lawyer, knew who we were, and we communicated through him.”
“I remember that on the porch that night, you told Angela and me your father taught you how to shoot guns.”
“That picture of me with the duck was taken one winter when my mother and I came down and he took me hunting the first time. I didn't like killing birds, but I did it for him. He made sure I was skilled in defending myself in every possible way.”
“I got a taste of that on the beach.”
Sean laughed. “You sure did. He made sure I learned karate, defensive-driving techniques, and a lot of other survival skills normal girls don't need to know.”
“If he was so protective, how could you have believed he was trying to kill you?”
“I never knew him that well, and it's sad that I didn't. My mother, a beautiful and vibrant woman, never dated another man. A few years ago she confessed to me that it was because she didn't want Sam to think for a moment that she would betray him in any way. She told me that the one unpardonable sin in Sam's eyes was betrayal. She said that he would kill anyone who betrayed him, and I knew she was totally serious. I knew from a hundred sources that Sam had killed friends and members of his own family who had crossed him. I didn't think about it until after those men came to Rook and you said Dylan was working for Sam. Then I assumed he thought I had betrayed him with Dylan. But I never told Dylan that Sam was my father. I planned to eventually, but the time never felt right.”
“Russo knew you were Sam's daughter.”
Sean nodded. “When I met Johnny, he was working at Sam's vending company and he was nice to me. At some point, Sam told Johnny that I was his daughter. I had Johnny's private number because in the last few years Sam used Johnny to communicate with my mother and me. Sam trusted Johnny, but he never should have trusted anybody from his own world.”
“You didn't ever mention Sam to Dylan?”
“The only way Dylan could have known about my connection to Sam was if someone who knew told him.”
“He worked for Sam. Maybe Sam told him.”
“Sam told me Dylan didn't work for him. He said he'd never met him and that he couldn't believe Dylan was bringing him down with lies. Sam assumed I had told Dylan about him and that Dylan lied about killing those people for Sam so he could get a deal with the government.
“If Dylan was killing Sam's enemies for someone, it could have been Johnny, because they would have had the same enemies. Sam was effectively out of the crime business, had no reason to kill anybody, but Johnny did. Maybe Johnny set it up so Dylan knew enough about me to get close to me.”
“I'm sure it was something like that,” Winter said.
“I knew what Sam was. One night when I was ten, I looked out a window at Sam's house and saw him knock a man to the ground and kick him until he was unconscious, while two of Sam's men watched. Sam was smiling like a lunatic the whole time he was beating that poor man.”
“That's terrible. I don't blame you for keeping your relationship secret.”
“I just want what I've always wanted-to live a normal life without ever again having to lie about anything to anyone.”
“You deserve that,” Winter told her.
109
McLean, Virginia
Ten o'clock in the morning found Fifteen in the basement of his house sitting on his sleek Italian leather couch, his feet on a matching ottoman. The cigarette smoke swarming around him caught the flickering light cast by his television set, which was showing a nine-ball championship between two female opponents. He knew that the Asian champion, his favorite, would win, because he had watched the tape at least a dozen times. Now, like never before, knowing the outcome of the contest was comforting.
His frown deepened as his eyes moved from the champion-to-be leaning over the pool table to make a shot on the three ball to the coffee table where an ashtray, piled high with butts and ash, kept company with a vase filled with an explosion of silk flowers. The table was also littered with newspapers detailing the explosion in Manhattan and the intelligence reports on the New Orleans fiasco.
Herman Hoffman had passed on to all of his people the belief that they were untouchable, because the organization had been designed to be both too valuable an asset to the government and too dangerous to screw with. Now that invulnerability was ancient history-a blood-splattered myth.
Since he had met with his liaison at the CIA two hours earlier, Fifteen had been sitting alone in his basement weighing his options, smoldering over the mistake he had made. He cringed at the memory of the smug, sawed-off CIA lackey who had passed on the CIA director's threats, knowing that Fifteen didn't dare do more than sit silently and take the man's insults, one by one, nodding all the while like a shell-shocked imbecile. A month ago no one would have dared confront him, much less dictate to him.
Blame it on ego. Herman's and his.
Herman had set the failure in motion, but Fifteen had blown it all with the deputy in New York by playing games instead of just taking care of the business. All he'd had to do was leave Massey there paralyzed and set the explosives for ten or twenty minutes, instead of toying with him. He had put the deputy into a sealed building with no way out, knowing that he would eventually open that refrigerator if only to scrounge some food. Fifteen had someone stay in the neighborhood until after the bomb went off, to ensure it did. The detonator was set for twenty seconds, not even enough time for Massey to piss his pants. How could he have escaped and ended up in the basement? It wasn't possible, but obviously it had been too possible. It was so damned unnecessary. He had known better, but he had given in to his own stupid arrogance.
Fifteen still couldn't believe that of the eight heavily armed cutouts who had tried to kill Massey on two occasions, he had killed six of them. In total, of the hundreds of rounds they had fired at him, the best killers on earth had managed to put a grand total of one bullet into the deputy's leg. And Fred Archer was dead-all that grooming wasted.
He had honestly believed that it couldn't get any worse, that he had fixed everything Herman had screwed up-had total control of the situation at every turn. Massey's death in that building would have sealed the blame, divided it between Greg Nations and Massey. Manelli's and Russo's deaths and the retrieval of the GPS from that computer would have insured that everything was settled, that the cutouts were out of peril. But that was not to be. Every time he thought he had everything back on track, there was Massey tossing another crowbar into the gears and him running to put it right.
Using information Massey and Fletcher Reed had collected, the director of the USMS, Richard Shapiro, had effectively derailed their dark ops train. Shapiro had the CIA by the nuts, and the agency had reacted by threatening to cancel Fifteen's organization's operating license, cut his ties to intelligence, and even throw Fifteen to a congressional oversight committee. The last threat was a bluff. There was no way the CIA could afford to have the cutout cells made public. But there could be a private reckoning-a bullet in the ear, a knife in the jugular, a heart attack, or perhaps a sans- parachute halo jump into the Atlantic.
Shapiro had somehow gotten his hands on the Global Fifty GPS from Sean Devlin's computer, and unbelievably, knew what it was, how it was used, and that the CIA owned the technology. He said he could prove that Archer's evidence against Greg Nations was fraudulent. Massey had told Shapiro everything he'd learned about Herman Hoffman and Fifteen, and about the existence of the cutout cells.
Fletcher Reed's computer printouts were a map to the members of the cells. And there was the matter of the fingerprint cards from Rook, which matched those of four long-dead soldiers whom Reed identified. Fifteen was still sure he could have gotten all of Shapiro's evidence back if the CIA would have let him-an action they had expressly forbidden.
Fifteen looked back up to the tournament on television. The Asian player had a beautiful, lithe body and coldly calculating eyes.
