The FBI Thrillers Collection Books 1-5 - Catherine Coulter [687]
“The others will be hiding in Jacob Marley’s house?”
“No, but they’ll be close by. It will work, Tyler.”
She was aware that all of them were staring at her, but she just shook her head at them. It was the only way to go, and all of them knew it. There’d been no reason to flail about and discuss any number of options into the ground. She had to go and she knew no one would let her go alone. Fine. They had a chance now. “Oh yes, Tyler, I need you to give me Krimakov’s note. Sherlock wants it. Now, just go about your business. Don’t say a word to anyone. We’ll be there in under four hours.”
Slowly, she lowered the phone into its cradle. She looked up. “Sam’s not going to die.”
“No,” Adam said, walking to her, “no, he won’t.” Then he just couldn’t stand it. He pulled her against him and held her there, his hand tight across her back, his other hand fisted in her hair. He felt her heart beating against his chest, hard, fast strokes. He brought her closer. He looked up to see Thomas staring at him, and slowly, he loosened his fingers in her hair, smoothing it down, but he didn’t want to let her go.
Thomas said, “Agent Hawley and Agent Cobb, this kidnapping will stay amongst us. It doesn’t go to anyone else in the FBI. All right?”
“No problem,” said Tellie Hawley. “Hell, we’re in this thing to the end. That bastard butchered four of my people. I want him as much as you do. If Savich and Sherlock aren’t saying anything to the higher-ups, why should we?”
“Let’s get rolling,” Sherlock said once Thomas had given her several papers with Krimakov’s handwriting. “We’ll meet at Reagan in an hour?”
“No,” Thomas said. “We’ll go over to Andrews Air Force Base. I’ll have a plane ready for us.”
They were nearly out the door when Thomas’s private phone rang. He looked undecided, then said, “Hold on. It’s got to be important if it’s on that phone.”
Slowly, because she didn’t really want to, Becca forced herself to pull away from Adam. “I’m all right,” she said.
“I’m not,” he said, and smiled at her. “We’ll get through this.”
They all followed Thomas back to his study, watched him pick up the phone on the edge of the mahogany desk.
“Yes? . . . Hello, Gaylan.”
It was Gaylan Woodhouse, the CIA director. They all watched Thomas’s face stiffen, then slowly turn pale and set. “Oh no,” he said, his voice bleak. “You’re absolutely certain of all this?”
They watched him lower the phone and stare over at them. He looked shaken, dazed. “This is just too much,” he said. “Just too much.”
“What the hell is it?” Adam was at Thomas’s side in but a moment.
Thomas shook his head, his eyes dazed. There was a fine tremor in his hands. “You’re not going to believe this. CIA Agent Elizabeth Pirounakis was blown up when she went into Vasili Krimakov’s apartment in Iráklion. Krimakov must have worked there, left notes there, evidence of his plans.
“The whole building blew up. It’s now rubble. Agent Pirounakis is dead, the two other Greek agents with her dead as well. Gaylan isn’t certain yet, but given the time of the explosion, thankfully very few people were in the apartment building.”
“He did this before he left Crete,” Agent Hawley said. “It’s not something he’s just done.”
Adam said, “At least now there has to be an inquiry about the guy they buried. Surely now they can’t hang on to the fiction that the man in the car accident was Vasili Krimakov?”
Thomas looked at Adam. “It doesn’t much matter now. There’s hell to pay over there, but that doesn’t help us.”
“Time,” Adam said. “It’s what he hasn’t given us.”
Thomas nodded, then paused another moment and looked over at his daughter. “You’re right. Let’s go.”
She gave him a smile filled with rage and said, “Yes. Lock and load.”
26
It was hot that day in Maine, even by the water. Lobster boats bobbed up and down in the inlets, fishermen, their hats pushed back on their heads, lay in the shade of the awnings on their boats, if they were lucky enough to have awnings.
The white spires