by Rachel Lee
“A loose cannon,” Arlen remarked.
“Yeah. Exactly. He’s crazy.”
“Do you think you can get him to tell you where Jessica is?”
Phil shrugged. “Maybe. Probably. Damn it, Arlen, you’ve got to believe me. I didn’t want to see her hurt.”
“You damn well better hope she hasn’t been,” Arlen said harshly. “I’m going to get Winkowski, at the very least, and maybe Dobrocek and Stratton, and at least one of them is going to tell me all about you, Phil. One of them will, but I’m betting on Winkowski. I’m willing to bet he’ll do anything to save his butt. Just like he’s doing right now.”
Harrigan slumped a little as he faced the truth of that. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Probably.”
Arlen passed a hand over his face. “Okay. Let’s get Caro Granger down here. We’re going to Mirandize you, Phil. You just keep in mind that Granger is the person you need to convince that you have some redeeming qualities. She’s the one who cuts the deals. Do you want an attorney?”
Phil heaved a deep, unsteady sigh. “What the hell for?” he asked wearily. “An attorney will only tell me not to say anything, and I already know that.”
“Get him an attorney,” Carolyn Granger said not five minutes later. “Mirandizing him isn’t enough to make it stick in court. He’s got to have counsel, or a smart defense attorney can weasel him out of this.”
Phil muttered an oath. “I doubt that,” he said acidly. “I’m a federal agent, for crying out loud. Who the hell is going to believe I didn’t know any better? Hell, I don’t believe it myself. Look, I’m not going to discuss anything I did without an attorney. I’m not going to admit to anything at all except that I know the number of Frank Winkowski’s radiophone.”
“You do?” Arlen sat up straighter.
Phil nodded.
Arlen’s expression was hard. “Why so suddenly cooperative, Phil?”
Phil spread his hands. This time Arlen couldn’t doubt his sincerity. “I’m worried he might get nervous enough to hurt the woman. Nobody was ever supposed to get hurt. I never guessed Frank was so unstable.”
For the next hour Phil tried to raise Frank Winkowski, without success. Arlen found it increasingly difficult to sit still, and he paced the circumference of his office almost ceaselessly, answering whatever questions came his way, ordering whatever needed to be ordered. Agents were searching Winkowski’s home and office yet again, interviewing neighbors and coworkers, seeking any clue to his whereabouts. Maddy Kazin produced the first unusual information about Winkowski—just two days before, he had paid in cash for a new car at a dealership along the interstate. The dealer was only just now getting around to reporting the cash purchase, as required by law.
“And that’s something,” said Lisa Gonzales. “Most dealers don’t even bother.”
Well, thought Arlen, now they knew Winkowski was driving a shiny red Accord with temporary tags. Obviously the guy hadn’t been planning to run two days ago. Big help. Real big help. If Jessica got out of this in one piece, he was going to…going to… Going to what? Turn his back on her and let her get on with a proper life, that was what. He wouldn’t take further advantage of her, that was what. She needed a husband and the next fifty or sixty years. That was what she needed, and he wouldn’t stand in her way. Just, dear God, please let her be all right.
And then Phil got through to Winkowski.
“Frank, it’s Phil.”
Phil’s voice brought Arlen pivoting around from the window.
“Look,” said Phil, “you haven’t hurt the woman, have you?”
Arlen held his breath, then released it as Phil looked up at him and shook his head. Two other agents were listening in on headsets, and Arlen was tempted to grab a pair from one of them. He held himself back, though, knowing he might get upset enough to give the game away. So much for his iron control. It had been a joke, evidently, ever since he met Jessie. Ever since he saw her virginal room and… He hoped heaven could forgive him, but he still wanted to see Jessie clad in nothing but her hair, lying on that satin comforter and waiting for him. Just for him. Smiling, holding out her arms, her long silky hair trailing across her shoulders and breasts.
“Frank,” Phil was saying, his tone one of soothing patience, the kind of tone a parent uses with an upset, recalcitrant child, “Frank, listen to me. I’ve got all the details about the trap that’s being set for you. Believe me, you’ll never get out of the airport unless you know what they’re planning.”
Phil listened for a minute, then interrupted. “I know, I know. But I’ve got a price for this, Frank. I’m not going to tell you what I know for nothing. You know I never do anything for nothing.”
Arlen could hear, actually hear, the whining of Winkowski’s voice on Phil’s handset.
“Just shut up and listen, Frank,” Phil said. “I can’t tell you over the phone, because somebody might hear me. I need to meet you…. Anyplace, damn it! Just tell me where.”
After another space, Phil nodded. “Got it. Okay…. My price? It’s cheap, Frank. I want to know where you’ve stashed the woman.”
Phil winced and pulled the receiver away from his ear. “Damn it, Frank, shut up! You’re sounding like a crazy man! You can tell me where she is after I tell you what the setup is and how to avoid it. Fine. But you will tell me.”
He paused. “Because I want to be the hero in this one, Frank. While you’re flying away to Moscow or wherever you’re planning to go, I want to be the one who saves the woman. That’s why. You get what you want, and I get to be a hero.”
Arlen hardly dared believe that Winkowski could fall for anything so transparent, but Harrigan evidently knew what he was doing. In a few more minutes a meeting had been set up.
“Two hours,” said Phil after he hung up. “The guy’s really cracked. With all the flat, open places he could have picked around here, he chose the hill country out toward Lago Vista. Plenty of cover.”
Arlen nodded. That made his job much easier, but it also shortened his time. Two hours. In two hours he was going to have the little crud in his grasp, and if Winkowski wouldn’t tell Phil where Jessie was, Arlen was prepared to use whatever means were necessary to get the information. To hell with careers and headlines and what the director thought. All that mattered was Jessie.
It was a day, Arlen thought, for barreling down backcountry roads on the Harley, roaring around the curves and over hills with the wind in his face. The sky had turned a pure, crystalline blue, the sun was warm and the air was dry. They just didn’t come much prettier.
But instead of roaring down roads to oblivion, he was crouching behind a boulder with the sun burning the back of his neck. Fire ants were everywhere, and while he had so far not been bitten, he didn’t expect that to last. The thought of rattlesnakes slithered across his mind, too. Probably too early in the spring for them, he told himself. But what did he know about such things? A trickle of sweat rolled down his back between his shoulder blades, and he shrugged to ease away the resultant itchiness. Something sharp poked into his right buttock, but he ignored it. Such discomforts were legion on a stakeout.
All the patience he had learned on past stakeouts was doing him little good on this one, though. Sure, he knew how to sit quietly for hours and ignore all the discomforts—within reason—but the emotional pressure this time was something else.
And where the devil was Winkowski?
They’d had very little time to set the stage for this one. By car it took nearly an hour to get here from town, and then they’d all had to find appropriate hiding places. As a precautionary measure there were two marksmen higher up, hidden in the rugged terrain with their high-powered rifles and sniper scopes. The narrow road leading in and out of here would be sealed the instant Winkowski arrived. Down below, leaning against his dusty caliche-colored Buick, Phil Harrigan waited.
Arlen doubted he was ever going to understand Harrigan. In his youth, Arlen had skirted the law a time or two. Why not admit it? He’d
been a hell-raiser at times, wanting to wring more out of life than it had given him. He’d felt bitter and alienated and all those other things that make people cross the street when they see you coming. But never, ever, in his wildest moments or wildest imaginings, would he have considered committing a crime of this type. Hell, wild or not, he had enlisted in the marines. Maybe he’d wanted some of the excitement that boys blindly and foolishly think is war, maybe he had wanted some of the glory and a lot more action than his tame little community could provide, but behind his decision was a blazing patriotism, a belief that no place in the world gave a man more opportunities, more chances, more freedoms. He felt he owed something to his country.
No, he would never understand what led a man to sell out his country this way. Nor would he ever understand how a man could compromise his personal honor and integrity in such a manner. He had never understood it in anyone, but it was far more comprehensible in some of the sleaze he had dealt with over the years than it could ever be in a man like Phil Harrigan—who was evidently a sleaze after all.
All the way out here Phil had been spilling his guts, as if his conscience had finally gone into overdrive and he wanted to appease it. His entire role in the espionage ring had been to warn Carl Stratton if the Feds picked up wind of the spying activities. In return for agreeing to do that, he’d received a monthly cash payment, free and clear, under the table.
Tax evasion, Arlen thought when he heard it. That would get him if nothing else did.
Carl Stratton had evidently been the kingpin of the operation. Phil had the names of everyone involved only because he had to be alert for them being mentioned at the Bureau offices or elsewhere. Otherwise, he probably wouldn’t have known about anyone other than Carl. As it was, he knew them all and was in contact with them all. All, that is, except Carl’s KGB contact.
Until Dobrocek had been introduced to Jessica Kilmer by Greg Leong, Phil hadn’t had even an inkling of the man’s identity. He had, of course, known that Carl must have such a contact, but not until then did he guess who it might be. He had, he said, tried to warn Carl that Jessica was acting as a double agent, had tried to prevent the contact from being made, but Carl had been out of town, and at that time only Carl had known Dobrocek’s identity. Phil’s inability to transmit his warning was the only reason Dobrocek had ever come into the picture. Even after Jessica was introduced to Dobrocek, Phil hadn’t been sure the Czech was connected with Stratton, not until Maddy Kazin had made her discoveries.
“What was Dave Barron’s role?” Arlen had asked him.
“About the same as mine. All he had to do was provide Carl with the safe combinations. And keep an eye on security, so he would catch trouble as soon as it started. Like it did with Kilmer.”
“Who killed him?”
“Winkowski.” Phil had passed a hand over his face and looked at the tape-recorder microphone Caro Granger held up beside his mouth. He and Caro had sat in the backseat, Arlen and Phil’s hastily summoned public defender in the front. The public defender had given up trying to silence Phil. Like the others, he now simply listened in fascination.
“Winkowski’s a problem,” Phil had said. “A big problem. From what I’ve been able to gather, Barron told him that Jessica was raising a big stink about that document, and that it wasn’t going to die a quiet death. He said he was going to report the theft to the FBI to make it look as if MTI were clean. Winkowski snapped, and I don’t think he’s unsnapped. I told him not to bother the woman. I told him nobody would ever guess he was involved. Damn, there wasn’t any connection except Carl, and Carl left the country—”
Phil had broken off, and Arlen’s hands had tightened on the wheel. “Damn it, Phil! When did he leave? He never even came back to his apartment after Maddy…” Arlen’s voice had trailed off. When he’d spoken again, his voice had held the sleet of an arctic blizzard. “You warned him we were onto him.”
“Hell, yes,” Phil had said. “Ever since this thing started going haywire, I’ve been worrying that somebody would start squealing. As far as I was concerned, it was all to the good if everybody skipped the country.”
Carl was already gone, having been seen by no one since Sunday night, the night Phil had called him and warned him that Maddy Kazin had connected him with Dobrocek.
Crouched behind his boulder now, Arlen considered one or two unsavory things he might like to do to Phil and Winkowski. Especially Winkowski. Especially the man who had terrified and kidnapped Jessica. God help him if he had hurt her in any way.
It had been Phil who had bugged Jessica’s phones, because he was concerned about the kind of information that Jessica might uncover and pass on to Arlen, and he didn’t want to be forced to rely on whatever Arlen chose to tell him about it. He had slipped over there that Saturday night after Arlen had told him that Jessica was going to be a double agent. He’d gone over in that small space of time after he left the Bureau office and before Arlen went over to Jessie’s to check on her.
The memory of that night hit Arlen like a punch to the stomach. Everyone automatically understood that a woman’s gift of her virginity was an emotionally charged one for the woman, but he wondered how many people understood that it could be just as emotionally charged for a man. He sure hadn’t guessed it himself. Lucy had come to him a virgin because that was the way things were done back then in the small towns of America, and because she really hadn’t had the time or experience to find out that it could be otherwise. Hell, he’d been a virgin himself, as most boys had been back then, despite locker-room talk. Their wedding night had in no way aroused in him the feelings Jessica had evoked with her freely given gift, a gift she had chosen not to give anyone until him.
She hadn’t asked for a ring or undying love or guarantees. She had simply given, freely. And he, whether he liked to think about it or not, had received that gift with an awe and wonder he felt to the very roots of his soul.
Static crackled in his ear, and he adjusted the earphone, seating it more firmly, then glanced down at the radio attached to his belt.
“Suspect is on his way,” said the voice of Colleen Mahaffey, who was stationed at the junction where this dirt road turned off from the farm-to-market road that was the only way to get here. “He’s driving slowly and looking every which way, so duck low. We’ll seal the road in three minutes.”
Automatically Arlen freed his weapon from its holster and checked it. The automatic was ready, of course. He’d checked the clip before leaving town, but he checked it again anyway. He was sure every other agent hidden in these rocks and sparse trees was doing precisely the same thing.
A slow toasting over hot coals? Or a skinning? Alive. Inch by inch. Such thoughts bounced around in his head as he watched Winkowski ease his shiny new car around potholes and the occasional large rock. Anything was too good for the scum. Levering himself up a little, he watched Winkowski climb out of the car and face Phil, who remained in a relaxed posture, leaning against the side of his Buick.
Phil was wearing a wire, and conversation began to burst into Arlen’s ear, full of static, mixed with the rustle of Phil’s clothing, but decipherable.
“Damn it, man,” Phil said, “I told you not to do this! You’ve got the Bureau hopping mad. They’re determined to have your skin.”
“I didn’t come out here to discuss how mad those guys are,” Winkowski said shortly. “You’re gonna tell me what they’ve got planned.”
“You tell me where the woman is first.” Phil held up a hand when Winkowski started to sputter. “Can it, Frank. I don’t trust you any farther than I can throw you. You’re cracked. You would have been home free if you’d just sat tight, but you didn’t have the sense to do that.”
“How the hell do I know I can trust you, Harrigan?”
“Simple. I want you out of the country because you can finger me. I don’t want you caught any more than you want to be caught. I want you safely away so I can be safe. But you’ve got this dangerous little bit of baggage ha
nging around your neck. Think of your future, Frank. We’ve got a lot of extradition treaties around the world. We can get you back from almost any country if you’re wanted for murder, but we can’t get you back from most of them if you’re wanted for espionage. So it seems to me you need to get the woman off your hands. And I figure since she’s gotta be rescued for your benefit, I might as well be the one to do it.”
Winkowski paced back and forth, and Arlen found himself holding his breath, wondering if Winkowski would buy the stuff about extradition treaties.
“I’m already wanted for murder,” Winkowski said, damning himself on tape. “They’ve got me on Barron.”
“Man, I told you, they don’t have any evidence on anyone for that! So he was murdered. It’s one thing to know somebody was murdered. It’s a whole other ball game to prove that one particular person did it. They’ve got nothing on no one for that.”
Winkowski hesitated. “You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!” Phil drew a breath of long-suffering patience, and even over the poor radio connection Arlen could hear him lowering his tone deliberately. “Look, Frank. It’s as much to my benefit as yours to get you the hell out of here. Do you think I want those guys questioning you?”
“Okay.” Winkowski’s capitulation came that quickly and without warning. “Jessica’s in the trunk of my car. I put drugs in her water so she wouldn’t make any trouble.”
That was when Arlen saw red, but he didn’t lose his self-control. He couldn’t. He couldn’t afford to. Instead, while Phil and Frank had their backs to him as they opened the trunk of Frank’s car and looked in at Jessica, he began to creep up behind them. Phil, acting like an agent, thank God, kept Frank’s attention on the trunk.
“What the hell did you drug her with?” Phil asked. “Are you sure she didn’t get too much?”