by Gregg Loomis
Damn, but she knew him too well.
“I promised you to avoid any violence …”
Explaining a bullet wound wasn’t going to be easy.
Her tone was wary. “Well, if you’re keeping your promise … Where is it you are going?”
Jason was caught flatfooted. He literally had no place to go. The villa at Ischia Ponte was definitely out. He was effectively homeless.
“Washington, briefly, and I’m not sure after that.”
“OK. I’ll call or text you in a day or so when I know for sure how much longer I’ll be here.”
How long did it take to plan a trip into a volcano’s crater? he wondered. The thing was probably no more than a single square mile.
He concluded the conversation just as the Gulfstream’s captain approached.
“All fueled up, Mr. Peters, ready to go. But I need a destination to complete the flight plan.”
Washington it was.
It took only a few minutes to complete the aircraft’s flight plan. As the Gulfstream screamed off the runway and turned southwest, Jason comforted himself that Harvor did not yet know he was gone.
He stuck a hand in a pocket, touching the phone. What made it and the accompanying twig and metal shard worth killing for? And by whom?
And what, if anything, had any of it to do with him?
Nothing.
He hoped.
He would have the twig analyzed along with the metal, take a look at what numbers or pictures were on the phone… . He reached for it and withdrew his hand. First he would shut his eyes for a few minutes.
The lack of sleep, the anesthesia and painkillers from the hospital, the loss of blood, all were making him drowsy.
He got up and made his way to the plane’s small but comfortable stateroom. Removing his shoes and gingerly struggling out of his jacket and the sling cradling the arm of his wounded shoulder, he sat on the side of the bed while he pulled down the collar of his shirt. The bandage on his shoulder was as pristine white as it had been in the hospital. No more bleeding. He stretched out, staring at the ceiling only a few feet from his head.
For the first time he could remember, Jason drifted off to sleep aboard an aircraft in flight, dreaming of figures in white carrying knives far larger than surgical scalpels and Laurin speaking with Boris.
18
Calle Luna 23
San Juan, Puerto Rico
The Same Time
The man who called himself Pedro spoke with a Slavic accent. His high cheekbones and blue eyes were not like any Latino whom Francisco had ever seen either. And his nose looked as though the man might have been a professional fighter: Flattened so that it covered a good part of his face. But jobs in Puerto Rico were hard to come by, and asking questions was discouraged, particularly inquiries as to exactly what Pedro and his ever-changing coworkers actually did.
The town house itself was also like none other Francisco had seen in the city. The exterior was normal enough, except for the fact its stucco was a pale blue rather than the muted reds, greens, and yellows favored by the other buildings, only one or two rooms wide, that sat along the curbs of the narrow blue cobblestone streets of Old San Juan sharing common walls.
That was not the only difference. The place had been modified far beyond what Francisco guessed was allowed by the strict rules of the city’s preservation council, a body dedicated to keeping as much of the sixteenth century intact as possible.
During Spain’s construction of the fortifications of San Juan beginning in 1539 and extending over the next two and a half centuries, the eighteen-foot-thick walls of the fortress guarding the harbor—San Felipe del Morro—and a number of storerooms and magazines had been built to facilitate the speedy delivery of provisions, powder, and shot to the fort’s garrison.
The English and Dutch had been a constant threat, mounting campaigns from their Caribbean colonies. Sir Francis Drake attacked in 1595, barely escaping when a cannonball pierced the cabin of his ship. Four years later, the duke of Cumberland succeeded in a land assault and siege against the city, only to retreat six months later when dysentery decimated his forces. In 1625, the Dutch sacked the city but were unable to breach del Morro’s walls.
After the fort fell into disuse at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, the storage spaces honeycombing the city’s walls were deserted, available to squatters, beggars, or whoever chose to take them over. Soon, respectable facades were added, along with upper stories, and the former usages were forgotten.
Calle Luna 23 was such a house, with some notable additions. Instead of the blank wall at the rear that had been the inner part of the fortifications, a banquet-sized room had been carved out to accommodate a battery of computers and other communication equipment that Francisco did not recognize. He only knew they were connected to the third floor, an area forever locked off from the rest of the house. The shutters of the floor-to-ceiling windows facing the street were steel rather than wood and were never opened, not even in the evening when every house in the old town was wide open in hopes of catching the breeze that would dissipate the damp mustiness of the air-conditioning that made Old San Juan habitable this time of year.
At the moment, Francisco was finishing sweeping the stone floor. His cleaning job was as mysterious as everything else here. First, the floor was littered with cigarette butts. Not the usual filtered Marlboros or Winstons sold at the bodega across the street, but cardboard-tipped, foul-smelling things with black tobacco. Francisco had never seen such a brand elsewhere in Puerto Rico. Where had they come from? Then, his first task each of the three days a week he came to clean was to empty a large wicker basket of shredded paper into the municipal garbage bin down the street. What was so important, so secret, that it needed to be shredded? Finally, there was the third floor. The door from the stairs was always locked and secured by a chain. Apparently no cleaning was required there. What was so valuable that it had to be locked away? And who were the men who came to and went from Number 23? None of them appeared to be Latino; almost all looked Slavic like Pedro. They spoke a rough language Francisco could not understand, even though he had taken several language courses before a slumping economy had forced him to drop out of the university at Ponce on the southern side of the island. They did occasionally speak English, particularly over the cell phones they all carried. But the speech was always oblique, never referring to anything Francisco was aware of. He surmised that the words they said stood for something else, a code.
Sometimes, though, they spoke clearly. That was even more confusing. Things about attacks on Japanese whaling fleets, cutting long lines in the Bering Sea, or sabotaging lumbering equipment in Brazil. Who cared about things so far away?
GrünWelt, GreenWorld, the international society publicly and politically dedicated to stopping the supposed rape of Planet Earth. That’s who, although the name meant nothing to Francisco.
Its world headquarters were ostensibly located just down the street from the US embassy to Switzerland and Liechtenstein at 19 Sulgeneckstrasse, Bern. An impressive building had been purchased and renovated with sums donated by concerned conservationists from around the world. The society’s announced policy was to fight whatever it saw as destruction of the environment with whatever peaceful means might be at hand.
That was the public persona.
Activities that might not stand the scrutiny of the authorities, or that skirted local or international law, were planned and put into practice here in San Juan, away from the hordes of well-meaning, if ill-informed, members whose dues and contributions provided the only source of income. At least, as far as the public knew.
Like many parts of the world lying between the tropics, Puerto Rico’s police had the laissez-faire attitude common to those latitudes plus the unique Anglo concept that, no matter how suspicious, premises could not be entered by authorities without some form of probable cause. In short, as long as the inhabitants of Number 23 caused no problems in San Juan, they were left alone.
Francisco was aware of little, if any, of this. He did know Pedro was talking to someone in the States, because he had been behind him and seen the 202 area code on the screen of the cell phone.
“I am relieved to hear if our problem has not been solved, it has been located there. Are you sure you can handle it?”
His silence while the question was answered implied satisfaction. “It is imperative you recover the objects. Yes, I understand it may not be easy. Dispose of the carrier. If you need assistance, call.”
Francisco thought that odd too. For an organization concerned about faraway whales and Brazilian rain forests, recycling would seem to make more sense.
19
Dulles International Airport
Chantilly, Virginia
7:01 the Next Morning
The Gulfstream’s tires kissed the runway an instant before Jason was shoved against his seat belt by howling twin Rolls-Royce BR 725 engines in reverse thrust. Had Momma not permanently sealed the windows, he would be getting his first view of his native land in … what, three years?
He thanked the flight crew and accepted a ride to customs and immigration in the main terminal, general aviation’s version not opening for an hour yet. As the shuttle rumbled across taxi and runways, Jason looked beyond the perimeter fences at what he could see of the western Virginia landscape. It could be anywhere: Europe, Asia, the Middle East, venues where he had arrived and departed so frequently that such facilities and their surroundings took on a certain anonymous sameness. That was both curse and blessing. Blessing because it lessened the acute awareness of how many times he had landed here and over at Reagan National when he had a wife and home to go to. Curse because landing at either reminded him Laurin would not be waiting with cold drinks and the latest neighborhood or office gossip. Now being in the land of his birth had no significance other than the fact he had to leave Iceland and had nowhere else to go. He was as effectively homeless as those mendicants one sees on the streets of major cities. The only difference was that, for some of those, choices made in their lives rendered them financially and emotionally unable to sustain permanence. The choices made in Jason’s had made a permanent residence a liability.
“Where to?” the cabdriver wanted to know as Jason tossed his single bag into the backseat and climbed in.
“The Pentagon,” Jason replied automatically. “With one stop in between.”
The Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project had not visibly progressed since Jason’s last trip in from the airport. A section of Highway 123 between Scotts Crossing Road and the I-495 Beltway was still closed, forcing more traffic onto highways designed to carry far less. Like most residents of DC and northern Virginia, Jason had long ago despaired of the project’s completion within his lifetime—or, for that matter, his grandchildren’s lifetime had he any grandchildren. Between cabdrivers’ vociferous objections to loss of fares inflated beyond reason, local residents’ fears that rail service would spread Washington’s crime into their suburban communities like some deadly virus, and labor unions’ constant push to sup at this trough, the rail line had become a political football in which the spectators, not the players, were the losers.
Nearly an hour later, the cab pulled up to the Pentagon’s south parking lot. Jason, two dozen white roses in the arm not in a sling, climbed out.
“Sir? Sir?” The cabbie asked nervously. “I can’t park here, not without a permit. There is no public parking.”
Jason didn’t even turn around. “So, circle the building a couple of times. I’ll meet you right here.”
“Er, sir, I can’t do that. Company regulations require I collect the fare when you exit the cab.”
Jason stopped, turned, and walked back to the waiting taxi.
He lowered his face until it was even with the driver’s. “I know you don’t make company policy. I also know it’s not your fault that the idiots who designed the memorial I’m about to visit didn’t provide parking. If you do not allow me to deliver these flowers to the site dedicated to my wife, that will be your fault. Do we understand each other?”
The cabbie took one look at Jason’s scowl, weighed the possibility of the mayhem implicit therein against an enhanced tip, and said, “Yessir, yessir. Perfectly. I don’t know how long I can stay here before they make me move but—”
Jason was already striding away.
At the southwest corner of the Pentagon, slightly fewer than two acres were dedicated to those who perished there on 9/11. Crape myrtles in their summer splendor were scattered about the gravel lot as were 184 terrazzo-finished sculptures that resemble diving boards over small lighted pools. Each sculpture bears a name and is arranged in a timeline from the youngest victim of a few months to the eldest in his seventies. If the person was one of the eighty-eight who were aboard the ill-fated aircraft that crashed into the building, the viewer looks skyward to read the name. If inside the Pentagon, one faces the building.
It took Jason only a few steps to stand beside Laurin’s memorial. He had first seen it on that mournful afternoon in September 2008, when the little park was dedicated in front of family and friends of the victims.
Kneeling, he placed the roses beside the small pool. He was fully aware that the park’s keepers would remove all flowers when they shut down for the evening, but he didn’t care. For a few hours, visitors would know someone had cared for Laurin Peters very much. She had no other site to deck with flowers on her birthday or special occasions, no gravestone memorializing the dates of her life. Only this, an abstract sculpture among many abstract sculptures, a pool among many pools.
He stood, his vision blurred. He made no effort to wipe away the hot tears coursing down his cheeks as he turned and walked to the waiting cab without a look back.
“Now where?”
Jason had to think a moment. He needed someone to look at the stick, the piece of metal, and the pictures from the phone’s camera, someone who might have an idea of their significance, of why they were worth killing for. What better place than DC with its universities, government-funded research centers, and laboratories both civilian and military?
“Thirteenth Street, Bolling Air Force Base.”
Between the Potomac and I-295, Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling was the base for the Air Force’s honor guard and band. There were no flight operations there. In fact, its tree-lined streets housed far more dependents than service personnel. The BOQ (bachelor officer quarters) just off Luke Street were spacious, anonymous, and usually with vacancies the command support staff would be delighted to have filled by transient service veterans.
An hour later, Jason had checked into a small suite, showered, changed clothes, and made an appointment with the base clinic to have his bandage changed the next day. He was ready for something to eat. The clerk in the lobby directed him to the officers’ club, barely two blocks away. Twice, women pushing baby carriages passed him on the sidewalk, each wishing him a cheery good morning. The tidy individual base housing units with their neat lawns, many displaying Big Wheels, tricycles, and swing sets, gave the impression more of a small town rather than a military base.
Jason would be comfortable there. Better yet, he wouldn’t be there long enough to get bored.
20
Calle Luna 23
San Juan
The Same Time
The man called Pedro scowled as he looked at the message on the computer screen dated the previous day: “Package arrived per flight plan. Temporary help in place. Smith.”
The obtuse language was a precaution against possible interception by ECHELON, even though the practice was under attack by the European Parliament as an instrument of industrial espionage. Whether the outrage was warranted or the result of the system’s exposure of six billion dollars in graft paid by an aircraft manufacturer to French officials, Pedro neither knew nor cared.
Behind him a younger man also watched the screen. “Package?” he asked in Russian. “I do not understand, Colonel.”
Pedro
whirled around, snarling. “Better you should stumble than misspeak! Do not ever refer to me so! My name is Pedro!”
Realizing the greater part of his anger was the result of several shots of vodka, not the other man’s indiscretion, he relented slightly. He produced a pack of Russian cigarettes, black tobacco with cardboard filters, and offered one to the other man. “Is better we speak Spanish. Or better yet, English.”
The other man shook his head in a polite “no thanks” to the tender of the cigarettes. “I still do not understand. I was sent out here by my commander… .”
Pedro struck a match and inhaled hungrily. The odor reminded the younger man of the smell of silage on his family’s farm near Kiev.
“You volunteered to serve the cause of saving the planet.” Pedro corrected. “And I am glad to see you, Sergi, er, Carlos. We worked well together in the past.”
Carlos smiled. “I am flattered you remember. You were polkovnik, a colonel. I was a mere mladshiy leytenant, a junior lieutenant. But our mission here is not clear to me. I do not understand Russia’s interest in such matters as saving species such as the little fish, the snail darter, in the United States, or preserving the range of the Arctic polar bear.”
Holding the cigarette between his lips, Pedro turned off the computer, thankful for an excuse not to have to deal with others for the moment. He put an avuncular arm around Carlos’s shoulder, leading him into what served as the house’s living room: cheap chairs made of canvas slung over metal frames. “Come, share a vodka, and I will explain what our superiors in Moscow did not.”
Moments later each man stood, glass in hand. “Tva-jó zda-ró-vye!” they said in unison, tossing down the liquor in a single gulp.
The older, Pedro, refilled the glasses while the foul-smelling tobacco smoldered in an ashtray. “Most of the world believes Marxism is dead,” he began. “At least in the West. But it is not. It has simply changed names and methods.”