Rachel. She was what mattered. Their principal. The client they'd pledged themselves to protect.
As Savage raced to help her, Akira joined him. At the end of the alley, the car's driver revved its engine. The two men—one on each side of Rachel—yanked her toward an open rear door.
Savage was too far away to reach her in time. No option. He knew what had to be done.
Halting abruptly, he drew his pistol. Akira halted simultaneously next to him, drawing his own. As if they'd trained together, as if they'd practiced coordinated maneuvers, each cocked his weapon precisely when the other did, the sharp clicks merging, echoing. They braced themselves identically, each turning slightly to the right, their feet apart, one foot angled away from the other for balance. They each used two hands to grip their weapons. Raising them, they each kept their left arm straight, their right arm slightly bent, their elbows locked for a steady aim.
Keeping both eyes open, lining up the front and rear sights, focusing on the front sight, the target beyond it slightly blurred, they fired. The simultaneous blasts reverberated along the alley. Ears rang, concussed. Though each man's bullet struck its target's chest, Savage and Akira fired again to make sure. The bullets walloped foreheads. Blood spurting, the targets fell.
Rachel stopped screaming. She knew enough, had learned enough, not to scramble around in confusion. Instead she dove to the alley's pavement, hugging it, removing herself from the line of fire.
The driver jerked up an arm.
Even at a distance, Savage recognized the shape of a pistol in his hand.
Savage aimed.
The driver shot first. His bullet buzzed past Savage's scalp as Savage dove to the left, Akira to the right.
Hitting the pavement, landing on their stomachs, they instantly propped their elbows to shoot from a prone position.
Too late. The driver stomped his foot on the throttle. Engine roaring, he sped from the alley's entrance. A cloud of exhaust replaced the car.
Savage thrust to his feet, charging toward Rachel. “Are you all right?”
“They almost wrenched my arms from their sockets.” She rubbed them. “Otherwise … Yes, I … What about you?”
Savage and Akira looked at each other. Trembling, breathing heavily, they exchanged reassuring nods.
“And what about—?” Rachel's incomplete question became a moan.
Mac lay beside the tavern's exit, the dim bulb above it glinting off a spreading pool of blood.
“No!” Savage raced toward him.
Mac's eyes were open, unblinking.
“Oh, Christ,” Savage said. He felt Mac's wrist, put an ear against Mac's chest, rested a finger against Mac's unmoving nostrils. “No.”
“Please,” Akira said. “There's nothing we can do for him. I'm sorry, but we have to leave.”
The tavern's back door banged open.
Savage pivoted, aiming.
A man with a brush cut, who was built like a football player, with a tattoo of a seal on a forearm, glared toward Mac's body, toward Savage, Akira, and Rachel, toward the other bodies.
Harold. The Ship-to-Shore's owner.
Savage lowered his aim.
“I knew you were trouble when you came in,” Harold said.
He scowled at Akira. “You bastards killed my father on Two Jima.”
He raised his arms. “It took me a while. But Doyle, at last I remember. Go ahead, shoot me, you son of a bitch. I'll die a hero. Along with Mac. You're a fucking disgrace. You don't deserve to have been a SEAL.”
Harold lunged.
Savage felt paralyzed.
Akira intercepted the attack, kicked Harold's groin, and grabbed Savage, urging him away.
As Harold fell toward the alley, Rachel helped Akira, tugging Savage.
Discipline insisted. Savage twisted his arms, freeing the hands that gripped him.
“Okay,” he said. “Let's go.”
15
Sirens wailed in the night. Despite his anxiety, Savage forced himself to maintain the speed limit, driving unobtrusively, blending with traffic. Rachel sat, her knees bent, her head hunched, on the floor in front of the passenger seat. Akira lay on the floor in back.
“I don't think anyone saw us reach the car,” Savage said. “So they don't know our license number. They won't be looking for a Taurus.”
“But two men and a woman. A blonde and a Japanese,” Rachel said. “Harold will tell the police who to look for. If a cop pulls up next to us, he might see us hiding in here.”
“In daylight maybe,” Savage said. “But at night? Unless the cop used a flashlight, he wouldn't notice you.”
Savage tried to sound reassuring. The truth was, the headlights and streetlights he drove past sometimes illuminated her. He kept his eyes straight ahead, barely moving his lips when he spoke, doing his best not to attract attention by seeming to talk to himself or to make a passing motorist guess he was talking to someone hidden in the car.
“Harold indeed will tell the police.” Akira's voice came muffled from the floor in back. “I could have killed him. I think now I should have.”
“No,” Savage said. “You did the right thing. We're protectors, not assassins! We were forced to kill to save Rachel. We made an ethical, necessary choice. But killing Harold would have been …”
“Needless?” Akira asked. “Gratuitous? What he saw— what he tells the police—threatens us. If we were justified in killing those men to save Rachel, I'd have been equally justified in killing Harold to save ourselves.”
“It's not the same,” Savage said. “I can't tell you why I'm sure of that. But I am sure. Harold must have heard the shots. Why didn't anyone else? Who knows? Maybe Harold was coming out of the men's room in the corridor. So he opened the outside door and found us. His timing, by accident, was terrible. A hit man for the mob would have killed him. But I'll say it again. We're not assassins. We don't kill innocent people because their timing's bad.”
“Evidently I agree. Because I didn't kill him.”
“And I thank you for that.”
“This is my fault,” Rachel said. She sounded cramped in the narrow space. “If I hadn't begged to come with you …”
“We accepted you,” Savage said. “We agreed. That topic's settled.”
“Let me finish,” Rachel said. “If I hadn't come along, if I hadn't been in that alley, my husband's men wouldn't have tried to grab me. You wouldn't have killed them. A misaimed bullet wouldn't have killed your friend. He'd have told you what you needed to know. You wouldn't be grieving. You wouldn't be trying to escape the police. Everything—all of it—is my fault.”
“If? My God,” Savage said, “is that what you've been thinking? Blaming yourself? Don't you understand what happened? The men who attacked you had nothing to do with your husband.”
“What?”
“Your husband couldn't have known where you were,” Akira said from behind the front seat. “We concealed your trail impeccably. From the attempt on you in southern France, we used every strategy we could think of to elude your husband. His men could not have followed us here.”
“Maybe they're better than you imagine,” Rachel said.
“If so, they'd have chosen an earlier moment to try to abduct you. At the various hotels where we stayed. Outside the various hospitals where we sought help. I can think of a dozen perfect intervention sites. If your husband's men did decide to grab you, why did they wait so long? And in such a complicated situation?”
“To take advantage of that complication, hoping you'd be distracted,” Rachel said.
Savage interrupted. “But your husband's men couldn't have known that I'd agreed to meet Mac in that alley! To support your theory, we'd have to assume that these presumably clever professionals decided all at once, with no plan, just for the hell of it, to take advantage of the Dumpster truck that entered the alley, to depend on luck and make a grab for you.”
“They did very well,” Rachel said. “They got me away from Akira.??
?
“That's something else that troubles me,” Akira said. “They should have killed me before they grabbed you. They had the chance. Instead one man distracted me while the others dragged you away. I didn't have a chance to draw my pistol. I was forced to fight hand to hand.”
“They responded to the confusion of the moment,” Rachel said.
“What confusion? If the Dumpster truck was part of the plan, Savage and I would have been confused. But not your husband's men. They'd have been ready. To do what was necessary. To kill me.”
“But they didn't,” Savage said. “Which suggests they didn't want to kill Akira, hadn't been ordered to.”
“And your husband's so arrogant he'd have insisted that Savage and I be killed. For humiliating the great man's pride,” Akira said. “The tactics were wrong. They should have killed us before they abducted you.”
“Easier. Safer,” Savage said, “instead Mac died. God help him. I didn't just happen to duck so the bullet hit him. If the driver wanted to hit me, he could have. He shot before I ducked. The target was Mac. Whatever's happening, he couldn't be allowed to talk. And Rachel, you were in the way, not part of the plan. You're not supposed to be with us. But you are. So whoever managed to predict where we'd be, decided to solve both problems at once. To take you away from us. To stop Mac from telling what he knew. And in the bargain, to continue confusing Akira and me.”
“But why?” Rachel asked.
11
The North Carolina motel room was small and drab. But at least it was clean, and its entrance was in a corridor at the rear of the building, where Rachel and Akira had a good chance of slipping in unnoticed. Late at night, the only takeout restaurant Savage found open served pizza. Sitting on the motel room's floor, they chewed unenthusiastically on a thickly crusted, five-ingredient “supreme,” not hungry but knowing they had to maintain their strength. A six-pack of Coke helped them swallow the overspiced, undercooked dough. Akira, who retained his culture's preference for vegetables, rice, and fish, picked off the sausage on his pizza slices.
“Let's analyze the conversation one more time,” Akira said. “Mac assumed you knew things you don't, so he didn't elaborate, didn't explain. As a consequence, what he said seemed cryptic. Even so, is there anything you feel sure of?”
“Mac did know me,” Savage said.
“Even though he called you ‘Doyle,’ which isn't your name.”
“Or maybe it is,” Savage said. “False memory. How do I know what's true? Whoever operated on my brain might have taught me to forget my real name and convinced me that one of my pseudonyms isn't a lie but the name I was born with.”
“Everything's a lie,” Rachel said. Disgusted, she dropped a half-eaten slice of pizza into the box.
Savage studied her, then continued. “What doesn't seem a false memory is that Mac and I in fact were friends. He mentioned that several times. But he also said that we were enemies, or supposed to be enemies. There were rules, he said. If we wanted to see each other, we had to use codes and meet at safe houses.”
“That's an expression used by intelligence operatives,” Akira said.
“Yes, and Mac thought you and Rachel were what he called my ‘watchdogs,’ assessing me because I was under stress. How would I behave when I tried to make unscheduled contact with him? How would he behave? He kept talking about rules and whether he still obeyed them. He seemed afraid that you were testing him.”
“But who did he think we worked for?” Rachel asked.
Savage hesitated. “The CIA.”
“What?”
“He got angry, as if he thought he'd be punished for breaking the rules and talking to me in the alley.”
Akira straightened. “Mac was CIA?”
“I can't be certain. It doesn't make sense for a SEAL to be a civilian intelligence operative. Navy intelligence maybe. But not a Langley operative. No,” Savage said, “the impression I got was that Mac thought I reported to you, that I worked for the agency.”
“My God,” Rachel said, “is that possible?”
“The last few days have proved that anything's possible. But if you're asking me, ‘Do I remember being an operative?’ the answer is no. Of course, you might suspect I'm lying.”
Akira shook his head. “In Philadelphia, you talked about being so unsure of what was real that you felt afraid to trust Rachel and me. Maybe we weren't what we seemed, you said. Maybe we'd been sent to trick you. We insisted you had to trust us. Because the alternative was paralysis. Now I take my own advice. My friend, as a necessary act of faith, I trust you. I refuse to suspect you're lying.”
“ ‘Abraham believed by virtue of the absurd,’ “ Rachel said.
Akira looked puzzled.
“It's something I said to Savage last night in Philadelphia.” Rachel stood. “An act of faith.”
“So we have to question whether I'm remembering correctly,” Savage said. “In Philadelphia, Dr. Santizo explained that a false memory required the cancellation of a true one. Otherwise I wouldn't behave consistently. So maybe I did— do—belong to the CIA, and I'm not aware of it.”
“ ‘Maybe’? ‘Perhaps’? This is getting us nowhere,” Akira said.
Savage rubbed his aching forehead. “Mac told me something else. ‘Was I supposed to fight with you again?’ That's what he said. It didn't make sense. Fight with him again? The implication is I fought with him before. But why—if we were friends? He said when I spoke to him in the bar, he pretended he owed me money because it was the only way he could think of to explain our conversation. ‘Except for punching you out. I could have done that. It fits your cover story,’ he said.”
“Cover story?” Akira frowned.
“Mac used that phrase a lot.”
“Friends supposed to be enemies. Cover story. CIA,” Rachel said. “I'm beginning … When Harold found us in the alley, he suddenly remembered you. He said you disgraced the SEALs. He went so berserk he didn't care about your pistol. He said he'd die a hero if he attacked you. Cover story.”
“I don't understand,” Savage said.
“Theory. Assumptions. If you did work for the CIA, you'd need a cover story to convince the opposition that you weren't still loyal to America. So the agency recruits you. You resign from the SEALs. You become a protector. While guarding your clients— important clients, influential clients, wealthy enough to afford your fee—you gather information about them. Because they're powerful. Because their secrets have strategic value or are so incriminating that the agency can blackmail your clients into working for them.”
Savage stared at the floor, his forehead persistently throbbing no matter how hard he rubbed it.
“But how to convince your clients that you're a free agent?” Rachel continued. “By disowning your government. Why?”
“Because I was part of the first wave of U.S. soldiers that invaded Grenada,” Savage said. “And what I saw there convinced me the Marxist government on the island—as crazy-as they were—didn't threaten America. The invasion was a public relations ploy, to distract America from the two hundred and thirty U.S. marines that died in Beirut because of a terrorist bomb. Grenada was the president's scheme to increase his popularity ratings. Too many of my comrades died needlessly. I resigned in disgust.”
“And fought with a fellow SEAL who disagreed with you, who thought you'd betrayed your team?” Akira asked. “A fight in public? Two friends become enemies? A convincing cover story.”
Savage raised his head but continued to rub his temples. “Especially if my father committed suicide because his country betrayed him, because the White House needed a scapegoat to explain the Bay of Pigs catastrophe. God damn it.” Savage glared. “That invasion failed because U.S. politicians lost their nerve and changed the Cuban invasion site from a town to a goddamn swamp.”
“But your background's consistent,” Rachel said. “Cuba. Grenada. Two invasions. One seems necessary but isn't successful. The second isn't necessary.”
“Bu
t is successful,” Savage said. “And both invasions are based on—”
“Lies?”
“Disinformation. Graham was fascinated with the concept. Events that never happened but changed the world. Hitler sending German soldiers into Poland, having them dress in Polish uniforms and fire toward the German lines, so the Germans could justify invading. The United States sending a destroyer too close to North Vietnam's Gulf of Tonkin, daring the North Vietnamese to fire, then claiming that the North Vietnamese attacked without provocation, and using that incident to justify increasing America's presence in South Vietnam. Convincing deception. Plausible deniability.”
“False memory,” Akira said. “Entire nations remembering what never happened. But right now your false memory is what matters. Let's assume your father—not the man you met in Baltimore but your real father—did kill himself. That makes it believable that you'd resign from the SEALs because the Grenada invasion wasn't necessary and you were furious about the needless deaths of fellow SEALs. You'd seem to be a true free agent, uninvolved with your government,” Akira said.
“False memory. Cover story. Lies. We don't know—we can't be sure of—”
“Anything,” Rachel said. “That pizza … It's making me sick. My head's … I'm too exhausted to think.” She reached for a package Savage had bought at an all-night convenience store. “But one thing I'm sure of. I have to dye my hair. So I'll be auburn again. Instead of blond. And not my sister. After that …” She pointed toward the narrow bed.
“One of us will stand guard while the other sleeps on the floor,” Akira said.
“No way,” Rachel said. “Decide who takes the first watch. Whoever's off duty shares the space next to me. I don't want someone with a stiff back trying to protect me. I'll put a pillow between us, so I don't interfere with anyone's peace of mind. We're a family, right? We're comfortable sharing space together. But Akira, when it's Savage's turn, I hope you don't object if in my sleep I squirm around and hug him.”
17
The North Carolina morning was fresh and clear. After assessing the motel's parking lot, Savage left the corridor's rear exit and crossed the street to get take-out breakfasts from McDonald's. Coming back, he bought several newspapers from vending machines on the sidewalk.