He said, “I didn’t think busy lawyers in private practice had time to cook for themselves, much less anybody else.”
“Reserve your judgment until after you’ve eaten it. I don’t watch the Food Network and I don’t hold myself out as any sort of cook. But the intent was honorable.”
Melanie had taken more after Knox’s deceased wife, Patty, than she had her father. She was tall and lithe with reddish hair that she usually wore pulled back. She was a graduate of UVA Law School and a rapidly rising young star at a D.C. powerhouse legal firm. The older of his two children—his son, Kenny, was currently in Iraq with his fellow Marines—Melanie had taken it on herself to make sure her father did not starve or wallow in pity over the recent death of her mother and his wife of thirty years.
The meal was eaten in the sunroom where they shared a bottle of Amarone and Melanie filled him in on the latest case she was handling. Over the years his children had quickly learned that their father never discussed his work with them, or anyone else. They knew he traveled the world, often on very little notice, and was gone for long periods of time. This was explained as him serving his country in a minor capacity with the State Department.
He had once told Melanie, “I’m unimportant enough to where they can call on me whenever they like, and I just go.”
That line had worked all the way through middle school. But once his precocious daughter had reached high school Knox could tell she no longer believed it, though she never tried to uncover the truth. His son had just accepted his father disappearing from time to time as the way life was. Now, as a Marine lance corporal serving overseas and trying to stay alive day by day, Kenny Knox had more on his mind, his father hoped, than worrying about what his old man did for a living.
“When you called to cancel,” Melanie began, “I was sure you’d be on a plane somewhere. I got the idea of cooking dinner when you said you’d be back home tonight.”
Knox simply nodded at this, while he sipped his wine and stared out at the trees in his backyard as they were whipsawed by yet another approaching storm.
“So everything going okay at work?” she asked tentatively.
“Just looking over some old papers. Not that enlightening actually.”
It was hard, he knew, for her. Most kids knew exactly what their parents did for a living and consequently could have cared less. While his children were growing up Knox had declined all invitations to parents’ career day at school. After all, what would he have said?
“Given any more thought to retiring?”
“I pretty much already am. One foot in the professional grave.”
“I’m surprised the State Department can function without you.”
Father and daughter exchanged a brief glance and then each looked away, focused on their wine and last bites of roast beef and potatoes.
As she was leaving Melanie let her hug linger around her father’s broad shoulders. She whispered in his ear, “Take care of yourself, Dad. Don’t push the envelope too hard. Dangerous times out there.”
He watched her walk to the cab she’d called to take her home to her condo in D.C. As it drove way, she waved to him.
He waved back, fleeting images of the last thirty years racing through his mind and ending with the image of Macklin Hayes telling him to tread carefully.
His brilliant daughter was right. It was dangerous times out there.
He would call Hayes in the morning. Early. The general was on rooster time. And like the rooster, he believed the sun rose because he did too. He had no answers and many questions. How the general would react to that he didn’t know. In the military Macklin had the rep of always getting the job done, by any means possible, which often included excessive losses. After becoming a battalion commander in Vietnam, Hayes still held the record, Knox believed, of having the highest casualty count of any field officer in the war. Yet because those losses often came with victories, at least victories measured in the taking of small hills or even yards of turf, sometimes only for hours, Hayes had swiftly moved up the command chain. Still, Knox did not intend on becoming one of the man’s statistics on his way to yet another triumph. The best he could hope for was to thread his way through the minefield, keeping his eye firmly on the target and watching his back at the same time. Macklin was a superb infighter, connected in all the right ways, and a man who excelled at putting other people’s necks at risk while protecting his own flanks with skillful dexterity. Competitive past all reason, he reportedly thrashed men half his age in racquetball at the Pentagon’s courts. What he lacked in speed, quickness and stamina he more than made up for with sheer guile and peerless vision.
His exact title in America’s intelligence empire was unknown to Knox. The man performed a curious—and as far as Knox was aware an unprecedented—straddle between military- and civilian-sector intelligence factions. It was a powerful position and anyone under his control had to play by his rules or risk the consequences. He had been a close friend and protégé of Carter Gray, and no one could have had a better mentor. Knox would do his best to gauge the general’s true intentions and then hope to fulfill them. Any way one looked at the task it was a formidable challenge.
He closed the door, stoked up the fireplace and picked up his novel with the intent of finishing it tonight. He might not get another chance for a very long time. When the wheels started to spin in his profession, they tended to spin very fast.
And from what Knox had seen in that box of secrets tonight, this time things could easily spin right out of control.
CHAPTER 10
KNOX WATCHED the earth disappear from underneath him as the tri-engine Falcon Dassault jet shot skyward with enormous thrust. The luxurious, wood-paneled interior of the plane only held three occupants, other than the two pilots up front—Knox, Macklin Hayes and a uniformed steward who’d discreetly disappeared as soon as the plane leveled off and the coffee and continental breakfast was served. When Knox had called Macklin at seven a.m. he’d been told to report to a private airstrip near Front Royal, Virginia, that he had no idea even existed. Five minutes after he’d pulled up in his Rover, the plane had lifted from the tarmac.
Hayes had an office in some building in some undisclosed part of Washington, Knox knew, but the man obviously preferred conducting his meetings at thirty-five thousand feet, as though the altitude made for better decision-making, or at least fewer opportunities to be spied on. Knox knew that just the fuel burn for this flight would have paid for some really nice digs in the heart of D.C. Yet it should have come as no surprise that some high-up government folks treated the U.S. Treasury as though it would never run out of dollars. At least it kept gainfully employed the feds who sold T-bills to the Chinese and the Saudis to keep America running.
The former general was dressed in civilian government standard issue, namely a boring suit and an equally boring tie and black wingtips on the feet. His socks were too short, Knox noted, and revealed pale ankles and the bottom of a hairless calf. The man had definitely not scaled the walls of power based on his fashion sense. He’d done it, Knox was well aware, on nerve and brains. The only sign of his former illustrious military career were the three stars on his tie clip.
They made casual conversation while munching an overabundance of carbs, and then the white-haired Hayes took a final sip of coffee and sat back in his leather seat looking expectant.
“Impressions from your reading session?”
“Many. None of them crystallized. I have to say the record is about as garbled as any I’ve seen. There’re enough holes to fly a jet five times the size of this one right through it without even nicking a wingtip.”
Hayes nodded approvingly. “I had the same initial reaction.”
Knox didn’t bother asking about the significance of the emphasized word because he knew from past dealings with Macklin that he would get zip for his troubles. “And I have to say I’m still not clear on the agenda. Where do you want this to go?”
Hayes spread his
long, bony arms. “Where? To the truth. I suppose.”
“You don’t sound convinced of that,” Knox said warily.
“But that could change, depending on what you find out. You know how this drill works, Knox.”
“Gray and Simpson are dead. Do we let sleeping dogs lie?”
“We need to know. What we do after we know? Now that’s another question entirely and one that does not involve you.”
The man has always been subtle about putting subordinates in their place.
“So I go full-bore on this? Is that what you’re telling me, sir?”
Hayes simply nodded. It struck Knox that the former general might have suspected Knox was somehow taping this conversation.
If only I had the balls to.
Knox decided not to press the man on actually verbalizing his answer. For all he knew there was government muscle hidden on the jet somewhere who might be summoned to relieve him of his ride at nearly eight miles up if he pushed Macklin too far. Far-fetched? Perhaps. But Knox didn’t want to find out.
“Tell me how you’ll proceed.”
“I’ve got some leads I can follow up. I take it DCI is off-limits,” he said, referring to the director of Central Intelligence.
“I doubt he’d be much good to you anyway. Intelligence begins at home and his house is unfortunately empty.”
Okay, he definitely knows I’m not taping this.
“Then the FBI agents who investigated the bombing at Gray’s house. The Secret Service agent Ford. What about Triple Six?”
“What about it? Officially it never existed.”
Knox had tired of the word games. Even his natural deference to the man had its limits. “There were subtle references in the papers intimating that somebody was popping retirees from the division and that Gray was aware of it.”
“You can run that down if you want, but a dead end is what you’ll find.”
“How about the unauthorized Soviet op from decades ago?”