by Steve White
My eyebrows rose. This exceeded even Stafford's usual capacity for cloak-and-dagger theatricality. But I was perfectly willing to play his games as long as I was paid to do so. "How will I know her?"
For answer, Stafford handed me a wallet-sized photo. It showed a handsome brunette, not too much older than me but too severe-looking for my taste.
"You will address her as 'Miss Smith'," Stafford went on, "and identify yourself to her as 'Mr. Jones'."
"While keeping a straight face?" I inquired, straight-faced. Stafford looked pained, and I raised a hand to forestall him. "I know, I know: 'no questions asked.' I will ask one question, though. Are you expecting trouble?"
"There shouldn't be any." Stafford's tone seemed oddly at variance with his words. It wasn't an assurance, but a kind of desperate, almost truculent assertion, as though things were happening that had no business happening. "However, it seems that the possibility can't be entirely discounted. Why do you think we're hiring you?"
"Skip the flattery. I expect a hazardous-duty bonus."
Stafford flushed. "Why? This is simply what we pay you for in the first place."
"Nope. You pay me—and, I imagine, others like me—because you want to keep your hands clean. Fine. But I get the impression that this isn't exactly routine. If I'm going to be risking my ass, I expect to be compensated accordingly."
"Don't push it," Stafford snarled. "Remember, if it wasn't for us, you wouldn't be in business at all."
There was an element of truth to this. I'd put out the word through various acquaintances that I could provide certain services discreetly. The result had been my first contact with Stafford. Shortly after that, my license to operate a private security service had come through, despite the less-than-fully-honorable discharge from the Army that I had on my record. I couldn't pretend that the two had been unconnected.
Still, I didn't appreciate him reminding me of it. So I turned my attention back to my drink, ignoring him and waiting patiently while he jittered.
"All right," he finally blurted. "I can't make a firm commitment. But we'll talk about it after she's safely delivered."
"Fair enough," I allowed, deciding it wouldn't be a good idea to push him too far in his present emotional state. Shortly thereafter, I departed, seeking my car. Even the hookers on Fourteenth Street seemed subdued. Everybody was subdued these days—except Stafford, who acted like he was fending off a nervous breakdown.
My apartment-cum-office was east of Rock Creek Park, which was why I could afford it. It wasn't bad, though. I had half of the second story of an established-but-not-dilapidated four-story building just off Dupont Circle. My three front windows were up where most passersby never look, above the storefront first floor. The doorway in the entry hall at the stairway landing, with its understated plaque reading Robert Devaney, Security Services, led directly into the office part: very basic, for I had no receptionist, nor any need of one. I'd found it was cheaper to hire an answering service—this was decades before voice mail, remember—and return any calls that seemed promising. Stafford and a few others knew the code-phrases to drop. So the office was really a place to do whatever paperwork I couldn't avoid, not to impress clients. I suppose it had been somebody's parlor, once upon a time. Behind the desk was a door leading to the living area, consisting of three rooms with the usual functions. In addition, there was what had clearly been a workshop. I'd hired a carpenter to conceal one wall of it behind a kind of shallow cabinet. The wall itself held hooks and racks to support tools. Now they held my tools—two of which I selected the following morning.
Even then, the Colt 1911 A1 was considered old-fashioned almost to the point of obsolescence. I still liked it, for its reliability and for the sheer stopping power of its .45 ACP slug. It went into an armpit holster—it was just barely small enough to carry that way, even under a loose-fitting jacket. Another holster fit around my right ankle. It held a Beretta .25, a gun on which I wasted very little respect. In fact, I regarded it as just the thing for a firefight in a phone booth. But it was very concealable, which covers a multitude of sins in a last-ditch holdout weapon.
In case you're wondering: no, I didn't usually go this heavily armed. But something about Stafford's manner had worried me. That, and the fact that they were hiring me—and even willing to consider a bonus, if Stafford was to be believed—for a job which, from his description, a chauffeur could have handled. This told me there was more to it than he was admitting. I didn't particularly resent his lack of candor—it wasn't like he owed me anything. But neither did I intend to go in blind without taking precautions.
Washington's cozy medium-sized-city ambience in those days had its negative points. One of these was National Airport, the inadequacy of which had long been a staple of local grumbling. It was hard to forget about; all you had to do was look toward the Potomac, at the procession of low-flying planes had become a permanent backdrop to the Lincoln Memorial. It became even more obvious as you drove over Arlington Memorial Bridge, caught the George Washington Memorial Highway south, and got into the traffic. Some people actually liked this stretch of road. I didn't, because it took me past the Pentagon, with its unwelcome memories.
The flight I was to meet was a Northwest Boeing 707 from Minneapolis. The crowd was fairly light, and the plane clearly hadn't been full. I had no trouble spotting "Miss Smith."
She was taller than I'd expected, and possibly a little younger, but just as severe as her photo had indicated. Her makeup was minimal, her suit businesslike, and her dark hair pulled back into a tight bun. I stepped forward diffidently.
"Miss Smith?" ("Ms." was yet another linguistic barbarism that still lay in the future.) "I'm Mr. Jones." I extended my hand, even though you were supposed to let a lady do that first, in those days.
She looked me over in a way that wasn't altogether flattering—or maybe that was just my oversensitive nature—and made no move to shake my hand. "Is my transportation ready, Mr. Jones?"
So much for small talk, I decided. "Yeah. Let's get your luggage and—"
"I have everything right here." She indicated the overnight bag she was carrying.
"Oh. Well, then . . ." I extended my hand again, this time to take the bag.
"I'll keep it with me, if you don't mind."
"Okay. Fine. Right this way."
She gave my '59 Dodge an inspection not unlike the one she'd given me. "Hey, it gets me there and it gets me back," I ventured as I held the door for her.
"It suits you," she observed, settling into the passenger's seat and keeping the bag on her lap.
"Somehow, I could tell you thought so." I got in behind the wheel and pulled out the envelope which I, continuing to play Stafford's little games, had kept sealed until now. I slit it open, curious, and read the address.
Several obscenities were out of my mouth before I caught myself and turned to "Miss Smith" sheepishly. She looked more amused than offended.
"Is something the matter?" she inquired with an economical smile.
"Pardon my French," I muttered. "But . . . well, you see, I don't generally get involved in high-level stuff." In actual fact, I never did, and Stafford knew it. I'm definitely gonna demand a bonus! I thought furiously. I also thought of where I was going to insert Stafford's sealed envelope, rolled up into a tube.
I continued thinking these thoughts as I drove, in sullen silence, back into the District and then northeastward in the direction of the White House.
Chapter Two
The attack came as we were crossing F Street.
Cautious habit, reinforced by my apprehension about this job and crystallized by my first look at the address inside Stafford's envelope, had taken me on a route that was both indirect and very different from the one I'd followed to National Airport earlier. After crossing over into the District, I did a half circle around the Lincoln Memorial and turned right onto Constitution Avenue. As we passed the Ellipse, with the Washington Monument to our right and the White House in the dist
ance to the left, "Miss Smith" gave me a look of arch inquiry, but held her tongue. I affected not to notice as I drove on past the National Archives and turned left on Seventh Street. I intended to continue north past Chinatown, maybe as far as Mount Vernon Square, before turning left again and looping around.
I was silently congratulating myself on my cleverness when the nondescript delivery truck came careening into the intersection from the left, seemingly out of control, and capsized with suspicious precision directly in front of us.
I slammed on the brake, managing to bring us to a screeching stop a few feet in front of that overturned truck . . . which, I could now see, had no driver. I could also see the inconspicuously dressed figures emerging purposefully from behind the buildings at the corner of F Street. Their purposefulness was of a particular kind, which I had learned to recognize: that of armed men. They circled around toward each side of us.
As I brought my raging thoughts under control, one of them would not be suppressed: How could they have known? There was no way to predict I'd take this route.
I turned to "Miss Smith" and met her dark brown eyes. They held none of the shocked panic they should have. All I could see there was a resigned, slightly exasperated Oh, shit.
I dismissed all of this from my mind as I unlocked the door on my side and opened it a crack. Then I reached under my jacket with my left hand and grasped the Colt. It was awkward as hell, but I'd had practice.
As the first of the nondescript figures approached my side of the car, I kicked the door open, to slam into him. As he reeled back into the man behind him, I grabbed "Miss Smith" by her upper left arm and pulled her behind me as I flung myself out of the car. Simultaneously, I whipped out the Colt and got off a shot that entered the first man's head under the chin and blew off its top in a pinkish-gray shower.
The crowd of sightseers that a traffic accident always attracts began to scream.
I was too busy to notice. I hit the street rolling, still pulling "Miss Smith" behind me. Out of a corner of my eye, I noticed that she was still clutching her overnight bag. I got to my feet, pulling her up with me. In life-and-death situations, you don't pause to worry about trivia like a dislocated shoulder. But she had the feel of a woman in good condition . . . and, praise be, she wasn't screaming hysterically. As she staggered to her feet, I fired off three rapid shots that didn't hit anybody but made all the attackers take cover behind the overturned truck. Taking advantage of that moment, I pulled her around behind the car.
There were no shots. I shifted the Colt to my right hand and risked a peek over the car.
Shots rang out, and bullets whined off the car. But that wasn't what bothered me. As I snatched my gun hand back, something happened to that arm—it felt as though the arm had instantly gone to sleep, but with an added numbness. Unpleasant as hell. I cried out in shock and dropped the Colt.
"Miss Smith" seemed to recognize my reaction, and she went pale.
"Paralysis beam," she gasped. "It must have brushed your arm only fleetingly. They're actually using something like that right here on a city street!" That aspect clearly concerned her more than my well-being.
I scooped up the Colt with my left hand while trying to shake some feeling back into my right arm, and glared at her. "Listen, whatever-your-name-is, I want to know just exactly what the hell is going on here, and who these people are, and how they knew where we'd be, and—"
"There's no time for that now," she snapped. "We've got to get in there." She pointed to a narrow alley between two buildings on the right-hand side of Seventh Street.
"What?" A renewed fusillade of shots sent us crouching deeper, and elicited new screams from the bystanders who still huddled behind whatever shelter the sidewalks afforded, too terrified to run. I didn't return fire, not wanting to risk a repetition of what these guys had just done to my arm. Besides, I wanted to conserve the four rounds left in my magazine. It was, I reflected, one of the reasons the police continued to prefer revolvers: in a situation like this, you could spend your spare time "topping up."
"Look," I told her, "what we need to do is sit tight and hold them off. The cops will be here in a couple of minutes."
"No! You don't understand. I can get us to safety—I have the means. I just can't use it here, in public, where there are witnesses."
To this day, I'm still not certain why I let her take the lead, when I was supposed to be the professional in charge. Maybe I was just very rattled at encountering things that I didn't understand but which she evidently did. Whatever the reason, I reached down and drew the Beretta.
"Do you know how to use one of these?" I asked.
"Not really. You, uh, pull the trigger, right?"
"No, you squeeze it." I released the safety and handed it to her. She took it gingerly. "It doesn't have much kick. Just hold it in both hands like this." I demonstrated with the Colt, for the feeling was returning to my right hand. "Empty the magazine in the direction of the bad guys while you're running. Ready?"
She nodded jerkily.
"All right. . . . Run!" As I shouted the last word, I rose up and started shooting.
She sprinted gamely toward the alley, firing away. She hadn't a prayer of hitting anything . . . but they didn't know that. Also, they must have been stunned by the sheer unexpectedness of this move. They kept their heads down until we'd almost reached the alley. As the shots finally began to ring out behind us, I anticipated the same tingling numbness I'd felt before, only worse. But then we were around the corner and into the alley. "Miss Smith," gasping for breath, dropped the empty Beretta and started getting something out of her bag.
I detached a fresh magazine from the holster belt and slammed it into the Colt's butt. Then I positioned myself between "Miss Smith" and the alley entrance, in firing stance.
That was when the world abruptly went blurry and gray and silent.
I didn't even know how to react. It was too unexpected, and too foreign to ordinary experience. I turned to face "Miss Smith," who was standing very close behind me. She, at least, was still in sharp focus and full color. She was holding an odd-looking device about the size and shape of a paperback book. She clasped it to her belt to free her hand. When she spoke, her voice was the only sound in the universe.
"It generates a field, large enough to encompass both of us, which—" she began. Then the first of our attackers was around the corner of the building, moving like a figure in a silent black-and-white movie in poor focus. I started to raise my gun, but she gripped me by the arm. "No! They can't see us or hear us. Just stand still, close to me."
My jaw dropped. Clearly, she was nuts. And yet . . . the ghostly figures were running past us, looking frantically around. One of them faced me, unseeing, from just a few feet away. Then their leader mouthed some inaudible command, and they regrouped and proceeded on down the alley, checking doorways as they went.
"As I was starting to say," she resumed, "the field bends light around itself a hundred and eighty degrees, thus conferring invisibility. In theory we shouldn't be able to see out of it, either, but a partial compensating feature is built in. Actually, it's two fields. The second one blocks sound waves, both ways."
"Who are you?" I managed.
"That's not important at the moment. What is important is that we get moving. Anytime now, they're going to pull themselves together and start looking for us with sensors against which this device is useless. Fortunately, we have a shielded command post nearby—it was lucky you picked this route."
"'We'?" I queried.
She ignored me. "Come on, and remember to stay close to me." She took my hand to emphasize the last point—a gesture totally devoid of affection—and led the way back out onto Seventh Street.
A sheer sense of unreality kept me inarticulate as we proceeded north past the National Portrait Gallery and then worked our way to the right through side streets, moving in a silent world composed of fuzzy shades of gray, past dim people who could neither hear nor see us as we wended our
way into Chinatown.
The Friendship Archway, that exercise in wretched excess, hadn't been constructed yet. There was just a squalidly picturesque district of exoticism and sinister menace that was largely—though not entirely—bogus, the whole effect comfortably cushioned by the knowledge that you were only about ten blocks from the White House. We passed invisibly through alleyways behind restaurants you'd never find listed by the AAA, where the by-products of their kitchens were disposed of. (No, you don't want to know.) As soon as we were inarguably alone, "Miss Smith" touched the little device on her belt. With a suddenness that was vertiginous for me but clearly no novelty for her, colors and sounds beat in on us as the universe returned to normal. She matter-of-factly returned the device to her bag and motioned me to follow her.
She led me to a laundry. (Yes, a laundry. I wouldn't dare make that up.) As we entered, the old Chinese guy behind the counter met her eyes. She approached him and said something I couldn't catch. He nodded. She motioned me to follow her to the right, behind a rack of hangers, rich with that freshly laundered smell. We worked out way around behind it, walking sideways to fit through the narrow spaces. She stopped in front of a segment of wooded wall that was distinguished only by a wooden carving of a Chinese ideograph . . . or what looked like one. I'd had some exposure to the Kai, Tsing and Tao scripts in the Army, but I couldn't place this one. She ran the palm of her hand over it. I spotted a faint greenish glow around the edges of her hand.
Soundlessly, a rectangular segment of the wall, large enough to admit one, moved back a couple of inches and slid aside. She passed through. I followed. The wall closed again.
We were in what looked like an empty closet, barely large enough to accommodate the two of us, lit by a dusty forty-watt bulb.
I was trying to frame a question when I felt a very faint vibration through the soles of my feet, followed by an equally faint sensation of descending, like an unusually slow and soundless elevator.