“Seven dragon ‘loose-end’ sauce?” Av said. “I think I’ll pass, guys.”
There was general agreement on that strategy. Ellen yawned and said she needed to go home. Av said he would walk her out to her car.
Out on the sidewalk he said he had a couple of questions about their great adventure.
“Shoot,” she said.
“First, how’d you guys bug my apartment?”
She smiled. “We discovered that we had some ready-service help right there in your building. By the name of Special Agent Rue Waltham?”
“You’re shitting me—she’s an agent? She said she was a lawyer.”
“She is both. We’ve got lots of lawyers in the Bureau. In fact, back in the day, you had to be either a lawyer or an accountant just to be a special agent. Times have changed; she works in our international operations division.”
“You planted her in my building?”
“Nope. She did that rental all by herself. Our surveillance people needed a base of operations near your building, preferably something besides the traditional telephone truck. They scanned all the addresses in your area and hers popped out, right in your building. I wish I could tell you that this was all planned, but it was mostly serendipity.”
“Okay—one last question: you and Strang—you were a team in this, right? I mean there’s no other way it could have worked.”
She feigned surprise. “You’re suggesting that the Bureau and the Agency might have worked together on this goat-grab?” she said. “What are the chances of that?”
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said.
She smiled, looked away, but said nothing.
“Okay.” He sighed. “But who was the second man working for Mandeville? The guy he sicced on me?”
“We have no fucking idea,” she said, quietly. “That’s the disturbing truth.”
“Disturbing—that’s one way of phrasing it,” he said. “Because if he’s still out there, then I’ve still got a big problem.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” she said. “Whoever he is, he knows the rules of the game. Once Mandeville goes down, his tasking, as it were, goes down with him. What would be the point?”
He sighed again, not entirely sure her logic would hold up. Then asked if he’d see her again.
“Whatever for, Detective Sergeant?” she asked, with a sly smile. “Me being so very scary and everything. You’re not about to broach the R-word are you?”
“R-word?”
“As in: relationship?”
“Well, I guess I could make an exception, just this once.”
“Uh-huh.”
He felt himself blushing just a little. “I mean, well, um—”
“I’ve got some news,” she interrupted gently.
“News?” he said, warily. Oh, God, now what? he thought.
“I’ve got a date tomorrow, or I guess it’s today, now. Dinner, and then a walk in a park, I believe.”
“With whom?”
“Can’t you guess, you being a detective sergeant and all?”
Av was baffled, and not for the first time, by this high-energy lady. Then he did guess.
“Hiram?” he squeaked. “But—but—”
She was laughing now. “And why not?” she said. “He’s head and shoulders the most interesting man I’ve met in a long, long time.”
“Head and shoulders is right,” he said.
“We-e-ll, I didn’t say it was romance, did I. It’s drinks on the terrace, dinner served by the staff, and then a walk in the park. His park. At his mansion on his riverfront estate, where the gardens are alive in more ways than one. Frankly, I was flattered when he asked me. Besides, it’s just possible he may have already solved your potentially big problem.”
“Wow” was all Av could manage, trying to visualize them as a pair.
She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “We could always be workout buddies again sometime, Detective Sergeant,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “Just keep an eye on your caller ID, okay? Bye, now.”
As she drove away, Av looked out into the tiny park by the canal lock. A young couple was walking by, the woman rhapsodizing about the historical canal, the guy looking over at Av, a sympathetic expression on his face when he saw Ellen leaving. Av put up his palms and shrugged. The guy grinned; they do get away, sometimes.
He went back upstairs, where Mau-Mau and Wong were taking beer bottles and glasses out to the kitchen. Wong was still griping about the compromised takeout.
“Gonna see that one again?” Mau-Mau asked him.
“Don’t think so,” Av said. “You know me.”
“Thought I did, till I saw that bra in the bathroom,” Mau-Mau said with a grin. “Although it wasn’t really your size and all.”
Av tried to think of a snappy comeback but all he could do was grin, too. After they’d left, he climbed up to the rooftop and stretched out in the lawn chair.
He thought about Ellen Whiting and her bewildering world of spooks, high-powered secret committees, and scary political games. He conjured up an image of her blasting through D.C. on a Harley with a swarm of feds on her tail—his Harley, now that he thought about it, have to get that back. He wondered if there were warrants out on that bike now. Did he really want to be involved with a woman like her?
Have to think about that, he concluded. Then he heard the house phone ringing. He ran down the stairs and barely beat the voice mail robot.
“Detective Sergeant,” Ellen said. “I forgot about your bike.”
“Where’d it end up?” he said.
“At the Hoover building. I’ll get it back to you tomorrow.”
“Take your time,” he said. “Bring it when you feel like taking a ride. So to speak.”
“Feel?” she said, ignoring his not very subtle suggestion. “As in feelings? You talking about feelings? You telling me you felt something that night?”
“It was morning,” he said. “And, yes, I did. Feel something. There was something in the bed. Like a rock, maybe. Piece of gravel? A pea?”
She started to laugh. “Careful what you wish for,” she said. “And remember, I don’t always knock.”
“I’ll keep the change jar open for you,” he said.
TWENTY-FIVE
“You ever seen a guy that big?” the agent driving asked his teammates as he turned the SUV south onto I-395 near the Pentagon and headed for Quantico.
“Looked like fucking Frankenstein,” one of the others said.
“Frankenstein was the mad scientist, not the monster,” said the third. “But, yeah, that’s what I thought of when I first saw him. Had to be what, six-ten, maybe even seven?”
“Had to be. The funeral director from hell. I stopped breathing for a moment. You see Bruno going for his weapon?”
They all laughed at that, except their passenger.
Carl Mandeville was still bound into his personal wiring harness in the middle of the backseat, with a bulky agent on either side. His hands were in his lap, the right one throbbing painfully under bulky bandages and one plaster cast. There was a plastic restraining wire strung between his forearms, supporting a third restraint wire that was clipped to a ring in the floor. His suit-coat sleeves hung empty on either side of his chest. His eyes were closed but he was definitely not asleep.
He was waiting. Wherever they were going, there’d be a phone. Or someone who had a phone, or someone who could get to a phone who could be intimidated to make one call, just one call to the White House operator, say a single code word, and then every one of these clowns would be shaking fries at a McDonald’s the next day and wondering what had just happened.
Then he would deal with the high-and-mighty leadership at the Bureau, itself. He would smother them under so much superclassified national security bullshit, special task-force inquiries, and maybe even a special prosecutor, that they’d be digging out for years, from the director on down. He would bury them for pulling this stunt tonight, and even dumber
, claiming they had a case on him.
They thought they had a case. Bullshit. Besides, even if they did, it hardly mattered, because what good’s a case without a court? There wasn’t a court in the land cleared to hear any part of this, not even everyone’s pet panel of judges over at FISA. As any real player in the CT business knew, FISA was a judicial fig leaf and nothing more. No agency with any real clout took serious operational cases to FISA—instead, they took the litter-box stuff, the hypotheticals, the borderline targets, the international hairball cases, and so many of them that all those learned judges all thought they were being groomed for the Supreme Court.
Through slitted eyes he watched the exit signs for the northern Virginia suburbs flash by in the darkness. In all his years in Washington, he’d never been able to drive faster than ten miles an hour down this stretch of I-95. No, he wasn’t worried about any so-called case the Bureau would try to build against him.
Hiram Walker. There was the real threat. Hiram Nightshade was more like it. Clever bastard had been unwilling to deal with Strang. Oh, no, if he was going to hand over some of his black-widow juice, it was only going to be to the man in charge. And, like a dummy, he, Carl Mandeville, had fallen for it, thus giving Hiram a permanent, stainless-steel fishhook into his guts. He still wondered if Strang had maybe arranged that precondition on purpose.
Smug bastard, Hiram Walker, he thought, looming over everyone out there in that park in his Jack the Ripper frock coat, like some kind of Victorian vampire. He glanced down at the little flower in his buttonhole. Something to remember him by? Hiram Walker would be remembered, all right. Evangelino would see to that, personally. What he would do to Hiram Walker would be memorable, indeed.
He tried lifting his arms to see if he could dislodge the annoying flower, but the cast on his four-fingered hand was too heavy and the restraining wire made it impossible. Frustrated, he leaned forward so that his unbandaged hand could just reach his chest and then mashed the flower.
There, he thought. That’s what’s going to happen to you, you fucking freak.
“Hey, Harry,” the agent on his left said. “I think I had too much coffee at the ER—any chance of a pit stop along here?”
“Not until Occoquan,” the driver said. “And two of us have to stay with what’s-his-name back here.”
“He’ll be good,” the agent said. “Won’t you, bud.”
“Cold,” Mandeville croaked.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
P. T. Deutermann is the author of seventeen previous novels, including The Last Man and Pacific Glory, which won the W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction. Deutermann spent twenty-six years in military and government service, as a captain in the Navy and in the Joint Chiefs of Staff as an arms-control specialist. He lives with his wife in North Carolina. You can sign up for email updates here.
ALSO BY P. T. DEUTERMANN
THE CAM RICHTER NOVELS
The Cat Dancers
Spider Mountain
The Moonpool
Nightwalkers
THRILLERS
The Last Man
The Firefly
Darkside
Hunting Season
Train Man
Zero Option
Sweepers
Official Privilege
SEA STORIES
Sentinels of Fire
Ghosts of Bungo Suido
Pacific Glory
The Edge of Honor
Scorpion in the Sea
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Note
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
About the Author
Also by P. T. Deutermann
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
COLD FRAME. Copyright © 2015 by P. T. Deutermann. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Young Jin Lim
Cover photographs by Shutterstock
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-05933-8 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-6392-7 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466863927
First Edition: July 2015
Cold Frame [retail] Page 31