Riptide

the bed. "Give me another drink of water, ask Sherlock to
    buy me some clothes, and we're out of here. An hour. That's all I
    need."
    "I think," Thomas said slowly, stroking his long fingers over his
    chin, "that there is perhaps a bit too much of me in you."
    Becca grinned at him. "That's what Mom told me, many times."
    "Then I'd best clear your leaving town with our local cops,"
    Thomas said, and wanted to pat her cheek, but didn't because she
    wasn't a little girl anymore and she barely knew him. The thought
    of that made him clear his throat.

    Washington, D.C.

    The Eagle Has Landed

    There weren't any leaks. None of them could believe it. Their
    short flight to Washington, then the drive to Georgetown to a small
    restaurant called The Eagle Has Landed didn't raise any curious

eyebrows. There wasn't a single TV van in front of the restaurant,
    not a single reporter from The Washington Post.
    "I don't believe it," Thomas said as he ushered Becca into the
    foyer of the small British pub. "No flashbulbs."
    "Glory be," said Adam.
    Andrew Bushman, appointed director of the FBI six months
    previously after the unexpected retirement of the former director,
    stood tall even with his rounded shoulders, his gray hair tonsured
    like a medieval monk's, and beautifully suited, when Thomas
    walked to the small circular table at the back of the restaurant.
    Bushman raised an eyebrow. "Mr. Matlock, I presume? You have
    pulled me away from some very important matters. I came because
    Gaylan Woodhouse asked me to, told me it had to do with the attempted
    assassination of the governor of New York. My people are
    directly involved in this. I will be interested to hear how the CIA
    could possibly be involved, what they could possibly know that's
    pertinent."
    Gaylan Woodhouse eased around the back of a shoji screen. He
    was a slight man of sixty-three who had come up through the
    ranks of the CIA and had been known in the old days as the best
    spy in the world because no one--absolutely no one--ever noticed
    him, and still he was. paranoid, staying in the shadows until
    there was no choice but to come out. He had been the director of
    the CIA for four years now. Thank God, Thomas thought, Gaylan
    had a long memory and a flexible mind.
    "Thank you," Thomas said and shook first the FBI hand and
    then the CIA hand. "Now, this is my daughter, Becca, who is very
    closely tied to this matter, and my associate, Adam Carruthers.
    Gaylan, thank you for putting in a good word for me with Mr.
    Bushman."

    Gaylan Woodhouse merely shrugged. "I know you, Thomas. If

you say something is critical, then it's critical. I hope by that you
    think it's time to bring the FBI up to speed on this thing."
    "Yes, it's time," Thomas said.
    The two directors eyed each other and managed affable smiles and
    civil greetings. Andrew Bushman cleared his throat. "Mr. Hawley
    and Mr. Cobb won't be joining us today, but I suspect you knew
    they wouldn't. I will have any information needed by them sent to
    New York when and if it's appropriate. Now, I need a martini.
    Then we can nail this thing down."
    Becca would have killed for a glass of wine, but she was taking
    medications that didn't allow it. She would even have accepted
    Adam's beer. She suffered through approximately four and a half
    minutes of small talk. Then Gaylan Woodhouse said, "What have
    you got that's definitive on Krimakov,Thomas?"
    Mr. Bushman's eyebrow shot up. "Does this have to do with the
    attempted assassination of the governor?"
    "Indeed it does," Gaylan said. "Thomas?"
    Thomas launched into the story of a CIA agent, namely himself,
    who was playing cat and mouse with a Russian agent in the mid-1970s
    and accidentally killed that agent's wife. And that Russian
    agent had promised that he would get revenge, that he would kill
    both Thomas and his family. As Thomas spoke, Becca thought
    about what her life, her mother's life would have been like if her father
    hadn't been in that godforsaken place, trying to get the best of
    a Russian agent named Vasili Krimakov. "Of course, Gaylan knows
    all of this already. The reason the FBI needs to be involved is because
    we are trying to prove whether or not Krimakov is still alive
    and thus was the one who tried to assassinate the governor of New
    York. Actually, now we're very certain that it's him."
    FBI Director Bushman was lounged back in his seat, holding the
    nearly empty martini glass in his hand. "But this guy is after you. Why

would he shoot