winding up in a coffin.”
Sal Molina was not squeamish. “Innocent people get murdered every day by terrorists. Casualties are inevitable.”
Jake Grafton only grunted. He worked on his beer and idly watched the ball game on television.
Sal Molina took a long pull of beer, then said, “Car bombs alone kill dozens of people around the globe every day. True, Abu Qasim and his minions aren’t responsible for all of them, or even most of them, but they do their share. And they are the people capable of pulling off big, complex operations, such as shooting down airliners, blowing up trains, sinking ships, assassinating heads of state … How many casualties are you willing to take to get Qasim?”
Abu Qasim was the most dangerous terrorist alive, in the opinion of most of the people in the upper echelons of the intelligence community. Grafton had crossed swords with him once before, and Qasim escaped alive. And Marisa Petrou had been close by.
Sal Molina, the lawyer, bored in. “One … ten … a hundred … a thousand?”
“That if the question, isn’t it?” Grafton murmured. “Winchester and his buddies better update their wills and get right with the man upstairs.”
“You’ll give it a try, then?”
Grafton finished his beer and crushed the can in his fist. “I don’t think that using this cabal creates more risk for my people. In the final analysis, the job is fighting terrorism, one way or the other.”
“Winchester and his friends are all volunteers,” Molina said, “for whatever reasons they think are good enough. Your clandestine operators are also volunteers.”
“Don’t give me that shit, Sal. We don’t send people to commit suicide. Not for God, or Allah, or the holy flag, or any other reason under the sun. We send people to take calculated risks to achieve results that we hope will benefit all the citizens of this republic. And I’m the idiot who calculates the risks and has to live with the outcome, good or bad.”
The silence that followed that comment was broken when Molina murmured, “Sorry.”
“All things considered,” Jake Grafton finally said, “I think we should give it a try.”
Winchester’s estate in eastern Connecticut comprised almost fifty acres. His wife owned thoroughbreds, and although she was gone, the horses weren’t. They sported in pastures doing horsey things behind carefully painted white board fences. The barn was recognizably a barn, painted white and trimmed in red and blue. It had paved floors and stalls and mechanized hay-bale-moving equipment. I thought it needed a chew mail pouch sign on the side, but there wasn’t one.
I stood in the middle of the barn looking at the horses, some of whom were in their stalls looking at me. They looked a lot smarter than some of the people I spend my time with.
“It doesn’t even smell like a barn,” I said to Jake Grafton, who was standing beside me looking around in silent amazement. “Look up there.” I pointed. “Aren’t those odorizers of some type? I thought I smelled lavender.”
Grafton looked, shook his head and walked out of the barn without saying good-bye to the horses. I trailed along behind him.
I should probably introduce myself. My name is Tommy Carmellini, and I work for Jake Grafton, sort of. Officially I’m a tech-support guy, but Grafton, who is the agency’s head of European Operations, wants me to do nontech chores for him from time to time, so when I’m not bugging embassies in Bulgaria or tapping phones in Buenos Aires, I trail around with him doing whatever he tells me.
Today he led me across the paved parking lot behind Winchester’s mansion and past the row of limousines and their chauffeurs, who were standing around visiting and smoking and wiping invisible road grime from their chariots with white linen towels. As we went by the manicured flower beds, I nodded at the gardener, a lady in a wide-brimmed straw hat kneeling in the dirt, digging up the dying fall flowers, and followed my boss into the mansion.
The place was stunning. The back of the building held the living quarters, kitchen, dining room and guest rooms, while the front was one huge room. The second-story living quarters had a balcony in the room, the ceiling of which was at least three stories high. The largest white marble fireplace I have ever seen was on the left wall; the other two walls consisted solely of soaring glass windows — the entire walls. Sunlight streamed in. The ceiling pitched down away from the fireplace, and through the windows to the right, where it was lowest, I could see a patio, a pool and a cabana of some sort.
The floor of the room was broken up into seating areas, one around fireplace, one around a wet bar and piano and one around a library collection housed in bookcases under the balcony. Several nice bronze sculptures sat on coffee tables, and a large stone one stood in one corner. It was an Indian chief, I think, or perhaps a wood sprite.
I decided the architect either was a really far-out, avant-garde genius or had a serious drug problem.
The house sat on a low hill, so there was a view. Looking between the mature trees in the lawn, way out there I could see Long Island Sound.
I would have liked more time to gawk, but it wasn’t in the program. Huntington Winchester, whom I recognized from his pictures, shook Grafton’s hand and introduced him to the people standing around the fireplace area. Being the hired help, I hung back; no one tried to introduce me.
A dog came over to check me out. She was a collie, reasonably well groomed, dressed in a nice collar. She did her sniffs and moved on. I didn’t try to make a friend. It’s not that I don’t like dogs, but I can never bring myself to pet strange dogs. Been bit too many times, I suppose.
Grafton had given me the names of the people, so it was easy to put faces to them. Simon Cairnes, the American banker, was a tall, erect, elderly man with an enviable mane of white hair. He walked with the help of a cane.
Near him was Oleg Tchernychenko, the Russian who lived in England. He was a medium-sized guy, lean, in his fifties, dressed in a Scottish golfing outfit. Amazingly, even in duds like that, he fit right into this eclectic crowd.
Next Grafton shook hands with Wolfgang Zetsche, the German shipping magnate. He was a skinny, feisty fellow, full of nervous energy. This guy, Grafton had told me, was a lady-killer of some renown, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at him. Well, maybe the ladies would, but his charm escaped me.
Jerry Hay Smith, the American journalist, was also a little shrimp of a guy. He was in his early forties, I thought, whippet thin, a Boston Marathon type. I thought he was also probably one of those guys who go through life with something to prove and wearing a perpetual chip on their shoulder. He almost elbowed Zetsche out of the way so he could pump Grafton’s hand. He was wearing a cheap sports coat that he might have stolen from a used- car salesman.
The Swiss banker, Rolf Gnadinger, was wearing an Italian silk suit that must have set him back a couple of thousand euros. Unfortunately he had a paunch that was a little too big and round shoulders, so he didn’t cut quite the figure he was striving for. On the other hand, that was a heck of a nice suit. A nice watch, too — I got just a glimpse, but it looked like a platinum Rolex accented with diamonds.
Last but not least, Winchester introduced the admiral to Isolde Petrou, the French widow who was running the biggest banking operation in Europe. She was in her early seventies, I think, dressed in the latest French fashion; even so, she looked as tough as shoe leather. She was wearing small diamond earrings and a little blue stone on a necklace that complemented her tailored knit dress. (I don’t mean to bore you, but being a former jewel thief, I notice these things.)
Grafton asked them all to take a seat. He stood with his back to the white marble fireplace. “Tommy, check that we are indeed alone.”
I checked the doors, even went upstairs to ensure no maids were listening just inside the doors to the balcony. I gave Grafton the Hi sign.
“Mr. Winchester tells me you are friends of his,” Grafton began. “He also tells me you have agreed to allow my agency, the CIA, access to the records of your businesses for the purpose of finding money-laundering transactions that we can use to find terrorists. Except for Mr. Smith, of course, who doesn’t have a business. Is that correct?”
They all murmured assent. Then Jerry Hay Smith said loudly, “He didn’t tell us you are CIA.”
“An oversight on his part, no doubt,” Grafton said with a straight face, then motored on. “He also tells me
