Scone Island

by Frederick Ramsay

  “Yes, sir.’

  “You say we still have time? How so?”

  “Garland has dropped out of sight. He didn’t return home. Do you suppose he really—?”

  “Thinks I’m after Schwartz? Of course he does. He’s no fool. The question is what will he do in response?”

  “Maybe we should tell him.”

  The director slapped his desk and spun around to gaze at, but not see, the woods that circled the building. “Can’t do it. Not yet. I need to get these guys, and as much as I hate to do it, Ike Schwartz has to be the bait. So, how did the program send him to me?”

  “We had to fiddle with it. NSA helped. Charlie is too much of a bulldog to let it go otherwise. If he had identified who was on his trail, he would have moved in on them before we could set the operation in place. So we picked you. We didn’t believe he’d believe it either, but, well…”

  “He’ll figure it out after a while. Right now, if I know Garland, he’s working on ways to avoid me and any threat to him and Schwartz I might pose.”

  “So, what shall we do?”

  “Can’t do much. Tell your people to keep an eye peeled for him at his favorite places. Track his cell phone, and wait. In the meantime, double your efforts to root out those SOBs. Garland is too valuable to lose.”

  “What about Ike Schwartz?”

  “Love the guy, but he doesn’t work here anymore. I can’t waste assets on him. I’m sorry. He’s supposed to be hiding somewhere, for reasons of his own, I guess, so he’ll assume he’s safe enough for a while.”

  “If Charlie turns up, what do I do?”

  “That has a fifty-fifty chance of happening at best. Feed him something soft and gooey. He won’t believe you, but it should convince him that what is in play at the moment is sufficiently important to shut him up.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “Yes, let’s.”

  ***

  Charlie checked out of his motel and drove to Prince George’s county. He found a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that served breakfast all day. He managed two poached eggs with corned beef hash and a side of wheat toast. Fortunately the ketchup was plentiful, and therefore the meal more or less edible. At least the coffee was good. He switched his front license plate back and dropped the borrowed one—he didn’t like to think of it as stolen—into a mail box, but not until after he’d wiped it.

  His next stop, the Vietnam War Memorial, where he spent an hour strolling along its length, stopping from time to time to put a face to a name, a memory. He’d lost some friends over there. It wasn’t his war. His came later, in the deserts of Iraq—the first sally into that ungrateful land. A few of the names on the wall were people he knew or grew up with, a school teacher who had a wife and baby, the guy who used to serve kids burgers at the drive-in, the older brother of one of his own friends and who’d been brought down himself in the desert not quite two decades later and who’d perhaps someday have his name etched into another wall in another mall. Perhaps not; who knew? The public is fickle and their memories short. When this latest series of deployments finally ended and the men and women made it home, would they be forgotten as well? Or only until someone decided to make political hay about the lack of a monument to their service?

  He loved his country but there were days when his tolerance for the state of things in Washington drove him crazy. He also knew the country suffered from a serious blind spot. The people of the United States were distressingly ignorant of their own history. Few if any could tell you the difference between the War of 1812 and the Revolution or even knew there was a difference, blithely running Francis Scott Key in with Betsy Ross; Jefferson with Admiral Perry, and all of them in with Natty Bumpo and his Mohican friends. These same people would also insist their country stood as a bastion for peace around the world while ignorant of the fact that during its relatively short history, it had been at war somewhere, somehow, nearly continuously since its beginnings in 1775. That the longest stretch during which no American servicemen were deployed into combat of some sort was the two decades between the First and Second World Wars. Other than that bright moment, the country had been at war at some level—against foreign powers, France, Spain, Germany, its own citizens, north, south, Native Americans, in the Philippines, in Cuba, in Haiti—the list seemed almost endless. He shook his head. He needed to clear it. He’d always hoped that working for the CIA would somehow ameliorate the need to send men and women away to die. So far he had seen precious little movement in that direction, but still, he hoped.

  Charlie had a Silver Star and a Purple Heart along with a few campaign ribbons tucked away in a dresser drawer. The miniature versions of three of them were more or less permanently attached to his dinner jacket. On the rare occasions he was summoned to a formal affair, he wore them, not as a display of his bravery and service—Charlie had no ego issues—but in the hope that people seeing them would stop and reflect, perhaps remember, and think about their country’s bellicose history. And then think about who they really wanted for their Commander in Chief and why, think about who should sit in Congress. Who should be entrusted with life and death decisions about the nation’s youth. War not only sapped the vitality of a nation more than pestilence, he thought, but it injured everyone, civilians and combatants alike. Surely, enough was enough. He turned and left the memorial. Too much darkness, too much introspection there. He needed some light and an inspiration. He had a problem to solve.

  He found a bench and sat staring vacantly off into the distance. He rarely had simple problems to solve and this one wasn’t one either. Was the director into something that could end badly for Ike, or was he covering for someone else, perhaps equally high up? He turned over the proposition; had someone tampered with his tracking program to create mistrust, misdirection? The bench was hard and still damp from the morning’s dew. He wanted to be seated at his desk. He wanted direction, reassurance. He wanted Bogie’s bottle. And he needed a plan.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Ike fed Ruth a lunch that consisted of turkey sandwiches and several glasses of oenologically incorrect red wine. They were out of white but Ruth insisted she didn’t care about conventions of that sort anyway. A half-hour later she declared the tryptophan was kicking in and she was going to try napping as she’d promised and would stretch out for a few minutes. She was asleep at once. Assured she was dead to the world, Ike headed to Cliffside and Harmon Staley’s stuff. What had that old bird been up to?

  As he expected, the door to the guest cottage was not locked. He searched it quickly. He found a cache of papers and letters. One asked for a geological survey of the island, another for a water assessment. So he had been thinking about expanding the scope of the house. But why a geological survey? He could understand Barstow wanting one, but Staley?

  The surveys themselves were not in the guest house. He walked to the main house and that door was locked. Ike kicked it open. The house was a shambles already; one more busted door couldn’t hurt. He’d make it up to the new owners, if and when—or not. Maybe he’d buy the place himself. No harm done if you break down your own door.

  If the guest house was a mess, the main house was a disaster. He moved from room to room, all three floors and found nothing. All the closets, cupboards, and possible storage places were bare. He turned to leave ready to give up when he spotted the piano. It was an old Steinway grand in the same state of disrepair as everything else and covered with dust. Well not entirely. The dust on the lid showed had been disturbed. Hand prints…Staley’s or his killer? He lifted it. What he saw almost made him drop it. The interior was largely devoid of strings and hammers. In their place were papers, a small duffle, and a holstered Glock. The papers included the expected hydrological survey, a topographical map of the island, and two hard cases that could only have held weaponry. He riffled the duffle. Not a gun, several guns! Pistols, shotgun shells and…a satphone.

  Who the hell was Harmon Staley?

  Ike checked the phone’s charge
and decided it was time to test it. He stepped out on the porch, headed up the path, and away from the house. He did not know if any of the nearby cottages were occupied but in any case he didn’t want anyone to know he had the phone.

  He switched it on, gave it a second or two to power up and locate a satellite, then called Charlie.

  ***

  After an hour in the park, away from the Wall, and a stop for lunch at a restaurant on the Potomac’s waterfront, Charlie headed across the river toward Langley, a decision made, and turned his cell phone back on. He could only guess at would happen when he arrived back at the agency, but he felt he had no other option. Either he would trust his boss in spite of what he knew, or he would quit. And though common sense suggested the latter to be the sanest choice, he wasn’t quite ready to accept it. He turned his car toward the office and a possible showdown.

  A mile and a half from the waffle-faced buildings of the Langley complex, Charlie’s cell phone buzzed. He glanced at the number. He didn’t recognize it except it was not beyond the possibility it identified a satellite phone. He pulled to the side of the road to answer. Charlie did not like it when people thought they could drive and manipulate a phone at the same time.

  “Charlie, I need some information, but I can’t talk long.”

  “Ike? I’ll call you back.” Charlie snapped the phone shut and tried to calculate how long the connection had been live, one second…two? Not long enough surely. He drove as fast as he dared back across the Potomac and into a parking lot near a busy office building. If anyone was scanning for calls, they’d get an earful. He dug through the paper bag on the passenger seat and found his “throw-away.” Part of his second nature, or perhaps his years of experience, endowed Charlie with a sort of photographic memory. His short term memory could store scraps of information, numbers, names, dates and times, for twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Outside that time frame the gift failed him, but at the moment, he had Ike’s number. He dialed back and waited.

  “What the hell was that all about, Charlie?”

  “Long story. Listen, Ike, I have to tell you something.”

  “So what else is new? Charlie, before you start, I need some information from you ASAP. I need you to look up a name for me, Harmon Staley.”

  “Who?”

  “Harmon Staley.”

  “Ike, where are you?”

  “No way, Charlie. I’m on vacation but there is something fishy going on and I need to know who the guy was.”

  “Okay, first you listen to me. It begins with the news I have been trying to get you for days. Archie Whitlock is dead.”

  “Archie is dead? Too bad and I should care? Why?”

  “Stay with me. Neil Bernstein is missing and Al Jackson’s also dead.”

  “Okay, they are dead. You think there is a connection and maybe I am in someone’s cross-hairs, too. Is that about it?”

  “Most, but not all. Archie was retired and under deep cover. Someone found him, and he was killed. I was tasked to find an internal leak, an assumed leak. Somehow whoever bumped Archie knew how to find him.”

  “So, why do I care how Archie was dropped?”

  “Officially?”

  “Actually.”

  “The cops are treating his death as an accident, but we think he was pushed off a cliff.”

  “Off a cliff? Wait, where did you tuck Archie away?”

  “Some place in Maine—an island, your island if I’m guessing right.”

  “Scone Island. His new name was Staley, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. Now you know.”

  “Good Lord, Charlie, he was my almost neighbor, and it wasn’t an accident.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Oddly, the scene of the crime. Mr. Staley—that’s Archie, right? Staley took a piece of rebar on the back of the head before he was dumped into the Atlantic.”

  “You’re really on that island where Archie was killed? This isn’t some kind of shell game someone is playing with me. Because if it is, I want it to stop.”

  “No games, Charlie. I am on the island. Ruth needed a clean break. The A-frame had become a little like living at Graceland. We needed to go away, far away. She owns a cottage here, so here we are for another week at least.”

  “Why are you on a satphone?”

  “Why are you on something other than your cell and what’s with hanging up and using a different phone?”

  “I asked you first.”

  “There is no phone service on this rock. I found this one in Staley’s, that is Archie’s, stash. I ask again—”

  “Long story. Tell you in a minute. I need to get back to Archie. We’re letting the local cops believe it was an accident. The director would rather no civilian interference in this one.”

  “Tell the director it’s too late. The locals know Archie was murdered.”

  “How?”

  “I told them. By the way, old Archie put up a fight. Almost took his killer out. If the iron bar hadn’t been right at hand, I think he’d have won that one. So what’s with your off-line phone?”

  Charlie filled him in with what he’d found in his search for the person or persons tracking his phone calls. What he suspected, but could not confirm about the deaths of Archie, Al Jackson, and Neil Bernstein.

  “You really do think someone is after me?”

  “I wish I knew for sure. Until I get a different read on the other two, yeah, I do. I think they are hunting you, Ike. You must have seen something or done something with Archie back in the day they want forgotten. You know that if they find you they will also have to take down Ruth. No witnesses allowed. There’s really no phone service?”

  “Nope.”

  “Cripes, how do you manage?”

  “Very nicely, thank you. At least up until this minute when you announced I have a bull’s-eye painted on my back. Now, not so hot.”

  “You need to move.”

  “Why? You are the only one who knows where I am.”

  “True, but if they trace the satphone, they can get a fix on your location.”

  “How will they do that? If it’s registered at all, it will be in Staley’s name not mine, and you and I are talking on a temporarily dead-end circuit, and what are the chances Archie as Staley used either name to register the phone, if he registered it at all?”

  “If they were monitoring my phone, they may have had enough time to track all or nearly all of your number.”

  “Charlie, they had what, a second, two max, and that’s being generous. Even so, if you think about it, it might be useful.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Not sure, a feeling perhaps. Tell me the rest.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The room received light only from a single grimy skylight, glowing computer screens that lined one wall, and a lamp on a desk at the center of the room. Men sat hunched staring at an array of monitors watching images as they scrolled across the flickering blue-green surfaces—images of streets, offices, or long shots of hillsides, all currently under surveillance for one reason or another. The frames changed every eight seconds. A second man sat apart at a desk in the center of the room shuffling through a stack of reports, one or two of which appeared official, others scribbled in pencil, but all bearing a number in their lower right hand corner.

  One watcher looked up. “Garland received a phone call. I’m pretty sure it was from Schwartz.”

  “Can you trace it?”

  “Not enough time. He answered and immediately said he’d call back. I have to wait for the call.”

  “Idiot, he won’t use that cell phone. Garland is on to us. He’ll go to a call box or an alternate we don’t know about.”

  “We have all his phone records, financials, everything. If he has another phone, we’d know.”

  “Unless he went to Wal-Mart in the last twenty-four hours and bought a pay-as-you-go-phone. Use your head, man.”

  “He would have had to pay cash.”

  “Check his
ATM withdrawals.”

  The first man typed for several seconds, squinted at the words on the screen in front of him, and shook his head. “He withdrew the max last night in Arlington.”

  “He won’t get far on three hundred bucks.”

  “Wait, he took another three hundred this morning in DC from an ATM on New York Avenue.”

  “Jam up his bank account—no wait, cancel that—too obvious. Keep a watch on his financials. I want to know everything he does. If he’s going to run, he’ll need money and credit cards. Watch all of them. But right now I want you to get after his call. Try scanning the area for any signals coming from within the area of the towers that serviced the last call.”

  “Yes, sir. Don’t worry, we’ll find him.”

  “You’d better or there will be hell to pay by you know who.”

  ***

  Ike fidgeted while Charlie spoke for another ten minutes. He detailed what he knew and didn’t know about Barratt, Colorado, Krissie Johansen, the Baltimore PD’s guess about Al Jackson, and the difficulties he faced with the director. He also mentioned how he’d spent the previous night.

  “If the Company’s in this, you just gave them a bad night, Charlie. Okay, you think the director’s putting the target on my back?”

  “I think it’s a possibility. I don’t know why and I don’t want to believe it, but what else could it be?”

  Ike walked around the big ramshackle house and to the cliff’s edge on the island’s most northern point. The sea air was crisp and briny and blew steadily in from the northeast. He did not notice it or the spectacular view across to what he supposed could be Nova Scotia. That is if it were possible to actually see that far.

  “Okay, I need time to think this through but here’s my quick take. The director wants to find me because he wants to use me to bait a trap he intends to set to nail Archie’s killer or killers.”

  “He wouldn’t do that.”

  “He would if he had a reason. It would have to be a pretty big one, but he would, and you know he would.”