A Wild and Lonely Place Read online

  I caught my breath, my skin prickling. The destruction here was nothing like what I’d seen after the bombing on the Mendocino coast, but nevertheless it unnerved me. I swung my gaze to the right of the walk and saw a pair of paramedics standing over a young woman on a stretcher. Her face was cut and abraded; water plastered her short blond hair to her skull.

  Renshaw was talking with one of the paramedics. I went over and squatted down beside the RKI operative. “How’re you doing?”

  “I feel like dog meat.” Her eyes were glazed by pain, but she sounded lucid.

  Renshaw squatted down on the other side of her. “Holman,” he said, “how the hell did this happen?”

  Her fingers spasmed against her thighs, but otherwise she didn’t react to his abruptness. As calmly as if she were being debriefed at the office she said, “I was on grounds patrol when I saw what looked like a UPS man handing over a package at the door. I checked for a truck. Wasn’t any. So I yelled at him, and he took off.”

  “You allowed him to get away.”

  Again Holman’s fingers tightened. “Yes. Mrs. Hamid’s granddaughter, Habiba, was the one who accepted the package. Today’s her ninth birthday, and I guess she thought it was a present for her. She had already started to open it, so I grabbed it and chucked it into the fountain.”

  “Thus triggering the detonating device.”

  Holman closed her eyes. Like all RKI’s people, she was a tough pro, but either the pain or the accusatory tone of Renshaw’s questioning was getting to her.

  Renshaw swiveled around to face a stocky young man who had come up behind him. “Well, Wilson,” he said, “where were you, that a kid opened the door?”

  Wilson shifted from foot to foot, his round face reddening. “I…don’t have any excuse for not being on the door, sir. But I didn’t realize Habiba’d escaped from her nanny. The kid’s a sly one—”

  “Jesus, if they can’t control a nine-year-old—” Renshaw broke off, his lips white with anger. After a moment he turned back to Holman, briefly touched her arm. “They’ll take you to S.F. General now. You’ve got some bad cuts and a few broken ribs, but nothing that can’t be fixed.”

  Holman nodded, her eyes still closed. Renshaw stood and stalked off toward the fountain, ignoring the puddles and splashing his trouser legs with water and mud. After a moment I followed. He stood with his arms folded, glaring down at the chunks of concrete. “Jesus, what a fiasco,” he said, more to himself than to me. “They’ll both have to go, of course.”

  “You’re firing them? I can understand about Wilson, but Holman risked her life to save the little girl.”

  “It’s the margin for error again. The guy who delivered that package should never’ve gotten as far as the door. We can’t tolerate slipups like that from any of our operatives.”

  I was silent, wondering how long I’d have lasted with RKI. Not very, I decided. Lucky for me I hadn’t taken them up on their offer of a job the year before.

  Now I heard Joslyn’s husky voice coming from the consulate’s entryway. I looked over there and saw her step outside, followed by a tall man who had the look of a federal agent, from his conservatively cut brown hair to his wing-tipped shoes. I started over there, but Adah saw me and shook her head slightly. They went down the walkway and got into the blue Buick.

  “Joslyn?” Renshaw asked softly.

  I nodded.

  “She wonders what you’re doing here.”

  “I’ll explain to her later.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He ignored my question. “We should talk with Mrs. Hamid now.” Taking my arm, he steered me to the door; the police officer stationed there examined his I.D., then told us we’d find Mrs. Hamid in the library.

  “Library” was a misnomer. True, there were bookcases on all four walls, but they contained few volumes and a great many art objects—enough porcelain and jade and ivory and crystal to stock a fair-sized gallery. The gleaming hardwood floor was partially covered by a deep blue Persian rug, and on a leather sofa in front of a leaded-glass window sat a heavyset woman in a plain black suit. She nodded and motioned for us to join her.

  Nothing about Malika Hamid’s demeanor suggested that she had nearly lost her granddaughter in a bombing attempt. She rose when Renshaw made the introductions, taking my hand in a steady grasp and meeting my eyes with an equally steady gaze. When she asked us to be seated, I was surprised to hear a cultivated British accent. Smiling faintly at my expression, she said, “I was educated in England, as are most members of my family.”

  As we sat down, Renshaw and I on chairs flanking the sofa, I took the opportunity to study the consul general. She was tall, with thick gray hair fashioned in a plain knot; the severe style emphasized the square shape of her face. Her eyes were so dark that it was difficult to tell where the pupils left off and the irises began, harder yet to read her expression. She wore no makeup, no jewelry, no polish on her blunt fingernails. Malika Hamid cared nothing at all for artifice, and I sensed a strong will and singularity of purpose beneath her gracious manner.

  She immediately confirmed my feeling by saying to Renshaw, “I assume you are about to offer excuses for this breach of security. None are welcome—or acceptable.”

  “No excuses, no explanations,” he replied easily. “It was error on the part of my operatives. Of course they’ll be dismissed. Before I left the office I requested replacements, and they’ll be on duty shortly.”

  “What reassurance have I that these replacements will be more efficient than the previous ones?”

  “You have my personal guarantee.”

  “Mmm.” The set of her mouth conveyed how little his guarantee was worth at the moment.

  Renshaw slouched in the chair, seeming unruffled. “You spoke with members of the task force?” he asked.

  “I did. An Inspector Joslyn and an Agent Morland.”

  “Did you tell them about the messages you’ve received?”

  “I did not.”

  “Do you intend to?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps,” Renshaw said after a moment’s reflection, “it’s time to confide in them.”

  She shook her head. “We have discussed this before, Mr. Renshaw. No one is to know about those messages.”

  “Have you also discussed it with Ambassador Jalil?”

  “The ambassador—my second cousin—is in agreement with me.”

  “Oh?”

  The syllable seemed to hang between them. Hamid cocked her head slightly, watchful.

  Renshaw added, “I spoke with Ambassador Jalil this morning. He’s concerned about withholding evidence and confesses to being perplexed as to your insistence on doing so.”

  “My second cousin has been perplexed since his birth.”

  Renshaw raised his eyebrows, waiting. Mrs. Hamid didn’t elaborate.

  I said, “Perhaps if there was some way to bring the messages to the attention of a discreet member of the task force, who would hold the information in confidence until she was sure the other members would do the same…”

  “Yes?”

  “As Mr. Renshaw mentioned, he’s enlisted my help because I have a close connection on the force, who can be trusted.”

  She made a chopping motion with her right hand. “In this case, no one can be trusted.”

  Her insistence on privacy bordered on the pathological, I thought. Unless she had something important to hide.…

  “Mrs. Hamid,” I began again, “if you could give me…us some idea of why you feel so strongly about keeping the subject of the messages to yourself—”

  “I have gone into that with Mr. Renshaw. We are a conservative country; we do not care for sensational publicity of any sort. In addition, our largest oil company is about to negotiate a major contract with your Chevron. Any indication of political instability in Azad would jeopardize those negotiations.”

  “Are the messages and today’s bombing evidence o
f political instability? Do you suspect an extremist group of being behind them?”

  “I mentioned political instability as an example of what the public might think.” Hamid transferred her attention to Renshaw. “I do not appreciate you bringing in an outsider.”

  He still slouched in the chair, looking as if his mind were on something else, but I knew he’d heard every word, noted every nuance. “Ms. McCone is an excellent investigator,” he said.

  “I do not want an investigator. I merely want efficient and effective security.”

  “Well, that you will have.” Abruptly he got to his feet and motioned to me. “ I’ll check on my replacements, and then we’ll be on our way.”

  I took my cue from him, said good-bye to the consul general, and followed him to the tiled reception area. When I glanced back into the library, I saw she hadn’t moved, except to clasp her hands together on her lap. Even at a distance I could tell her knuckles had gone white.

  Renshaw crossed the foyer and spoke with a guard wearing the maroon-and-gray RKI blazer. I started over there, but turned when I heard a noise behind me. An enormous rose marble urn stood in the far corner, and above its lip protruded a forehead covered by floppy black bangs; a pair of huge dark eyes regarded me solemnly from beneath them.

  How on earth had the child managed to squeeze inside that urn?

  The eyes blinked, then disappeared; only tufts of hair springing from a cowlick remained in view. I waited. After a moment the eyes reappeared.

  I smiled.

  They studied me.

  I winked.

  After a moment the right eye winked back.

  It was my first encounter with Habiba Hamid.

  * * *

  I said, “Hamid’s a liar, Gage.”

  “I know that.” He eased the van from its parking space.

  “She’s also a lot more nervous about the reason for these messages and the bombing attempt than she lets on.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “So why don’t you call her on it?”

  “Wouldn’t do any good.”

  “The ambassador, Jalil—can’t he exert some pressure on her?”

  Renshaw sighed and turned left toward Van Ness. “Malika Hamid’s assessment of Jalil is correct: the man doesn’t have a clue.”

  “Then why did the Azadis make him an ambassador?”

  “Azad is literally owned and ruled by the Jalils and Hamids. Idiot relatives who have large holdings in oil-rich lands are kept happy by the award of political plums. Jalil wanted to come to America because he’s a theater buff, loves Broadway shows.”

  “So why didn’t they send him to New York? Surely there must’ve been a job suitable for an idiot with the United Nations delegation.”

  “At the time there wasn’t anything appropriate to Jalil’s station, but the ambassadorship was open.”

  “Strange system for conducting international relations.” Then I smiled, thinking of some of our own diplomats. “Well, on second thought, I guess they aren’t the only country that exports its fools.”

  “No, but they do surround their fools with astute advisors.”

  We were inside the Broadway Tunnel now; I watched its tiled walls slip by the van’s windows. After we emerged onto the edges of Chinatown I commented, “Malika Hamid doesn’t seem to need astute advisors.”

  “No, she’s a sharp woman, but she has them too I’ll arrange for you to meet one tomorrow, if you like.”

  “And that is…?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t go into this any farther until I’m sure you’re with us. We need to hammer out terms and sign a contract.”

  “Okay—the terms?”

  “Nothing I reveal to you about the Azadis—including the existence of those messages—goes back to Joslyn or anyone else on the task force, unless Hamid changes her mind and gives her consent.”

  I frowned, not liking his terms already.

  Gage saw my expression and added, “Of course, we’ll compensate you handsomely. How does fifty percent over what we paid you last spring sound?”

  That sounded handsome indeed, but I still didn’t respond.

  “You’ll also have free access to our resources and our personnel.”

  “I’d need someone from your data-search section assigned to help me—Charlotte Keim, if available. She did some work for me last fall, and I like the way she operates.”

  He hesitated, then nodded.

  “And I’d have to be given a free hand—no briefings, debriefings, or instructions.”

  “You’d report only to me.”

  “And only when I felt I had something to tell you.”

  He smiled thinly. “I can’t imagine you working any other way.”

  “We have something else to settle, Gage. As I asked you before, why such largess?”

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel as he negotiated around a double-parked truck in front of a Chinese produce market. “All right—my reason’s really quite simple. When the bomber moved his activities to San Francisco, I realized he was stepping up the pace. For whatever reason, he’s got it in for the Azadis, and he’s going to get his revenge. I’m not sure if the other bombings were a smoke screen for his real intentions, or related, or what. But I knew he’d strike at the consulate soon, and I know he’ll strike again. He’s damned serious—so serious that he thinks nothing of taking out a nine-year-old girl.”

  I nodded.

  Renshaw added, “We held him off today, but we can’t hold him off indefinitely. Unless we find out why he’s after them and who he is, one of these days he’s going to get past us again and take out a lot of people—including some of our own.”

  I nodded again.

  “So there you have it. RKI can’t afford that. We can afford you. Are you with us?”

  In theory I was, but I still wanted to think it over before I signed a contract. “What about the feds’ reward?” I asked.

  He scowled.

  “Well?”

  “The reward will be split fifty-fifty.”

  “Seventy-five to me, twenty-five to you.”

  “Sixty-forty.”

  “Sixty to me?”

  “Goddamn it, yes!”

  “Okay, I’ll think on it. You’ll have my answer by noon tomorrow.”

  “Think on it?”

  “Until noon, Gage.”

  “Sharon, you are the most stubborn, aggravating—”

  “Save it. I’ve heard it all before.”

  He glanced at me with interest. “From Ripinsky, too?”

  “Never.”

  “Why not?”

  Why not? Well, it had to do with the nature of the relationship. I could have tried to explain that to Renshaw, but I didn’t bother. It simply wasn’t within the range of his comprehension.

  Three

  I’d planned to deliver a final report to an architect who had his offices in one of the renovated piers off the Embarcadero at four o’clock, but by the time Renshaw dropped me at my car it was closer to four-thirty. I used my mobile phone to call the client, and he told me to come over anyway, so I left the MG where it was and walked there. After we discussed the report, I collected a check from him and strolled back along the shoreline boulevard. At the municipal pier next to the Waterfront restaurant I turned and took a detour.

  It had been one of those brilliantly clear days that almost make San Franciscans believe a dreary fog-socked summer isn’t going to happen after all. At five o’clock the streets were clogged with cars and buses, and the sidewalks teemed with pedestrians taking their time on their way home. After-work joggers pounded past me on the pier, and less active types sat on the benches facing an iron railing that was crowned with old-fashioned streetlamps. The chimes in the tower of the nearby Ferry Building played “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” and then a melody whose words I remembered as having something to do with the evening breeze. I smiled at this typically San Francisco version of taps.

  When I reached t
he end of the pier, I leaned on the rail, watched a ferry ply its way toward Marin County, and listened to the swash of its wake against the pilings. I thought about Gage Renshaw’s proposition, about the Azadis, about Adah Joslyn.

  I wasn’t sure whether in good conscience I could keep from Joslyn what I knew about the messages the consulate had received. Whenever possible I tried to cooperate with law-enforcement agencies and besides, Adah was a friend. By withholding information I could hamper the one official body that was capable of putting a stop to the bombings. On the other hand, if I turned down Renshaw’s offer I’d relinquish following up on one of the most promising leads in the case so far. And even if I went to Adah with the information, I was certain Malika Hamid would deny my story and refuse to cooperate with the task force.

  I looked at the situation pro and con. Tried several approaches, discarded most of them, tried some more. I thought about my fear of becoming too much like Renshaw and his cohorts. Realized that if I accepted the proposed contract I would have taken one more step toward the line that separated us. But even as I fought the notion, a compelling image kept intruding.

  An image of big shiny dark eyes staring at me over the lip of an enormous marble urn. Big shiny dark eyes that—had it not been for the quick actions of a brave young woman—might now be staring blank and dull from a steel drawer in the morgue.

  Habiba Hamid tipped the scales in favor of Renshaw’s offer. I turned and retraced my route along the pier.

  * * *

  I wanted to go over my files on the case and check some things before I spoke with Renshaw, so I ate a quick sandwich and called my office as I headed across town. Mick Savage, my nephew and temporary assistant, had gone home and forgotten to turn on the answering machine.

  I slammed the receiver into its base unit. Cursed and for the thousandth time vowed to find a permanent replacement for Mick. But—as Hy frequently reminded me—although Mick would forever be temporary in my mind, in actuality he was there to stay. The kid—he’d just turned eighteen—was a computer genius, had a natural talent for investigation, and was usually a delight to have around. Besides, I couldn’t fault him for rushing home tonight; he’d told me that this was the eighth-month anniversary of his meeting Maggie Bridges, the bright and pretty USF student with whom he lived. A romantic evening was in the works.