Page 84 of The 9th Man

An hour of waiting ended with the roar of an outboard engine, which faded away on the water. He crawled from his hiding place. To his right the eastern horizon was pink with the rising sun. He oriented himself north and started walking. The terrain was flat and mostly dry, but thick with foliage. His route repeatedly snaked northeast then northwest. He kept going, steadily covering the miles until finally around midmorning he stumbled onto the gravel road Sue had mentioned.

He started jogging.

After four miles he came to a stop sign and an asphalt road. A figure rose from the grass beside the sign. Jillian. He was glad to see her.

“What took you so long?” she asked.

“I fell asleep.”

“Yeah, right.”

“How long have you been here?” he asked.

“No more than half an hour. Your leg’s bloody.”

He glanced down at his calf. “Flesh wound. Let’s find this marina Sue mentioned. I’ve had enough swamp for a lifetime.”

39

Starlings Island, Maryland

Saturday — March 28 — 11:15A.M.

ROWLAND SAT ON THE TERRACE, HIS LAP DRAPED BY A WOOL BLANKET,and admired the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. He liked what the author James Michener wrote.The bay is like a beautiful woman. There’s no humiliation from which she cannot recover.

How poetic and apt.

The day was cloudy and cool. Though spring had arrived a week ago no warmth had followed the change of season. He wondered how many more springs by the water he’d be allowed to enjoy. Hopefully a few, as it was one of the great joys of his life.

The terrace doors opened and his chamberlain stepped out.

“Sir, you have a visitor.”

Really? That was unusual. No one came to see him unless invited. And he’d extended no invitations for today. On a weekend? His thoughts were entirely with Jack Talley and all that was happening in Europe and Louisiana. He wanted no interruptions. “Tell whoever it is that—”

“You tell me, Tom,” a new voice said from the terrace doors.

Female. Familiar. And not appreciated.

“You were told to wait at the front door,” the chamberlain said.

“I’m not good at following orders. Am I, Tom?”

“Leave us,” he said to the chamberlain, who vanished back into the house.

And he faced Stephanie Nelle.

She was a petite woman, in her sixties, and a little testy about her age. Justice Department personnel records, he’d been told, contained only a winkingN/Ain the space reserved for date of birth. Her blond hair was streaked with waves of silver and her pale-blue eyes offered both the compassionate look of a liberal and the fiery glint of a prosecutor. Which had long made her politically appealing to both sides of the aisle. Two presidents had tried to make her attorney general, but she’d turned both offers down. One attorney general lobbied hard to fire her—especially after she was enlisted by the FBI to investigate him—but the White House at the time nixed the idea since, among other things, Nelle was regarded as scrupulously honest and they didn’t want the flak.

Recently, she’d run afoul of the current president, Warner Fox, to the point that both she and the Magellan Billet seemed on their last leg. He’d actually encouraged both actions since he’d earned Warner Fox’s ear years before the man had managed to be elected president. He’d been unapologetic in saying both Nelle and the Billet were anachronisms that no longer were needed. Stephanie had created the unit within the Justice Department and had run it from day one. It was the only branch of the American intelligence community Rowland had not been able to successfully infiltrate. Nothing and no one from there had ever been of any assistance. So Stephanie being here, unannounced, on a Saturday morning meant only one thing.

Trouble.

With a capital T.

“We need to speak,” she said. “Face-to-face.”

“Then, by all means, sit. Talk.”