The Bancroft Strategy

  Research Triangle Park itself was something of an anomaly. Its motto was “Where the minds of the world meet.” But it was not clear whom it belonged to. The United States Postal Service regarded it as a town or municipality, and though Durham claimed some authority over it, it was not itself part of any neighboring township. It included some of the largest supercomputing facilities in the world, some leading pharmaceutical research campuses, various think tanks as well. But it was, technically, neither public nor private, but a kind of nonprofit entity in its own right. It was created more than forty years ago by an obscure plutocrat—a Russian émigré who had supposedly made a fortune in textiles, and who had acquired the vast parcel of land. Carved into the forest were large campuses for high-tech companies and policy institutes, but officially most of it remained undeveloped, virgin forest.

  Was the truth, in fact, more complicated? If only she could speak to Paul Bancroft—but nobody at the foundation could tell her when he would return, and she could wait no longer. The dreams and nightmares increasingly focused on the mystery surrounding the facility at Research Triangle Park. A foundation within the foundation? If so, did Paul Bancroft know about it? Had her mother learned about it? Too many questions, too much uncertainty.

  Once again it seemed that ashed-over embers had been fanned and reignited. Something drew her toward them. Like a moth to a flame?

  Doing nothing was maddening. Maybe it was insanity to go to Research Triangle Park herself, yet sitting on the sidelines was turning into another form of insanity. Maybe the plain banal facts would put to rest her feverish imaginings once and for all; it was altogether possible that there was a boring explanation that she had overlooked. Yet she would find no reassurance in dwelling on the anomalies she had discovered. Inaction would not bring calm.

  One Terrapin Drive.

  It was her mood, but once she landed everything struck her as ominous, even the giant sign with “RDU” in huge blue letters. The airport, scarcely distinguishable in its sterile modernism from hundreds around the country, was a terrazzo jungle.

  She was, if she were honest with herself, suffering from a bad case of nerves. Almost every face she saw seemed suspicious. She actually found herself peering into a baby stroller to make sure it wasn’t just a prop used by someone doing surveillance. The baby gurgled at her, and she felt immediately ashamed. Get a grip, Andrea.

  She had packed light, stowed her one piece of luggage in the overhead compartment. Now she wheeled it ahead of her as she pushed toward the ground-transportation exit. A gaggle of men with hand-lettered signs loitered by the glass, enjoying the air conditioning. Andrea had arranged to be picked up by a driver, but didn’t see anyone with a sign for her. She was about to give up and head for the taxi stand when she saw a latecomer holding up a piece of paper lettered A. BANCROFT. So the man was a few minutes late. She waved at the driver, willing away her trivial sense of annoyance. The driver—a ruggedly handsome man, she noticed, with gray eyes—nodded and took her case, leading her to his dark-blue Buick. In his mid-forties, he was bulky, but light on his feet. No, not bulky, exactly; Andrea corrected her first impression. He was just heavily muscled, perhaps a fitness buff. His forehead was reddened, as if he had recently been out in the sun.

  She gave him the address of her hotel, a Radisson in RTP, and the man silently and fluidly navigated the Buick through the outflows of airport traffic. For the first time, Andrea allowed herself to relax a little. Yet the thoughts that came to her were anything but serene.

  How quickly a dream could curdle into a nightmare. Laura Parry Bancroft. Seeing the name neatly typed onto the registry forms had come as a shock, and the memory still had the power to transfix her with grief. Her mother’s death had cast a shadow over her life. Yet how far could she trust her own feelings, her own suspicions? Perhaps she was in the sway of a maternal disaffection—a maternal delusion—out of love and loyalty and grief. Had the Bancrofts really done her any harm, or had she harmed herself because of her own frustrated anger? How well did she really understand her own mother? There were so many questions she wished she could ask her. So many questions.

  Questions that her mother would never be able to answer. So much had perished in that car crash. And Andrea ached—ached with her whole body—whenever she thought about it.

  The car seemed to be driving over bumpy terrain, and Andrea opened her eyes and looked out for the first time. They were on a nearly deserted two-lane country road, and the car was gliding across the right lane to the shoulder, slowing, and—

  This was wrong.

  She was thrown abruptly to the side, her shoulder belt snapping and yanking at her, as the car slewed at a sharp angle and swerved off the shoulder and behind a dense roadside copse. Oh Christ…It was a trap!

  Had the driver scouted out the area ahead of time, and driven her to this hidden spot knowing that she wouldn’t get wise to what was happening until it was too late?

  She saw the driver’s face in the rearview mirror, saw a look of fury and hatred that almost took her breath away.

  “Take my money,” she pleaded.

  “You wish,” the driver scoffed, with chilling contempt.

  She felt an icicle of fear touch her neck. She realized that she had been optimistic in thinking that it was only money he was after. And he was a powerful specimen indeed. All she had at her disposal was the possibility of surprise. And the likelihood that she would be underestimated.

  What was the heaviest article she had? Hair brush, cell phone, a Cross pen that her mother had given her years ago, and…what? She commanded herself to focus, reached down to her ankle with her left hand. When she looked up again, the man was climbing over the front seat toward her. For a brief moment, his arms would be occupied while he negotiated the awkward passage. She made herself look small, surrendered, harmless.

  Clutching her stiletto-heeled shoe in her right hand, she suddenly lashed out, heel forward—lashing toward his face, toward his eyes, and at the same moment she let out a piercing shriek.

  Almost. With the stiletto just an inch away from his eyes, he grabbed her wrist with a steel-like hand, slamming it away while—thinking took too long—she smashed her other hand toward his nose. She remembered being told by a roommate taking martial-arts lessons that victims were frightened of hitting an assailant in the face—that they became victims by their own fear of aggression. You gouge their eyes, you smash their nose, you do as much damage as you can—that was the common sense that all the training came down to. Your greatest enemy is yourself, Alison always said.

  Yeah? Bullshit. Her greatest enemy was the son of a bitch who was trying to kill her—and who had turned his head just in time to avert her second blow. Whatever happens to me, she thought, thrashing ferociously as she tried to unlock the door, at least nobody will say I went easy.

  But the man was unstoppable, powerful, able to anticipate her every move. Pinning her down beneath him, he roared a question.

  “Why did you kill Tom Mitchell?”

  Andrea blinked, uncomprehending, but the monster persisted with a barrage of mystifying questions. Mitchell. Navajo Blue. Gerald—or was it Jared?—Rinehart. A fusillade of names, accusations.

  It made no sense.

  “How did you kill him, dammit?” With a quick motion, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a blued-metal handgun. Then he placed it to her head. “I’d like to shoot you,” he said in a voice of immaculate hatred. “Try giving me a reason why I shouldn’t.”

  Todd Belknap glowered at his captive. She had been wild, a hellcat, had left bruises he would undoubtedly feel tomorrow. But it was purely a matter of animal spirits; there was no evidence of training. That was just one of several discordant elements. Another was that she seemed genuinely bewildered by his questions. She could have been a superb liar; nothing he had learned ruled out the possibility that she was Genesis, or one of his confederates. But nothing gave support to that hypothesis, either.

  He scrutinized her c
losely as he held the pistol steady. Another question surfaced obscurely in his mind, like a fish in a muddy pond. Hadn’t it all been just a little too easy? She had purchased the airplane ticket under her own name, ensuring that it would appear in the FAA databases. She’d used the concierge service of her platinum charge card to arrange for a car to pick her up, again under her own name. Getting rid of the actual driver had been child’s play, requiring no more than a fistful of cash and a good story about a surprise birthday. If she was indeed a professional, she had to be bizarrely confident that nobody was likely to be after her. Perhaps, then, she was merely unskilled labor—a cutaway, someone to be used on occasion, but not trained, someone whose very amateurishness would provide bona fides of her innocence. Or perhaps it was all a mistake. But then why had a call been placed from her cell phone to that of the leader of the squad in Dubai?

  The woman struggled to control her breathing. She was, he noticed, an attractive woman, and quite possibly a former athlete. Someone used as bait?

  There were too many questions. He needed answers.

  “I have a question for you,” the woman said, returning his glare. “Who sent you? Are you with the Bancroft Foundation?”

  “You’re not fooling anyone,” the operative barked.

  She gulped air, winded with fear. “If you’re going to kill me, I think I have the right to die knowing the truth. Did you people kill my mother, too?”

  What the hell was she talking about? “Your mother?”

  “Laura Parry Bancroft. She died ten years ago. In a car accident, they said. I’d always believed it, too. But I’m not sure I believe it anymore.”

  Belknap could not stop a look of puzzlement from spreading across his features.

  “Who are you people?” she demanded, a sob in her voice. “What are you after?”

  “What are you talking about?” Belknap asked. He was losing control of the situation.

  “You know who I am, right?”

  “You’re Andrea Bancroft.”

  “Correct. And who ordered you to kill me? It’s my final goddamn request, okay? Like a last cigarette. Don’t you hit men have a goddamn code of honor?” She blinked away tears. “Like in the movies, when they say, ‘Since you’re about to die, I may as well tell you…’ That’s all I’m asking.” She smiled through her tears, but she was obviously struggling to fend off collapse.

  Belknap just shook his head.

  “I need to know,” she whispered. “I need to know,” she repeated. Now she was hyperventilating and she was yelling at the top of her lungs, no longer begging but demanding. “I need to know.”

  Numbly, Belknap returned the pistol to his shoulder holster. “Yesterday afternoon, a man drove down from New Hampshire and went to your house, on my instructions. He was dead before sunset.”

  “On your instructions?” Andrea asked incredulously. “For what?”

  Belknap pulled out the cell phone that belonged to the slain commando, brought up its log of received calls, and dialed the one that had arrived from the United States. Inside her handbag, another cell phone began to trill. Belknap clicked off the call. The trilling ceased. “This cell phone belonged to the leader of a death squad. I had an encounter with him in Dubai. Now, why did you call him?”

  “Why would I call? But I didn’t…” Andrea faltered. “I mean, yes, I might have dialed the number, but I had no idea who I was calling.” She opened her handbag and started to scavenge through it.

  “Not so fast!” he roared, brandishing the pistol again.

  The woman froze. “Do you see that folded sheet?”

  Belknap looked into the handbag, retrieved the sheet with his left hand, flipped it open with a snap of his wrist. A list of telephone numbers.

  “Was it you who I called?”

  Belknap just shook his head.

  “I dialed all those numbers, in order,” the woman said insistently. “The first dozen of them, anyway. If you don’t believe me, you can check out my cell phone, see the list of dialed calls, the times.”

  “Why?”

  “I…” Again she broke off. “It’s complicated.”

  Belknap bit off the words as he replied. “Then make it simple.”

  “I’ll try, but…” She took a deep, unsteady breath. “There’s a hell of a lot I don’t know yet. A hell of a lot I don’t understand.”

  Belknap’s gaze softened a little. That makes two of us, he thought. “I don’t know whether I should believe you,” he replied warily, but he reholstered the pistol. “You called, I answered, you hung up. Let’s start there.”

  “Yeah, let’s. Someone hangs up on you, so you travel halfway around the globe and hunt them down with a gun.” Andrea held his gaze. “I’d hate to see what you do when someone steals your parking space.”

  Despite himself, Belknap laughed. “You’ve got the wrong idea.”

  “Maybe we both do,” she said.

  “And maybe,” Belknap said, tension entering his voice again, “there’s a way to sort things out.”

  She shook her head slowly: marveling, not dissenting. “Let me get this straight. You sent someone to my house in Carlyle. Um, checking to see if I removed a mattress tag illegally? Sorry, I’m still not getting this.”

  “I had to know whether you were behind Jared Rinehart’s abduction.”

  “And Jared is…?”

  “Jared?” He stopped.

  “Because it’s hard to follow without a scorecard.”

  Belknap grimaced with impatience. “You know what? It doesn’t really matter if you understand.”

  “Doesn’t matter to whom?”

  “What matters is that we figure out why this cell number appears on that phone bill. That’s what I’m going to need your help with.”

  “Of course,” she said with a brittle smile. She tossed her curtain of blond hair back and gave him a hard look. “Now, you want to remind me again why I should give a shit?”

  Belknap stared at her, anger mounting. “Goddammit,” he started. Yet she had a point to make: she had no idea what his concerns were, and he had no idea what hers were, either. “Okay, listen. There are security issues involved here. Highly classified information. I wish I could say more.”

  “You’re trying to say that you’ve got government clearance and I don’t.”

  “You got it.”

  “What kind of an airhead do you take me for?”

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me. You’re supposed to be some secret a gentman? Give me a goddamn break. I really don’t think U.S. intelligence officers run their operations this way. Like, where’s your team? Why are you by yourself? Best I can tell, you’ve got some Charles Bronson Death Wish thing going on and I just got caught in the middle of it. On the other hand, if I’m wrong, I’d be happy to meet you at your government offices and hash the whole thing out with your superiors.”

  Belknap exhaled heavily. “Maybe we got started off on the wrong foot.”

  “Oh, you think? What little social faux pas of yours did you have in mind? The part where you waved your pistol in my face and threatened to blow my brains out? Or the part where you practically crushed both my collarbones? Why don’t we check Amy Vanderbilt’s etiquette guide, see if either one violates any of her little rules?”

  “Please listen to me. I’m not in the service right now. You called that right. But I was. A career operative, okay? I don’t expect any of this to make a lot of sense to you. I know a certain amount about you. You don’t know anything about me. But maybe, just maybe, we can help each other.”

  “How sweet. That makes everything all right, then.” Andrea Bancroft spoke with heavy sarcasm. “A goddamn psycho thinks we can be of mutual assistance. Break out the champagne.” Anger glinted from her eyes.

  “You honestly think I’m a psycho?”

  She stared at him for a long moment, then looked away. “No,” she said quietly. “Oddly enough, I don’t.” She paused. “How about you? You honestly think I’m part o
f some conspiracy to kidnap your friend?”

  “You wanna know the truth?”

  “Might make a nice change.”

  “I think probably you’re not. But I also think it’s a little too soon to say.”

  “A man who’s afraid to commit.” A mock simper. “The story of my life.”

  “Tell me more about this foundation,” Belknap said. “What does it do, exactly?”

  “What does it do? It’s the Bancroft Foundation. It does…good deeds. Global public health, that kind of stuff.”

  “Then why did you ask if I was from the foundation?”

  “What? I’m sorry, I can’t even think straight just now.” She put a hand on her forehead. “All of a sudden I’m feeling a little dizzy. I need to step out, just walk for a few minutes, breathe some fresh air, or I’m going to pass out. This has all been a lot to deal with.”

  “Fine,” Belknap said mistrustfully. “Take some air.” Maybe she was telling the truth, but he had serious doubts. She might well be trying to collect herself while she contemplated a countermove. He would keep an eye on her as she walked through the copse of firs, alert to any sudden movements. At the same time, he did not want her to feel that she had been taken prisoner; if her account was honest—and his instincts told him that, for the most part, it was—he might indeed need to gain her confidence.

  She had her back to him, was walking, shoeless, in a steady, deliberate gait, and when she finally circled back, he could tell from her face, instantly, that something had changed. In his mind, he replayed what he had seen, and not seen, and, in a flash, he knew. She had her purse with her, had dialed 911 from her cell phone, had murmured a distress call into it.

  “Shall we go?” Belknap asked her.

  “In a few minutes,” she said. “My stomach, you know. All this stress. I just need to settle down. Do you mind?”

  “Why should I mind?” He took a step toward her and, in a sudden movement, plunged a hand into her purse and retrieved her small cell phone. He mashed two keys, got the DIALED CALLS log to display. Just as he thought: The first number to appear was 911. He tossed the phone to her. “Summoning the cavalry?”