Maybe.
His father and grandfather had not minded the label. They’d actually taken pride in their buccaneer ways. Why not him?
The house phone rang.
“I have some bad news,” Knox said when he answered. “They set me up.”
As he listened to what had happened in New York, his anxiety returned. Salvation seemed fleeting once again. “I want you back here. Now.”
“I’m on the way. That’s what delayed my call. I wanted to get out of New York first.”
“Come straight to the house on your return. And no reports to the others. Not yet.”
He ended the call.
And immediately dialed another number.
TWENTY-SIX
11:20 PM
WYATT SURVEYED THE FORESTED CAMPUS OF THE GARVER INSTITUTE. The cluster of five brick buildings, each three stories high, sat in a wooded glen a quarter mile off a state highway. Clouds rolled across the black sky, veiling a half-moon. A splatter of rain had followed him from the small airport a few miles away where Andrea Carbonell had left him. Thunder clapped in the distance.
He’d purposefully not driven into one of the lit parking lots, the hundred or so spaces vacant. In fact, he’d left the car Carbonell had provided him on the highway and walked in. Ready for whatever might be waiting.
He’d watched as Carbonell left, flying south, toward the Potomac and Virginia. Washington lay north. Where was she going now?
He used a progression of pine trees lining the lane for cover and kept easing toward the one building where lights still burned on the second floor. Carbonell had said that the office he sought was located there, a Dr. Gary Voccio, supposedly some mathematician supreme. The good doctor was told to wait until an agent appeared with the appropriate password, then to provide all data and information on the Jefferson cipher only to him.
His gaze raked the darkness, his alert level rising from yellow to orange. A chill coursed through his body. He wasn’t alone. Though he couldn’t see them, he sensed them. Carbonell had warned they’d be here. Why hadn’t they moved on the institute already? The answer was clear.
They were waiting for him.
Or someone else.
Prudence advised caution, but he decided to not disappoint them.
So he stepped from his cover and walked straight for the lit building.
HALE LISTENED AS THE PHONE RANG IN HIS EAR.
Once. Twice. Three times.
“What is it, Quentin?” Andrea Carbonell finally said in his ear. “Don’t you sleep?”
“As if you weren’t waiting for my call.”
“Knox made a mess at the Helmsley Park Lane. One dead agent, two wounded, another dead in Central Park. I can’t let that go unanswered.”
Noise on the line, like the rotor of a helicopter, signaled that she was on the move.
“What do you plan to do? Arrest us? Good luck, considering how deep you’re into this. I’d love to explain on television what a lying bitch you truly are.”
“A little touchy tonight.”
“You have no idea.”
“I have as much faith in the justice system as you do,” she made clear. “And like you, I prefer my own forms of retribution, administered my way.”
“I thought we were allies.”
“We were, until you decided to do something stupid in New York.”
“I didn’t do that.”
“Nobody would ever believe you.”
“Have you solved the Jefferson cipher? Or was that another lie?”
“Before I answer, I want to know something.”
He wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of discussing much with this woman, but what choice did he have? “Go ahead.”
“How long did you think you could do as you pleased?”
This he could discuss. “We have a constitutional grant of authority from the Congress and the first president of United States to attack, at will, this nation’s enemies in perpetuity.”
“You’re an anachronism, Quentin. A relic from the past that no longer has any place.”
“Our Commonwealth has managed to do things that could never have been accomplished through conventional avenues. You wanted economic chaos in certain Middle East nations. We provided that. You wanted assets stripped from certain persons of interest. We stripped them. Politicos who weren’t cooperating started to cooperate after we finished with them.” He knew she would not want this information broadcast to the world, so if anyone was listening they were enjoying an earful.
“And while you did all that,” she said. “You stole for yourself, keeping far more than the eighty percent allowed.”
“Can you prove that? We make considerable payments to several intelligence agencies on a yearly basis, yours included-payments in the millions. I wonder, Andrea, does all of that end up in the U.S. Treasury?”
She laughed. “Like we’re getting our full share. All you pirates and privateers perform your own special form of accounting. Centuries ago it happened on the high seas, the spoils divvied up per your precious Articles before anyone could see how much had been plundered. What did they call it? The ledger? I’m sure two sets of ledgers were kept. One to show the government to make them happy and another to make sure that everyone privy to the Articles didn’t complain.”
“We are at an impasse,” he said. “We’re accomplishing nothing.”
“But it explains why we’re speaking at this godforsaken hour.”
He tried again. “Have you solved the cipher?”
“We have the key.”
He didn’t know whether to believe her or not. “I want it.”
“I’m sure you do. But I’m not currently in a position to give it to you. I’ll admit that I was planning on taking Knox hostage, using him as a bargaining chip. Maybe even just killing him and be done with it. But your quartermaster moved fast and we took casualties. That’s the price my people pay for their failure.”
Had any corsair or buccaneer regarded his crew with the same callous disrespect, he would have been marooned on the first island encountered.
And she called him a pirate.
“Don’t forget,” he said, “I have what you really want.”
He’d moved on Stephanie Nelle only because Carbonell had specifically asked him to. If she was to be believed, Nelle had been asking questions about Carbonell, investigating her relationship with the Commonwealth or, more specifically, her relationship with Hale. None of the other three captains knew of her existence, or at least
