Chapter 64

CHAPTER 64

S AXBY LEFT DEVINE SITTING THERE, brooding.

As he nursed both his coffee and his professional wounds, Pru Jackson appeared and sat down opposite him.

She was dressed hipper, looking nothing like she had back at the bookstore, or even at the Gum Wall.

“I guess you had some means of hearing everything we said?” he began in a weary tone.

She laid a minuscule device on the table and took out a pair of black ear pods. “You sure walked into a shitstorm,” she said.

“You haven’t heard all of it yet, Ms. Jackson.”

Jackson stiffened but then relaxed. “I assumed that it might come out one day. And you told the FBI agent that you talked to CIA. So tell me everything you know.”

“Why?”

“It seems you’re going to need all the help you can get.”

“Let’s get out of here. For all I know, there are a dozen people in here with the same surveillance crap you have.”

They walked out into the gloom.

“So tell me what I don’t know,” prompted Jackson.

“Angela Davenport?”

“ She’s in the mix? She’s your contact with CIA?”

“She told me about you and her. But I’d like to hear your take.”

“Why? So you can compare it to hers?”

“Wouldn’t you do the same?”

Jackson glanced around as they walked down the street. “She was my mentor at CIA. A legendary ops officer in her own right. She’s on my hit list, by the way.”

“What about a Will Chambers?”

“I’ve heard the name but never knew him. He’s in town, too?”

Devine nodded. “They know you’re alive. And they claim they had nothing to do with your being left behind. They were told that you were dead.”

“They were in the loop, count on it.”

“And you know that how?”

She gave him a stern look. “Are you really second-guessing me, Devine?”

“I just had a come-to-Jesus with the FBI. Before that I had a come-to-Jesus with CIA. Before that I had a come-to-Jesus with you !” He stopped and looked down at her. “You’ve never been wrong? Never had an instinct that turned out to be bad? You’re perfect?”

“I never said that. And you know for a fact I’m not perfect. Remember, the train?”

“So tell me why you think they were in the loop. Spell it out for me. All the players and angles.”

She led him over to the mouth of an alleyway and well out of earshot of anyone. Then Jackson turned and faced him.

“I was inserted into a particular region, in a country that I am not going to name. It is a hellhole of terrorist activity.”

“Middle East?”

“No. It would be difficult to drop someone who looks like me into that area and be able to do anything productive. And the desert is not the only place where terrorists are present.”

“Okay, fair enough.”

“I infiltrated the group and communicated the intel out. Action was taken and our agency goals were achieved. On the night I was supposed to leave, I was abducted. I could hear the men speaking in a language that I’m passable in. I was betrayed, Devine. I was set up by my own people because I knew about the murder I told you about. I could take people down.”

“Davenport said the people responsible for that murder are in prison and CIA was not involved.”

Jackson looked shaken by this and didn’t respond.

“Let’s drill down into that some more. What people in particular do you think were involved in your abduction?”

“The ones I talked to about the murder, including Davenport,” she said.

“How about Anne Cassidy, the woman calling herself Mercedes King, the mayor of Ricketts? The one you stabbed in the throat before she could stab you? Was she involved?”

“Cassidy was a fellow field agent. But she wasn’t involved in my abduction.”

“How do you know she wasn’t? Maybe she was responsible for it all by herself.”

“Why would Cassidy have done that on her own?”

“Why exactly was she trying to kill you? Just over professional differences like you said? I highly doubt that.”

Jackson wouldn’t look at him. She studied the brick wall over his shoulder.

“If we’re going to help each other, Ms. Jackson, the truth would be nice.”

She finally looked at him. “It’s just Pru. Okay, Cassidy was a piggybacker. She let others do the work and she rode them till they died, literally. Only in my case, I wasn’t going to stand for it. I finished my mission and she was trying to take all the credit. I went to her apartment. I put my foot down. She grabbed a knife and tried to take my life. I got the knife and did what I did. Two days later, I was taken.”

“Two days later? Cause and effect? I mean, she had a great motive to take you out. You’d left her for dead after she tried to kill you. Maybe her revenge was years of torture in prison for you rather than a bullet to the head. Was she that kind of person?”

“Yes,” conceded Jackson.

“So she delivers you up to the abductors. And then reports you as having been killed, with no body to ID. And she walks off free and clear. Why would you think it was your agency and not her that screwed you over? I mean, she had just tried to kill you!”

“Because I overheard my captors saying my agency betrayed me and—”

Devine broke in, “And she wouldn’t have thought to tell them to do that? Manipulate you one last time? And cover herself on the off chance that you got away and might come after her for what she’d done? So she lays the blame on the Agency.”

She gave him a hard stare. “I didn’t know you ex-military were capable of such nuance.”

“You mean thinking like the backstabbing, lying, let-you-die-as-an-olive-branch-to-your-worst-enemies pieces of crap that litter your old stomping grounds? Yeah, I surprised myself, actually. But I’ve always been a quick learner. It’s why I’m still breathing.”

“I guess I deserved that,” she conceded.

“How much would your abductors pay Cassidy to sell you out?” asked Devine.

“A lot.”

“Well, maybe Anne Cassidy walked away with a bag of money for her treachery and used that to become mayor of Ricketts. The question is why?”

“I already told you that the town is probably controlled by CIA.”

“No, Mercedes King clearly no longer works for them. And the chopper and the guys you saw that night? Not CIA.”

“Who then?” asked Jackson.

“As I’m sure you heard me tell Ellen Saxby just now, even though she already knew it, Ricketts is HQ for 12/24/65, the second coming of the KKK. And they’re planning something really big. And killing me was apparently part of that.” He studied her. “You don’t look unduly surprised by this.”

“Absolutely nothing surprises me anymore.”

“It was suggested that they have big money backers, and people embedded at all levels of the state and federal governments, the police, the military, too.”

“That would make sense.”

“How so?” he asked.

“Caesar had his Brutus.”

Devine shook his head. “Shooting people in a different uniform is a lot easier. You don’t have to keep looking behind you for a ‘friend’ holding a knife.” He glanced at her. “So maybe our cooperation can start there.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“I’m a known quantity in Ricketts now, but you could go in wearing one of your incredible disguises and snoop around without anyone the wiser, and then report back to me.”

“So Cassidy’s the one who really sold me out? Not CIA? You’re certain?”

“I can’t be certain of anything, but it sure as hell looks that way to me, Pru. And doesn’t it make sense to find out for sure?”

“Okay, I’ll do it. But now I’m really going to finish off that bitch if she did set me up.”

“Well, I think you might get your chance. But that means she’ll have her shot, too.”