by Lee Child
“Yes,” I said. “It is.”
“All you have to do is ask.”
“I did ask.”
“No, you asked if there was any,” she said. “Not the same thing.”
“So will you make me some? Please?”
“What happened to Mr. Duke?”
I paused. Maybe she was planning on marrying him, like in old movies where the cook marries the butler and they retire and live happily ever after.
“He was killed,” I said.
“Last night?”
I nodded. “In an ambush.”
“Where?”
“In Connecticut.”
“OK,” she said. “I’ll make you some coffee.”
She set the machine going. I watched where she got everything from. The filter papers were stored in a cupboard next to the paper napkins. The coffee itself was in the freezer. The machine was old and slow. It made a loud ponderous gulping sound. Combined with the rain lashing on the windows and the waves pounding on the rocks it meant I didn’t hear the Cadillac come back. First I knew, the back door was thrown open and Elizabeth Beck burst in with Richard crowding after her and Beck himself bringing up the rear. They were moving with the kind of exhilarated breathless urgency people show after a short fast dash through heavy rain.
“Hello,” Elizabeth said to me.
I nodded. Said nothing.
“Coffee,” Richard said. “Great.”
“We went out for breakfast,” Elizabeth said. “Old Orchard Beach. There’s a little diner there we like.”
“Paulie figured we shouldn’t wake you,” Beck said. “He figured you looked pretty tired last night. So he offered to drive us instead.”
“OK,” I said. Thought: Did Paulie find my stash? Did he tell them yet?
“You want coffee?” Richard asked me. He was over by the machine, rattling cups in his hand.
“Black,” I said. “Thanks.”
He brought me a cup. Beck was peeling off his coat and shaking water off it onto the floor.
“Bring it through,” he called. “We need to talk.”
He headed out to the hallway and looked back like he expected me to follow him. I took my coffee with me. It was hot and steaming. I could toss it in his face if I had to. He led me toward the square paneled room we had used before. I was carrying my cup, which slowed me down a little. He got there well ahead of me. When I entered he was already all the way over by one of the windows with his back to me, looking out at the rain. When he turned around he had a gun in his hand. I just stood still. I was too far away to use the coffee. Maybe fourteen feet. It would have looped up and curled and dispersed in the air and probably missed him altogether.
The gun was a Beretta M9 Special Edition, which was a civilian Beretta 92FS all dressed up to look exactly like a standard military-issue M9. It used nine-millimeter Parabellum ammunition. It had a fifteen-round magazine and military dot-and-post sights. I remembered with bizarre clarity that the retail price had been $861. I had carried an M9 for thirteen years. I had fired many thousands of practice rounds with it and more than a few for real. Most of them had hit their targets, because it’s an accurate weapon. Most of the targets had been destroyed, because it’s a powerful weapon. It had served me well. I even remembered the original sales pitch from the ordnance people: It’s got manageable recoil and it’s easy to strip in the field. They had repeated it like a mantra. Over and over again. I guess there were contracts at stake. There was some controversy. Navy SEALs hated it. They claimed they’d had dozens blow up in their faces. They even made up a cadence song about it: No way are you a Navy Seal, until you eat some Italian steel. But the M9 always served me well. It was a fine weapon, in my opinion. Beck’s example looked like a brand-new gun. The finish was immaculate. Dewy with oil. There was luminescent paint on the sights. It glowed softly in the gloom.
I waited.
Beck just stood there, holding the gun. Then he moved. He slapped the barrel into his left palm and took his right hand away. Leaned over the oak table and held the thing out to me, butt-first, left-handed, politely, like he was a clerk in a store.
“Hope you like it,” he said. “I thought you might feel at home with it. Duke was into the exotics, like that Steyr he had. But I figured you’d be more comfortable with the Beretta, you know, given your background.”
I stepped forward. Put my coffee on the table. Took the gun from him. Ejected the magazine, checked the chamber, worked the action, looked down the barrel. It wasn’t spiked. It wasn’t a trick. It was a working piece. The Parabellums were real. It was brand new. It had never been fired. I slapped it back together and just held it for a moment. It was like shaking hands with an old friend. Then I cocked it and locked it and put it in my pocket.
“Thanks,” I said.
He put his hand in his own pocket and came out with two spare magazines.
“Take these,” he said.
He passed them across. I took them.
“I’ll get you more later,” he said.
“OK,” I said.
“You ever tried laser sights?”
I shook my head.
“There’s a company called Laser Devices,” he said. “They do a universal handgun sight that mounts under the barrel. Plus a little flashlight that clips under the sight. Very cool device.”
“Gives a little red spot?”
He nodded. Smiled. “Nobody likes to get lit up with that little red spot, that’s for sure.”
“Expensive?”
“Not really,” he said. “Couple hundred bucks.”
“How much weight does it add?”
“Four and a half ounces,” he said.
“All at the front?”
“It helps, actually,” he said. “Stops the muzzle kicking upward when you fire. It adds about thirteen percent of the weight of the gun. More with the flashlight, of course. Maybe forty, forty-five ounces total. Still way less than those Anacondas you were using. What were they, fifty-nine ounces?”
“Unloaded,” I said. “More with six shells in them. Am I ever going to get them back?”
“I put them away somewhere,” he said. “I’ll get them for you later.”
“Thanks,” I said again.
“You want to try the laser?”
“I’m happy without it,” I said.
He nodded again. “Your choice. But I want the best protection I can get.”
“Don’t worry,” I said.
“I’ve got to go out now,” he said. “Alone. I’ve got an appointment.”
“You don’t want me to drive you?”
“This sort of appointment, I have to do them alone. You stay here. We’ll talk later. Move into Duke’s room, OK? I like my security closer to where I sleep.”
I put the spare magazines in my other pocket.
“OK,” I said.
He walked past me into the hallway, back toward the kitchen.
It was the kind of mental somersault that can slow you down. Extreme tension, and then extreme puzzlement. I walked to the front of the house and watched from a hallway window. Saw the Cadillac sweep around the carriage circle in the rain and head for the gate. It paused in front of it and Paulie came out of the gatehouse. They must have dropped him there on their way back from breakfast. Beck must have driven the final length of the driveway himself. Or Richard, or Elizabeth. Paulie opened the gate. The Cadillac drove through it and away into the rain and the mist. Paulie closed the gate. He was wearing a slicker the size of a circus tent.
I shook myself and turned back and went to find Richard. He had the kind of guileless eyes that hide nothing. He was still in the kitchen, drinking his coffee.
“You walk the shoreline this morning?” I asked him.
I asked it innocently and amiably, like I was just making conversation. If he had anything to hide, I would know. He would go red, look away, stammer, shuffle his feet. But he did none of those things. He was completely relaxed. He looked straight at me.
“Are you kidding?” he said. “Seen the weather?”
I nodded.
“Pretty bad,” I said.
“I’m quitting college,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because of last night,” he said. “The ambush. Those Connecticut guys are still on the loose. Not safe to go back. I’m staying right here for a spell.”
“You OK with that?”
He nodded. “It was mostly a waste of time.”
I looked away. The law of unintended consequences. I had just short-circuited a kid’s education. Maybe ruined his life. But then, I was about to send his father to jail. Or waste him altogether. So I guessed a BA didn’t matter very much, compared to that.
I went to find Elizabeth Beck. She would be harder to read. I debated my approach and couldn’t come up with anything guaranteed to work. I found her in a parlor tucked into the northwest corner of the house. She was in an armchair. She had a book open on her lap. It was Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak. Paperback. I had seen the movie. I remembered Julie Christie, and the music. “Lara’s Theme.” Train journeys. And a lot of snow. Some girl had made me go.
“It’s not you,” she said.
“What’s not me?”
“You’re not the government spy.”
I breathed out. She wouldn’t say that if she’d found my stash.
“Exactly,” I said. “Your husband just gave me a gun.”
“You’re not smart enough to be a government spy.”
“Aren’t I?”
She shook her head. “Richard was desperate for a cup of coffee just now. When we came in.”
“So?”
“Do you think he would have been if we’d really been out for breakfast? He could have had all the coffee he wanted.”
“So where did you go?”
“We were called to a meeting.”
“With who?”
She just shook her head, like she couldn’t speak the name.
“Paulie didn’t offer to drive us,” she said. “He summoned us. Richard had to wait in the car.”
“But you went in?”
She nodded. “They’ve got a guy called Troy.”
“Silly name,” I said.
“But a very smart guy,” she said. “He’s young, and he’s very good with computers. I guess he’s what they call a hacker.”
“And?”
“He just got partial access to one of the government systems in Washington. He found out they put a federal agent in here. Undercover. At first they assumed it was you. Then they checked a little further and found out it was a woman and she’s actually been here for weeks.”
I stared at her, not understanding. Teresa Daniel was off the books. The government computers knew nothing about her. Then I remembered Duffy’s laptop, with the Justice Department logo as the screensaver. I remembered the modem wire, trailing across the desk, going through the complex adapter, going into the wall, hooking up with all the other computers in the world. Had Duffy been compiling private reports? For her own use? For postaction justification?
“I hate to think what they’re going to do,” Elizabeth said. “To a woman.”
She shuddered visibly and looked away. I made it as far as the hallway. Then I stopped dead. There were no cars. And twelve miles of road before I would even begin to get anywhere. Three hours’ fast walk. Two hours, running.
“Forget it,” Elizabeth called. “Nothing to do with you.”
I turned around and stared in at her.
“Forget it,” she said again. “They’ll be doing it right now. It’ll be all over soon.”
The second time I ever saw Sergeant First Class Dominique Kohl was the third day she worked for me. She was wearing green battledress pants and a khaki T-shirt. It was very hot. I remember that. We were having some kind of a major heat wave. Her arms were tanned. She had the kind of skin that looks dusty in the heat. She wasn’t sweating. The T-shirt was great. She had her tapes on it, Kohl on the right and US Army on the left, both of them kicked up just a little by the curve of her breasts. She was carrying the file I had given her. It had gotten a little thicker, padded out with her notes.
“I’m going to need a partner,” she said to me. I felt a little guilty. Her third day, and I hadn’t even partnered her up. I wondered whether I’d given her a desk. Or a locker, or a room to sleep in.
“You met a guy called Frasconi yet?” I said.
“Tony? I met him yesterday. But he’s a lieutenant.”
I shrugged. “I don’t mind commissioned and noncommissioned working together. There’s no regulation against it. If there was, I’d ignore it anyway. You got a problem with it?”
She shook her head. “But maybe he does.”
“Frasconi? He won’t have a problem.”
“So will you tell him?”
“Sure,” I said. I made a note for myself, on a slip of blank paper, Frasconi, Kohl, partners. I underlined it twice, so I would remember. Then I pointed at the file she was carrying. “What have you got?”
“Good news and bad news,” she said. “Bad news is their system for signing out eyes-only paper is all shot to hell. Could be routine inefficiency, but more likely it’s been deliberately compromised to conceal stuff that shouldn’t be happening.”
“Who’s the guy in question?”
“A pointy-head called Gorowski. Uncle Sam recruited him right out of MIT. A nice guy, by all accounts. Supposed to be very smart.”
“Is he Russian?”
She shook her head. “Polish, from a million years ago. No hint of any ideology.”
“Was he a Red Sox fan up at MIT?”
“Why?”
“They’re all weird,” I said. “Check it.”
“It’s probably blackmail,” she said.
“So what’s the good news?”
She opened her file. “This thing they’re working on is a kind of small missile, basically.”
“Who are they working with?”
“Honeywell and the General Defense Corporation.”
“And?”
“This missile needs to be slim. So it’s going to be subcaliber. The tanks use hundred and twenty millimeter cannons, but the thing is going to be smaller than that.”
“By how much?”
“Nobody knows yet. But they’re working on the sabot design right now. The sabot is a kind of sleeve that surrounds the thing to make it up to the right diameter.”
“I know what a sabot is,” I said.
She ignored me. “It’s going to be a discarding sabot, which means it comes apart and falls away immediately after the thing leaves the gun muzzle. They’re trying to figure whether it has to be a metal sabot, or whether it could be plastic. Sabot means boot. From the French. It’s like the missile starts out wearing a little boot.”
“I know that,” I said. “I speak French. My mother was French.”
“Like sabotage,” she said. “From old French labor disputes. Originally it meant to smash new industrial equipment by kicking it.”
“With your boots,” I said.
She nodded. “Right.”
“So what’s the good news again?”
“The sabot design isn’t going to tell anybody anything,” she said. “Nothing important, anyway. It’s just a sabot. So we’ve got plenty of time.”
“OK,” I said. “But make it a priority. With Frasconi. You’ll like him.”
“You want to get a beer later?”
“Me?”
She looked right at me. “If all ranks can work together, they should be able to have a beer together, right?”
“OK,” I said.
Dominique Kohl looked nothing at all like the photographs I had seen of Teresa Daniel, but it was a blend of both their faces I saw in my head. I left Elizabeth Beck with her book and headed up to my original room. I felt more isolated up there. Safer. I locked myself in the bathroom and took my shoe off. Opened the heel and fired up the e-mail device. There was a message from D
uffy waiting: No activity at warehouse. What are they doing?
I ignored it and hit new message and typed: We lost Teresa Daniel.
Four words, eighteen letters, three spaces. I stared at them for a long time. Put my finger on the send button. But I didn’t press it. I went to backspace instead and erased the message. It disappeared from right to left. The little cursor ate it up. I figured I would send it only when I had to. When I knew for sure.
I sent: Possibility your computer is penetrated.
There was a long delay. Much longer than the usual ninety seconds. I thought she wasn’t going to answer. I thought she must be ripping her wires out of the wall. But maybe she was just getting out of the shower or something because about four minutes later she came back with a simple: Why?
I sent: Talk of a hacker with partial access to government systems.
She sent: Mainframes or LANs?
I had no idea what she meant. I sent: Don’t know.
She asked: Details?
I sent: Just talk. Are you keeping a log on your laptop?
She sent: Hell no!
I sent: Anywhere?
She sent: Hell no!!
I sent: Eliot?
There was another four-minute delay. Then she came back with: Don’t think so.
I asked: Think or know?
She sent: Think.
I stared at the tiled wall in front of me. Breathed out. Eliot had killed Teresa Daniel. It was the only explanation. Then I breathed in. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he hadn’t. I sent: Are these e-mails vulnerable?
We had been e-mailing back and forth furiously for more than sixty hours. She had asked for news of her agent. I had asked for her agent’s real name. And I had asked in a way that definitely wasn’t gender-neutral. Maybe I had killed Teresa Daniel.
I held my breath until Duffy came back with: Our e-mail is encrypted. Technically might be visible as code but no way is it readable.
I breathed out and sent: Sure?
She sent: Totally.
I sent: Coded how?
She sent: NSA billion-dollar project.
That cheered me up, but only a little. Some of NSA’s billion-dollar projects are in the Washington Post before they’re even finished. And communications snafus screw more things up than any other reason in the world.