Chapter 25
“We apologize,” said Ben. “We should have told you.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Jo grumbled as she walked into Ben’s kitchen.
With the Slocums away, tonight’s meal was a pale imitation of the elaborate potlucks that usually greeted her when she dined with the Martini Club.
Ben and Declan had laid out a platter of cold cuts and store-bought potato salad.
There was also whisky, of course, and it appeared the two men had already gotten a good head start on that.
Declan set a glass on the kitchen table for Jo and was about to pour a splash of scotch when he paused and glanced at her. “Not on duty?”
“Not tonight.”
“Would you like some?”
“Yes, please.”
Declan poured a generous shot and slid the glass to her. She took a sip and sighed, which made both Ben and Declan smile. While she couldn’t afford to regularly enjoy a well-aged single malt, she was happy to indulge when invited.
Tonight, she thought, they owed her this invitation.
“I felt like an idiot,” she said. “I had no idea that Lloyd jumped on a flight to Amsterdam. You should have told me.”
“We should have,” Declan conceded.
“Why didn’t you? Instead, I had to hear it from the FBI.”
Ben sat down across from her. “It’s complicated.”
“Yeah. With you people, it’s always complicated.
” She looked around the kitchen, which seemed sadly empty without the other three members of the group.
When all five of them put their heads together, the result was like nuclear fusion, crackling with energy.
Still, two of them was better than none, and tonight Jo needed all the help she could get.
Already, Declan had his laptop open on the kitchen table, and as she slathered mayonnaise on bread and piled on salami, he opened a file filled with names.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Everyone who attended the conference. The 378 members of the audience as well as the twelve invited speakers. We’re also looking at the employees who worked at the resort, the drivers who delivered supplies, and anyone who might have been on the property the day Dr. Maslov checked into his hotel room. ”
“You’re conducting a parallel investigation.”
“We’re trying to. It would be a lot quicker if Ingrid were here to work her magic.”
“She’s the reason I’m here. What the heck’s going on with Ingrid, anyway?”
“Sorry,” said Ben. “We can’t help you there.”
“Why not?”
“We don’t know.”
Jo gave a startled laugh. “You mean you don’t have all the answers?”
“When do we ever?”
“You always manage to make me feel clueless.”
“This time, we’re in the dark with you,” said Declan. “All we can tell you is Ingrid abruptly left for Amsterdam, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. Then Lloyd and Maggie went to find her.”
“Have they found her?”
“No.”
“And they landed in one big heap of trouble,” said Ben.
“What kind of trouble?”
The men exchanged looks, as if silently consulting with each other whether to take her into their confidence.
“Oh, come on,” said Jo. “You’re not going to cut me off now.”
“Let’s just say, they were lucky to survive what happened,” said Ben.
“Did someone try to kill them?” She looked back and forth at the two men. “What does this have to do with Dr. Maslov?”
“As we told you, it’s complicated,” said Declan.
“Dr. Maslov isn’t the first Russian defector to be murdered.
There’ve been other recent assassinations, in cities around the world.
For years, these victims had lived quietly under cover identities.
Then suddenly, their identities were exposed, and they were eliminated. ”
“But Maslov was living out in the open.”
“That was his mistake. He thought enough time had passed, that Moscow had forgotten about him. But Moscow never forgets. They killed Alexander Litvinenko six years after he defected, and it was ten years before they got to Sergei Skripal. In Purity, they finally caught up with Maslov. Somehow, they managed to slip polonium into his food or drink. It would have been the perfect crime, because no doctor in Maine would normally consider radiation poisoning as a cause of death.”
Jo looked at Declan’s laptop. At the names that filled the screen. “You think someone at the conference did it.”
“Based purely on proximity.”
“I see local names on there as well.”
“Including our own. Obviously, some names are easier to eliminate as suspects.”
She reached for the mouse and scrolled down the list. So many names, so many suspects. She reached the S’s and paused at the name Slocum. She hated to ask the next question, but it couldn’t be avoided, as painful as it might be. “Could Ingrid be involved?”
There was a silence. Ben reached for the whisky bottle and tipped more scotch into their three glasses.
“You’re not going to tell me?” she said.
Ben set down the bottle with a thud. “We’re still considering that question. She’s almost certainly involved in all this, but how? We can’t imagine she would ever work for the other side.”
“Then why hasn’t she told you what she’s up to? For God’s sake, why hasn’t she told her own husband?”
“That’s what concerns us,” said Declan. “It makes her seem . . .”
“Deceptive,” said Ben.
And there it was, an open admission of what they feared. That their friend could not be trusted.
“You’ve known her a long time,” said Jo.
“Almost forty years now,” said Declan. “Since the four of us were in training. When Lloyd married Ingrid, he joined our circle and it became the five of us, through thick and thin. Even though we worked in different areas of the world. Even though there were things we couldn’t share, secrets we’ve sworn to take to our graves, we always believed we could rely on each other. ”
“Now we have to wonder,” said Ben.
“Speak for yourself, Ben. I can’t believe Ingrid would turn against us, against her own country. If we can’t trust each other, who can we trust?”
Ben snorted. “When did you become Pollyanna?”
“I want to believe in the five of us, at least.”
“Five human beings, the world’s most untrustworthy species?”
“You’ve gotten cynical.”
“I’ve always been cynical. You’ve gone mushy.”
“Guys,” said Jo. “The subject is Ingrid, and can she be trusted.”
“Yes,” said Declan.
“Then why has she gone dark?” asked Ben.
“Because she can’t bring us into whatever this is. Maybe she’s not allowed to, or she’s afraid to. Or . . .” Declan paused. “Or she doesn’t trust us.”
Jo looked back and forth at the two men. “Any reason she might not?”
“Experience,” said Ben. “A bad one.” He picked up his glass and gulped down the whisky.
“What happened?”
“We don’t know all the particulars,” said Declan.
“We know it happened in France. An operation that turned so disastrous, word of it was bound to spill out within the Agency, even though it was classified. Especially since two of our own people were killed, as well as a young woman they were supposed to be protecting.”
“How did it go wrong?”
“They realized too late that they had a double agent on their team. He leaked the location of the safe house where the young woman was being protected, and he was rewarded with a handsome payoff. Before the CIA could arrest him, he jumped on a plane to Moscow. He traded his own country, and the lives of two colleagues, for a boatload of cash. That’s what we were able to piece together, anyway, although Ingrid wouldn’t tell us the details. ”
“Because it was classified?”
“Or it was too painful to talk about. Some memories are too awful to share.”
Jo sat in silence for a moment, staring down at the liquid gold in her glass, grateful that she had no such horrors in her own past.
“Do you have any clue why Ingrid left the country?”
Again, the men glanced at each other. Again, it was a look of Should we or should we not trust her?
Declan tapped on the keyboard and highlighted a name on the attendee list: Rodrigo Estrada.
“Who’s that?” asked Jo.
“An old colleague of Ingrid’s. Thirty years ago, he was stationed in Paris, the same time she was there.
Last week he was here, attending the conference, and he introduced himself.
” With a few more keystrokes, Declan pulled up another page.
On-screen was a web page with an accompanying photo of Estrada, a man with striking dark eyes and a handsome mane of black-and-silver hair.
“The Argus Company,” Jo read from the website. “What’s that?”
“A private intelligence firm,” said Ben. “Rodrigo Estrada is the CEO. We did a deep dive into Argus. Found out that the company is the registered owner of three aircraft. One of their planes is a Piper Seneca.”
Jo looked at Declan. “Like the plane that picked up Ingrid at Belfast airport? She went off to join this guy?”
“It appears so.”
Jo focused on the photo of Estrada. “Well, I can kind of see it.”
“See what?”
“He’s nothing to sneeze at.”
“Aside from his looks,” snapped Ben, “we think he’s pulled Ingrid into something connected to the Maslov assassination. We just don’t know what that connection is.”
“Ingrid could just tell you,” Jo pointed out. “She’s the one with all the answers.”
Ben nodded. “We just have to wait until she’s ready to share them.”