“Your brother’s FBI, too?”
“No, James is a priest. He laughs at her when she tells him he’d make an excellent cardinal. After all, he speaks Italian fluently, doesn’t he? My mom never gives up. What about you, Cal? Why’d you sign up?”
“Unlike you, it had nothing to do with having cop in the blood. I was in high school when Nine-Eleven happened, already accepted into MIT. That day changed my life. I never looked back.”
“Did you lose a relative? A friend?”
“No, nothing like that. I simply realized on that day what lengths terrorists would go to try to wipe us from the face of the earth. I wanted to help stop them.”
“How long have you been in the counterterrorism unit?”
“I started there when I was nearly twenty-five, seven years now.” He looked over to check on Sherlock, who hadn’t moved, then back at her. “It’s where I belong, where my talents lie. This terrorist operation—Bella—it’s got me in overdrive, just like you. Thanks for letting me in, Kelly.”
She tapped her fingertips on the table. “I took one look at you and wanted to boot you back to Washington. I’ve got to say, though, you’ve been pretty useful—well, so far.”
He was out of his chair, moving fast toward the arched doorway. A man was moving purposefully, directly toward Sherlock, his hand going to his pants pocket.
Cal caught up with him, pressed his Glock against the man’s kidney. “Don’t move. I need to check what’s in your pocket.”
The man was jerking around toward Cal when he felt the gun. “What—what?”
“Take your hand out of your pocket. Slowly.”
“But—”
“Now.”
Cal patted his thigh, felt a cell phone. “I-I was coming back here to call my wife,” he said, and looked nervously back at his table, where a very pretty young woman sat sipping wine.
Cal eased his Glock back onto the clip at his waist. “Okay, my apologies. Federal agent, doing my job. Enjoy your evening, although given what you’re doing, I gotta say you’re a jerk.”
The man’s mouth tightened and he started to say something more but thought better of it. He wouldn’t make a scene while out with a woman who wasn’t his wife. And with a cop. The guy wasn’t entirely stupid.
“Yes, okay, but it’s none of your business,” the man said, and walked quickly back to his table.
“Thanks for moving so fast, Cal. I’m all right, go back to your dinner.” He smiled, nodded and left her. She said into her cell, “Dillon, no worries, it was only some cheating guy who was going to call his wife. Cal was being careful.” She’d seen the man’s face close up, realized she wasn’t even on his radar, but Cal hadn’t, and he’d moved fast. She watched Cal walk between the tables back to Kelly, looking her way a couple more times, just in case.
She shifted the cell to her other ear. “Everything’s okay, Dillon. False alarm. Yes, I promise. Now you want me to tell Kelly you spoke to your friend John Eiserly at MI5?”
“Yes, and he’s keeping me up to date,” Savich said, his heart still stuttering.
Sherlock wondered if Kelly would be pissed about Dillon sticking his nose under the tent. She realized she didn’t care. She wanted this to be over, she wanted to go home. She wanted her life back.
He said, “You know, I’d really prefer to hear you were in a closet with four armed guards.”
“Cal’s been sitting right next to me, Dillon, one hand spooning his Bolognese sauce, the other an inch from his Glock. Everything’s okay.”
“Keep being careful, all right?”
“I promise. You were telling me about your visit to Charlie Marker’s hospital room this evening.” Finally, she had her own fear for him under control. He and Griffin both could so easily have been killed by a hypnotized man who didn’t have any idea at all of what he was doing, much less why or who had convinced him to do it.
As he spoke, Savich pictured the young man propped up in bed, silent, pale, in some pain, and scared to death. He knew he’d done something bad but didn’t remember what it was. His parents, an older couple, as scared as their son, were in his room, his mom continually patting his arm, watching him closely, as if afraid of what he suddenly might do, his dad pacing, neither understanding enough of what happened to know who to yell at. It was the dad’s Kel-Tec that Charlie had taken from his locked gun box, his Silverado that Charlie had driven to the woods. Maybe Dr. Hicks could help Charlie remember what had happened, as he had Brakey. Savich told them what had happened, tried to explain the inexplicable. He’d already glossed over the attack when he’d told Sherlock about it earlier, assuring her that Griffin had everything under control. He finished with, “It was tough, for Charlie and his parents. At least Charlie hadn’t killed anyone. I assured them he wouldn’t be arrested and left it at that. Obviously they know all about what happened to Brakey and Walter Givens, as everyone in Plackett knows the McCutty woods where Charlie ambushed us. Ah, the woods, they were in Dalco’s first dreamscape, so since he knew those woods, that’s where he sent Charlie.
“Now, enough about my insanity. Was Mrs. Conklin able to tell you anything?”
There’d been more danger than he’d ever let on, Sherlock knew, and that was why he wanted to move right along. “She knew very little that’s new, Dillon. Three men burst into her front door in Notting Hill in London, threatened her children and husband if she resisted. Two handlers she couldn’t identify flew with them to Boston where they were put in an SUV, blindfolded, and driven she had no idea where. They let her speak to Nasim only once. The Boston agents had to tell her everything else that happened.”
“Could she tell Boston anything pertinent about Imam Al-H?di ibn Mirza?”
“Marie Claire believes the imam is involved, but she has no proof. And she’s never heard of anyone called the Strategist.”
“John said they have the imam under surveillance, but they’re holding off bringing him in for questioning, hoping to identify his contacts.”
Sherlock sighed. “Dillon, if you could have seen Marie Claire’s face, her children’s faces. It was a horror for her, believing finally that her children would die, having no reason for hope. When this is all over I imagine she’ll go back to live in France. She’ll be a wealthy woman, won’t she, from the business Nasim inherited from his father?”
“Yes, the business will be hers now. I’m sure she’ll sell it, and that she’ll never want to go back to England again. She survived because of you, Sherlock. You gave her and her children a future.”
She closed her eyes, so relieved and thankful everything had turned out as it had. Except for Nasim. “Thank you, but you know it was all of us working together. Now tell me how you managed to get Sean to bed tonight.”
THORNSBY, ENGLAND
Saturday afternoon
Imam Al-H?di ibn Mirza crossed his arms over his white-robed chest and sat back in his caned chair, well aware that the other dozen or so customers were eyeing him, not surprising because he looked so different from them, a foreigner they didn’t trust or understand, a holy man who belonged in the desert, not in this time-warped little English village barely large enough to be on the map, in this middle-class little tea shop with its lace draperies and middle-aged serving women.