by Gene Riehl
He winced. “I don’t know.” He spoke to himself for a moment. “Three games … I get the serve … I get one alley.” He shook his head. “I don’t like it.”
“What would you like?”
His voice quickened, his tell that he was certain he had me now. “Two hundred for the set. You start four down. I serve first, but I take no alleys.”
I kicked the carpet. I stared at the locker room ceiling, mumbled to myself, looked him in the eye. “Christ, Gerard, why don’t you just stick me up with a gun, we wouldn’t have to get all sweaty.” Then I sighed. “Okay, okay. If you need money that badly …”
Startled by my sudden agreement, he tried to smile, but I had him and we both knew it.
Apparently he hadn’t known it.
I’d never seen the spy play better.
Two of the best serves of his life in the first game, and I’m down oh-five before I’ve served a single point. I win the next three games, sweating like a pig to keep him pinned to his baseline. We go back and forth until he pulls a backhand out of his ass in the last game and at six-all we go to a tiebreaker. I serve first, ace him down the middle, he serves the next two, we split. He makes shot after shot until it’s eight-all, his serve. All I’ve got to do is win the point, then handcuff him with a blistering serve into his body to finish him off.
It doesn’t happen.
He serves a kicker to my backhand, comes to the net and stumbles into a volley that goes past me quicker than Kobe Bryant. Set point against me, my serve. I miss the ace down the middle by a whisker. Now it’s hairy. I toss the ball for my second serve. It arcs through a distant light in the ceiling. I lose it for just a second, long enough to dog the serve into the top of the net. I stare across at him. He’s got that huge Frog grin working as he comes forward, hand outstretched. I shake his hand, head for the showers to scrub away my disbelief.
Afterward we sat at an isolated table in the bar. From my pocket I pulled the same two hundred-dollar bills I’d wagered on my call to Berkeley and handed them over. So much for my return to the world of winning. Good thing I’d missed out on the card room. The damage could have been a hell of a lot worse.
“Maybe you should buy a Lotto ticket,” I told him. “You ain’t gonna get any luckier.”
He shrugged. “Even a blind pig finds a truffle.” He looked around for a waiter. “Something to drink, Puller? Beer, perhaps, or a glass of wine?”
I was tempted. Gerard’s idea of a glass of wine was a hundred-dollar bottle of wine, but my workday wasn’t yet over. “Just a Coke,” I told him. “Diet Coke.”
His lips formed a straight line of disgust. He’d been in Washington almost twenty years, but still couldn’t understand people who’d willingly drink such crap when there was wine available. The waiter took the order, came back a moment later with one Coke, one cabernet. We drank a while, then got down to business.
“Bradley Long,” he said, then reached for his briefcase and withdrew a single sheet of paper. He handed it across the table to me. A short memo bearing the letterhead of the French embassy. “Nothing ident on him, Puller. Sûreté, Paris Metro Police, Interpol’s Paris Bureau. Nothing.”
I took the memo, tucked it in the inside pocket of my suit coat, not surprised. Bradley Long was a former deputy ambassador to France and the current White House nominee for secretary of education. A family man, presumed to be squeaky clean, and so far he had turned out to be.
“The other matter,” Gerard said, “Annette Hughes-Gardener. Paris found several references to her, so they’ll need another week to assemble a report. I hope that doesn’t jam you up on your deadline.”
“Not at all.” But it would, of course. Deadlines were deadlines. The Hoover Building didn’t care whether the work was being done in Paris, France, or Paris, Texas. “Just give me what you can when you can.”
I reached into a second pocket and brought out my own sheet of paper. “I have something new, Gerard.” I handed it across. “Federal Judge Brenda Thompson. Supreme Court nominee.” He nodded. “Thompson attended a month-long seminar on international law at the Sorbonne. Ten years ago, something like that. The exact dates are on the paper there.”
Gerard studied the sheet. “Of course. I’ll get something out today. Should have an answer by next Friday.”
“Deadline’s Thursday next week, and this is one I can’t delay. I know you don’t like to do it, but can you use your STU-III phone or your computer net?”
He glanced at me. “We quit using the computer for stuff like this over a year ago. Too many people watching, you people with your Magic Lantern included.” He stared at the sheet again. “Is there something else I should know here? Since when do you run checks on seminars at the Sorbonne?”
“You remember Josephine Grady?”
“Have you similar problems with Brenda Thompson?”
I shook my head. “Thompson has a housekeeper from Mexico, but you wouldn’t believe the documentation. Green card, perfect IRS record, impeccable social security payments from the judge into her account. T’s crossed, I’s dotted. Gotta be the most perfectly credentialed domestic worker in the history of Washington.”
“Why am I not surprised?” He sipped wine, put the glass back on the table. “And the White House. Still determined to add the first black woman to the Court?”
I smiled at Gerard’s practiced naïveté, his pretense that he didn’t already know the answer to such a question.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but it still sounds like you’ve got another Grady in the works.”
I lifted my glass of Diet Coke. Drops of condensation fell to the table. “I don’t mean to give that impression at all. All we have is praise so far. Three hundred pages of it, not a word of derog.”
“But there’s something,” he said, his tone persistent. “You know damn well we wouldn’t be talking about her otherwise.” He scowled at me. “The Sorbonne? Ten years ago? Gimme a break.”
I shook my head. We go back a long way, Gerard and I. I trust him about as much as you can trust anyone in Washington, but Brenda Thompson wasn’t just another case. Whatever she was up to, I was pretty sure it was no business of the French government.
“You wouldn’t believe the lengths we’re going to these days,” I told him. “After Grady, the seventh floor rewrote the book.” Paris has L’Elysée, and London Ten Downing. For the FBI, Mecca is the seventh floor of the Hoover Building.
He nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks. It’s important or I wouldn’t ask. Kevin Finnerty is all over me on this one. Came down to my office personally, if you can believe that.”
Gerard’s hand with the wineglass stopped halfway to his mouth. He looked at me for a moment, then set it back on the table and checked his watch.
“Four-thirty,” he said. “They might still be in the office in Paris. Maybe I can catch them.”
He rose to his feet, grabbed his tennis bag, and hurried away.
I stared after him, puzzled by what he’d done, more importantly, what he’d failed to do. Gerard Ziff was a world-class handshaker, the instant he saw you, the moment he decided to leave. Every time, no exceptions. Until today. Until just now.
I got up to leave. Gerard’s abrupt departure left me with time to kill. Maybe I could still get to the card room, do some damage there before I started for Jabalah Abahd’s house in Cheverly. Unfortunately, the traffic would kill me. I wouldn’t make it to Arlington till six, I’d have to leave half an hour later to get back over to Maryland, and that wasn’t going to cut it. I didn’t know how to walk away winners, and I wasn’t about to fall behind early and abandon the money.
I could go back to the office, I told myself. Unless someone had come in and firebombed my desk, there were still two or three mountains of paperwork awaiting my attention.
Or I could eat.
There was an Italian place around here somewhere, I was sure. I would call Lisa from my table, have her e-mail the Bennett results and the s
tuff on Abahd to my laptop. I’d have plenty of time to go over it before my seven o’clock meeting with the lawyer.
I pulled out into K Street, turned left. Guido’s was on K Street. My head swiveled as I looked for it.
At Guido’s Taste of Napoli I ordered a plate of gnocchi in the artery-clogging Alfredo sauce I was powerless to resist. The waiter hustled away and I called Lisa.
“Robert Bennett,” she said before I could ask. “Personnel Division’s never heard of him. I called the DOJ, nothing. Treasury the same thing. I even tried the Senate Judiciary Committee. Nada. If Bennett’s a Fed, no one seems to know about him.”
“What did you find on Abahd-Hernandez?”
“Still waiting for the computer clerks to get back to me. I’ll call when they do.”
I hung up and sat thinking until the waiter appeared with my meal. I was eating before he could even turn around, but two bites into it the phone rang again.
“Lisa,” I said before she could speak. “You caught me with a mouthful of food.”
“It’s not Lisa, Agent Monk, and I’m glad one of us has time to eat. It’s Jabalah Abahd. I was supposed to be in court all afternoon but my client pleaded guilty on me, so I can see you at six instead of seven.”
I glanced at my plate of food, then told her I’d see her at six. I laid the phone on the table. Instead of two hours, I had half an hour. So much for an unhurried meal. I forked a couple of gnocchi and had them halfway to my mouth when the phone rang again. I held on to the fork as I answered it. Gerard Ziff this time.
He spoke as carefully as ever—a truncated code he insisted on using—as though Moscow itself were still listening. To give him his due, and from what we’d been hearing from our counterintelligence people, they probably still were.
“Nothing,” he told me. “Civil and criminal, here and the other side. Nothing.”
“What about the”—I fumbled for a euphemism—“your other friends?” I was referring to the intelligence files at the French embassy.
“Harder to access. Maybe sometime tomorrow.”
Gerard couldn’t get into those files without a written request, I knew, and the ambassador had put the clamps on such requests from the FBI following the discovery of Special Agent Robert Hanssen’s criminal treachery. After Hanssen’s fingers had been caught in the croissant jar, the French had decided the bureau could no longer be trusted with unconditional access to international secrets. Gerard would find a way, but he’d have to work on it a bit.
“Word of mouth?” I asked. French agents were just like FBI agents. Privy to lots of scuttlebutt that might or might not end up in an actual file.
“Nothing.”
I thanked him, hung up, glanced at my watch. Traffic bad as it was, I better get going. I gobbled a few more bites of gnocchi, paid the bill, hustled out the door.
The rush hour was even worse than I’d anticipated, and the short drive to Cheverly took the better part of an hour. I phoned Lisa and told her about Abahd’s call, then told her to quit waiting for the computer printouts and go home, that I didn’t need them badly enough to keep her sitting around the office. She wanted to come out for the interview, but we agreed she’d never make it in time. She sounded reluctant to call it a day, and I had to smile. First office agents never want to go home. The day would come when she would no longer feel that way, or maybe in her case it wouldn’t. Lisa was a determined young woman with a definite goal in mind. I wouldn’t have her long, I knew, and I was surprised by a curious sense of regret about that. Easy, Puller, I told myself. You’ve got plenty on your spinning plate already. For once in your life, grab the pole and hold on for a while.
Abahd’s street was lined with winter-bare poplars, and her jumbo two-story white house suggested she didn’t defend the indigent because of any firsthand knowledge of poverty. I parked the Caprice out front, grabbed my briefcase and headed up the brick walkway to her bright-red front door. I pushed the doorbell and heard a two-tone chime, then the faint sound of what I decided was a door closing somewhere inside. I stepped back and waited for the front door to open, but it didn’t.
I rang again. Nothing. I scowled at the door, then knocked on it, softly at first, then much harder. Still nothing. What the hell? Was the woman deaf? I’d had no sense of that during our brief conversation on the phone, but that really didn’t mean much. Phones could be rigged to work as virtual hearing aides. Maybe she had a real one but didn’t wear it at home.
I called out to her.
“Ms. Abahd! FBI! Agent Monk!”
I moved up close to the door, cocked my head, and listened. Not a sound. I tried the door. It wasn’t locked. I twisted the knob and cracked it open. Called out again, louder this time, repeated my name, listened hard, but still heard nothing. This wasn’t going to cut it, I decided, then opened the door wide enough to stick my head in.
“Ms. Abahd!” I shouted. “It’s Puller Monk!”
I gave her twenty seconds to respond, but she didn’t, so I opened the door all the way and stepped into a wide, blue-slated entry. I could see into the formal living room—lots of dark furniture and embroidered upholstery—but I couldn’t see any sign of life. She’s got to be here, I told myself, no way she’d leave the front door open like this. Had to be in the back of the house somewhere, probably in a bathroom, or a distant bedroom. Somewhere she couldn’t hear me.
I called out again, then moved a dozen steps into the living room and waited for her like a proper agent. Then I realized I was already too far inside for a proper anybody. Unwilling to be caught in her living room, I hurried back to the front door. “Ms. Abahd?” I called from the doorway. Again I waited, again she failed to show. And that did it for me. We had an appointment, I needed to talk with her today, and I no longer cared how I got it done. I went back in again, this time all the way to the far edge of the living room.
A long corridor extended from my right to the back of the house. I poked my head into the hallway and called her name again, said my name again. I cocked my head, thought I heard her back there, some sort of movement, a wisp of sound. She was back there, I could hear her, but I couldn’t very well walk straight into her bedroom. I had a better idea, reached for my cell phone to call her, then realized I’d left the phone in the car. I turned to go get it, but before I could take a step I heard a different sound. A low moan. The distinct sound of someone in pain.
“Ms. Abahd!” I shouted as I hurried toward the sound. “Are you back there? Are you all right?”
A louder moan.
I rushed down the corridor toward where it had come from, turned into the first open doorway on my right, and stopped dead, my attention riveted to the woman in the chair in the center of the room. The woman duct-taped to that chair My eyes widened, an electric jolt of shock raced through my shoulders and up the back of my neck.
Dear God!.
I bolted to her side. She moaned again as I got there, but it wasn’t because she’d seen me coming.
Her eyes were duct-taped shut, but even if they hadn’t been they were now useless.
Her narrow face was a mangled bloody mess. Her nose was flattened sideways against her cheek. Her jaw hung loose, and the unnatural angle told me it was broken. Her mouth was torn at the corners, and I could see punctures where her teeth had penetrated the skin from the force of her beating. There was blood all over her right hand. In her lap was a single amputated finger.
I bent to her ear. “You’re safe now,” I told her, even though I had no idea she could hear me. “Hold on. Help’s on the way.”
I heard her try to speak. I put my ear against her mouth.
“FBI,” she managed to whisper, her voice a spindly croak. “Monk … Agent Monk.”
“Yes,” I told her. “I’m here. Just hold on a little longer.”
Her thin body stiffened, then slumped, her head falling to her chest. I reached to check the pulse at her neck, then realized I was wasting time. She needed a lot more help than I could give her. An am
bulance, paramedics, the nearest trauma unit. I bolted around her and grabbed for the phone on the desk, jabbed 911, lifted the phone. “Police emergency,” I heard, but before I could say anything a blow from behind sent me crashing against the nearest wall, from there to the floor. I scrambled to my feet, turned to fight.
A black-hooded giant stood facing me.
A growl came out of his throat as he hurried to finish the job.
SIX
He had me by a couple of inches and at least fifty pounds, but I managed to throw the first punch, a straight left directly at his Adam’s apple. He flicked my fist away, his hand speed incredible for a man that size. I cocked my right leg and sidekicked at his knee. He twisted and my kick caught nothing but rock-hard thigh. Then he threw his first punch. I jerked away but too late. His right fist caught the tender flesh of my right ear and my head went numb. I slumped backward, then toppled to one knee. A high whistling started inside my head, and I knew what it meant, knew for sure I had to stay conscious as long as I could. I dragged myself to my feet, shook my head, and heard the whistling recede. I thought about the Smith-10 in my briefcase on the floor next to Abahd. I had to turn this fight in that direction.
The giant swung his right leg outward and upward in a short quick arc. I used my left arm to guard my head, but he fooled me. His black shoe exploded against my ribs instead. Again I went down. My vision turned gray, then black at the edges. The whistling turned to shrieking, the darkness began to close as I tried to focus on what I had to do to save my life.
Get up! I heard my mind shouting. Get to your weapon!
My feet scrabbled against the hardwood floor until I was on all fours. I pushed with my arms, made it halfway up before he kicked me again. This time the leg had less distance to travel before ripping into the same ribs. My head filled with colors—reds, purples, yellows. I gasped for breath, ignored the spike of pain that came with each attempt. Still on hands and knees, my head hanging, I knew he was coming. Convinced he had nothing to fear, he seemed eager to get it over with.