Liars & Thieves: A Novel Read online

  “Well, here is the amazing part. I’ve got a couple dozen people here partying, and we all see and hear this shootout and watch the police and ambulance people clean up, and they wouldn’t tell us a goddamn thing.”

  “They wouldn’t?”

  “Nothing. The next morning we check the television and newspapers to see what in hell the shootout was all about, and you know what? There wasn’t a word in the paper or on television. I even called the local paper and talked to the editor.”

  “’Zat right?”

  “He listened to what I had to say, said his reporters would look into it … and he printed zilch. Nada! Not a single word on the air or in print. Like it never happened. All the television and papers are full of the political mess—there isn’t room for anything else. But I’ll tell you, if I read or hear another word about Zooey Sonnenberg I think I’m going to puke.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Thought you might know something about the shootout.”

  “Naw. Not a thing. By the way, you gonna have any more parties?”

  “Next Saturday. Wanta come?”

  So Jake had some explaining to do with his neighbors. I made a mental note to tell him so when I talked to him again.

  Try as I might to think of something else, the events of the last few weeks occupied most of my thoughts. Joe Billy Dunn, Royston, Zooey Sonnenberg … the guy who had tried to kill me from the abandoned house with the little Ruger rifle—I carefully inspected that house every time I passed it.

  Of course I wondered about the president and Zooey. I thought about that conversation I had overheard. Did he know that Zooey was cheating on him with Dell? Did he care? Did he ever care for her, or was theirs a political union, a marriage in name only?

  Someday some idiot publisher would pay the president millions for his memoir, and the public would read what he chose to say—just that and nothing more. I decided there are some rocks no one will ever see under.

  One morning I climbed in the car and headed for the Bethesda Naval Hospital to get checked for infections and have the last of the stitches removed. Dorsey O’Shea was on my mind. The way I figured it, she wanted to marry me and take me away in order to save my life. She knew or suspected Royston was going to have me hit. She may have thought that if I were her husband, he’d lay off.

  Perhaps Dorsey had fallen in love with me … a little teeny tiny bit. Loved someone besides her mother, Zooey Sonnenberg. Maybe she cared.

  That’s what love is, isn’t it? Caring.

  I cared for a woman who was somewhere out there in the big wide world and might never return.

  Was I capable of loving another person, one who was physically here?

  The thing about Dorsey …

  What if she called? She had my cell phone number. What would I say to her?

  I thought about that, about the murders and Zooey and all that stuff. As I drove over the Bay Bridge, I threw the phone out the window into the Chesapeake.

  On Saturday morning I was basting in the sun, reading a novel and enjoying a stiff breeze, when a shadow fell across my book. I looked up.

  Sarah Houston. In a huge, floppy sun hat and a skimpy two-piece suit that didn’t hide anything. I don’t know why they even bother to wear those things. She spread a huge beach towel beside mine and handed me a tube of suntan lotion while the wind whipped at the brim of her hat. “Do me, will you?”

  “Did you just happen by?”

  “I hike the beach from Maine to Florida every summer. Saw you lying there and decided I could use a break.”

  “Going to be here long?”

  “As a matter of fact, Admiral Grafton called me. He said you were staying at his beach house and asked if I would like to use it, too. Said he had a couple of bedrooms and plenty of toilet paper.”

  I turned on my side and looked her over while she settled herself on her towel and told me this tale. I wondered if Grafton really called her or she called him. I sat up and went to work with the lotion.

  “So,” she continued as I slathered her, “I thought, I’m due for some vacation, and why not?”

  “Indeed! Why not?”

  “Give me a chance to get the real inside scoop on Zooey and Royston. Grafton said you were in the suite when they were arrested.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t discuss it. I’m saving it for my autobiography.”

  “Darn. I’ll just have to wheedle it out of you. A project like that will help fill the long evenings.”

  “Heck, yeah. As a matter of fact, I have a party invite for tonight. Want to go?”

  “If we can leave the party early. There’s a certain man I’m looking forward to making love to.”

  You could have knocked me over with a feather. Sarah Houston! Who would have ever suspected?

  Nonfiction by Stephen Coonts

  The Cannibal Queen

  Novels by Stephen Coonts

  Liberty

  America

  Saucer

  Hong Kong

  Cuba

  Fortunes of War

  Flight of the Intruder

  Final Flight

  The Minotaur

  Under Siege

  The Red Horseman

  The Intruders

  Deep Black (with Jim DeFelice)

  Anthologies and collections edited by Stephen Coonts

  War in the Air

  Combat

  Victory

  On Glorious Wings

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The very real defection of Vasili Mitrokhin, the retired archivist for the KGB, to Great Britain in 1992 was the inspiration for this tale. He left Russia with six suitcases full of notes that he had taken from classified KGB files over a period of twelve years. (See The Sword and The Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, Basic Books, 1999.) I have wanted to write this tale since I read that book. My editor, Charles Spicer, and his colleagues at St. Martin’s Press offered me the opportunity, for which I am extremely grateful.

  My wife, Deborah Coonts, had a large creative input to the plot of the novel as it developed. Engineer and physicist Gilbert “Gil” Pascal read the manuscript and offered technical suggestions, as he has been kind enough to do many times in the past. A heartfelt Thank You to both of them.

  This story is a work of fiction. As usual, the author is solely responsible for the plot, characters, incidents, and dialogue contained herein.

  LIARS & THIEVES. Copyright © 2004 by Stephen Coonts. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  eISBN 9781429967518

  First eBook Edition : June 2011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Coonts, Stephen, 1946–

  Liars & thieves : a novel / Stephen Coonts.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-28362-8

  EAN 978-0312-28362-9

  1. Intelligence officers—Fiction. 2. Massacres—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3553.O5796L525 2004

  813’.54—dc22

  2003069771

  First Edition: May 2004