CHAPTER
58
ROBERT PULLER WAS sitting in his pickup truck watching her. The Kansas plates had seemed to stick out here, so he had replaced them with D.C. plates he’d lifted from a car sitting in a D.C. impoundment lot.
Susan Reynolds was eating dinner at a table in the front window of a restaurant on trendy H Street. She looked like she didn’t have a care in the world, but looks could be deceiving. And he wasn’t going to underestimate the woman. Not again. He had gone back through her professional history multiple times, focusing on parts he had skimmed before. He had taken all of this and built it into a new mosaic, which had presented some interesting possibilities.
She was dressed to entice tonight, that was clear to see. The skirt was knee-length but tight, and the starched white shirt with the two top buttons undone was suggestively revealing. The shoes were long spikes and the stockings had seams down the backs.
He sank lower in the driver’s seat as a D.C. patrol car sailed past. He knew cops everywhere now would be alerted to his possible presence in the metro area.
He had picked up his tail on Reynolds at her home and followed her here. He didn’t recognize the man she was with, but he was dressed like a lawyer or lobbyist, which meant he was dressed expensively. Puller had gotten a look at him when he drove up shortly after Reynolds arrived. He had arrived in an Aston-Martin. So there was money there if nothing else. As he watched, she laughed at something the man said.
It must be nice to be able to still find amusement in life when your boss just got blown to dust. Puller could imagine that the rest of DTRA must be mourning their slain chief. And Blair Sullivan. And the driver. Three innocent men who would not get to live one day longer. But not Reynolds. She just trucked on with not one blemish on her. Not an ounce of remorse.
Puller knew that Reynolds had had some part to play in the bombing. He just didn’t know how or exactly why. His brother had told him that Sullivan had gone off on him and defended Reynolds. And Donovan Carter had agreed with his internal security chief’s position, though not necessarily his tone. So if Reynolds was off the hook, why kill them? his brother had wanted to know. But Carter had suspected Reynolds. And so had Sullivan, of that Puller was certain. And Reynolds must’ve realized this or discovered it somehow, and their deaths had swiftly followed.
His brother was a superb soldier and a crackerjack investigator, but he was both an honorable and an honest man. And while he could sniff out when suspects were lying, the intelligence world was a different paradigm altogether. People in that world didn’t lie simply to conceal things. They lied for a living. And when you did something over and over you tended to get really adept at it. At least the ones who stuck with it did. The others were either drummed out of the field or perished within it.
That’s what was so perplexing about Reynolds. His brother had been convinced she was lying. And when he had questioned her with a gun to her head, Robert Puller had felt the same way. And she had been lying. She had also been telling the truth about one crucial fact, but had tried to fashion it as a very clever lie.
She saw the mirror I was using. She knew I was watching her face. She faked me out. Or at least she tried to.
He could see that now. And that truth was worrying him greatly.
He viewed Reynolds and her guest with his binoculars. There was definitely something familiar about the man. With the camera he had purchased, Puller took a long-range photo of him. He downloaded the image to his laptop and then ran the picture through the same databases he had used to check the image of the man he had killed in his prison cell.
Yet unlike that image Puller got a hit on this search.
Malcolm Aust.
Now he connected the name with the face. Of course.
He was neither a lawyer nor a lobbyist.
He was a chief UN weapons inspector from Germany, greatly respected across the world for both his knowledge and his courage.
Though Puller knew something of the man, he quickly read through Aust’s bio. He had been in his position for over twenty-five years and had traveled to pretty much every hot spot on the globe. He was held in high esteem and had also written scholarly papers and appeared often on news programs.
He was cultured, spoke several languages, and was rich thanks to his status as heir to a fragrance fortune. Thus the Aston-Martin didn’t trouble Puller. But something else did.
Why would Reynolds be meeting with him? Despite her employment at the WMD Center and many accomplishments, she was not at the level where she would be having a dinner meeting with someone of Aust’s stature. Their types of professional circles were tightly controlled by those within the field. They adhered to strict pecking orders like any good hierarchy. The various status levels simply did not associate with each other. Aust might sit down with secretaries of state or chairmen of congressional committees. He might hobnob with generals and admirals and key CEOs or even heads of state. But Reynolds was none of those things.
And yet Aust looked quite engaged with the woman, and Puller started to wonder if it were simply personal on his part. Reynolds, despite what he believed she had done, was very attractive and smart and held an important position in a field that mirrored Aust’s own interests.
As he watched they clinked glasses and Reynolds leaned across the table and gave him a peck on the cheek. The look on the man’s face–which Puller could see through his optics–made it clear that Aust wanted far more than a brush of the lady’s ruby red lips against his skin.
This might get interesting.
It was then that he glanced in the truck’s side mirror and saw the man. He was about four car lengths back and casually smoking a cigarette while leaning against a building. He had looked away, only not in time.
The watcher is being watched. I’ve been made. But I don’t think they realize that I know that. At least not yet.
Puller sat there glancing in the rearview mirror from time to time to check the man’s movements. Then he gazed around to see if others were back there. There were many cars parked along the street. It could be any one of them. And then he saw a flash of light in a black Mercedes three cars back and on the other side of the road.
A camera flash. Someone had just snapped a photo of him and his truck.
He slipped his phone out and thumbed in a coded text to his brother. It was short but packed with information. He needed John Puller’s help. And he needed it now.
He looked across the street to the restaurant.
Aust was no longer at the table, but Reynolds was still there. She was on her phone. She nodded several times, spoke into the phone, and then put it away. She swept a hand through her hair and in doing so glanced outside. The tactic was done well, and if Puller hadn’t discovered that he was being watched, he would probably have associated nothing unusual with it.
But as she looked out the window, her gaze had flickered across him. Just a flicker, but it was enough. How they could have gotten on to him was inexplicable. Even his own brother had not recognized him.
The headlamps of the big Mercedes burst to life as the engine was started.
Puller glanced in the rearview again and saw the man who’d been watching him climb into a coal-black SUV. It too started up.
Puller looked ahead of him. There was a stoplight at the next intersection. At this late hour traffic was light, which was both good and bad for him. His hand slipped to his ignition key right as his phone vibrated. He glanced at the screen.
His brother had texted him back.
Like the cavalry, John Puller was on his way. But it might not be in time. However, Robert had an idea. His fingers flew over his phone. He was sending a downloaded program together with some additional data to his brother, all linked together. He hoped it worked. Otherwise, he was dead.
Finished with that, Robert Puller counted to three, watching the light up ahead, and then turned the ignition key. The truck started up. He shifted into gear.
The Mercedes shot out of its parking spot, but he gunned the truck engine and laid down some tread, beating the German-made car to the open lane. He raced ahead, glancing to his right as he did.
Reynolds was still in her seat and staring dead at him as he sped by.
And then she was gone as the truck blew through the intersection. The light turned red, just as he had planned. Only the Mercedes made it through, simply because it didn’t stop. The SUV was blocked by traffic coming from both the left and right. But the driver used his vehicle like a battering ram and broke through the obstruction.
Now the chase was on.