Top Hook. Gordon Kent

for it, knocking over her beer. “Goddamit—!” O’Neill and Peretz were both there, mopping at the carpet, and she stepped over them. “Hello!” She sounded enraged, and she hoped, therefore, that it wasn’t Alan.

      And it wasn’t. It was a woman.

      “You don’t know me,” the female voice said. Rose’s first thought was that it was some sort of telemarketer, an idea that was gone as fast as it came; telemarketers didn’t do motel rooms. Did they?

      “Who is this?”

      “I want to help you.”

      The voice was soft, as if she didn’t want somebody on her end to overhear. A little tense. Guarded. Around Rose, the room had fallen silent, and the men were watching her.

      “Who is this, please?”

      “George Shreed is behind what’s being done to you.”

      Rose heard the click as the woman hung up. Even so, she spoke into the phone again. And got nothing.

      When she turned back to the room, they were all looking at her.

      “A woman I don’t know said that George Shreed is behind what’s happening.”

      Abe Peretz exploded. “Sonofabitch—!”

      Emma was saying, “Who’s George Shreed?” to Dukas, and O’Neill was frowning at Rose in a way that meant he knew exactly who Shreed was, and what was the connection? Suddenly the room was electric where before it had been sullen.

      Rose sat down. “I don’t get it. Why would somebody—?”

      “Agency,” Harry said. “She’d have to be Agency to know anything about Shreed. Or she’s an old girlfriend with a grudge. Which isn’t his style.”

      “Yes, yes, but—” Peretz was so excited that he was waving one hand like a kid trying to be called on in class. “It’s exactly what I was going to say! Shreed was deep, deep in Peacemaker.”

      “Wait!” Emma was on her feet. She had a real bellow when she needed it. “What the hell are you all talking about?”

      So, while O’Neill and Peretz murmured together, Rose and Dukas sketched it in for Emma Pasternak: Peretz, who had started a routine, two-week Naval Reserve stint at Peacemaker two years before, had got suspicious of the sort of data he was seeing and had begun nosing around, tracking things back to Shreed and the Agency, a search that had been ended by the mugging that had cost him the hearing in one ear.

      “Shreed got him beaten up?” Emma said.

      “Oh, no,” Rose cried, “I never believed—” Then she looked at Dukas.

      “They never followed up that idea,” he said. He made a note.

      “Well, I would have!” Emma shouted.

      “Yeah, you would have.” Dukas whacked O’Neill on the knee. “Harry, you think Telephone Girl’s Agency?”

      “Likely.”

      “You got any way to find her?”

      “Put a tap on Rose’s phone.”

      Emma was screaming, “No way!” Dukas turned back to O’Neill. “Poke around, will you?”

      “I have to be in Nairobi on Saturday, Mike.” He turned to Rose and started mumbling something about tape-recording telephone calls.

      Dukas was making notes. “Abe, I want everything you got on Peacemaker.”

      “Hey, how about polygraphing Shreed?” Peretz said.

      “Not yet.” He made a note. “The Agency wouldn’t let me polygraph its people without a hell of a fight, and I’m not ready for a fight. Yet.” He looked at his notes. “Rosie, does it make sense that George Shreed would go after you because he has an old rhubarb with Al?”

      She shrugged. “I don’t know, does it?”

      Peretz shook his head. “He’s a high-powered guy, but he’s very personal—he fought the Cold War that way, his personal enemies. A big thinker in terms of geopolitics, but he personalizes everything. Can be very petty.”

      “Could he be petty enough to go after Rose to settle with Alan?”

      “Why should he go after Alan?” Emma said.

      Dukas sighed. “A very old story. Al and I were in Mombasa in ninety—or was it ninety-one? Al had a contact with a, well, call him a foreign asset, and he didn’t know what to do, so he calls Shreed, who’s an old family friend. Bang! Al and I get pulled out of the country so fast we think we’re being deported, and two CIA types come in, and next thing we know, the foreign contact is dead.”

      “Shreed had him killed?”

      “No, no!” Dukas shook his head as if the question was the dumbest one he’d ever heard. “Suicide. Alan had a fight with Shreed about it when we got back to the US, and they’ve been on the outs ever since. But is that reason enough to lay a serious frame-up on Rose now? I don’t buy it.” He turned back to Harry. “But just to be on the safe side, as long as you’re going to be in Nairobi, how about checking into that death while you’re there?”

      “Nairobi isn’t Mombasa.”

      “Well, same country, what the hell. Come on, Harry—for Rose, okay?”

      Peretz shook his head. “A man like Shreed doesn’t wait eight or nine years and then do something like this out of spite. Although, maybe if somebody else fingered Rose, Shreed might take advantage of it.”

      They all started offering theories about Shreed then, and the skull session quickly degenerated into chaos. Dukas pounded on the bedside table with a beer bottle until they all shut up. “Hey! Hey!” He hiked his pants up and glared at them, then grinned. “Look, folks, we’ve allowed ourselves to narrow our focus too soon, you all understand that, right? I think the Shreed thing is…” He rocked his free hand back and forth. “At this point it’s nothing but a line for us to follow, and all we got is Telephone Girl’s voice telling us to.” He sighed. “What I think is, George Shreed is a sonofabitch who has nothing to do with Rose’s case, but I’m going to follow up, because that’s my job. Let’s have some other ideas, could we?”

      They sat for another hour, repeating some of it, trying to cheer Rose, offering new theories. Did Rose have enemies? Peretz mentioned Ray Suter, who had been at Peacemaker and was now at the CIA and who had tried and failed to get Rose in the sack. Did that make him an enemy? Other names were mentioned—squadron squabbles, professional rivalries. Dukas made notes. Then they began to drift away, first Peretz, then Emma and Dukas, O’Neill last.

      It was only when they were gone and she had put the television on to keep her from thinking that Rose remembered that Dukas and Emma had arrived and left together and that something was going on.

      

      Later, Dukas lay on his back in the dark. Emma was lying half on him, her head on his chest, and he could feel her hair on his bare skin. He thought she was asleep and he was sliding off into sleep himself when she said, “I was married once.”

      “No kidding.”

      “It only lasted two years.” He felt her raise her head and shake her hair back; her head was dimly silhouetted against a window. “Doomed to failure. Two lawyers.”

      He thought about that. He thought about it so long he thought she might have fallen asleep, but he said, “What’s doomed if you loved each other?” and he heard her laugh, a kind of wheezing, ratchety sound that didn’t seem as if she made it often, and she said, “Love? Christ almighty, Mike. Grow up.”

      She was different in the dark. Her voice was lower, quieter, and she wasn’t on the attack. She had that laugh, and of