by Tom Clancy
As she picked up the larger of the now mostly empty capsule segments to reload the powder, she noticed an odd strip of coloration on one end, just inside the edge. Hmm. What was that?
She held the cap under the scope, couldn’t quite make it out. It looked almost like some kind of pattern. Well, we’ll see about that. She put the cap down, removed the auxiliary lens, and brought the scope’s magnification to 10X. Let’s have another look, shall we?
Jesus! What was that? She fiddled with the light, turned the cap this way, then that, and got the shadows just right so she could make it out.
Etched into the material of the cap were tiny words. “Hi, Feebs! Want to find me? Ask Frankie and Annette’s grandkids, they know where! Sincerely Yours, Thor.”
Hello!
She reached for the phone on the end of the bench. She had to get Alex. He was going to want to hear about this.
Newport Beach, California
The restaurant, Claudia’s Grill, was half a block off the highway and slightly up the hill, so it had a nice view of the water. Drayne pulled his Mercedes into the parking lot, gave the key to the attendant and got a parking stub, then went inside. It was three minutes to seven, and the place was pretty full. They served a good breakfast here, and it was a great location.
His father sat alone in a booth, staring out through a wall of glass at the Pacific, the waters already changing from gray to blue as the sun began to burn off the morning fog.
“Hello, Dad.”
“Robert.”
Drayne slid into the booth. “What’s up?”
“Let’s order first.”
The waitress came by. Drayne ordered poached eggs, chicken apple sausage, and whole-grain pancakes. His father asked for white toast, corn flakes, and decaf coffee.
When she was gone to put their order in, his father cleared his throat. He said, “I’m glad your mother isn’t alive to see what you’ve become.”
Drayne stared at him as if his father had just sprouted fangs and fur and might start baying like a werewolf. “What?”
“How stupid do you think I am, Robert? Did it never occur to you that thirty years with the Bureau might have taught me something?”
“What are you talking about?”
“PolyChem Products,” his father said.
Drayne felt his belly spasm, as if he had just gone over the big drop on a roller coaster. “What about it?”
His father looked disgusted. “There is no ‘it.’ It’s a paper corporation, a phantom. The bank records, the history, none of it is any deeper than a postage stamp. You thought I might look at it, but not too closely, didn’t you? You are PolyChem Products.”
Drayne couldn’t think of anything to say. He was cold, as if he had suddenly found himself shoved headfirst into a refrigerator. He’d never expected this.
The old man looked away from him, out at the ocean again. He said, “I have friends, boy, people who owe me favors. I know where you live, and I know you live well, but I also know that you don’t have any visible way of earning money. So that means you are into something illegal or immoral. Probably both. From the way you talked about admiring that criminal who assaulted the agents and staff at HQ recently, I surmise it probably has something to do with drugs.”
“Dad—”
His old man turned back to face him, held up his hand to silence him, and in that moment, he was Special Agent in Charge Rickover Drayne of old, steely-eyed and fierce, one of the most stalwart protectors of the republic. “Don’t say anything. I don’t want to hear about it, I don’t want to know about it. You’re an adult; you can make your own choices. I expected better of you, that’s all.”
Drayne lost it: “You expected me to turn into a fucking robot without feelings who would grow up to be just like you.” He was amazed at the sudden venom in his voice. “You wanted a carbon copy of yourself to send forth, a grown-up Boy Scout who was trustworthy, loyal, friendly, obedient, who would cog his way into the system and stay there smiling until he wore out, just like you. You never once asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up or cared what I thought about anything.”
The old man blinked at him. “I wanted the best for you—”
“Your best! What you thought I should be! Face it, Dad, you were always too busy saving the country from the forces of evil to give a shit what I did, as long as I kept my grades up, my room clean, and I didn’t bother you.”
“Robert—”
“Jesus fucking Christ, listen to yourself! Everybody in the world calls me Bobby except for you! I asked you to do that a hundred times! You didn’t listen. You never listened.”
Nobody said anything for a long time. Finally, Drayne said, “So, what are you going to do? Give my name to your friends who owe you favors? Have them investigate me?”
The old man shook his head. “No.”
“No? Why? Because I’m your son and you love me? Or because you wouldn’t want your old FBI chums to know your son was anything less than the soul of respectability?”
The old man was spared whatever answer he might have made as the waitress returned with their breakfast. Drayne had never felt less like eating in his life, but both he and the old man smiled at her.
When she was gone, the old man said, “You can think whatever you want. You… You’re a brilliant man, son. Smarter than I ever was. I always knew that. You could have gone into legitimate business and made a fortune. You could have been somebody important.”
“What makes you think I can’t do that now?”
“Oh, you could. I don’t think you want to. You were always more interested in pulling my chain than anything else, weren’t you?”
And I still am, Drayne was smart enough to realize. But he didn’t want the old man to walk away with any kind of victory, no way, so he said, “No. All I wanted was to get your attention. Any attention, good or bad, was better than indifference. That’s what you gave me, Dad. Indifference. So now you finally notice me, enough to bust my balls. Thank you so fucking much. You want to turn me in for being a criminal, go ahead. I don’t care.” And if you do turn me in, I win, he thought.
Drayne stood, dropped a fifty on the table, and said, “I’m not hungry, but you enjoy your breakfast. It’s a long drive back to Arizona. Give my regards to the dog.”
Drayne turned and stalked off. Dramatic, but he’d made worse exits. Let the old bastard chew on that for a while.
Once he was in his car, he realized how shaken he was. Even after all the years of layering scar tissue and callus over it, on some level, he still cared what the old man thought of him. Amazing to realize that.
* * *
Tad couldn’t sleep. He was topped off with enough drugs to put a stadium full of rabid football fans into a trance, but his mind wouldn’t go down.
He had taken a hot shower. He had tried to blank his mind. He had gotten up and eaten another phenobarb, and while he was so stoned he could hardly move, he was no way about to sleep, and he needed that, bad.
Bobby had told him about the new operations plan, the safe house, moving the money, and wanting to hire some armed muscle to ride shotgun. Tad had shrugged that off. Whatever Bobby wanted was fine. Tad had made some calls. Some guys were coming by to see Bobby later, shooters who didn’t care who they cooked, long as the money was good. It wouldn’t cramp things here, they had five bedrooms, plenty of space. Bobby was thinking he could post one as a lookout, have him watching the road, scanning police radios, shit like that. Somebody came calling, they’d hit the beach before the visitors got to the door, jog a ways down to the parking lot where his car was already parked, ready to roll. Could maybe leave another ride in the opposite direction, at the bed-and-breakfast place, slip the owner a few bucks for parking. Maybe even have a jet ski or something, take to the ocean. Maybe rig a bomb to the front gate or something.
Bobby got into the details of stuff like this, and once he did, he covered it pretty fine.
Tad didn’t think it was gonna come to that
, but that last biz had put the fear of God into Bobby a little, so that was cool, whatever.
Tad went out on the deck, sprawled in the padded lounge chair, lit a cigarette, and blew smoke at the ocean. The wind blew it back in his face, and he smiled at that. Bunnies in thong bikinis jogged past, guys with tans dark as walnuts, all going about their boring lives. Tad waved at them, some of them waved back. Jesus.
A helicopter zipped by a few hundred feet up, probably looking for people caught in the rip and pulled out beyond the surf. Welcome to the Promised Land, folks. Sun, water, beautiful people, even airborne lifeguards to make sure you don’t venture too far away from paradise by accident.
Tad finished the cigarette, ground the butt out on the arm of the chair, then snapped it out toward the water using his thumb and middle finger. This was what his life had come to: There was the Hammer, and then there was waiting for a chance to grab the Hammer; that was it.
Except for the waiting part, it was okay.
He leaned back and watched the seagulls wheel and work the uncertain air currents over the beach, diving and rolling, sometimes hovering almost still against the force of the wind. Some real intricate patterns there, those flights.
The aerobatic dance of the gulls was what finally lulled him to sleep.
31
Net Force HQ, Quantico, Virginia
Michaels said, “Mean anything to you?”
Jay shook his head. “Nope, not right off, but I’ve turned the searchbots loose on it. I should be getting a first-hit list any moment.”
Howard came into the conference room. “Sorry I’m late. I had to park in the secured lot. There’s some, ah, hardware I was checking out locked in the trunk of my agency car I didn’t have time to return yet. I wouldn’t want to lose it.”
“No problem. Do you recognize the names Frankie and Annette?”
“No, sir.”
Michaels slid a hardcopy printout across the conference room table to Howard, who picked it up and looked at it.
Howard shook his head. “And this came from where?”
Michaels explained how Toni had discovered the hidden message inside the capsule. He was feeling a certain sense of pride when he told them.
Jay said, “Tell Toni that’s nice work. Nothing in the DEA reports about this. Somebody there is maybe sitting on this information?”
“That’s what I thought,” Michaels said. “I asked the director to pull some strings, and she’s gotten the original lab reports from DEA. They went over the caps they’ve recovered with a fine tooth comb. None of those have this little grandkids riddle inscribed in them.”
“We think the DEA might be hiding things from us?” Howard said.
Michaels nodded and brought him up to speed on what Jay had discovered.
“And there’s one more little tidbit,” Jay said when Michaels had finished. “I have a record of a telecon between Hans Brocken and our Mr. Brett Lee, of the DEA, from three months back. Herr Brocken is the chief security officer for Brocken Pharmaceuticals, of Berlin, Germany.”
“Careless,” Michaels said.
“I did have to look for it. It wasn’t something you’d stumble across accidentally. They made a pretty good effort to hide it.”
Howard said, “You really think Lee is in bed with a drug company? Looking to sell the formula for this stuff?”
“It makes a certain kind of sense,” Michaels said. “We talked about reasons for him shooting the movie star before, remember.”
“And you think Lee is in league with the NSA?”
“Only with one particular person there. No point in casting aspersions on the entire agency,” Michaels said. “It seems that Mr. Lee and Mr. George have history about which they have not been entirely forthcoming, though this is still circumstantial evidence.”
“I’ll get harder stuff eventually,” Jay said. “Oops, speaking of which—” He tapped keys on his flatscreen. “Okay, here’s what the Sherlock searchbot has to say about my query…”
Jay frowned at the flatscreen.
“You want to let us in on it, Jay?”
“Huh? Oh, sorry.” Jay tapped a key.
The flatscreen’s vox began reading aloud in a smoky, sexy woman’s voice:
“Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, teen singing and television idols from the late 1950s and early 1960s, first appeared together in the low-budget movie Beach Party, from American International Pictures, 1963, co-starring Robert Cummings, Dorothy Malone, and Harvey Lembeck, and featuring musical roles by Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, and Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. The movie was the first of several in the chaste surf-and-sand genre, which was to remain viable and popular for the next two years.
“Avalon and Funicello were paired in several additional surf movies, including a distant sequel, Back to the Beach, Paramount Pictures, 1987, also starring Lori Loughlin, Tommy Hinkley, and Connie Stevens.”
The computer’s voice went silent, and the three men looked at each other.
Michaels said, “The stars of fifty-year-old teenybopper movies? Fine. Who are their grandchildren?”
Jay shook his head. “I’m cross-checking here, but it does not appear that the two had any off-screen relationship that would have resulted in children together. They were both married to other people.”
“Not having children would make it hard to have grandchildren, wouldn’t it?” Howard observed.
Michaels said, “Maybe we aren’t talking about literal grandchildren. Maybe movie grandchildren?”
Jay tapped away at the keyboard. A moment passed. “Nope, nothing that fits. Nobody ever did another beach movie with the actors who played their children in the’ 87 picture.”
“Maybe the message is speaking metaphorically?” Howard said.
Jay looked at him.
Howard said, “Anybody make any similar kind of pictures recently? Celluloid grandchildren, so to speak, of the originals?”
Jay smiled. “Well, film isn’t made out of celluloid anymore, but that’s pretty good, General. Let me see… Okay, here we are, under Beach Movies, there are several, hmm…ah. I think I found it!”
A few seconds passed while Jay read to himself.
“Jay?”
“Sorry, boss.”
The flatscreen’s vox said, “Surf Daze, an homage to the surf movies of the early 1960s, Fox Pictures, 2004, starring Larry Wright, Mae Jean Kent, and George Harris Zeigler. Set in Malibu in 1965, Surf Daze chronicles the adventures of—”
“Stop,” Michaels said.
Jay paused the recitation. “What?”
Howard beat him to it. He said, “George Harris Zeigler.”
Jay nodded. “Oh, yeah. The Zee-ster.”
“The recently departed Zee-ster,” Michaels said.
Jay said, “This was, um, seven years ago. Before he hit it big. He’d have been about, what? Twenty-four or — five then. Thing is, where he’s gone, I don’t think he’d be telling us anything useful.”
“This is too much of a coincidence. This dope dealer is pulling our chain. We need to talk to the other actors.”
“You gonna turn it over to the regular feebs?”
Michaels took a deep breath and let it out. “No. I think maybe we ought to go check this out ourselves.”
“Not in our charter,” Howard said.
“The current waters are very murky,” Michaels said. “Given the capabilities of the DEA and NSA, I’m not altogether sure just who we can trust. Sure, the FBI are our guys, and they love us — in theory, anyway — but we can’t cover any leaks on their part. We don’t want to be behind the eight ball on this, do we?”
“No need to convince me, Commander,” Howard said, smiling. “I’m going senile from boredom in my office. The drug raid was the most interesting thing that’s happened in three months. I’m game.”
“Me, too,” Jay said.
“I thought after your last adventure in the field you’d want to avoid it,” Michaels said.
“I
was alone then,” Jay said, “and dealing with a militant gun dealer. With the general here and you, I’d feel secure enough to interview a drop-dead gorgeous movie star. Did you see Mae Jean in Scream, Baby, Scream?”
“I must have missed that one,” Michaels said.
“Me, too,” Howard said.
“I’m telling you, she’s got lungs could raise the dead, aurally and, um, visually. One of the great on-screen screamers of all time, right up there with Jamie Lee. And did I mention she was drop-dead gorgeous?”
“I thought you had a pretty intense relationship going, Jay?”
“That’s true, boss, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna do anything. I can look, can’t I?”
Howard and Michaels grinned at each other.
* * *
Howard went back and collected his staff car, then headed for home. He didn’t want to take the time to return the rifle right now, but it would be safe enough at his home; safer, in fact, than in the general access parking lot at Quantico. Since they weren’t going to drop everything and rush over to La-La Land in the next few minutes, he’d have time to pack a bag and tell Nadine good-bye. They’d be flying commercial — Commander Michaels did not want to attract any attention by cranking up one of the Net Force jets — and they’d be flying incognito, on open-ended agency tickets, so they wouldn’t have to put any names on a passenger list until just before boarding, and those would be cover noms anyhow.
Given that he’d just been out to the left coast, it might not be as big a thrill for him as it was for Jay Gridley; still, it would get him out and moving, and at this point, anything was better than spending another day doing make-work.
He headed out toward the freeway and the drive back to the city.
Normally, the drive was a straight run up I-95 and into the District, loop around the belt and to the north end of town where he lived.
But after a couple of miles, he spotted what he thought was a tail.