Patriot

CHAPTER 9

Hawke had met CIA director Kelly a decade earlier, in prison. Patrick Brickhouse Kelly was a U.S. Army spec-ops colonel back then, a man who’d been caught red-handed trying to assassinate a Sunni warlord in his mountain village. And Hawke’s Royal Navy fighter plane had been shot down over the desert only a few miles from the Iraqi prison. Their treatment was something less than five-star; it was no mints-on-the-pillow operation.

The guards were inhuman and merciless. These were animals, savages who laughed at the CIA and its ridiculous waterboarding, which to them was only mildly worse than having no hot water in the shower.

One night, after months of inhumanity, Kelly had been dragged away from their cell for yet another brutal beating coupled with electroshock to his genitals. Brick had looked so broken and weak that Hawke decided he’d not survive another day of malnutrition and the cruelest of tortures. The sound of his friend’s screams reverberating off the stone walls of the cell down the hall galvanized him into action.

That night, Hawke planned and managed to effect an escape, killing most of the guards and destroying half the prison in the doing of it. He carried Brick Kelly on his shoulders out into the burning desert. It was four long days before they were rescued by friendlies, both men delirious with hunger, sunstroke, and dehydration. It’s the kind of defining experience that brings men of a certain caliber together for the balance of their lives.

He and Brick Kelly had been thick as thieves ever since. Hawke was godfather to Brick’s eldest child. Brick had been standing beside him as best man at Hawke’s tragic wedding. They had learned to survive the worst with each other’s help and it had stood them in good stead.

Some of Hawke’s happiest memories had been springtime visits to Brick and his wife Jane’s glorious Virginia estate, Burning Tree Farm in McLean, Virginia. A horse farm just outside of Washington, D.C., it was a few hundred acres of rolling green hills, perfect white fences, and some of America’s most highly prized thoroughbred horses.

Hawke went inside to take the call. He moved quickly across the room to the antique black Bakelite phone sitting atop the monkey-wood bar and picked up the receiver.

“Hullo?” he said. By force of habit, he was always noncommittal when answering any phone call. Even this one.

“Hullo?” he repeated.

“Hawke? Is that you?”

“Brick?”

“Yeah. It’s a secure transmission, Alex, no worries. I know you’re lying low for a while. Well-deserved R&R and all that stuff. Listen. Sorry to even bother you but something’s happened I felt you should know about.”

“Trouble?”

“No, not exactly. Sadness is more like it. Alex, your old friend Cameron Hooker died this past weekend.”

“Hook died? Was he sick? He never said a word.”

“No. It was an accident.”

“Ah, hell, Brick. Damn it. What happened?”

“He went for a sail on Sunday morning. Up at his house on North Haven Island in Maine. Did it every Sunday of his life apparently. When he wasn’t back home by noon, and his wife couldn’t reach his cell, Gillian called the sheriff. They found the boat run aground on a small island near Stonington. Hook was in the stern, dead.”

“Heart attack? Stroke?”

“His head was bashed in.”

“Foul play?”

“No. He was alone, apparently. At least he was when he left the dock, according to a young fellow hired on for the summer.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know much about sailing, Alex. As you well know. Apparently, he attempted some kind of accidental tack in heavy wind and the big wooden boom swung round and hit him in the head.”

“A jibe,” Hawke said. “The most dangerous move you can attempt on a sailboat in a blow.”

“Right, jibe, that’s the word the boy used. It was blowing pretty good, I suppose. Certainly enough force for something that heavy to kill him. But…”

“But what?”

“I hate to even bring this up, Alex. But in the last six weeks, a number of other high-level Agency guys of his era have died. Lou Gagosian, Taylor Greene, Max Cohen, and Nicola Peruggia. And last April in Paris, Harding Torrance.”

“Suspicious deaths? Any of them?”

“No. Not on the surface, anyway. No evidence of foul play at all. It’s just the sheer number and timing that’s troublesome. And the high number may just be coincidence.”

“Or maybe not.”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Want me to look into it?”

“No. Not yet, anyway. All these poor widows and families are in mourning still. And I don’t really have any degree of certainty about my suspicions, just my usual extrasensory paranoia.”

“But.”

“Yeah. But. So, the question is this. Who is killing the great spies of Europe?”

“Look here. Hook was a good friend of mine, Brick. If someone killed him, I damn well want to find out who.”

“I’m sure you do. I’ll tell you what. Let’s give it a month or so. See what happens. Anything suspicious, we go full bore. Okay with you?”

“Sure. You know best. When’s the funeral? Where?”

“Up at Hook’s place, Cranberry Farm, in Maine. Family cemetery on the property. The service is next Friday afternoon at two. North Haven Island. Out in Penobscot Bay east of Camden. If you’re going to fly up from Bermuda, there’s a private airstrip at the old Watson place.”

“I’ve used it a few times, but thanks.”

“That’s right, I forgot, you’ve been out there before. Okay. I’ll see you there, then. Sorry, Alex. I know you two guys were close.”

“I’m sorry, too, Brick. Last of the old breed. He was a very, very good guy. See you there.”