London Bridges

just get
your
job. You never see the whole plan. But there was something between him and Weir—bad blood.
    “Anyway, he sure as hell never contacted me. Always my partner. Always Hancock. He’s the one who got the Wolf out of Russia. Corky, the Germans, the Brits. I told you that, right?” Cahill said, then winked at us. “This stuff is good. Truth serum. Drink the grape juice, boys.” He looked over at O’Connell. “You, too, Dr. Mengele. Drink the fucking grape and the truth will set you free.”

Chapter 96
    HAD WE GOTTEN the truth out of Joe Cahill? Was there anything to his drug-induced ramblings?
    Corky Hancock? The Germans, the Brits? Thomas Weir?
    Somebody had to know something about the Wolf. Where he was. Who he was. What he might be up to next.
    So I was on the road again, tracking down the Wolf. Joe Cahill’s partner had moved out to the central Idaho Rockies after he had taken early retirement. He lived on the outskirts of Hailey in the Wood River Valley, about a dozen miles south of Sun Valley. Not a bad life for a former spook.
    As we drove from the airport to Hailey we passed through what the Bureau driver described as “high desert.” Hancock, like Joe Cahill, was a hunter and fisherman, it seemed. Silver Creek Preserve, a world-famous catch-and-release fishing area, was nearby.
    “We’re not going to bust in on Hancock. We’ll keep him under surveillance. Try to see what he’s up to. He’s off in the mountains, hunting, right now. We’ll run by his place. Let you have a look,” said the local senior agent, a young Turk named Ned Rust. “Hancock is an expert shot with a rifle, by the way. Thought I’d mention that.”
    We drove up into the hills, where several of the larger houses seemed to be on five-to-ten-acre lots. Some homes had well-manicured lawns, which looked unnaturally green in contrast to the ashen hills, which, of course,
were
natural.
    “There have been avalanches in the area recently,” Rust said as we drove. He was just chock full of information. “Might see some wild horses. Or Bruce Willis. Demi and Ashton and the kids. Anyway, there’s Hancock’s house up ahead. Exterior’s river rock. Popular around here. Lot of house for a retired agent with no family.”
    “He’s probably got some money to spend on himself,” I said.
    The house was large all right, and handsome, with spectacular views in three directions. There was a detached barn that was bigger than my house, and a couple of horses grazing nearby. No Corky Hancock, though; he was off hunting.
    Well, so was I.
    Nothing much happened in Hailey for the next few days. I was briefed by the senior agent in charge, a man named William Koch. The CIA had also sent a heavy from Washington, Bridget Rooney. Hancock returned from his hunting outing, and we watched his every move. Static surveillance was set up by an operations group that had been flown in from Quantico. There was a mobile team whenever Hancock left the house. We were taking him very seriously. After all, the Wolf was out there somewhere, with close to two billion dollars. In winnings.
    But maybe we finally had a way to track him: the CIA agent who brought him out of Russia. And maybe it was all connected to whatever had happened between the Wolf and Thomas Weir.
    The mistake in Paris.

Chapter 97
    IT JUST WASN’T going to happen overnight. Or the next night. Or the one after that.
    On Friday I got permission to take a trip out to Seattle to visit my boy. I called Christine, who said that it would be fine and that Alex would be happy to see me—and so would she. I’d noticed the edge was gone from Christine’s voice when we talked these days; sometimes I could even remember how it had been between us. I wasn’t sure that was a good thing, though.
    I arrived at her house in the late morning and was struck again by what a warm and charming place it was. The house and the yard were very Christine: cozy and light, with the familiar white picket fence and matching handrails hugging the stone steps leading to the front door; rosemary, thyme, and mint filled the herb garden. Everything just so.
    Christine answered the bell herself, with Alex in her arms. As much as I tried not to, I couldn’t help thinking about the way things might have been if I hadn’t been a homicide cop and my life as a detective hadn’t violently derailed the two of us.
    I was surprised that she was home, and she must have recognized the look in my eyes.
    “I won’t