The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich

by Lars Emmerich

  The tired nurse asked him for his phone password, established during the emotional moments at the end of his one and only visit to Charley’s room in the hospital on Sunday morning, an eternity ago.

  Kittredge struggled to recall the password he’d given them.

  “Sir?” The nurse sounded impatient.

  “Boilermakers,” Kittredge finally said. In honor of Charley’s alma mater. It was a random password to think of, and honestly not all that secure, but he wasn’t thinking all that clearly at the time.

  “Just a second while I pull up his chart,” she said.

  Kittredge heard a thud as the nurse set the receiver unceremoniously on her desk. He also heard clicks and pops in the background, and he got the same feeling he used to get when his younger sister eavesdropped on his telephone conversations on another extension in their house.

  This is probably a huge mistake, he thought, and he briefly considered hanging up.

  The nurse’s return interrupted his indecision. She relayed that Charley was still unconscious, but his swelling had receded, his pupils responded well to light, and he was demonstrating positive signs of cognitive function, but that Kittredge should still be prepared for permanent changes.

  He asked her for a prognosis for when Charley might regain consciousness, hoping for a timeframe to help him wrap things up in Caracas and return to DC in time for Charley’s awakening, but the nurse demurred. “Predicting the future is the job of a doctor, not a mortal. I haven’t been taught how to read the chicken bones,” she said. Kittredge chuckled, thanked her, and hung up.

  He sipped his vodka and stared at the midnight lights of Caracas. He had always loved this city, with its own local twist on the universal themes of conspicuous consumption cohabiting with grinding poverty, and the lights comforted him as he mulled his situation.

  Kittredge knew that he had not yet made a rational decision about which associations to keep, and he had no idea how to cleanly and permanently sever the others.

  He had the feeling that he was deeply entangled in two diametrically opposed worlds. Quinn and Fredericks considered him their property; El Grande’s people could also lay roughly equal claim to him, by virtue of his insider knowledge of their operation.

  Beholden to both sides. What could possibly go wrong?

  He shook his head and sighed, fearing the train wreck that would inevitably unfold, then tossed back the last of his vodka. He eyed the bottle, momentarily tempted to pour another drink, but he had a sense that the morning would already arrive far too quickly for his liking.

  Kittredge walked quietly back into the bedroom and slipped in the bed next to Maria’s warm, naked body. His foray into life as a sexual omnivore wasn’t unpleasant in the least, he thought to himself. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the sound of Maria’s rhythmic breathing.

  40

  Quinn phoned Fredericks at first light. “I noticed that the back of your neck is starting to look like a pack of hot dogs. You should really lay off the sugar and starch.”

  “You woke me up for that?” Fredericks wasn’t amused.

  “Yes. And to tell you that I got a message from our flunky monitoring the hospital switchboard. Kittredge called around midnight last night, asking about Arlinghaus.”

  “That little shit,” Fredericks said.

  “What’d you expect? They’re lovers.”

  “You say that like it’s not even an abomination.”

  Quinn laughed. “You’ve been listening to that pedophile priest again, haven’t you?”

  Fredericks chuckled. “I’m beginning to think Kittredge is going to be a problem for us.”

  “He was fine, until your amateur-hour stunt. Speaking of which, your guys did a great job last night with their OK Corral routine. I think there might still be two or three Venezuelans left who don’t know that the CIA’s in town.”

  “Go to hell, Quinn.”

  “And you called me B-team.”

  “What would you have done?” Fredericks asked, making no attempt to hide his anger. “He made contact with the VSS guys, then broke contact with us.”

  “He left you his cell phone, Bill. In the safe deposit box. Do you think he’d have done that if he wanted to go permanently off the reservation?”

  “He’s not the world’s brightest operator.”

  “He’ll fit right in with your team.”

  “Go to hell,” Fredericks repeated. “Did our guys trace his call to the hospital?”

  “Not yet. IP encryption. The nerds think it’ll take a few days. I suggest we sit tight.”

  “I suggest you don’t make suggestions.”

  “You’re not a very good supervisor, Bill. I don’t feel very empowered.”

  Fredericks didn’t reply.

  “Seriously,” Quinn pressed. “Just relax, let his crisis of conscience subside, and let him calculate his odds. I bet we hear from him.”

  Fredericks snorted. “Even after last night?”

  “Especially after last night.”

  41

  Special Agent Sam Jameson drove her rental car aimlessly through the Old Town streets. She loved the feel of the city, with its quaint old buildings and real, one-off shops and restaurants. Sure, the chain stores and restaurants had invaded, just like everywhere else, but there was still plenty of local flavor. Alexandria wasn’t yet homogenized, and Sam hoped it never got that way.

  She had left Landers’ office in the Pentagon a little over fourteen hours ago, and since then, she’d thought about nothing but the dead ends she’d discovered, which had knotted themselves together to form an impossibly tangled mess.

  She was growing weary of living on the lam. Each hotel stay was another risk, and she had spent the night in the back seat of her rental car, just in case someone had circulated a warning about her, or had the area flophouses under surveillance. It was a bit of a paranoid move, but she knew better than almost anyone alive that once Big Brother decided to bear down on someone, it was all over but the crying.

  And it was certainly her turn under the microscope, because of the Brock/Dibiaso thing, and because of the Brock/Minton thing, though the latter appeared not to be a thing at all. Brock and Fatso were fighter squadron buddies from years ago, but evidently not much else, so that had left her with only the Dibiaso connection.

  She hadn’t necessarily expected to find a smoking gun at the Pentagon, but she had certainly hoped for something to help piece things together. Dibiaso hadn’t signed the visitor log using his own name, and Landers had said nothing at all about their business together, which was more than frustrating, so the trip wasn’t terribly educational.

  All of that had made for a melancholy morning.

  And I got Jensen killed yesterday, too. It was a melodramatic thought, she knew, and it wasn’t entirely accurate. But it contained a kernel of truth, and hearing the news about Jensen during a brief phone conversation with Dan Gable as she left the Pentagon the previous afternoon had turned her dejection into something just shy of despair.

  Gable had also mentioned that his search for Dibiaso’s phone records had come up empty. The number was apparently only in use for a couple of weeks, and it hadn’t appeared on the network before or since the period of time when Dibiaso’s movements coincided with Brock’s.

  So Dibiaso was using a burner. It was telling, but it was yet another dead end.

  Sam churned things over in her head. She was pretty sure that Jensen, the young CSI, hadn’t committed suicide in a restaurant bathroom, and she was also pretty sure that he wasn’t stupid enough to have made a lethal dosage error.

  And, while people fell off the wagon all the time, Jeff was probably too smart to get high at lunchtime, with all of his coworkers around to watch his intoxicated antics.

  So the deadly thing, whatever the hell it was, had claimed another victim.

  Abrams, Cooper, Quartermain, and now Jensen.

  I was within seconds of joining them, she noted. But for a bit of good luck, Sunday
morning’s bomb would surely have killed her and Brock.

  And what if she had shown up a few minutes earlier to Quartermain’s apartment? Would she have been Phil’s morgue-drawer neighbor? Random chance had saved her a few times over the past week.

  Random chance.

  Randomness made her think of what Landers had said at the end of their interview at the Pentagon. Random strangers was the phrase he used. He was talking about waiting in the so-called “slug line,” a strange Pentagon euphemism for a slightly creepy carpool arrangement, to jump into a car with people he didn’t know.

  The meme got Sam thinking about the way the slug line worked. It was a symbiotic relationship, it occurred to her, as adding passengers allowed the drivers to use the HOV lanes, and the passengers avoided the expense, hassle, and stench of the subway system.

  It seemed odd to Sam that they wouldn’t organize steady carpools, but maybe there was a bit of wisdom to it. Under the slug line concept, if one guy’s boss decided to keep him late, the whole carful of people wouldn’t have to miss dinner.

  It probably worked because the Pentagon was such a huge place, and nobody wanted to stay a nanosecond longer than necessary, so there was probably always someone to carpool with.

  Sam thought more about the size of the building, with its thirty thousand employees. The carpool was probably an interesting numbers study, she thought. You could probably go months without getting in the same car twice, and probably at least that long before ending up in a car with another passenger for a second time.

  The whole thing didn’t sound terribly appealing on a personal level, and Sam thought it would be awkward to climb into a car full of complete strangers twice a day.

  Complete strangers.

  It hit her like a freight train.

  Of course!

  Complete strangers!

  Sam fumbled with her new burner phone. It took ages to turn on, and she punched a wrong number trying to dial Dan Gable’s office number. She cursed, almost ran a red light, and finally redialed.

  It rang forever before Gable picked up.

  “Dan, maybe Brock isn’t lying!” she shouted before he could even get a word out.

  “Huh?”

  “The slug line! He carpooled home from the Pentagon!”

  “I’m not following,” Dan said. “And Ekman’s asking about you again. I can’t keep pretending I’m not helping you.”

  “Dan, Brock might not be lying about Arturo Dibiaso!”

  Dan sighed. “Sam, his cell phone data matched Dibiaso’s exactly.” His voice sounded tired. “I’m sorry, but they were in the same car, twice.”

  “That’s what I’m saying! People at the Pentagon carpool with random strangers all the time!”

  Dan thought this over. “So you’re saying he randomly rode in the same car with Dibiaso, twice in two weeks?”

  “Yeah. I mean, maybe. You told me that he got off at his normal spot both times, and Dibiaso continued on all the way to Triangle both times.”

  “Are you sure this isn’t just wishful thinking on your part?”

  “It sounds impossible on the face of it,” Sam said, “which is why I was convinced he was lying. But I was just thinking, what did they teach us during IB?” Sam asked. Investigation Basics was the entry-level course all Homeland counterespionage agents cut their teeth on.

  “Nothing useful,” Dan said.

  “They taught us that random events don’t space themselves evenly. And random events sometimes bunch together, making it look like they’re connected when it’s really just coincidence.”

  It got silent on the other end of the phone while Dan considered Sam’s idea. “You might be right,” he said. “It sure would explain why Brock wouldn’t leave us alone. Up until yesterday, he kept calling, trying to plead his case with anyone who would listen. Guilty people don’t usually do that.”

  Sam thought about this. Brock’s behavior seemed to support her notion that the connection with Dibiaso was, in fact, pure coincidence.

  Something gnawed at her. “You said, ‘up until yesterday.’ What did you mean?”

  “Jarvis finally got good and ready to interview Brock. Even set up an appointment and everything.”

  “And?”

  “Brock didn’t show. We have people looking for him. . .”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Sam said.

  Had something happened to Brock?

  Her blood ran cold thinking of the awful things that had happened to four different people associated with this case over the past few days, and of the horrible things that had almost happened to her and Brock over the weekend.

  “I tried to call you a few times,” Dan said, “but you’d changed out your burners again and I didn’t have a number.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Sam repeated.

  “I’m afraid there’s more. They found his car at home, with his cell phone in the glove box. The construction crew working on your house said the car hadn’t moved all day, and they never saw Brock.”

  The tears came.

  “I’m sorry, Sam. They searched your house,” Dan said, speaking with the air of a physician bearing news of a terminal disease.

  He paused before continuing. “I hate having to tell you this, but there was some blood.”

  Sam choked back a sob.

  “The lab results aren’t back yet on the blood from your kitchen,” Dan said. “But they haven’t found any sign of Brock.”

  Part IV

  42

  Peter Kittredge awoke to sunlight penetrating the room. The posh surroundings reminded him of the Cayman resort where he and Charley had vacationed during their early days together.

  He heard soft snoring, and turned to see Maria lying next to him. She was on her side facing away from him, and he followed the exquisite line of her shoulders and back as they gave way to her trim waist, and rose again to her perfect hips, barely covered by the silk sheets.

  Something primal stirred in Kittredge. He sidled up to Maria’s body, kissed her neck softly, and moved provocatively against her.

  She responded in kind.

  The animal pleasure of it surprised him again, and he soon found himself blissfully entangled, drinking her in, devouring her.

  Afterward, they lay together, conjoined. He kissed her neck, feeling none of the mild post-coital revulsion his previous heterosexual conquests had engendered.

  That was interesting, and new. With every other woman in his life, his desire for sex had lasted precisely until climax, after which his desire shifted instantly to escape and evasion, longing to return to the comfort of male companionship.

  “Good morning,” she finally said.

  “Quite.”

  “If your boyfriend could see you now,” she teased.

  “You might have ruined me for boys.”

  “I hope not. I think there are many fun possibilities we could explore.”

  His response was interrupted by the ringing telephone. He reached to grab it, but she held his hand. “Wait. Count the rings.”

  Four rings of the phone, then silence.

  It rang again, twice, then more silence.

  Thirty seconds later, it rang again, and this time Maria picked up the receiver. “Si.”

  Kittredge overheard a male voice speaking in staccato Spanish, and watched Maria’s face harden. “Si,” she said again, and hung up.

  She looked at Kittredge for a long moment.

  Without warning, she slapped his face, the sharp smack echoing off the marble floor. “Fucking idiot. Get dressed. We must go.”

  Kittredge joined Maria in the shower. Despite their shared nudity and the novelty of their new sexual relationship, she was all business. She moved quickly out of the shower, dried off, and rummaged in the expansive closet.

  “Wear this,” she said, tossing a black two-piece suit on the bed as he toweled off.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked. No reply, other than a frosty glance and a thin black tie thrown at him from the r
ecesses of the walk-in closet, which was stocked with enough quality clothing to make the urbane cosmopolitan in him insanely jealous.

  He set about getting ready.

  “So you made a little phone call last night,” she said a few minutes later. Kittredge got the impression it had taken a while for her to muster the limited civility evident in her tone.

  “Yes.” He was unapologetic.

  “You couldn’t have asked me to find out what you wanted to know?”

  “I needed to trust the answer.”

  She turned from the mirror. “What’s between us,” she said. “That’s not trust?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe it’s manipulation. There seems to be a lot of that in my life these days. And I still don’t know what you want with me.”

  He debated telling her what was really on his mind. He decided to take a chance, and maybe inflict a wound in the process. “And I think the VSS put Charley in the hospital in the first place.”

  She wasn’t wounded. “I think you’re a brilliant spy,” she said with obvious sarcasm. “Of course we did. You’re lucky he’s not dead. Get dressed.”

  It wasn’t a surprising revelation. Her eyes had told him nearly as much when he’d asked a similar question the previous evening.

  He had an idea of why the VSS had attacked Charley, but a part of him needed it spelled out. “Why?” he asked.

  “Wear the black shoes on the floor,” Maria said. She disappeared into the other room and shut the door behind her.

  Kittredge sat at the kitchen counter, staring out the window at the Caracas skyline while nursing a Bloody Mary he’d concocted from ingredients stocked in the gorgeously apportioned kitchen. He’d considered a sober morning, but quickly dismissed the thought. Maria’s sudden turn from minx to jungle cat was all the excuse he needed to start the day with a shine on.

  So the VSS had put Charley into a coma. He was surprised that he wasn’t surprised.

  But it was surprising that he wasn’t terribly angry about it, and he attributed that to the inchoate knowledge that there was much more to Charley than Charley had let him see. His lover, whom Kittredge had even thought of as his partner, had hidden a few terribly important things from him, and that felt very much like a betrayal.