Then her thoughts just as suddenly swung the other way. This is not your concern, Annabelle. You need to go. Jerry Bagger is coming for you. Let the old guys handle it. There was no way Reuben could have murdered Behan, but they’ll figure it out. And if they don’t, it’s not your problem. It’s not.

Still, she stood there frozen. Never before had she been so indecisive.

“Last call, door’s closing for flight 3457.”

She whispered desperately, “Go, Annabelle, damn it, just go. You don’t need this. It’s not your fight. You don’t owe these people anything. You don’t owe Jonathan anything.”

She watched as the door to her flight from Jerry Bagger slammed shut and the ticket–taker marched off to another gate. She watched ten minutes later as the Boeing 777 pulled away from the gate. As it soared into the sky right on schedule, Annabelle was booking another flight north taking her squarely within the vicinity of Jerry Bagger and his wood chipper. And she didn’t even know why. Yet somewhere in her soul maybe she did.

• • •

Albert Trent was finishing up some things at his office at home. He’d gotten a late start after a long night of work and decided to catch up on some things before he drove in. The tasks were all related to his position as the senior staff member on the House Intelligence Committee. It was one he’d held for years now, and he was well grounded in nearly all aspects of the intelligence business, at least the part the agencies shared with their congressional overseers. He smoothed his few strands of hair down, finished his coffee and cheese Danish, packed his briefcase and a few minutes later pulled down the street in his Honda two–door. Five years from now he would be driving something much nicer in, say, Argentina, or he’d heard the South Pacific was truly paradise.

His secret account now contained millions. He should be able to double that in the next half–decade. The secrets Roger Seagraves was selling were at the very top end of the payment scale. It wasn’t like the Cold War where you dropped a package off and picked up twenty thousand bucks in return. The people Seagraves was dealing with operated only in the seven–figure range, but they expected a lot for their money. Trent had never questioned Seagraves either about his sources or the people he was selling to. The man would never have revealed anything, and, in fact, Trent didn’t want to know. His sole but critical piece of the equation was getting the information Seagraves passed to him to the next leg of the journey. His method for doing so was unique and probably foolproof. Indeed, it was the main reason the American intelligence community was currently in shambles.

There were many energetic and skilled counterintelligence agents out in the field trying to ferret out how the secrets were being stolen and then communicated to the enemy. In his official capacity Trent had been privy to some of these investigative efforts. The agents talking to him had no reason to suspect that a mere staffer with a bad hairdo who drove an eight–year–old Honda and lived in a crummy house and labored under the same bills and limited income every other civil servant had was part of a sophisticated espionage crew that was decimating American intelligence efforts.

The authorities had to know by now that the source was deeply buried inside, but with fifteen major intelligence agencies eating up 50 billion in budget dollars a year spread over 120,000 employees, the haystacks were enormous and the needles beyond microscopic. And Roger Seagraves, Trent had found, was chillingly efficient and never missed any of the details, however small and seemingly trivial.

Trent had tried to find out some background on him when they first started talking, yet could discover exactly zero on the man. To an experienced intelligence staffer like Trent, he knew this meant Seagraves had had an entirely covert past professional life. That made him a man you would never want to cross. And Trent never intended to. He would much rather die old and rich far away from this place.

As he puttered along in his dented Honda, he imagined how that new life would look. It would be very different, that was for certain. However, he never dwelled on how many lives had been lost because of his greed. Traitors seldom had such pangs of conscience.

• • •

Stone had just returned from his visit with Marilyn Behan when someone knocked on his cottage door.

“Hello, Oliver,” Annabelle said as he peered out.

He exhibited no surprise at her reappearance, but simply motioned her inside. They sat in front of the fireplace in two rickety chairs.

“How was your trip?” he asked pleasantly.

“Come off it, I didn’t go.”

“Really?”

“Have you told the others I left?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I knew you’d be back.”

She said angrily, “Okay, that really pisses me off. You don’t know me.”

“Obviously, I do, because here you are.”

She stared at him, shaking her head. “You have got to be the most unusual cemetery worker I’ve ever met.”

“You’ve met many, have you?”

“I heard what happened to Reuben.”

“The police are wrong, of course, but they just don’t know it yet.”

“We have to get him out of jail.”

“We’re working on that and Reuben’s doing fine. I don’t think many people will give him trouble in there. I’ve seen him take out five men in a bar fight. In addition to his great physical strength, he is one of the most ruthless and dirtiest fighters I’ve ever seen. I greatly admire that in a person.”

“But somebody got the drop on him at Jonathan’s?”

“Yes, someone did.”

“Why do it? Why kill Behan?”

“Because he found out how Jonathan died. That was enough reason.” Stone explained his conversation with Marilyn Behan.

“So they take out Behan and blame it on Reuben because he was ever so conveniently there?”

“They probably saw him coming and going from the house, figured the attic would be a good shot line, and they executed upon that plan. They may have ascertained that Behan brought women by and that they always spent time in that room.”

“Pretty tough competition we’re up against. So what do we do now?”

“For starters we need to see the tapes of the reading room vault.”

“On the way back I actually thought of how to do that.”

“I had no doubt you would.” He paused. “I don’t think we could have finished this without you. In fact, I’m sure of it.”

“Don’t flatter me too much. We’re still not there yet.”

The pair sat in silence for a few moments.

Annabelle gazed out the window. “You know it is peaceful here.”

“With dead people? I’m starting to find it very depressing.”

She smiled and rose. “I’ll call Caleb about my idea.”

Stone stood too, stretching out his lean, six–foot–two frame. “I’m afraid I’ve reached the age where simply cutting the grass does awful things to my joints.”

“Take some Advil. I’ll give you a call later, once I’m settled back in.”

As she passed Stone on the way out, he said quietly, “I’m glad you’re back.”

If she heard him, Annabelle didn’t react. He watched the lady climb into her car and drive off.

Chapter 48

After his revelation Jerry Bagger had summoned the manager of the hotel across the street to his office and demanded details of every guest who’d taken a room on the twenty–third floor on the side facing his building on a certain day. And in Atlantic City, when Jerry Bagger said to come, you went. As usual, some of Bagger’s men hovered in the background.

The hotel manager, a young, good–looking man who was obviously ambitious and intent on performing his duties to the best of his abilities, was not inclined to let the casino chief see anything.

“Just so you understand the situation, if you don’t give me what I want, you will die,” Bagger said.