Hot Ice

by Gregg Loomis

  The airline, of course, had nearly frustrated his plan. During multiple coffee breaks on the drive back to London, and the equally frequent stops necessitated thereby, Jason had used his BlackBerry to book a first-class ticket Paris–Washington, reservations he had electronically confirmed upon his arrival at Gare du Nord in Paris before getting on the Métro for Charles de Gaulle.

  His arrival at the airport revealed a somewhat different story: Yes, of course his reservations were in the system, the pretty young Frenchwoman assured him in delightfully accented English. But what did the system know, she asked with that Gallic shrug that says there is no understanding to be had. The equipment had been changed to an aircraft with a smaller first-class section. The row including Jason’s seat had been eliminated. Management had not told the reservations people, she confided, this time with a forefinger tugging at a bottom eyelid, the French gesture that says the words are not to be believed.

  A seat was available in economy. She smiled with this information as though Delta was doing him a real service just to let him on the airplane. No? There would be plenty of first-class seats on the next flight.

  When would that be? he wanted to know.

  She checked her watch as though it displayed airline timetables rather than the hour. Its scheduled departure was only an hour or so away.

  Jason wasn’t going to get screwed by the airline twice in the same day. “Could you give the actual departure time?”

  There was a hitch: the next flight, the one with a surplus of first-class seats, had a small problem. Something about some silly little light that would not go off no matter how many switches, buttons, and levers the pilot had used on the flight over earlier that day. It should be no problem: the necessary part was on its way, being trucked over from Orly, Paris’s other international airport.

  Jason had flown enough to be wary of both “minor” maintenance problems and flights with a plethora of available seats. Since admission of a major mechanical problem was bad PR, all glitches were classed as ‘minor.’ Second, a flight with a number of empty seats, particularly transoceanic, was likely to be canceled for some fabricated reason other than the real one: that the airline would lose money on it.

  He took the seat in coach.

  With his single bag in the overhead bin, he shoehorned himself into a middle seat that had obviously been designed by someone with minimal knowledge of human anatomy. Or a sadist. To his right, next to the window, was a gray-haired woman who began to unload a collection of travel guides to France from a voluminous purse. Why she would find the attractions of, say, the Loire, of interest when departing the country was a mystery.

  Just as the cabin door was about to close, a young woman with a bad blond bleach job plopped down in the aisle seat to Jason’s left. She also carried a purse that could have served as a suitcase. From it she began to unload a collection of cosmetics: face powder, mascara, eye liner, and a number of items Jason could not have identified had he tried. Once the items were arranged in her lap, she began to apply them with the aid of a small mirror. Another mystery: where was she going in the next eight or so hours where such an effort would be necessary?

  At least he had nothing in common with his seat mates sufficient to provoke an effort at conversation. Enduring a recap of some stranger’s recent vacation, business trip, or whatever was not what Jason had in mind. To make sure, he stood, unzipped his suitcase, and took his iPad out and put the buds in his ears. If relaxation would have been difficult with the seat back released to its customary six inches, it was impossible in the pre-takeoff upright or rigid position.

  Religious music, per se, was of little interest to Jason but J. S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor was a composition of pure beauty regardless of the subject matter. Like all of this composer’s work, vocal or instrumental, this was more of a journey than an experience, returning over and over to same or similar themes and patterns. The a cappella choral prelude was blending into strings when Jason looked up to see a flight attendant who was saying something.

  He removed the ear buds.

  “Sir, as has already been announced, electronic devices must be shut off before takeoff. The captain will announce when it is safe to use such devices. You need to check the in-flight magazine to see which electronics may be used on board.”

  Both of Jason’s seat mates were scowling at him, someone who was carelessly endangering their safety. Jason knew from his own flight training that iPads, cell phones, e-readers, and the like had as much influence on the aircraft’s navigational systems as the wizard Merlin had had on raising up Stonehenge. Neither legend would die, however. The difference was the airlines had a motive in promoting theirs: a passenger allowed unlimited access to his own electronics was far less likely to pay for earphones to watch the in-flight entertainment.

  Reluctantly, Jason made a show of turning the contraption off.

  He put it in the seat pocket in front of him. His fingers went to his own pocket. The matchbook he had taken from the assassin in Durham.

  He pulled it out, examining it. HOTEL EL CONVENTO, 100 CALLE CRISTO, SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO was embossed on its cover.

  What was the connection between a Spetsnaz killer and a hotel in San Juan? Not much of a clue, but the only one Jason had.

  35

  Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling

  Officers’ Club

  That Evening

  Jason had been disappointed to learn that Thomas, Roosevelt, Captain, United States Marine Corps (Ret.) had checked out. In fact, the bachelor officers’ quarters seemed deserted. There had been nothing to do but take his single bag to his quarters and retrieve the package he had left before flying to London: the Glock, two clips, and a box of ammunition. He could have checked the gun in a bag on the plane but that would have required waiting at a baggage carousel, risking delay, and becoming a stationary target. Plus, there was also the risk the British might discover the weapon, subjecting him to criminal penalties at worst and lengthy questioning at best.

  He took the opportunity to stop by the base clinic to have a doctor look at his shoulder’s healing gunshot wound.

  The doctor was a woman. She wore no makeup. Thick black-framed glasses, blond hair pulled back into a knot at the nape of her neck, white lab coat at least two sizes too big. Her name tag labeled her as Ferris, J. The bronze oak leaves on her collar denoted her rank as a major.

  She pulled off the bandage, gently pressing around the area. “Hurt?”

  “Not as much as it did last time I was here, a couple of days ago.”

  She cocked her head, still staring at the shoulder. “Looks like a bullet wound.”

  Jason said nothing as she perused his brief chart. “Says here it is a bullet wound, sustained outside the country.”

  Again, Jason said nothing.

  “Also says here you’re retired Army. If you’re retired, how come somebody shot you?”

  “Accidentally, self-inflicted.”

  She made no effort to conceal her incredulity as she taped a new bandage into place. “As an Army officer you should know how to handle firearms safely.”

  “The human mind is always capable of learning. And make that a former Army officer.”

  She snipped the last bit of tape. “Hopefully quickly. The next ‘accident’”—she made quotation marks with her fingers—“might be fatal.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, Doc.”

  She stood. “For that bit of advice, Captain, I’ll allow you to buy me a drink at the officers’ club at, say, twenty hundred hours?”

  “As long as the sun has gone down, Doc.”

  “Captain, somewhere on this old earth the sun has always gone down.”

  It was not until he was walking back to his quarters he had realized he had something very much resembling a date.

  Well, why not? Maria was still in Iceland with her damned volcanoes, too busy to call or even text these last couple of days and …

  Not her fault she’s in Iceland, the small vo
ice in his head argued. She’s there ’cause you let Momma manipulate her so you could take the assignment she had for you.

  Maybe. But I didn’t stop her from even so much as an e-mail. I mean, what’s she doing with this guy … ?

  Sevensen, Pier Sevensen.

  Yeah, him. What’s she doing with him that’s so important she can’t stay in touch?

  You got problems with the global chip in your own BlackBerry?

  Well, it’s really not a date, anyway. Just two officers having a drink.

  The internal argument came to an end as Jason passed the officers’ club. He went inside to the room where he had seen the computers. Calling up Google, he entered “Hotel El Convento.” He was rewarded by a picture of a pale-yellow stucco Spanish colonial building. An adjacent map located it in the middle of Old San Juan. A brief read informed him the place had, as the name suggested, begun life as a convent, specifically of the Carmelite order, in 1561. Later years had been anything but benign, turning the structure into a dance hall, a casino, a flophouse and, finally, a parking area for garbage trucks. The renaissance of Puerto Rican tourism began shortly after the end of World War II and the old place had been restored as a hotel, one visited on at least one occasion by Ernest Hemingway and an impressive list of other luminaries.

  Interesting, but what connection did a former nunnery have with Grünwelt? Perhaps the Greenies had an interest in Puerto Rico’s rain forest. But wasn’t that already a national park, protected by federal law? Another Google excursion confirmed that the El Yunque pre-dated American possession, having been set aside as a national park by the Spanish Crown in 1876. The place had been off-limits to development for nearly a century and a half.

  Swell, but what interest would a radical and potentially violent conservationist group have in an area already protected?

  The only answer Jason could come up with was none. There was some reason other than global warming why the persons Jason believed had been sent to England to kill him would have been at that hotel in San Juan. The problem was finding out what that reason was.

  So far, he had a strong suspicion Professor Cravas had been right to the extent that this environmental group, Grünwelt, was behind the attacks. As far as specifics, he had only two clues: the name Uri and this hotel in San Juan.

  Not a whole lot.

  Unaware he was tapping his lips with a ballpoint, Jason reached into a pocket for his super low-tech address book. He was unwilling to entrust years of telephone numbers to a computer system that could—and frequently did—swallow them at will. He flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for. Then he entered a number in his BlackBerry.

  “Sybil? Jason Peters here. Will you be available day after tomorrow? No, I’m not sure of the time yet, I’ll have to check the airline schedule.”

  A few minutes before eight, he was sitting at the bar at the officers’ club, toying with a short glass of single-malt scotch, regrettably not Balvenie, on the rocks. The bartender, a chief master sergeant, was polishing glasses. A comradely hum of conversation formed an audio backdrop for soft instrumentals of long-ago showtunes.

  Then it all came to a stop. Except for the recorded music. The talk ceased abruptly. The barkeep put down the glass in his hand and stared at a point over Jason’s shoulder.

  Jason swiveled his bar stool around and had to stop himself from gawking.

  Ferris, J., had undergone a metamorphosis that even Ovid could not have contemplated. The lab coat had been replaced by a red dress that did nothing to conceal a figure most eighteen-year-old girls would have killed for. The blond hair had been unleashed from its knot and hung in bountiful waves to just above her bare shoulders. The heavily rimmed glasses had disappeared in favor of artfully applied eye shadow.

  She walked into the room and climbed onto the bar stool next to Jason’s. He found the whisper of her stockings as she crossed her legs very, very sexy.

  “Buy a girl a drink, Captain?”

  A stemmed martini glass appeared on the bar as if by magic. She nodded her thanks to the sergeant as she withdrew a toothpick upon which a pair of olives were impaled. Putting it to her mouth, she used her tongue to remove the olives.

  “You seem to have gone quiet, Captain.”

  “That trick, taking the olives off the stick with your tongue. How do you do it?”

  “Only with lots of practice.”

  Standing where only Jason could see his face, the bartender rolled his eyes. The major was a regular here.

  “Live on base, Major?” Jason asked, more to make conversation than curiosity.

  She shook her head, sending blond ripples rolling. “Nope. Have a condo in Alexandria. And by the way, I’m Judith, not ‘Major,’ when I’m off duty.”

  Jason finished the dregs of his drink and motioned to the bartender. “If you’d told me, I could have met you somewhere else, saved you the drive.”

  She took a sip of the icy-clear liquid in her glass. “Getting you to meet me here was a slam-dunk. Getting you to venture off base might have been a bit dicey.”

  “I can’t believe you have a hard time getting men to do anything.”

  She looked at him over the rim of her glass. He had not noticed earlier how green her eyes were. “Have you always flattered women?”

  “Only the pretty ones.”

  “Touché!”

  They were both silent for a moment, preparing for the next round.

  “Hope you like Kinkead’s,” she said.

  “The seafood place on Pennsylvania Avenue? Love it. Why?”

  She checked her watch. “Because we have reservations there in about twenty minutes.”

  “Let me get a couple of things from my room.”

  The last time Jason had dined at Kinkead’s had been with Laurin, a thought that flashed through his mind as the cab pulled up to the thirteen early nineteenth-century town houses that had been joined when the eight-story office complex, part of the tony Shops at 2000 Penn and Red Lion Row, had commenced construction in the 1980s. Now the old homes housed upscale shops, galleries, and Kinkead’s. The restaurant hadn’t changed: light wood, a jazz trio playing downstairs beside an open square bar that had its own menu. Upstairs was a more traditional restaurant specializing in seafood dishes.

  With every step, heads turned. Watching the skirt stretch tight across Judith’s derriere as she climbed the stairs interrupted more than one conversation.

  And was something more than one husband would hear about later.

  Noting the season, Jason ordered the clam and oyster chowder as a prelude to tempura soft shells with green papaya salad and a fruity dipping sauce. Judith opted for the crab cakes with the Eastern Shore corn flan. He was delighted to find a Gaja on the wine list.

  Jason learned that Judith came from a small town in Iowa. The Air Force had put her through medical school, obligating her to five years as a military doctor. At the end of her tour, she had decided to reenlist.

  “No hassles, no med mal insurance, no Medicare forms,” she explained. “And even if the pay isn’t all that great, the travel benefits are. But what about you?”

  Jason became instantly defensive. “Ah, I served my time. Got married and was planning on moving into civilian life when 9/11 came along. Both my wife and I were in the Pentagon. I survived; she didn’t.”

  Judith’s hand went out to rest on top of his. “I’m sorry… .”

  Jason made no effort to move his hand. “You had no way to know. Anyway, my plans changed. I went to work with a civilian contractor.”

  She looked at him, half smiling. “I can imagine what a former Special Operations Command guy would be doing in the private sector.”

  He looked at her quizzically.

  “It’s in your service jacket. We routinely download all patients’ service records when they come in for treatment. Yours is the first I’ve seen that has more classified than specified. I don’t know what you’re doing for your civilian contractor, but I sure hope you
’re paid enough to make getting shot worth it.”

  “I got shot at for a lot less money in the service.”

  By the time they were at the maître d’s stand awaiting the arrival of the cab they had requested, Jason had successfully deflected most questions about his personal life. Easily done when the other person is encouraged to talk about themselves.

  Judith checked her watch. “Where’s the cab? I’ve got an oh-seven-hundred staff meeting at the clinic tomorrow.”

  “I called the cab ten minutes ago,” the maître d said defensively. “Maybe someone hijacked it en route.”

  As in most large cities, cabbies were not above picking up a fare on the street on their way to responding to a call. If the street fare was short enough, they could make both it and the call. The results were an additional fare and a delayed response.

  Jason stepped toward the door. “I’ll see if I can flag one down while we wait.”

  Outside, Jason stepped into a wall of heat and damp that was a Washington summer night. Built on a drained swamp just like most of New Orleans, the two cities shared a muggy humidity.

  Training embedded so deeply that it had become reflex rather than thought took over as Jason scanned the empty street. At this hour, Pennsylvania Avenue was quiet. Parked cars lined the curb, their windshields giving back the pale orange of the sodium-vapor streetlights. Each had a residential parking permit sticker, a prerequisite for not getting towed in DC, where cars overwhelmingly outnumbered parking places.

  There were no cruising cabs in sight.

  His eyes followed a Metrobus lumbering in the direction of the George Washington University/Foggy Bottom Station. As his eyes followed the bus, he noted a Lincoln Town Car at the curb across the street. The make and model was common enough in the District, usually hired with driver to ferry the area’s nobility, politicians, from place to place. But this one did not have the windshield sticker that would allow temporary parking anywhere in Washington. And it appeared empty, no dark-suited chauffeur smoking a cigarette while he waited for his patron to finish whatever had brought him into the neighborhood.