Read Online Top Hook by Gordon Kent - Free Book Online Page A

thing. If she’s in it, so is he. Get it?”
    â€œThis is official?”
    Shreed started to answer him with acid, then stopped. Suter usually didn’t question his orders.
    â€œShe’s proven herself an enemy of the Agency,” Shreed said. “Is that official enough for you?
    â€œAnd Suter became Uriah Heep, all but wringing his hands, saying, “Right, right—oh, right—”
    And Shreed thought, Not right, but then he remembered Janey’s death, and Suter became unimportant.
Washington.
    â€œIt’s you, Rose. Not Al. And it’s the CIA, not the Navy.”
    Abe Peretz looked like a casting director’s idea of a Jewish professor, with a balding head, unfashionable glasses, and eyes that were mostly dreamy but now and then as hard as diamonds. He was deaf in one ear, the result of a mugging two years before, and so he normally talked now with his head slightly turned so that his good right ear was toward other people.
    â€œWhat the hell’s the CIA got to do with me?”
    â€œAnd not just the Agency—the Agency’s Internal Investigations Directorate .” The innocent eyes became hard. “They’re hard-nosed and they’re ugly—leftovers from Angleton and Kill-a-Commie-for-Christ—and they’d send their own mothers up if she was dicking the Agency. So how come they’re on your case? There can be only one reason—you’ve spun off from an internal investigation.”
    â€œI’m not even in their chain of command!”
    â€œThink of it as walking by when somebody pissed out the window. There’s a rumor floating around they’ve got another mole. You don’t understand the relief they’d feel if they got a positive on somebody who isn’t Agency. It means they can say to each other, ‘We dodged the bullet.’ And it means that they can go public, at least within the intelligence community, and say, ‘See, it isn’t us—it’s the Navy.’ And so they went back-channel, probably through the NSC, and sandbagged you.”
    â€œAbe, what the hell do I do?”
    â€œYou fight.” He pushed a piece of paper across his desk. “You’ve got an appointment at three at Barnard, Kootz, Bingham.” She looked her question with a frown, and he said, “Law firm. Heavy hitters—sixty partners, big-bucks political donors to both parties, lots of media savvy. The woman I’m sending you to is the best they got.” He grinned. “She just beat us in court. That’s how I know how good she is. Unhh—this ain’t pro bono work they do over there, Rose. Justice is blind, but she ain’t cheap. Bea and I’ll help if we can.”
    She had a quick temper, at best; now it gushed out, pushed by the fatigue and a hangover and the hurt, and she cursed; she said they could shove it; she said she didn’t want to be part of a Navy that could treat her like this. And she cursed some more.
    He grinned again. “Stay mad. You’re going to need it.”

4
USS Thomas Jefferson.
    USS Thomas Jefferson was an old friend, and Alan walked through the passageways with the familiarity of a man visiting a childhood home. The ship was preparing to get underway, and the noise was oddly calming to his own tension. Maybe, as Rafe seemed to believe, it really would all work out once they were at sea.
    His detachment had its own ready room, the lack of an A-6 squadron in the air wing having left one vacant. Ready Room Nine, all the way aft and almost under the stern, was the noisiest one; landing aircraft hit the deck just a few feet overhead, and, during flight operations, conversation was all but impossible. Heavy iron cruise boxes filled the front of the room below the chalk-board, but at least, he thought, it was theirs .
    He wanted to speak to his division chiefs and the officers acting as department heads, but the ready room was nearly empty. He also