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Hurley made him nervous and Nash wasn’t afraid to admit it. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the man. He absolutely did. His wife adored him, his kids got a kick out him, and Nash himself couldn’t help revering some of the man’s accomplishments in the world of espionage. But the two men had chosen significantly different paths in life. Nash didn’t like the fact that, with everything that was going on this morning, Kennedy wanted him to see Hurley. Hurley was the emergency brake. The ejection handle. The guy they went to when the options were slim and the problem was big.
It could be that Kennedy was losing her nerve, or, more accurately, her calm. There was no denying the fact that she had changed since the attack on her motorcade in Iraq the previous fall. She had been an extremely intelligent and capable boss who under the right circumstances might crack a smile, but would never under any circumstances show anger. Her patience, more than anything else, had amazed him. She was surrounded by passionate field operatives like himself, O’Brien, Ridley, and Rapp. Cowboys who were not afraid to speak their minds in a very forceful and sometimes uncouth manner. Even with all the big egos and big dicks speaking their minds, she’d keep her cool.
Things had changed since the abduction, though. She was far more prone to letting her displeasure be known, and her hallmark patience was all but gone. The thing that worried Nash the most was her new aggressive behavior. For years Nash and Rapp had been pushing for bolder operations. It was Kennedy who challenged their every idea and dissected their every move. She would patiently listen to their often harebrained schemes and then methodically shred their plans and expose the myriad of pitfalls. Her constant pushback made them sharper and their plans better. The ones that truly sucked never got off the ground, thanks to Kennedy’s ability to extrapolate—to look at things from every conceivable angle and project them to the end.
Those days seemed to be gone. She was no longer challenging them. Nash feared that the war had gotten personal for her, and in her zeal to take the fight to the enemy, she was making careless decisions. Things were out of balance, and Nash couldn’t shake the feeling that some eight-hundred-pound gorilla was about to jump all over him. He’d seen far too many good men and women get caught in Washington’s incessant political cross fire. Real lives and national security were trashed for political and personal gain, and it was never pretty.
Nash pulled up to the main gate at the National Naval Medical Center and flashed his government badge. The guard signed him in and waved him through. After parking in the visitors’ lot, Nash began what ended up being a twenty-minute search for a seventy-eight-year-old man who was supposedly laid up after his surgery. Nash eventually found him sitting in a wheelchair under a shady tree with a well-fed nurse fawning over him.
Nash’s first observation was that the two looked a little too cozy. As he approached, he saw Hurley reach out and place his hand on the nurse’s ample upper thigh. The nurse playfully slapped his hand away and started giggling.
Anyone else, Nash might have been surprised, or thought he was reading more into it than was wise, but not with Hurley. The man was a legendary pussy hound. He loved women and he loved to chase them. Eight feet away Nash stopped and cleared his throat. “I hope I’m not interrupting something.”
D.C. had thousands of federal law enforcement officers who worked for everyone from the FBI to the U.S. Postal Service. Many of them fit a pretty basic description. Short hair, athletic build, dark, boxy suit, and bulges on each hip—one from mobile phones and the other from a government-issue sidearm. Mike Nash fit the bill perfectly.
Nash watched the nurse blush and said, “Miss, do you know you are associating with a known felon?”
Hurley roared with laughter. “Beatrice, darlin’, don’t listen to a word this moron has to say. Based on what I read in the paper today, I’m not the one who has to worry about going to jail. Now, honey, why don’t you run along and give me a few minutes alone with my friend here. But don’t go far, I want to be able to keep an eye on you. I don’t want you flirtin’ with any other patients.”
“Oh…” She slapped him on his good leg. “You are just horrible.” The nurse stood and retreated up the path.
“Wait till you get me in bed,” Hurley said under his breath. “Then you’ll see that I’m downright nasty.”
The nurse looked back over her shoulder and asked, “Did you say something?”
“No, darlin’. I was just admiring that gorgeous figure of yours.”
Nash unbuttoned his jacket and looked at the nurse’s pear-shaped butt. She had to weigh as much as Hurley, if not more. “You are unbelievable.”
“Use it or lose it, buddy.”
“Yeah, right.” Nash sat down on the bench. His shoulders slouched.
Hurley looked at him with the eyes of someone who’d spend a life studying people. “Everything all right with Maggie and the kids?”
Oh fuck, Nash thought to himself. Here we go. He was afraid to look the old spook in the eyes. There were times like now when he’d swear the man was a mind reader. “Sure…everything’s great. They love the fact that they’ve seen me for a total of about eight hours in the last two weeks.”
Hurley grabbed a mobile phone out of his robe pocket and pressed a few buttons. The device was equipped with anti-eavesdropping measures to frustrate anyone who might try to listen in on their conversation. “What’s going on?”
“You know how it is. I’m flying all over the place, and when I’m not flying and I’m supposed to be with them the damn phone is ringing.”
“It’s not easy. I fucked up three marriages. Two kids talk to me…three don’t.”
“And then there’s all the ones you don’t know about.”
r /> Hurley nodded. “And then there’s those. Shit, I bet I got another half dozen running around.”
“At least.”
“Who knows?” Hurley got a faraway look in his clear hazel eyes. “God, I had a lot of fun. That’s one thing I can never complain about. I bet I bagged more ass than any spy in the history of the country.”
“I bet any country. I’m amazed your pecker hasn’t fallen off.”
“Speaking of peckers…is everything okay between the sheets?”
The question caught Nash so off guard he was unable to play it off as nothing. His brain raced off in multiple directions wondering in quick succession; how Hurley could know, was it a lucky guess, did Maggie talk, or was his house bugged? His job was more conducive to fits of paranoia than perhaps any other occupation in the world, and now it had caused his brain to freeze half a second too long. Just long enough for Hurley to notice.
“Kid,” the old spook said in a sad voice, “once you stop sleeping with each other, you’re screwed.”
