He drove off while I climbed the steps. Callie Grafton and Kelly Erlanger looked shocked when they saw me. They were alone in the house — the admiral had dropped his mother at the nursing home where she resided on his way to the airport with Dorsey. Tonight Callie made me a bowl of soup and a sandwich while I took a shower. When I undressed, glass pebbles cascaded onto the floor.
Looking in the mirror, I had to admit, I was a sight. I had two red, swollen, inflamed welts on my face where that guy had smacked me with his pistol. The one along my jaw had bled some. My hands, face, and neck were scratched in dozens of places from flying glass. I also raked some tiny glass fragments from my hair. No wonder I had itched.
Erlanger sat beside me while I ate. Callie hovered nearby. I summarized my adventures, omitting the parts I didn’t even want to think about.
The admiral returned later and took the downstairs couch. He had an old 1911 Colt, which he put on the floor by the couch. The MP-5 was gone — it was in the trunk of the car I had abandoned on the freeway. I inherited the little.38 Dorsey had used to defend her castle. I made sure it was loaded and put it in my pocket. I was getting stiffer by the minute and had to work to climb the stairs to the guest room.
Erlanger was already in the bed with the lights out.
I undressed and crawled between the sheets. She snuggled right up to me. She was warm, smelled good, and settled right in with her head on my shoulder.
I thought the romantic side of our relationship could use some work, but I was too tired that evening. That must have been the last thought I had before I dropped off to sleep.
When I awoke the next morning the sky was gray. Kelly was still asleep, curled up against me, so I started to get out of bed. She wrapped her arms around me and gave me a big hug, then let me go.
I wasn’t sure what it all meant. Maybe we were working up to something, or maybe I was a substitute for the teddy bear she had left at home.
Jake Grafton already had coffee made when I came downstairs. He was sitting at the kitchen table, his Colt lying beside his coffee cup, watching a cable news show.
“You’re making quite a splash in law enforcement circles,” he said, eyeing me to gauge my reaction. “Somehow you’re the bad guy who killed all those folks at the safe house, murdered those guys at Willie Varner’s, and, I have no doubt, killed that cop and those two other guys last night.”
What a way to start a morning! “Well, I figured that,” I admitted. “Death row, here I come. I’m going to have to get a hobby, something I can do in a small room.” At least the coffee was hot. “Sarah Houston tell you all that?”
He nodded. “She was full of information. One of the tidbits I thought would interest you is the fact that Mikhail Goncharov may still be alive.”
I decided the coffee needed milk and got some from the refrigerator. Then I sat down across the table from him.
“The safe house is in Pocahontas County, West Virginia. The county sheriff passed a set of prints to the FBI that they have been unable to identify,” he continued. “The powers that be haven’t made the connection between these prints and the people at the CIA safe house, but Sarah thought it curious. The prints of every person the CIA had there last Monday were on file. Goncharov’s prints weren’t, of course, because he has never been fingerprinted by any American agency.”
“Where is this person?”
“You’ll need to see the sheriff.”
“Have they put me in the crime computer?”
“Yes. On a national security warrant, arrest and hold. No charges listed.”
“Terrific.” I thought about that for a moment, then said, “If it is Goncharov, he only speaks Russian.”
“Take Erlanger with you.”
We discussed it. He agreed to rent a car this morning for me so it wouldn’t appear in my name if anyone ran a computer check at the car rental companies.
“What about the phone number on that cell phone I gave you last night?”
“Belongs to a Dell Royston.”
I wasn’t as stiff this morning as I was last night, but I still felt as if I had been run over by something big. I worked on the soreness in my shoulders as I tried to recall where I had heard Royston’s name.
“Wasn’t he some big weenie at the White House?”
Grafton nodded a fraction of a millimeter. “He was chief of staff,” he said. “Left three months ago. He’s running the president’s reelection campaign, I think.”
“He was the asshole I shouted at on the telephone last night?”
“Perhaps.”
“Those numbers I gave you from those other two phones?”
“Don’t think you’d recognize the names. Sarah is working them.”
“So what’s going down?”
Grafton got up and went to the window. He looked out, then turned to face me and leaned against the sink. “Something was in those files. Six of the seven suitcases may be ashes, yet Goncharov may remember something.”
“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not quite following you.
“Something that connects someone at the White House with the KGB or the foreign intelligence service.”
I stared. “Naw.”
“Someone really high up in government,” Jake Grafton said, tugging at his nose. “Someone with the power to make things happen.”
“Erlanger translated some of the stuff in the intact suitcase for me,” I told him. “The files she saw have code names for every agent, every contact. The code names are rarely identified, and they are always in capital letters, BLUE, FOREST, MAX, something like that.”
“Callie translated several files for me last night,” he replied. “I doubt that any of these files on domestic dirty tricks by the KGB are what we are after. The file we want would have been a First Chief Directorate file, foreign intelligence. If we had the file, even with code names, if we knew the time and place well enough, we could make a shrewd guess who the agent might be.”
He threw up his hands. “But we don’t have the file. I want you to find Goncharov, talk to him, see what he knows. There may have been a foreign intelligence file that piqued his interest.”
“Kelly said he hasn’t had access to KGB files since he retired, like four years ago,” I objected. “This administration wasn’t in office when he made his notes.”
Grafton shrugged.
“What should I do with him when I find him?”
“Talk to him, then call me. I may have an epiphany or two by then.”
“Yes, sir.”
I don’t know why, but that word “sir” often slips out when I am talking to Grafton. My mind was elsewhere. The president of the United States. Holy…! I hadn’t fallen in a hole, I’d fallen in the Grand Canyon.
I poured a cup of coffee for Kelly and took it upstairs. I kissed her cheek, and she rolled over and kissed me back. When she smelled the coffee her eyes popped open.
“We’re going to West Virginia this morning,” I told her as she sipped. “Mikhail Goncharov may be alive.”
Her eyes widened and she stared at me.
“I’ll need you to translate.”
“Alive? How could that be?”
“I don’t know. The county sheriff sent an unidentified person’s prints to the FBI. The prints may be from Goncharov. We’re going to see if we can beat the crowd, interview him first.”
“How did you learn about this?” she said, and had another sip of coffee.
“Jake Grafton knows people.” I wasn’t about to tell her about Zelda Hudson/Sarah Houston, who was supposed to be in prison. “They tell him things.”
“Let’s hope his friends are right,” she said. She put the coffee cup on the bedside table and moved my hand under her pajama top.
