Winter Warning

by Jerome Charyn

  “I’m worried,” Isaac said. “And I didn’t want to add Max to the mix. I’m expecting a visit from Ariel Moss. It seems a lot of folks would be much happier if he didn’t make it here alive. And I’d like to know the reason. Do you have a sidearm, son?”

  The president’s paranoia was beginning to gnaw at Stef. He wondered about all those unfamiliar faces in Oriole caps. Was the mountain overrun with professional body snatchers?

  “I left my Beretta back at the base, sir. None of us are sanctioned to carry sidearms on a lift. We’re not meant to be Buffalo Bill. We’d only add to the confusion in a firefight.” He was disheartened by the president’s woeful look. “I could go to the Marine barracks and get a sidearm. I have that privilege.”

  “No,” Isaac said. “It might alert our enemies if you suddenly appear with a sidearm on the mountain.”

  What enemies? Had the Big Guy gone gray in the head?

  “Do you want some company, sir? I could spend the night at Aspen.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Isaac said. “But indulge me. Don’t make any new friends, not on this mountain.”

  The colonel had to promise the president, like a Boy Scout making a pledge of honor. Some kind of shit was going down and Stef had to juggle in the dark. But a promise was a promise. He walked out among those body snatchers in Oriole caps and went to the officers’ mess at Hickory Lodge. And that’s when he saw her, a Marine lieutenant attached to some other detail. She didn’t belong to Squadron One. She was wearing rubber boots, tucked into her fatigues. She had dark, curly hair, like Leona, and it filled him with remorse, as he dreamt of his wife. The lady lieutenant was sipping a Dr. Pepper.

  They were in a Mickey Mouse canteen, like everything on this mountain. Officers and enlisted men had to suck whiskey on the sly. She had hazel eyes, and he had to calibrate the contours of her body like a pilot on a presidential mission. Even a widower in his grief had to admit that she was gorgeous. But not a soul in this mess hall was hitting on her, and she was the only female in sight. Then he noticed how lithe she was, how she leaned on the steel toes of her boots, like a night fighter.

  She smiled at him, and it wasn’t a seductive, slit-eyed smile. He returned her salute, though she didn’t have to salute him in the mess hall, not in a company of officers at Camp David. The president’s retreat was getting weirder and weirder—it was like tumbling into the rabbit hole with little Alice, but this rabbit hole was on a mountain.

  “We’re proud of you, Colonel,” she said, with a Southern lilt in her voice. “Lieutenant Sarah Rogers, with the camp commander’s office. I’m in charge of the commander’s books. You know, I count up all the cans of asparagus.”

  A camp accountant wouldn’t have worn steel-tipped boots. But he went along with her play and decided to become POTUS’s perimeter detective. What if the Big Guy wasn’t paranoid at all, and Lieutenant Sarah was some kind of a key? He was drawn to her despite her phony claims. He hadn’t expected to discover a siren in a glorified snack bar. Leona had been his high school sweetheart, and he’d never flirted with another gal.

  “You’re a Southern belle, aren’t you?”

  Her hazel eyes crinkled a bit, but her smile was genuine. And Stef began to wonder if playacting was as difficult for her as it was for him.

  “Lord,” she said, “I’m a Texas cowgirl. I rode the bulls at Gilley’s, and grew up on a ranch outside Austin. And where are you from, Colonel?”

  “Peoria,” he said. But it was a bit of a lie. Stef was a military brat, and he’d lived in Peoria just long enough to graduate from high school. He sensed the same rootless longing in this lieutenant with the steel-tipped toes. He’d have bet that Sarah Rogers, the Southern belle, was also a military brat, and that the “ranch” she grew up on was a swarm of airfields and training camps between Okinawa and Stuttgart.

  “It’s hot in here,” she said. “Shall we sit on the verandah?”

  The snack bar didn’t have anything like a verandah; it had a tiny landing on top of a staircase that led down to the camp garage. Two men in windbreakers wobbled up the stairs, with metal flasks sticking out of their pockets. The colonel couldn’t tell if they were soldiers or civilian contractors assigned to the mountain. Both of them had mean whiskey eyes. They doffed their baseball caps at Sarah and pretended to salute Stef.

  “Well, well,” said the first whiskey man, “if it ain’t the celebrity himself? What does it feel like, Mr. Oliver, to ferry the big Jew around in one of your Night Hawks? Does he recite his evening prayers in a yarmulke?”

  “I think you had better shut your mouth,” the colonel said, “and show a little respect for the commander in chief. You’re both standing on his mountain.”

  “Well, well,” said the second whiskey man. “Ain’t he gallant? But the big Jew is nothin’ but a crook. He stole the election. He doesn’t deserve to be at David, unless he’s here to clean the garbage bins. Why don’t you lend us the young lady, Mr. Oliver? We’ll waltz her into the forest and be as gentle with her as Jesus.”

  Stef moved toward these whiskey boys, ready to “waltz” with them on the landing, in his own way, but Sarah was much too quick for him, leaping out like the Catoctin wind. She battered their kneecaps with her steel toes, and they tumbled down the stairs with the crazy flip-flop of mannequins.

  “Those two dirtballs,” Sarah said. The Southern lilt was gone. She had that neutral, staccato tone of a military brat who’d spent her childhood hopping from place to place like a gal on an endless circus caravan.

  “We could be charged with assault,” Stefan said.

  “I doubt it.”

  She had too many puckers around her hazel eyes for a brash young lieutenant. But why would she conceal her true rank?

  “You’re not the camp’s bean counter, are you?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m a captain with Naval Intel. And this isn’t POTUS’s mountain. He’s a tenant here. Cactus belongs to us.”

  Stef had to live in a wonderland of code names. Cactus. That’s what the various intelligence services called this mountain retreat.

  “And are you here to protect your property, Captain?”

  Sarah smiled. “Sort of,” she said. “This lift package was kind of a curveball. It wasn’t on our radar. So I came out from Quantico to have a look. But you can call me Sarah.”

  Naval Intel had its headquarters somewhere in the bowels of the Marine base. It was the most mandarin of all the intelligence services. One or two of the fliers under his command probably belonged to Naval Intel, and Stef would never know. But he had a crazy urge to stroke the auburn hair of this mysterious captain. He wondered if it was the backlash of his own grief. He no longer trusted himself, or his instincts.

  It was Sarah who reached out, kissed him, and fondled his hair.

  “I couldn’t resist,” she said with a very soft smile, while the two contractors groaned at the bottom of the stairs. “I guess I’m a groupie. I saw you at Quantico in your flight jacket. You’re a legend, you know. The young colonel who ferries POTUS around. I’m sorry about your wife.”

  Stef clapped his hand over her mouth. Sarah didn’t struggle; she nibbled at his hand—they were love bites.

  “Please,” he said. “I have a headache, and . . .”

  He removed his hand, and they stood there in the afterglow of the sinking sun, like dancers in their own invisible, motionless circle. But the two contractors got to their feet and started up the stairs with menace riding on their backs. Sarah plucked a Beretta M9 from her windbreaker without taking her eyes off Stef and pointed it at the two men.

  “Don’t you dare,” she said, and they scuttled into that strange ellipsis from the final scraps of sunlight.

  Her eyes were still on Stef. “I’ll walk you to your quarters.”

  It wasn’t much of a hike to Walnut. She held his hand. And Stef began to feel that he was tumbling into a dream. Her sleek semiautomatic was the exact replica of his own. Was Sarah the phantom sharpshooter he had se
en on the lawn as he hovered over the landing pad on Marine One? It couldn’t have been her.

  “Would you like a cup of fruit cocktail? That’s all I have in the fridge.”

  She rubbed at his chin with her knuckles. “That’s the sweetest invitation I’ve had in a long time. But I’m still on duty, Stef. I haven’t checked the perimeters. And I wouldn’t want to lose our chief tenant to some ghost who’s wandered in through the wires.”

  “But this is the most secure facility we have.”

  “I know,” she whispered, and then she vanished into that final scrap of light.

  4

  He asked to be woken if a stranger appeared on the mountain in the middle of the night—it was four A.M. and Charles, his Seabee chef, who sometimes served as his barber and his bodyguard at Aspen, tugged on his pajama top. “Mr. President, there are two fuzzy white men at the front gate, old geezers, and they don’t know any of the call signs.”

  “Two geezers?”

  “That’s what I get from the gate. And they have no business being there. But one of ’em insists that it’s a personal checkpoint between him and you.”

  “Did he give a name?” Isaac asked, putting his windbreaker on over his pajamas.

  “No, but it sounds like he’s one mean motherfucker, sir, and he has that awful smell of privilege.”

  “Like a president—or a prime minister.”

  Isaac went out into the cold in the same slippers he’d worn at Gracie Mansion—slippers he’d found in an Orchard Street barrel—but Charles made him put on a pair of wool, all-weather socks. Isaac’s detail was already outside in a caravan of golf carts, with Matthew Malloy in the lead cart.

  “Jesus,” Isaac said, “I don’t need the whole fucking brigade. You’ll scare the pants off the prime minister.”

  “And what if it isn’t him?” Matt asked, in harness with his holster, his hand-held metal detector, his Ray-Bans, and a stun gun.

  “Hey, Sherlock Holmes, who else could it be?”

  Isaac would have preferred to walk, but he couldn’t wait. So he sat in the saddle, while Matt steered the cart, and Charles climbed onto the baggage seat. Matt drove at a maddening speed, and the entire caravan nearly spilled into a ditch. But he got to the gatehouse with his package, Citizen Sidel, and there they were, two geezers in rumpled trench coats and hats with enormous earlaps, like refugees of some long-forgotten winter war.

  Isaac recognized Ariel Moss, with his sunken shoulders and that one lazy eye. He looked like a lunatic; his hair hadn’t been cut, and he had wild roots at the back of his neck. Isaac also recognized the other man, Mordecai Katz, one of the founders of Shin Bet, whose physique would have rivaled Bull Latham’s if he hadn’t been so hunched over.

  Suddenly Ariel Moss’s secret voyage made no sense. Why wouldn’t Shin Bet have sponsored him if Mordecai was still at the helm? And then he realized that Mordecai had come as Ariel’s bodyguard and not as a spokesman for Shin Bet. No one inside Israeli counterintelligence had sanctioned this move. Mordecai had left the service years ago. He was a retired general and a rogue secret agent. That’s why Ariel could come out of his seclusion and go back to robbing banks at will. Shin Bet wouldn’t have interfered with their idol, Mordecai Katz. And Ariel couldn’t have made it to America without him.

  Matt Malloy was about to wave his magic wand—that magnetometer of his—over Mordecai when Isaac started to protest. “Matt, these guys are my guests. You can’t do a body search on an ex–prime minister and the former chief of Shin Bet.”

  But Mordecai intervened in Matt’s behalf. “Please, Mr. President, you must allow this young fellow to perform his duties. It’s a matter of protocol. Ari and I could be assassins on the run,” he said with a grin that revealed a mouth full of battered, broken teeth.

  Shit, Isaac mused. Didn’t Israeli generals have a decent dental plan?

  But the Hermit of Haifa and his giant of a companion stood with their paws in the air while Matt probed them with his magic wand. Then the caravan returned to Aspen, with Ariel and Mordecai in separate carts. But a dispute broke out at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Mr. President,” Mordecai said, “we cannot begin our talk with the Secret Service in the same house.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Matt said.

  “Perhaps, but it is my protocol.”

  Matt might have had some violent tango with Mordecai if Isaac hadn’t overruled him.

  “Charles can protect me.”

  “Sir,” Matt said, “Charles is a cook.”

  “He’s also a Seabee—end of discussion.”

  Ariel had to hold onto the handrail or he couldn’t have climbed the president’s stairs. Isaac should have known how fragile he was. Mordecai stood right behind Ariel, who could have been wandering across some infinite line—that’s how long it took him to arrive at the top of the stairs.

  Mordecai went into the cabin first. Isaac couldn’t imagine what predators Ariel’s giant hoped to find. Mordecai went through every room, opening and shutting doors, peering into closets. Then he closed the curtains that surrounded the sun room, and Isaac had a touch of panic as he lost the sweep of the forest that always managed to calm a city boy. Now he couldn’t watch the whitetails wander over to the salt lick as the light broke through the trees.

  Mordecai could see how unsettled Isaac was. “Mr. President, I assure you, it is absolutely necessary that we are not observed during this discussion. Also, I am a camel. I can survive for days on my own cud. But the prime minister has a special diet. And . . .”

  “I know,” Isaac said. “Balanda. It is already being prepared, General.”

  Mordecai pulled on the strings of his cap, suspicious of Sidel. “But who could have told you about his diet?”

  “Pesh Olinov.”

  “Ah,” Mordecai said, tossing his head back, “that Kremlin gangster.”

  “He must have been some kind of cutout,” Isaac said. “How else would I have known that Ariel was coming?”

  “Motke,” Ariel said, leaning back on Isaac’s sofa, with his lazy eye wandering about in his head. “We shouldn’t confuse the president. Yes, I reached out to the gangster. But I wasn’t sure how dependable he was. He’s too busy buying and selling mountains of toilet paper.” Suddenly Ariel grimaced, and his face turned white. “Dear Isaac, I must have something to eat.”

  Charles arrived from the kitchen with a steaming pot of balanda, with Russian rye bread, a jar of kosher pickles, and blackened potatoes that resembled nuggets of coal.

  They could have had their balanda at the dining room table, but Ariel preferred his own tray. His lazy eye stopped wandering once he slurped his soup. He tore at the Russian rye, bit into a blackened potato. Isaac could hardly believe the metamorphosis. Ariel Moss belched like a Cossack.

  Isaac couldn’t fathom the healing powers of balanda. It tasted like tepid dishwater. But he drank the soup, wondering how the zeks could have survived Siberia on such a weak potion. He gobbled the rye bread with a pickle that didn’t have the same brine as the pickle barrels along Essex Street.

  “Good,” Ariel whispered, “I’m refreshed,” as Charles vanished into the kitchen and shut the door. Ariel and Mordecai removed their hats and coats; they wore sleeveless sweaters over their winter underwear.

  Ariel was silent for a moment, a very sly fox. “It could have been the rumor of a rumor of a rumor,” he said with his lazy eye shut. “That’s how it started. A drug lord from Medellin sends me a fan letter out of the blue. He admired my raid on Acre Prison, how I had freed my brothers from the Irgun. And this minor drug lord—call him Pepito—met with his banker in Basel. And the banker said that he and his associates all contributed to a lottery.”

  The sly fox paused again. “Dear Isaac, can you guess what the lottery was about?”

  Isaac was no connoisseur of lotteries. “I haven’t a clue. What could interest a banker in Basel? The sudden rise of the Swiss franc?”

  “Not at all,” Ariel said. “T
he winner had to pick the exact date of your death.”

  Isaac smiled. “I suppose I should be flattered.”

  “It’s not a joke!” Ariel said. “The lottery had become a fashion—a craze—in certain banking centers. This alone meant nothing to me. Bankers love to bet. But the lottery spiraled out of control. And whoever won would be a very rich man.”

  Ariel fell silent again. He puffed on a pipe with a very short stem; there wasn’t a pinch of tobacco in the bowl.

  Now Isaac was annoyed. It was as if he had to wade through a world of smokeless smoke. He longed to see the forest through his picture window, wait for sunrise, and watch the whitetails assemble under his stairs. He preferred his salt lick to spymasters and a loony ex–prime minister.

  “You traveled all the way to America to tell me this?”

  “Yes,” said Ariel with a deep shiver. “It was imperative.”

  Mordecai sat with his huge paws on his lap. “Mr. President, you were once a policeman, yes?”

  “I still am—I earned my gold shield. I still have it.”

  “Then you are familiar with our craft. We look for signs, for vectors, really, millions of them traveling in the dark, disappearing into the void, never touching their destination once. But when these vectors collide, you have what is called a smash point.”

  “That’s very poetic,” Isaac said. “Are we in the middle of a tennis match? What the heck does it mean?”

  Ariel grabbed Isaac’s gnarled hand for a moment as his lazy eye wandered again. Lincoln also had a lazy eye, Isaac recalled. You could see it in the portraits, with or without Mary, where the Great Emancipator seemed to squint, or look out into some dark unknown. Isaac was terrified to live in Lincoln’s house. No other president haunted him, not even FDR. Roosevelt had his stamp albums, his poker games, his dalliances, and Lincoln had nothing at all to lighten the load of the presidency, nothing perhaps but his little boy Tad.