by John Lutz
His arms were pumping freely. He’d put away or discarded the machine pistol. Sunlight glistened on his black hair. He’d taken off the balaclava, too.
They were now running through a parking lot, weaving among people burdened with bags or pushing carts. A car backed out right in front of the man but it didn’t faze him. He threw out his arms, planted both hands on the trunk lid, and vaulted over the car, effortlessly regaining his footing as he landed.
The Beretta in its holster slapped Laker’s ribs with every stride. His vision was good enough to aim now, but there were too many people around to risk a shot. He realized they were approaching Eastern Market.
In front of the old brick market hall, the row of white pavilions where farmers put out their produce was thronged with lunchtime shoppers. The man slowed to a jog, picking his way among them. One hand and then the other slid up inside the back of his flak vest, came out holding things. Laker couldn’t make out what they were. The man put the thing in his right hand on his head. It was a baseball cap. Then he went in the entrance to the market hall.
Laker followed. The man had disappeared. The aisles between display cases of cheese and meats and beds of ice on which lay staring fish were packed with people, and half of them were wearing baseball caps. Laker had three aisles to choose from. He guessed straight ahead, moving among the people with the overhand motions of a swimmer, muttering apologies, scanning the crowd ahead.
After a few moments he stopped, realizing it was futile. The thing in the killer’s other hand must have been a jacket he could put over the flak vest. Laker didn’t know what color it was. Even if he saw the man, he wouldn’t recognize him.
He turned and made his way slowly to the entrance, getting his breath back.
His vision was normal except for an occasional flicker, and he was no deafer than usual.
He took out his phone and put it to his good right ear.
Joanie came on the line. “Laker?”
“I lost him. Eastern Market, just a minute ago.” He gave her a description, pitifully inadequate, to pass on to the police.
She said, “Better come back, Tom. DC cops are here. And the Bureau. They have two dead.”
“Bartel and the boss?”
“Just left in the ambo. Both still breathing. That’s all the medics would say.”
Thank God for that, anyway, Laker thought. “On my way,” he said.
Stepping into the sunlight, he spotted a cab parked in the market’s forecourt and beckoned. As it maneuvered toward him he glanced at his phone again. He had a text. It was from Ava. She said she’d figured out what her grandmother had given her, and was on her way to her apartment to retrieve it.
The cab pulled up beside him and Laker got in. He gave the driver, a turbaned and bearded Sikh, the address of the Outfit’s headquarters. As he sank back in the seat and the cab pulled away, he tried to assess the damage.
The journal was in enemy hands. Whoever the enemy was. Dates in 1941, addresses in Honolulu, the mutterings of a sleeping Japanese diplomat. Would it mean any more to the enemy than it had to them?
Laker sat bolt upright as the realization hit him. The killer was probably going through the journal now. The blank page Ava had rubbed graphite on would leap out at him. Tillie’s message might not mean anything to him, but it would tell him that Ava was the key.
She was now at home. The first place he would look for her.
Laker slid forward on the seat. “Take me to 1108 New Hampshire Avenue.”
The Sikh half-turned with a doubtful expression.
“It’s just off Dupont Circle. As fast as you can get there,” Laker said, touching Ava’s number on his phone’s keypad.
21
Ava heard the incoming-call tune from the phone in her pants pocket, but let it go to voice mail. This was a delicate moment.
She was approaching her home on foot. It was an old ten-story apartment building of tan brick with a maroon canopy at the entrance. The curb was solidly lined with parked cars, and right in front of her building was a white Chevrolet Impala, straight from the NSA pool. There were two motionless figures in the front seats. Waiting to take her back to Fort Meade for debriefing.
As usual she was wearing a hat with a wide floppy brim to protect her delicate skin. It also hid her red hair. With luck they hadn’t noticed her yet.
Putting her head down, she walked quickly, but not too quickly, up the side path and along her building to the back. There was a parking lot surrounded by a high fence. Taking out her keys, she unlocked the gate and went through, then climbed the fire escape stairs to her floor, the sixth, arriving breathless. She went through the back door into the kitchen, turned left into the second bedroom she used as an office. There was a tall gray government surplus filing cabinet. She slid open the top drawer where she kept Tillie’s papers and fingered through the tabbed folders.
She’d followed routine when she got back from Tillie’s on June 2. Right where it should be was the latest living will, still in its manila envelope. She really ought to get out of here, but she couldn’t resist opening the flap and pulling out the papers.
And there was her grandmother’s personal message. Between the first and second pages, one sheet of paper, densely covered with print. The letters were a bit blurry and some were heavier than others. It had been typed on the old manual typewriter Tillie’d kept in her study at the Chevy Chase house. Before the arthritis worsened, she’d been an excellent typist. Priding herself on her speed and accuracy, she said she didn’t need an electric typewriter, let alone a word processor. The letters formed meaningless groups rather than words. Ava had no difficulty recognizing a basic substitution code, the sort that could be used even by a bright middle-school kid. Once she found the key text, she would be able to decode it in a couple of hours.
A sound was nibbling away at a corner of her mind. Now she identified it. Someone was jiggling the doorknob of her back door. She jumped up and ran into the kitchen. The doorknob was turning back and forth. Clicks and rattles indicated somebody was trying to pick the lock.
Ava backed away. The watchers in the car must have been more alert than she’d hoped. They’d seen her go by and followed her up. She wondered how they’d gotten through the parking-lot gate. Well, she didn’t want to talk to them. Folding the sheet of code, she trotted through the living room and out her front door. She locked it behind her and pressed the elevator call button.
The elevator must have been original equipment with the 1920s building and seemed to take forever when you were in a hurry. The click of a lock made her look over her shoulder. The knob of her door was turning.
The NSA guys had picked the lock of her back door, failed to find her inside, and now were coming after her. If they were the NSA guys.
She wasn’t going to wait around to find out. Throwing open the heavy fire door she started down the stairs. Her rapid footfalls echoed in the dim concrete stairwell. She could hear other footfalls, too.
She came out in the small lobby, wishing her building had a doorman. But there was nobody, just an empty room with a tile floor and the tenants’ mailboxes inset in the wall. She opened the door and started down the front walk. The NSA guys were still sitting in their Chevrolet parked at the curb, just as before, heads back against the headrests as if they were napping. But they’d be armed. They’d protect her from her pursuer.
She ran toward the car, waving. They didn’t look her way. She shouted for help. Still no response.
She pulled open the door. The man in the passenger seat flopped over. From the motion of his head she could tell that his neck was broken. She looked at the man in the driver’s seat: eyes shut, mouth hanging open. He was dead, too.
She cried out and backed away, scanning the sidewalks for somebody—a dog walker, a jogger—but no one was nearby. The door of her building opened. Relieved, she saw that it was one of her neighbors. She didn’t actually recognize the face, but it was a paunchy man in a dark suit, with gray hair
and sunglasses. He was talking on his phone and paying no attention to his surroundings. Just another civil servant, come home from the office to let a repairman in or something.
She actually took a step toward him before she realized that this might be her pursuer. The killer of the men in the car.
She started running toward Dupont Circle. The man dropped his phone and started after her. She dug into her pants pocket, pulled out her own iPhone, shouted at it, “Call Laker!”
“Sorry, I didn’t get that,” it replied.
She turned it so the microphone was next to her mouth, enunciated, “Call Laker.”
A few steps later the line opened. “Someone’s after you,” Laker said.
No time to ask how he knew. “He’s chasing me down New Hampshire.”
“You’re headed for the Circle?”
Someone was shouting in the background on his end and it was hard to hear him. “Almost there.”
“I see you. Ava, you can’t stop, he’s too close. Run into the street.”
“Into traffic?”
“Don’t look at the cars. Run a straight line, no stops or turns, and they’ll avoid you. Ava, do it!”
Cars were whirling around the multilane roundabout. Oh God. She leapt off the curb and kept going. Looked straight ahead at the trees in the center of the circle. Heard horns sounding and brakes screeching. A car skidded sideways past her. A pickup truck rammed it in the side. She could see the driver pitch forward into a blooming airbag. Behind her people were shouting and cursing.
Laker had a good view from a hundred feet away. His cab was pulled to the curb and stopped and he was standing on the hood. The Sikh was out of the car, yelling and gesticulating at him. Laker wasn’t paying attention. Ava was halfway across the street. Cars were screeching and plunging to a stop all around her. Everybody was staring at her, which was what Laker’d had in mind.
But her pursuer wasn’t giving up. A gray-headed man in a black suit, he was dodging and weaving among the cars. He looked middle-aged but moved like a young man. He was closing the distance to Ava. Laker reached for the Beretta, but he didn’t have a clear shot.
He jumped down from the hood and started running. Ava had reached the green island in the middle of Dupont Circle. She didn’t slow down or look back, just kept running through the trees. Good girl! Laker thought. Pedestrians were standing at the curb, some turning to stare after her, others gaping at the onrushing pursuer. Even that didn’t make him shy away. He ran through the cluster of people, closing in on Ava.
Laker reached the curb just as she neared the large fountain in the middle of the island. She turned to skirt it but the pursuer was too close. He swung at her head and knocked her to the ground. People sitting on the wall of the fountain were standing up, crying out, pulling their phones from their pockets, but they kept their distance. Nobody wanted to be a hero.
Which was fine with Laker. He had a clear shot.
He drew the Beretta, thumbed off the safe, dropped into a shooting crouch with both arms out. The bead of the sight was wavering. He was breathing too hard. He fired once.
And missed. The bullet kicked up a jet of water in the fountain to the pursuer’s left. He spun around so fast that his sunglasses flew off. He hadn’t been aware of Laker until now. He bent and scooped Ava up. Her head lolled—she was unconscious. The man handled her as if she were weightless, making a shield of her. Laker charged him. At the last moment he thrust her toward Laker, who had to drop the gun as he caught her. He laid her down and turned. The pursuer was running around the fountain. Not fast enough.
Laker took two bounds and tackled him.
They went down in a heap. The pursuer scrambled to his feet, a split second faster than Laker. He pivoted and high-kicked at Laker’s head. Laker ducked just in time.
As the pursuer recovered, Laker closed in and threw his right fist. The man managed to get an arm up to block it. He was fast. Now his own hand was coming up in a blur of motion, palm up, aimed at the underside of Laker’s chin. Laker pulled back so he missed by a fraction of an inch. If he’d made contact the blow would have broken Laker’s neck.
They were face-to-face. The pursuer had blue eyes. He was the same man Laker’d lost at Eastern Market. His left fist leapt at Laker’s face. Dropping into a crouch so the blow went over his head, Laker punched low. His fist landed solidly in the man’s sternum and should have knocked out his breath and left him helpless, but the man only grunted, fell back a step, and recovered his balance. Laker closed in.
This time Laker didn’t see the blow coming. Only felt it, a bomb exploding inside his head. He sat down hard on the concrete. It would be a kick next. He tried to get his arms up to protect his head.
But the fight was over. The pursuer had turned his back and was running away. Laker realized he could hear sirens. He turned to see a D.C. patrol car with light-bars flashing pull over to the curb. He got up, tasting blood. Wiping his chin he staggered toward Ava. She was conscious, sitting upright, bracing herself with both arms.
A crowd of tourists surrounded them at a safe distance. Everybody seemed to have a phone out. Some were making superfluous 911 calls. Others were taking pictures of Laker. Two cops were running toward him, guns drawn. He slowly raised both arms.
It would be damned annoying to get shot now.
22
The nurses told Laker that Sam Mason was a difficult patient. Which didn’t surprise him. Once Mason came to after surgery, he’d refused further painkillers. They told him he wouldn’t be able to stand it, but he wanted his mind clear to deal with phone calls. So far, he’d stood it.
Laker’s turn to report came an hour before dawn. He’d been in meetings all night. He entered Mason’s room to find him sitting up in bed, talking on the phone. The left side of his face was covered in bandages. The surgeon had told Laker that the blow had caved in his cheekbone and eye socket. More surgeries would be needed. He might never recover the sight in that eye.
Laker felt his hands curl into fists. He didn’t like it, that the enemy had been able to break into the Outfit’s headquarters. To kill his friends and wound his chief. Didn’t like it at all.
Mason glanced at him as he put the receiver down. Read his face. “Don’t get mad, Laker. How many times have I told you, anger’s worse than useless in this business. Breeds mistakes.”
Laker sat in the chair by the bedside. Unclenched his fists and rested his open hands on his thighs.
“How’s Brad Bartel?” Mason asked.
“Stable. But it’ll be a long time till he’s able to walk again.”
“Any idea who we’re up against yet?”
“Lot of theories. Few facts.”
“These were highly trained, deeply committed operatives. They had to be from the intelligence service of a hostile nation. Or a stable, well-funded terrorist organization.”
“I don’t think it’s ‘they.’”
“What?”
“I think that it’s the same man.”
“But the descriptions don’t match up. The guy you chased to Eastern Market was five-nine, one-sixty, black hair. The guy at Ava North’s place was six-one, two hundred, gray hair.”
“Yes. Only the blue eyes are the same. And even they can change.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“The Maryland cops brought in all the workmen at the North estate, the day Tillie was killed. Questioned them, ran background checks. Found nothing and released them. But they kept working on the backgrounds, and one ID has fallen through. The guy who was closest to the garage before it blew up. Name of Earl Richardson, except that there turns out to be no such person.”
Laker handed over the photo the Maryland police had taken of the man. Mason studied it.
“Bad teeth. Brown hair. Brown eyes.”
“Contact lenses.”
“You think this same guy killed Tillie North?”
“And followed us to Hawaii. Although Ava never saw the guy who was after her, so I’m goin
g on instinct.”
Mason returned the photo. “You saw his face yesterday.”
“I saw one of his faces.”
“But you think it’s the same guy?”
“Yes. At the meeting this evening, somebody came up with a name for him. The Shapeshifter.”
“So what are the implications? That he’s a lone wolf, working for no one?”
“It’s a possibility. But I don’t think so. I think you’re right. A terrorist group or an enemy service. Too early to say. But one thing seems clear to me. He has a better idea what this is all about than we do. How the journal fits in.”
“And now he’s got it. Shit. Anybody have any ideas why he went after Ava? He had the journal. Why was he still interested in her?”
“First thing the journal told him was how important she was.” Laker explained about the living will and Tillie’s coded message. “She says that as soon as she finds the key text, she can decode it.”
Mason’s one visible eye was watching Laker coldly, steadily. “I get the feeling you haven’t mentioned this last part to anybody else.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because the Outfit has been penetrated.”
Mason looked down. Took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “You’re right. Kills me to say so, but you’re right. This guy—the Shapeshifter—he knew when you were bringing the journal in. How to beat our security. He has a source in the Outfit. Whom we will have to find. And when we do I’ll rip the guts out of the son of a bitch.”
“Anger’s useless, remember?”
“Worse than useless.” Mason sank back into the pillows that supported him. “What are your plans?”
“I’m taking Ava and leaving town. Cutting all ties. Until we find and plug the leak, I’m going to stay out of touch.”
“So you’ll be on your own.” Mason smiled bleakly. “Just the way you like it.”