I love you,
CAT
June, 1968
Dear John,
You were such a darling at the party last night, dancing a jig in celebration of Truman bombing all those dirty little nips. Of course, only I know that you were really dancing because you met your weight loss goal. Just imagine—twenty pounds lighter! And you look wonderful, my darling. Congratulations!
I love you,
CAT
August, 1945
Dear John,
I totally agree that it’s high time to order full battle stations on all those Italian greaseballs. After last year’s meeting in Apalachin, NY—you had no choice. They pushed you too far. And don’t worry about what they know about us. They shoot blanks when it comes to us. Besides, it’ll be just like the good old days when you cornered all those bank robbing hillbillies. And with Purvis long gone this time around, busting the mafia will be all your show.
I love you,
CAT
January, 1958
Dear John,
Happy birthday, lover! Just think, you are half a century today! I hope you like my present.
I love you,
CAT
January, 1945
Chapter Forty-Eight
Central Park Zoo, New York City
“It’s four-thirty. The zoo is closing now, sir. Please make your way to the exit.”
McCanliss ignored the attendant. He preferred to stay and watch the snow leopards. He wanted to reach in and give his longtime friends a goodbye pet where they lay next to the lamb shanks. After many years, and hundreds of walks through the Central Park Zoo for business and pleasure, he knew this would be his last.
He was done.
Over the years, his favorite animal had been Gus, the polar bear who was ultimately euthanized. Ah God, he was a powerful, charming creature. He had a wonderful mix of wild brutality and childish curiosity. Of course, Gus was thoroughly ill in his mind. Living in a cage, no matter how natural, will do that. You could see it in his behavior—alternately obsessive, manic, depressed, despondent, happy, violent. Sleep was his only true freedom.
McCanliss often wondered what Gus the polar bear dreamed of. Female polar bears? The open sky? Deep waters? Infinite ice? Unfettered freedoms? Or maybe Gus simply dreamed of eating the California sea lions for lunch. After all, he smelled them every day of his life as they frolicked in the fishy waters of the adjacent compound where they performed for tourists.
Whatever that bear dreamed, whatever he wished, he existed at the edge of life. That’s why the polar bear was his favorite. Gus reminded McCanliss of himself, of his own life. They both had what the psychiatrists call “marginal personalities.” Their impulses needed to be kept in check. They appeared whole, yet were actually fractured. And they were so dangerous they needed to be caged in their own respective ways.
But for McCanliss—no more cages. He was done.
“The park is closing, sir.” It was another attendant sweeping the zoo of visitors, this time a young lady. She wore the standard zoo uniform of khaki slacks and a pullover bearing the message Be a Zoo Lover. “Please make your way to the exit,” she said.
After Gus the polar bear was euthanized, McCanliss learned to enjoy the snow leopards, Zoe and Askai, so adroit on their feet. And he loved the penguins, so animated and genuinely happy about life. The penguins reminded him of puppies, too young to know anything of the pain that life will deal them. As for the sea lions, they were the least of all the animals because they surrendered to the rules. As long as they performed and clapped and bayed and barked and obeyed the attendants, they got the fish. Getting the fish meant survival. It meant winning. And more than that, as long as they obeyed, they were loved.
It also meant they surrendered.
In was ironic. McCanliss saw himself in each species. He’d been a human version of Gus the polar bear, yet felt as though he’d behaved like a California sea lion.
No more. Gus the polar bear was gone. And soon, he’d be gone too. Never again would he beg like a sea lion.
No more.
He’d heard of the Dear John File early on. Every agent had. There were always rumors. Some said it was coded-named QB69, speculated to stand for “Queen Bitch.” As for the “69,” it was understood with a smug wink to be a sexual reference. No one really believed it existed. If anyone did, they kept silent. Personally, he never cared one way or another. Why should he care if there was a secret file verifying that the founding director of the FBI walked the other side of the street? He never met the man. But he knew the real problem amounted to much more than sexual orientation. It was all the other stuff rumored to be in the Dear John File that worried the tenth floor. They were panicked about release of operation details from the 1960s, all of it before his time. They were illegal actions taken in the name of saving and keeping America as the great place it was believed to be. On that subject, it was more important that company members stay silent. Better to suggest the founding director was merely gay than to suggest he had anything do with murdering the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
That would be bad.
For them.
It’s a routine flowchart: if this happens, then that happens. Problem is, management never seems to read any flowchart of their own making.
If this, then that.
Well, he could read his own flowchart. It was bad for him as a kid living on a U.S. airbase in Italy, the same base where the local surgeon botched his cleft palate surgery, leaving him with a lifelong and uncorrectable scar. He was born on that base at Aviano. In some ways, he died there, too. He was there when he learned his father had been killed in Vietnam, the only war the U.S. lost. But it wasn’t lost because of foreign armies. It was lost because of internal armies: hippies, liberals, Democrats, students, professors, protestors, movie stars.
Idiots, all of them.
He felt he could do more for his country and more to avenge his father’s death by domestically policing the U.S., than any contribution he might have made following his father’s path to the Air Force. That’s why he went into the FBI. It wasn’t until 9/11 that he began to change his way of thinking. 9/11 was caused by rank incompetence, followed by a shamefully bureaucratic cover-up. The direct consequence was two perfectly avoidable wars.
If this, then that.
In 2004, there came another flowchart: he lost his son in Iraq. Captain Winston McCanliss was a troop transport pilot with the 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Drum, New York. His death changed everything all over again. It changed him, his life, his family, his outlook. His wife divorced him. It made him go from routine law-abiding FBI agent to zealot for the cause, a warrior, a black ops performing sea lion for the agency. His son’s death made him double-down on his father’s death. That’s when he was inducted into the DFC. Whatever they wanted from him, they got it. If they wanted the rules broken, he broke the rules. If they wanted someone dead, he killed them. Disappear? He made them go away. And if they wanted an amateur fox to become a wanted murderer, then he murdered an eleven-year-old boy to make it happen.
But no more.
Once again, they couldn’t read their own flow charts: if this happens, then that happens.
It had been fifteen years since Winston’s transport crashed in Iraq. In that time, thanks to the granting of supreme authority, he had plunged into the dark side for the bureau. And now, just because he’d lost four K-32 model drones, and one (and only one) fox had slipped through his fingers, they were worried about him?
That didn’t fit.
In all those years, this had been his only slip-up.
Sure, he deliberately left a copy of the encoded file in Teagarden’s inbox. So what? He didn’t think it would be downloaded by him or anyone else. Why bother with clerical details? He was a DFC agent operating with a grant of supreme authority. He was going to kill the target. Zap him with a K-32 programmed to kill with epipoxilene—instant heart at
tack without any chemical trace.
Nothing to it.
Then this Teagarden managed to take out all four K-32s, both the older and newer versions. That intrigued him. For the first time in years his skills were challenged. It made his job fun.
Until now.
And because of this one screw-up on a case involving the Dear John File, they’re doubling down on him? They’re granting supreme authority to someone else on the same case? And not just someone else—but Durgan Donnursk. He was a weight-lifting, vitamin-popping, punk kid. Hell, he probably watched CNN, too.
When Donnursk was coming up in the bureau, his nickname was Special Agent Dunno. And if he’s reading this thing correctly, they’re telling Donnursk to consider him, McCanliss, as the co-fox? They’re telling Donnursk to hit Teagarden—and—hit him?
Screw that.
If his time was up, he was going to spend his last minutes giving them what they deserved. Besides, the Dear John File was a screw-up of their doing. Not his. They failed to clean their own house nearly fifty years ago. Once again, just like 9/11, they want to prevent their dumb-doing from becoming their UN-doing. And they wanted him to be the UN-doer.
No more. He was finished. It was their doing. Let it be their own undoing.
They don’t understand their own flowcharts.
If this, then that.
“Sir, it’s now four-forty-five. Make your way to the exit, please.” It was the same male staffer who’d spoken to him fifteen minutes earlier. But this time, he did not continue walking. He stood beside McCanliss where he sat on the bench watching the snow leopards, waiting for him to stand and exit.
“Time to go, sir.”
McCanliss looked up. He could kill this annoying man with one blow. He’d become a cadaver in a matter of microseconds, his brain squeezed to mush. He could do it with a hand to the throat, a fist to the temple, a foot to the neck. It would be so easy.
“All right,” McCanliss said to the man.
He rose and slowly made his way toward the exit. He wondered what the zoo attendant would have done if Gus the polar bear had escaped his cage and roamed into Central Park.
“Please come again, sir. The park reopens tomorrow at ten o’clock.”
On Fifth Avenue, instead of walking to the safe house on East Sixty-Fourth Street, he walked deeper into Central Park amid the bikers and joggers. He knew the tenth floor would soon be buzzing as if he really were Gus the polar bear who’d just escaped and was really strolling about, unfettered, with all his power and wild brutality.
If this happens, then that happens.
The—this—part of the equation had already happened. Now the—that—part of the equation was about to happen. But for the first time, it was going to happen his way. He was no longer working for the tenth floor.
No more behaving like a California sea lion. Instead, Special Agent Harry McCanliss would be more like Gus the polar bear. Or more like Zoe and Askai, the snow leopards.
Now, he was working for himself.
And best of all, he knew where the fox was going next.
Chapter Forty-Nine
The Boathouse, Sparta Township, NJ
It was a tedious chore made less tolerable by the stifling heat and cramped space of the boathouse loft.
Yet Teagarden stayed with it most of the day and was almost finished with all thirty-four pages by early evening. He lowered the ladder and descended to the boathouse floor, taking care to stay clear of the windows. Using the binoculars, he looked for any evidence that Ernest Blair’s big colonial was still under surveillance. He saw none. The windows showed no movement. The truck and all trooper cars were gone from the narrow street. Across the lake, the cactus in the blue pot was still in the bathroom window of Cynthia’s rental. He assumed she left it there after going to work, but he wasn’t going to risk the possibility that Harry the furnace repairman, or Durgan the lawn and garden man, or some other agent was lurking about. He would wait for word from her before making his next move.
Moments later, back in the loft, he received that word. He logged onto Dan Jones’ e-mail, whose name and password she had cleverly remembered when he regaled her with every detail of his story.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
it’s not from me. you should know by now that I am done playing games.
maybe it’s from someone you need to tell me about who’s using my id.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Dan, please tell what this “pox on both houses” means. I will meet you anywhere, but I need to understand.
Please don’t tell me you are drinking and smoking too.
And I certainly hope you are not toying with my emotions.
I still love you,
Sandy
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
a pox remains on both houses…take canoe at pier’s end, paddle toward town ctr…meet me @ 10 pm under boardwalk at German beerhall called Östreicher Haus.
i will guide with cig. lighter.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Oh Dan,
You are a good man.
Please remember that and only that is what I will always think of you and nothing else ever for all time.
I love you,
Sandy
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
I say I am dishonest, because I am.
Forty-five years in Canton is enough.
I saw a crazy woman talking to a squirrel in Central Park yesterday as she fed it popcorn. You know what she was saying? She was saying, “I love you, I love you and respect you like my brother.”
Sure, she was crazy.
She was also honest.
Maybe you need to think about that.
Once again, that’s where I came in.
Sorry, Dan. I’ll try to make this up to you somehow, but please don’t make it any worse for yourself than you already have. You can take it from me, your wife certainly does not have any secret lovers to confess, and frankly, my sympathies are starting to lean toward her.
He logged off. The messages made him feel renewed appreciation for having Cynthia as an ally.
And what an ally. She’s as smart as they come, well adjusted, willing to risk everything to help him, and all of it in one very attractive package. That reminded him of the back of the box verbiage he’d been reading for each year’s new decoder ring: “just for you, new and improved to avoid secret dangers lurking around every corner, a very sweet deal, an all-in-one powerful device.”
Then he came to his senses.
She said both houses are still at risk. He didn’t own an all-in-one powerful device to help him avoid secret dangers which, in his case, really did lurk around every corner.
After gulping more NSAIDs, he spent the next few hours napping as best as he could manage in the heat of the storage loft. He needed to rest while he could.
Chapter Fifty
FBI/CIA Safe House, East 64th Street, New York City
Donnursk felt good about himself.
He lay on the bed in his room at the safe house. He remembered how good he felt when he graduated from the FBI Academy at Quantico.
His first assignment had been tailing a low-level courier for an arms smuggler. It meant covertly flashing his badge at the TSA security guy at Reagan National Airport so he could pass through the gate with his weapon still cradled in his left armpit. That felt good.
His first arrest had been a computer hacker in Richmond who stole bank account passwords and sold them for drug money. The perp was a pimply faced punk who got off with six-months’ probation. Still, it felt good.
He’d been a member of the DFC for only a few months. Yet he’d handled his f
irst assignment sanctioned by supreme authority with flying colors last Monday night on Shirley Highway. The DFC loved him for it. That meant the entire tenth floor loved him. And that meant he was golden.
The last few days had been the best of his career thus far. He’d been assigned two simultaneous jobs protected by supreme authority. He wasn’t certain if that had ever happened before, but guessed it had never happened for anyone as quickly as this. It seemed like the bureau equivalent of winning MVP in your rookie year. Because of it, he was now their top “go to” agent.
Now, job number one was—kill Sam Teagarden.
Job number two was—kill McCanliss, aka Ice Skater.
The first job he would complete for the agency, his country, his sworn duty.
The second job was much more. He’d complete it because he’d enjoy it. McCanliss was one of the last old timers from the 9/11 era. He was a part of the team that failed to connect the dots. Of course, they were all responsible. They—all—failed to detect nineteen Arabic foreign nationals living in the U.S. while learning to fly commercial airliners without bothering to learn how to take off or land a commercial airliner.
To his way of thinking, anyone with the bureau at that time shared responsibility, but not one of them took responsibility.
Not a single one.
Now it was time to hold one of those old timers accountable. The DFC commander’s instruction was “if ice skater does not turn-up by tonight, you have supreme authority on both the fox…and on ice skater.”
Well “tonight” had arrived and Ice Skater still had not turned up.
Time to go to work.
Chapter Fifty-One
Flight of the Fox Page 16