State of Siege

“I know.” He touched her cheek and smiled lightly. “But we’ll get through this.”

“Not when everything is pissing me off,” she said.

“Apart from the food, what else bothered you?” Hood asked.

“I was angry at the parents we were with, at the table manners of their kids, at the way the cars raced through red lights or stopped in the crosswalks. Everything got to me. Everything.”

“We’ve all had days like that,” he said.

“Paul, I can’t remember when I wasn’t like that,” Sharon said. “It’s just been building and building, and I don’t want to spoil things for Harleigh or Alexander this week.”

“You’ve been through some rough times,” Hood said. “We both have. But the kids aren’t stupid. They know what’s been happening with us. What I wanted, what I hoped for, was that we not let anything get to us while we’re here.”

Sharon shook her head sadly. “How?”

“We’re not in a rush,” Hood said. “The only thing we have to do over the next few days is to build some good memories for ourselves and the kids. Start to pull ourselves out of this funk. Can we focus on that?”

Sharon placed her hand on his. There was a hint of garlic from something she’d cooked the night before. That didn’t do a hell of a lot for passion either, Hood had to admit. The routine of life. The smells that became more familiar than that unforgettable first scent of a woman’s hair. The chores that turned the tip of your angel’s wing back into a hand.

“I want things to change,” Sharon said. “I felt something in the van driving up—”

“I know,” Hood said. “I felt it, too. It was nice.”

Sharon looked at him. Her eyes were moist. “No, Paul,” she said. “What I felt was scary.”

“Scary?” Hood said. “What do you mean?”

“The whole ride up, I kept remembering the drives we used to take when the kids were small. Out to Palm Springs or Big Bear Lake or up the coast. We were so different then.”

“We were younger,” Hood said.

“It was more than that.”

“We were focused,” Hood said. “The kids needed us more than they do now. It’s like monkey bars. You’ve got to stand close together when their reach is small. Otherwise they fall.”

“I know,” Sharon said. Tears began trickling from her eyes. “But I wanted to feel that togetherness today, and I didn’t. I want those good times again, those old feelings.”

“We can have them now,” Hood promised.

“But there’s all this crap inside,” Sharon said. “All this bitterness, disappointment, resentment. I want to go back and do things over so we can grow together, not apart.”

Hood looked at his wife. Sharon had a habit of looking away whenever she was confused and of looking directly at him when she was not. She was looking straight into his eyes.

“We can’t do that,” Hood remarked. “But we can work on fixing things, one at a time.”

He pulled her closer. Sharon moved across the bed, but there was no warmth in their proximity. He didn’t understand this at all. He was giving her what she had wanted, what she said she needed, and she was still withdrawing. Maybe she was just venting. She hadn’t really had a chance to do that. He held her silently for several minutes.

“Hon,” Hood went on, “I know you haven’t wanted to do this before, but it might be a good idea if the two of us talked to someone. Liz Gordon said she’d give me some names, if you’re interested.”

Sharon didn’t say anything. Hood held her closer and heard that her breathing had slowed. He craned back slightly. She was staring at nothing and fighting back tears.

“At least the children turned out all right,” she said. “At least we did that right.”

“Sharon, we did more than just that right,” he said. “We’ve made a life together. Not perfect, but a better life than a lot of people. We’ve done okay. And we’ll do better.”

He pulled her close again as she began to sob openly. Her arms went around his shoulders.

“That isn’t what a girl dreams of when she thinks of the future, you know?” she wept.

“I know.” He cradled her tighter. “We’ll make it better, I promise.”

He didn’t say anything else. He just held on as passion sent Sharon’s regret into a power dive. She would bottom out and then, in the morning, they’d start the long climb back.

It would be difficult to take things slow and easy, as he’d said. But he owed that to Sharon. Not because he’d let his career dictate his hours but because he’d given his passion to Nancy Bosworth and Ann Farris. Not his body, but his thoughts, his attention, even his dreams. That energy, that focus, should have been saved for his wife and his family.

Sharon fell asleep snuggled in his arms. This wasn’t how he wanted to feel closeness, but at least it was something. When he was sure he wouldn’t wake her, he released her gently, reached over to the night table, and snapped off the light. Then he lay back, staring at the ceiling and feeling disgusted with himself in the hard, unforgiving way you can only at night. And he tried to figure out if there was a way he could make this weekend a little more special for the three people he’d somehow let down.

FIVE

New York, New York

Saturday, 4:57 A.M.

Standing outside the run-down, two story brick building near the Hudson River made Lieutenant Bernardo Barone think of his native Montevideo.

It wasn’t just the dilapidated condition of the body shop that reminded him of the slums where he grew up. For one thing, there were the brisk winds blowing from the south. The smell of the Atlantic Ocean was mixed with the smell of gasoline from cars racing along the nearby West Side Highway. In Montevideo, fuel and the sea wind were ever present. Overhead, a steady flow of air traffic followed the river to the north before turning east to La Guardia Airport. Planes were always criss-crossing the skies over his home.

Yet it was more than that which reminded him of home. Bernardo Barone had found those in every port city he’d visited the world over. What made it different was being out here by himself. Loneliness was something he felt in Montevideo whenever he returned.

No, he thought suddenly. Don’t get into that. He didn’t want to be angry and depressed. Not now. He had to focus.

He backed up against the door. It felt cool on his sweaty back. The door was wood covered with a sheet of steel on both sides. There were three key locks on the outside and two heavy bolts on the inside. The sun-faded sign above the door read Viks’ Body Shop. The owner was a member of the Russian Mafia named Leonid Ustinoviks. The small, bony, chain-smoker was a former Soviet military leader and an acquaintance of Georgiev’s through the Khmer Rouge. Barone had been informed by Ustinoviks that there wasn’t a body shop in New York that was exclusively a body shop. By night, when it was quiet and no one could approach the building unseen or unheard, either they were chop shops selling stolen cars, drug or weapon dealerships, or slavery operations. The Russians and Thais were big in this arena, sending kidnapped American children out of the country or bringing young women into the United States. In most cases, the captives were put to work as prostitutes. Some of the girls who had worked for Georgiev in Cambodia had ended up here, moving through Ustinoviks’s hands. The size of the crates used to ship “spare parts” and the international nature of the trade made these businesses a perfect front.

Leonid Ustinoviks’s business was arms. He had them brought in from former republics of the Soviet Union. The weapons came into Canada or Cuba, usually by freighter. From there, they were slipped into New England and the Middle Atlantic States, or into Florida and the other Gulf Coast states. Typically, they were moved piecemeal from small-town storehouses to places like this body shop. That was to prevent losing everything if the FBI and the NYPD’s Intelligence Division caught them in transit. Both groups quietly monitored the communications and activities of persons from nations known to sponsor illicit trade or terrorism: Russia, Libya, North Korea, and many others. The police regularly changed signs along the riverfront and in the warehouse districts, altering parking