Chapter 21
Alice
The hotel was an ultra-modern glass building overlooking the harbor.
No trace in the lobby of the woman with the aviators, but then she probably wasn’t working alone—there’d been a different shooter yesterday.
Surely they wouldn’t open fire in a crowded hotel?
A display board advertised various conferences and meetings, including The Randolph Jeffson Congressional Fundraiser Luncheon in the Calvert Ballroom.
Alice followed the arrows up a set of stairs to the mezzanine floor, trying to appear at least outwardly confident.
The ballroom was still being set up by uniformed hotel staff.
No Carter, or anyone answering Randolph’s description.
“Can I help you?”
Alice spun at the voice. It belonged to an older woman with a white pixie cut and strikingly sharp cheekbones, wearing a cream pantsuit that drew attention to massive emerald and diamond earrings.
Alice pushed Carter’s fake reading glasses up her nose, her hands shaking.
She’d also changed out of her jeans into her capris and taken off the jacket.
Right now, it didn’t seem like much of a disguise.
“I’m looking for Randolph Jeffson—do you know where he is?”
“Coincidentally, so am I. He’s supposed to be here right now, finalizing the running order for today. You’re the author of that book, aren’t you? Names Have Been Changed.”
“Co-author, yes.”
“Sensational reading. What brings you here?”
“You’ve read it?”
“My PAC is bankrolling Mr. Jeffson’s campaign, and the book suggests he’s a traitor to his country, so yes, I’ve read it.
It’s proving rather problematic.” She stuck out a hand and Alice shook it, just about losing her hand to the vise-like pressure.
“Tania Garrett. Here’s my card. Walk with me—I’m told he was last seen entering the men’s bathrooms on this floor.
Now, what I’m trying to figure out—what we’re all trying to figure out—is how much of the book is true. ”
“I’m trying to figure that out too,” Alice said, hurrying to keep up with the woman’s stride.
“You don’t know?”
“It wasn’t my story, I just helped stitch it together. And I added some stuff.”
“So when you say you’re trying to figure out how much is true… Exactly how are you doing that? Do you have access to source material, documents?”
“Uh, some. But there’s nothing to suggest Mr. Jeffson has done anything wrong. I made that part up. We’re trying to figure it all out.”
“We? You and Carter Beck? Is he with you?”
“Uh.”
“God, you look terrified, you poor thing. You’re a high school teacher, is that right?”
“Ye-es.”
“Honey, I know this will be overwhelming for you, and from what I’ve been told about Mr. Beck, he likes to work alone, to his detriment.
Lord knows why he dragged you into it the way he did, but you don’t have to do it alone, no matter what he says.
Okay? I can protect you, and I have access to money, politicians, excellent lawyers…
We want the same outcome here—for this all to go away. Am I right?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Then it’s silly for us not to work together, isn’t it?”
“Mrs. Garrett?” a man called from behind them.
“Just a minute,” Tania called back.
“I don’t think this can wait, ma’am. The FBI are downstairs. They want to talk to Mr. Jeffson.”
Tania stopped and briefly looked up to the ceiling as if appealing to a higher being.
“That’s all we need. Wait right here,” she said, pointing to Alice.
“I can protect you. I’ll see if I can get rid of them.
I’m assuming they don’t know for sure you’re here, or they wouldn’t be waiting for an invitation. ”
Tania disappeared around a corner, leaving the corridor empty.
As tempting as the offer of protection was, Alice sure as hell wasn’t about to stand around waiting.
She hurried to a sign announcing the men’s bathroom and pushed the door open.
Carter turned in surprise, as did a man who was unmistakably Randolph Jeffson.
She was face to face with another fictional character.
“Alice,” Carter said, stepping forward as if to catch her. She probably did look like she was about to collapse. “What are you doing here?”
“The people who shot at us—the driver—she’s here—I saw her. She parked right opposite us. And the FBI. They’re here too.”
Carter turned a searching gaze on Randolph, who raised his hands as if to protest his innocence.
“Nothing to do with me,” Randolph said.
“Really?”
“I could do without the publicity of you being arrested at my fundraiser, on top of all the other shit.” He stepped to the door.
“Follow me. You can go out through the kitchens. Well, come on then—it’s not like you have a bunch of other options.
There’s a poorly monitored service entrance that runs behind the block, as I’m sure you’re aware. Never go into a building…”
“… without knowing at least two ways out,” Carter said.
“Old habits,” Randolph said to Alice as he ushered them into the hall. He limped to an exit door and pushed it open to reveal a stairwell. “So, you’re the famous Alice Thornton?”
“Yes, Randolph, this is the public school teacher you’re suing,” Carter said. He indicated that Alice should go ahead of him, so she was positioned between the men. His voice sounded tight. “How’s that gonna go down with voters?”
“Better than the optics of being a traitor to my country. Not that we’ve done any polling on it. Don’t take it personally, Ms. Thornton. It’s a matter of time before the media puts together this entire story—and links me to it. I had to sue to get ahead of it.”
“The media? How can I not take it personally—you’re probably gonna sue me for more money than I could make in a lifetime.”
“My lawyers are thinking in the region of seventeen million.”
She laughed, the sound echoing in the stairwell, and then her face fell. “Oh God, you’re serious. That’s such a crazy number it doesn’t register in my brain.”
“They’ll need half that to cover their own fee. Cheer up—last my staff told me, you’d passed John le Carré on the spy-thriller bestseller list, though I think he’s past caring, and were rising by the hour.”
“Really?”
“And that was before your name and photo were distributed to every cop station and media outlet in the country. The first wave of sales was just word going around the Intelligence Community. I’d show you the proof, but Carter here made me leave my phone with my assistant.
And my other phone. And my laptop, and my watch. I’m amazed I was allowed my shoes.”
“Randolph, one more thing,” Carter said, jogging down the stairs behind Alice. “We need to get the video evidence of Nika’s interrogation at the FBI field office in D.C.”
“Already tried. My sources tell me it wasn’t taped. Neither was yours.”
“Your sources are lying. Or you are.”
“My sources are sound. If there was video evidence—and I have no reason to doubt you, well not on that subject—it no longer exists.”
“Someone’s covering something up, Randolph,” Carter said, and Alice couldn’t tell if it was an accusation.
“It’s not me, as much as I’d like all of this to go away. My theory? You were a victim of your own success. Moscow wanted your operation shut down, and they had help within the CIA to make that happen. Maybe the COS got wise to who the real traitor was, so he got silenced.”
“Then why not kill Nika too? Why go to all the effort to help her to defect?”
“That’s what I want to know. What did she have, over whom? We all thought she was a pawn in this game, but at some point she queened herself, as evidenced by the book.”
“The thing that struck me, that I keep coming back to?” Carter said, lightly touching Alice’s back as they rounded a landing. “Nika described you perfectly, when to my knowledge you never met.”
“That’s the great danger of this book,” Randolph said, puffing heavily.
Nika hadn’t mentioned his limp, though in their book he’d been sitting down when they’d met.
“There’s just enough truth in it to make the fantasy plausible.
There’s a lot of political pressure to finally solve this murder.
Diplomatic will, too—the Russians want to be off the hook for this, and it’s a good look for them if it happens in a way that implicates an American spy and a Russian traitor in a dirty conspiracy.
Plus, the current administration doesn’t want this over its head going into the primaries, and I sure as hell don’t want it over mine.
It will be resolved, one way or another, and fast. Unfortunately for you, Carter, now that Elena—Annika—is dead, she can no longer protect you.
If she was writing the book to clear your name, or clear her conscience—some kind of bucket list project—it didn’t work. ”
They reached the bottom of the stairwell and Randolph opened a fire door. “We go this way,” he said, stepping out into another hallway, a wide service corridor with white walls scuffed with black marks, and pipes running along it.
“You think she was protecting me?” Carter said. “With what?”
“That’s what I would very much like to know.”
“When did you meet her, Randolph?”
“She came to the embassy in Moscow, a day or two before you left—incredibly risky, but I guess by that time she was desperate.” Despite the breathlessness, Randolph managed to sound offhand and conversational, like they were talking about nothing more significant than the traffic or the weather.
“I sent her a message to meet me at a café I know—knew—where we could be discreet.”
“How did she know about you, where to find you?”