Tail Spin

I’m a selfish asshole. I’m not sorry about Dr. MacLean, but believe me, I regret passing secure information on to Anna because of what she did with it, sorry about all of it. But I did it, so anything I say comes across as a pitiful excuse, as self-serving, as meaningless to anyone who counts.”
    Jack said, his voice emotionless, “It seems you were ready and willing to risk the lives of any number of people. I wonder how many more CIA operatives have died and will die because of the information you passed to your girlfriend.
    “This woman you claim you love—she is a terrorist. She kills people. Her name isn’t Anna, it’s Halimah. She’s a Syrian fundamentalist. She’s been trained to seduce young men, to use them. She used you, played you to perfection. What she gave you was a fantasy, and you bought into it. Love? It wasn’t ever about love, and you should know that by now.
    “You’re not only an asshole, Jean David, you’re pretty stupid. Talk about letting a woman lead you around by your dick. Aren’t you done with that?”
    After a moment of acid silence, Savich said, “But you’ll always be smart to your parents, Jean David—their beloved, precious son who was seduced into making a few bad judgments. I don’t think they’ll ever allow themselves to accept that their son is responsible for the loss of countless innocent people.”
    Jean David said, “One of the excuses my father made for me was that I couldn’t be a traitor to this country—I was only born here by accident, after all. No, France is my country, and I owe my allegiance only to France.
    “The thing is, he’s dead wrong. Hell, I’m a Redskins fan. America is my country. I would never have done what I did on purpose.” He sighed. “I don’t suppose it matters now. You want to take me back, don’t you?”
    “Yes,” Jack said. “We do.”
    He was fast. Savich managed to grab his Redskins shirt, but it was so old, it ripped off him. He saw the white bandage on his arm as Jean David Barbeau leaped off the high limestone cliffs on the far west coast of Jamaica. He didn’t make a sound.
    Savich was breathing hard, shocked and furious that he’d let him get away from him. He and Jack stood at the edge of the cliff. They saw him floating facedown seventy feet below.
    “Do you think he hit those hidden rocks?”
    Savich said, “I don’t think it matters.”
    “His parents,” Jack said. “They’re going to be destroyed all over again.”
    “Only if they find out about it. Let’s retrieve his body, see how we can get him buried here in Jamaica, and try to keep what happened here from getting back to them.”
    He heard a loud squawk. Savich looked at the group of cormorants hovering some fifty feet above Jean David’s body. They hovered a moment, then winged their way out over the Caribbean.
    Savich turned to Jack. “It’s odd, isn’t it, how both these cases involved obsessions with family honor and family shame. So much needless tragedy.”
    “No, not in this case,” Jack said slowly, looking down at Jean David’s body, waves pushing it back and forth against the black rocks. His body would be torn to shreds, he knew, and he didn’t care. “I think it’s about a spoiled young man who found out he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.”
    “All right, let’s get this done.” Savich pulled out his cell phone and called the local police captain.

EPILOGUE
    It was a fine day in Slipper Hollow. By count, nearly half the population of Parlow, Kentucky, had made the five-mile trip to a place few of them had even known about a few short months before. It certainly wasn’t at all hidden now. There’d been a two-dozen-car caravan driving the two-lane road, winding and turning back on itself, trees pressing in on all sides, mountains hovering, then, all of a sudden, there was a wide turnoff to the right onto another, narrower road, beautifully paved and landscaped with bushes and flowers on both sides. It was a very wide driveway, really, and it led to a beautiful hollow of land in the midst of which sat a magnificent house, built almost entirely by Gillette Janes himself.
    It wasn’t to celebrate a wedding that half the town came out on this beautiful, warm fall day, it was the installation of a new cell phone tower right on the property. Now everyone had cell phones, and glory be, they worked. All the time. Deals had been made, Dougie Hollyfield knew, between the newly established Abbott Foundation and