Once a spy dc-1

by Keith Thomson

  “In the event of an emergency where we need a blender?”

  “In the event we want to draw on the account at the Bank of Antigua. It’s a numbered account, so there’s no link to my name. Do you think you’ll be able to memorize the number on the card?”

  Charlie glanced at the sixteen digits. “For eight million bucks, I could memorize all of Moby-Dick.”

  Drummond regarded Charlie with what looked like contentment; Charlie wasn’t entirely sure, never having seen that expression on him before.

  “Charles, please know I never wanted you to be in the position of having to flee the country,” Drummond said. “As it stands, though, I’m grateful to you for having gotten us this far. And I’ll be very happy to have you along.” He thrust out his right hand.

  Charlie clasped it with matching energy. Still, the handshake felt lacking.

  It was interrupted by three raps at the door between Bedford Avenue and the vestibule the offices shared with the candy store.

  “This is the police,” came a man’s voice from the sidewalk. “Please come out now or we’ll be forced to come in.”

  Charlie flashed back to his clumsy, boxes-of-malted-milk-balls-rattling move when the car drove past. He groaned inwardly.

  “I can take care of this,” Drummond whispered. He put the lid back on the container of cash and diamonds, then grabbed a card from the pile on the desk. “Stay put for just a minute.”

  He stepped out of the office, blending into the darkness of the corridor leading to the vestibule. He reappeared for a moment, red, then white, and then blue from the flashing light bar on the patrol car. Then he vanished into the vestibule.

  Charlie heard him padding down thick rubber matting. He heard too the raspy slide of the bolt, the groan as the door opened, the tinkle of a little bell on top of it, the influx of the Brooklyn night, then Drummond delivering a very convincing, “It’s okay, officers, I’m Bill Peterson. I’m a tenant here. With too much work due tomorrow morning, unfortunately.” What sounded like a brief exchange of formalities between him and the policemen came next, followed by another jingle of the bell as the door fell back into its frame, the relocking of the bolt, the patrol car rolling away, and, finally, Drummond ambling back down the dark corridor.

  “So did you have to buy tickets to the PBA dinner?” Charlie asked.

  There was no response.

  “Dad?”

  Out of the darkness came a stocky young man. Charlie knew him as MacKenzie, but his name was really Pitman-assuming Cadaret hadn’t lied about that too. Pitman held the Colt that had been tucked into Drummond’s waistband seconds ago.

  “Dad had to go to a meeting,” he said.

  46

  Pitman pried a block of wood from a corner of the bookshelf. It matched the triangular braces on the shelf’s other corners. He shook it until a small transistor-like gadget fell out and onto the desk blotter. An eavesdropping device, guessed Charlie, who sat at the desk per Pitman’s promise to shoot him if he didn’t.

  With the butt of the Colt, Pitman smashed apart the gadget, then swept away its remains, along with the Chinese food containers, sending them clattering against the fake-wood paneling and then to the floor. Spreading the charge cards out onto the blotter, he asked, “Okay, which one is it?”

  Evidently he’d overheard what Drummond said about the Bank of Antigua and was looking to get in on the money himself-how else to explain his furtive solo entry coupled with the destruction of the eavesdropping device? His problem was Drummond never identified the card by name; he’d merely tapped it.

  “Which one is what?” Charlie said.

  Pitman grabbed him by the collar and thrust his face toward the desktop. The bulb of Charlie’s nose flattened against the blotter. The cartilage was a hair’s breadth from exploding when Pitman jerked him to a stop.

  “Why make this hard on yourself, Charlie?”

  “I don’t know what you want,” Charlie said, trying to buy time to think.

  No doubt Pitman could torture him into revealing it was the Sears card. Probably the spook knew dark artistry that would hurt just to hear about. And even more disturbing: Once Pitman got what he wanted, he couldn’t risk Charlie breathing a word of what had happened.

  “I know it’s not one of the gas station cards, because you can’t buy a blender at a gas station,” Pitman said. “So, which is it? Nordstrom’s? Spiegel? Sears? JCPenney?”

  Charlie felt the heat of Pitman’s scrutiny with the mention of each. “Really, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “Do you have Alzheimer’s too? I overheard your entire conversation.”

  Pitman gripped the Colt by the barrel and appeared only to flick it. When the handle struck Charlie’s nose, though, it felt like a wrecking ball. Hot blood burst from his nostrils, he saw at least two of everything in the room, and he wanted to shriek. But while shrieking would release some of the pain, it would get the neighbors’ attention, and draw the police. Then Pitman would simply flash his G-man badge and drag Charlie somewhere else to torture him.

  Which would foil Charlie’s nascent escape plan.

  So instead of shrieking, Charlie dug his nails into the wooden frame of his chair, sucked back the blood, and said, “Oh, I get it, you mean the numbered bank account.”

  “So pain helps jog your memory. Good.” Pitman positioned himself so he stood directly above Charlie. He took Charlie’s right ring finger in a tight grip, then raised it as high as he could in preparation for plunging it into the sharp edge of the desktop. “I’m going to break your fingers, one at a time, until you tell me which card it is.”

  Charlie had no doubt the maneuver would break his finger. The question was whether it would break the finger off. “Okay, okay, okay! Uncle!”

  Pitman let Charlie’s hand fall but kept the gun pointed at him. “Which?”

  The bright red Sears card sat in the very center of the blotter. Trying to block it from his consciousness, Charlie inched a hand toward the JCPenney card. The nose of the Colt mirrored his motion.

  “JCPenney?” Pitman asked.

  “Yeah,” Charlie said in defeat.

  He grabbed at his nose, as if to staunch the blood. In the process he elbowed the JCPenney card. It skidded off the desk and clicked to the floor. “Sorry,” he said.

  As Pitman knelt to pick up the Penney’s card, Charlie snatched the Sears card, wound up, and fired it toward the bathroom. Its flight was clumsy-end over end, as opposed to the laser beam he’d envisioned. The motion caught Pitman’s eye. He looked up from his kneel as the card landed, with a splash, in the toilet bowl-or, as Charlie thought of it, the bull’s-eye.

  “It was the Sears card, wasn’t it?” Pitman asked.

  Charlie looked away and said nothing.

  “I should have known from the way you avoided looking at it.” Pitman stood and pointed the Colt at him. “Get it out and lick it clean.”

  Charlie rose. From the desk, Pitman matched his movements with the nose of the Colt. Fearing another pistol-whipping, Charlie steered clear of it.

  When in range of the bathroom, he lunged, grabbed the handle of the flush chain hanging from the overhead cistern, and pulled as hard as he could. Water rushed into the bowl with astounding power. The Sears card would almost surely go down the drain.

  Pitman dove headlong from the desk and toward the bowl. Charlie threw all his weight against the inside of the bathroom door. The face of the door met Pitman’s jaw squarely with a sound neighbors might have mistaken for a bowling ball that had fallen from the top shelf of a closet.

  Pitman toppled backward. Still he managed to keep the muzzle of the Colt on line with Charlie’s face. Until he slipped on a greasy take-out container top. The base of his skull smacked into a sharp edge of the desktop. He collapsed to the floor.

  47

  Charlie knelt over Pitman and jostled him back into consciousness. Pitman’s eyes opened and he appeared to regain focus. Charlie flashed the Colt
. “What happened to my father?”

  “I don’t know. How long have I been unconscious?”

  “Like, ten seconds.”

  Pitman inched a hand toward his waistband.

  “While you were out, I put that SIG Sauer P two-two-eight of yours in a safe place,” Charlie said. “Now, where’d they take him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “You memorized the number on the Sears card, didn’t you?”

  “Is the number your price for information?”

  “It could be.”

  “Why would I trust you?”

  “What choice do you have?”

  Charlie eyed the Colt.

  Pitman laughed. “If you fire that in here, either half the neighborhood will hear it and call the cops, or the cops will hear it themselves, and after I identify myself and explain the situation to them, you and I will go somewhere else and take our sweet time on your recollection of the account number.”

  “All right. I’ll use this then.” Charlie uncradled the telephone on the desk.

  “For what?”

  “I’ll say you came here to apprehend my father’s retirement fund, rather than apprehend me-I’ll bet you didn’t even tell anyone you’d heard me with your bug.”

  “Who can you call?”

  “Anybody. Your colleagues will hear me whoever I call.”

  “Then they’ll know you’re here.”

  “Then they’ll know we’re here, you mean. And they’ll put you in jail for a long time. If you’re lucky.”

  Pitman rolled his eyes.

  Charlie dialed the number of a second-rate bookmaking service in Vegas, listened to the menu, then hit 0 to speak with a live operator. As usual, Muzak kicked in. The first-rate places were staffed with operators who answered straightaway. Charlie clung to the hope that he could sway Pitman without having to say another word-if the Cavalry were to learn Charlie’s location, his plan was dead. Him too, in all likelihood.

  Pitman sat against the desk, blase as ever. Obviously the spook had let it get to this point because he saw the bluff.

  Charlie decided: Better to cede the round and hang up before it was too late.

  “Fine, fine,” grumbled Pitman. “Fine.” He rubbed his jaw.

  With manufactured nonchalance, Charlie dropped the handset into its cradle.

  “They took your father for a debrief,” Pitman said.

  “Is that a euphemism?”

  “No. They do intend to neutralize him, but they need information first. They’re worried that in the time since he figured out what was going on, he secretly spread out a security blanket. They’re jetting an ace interrogator up from the Caribbean.”

  “What do you mean by a ‘security blanket’?”

  “Like, a timed drop.”

  “And what do you mean by a ‘timed drop’?”

  “A dead drop that will be cleared after a set time period unless he’s around to put a stop to it. Then the contents go to, say, the Washington Post.”

  While such a measure was practical, Charlie suspected that Drummond’s patriotism would have precluded it. “Where did they take him?” he asked.

  “I heard Cuba,” Pitman said, rubbing his jaw again.

  “Not the island?”

  “No, it’s someplace around here. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “How can I get more information?”

  “Call four one one,” Pitman said. His hand shot from his jaw to Charlie’s stomach.

  It caught Charlie off guard and felt like a blow from a heavyweight. Pitman sprang up, tackling him hard about the rib cage. Charlie tumbled backward. His right wrist smacked into the thick steel trunk of the gumball machine lamp, costing him his hold on the Colt. It fell onto the desktop and slid to within inches of Pitman.

  Snaring it, Pitman said, “On second thought, you may want to call nine one one.” He curled a finger around the trigger and aimed the gun at Charlie.

  The odds were that a professional like Pitman would reclaim the Colt. Charlie had bet on that beforehand. And been right. Accordingly it was with gusto that he yanked the lamp’s power cord, plunging the room into total darkness. Then he whisked Pitman’s silenced SIG Sauer P228 from the back of his own waistband, leveled it, and pulled the trigger. The gun nearly kicked out of his hand. The plume of flame lit the office, showing Pitman lifted by the shoulder and thrust into the wall. He slid to the floor and lay still, apparently unconscious again, blood darkening his shirtfront.

  Another time, Charlie would be in shock. Now, all he thought about was getting to Drummond. He recognized it was a long shot. Which buoyed him: For once he had relevant experience.

  Part Three

  The Triggerman

  1

  Pitman was lying on the office floor, still breathing but unconscious, when he began to intermittently glow green. It was the reflection, Charlie realized, of the neon sign sputtering on across the street at the Mykonos Diner. The Sea Dog was a go.

  Sitting at the desk, Charlie tried to devise an alternative plan. His approach was no different than if he were playing the horses, which begins with an evaluation of the past-the speed, the endurance, and the style demonstrated by the horses during their previous trips. The next step is to create a mental picture of them competing in the forthcoming race. To Charlie’s surprise, his thinking wasn’t just clear but electric. Adrenaline strengthened his focus and quickened his acuity, which had the effect of slowing the pace of the rest of the world, allowing him to weigh options he otherwise might have overlooked. Like nuclear fission.

  He recalled a story Drummond used to tell in which the scientists arrived for work at the secret headquarters of the Manhattan Project. A lot of the early atomic bomb research was conducted at Columbia University, on Manhattan’s Morningside Heights, in a subterranean complex built solidly enough that vibrations from the adjacent IRT subway line wouldn’t disturb the hypersensitive instruments.

  The entrance was in the campus grocery store in the basement of Furnald Hall, an undergraduate dormitory. All day long students and professors bought coffee and snacks. The students had no idea that the cashiers from whom they finagled six-packs were really employees of the U.S. Army. No one suspected that Gibby, the dim stockroom guy, held the key-literally-to the Allied nuclear effort. When Gibby was sure no one was looking, he admitted certain “professors” to the employee washroom. Within the far toilet stall was the entryway to a tunnel leading to a secret warren of offices and laboratories. When the war ended, the complex was sealed off to prevent radioactive leakage. Or so everyone was told.

  When Drummond used to talk about the Manhattan Project, it was with the same patriotic pride he reserved for D-day and the lunar landing. Tonight it seemed significant to Charlie that, unlike the Normandy beaches and the moon, the Manhattan Project facility was two blocks from Drummond’s office. Also, dropping letters from Columbia netted Cuba.

  Charlie imagined a subterranean complex of sparkling modern laboratories, teeming with scientists in gleaming lab coats, corridors patrolled in lockstep by guards in crisp unitards. Then he applied what he’d learned the last two days: Odds were, to avoid drawing attention, the Cavalry would keep personnel to the absolute minimum, and their security force would more closely resemble the small Manhattan Project unit in the grocery store. Which meant they would be susceptible to attack.

  All at once, Charlie had an idea of how to carry it out.

  “I hope you’re okay,” he said to Pitman. “We have a lot of work to do.”

  2

  Alice heard a baby crying in the next room. She knew that Iraqi interrogators, believing no sound induced greater psychological stress, were fond of piping recordings of wailing infants into the cells of their subjects. It certainly would explain the twinkle in Dr. Cranch’s eye when he’d left the room a few minutes ago.

  “I’d estimate you’ve told me ninety percent of what I want to know,” the interrogator had said. “Mos
t likely the omissions are the result of fatigue and the shock of your having been discovered. So let’s table our discussion until you’ve had a chance to get some proper rest.”

  Since the Dark Ages, sleep deprivation had been recognized as an effective means of coercion. In most modern civilized countries, it was an illegal form of torture. Alice knew from experience that after seventy hours, her electrolyte balance would go haywire. She would lose her ability to think rationally. She would say things she shouldn’t. Thankfully, she’d learned this during a training exercise. If the same were to happen here, people would die. And she’d be number one.

  As Hector peeked through the transom, a far better scenario presented itself. The nominal butler stood on the other side of the door, a Beretta tucked into the waistband of his too-tight white linen uniform trousers. He’d been peeking through the transom more often than the position of watchman warranted. That he was on duty tonight, rather than the more resolute Alberto, was a stroke of luck.

  Twenty-five or so, Hector was tall and dark and built like a Greek statue, with chocolate-brown eyes, waves of glossy black hair, and sparkling teeth. But these classically handsome parts went together poorly, like stripes and checks. He was unaware of it, or at least he didn’t let it impede his efforts as a lothario. Not only was he a chronic flirt but he often called Alice “baby.” Who calls the boss’s girlfriend “baby”?