by Stuart Woods
“I’m okay. You and I got an invitation from those folks out at the lake to go to their gun show this weekend and have some lunch with them. You want to go?”
“I’ll pass, Ham. Those people are boring.”
“Suit yourself, Holly.”
“I mean, you don’t really like them, do you?”
“I had dinner out there last month. They seem like nice folks, and they have some interesting ideas.”
“Yeah, sure. Listen, thanks for the invitation. I gotta run. Take care of yourself.”
“Well, somebody has to,” Ham said petulantly, then hung up.
Holly hung up, too. “Let’s see what they make of that conversation,” she said aloud.
Thirty-two
THIS TIME, HAM WORE A FRESHLY STARCHED SET of camouflage fatigues. He figured he’d fit right in with the mind-set of these people, and he was right.
When Peck Rawlings saw him, he beamed from ear to ear. “Well, Ham, you’re looking sharp today,” he said, shaking hands.
“I’m okay,” Ham said. He unzipped the canvas bag he was carrying and showed Peck the silenced CIA-issue pistol. “I thought some of your folks might be interested in seeing this,” he said.
“Damn right they will,” Peck replied. “Come on, let’s find some of the boys right now.”
Peck collected a dozen men, only a couple of whom Ham had met, and escorted them out to the firing range. “Gentlemen,” he said, “Ham Barker has brought along something I think you’ll find very interesting. Ham?”
Ham took the pistol from its holster, removed the clip, checked that the breech was empty and passed it around, watching as each of the men inspected it.
“Never seen anything like it,” one of them said.
“It’s not likely you will,” Ham said. “I’m told they were made in very small numbers for a government agency that appreciates these kinds of toys.” He took the pistol back, loaded it and screwed the silencer into the barrel.
“Pick out a target,” Peck said, waving an arm at the range.
Ham lifted the pistol, took brief aim at a whiskey bottle sitting on top of a burned-out car halfway down the range and fired. The shattering of the bottle made more noise than the pistol had.
There was a murmur of approval from the crowd.
“That was a hell of a shot from a hundred yards,” Peck said. “I’m a pretty good shot, and I don’t know if I could hit anything with a handgun from that distance.”
Ham shrugged. “Some of you fellas want to try it out?” He watched as the men, one by one, fired the weapon. One or two of them came close to their targets, but none hit them.
Jim, whom Ham remembered from before, stepped forward with another military-looking weapon—a long-barreled rifle with a large scope affixed. “Show us what you can do with this, Ham,” he said.
Ham took the weapon and inspected it. “I believe I’ve seen one of these before,” he said, “when I was in Special Forces.” He looked around him. “What can I safely take a shot at that’s a little farther away?” he asked.
Peck looked back toward the town and pointed to the water tower, half a mile away. A bunch of welcoming balloons was tied to the top of it. “See if you can hit the top balloon,” he said. “The round will end up in the lake.”
Ham sighted the rifle. The balloons stood straight up in the calm air. “Good day for it,” he said, and popped the top balloon with a single round.
“You think you could do that with the Barrett’s rifle?” Peck asked.
“Given an opportunity to sight it in, probably,” Ham said. “I fired it a few times in Iraq and did pretty good.”
“Maybe we’ll try that on another occasion,” Peck said. “Come on, everybody, let’s eat some barbecue.”
Ham unloaded and stowed his pistol, and the group walked to the lakeside, where a group of women had set up a chow line beside a dozen picnic tables. Everybody grabbed a plate, and shortly, they were seated at a table, eating barbecue. Ham noticed that Peck and Jim stuck with him, and another man, one he hadn’t seen before, joined them.
“Ham,” Peck said, “this is John.”
The man, who was tall and slim like Ham, and who wore round, steel-rimmed glasses, offered his hand. “How do you do, Ham?”
“Good to meet you,” Ham said. “Just John?”
“That’s what they call me,” the man replied, biting into some cornbread.
“That’s all that’s necessary,” another man said, and the group nodded as one man.
Ham sensed, from the deference shown to John, that he was somebody special to these people. “John, it is,” he said, and dug into his barbecue.
“I had a look at your military record,” John said after a moment. “You had an interesting career.”
“I guess I did,” Ham replied.
“Must be a little boring, being retired.”
“A little,” Ham agreed. “There’s just so much fishing a fellow can do.”
John nodded in agreement. “That’s how I felt when I retired.”
“What service?” Ham asked.
“I wasn’t in the military,” the man said. “You might say I served another master.”
Ham started to ask what master but thought better of it. He nodded and continued with his lunch.
“I wonder,” John said, “if you’d like to give some of our people a little instruction in the finer points of shooting?”
“Sure,” Ham replied. “What sort of shooting?”
“The kind you were doing a few minutes ago,” he said. “We’ve got some good shots in our outfit, but none as good as you.”
“If they’ve got talent, I can train them,” Ham said. “They’ll have to work at it, though.”
“Oh, they’ll work at it,” John said, “or answer to me. After lunch, we’ll take a little trip down to another range we’ve got out in the pines, and you can watch our people shoot.”
“Be glad to,” Ham said. “This is damn fine barbecue, Peck. You folks sure do eat well.”
“We do that,” Peck replied. “John always enjoys our ladies’ cooking, too, don’t you, John?”
“I do,” John replied. “Your women are the best cooks in the group, and that’s a fact.”
And just what group is that? Ham wanted to ask, but didn’t. He sat, ate his barbecue, which really was sensational, and listened to John talk to the men, apparently about nothing. The others were reveren tially quiet.
Thirty-three
HOLLY HAD JUST COME HOME FROM WORK WHEN Ham let himself in through the beach door.
“Hey,” she said, giving him a kiss.
“How you doing?”
“I’m okay. I got your message.”
“Then where is Harry?”
“Come with me,” she said, leading him out the door to the beach. Daisy padded along behind, running through the dunes, sniffing out dune mice. Holly led him down the beach a hundred yards, then turned down a path through the dunes to the house next door.
“Whose place is this?” Ham asked.
“Just follow me, Ham.” She rapped sharply at the door of the house and let herself in. Harry and two other men were sitting in the living room, drinking beer.
“Hi there, Ham,” Harry said.
“You’re living next door now?” Ham asked, shaking his hand.
“What you’ve found out so far about the people out at the lake has made me commit to a full investigation. We rented the place. It’s convenient, and it keeps the heat off Holly.”
“Good idea,” Ham said.
“Ham this is Doug, one of our agents, and this is our ace techie, Eddie. Eddie the Hacker we like to call him.”
Ham shook their hands, then he noticed that the dining-room table was filled with computers, printers and some equipment he didn’t recognize.
“You want a beer?” Harry asked.
“You betcha,” Ham said, accepting a cold Heineken.
“I want to hear about this John character,” Harry said, “a
nd Eddie is going to do up a computer-generated face for us.”
“Okay,” Ham said, and allowed himself to be sat down beside Eddie at the dining-room table.
“Let’s start with height and weight,” Eddie said.
“Six-three, a hundred and eighty pounds, about like me,” Ham said.
Eddie made some entries into the computer, and a male figure, faceless, appeared on the large, flat-screen monitor before him. “Okay, hair color?”
“Gray.”
“Short? Long?”
“Fairly short and very curly.”
Eddie typed away. “Like this?”
“No, even curlier, almost like a sheep.”
“Like this?”
“That’s it.”
“Face thin, medium or fat?”
“Thinnish, strong jaw.”
“Like so?”
“Stronger.”
“Better?”
“Very good.”
“Nose: fat or thin, straight or curved?”
“Thin, straight and short.”
“Lips?”
“Thin.”
“Color of eyes?”
“I’m not sure; maybe blue or green.”
“We’ll start with blue.” Eddie typed some more, then a face appeared on the screen, very complete, almost like a photograph. “How’s that?”
“Good, but he had pretty thick eyebrows, and they were black.”
Eddie made the adjustment.
“Higher cheekbones,” Ham said.
Eddie typed some more.
“And his ears were fairly small and lay flat against his head,” Ham said.
Eddie made the changes.
“Jesus, that’s good,” Ham said, impressed.
Eddie hit some more keys, and the face turned to its left a quarter turn. “Does it still look good?”
“Yep.”
Eddie turned the face to profile. “How about now?”
“The nose isn’t turned up like that, it’s straight, but the length is right. He looks older than your picture, too.”
Eddie typed some more. “What age?”
“Fifty, maybe, or a young fifty-five. No, that’s too old. He’s fairly youthful-looking, no sagging chin or bags under his eyes.”
“We’ll make him fifty and well preserved,” Eddie said.
Ham watched the changes in the image. “Try forty-five.”
Eddie adjusted the picture.
“Eddie, that’s the guy. Dead ringer. I swear, I didn’t know it could be done that well.”
“Okay, now let’s compare him to the database,” Eddie said.
“Just a minute, I forgot the glasses. They were round, steel-rimmed, on the small side.”
“Like this?”
“Rounder. That’s it. Now try your database.”
Eddie typed for another thirty seconds, and the screen went blank. “This’ll take a few minutes,” he said. “It goes faster if you don’t watch it happen.” He stood up, walked back to the living-room sofa and retrieved his beer.
“Anything else you can tell us about this guy?” Harry asked.
“I’d say he was a natural-born leader, considering the respect he got from everybody. They seemed a little in awe of him. He was the first one to actually ask me to do something for the group.”
“What did he ask you to do?”
“To train some of his people in shooting.”
“Shooting of what?”
“He didn’t say; just shooting. I gave them a little demonstration, and somebody asked me if I could shoot like that with the Barrett’s rifle.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them I could, if I had an opportunity to sight it in.”
Eddie got up and went back to the computer.
“How’s it going?” Harry asked.
“Coming along. It’s a big database, remember, and a lot of John’s features are common to a lot of other people. Give it a few more minutes.”
“Does John live out at the lake with the group?” Harry asked.
“My impression—and nobody actually told me this—was that he didn’t, that he was visiting. It was the first time I’d seen him there, but it’s possible that he lives there, but had been away and had just returned.”
Eddie spoke up. “We’ve got some faces,” he said. “Come take a look.”
Everybody gathered around the computer screen. Faces were materializing, some clear, others still filling in. Most of them were front and profile shots of people holding numbers under their chins.
“Same general types,” Eddie said.
Ham pointed at a photograph. “Isn’t that a woman?” he asked.
“Yes, but she answers the description,” Eddie replied, “and she turned up, even though I specified male.”
More pictures became clear, and Eddie slowly scrolled through them, more than two hundred. Then he stopped at the last frame.
“What does that mean?” Ham asked. The frame was empty and had the word “restricted” stamped across it.
“That means it’s a face somebody doesn’t want us to see,” Eddie replied. “Could be someone in the witness protection program.”
“John said he was retired, like me, and I asked him if it was from the military. He said not exactly. Could the restriction be because the guy worked for one of the civilian intelligence agencies?”
“Maybe. If so, his records would be in another database, one we don’t have ready access to. The people in this one are people who have been arrested, done time or, at least, are suspected of a crime.”
Eddie turned to Harry. “There’s a file number here, Harry. You know somebody who might give us access?”
Harry was staring at the blank rectangle and rubbing his chin. “All I can do is try,” he replied.
Thirty-four
HOLLY PLAYED HOSTESS AND CLEARED THE dishes away from the coffee table, and the empty cartons that had once held Chinese food. Doug put on a pot of coffee, and they waited for Harry, who was on the phone in the den. Finally, he came back.
“Here,” he said, handing the computer-generated picture of John to Eddie. “E-mail this to the address at the bottom of the page.”
Eddie did as he was asked, then came back. “What now?”
“We wait,” Harry said.
“Are we going to get access to the file?” Holly asked.
“Not exactly,” Harry said.
“What does that mean?” Ham asked.
“It means we’re not going to be able to penetrate the restriction on this photograph and download this guy’s file. I’m not sure that even a court order would produce it.”
“Then what are we waiting to hear?” Holly asked.
“I know a guy who agreed to look at the picture,” Harry said. “He can probably get a look at the file, and if he’s had enough to drink, he might tell us some of what’s in it. I got him at home, and he’d already had at least one Scotch.”
“And who is this guy?” Ham asked.
Harry wagged a finger. “Don’t ask.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Harry,” Holly said, “I’m beginning to get the impression that nobody in the federal law enforcement community talks to anybody else outside his own agency.”
“This guy’s not in the law enforcement community; you might say he’s quietly in the law-breaking community, in his way. But you’re right: the level of interagency cooperation only tends to rise when somebody can recognize some self-interest in a situation. If this guy helps us, then I’ll have to help him sometime, ignore a regulation or two, and I probably won’t like doing it.”
They fell silent for a while, watching the flames from the driftwood fire. Nobody seemed to want to add another log.
“What’s your best guess on this John guy, Harry?” Holly asked.
Harry shook his head. “No point guessing; he could be anybody. And if my buddy won’t help, and if the guy has never been arrested, then we’re going to
have one hell of a time figuring out who or what he is.”
“I could maybe get his fingerprints,” Ham said. “You know, steal a glass he’s used, or something like that.”
“It might come to that,” Harry said, “but I don’t want you to take the risk, unless it’s the only way. Anyway, if his photograph is restricted, it’s very likely his prints will be, too.”
The phone rang, and everybody sat up. Harry went into the den to answer it, and he didn’t come back for twenty minutes. When he did, the group was all ears.
“Well, I don’t know how much help this is going to be,” Harry said, when he had settled into his chair once more. “My guy was able to access some records, records that even he was not supposed to have access to, so this one is going to cost me.”
“Come on, Harry,” Holly said, “spit it out.”
“All right, he worked for one or more government agencies as an independent contractor—always paid in cash, no social security number involved, no paper trail, except in those inaccessible files.”
“You mean he was, like, a government assassin?” Holly asked.
“No, not that. I’m not even sure those sorts of operators exist anymore, if they ever did.”
“They did,” Ham said quietly. “I knew some.”
“Anyway, the name on the file—and this doesn’t mean it’s his real name—was Alton Charlesworth.”
“Has to be his real name,” Ham said. “Who’d pick a name like that?”
“You have a point,” Harry said. “But Charlesworth was involved in technical and financial stuff, breaking into bank records, tracing the movement of money from bank to bank and country to country. It was wet work, involving burglary at the very least, and maybe much worse.”
“Any specific examples?” Holly asked.
“My guy wouldn’t give me any. He did say that if you wanted to hide some assets or launder some money, Charlesworth would be your man. He hinted at darker deeds, too, but he wouldn’t be specific. My guy said he wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley—or anyplace else, for that matter. He made the man sound thoroughly unpleasant. He also mentioned that there would be no criminal record—or, if there had been one, it would have been quietly expunged from all the relevant computers. The guy sounds like a rollover.”