Top Hook

Utica.

Rose had sat up with her father, drinking too much wine and letting him try to soothe her. Then she lay awake for an hour, then another hour, hearing dogs, the bells of clocks, the freights rolling along the old New York Central tracks. A car went by, its boombox thumping hip-hop bass. Somebody laughed and shouted. Her talk with the detailer went around and around in her head, and she tracked it, around and around, looking for the explanation, the solution, a rat running around and around, looking for a way out—

Rose woke to see by the pale orange digitals of the bedside clock that it was a little after two. Her head really ached now, and the wine rose as a sour nausea in her throat. She would feel really lousy tomorrow. Today.

She went to the old bathroom along the hall, the only one in the house, drank two glasses of water, looked at her bloated face in the mirrored door of the medicine chest. Some looker you are! she thought. Well, her face matched her thoughts, anyway. She drank another glass of water and knew she had to do something, anything—go for a walk, go for a drive. Scream. Instead, she went and checked her children and then went downstairs, the dog padding beside her, and by the time she reached the bottom tread, she knew what she was going to do.

She was going to scream for help.

She took the dog out into the cool night and, again leaning against the rear of her car, got on her cellphone. She called a duty number of a war crimes unit in Sarajevo, where Mike Dukas, who loved her and was her husband’s friend and was an NCIS agent on loan to the International War Crimes Tribunal, was officer-in-charge. What she got was a gravel-voiced Frenchman named Pigoreau who wanted to flirt with her and who finally told her that Mike was in a grande luxe hotel in Holland, The Hague, “being kicked up the stairs.” He gave her a phone number.

His flirtatiousness made her numb. Some other time—She punched the numbers into the phone and pulled her robe tighter around her. The cool air felt good on the hangover, but parts of her were a little too cool.

Pigoreau had been right. The hotel was very grande luxe. It was so grand she thought she was never going to get past reception, but finally a somewhat too elegant female put her through, and she heard one ring and then Mike Dukas’s growl, and, before she could think, she cried, “Oh, Mike, thank God!”

“Hey! Rose? Rose?”

“Oh, Mike, goddamit, I’m so happy to talk to you! Mike—I need help.”

“What the hell. Help?”

So she told him. Two sentences, bam, bam.

“What, you got bounced from the program and sent to some nowheresville, and the orders came out of CNO?”

“You got it.”

“Where’s Al?”

“Somewhere between Aviano and the boat.” She told him about the change to Alan’s orders. “First him, now me.”

“Which I don’t think is a funny coincidence, babe. You with me? You know the Navy—they get on one of you, you both go down. You need somebody to find out what the hell’s going on. I don’t think it’s us—NCIS, I mean. Could be Navy intel, but they don’t work like that; they’d come to you and do stuff—investigation, interviews, maybe polygraph.”

“But why?”

“Because either you or Al is a security problem, is why. That’s all it can be.”

“My dad thinks I have an enemy.”

“Your dad may not be so far wrong. But maybe Al has an enemy and you’re getting the backlash. But this has a kind of stink. Like, it sounds very quick and very from the top down, not by the book. And not the Nav, you know? But I’ll check. Listen, give me an hour or two, shit, what time is it there—? I’ll check to see if the Navy’s involved, other than issuing the orders. But what you gotta have is information. What you do, call Abe Peretz and tell him to find out what’s up.”

“It’s two a.m.”

“What are friends for? He’s FBI, he’ll have an answer by the time you’re eating breakfast. Then call me back and we’ll talk about what happens next. Okay?”

“I hate to wake people up.”

“Oh, do you? Your life is shit, your career is ruined, and you hate to wake people up. Come on, babe, get with the program. This is war.”

“You’re the best, Mike.”

“No, I’m a mediocre Navy cop, but I’m crazy about you, so you bring out the best in me. Now go call Abe and let me get some breakfast.”

“You sound grumpy.”

“Wait until you hear Abe.”

Abe Peretz was a former naval officer who had joined the FBI. Like Dukas, he was an old friend, a kind of mentor to her husband and a counselor to her. He was only a little pissed at being waked up; once he understood the problem, he gave her some hard advice: come to Washington, where the action is.

Half an hour later, she was on the road.

USS Thomas Jefferson.

His first official act on the carrier was supposed to have been a brief to the admiral on the purpose of his detachment. The briefing was out the window, however, because of the Trieste mess, and when he showed up on the flag deck at 0800, he was met, not by Admiral Kessler, but by Maggiulli and the flag captain.

“Have you reached your NCIS guy yet?” Maggiulli said. He looked as wasted by lack of sleep as Alan, but he was certainly more nervous.

“I filed a contact report at the NCIS shack on the boat. I keep missing my guy when I call—I got the runaround in Bosnia, where he’s detached to a war crimes unit, and I just found out ten minutes ago that he’s in The Hague. I’ve got a call in to him there.” He turned to the flag captain. “Am I briefing on the MARI project this morning, sir?”

“The admiral would prefer that you straighten this other matter out first. Commander, it still appears that you’re withholding evidence from the Italian police. You haven’t offered us any reasonable explanation. People were killed, Commander.”

“This is a change from two hours ago.”

“It is not a change!” Maggiulli looked at the flag captain, thus proving that this was a change.

“John, I will continue to make contact with the special agent in charge of the investigation my first priority. He’s at a hotel in The Hague, and I expect to talk to him as soon as I leave this meeting.”

“Admiral Kessler wants somebody with some authority at NCIS to explain this matter to him, as you don’t seem prepared to do it yourself. It looks like you’re jerking us around, Craik.”

His anger almost exploded, and his face went white.

Clenching his fists, Alan said in a dead, rigidly controlled voice, “It looks like you’re jerking me around, John. Two hours ago, you seemed to accept my explanation and told me to call my guy; now you don’t accept my explanation! Listen to me—and you, too, sir—because I’m in the right on this and I know the code, too! I am doing my goddam level best to satisfy you and the Italian police and my responsibility to a classified investigation! If you want to take me to the mat on it, you do it! Call me on it!”

With a gesture, the flag captain silenced Maggiulli. To Alan’s surprise, he spoke quite gently, as if, all along, he had simply been hearing how it would play. “I’ll forget the tone of voice you just used, Mister Craik, but you gotta remember the seriousness of this from our point of view. We got a capital ship here in a foreign port where we’re not deeply loved to start with. So you just do nothing but work at getting on the blower to your man and make it right, okay?”

“Sir, I also have a detachment to run, and I haven’t even met all my officers yet.”

The flag captain nodded. “I think that can wait for twenty-four hours.”

The man seemed to be saying that his whole detachment could sit on their thumbs until he got hold of Mike Dukas. And then he got it, through the fog of fatigue and anger: if he didn’t get Mike Dukas and satisfy the admiral, there wouldn’t be any detachment—at least not for him. That’s why Maggiulli was the attack dog—to give legal cover if Kessler decided to kick his ass off the Jefferson. That really would end his naval career. And Kessler knew that, too.

“Sir, with all respect, I request permission to continue with my detachment while trying to locate Mister Dukas.” He rushed on almost boyishly. “There’s no point in me sitting on a phone if he’s at breakfast and doesn’t have a telephone handy.”

The flag captain thought about that and actually smiled. He picked up his hat, a signal that the meeting was about over. Again, his voice was almost soft. “I appreciate your position. You please try to appreciate ours.” He put his cover on and came close, as if he wanted to shut Maggiulli out. “You better satisfy the admiral today, or you’re toast.”

Fifteen minutes later, Alan was in his stateroom, looking at the black heel-mark on a bulkhead where he had just thrown a dress shoe. Mike Dukas had not been at the hotel in The Hague—he had just checked out.

He had tried Dukas’s office in Sarajevo again, and, although he had got an English speaker this time, she hadn’t known anything, either.

Mike Dukas was in transit.

Now, shaking with anger, Alan tried to talk himself down. He was about halfway there when a knock sounded on his door and he whirled, ready to explode on anybody suggesting that the admiral wanted him to hurry. Flinging open the door, he saw first the captain’s eagles on the collar, only belatedly the face above it.

“Hey, Al!” A big hand descended on his shoulder. “Hey, man, I like for my officers to check in with me when they come aboard, what gives?”

Alan’s anger deflated like a leaky balloon. It was “Rafe” Rafehausen, friend from his first squadron, onetime nemesis, now the CAG—commander of the Jefferson’s air wing.

“You going to ask me in, or do I have to push?”

“Oh, Jeez—Rafe, am I glad to see you—Christ, man, I haven’t had time to report; see, last night—”

Rafe waved a hand. “I know all about it. Everybody knows all about it—James Bond Meets Rambo. You don’t do things by halves, do you, Craik?” He pushed a duffel bag off the only chair and threw himself down. “Don’t let me interrupt, if you were doing something important. You look like shit, by the way, anybody told you that?”

“I shot a guy yesterday. How you think that makes me feel?”

“I don’t know how it makes you feel, but it makes you look like shit. Come on, what’s up—trouble?”

“Kessler.” Alan raced through a summary of his meeting with the admiral and then Maggiulli and the flag captain. To his surprise, Rafe laughed. “Hey, Kessler’s got a bug up his ass about good relations with foreigners and the media; you come in and shoot up a liberty port, what d’you think he’s going to do, kiss you? So call your friend at NCIS, for Christ’s sake!”

“I can’t get hold of him!” Alan started to rant, and Rafe cut him off.

“Get a grip. First things first—the reason I came here, besides wanting to welcome you aboard, was to get you to grab hold of this fucking detachment you’re supposed to command. Your detachment sucks—clear?”

“Rafe, I only met the guys two days ago; Jesus Christ, give me a break.”

“I can’t give you a break. And I wouldn’t if I could; I need your aircraft in the air and I need them today. Between you, me and the shitter, Kosovo’s going to go ballistic and holy hell is blowing up in the Indian Ocean, and the CAG doesn’t have time for one of his commanders to dance around the telephone. You get with your det, buddy, and you start to kick ass; they’re a mess.”

“Kessler’s captain gave me an ultimatum.”

Rafe blew out a breath in exasperation. “I’ll handle it. Kessler listens to me; he’s not an aviator, so he needs me. I’ll tell him you’re God’s gift to the US Navy; I trust you like a brother; if you say it’s national security, it’s national security. Give me the name of the guy you’re trying to reach on the fucking phone and I’ll have him found by the time you’ve done an honest day’s work with the det. Deal?”

“The flag captain’s word was ‘toast.’”

“Yeah, yeah, his bark is worse than his bite. Friel’s a pussycat. Come on, gimme the data and get your ass out of here and go to work. That’s an order, Craik!”

Alan stared at him and then began to laugh. He reached for his flight suit.

Rafe put a hand again on Alan’s shoulder.

“One more thing. There’s talk, so watch your step.”

“Talk? What—last night—?”

“That, and—you know the boat, everybody cooped up. There’s just talk about you taking over the det on such short notice. They say you got bounced from another assignment.”

Alan’s face went rigid. “I did. And no reason given.”

Rafe patted his shoulder. “Guys talk. Just let ’em.”

Langley, Virginia.

George Shreed was leaning on his metal canes by his office window, watching a hot wind blow fast-food wrappers through the CIA parking lot. He wasn’t seeing them; he was only turning his eyes on them, occupying his vision, while his mind, numb, could not shift his focus from his wife’s death. He thought of himself as a hardass, but he wasn’t hard all the way through; somewhere in there, he bled. He had prepared for the death, had used the word, had said it would happen, must happen, was unavoidable—and now he was as devastated as if it had come as a surprise.

His door thumped under somebody’s knuckles.

“Yes.”

Ray Suter came in, first his head, then a shoulder, then half his body. “You want to be by yourself?”

“Come in, come in.”

“I wanted to say how bad I feel. All of us feel.”

“Thank you.”

Shreed hadn’t turned around. He could see Suter’s reflection in the window, beyond it, the trees bowing in the hot wind of a June day. Tonight there would be thunderstorms, a cold front, a change. Even in his grief, he found himself thinking that Suter looked different today.

“Can we do anything?”

It was the kind of question that Shreed usually pounced on: What did you have in mind, resurrection? Did you want to hold a seance in the canteen? But the acid had gone out of him for a little while. Instead, Shreed said, “Maybe somebody could plant a tree someplace. No flowers.”

“Right, right. I heard that. The Cancer Society, right. There’s a collection—the girls are taking it up—”

Shreed’s back moved, straightened. Was he going to make some comment about the futility of collections as an answer to death? He exhaled slowly. “Thank them for me.”

“Sure. Absolutely. Can I do anything for you? You sleeping?”

Shreed turned, made his way to his desk and leaned the bright canes against a spot he had used so long that the varnish was worn from the wood. “Pick up the slack on the five-year report, if you will; I’ve dragged my feet there. Yeah, I’m sleeping okay.” He never slept much, anyway. “There’s a memorial service Thursday. You might let people know.”

“Right. Right, absolutely.” Suter stood there, well into the room now but still somehow not of it—keeping himself separate. “I feel so helpless.” Yet he didn’t look helpless to Shreed; he looked—gleeful?

Shreed shot him a look. Suter’s eyes looked funny—was he perhaps hung over? They were too bright, too—excited. For an instant, a bizarre thought flashed across Shreed’s mind: He knows. Then it was gone, the idea that Suter could know about his spying too ridiculous to consider.

“I’ve got a task for you,” he said when he had sat down. “One that won’t make you feel helpless. Something you’ll enjoy, in fact—screwing an old friend.” He grinned. “Alan Craik.”

“No friend of mine!” Suter cried.

“Old enemy, then. What’s the difference? Craik’s wife is under investigation. Security violation on the Peacemaker project.”

Suter scowled. He had been on the Peacemaker project, too, and had in fact tried without success to get Rose Siciliano into bed.

“I want you to make sure the word gets out that they’re security risks. Both of them—where there’s smoke there’s fire, that sort of thing. If she’s in it, so is he. Get it?”

“This is official?”

Shreed started to answer him with acid, then stopped. Suter usually didn’t question his orders.

“She’s proven herself an enemy of the Agency,” Shreed said. “Is that official enough for you?

“And Suter became Uriah Heep, all but wringing his hands, saying, “Right, right—oh, right—”

And Shreed thought, Not right, but then he remembered Janey’s death, and Suter became unimportant.

Washington.

“It’s you, Rose. Not Al. And it’s the CIA, not the Navy.”

Abe Peretz looked like a casting director’s idea of a Jewish professor, with a balding head, unfashionable glasses, and eyes that were mostly dreamy but now and then as hard as diamonds. He was deaf in one ear, the result of a mugging two years before, and so he normally talked now with his head slightly turned so that his good right ear was toward other people.

“What the hell’s the CIA got to do with me?”

“And not just the Agency—the Agency’s Internal Investigations Directorate.” The innocent eyes became hard. “They’re hard-nosed and they’re ugly—leftovers from Angleton and Kill-a-Commie-for-Christ—and they’d send their own mothers up if she was dicking the Agency. So how come they’re on your case? There can be only one reason—you’ve spun off from an internal investigation.”

“I’m not even in their chain of command!”

“Think of it as walking by when somebody pissed out the window. There’s a rumor floating around they’ve got another mole. You don’t understand the relief they’d feel if they got a positive on somebody who isn’t Agency. It means they can say to each other, ‘We dodged the bullet.’ And it means that they can go public, at least within the intelligence community, and say, ‘See, it isn’t us—it’s the Navy.’ And so they went back-channel, probably through the NSC, and sandbagged you.”

“Abe, what the hell do I do?”

“You fight.” He pushed a piece of paper across his desk. “You’ve got an appointment at three at Barnard, Kootz, Bingham.” She looked her question with a frown, and he said, “Law firm. Heavy hitters—sixty partners, big-bucks political donors to both parties, lots of media savvy. The woman I’m sending you to is the best they got.” He grinned. “She just beat us in court. That’s how I know how good she is. Unhh—this ain’t pro bono work they do over there, Rose. Justice is blind, but she ain’t cheap. Bea and I’ll help if we can.”

She had a quick temper, at best; now it gushed out, pushed by the fatigue and a hangover and the hurt, and she cursed; she said they could shove it; she said she didn’t want to be part of a Navy that could treat her like this. And she cursed some more.

He grinned again. “Stay mad. You’re going to need it.”