“I suppose, since he’s come all this way, I’m going to have to see him.”
“I’ll go tell Janet to send him in, then,” Dylan said.
As the receptionist ushered the man into his outer office, it crossed Hunter’s mind that if Hollywood ever went looking for someone to cast in the role of a rising player in the high-stakes world of international diplomacy, James Van Horn would be perfect for the part. His hundred-dollar haircut and cashmere coat suggested the family wealth Hunter knew had made him a legendary undergrad at Princeton. The British accent he tended to affect was a reminder of his days at Oxford, and his shoes—wing tips, for God’s sake—were far more appropriate for walking the marbled halls of the State Department than wading through Castle Mountain’s snowdrifts.
“I wasn’t expecting you.” Annoyed by the intrusion, and even more irritated that the man wasn’t the woman he’d been expecting for the past twenty-four hours, Hunter didn’t bother with pleasantries.
“I suppose you wouldn’t believe that I was in the neighborhood and decided to drop in and see how the work was progressing.”
“Not on a bet.”
Without waiting for an invitation, he took off his coat, which he hung with precision on the coatrack, hitched up the legs of his wool suit slacks, sat down in a leather chair, crossed his legs, then ran his manicured fingers down a knife-sharp crease.
“I had business in New England.” Shoulders clad in a subdued gray pinstripe shrugged. “You weren’t that far out of my way.”
It was a lie and both men knew it. Hunter waited him out.
“So, are the rumors true?” Van Horn eventually asked.
“Which rumors are you referring to?”
“The ones circulating around Washington that you’re on the verge of finalizing the project.”
The project in question was an offshoot of the gene studies Hunter had been doing when George Cassidy had gotten him kicked off the MIT project. Simply put, he’d created a program in which he detailed the political and economic history of a region, plugged in sociological factors past and present, along with a genetic profile of the inhabitants obtained from DNA studies, then ran them through the computer. With the collected data, the program, in theory, was then able to predict how any given population would respond under various circumstances.
There was another, darker side to his research that Hunter fully intended to keep under wraps. If the detailed DNA model he’d created fell into the wrong hands, it could theoretically be used to clone a genetically perfected warrior lacking in any social or moral conscience. An assassin class.
While he disliked working with bureaucrats, Hunter wasn’t in any position to turn down much-needed funds. He’d always eschewed the money-raising circuit, but after that incident in Bosnia that had cost him half his face and a hand, he figured hostesses wouldn’t exactly consider him a plus at their fund-raising dinners or cocktail parties.
His current work was being funded by both the State and Defense Departments, Defense wanting the data in order to predict wars and to discover how to map winning battle strategies, while State was seeking to defuse international skirmishes before they blew up into full-scale wars.
“I still have some work to do,” he said obliquely. “The Middle East, for example, is still problematic.”
They also didn’t like him in that part of the world. He’d been shot at more times than he cared to think about during his stay in the region. And although he liked most of the population personally, he’d been warned on more than one occasion that he was considered a traitor for including various warring factions into his model. The trouble with that was that in too many parts of the world, people viewed as traitors tended to disappear. Or get blown up.
Hunter hoped like hell that he wouldn’t have to return to Lebanon anytime soon. Beirut might have once been the Paris of the region, but there were still neighborhoods that could only be described as shooting galleries.
Then there was Kosovo. Hunter sighed. Good luck keeping any negotiated peace in that place. And Bosnia. And Afghanistan. The list went on and on, and while he had uncharacteristically high hopes for the project, Hunter was also pragmatic enough to know that trying to halt any outbreaks of violence around the world was akin to attempting to plug a hole in Hoover Dam with a finger.
“The powers that be are getting impatient,” Van Horn warned.
“Tough. The work will be done when it’s done. And not a minute before.”
“They have to justify the expenditures to the budget committee. I doubt you’d enjoy being the target of a congressional investigation.”
Hunter lifted a brow. “Is that a threat?”
“Merely an observation.”
“My budget is chicken feed compared to the bucks you guys spend. Hell, the price of your expense account lunches at all those high-priced trendy Washington restaurants alone could fund me for another six months.
“And if there do happen to be any mumblings about expenditures up on the Hill, then it’s your job to quiet them. You guys aren’t the only game in town, you know.”
A scowl darkened Van Horn’s classically handsome WASP face. “Then the other rumor about you meeting with the Russians is also true?”
“I haven’t met with them.” And wouldn’t. But Hunter had perversely enjoyed the momentary panic he’d viewed in Van Horn’s eyes. “But I have received some inquiries regarding certain aspects of the project.”
“You realize that sharing information with them—especially information that’s been classified—could get you arrested for treason.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Van Horn gave him another hard look, as if trying to determine whether or not Hunter was jerking his chain. Which, of course, he was. It was one of the few side benefits of working with bureaucrats. They were so marvelously predictable. And competitive.
“There’s something else.” Van Horn had begun working that crease again, Hunter noted.
“I rather suspected there might be.” After all, a blizzard had been predicted and Hunter didn’t figure the guy had come all the way to Castle Mountain to sip hot toddies beside a roaring fire at the Gray Gull inn and watch the winter wonderland occurring outside the lace-curtained windows.
“I heard from one of my sources at the CIA that you’re on a terrorist hit list.”
“Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know?”
“I just wanted to pass the warning along.”
“Consider it passed.” Hunter stood up, effectively ending what had turned out to be little more than a fishing expedition. “And now that I’ve been properly warned about Congress and terrorists, I’m sure you won’t mind if I return to work. After all,” he said as he plucked the soft cashmere coat from the rack and held it out to James Van Horn, “as you’ve pointed out on so many other visits, time is money.”
With that he ushered the dapper diplomat out the door. Then, giving up on getting any work done when he couldn’t keep his mind off the damn clock, he locked the door to his inner office, set the secret code on the security system, then headed home to wait for Gillian’s arrival.
FIVE DAYS AFTER her father’s incredible revelation, Gillian was sitting in the back of a car crawling its way up the cliff leading out of the quaint village that could be used as a movie set of a late-nineteenth century New England fishing village. The narrow gravel road, which was currently packed with crunchy snow, would soon become impassable for days during winter storms. Which was, Gillian thought, probably just the way Hunter liked it.
All the articles she’d read about him, including the recent one in Newsweek,