same old lying and deception of his CIA years? At least he could tell Lockwood about the note. Perhaps Lockwood might even have an idea about this mysterious Joe Blitz. He entered his number.
“It’s been more than twenty-four hours,” Lockwood answered the phone testily, not bothering with the usual salutations. “What have you been doing?”
“I found a note at Volkonsky’s the other night I thought you’d want to know about.”
“Why didn’t you mention it yesterday?”
“It was just a piece of torn paper with some computer code on it. I didn’t know it was significant. But then I was able to decode it.”
“Well? What did it say?”
He read the note into the phone.
“Who the hell’s Joe Blitz?” Lockwood asked.
“I was hoping you might know.”
“I’ll get my staff on it. And also this Aunt Natasha.”
Ford slowly hung up the phone. There was one other thing he’d noticed: the note did not at all strike him as being written by a man on the verge of suicide.
31
AFTER A QUICK NAP AND A late lunch, Ford walked over to the stables. He had some important business to take care of with Kate: she had leveled with him, and now it was his turn to tell her the truth.
He found her filling up the horse troughs from a hose. She glanced at him. Her face was still pale, almost translucent, with worry.
“Thanks for vouching for me back there,” Ford said. “I’m sorry I put you in an awkward position.”
She shook her head. “Never mind. I’m just relieved I don’t have to hide anything from you anymore.”
He stood in the doorway, trying to screw up the courage to tell her. She was not going to take it well—not at all. His courage failed. He would tell her later, on the ride.
“Thanks to Melissa, everyone thinks we’re sleeping together.” Kate looked at him. “She’s impossible. First she was chasing Innes, and then Dolby, and now you. What she really needs is a good shagging.” She managed a wan smile. “Maybe you guys should get together and draw straws.”
“No thanks.” Ford eased himself down on a bale. It was cool in the barn and motes drifted in the air. Blondie was playing again on the boom box.
“Wyman, I’m sorry I wasn’t very welcoming when you arrived. I want to tell you that I’m glad you’re here. I never liked how we broke things off.”
“It was pretty nasty.”
“We were young and stupid. I did a lot of growing up since then—I mean, a
Ford wished he hadn’t read her dossier, knowing the pain she must have gone through in the intervening years.
“Me, too.”
She lifted her arms and let them drop. “And so here we are. Again.”
She looked so hopeful, standing there in dusty barn, hay in her hair. And so breathtakingly pretty. “Want to go for a ride?” he asked. “I’m going to pay another visit to Begay.”
“I’ve got a lot to do . . . .”
“We made a pretty good team last time.”
She brushed back her hair and looked at him—searchingly, for a long time. Finally she spoke. “All right.”
They saddled up and set off southwestward toward the sandstone bluffs along the edge of the valley. Kate rode ahead, her slim body fitted confidently to her horse, swaying with it, in a rhythmic, almost erotic motion. A battered Australian cowboy hat was crammed on her head, and her black hair stirred in the wind.
As they approached the edge of the mesa where the Midnight Trail plunged down through a cut in the rock, Ford moved his horse up alongside her. They stopped twenty feet from the edge of the cliffs. She was staring across toward the horizon, a troubled look on her face. The wind blew up in uneven gusts from below, bringing with it an invisible cloud of grit. Ford spat and shifted in the saddle. “Are you still thinking about what happened last night?” he asked.
“I can’t
“I don’t know.”
She gazed out over the vast red desert unrolling to blue mountains and cloud-castled infinities. “Looking at this,” she murmured, “it’s not hard to believe in God. I mean, who knows? Maybe we
She brushed back her hair and smiled ruefully at him.
Ford was astonished. This was a very different Kate from the strident atheist he had known in graduate school. He wondered once again what had happened in those missing two years.
32
BOOKER CRAWLEY STUCK THE CHURCHILL IN his mouth while he lined up the snooker shot. Satisfied, he hit the cue ball with a decisive rap and watched the little balls do their thing.
“Nice,” said his billiards companion, watching the three ball drop into the braided leather pocket.
Through a row of narrow windows, the sun glinted off the river. It was a pleasant Thursday morning at the Potomac Club, and most members were at work. Crawley was also at work, or so he considered it—entertaining a potential client who owned a barrier island near Cape Hatteras and wanted the government to pay twenty million dollars to build a bridge to it. A bridge like that would double, even triple his land investment. For Crawley, this was a no-brainer. The junior senator from North Carolina owed him a favor after that golfing trip to St. Andrews, and he was a man who could be counted on for his loyalty and the preservation of his perks. One phone call, an earmark slipped into an unrelated bill, and Crawley would make the developer millions while pocketing a seven-figure fee for himself. If Alaska could have its bridge to nowhere, North Carolina should have one, too.
He watched the developer lining up his shot. He came from that special tribe of southerners who sported three last names and a roman numeral. Safford was his name, Safford Montague McGrath III. McGrath came from fine old Scotch-Irish stock, a big, blond, trim specimen of southern gentility. In other words, he was as dumb as a cow in the rain. McGrath made a show of being savvy in the ways of Washington, but anyone could see he was walking around with a hayseed jammed in one of his big country ears. Crawley had a feeling the man was going to tussle over the fee like a pigskin at the two-yard line. He was the type who had to come away from a negotiation feeling like he’d beat the crap out of the other side, or he wouldn’t be able to get it up at home.
“So how’s Senator Stratham these days?” McGrath asked, as if he had once known the old bastard.
“Fine, just fine.” No doubt these days the old boy was enjoying a lunch of Gerber’s whirled peas and sipping Ensure through a straw. The reality was, Crawley had never worked with old Senator Stratham; he’d bought the firm, Stratham & Co., when Stratham had retired. He had thereby acquired an aura of respectability, a link to the fine old days, which handily distinguished him from the other K Street lobbyists who had sprung up after the last election like mushrooms in a steaming pile after a rain.
McGrath’s next shot grazed the corner, made a little jog in front of the pocket, and drifted off down the felt. The man straightened up, saying nothing, his lips tight.
Crawley could polish off the fellow with his eyes closed, but that wouldn’t do. No—the best way was to stay just ahead until the very end, then lose. Close the deal on the man’s flush of triumph.
He flubbed the next shot by a close enough margin to give it verisimilitude.
“Nice try,” said McGrath. He took a long puff on his cigar, laid it in the marble ashtray, crouched, and sighted. Then he shot. He obviously considered himself a hotshot pool player, but he didn’t have the finesse for snooker. Still, this was an easy one and the ball was well potted.
“Whew,” said Crawley. “You’re going to make me work, Safford.”
An attendant entered carrying a silver tray that held a note. “Mr. Crawley?”
Crawley took the note with a flourish. The club management, he thought with a smile, still used a system whereby an army of old-time darkies went flitting around with notes on silver platters—very antebellum. Getting a note on a silver platter beat hell out of fumbling for a squealing cell phone.
“Excuse me, Safford.” Crawley unfolded the note. It read,
