Wildcard

“Hi, Tom. Good of you to come.”

It was the voice from his mysterious phone calls, now coming from a woman sitting in an armchair.

“How did you get in here?” Surprise gave way to anger, and Tom felt distinctly vulnerable, with nothing but a towel around his waist and an unknown woman in his hotel room.

She shrugged. “Hotel-room doors are good. But manageable.”

“Then how about you manage it again and get the hell out?”

She laughed; then her eyes hardened. “You don’t really want me to do that, Tom. You want me to tell you why you’re here and what you’ve gotten yourself into. You’ll want to get dressed, however. You’ll find a Glock nine millimeter in your overnight bag. Standard Bureau issue. I knew you hadn’t traveled with one.”

He flipped open the travel bag, and sure enough, a black handgun lay atop his clothes. Hefting it, he popped out the clip and counted off twelve rounds. Although he knew nothing about her, she apparently knew a great deal about him. As a former undercover agent, that was not a situation he found palatable. But she didn’t seem stupid enough to arm a would-be opponent. Which meant she didn’t see him as an opponent….

“So why am I here?”

Wildcard

Rachel Lee

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Epilogue

Afterword and Acknowledgments

Prologue

Akhetaten, Egypt

1329 B.C.E.

Tutu watched the wanton destruction with a heavy heart. His ruler and patron, Akhenaten, was dead, along with the Pharaoh’s beautiful wife, Nefertiti, savagely murdered in a religious coup, their bodies hacked to pieces and fed to desert jackals.

Tutu himself had escaped the bloodletting, thus far, only because he had been out of the city at the time. But when they found him, they would kill him. Of that, Tutu had no doubt. The royal chamberlain could not be allowed to survive. Tutu had studied too much, learned too much, even if he had not been at Akhenaten’s side to make use of that knowledge when it most mattered. He must die, and what he had learned must die with him.

Tutu cared not for his own life. He was an old man, and death would claim him, one way or another, soon enough. But the knowledge must live.

Hiding amidst the rocks above what had once been the workers’ village, Tutu could not help but chuckle at the irony of it all. Had Akhenaten not grown up with a Hebrew, he might well have kept his birth name, Amenhotep the Fourth. Like his father and his grandfather before him, he would have ruled in the city of Thebes. He would have remained in the good graces of the priests of Amun. He might still be alive.

Instead, Tutu and young Amenhotep had grown up and played with a boy whom Tutu’s mother had plucked from a reed basket in the Nile. Tutu and the young prince had hidden in the shadows as his Hebrew friend listened to the wisdom of his people. Afterward, the three would sneak away together to discuss in secret what they had heard that day. Secrets had shaped Akhenaten’s life from childhood, and in the end they had consumed him.

Perhaps it had been all his fault, Tutu thought, not for the first time. Would young Amenhotep and his friend have tumbled onto the hidden codes by themselves? Probably not. Writing and its mysteries were Tutu’s gift—and his curse. As fluent in Hebrew as he was in Egyptian, even as a child, Tutu had transcribed from memory the stories he had heard. The Egyptian stories he wrote in the royal picture script. The Hebrew stories he wrote in their own language. That had been both his triumph and his downfall.

For once Amenhotep had ascended to the throne, Tutu no longer had to conceal his fascination with the Hebrew scrolls he had written down as a child. The scrolls that had begun to reveal coded mysteries beyond Tutu’s wildest imagination. The scrolls that now lay in a leather bag at his feet. Tutu had shared those mysteries with his two boyhood friends, and their fascination had spurred further study and the discovery of more mysteries.

It was those mysteries that had led Amenhotep to abandon the priests of Amun, change his name to Akhenaten and build the city that was even now being laid to ruin.

The mysteries of the Light. Tutu was now their sole surviving guardian. Akhenaten was dead. Their childhood friend had vanished into the desert, a fugitive wanted for murder. If the mysteries were to be preserved, it was up to Tutu.

With a sad sigh, he took a last look at the once beautiful city that had been his home for the past decade. Then he picked up his precious leather bag and the lone waterskin he had been able to scavenge from the home of a long-departed workman, and crept around the northern rim of the city. It would be a long walk down the Nile to the camps of the Hebrews. But they would offer him sanctuary in his last days.

And, perhaps, he would find among them a young man or two whom he could teach. If only the Light would grant him the time.

1

Guatemala City, Guatemala

Present Day

Miguel Ortiz sat on a bench in the Parque Centro-América and watched the morning traffic build—shopkeepers and businessmen en route to their daily labors, diplomats to their offices, tourists peeking out of their hotels like so many ants looking for honey. The sun was well over the horizon, already warming air still heavy from last night’s tropical rain. A couple sat on a nearby bench, and Miguel nodded to them. Almost time.

It seemed he had spent his entire life preparing for this day, although in truth he had never imagined himself doing such a thing until four years ago. Had it been that long since the day he’d come home from school to find his father hanged from a lamppost outside their house? He had looked up into his father’s face, bulging and purple, tongue distended, and in that moment he had known what his future would be.

His father had been an innocent man, a Quiché farmer eking out an existence from the impoverished earth. The gringos hadn’t cared. Miguel’s uncle had died defending the family secret, but not before he had killed two of the gringos who had tortured him. In Miguel’s country, blood cried out for blood. His uncle had taken gringo blood, and they had taken the blood of Miguel’s father. Today, he would take theirs. It was the way of the world. His world and, probably, his children’s world. If he lived long enough to have them.

That vision of the future had dimmed in the past four years. He had once imagined himself with a wife, working his father’s farm, raising children. He had once been so foolish as to imagine that his father’s optimism was not misplaced, that the peace accord would stand up, that his country would know stability, that he would someday walk into town and not see men in uniform with machine guns hanging from their shoulders. In his youth and naiveté, that had seemed possible.

That vision had been torn apart as he’d stood on a dirt street beside a drying puddle at the base of the lamppost, a testament to the moment of his father’s death. Blood cried out for blood. Nothing more. Nothing less.

He reached inside the shopping bag beside him and fingered the stumpy stock of the AK-47. The wood was rough where he’d sawed it off. He’d considered sanding it smooth and decided against it. Life was not smooth. It grated on the nerves and left splinters in the mind. A weapon should be no less. And do no less.

The couple were also armed, he with another AK, she with a 9 mm pistol and a block of plastic explosives in her handbag. The guerilla lieutenant had provided the C-4. The use of gringo explosives was a delicious irony. Miguel didn’t know their exact provenance—that a corporal in Georgia had sold them to a wild-eyed friend who sought to restore the purity of the white race, to be sold and resold again by those who lived and died by a warrior creed, until what looked like a block of gray clay had made its way to the Guatemalan highlands. He didn’t know the details, but he had learned enough about the ways and means of killing to recognize U.S. Army issue. It was perfect.

It was perfect, because the guerillas had also taught him about his country’s history, about the endless cycle of violence that had nearly bled his people white, touched off in 1954 when the American CIA—to protect the profits of the United Fruit Company—had instigated and funded the coup that had replaced an elected president, Jacobo Arbenz Gudman, with a military dictator. In the years since, the gringos had continued to fund a reign of terror, training the death squads at the School of the Americas. Over two hundred thousand of Miguel’s countrymen had died. All so American children could have their bananas.

That was the official story.

The truth, Miguel knew, was something else altogether. Gudman would not only have nationalized Guatemala’s farms and thereby ensured a better quality of life for the Quiché Mayan people. He had also been working to authenticate and publish a document that would change the world. The gringos could not permit that. Everyone known to be associated with the document had been killed, including Miguel’s grandfather.

Now, today, Miguel would strike back. Today’s operation would not be the first blow. It might not even be the largest blow. But it would be Miguel’s blow.

He heard the heavy rumble of the engine before he saw it, and checked his watch. Right on time. The armored limousine, bearing the gringo ambassador, passing through the streets like a Roman governor through a slave nation. Well, Miguel thought, this is not a slave nation. And you are not welcome.

He rose from the bench and lifted the shopping bag, striding casually, as if he were on his way to work. And, in a brutal way, he was. The couple saw him and got to their feet, as well, walking arm-in-arm, two young lovers out to greet the new day. Miguel stood at the corner and lighted a cigarette. He made as if to put the lighter in his pocket but dropped it in the bag instead. Shaking his head, he set the bag on the sidewalk and stooped, watching the limousine and the couple from the corner of his eye.

The timing was perfect. Just as they’d rehearsed it.

The couple had almost crossed the street as the car approached. The woman touched her forehead and stepped back from her partner, as if she had left something behind. Miguel gripped the stock of the AK-47 and rose, just as the limo slowed to avoid the woman. He fired, knowing the bullets would not penetrate the glass, but also knowing the spiderweb of cracks across the windshield would cause the driver to pause momentarily before his training took over and he gunned the engine. In that pause, the woman moved with well-drilled speed and precision, looking as if she were diving for cover behind the limousine, when, in fact, she was slapping the plastic explosive to the underside of its frame.

Now her partner drew his weapon from beneath his business suit, and the car was riddled with enfilading fire. The limousine surged forward, the driver reacting exactly as he had been taught to do. Get out of the kill zone. Protect the principal.

Miguel and the man held their fire as the car passed, so as not to hit each other, then opened up again as it pulled away. The rattle of rounds being discharged, the comforting recoil, the ping and whine of bullets ricocheting off hardened metal, were exactly as he’d imagined.

As was the fireball, moments later, when the plastic explosive detonated beneath the fuel tank. The heavy, almost hollow crump reached his ears a split second later, followed by the rush of heat. But he was prepared for that, as well, knowing he and his comrades had been protected from the blast itself by the limousine driver’s training to speed away from the shooting.

They were already advancing on the burning vehicle, weapons at the ready, as the doors popped open. The woman fired first, two Teflon-coated 9 mm rounds cutting through the driver’s Kevlar vest like hot knives through butter, shredding internal organs as they went. The ambassador was the next to crawl out, and by then Miguel was only three meters away, waiting for him. The ambassador was raising his hands, his eyes pleading, as Miguel smiled and sighted his weapon on the man’s forehead.

“Vaya con Dios,” Miguel said bitterly.

Then he squeezed the trigger.

A white Honda squealed into the intersection, the lieutenant at the wheel. Miguel yanked open the passenger side door and climbed in as the couple piled in back.

“Vámonos!” the lieutenant said, stepping on the gas even before their doors were closed.

“Sí,” Miguel answered. “Vámonos.”

“Sangre para sangre,” the lieutenant said, glancing in the rearview mirror as they sped away.

Yes, Miguel thought, remembering his grandfather, his uncle, and his father. Blood for blood.

2

Fredericksburg, Virginia

As the primary returns were posted, Terry Tyson jumped from the sofa and let out a whoop that almost deafened Tom Lawton.

“Yes!” Terry said. “He’s got it!”

Grant Lawrence had indeed sewn up the Democratic nomination for president, with solid wins in Florida, Texas and Louisiana pushing him over the top.

Beside him, Miriam reached for a napkin to dab champagne from her slacks. “Terry!”

“Oh,” he said, looking down. His ebony features fell. “Sorry, honey.”

She smiled back at him and laughed. “Hey, I’m excited, too. But you just about blew out poor Tom’s eardrums!”

Tom joined in the laughter, finding it more difficult than it should have been. Here he was, in the home of his Bureau mentor, having spent the evening basking in the obvious warmth that passed between her and Terry. It had been an evening of good food, lighthearted banter and ready smiles. No undercover role-playing. No reading between the lines for veiled threats. None of what he’d endured the past three years living in the underside of the Los Angeles glitter. He ought to have been a warm puddle. But the old instincts, the quiet, life-or-death whisper in his mind, wouldn’t go away.

The fury wouldn’t go away, either. It had gotten him suspended. Now it gnawed at him remorselessly.

Miriam had seen it, of course. So had Terry. They understood. They’d both been there, she with the FBI, he as a career homicide detective in Washington, D.C. They knew the signs. But they were too considerate and too experienced to offer casual bromides. Instead, they had simply fed him, welcomed him into their living room and allowed him to sit quietly as they watched the primary election returns and held hands like teenagers.

“I hope,” Senator Grant Lawrence was saying on the television, hands raised to quiet a crowd of ecstatic supporters, “I hope tonight shows that the American people can rise above their outrage and see that it is not only the ends that matter, but also the means by which we achieve those ends. That it is important not only to do the right thing, but to do it in the right way. And if the American people grant me their trust in November, I can promise you there will be a reckoning. Not a time of vengeance, but a time of justice. Not an orgy of violence, but a veneration of principle. Not a feeding of hate, but a nourishment of hope. That, my friends, is the American way. And America will lead the way!”

His words and the passions of the moment ignited a cheer that drowned out further speech. Endlessly, they chanted, “Lawrence! Lawrence! Lawrence!”

“Damn, he’s good,” Terry said, pumping his fist.

“He’s more than good,” Miriam said, grinning from ear to ear. “He’s amazing. And what’s more, with him it’s not an act. He’s the real deal.”

Tom gave her the required nod of agreement. Amidst the mess in L.A., he’d taken a private moment to smile at her handling of the Lawrence kidnapping case. She, together with Terry and then-Tampa-detective Karen Sweeney, had rescued Grant’s children and saved him from a sniper’s bullet. Detective Sweeney had moved to Washington, where she was now Terry’s partner and—as the tabloids spared no ink to remind America— Lawrence’s girlfriend. There was no doubt in Tom’s mind which way the votes in this room would go.

And perhaps the man truly was as worthy as his words. He had faced down his chief Democratic opponent, Alabama Senator Harrison Rice, who had repeatedly called for continuing the U.S. war on terrorism in the Middle East. Rice had made those arguments even more forcefully yesterday, after the murder of the Guatemalan ambassador.

Tom had half expected Lawrence to rise to the bait, to use the assassination as a reason to reverse his policy and thus bolster his image on national security issues. Certainly no one would have faulted him for doing so, and in fact many pundits had predicted exactly that. But Lawrence had not wavered. His response had been brief and direct.

“The murder of our ambassador,” he had said, “while barbaric, is a reflection of the violence that has torn that country apart. There is no reason to connect this crime with the recent attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq. The solution to war is not more war. The solution to war is a just peace. And, as president, I will work toward that just peace.”

That kind of backbone impressed Tom. He wished Grant Lawrence had been his Special Agent in Charge back in L.A. Things might have gone differently. A little girl might not now hate him, and he might not have broken his boss’s nose.

Then his fists tightened, and he told himself he was just being wishful. Grant Lawrence was probably just another political chameleon. Like his former boss, with his eye on promotion, not on the lives that would be affected.

Tom forced his attention back to the television as Lawrence finally quieted the crowd and resumed speaking.

“As joyous as this night is,” Lawrence said, his voice now softened, “I must pause to acknowledge the grief of Mrs. Kilhenny and her children. Nothing I can do or say will ease their loss. I met Bill and Grace Kilhenny a month ago, when I went to visit Guatemala to see for myself the conditions that prevail there. He was a skilled diplomat, a gracious host and a brave man.”

A long moment of silence passed, both in the Lawrence campaign headquarters and in the apartment. In the space of that minute, the senator had swept away the trappings of power and politics and attended to the pain of one woman. Even Tom was reluctantly moved.

Tampa, Florida

Grant Lawrence looked out into the sea of faces and finally found the one he really wanted to see. Karen. She was standing near a side door, smiling. He wished she could be up here with him. But that would be tantamount to a public proposal of marriage, and that was a step they weren’t ready to take.

She was, after all, a cop. It wasn’t merely her job. It was a big part of her identity. If he won this thing—and tonight even that dream seemed within reach—they could not be together. She couldn’t function as a homicide detective with a Secret Service retinue. And the country wouldn’t stand for a First Lady who held a job regardless. He knew it. She knew it. It was the bitter cloud around this silver lining. He had wanted to bow out of the race, to remain in the Senate, so they could be together. She had steadfastly refused to let him do it. She said she loved him, and her country, too much to allow it.

And so here he was. And there she was. The gulf between the podium and that door seemed insurmountable.

It was with that thought in his mind that he looked again at his supporters, then at his prepared text, and pushed the text aside.

“Friends, we have work to do. Not just for the next eight months, but for the next four years. That work will not be easy. Justice, peace and prosperity are not easily won. These past months have tested our commitment, but they are only the beginning. Greater tests lie ahead. But I am sure that if we commit ourselves to facing those tests together, to meeting those challenges, to giving wings to our dreams and life to our ideals, we can transform both ourselves and this nation. We can be, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, that last, best hope. Tonight I say to you, I am committed to that last, best hope. Join with me. Stay with me. And together we will go on to victory!”

The roar was almost deafening. He turned and saw Jerry Connally’s smile. His old friend stepped toward him, extending first a handshake and then a bear hug. Grant chose the bear hug, for this bear had been at his side throughout his eight years in the Senate, in the lean times, and in the worst of the ugliness that politics and life can offer. This night was Jerry’s as much as it was Grant’s.

“Wow, boss,” Jerry said, almost yelling in his ear to be heard above the crowd. “I don’t know where you got that from. But you’d better bottle it for safekeeping.”

“Thank you, friend,” Grant said.

“Thank you,” Jerry said. “But the best is yet to come. For all of us.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“By the way, boss, there are about two hundred people in the lobby that couldn’t fit in here. You should make your way out there and let them know they’re not on the outside looking in.”

“Right,” Grant said. “You’re right. Lead the way.”

“Wasn’t he amazing?” Miriam asked.

“As always,” Terry said. “If the country doesn’t elect him this fall, they’re passing up one hell of an opportunity.”

For his part, Tom simply nodded and forced a smile. Yes, Lawrence’s speech had been an effective piece of political rhetoric. Whether it was any more than that remained to be seen. He watched as Lawrence left the stage and waded into the crowd. The man certainly seemed to enjoy people.

Tom could still remember a time when he’d felt the same. Lately, people were to be avoided. Even here, with Miriam and Terry, he avoided any real contact. Contact only led to betrayal and hurt.

His thoughts were interrupted by a sound like popping corn, emanating from the television.

“What the…?” Terry said, looking at the screen.

“God, no,” Miriam said, eyes wide.

The camera caught it all in stomach-turning detail. Lawrence’s smile faded in an instant, replaced by a blank look of shock as he slid to the floor. Tom Lawton had seen that look before and didn’t need to hear the reporter’s next words.

“My God, he’s been shot. Grant Lawrence has been shot!”

3

Washington, D.C.

“I want Tom Lawton on my team,” Miriam said firmly.

“No,” Kevin Willis replied. “I’m sorry, but no.”

She gave him a look of disgust and pressed on. “Tom is the smartest investigator I’ve ever worked with. He thinks outside the box. That’s exactly the kind of mind we need on this case.”

In that sense, she was right. It was all too easy for an agent to fixate on a suspect to the exclusion of other evidence. Kevin knew that as well as anyone in the Bureau. In the mid-nineties, early in his career, he’d been assigned to the Atlanta field office, putting him among the dozens of agents who’d responded to the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. He’d witnessed firsthand the near ruin of an innocent man before investigators finally stepped back to reexamine the evidence.