Extreme Denial Read online

  This damned job, Decker thought. It not only makes you paranoid; it makes you a monk.

  He glanced around the depressing living room. His nostrils felt irritated by the smell of must. His stomach continued to bother him.

  Happy fortieth birthday, he told himself again.

  9

  Decker had finished all the bread in the apartment by the time a key scraped in the lock. It was almost 9:00 P.M. McKittrick rushed in, breathless, and froze when he saw Decker.

  “Shut the door,” Decker said.

  “What are you—”

  “We had an appointment, remember? Shut the door.”

  McKittrick obeyed. “Weren’t you told? Didn’t my father—”

  “He relayed a message to me, all right. But that didn’t seem a reason to cancel our chat.” Decker stood. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You haven’t been watching?”

  “Make sense.”

  McKittrick hurried to the television set and turned it on. “Three different television crews were there. Surely one of the channels is still broadcasting from ...” His hand shook as he kept switching stations. “There.”

  At first, Decker didn’t understand what he was seeing. Abruptly the loud, confusing images sent a wave of apprehension through him. Thick black smoke choked the sky. Flames burst from windows. Amid a section of wall that had toppled, firemen struggled with hoses, spewing water toward a large blazing building. Fire trucks wailed to a stop among the chaos of other emergency vehicles, police cars, ambulances, more fire trucks. Appalled, Decker realized that some of the wailing came not from sirens but from burn victims being lifted onto stretchers, their faces charred, twisted with pain, not recognizably human. Unmoving bodies lay under blankets as policemen forced a crowd back.

  “What is it? What in God’s name happened?”

  Before McKittrick could answer, a television reporter was talking about terrorists, about the Children of Mussolini, about the worst incident yet of anti-American violence, about twenty-three American tourists killed and another forty-three injured in a massive explosion, members of a Salt Lake City tour group that had been enjoying a banquet at the Tiber Club in honor of their final night in Rome.

  “The Tiber Club?” Decker remembered the name from the list he had memorized.

  “That’s where Renata told me the terrorists like to go.” McKittrick’s skin was ashen. “She told me the plan was foolproof. Nothing could screw it up. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this! Renata swore to me that—”

  “Quit babbling.” Decker gripped McKittrick’s shoulders. “Talk to me. What did you do?”

  “Last night.” McKittrick stopped to take several quick breaths. “After the meeting, after we argued.” McKittrick’s chest heaved. “I knew I didn’t have much time before you took the operation away from me and stole the credit for it.”

  “You actually believe that bullshit you told your father? You think I’m jealous of you?”

  “I had to do something. I couldn’t be sure my phone call to my father would solve the problem. There was a plan that Renata and I had been talking about. A perfect plan. After I left you, I went back to the café. Renata and the others were still in the upstairs room. We decided to put the plan into motion.”

  “Without authorization.” Decker was appalled.

  “Who was I going to get it from? You? You’d have told me not to. You’d have done your best to have me reassigned. You’d have used the same plan yourself.”

  “I am trying very hard to keep my patience,” Decker said. On the television, flames shot from doorways, forcing firemen to stumble back as another section of wall fell. The wail of sirens intensified. Smoke-shrouded attendants loaded bodies into ambulances. “This plan. Tell me about this perfect plan.”

  “It was simple to the point of brilliance.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it was.”

  “Renata and her group would wait until the terrorists came together in one place—an apartment maybe, or the Tiber Club. Then someone from Renata’s group would hide a satchel filled with plastic explosive near where the terrorists would have to pass when they came out. As soon as they appeared, Renata would press a remote control that detonated the explosive. It would look as if the terrorists had been carrying the explosive with them and the bomb went off by mistake.”

  Decker listened with absolute astonishment. The room seemed to tilt. His face became numb. He questioned his sanity. This can’t be happening, he told himself. He couldn’t possibly be hearing this.

  “Simple? Brilliant?” Decker rubbed his aching forehead. “Didn’t it occur to you that you might blow up the wrong people?”

  “I’m absolutely positive that Renata’s group has found the terrorists.”

  “Didn’t it also occur to you that you might blow up a lot of innocent people with them?”

  “I warned Renata not to take chances. If there was the slightest doubt that someone else would be in the blast area, she was to wait.”

  “She?” Decker wanted to shake McKittrick. “Where’s your common sense? Most people wouldn’t be capable of detonating the explosion. Why would she?”

  “Because I asked her.”

  “What?”

  “She loves me.”

  “I must be asleep. This must be a nightmare,” Decker said. “In a little while, I’ll wake up. None of this will have happened.”

  “She’d do anything for me.”

  “Including murder?”

  “It isn’t murder to kill terrorists.”

  “What the hell do you call it?”

  “An execution.”

  “You’re amazing,” Decker said. “Last night, you called it ‘extreme denial.’ Call it whatever you want. It’s still killing, and when someone agrees to do it, you’ve got to ask yourself what makes them capable of doing it. And in this case, I don’t think it’s love.”

  “I can’t believe she’s doing this only for the money.”

  “Where was the plastic explosive supposed to come from?”

  “Me.”

  Decker felt as if he’d been slapped. “You supplied it?”

  “I’d been given Semtex at the start of the operation—so Renata’s group could try to infiltrate the terrorist group by offering them Semtex as a sign of good faith.”

  “You supplied the...?” With greater horror, Decker stared toward the sirens wailing on the television, toward the smoke, flames, and wreckage, toward the bodies. “You’re responsible for ...?”

  “No! It was a mistake! Somehow the satchel went off at the wrong time! Somehow the club was filled with Americans! Somehow the... I... Renata must have... mistake.” McKittrick ran out of words, his broad mouth open, his lips moving, no sounds coming out.

  “You weren’t given enough Semtex to cause that much damage,” Decker said flatly.

  McKittrick blinked at him, uncomprehending.

  “You had only a sample,” Decker said. “Enough to tempt the terrorists and make them think they’d get more. Renata had to have access to a lot more of it in order to destroy that entire building.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Use your common sense! You didn’t recruit a group of students to help you find the terrorists! You idiot, you recruited the terrorists themselves!”

  McKittrick’s eyes went blank with shock. He shook his head fiercely. “No. That’s impossible.”

  “They’ve been staring you in the face! It’s a wonder they kept themselves from laughing in your face. Classic entrapment. All the time you’ve been screwing Renata, she’s been asking you questions, and you’ve been telling her our plans, everything we’ve been doing to try to catch them.” McKittrick’s face became more ashen.

  “I’m right, aren’t I?” Decker asked. “You’ve been telling her everything.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Last night, when you warned them you might be reassi
gned, they decided the game was over. It was time for them to go back to work. Did you suggest implementing the plan and moving against the terrorists, or did Renata?”

  “She ...” McKittrick swallowed. “She did.”

  “To help you in your career.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because she loved you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was the plan her idea in the first place?”

  “Yes.”

  “And now she used the sample of Semtex you gave her. I’ll bet they’ve got photographs and tape recordings that document your participation. She put the sample with some of her own, and she blew up a tour group of Americans. You wanted to promote your career? Well, buddy, your career is over.”

  10

  “What a mess.” In the international real estate consulting firm, Decker listened to his superior’s weary voice on the scrambler-protected telephone. “All those people killed. Terrible. Sickening. Thank God it’s not my responsibility anymore.”

  Decker took a moment before the implication struck him. He sat straighter, clutching the phone harder. “Not your responsibility? Whose is it? Mine? You’re dumping this on me?”

  “Let me explain.”

  “I had nothing to do with it. You sent me in at the last minute. I reported back that I thought the operation was in trouble. You ignored my advice, and—”

  “I'm not the one who ignored your advice,” Decker’s superior said. “McKittrick’s father took over. He's in charge now.”

  “What?”

  “The operation is his responsibility. As soon as he got his son’s phone call, he started badgering everyone who owed him favors. Right now he’s on his way to Rome. He ought to be arriving at...”

  11

  The Astra Galaxy eight-seat corporate jet, ostensibly privately owned, set down at Leonardo da Vinci Airport just after midnight. Decker waited beyond customs and immigration while a tall, white-haired, patrician-looking man dealt with the officials. As near as Decker could tell, there were no other passengers on the jet. The man was seventy-two, but in amazing shape, broad-shouldered, tan, with craggy, handsome features. He wore a three-piece blended-wool gray suit that showed no effects of the long, hastily scheduled flight, any more than did Jason McKittrick himself.

  Decker had met the legend three times before, and he received a curt nod of recognition as McKittrick approached him.

  “Did you have a good flight? Let me take your suitcase,” Decker said.

  But McKittrick kept a grip on the suitcase and walked past Decker, proceeding toward the airport’s exit. Decker caught up to him, their footsteps echoing in the cavernous facility. Few people were present at so late an hour.

  Decker had rented a car, a Fiat. In the parking area, McKittrick watched him scan the vehicle to make sure that no eavesdropping devices had been planted while Decker was in the airport. Only after McKittrick was inside the Fiat and Decker was driving through a gloomy drizzle toward the city did the great man finally speak.

  “Where’s my son?”

  “At a hotel,” Decker said. “He used the passport for his alternate identity. After what happened ... I assume you were told en route?”

  “About the explosion?” McKittrick nodded somberly.

  Decker stared ahead past the flapping windshield wipers. “After the explosion, I didn’t think it was safe for your son to stay at his apartment. The terrorists know where he lives.”

  “You suspect they might attack him?”

  “No.” Decker glanced at numerous headlights in his rear-view mirror. In the dark and the rain, it was difficult to determine if he was being followed. “But I have to assume they’ll release information and evidence about him to the police'. I take for granted that was the point—to connect an American intelligence operative to a terrorist attack against Americans.”

  McKittrick’s expression hardened.

  “As soon as I’ve assured myself that we’re not being followed, I’ll drive you to him,” Decker said.

  “You seem to have thought of everything.”

  “I’m doing my best.”

  “So, have you thought about who’s going to be blamed for this?” McKittrick asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  Rain pattered on the car’s roof.

  “You, for instance?” McKittrick asked.

  “There is no way I am going to take the blame for—”

  “Then think of someone else. Because if there is one thing you can be confident of, it is that my son is not going to take the blame.”

  12

  The modest hotel was on a modest street—nothing about it attracted attention. After nodding to the night porter and showing one of the hotels keys to prove he belonged there, Decker escorted McKittrick across the small lobby, past the elevator, up carpeted stairs. The son’s room was only a few floors above them, and whenever possible, Decker avoided the potential trap of elevators.

  McKittrick seemed to take the precaution for granted. Even carrying his suitcase, the tall elderly man displayed no sign of exertion.

  They came to room 312. Decker knocked four times, a code to let McKittrick’s son know who was coming in, then used his key to unlock the door. The room’s darkness made him frown. He flicked a light switch and frowned more severely when he saw that the bed had not been slept in. “Shit.”

  “Where is he?” McKittrick demanded.

  Knowing that the effort was futile, Decker peered into the bathroom and the sitting room. “Your son has a bad habit of not following orders. This is twice today that he didn’t stay put when I told him to.”

  “He must have had an excellent reason.”

  “That would be a change. He left his suitcase. Presumably that means he’s planning to come back.” Decker noticed an envelope on the bedside table. “Here. This is addressed to you.”

  McKittrick looked uneasy. “You told him I was coming?”

  “Of course. Why? What’s the matter?”

  “Perhaps that wasn’t the wisest thing.”

  “What was wrong with telling him that his father was coming?”

  But McKittrick had already opened the note. His aged eyes narrowed. Otherwise, he showed no reaction to what he was reading.

  At last, he lowered the note and exhaled.

  “So?” Decker asked.

  McKittrick didn’t answer.

  “What is it?”

  McKittrick still didn’t answer.

  “Tell me.”

  “I’m not certain.” McKittrick sounded hoarse. “Perhaps it’s a suicide note.”

  “Suicide? What the—” Decker took the note from him. It was handwritten, its salutation giving Decker an image of an Ivy-Leaguer who had never grown up.

  Pops—

  I guess I screwed up again. Sorry. I seem to say that a lot, don’t I? Sorry. I want you to know that this time I really tried. Honestly, I thought I had it all figured out. The bases covered. The game in the bag. Talk about being wrong, huh?

  I don’t know which is worse—embarrassing you or not becoming you. But I swear to you, this time I won’t run away from my mistake. The responsibility is mine. And the punishment. When I've done what needs to be done, you won't be ashamed of me any longer.

  Bry

  McKittrick cleared his throat as if he was having difficulty speaking. “That was my nickname for Brian. Bry.”

  Decker reread the note. “ ‘The responsibility is mine. And the punishment.’ What’s he saying?”

  “I’m very much afraid that he intends to kill himself,” McKittrick said.

  “And that’s going to stop you from being ashamed of him? You think that’s what his last sentence means?” Decker shook his head. “Suicide might wipe out his shame, but it wouldn’t stop yours. Your son isn’t talking about killing himself. That wouldn’t be dramatic enough.”

  “I don’t know what you’re ...”

  “He’s a grandstander. ‘I won’t run away from my mistake. The responsibility is mine. And the
punishment.’ He’s not talking about suicide. He’s talking about getting even. He’s going after them.”

  13

  As Decker swerved the rented Fiat onto the side street off Via dei Condotti, his headlights pierced the persistent rain, revealing two police cars, their roof lights flashing. Two policemen in rain slickers stood in the illuminated entrance to an apartment building, talking to several distressed-looking people in the vestibule, all of whom wore pajamas or bathrobes. Lights were on in many windows.

  “Damn it, I hoped I’d be wrong.”

  “What is this place?” McKittrick asked.

  “I followed your son and a woman here on Friday,” Decker said. “Her first name’s Renata. I wasn’t given her last. Probably an alias. She’s the leader of the group your son recruited, which means she’s the leader of the group that blew up the Tiber Club. In other words, the terrorists.”

  “That’s an assumption. You can’t be certain that the two groups are the same,” McKittrick said.

  “Your son keeps using a phrase I’d say you’re in—extreme denial.”

  Decker slowed, easing past the police cars on the narrow street. As tires splashed through puddles, the policemen looked toward the Fiat, then resumed talking to the people in the vestibule.

  “And you can’t be certain that those policemen have anything to do with Brian,” McKittrick said.

  “You know as well as I do—we can’t accept coincidence. If I were Brian, this is the logical place that I'd go first. To try to get even with the woman who betrayed him. There’s one way to find out. You want me to stop so you can go back and talk to the police?”

  “Lord no. Keep driving. Because I’m an American, they’d want to know why I was interested. They’d ask so many questions, I’d be forced to show my credentials.”

  “Right. And if Brian can be linked to whatever happened at that apartment building, you’d be linked to him and to what happened at the Tiber Club, assuming the terrorists sent the police evidence about his involvement in the explosion. Wouldn’t that be a pretty mess?”