Underground

by Kat Richardson

  THIRTEEN

  The temperature was up to thirty degrees when I rolled out of bed Monday morning. The snow was still sticking, but it didn’t look so impressive once it had been plowed and shoveled into dirty piles only a few inches high at the curbs with the rough shapes of shrubs and grass poking through in the fields and yards. It was still too cold for most of the schools, though—some still operating without electricity or heat—and kids would be loose on the remaining snow before noon. Otherwise, it was an average Monday. I did the morning routine, working on my knee and shoulder for a while before heading to my office to dive into neglected work for Nan Grover.

  At twelve minutes past eleven the door alarm Quinton had installed months ago pinged me and a matronly woman walked into my office, followed by two men with the look of guided missiles. The woman had chin-length gray hair naturally streaked with white and looked about fifty. She wore a charcoal gray suit with black running shoes and a black wool swing coat under an aura the color of battlefield smoke lit by gunfire. The men didn’t match: both fit and thirtyish, cloaked in rain-colored energy coronas, one wore a pair of slacks and a sport coat under an East Coast-style overcoat; the other had on jeans and a padded stadium jacket. They sent off a cool psychic stink of no personal stake in whatever had brought the woman to my office. They came to follow her orders.

  All three had their coats undone over the telltale lumps and wrinkles of concealed pistols. I thought I’d seen damn near every variation and rip-off of this group that existed, but never one headed by a grand-old-lady type before. The disconnect between the woman’s appearance and her energy bugged me—not to mention the gun. I didn’t bother asking if I could help them and stayed put behind my desk where my own pistol and the panic button on the alarm were a handbreadth away.

  “Are you Harper Blaine?” the woman asked. Her tone was bored, as if she really didn’t need my answer but she would stick to the form.

  I didn’t see a point in skirmishing over it. I gave her a bland look back as her attack dogs stationed themselves on each side of my door. “Yes, I am. And who are you?”

  She didn’t carry a purse, so she brought a leather ID folder from her coat pocket. She flipped the folder open, saying, “I’m Fern Laguire. I’m with the NSA.” She closed the distance between the door and the desk and stood so close she loomed over me as if it was just an accident of my cramped office space. Then she flapped the folder closed before I could read it properly. I’d done that a few times myself, so I looked up at her and put out my hand.

  “May I see that again, please—a bit slower? I don’t speed-read.”

  Laguire clucked her tongue and showed me the ID again, not releasing the folder but just holding it open in front of me, as if I was kid with ADD and she a harried teacher. She did seem a little teacherlike, in a smile-and-yardstick sort of way, but I noticed she narrowed her eyes as she held the folder for me. The washed-blue irises gleamed like ice chips.

  The ID wasn’t helpful. It did have her name and the agency name, seal—an eagle standing on a key—and office address in Maryland, but it didn’t have any indication of rank or deployment beyond the words “Field Liaison.” She could have been a secretary or the director for all the card said, though I guessed she was probably as close to an actual spook as “No Such Agency” had. The great mystery of intelligence agencies: a cryptology unit with more tentacles than a school of squid and more pull than anyone wants to admit. I’d have bet even money that the backup were on loan from the CIA or FBI because they certainly didn’t look like mathematicians or computer geeks.

  I let the card go and Laguire flipped it closed, dropping it back into her pocket. Her New England schoolmarm personality seemed a perversely appropriate choice for an NSA field operative, but it didn’t really go with the glacial eyes and the disturbing energy cloud around her—the effect was creepy, like seeing your grandmother whip out a flick knife and dispatch the cat for spitting up a hairball.

  “I don’t do wiretaps or foreign data transmissions,” I said, “so I doubt I’m going to be much use to you.”

  “We’re not interested in you, dear. Not in any professional capacity, at least,” Laguire replied. “We want James Jason Purlis.”

  “Who?” I wasn’t faking ignorance; I’d never heard the name before in my life.

  Her voice was soft and refined, but it left a hard wake in the Grey that would have caused most people to toe her line. “Oh, but you do know him, Ms. Blaine. You were in his company yesterday. Caucasian, brown hair, brown eyes, thirty-five years old.”

  I’d been in a lot of people’s company Sunday and about half answered that description. “You have a photo?” I asked.

  Laguire pulled a five-by-seven black-and-white from her pocket and put it on my desk, pushing it across the blotter to me with both index fingers. It was a blowup of an ID photo, grainy and bland. Judging by the clothes, it was about ten years old. The young man in the photo was a generic white-bread nerd—as if he’d tried to be unmemorable—short hair, clean shaven, overweight, slightly sullen or just bored. Aside from everyone else, I’d talked to Fish, Quinton, and the Danzigers, as well as a few waitstaff, librarians, and a gas station attendant yesterday, and many of them could have been the man in that photo, given different hair, weight, glasses, whatever. I knew who she wanted, but I wasn’t going to turn.

  I shoved the photo back across my desk. “I spent all day tracking witnesses and evidence for investigations and for cases going to trial. I spent a lot of that time with some homeless people who don’t exactly hand over their business cards, and the rest of it in a glorified trash dump. Which one of the hundred or so people I talked to or stood next to do you think I should recognize from that picture?”

  “Only J.J. Purlis. He went to ground years ago and we’ve been waiting patiently for him to show up on our radar ever since. Yesterday he did. Now he’s vanished again, but you were IDed and here you are.” She seemed to imply I soon might not be.

  “Who told you I was with this Purlis, and where?” I asked. “You give me a clue and I might give you your man.”

  She shook her head with a disappointed smile. “I won’t name our source. That would be ill-advised. Purlis is a danger to national security and to the health and safety of people like you. He has knowledge, skills, and the mind to cause harm. You have a duty to turn him over.”

  “You make this guy sound like a terrorist,” I said, flipping my hand to dismiss her drama.

  “As information is the real source of power and since crypto systems are now defined as matériel, he well could be. I imagine you think you’re protecting a witness or an informant, but all you are doing is standing between us and a fugitive.”

  “Fugitives are the purview of the federal marshals’ office and law enforcement. Not Fort Meade’s carnivores.”

  A palpable hit. Laguire’s mouth tightened at the reference, but her voice stayed calm, if a bit chillier. “Mr. Purlis is our asset. We will reacquire him. You will not stand in our way.” She leaned in a little. “I don’t need to play games with you. I can get what I want other ways, but you won’t like them, Ms. Blaine. It’s very simple. All I want is Purlis’s location.”

  I stood up and Laguire had to tilt her head up to meet my scrutiny. She didn’t like it, but she didn’t want to step back and even the distance—it might look like retreat. “I don’t have your mystery man’s location, Ms. Laguire. I don’t know a J.J. Purlis and your photo is worthless. You can—”

  My suggestion was cut off by my cell phone—lucky for both of us.

  “Excuse me. I need to answer my phone, but since the nature of my work is confidential, I’m sure you understand my asking you and your associates to leave now.” Then I shut up and gazed at her without blinking or hostility, just blank and expectant.

  Her smoky aura flared with frustrated explosions of orange and red, but she laid her card on my desk, turned silently on her heel, and strode out of my office. Her bodyguards followed her.
r />   It was possible she’d left a bug or had some kind of tap on my cell phone or something, but I doubted she’d set up any such thing. If she’d caught a late-night flight, she’d have been on me the night before—surprising a subject when they’re tired or disoriented from being jarred out of bed is a classic tactic for interrogators. So chances were good she’d caught a morning plane and come to me less than an hour after picking up her escort at the federal building. Even the Feds play turf wars, and she would have had to check in with the local office first.

  By the time I’d finished the thought, I’d missed the call but I picked up the message. Fish had found some info on the Sistu.

  “My old grandma said she’ll tell you what you want to know but she’ll only talk to you in person. She’s old. I mean old, like Kennewick Man old, so she doesn’t leave the house. Call me back and I’ll set it up, but it has to be today.”

  I called his cell phone.

  “I had a client in the office and couldn’t answer the phone,” I explained after exchanging greetings. “What’s the deal?”

  “We have to go to the rez. I’ll take you up there and introduce you, then you’re kind of on your own. Grandma’s an old she-wolf and she’s still got teeth. Hope you’ve got a few hours, ’cause she doesn’t do anything fast.”

  “I have the day, if that’s what it takes. I need to bring someone along, though. Will your grandmother have a problem with that?”

  “Depends on whether she thinks she can scare him.”

  “I don’t think she can.”

  “Then she’ll probably be OK. She respects strength, so long as she gets respect back. Real old-school.”

  “Where do I need to pick you up?”

  “I live up in Montlake, near the arboretum.”

  “We’ll be up at your place in forty minutes. I’ll call for directions when we’re on the way.”

  “OK. See you then.”

  I agreed I’d be seeing him and paged Quinton. Then I went out to find a noisy place to grab some lunch I could wolf down in twenty minutes. The drive to Montlake was usually fifteen minutes from my office, but it sounded like a long day ahead and I both needed food and wanted to minimize Laguire’s chance of picking up any of my conversations. Some things are worthy of paranoia, and she and her agency gave me the chills.

  My phone rang again as I was crossing the Square. In the frosted cold, the area was mostly deserted except for the snow drifts and ghosts, and I glanced around for any sign of surveillance or monitoring. Not even the phantoms were interested in me.

  Spotting nothing, I still answered the phone in a sharp bark unlike my usual tone. “Blaine.”

  There was a pause. “Um, this is your alarm company,” Quinton said. “You left a message for us to return your call. . . .”

  “I have three nines and I’m running late because of an official visitor.” Three nines was the pager code Quinton had programed to indicate a break-in at my office—it was also the UK version of 911. “Tell the installer I’ll meet him at Bakeman’s in a couple of minutes.” I hung up without waiting for a reply and hoped Quinton knew me well enough to guess my meaning and show up both quickly and discreetly.

  Located on Cherry in a basement row of little lunch spots that mostly catered to local office workers, Bakeman’s was determinedly blue collar in service and atmosphere. The odor of roast turkey and meatloaf wafted out the sunken door along with the clang and shout of the staff passing orders and moving customers at New York speeds. The hard, slick walls and Formica tables reflected the noises of the busy kitchen and the hurried diners into a rattling cacophony. No one lingered over a cup of joe at Bakeman’s or “took meetings” at the no-nonsense tables without risking the owner’s notorious sharp tongue. If Fern Laguire or her mismatched muscles wanted to snoop, they’d have to come in, order up, and join us at our table to have any hope of eavesdropping or getting in without drawing attention.

  I’d barely sat down with my food when Quinton popped in through the lunchroom’s back door from the building above.

  “Hey,” he said, sliding in next to me to facilitate a lower-volume conversation.

  “Hey. Two things first. We’re going to Marysville to talk to Fish’s grandmother about the Sistu, which should take a few hours so you better grab some food if you’re hungry. And I got a visit from the NSA about thirty minutes ago.”

  Quinton looked thoughtful. “I’ll be right back.”

  He returned in ten minutes with one of Bakeman’s famous sandwiches and a can of soda. “I always think I’ll have the pie next time and I never do,” he said.

  I finished my soup and glanced at him as he wolfed his food. I was glad he hadn’t run, though I hadn’t really expected him to. “You know anything about this Fern Laguire?”

  He nodded and swallowed. “I hear she was heartless at twenty and had passed ‘ballbreaker’ in her thirties. Ten years ago she’d advanced to vitrified in all human emotions except anger. The scale appears to be logarithmic.”

  “She has two assistants who smell of Fed, one probably CIA, the other local Feeb.”

  Quinton nodded acknowledgment.

  “Do we have a problem?” I asked.

  “There’s a hole in something. I don’t want to discuss it right now. In fact, considering communication is the name of the game with them, probably best to get moving and talk as little as possible. Fern may not have you bugged yet—if she just hit town she hasn’t had much time.”

  “Unless she came on a private flight, I’d guess she couldn’t have arrived before eight-thirty this morning—assuming flights landed on time with the snow.”

  He hummed, thinking. Then he asked, “Do you need your cell phone for this trip?”

  “I need to call Fish for directions to his place.”

  “Use a pay phone—it’s safer. I’ll have to disable the cell— otherwise they may use it to track or bug us.” He put out one hand for my phone and picked up his soda with the other, draining it in three big gulps.

  I handed him the phone, which he looked over and put on the table.

  “Remove the battery, will you?” he asked, rummaging in his coat.

  As I pried the battery out, Quinton pulled a big folding knife from his pocket. I started to snatch my phone back, but he stabbed the side of the soda can near the upper crimp and cut the top off. Then he wiped the remaining soda out of the can with a napkin and dropped my phone in before squeezing the can into a flatter shape and folding the ragged edges down, making a sort of tight metallic envelope. He handed me the phone and the battery, and the tiny spark that seemed to pass between us when his fingers brushed mine had nothing to do with the phone. “Hold on to these, but keep them apart and don’t put them back together until we’re back in Seattle—unless you have to. I want to check the Rover before we go. Call Fish and I’ll meet you at the parking garage.”

  Quinton folded the paper over his remaining half sandwich and stuffed it into one pocket of his coat and the knife into another pocket. Then he left through the door he’d come in by. I figured that Laguire was probably still waiting for me at the Cherry Street door, if she was watching, so I used a pay phone across the street to call Fish, buying Quinton time to get to my truck unseen—I hoped—while I got the directions.

  Quinton was lurking in a dark corner of the garage and slipped into the Rover’s backseat when I unlocked it. He gave me a thin smile. “No sign of spooks or bugs.”

  We picked up Fish and headed for the Tulalip reservation west of Marysville. Fish told us about his grandmother as I drove and Quinton sat in the back, scowling at his own thoughts.

  “We’re going to see Ella Graham. Now, she’s not actually my grandmother,” Fish explained. “We call her Grandma as a term of respect because she’s old and wise—and kind of scary. I’m not sure how old she actually is, but my mom says she’s about a hundred and I wouldn’t be surprised if that were true. She’s also . . . crotchety, I guess is the word, so you have to cater to her a little. Pretty
old-school. If she had her way, she’d live in a long house with her whole family and smoke salmon over the fire. But she knows all the stories and legends and she’s got a good memory for stuff she saw or heard when she was younger. She said she’d talk to you, but she wanted a gift.” He held up the large gold-wrapped box he’d had on his lap all this time. “My mom tipped me she’s a sucker for chocolate, so I got some Fran’s.”

  “Give me the receipt and I’ll reimburse you,” I said.

  Fish chuckled. “Heck no. I want to see how she eats them— they’re caramels. We’ll have to stop at the casino and get some cigars for her, if you want her really happy.”

  “Cigars? You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. She doesn’t smoke ’em. She just likes to smell ’em burning—says they smell like the old days. If we get lucky, Russell will have some Cubans he got from his cousin in Whistler and let us have one or two.”

  I shook my head. “Cuban cigars and handmade chocolates. Not exactly the combo one expects to bring when visiting elderly ladies.”

  “Not just any old lady—Grandma Ella. It won’t seem so strange when you meet her.”

  I shrugged. “If you say so. Who’s Russell?”

  “Russell Willet. He’s a buddy of mine from, hm . . . preschool, I guess. We ate mud together. He decided to work for the tribe. He’s a good manager, but he gets bored when things go well for too long, so he keeps changing jobs. At the moment, he’s working in the casino, but he’s always got contacts in everything.”

  “Willet, Graham . . . I know one of the bigwigs in the tribal council is named McCoy. How come you ended up with the stereotyped name?”

  “That’s my mom for you,” Fish replied, shrugging. “I think she was mad at me for giving her so much trouble in the womb. She didn’t even give me a name for three years—some Indians wait to name their kids until they do something of merit or ‘find’ a name themselves. It’s not a very common practice, but it’s still around. Mom just called me ‘dirty boy’ for a while—’cause I was really good at getting filthy and tracking it all over everything. My original birth certificate just says ‘boy, Williams.’”