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before she did say something.
All right, she said, but Gordon
The money ran out.
Back in the bar, no one had touched his drink or his paper. He left the paper
folded at the crossword, but now opened it up again and read, or at least
stared at the headlines. He didn t think they d be watching the airports
yet well, the police wouldn t. Jay and his team might, but he thought they
were probably gone by now. Regrouping, awaiting new orders. One mission was
over for them, only a partial success. He guessed they d be back in the
States, maybe in San Diego.
Which was exactly where he was headed.
After sixty minutes, he went back out to his car. At first he couldn t see
anything in the trunk. Halliday had tucked it deep underneath the lip. It was
nothing really, a small packet white paper, folded over. Reeve got into the
car and carefully unfolded the A4 sheet. He stared at some yellowy-white
powder, about enough for a teaspoon. Even with the interior light on, the
stuff didn t look pure. Maybe it was diluted with baking soda or something.
Maybe it was just a benzo-scopo mix. There was enough of it though. Reeve knew
how much he needed: just over two milligrams a dose. Three or four per dose to
be on the safe side; or on the unsafe side if you happened to be the
recipient. He knew the stuff would dissolve in liquid, becoming only very
slightly opalescent. He knew it had no flavor, no smell. It was so perfect, it
was like the Devil himself had made it in his lab, or dropped the borrachero
seeds in Eden.
Reeve refolded the paper and put it in his jacket pocket.
Beautiful, he said, starting the car.
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On the way south, he thought about how Tommy Halliday might have stitched him
up, or been stitched up himself. The powder could be a cold remedy, simple
aspirin. Reeve could take it all the way to the States and find only at the
last crucial minute that he d been sold a placebo. Maybe he should test it
first.
Yes, but not here. It could wait till America.
Another bloody night in the car, he muttered to himself. And another
airplane at the end of it.
FIFTEEN
ALLERDYCE HAD TAKEN WHAT FOR HIM was a momentous, unparalleled decision.
He d decided he had to tread carefully with Kosigin and Co-World Chemicals. As
a result, there was to be no more discussion of either topic within the walls
of Alliance Investigative not in his office, not in the corridors, not even in
the elevators. Instead, Dulwater had to report, either by telephone or in
person, to Allerdyce s home.
Allerdyce had always kept his office and home lives discrete insofar as he
never entertained at home, and no Alliance personnel ever visited him there,
not even the most senior partners. No one except the dog handlers. He had an
apartment in downtown Washington, DC, but much preferred to return daily to
his home on the Potomac.
The house was just off a AAA-designated scenic byway between Alexandria and
George Washington s old home at Mount Vernon. If streams of tourist traffic
passed by his house, Aller-dyce didn t know about it. The house was hidden
from the road by a tall privet hedge and a wall, and separated by an expanse
of lawn and garden. It was a colonial mansion with its own stretch of
riverfront, a jetty with a boat in mooring, separate servants quarters, and a
nineteenth-century ice house, which was now Allerdyce s wine cellar. It wasn t
as grand as Mount Vernon, but it would do for Jeffrey Allerdyce.
Had he chosen to entertain clients there, the house and grounds would have
served as a demonstration of some of the most elaborate security on the
market: electronic gates with video identification, infrared trip beams
surrounding the house, a couple of very well-trained dogs, and two security
guards on general watch at all times. The riverfront was the only flaw in the
security; anyone could land from the water. So the security men concentrated
on the river and let the dogs and devices deal with the rest.
The reason for all the security at Allerdyce s home was not fear of
assassination or kidnap, or simple paranoia, but that he kept his secrets
there his files on the great and good, infor-mation he might one day use.
There were favors there that he could call in; there were videotapes and
photographs which could destroy politicians and judges and the writers of
Op-Ed pages. There were audio recordings, transcripts, scribbled notes, sheafs
of clippings, and even more private information: copies of bank statements and
bounced checks, credit card bills, motel registration books, logs of telephone
calls, police reports, medical examination results, blood tests, judicial
reviews& Then there were the rumors, filed away with everything else: rumors
of affairs, homosexual love-ins, cocaine habits, stabbings, falsified court
evidence, misappropriated court evidence, misappropriated funds, numbered
accounts in the Caribbean islands, Mafia connections, Cuban connections,
Colombian connections, wrong connections&
Allerdyce had contacts at the highest levels. He knew officials in the FBI and
CIA and NSA, he knew secret servicemen, he knew a couple of good people at the
Pentagon. One person gained him access to another person, and the network
grew. They knew they could come to him for a favor, and if the favor was
something like covering up an affair or some sticky, sordid jam they d gotten
into well, that gave Allerdyce just the hold he wanted. That went down in his
book of favors. And all the time the information grew and grew. Already he had
more information than he knew what to do with, more than he might use in his
lifetime. He didn t know what he d do with his vast (and still increasing)
store of information when he died. Burn it? That seemed a waste. Pass it on?
Yes but to whom? The likeliest candidate seemed his successor at Alliance.
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After all, the organization would be sure to prosper with all that information
in the bank. But Allerdyce had no successor in mind. His underlings were just
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