Eve - Iris Johansen [85]
“I’m not fussing.” She felt a ripple of irritation that overcame the concern and worry she had been feeling. “By all means, let’s go back and search. I want to find Gallo as much as you do.”
He shook his head. “No you don’t.”
“You listen to me, Joe,” Eve said fiercely. “No one wants to talk to Gallo more than I do. I know nothing about Paul Black, and John seems to be the only one who can tell me anything about him. I might have had a chance of persuading him to talk to me, but you put him on the run. Do you think I won’t do anything on earth to find him and make him tell me everything he knows? Bill Hanks isn’t going to be able to help. He as much as told me when I first met him that John didn’t often confide in him. And Hanks preferred not to know.”
“He could have been lying.”
“I don’t believe he was.” She took his elbow and nudged him forward. “You and Catherine are both working and analyzing this as if it were an objective problem. Well, I’m not objective. So you do your thing, and I’ll do mine. But don’t expect me to approve when you go running down a mountain and get yourself shot and then—” She drew a deep breath. “To hell with it. Let’s get back to the house and take care of your arm.”
* * *
JACOBS WAS SCARED, NATE Queen realized, as he held the phone a few inches away and listened to the spate of curses and questions. He should have expected it. Thomas Jacobs always fell apart when the going got tough. Queen sometimes wondered why he still kept Jacobs on as a minor partner instead of ridding himself of the coward. But Jacobs had been with him a long time, even at the initial recruitment of Gallo. He knew more than was comfortable for Queen. Besides, he was willing to set up all the little deals with which Queen didn’t want to bother.
“I know all that,” Queen said. “I didn’t handle it well. But are you telling me you would have been able to handle Catherine Ling and Quinn? They were nasty as hell, and there was no way I was going to end up dead.”
“Of course not. But there should have been a way to stop them.”
“It’s done. I only told them what I had to tell them.”
“You said you gave them the map.” Jacobs paused. “What are the chances they’ll get into the compound?”
“I wouldn’t bet against them. They disabled my security system, and it’s fairly sophisticated. They’re both tops in their fields, and they work well together. After they get in, it’s a different proposition. They’ll have to deal with Gallo.”
“But you said Quinn is lethal. That could be a problem. We can’t afford to have Gallo dead before we get our hands on the ledger.”
“I’m sending a team to Utah to move into the compound if we hear Gallo has been killed.”
“It may not even be in the compound. Gallo warned us it would go straight to the Washington Post if you moved against him. It may be in a damn lawyer’s office somewhere. You blundered big-time, Queen.”
The prick. He was getting pissed. “How was I to know that he’d go after Eve Duncan after all these years? He kept talking about Ling. Who the hell could tell what he was thinking? Ling is CIA. Duncan was no threat.”
“Then why did he take her?” Jacobs was silent, thinking. “Was it to frighten her into keeping silent that he was still alive and might be a suspect? Or was it something else? As you say, he’s unstable. Who knows what’s going on in his head?”
“Frighten? Gallo doesn’t bluff. She may be dead by the time Quinn gets to her. Serve the bastard right.”
“And if she is dead, we’ll have to do a cleanup for Gallo. You’d better hope that she’s still alive. So what do we do?”
“We find out what’s going on in the compound. Who’s our man on the payroll there?”
“Lon Davarak. He’s a perimeter guard. It’s as close as we could get to Gallo. Hanks is damn careful of the guards for the house.”
“Then call Davarak and get him to scout around and see if he can find out what the hell is happening.” He was silent again. “Eve Duncan…”
“What are you thinking?”
“He had a kid with Eve Duncan. When he made no attempt to approach her after Korea, we assumed that she was nothing to him, just a good lay.