“Buster,” I say softly, not turning my head, “what is going on?”
“Take it easy, Fritz,” he answers in a quieter voice than mine, “it’s going to be okay.”
“It already isn’t okay.”
Then the other man steps forward.
“Hello, Fritz,” he says evenly.
I whirl on Buster. “You motherfucker! You fucking Benedict Arnold!”
Buster’s hands fly up in a submissive posture. “I had to do it this way, Fritz.” He points to Roach and Clements. “They make the rules.”
James Roach takes a few steps toward me. “You’re not in danger here, Fritz. No one’s going to harm you. But we have to talk to you.”
“What about?” I ask defensively. I’m going to kill Buster for this.
“What you’ve been spying on,” he says bluntly. “What you’ve almost ruined with your amateurish attempts at playing Indiana Jones.”
He locks eyes with me for a moment; then he introduces the other man. “This is Rex Clements. Rex is one of my oldest and closest friends. He arranged this meeting, through your friend Buster.”
Clements stretches his hand across the table. Reluctantly, I shake it. Then I glare at Buster again, who’s preoccupied with his shoes.
“So much for confidentiality and trust, right, Buster?”
“You asked me to help you, Fritz,” he comes back defensively.
“You fucked me, man.”
Roach intercedes. “Calm down, Fritz. Don’t blame Buster for this. He had no choice.”
I don’t buy that. Buster had a choice. He chose to cover his ass, at the expense of mine.
Roach motions toward the table. “Sit down.”
I slouch into a chair. Buster puts what he hopes is a comforting hand on my shoulder. I shrug it off. “It’s gonna be okay,” he tries to assure me. His voice rings hollow.
I shake my head. I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to be here.
He gives up on trying to make it okay, because he knows he can’t. “I’ll be waiting downstairs,” he tells me.
I hear the door closing behind him.
Roach and Clements sit down opposite me. I stare balefully at my nemesis. I’m pissed enough that I’m not as scared as I’d have thought I’d be.
“Let’s cut through the crap, okay?” I say to Roach. “You shanghaied me into a meeting before, over at your place. Now you’ve done it again. What do you want from me this time?”
Roach stares at me with lizard eyes. He picks up a large-clasp envelope that’s resting on the table, takes some pictures out, spreads them in front of me. I stare at them. They’re pictures of me taken with an infrared lens the other night, when I spied on the clandestine gathering at his property.
My instinct about being under observation was right. I start to shake.
“It goes without saying I’d have security,” Roach says. “You were under observation from the time you got close enough to my residence to take these.” He flicks a finger at the pictures.
This is scary. “Then why didn’t you—”
“Do something about it? Like kill you? My people came close, didn’t they? They could have, if I’d wanted them to, but they were under orders not to. That’s why you got away, Fritz. That’s why you’re here now.”
I am so far out of my league it’s pathetic. He’s ten steps ahead of me, without breaking a sweat.
“There’s already been too much killing, don’t you think?” he continues. “But that isn’t the reason I didn’t pursue you, Fritz. I let you go because what I was doing there, what I’ve been working my heart and soul on for the past two years, was more important than exposing one small-time snoop. As it was, my guests panicked and our meeting was aborted. I assume you saw them leaving, while you were making your great escape.”
I mutely look down at the table.
“It took me two days on the phone, around the clock, to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again,” he tells me harshly. “It was only this morning that I finally convinced the last faction that they weren’t in danger, that our work hadn’t been fatally compromised, and that they, personally, had not been identified.” He glances at Clements, then turns back to me. “I knew I could take care of this with you on this later on down the line.” He pauses. “And there was another factor.”
“What’s that?” I ask edgily.
“You saved young Joe’s life, on my yacht. I owed you one for that.” He looks at me unblinkingly. “The books are even now. I don’t owe you anymore.”
So much for my thinking I’d get away with spying on him without repercussions. I was the rat in the maze and he was playing with me, running me any way he wanted. And by telling me that debt has been paid, he’s also telling me that if there’s a next time, I won’t be let off the hook.
“You as a person don’t concern me, Fritz,” he tells me with frosty condescension. “But what you’re doing does—a lot.” He slides another set of pictures over the table to me. I don’t have to look at them to know what they are—the photos I shot at his farm.
“You trespassed on my property, which is against the law. You asked your friend Mr. Reilly to find out who these men are, and what their business is with me. And how this meeting you photographed—another unlawful act, I might add—ties in to everything that’s been happening.”
My stomach is churning. “Yes. I did.”
“You thought it was something illegal, didn’t you?” he asks, his voice dripping venom. He taps a finger on the pictures. “You don’t have a clue as to who these people are, do you?”
I shake my head. “If I did, I wouldn’t have had to come to Buster for help, would I?”
“I don’t know how your crazy mind works,” he answers. “But since you want to know so badly, I’m going to tell you.”
He points to the first picture. “This man is the Israeli prime minister’s most trusted lieutenant.”
I feel like the floor’s going to open and swallow me up. Oh shit, what have you gotten into now, you idiot? is the only thought that comes into my mind.
His finger moves to the next picture. “The man next to him is the Palestinian delegate to the U.N.” He waggles his finger between the two photos. “These two men are never seen together,” he informs me solemnly. “Never,” he repeats for emphasis. Then he indicates the other photos. “The Russian deputy prime minister, and the Syrian assistant foreign minister.”
He sits back in his chair and stares at me. “Do you know how dangerous it would be for these men if it ever got out they were meeting with each other, especially clandestinely?” He leans in to me. “They’d be dead in less than twenty-four hours.”
My head is spinning. “You’ve lost me.”
“That’s the problem,” Roach says coldly. “You don’t understand the ramifications of this. So let me explain.”
He taps a manicured finger on the table. “What you have been doing with your senseless, destructive meddling could jeopardize our national security, Fritz. Not only that, it could ruin our international credibility. If these pictures ever got out, they could scuttle a process that our government, and their governments”—he indicates the pictures sitting on the table in front of me—“have been painstakingly laboring on for years, under the most secret of circumstances. That I have been personally devoting my life to for years,” he goes on. “Including the morning of the day we first met, at your mother’s house,” he says, his voice dripping with ridicule. “When you were clumsily pumping me for information.”
So he’s known about my nosing into his business all along. I haven’t fooled him for a minute.
“I . . .”
“Don’t say anything,” he orders me. “Shut your mouth and listen.” His voice rises in anger. “That’s why I inveigled bringing you here. To try to finally convince you to stop your reckless, dangerous conduct.”
“How was I to know that?”
“Jesus Christ, Fritz!” he thunders. “I asked you, in what I thought was
a polite, civilized way, to keep clear of this, when I brought you to my place. I warned you. Didn’t I?”
“Jim.” Clements is trying to calm Roach down.
Roach shrugs him off. “Then why in the world didn’t you do what I told you?” he rails at me. “You didn’t think I was serious? You don’t think I’d cut your legs off at the knees if I had to? For Godsakes, you fool, who in the world do you think you’re dealing with?”
Something snaps inside me. I’ve had enough of being intimidated. Screw being on the defensive. “I knew who I was dealing with. At least, I thought I did.”
“Who?”
“The man who killed my mother. Or had her killed, same difference.”
He stares at me as if I’ve completely lost it. “That’s the reason?” he asks incredulously.
“What other would I have?”
Roach shakes his head in disbelief. He looks shell-shocked.
“If it wasn’t you who killed her, then who was it? And who killed Wallace? And that Russian diplomat, who was also murdered on your property,” I press on. “It all leads to you. You’re the common denominator.”
He sits back, staring at me intently. “How do you know about the Russian?” he asks me. For the first time, his voice has a hint of panic in it. “Where did you get that information?”
“Are you denying it?”
For a moment, no one says a word. Roach looks at Clements, then at me. “You know a lot, don’t you.”
“I know a lot of things you don’t know I know,” I respond.
“I’m not going to get into that Russian diplomat situation,” he says curtly. “It’s a separate issue, that isn’t connected to this one. Which, again, you should be steering very clear of.” He stares at the photos for a moment. Then he looks up at me. “I don’t know who’s behind these killings,” he says. His internal fires are banked now, he’s the calm, in-control statesman again. “What I can tell you, unequivocally, is that it isn’t me. I haven’t killed anyone, or had anyone killed.” He paused. “But even if I did, Fritz, I wouldn’t tell you. What we’re doing is more important to the total picture than your mother, or Wallace, or any single individual—including you.” He sits back. “That may be cold, my friend, but it’s reality.”
“Your reality, not mine,” I throw back at him. “And I’m not your friend.”
He shakes his head, gathers up the photographs, puts them back in the envelope. “This ends here,” he orders me. “Everything. Or there will be very dire consequences for you. Do you understand?”
I stare back at him; then I nod.
“As does any involvement you have with me. Any. Are we completely clear on that also?”
“Yes,” I tell him in a lifeless voice. “We’re clear.”
Buster and I walk back to his office in silence, take the elevator down to the garage. I’m shaking, as much with anger as from nerves.
“I’m sorry I had to lie to you, Fritz,” Buster apologizes for at least the tenth time. The poor bastard looked like he’d had his blood drained when we met up, back down in the lobby. I felt like punching his sorry ass out when I first saw him there, waiting for me, but he looked so woebegone I had to let my anger go.
“It was the only way Roach would do it,” he says, trying to justify what he knows was shitty behavior. “You want to play ball with flamethrowers like Roach, you have to play by their rules.”
I don’t want to deal with this now. “It’s okay,” I say woodenly. “The message was more important than the way it was delivered.”
“I warned you, didn’t I?” His voice has risen an octave, like he’s a teenager whose balls haven’t dropped yet. “The first time you brought this time bomb to me, not to be reckless about this. Didn’t I?”
I nod.
“I wish to hell you had taken my advice, one time.”
“I guess I wish I had, too.”
We’ve reached my car. He offers his hand. “Still friends?”
I hesitate—then I take it. “Yes, Buster. We’ll always be friends. But don’t ever fuck me over like that again.”
“I won’t,” he promises. “So now what?” he asks anxiously.
“Nothing. I found out what I wanted to know.” My laugh is forced, brittle. “Way more.”
“Where’re you going now?”
I check my watch. It’s after eight. “Home. Where else?”
“You want to grab a drink? I know I could use one.”
I shake my head. “I’ll pass. It’s a long drive, and I’m beat.”
“Be careful, man,” he cautions me. “Call me if you need anything. Anything,” he repeats.
• • •
I do want a drink—I need one badly—but I don’t want to be with Buster, not now. His heart was in the right place when he threw me into that lion’s den, I grudgingly admit to myself, but he should have given me advance warning. It’s my decision if I want to meet with Roach, not Buster’s or anyone else’s.
I cruise a few blocks, luck out in finding a parking spot on the street, and go into the Old Ebbits Bar & Grill, where I sit at the end of the bar and order a double Johnnie Walker Black, neat. A popular watering hole, the restaurant is crowded with Washingtonians of a certain stripe, male and female—lawyers, congressional aides, lobbyists. Power suits and slick haircuts are de rigueur. Buster would be at home here. I’m not.
I knock half the drink back in one swallow, then let my mind ruminate on the meeting I just had with Roach—more an inquisition than a meeting. Roach gave a great performance—he has a splendid Sir Laurence Olivierish air about him—but whether he spoke the truth or not is still up in the air as far as I’m concerned. I instinctively haven’t trusted the man since the first time I met him, and my feelings in that regard haven’t changed. If anything, they’ve hardened. I don’t doubt who his nocturnal visitors were, or why they were there. I don’t even care, that’s not the point. What’s important is that I still feel, in my gut, that he was involved in the murders, including my mother’s. As good as his newest dog and pony show was, he didn’t change my mind about that, not by a long shot. But it’s beginning to sink in that I’ll never be able to prove it.
Still, what he said was very heavy, with ominous consequences for me. I’m already under suspicion by the Prince Georges cops for Wallace’s murder—how much, I don’t know, but Ricketts hasn’t forgotten me, I’m sure of that. I don’t want to find myself in a position where I’m also accused of jeopardizing an important and fragile government operation.
• • •
It’s after eleven by the time I get home. I called Maureen from the road, told her I was going to be very late, that I’d call her in the morning. She was disappointed, but she knows how stressed I am, so she didn’t push. Still in my clothes, I fall into bed and thirty seconds later I’m asleep.
Maureen comes over early the following morning. She looks better than ever—appealing, vulnerable, real. We hug for a long time. I cling to her. When we break, she looks at me peculiarly.
“You seem different, Fritz. More here.”
I can’t tell her about my meeting with Roach, so I tell her how I’m feeling about her. “I’m getting rid of the shit in my life, and keeping the sweet stuff.” I take her face in my hands. “You’re the sweet stuff.”
“Finally,” she says with relief. “You know how worried I’ve been about you over this, Fritz. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with someone I have to be scared for all the time. I want the sweet stuff, too.” She hugs me. “Thank God,” she whispers in my ear. “That you’re going to be with me, after all.”
• • •
We stay put in the afternoon heat, then at twilight we go down to bird island. The light is perfect—soft, diffused twilight. I shoot a couple rolls of film. Maureen watches me observing Ollie. She’s more interested in me now than she is in him.
“When are you going to do the right thing about this bird?” she asks.
“Soon. You’re the expert, I’
ll let you make the arrangements.”
Thinking about Ollie having to leave makes me reflect again on my own situation. As Maureen and everyone else has pointed out, there’s no reason for me to be here anymore. I’m going to have to get serious about looking for a job. I’ve never had to before; they’ve always come to me. I don’t know what it’s like to be a supplicant. I’m not going to like it. I’m better at being pursued than being the hunter.
That’s going to be a big issue—where I find a job. If I got something across the country, I couldn’t take it, unless I was willing to let Maureen go.
I can’t do that.
• • •
I scrounge around in the refrigerator to see if there’s anything I can cook for dinner. Maureen’s on her cell phone, checking messages. I find a stash of Mattie’s chicken pot pies in the freezer, pop two in the microwave.
“Damn.” Maureen’s frowning at her telephone.
“What’s the matter?”
“I have to go to Boston. There’s a situation I can’t fix over the phone.”
Now I’m the one who’s upset about the other’s departing. “When?”
“Tomorrow morning. I’ll drive up to BWI and catch the shuttle.”
“For how long?”
“Not long, although I may have to stay over a night or two. God, I hope not. I so do not want to be there.” She slings an arm around my shoulders, gives me a kiss. “I want to be here. Nowhere else.”
• • •
We go to bed early, make love, sleep like babies, get up early, make love again. She has to go back to her motel and grab some things for her trip, so she leaves without eating breakfast.
After Maureen leaves, I call Fred and fill him in on what’s been going on in my life—stumbling into the top secret gathering at Roach’s compound, then my being blindsided by Roach at the State Department.
“So now what?” Fred asks.
“I’ve drilled a lot of dry holes, Fred. I think it’s time to pack it in.”
“It’s your life.” He sounds disappointed—he’s been living the excitement of all this vicariously, through me.
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