Father Night Read Free Page A

offer, but Nona and I are local and I’m sure your SITSPEC is not. It’s probably not even domestic.”
    “There you’re wrong. It is domestic and, as of this moment, it’s local to the D.C. area.”
    Fraine considered this possibility. “Why us?”
    “I know I can trust you. You and Nona owe me; at the end of the day, I know you won’t turn me down.” He smiled. “Besides, before it’s over, there’s a good chance we’ll be intersecting with Henry Holt Carson’s interests.” His smile turned sly. “I know you can’t pass up that opportunity.”
    *   *   *
    “T HERE’S A time and a place for everything,” the General said.
    “Even peace?”
    “No.” The General lit a cigar with a wooden match. He had a head like a helmet, with a fringe of prematurely white hair like a priest’s tonsure. “Of course not peace.”
    The other man, small-boned, sharp-nosed, and gray as a rodent, shifted in his wing chair. He wore a pale-colored suit and a black tie. By his side was a carved hickory walking stick. His name was Werner Waxman, though he also might be known as Smith or Jones, Reilly or Coen, depending on what country and what year he was in. In any case, Waxman was not his real name. “But you said—”
    “For me, peace doesn’t exist.”
    The two men were sunk into the dim, woody interior of a hunting lodge deep in the forests of Virginia. Far from the media spotlight glare inside the Beltway, they sat on either side of an enormous fireplace composed of stones as large as their heads. It was late, only a few scattered lamps left on, their pools of lights burnishing the wide polished floorboards. A tray with the remains of coffee and dessert sat unnoticed on a low table nearby.
    The General lifted his cleft chin, blew smoke at the coffered ceiling. “I, personally, don’t know what peace is, and, frankly, I don’t want to know.”
    Waxman leaned forward, his muscles tense. A blue vein beat at the corner of his left eye. “Peace is death.”
    The General’s gaze came down, fixed Waxman with the accuracy of a lawn dart. “Yes.” He seemed as much impressed as he was surprised. “You’ve caught the essence precisely.”
    “Well.” Waxman inclined his head, a formal Middle European gesture. “That’s my job, isn’t it?”
    “I wouldn’t want that.” The General rounded the ash crown of his cigar on the lip of his plate. “I wouldn’t want the responsibility of making sense of it all.”
    “We all have our roles to play.” Waxman’s eyes glinted as he turned his head. “You, General, are a man of action. You carry out a plan to perfection.”
    The General stirred, wondering now what Waxman wanted. “This enterprise of yours—it had better work.”
    “Trust me, General.”
    “The last individual who said that to me is six feet under.”
    Like a conjuror, Waxman produced a thin smile as if from nowhere. “As to that, I have no worries.”
    The General sucked on his cigar. “The stakes are astronomical.”
    “Such melodrama! This isn’t Hollywood.”
    “You can’t afford to be wrong.” The General stared at the ash at the end of his cigar. “About anything.” He glanced up. “Or anyone.”
    Waxman’s thin smile seemed set in cement.
    The General regarded Waxman with carefully concealed distaste. He seemed pale and weak, unfit for anything outside a well-ventilated room, but, as he had said, they all had their roles to play, all of them. Each brought a different expertise to the enterprise. They were bound not by friendship, but by need. Better by far than friendship, the General judged. It was unthinkable to betray someone you needed. And betrayal was the one thing they all feared. He knew that, because it was what he feared, the fear muscled way down in the depths of him, but always keeping a wary antenna out for red flags.
    The members had made a covenant with each other a long time ago on a dark and turbulent night filled with blood, death, and terror. They were