The Sixth Man (35 page)

B
UNTING SPENT THE SHORT PLANE RIDE
on his G550 staring out at a large bank of lazy clouds. He barely noticed the plane had landed until the flight attendant handed him his coat and told him his car was waiting. The drive to the city took longer than the flight had. The maid greeted Bunting at the door of his Fifth Avenue brownstone.

“Is my wife in?” he asked the woman, who was petite and Latina.

“She is in her office, Mr. Bunting.”

He found her going over details for another social benefit. He didn’t even know what it was for, she was involved in so many. All good causes, he knew, that also allowed her and her friends to dress up, go to chic places, eat good food, and feel wonderful about themselves and what they did for the people who did not live in twenty-million-dollar brownstones on Fifth Avenue. But that was unfair. His wife had gone to hospitals with no photographers in tow and held AIDS and crack babies for hours because she wanted to help, because she felt compassion for them. She volunteered at soup kitchens and as a reading tutor at a homeless shelter, and she often brought their kids with her so they could see that life was not so wonderful for everyone. They had set up a foundation that funneled money and assistance to the poor and undereducated in the city.

And I do nothing when it comes to that.

But I keep the country safe.
That was usually his easy answer to why he didn’t share in his wife’s philanthropic endeavors. But right now it didn’t seem very convincing.

He kissed his wife, who looked up at him in surprise. He hadn’t been home this early in years.

“Is everything okay at work?” she asked in a worried tone.

He smiled and sat down across from her in the exquisitely decorated office that alone had probably cost a quarter of a million dollars.

He wanted to talk to her about his problems, but she would have required the highest security clearances for that to happen. And she had none. Not a one, while he possessed the very highest of all. It was like living with someone from a different planet. He could never talk about work with the woman he loved. Never. So he simply smiled, even though he wanted to scream, and said, “Everything’s fine. Just thought I’d come home, spend some time with you and the kids.”

“Oh, well, I have to go out to a benefit at Lincoln Center. It’s so beautiful what they’ve done with the restoration. You need to go with me sometime.”

“Right, I will,” he said vaguely. “Sometime. And the kids?”

“They’re at my sister’s house. Remember? We talked about this. They’ll be back tomorrow morning. We did talk about it,” she added gently.

Bunting’s smile faded.
I’m an idiot. I basically run the nation’s intelligence grid to keep all Americans safe and I don’t even know where my own kids are.

He tried to laugh it off. “Right. I know. I’ve got some things to do in my study.”

He went to his bedroom, dropped his two-thousand-dollar jacket on the floor, undid his three-hundred-dollar tie, poured himself a drink from the minibar in the adjacent sitting area, and gazed out the window at the darkening skies. Fall had settled in with cooler temperatures and fouler weather. It only added to his depression.

He looked around the confines of his bedroom, which had been personally designed by someone who went by only one name and was written up all the time in the sorts of magazines Bunting never read. Everything was elegant and in its place and spic-and-span clean. His entire home could be in a magazine. But it never would be because of what he did for a living. The country’s spy heads expected their hired lackeys to tiptoe through life, not run screaming down the halls with money clutched in their fat fists.

He also had a library of handsomely bound leather books, many of them first editions of wonderful fiction penned by storied writers from the past. Or so he’d heard. The one-name designer and his wife had purchased them all in a single lot. He’d never actually read any of them. Didn’t have the time. He wasn’t much into fiction. Cold, hard facts ruled his entire existence.

He took one flight down to his study and spent about an hour working there. Then, when his concentration continued to wander, he clicked off his computer, rubbed his eyes, and went back upstairs, where his wife was finishing dressing for her night out.

“You can come with me,” she said. “I’m on the board. I can certainly get you a seat.”

“Thanks, maybe another time. I’m really beat.”

She turned around, lifted up her hair, and pointed down to her zipper. “Can you help me, sweetie?”

Before he zipped her up he let his gaze wander down the inside of her dress, to the black thong she wore. He reached his hand down and squeezed her soft butt cheeks.

“I thought you said you were really beat,” she chided him.

“That was before I saw you naked.”

“God, your timing is incredibly poor.”

“I know,” he admitted

After he zipped her up he moved his hand along her smooth back, which made her writhe a bit. She turned to him, smiled. “I shouldn’t be too late tonight if you really want to fool around later. I bought some new lingerie.”

“I’d like that,” he said, momentarily forgetting that people were dropping all around him, and that he was facing professional doom or even an early and violent death. This thought coupled with the seeming domestic bliss of his life made him feel suddenly dizzy.

She kissed him and said, “I’m having Leon drive me over. He’ll wait to bring me back. Or he can come directly back if you need the car.”

“No, I don’t plan on going out. See you later, honey.”

He watched her leave. At forty-six his wife was still a stunner. They’d been married over seventeen years, and it felt like the first year over and over.

I’m a very lucky man. In some ways. Not so much in others.

Time passed and he wandered the house, a second glass of gin he’d poured dangling precariously in his hand. He finished it off, chewed the ice cubes down, sucking in every last drop of alcohol.

Foster and Quantrell were in this together and obviously had been for quite some time. Bunting had moles embedded everywhere, but they’d completely missed that little alliance. The E-Program, despite its proven worth, was going up in flames. And those two were poised to walk out of that fire with their kingdoms not only intact but far larger. And Bunting?

Either I’m dead or in prison. They’ve set me up nicely.

He had called James Harkes and gotten no answer back. It was clear to Bunting what that meant. Harkes was supposed to be his attack dog. But he had returned to his true master now, like Cerberus to Hades.

He rubbed his forehead. Harkes had been a plant. Either by Foster or Quantrell, or both. If he had killed those people? If the FBI thought that Bunting… Enough evidence to send him away forever, he was sure, was all neatly planted. Foster was nothing if not thorough.

He sat down on the edge of the bed. The comforter had been hand-sewn in Italy. It had cost more than Bunting’s first year’s college tuition. He had never much thought about this. And he didn’t dwell on it now. He would buy a hundred such comforters if only he could put this all behind him.

He took a deep breath and smelled the alcohol coming out of his mouth. It tickled his nose, warmed him. He poured another gin, let it wash down his gullet, splash into his gut, and give him a cool burn, like diving into icy water naked.

His phone buzzed. Bunting lifted it from his pocket, gazed at it wearily when he saw who it was. He considered not answering it, then habit took over and he relented.

“Yes, Avery?”

“I just received a call from Sean King. He wants to meet.”

Bunting didn’t say anything. He felt a painful stitch in his chest.

“Mr. Bunting?”

“Yes?” He tried to keep his voice steady, but he heard it wobble.

“He wants to meet.”

“I heard that. With you?”

“No, with you.”

Bunting cleared his throat, tried to work some saliva into his mouth. “When?”

Avery didn’t say anything.

“When!”

“He said he’s standing outside your house right now.”

K
ELLY
P
AUL LOWERED
her binoculars and studied the immediate landscape as afternoon fell away into evening in eastern Maine. She had a pad and pen. She made some notes: numbers, locations of things, degrees on the compass, obstacles, and possible advantages. She looked out to the ocean. The water was calm today. Cutter’s Rock didn’t seem nearly as intimidating from this heightened angle.

She lifted the binoculars once more as the van passed through security and arrived at the front doors to the facility. She adjusted the magnification and studied the writing on the side of the van. Cutter’s must be having an issue with their power system, she concluded. And these gents were here to fix it. They were inside for nearly two hours and then did some work at a second, far smaller building behind the main facility. Later, they came out, put their equipment in the van, and drove away.

Paul lowered her optics when the van passed from sight.

The federal facility, she concluded, was an onion with layers that needed to be peeled away. After Sean had told her about it Paul had had Michelle tell her in detail about the other pair of eyes she’d seen on Cutter’s. She had given Paul the approximate location of these eyes. That was why she was here, to see it for herself. It was a good observation point. She could understand why they had chosen it.

She looked down at the facility plans in her hands. They had been hard to come by. But she had built up many favors over the years and could think of no better reason to use them. She had also learned that Cutter’s Rock had gotten a new director to replace the deceased Carla Dukes. She was certain that this new person had
been as carefully selected as the last one, perhaps even more so. She wrote other things down and then used her cell phone to make some calls. She had suspected certain tactical actions were in the works, and her observations today had confirmed that. She needed help. With these phone calls she cashed in more favors and got the assets she needed. It was proof of the work that she had done in the field over the last two decades that not a single person said no, or even questioned why she wanted to do this.

She put the phone away, retraced her steps, and got back in her rental. The drive back to Machias was quick but it still gave her precious time to think. She found Megan Riley in the front parlor at the inn. Megan had her laptop, notepads, and legal documents spread out in front of her on a wide, oval table that Mrs. Burke had allowed her to use as a makeshift desk. She sat down across from her.

“Being productive?” she asked.

Megan bit on the end of her pen and looked up at the woman. “Depends on how you define
productive
.”

“Making progress?”

“Marginally. It’s not easy.”

“Hard things in life are, de facto, never easy.”

“Sean and Michelle are gone again.”

“I know.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Or you won’t tell me.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because you all think I’m a baby lawyer who will screw stuff up.”

“You are and you might.”

“Thanks. Thanks for all the support.”

“You earn support.”

“I’m doing the best that I can.”

“Are you absolutely sure about that?”

“Are you always this rude?”

“You haven’t yet seen me be rude. When I am it’s unmistakable.”

“I want to be in the loop on everything.”

“Again, you have to earn that right.”

Megan leaned back in her chair and studied the other woman. “Okay, why don’t you tell me some things about your brother?”

“Why?”

Megan pointed to the documents. “I’m trying to draft motions to get him out of Cutter’s. I have to have something to go on other than his insanity act.”

“An act?”

“I saw what went on at Cutter’s. You were communicating with him somehow.”

“Maybe I was and maybe I wasn’t. Sean said that the forensics don’t add up. Different dirt on the bodies. That’s something you can use.”

“But it’s just a point of evidence, something for the jury to decide. It’s not going to get the charges thrown out.”

“Getting the charges thrown out isn’t necessarily the goal. We need to put pressure on certain people. We need for them to know that there is a lot at stake. More than my brother being executed for crimes he didn’t commit.”

“Well, drafting stupid motions won’t do that.”

“They can, if we execute the plan precisely.”

“And how do we get to these certain people?”

“I believe Sean and Michelle are attempting to do that right now.”

“And who are these certain people?”

Paul remained silent.

Megan pursed her lips and folded her arms over her chest. “I am the one who’ll be arguing this case to save your brother’s ass.”

“It’s a company in the intelligence field.”

“Does this company have a name? It could have direct bearing on the case.”