I thought for a moment and did my best to clear my head. Then I told Kate about the motorcycle pulling in front of us and the other bike coming up from behind. I told her about the Jaguar jerking forward and smashing over the first gunman, and I told her about killing the second shooter with the.45 before I passed out. Something told me not to mention pulling off the man’s helmet and recognizing Marcus York’s face, at least not quite yet, so I left that part out.
“Where did you learn to shoot like that?” Kate asked.
“I used to play tennis with some DEA agents in Washington. They took me to ranges sometimes. Just screwing around. They said I had a knack for it.”
A short silence fell after that. I was pretty badly muddled, but I was lucid enough to probe Kate gently, just to see where it might go.
“Who were those guys anyway?” I asked her.
“We don’t know yet. No ID on either of them, of course. They might have been local hitters, but probably not. More than likely imported. Malaysian, would be my guess.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Well…they looked more Malaysian than Thai to me, but I’m just guessing.”
That stopped me.
“You saw the bodies?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“And they were both Asians?”
“That’s right. So if you’re wondering whether the marshals had anything to do with this, I think the answer is no. I doubt they would have trusted a couple of local hired guns.”
There was no way in hell Kate could have mistaken Marcus York for a Malaysian. If she was telling me the truth, somebody removed York’s body and substituted another one before she got there. On the other hand, maybe Kate was lying to me. Maybe she had seen York’s corpse and she thought I hadn’t, so she didn’t want me to know.
I tried to work out where each of those possibilities left me, but I couldn’t. Before I could even decide whether or not to tell Kate the truth, to tell her I already knew who was behind the attack, she changed the subject
“Is there anybody you’d like me to call for you, Jack? To tell them you’rtace going to be all right?’
“Yes,” I said automatically, “Anita will be worried if she hears…”
But then all that came back to me, too, and I trailed off.
“No,” I said. “No one.”
The finality of it caused me to groan audibly. I turned my head away and Kate leaned closer.
“Shall I get a nurse?’
“No,” I said, “just give me a minute.”
I felt myself plunge into a cavern of coldness and my ears filled with sound that had no source. Kate moved slightly. The gray light in the room shifted and I caught a glimpse of the green luminous numerals of a clock face. My hands trembled against the bedsheets. Then, as abruptly as I had entered it, I was through the cavern and rising again into warmth. My hands stopped trembling and the sound in my ears faded away.
“What about the others?” I asked Kate.
“Dead,” she said. “All of them.”
I had known that already, of course.
“Has anyone told Karsarkis?” I asked. “About Mia, I mean.”
“I sent people out there as soon as we found the wreck. The estate appeared to be secure, but the guards wouldn’t let us in. There’s been no reply to the message we left.”
My eyes searched the room for the clock face I had glimpsed before. I found it on a table.
Just after one o’clock, it said. Was that afternoon? Or night? I struggled to work it out.
Night, I decided. It had to be night. It must be after one a.m.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Kate. “Where did you come from?”
“When Mia didn’t arrive, I called her cell phone and there was no answer. We followed the road back to see if there had been an accident and we found you”
“Didn’t arrive? What do you mean?”
“We were having lunch together at Amanpuri. You didn’t know?”
“She told me she was having lunch with someone. She didn’t say who.”
Kate showed a half smile. “It was me,” she said.
I lay quietly and turned my new discovery over in my mind. It didn’t fit with anything else and I didn’t know how to try to make it fit, so after a while I let it go.
“Who would want to kill Mia?” I asked.
Kate looked at me for a long time.
“What?” I asked.
“Why do you think they were after Mia?”
“Are you trying to tell me it was another mistake? Like Mike O’Connell. Another botched attempt on Karsarkis?”
“That’s possible, I guess. Karsarkis’ car. Mia on one side. A man on the other. Maybe they thought you were Karsarkis.”
“Except I don’t look anything like Karsarkis.”
“Then maybe there’s another explanation, Jack.”
I looked sideways for a moment and then shifted my eyes back to Kate. Her face was professionally empty, but I had no doubt what she meant.
“You amp;rsnd quo;re shitting me,” I said.
Kate shook her head.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Why in God’s name would they have been trying to kill me?”
“If you’re working with Plato, there are people who assume you know what he knows.”
“But I’m not working with Karsarkis.”
“There’re people who probably assume you are.”
“And he hasn’t told me anything.”
“They would probably assume he had.”
“And you think whoever is doing all of this goddamn assuming would send two goddamned gunmen to ambush Mia’s car and kill everybody in it just to get me? Just in case I actually do know whatever it is I’m supposed to know?”
“You can put it together that way.”
I stared at Kate. “Oh, man,” I sighed, “You have got to be kidding me.”
“I feel like I got you into this, Jack,” Kate said.
I noticed Kate’s voice had turned businesslike. So much, apparently, for the personal warmth part of our program.
“Until I figure out how to get you out of it, a team of my best people will be with you around the clock. You can trust them absolutely.”
“With my life?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Gee, then I guess my worries are over.”
“They can’t get set up until morning, but I’ve got local police all around this hospital until then. Don’t worry. We’re not going to give them a second chance.”
“Give who a second chance?”
Kate glanced briefly out the window, which there was very little point in doing since it was pitch black out there. Then she put her hand on my shoulder and gave it a little squeeze.
“I don’t know. The truth is I just don’t know for sure.”
But of course I did. I knew. For sure.
“And you think the marshals had nothing to do with this?” I probed again.
“No.”
This time I was watching Kate’s eyes when she answered and I decided she believed what she was saying. She didn’t know about Marcus York, I was certain of that now, but something still kept me from telling her.
“What about the email intercepts?” I asked, trying to make up my mind how to play it from there. “They had to mean something.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jack.”
“Kate, I’m talking about the email intercepts, those transcripts you gave me…”
“I never gave you anything.”
I was a little slow-witted right then, I realized, but not that slow-witted.
“Okay,” I said. “I see.”
“I’m glad.”
Kate may not have known specifically about Marcus York trying to kill me, but she knew there was something out there. She also knew it was something ugly and something neither of uspec understood. She wanted to get as far away from it as she possibly could. I could hardly say I blamed her.
“So,” I said after mulling that over for a bit, “if I told anyone you had given me copies of the NIA email intercepts from the US Marshals that implied they were actually here to kill Karsarkis rather than return him for trial…”
“I imagine most people would have a hard time believing that. Without copies of the intercepts, of course, which you don’t have.”
“Which I do have,” I said.
Kate went completely still.
“You couldn’t have gotten past the security routine in that file,” she said after a moment.
“You’re right,” I said. “I couldn’t have.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“But I know people who could. Did, in fact.”
Kate measured me with a long look. As she did, she bit unconsciously at her lip. One tooth made a little white mark there and I looked at it until it had faded away.
“All right,” she said after a time had passed in silence. “So what are you going to do?”
I blew out a breath and popped my lips.
“Maybe I’ll just go back to sleep,” I said, “and think about everything again tomorrow.”
“That’s probably the best thing for you to do.”
Kate smiled and started to turn away, but then to my surprise, and possibly to hers as well, she reached out and stroked my hair with the tips of her fingers. Her cool hand lingered on my forehead as she might let it linger on the face of an injured child. I could see a thought come into her eyes like a dark bird, stay a moment, and then fly away.
“I’ll be back in the morning,” she said after a moment or two had passed that way.
I was about to say something in reply, something that would tell Kate how happy I was she was there right then and that she would be coming back, but before the thought could shape itself into words, the drugs took me and I was gone.