The Last Exit

by Michael Kaufman

  Ava showed the credentials for the group. They passed through the metal detectors and received visitors’ badges. Ava distributed beautifully printed programs with photographs, notes, and their route map through the building.

  The tour started. Ava spoke about the history of the building. Jen started chewing her nails. Ava kept speaking. Jen was about to chew off the tops of her fingers when she spotted a washroom. In a fake croaky voice, she interrupted Ava to say she needed to be excused for a moment. They waited for her. But when she came out she was clutching her stomach. She said to Ava, “I’m feeling awful. I need to …” And she pointed back in with an Academy Award-winning look of desperation. She held up the program. “I’ll catch up or, worse case, meet you back here.”

  Ava didn’t look pleased. She said, “We leave at ten twenty-five.”

  Jen rushed into the washroom, feeling crappy about burning Ava. She locked herself in the end stall. She checked the route on the program. She could easily beat them to the spectacular staircase.

  She stepped back out through the restroom door, glanced both ways, and then marched to the stairs. As she started up, she flipped into a confident mindset: I belong here. Two minutes had elapsed by the time she knocked and entered the unnamed office.

  The office was on the move. Where the two chairs for visitors had been, there were now document boxes stacked four high—all sealed with security tape. Only the neatly dressed, polite young man at the ornate desk was the same.

  He looked up from his work as she entered. “Oh. You again.”

  “Hey, nice to see you, uh …”

  “Bruce.”

  “Sorry, forgot.”

  “Not to be rude, but we’re super busy.”

  “Bruce, I only need to talk to Teko Teko for a moment.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Oh, darn.” I can’t believe I just said darn. “He told me to drop by and speak to him or the other guy who was here when I visited. Can’t remember his name.”

  “He’s up to his neck.”

  “Exactly why I’m here. And I’ll just be a moment.”

  To her great relief, he finally stood up. He looked toward where the chairs usually were. She took a few steps away from his desk and leaned against a box. Maybe I should just grab a box and run, she thought, but with my luck, I’ll end up with a carton of sticky notepads and paper clips. She pulled out the phone and pretended to check her messages but opened the camera app. As he went through the inner door, she could feel his eyes glancing back. And then he was gone.

  She’d been calculating this moment since last night. Her plan was simple. March to desk. Turn over empty coffee mug. Hope that this week’s or today’s password was there. Take a photo. Replace mug. She’d have fifteen to twenty seconds: he walks through door, takes a few steps in, explains to Teko Teko or the other guy that Jen wants to talk to him and gets a quick no. It probably wouldn’t even deserve a “what does she want?” before he comes back out to say no.

  With two long strides, she was at his desk. She grabbed his oversized mug. Damn! Three-quarters full of coffee.

  Dump it behind boxes? Chug it? Either way, he’ll know I tampered with it. Running out of time!

  She lifted the mug. The handle of the inner door rattled. Hand trembling, she held the phone underneath the mug and fired off a burst of photos. The door opened. Jen put the mug back down, took two steps away, and stared at her phone as Bruce came out of the room.

  “He says he doesn’t have time.”

  “Bruce, he said that? Really?” She took a cautious step toward the door.

  “No, actually, he said to get lost.”

  “Oh. Wow. That kind of hurts.” She took another step.

  “Listen …”

  “Me too. Places to go, people to see.”

  By the time Jen reentered the women’s washroom on the main floor, her shaking was almost uncontrollable. She rushed into a stall, her hand trembling too hard to latch it. Get a grip, girl. Breathe. She sat down and checked the photos. Out of focus … out of focus … missed the bottom altogether … out of focus … GOT IT!

  It was 9:55.

  She debated whether to call Isaiah from there or leave and phone from Lafayette Square. She’d heard rumors there was real-time surveillance of all phone communication from the park, which faced the White House. Seemed far-fetched, but this would be a hell of a bad time to find out.

  She dialed.

  “Hi. It’s me.”

  “One sec.” Through the phone, Jen heard a door close. Isaiah asked, “Any luck?”

  She read him the complicated password—letters, numbers, typographical symbols, emojis.

  “I’ll call you back.”

  “Wait. How soon?”

  “Hopefully five minutes. Could be more.”

  Sitting in a washroom stall with no reason to be sitting there plus nothing to read plus having a phone without data was excruciating.

  Someone came in. Used another stall. Left.

  10:00. 10:05.

  10:15. The phone rang.

  “We’re trying now. Hold on.… We’re in. We’re in SpotView. He has the three-day view. Yesterday: White House at one PM. Jeez. Three at police HQ, and then seven, La Carnita.”

  “Come on. Today.”

  “Three things. Nine forty-five to ten thirty, FBI. Ten forty-five, pickup and inspection. Then a flight at 9:23 PM, BA292 to London Heathrow.”

  “Anything tomorrow?”

  “Nothing. Got to go.”

  Before she could say thank you, the line clicked off.

  Pickup. Inspection. Of the office? No, nothing to inspect. But on the other hand, how about a small fabrication plant or lab somewhere in the DC area or nearby? Wouldn’t he want to make sure before flying out that it was cleared of any evidence? Maybe he’d done that days ago, but this seemed her only lead.

  She needed to find him and follow him.

  It was 10:20. Teko Teko’s meeting with the FBI was, hopefully, at the FBI. Would he come back here to be picked up? Unlikely. It was a twenty-minute walk, fifteen for even a fast walker. If his meeting ended on time, it would take him at least five minutes to get out the building. She needed to be there when he left. And then she’d need a hell of a lot of luck.

  She tried not to run as she left the restroom. She spotted Ava and her group coming down the hall and picked up her pace to meet them.

  She spoke softly to Ava. “I’m so sorry. Must have been the breakfast they gave me at headquarters.”

  Ava seemed annoyed. She’d broken a rule and put herself out, and all for nothing. But she pasted on a smile and said she’d catch Jen later.

  Jen was off, walking as fast as she could without drawing attention. As soon as she passed Lafayette Square, she pulled out the phone, hit speed dial to Zach, and broke into a run.

  44

  “Zach, you need to get me a car, quick. Wait! Under Gabe’s name. Not mine. Not yours.”

  “What—”

  “Just listen. Get one with power—I may be driving out of town. And that can change colors.”

  “Are —”

  “Zach, listen! Have—” She whacked into an overweight man, who yelled at her as she took off in a run. “Have it outside Ford’s Theatre on, fuck, on—”

  “Tenth.”

  “Right. At”—her eyes shot to her watch—“10:35.”

  She ran flat out.

  He flipped a text back to her with the license plate and reservation code. The car was waiting for her. A nondescript Ford Damn Boring: good. Currently colored black. She got in, entered the code, and told the car she’d be on manual directions.

  She swung it around the block. Parked across from the FBI building, half a block shy of the main entrance. Hoped to God he was here and coming out this exit, that she hadn’t missed him and that he wouldn’t spot her. On the other side of the street, a honking-big gray SUV slid in like grease on wheels. She dimmed the windows until they were mirrored on the outside.


  Three minutes later, Teko Teko came out and jumped into the SUV.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Over to 15th, across K to Connecticut, up past Dupont Circle, along New Hampshire, and a right onto Q. Small street. This wasn’t good.

  She rounded the corner and immediately slipped into a parking spot behind a parked car. Farther down, the SUV had stopped in a no-parking zone in front of a town house. Teko Teko climbed out and ran up the front steps and inside. Was this the inspection? Of the place he’d been renting, rather than possibly inspecting their lab?

  A moment later, a windowless van passed her and cozied in behind the SUV. Teko Teko reappeared carrying two suitcases. She clicked off photos with the phone. The driver jumped out of the SUV, but Teko Teko waved him off with a sharp flick of his head. The back of the SUV swung open; Teko Teko tossed the suitcases in, and they drove off, the van tight behind.

  Jen changed the car’s color to beige before following. They headed west and through Georgetown. The van made it easier to follow, and she was able to stay a bit farther back. They crossed the Potomac and a moment later were on I-66 heading west. Damn, she thought, we’re going to Dulles. He’s catching an earlier flight.

  She realized she hadn’t phoned Zach back.

  “Zach, put this on speaker. Gabe, you there?”

  “Jen, I was so—”

  “I’m fine. Listen, I got the password. He has three appointments today. The first was at the FBI. He got picked up there and—thanks, Zach—the car was waiting for me. By the way, are you tracking me?”

  Gabe said, “Sorry, I used ANON to book the car.”

  “I’m following him now. The second appointment, at 10:45, had two words, pickup and inspection. The pickup was at the FBI. The inspection might have been at the townhouse I think he was renting. We stopped there, but he was back out in a minute with two suitcases. Wait, I’ll send you some photos.” She did that and continued. “I was hoping, and I’m still hoping, it might be to inspect where their lab is getting shut down. The third is for a flight tonight from Dulles. BA292 to London. But we seem to be on our way there now.”

  She gave them the address of the town house. She said there should be a photo of the man who’d jumped out of the SUV to help, but she described him anyway. Medium height. Solid looking. Asian features. Short-cropped hair. Erect posture, soldier type. Jeans, white T-shirt, boots. She checked the photos but couldn’t find clear ones of the license plates. She dredged her memory and gave the license numbers of the SUV and the van.

  “Stay with me,” she said to Zach and Gabe.

  “We’re right here.”

  At the last possible exit for Dulles, they kept going, and Jen whooped with excitement.

  She told them more about getting hauled off to the police station and then her adventure getting the password. Gabe said the editor of the Post had agreed to publish a series of articles. The first, on Jen getting the treatment, was edited and waiting for Jen and Gabe’s go-ahead. The others were in the works.

  They talked about what she was hoping to see wherever they were heading and what could happen when she got out there.

  “Don’t worry,” she said when Zach expressed his concerns. “I’ll keep my distance. I’ll take pictures. And once they’re gone, I’ll go inside and take more pictures and, who knows, maybe find a smoking gun.”

  Gabe said, “Your friend, Les. Maybe we should call him.”

  Over the past week she’d been talking a lot to Gabe and Zach about the role of police in all this. She didn’t think the police were in on the Big Pharma Eden scam. She figured they were being played. After all, the fewer people who knew what was going on, the better. Big conspiracies simply did not work. Perhaps one or two people in the FBI or DEA—very high up or particularly corrupt—knew the truth, but even that seemed unlikely. She was certain that the DC cops and other departments were just dupes of the corporate powers that be.

  Even so, she still wouldn’t want any of them getting called in. She was officially a fugitive. Perhaps the alarms had already been sounded on her. Les was off duty, but they could’ve already connected him to her escape.

  On the other hand, she was now convinced Teko Teko was leading her to a lab or a production and distribution facility. There were at least two people in the SUV; she assumed more in the van, although it might have been empty of passengers. But if they were bringing a van to fill with equipment, she had to guess there were at least another two. She was unarmed. She was suspended from the force. She was forty minutes into Virginia and heading west. She had no backup. No radio. And—here she checked the battery for the first time—a cell phone that appeared either defective or that hadn’t been fully charged.

  “Shit. My battery’s low. Call him.”

  Her instructions were simple. Tell Les he must not alert the Virginia or DC police under any circumstances. He should get a car and follow her trail as quickly as possible. Switch on P.D. She wouldn’t call him directly, so both he and P.D. would be able to truthfully say that Jen hadn’t contacted him, but that he was acting on a tip. She would keep phoning Zach and Gabe to give them updates on their route but, for now, she was still on I-66, finally past the DC/Northern Virginia sprawl and into the countryside.

  “One sec,” she said. “Damn, they’re getting off.”

  She had been passing a semi when the SUV and van swung onto the exit ramp and she was boxed out from following. As she went under the overpass, she yelled at the car to pull over on the left. She tapped the emergency override code, hit “agree” at the $2,000 penalty warning for misuse, and instructed the car to cross the grassy median and go back to the exit. She caught the SUV and van crossing the overpass, heading south.

  “Get off here,” she ordered the car.

  Coming up the ramp, she caught a momentary glimpse of the car and van on a parallel side road.

  “Jen,” Zach said, “we’re still here.”

  “Getting off I-66. Exit twenty-seven. Hang on. I’m turning onto … Zach?”

  She looked at the phone. Dead.

  She came to a stop at the top of the ramp. All things considered, not following them up the exit ramp had been a lucky break, for they would surely have spotted her. Still tricky: she was now on country roads, and if she could see them, they might see her. But if she didn’t see them at least once in a while, she would lose them.

  She changed the car to a muddy green and took off in pursuit.

  As soon as she swung onto their road, she caught sight of the back of the van as it turned down an even smaller side road. She waited thirty seconds before following, and when she got there, they were already out of sight.

  She drove along the heavily wooded road, straining to glimpse them in the distance. On the left, the woods opened to reveal a shabby farm, unpainted fences, a tired-looking horse, a rusting truck. Woods again. Another farm.

  There! A flash of metal as their vehicles banked over a small rise.

  For eleven minutes, she followed the winding road, luckily spotting them when they made a turn. She followed them onto an unpaved road and knew they must be getting close.

  Four minutes later, she hit a dead end.

  Somewhere, she had lost them.

  She inched back along the road. A dirt drive cut off on the left. Through a stand of sickly trees, she made out a mobile home, but no van or SUV. Farther up on the right lay a skinny dirt track. Before she reached it, she had the car back up around the first curve and park, in case there was a lookout on the driveway. She cut through the woods, scooting low until she spotted a dilapidated house and a shack or a small barn. She heard chickens clucking. She saw no cars or vans. She headed back to her car and slowly drove forward.

  Next dirt track, she got lucky.

  She again backed up to park around a bend and then scuttled through the woods as quietly as she could. It was a good thing she did. A hundred yards up the drive, a man clutched an automatic weapon. He was Black, no one she’d seen before. So there were
at least three of them. She slipped back, deeper into the woods. Scrambling through the underbrush, she jumped over a tiny creek, and when she saw the woods thinning out, she dropped onto her belly. She smeared dirt onto her face and bare arms, rubbed dead leaves into her hair, and on high alert crawled forward.

  The building in the clearing was squat, maybe thirty or forty years old. Could have been used at some point for storage or to process, what—chickens? Illegal marijuana?—and then abandoned. Unpainted concrete blocks for walls, sheets of tin for a roof. A recently added steel door on the front. To the right of the door, heavy wire mesh protected a solitary window; to the left, the van had been backed in, filling the opening of a garage door. The SUV was parked on the dirt driveway, facing out. The other visible side of the building was a wall of concrete block, staring at her, blank and ugly.

  She collapsed onto her belly. She didn’t know how many men and women were inside. She assumed they were dismantling equipment. She didn’t know if the people who had worked here were still inside, but she suspected they were gone: otherwise, wouldn’t there have been more vehicles?

  She watched the building for ten minutes. Fifteen. Twenty. Aside from occasional sightings of the guard, there was nothing to be seen from out here.

  Going for help and calling the cops would be useless or even counterproductive, she was convinced of that. Even if Zach and Gabe had persuaded Les to come out here, once he reached the I-66 exit, he’d have no idea which way to go. She could wait and follow them, but what if it was only to drop Teko Teko off at the airport? And what if they were destroying evidence, and the vans were only to cart away innocuous machinery to be destroyed later? With her phone dead, she couldn’t even take pictures.

  She had to get inside.

  45

  Jen retreated and then swung widely through the afternoon-quiet woods, finally approaching the building from the back. She crawled through the trees. The gray slab of concrete blocks was broken by a window covered with wire mesh. From the reflection of the glass underneath the mesh, the window seemed to be partly open.