by Gregg Loomis
Mama stood, handing him a plain white envelope. “Here’s your contact.”
Jason opened it, annoyed but not surprised to see what he took to be a single name and a phone number.
“Password is fife,” Mama added.
“Fife, as in Barney?”
“As in fife and drum. Drum’s the countersign.”
“Don’t these guys know we’re on their side? Or at least they’re paying us a hell of a lot of money to be.” Jason held up the envelope. “Tell me this isn’t going to burn a hole in my new suit when it self-destructs.”
Mama grinned, one gold incisor sporting a diamond. “This isn’t Mission Impossible, you know.”
Jason nodded. “Yeah, I know. Question is, does the CIA? I wouldn’t be surprised which bathroom is the men’s and which is the women’s is classified over there.”
Mamma chuckled, her massive bosom quivering enough to shake the desk. “That might lead to interesting results.” She swallowed, serious again. “You need anything, call.”
Jason had been dismissed.
He was reaching for the door when she said, “Jason, I almost forgot.”
He turned to see her holding out what looked like an ordinary BlackBerry, the combination cell phone and computer that had become the badge of anyone who wanted to be considered important.
“Thanks, but I have one.”
She motioned him back with the hand holding the BlackBerry. “Not like this you don’t. It’s straight from the Third Directorate.”
The CIA was divided into four compartmentalized divisions: Operations, or Ops, included the actual spycraft, cloak-and-dagger activities. Intelligence consisted of the satellite-picture-searching, communications-monitoring computer nerds. Supply, the Third Directorate, functioned somewhat like Q of James Bond fame. They had actually developed a gas-spraying fountain pen, a belt-buckle camera, and a poison-laden hyperdermic needle concealed in an umbrella. With the demise of the Soviet Union, the need for these “toys” had diminished to the point that Jason had had to search his memory to recall exactly what Supply did. The Fourth Directorate, Administration, included the bean counters, the cost analysts, procurers of equipment and the like.
Jason looked at the BlackBerry with renewed interest. “And it does what?”
“Functions just like an ordinary BlackBerry.” Mama opened her other hand, revealing what appeared to be a newly minted quarter. “When you squeeze this, though, it goes bump in the night.”
Jason took both, examining them closely. “How much ‘bump’?”
“Enough that you don’t want to be holding it.”
Jason slid them both into a pocket. “I’ll try to remember that.”
“And keep the two in separate pockets or you’ll be singing soprano the rest of your life.”
“I’ll definitely remember that.”
As he passed through the lobby, he waved to Kim. She ignored him.
In the garage he sat in the car a moment, planning his course of action.
He remembered his first job for Narcom, Inc.
After 9/11, after Laurin had… disappeared, the days and weeks had blended into a haze of equal grief and impotent fury. He was part of the most elite small-engagement organization in the world, Delta Force. He had dropped into inky darkness to places so deserted, so void of life that even the appearance of a scorpion had provided relief. He had slipped across borders into jungles that stank of decay, where boots rotted away in a week and both animals and plants were equally likely to be poisonous.
But no place had been as near to hell as the empty house on P Street in Georgetown, the home he and Laurin had shared. No encounter was as bad as being able to do nothing other than accept that she had been taken from him and there was nothing he could do about it. Getting even was out of the question; no life would equal hers. Still, he would gladly give years of his for just a chance at those responsible for her death.
Then Mama had called.
At first he had thought some prankster was playing a cruel joke. Then he remembered she was calling on a secure line, a phone that not only was unlisted but did not exist as far as any phone company knew.
It was as if she were intentionally playing Mephistopheles to his Faust.
The soft woman’s voice named the members of his last squad and the code name of their mission, information so classified that less than a dozen people knew it. Would he be willing to take a high-paying job that desperately needed doing but carried far too much risk for politicians, a job ignoring national boundaries to stamp out international terrorist organizations, those who were perfectly willing to kill the innocent to impose their politics or religion on others?
Did a bear shit in the woods?
Did he have qualms about killing extremists, no matter their sex or nationality?
Did a shark ask questions before it fed?
A week later, Jason handed in his resignation from the army and Delta Force amid the sounds of debris removal at the Pentagon. That night he was on a plane for Munich, from where he would travel to a small town just across the Austrian border to a place the leaders of three European cells of Hamas were meeting.
Two days later he was on his way home, his rage at his loss partially slaked and his newly opened Swiss account over half a million dollars fatter.
It took the Austrian officials over a week to conclude that they would never find all the body parts.
Narcom had given Jason two things: wealth and revenge. There might be enough of the former in the world, but never the latter.
So much for Memory Lane. He had a new job to do.
Chapter Ten
Hilton Hotel K Street, Washington
That evening
Dressed in a new sweater and slacks as well as a warm and moth-free coat, Jason had cruised the Kalorama District, an area of restored mansions bordering Dupont Circle known locally as Embassy Row. Despite a number of sudden and unsignaled turns that brought the blasts of angry horns, he was still not sure he was not being followed. There was simply too much traffic to be certain.
Checking his watch for the third time in as many minutes, he was aware he was likely to be late for a rendezvous Jason considered useless at best. In typical CIA fashion, the phone number Mama had given him was answered only by the countersign, a time, and the bar of this Hilton as a meeting place. Simple courier delivery of the material Jason wanted would have served. The organization frequently reminded Jason of a group of kids playing at being spies, secrecy and stealth their own rewards. That love of the cloak-and-dagger mystique meant that if Jason were late, he’d miss his contact and have to go through the elaborate process of setting up another clandestine meeting.
He pulled to the curb in front of one the embassies, this one flying a flag he didn’t recognize. As expected, a D.C. cop cruiser was behind him in less than a minute. In a world where alliances shifted like sands in a windstorm, the municipal government of the District made every effort to ensure that international antagonisms took only verbal form in its jurisdiction.
One cop stood just outside the driver’s window of Jason’s rental car. Another was checking the license plate.
The one beside the car made a motion to roll down the window. “You got a problem, mister?”
Jason shrugged. “Lost, I’m afraid. Can you direct me to the Hilton?”
The policeman shook his head in disgust. “Take a look to your left. And remember, visitor to the city or not, we enforce the no-stopping signs in front of these embassies.”
During the brief encounter, Jason had seen no other vehicle stop to observe. It was the best he was going to do.
He was reluctant to hand over the rental car to the hotel’s valet. Not having the keys in his possession eliminated one means of escape if something went wrong. That made him nervous.
Get a grip, he told himself. What could possibly go wrong with a simple delivery of papers, material Jason had requested?
But then, he knew Murphy had been an opti
mist.
His overcoat slung over his arm, he followed the sound of a piano mingled with voices. Just before the bank of elevators, he found a large, crowded room with an oak bar at one end. The sole entrance was clogged with customers coming and going. Tables surrounded by upholstered captain’s chairs shared the rest of the space with a baby grand and banquettes against the wall opposite the piano. Jason skimmed the room with a glance. Drum, the voice on the phone, had given no clue as to how he might be identified.
Groups formed and re-formed like swarms of bees; no one seemed to be accompanied by anyone else. It was only after noting that there were roughly equal numbers of men and women that Jason realized it was Friday evening and he was witnessing that uniquely American mating rite, a singles bar. Had he given it any thought at all during the last several years, he would have guessed AIDS, herpes, and other unpleasant possibilities had culled the herd of unmarrieds seeking companionship, if not a relationship, in a saloon. Had he been asked, he would have assumed the ritual had joined the tea dance and church social on society’s ash heap.
Jason grinned at snatches of conversation he could not help but overhear, words and phrases he had heard during his bachelorhood fifteen years ago: No woman ever came to such places except tonight, when she had simply agreed to accompany a friend. No man was driving anything less than a Porsche.
He smiled again, this time returning one from a shapely woman, her face surrounded by pageboy curls. It was too dark to distinguish all her features, but it would have been hard to miss the flat stomach that peered with a single eye over pants glued to her pelvic bone, or cleavage that threatened to spill out of a blouse utilizing less than half its buttons.
Undressed to kill.
Her interest looked a lot more personal than Kim’s had been. She started in his direction, and for an instant Jason wished he were not here oil business.
“Fife?” The voice came from behind him.
Jason reluctantly turned his head to see a man who, at least in the bar’s dim light, looked no older than a college sophomore. More and more people seemed younger and younger, a sure sign Jason was experiencing what the advertisements euphemistically described as the maturing process.
Mature or not, he gave the low-riders another look. She was already talking to someone else.
“I have a room upstairs,” the stranger announced.
Wordlessly, Jason followed him out of the bar and onto an elevator. The bright light confirmed Jason’s impression that the guy was young. The heavy horn-rimmed glasses and dark suit did more to make him look out of place than older.
Still without speaking, the two men got off and trudged down a hall, stopping in front of one of a series of doors while the young man inserted his plastic key. Other than an overcoat draped across one of the beds and a briefcase on a table, there was no sign the room had been occupied.
“Wouldn’t it have been easier to simply courier over the reports?” Jason bantered, throwing his coat beside the other and taking a seat in one of the two chairs. “You could have saved a pair of code names and the time you took to study my picture.”
The other man sat in the remaining chair across a small table, produced a key, and unlocked the briefcase. He handed Jason a form for his signature. “I assume you know the rules: classified documents are not entrusted to persons without appropriate clearances, and all copies have to be signed for.”
The agency employment profile did not require a sense of humor.
Jason took a thin manila folder and quickly skimmed it. “This is the complete report of the incidents in the Bering Sea and Georgia?”
The young man was already relocking the empty brief, case. “It was what I was given.”
“And if I have further questions about something?”
The agent’s face betrayed confusion. “No one told me. My instructions were to deliver that file and have you sign for it.”
Originality of thought was not a requisite, either.
Jason stood, stuffing the file under his belt at the small of his back and pulling his sweater down over it. “It’s been a real pleasure to meet someone as charming and witty as you. I don’t know what I would do without all your help. You want to leave first?”
Clandestine meetings broke up one at a time because single departures did not advertise the fact that there had, in fact, been a meeting.
The still-unnamed agent also stood, scooping a coat from the bed. “I’ll leave first. Give me five minutes.”
Then he was gone.
It was only when Jason picked up the remaining coat that he saw the young man had taken the wrong one. Instead of the tartan design of the Burberry’s lining, there was dark faux fur. The remaining raincoat also lacked the belt that gave Jason’s garment its distinctive shape.
The guy had been in too big a hurry to get away to notice.
Shit.
Snatching up the coat, Jason rushed for the door.
Screw procedure. Jason wanted to retrieve his coat without having to drive all the way to Langley.
The hall was empty, and the elevator seemed to take forever.
As the doors sighed open, the vestibule containing the elevators was packed with a seething, shouting crowd, most of whom looked like they had come from the bar. A woman screamed; several men shouted.
Jason edged his way toward the hotel’s exit, turning to a young woman. “What’s happening?”
“Someone’s been shot,” the man next to her said. “Shot right here.”
The pulsating wails of police sirens were becoming increasingly audible above the crowd as Jason worked his way through the lobby. Near the revolving door that led onto the arrival porte cochere, the crowd had formed a rough circle.
Jason felt as though he had stepped into a blast of arctic air as he peered over the heads of the people in front. He was looking at a man sprawled on the floor, a dark pool seeping into light carpet.
The man was wearing an overcoat.
Jason’s overcoat.
Chapter Eleven
Hay-Adams Hotel
16th and H Streets, Washington
An hour later
Jason had made no effort to retrieve his rental car. Instead, he had again fought the crowds in the hotel lobby until he found his way to a side exit. Forcing himself to move at a normal, non-attention-getting pace, he took an irregular course for several blocks until he found an overhanging awning that afforded deep shadows.
For a full five minutes he waited, watching the way he had come, before crossing the street to a Metro station. He really didn’t care where the train was headed. He simply wanted to put maximum distance between him and the overcoat-shrouded body in the hotel lobby.
The bullet that had killed the young man from the agency had been meant for him. They could simply have traced his credit card, one issued by Narcom in the same name as his alternative passport, the same one used to rent the boat, the same boat with the key in Paco’s pocket. It would have led them straight to the hotel in Crystal
City. Then all they had to do was follow him embedded in the mass of Washington traffic, almost impossible to spot.
At some point, Jason exited the Metro and took a cab to the venerable old hotel across Lafayette Park from the White House. The woman at the desk was unable to conceal her surprise when he paid for the room in cash. It would draw unwanted attention, but the credit card would attract notice even less desirable.
One of the reasons Jason had selected this particular hotel was its dining room. The fare was good, but the location better. Seated at any one of several candlelit tables on the floor below the lobby, he had a clear view of anyone descending the well-lit stairs or exiting the elevators under overhead illumination. His first thought was to have a cup of coffee and tarry thirty minutes or so, observing. After only ten, the siren aroma of a passing dish reminded him he had not eaten in a long time. He asked for a menu.
His room was furnished with reproductions of lateeighteenth-century American pieces,
a period reminiscent of the building’s origins. The cabinet containing the TV and minibar was a highboy with brass pulls. The bed had both steps and canopy. Just to make sure, he checked the bathroom, satisfied the faux antiques did not include these facilities. Sitting in a Martha Washington chair at a Federalist desk, Jason began to read the report he had been given.
There were a number of items that had not been included in the briefer document Mama had given him, and one very interesting addition.
When he finished, he reread it, puzzled, before taking the BlackBerry-like device Mama had given him out of his pocket. The resemblance ended largely with the physical case. Although the gadget could receive and send voice and text messages, it could do so in nanosecond garbled bursts that both defied decoding without appropriate equipment and sent false satellite coordinates that would foil the most sophisticated GPS. In short, communications were secure both as to location and content.
He punched a button on the back that activated the special features and then a series of numbers, beginning with the 202 D.C. area code, well aware that the actual phone he was calling might be on the other side of the world.
Jason waited. There was no sound of ringing in the conventional sense. He was calling his agency contact whom he used when he needed information on anything. Anything included pertinent weather updates in any part of the world, scientific data, or impeding coups or assassinations.
The latter two, Jason mused, had been on a decline in inverse proportion to increasing congressional inquiry. Gone were the halcyon days when a people’s revolution conveniently removed a leftist-leaning dictator of some banana republic, or a rival clansman used a single bullet to end the anti-Western ravings of some sheikh or mullah.
The more moral American foreign policy, the more chaotic the world became.
There was no salutation, no mention of a name, simply a “Begin.”
Jason was used to the abruptness. In fact, he had long suspected he was speaking to a voice mechanically generated to make electronic identification impossible should the conversation somehow be recorded. Machine or person, he had no idea with whom he was speaking, only that the voice was always the same.