI agent. That building might as well be in Beijing. It was Chinese land underneath it, as far as international protocols were concerned.

And if the Chinese were involved, how did that tie into the two Russians she had knocked out at Priest’s home?

Despite the late hour, she called Blum and told her what had happened.

Blum said, “Why do you think this Simon Russell is there?”

“It can’t be a coincidence that he came here right after talking with me. So that means that whatever Ben Priest was involved in, it had to do, at least partly, with the Chinese.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“Wait until Russell comes out and follow him.”

Pine clicked off and slouched down further in her seat as a car came down the road and its lights cut across her.

Her car clock hit two a.m. when the same black SUV pulled out.

Pine knew it was the same SUV because of the plates. The only problem was she had no way of knowing if Russell was inside.

She had no choice but to follow.

There was hardly any traffic now, so Pine took a chance, shot ahead of the SUV, glancing toward it as she passed. But the windows were tinted and she couldn’t see inside.

She drove back to Russell’s place, parked, and waited.

Sure enough, he came walking up to his house a few minutes later, the SUV obviously having dropped him off some distance away.

She was deciding whether to approach him again when a quartet of men converged on Russell as he opened his door. They pushed him inside and shut the door behind them.

For an instant Pine sat frozen in her car. Then she burst into action.

She hit a U-turn, turned right, and then right again as she drove into the alley she had visited before.

She stopped at Russell’s rear yard and scrambled over the wall, landing softly in the grass on the other side. Keeping low, she glided up to the house and glanced through a window.

She couldn’t see anything, but she heard noises. She had no idea who these men were or what they wanted with Russell.

She was certain they weren’t cops. If they were cops they would have shown their badges and taken him into custody on the front porch. They would not have forced him inside his house.

If this had been a normal situation, Pine would have immediately called 911. This was not a normal situation.