Geli rolled her eyes. 'Tennant is saying whatever he has to say to get access to the man he wants to kill. By painting him as a deranged assassin, we can use every metro cop in D.C. to hunt him down. And once you give him the Lee Harvey Oswald treatment, the Secret Service won't let him near the president.'
'That's an elegant strategy. What do we use for evi¬dence?'
'We have hundreds of hours of recordings from Tennant's house and phone. Is the Godin Four still run¬ning upstairs?'
'I didn't notice. Why?'
'With the right programs from the NSA-and our Godin Four-you could piece together a verbal threat against the president that no one could prove was fake.'
Skow smiled with appreciation. 'That's good, Geli. Very good.'
'That's why I'm here. The question is, will Tennant go straight to D.C. or wait the four days?'
'My source says no,' said Skow. 'I've got a short list of places Tennant might run, and Washington is at the bottom.'
Anger tightened Geli's jaw muscles. 'Who is this source, damn it?'
'I can't give you that. I'm sorry.'
'But he says Tennant will run somewhere besides D.C?'
'Yes. Isn't it just common sense? Why should Tennant risk going straight to Washington when the meet is four days away?'
'Because he knows people there who have access to POTUS. The surgeon general. The director of the National Institutes of Health. The politicians from his home state. Senator Barrett Jackson heads the Select Committee on Intelligence, for God's sake. He can get access to the Oval Office with a phone call. And if Tennant convinces someone like Barrett Jackson that he's sane…'
'I see. All right. But we can't be sure where he'll run. And our assassin story will allow us to bring in other federal assets to cover the other locations.'
'Good. You take care of the media. You also need to hit everyone Tennant knows inside the Beltway with a classified NSA security warning. Emphasize his mental instability. Can you do that gracefully?'
Skow's thin lips flattened into something like a smile. 'That's why I'm here.'
Geli nodded, feeling better than she had in hours. 'You'd better get upstairs and make sure they keep the Godin Four fired up. Or get it moved back here quick.'
Skow had never touched Geli before, but he reached out and laid his hand on her wrist. 'You have four days to kill Tennant and Weiss. After that, the Secret Service will be running things, and they'll work very hard to trap Tennant rather than kill him.'
'That's why you're going to make sure nothing he says will be believed.'
Skow nodded. 'Right.'
'Don't worry,' Geli assured him. 'The president will never see Tennant again. In twenty-four hours he'll be as dead as his brother.'
CHAPTER 20
It was dark by the time we reached Raleigh. Highway 64 turned to I-40, and then we were rolling back through Research Triangle Park, moving west toward Tennessee.
'Look at that,' Rachel said, watching the familiar lights drift by. 'When it's dark like this, I can almost believe you could drop me off at my house in Durham, and I could go inside and make a cup of tea.'
'You know better now.'
She looked at me for a long time, then sighed in the dark.
'I'm sorry I got you into this,' I said. 'I haven't really apologized yet.'
'I got myself into it.'
'No. I did that when I chose you as my analyst.'
The weariness in Rachel's face told me she was accus¬tomed to dealing with other people's guilt. 'Don't start trying to figure out the vagaries of fate. If a butterfly had flapped its wings in Malaysia before you called, you would have found someone else. That's the way life is.'
I'd said that kind of thing to myself before, but in this case I didn't believe it. 'No. I sought you out because you're the best at what you do. And Jungian analysts aren't like psychologists, one on every corner. I know it sounds juvenile, but I have this feeling I was meant to find you.'
She looked at me with infinitely perceptive eyes, but beneath her perception I saw pain. Somehow, I had prodded a deep nerve. When she spoke, it was in a voice devoid of emotion.
'It's easy to tell ourselves that whatever happens to us was meant to be. It's comforting. It gives us a sense that there's some larger plan. I thought my husband and I were meant to be together. But we weren't. It was just a bad choice that I rationalized as fate. It's pathetic, really.'
'Pathetic? That marriage gave you your son.'
'Who died frightened and in pain at the age of five.'
Her tone had a warning edge to it. I'd seen many chil¬dren die during my years practicing medicine, and I knew how it could affect parents. They could be shat¬tered beyond recovery. Even hospital staff weren't immune. The exoskeleton of professionalism melts easily in the presence of a suffering child. For me that suffer¬ing-the agony of innocents-was one of the primary obstacles to believing in God.
'You and your son gave each other five years of unconditional love. Would you rather he'd never lived, to spare you both the pain at the end?'
She fixed me with an indignant glare. 'You'll say any¬thing, won't you? You don't observe any boundaries.'
'Not when I've earned the right to cross them.' I was speaking of the loss of my own child, and she knew it.
She looked out the window again. 'Let's not talk about this.'
'We don't have to talk at all. But we need supplies. I'm going to stop at an all-night Wal-Mart in Winston- Salem or Asheville. That gives you a couple of hours to sleep.'
'I am exhausted,' she admitted.
'Come here.'
'What?'
'Lean over here.'
'On your shoulder?'
'No. Be brave. Curl up on the seat and lay your head on my lap.'
She shook her head, but not in refusal. I kept my eyes on the road. After a few moments, she pulled off her shoes, then folded her legs on the seat and laid her head on my right thigh. I sensed that her eyes were open, but I didn't look down. I lowered my right hand and began to stroke her forehead, sliding my fingers back into her hair.
'This reminds me of when I was a little girl,' she said.
'I'm not talking to you. Close your eyes.'
After a while, she did.
We hit Asheville at 10:30 P.M. A brightly lit Wal-Mart store appeared like an oasis out of the dark, and I pulled off the interstate. Rachel's head was still in my lap, and my right leg was nearly numb. She didn't respond when I spoke. I was tempted to leave her in the truck while I went into the store, but I didn't want her to wake up alone in the parking lot. There was also a chance that the local police had received an APB on the fisherman's stolen pickup. To avoid being ambushed when we came out of the store, I awakened Rachel and posted her just inside the glass doors, where she could see anyone who took an undue interest in our maroon Ram.
I went straight to the sporting goods department and began piling items beside an unattended cash register. A two-man tent. Sleeping bags. Backpacks. A Coleman lantern, a stove ring, and fuel. From another aisle I selected two Silent Shadow camouflage jumpsuits, camo headgear, rubber camo boots, and insulated underwear. One aisle over again, I chose a compound bow, eight arrows, and a quiver. I topped off my pile with a com¬pass, a
