She was instantly overwhelmed. Another rent-a-cop stationed at the escalators instantly recognized her look of confusion, and pointed her to another ridiculously long line of dour-faced people waiting beneath a sign that said “Visitor Check-In.”
Sam employed the badge trick once again, and soon found herself leaning over the counter to hear a slightly mouse-faced security administrator provide mumbled half-answers to her repeated requests to see the visitor log for two particular dates in the recent past.
The clerk eventually handed her a clipboard containing a form with dozens of fill-in-the-blank fields, and mumbled that Sam should get back in line when she had finished filling out the form.
Sam rarely responded well to low-level bureaucratic bullshit, and she was even less charitable than normal after suffering through what had to have been the world’s longest week. “Point to the place where your supervisor sits,” she told the clerk through clenched teeth. The clerk pointed to the chair next to her, occupied by an equally dull-looking human. “Thanks. Now, point to that person’s supervisor,” Sam said.
The clerk rolled his droopy eyes, sighed, and pointed a stubby finger toward a glassed-in office, also with a long line of people waiting to be seen.
You’ve got to be kidding me, Sam thought. She recalled Brock’s frequent jokes to the effect that the country was wasting its money on military weapons; the surest way to kill an enemy would be to subject him to American military bureaucracy, thereby instantly removing his will to live.
By the time Sam reached the uber-rent-a-cop’s office and used her badge to elbow her way to the front of the line for a third time, she was feeling stressed and far less than courteous.
Fortunately, the supervisory clerk had above-average situational awareness, and recognized that the combination of Sam’s DHS credentials and her foul mood could spell trouble. He wrote down the two dates she was interested in, disappeared behind some modular office furniture, and emerged several minutes later with a computerized printout of the visitor’s logs.
Finally.
Sam referenced the precise times when Arturo Dibiaso’s cell phone data appeared to pause at the Metro entrance to the Pentagon. Over a hundred people signed in during the thirty minutes Dibiaso’s cell phone signal was stationary. Not much help.
She figured that signing the visitor’s log would be the last thing Dibiaso did before venturing into the bowels of the Pentagon, so she narrowed her search to within three minutes of when Dibiaso’s location moved deeper into the complex.
Six names. Much better.
But none of them were Arturo Dibiaso.
She hadn’t expected Dibiaso to use his own name to sign in to the Pentagon, if he had indeed visited the Building, but it would have been a welcome break. Alas.
Sam took a closer look at the remaining fields on the visitor form, hoping for something to guide her search of the remaining six names. Each visitor required an escort, who was required to both print and sign his or her name, along with an office symbol and telephone number.
She scanned the list of escorts, and one jumped out at her immediately: Major General Charles W. Landers. Brock’s boss! He had escorted someone named Avery Martinson, which didn’t ring any bells for Sam. But the timing matched up almost exactly, on both days in question.
Sam’s spirits lifted, but she realized she had very little time before Landers would be joining the throng of Pentagon refugees on their daily pilgrimage from the bowels of the world’s ugliest building, back to civilized society.
37
The Caracas sun had begun its descent, casting the city in the nostalgic light of day’s end. Peter Kittredge glimpsed the deepening hues through the window of a street cafe and bar.
The Eurotrash music was already pounding as if it were 1999 in Berlin, adding further ammunition to his side of a running discussion with Charley about exactly how many years behind North America their South American counterparts chose to remain. Charley said five years, but Kittredge maintained it was a decade if it was a day.
Thoughts of Charley were hard to keep from his mind. He still wavered between sadness, anger, and fear. And he was still horribly confused about just what he and Charley were together. A couple? Partners? Or sex-buddies of convenience, one of whom happened to be playing the other like a marionette. It was not an uplifting line of thought, and Kittredge felt emotionally worn out.
Thankfully, his rumination was cut short by the arrival of his arranged date for the evening. She looked to be in her very, very early twenties. Her bare legs were exquisite, leading to a heart-shaped tush barely covered by a skirt. She had large breasts, and big, expressive Latin eyes, along with perfectly smooth, olive skin. She had a beautiful face and a perfect mouth, which delivered the agreed-upon opening phrase: “You must be angry with me for keeping you waiting so long.”
He had been practicing his rejoinder. “I couldn’t possibly be angry at you,” he said. In the moment, it felt wooden and rehearsed, possibly because he had been rehearsing, and he was still scared witless about his deepening affiliation with El Grande’s Venezuelan Special Services friends.
Fortunately for Kittredge, a comfortable alcohol buzz had set in, and he soon forgot his nervousness. The bar was apparently a very popular place on Thursday afternoons, which made it extremely public but also a terrific place to have a private conversation. Nobody could hear a thing anyone else said, unless they hollered directly into each other’s ear drums.
“You’re beautiful, and I would definitely try to pick you up if I wasn’t gay,” Kittredge shouted into his new friend’s ear.
She laughed. “I have toys we can both play with, in that case.” Kittredge’s turn to laugh.
Maybe the VSS thing wasn’t such a bad deal after all, he thought. Except it seemed like a great way to make enemies out of the the Agency, which Kittredge had come to view as one of the world’s most vicious clandestine services.
But Kittredge had already managed to do that without much help. Maybe Quinn and Fredericks weren’t his outright enemies, but they certainly weren’t better than frenemies. He got angry all over again about their invasion of his privacy, and their violation of his person with a belt sander.
And they had ripped him off. He had conveniently forgotten Fredericks’ point regarding the silver, namely that Kittredge had “earned” it by selling embassy secrets, and therefore the Agency hadn’t technically stolen from him.
Details.
It felt good to be taking back control. He felt that was the overarching purpose for having dialed the number given to him in the National Mall in DC, by a guy who was now very dead. And regaining control was also the reason he had allowed El Grande and the VSS to continue to cultivate a relationship with him.
He also realized that he was at least as interested in the VSS as they were in him, which made theirs the kind of mutual neediness that would either lead to a successful relationship, or to abject dysfunction.
Not much to lose by seeing what happens, Kittredge decided, but he knew instantly that such a choice was undoubtedly progeny of alcohol-induced hubris, and possibly a little carelessness.
Living dangerously again. Guess I’m a born operator. He chuckled. James Bond, minus the machismo, and with a limp wrist and the faint trace of a lisp.
The girl was shouting in his ear again. “You have to assume they’re watching you,” she was yelling, as if her twenty-one-ish years of life experience had bestowed this pearl upon her, which she now dutifully passed on to the feckless protégé almost twice her age.
He bristled a little.
“Did you read that in a LeCarré book?” he shouted in her ear with a wicked grin.
“Clancy,” she corrected.
“I didn’t know anyone still reads him.”
“It’s 1995 here in Caracas, even though the calendar says something different.”
“Ha!” he bellowed. “Yes! I keep telling Charley that same thing. He says 2005 though.”
“Not
even close. We’re still worried about Y2K.”
Kittredge laughed. “Were you even alive then?”
“I was giving head to my boyfriend at the turn of the century.”
“You must be very proud. And hopefully older than you look.”
“Si. Thirty-one.”
“I never would have guessed.”
“We have no petrochemicals in our water. We don’t age as fast. But I think you gringos want to change that for us.”
“It’s called progress. Get on board.” It drew a laugh from his pretty companion.
Kittredge began to seriously entertain heterosexual notions. He’d dabbled before, always returning to the male end of the sexual spectrum but certainly enjoying the change of pace.
“I like you, Peter Kittredge,” she said. “Buy me another drink.”
“If I wasn’t mistaken, I’d think you were coming on to me.”
“Maybe I’m trying to help you see the error of your ways,” she said playfully. He was sure her flirtation was brought on by the universal notion among women that gay guys were safe to flirt with, but he wondered how “safe” he actually was – he felt the beginnings of arousal.
“Maybe I’m open to alternative points of view,” he said, matching her playful tone, his mouth next to her ear, his hand on her thigh for good measure.
“You can’t put it in my ass no matter how much you beg.”
He laughed until tears came out of his eyes. Then, “Is that why they sent you to meet me? To put me in a compromising position?”
She smelled good. Not in a perfumed way, but in a visceral, biological way.
“You mean more compromising than already? I don’t see how that could happen, super-spy.” Her lips brushed his ear, and she nibbled his earlobe.
Was he really about to have sex with a woman, and one he’d met just moments before?
His crotch voted “yes.” There were worse things in the world than female favors, even for a middle-aged, ostensibly-gay guy.
“Seriously, they sent you to have sex with me?”
“No. They sent me to keep an eye on you. Sex was my idea.”
It didn’t take Kittredge long to decide. “Barkeep! Tab, please.”
She was absolutely wild. She left teeth marks on his thigh, bit his nipple, and rode him with abandon.
Round one complete, Kittredge and his new friend watched the sun track further toward the horizon. She ran her fingers tenderly along his scabbed-over lower back, and asked him about the injury.
“My new friends,” he said.
“You need better friends.”
“I think I just made one,” he said. She smiled.
He wasn’t sure whose apartment they had used for their unlikely rendezvous, but it was clear that at least some of the things were hers. It was probably a safe house, but one she’d been inhabiting for a few days.
“Now that we share the same diseases, what’s your name?” he asked.
“Maria,” she said.
“Really?”
“No. But that’s what you should call me.”
“I can live with that.”
“Of course you can,” she said.
It was all thoroughly disorienting for Kittredge.
“You are confused, no? Like, where has this girl been my whole life, and why have I wasted all these years with hombres?”
“Maybe. But maybe it’s just that I’d hate to have to give up my gay card if anyone found out.”
She laughed. “Sex and politics.”
“They’re one and the same,” Kittredge agreed.
“Uh-oh,” she said, suddenly serious. “Time for us to move.”
“Why?”
She pointed out the window to a car parked on the curb across the street, twelve stories below. “Your friends are here.”
Kittredge slipped on his underwear and pants and stood next to Maria, peering through the bars of the balcony and down at the opposite curb, where a white sedan was parked illegally.
An unbelievably intense flash of red light had a blinding effect on his vision, and he instinctively turned his head. The intense light appeared to be coming from the high-rise across the street, but he was too disoriented by the painfully intense beam to figure out its import.
He felt Maria’s shoulder crash into his side, and felt his body hurtled backwards toward the bed. He heard her yell, and then heard the deafening crash of glass as the balcony door shattered into pieces.
“Sniper!” she yelled. She rolled off the bed and moved on all fours along the far wall, hidden for a moment behind the bed.
“Bathroom, now!” she commanded, and Kittredge obeyed. They low-crawled against a wall, using the furniture to obstruct the sniper’s line of vision.
Kittredge looked up to follow Maria into the bathroom, and he got an eyeful of her still-naked derriere. This is craziness, all of it.
Maria scooped up enough clothing on her way to the refuge of the bathroom to cover all the appropriate parts of her, and she dressed with a speed and nimbleness that instantly impressed Kittredge. It was clear that she was far more than just a pretty face sent to occupy his time to keep him from getting in more serious trouble. She was actually in charge of keeping him alive.
“When I tell you, you’re going to crawl. Keep low. Turn right, wait for me at the apartment door,” she said.
She opened the bathroom cabinet door, moved aside a box of tampons beneath the sink, and retrieved the largest handgun he’d ever seen. She also grabbed a snub-nosed Glock .45, and threw it at him. He missed, and the handgun clattered on the tile floor. She beat him to it, grabbed his right hand, and forcibly placed the gun in his palm. “You should have brought the gun El Grande gave you. Don’t lose this one. It has my prints on it.”
She peered around the corner and studied the scene for several seconds. “Go Kittredge!” she shouted suddenly. She was still the same animal who’d had her way with him moments earlier, but now that feral energy was channeled in a much different direction.
As he exited the bathroom on his hands and knees, he saw the red flash out of the corner of his eye again, and instinctively flattened himself to the carpet. A bullet tore into the wall just above his torso, and his mind registered in a strangely detached way the scant few inches that delineated between drawing another breath and having a rifle slug destroy his heart and lungs.
“Move! Crawl! You have to get out of the line of sight!” She shouted. “Around the corner, now!” Kittredge scampered in what he imagined was an Army low-crawl, pulling his body forward over the carpet with his elbows and knees flayed out to either side.
More glass shattered as a bullet tore into the bathroom mirror, and Kittredge heard an explosion that sounded like a cannon’s report. Shocked by its incredible loudness, Kittredge turned to find its source, and saw the giant .50 caliber handgun in Maria’s hands roar for a second time, belching flames out the front and moving her entire body backwards with the force of its recoil.
“Vamanos!” she commanded, and Kittredge resumed his panicked scramble toward the apartment’s front door.
As they crawled deeper into the flat and away from the balcony, the laser sight crept its way along the hallway wall above them, but it disappeared abruptly each time it descended toward them. Kittredge realized that the shooter must have been on a lower floor across the street, and as he and Maria moved further into the apartment, the shooter was unable to draw a bead on them because his firing line was obstructed by the balcony floor.
They gathered their breath at the doorway, Maria straightening the tee shirt she had collected from the floor moments earlier.
“What now?” he asked, breathless with fright and exertion.
“Now, it gets difficult,” she said, tucking an extra clip of .50 ammunition in her pocket.
She reached up, unlocked the front door, swung it wide open, and somersaulted out into the hallway, coming to rest on one knee with the giant handgun pointed in the direction of the elevators. Findi
ng no one, she rolled again, this time ending up in a prone firing position pointing the opposite direction down the hallway.
“Come!” she hollered for the second time in the last few minutes, meaning something far different this time than the first.
Kittredge scrambled to his feet and lurched clumsily after her as she ran downy he hallway. “The elevators are the other way!” he shouted.
“Exactly!” She leapt feet-first at the fire door beneath a lighted sign depicting a staircase. Her heel caught the horizontal door bar, and the door exploded open, crashing into the cement wall on the stairway landing and slamming shut again. Now certain no one was behind the door, she opened it for a second time, and admonished Kittredge to keep up with her.
He entered the stairwell a few paces behind her, and was shocked to find her climbing up the stairs, bounding two at a time. “We’ll be trapped!” he yelled.
“They are already on their way up! Just trust me.”
He didn’t have a better idea, so he followed her up two more flights of stairs and onto the fourteenth floor landing, his lungs suddenly burning. He felt lightheaded from fear, exertion, and the kind of dehydration that only a three-day bender can inflict.
Kittredge heard pounding feet climbing the stairs beneath them. “Hurry!” she hissed.
He reached her as she opened the doorway to the fourteenth floor hallway, and she repeated the Hollywood-esque procedure of rolling around on the floor with her gun drawn.
Twenty paces down the hallway, a resident had just opened the door into her apartment, and had reached back down toward the floor to retrieve a basket of laundry. Kittredge heard Maria bark terse instructions in Spanish, and the woman let out a feeble screech of alarm.
More barking from Maria served to encourage the woman’s silence, and Maria closed the gap to the open apartment doorway in what looked like three giant steps, her hand waving behind her for Kittredge to follow.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 21