Twice Dead (14 page)

Oh yeah, he'd try to save Thomas's daughter.

Only one mistake in the late seventies, and Thomas Matlock had lost any chance at the promising life he'd begun. He'd had to hold himself private. He'd kept his position in the intelligence community so he would know if Krimakov ever surfaced. But he'd had to remain alone.

 

 

 

Adam slowly opened his eyes. He was in the same room with Allison and Thomas Matlock's daughter, and she was looking at him with an odd combination of helplessness and wariness. She looked so very much like her father. He couldn't tell her yet. No, not yet. He said on a yawn, “I'm sorry, I guess I just sort of flashed out for a while.”

“It's late. You're probably exhausted what with all your skulking around spying on me. I'm going to bed. There's a guest room at the end of the hall upstairs. The bed might be awful, I don't know. Come on and I'll help you make it up.”

The bed was hard as a rock, which was fine with Adam. His feet didn't hang off the end, another nice thing. He watched her trail off down the hall, pause for just a moment, and look back at him. She raised her hand. Then he watched her close the door to her bedroom.

He'd wondered about Becca Matlock for a very long time, wondered what she was like, how much she'd inherited from her father, wondered if she was happy, maybe even in love with a guy and ready to get married. He discovered he was still wondering about her as he lay on his back and stared up at the black ceiling. All he knew for sure was that someone had put her in the center of his game and was doing his best to bring her down. Kill her? He didn't know.

Was it Vasili Krimakov? He didn't know that either, but maybe it was time to consider anything that put a shadow on the radar.

He woke up at about four a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep. Finally, he booted up his laptop and wrote an e-mail:

He turned off the laptop and stretched out again, pillowing his head on his arms. To him, Krimakov was like the bogeyman, a monster trotted out to scare children. To Adam, the man had never had any substance, even though he'd seen classified material about him, been briefed about his kills. But that was over twenty-five years ago. Nothing, not even a whiff of the man since then.

Twenty-five years since Thomas Matlock had accidentally killed his wife. So long ago and in a place that was no longer even part of the Soviet Union—Belarus, the smallest of the Slavic republics, independent since 1991.

He knew the story because once, once, Thomas Matlock had gotten drunk—it was his anniversary—and told him about how he'd been playing cat and mouse back in the seventies with a Russian agent, Vasili Krimakov, and in the midst of a firefight that never should have happened, he'd accidentally shot Krimakov's wife. They'd been on the top of Dzerzhinskaya Mountain, not much of a mountain at all, but the highest peak Belarus had to offer. And she'd died and Krimakov had sworn he would kill him, kill his wife, kill anyone he loved, and he'd cursed him to hell and beyond. And Thomas Matlock knew he meant it.

The next morning, Thomas Matlock had simply looked at Adam and said, “Only two other people in the world know the whole of it, and one of them is my wife.” If there was more to the tale, Thomas Matlock hadn't told him.

Adam had always wondered who the other person was who knew the whole story, but he hadn't asked. He wondered now what Thomas Matlock was doing at this precise moment, if he, like Adam, was lying awake, wondering what was going on.

 

 

 

It was raining deep in the night, a slow, warm rain that would soak into the ground and be good for all the summer flowers. There was no moon to speak of to shine in through the window of the dimly lit study. Thomas Matlock was hunched over his computer, aware of the soft sounds of the rain but not really hearing it. He had just gotten an e-mail from a former double agent, now living in Istanbul, telling him he'd picked it up from a Greek smuggler that Vasili Krimakov had died in an auto accident near Agios Nikolaos, a small fishing village on the northeast coast of Crete.

Krimakov had lived all this time in Crete? Since Thomas had found out about his daughter's stalker, after the man had murdered that old bag lady, he'd put everyone on finding Krimakov. Scour the world for him, Thomas had said. He's got to be somewhere. Hell, he's probably right here.

Now after all this time, all these bloody years, he'd finally found him? Only he was dead. It was hard to accept. His implacable enemy, finally dead. Gone, only it was too late, because Allison was dead, too. Far too late.

Was it really an accident?

Thomas knew that Krimakov had to have enemies. He'd had years to make them, just as Thomas had. He'd gotten messages from Krimakov back in the early years, telling him he would never forget, never. Telling him he would find his wife and daughter—yes, he knew all about them and he would find them, no matter how well Thomas had hidden them. And then it would be judgment day.

Thomas had been terrified. And he'd done something unconscionable. He escorted a very pretty young woman, one of the assistants in his office, to an Italian embassy function, then to a Smithsonian exhibit. The third time he was with her, he was simply walking her to her car from the office because the skies had suddenly opened up and rain was pouring down and he had a big umbrella.

A man had jumped out of an alley and shot her between the eyes, not more than six feet away. Thomas hadn't caught him. He knew it was Krimakov even before he'd received that letter written in Vasili's stark, elegant hand: “Your mistress is dead. Enjoy yourself. When I discover your wife and child, they will be next.”

That had been seventeen years before.

Thomas had considered seeing Allison that weekend. He had canceled, and she'd known why, of course. He sat back in his chair, pillowing his head on his arms. He read the e-mail from Adam.
Consider Krimakov.

But Krimakov was finally dead. The irony of it didn't escape him. Krimakov was gone, out of his life, forever. It was all over. He could have finally been with Allison. But it was too late, too late. But now someone was terrorizing Becca. He didn't understand what was going on. He wished he could learn about Dick McCallum, but as of yet, no one had seen anything out of the ordinary. No big deposits, no new accounts, no big expenditures on his credit cards, no strangers reported near him, nothing suspicious or unexpected in his apartment. Simply nothing.

Thomas remembered telling Adam how there were only two other people—besides Adam—who knew the real story. His wife and Buck Savich, both dead now. Buck had died of a heart attack some six years before. But there was Buck's son, and he was very much alive, and Thomas realized now that he needed him, needed him very much.

The man knew all about monsters. He knew how to find them.

 

Dillon Savich, head of the Criminal Apprehension Unit of the FBI, booted up his laptop MAX and saw there was an e-mail from someone he didn't know. He shifted his six-month-old son, Sean, to his other shoulder and punched up the message.

Sean burped. “Good one,” Savich said, and rubbed his son's back in slow circles. He heard him begin to suck his fingers, felt his small body relax into his shoulder. He read:

Sean reared back suddenly and patted his father's whiskered cheek with his wet fingers. Savich stroked his son's small fingers and dried them on his cotton shirt. “We've got a neat mystery here, Sean. Who is Thomas Matlock? How did he know my father? He was an excellent friend? I don't remember ever hearing my father mention his name.

“MAX, let me get you started on this. Find out about this man for me.” He punched in a series of keys, then sat back, Sean bouncing from foot to foot on his stomach, watching MAX do his thing.

Savich reached up and flicked the drool off Sean's chin. “You're teething, champ. It's not going to be a pretty sight for the next several months, so that book says. You don't seem like you're feeling any pain. Believe me, that's a relief for both of us.”

Sean gurgled very close to Savich's ear.

He held his son back and smiled into that beloved little face that looked more like him than Sherlock. Sean had his dark hair, not Sherlock's curly red hair. As for his eyes, they were as dark as his father's, not that sweet, soft blue of his mother's. “You want to know something? It's four o'clock in the morning and here we are wide awake. Your mama's going to think we're both nuts.”

Sean yawned then and stuck three fingers into his mouth. Savich kissed his forehead and stood, gently laying his son over his shoulder. “Let's see if you're ready to pack it in again.”

He went to his son's room and dimmed the light. He laid him on his back and pulled a yellow baby blanket over his light diaper shirt.

“You go to sleep now, hear? I'm even going to sing you one of my favorite songs. Your mama always laughs her head off when I sing her this one.” He sang a country-and-western song about a man who loved his Chevy truck so much that he was buried with the engine and all four hubcaps, special edition, all silver. Sean looked mesmerized by his father's deep, rich voice. He was out after just two verses. One good thing about country-and-western music—there was always another verse. Savich paused a moment, smiled down at the precious human being that still jolted him when he realized that Sean was, indeed, his very own child, part of him. Just as Savich had been his father's child. He felt a sharp pull somewhere in the region of his heart. He missed his dad, always would.

Who was this Thomas Matlock, who claimed to have known his father?

He went back to his study.

MAX beeped as he walked in. “Good for you,” Savich said, sitting back down. “What have we got on this Thomas Matlock guy?”

TWELVE

Adam said, “You mean they're giving up trying to find her on the Outer Banks?”

Adam knew that Hatch, his right hand, was sitting crouched behind a car somewhere, calling on his cell phone, his dark sunglasses pressed so close to his eyes that his eyelashes got tangled, got into his eyes, and sometimes caused eye infections. “Yeah, boss. Since they have no leads at all, they're counting on Becca knowing something, maybe even knowing this guy who shot the governor. That's why they're searching high and low for her. Agent Ezra John is the SAC running the show down there. I hear he's cursing up a blue streak, wondering where she could have hidden herself. Says they looked everywhere for her and she ain't anywhere, like smoke, he says, and the others grin behind their hands. Oh yeah, you'll love this, boss. Old Ezra believes Ms. Matlock is a lot smarter than anyone gave her credit for, keeping out of sight like she is. If he knew it was you who duped him, he'd want to put your head on a pike and find some bridge to stick it on.”

“Thanks for sharing that, Hatch.”

“Knew you'd like it. You and old Ezra go back a long ways, don't you?”

That wasn't the half of it, Adam thought, and said only, “Something like that. Okay now. In other words, Ezra's finally come to the conclusion that she conned him? That she isn't anywhere near the Outer Banks?”

“That's it.”

“I don't think I need to fiddle them anymore. Too much time has passed for them to find her now. I think we're home free—well, at least for the moment.”

Silence.

“Hatch, I know you're lighting a cigarette. Put it out right now or I'll fire you.”

Silence.

“Is it out?”

“Yeah, boss. I swear it's out. I didn't even get one decent puff.”

“Swell news for your lungs. Now, what about the NYPD?”

“They're talking to their counterparts all over the country, just like the Feebs are. But hey—nothing, nada, zippo. This Detective Morales is a wreck, probably hasn't slept for three days. All he can talk about is how she called him, repeated to him that she'd told him everything, and he wasn't able to talk her in. There's this other detective, a woman name of Letitia Gordon, who evidently hates Ms. Matlock's guts. Claims she's a liar, a nutcase, and probably a murderer. Old Letitia really wants to bring her down. She's pushing everyone to charge Ms. Matlock with the murder of that old bag lady outside the Metropolitan Museum. You know, the murder Ms. Matlock reported? The one the stalker did to get her attention?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Well, they told Detective Gordon to pull her head out of her armpit and try for a bit of objectivity. The woman's really got it in for our gal.”

Adam made a rude noise. “Let Detective Gordon get hives over it for all we care. Neither Thomas nor I ever believed they were going to charge her with murder. But a material witness? That's possible. And you know as well as I do that the cops couldn't protect her from this stalker. Nope, that's our job. Now, what do you have on McCallum?”

Adam wasn't expecting anything, so he wasn't disappointed when Hatch sighed and said, “Not a thing as of yet. A real pro spearheaded this operation, boss, like you thought.”

“Unfortunately, it can't be Krimakov because Thomas finally got him tracked down. He was living on Crete, and as of a week ago, he's dead. I'm not sure of the exact date. But it was before McCallum was run down in Albany. I guess Krimakov could have been involved, but he certainly wasn't running the show, and that's not his MO. Anything Krimakov was involved in, he was the Big Leader. Thomas is willing to bet his ascot on that. But if Krimakov was somehow involved, it means he knew about Becca being Matlock's daughter. It's making me crazy.”