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:
‘Tell her I’m like... a kestrel. In the wind.’
Janet was doing pushups on the edge of her bunk when she heard the familiar sound of her cell door being unlocked. It swung wide. Framed in the opening was her chief interrogator. She didn’t know his name. None of them ever gave her a name. He was holding something out to her.
‘Here is your watch, Ms. Kestrel.’ It was the first time he had addressed her by name. ‘It’s eleven-forty a.m. on Saturday, June eleventh. You are free to go. All charges against you have been dropped. I’m... I’m very glad it worked out this way.’
He was gone. Another man stepped in with the clothes she had been wearing when they had grabbed her. All of the items had been freshly washed and ironed.
Ten minutes later, Janet was squinting against the dazzling noonday sunlight outside the monolithic black tower of the Federal Building, sucking in huge gulps of free air, dazed, totally disoriented. Someone called her name. She looked quickly about, saw a familiar figure far across the weekend-empty parking lot.
‘Kate!’ she cried, and was running toward her friend.
Sammy Spaulding stood at his office window watching Janet Kestrel and the other woman, trying to imagine Janet’s feelings. He was still stunned by the phone call from Hatfield he had received at home the night before, ordering her release. But as he had told her, he was glad she was free.
In fact, he felt as if he too had been set free. Free from Terrill Hatfield’s insinuating presence, free from the dazzling heights of power Hatfield had implied would be his. He took me up on the mountain, Sammy thought, and showed me what could be mine. Assistant Director of the FBI. Any Agent’s wet dream. But now the spell had been broken. It was so simple when he thought about it. Just be the FBI Agent he had sworn to be when he had graduated from Quantico.
Just blow the whistle on Terrill Hatfield.
45
Fort Snelling National Cemetery, where so many of Minnesota’s dead heroes were buried, lay between the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and Highway 5. It was the Fourth of July, and in the adjacent Fort Snelling State Historical Park, President Gustave Wallberg, Edith at his side, was taking his ease in a picnic area under a stand of elm trees a hundred yards from the Minnesota River. They were surrounded by his entourage, which in turn was encased in a cocoon of Secret Service agents.
It felt wonderful to be the centerpiece of an old-fashioned birth-of-our-nation VFW picnic. The speech he had been working on a month ago during the Memorial Day weekend was now finished. And damned good it was, hitting all the right patriotic notes.
He checked his watch. Almost show time.
Twelve-hundred yards away, Brendan Thorne was literally up a tree. A week earlier, before the unobtrusively elaborate security preparations had begun, he had climbed thirty feet up into this huge old oak to jam a three-foot one-by-twelve board between two branches to form a makeshift sniper’s platform.
He had also cut a keyhole in the foliage so he could scan the picnic grounds through his spotter scope. He wore shooter’s gloves, and an earphone radio so he could listen in on the speeches.
Hatfield was honoring their agreement. Janet was free, Dorst and Blackburn were no longer under even clandestine surveillance, and he had talked with Squealer Kemoli in Nairobi. The Kenyan arrest order had been rescinded. So he, too, was honoring their agreement. Distasteful as he found it, he would do nothing directly to hamper Hatfield’s rise to power.
The veterans and their families were already drawn up around the bunting-bedecked platform to hear their President speak. There was one important amendment to the speech that no one knew about except Wallberg. He would not be announcing Terrill Hatfield’s elevation to Director of the FBI as previously hinted to the press corps. He had received signed e-mails from two high-ranking Bureau officials, each alerting him to, and giving him the details of, separate pending investigations of misconduct by Hatfield.
He had expressed his thanks and his profound shock at Hatfield’s actions, and had assured each of them that Hatfield’s name would be withdrawn. True, Hatfield had saved his life by shooting Corwin at the critical moment in the Bitterroot Range. True, everything the man had done, including the unlawful detention of Janet Kestrel, had been done on behalf of Wallberg and with his knowledge.
But there was no paperwork to that effect. Wallberg had made sure of that. Whatever wild charges Hatfield might make as he went down, President Wallberg had deniability. And it wouldn’t hurt his ratings that he would be seen as taking an ethical stand: no breaking of the law in the Wallberg administration. But justice would be tempered with compassion. Hatfield would resign from the FBI without jail time.
Just as well. Hatfield was ambitious. In time, he might have become another Jaeger, trying to uncover secrets best left buried, seeking influence with the Oval Office.
Gus Wallberg sighed and put aside his bottle of beer — Leinenkugel Honey Weiss, a good Minnesota brew — and got to his feet. A pity. The national good could demand heavy sacrifices: three people had died on election night, so now it was Hatfield’s turn to pay a heavy price for his country.
‘Time to earn my keep, people,’ he said to his entourage.
There was hearty sycophantic laughter. He blew Edith a kiss and started off, encircled by young, hard-eyed, highly-conditioned men speaking to their wrists or to the collars of their sports shirts. He shook hands, waved, grinned, tossed out greetings as they opened a pathway through the crowd for him to get to the podium. He was in his element. He was the future, Terrill was the past. As was Corwin. And Nisa. And Thorne.
Thorne, in his sniper’s nest, following Wallberg’s progress with his scope. The president’s clothes were carefully casuaclass="underline" a Solumbra sun hat, slacks, and a gaudy short-sleeve sport shirt. In his left hand was a fried chicken leg. A man of the people. He stepped up to the podium where his speech was laid open for him. No one up there to introduce him. He wanted the platform all to himself.
Watching from a distance of twelve-hundred yards, Thorne realized how much he despised this man. Ten years ago, he would have tried the impossible shot and would have lost his own life in the attempt. On this day, Thorne planned no mayhem. He had his sniper’s nest but he had no sniper rifle. He was here to feel just a little of what Corwin must have felt in Montana, sighting in on a hated target a dozen football fields away. This was Thorne’s final bloodless bow to the man he once had been. Soon he would disappear without anyone ever knowing he had been there.
Wallberg looked out over the throng, drawing his power, as always, from their numbers, from their rapt attention, from their devotion to him. And from the dozens of media cameras pointing at him to help bump his ratings ever higher. He had planned to talk about himself a good deal, knock the accomplishments of the previous administration, but Edith had advised him that it might sound petty, self-serving; better to just praise America.
‘My fellow Americans, we are gathered here today to celebrate the birthday of this great nation which has given so many blessings to all of her citizens. Beyond the beer and the potato salad...’ he raised his arm above his head to wave around his chicken leg, ‘...beyond the fried chicken...’ The well-rehearsed but seemingly spontaneous gesture drew wild applause from the crowd. ‘...we honor all of those brave men and women who gave up their lives on foreign battlefields so that we might enjoy the fruits of their sacrifice. From the shores of Tripoli to the trenches of the Ardennes, from the death march of Corregidor to the jungles of Vietnam, from the mountains of Afghanistan to the deserts of Iraq...’