Liars & Thieves: A Novel

by Stephen Coonts

  Tonight Jake told her, “A friend of mine tells me someone took out a CIA safe house on the Greenbrier River in West Virginia this past Tuesday, killed most of the folks there. Have you heard anything about it?”

  “Not a peep. Nor would I.”

  “There have been no public announcements, no requests for local police assistance, none of that. I want to know what the agency is doing to find the killers.”

  “I can’t get into the CIA computers,” she said flatly. “Once upon a time, but not in this day and age.”

  “There was a fire and a bunch of bodies—at least six, perhaps a dozen. The local fire department responded. The bodies must have gone somewhere, and someone must have queried the FBI fingerprint files in an effort to identify them. More than likely the FBI is involved.”

  “I could check that,” she said tentatively.

  “There was a shooting in downtown Washington early Wednesday morning,” Jake continued. He read her the address that Tommy had given him. “And two people were shot on an estate in Montgomery County, Maryland, Wednesday morning.” He gave her that address, too. “I need to know who these people were, who they worked for, what is being done to investigate these crimes.”

  “You still in the Navy, Admiral?”

  “Nope.”

  She gave an audible sigh. “I suppose you don’t want anyone to know that you and I are inquiring?”

  “You’re a mind reader.”

  “And you have a good reason for asking these questions?”

  “You bet.”

  “Want to share it with me?”

  “No.”

  “When I got up this morning, I thought life was going too well. If I didn’t owe you big-time, Admiral, I’d tell you where to stick that telephone.”

  “Ain’t it great having friends?”

  “I want you to know that I like my job and don’t want to go back to the joint. You’re asking me to hang it all out, risk everything.”

  “Yes.”

  She said a cuss word, then said, “Call me back tomorrow night at this number, about this time or later.”

  They said a curt good-bye.

  I bunked on the porch of the Graftons’ beach house that evening, the MP-5 within easy reach. When he got back that evening, the admiral told me he had called Sarah Houston . That’s all he said. I had been working for him when he sprung Sarah because she was the best hacker on the planet. If anyone could figure out what was going down, Sarah would be the one.

  I handed him the automatic when he went upstairs to bed and kept the MP-5.

  After the house quieted down and the lights were out, Kelly Erlanger came downstairs and crawled under the blanket with me. She was wearing pajamas—didn’t say anything, just curled up with her back to me and drifted off to sleep.

  I was beginning to wish that she was a little more romantic. After everything we had been through this past week, maybe this wasn’t a good time. Still …

  She was gone when I woke up, sometime before dawn. There was a nice breeze. I lay in the darkness listening. Occasionally a vehicle passed on the highway. The rumble of the surf was steady as clockwork. I was about to get up when I heard footsteps in the crushed-seashell street. The noise woke me completely.

  I rolled off the couch as quietly as I could, picked up the MP-5, and crawled forward a few feet to a place I where could see up and down the street. I eased the silenced muzzle of the weapon forward, tried not to breathe.

  Something was out there, something evil.

  There—under the last streetlight, near the beach, someone with a big dog on a leash, walking toward the boardwalk over the dune.

  Was I going to spend the rest of my life jumping at every footfall, every little noise?

  A little disgusted with myself, I went inside and made a pot of coffee.

  At ten after one on Friday afternoon I parked the car on a deserted country lane on the top of the bluff overlooking the Potomac and hiked through the woods toward Dorsey O’Shea’s mansion. I carried the submachine gun in my arms and had the automatic in my pocket. That morning I offered to leave the MP-5 with Admiral Grafton, but he said he had an old pistol in a drawer upstairs, and that would do.

  Needless to say, I had no desire to run into anyone on this hike—uniformed police looking for someone to drag off to the clink would be bad, but camouflaged killers packing submachine guns lying in wait for anyone happening by could be fatal. I had seen those shrub-heads in their ghillie suits, so I knew how hard they would be to see. I took my time, kept the eyeballs going as I slipped through the woods, watching every step, every twig and branch, alert for anything that shouldn’t be there.

  Believe me, I was sweating. One mistake and I was a goner. I knew it and was doing this anyway, which says more about my testosterone level than it does about my intelligence. Actually I didn’t have a choice—I was already in this mess up to my eyes. Marching into a police station and making accusations looked as attractive as a weekend of Russian roulette. Anyone who could reach into a CIA safe house to whack someone could get to me in any hole I picked.

  When I got my first glimpse of Dorsey’s house, I got down on my belly and lay still for the longest time, looking and listening. Finally I crawled to where I could see better.

  Lying there on the forest floor felt good. I didn’t want to move. Thought of a dozen reasons why I shouldn’t.

  Finally I forced myself to do it. Stood and walked to the side of the house and pressed my back to it. Worked my way along the house to the corner and eased one eye around it.

  The body of the man I had killed wasn’t there.

  After a careful look all about, I walked over to where he had fallen and examined the grass and earth. The rain had almost washed out the bloodstains. I eased on over to the spot where I did the shooting. Sure enough, someone had picked up the spent cartridges. I have good eyes, and I looked—and didn’t see a single one.

  Dorsey had given me a key to the kitchen door. Although she was a rich single woman living alone on the edge of one of the nation’s worst sewers—Washington, D.C.—Dorsey didn’t have a burglar alarm in her house. Go figure. I pushed the door open, then stood waiting for the hail of bullets that didn’t come. Finally I sucked it up and eased through the doorway.

  I kept my shooter at waist height, leveled and ready, my finger off the trigger, and moved as slowly and silently as I could.

  I was dripping wet with perspiration. If they didn’t hear me coming, they would smell me.

  The body was gone from the foyer. Dorsey was going to be pleased to hear that whoever had carted off the corpse had also cleaned up the blood. I couldn’t see any stains.

  I did the whole house room by room, floor by floor. Only when I was absolutely certain that I was the only person in the building did I go back to Dorsey’s room and root through her drawer for a passport. She gave me a list of things she wanted, makeup, dresses, swimsuits, and such, but I didn’t bother. She was wearing her Rolex and had her purse with credit cards, checkbook, and address book—she was ready to fly. Young women in her socioeconomic group didn’t wear jewels, which meant hard times ahead for guys like me if that trend didn’t change. Maybe I should stay with the government.

  I locked the place up when I left, took a last look around, then set off back through the woods.

  Who removed the bodies?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I headed for the Baltimore–Washington International Airport to meet Jake Grafton and Dorsey O’Shea. Traffic was heavy, as usual. Five million people in the metro area, and every one of them is out on the highway driving his own car when I want to get from here to there.

  I was nervous—probably still tense from sneaking around the Rancho Dorsey trying to get shot. I didn’t think the police had hauled away those two bodies. If they had, they would have put up a mile of yellow crime scene tape and still be there taking pictures, lifting prints, and doing all that stuff the CSI dudes do on television.

  Musing on the
se weighty matters, I became aware of a white sedan three cars back that was keeping pace with me as I rolled east on the interstate. The other cars darted in and out of traffic and occasionally peeled off to dart down an exit, but this guy stayed back, matching my speed.

  Tommy, don’t be paranoid.

  I allowed my speed to creep up another five mph, just for grins. The guy didn’t fall back.

  I changed lanes, slid over behind a semi, which meant I had to slow down about five. The sedan changed lanes, too, yet he fell back a little when two cars cut in between us. They took the next exit, which left about fifty yards between me and the white sedan.

  Just when I was starting to get worried, the white sedan dropped down the next exit, leaving me to motor along with my random companions. No one else seemed to be following.

  It was late in the afternoon when I parked on the top deck of the close-in parking at BWI and rode the elevator down to the pedestrian bridge that led to the terminal. I was sitting in the lobby across from the airline counter when I saw them approaching. I handed Dorsey her passport.

  “That’s all you brought?”

  “I don’t believe in overpacking. That other stuff would just weigh you down.”

  She bit her lip and tossed her hair. Grafton and I stood in line with her to present her passport and get her seat assignment. I told her that someone had removed the bodies from her house, and she nodded. I felt like the Roto-Rooter man telling her the drain was open.

  After she did her business at the counter, Grafton and I escorted her to the security gate.

  “You didn’t bring that thirty-eight along, did you?” I asked, trying to be casual. It would be just my luck for her to be arrested for smuggling a shooter through security. She would spill her guts in a heartbeat. Grafton and I wouldn’t make it out of the terminal.

  “I left it at the admiral’s house,” she said distractedly.

  She shook Grafton’s hand, then held out a hand to me. “Good-bye, Tommy.”

  Well, what the hey! I wasn’t the guy for her, and she certainly wasn’t the gal for me. “So long, kid,” I told her, shaking her hand.

  She went through the metal detector okay, but the security personnel decided to search her handbag. Probably thought they saw a nail clipper in there.

  “Think they’ll send someone to Europe after her?” I said, referring to the hit men.

  “Not a chance in a thousand,” Grafton said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  The security guard finished stirring through Dorsey’s purse and returned it to her. She picked up her carry-on bag and joined the throng going down the concourse. She didn’t look back.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Jake Grafton said, turning away.

  As we walked I told him, “On the way over here I thought someone followed me from Dorsey’s, then they turned off.”

  He walked on, didn’t say anything.

  “Maybe I’m being an idiot.”

  That’s when Grafton spoke. “If they’re any good they have three or four cars on you. No one follows along as if he’s on a leash.”

  “If they were watching Dorsey’s place, they may be on me.”

  “The bodies were gone from Dorsey’s?”

  “Whoever took them away did a pretty good job cleaning up,” I told the admiral. “No visible blood inside and just traces on the lawn, which will wash away in the next rain shower.”

  Grafton gave me his cell number and the telephone number at the beach house. I wrote them on my left hand. “We’ll go separately,” he added. “Don’t go to the beach house unless you are absolutely sure you are not being followed.”

  As we rode up in the parking garage elevator, I asked, “What do you think, Admiral?” Perhaps I wanted some reassurance. If so, I didn’t get it.

  “I think you and Kelly are in a hell of a tight spot,” Jake Grafton said, then got off the elevator on the fourth floor. The guy sugarcoats everything.

  Up on the roof I stepped out of the elevator and hiked a foot up on the nearest trash can. While I worked on my shoelace I scanned the scene, looking for … I wasn’t sure what. People were getting into and out of cars, walking toward the elevator carrying and pulling luggage; several cars were cruising around looking for spaces near the elevator, even though the entire back row of the area was empty.

  I plopped my foot down and headed for my car, trying to hike along as if I hadn’t a care in the world except crabgrass in the lawn.

  It’s just that I had this itch between my shoulders, one I couldn’t reach to scratch. Maybe it was nothing, but it was there, this feeling that things were going badly wrong and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I wanted to shout, “I don’t know anything! Erlanger doesn’t know anything! Leave us alone.”

  Leave us alone—isn’t that the prayer that defines our age? We ask it of the government, the people with causes, the addicted, the crazy, and the starving and oppressed in all those third-world sewers. Leave us alone! Let us live our comfortable little lives without your burdens. Please.

  That’s the prayer, and no one ever listens.

  I didn’t see Grafton’s car—I wasn’t really looking. I was trying to figure out if anyone was following me. Crazy how your mind works—it seemed as if everyone was following, everyone was looking at me, everyone was going where I wanted to go. When I changed lanes, the car behind me did, too. The guy or gal in front drifted over into the right lane for the off-ramp to Annapolis and the Bay Bridge.

  Paranoid. I was paranoid. Relax, I told myself. Drive safely and normally and relax, for Christ’s sake.

  So I was doing just that, motoring along at the speed limit like the good citizen I will never be, when a police cruiser changed lanes to get behind me. I glanced at him in the rear view mirror and saw that he was using his handheld mike.

  Oh, great!

  I checked the other mirrors, looked at the terrain, thought about flooring the accelerator to try to outrun the guy. In this heap?

  After a minute and a half the dome light of the cruiser illuminated and began flashing. I drove for another twenty seconds or so, then put on the blinker and began slowing. I pulled off the road, stopped, put the car in park, and lowered the driver’s window.

  I watched the cop walk toward me in the driver’s side window. Mid-to late twenties, cool wraparound shades, a buzz cut, wearing a bulletproof vest under his uniform shirt. I’d opened my mouth to ask him what the problem was when he drew his service pistol and said loudly, “Out of the car, slow and easy, hands where I can see them.”

  “Officer, what—”

  “Out! Now!”

  I took my left hand off the wheel, unlatched the door. He backed off just enough to let me open it. I did so, then got out.

  He had the pistol leveled in a two-handed combat stance. “Take two steps toward the front of the car, turn toward the hood, and put your hands on it. Now!”

  This guy was spring-loaded to shoot. Since I had no choice, I did as he said. “What’s this all about, officer?”

  “The computer says your car is stolen, sir. Please cooperate and we’ll get this all straightened out.”

  He got too close and I could have knocked the pistol away and decked him, but I didn’t. Ten seconds later, when he kicked my feet aft and deftly pulled the automatic from behind my belt, I wished I had. My opportunity was gone by then, of course.

  “On the ground. Lie on your face.”

  If he got those cuffs on me, I was dead meat, with a life expectancy that could be measured in hours. The heck of it was I didn’t want to hurt or kill him.

  As he snapped one of the cuffs around my left wrist, I rolled hard into him. He fell, grunted as he hit the ground.

  I was all over him, fighting him for the pistol, which I knocked out of his hand. It went skidding under the car. He was young, strong, and desperate, probably sure I was going to kill him. All those years of rock climbing and working out had given me tremendous strength in the upper body, and believe me, I needed it
then. We rolled around on the ground, grunting and cursing, each of us trying to subdue the other as traffic roared by on the interstate.

  There was no way around it—at the first opportunity I popped him in the jaw as hard as I could hit. Stunned, semiconscious, he relaxed, and I leaped up.

  The radio was squawking, something about backup help being minutes away. My young fool hadn’t waited; if I had been a killer he would more than likely be dead. He didn’t know that, though, and probably never would.

  I couldn’t leave him lying beside the road to be run over, so I picked him up bodily and tossed him in the back seat of the cruiser. I threw his pistol in with him and retrieved mine from where he dropped it. Then I grabbed the key from the ignition and threw it as far as I could. I was sprinting for my car when two unmarked sedans skidded to a halt, one behind the cruiser and one in front of my heap. The drivers and passengers came boiling out of the cars. There were four of them in civilian clothes, and they came on a dead run with drawn weapons.

  “Freeze!” the man in front roared, his weapon leveled at my belt buckle.

  It wasn’t as if I had a lot of options. I lifted my hands. One of the men dashed in and snapped the dangling cuff around my other wrist, then two of them hustled me into their car. Behind me I heard a shot.

  One of them got behind the wheel, and the other jumped into the passenger seat. In seconds we were rolling.