Extreme Denial

  Decker was far enough from the roaring flames to hear the pulsing wail of approaching sirens. One of the terrorists might have stayed, hiding behind a car, hoping to create an ambush. But Decker was betting that the sirens were as worrisome to the terrorists as they were to him.

  He decided to take the chance. “Let’s go!” he told Brian.

  As people crowded behind them, he and Brian hurried to carry McKittrick toward the Fiat and set him in the backseat. Brian stayed in back with his father while Decker slid behind the steering wheel and sped away, narrowly missing people in the street. At the same time, numerous sirens wailed louder behind the Fiat Pressing his foot on the accelerator, Decker glanced nervously at the rearview mirror and saw the flashing lights of emergency vehicles appear on the rainy street behind him.

  But what about up ahead? he wondered, his hands tense on the steering wheel. The street was so narrow that if fire trucks or police cars sped around a corner, heading in Decker’s direction, there’d be no way around them. The Fiat would be trapped.

  A rain-slick corner loomed. Decker swerved, finding himself on a street that was wider. No approaching lights flashed in the darkness ahead. The sirens were farther behind him.

  “I think we got away,” Decker said. “How’s your father?”

  “He’s still alive. That’s the best I can say.”

  Decker tried to breathe less quickly. “What did Renata mean about threatening to do what she did at the other apartment buildings?”

  “She told me she rigged explosives at some of them. After I showed up, looking for her and the others ...” Brian had trouble speaking.

  “As soon as you were out of the area, she set off the charges?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’d made such a commotion, barging into the apartments, that the other people in the building would have come out to learn what was going on? They’d associate you with the explosions?”

  “Yes.”

  “Renata wanted an American to be blamed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn it, you let her use you again,” Decker said.

  “But I got even.”

  “Even?”

  “You saw what I did. I shot her.”

  “You... ?” Decker couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He felt as if the road wavered. “You didn’t shoot her.”

  “In the throat,” Brian said.

  “No.”

  “You’re trying to claim you did?” Brian demanded.

  My God, he truly is crazy, Decker thought. “There’s nothing to brag about here, Brian. If you had shot her, it wouldn’t make me think less of myself or more of you. If anything, I’d feel sorry for you. It’s a terrible thing, living with the memory of ...”

  “Sorry for me? What the hell are you talking about? You think you’re better than I am? What gives you the right to feel so superior?”

  “Forget it, Brian.”

  “Sorry for me? Are you trying to claim you did what I did?”

  “Just calm down,” Decker said.

  “You hate me so much, the next thing, you’ll be claiming I was the one who shot my father.”

  Decker’s sense of reality was so threatened that he felt momentarily dizzy. “Whatever you say, Brian. All I want to do is get him to a hospital.”

  “Damned right.”

  Decker heard a pulsing siren. The flashing lights of a police car raced toward him. His palms sweated on the steering wheel. At once the police car rushed past, heading in the direction from which Decker had come.

  “Give me your revolver, Brian.”

  “Get serious.”

  “I mean it. Hand me your revolver.”

  “You’ve got to be—”

  “Just once, for Christ sake, listen to me. There’ll be other police cars. Someone will tell the police a Fiat sped away. There’s a chance we’ll be stopped. It’s bad enough we have a wounded man in the car. But if the police find our handguns ...”

  “What are you going to do with my revolver? You think you can use ballistics from it to prove I shot my father? You’re afraid I’ll try to get rid of it?”

  “No, I’m going to get rid of it.”

  Brian cocked his head in surprise.

  “As much as I don’t want to.” Decker stopped at the side of the murky street and turned to stare at Brian. “Give ... me ... your ... revolver.”

  Squinting, Brian studied him. Slowly he reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out the weapon.

  Decker pulled out his own weapon.

  Only when Brian offered the revolver, butt first, did Decker allow himself to relax a little. In the courtyard, before he had helped to lift McKittrick’s father, he had picked up the elderly man’s pistol. Now he took that pistol, his own, and Brian’s. He got out of the Fiat into the chilling rain, scanned the darkness to see if anyone was watching, went around to the curb, knelt as if to check the pressure on one of his tires, and inconspicuously dropped the three handguns down a sewer drain.

  Immediately he got back into the Fiat and drove away.

  “So that takes care of that, huh?” Brian said.

  “Yes,” Decker answered bitterly. “That takes care of that.”

  16

  “He has lost a great deal of blood,” the emergency-room doctor said in Italian. “His pulse is weak and erratic. His blood pressure is low. I do not wish to be pessimistic, but I am afraid that you must prepare yourself for any eventuality.”

  “I understand,” Decker said. “This man’s son and I appreciate anything you can do for him.”

  The doctor nodded gravely and went back into the emergency room. .

  Decker turned to two weary-looking hospital officials who stood respectfully in a corner of the waiting room. “I’m grateful for your cooperation in this matter,” Decker told them. “My superiors will be even more grateful. Of course, a suitable gesture of gratitude will be made to everyone involved.”

  “Your superiors have always been most generous.” One of the officials took off his spectacles. “We will do our best to make certain that the authorities are not informed about the true cause of the patient’s injury.”

  “I have total confidence in your discretion.” Decker shook hands with them. The money he slipped into their palms disappeared into their pockets. “Grazie.”

  As soon as the officials left, Decker sat beside Brian. “Good. You kept your mouth shut.”

  “We have an understanding with this hospital?”

  Decker nodded.

  “Is this place first-rate?” Brian asked. “It seems awfully small.”

  “It’s the best.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Prayer wouldn’t hurt.”

  Brian frowned. “You mean you’re religious?”

  “I like to keep my options open.” Decker peered down at his wet clothes, which were clinging to him. “What they’re doing for your father is going to take a while. I think we’d better go back to your hotel and put on dry clothes.”

  “But what if something happens while we’re gone?”

  “You mean if he dies?” Decker asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It won’t make any difference whether we’re in this room or not.”

  “This is all your fault.”

  “What?” Decker felt sudden pressure behind his ears. “My fault?”

  “You got us into this mess. If it wasn’t for you, none of this would have happened.”

  “How the hell do you figure that?”

  “If you hadn’t shown up on Friday and rushed me, I could have handled Renata and her group just fine.”

  “Why don’t we talk about this on the way to your hotel?”

  17

  “He claims that as soon as you got him out of the hospital, you shoved him into an alley and beat him up,” Decker’s superior said.

  “He can claim anything he wants.” It was Monday. Again, Decker was in an office at the international real estate consulting firm, but this time, he was s
peaking to his superior in person rather than on a scrambler-protected telephone.

  The gray-haired superior, whose sagging cheeks were florid from tension, leaned forward across the table. “You deny the accusation?”

  “Brian was injured in the incident at the apartment building. I have no idea where this fantasy about my beating him comes from.”

  “He says you’re jealous of him.”

  “Right.”

  “That you’re angry because he found the terrorists.”

  “Sure.”

  “That you’re trying to get even with him by claiming that he accidentally shot his father.”

  “Imagine.”

  “And that you’re trying to take credit for shooting the terrorists whom he in fact shot.”

  “Look,” Decker said, “I know you need to protect your pension. I know there’s a lot of political pressure and that you need to cover your ass. But why are you dignifying that jerk’s ridiculous accusations by repeating them to me?”

  “What makes you think they’re ridiculous?”

  “Ask Brian’s father. He’s awfully weak. It’s a miracle he pulled through. But he’ll be able to—”

  “I already have asked him.”

  Decker didn’t like his superior’s solemn tone. “And?”

  “Jason McKittrick verifies everything Brian claims,” the superior said. “Terrorists shot him, but not before he saw his son shoot three of the terrorists. Of course, ballistic tests might have corroborated what Jason McKittrick says, but you saw fit to dispose of all the weapons that were used that night.” Decker’s gaze was as steady as his superior’s.

  “So that’s how it’s going to be.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jason McKittrick warned me from the start—his son wasn’t going to take the blame. I liked the old man enough that I stopped treating the warning seriously. I should have been more careful. The enemy wasn’t out there. He was next to me.”

  “Jason McKittrick’s character isn’t in question here.”

  “Of course not. Because nobody wants Jason McKittrick as an enemy. And nobody wants to accept the responsibility for allowing his incompetent son to ruin a major operation. But somebody's got to be at fault, right?”

  The superior didn’t answer.

  “How did you manage to hide Brian’s involvement in this?” Decker asked. “Didn’t the terrorists send incriminating evidence about him to the police?”

  “When you phoned to warn me about that possibility, I alerted our contacts in the police department. A package did arrive. Our contacts diverted it.”

  “What about the media? No package was sent to them?”

  “A television station, the same station the terrorists had earlier been sending messages to. We intercepted that package, also. The crisis is over.”

  “Except for twenty-three dead Americans,” Decker said. “Do you wish to make any change in your report?”

  “Yes. I did beat the hell out of that jerk. I wish I’d beaten him more.”

  “Any other change?”

  “Something I should have added,” Decker said.

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “Saturday was my fortieth birthday.”

  The superior shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t see the relevance of that remark.”

  “If you’ll wait a moment, I’ll type up my resignation.”

  “Your ...? But we’re not asking you to go that far. What on earth do you think resigning will get you?”

  “A life.”

  TWO

  1

  Decker lay on the bed in his New York hotel room. Using his right hand, he sipped from a glass of Jack Daniel’s. Using his left hand, he aimed the television’s remote control and restlessly switched channels. Where do you go when you’ve been everywhere? he asked himself.

  New York had always been good for him, a place to which he’d automatically headed when he had a rare free weekend. Broadway, the Metropolitan Opera, the Museum of Modem Art—these had always beckoned like old friends. Days, he had used to enjoy a soothing ritual of jogging through Central Park, of lunching at the Carnegie Deli, of browsing through the Strand Book Store, of watching the sidewalk artists in Washington Square. Nights, he had liked to check out who was singing at the Algonquin Room. Radio City Music Hall. Madison Square Garden. There had always been plenty to do.

  But this trip, to his surprise, he wanted to do none of it. Mel Tormé was at Michael’s Pub. Normally Decker would have been the first in line to get a seat. Not this time. Maynard Ferguson, Decker’s favorite trumpeter, was at the Blue Note, but Decker didn’t have the energy to clean himself up and go out. All he did have energy for was to pour more bourbon into his glass and keep pressing the channel changer on the TV’s remote control.

  After flying back from Rome, he hadn’t considered returning to his small apartment in Alexandria, Virginia. He had no attachment to the small bedroom, living room, kitchenette, and bath. They weren’t his home. They were merely a place for storing his clothes and sleeping between assignments. The dust that greeted him whenever he returned made his nose itch and gave him a headache. There was no way he could allow himself to break security and hire a cleaning lady to spruce the place up for his arrival. The thought of a stranger going through his things made his skin prickle— not that he would ever have left anything revealing in his apartment.

  He hadn’t let his superior—correction: his former superior—know where he was going after he submitted his resignation. New York would have been on the list of predictables, of course, and it would have been a routine matter for someone following him to confirm the destination of the flight Decker had boarded. He had used evasion procedures when he arrived in New York. He had stayed in a hotel that was new to him— the St. Regis. Nonetheless, ten minutes after he had checked in and been shown to his room, the telephone had rung, and, of course, it had been his superior—correction again: damn it, former superior—asking Decker to reconsider.

  “Really, Steve,” the weary-sounding man had said, “I appreciate grand gestures as much as the next person, but now that you’ve done it, now that it’s out of your system, let’s let bygones be bygones. Climb back aboard. I agree, this Rome business is a mess from every angle, an out-and-out disaster, but resigning isn’t going to change things. You’re not making anything better. Surely you understand the futility of what you’ve done.”

  “You’re afraid I’m angry enough to tell the wrong people about what happened, is that it?” Decker had asked.

  “Of course not. Everybody knows you’re rock-solid. You wouldn’t do anything unprofessional. You wouldn’t let us down.”

  “Then you don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “You’re too good a man to lose, Steve.”

  “With guys like Brian McKittrick, you’ll never know I’m gone.” Decker had set the phone on its receptacle.

  A minute later, the phone had rung again, and this time, it had been his former superior’s superior. “If it’s an increase in salary you want ...”

  “I never had a chance to spend what you paid me,” Decker said.

  “Perhaps more time off.”

  “To do what?”

  “Travel.”

  “Right. See the world. Rome, for instance. I fly so much, I think there’s something wrong with a bed if it isn’t shaped like an airline seat.”

  “Look, Steve, everybody gets burned-out. It’s part of the job. That’s why we keep a team of experts who know how to relieve the symptoms of stress. Honestly, I think it would do you a world of good if you took a shuttle down to Washington right now and had a talk with them.”

  “Didn’t you listen? I told you I’m sick of flying.”

  “Then use the train.”

  Again, Decker set the phone on its receptacle. He had no doubt that if he tried to go outside, he would be intercepted by two men waiting for him in the lobby. They would identify themselves, explain that his friends were worried abo
ut his reaction to what had happened in Rome, and suggest driving him to a quiet bar where they could discuss what was bothering him.

  To hell with that, Decker thought. I can have a drink in my room, by myself. Besides, the ride they gave me wouldn’t be to a bar. That was when Decker picked up the phone, ordered a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and plenty of ice from room service, unplugged the phone, turned on the television, and began switching channels. Two hours later, as darkness thickened beyond his closed drapes, he was a third of the way through the bottle and still switching channels. The staccato images on the screen were the test pattern of his mind.

  Where to go? What to do? he asked himself. Money wasn’t an immediate problem. For the ten years he had worked as an operative, a considerable portion of his salary had gone into mutual funds. Added to that sum was the sizable amount of accumulated parachute pay, scuba pay, demolitions pay, combat pay, and specialty pay that he had previously earned as a member of a classified military counterterrorist unit. Like many of the military’s highest-trained soldiers, he had been recruited into intelligence work after he had reached an age when his body could no longer function as efficiently as his special-operations duties required—in Decker’s case, when he was thirty, after a broken leg, three broken ribs, and two bullet wounds suffered in various classified missions. Of course, even though Decker was no longer physically superior enough to belong to his counterterrorist unit, he was still in better condition than most civilians.

  His investments had increased to the point that his net worth was $300,000. In addition, he planned to withdraw the fifty thousand dollars that he had contributed to his government pension. But despite his relative financial freedom, he felt trapped in other ways. With the whole world to choose from, he had narrowed his choices to this hotel room. If his parents had still been alive (and briefly he fantasized that they were), he would have paid them a long-postponed visit. As things were, his mother had died in a car accident three years earlier and his father from a heart attack a few months afterward, both while he was on assignment. The last time he had seen his father alive was at his mother’s funeral.