Flanking her were two senior special agents from the United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Detective Sergeant Marcus Vance, their service weapons holstered, carrying two heavy, red-wax-sealed legal folios bound in dark-blue calfskin.
Arthur Sterling did not jump to his feet.
The seventy-two-year-old retired Admiral sat paralyzed in my grandfather’s leather chair, his Walther PPK trembling half an inch above his knee, his eyes bulging as if his retinas had detached from his skull:
“Eleanor…?” Arthur rasped, his voice cracked into jagged, dry splinters:
“You… you were in ventricular fibrillation on Route Six! The synthetic carbon monoxide in your car cabin was calibrated at eight hundred parts per million! The telemetry on my satellite monitor showed your heart had stopped!”
Eleanor Vance-Sterling walked into the center of my living room.
Her hickory stick made a clean, concussive tack… tack… tack against the hardwood floor.
