“Flynn? Flynn Kenyon?” Kel asked. “He’s involved in this rally of yours?”
“Actually I’m involved in this rally of his, in a very minor way.” I stared at him. He looked tense. “What?”
“Nothing.” He nodded towards his car, parked at the edge of the grass. “Let’s go. I have the papers in my car.”
He took my arm for the walk to his car, but I noticed that several times he looked back at the pig. At the car, he opened the door.
“Get in.”
“Are we leaving?”
“I thought we could look at the papers over lunch. I still owe you one. And you did say you were through kissing every guy that happens to walk by.”
“I didn’t kiss every guy that walked by. Just three of them.” I crossed my arms, feeling kind of Schwarztcoff-ish in my Desert Storm gear. “What about my dog?”
“Your dog?” He looked at Addison, frolicking with some children. “Can’t he stay and play? He won’t fit in my car.”
“We’ve established your car is small, haven’t we?”
He started beating a tattoo with his fingers on the top of the small car. “And your dog is big as a horse. But I think Dobbs and Henderson can take him home.” He signaled to my watch-suits.
“I suppose so, just warn them to keep him away from your car until we leave.”
Kel got kind of immobile. “Why?”
He laid a protective hand on his car.
“He likes to bite off the mirrors.”
“He—why?”
“He’s patriotic and believes people should buy American.”
Kel pulled rank on the suits. We left without Addison and with his side mirrors intact, though it was a near thing. We sped rapidly away from the park, traveling in silence for several blocks before Kel took up the attack again.
“So, did you give Jerome his answer?” He sounded a little too noncommittal.
“Yes.”
“Before or after the long kiss.”
I smiled. “It wasn’t that long—the light is green now—isn’t it kind of hard on your transmission to grind the gears like that?”
He accelerated, deliberately abusing his transmission again. “Every time I turn around you’re getting cozy with those boys.”
“Not every time. It was a rehearsal.”
“Is that what you call it? Sounded more like soliciting to me.” I liked the aggrieved edge to his voice. If I had to be baffled, then he should be aggrieved. “It’s dangerous to encourage them like that. Young men’s hormones, well, they can get out of hand.”
“Really?” He ground his teeth, so I added soothingly, “Actually I was trying to discourage them.”
“I don’t think it worked.”
“They were just high on the idea of liking me. I removed the mystery—”
“Mystery?”
“Yeah. I think they thought it would be, like amazing to kiss me or something. I disabused them of the idea and now we’re all just good friends again.”
“They didn’t think kissing you was amazing?” He pulled through the light and stopped in front of the same Mexican restaurant where we’d been shot at before.
“No.” I turned to look at him, found myself nose to nose with him. He removed his glasses, then mine and snared me in the glow of his hot, blue gaze.
“I find that hard to believe.” His voice husky, he leaned close, his hand sliding over mine nestled in my lap and lifted it to his mouth.
All I could do was stare, the breath stealing from my lungs in a gentle whoosh as his mouth slid across the back of my hand.
“Oh.” It was not brilliant, but it was all I could manage. I started to lean towards him, surrender in my heart. Apparently he didn’t want surrender. He wanted lunch. He turned and slid out of the car. I watched him walk around to open my door, pique replacing passion. Again he had failed to take advantage of a lady in the front seat of his car? The man wasn’t doing his part to improve the CIA’s bad image.
I managed to drown my pique in the excellent lunch. Feeling mellow and much more forgiving, I leaned forward, pushing aside my water glass, my hand playing with the petals of the flower that drooped in the center of the table as we chatted about everything but what brought us together.
Kel leaned forward, linking his hand with mine, both our elbows on the table, we stared at each other across the minimal space, like arm wrestlers waiting the starting gun—
The thought must have formed in both our minds at the same time because we both started straining, turning our table into a mini-battle field of the sexes. Of course I lost. I hadn’t been rigorously trained by the government. But sometimes losing can be winning. With my arm down on the table, our faces ended up just millimeters apart.
He shortened the distance. I let him, fluttering my lashes down on my cheeks in what I hoped were alluring half-moons. But instead of kissing me he jumped to his feet like he’d heard a gunshot.
“Mother!” His hand went to his tie.
For one awful moment, I thought it was my mother. Then it hit me. I jerked back from my draped position on the table and knocked over my water glass.
“What are you doing here?” He tugged his tie again.
I saw her attention turn toward me and braced for it, but her eyes were as clever as Kel’s at disguising what she was thinking.
“You played at Ellie’s funeral,” she said, her voice as coolly elegant as her dark suit. She looked like the perfect political wife, but probably wasn’t with a name like Kapone. I braced for a more polite form of my mother’s dismay, but she startled me by adding, “It was lovely. You’ve been to New Orleans?”
“I taught school there for several years,” I admitted.
Mrs. Kapone slanted a look at her son that was both charming and mischievous. He blushed. A real, honest-to-goodness blush.
“Kel had the most darling crush on his teacher…Elspeth Carter when he was ten,” she confided. “That’s how we met. She invited me in to discuss a poem—”
“Mother!” Kel protested.
I found myself exchanging an amusing, faintly superior female look with Kel’s mother. I will confess I didn’t just enjoy it, I reveled in it.
She left us to finish our business, with an admonition to Kel to come home for Sunday dinner this weekend. He kissed her cheek, murmured something soothing, but noncommittal, then escorted her to a seat with her friends.
When he’d rejoined me, he managed to avoid making eye contact by pulling the computer sheet from his inside jacket pocket. Instead of serious spy, he looked sort of boyish. I knew how he felt. When your mother was watching, it just didn’t matter how old you were. All that mattered was how old you felt.
I was thinking how endearing he was until a movement gave me a glimpse of the gun nestled inside his jacket. It was a timely reminder of who and what he was.
This wasn’t just the man I’d most like to kiss. This wasn’t just a man with a truly classy mother who could be as embarrassing as my mother. This was a CIA agent. A man who carried a gun and who used it in the service of his country. I’d seen him shoot it. He’d probably killed with it.
A girl who got mixed up with him was likely to find herself featured on a made-for-television movie of the week. I should look at the stupid computer sheets and then hie me back to my roach as quickly as I possibly could. I was out of my league.
In pursuit of this goal, I asked, “Kel, you don’t still think the Kenyons are mad plotters, do you?”
He paused in the act of unfolding the sheet. “I don’t know about the elder Kenyon. I know his son, Dag, is not squeaky clean.”
This did not surprise me.
“He was in debt past his eyeballs, until last month. He suddenly paid the worst of his debts off with money from an overseas account. The FBI is still trying to trace where it came from. If we’d got on to him sooner—” He shrugged.
“The bum. He cries poverty to Rosemary all the time.” Though he had offered a cash payment for the Mercedes,
I remembered, and smiled. “Kel. He was at the convention, when the round-headed man came after me. It was him. The lousy, bast—ahem.”
“I did wonder how Howard found out you were there. Couldn’t find the link between him and Willis for that one.” He leaned towards me. “The pieces are starting to fit together, particularly…”
He stopped, then held up the sheet. “Remember I told you these were schematics for embassies?”
I nodded.
“Well, they’re more than that. They’re printouts from a pretty sophisticated computer modeling program.”
“Really? To do what?”
“To analyze the structure of certain buildings for weaknesses. The military uses something similar to study the impact of missiles and artillery shelling on different types of buildings. The idea being to find the best place to aim your device to bring it all down.”
I didn’t like what I was hearing. “Are you telling me that someone—” Not someone. Dag “—has been analyzing the Israeli and Egyptian embassies so he can shoot missiles at them?”
“That’s what it looks like. If you can identify the handwriting on this sheet, well, I might have enough to pull him in for questioning.”
“But this, you’re saying this could link him to those terrorists you were talking about? The ones buying the weapons?”
“If what I suspect is true, they haven’t just been selling weapons to them. They’ve been helping the terrorists choose targets and set them up for an attack.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would they betray their country…” Money. With Dag it was always about money. Except Willis. He said it wasn’t the money. “Willis doesn’t think he’s betraying his country, Kel.”
“It’s the shell game. What if each component of the plot has their own agenda? And something, perhaps their final objective, has dovetailed together? We’ve got Kenyon hard up for cash. We got some crooked guardsman with weapons to sell. We’ve got some people with a political agenda they want to hurry up. And we’ve got some terrorists who want to cause chaos in this country. I’ve put together a scenario, where all these elements could work together. If the last piece fits.”
He didn’t say what that piece was.
“Have you seen Kenyon hanging around the park where your rally is being held?”
I shook my head. “Just Flynn has been around. But I suppose Dag could be at one of the other sites.”
“Other sites?”
“Yeah, there’s going to be three simultaneous rallies tonight. Fox News is going to broadcast from ours when Greenwood does his big number.”
“Three rallies? Will there be three guns?”
I nodded. “Does it matter?”
“Three. I didn’t think…” He stared straight ahead for a long moment, his gears turning, then he spread the sheet out for me to look at. “Here’s the notations. Do you recognize the handwriting?”
I reluctantly bent over the sheet. I wasn’t eager to finger my nieces’ and nephew’s father conspiring against the government of the United States. But when I saw it, I could feel the blood drain from my face.
“Bel? What’s wrong? Isn’t it Kenyon’s?”
“It’s a Kenyon. But not Dag’s.” I looked at Kel in shock. “It’s Muir Kenyon’s handwriting.”
“Muir? That’s the other son. Are you sure? How come you recognize his handwriting?”
I smiled weakly, my gaze sliding away from his. “We sometimes…sort of…date.”
Kel looked resigned. “Of course you do.”
A distraction seemed in order. “I wonder if this is the computer program he’s been trying to show me all week?”
TWENTY-FOUR
Despite my deficiencies as a sleuth, I was bright enough to be worried after my lunch with Kel. I didn’t have the resources of the CIA at my disposal or all the clues laid end to end for me to follow. I did know enough to be profoundly uneasy when Kel’s suits gave me a ride, through a night already cold and dark, to the park with the pig.
It didn’t help my unease that the suits’ preppie look had been traded in for ominous form-fitting black jumpsuits, bullet-proof vests and stocking caps. They lacked only the blacking on their faces to be a mini rally invasion force. In honor of the mood, the radio provided the right background by wailing Bad Moon Rising.
As we pulled up next to the park, the area marked out for the rally was a brilliant, larger-than-life, splash of light in the otherwise dark park. Spot lights were positioned at the base of the trees festooned with yellow ribbons. The cold breeze sliding through bare branches made the big bows dance and weave like drunken sailors.
My non-suits melted into frenzy’s shadow. I wished I could go with them. Since I couldn’t, I donned the military sun glasses Flynn insisted we wear with our gear, and found I was glad for them. The contrast of light and dark was as extreme as political ideology and about as painful. Inside the magic circle, the guys moved around the equipment in their desert camouflage, their breath condensing into cloudy puffs around their heads as they exchanged quips.
I stopped at the edge of light overcome by the sensation that something momentous was about to happen. My nerve endings felt charged, my senses super alert as I studied the patriotic scene.
Like ants drawn to the hive, people flowed into the stands from all directions. Some faces I recognized. Reverend Hilliard seated next to Mrs. Macpherson, pale despite the cold nipping cheeks and nose. Illness had taken the curve out of her robust cheeks, but she clutched a tiny American flag in her fist.
My family wasn’t here. My mother claimed a desire to hear the State of the Union address kept her away. Right. She just didn’t want to see me on stage with my boys.
I didn’t see Steve, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t here. He had that strict sense of duty to country that might overcome distaste. No Kenyons in sight either. This was a relief. I didn’t know if I was a good enough actress to look them in the eye and pretend I didn’t know they were consorting with terrorists and murderers.
I still couldn’t get over the idea that poor old Muir was a conspirator, too. I tried to picture him hunched over his computer plotting the trajectory that would take out an embassy, but I couldn’t picture him at all. He was that bland.
I climbed on stage and found that someone had moved my keyboard to the very back of the stage, almost out of sight behind a couple of amplifiers. I thought it was odd, but was grateful. This was a bigger crowd than I was used to playing for and I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything.
Despite, or maybe because of the cold, the crowd didn’t need much of our pre-rally warm-up to reach near frenzy for the arrival of the big-wigs in long, dark limos. They were exactly on time. It wasn’t like bigwigs, but perhaps we were all slaves to Fox News and the President’s schedule. I tensed when Flynn mounted the stand, but he didn’t seem to notice me ensconced behind my keyboard at the back of the action and I was able to relax. I studied him, trying to find the evil lurking beneath his saintly exterior. No sign of Dag, which was a huge relief, whether he was a mad plotter or not.
The colors were presented to the sound of a single bugler playing The Star Spangled Banner. The crisp cold gave each note a clarity that brought tears to my eyes and made the hand over my heart more than a peer pressure induced gesture. In the bold, bright light Old Glory rose on the new flagpole, the breeze whipping it straight. Red, white and blue against the night sky brought a collective sigh from the audience. The music faded into the night and everyone sat down.
It was time for the hot air. The political speeches passed surprisingly fast, like everyone was set on fast forward. It was odd, but I didn’t dwell on it. Lee Greenwood stepped forward and it was time to make some music. In concert with my boys, I keyed the opening notes of I’m Proud to be an American, the song that had become the rallying cry for the whole war.
Something about the intense cold, brilliant light and heightened emotion brought it all into sharper focus, giving everything a clarity and
precision that cut through preoccupation like a Ginzu knife. It was as if my mind had unconsciously been taking notes, and now began sending questions for my conscious mind to ponder.
Questions like, why were the lights angled to cause pain if the audience didn’t look directly towards the bandstand?
Why was the memorial pig not in the lime light? All I could see was the very end of its muzzle. The base and rear were completely shrouded in darkness.
The angle of the barrel was odd, too. Shouldn’t it be pointing up more, rather than straight down the channel created by the facing bleachers?
Thinking of bleachers, why were they facing each other, instead of the bandstand?
I kept singing and playing on cue, but my mind was a vulture circling the scene before finally settling on Flynn.
He looked relaxed. Too relaxed. He looked at his watch, then at the rear of the pig. So I looked at the rear of the pig. Couldn’t see squat with the dark glasses on, but I looked. My hands faltered on the keyboard. No one seemed to notice. Only the words mattered.
I’m proud to be an American.
Flynn was as proud of this country as anyone I knew. It didn’t fit for him to throw in with terrorists. Could he be Dag’s pawn? That sure fit. Dag was a toe rag.
I frowned into the shadow, hitting about half the keys I was supposed to, and found I could see the dark outline of the pig if I took care not to look into a spotlight. That’s when I saw a flicker of movement so slight I wondered if I’d imagined it. Okay, so someone was back there. Made sense. Someone had to unveil the pig.
—going to be something happen today, possibly tonight. It might involve embassies—
—schematics that determined weak spots—
—look right at it and not know what it was—
—second shot heard round the world?
I tensed and just stopped myself from hitting a wrong note. My hands quit moving as my mind sped along the track of clues strewn right and left and added in what Kel had told me, mixed with what I’d learned from war watching.
Artillery was hard to defend against, almost impossible, in fact, unless you stopped it before launch.
The Spy Who Kissed Me Page 20