“I’m sorry, dear,” Faith said, unwrapping herself. “I got excited.”
Faith’s motherly look at Alla told Gage that she’d understood his e-mail describing both the courage Alla had shown and her need for a woman in whom to confide. Faith hugged her, then picked up her suitcase. “You must be very tired. All you’ve been through.”
“I’m fine, really. I rested in London.”
“Not like you’ll rest here.” Faith tilted her head toward the stairs. “Come on, I’ll show you to your room.”
Faith led Alla through the house to a lower-level bedroom. Alla walked directly from the door to the corner windows facing the bay.
“Is that San Francisco?” she asked, wide-eyed at the floor-to-ceiling view that extended from Mount Tamalpias in the north to the airport in the south. The first bit of evening fog was easing its way through the Golden Gate, but had yet to mute the twinkling lights of the city or the sapphire blue of the bay. “It’s like a postcard.”
“It’s real and it’s yours as long as you can stay with us. You can freshen up down the hallway, then come back up.”
Gage was sitting at the kitchen table when Faith walked in. She took a bottle of Budweiser out of the refrigerator and handed it to him. “From Professor Blanchard. He said you’d understand.”
Gage twisted off the top and took a sip. “Sweetheart of a guy.”
“He feels indebted to you,” Faith said, sitting down.
“It’s the other way around.”
“That’s not how he looks at it. He spent his whole career worrying that his research was being used to make weapons that would end up in the hands of the wrong people. He feels like you gave him a chance to use his knowledge for good.”
“Well, he did good. I couldn’t have gotten this far without him. I just don’t know whether it was enough.”
Faith reached over and rested her hand on Gage’s forearm. “You look beat.”
“A little jet lag, it’ll be gone tomorrow.”
“You think you can force Peterson to indict Matson for the devices?”
“Based on what? Alla can’t get up on the stand. Whoever killed Granger and the Fitzhughs will go after her if she does.”
“What about you?”
“Testify about watching Matson from a distance? It was a silent movie without subtitles-and it would be just as dangerous for Alla because I’d have to expose her role.” Gage looked across the bay toward the Federal Building, but his eyes fell on the clock tower at the foot of Market Street. “I’ve got nothing to delay the indictment.”
“How soon do you think it will be?”
“A day or two. Milsberg left a message that Zink said he’s the second-to-the-last grand jury witness, and they want him in tomorrow. At 10 A. M.”
CHAPTER 77
Peterson called seconds after Gage sat down in his office the next morning.
“Hey, hotshot. I heard you’ve been traveling again.”
Gage didn’t rise to the aggression rumbling under Peterson’s jocular banter.
“A little bit.”
“I also heard Matson’s girlfriend is in town.”
“Ex.”
“Ex?”
“Yup.”
“How’d you do it?”
“I went over to London a couple of days ago and asked her to come. He shouldn’t have left her alone in that big flat.”
“What’s she gonna say?”
“That Matson told her Burch didn’t know what was going on.”
Peterson laughed. “That’s bullshit. Matson told Zink he didn’t let her in on anything. Why would he? He says she was just a plaything and he dangled a green card in front of her nose to keep her around.”
“Then you can add lying to a federal agent to his charge sheet.”
“Yeah, right. If she was such a hot witness, you’d have run the visa through me.”
“Two reasons. One, you’d feed her to the civil lawyers-”
“You’ve got no proof-”
“And two, I’ve got an idea about Burch’s shooting and the Granger and Fitzhugh murders. My guess is that each one happened right after you focused the grand jury on them.”
“What are you saying?”
“You’ve got a leak.”
“That’s a dead end. We already checked it out.”
“By ‘we’ you mean that idiot Zink?”
“You underestimate the guy. He turned his career around with this case. He put the whole thing together from the ground up.”
“That’s a crock. The case was handed to him by an insider at SatTek, Katie Palan. She gave you Matson, then Matson gave you everything else. All Zink did was take notes.”
“Who?”
“Katie Palan.”
“Oh yeah, the woman who sent the letter.”
“That’s how it happened. And she’s dead, too.”
“I heard somebody at SatTek died in a traffic accident. Was that her?”
“That’s her. But it wasn’t an accident.”
“Not again.” Peterson adopted an exasperated tone, and seemed to enjoy it. “You sound normal for a while, then you start babbling like a conspiracy lunatic.”
“We’ll see.”
“What do you mean, we’ll see?”
“We’ll see who’s got a better grasp on reality.”
“Don’t kid yourself, pal. Burch is going down as sure as the sun sets in the west.”
“The sun doesn’t set. The earth rotates.”
“Same difference.”
“Nope. It makes all the difference in the world.”
Gage hung up and called Burch.
“Any news from Geneva?”
“Matson hasn’t tried to move the KTMG Limited money again. He must still think the account’s frozen.”
“Will your banker friend hang tough?”
“I think so.”
“I want you to give him a code phrase. If Matson calls and says ‘looking glass,’ your friend should do what he says. Get ahold of him as soon as the bank opens.”
Gage then called Matson.
“This is Mr. Green.”
“Thank God you called. They froze my money and I-”
“Not over the phone.”
“But-”
“Not…over…the phone.”
“When can we meet?”
“At 3 P. M. The cafe where we first met.”
