End of Enemies by Grant Blackwood Page A

You’re on vacation until you sort out what’s going on in your head.”
    To Tanner’s surprise, the half-dozen visits to the counselor had helped. He hadn’t talked to anyone about the accident, or his feelings, or that hollow ache he carried around in his chest. “You’re going to find it hard to trust again,” the psychologist had warned him. “No matter what your head says, subconsciously you believe anything is better than going through this again. It’s a kind of self-preservation mechanism … and given the business you’re in, that mechanism is pretty damned strong. Problem is, left unchecked, it’ll do more damage than good.”
    Even before he heard the words, Tanner knew they were true. Time had dulled the mechanism, but at times—like right now—it still talked to him.
    He picked up his jogging pace and turned away from the tide line, digging his heels into the softer sand. A quarter mile ahead, a figure sat on a driftwood log. Tanner stopped and sat down.
    â€œYou did not have to run, Mr. Tanner,” said Sato Ieyasu. “But I admire your desire to be punctual.”
    Tanner laughed. “Exercise, Inspector.”
    â€œAh, I see. I admire your discipline. Thank you for meeting me.”
    â€œMy social calendar is uncluttered at the moment.”
    â€œI brought something for you.” Ieyasu handed him a photograph. “Tange Noboru, Takagi’s chief of security.”
    â€œThat’s him. He was the one driving.”
    â€œAt the murder.”
    â€œNo, here.”
    â€œWell, if he’s watching you, you can be sure it’s on direct orders from Takagi himself. Have you seen him again?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThat is best,” Ieyasu said. “You don’t want Noboru interested in you.”
    Too late, Tanner thought. Now I’m interested in him.
    Chesapeake Bay, Maryland
    It was midevening, and Walter Oaken was still at the Holystone office. As Dutcher’s deputy, most of the routine administrative tasks fell to Oaken, but unlike most men, he thrived on detail work. In his world there was a place for everything, and everything had its place. A dedicated indoorsman, Oaken preferred the neatness of the office. So strong was this idiosyncrasy that Tanner had long since given up trying to lure Oaken on a camping or hiking trip.
    â€œNo chance,” was Oaken’s standard reply. “I like my adventure predictable, preferably on the pages of a magazine.”
    â€œPlanned spontaneity?”
    â€œExactly. You’ll be happy to hear, however, I just renewed my subscription to National Geographic. ”
    â€œI’m proud of you.”
    Oaken smiled at the memory. Though opposites in many ways, he and Tanner counterbalanced one another, and their friendship was stronger for it. He wondered what Briggs’s love of the unknown had gotten him into this time.
    A voracious reader and an information pack rat, Oaken loved reports, forms, cereal boxes; if it had print on it, he read it. His wife Beverly fought an ongoing battle to keep his “gonna get to ’em soon” magazine stacks below three feet tall, lest one of their daughters bump one of the monoliths and be crushed by an avalanche of U.S. News & World Report. Whether at his home office or at work, a television was always tuned to CNN, and whenever Bev came in to clean, her opening of the door stirred up a blizzard of newspaper clippings that took hours to settle—or so she joked.
    At forty-eight years old, Oaken had assimilated enough knowledge about the world—past and present, scientific and cultural, obscure and pertinent—to speak authoritatively on almost any subject. That which he didn’t know, he learned.
    Standing six and a half feet tall, his chronically rumpled suits hung from his shoulders like lab coats, and he lacked any modicum of fashion sense. He looked every bit the absentminded professor.
    The