Page 72 of South of Nowhere (Colter Shaw #5)

72.

Colter took a beer.

A Sierra Nevada.

When on a reward job, he liked to drink a local brew, and it didn’t get any more local than this brand.

The women were drinking pinot noir. It was Oregonian and he wondered if Margaret had brought it from wherever she lived in the state.

The woman had an elegance about her. Her straight gray hair, parted in the center, fell to the middle of her back. She wore a simple chain necklace. Three rings, subtle, small, were on fingers tipped in polish-free but carefully trimmed nails: tiger’s eye opal, a diamond and a twisty gold band, like a puzzle ring, on her heart finger. She had changed from the country dress she was wearing earlier and was now in a long denim skirt, white blouse and brown leather vest.

Not dissimilar from what Mary Dove occasionally wore.

Her eyes were dark and sharp and didn’t seem to miss a single thing in the room, including those in it. She was older, yes, but attractive by any standard.

He caught a glimpse of the pistol that had been mentioned in his father’s correspondence, the one from Eddy Street in San Francisco. A 1911 Colt. But she wasn’t carrying it holstered; the gun weighed two and a half pounds and featured a lengthy barrel. The weapon sat in a colorful macrame bag at her feet.

In a soothing voice, tinted with a European accent, she said, “We should dispose of the big question first. Yes, you and Dorion and I are legal half-siblings. We share Ashton as a father.”

Mary Dove seemed unable to contain the smile when looking at Colter’s expression.

“My husband, Robert, and I met him and Mary Dove when we were both guest lecturing at Berkeley. We were journalists and had taken up the cause of writing about the rise of totalitarian movements in the world, the U.S. included.” She sighed. “We felt it was our mission to bring these movements to light. World War Two and Hitler’s coming to power began a mere hundred years ago—and death camps were only eighty. That is just a splinter of time in the history of the world. Would we like to believe we have quote ‘cured’ that type of dementia and sadism? Of course. Have we? No. Absolutely not.

“Your father helped us immeasurably. He was researching an aspect of the problem that we had not thought about: the relationship between corporations and totalitarianism. That was a mistake on our part. Of course companies can facilitate fascism and nationalism. Look at the Krupp weapons company, which helped rearm the country under Hitler—who also leased state-of-the-art computer systems from America to identify and track Jews. Some historians believe the company was aware of that.” She took a sip of wine and looked knowingly at the Shaws. “And then some corporations are totalitarian entities themselves.”

“BlackBridge,” Colter said evenly.

The corporation their father exposed, with disastrous consequences.

Margaret grimaced and continued her narrative.

“Some of his research led us to a company in our home country.” A sour laugh. “On the surface it was a humanitarian aid nonprofit. It seemed to be doing good things, but in reality? It was an intelligence agency identifying dissidents. I continued to focus my research here, and Robert went overseas to interview someone inside the company.”

“He was there no more than a week before…” Her voice caught. “An accident. A car accident. On a straightaway, dry asphalt, and Robert never sped or drove dangerously.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I learned that I was in danger too. I do not know who in the U.S. government received what, but someone sold me out. And my visa was revoked. If I did not leave voluntarily I would have been deported—into the arms of the Ministerstvo Vneshneekonomicheskikh Svyazey . That’s the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations.”

She laughed bitterly. “How is that for a pseudonym? It was really a brutal state security agency—the one responsible for Robert’s death. If I had gone back I would have been killed too. But you know your father—he was always thinking of ways to outwit Them. ‘Them’ with a capital ‘T’—the enemy that Ashton could see and so many others could not. And he came up with plan.”

Colter said, “He adopted you.”

She offered an amused glance his way.

Dorion said, “And you became a citizen?”

“Not automatically. There were still hoops to jump through. But it stalled the deportation, and eventually I did get citizenship. And then I went underground. New identity. My real name is Sarah.”

Ah, the Sarah in the letters. Ashton’s friend. Not his lover.

“I changed it to Margaret—after Margarete Momma. She lived in eighteenth-century Sweden and is considered the world’s first woman political journalist. I wanted to keep writing, but I knew I had to wait. In the meantime, Ashton got me a job as a teacher in a private school.”

Colter shared a glance with Dorion, who whispered, “We found the letter.”

“We thought it was about you getting admitted to a grade school as a student.”

After a beat of a moment, both Margaret and Mary Dove laughed.

Then their mother cocked her head. “So you thought Ashton had an affair with Sarah, and they had a baby, Margaret?”

Neither of the pair replied.

Mary Dove was not dismayed or disappointed at their assumption. “Understandable. It was a time when Ash was starting to slip away from us all. Besides, what was one of his most important rules?”

Dorion answered. “?‘Never ignore the facts.’?”

Their mother offered, “You heard he had a daughter, and you had no indication of her age, other than he’d apparently helped her get into elementary school. And he never mentioned anything about a Sarah or Margaret. Your assumption was logical. Of course…if you’d been less concerned about sparing my feelings and just told me about it in a phone call…”

Partly good-natured chiding. Partly gentle rebuke.

And, as always, she was right.

“So,” Margaret said, “that is the story of how I became your half-sibling and the daughter of a man three years younger than I was.”

Colter said, “The angry letters you wrote. The gun?”

“Oh, you found those too? I told you that somebody here—in the States—had betrayed us. After my husband was killed I went crazy, I will admit it. I wanted to find them, get revenge. I bought the gun from a street dealer on Eddy Street. I’d written a story about the gangs there and had some contacts. I played Hercule Poirot, trying to track down who had done it. But your father convinced me not to. He said revenge was not why God put me on earth. I was a journalist not a soldier. I gave up that idea and started reporting again. Carefully, of course, under various pseudonyms.” A wry, knowing glance. “But of course I kept the gun.” A glance toward her bag.

Margaret now looked him over carefully. “Which brings me to our reunion.” A sip of wine. “I had to find the Compound. I knew about it, but not where it was. And I was too paranoid to use a computer or phone to contact Mary Dove or you. One of the reasons I’ve survived this long is because of what Ashton taught me.” She paused a moment. “And the reason I wanted to find the Compound was…because I needed you, Colter.”

He could see where this was going and he gestured encouragingly.

“In my reporting I learned about a company based in Brussels. A chocolate manufacturer, what else? Their confections are quite good. Popular throughout Europe. But that is merely a cover. Their main function is to engineer misinformation campaigns. And, far more troubling, the company employs one particular individual to identify and murder those exposing totalitarian and anti-democratic threats. Activists and journalists like myself. He’s killed at least five in Russia and other Eastern European Countries. Two in the Middle East.

“I learned that last week he was given the assignment of killing a person or persons within the next month here in the U.S. My source had only limited information. The assassin is a man, middle aged, and he works in the bookkeeping department of the company. That’s what he’s known as, his code name: the Bookkeeper. No one outside the organization knows his identity but the rumors are he is obsessed with balance sheets—and numbers—and is quite good at that job. As good as he is at murder.”

She smiled. “Yes, yes, Colter. You understand now. The Institute for the Freedom of Journalism has offered a reward for information leading to the identity and arrest of this man. And yes, this is the man who killed Robert. Now, I must say—”

“I’ll do it.”

“You don’t want to know about what the Institute is offering?”

If ever there was a reward-free reward job this was it.

“No.”

“Thank you, thank you,” she whispered as relief and gratitude flooded her face. “No one has the resources or the desire, frankly, to pursue anyone with no known record—and no known identity. MI5 and -6, the FBI, the State Department, Homeland, the SDECE in France…If we could give them a name and location, proof of past crimes, maybe some evidence of what he has planned, then they would start a file and assign investigators. But until then, we are on our own.”

“Do you know the targets?”

“No, just that they’re in or near the same city in the U.S.

“The institute has several safe houses they use for at-risk journalists. They will set you up in one there, if you’d like. I’ll meet you there and—”

“No,” Colter said. “It’s time for you to go back underground. It’s what”—he smiled—“ our father would have wanted.”

A sigh. “The truth is, I am tired. Endless fighting finally catches up with old bones. The damn body. It simply does not always cooperate.” She dug into her purse and pulled out an envelope. “Here’s the address of the safe house and the phone number of the institute.”

He opened the envelope and glanced at the details of the place that would be his new home for—well, however long it took to find the Bookkeeper and report him to the authorities.

Or come up with a different, perhaps a more efficient, solution to bring him to justice.

In his work, Coler Shaw had learned that sometimes one person’s survival means another person’s demise.

Margaret added, “The Institute will get you more information if they can find any.”

Shaw nodded, then he noted the hour was nearly midnight and he knew everyone was feeling the same exhaustion he was.

This had been a long, long two days.

He said good night and returned to the camper. Walking over the damp gritty asphalt, he was thinking about where the institute’s safe house, for which he would leave at first light, was located.

Colter Shaw’s profession had taken him to some exceedingly inhospitable and dangerous locales.

He wondered if this particular destination would prove to be the most inhospitable and dangerous of any he’d yet worked.

Those were the rumors, at least.

But then he’d never been to New York City.

And he recalled one of his father’s most important rules.

Never judge a place until you plant your feet on the ground.