Extreme Denial Read Online Free PDF

weary voice on the scrambler-protected telephone. “All those people killed. Terrible. Sickening. Thank God it’s not my responsibility anymore.”
    Decker took a moment before the implication struck him. He sat straighter, clutching the phone harder. “Not your responsibility? Whose is it? Mine ? You’re dumping this on me ?”
    “Let me explain.”
    “I had nothing to do with it. You sent me in at the last minute. I reported back that I thought the operation was in trouble. You ignored my advice, and—”
    “ I’m not the one who ignored your advice,” Decker’s superior said. “McKittrick’s father took over. He’s in charge now.”
    “ What?”
    “The operation is his responsibility. As soon as he got his son’s phone call, he started badgering everyone who owed him favors. Right now he’s on his way to Rome. He ought to be arriving at...”
    11
    The Astra Galaxy eight-seat corporate jet, ostensibly privately owned, set down at Leonardo da Vinci Airport just after midnight. Decker waited beyond customs and immigration while a tall, white-haired, patrician-looking man dealt with the officials. As near as Decker could tell, there were no other passengers on the jet. The man was seventy-two, but in amazing shape, broad-shouldered, tan, with craggy, handsome features. He wore a three-piece blended-wool gray suit that showed no effects of the long, hastily scheduled flight, any more than did Jason McKittrick himself.
    Decker had met the legend three times before, and he received a curt nod of recognition as McKittrick approached him.
    “Did you have a good flight? Let me take your suitcase,” Decker said.
    But McKittrick kept a grip on the suitcase and walked past Decker, proceeding toward the airport’s exit. Decker caught up to him, their footsteps echoing in the cavernous facility. Few people were present at so late an hour.
    Decker had rented a car, a Fiat. In the parking area, McKittrick watched him scan the vehicle to make sure that no eavesdropping devices had been planted while Decker was in the airport. Only after McKittrick was inside the Fiat and Decker was driving through a gloomy drizzle toward the city did the great man finally speak.
    “Where’s my son?”
    “At a hotel,” Decker said. “He used the passport for his alternate identity. After what happened ... I assume you were told en route?”
    “About the explosion?” McKittrick nodded somberly. Decker stared ahead past the flapping windshield wipers. “After the explosion, I didn’t think it was safe for your son to stay at his apartment. The terrorists know where he lives.”
    “You suspect they might attack him?”
    “No.” Decker glanced at numerous headlights in his rearview mirror. In the dark and the rain, it was difficult to determine if he was being followed. “But I have to assume they’ll release information and evidence about him to the police’. I take for granted that was the point—to connect an American intelligence operative to a terrorist attack against Americans.”
    McKittrick’s expression hardened.
    “As soon as I’ve assured myself that we’re not being followed, I’ll drive you to him,” Decker said.
    “You seem to have thought of everything.”
    “I’m doing my best.”
    “So, have you thought about who’s going to be blamed for this?” McKittrick asked.
    “Excuse me?”
    Rain pattered on the car’s roof.
    “You, for instance?” McKittrick asked.
    “There is no way I am going to take the blame for—”
    “Then think of someone else. Because if there is one thing you can be confident of, it is that my son is not going to take the blame.”
    12
    The modest hotel was on a modest street—nothing about it attracted attention. After nodding to the night porter and showing one of the hotels keys to prove he belonged there, Decker escorted McKittrick across the small lobby, past the elevator, up carpeted stairs. The son’s room was only a few floors above them, and whenever possible,