“You help us get Royston and whoever is behind him, the prosecutors may go easy on you. Multiple counts of murder could put you in prison for a long, long time. For all I know, they still have the death penalty in West Virginia.”
“You can’t prove anything.”
“I’m beginning to see it,” I said softly, not taking my eyes off her. “I’ve been wondering how they learned Goncharov was at the safe house.”
“Erlanger was the leak,” Grafton said. He sounded tired. “She told them as soon as she received the translation assignment.”
The scene at the safe house replayed itself in my mind. “When I went into that burning house, she was busy burning the files, not trying to save them,” I said, thinking aloud.
“Your presence was an unexpected complication,” Grafton mused. “You were a witness they couldn’t seem to kill. Worse, you shot back. They didn’t expect that. Erlanger didn’t want to die, so she went along until she could steal your car. When you showed up at her house that night, she was going through the only surviving files, trying to determine if the important one was there.” He addressed her. “Were you thinking of blackmailing someone?”
She didn’t turn a hair. “You can’t prove anything.”
Jake Grafton pulled a file from the bookcase behind him. “You didn’t look hard enough.”
Now an expression crossed her face, and it was ugly.
“You can’t prove anything,” she insisted.
Grafton tucked the file back in the bookcase between two books. “Tell Royston I have it,” he said.
“You’re letting me go?”
Grafton shrugged. “It’s your choice. Cooperate for a reduced sentence or rabbit off to Royston and take the consequences.”
She stood. I stepped aside. She walked to the door, opened it and went out without even glancing at me.
Okay, okay. So I don’t know shit about women.
“She’ll tell them you have that file.”
He grunted.
“What’s in it?”
He pulled it out of the bookcase again, passed it to me. I opened it. Inside was a section of the Washington Post.
“There’s nothing here.” That comment just slipped out.
Grafton shrugged. “Royston will suspect that’s the case. But he won’t know, will he?”
“Is that why you let her go, to tell them about the file?”
“They’ll listen to what she has to say, then kill her.”
That comment stunned me. He said it without sorrow or remorse. And he was right. Kelly Erlanger had to die.
“Why didn’t you tell her that?”
He levered himself from his chair. When he was upright he looked straight into my eyes. “I made her an offer — cooperate or suffer the consequences. Death is the consequence. She won’t believe it, though, until they point a pistol at her head and pull the trigger.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
What is your name?” Callie Grafton asked in Russian. The archivist sat silently at the kitchen table, apparently thinking about the question. “I don’t know,” he said at last.
“What kind of work do you do?”
“I don’t know,” he repeated hoarsely. A sheen of perspiration appeared on his forehead.
“Are you married?” Callie sat beside him and held his hand.
“I don’t know?” he said, obviously bewildered.
“You came to my house a few moments ago with two people. Do you remember their names?”
“Oh, yes. The woman is Kelly. The man is Carmellini — that’s an Italian name, I think.”
“Is he Italian?”
The Russian pondered it. “He might be,” he said at last. “But perhaps not.”
“If he is not an Italian, what nationality is he?”
Her questions didn’t trouble Mikhail Goncharov, but they obviously confused him. She thought it interesting that he was not curious about the answers to her questions, merely surprised and troubled that he didn’t know them.
“Are you thirsty or hungry?” she asked finally. And for the first time she got an affirmative answer.
After Kelly Erlanger took a powder, Jake Grafton wandered into the kitchen. I trailed along behind. Mikhail Goncharov was sitting at the small round table drinking soda pop and Callie was fixing sandwiches.
“Would you like a sandwich, Tommy?” she asked. “Ham and Swiss or tuna salad?” She didn’t remark on the commotion in the living room, nor did she ask if Kelly Erlanger was going to join us. The thought occurred to me that Callie Grafton was as tough as her husband.
“Ham and Swiss, please.” I dropped into a chair beside Goncharov. “Is it amnesia?”
“He doesn’t seem to remember anything,” she said without turning around.
“I’ve heard these hard-drive crashes are sometimes temporary,” I said, just to make conversation. “Of course, what I know about it wouldn’t fill a thimble.” There was a napkin dispenser on the table. I helped myself to one; I used it to swab at the scratch on my cheek, which was still burning. There was a trace of blood.
Jake Grafton pulled three beers from the fridge and handed me one. It tasted great. He opened another and put it in front of Goncharov, who abandoned the soda pop and took a long swig.
After I had a couple of slurps, I said to him, “Kelly must be making a beeline for a pay phone. She might have already told them about this house. They could be here in the next five minutes.”
Grafton savored a swig of beer, swallowed it, and nodded.
“Maybe I’m just a nervous Nellie, Admiral, but if they hit us here in this house, we’re dead.”
“I called some friends yesterday,” Jake said. “They arrived this morning.”
“Oh.”
Callie put a sandwich in front of Goncharov and one in front of me. She had even put mustard on mine. I took a bite and worked on it a while. “Who are they?”
“Snake-eaters. There are a half dozen of them out there.”
“I didn’t see anyone.. and I was looking.”
“They’re hard to see,” he admitted. When Callie served his sandwich, he sat down beside me. “Tell me about yesterday, everything you can remember.”
I was still talking when Callie took Goncharov upstairs to the guest room for a nap. He had only eaten a few bites of his sandwich.
Telling Jake Grafton everything I knew made me feel better. He asked a few questions to clarify points, but other than that, he had little to say. When I had run down and he was out of questions, I asked one. “Do you really think they’ll kill her?”
“She called Dell Royston from every stop. Sarah Houston said it sounded like there was water running in the background every time. She said Goncharov had amnesia, told him where you were going, the name of the motel where you spent the night, my name, address, everything she could think of.”
“Why didn’t they hit us in the motel?”
“Too dangerous, too many witnesses, and Royston didn’t want you killing any more of his people. Apparently they signed up for murder, not combat.”
Dell Royston, a political operative at the White House. “Is Royston Mr. Big, you think?”
“That’s the question,” he muttered. “Let’s go make some telephone calls. I’ll drive. I want you to sit beside me with the MP-5 on your lap.”
