The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings: A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel
Page 88
Aside from that, when I looked at a pretty woman, that’s what I saw. A pretty woman. I’ve found over the years that all of it comes attached to the rest, and it’s what’s inside the package that makes it tick, not the bow or the wrapping paper. If you wanted anything more substantial to judge a woman by, you had to be allowed to see inside. That was where love lived, and that access was controlled by the woman. If I wasn’t allowed to see inside, then I knew where I stood. It made sense to me.
Meanwhile, Evie had gotten what she needed and slipped back into the room. Right away she started scanning. There was a small device like a micro-recorder, the kind you use at business meetings when you don’t totally trust your partner, or to take notes while you’re driving, for later, that kind of thing. Only I was sure that this model came with a few extras. This, she placed on the foot of the bed, pretty much in the centre of the room. Then she quickly walked around the rest of the room with a small pen-like device that came with an earpiece and a set of small blinking LED’s, or light emitting diodes. It took her all of about thirty seconds to complete the sweep. She stopped by the wardrobe, and pulled the ear-piece out, pressing a small stud on the scanner/pen, which put out the small LED’s.
“We’re clean, thank God.”
All for naught. Ah well. Better safe than sorry.
“Good. Maybe we can put some of this tension to rest then, eh?”
“No. I was right after all. I got a quick reading from my room and the upper hallways. Your room may be the only room that isn’t wired.”
She was talking quietly, but the impact was big, especially on Loretta, who still didn’t know why the heck she was sitting on my bed in the first place, but understood fully the implications of what Evie had just said.
Evie was nervous now. It may have been dangerous before, but now it was like walking on the razor’s edge. I picked up the pace a bit.
“Thank you for coming, Loretta, is it?”
“A few hours ago, Littlefox was fine, but yes, it is Lorretta. What’s happening here?”
“I’m going to let Evie answer that for you, and Evie…” I tapped my watch, “time’s ticking. Five minutes total. Then we reassess.”
“Okay. I can do that. Lorrie, listen…”
It took about half of the time allotted for the meeting just to get Littlefox up to speed on Evie’s current feelings about what was about to go down with the teams, and her concerns as to whether or not we had been infiltrated here in the field, or back at the home office, or both.
Listening to it all the second time around, it made even more sense to be paranoid about this. Paranoia was a survival mechanism under the proper conditions, and I was currently thinking that the conditions had been met. Particularly with the advent of the uncovering of the ‘wiring of the safehouse’.
The issue of Ronnie running her own show behind my back made me want to leave her to her own machinations. I didn’t need Heidi Meir to finish this case, she did. But what Evie had said to me earlier was inescapably true. One of the major parts of the mandate I had accepted was to make sure that Ronnie came home walking. Or at the very least, alive. Ronnie and I were going to have to have a talk, and a good one, if that goal was to be brought to fruition.
When Evie finished, she had two new converts. Loretta gave her a satisfying look of incredulity the entire time she was defining the nature of the issue, and was as quiet as a church mouse afterwards. Proper reactions so far.
The whole time Evie had been talking, I’d been watching. Watching Loretta’s eyes, her hands, her body language. It was easy to read her, and she was shocked, or she was the best actress since the invention of the silver screen. If she was clean, what we were talking about was one of her own team putting the black spot in her hand for her. A nice gift from a trusted friend, no?
If she wasn’t, well that would put a whole different slant on this conversation. Her emotions would be strong, but they wouldn’t be shock. Fear of discovery, frantic flight syndrome, aggression, denial, these topped the list, and they were conspicuously absent. I figured Evie was right, and Loretta was clean. What I had seen was shock, then anger. The right combination in the right sequence. The catch was, what now? Evie had come to me, so that would have to be my call.
Once Evie had finished, Loretta just sat there, trying to work through all of the implications. I thought it was time to help out a little. She was with us, so I had to confide in her, she had the right. She had been betrayed right along with the rest of us.
The fact that my room wasn’t bugged might have been a simple oversight, but I doubted it. It was much more likely that I hadn’t been expected. I’d have to check with Ronnie and see when the last time she had spoken to the house was, and to whom she had spoken. Although, if the house were wired, it would make sense that the telephone was as well. Questions within questions.
I hated this part of it. This was what had turned me away from the Service all those years ago.
“Okay, thank you Evie. You may have just saved the day. Loretta, now you’re up to speed. I’m going to have a talk with the Colonel, but Evie is going to do a full sweep of the house first. Evie does the sweep, you and I do the backup cover with George. Nobody interferes with her work. No exceptions. Anyone gets out of line, take them down. No questions asked. You are authorized to kill, but it would be better to be able to have a chat with any ‘rats’ you might happen to flush out of hiding.
Again, I would like to emphasize that your life is worth something, and the traitor’s is not. If it looks dangerous, shoot to kill. Be one hundred percent certain before you let any ‘rats’ live, got it? I’d rather see them dead than have a scratch on you. Is the whole team currently in the house?”
Evie came back quickly on that.
“Yes.”
“Good. Evie, can you locate and jam any communications that may be tight-beam broadcasting from the house?”
“Yes, but it’ll take about fifteen minutes to set up and confirm. Everything's packed, and I have to find the frequencies, position the jammers…”
“Later. That’s too long. We can secure the house faster than that, and that’s what we’re going to do. Round everyone up and put them in the living room. First, we seal the house, and then you do the sweep. In that order. I’ll have my talk with Ronnie after we’ve secured the building. Loretta, you take the front door until I say different. I’ll start at the back door. Let’s go. We’ll get Therese and George on the way downstairs. Is Collette upstairs in her room?”
“No. I checked when I got my gear.”
We had put Collette on the top floor, where there were two bedrooms, with Evie and Littlefox in one, and Collette in the other, smaller one.
This was turning out to be a very different day than I’d expected. Like that was unusual.
We trooped out into the hallway, which was clear, so we headed for the main floor, where Ronnie’s room was, and both doors out of the house, which had just become a death trap for whomever had turned on us. If they were part of the team that was here.
I wasn’t going to like it, not one little bit. I could feel the old cold fire bubbling away deep inside, and the ‘job’ instincts were coming to the fore. I was familiar with the way it worked for me. Any second now I‘d become dangerous to anyone who wasn’t ‘declared & cleared’, and that covered Casey and Wilson.
I’d picked up my holster rig as we left my room, and both sides were packing H&K .45’s, with the H&K .40 compact backup in my waist holster. The blade that Samuel had given me was in its sheath running down my left side, with the grip showing just above my belt line. A pretty overblown setup by most standards, but I felt comfortable. And that was the point, after all.
The first door on the other side was Georges room. I turned the knob and shoved the door with my foot as I stood back from the entryway. George was sitting on the bed, working. He looked up from his notebook PC and went to speak, but I cut him off.
“Come on pal, and bring….”
; I drew my right-hand .45, and showed it to George palm out. One look was all it took to get him clued in. He didn’t know who, or why, but he knew what. Without asking.
George had always been sharp. That’s why I had let him marry Sarah I guess. Twenty-five years of friendship was one thing, marrying your sister was another. But George fit the proper profile. I knew he’d take good care of them, because he could.
Now here we were in exactly the kind of situation that I never wanted to see him in, because of Sarah and Katie. I had to get this whole thing done with and us back to our lives, before we stayed out in the field too long. This was getting too inclusive for my taste. George was sucked into it now just by virtue of the fact that he was here. You’re always better off staying at home.
You never get to come back if you take too long to do the job. There’s always someone on the other side that works while you sleep. Works while you play. Works whenever you don’t, as well as whenever you do.
The point was, I guess, that this particular job was definitely a twenty-four hour a day number. Failure usually meant death or capture. Both of which were unacceptable, but there would be no capture this time. We weren’t fighting a rogue government. These players had no use for us alive. It was death we were up against. Ha!
‘Give me Victory, or give me Death’. Patrick Henry was making a personal choice when he’d said that. We weren’t being given a choice. Victory was the only solution.
George was dressed in slacks and a white shirt with rolled up sleeves, and as he got off the bed he stepped into his loafers in a quick practiced step. Now we were four.
On our way down the hall I tried to open Therese’s door, but it was locked. For about a second or two. I just heaved my shoulder at it as we passed by and it popped open with a sharp cracking sound. I was starting to get pumped, because I hadn’t even noticed the resistance of the lock, and these doors were made of solid oak. My ‘housecleaning’ partners jumped when the door snapped. They weren’t expecting it, it had happened sort of in passing, as we walked by. I motioned for them all to hang on while I went in.
There was no sight of her in the room, but I could hear her in the bathroom. She had the second best room in the joint, with most of the amenities. The only thing missing was a telephone and cable Television. In Paris that meant nothing more than BBC 1 & 2, along with CNN. The rest was just like the crap we had at home, but in a foreign language. The French here was too fast for me on television. It was different when you were speaking in person, and you could ask someone to slow down.
The sounds coming from the bathroom bore fruit. And what lovely fruit it was. As I walked through the door she let out a yelp, and sunk down into the bubbles, before she saw that it was me.
“Mon chéri, qu'est-ce que c'est passe ici?”
“À plus tard, chéri, viens avec moi maintenant. C’est quelque chose très urgent. Vite!”
She didn’t wait to hear any more. By now she had come to respect what I said, when I said it. If Ronnie, the genius girl-Colonel had had half the respect for what I did that Therese had, we probably wouldn’t be in this mess right now. Later for that stuff, later. Thinking like that only helped the enemy.
She stood up and quickly stepped out of the tub, looking like a centre-fold the whole time. God, I was a lucky man. Even if it didn’t work out long-term, this woman had fallen for me. In the middle of all of this I’d managed to connect with this gorgeous creature, and she with me. Life is definitely strange.
She grabbed her robe from the back of the bathroom door and belted it as we left the room. She never even looked back.
The hallway was still clear, and that meant that everyone was downstairs, or whoever was upstairs was deaf, on drugs, or guilty as sin. The splitting of the door frame had been like a pistol shot on the upper floor, and this was a safehouse in the middle of a serious mission. Anyone up here should have been in the hallway by now with weapons drawn, calling out for information, checking the source of the sound. There was no one.
We came down the stairs with me in the lead, and then Evie, then George, with Therese shielded behind him and Loretta holding down the rear guard position. Evie may have been pissed about Therese, but she was doing her job the way I would have expected her to. It was a good feeling having her at my back, and on my team. Being able to depend on someone right down to the moment their lights went out, maybe permanently, was a big thing in my books. It made all the difference in the world.
There’s nothing quite so lonely as going into it solo. Also, the odds of coming out again are distinctly diminished under solo conditions. Not fun.
Downstairs, again, we found a quiet house. It was odd, but maybe it was just a quiet moment. That happens.
As we came off the stairway Loretta carried on straight to the foyer, and checked the door before sliding into a crouch beside the small outcrop of wall that separated the foyer from the main downstairs hallway. Interestingly, she had both hands full of H&K hardware, the same big .45 that I was using today, but both of her hands were needed to handle it. She had the full setup, laser sights, a silencer, and an added attraction of some kind that involved a flashing red LED on the back of the grip. I only got a glimpse of it and we were headed into the house proper. I’d have to ask her about that at a more appropriate moment.
When Loretta dropped out at the front door, Evie had switched to rear guard. Therese was still padding along in the middle, leaving wet footprints on the hardwood floors. George had taken the shield position.
We came into the kitchen from the main hall, by-passing the living room and the dining room. The way the house was built put the kitchen in the middle of the main floor, more or less. On the other side of the kitchen was a continuation of the hallway, narrower than the front hall, with bedrooms on both sides. Ronnie’s room was on the left, and Wilson’s was on the right.
Mine was on the second floor, along with Therese, and Casey, and Ted and George together. Loretta and Evie shared a room on the pseudo third floor across from Collette. It was only a half-height landing that opened up on their rooms, which stuck out over the back-garden area. Evie had said it was ‘cozy’.
The garage was in the back, with a short walkway from the house that led down the right side of the garden, straight from the end of the back hallway. There was a small mudroom, I guess you’d call it, that made the same effort as the foyer in the front. A bit of esthetic separation from the house proper for both the front and back.
From the middle of the kitchen you could see the entire hallway, and both doors to the bedrooms. All of the oak trim and bare hardwood floors made it seem dark, and old. Nobody had oak like this anymore in Canada. It would cost as much to do the trim as it had to build the house.
When we entered the kitchen, Casey was sitting at the table with Collette, along the left side of the room, which was big, maybe thirty feet by twenty feet, having a cup of coffee and reading the Herald-Tribune International Edition. He had the paper wide open at the moment we entered, so he didn’t catch the armament right away. Five seconds later he was de-armed and being escorted into the living room, while I held the fort in the kitchen with Therese and George, and a very surprised Ted, who had been about to make a sandwich.
He’d had his head in the fridge when we came in, but the door to the fridge opened towards the opposite wall, and he had no trouble spotting the hardware. He had just stood there with the fridge door open, watching in total amazement as Casey got searched and marched off.
Collette had been good. She’d looked up from her magazine and coffee, and made a big ‘surprised’ face, but she hadn’t said anything, except to Therese. Apparently, their rapid-fire exchange had been agreeable to her, because she got up from the table and went straight to Therese, taking her hand, and letting herself be led into the living room.
Evie had been really good with it too. It’s hard to do that to someone you work with and trust. The problem was that we didn’t know for sure that we could trust him anymore.
Casey hadn’t had a chance to say anything, because we hadn’t let him. At the moment, he couldn’t, because there was duct tape over his mouth. The kitchen was well stocked with all of the amenities of life in the fast lane.
I hoped that he didn’t have a sinus condition, I hated having to breathe through my nose when my mouth was taped. I’d tried it once, years ago, when I’d been in training. It hadn’t been voluntary, but it had been the last time as well as the first. I made sure from that day on that whatever went down, it wouldn’t be me.
As Evie entered the room again she nodded to me. All clear. I pulled the H&K .40 calibre backup pistol from my waist and handed it to Ted, grip forward. He looked at me like I was nuts and started to shake his head no, so I walked right over that. I turned to Evie.
“Call Therese back, please.”
My new girl. I had been thinking lately that I’d never get to think that again. Life.
She was back right away with her, and Therese still had Collette attached. Collette would definitely be the ‘woman’ in any relationship. Well, I suppose someone had to be the woman.
“Therese, here. Be careful, there is no safety switch, just point it and pull the trigger if anyone besides us or the girls pulls a gun. Stand in the corner of the living room and make like a floor lamp. I’ll be right back. Take Ted with you.”
He looked at the gun like it was a live snake, and started to turn away to go. I grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around.
“Ted, this is in order to protect your life, get it?”
He was looking right into my eyes, but I wasn’t home anymore, I was out at work. The effect it had on him was obvious. He actually shuddered, and then he nodded yes.