CHAPTER 76
CHAPTER
THEIR LOVEMAKING NOW WAS SLOW and sensual, instead of the previous attempt’s feral and frenetic display.
Nash’s pelvis methodically rose and fell between her legs before he pulled her upward and she sat astride him, seamlessly moving her hips up and down against him.
When they were both done, she slumped against him, breathless.
With her in his arms, Nash fell to one side and they lay next to one another on the bed.
She let out a throaty moan and rubbed his arm.
Then she rose on one elbow and turned to him.
“This was much more pleasurable than how it started out between us,” she noted.
He managed a weak smile. “The first attempt was more of a war.”
Her large sad eyes took him in fully and she said, “We should get ready, Walter, and then. . . discuss things.”
Forty-five minutes later Nash and Steers sat in front of the flames from the gas fireplace in the living room after a hastily prepared meal that they ate quickly and with little conversation. The weather had turned cloudy, with a damp chill.
Steers had explained very little about Maggie’s being alive and, in truth, Nash would not have been able to process it if she had elaborated.
The fact that they had made love after the stunning revelation was probably good.
He had not wanted to think at that moment.
If he had, Nash was certain he would have convinced himself that Maggie was in fact dead.
But now, the time had come for an explanation from Steers.
He looked at her. “Maggie?”
“I had mentioned long ago that your CIA was interested in me?”
“I remember that, yes. But you didn’t get into details.”
“I could not at the time. But. . .they were not just interested. They made me an offer, an offer I could not refuse.”
“What sort of offer?”
“A future. Not a bright one, really, but better than what I had.”
“Why come to you with an offer? They must have known the authorities were already after you.”
“The truth is, I made discreet overtures to certain parties that led the CIA to secretly approach me. My mother believed she could make me just like her. But she could not. And you have always been right about that, Walter. I am not her.”
“It’s good to hear you say it, Victoria.”
“It is good to hear me say it,” she replied.
“So you, what, started working for the CIA?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Ironic in that the FBI engaged me to be a mole against you while you were a mole against everyone you were working with.”
“I do not believe that your FBI knows of any of this.”
“And the sale of your business?”
“That was necessary because it placed Connor Lord squarely in the bullseye. The CIA wants him for many reasons, they told me. He can bring down many major figures.”
“The FBI told me the same thing.”
“His purchase of my organization was the first time he actually took over any overt criminal enterprise. That was why I dangled it like a carrot and then made sure he would accept my terms. The CIA told me that if we managed to pull this off, it will be one of the most important operations they have ever been party to.”
“If Lord is this master chess player and genius, why do you think he agreed to take over your operation? He must be aware of the risks.”
“He is also a narcissist, which can be a weakness of enormous degree. He feigns contentment lurking behind the scenes, but Lord has always thirsted for more power, and the opportunity to be center stage. And I used that against him. And I hope that it also will be his undoing.” She paused and studied him.
“So that is why I could tell you nothing. I am so very sorry.”
“I understand.”
“Lord told me that the FBI had recruited you, in your position at Sybaritic, to spy on me and the Temples. How he found out, I do not know. He wanted you taken care of. Not killed. He wanted something more so that the FBI would no longer work with or trust you, and indeed might abandon their investigation entirely. That is why I did what I did with your daughter. It was the only thing I could think of. After Maggie was taken and her AI-altered image appeared online, I was supposed to capture and then torture you to make you tell me what you had disclosed to the authorities. But I had no interest in that, and you managed to elude me and the police. And afterward, while I made noises about trying to find you and kept imploring Rhett Temple to do the same, it was all window dressing to placate Lord. I. . .I had done enough harm to you.”
“But then you sent Lynn Ryder over and made a big push to locate me.”
“I became desperate. I needed to know what you had told the FBI. You see, it had occurred to me that if they brought down my business before Lord was attached to it, everything I had worked for with the CIA would be ruined. I just wanted to take you out of the equation until I could complete the transaction with Lord. I of course had no inkling you were right there the whole time.”
“And those men being sent to my wife’s home? Would they have killed her even though you said not to? They came into the house with knives out and looked ready to murder her.”
“I ordered Lynn to have those men abduct your wife, that is all. As soon as I did, however, I regretted it. You see, those men did not work directly for me. They worked for Lord.” She looked away.
“I. . .I should have thought it through more, but I suppose I panicked. I had so little time to make a decision. It. . .it was. . .a poor choice. And if I failed, the CIA would, of course, have disclaimed all knowledge of our arrangement. I would be in prison for the rest of my life, and Lord would be free to continue to wreak havoc.”
“Rhett finally figured out my real identity,” said Nash.
Steers looked at him pensively. “That does surprise and intrigue me. How was he able to accomplish what I could not?”
“A perfect storm of clues, mistakes on my part, and lucky deductions on his, unfortunately. But I struck a deal with him. You see, I also know that he murdered his father, so I had that to hold over him, too.”
“He killed his father? I did not think he had that in him.”
“I didn’t either. But Rhett is cagier than most people think. Ironically, it wasn’t the FBI who told me your mother’s real name was Dai Lu. It was Rhett. He overheard some of your associates talking about it.”
“I see.”
“Your mother was actually using my knowledge of her real name as leverage. And when she told you I knew her Chinese name? You had me drive you out to Hiroko’s resting place, at gunpoint.”
“I was not planning to kill you, just find out who you were really working for and then let the CIA deal with it. But when you told me you were Walter Nash?” She shook her head.
“I have truthfully never been more surprised in my life. Even more so than when I found out my mother was not a prisoner in Myanmar.”
“I still don’t understand how Maggie is alive. They found her remains. Bones, teeth.”
“They found some remains, but they were not hers.”
“But they ran tests. DNA doesn’t lie.”
“The CIA made certain the tests would come back as a positive match. The ring and strands of hair that were also found we took from Maggie to leave with the bones and teeth to further substantiate that those were her remains. She has been in safekeeping with your U.S. Marshals all this time. Things have been explained to her. She knows that you are alive, and also what you have been doing.”
Nash was taken aback by this revelation. “She knows about me?”
“Yes.”
“Does Judith know that Maggie is alive?”
“I do not know. But I do know that the CIA does not like to share information with anyone.” She paused. “I communicated with my handler earlier. I was also told that Maggie wanted you to know that she could not be more proud of you for all that you have done.”
Nash felt the tears creep to his eyes. At bottom, regardless of the muscles and tats and lethal skill set, he was, in some respects, still the overly sentimental Walter Nash.
Steers rubbed his arm. “I know how you have suffered. If there had been any other way . . .”
He brushed his tears away and attempted a smile. “I’ve been working with the FBI for a while, so I got a crash course in government secrecy and skullduggery, Victoria. But what about our neighborhood security guard, Billy Adams? He was killed.”
Steers gazed once more into the flames. “The fake police, who were the ones to abduct Maggie, were sent to me by Lord. However, I arranged that Maggie would be immediately turned over to my people for interrogation. . .and disposal. Those people were agents of the CIA. So Maggie was then safe. However, the fake police, unbeknownst to me, placed a listening device at the guard shack. They heard your conversation with the guard, and your urging him to go to the authorities about what he had seen. Again, without my knowledge, they used your vehicle to kill him. I truly did not intend anyone to die or you to be blamed for it.”
Nash nodded slowly. “And your mother and the prison? Why did Lord bring her back so that you could ‘rescue’ her?”
“To me it evidenced a master chess move of stunning creativity. Lord, you see, allowed me to visit my mother in prison as a reward for disposing of the threat you represented to both of us, but for different reasons. He did not want his plans with China thwarted, and I did not want my pact with the CIA disrupted. As I informed you before, with my mother in prison, or so I thought, that was significant leverage over me to do Lord’s bidding without restriction. ”
“They might have sensed you wanted to get out.”
“This, too, I have thought is more probable than not.”
“But what happened then? What was this master chess move?”
“My mother returning to the business allowed her to spy on me, a capability Lord did not have previously.”
“Like a Trojan horse,” said Nash.
“As you know, Beijing was not happy with me. They deemed a leadership change in their best interests. So my mother would use whatever intelligence she could gather to eventually dethrone me. That is a master chess move because it is both tactical and strategic, and it achieves multiple goals from the same set of actions.”
“But why not just kill you and insert your mother or Lord at the top of the chain?”
“As you now know I have partners all over the world, and they are men who are unafraid of Connor Lord or even Beijing.
Were the Chinese to do what you suggested it would have caused a dramatic and violent rupture in that partnership.
Beijing and Lord are far too intelligent to go down a road filled with such potholes.
She stroked his arm. “I was fooled by my mother until you suggested that she was distracting me from what she was really doing.” She gazed at Nash in reverence.
“You actually read Masuyo better than I did, Walter. And that is not an easy undertaking.”
“But she is your mother, Victoria. And, regardless of the circumstances, it’s not easy to think badly of a parent. I had no such allegiances to your mother.”
“After that I had her watched most carefully. And my suspicions were confirmed. My mother is brilliant. But she is also arrogant, and sometimes arrogant people are not as careful as they otherwise should be. They make mistakes, and she made enough to where the truth became apparent to me.”
“So you planned to turn that to your advantage?”
“After Hiroko-san’s murder at my mother’s hands, that became my one desire in life. And it also meshed quite perfectly with my plan to lure Connor Lord in and then trap him. Now the authorities are closing in, and all I have to do is survive.”
“I would have thought the CIA would put you in protective custody right after the sale went through.”
“If that had been done, Lord would have instantly seen the truth and taken steps to counteract anything we might have planned. I had to remain in the relative open in my ‘retirement.’ What happened at the estate was unforeseen by any of us, occurring far earlier than any of us would have predicted. With that said, I sense my mother’s impatient hand in it. ”
Steers fell silent, and Nash looked to the window as the wind picked up.
“Clearly now they suspect that you are working for the authorities,” he said. “They tried to kill you. They are hunting you. What is the CIA doing about that?”
“They are aware of the attack, obviously, and are working out a suitable plan.”
“If you are killed, is their case weakened?”
She nodded. “Yes, considerably.”
“How long before arrests are made?”
“Soon.”
“It may not be soon enough for us.”
“That is a definite possibility, yes.”
“It seems the CIA is better at concocting the entrance into a scheme than they are at the exit.”
“This, too, I have thought.”
Nash rose and said, “Go pack. We need to leave here. Now.”
She looked up at him in surprise. “Now?”
“I used to be a businessman who just ran numbers for a living. I now have a new set of skills for keeping myself and those in my charge safe. But my old job instilled in me a great sixth sense about potential problems in every deal I ever did. And right now, Victoria, it’s blaring a foghorn.”
“But where will we go?”
“I have somewhere in mind. And it offers more than just a hiding place.”
“What else does it offer?”
“Help. Which is something we both really need right now.”