Death is Forever

Windsor’s words. “The Aussies won’t lift a finger. The boys down under would be more than happy to stick it up the cartel’s ass and break it off. They’re still mad as hell about the Argyle mine.”
    “That doesn’t mean Blackburn is an assassin. He’s spent his whole life avoiding being owned by anyone or anything. Why would he suddenly change his pattern?”
    “Money,” she said succinctly.
    “He’s been offered money before. Lots of it. He turned it down.”
    “Pull your head out of your ass. If Sleeping Dog Mines is half what we suspect it is, a whole lot of set patterns will change real quick. If Blackburn is somebody’s mole, this would be the score that would bring him to the surface.”
    “I still don’t buy it.”
    “I’m not selling,” Faulkner said coldly, “I’m telling . Europe is going through the biggest economic restructuring since they scragged the czar, the Soviets are flat starved for international currency, and the cartel is the biggest cash cow they have. If the cartel goes under, so do the Soviets. We don’t want that to happen, babe. We have to control that fucking mine!” She blew out a dense burst of smoke. “I’ve taken a lot of flak over your refusal to recommend Thomas as your daughter’s diamond expert.”
    “Thomas is CIA.”
    “You bet your ass he is. That’s the whole point.”
    “No. The point is that he would trade Erin’s life for the mine any time he got an offer.” Windsor watched Faulkner, seeing the new lines of strain. “Who’s squeezing you?”
    “You know better than to ask. I sure as hell know better than to answer.”
    Faulkner smoked in tight silence for a few moments before she closed her eyes and went on wearily.
    “I shouldn’t tell you this, but if I can’t trust you I might as well cut my throat and get the waiting over with.” She stubbed out her half-smoked cigarillo. “Either we give Jason Street a letter of introduction to Erin or we can forget all the strategic minerals we’ve been getting from ConMin. South Africa won’t sell them to us. Neither will the Soviets. Which means the U.S. will be shit out of luck real quick.”
    Silence was Windsor’s only answer.
    “Say something, Matt.”
    “Like what? I’m having a hard time believing that ConMin is willing to go that far over a diamond mine that may or may not exist.”
    “Oh, they’re willing. Not eager, mind you, but willing. You know where Erin is. Call her. Use my phone.”
    “No.”
    Faulkner looked across her desk in blank disbelief. “What?”
    “I was ambitious once. I came close to destroying Erin by using her as an unwitting source of disinformation for a Soviet agent known as Hans Schmidt.”
    Faulkner sat very still. She’d read the file and wondered about Windsor’s role. Now she knew.
    “I told myself it would be all right,” Windsor said. “I’d gone over Schmidt’s file until I had it memorized. I’d questioned other sources. If he wasn’t a Soviet, he would have been everything a father could want for his daughter—intelligent, strong, ambitious, a real comer. He seemed very much in love with Erin. She was certainly in love with him.”
    “And if you doubled him,” Faulkner said, “you’d have had a direct pipeline to the Kremlin at a time when the U.S. was spending too many days on yellow alert.”
    “Yes,” Windsor said simply. He closed his eyes for a moment, knowing he couldn’t conceal the old echoes of pain, rage, and shame from Faulkner’s shrewd black eyes.
    She sighed. “Don’t blame yourself. You had no way of knowing Hans got off by cutting up girls.”
    “No, but if I’d told Erin that Hans was a Soviet agent, she would have broken the engagement. As it was…” Windsor’s voice faded.
    “As it was, your daughter ended up in the hospital. It wasn’t your fault. And you got even,” Faulkner pointed out with a thin, cold smile. “You got even but good.”
    There was silence for the space of several breaths. Faulkner waited.
    Finally Windsor began talking again.
    “I’m no longer sure about absolute right and absolute wrong,” he said slowly. “I did what I thought was right, what was necessary, what was useful, and I got a little gold star in my file because the information Erin innocently passed on to her loving fiancé threw the Soviets off the scent of our secret negotiations with Iran for a whole three weeks.”
    “Every hour of that time was vital,” Faulkner pointed out. “We made some real