“I don’t believe it,” Thomas said as he ushered Becca into the foyer of the small British pub. “No flashbulbs.”
“Glory be,” said Adam.
Andrew Bushman, appointed director of the FBI six months previously after the unexpected retirement of the former director, stood tall even with his rounded shoulders, his gray hair tonsured like a medieval monk’s, and beautifully suited, when Thomas walked to the small circular table at the back of the restaurant. Bushman raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Matlock, I presume? You have pulled me away from some very important matters. I came because Gaylan Woodhouse asked me to, told me it had to do with the attempted assassination of the governor of New York. My people are directly involved in this. I will be interested to hear how the CIA could possibly be involved, what they could possibly know that’s pertinent.”
Gaylan Woodhouse eased around the back of a shoji screen. He was a slight man of sixty-three who had come up through the ranks of the CIA and had been known in the old days as the best spy in the world because no one—absolutely no one—ever noticed him, and still he was paranoid, staying in the shadows until there was no choice but to come out. He had been the director of the CIA for four years now. Thank God, Thomas thought, Gaylan had a long memory and a flexible mind.
“Thank you,” Thomas said and shook first the FBI hand and then the CIA hand. “Now, this is my daughter, Becca, who is very closely tied to this matter, and my associate, Adam Carruthers. Gaylan, thank you for putting in a good word for me with Mr. Bushman.”
Gaylan Woodhouse merely shrugged. “I know you, Thomas. If you say something is critical, then it’s critical. I hope by that you think it’s time to bring the FBI up to speed on this thing.”
“Yes, it’s time,” Thomas said.
The two directors eyed each other and managed affable smiles and civil greetings. Andrew Bushman cleared his throat. “Mr. Hawley and Mr. Cobb won’t be joining us today, but I suspect you knew they wouldn’t. I will have any information needed by them sent to New York when and if it’s appropriate. Now, I need a martini. Then we can nail this thing down.”
Becca would have killed for a glass of wine, but she was taking medications that didn’t allow it. She would even have accepted Adam’s beer. She suffered through approximately four and a half minutes of small talk. Then Gaylan Woodhouse said, “What have you got that’s definitive on Krimakov, Thomas?”
Mr. Bushman’s eyebrow shot up. “Does this have to do with the attempted assassination of the governor?”
“Indeed it does,” Gaylan said. “Thomas?”
Thomas launched into the story of a CIA agent, namely himself, who was playing cat and mouse with a Russian agent in the mid-1970s and accidentally killed that agent’s wife. And that Russian agent had promised that he would get revenge, that he would kill both Thomas and his family. As Thomas spoke, Becca thought about what her life, her mother’s life would have been like if her father hadn’t been in that godforsaken place, trying to get the best of a Russian agent named Vasili Krimakov. “Of course, Gaylan knows all of this already. The reason the FBI needs to be involved is because we are trying to prove whether or not Krimakov is still alive and thus was the one who tried to assassinate the governor of New York. Actually, now we’re very certain that it’s him.”
FBI Director Bushman was lounged back in his seat, holding the nearly empty martini glass in his hand. “But this guy is after you. Why would he shoot the governor of New York? I’m not getting something here. Oh my God, Matlock—you’re the Rebecca Matlock, the young woman who escaped the police and went into hiding?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
Andrew Bushman sat forward, his drink forgotten. “All right, Thomas, tell me everything, even stuff that Gaylan doesn’t know. I need to have a leg up on him somewhere.”
“Krimakov wanted to flush me out. Somehow he found out that I have a daughter—Becca. We don’t know how he found out about her, but it appears that he did and he came after her. That’s why he’s been terrorizing her, that’s why he kicked her out of his car in front of One Police Plaza in New York.”
“To get you out in the open.”
“Yes, that’s it exactly. It’s not so complicated when you cut right to the chase. He wants to kill me and he wants to kill my daughter. All the rest is window dressing, it’s drama, giving him the spotlight, showing the world how brilliant he is, how he’s the one in control here.” And Thomas thought, He can’t kill Allison because she’s dead already, and I wasn’t there with her.