Glass Tiger
- Автор: Горес Джо
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Quercus
- ISBN: 978-1-84724-072-9
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «Glass Tiger». Краткое содержание книги:
For answer, he put his head down on the bar and passed out.
Kate punched out her home number on the bar’s phone, whispered to Janet’s cautious voice, ‘He made it.’
Thorne woke to a pair of warm brown expectant eyes staring into his face from a foot away. A shorthair black-and-white mongrel was sitting on his chest, wagging its tail on his belly. His side, bandaged, hurt; his ribs, taped, itched. He had no idea why he was flat on his back with a dog on his chest. The dog lifted a front paw. They shook, solemnly.
‘His name is Jigger,’ piped a voice from beside the bed.
Thorne could just see the top half of a tiny girl’s face beyond the covers. She had big solemn dark eyes and cornsilk hair. Maybe two, about the age of Eden when...
‘I’m Thorne,’ he said, quickly stifling memory.
‘Lindy,’ she said. ‘Me’n Jigger wanted to say “hi”.’
‘Hi.’
She whirled and ran out of the room. She wore a pink frilly dress. Jigger jumped down and trotted busily after her.
When Thorne opened his eyes again, Janet was there. She wore jeans and a blouse and a sheath knife on the outside of her right boot. Her arms were crossed over her breasts in what could almost have been a defensive stance.
He gestured at his wrapped ribs and bandaged wound. ‘You?’
‘Jigger’s vet. He won’t talk. You got to Oakdale night before last and stumbled your way into Whiskey River and passed out. My friend Kate called me, we brought you over here. This is her house. Lindy’s her daughter.’
Thorne steeled himself. ‘We have to talk.’
‘Not here. Not now.’ She gestured after Lindy. ‘After hours at the bar. I’ll leave the back door unlocked.’
37
They were in the conference room under the White House. Just the two of them. No aides, no notes taken. Hatfield had to use smoke and mirrors to spin his essential lack of results to his utmost advantage.
‘Mr. President, we are concentrating on a blackjack dealer and casual prostitute named Janet Kestrel. She hooked up with Corwin in Reno in July, travelled with him until the election, then disappeared. I have a BOLO and an SIA out on her.’
For Wallberg, somebody new to worry about. With Corwin dead, he’d thought Thorne, snooping around in the past as Hatfield had said, was his only concern. But this Kestrel woman also sounded like trouble. This was dangerous ground; Hal Corwin might have remembered things and told them to her, things no one else could know about. With Kurt Jaeger gone, Wallberg knew he had to find someone new to trust. Probably Hatfield, but not yet. For now, dissemble, act as if Kestrel was of no importance to him.
‘So she traveled with Corwin. Corwin is dead and gone. Thorne is our priority here.’
‘Frankly, Mr. President, we want the Kestrel woman because Thorne was looking for her. Since we can’t ask Thorne himself, it’s vital to catch her and find out what he wanted from her.’
‘Can’t ask Thorne himself,’ snapped Wallberg. ‘Say what you mean, man. That you can’t find Thorne.’
‘Can’t ask him, Mr. President,’ Hatfield persisted. ‘We have every reason to believe that Thorne is dead.’
Wallberg kept his face and voice impassive. ‘Indeed?’
Hatfield spun his tale. Thorne exchanging fire with him, and, wounded, trying to escape down the Tuolemne. Water-logged rowboat, wreckage, life jacket. Absolutely nothing since.
Hope leaped up in Wallberg’s chest. ‘I find it symbolic,’ he intoned sententiously when Hatfield was finished, ‘that both Thorne and Corwin found their quietus in icy, rushing water, as if trying to cleanse themselves of their sins.’ He stood up. ‘Good work, Terrill. But find this Kestrel woman. Confirm that Thorne is dead. I need closure in this matter so I can get on with the business of running this great country of ours.’
‘Closure you will get, Mr. President.’
Alone, Wallberg felt a rising excitement. Corwin was dead, Thorne was probably dead, no longer able to pick at certain forty-year-old knots in the fabric of his life before the presidency. Hatfield would find Kestrel, extract whatever information she had, tell it only to him. The man was proving his dedication to the Presidency — and to Hatfield’s own ambition: to become the Director of the FBI. As Edith had said on New Year’s Eve, no one could stop Gus Wallberg now.
Walking the perimeter of the Whiskey River lot, Thorne felt surprisingly good. The vet had done his job. No real pain. In front of the bar, no vehicles. In the dirt parking lot out behind, no bikes. In the wall he faced, no windows. A good place for a talk. Or a take-down.
He drifted the door open. Smells of beer and booze; this being California, none of cigarettes. Janet was sitting at a small round table across the dance floor, nothing in her hands, a bottle of whiskey and two thick-bottom shot glasses in front of her. He slid the deadbolt shut, sat down across from her.
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘now tell me about Hal.’ Her eyes were hot, intense on his face.
‘I’d better tell you about me, first. It’s relevant. I grew up in Alaska, did a lot of hunting and trapping. I joined the Rangers, when I became an ex-Ranger, the CIA hired me as a contract sniper for a CIA front in Panama. Seven years ago I lost my wife and infant child, about Lindy’s age, to a drunk driver. I vowed to my wife’s memory I would never kill again, and became a camp guard in Kenya at a fancy tourist lodge. Any of this sound familiar? Like a parallel to Hal’s life? Anyway, Hatfield framed me so I would be deported back to the States.’
‘Sure, I see the parallel. But I think I hear violins.’
‘This isn’t a sob story. Hatfield framed me to get me back here to hunt down Corwin for the president.’ He outlined for her the presidential pressure to find Corwin, the way he had done it, the cat-and-mouse with Corwin, blind chess — in Minnesota, in the Bitterroot Mountains.
‘So you’re saying Hal shot at Wallberg and hit Jaeger.’
‘That’s what I’m saying. From twelve-hundred yards out.’
‘That’s what I can’t believe. Hal wouldn’t miss. Not even from twelve-hundred yards.’ Her eyes were chips of blue ice, glacier-cold. ‘I think he meant to hit Jaeger, and that’s enough bullshit about how and why. I want to know where. Goddamn you — where is Hal Corwin?’
Thorne’s own personal Rubicon. ‘Dead. I killed him. I know it’s not worth anything, but I’m sorry he’s—’
She came across the table at Thorne, knocking him backward out of his chair, landing on top of him. Her left hand was a claw that scored his face with long bloody parallel grooves. Her right hand was jerking the knife from her boot. She stabbed downward at his throat. He knocked the blade aside. The knife buried itself two inches deep in the hardwood floor.
Thorne swung an elbow against the corner of her jaw. She sagged. He threw the knife away. It hit the bandstand with a clang. He got up, panting, righted his chair, retrieved the bottle and unbroken glasses. He sat down heavily, hunched over with pain from his ribs, watching her like a hungry hawk.
Her eyelids fluttered. She moved her head, pressed a hand against the side of her jaw, yelped. Her eyes opened, filled with malice. She measured the distance between them.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ he said.
After a full minute, she sighed and got to her feet and went around him to her chair and sat down. She poured herself a drink, held up the bottle. He nodded. They drank, set the glasses down. He resumed as if she hadn’t tried to kill him.
Their stalk of each other down the mountain. Firing at the same time Corwin fired. Corwin’s crawl to the stream. She didn’t interrupt, just kept her eyes on his face.
‘I told Corwin, “You missed.” He said, “Did I?” and rolled over into the water and was dead and gone forever.’