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  “How in the hell did Xhafa manage that?”

  The president looked like he’d just seen a dog run over by a car. “That’s one of the mysteries. This man is not like other crime lords; there’s something different about him.”

  “He’s smarter?”

  “Among other things,” the president nodded, “such as sophisticated weaponry to take out an entire SKOPES unit.”

  “Sophisticated weaponry takes big bucks.”

  The president’s expression became even more pained. “Simply put, we aren’t authorized to send military into Albania. Besides which, the military can’t cut it in that region—the mountainous terrain works against them. No, this is strictly black ops. A small guerrilla unit is what’s needed. And don’t talk to me about Interpol. Those monkeys can’t find their own assholes.”

  “Nevertheless, with all due respect, sir—”

  “Loyalty, Dennis.” Crawford’s voice was soft but with a backbone of steel. “I want you to find Xhafa and shut him down … permanently.”

  Paull sighed in resignation. “All right. I’ll get a task force to work up a plan ASAP.”

  “That’s just what you won’t do.” The president set down his cup. “I want you to handle this job personally.”

  Paull felt as if he were a whiplash victim of a car crash. “Sir, I don’t understand. A secretary of HS doesn’t—”

  “It seems to me, Dennis—and I say this as a compliment, though I fear you’ll take it otherwise—that secretary of HS was never the best use of your talents.” He turned and took a thick Eyes Only dossier off his desk. “For ten years, during your assignments in the field, you never once failed to complete a mission. Plus, you never lost a man.”

  “Once,” Paull said. “I lost a man once.”

  “No.” The president paged through the dossier until he reached the page he was looking for. Running his forefinger down the page, dense with typescript, he said, “The agent, Russell Evans, was wounded by friendly fire. You carried him on your back for twenty-five miles until you crossed over from hostile territory.”

  “By then he was dead.”

  “Through no fault of your own, Dennis.” The president closed the dossier with a decisive slap. “You received a medal for that mission.”

  Paull, chilled to his marrow, sat very still. He was hyperaware of his heartbeat and his breath, as if he were a scientific observer monitoring this unreal scene. “What is this,” he said in a voice he did not fully recognize, “a sacking?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “A demotion, then.”

  “Dennis, as I feared, you’ve completely misinterpreted what I’ve just said.”

  “Do you want me to step down as secretary of HS?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I haven’t misinterpreted anything.”

  Crawford hitched himself to the edge of the sofa. “Listen to me, Dennis. I know you don’t trust me. I know your loyalty was to Edward, and since we never saw eye to eye on most matters…” He allowed his voice to trail off, as if he was thinking ahead three or four steps. Or, anyway, that was Paull’s interpretation of the small silence.

  Then the president’s eyes reengaged with Paull’s. “I value you, Dennis, perhaps—and I know this will be difficult for you to believe—perhaps more than Edward did. This job he put you in—it’s not … You’re not a politician. Your expertise is in the field—it always has been. That’s where you shine; that’s where you’ll be of the most use to me—and your country.”

  “So the decision has been made.”

  Crawford looked at Paull for a moment. “Dennis, answer me this: Have you been happy the last year or so? Happy in your job, I mean.”

  Paull said nothing. He sat thinking of a future that now seemed as treacherous as quicksand. “Since the deed is done, it doesn’t matter what I say.”

  The president steepled his hands together, elbows on his knees. “The reason I scuttled Edward’s initiatives is simple: They were doomed. The health care bill—he had to get into bed with big pharma in order to even get it cobbled together. It had more pork in it than a pig farm. The attack on the merchant banks—too punitive and difficult to get through Congress. Edward would have expended all his remaining political capital on this agenda, and he would have failed. His presidency would have foundered. I’ve been given a chance to right the ship, and I’m taking it.”

  “Right is right,” Paull said sourly.

  Crawford laughed and shook his head. “Dennis, I’m going to take a chance. I’ve decided to trust you enough to tell you a secret.”

  He paused as if needing another minute to make up his mind. Despite himself, Paull edged forward, the better to hear what the president had to say, because Crawford was speaking now in a hushed tone.

  “I’m a conservative by design, not by conviction. Not many people know this; Edward certainly didn’t. But I have to deal from strength with certain powerful elements in this country. In any event, I want to do what’s right for the country, and as of this moment what we need more than anything else is fiscal responsibility. I’m going to see we get it.”

  “That involves appointing someone else as HS secretary. Is that what you’re going to say in your address?”

  Crawford waved away Paull’s words. “I’m doing away with the position. Your man Dickinson, who’s director, is more than capable of handling the department. Hell, he already is. He’s an organizational wizard, isn’t he?”

  “That he is,” Paull admitted.

  The president spread his hands wide. “Well, then, there you have it.”

  “What’s to be my new title?”

  Crawford’s smile spread across his face like jam. “Officially, you’ll be ambassador at large. Unofficially, you’ll be in charge of a SITSPEC, reporting directly to me.”

  This might have some potential after all, Paull thought. SITSPEC was gov-speak for a situation-specific black ops group that, in theory at least, could comprise two people or two thousand.

  “If this is the way it will be, I want some terms.”

  “Name them, Denny.”

  “I don’t want oversight.”

  “Define oversight.”

  “The group is at Black ICE level. We’re dark to Congress, the CIA, and DoD. I report to you, and act on your mandates or ones I deem appropriate and necessary, period.”

  The POTUS stroked his chin. “Well, now, Denny, I don’t rightly know whether I can do that.”

  “Okay.” Paull stood up. “Then I’m out, sir.”

  For a moment, Crawford looked up at him, then he gestured with one hand. “Aw, sit down, would you?” When Paull did, he added, “Give the group a name, Denny.”

  Paull thought a moment. “Chimera.”

  “The monster that changes its shape. An apt creature to destroy Arian Xhafa.” The president nodded, pleased.

  “The fewer people around you who know, the better.”

  “Agreed, but you’ll have to stick Chimera somewhere,” he continued. “Let’s start with the department you know best, Homeland.”

  “I want Jack McClure,” Paull said without hesitation.

  “That’s it? One person?”

  “For now.”

  “Take him, then.” The president began to talk about the details. “This crime spree is spreading like a virus. You pull the plug and America’s image starts to shine again. As of this moment, you have Alpha Authorization to procure anything you require for this mission. I want you to bring me Arian Xhafa’s head.”

  Paull was leafing through the file. “I’ll need a better photo of Xhafa.”

  The president looked pained again. He produced three more photos, placing them side by side with the first one—grainy, slightly blurred surveillance photos obviously taken with a long lens. He pointed to each one, in turn.

  “Xhafa could be this man, or this one, or this one. More likely he’s none of these three. We just don’t know.”

  “A bio?”

 
; “Ditto. We don’t know his parentage or where he came from.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “This is a very special person we’re talking about, Denny. A dark prodigy, a creature of pure evil.”

  “Like Kurtz in his jungle temple.”

  “No, Denny. Kurtz came from civilization. Xhafa was born in a dark place and there he resides, with the power of a mythical monster.”

  Paull scraped a hand across his chin. “How could he have amassed so much power and influence?”

  “McClure likes solving real-life puzzles, doesn’t he?”

  Paull rose. As he reached the door, the president’s voice caused him to turn back.

  “There’s something else that isn’t in the dossier. Arian Xhafa has more money than an Albanian crime lord ought to have.”

  “The sophisticated weaponry,” Paull said.

  The president nodded again. “What’s the source of his capital, and, just as troubling, how was he able to obtain the weaponry? You need the highest-level contacts for that. Two more mysteries you’re tasked with solving.”

  “You’re not asking for much, are you, sir?”

  The president produced a thin smile. “Has to be done, Denny, and now. Along with the sudden influx of capital came the ambition to expand his organization outside the borders of Macedonia and Albania—starting with Italy because it’s so close, just across the Adriatic, as well as Spain, France, and Germany.

  “The Albanians moved in on the Italian Mafia’s territory when the Italian police successfully splintered the mob. Power abhors a vacuum. Xhafa saw his opportunity and jumped in with both feet. Now he has to be stopped before he turns his people into a full-fledged international criminal operation.”

  “So this isn’t a strictly humanitarian mission.”

  President Crawford smiled an ironic smile. “Jesus, Denny, when is it ever?”

  FOUR

  THE MOMENT the shrink left, Alli broke down and cried. She wept as she hadn’t wept in nearly a year. Her sobs were deep and heartfelt, all the more so because she had forced herself to keep them in abeyance for the hundred minutes or so that the shrink was questioning her. He was a small, dark man with a scraggly beard and a sharp nose. He smelled faintly of tobacco and loss.

  Now that she was alone, she desperately wanted to hear Jack’s reassuring voice. But the lawyer had taken away her cell as evidence and there was no phone in her uncle’s study where she sat on a voluminous, high-backed chair, so familiar to her from the days when her father took her here and she hung out while he and Uncle Hank went downstairs into the cellar to talk. As a young girl, it had never occurred to her to question why they chose the cellar. Later, however, it became clear that they had ensured that the cellar was the most secure place in the house. Security was the last thing on her mind as she thought about the current nightmare in which she was enmeshed.

  The study was exactly as she remembered it, filled with Old World–carved, hand-turned wood, a coffered ceiling, bookcases from floor to ceiling, and an immense stone fireplace over which a stuffed buck’s head with impressive antlers gazed down on her with, she was sure, steady compassion.

  Forty-five or so minutes later, her uncle and his lawyer appeared.

  Alli was struggling to blot out the sight of Billy Warren, drained of blood, cut all over, his carotid breached as if by a vampire’s fang, but the image refused to be banished. It hung in her mind like a guest who, overstaying his welcome, now threatens to take over your home.

  “Alli,” Henry Holt Carson said, as he sat down on the sofa facing her. “How are you feeling?” Behind him stood Harrison Jenkins, as immobile as a cigar store Indian.

  “How d’you think I’m feeling,” she said dully.

  “I’m afraid I have no idea.”

  “That’s just the problem!” She honed the accusatory note to a fine point. “Why are you keeping me here? Why can’t I even call Jack?”

  “McClure is busy, trying to clear your name, one hopes,” Carson said. “Besides, by court order you cannot leave here.”

  “Then I want to speak with him.”

  “In time, perhaps.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Alli, I wish you’d learn to curb your tongue.” He shifted, obviously uncomfortable. Then he set two prescription vials onto the low table between them. “The psychopharmacologist who interviewed you…”

  At the word she stared at the vials. “You want to give me drugs?” She leapt up and, with a backhand swipe, sent the vials flying across the room. “I’m not taking any fucking drugs!” She was white and trembling.

  “Alli, I don’t think you understand the true nature of your situation.”

  “Henry, allow me.” Jenkins came around and gestured for Alli to sit back down. When she did, he sat on a chair next to her. “The detectives were anxious to take you into custody. I used a technicality to forestall them. Nevertheless, I had to go before a federal judge this morning and defend you with the district attorney breathing down my neck. This much you know. A horrific crime has been committed and there is a tremendous amount of pressure from all sides to find the murderer and bring him or her to justice.”

  “I didn’t kill Billy!” Alli cried. “Why won’t anyone listen?”

  “I didn’t say you killed him. Frankly, I believe you’re innocent, but there are two pieces of incriminating evidence that say otherwise”—he held up a hand to stop her protest—“or lead to the conclusion that someone very clever has, for whatever reason, set you up.” He took a breath. “Can you think of anyone who would have cause to implicate you in a capital crime?”

  She glanced at her uncle before shaking her head. Her eyes drifted away. “No.”

  Jenkins studied Alli for a moment, then turned to Carson. “Henry, please give me a few moments.”

  Carson frowned. “Are you sure?”

  “Henry, I imagine there is a backlog of calls impatiently awaiting your attention.”

  Carson grunted, rose, and, crossing the carpet, went out the door, closing it softly behind him.

  Jenkins took a deep breath, then turned to Alli. “Now, my dear, what is it you wish to say?” Seeing her quick glance at the closed door, he added, “Anything you tell me is privileged information … even from your uncle.”

  Alli worried her lower lip before she put her elbows on her knees. “Someone is framing me. I mean there’s no way I dosed my roommate or killed Billy. God!”

  He nodded sagely.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Alli ran a hand through her hair. “This is a nightmare.” She cleared her throat. “Everyone thinks I’m suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome.”

  Jenkins waited a moment. “That’s it?”

  “Yes.”

  “So it’s your contention that you’re fine.”

  “I didn’t poison anyone, I didn’t kill anyone.”

  He slid back in his chair and pursed his lips. “I’ll take that into consideration.”

  “I’d like to speak to Jack.”

  “Would you now?” Jenkins had a way of saying no without actually saying the word. “It is your uncle’s opinion that you have formed a … how shall I put it?… an unnatural attachment to Jack McClure.”

  She stared at him, wide-eyed. “And you believe that?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe. I work for your uncle.”

  She stared out the one window at the snaking gravel driveway. All of a sudden, she took up a poker from the fireplace and slammed it against the window. It bounced off, as if the pane was made of rubber. Alli swung again and again, grunting with each swing, without even a single crack to show for her effort.

  She whirled on Jenkins just as the door burst open and a man with the massive sloping shoulders and raw, red face of a weightlifter rushed in.

  Jenkins raised a placating hand. “It’s all right, Rudy. No harm done.”

  As if to pro
ve his words, he crossed to where Alli stood and took the poker from her. Rudy relieved him of it, and, with a last look at Alli, went out of the study, closing the door behind him.

  “The windows are both bulletproof and alarmed,” Jenkins said.

  Alli turned to the attorney. “I used to come here when I was a kid. I broke that window once. When did that happen?”

  “Five years ago,” Jenkins said. “Maybe six.”

  “So I’m a prisoner in my uncle’s house.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  His words hung in the room for some time. A phone rang distantly and then stopped. A dog began to bark somewhere outside, its excitement rising.

  “You’re both mental as anything.” Her voice was thin and ragged with despair. She felt herself crawl back into the shell she had created for herself when she had been kidnapped.

  Jenkins appeared to be aware of this, because he said in his most soothing voice, “The most absurd aspect of the accusation is, of course, the torture. Scientific study tells us that the female of the species, though she can be as cold-blooded and capable of murder as a male, rarely has the stomach for torture. On the other hand, it is the torture of William Warren, so disturbing by its very nature, that is dictating this rush to judgment, at least in my estimation. It’s also the largest question mark. What did his killer or killers want from him? What information did he possess that they needed to go to such extreme lengths to get from him?”

  He regarded her steadily. Clearly, he was looking for an answer from her. She shook her head. “I can’t say. I really didn’t know him that well.”

  “Come on, Alli, you two were carrying on a love affair for five months.”

  “That’s just it,” Alli said, “it wasn’t a love affair.”

  “No, what was it then?”

  “I was…” Her eyes darted away for a moment. “I was trying to regain a sense of myself, to, I don’t know, feel my body again, to be in control of it again.”

  Jenkins sat studying her for a while, or perhaps he was pondering her words. At last, he said, “Did you care about Mr. Warren?”

  “Of course I did.” She hesitated, but it was clear she had more to say. “But not … just not in the way you think.”