Riptide
Page 87
“I hope you burned your tongue,” Adam said as he pulled the hot cheese free of a slice of pizza from another box that was closer to him than to anyone else, and reverently lifted it up. “Serves you right for being a pig. God, I love artichokes and olives.”
“Nah, my tongue isn’t burned. It’s just a bit of a sting,” Hatch said, and pulled up another piece. After he took another big bite, he said, “Now, just to make sure everyone’s on the same page. All federal agencies are up to date on Krimakov. The New York Bureau guys are going over the car the guy dumped you out of, Becca, with every high-tech scan, every piece of sophisticated equipment they have. Haven’t found anything yet. I was really hoping they would find something, but this guy Krimakov is careful, real anal, one of the techs said. He didn’t leave anything helpful. Rollo and Dave, who just left Riptide yesterday, sent the FBI all the fingerprints we got in Linda Cartwright’s house, all the fibers we bagged. No word yet. The woman he killed in Ithaca, and stole her car—they’ve combed the hills for witnesses but came up empty. All that boils down to nada, nothing, zippo.” And then he cursed in some language Becca didn’t recognize. She lifted her eyebrow at him. Hatch said, flushing a bit, “That was just a bit of Latvian. A nice set of words, full-bodied and pungent, covers a lot of the hind end of a horse and what one could do with it.”
There was laughter, lots of it, and it felt so good that Becca just looked around at all the people she hadn’t even known existed until very recently. People who were friends now. People who would probably remain friends for the rest of her life. She looked over at the baby lying in his carryall, sound asleep, a light-blue blanket tucked over him. He was the image of his father.
She looked at Thomas Matlock, who was also looking at the baby and smiling. Her father, who hadn’t eaten much pizza because, she knew, he was so worried. About her.
My father.
It still felt so very strange. He was real, he was her father, and her brain recognized and accepted it, but it was still too new to accept all the way to the deepest part of her that had no memories, no knowledge of him, nothing tangible, just a couple of photos taken when he and her mother were young, some when they were even younger than she was now, and stories her mother had told her, many, many stories. The stories were secondhand memories, she realized now. Her mother had given them to her, again and again, hoping that she would remember them and, through them, love the father she’d believed was dead.
Her father, alive, always alive, and her mother hadn’t told her. Just stories, stupid stories. Her mother had memories, scores of them, and she had stories. But she kept quiet to protect me, Becca thought, but the sense of betrayal, the fury of it, roiled deep inside her. They could have told her when she was eighteen or when she was twenty-one. How about when she was twenty-five? Wasn’t that adult enough for them? She was an adult, a real live independent adult, for God’s sake, and yet they’d never said a thing, and now it was too late. Her mother was dead. Her mother had died without telling her a thing. She could have told her before she fell into that coma. She would never see them together now. She wanted to kill both of them.
She remembered many of those times when her mother had left her for maybe three, four days at a time. Three or four times a year she’d stayed with one of her mother’s very good friends and her three children. She’d enjoyed those visits so much she’d never really ever wondered where her mother went, just accepting that it was some sort of business trip or an obligation to a friend, or whatever.
She sighed. She still wanted to kill both of them. She wished they were both here so she could hug them and never let them go.
Savich said, “I’ve got the latest on Krimakov. A CIA operative told me about this computer system in Athens that’s pretty top-secret and that maybe MAX could get into. Well, MAX did invite himself to visit the computer system in Athens that keeps data on the whereabouts and business pursuits of all noncitizens residing in Greece. It is top-secret because it also has lists of all Greek agents who are acting clandestinely throughout the world.
“Now, as you can imagine, this includes a lot of rather shady characters that they try to keep tabs on. Remember, there was nothing left in Moscow because the KGB purged everything on Krimakov. But they didn’t have anything to do with the Greek records. This is what they had on Krimakov. Now, recognize that we’ve already learned most of this, that it was pretty common knowledge. However, in this context, it leads to very interesting conclusions.” Savich pulled three pages from his jacket pocket and read: “Vasili Krimakov has lived in Agios Nikolaos for eighteen years. He married a Cretan woman in 1983. She died in a swimming accident in 1996. She had two children by a former marriage. Her children are dead. The oldest boy, sixteen, was mountain-climbing when he fell off a cliff. A girl, fifteen, ran into a tree on her motorcycle. They had one child, a boy, eight years old. He was badly burned in some sort of trash fire and is currently in a special burn rehabilitation facility near Lucerne, Switzerland. He’s still not out of the woods, but at least he’s alive.” Savich looked up at all of them in turn. “We’ve had reports on some of this, but not all of it presented together. Also, they had drawn conclusions, and that’s what was really interesting. I know there was more, probably about their plans to act against Krimakov, but I couldn’t find any more. What do you think?”
“Nah, my tongue isn’t burned. It’s just a bit of a sting,” Hatch said, and pulled up another piece. After he took another big bite, he said, “Now, just to make sure everyone’s on the same page. All federal agencies are up to date on Krimakov. The New York Bureau guys are going over the car the guy dumped you out of, Becca, with every high-tech scan, every piece of sophisticated equipment they have. Haven’t found anything yet. I was really hoping they would find something, but this guy Krimakov is careful, real anal, one of the techs said. He didn’t leave anything helpful. Rollo and Dave, who just left Riptide yesterday, sent the FBI all the fingerprints we got in Linda Cartwright’s house, all the fibers we bagged. No word yet. The woman he killed in Ithaca, and stole her car—they’ve combed the hills for witnesses but came up empty. All that boils down to nada, nothing, zippo.” And then he cursed in some language Becca didn’t recognize. She lifted her eyebrow at him. Hatch said, flushing a bit, “That was just a bit of Latvian. A nice set of words, full-bodied and pungent, covers a lot of the hind end of a horse and what one could do with it.”
There was laughter, lots of it, and it felt so good that Becca just looked around at all the people she hadn’t even known existed until very recently. People who were friends now. People who would probably remain friends for the rest of her life. She looked over at the baby lying in his carryall, sound asleep, a light-blue blanket tucked over him. He was the image of his father.
She looked at Thomas Matlock, who was also looking at the baby and smiling. Her father, who hadn’t eaten much pizza because, she knew, he was so worried. About her.
My father.
It still felt so very strange. He was real, he was her father, and her brain recognized and accepted it, but it was still too new to accept all the way to the deepest part of her that had no memories, no knowledge of him, nothing tangible, just a couple of photos taken when he and her mother were young, some when they were even younger than she was now, and stories her mother had told her, many, many stories. The stories were secondhand memories, she realized now. Her mother had given them to her, again and again, hoping that she would remember them and, through them, love the father she’d believed was dead.
Her father, alive, always alive, and her mother hadn’t told her. Just stories, stupid stories. Her mother had memories, scores of them, and she had stories. But she kept quiet to protect me, Becca thought, but the sense of betrayal, the fury of it, roiled deep inside her. They could have told her when she was eighteen or when she was twenty-one. How about when she was twenty-five? Wasn’t that adult enough for them? She was an adult, a real live independent adult, for God’s sake, and yet they’d never said a thing, and now it was too late. Her mother was dead. Her mother had died without telling her a thing. She could have told her before she fell into that coma. She would never see them together now. She wanted to kill both of them.
She remembered many of those times when her mother had left her for maybe three, four days at a time. Three or four times a year she’d stayed with one of her mother’s very good friends and her three children. She’d enjoyed those visits so much she’d never really ever wondered where her mother went, just accepting that it was some sort of business trip or an obligation to a friend, or whatever.
She sighed. She still wanted to kill both of them. She wished they were both here so she could hug them and never let them go.
Savich said, “I’ve got the latest on Krimakov. A CIA operative told me about this computer system in Athens that’s pretty top-secret and that maybe MAX could get into. Well, MAX did invite himself to visit the computer system in Athens that keeps data on the whereabouts and business pursuits of all noncitizens residing in Greece. It is top-secret because it also has lists of all Greek agents who are acting clandestinely throughout the world.
“Now, as you can imagine, this includes a lot of rather shady characters that they try to keep tabs on. Remember, there was nothing left in Moscow because the KGB purged everything on Krimakov. But they didn’t have anything to do with the Greek records. This is what they had on Krimakov. Now, recognize that we’ve already learned most of this, that it was pretty common knowledge. However, in this context, it leads to very interesting conclusions.” Savich pulled three pages from his jacket pocket and read: “Vasili Krimakov has lived in Agios Nikolaos for eighteen years. He married a Cretan woman in 1983. She died in a swimming accident in 1996. She had two children by a former marriage. Her children are dead. The oldest boy, sixteen, was mountain-climbing when he fell off a cliff. A girl, fifteen, ran into a tree on her motorcycle. They had one child, a boy, eight years old. He was badly burned in some sort of trash fire and is currently in a special burn rehabilitation facility near Lucerne, Switzerland. He’s still not out of the woods, but at least he’s alive.” Savich looked up at all of them in turn. “We’ve had reports on some of this, but not all of it presented together. Also, they had drawn conclusions, and that’s what was really interesting. I know there was more, probably about their plans to act against Krimakov, but I couldn’t find any more. What do you think?”
