Robert looked guiltily at him. “I thought about it, trust me. But it would have put you in an untenable situation. You’d be duty-bound to arrest me.”
“But you made contact now. Why?”
Robert sighed. “Because I didn’t know if I’d ever get another chance. I know how many people are out looking for me. Highly trained people good at their job. I…I just wanted you to hear things from my side. I wanted you to know that…”
“I never believed you were guilty of anything.”
His brother smiled weakly. “Sure you did. Or at least you weren’t certain.”
“I found out about the threatening letter you got in your cell.”
Robert’s smile faded. “Who told you that?”
“Doesn’t matter. You took a dive to protect Dad and me. Your career, years of your life, everything, Bobby.”
“The fact is I was too arrogant. I never thought I’d be convicted because I wasn’t guilty. Talk about naïve.”
“You still took a dive.”
“I couldn’t let anything happen to my family,” he said quietly. “You two were all I had left.”
“Any idea who they might be?”
“No. But you said the voice you heard when you were kid-napped thought of himself as a patriot. That’s both interesting and disturbing.”
“Why disturbing?”
“Because in my experience, patriotism, while a fine quality, can fuel quite a dangerous agenda if taken to the extreme.”
“An agenda as yet unknown,” said Puller.
“I think we can cast a little bit of light on it.”
“How?”
“If I was prevented from going to ISR and Daughtrey filled my slot, then that’s something.”
“But what would be the reason?”
“I’m honest and above reproach. I can’t be bought. Unusual language coming from a convicted traitor, but it is the truth. Daughtrey, on the other hand, might’ve been none of those things.”
“And they wanted him at ISR. Carter told us how important that component is to our national defense.”
“In many vital ways ISR is our national defense.”
“So a traitor could do a great deal of damage?”
“Catastrophic.”
“What do you know about Daughtrey? How did he get that far in the military without anyone suspecting?”
“If he is guilty. We don’t have definite proof of that yet. But if he is guilty, who’s to say when he went over to the other side, or what the motivation was?”
“If he was a traitor why kill him?”
“You said he was part of the team that recruited you to work on my case?”
“Yes.”
“So if he was bad, he was doing that to piggyback on the investigation. He was hoping you would find me and he could make sure I never got back to DB alive.”
“But how can you hurt them?”
“I don’t know. I was nothing to them while I was sitting in DB, John. Something happened to trigger this.”
“Okay, let’s say that’s true. Let’s go back to the question of why kill Daughtrey?”
“The main reason to kill an operative is pretty obvious.”
“He decided to defect?”
“Or had a change of heart of some kind. Maybe he had a conscience and drew the line at outright murdering someone.”
“Then he signed his own death warrant.”
PULLER met Knox in the lobby of the W Hotel the next morning. Though he tried hard to hide it, she apparently noticed something different.
“You okay?” she asked.
He rubbed his eyes. “Didn’t sleep much last night.”
She didn’t look sympathetic. “Join the club. I don’t think I’ve slept a full night since I met you.”
They walked out of the hotel and to his car parked on the street. The air was surprisingly crisp and cool, with a light breeze. A jet overhead made a sharp left bank to avoid flying over restricted airspace after taking off from Reagan National.