“Sounds unpleasant.”
She shook her head in the darkness of the Jeep Cherokee as she approached the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
“It was unpleasant. And there are a lot more drones up ahead. Zooming all over.”
He rose just enough to peek into the distance. They were larger than the ones that attacked him in Bethel. Each one was about the size of a basketball and equipped with light beams that scanned the interior of passing vehicles. Seeing that, he quickly ducked back down and tightened the blanket edges.
“Can you imagine?” she continued. “In my own home! Just because they have a search warrant, I can’t go to the bathroom by myself.”
“What’d you do?”
“I let the lady agent walk with me. At the bathroom door, I told her to wait outside.”
“Did she?”
“Of course. How do you think I got the cactus in the window?”
She told him about her phone conversation with Bruce Kasarian later in the day, who was profusely apologetic for telling FBI agents about their one night together.
“That’s how they knew about me,” she said.
“Yeah. I figured that one out. But why’d he tell them? He’s been such a good friend for years. Why’d Bruce do that to me? And to you?”
“Oh, Sam, don’t blame him. They grilled the poor guy for three hours, right there in his office at Columbia. It’s what they do. It’s what they know how to do best. They intimidate people. I’m telling you, it was so upsetting having them in my house, firing questions at me. I’m sorry to tell you, I considered confessing everything just to make it stop. And I’m a courtroom lawyer. I know how to play the game. It was spooky to be on the receiving end. No lie.”
“I’m sorry,” he said from beneath the blanket in the back. “I should never have gotten you into this.”
“Never mind that sort of talk.” She took a deep breath, preparing to pass on two additional developments. “I’ve consulted a couple of fellow lawyers about this. One in New York and one in D.C. They’re top notch brains, criminal law, constitutional law, and trustworthy.”
“And?”
“And they’re working for us now, making calls, trying to work something out—but in the meantime, they’re concerned about your daughter.”
“They wouldn’t dare hurt her. Federal agents can’t do that.”
“I know and I agree. But the lawyers see a problem. It’s like this: these men we’re dealing with are what the security industry calls ‘in the black,’ or ‘deep shadow.’ Their budget isn’t public; Congress doesn’t officially know they exist. They don’t operate by the rules. They make accidents happen, including heart attacks. You were supposed to be one of their accidents. Instead you’ve become more of an ‘uh-oh.’”
“I get that part, but why involve Eva? My daughter has nothing to do with any of this.”
She took another deep breath. “I’m sorry to say this, but the lawyers think there’s reason to fear the sociopaths will now be happy to smoke you out anyway they can. It’s because you’re outsmarting them. They might decide that using your family is an option.”
“Oh God, Cynthia!”
“I know, Sam,” she said. “Don’t get too worried yet. You’ve had contact with her so you know she’s okay. And this particular aspect of the overall problem does not apply to your sheriff, who tried to shotgun you in a rowboat.”
“And he came damn close to nailing me. That man is smart. He makes the feds look like amateurs.”
“Right. So here’s my suggestion regarding the FBI. If we get separated, you need to figure a way to team with your daughter. Or at the very least, you need to let her know to be extra careful about her safety and the safety of her own daughter.”
“That makes sense. But how could I possibly get to Key West? I can’t exactly board a flight at Reagan National.”
“We’ll figure something out. Meanwhile, these two lawyer friends of mine are working an angle on your behalf, but they have to work their way through the ranks. It’ll take a few days for them to get to the people who issue orders in the dark.”
“So my job is to stay alive until somebody applies the brakes.”
She took another deep breath and swallowed.
“Listen, Sam, there’s something else. How plugged into the news have you been?”
“Not much. I read a little online news in the boathouse. Iran is threatening to blow up the world. And I know I’m a wanted man. That’s enough news for me. Why?”
“I’m afraid I have some bad news about your math professor friend at George Washington University—Stuart Shelbourn.”
Teagarden threw off the blanket and bolted upright before catching himself and lying back down.
“Oh no!” he groaned.
“I’m afraid so. His son, too. They’re both dead. Kasarian mentioned it to me and I found it online. Traffic accident in northern Virginia. At least, that’s what the Virginia State Police call it. There was a torrential downpour at the time.”
“Oh God…”
“And there’s more. The woman at that tourist hostel in Manhattan where you stayed.”
“Svetlana?”
“Yes. She was found strangled yesterday morning. There’s some media speculation you did it.”
He curled tighter on the floor of the car’s backseat. First Billy Carney, then Stu Shelbourn and his son, and Svetlana, too. Though she was a drug dealer, she didn’t deserve to be murdered. And all those deaths were because of a dusty old folder encrypted with a century-old toy decoder ring that was innocently mailed to him. It was more than his stressed emotions could process. For the balance of the drive down I-95, all the way to Fort McHenry Tunnel at Baltimore Harbor—he wept.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Friday, July 26, 2019
Key West Airport
It was an intriguing sight.
McCanliss stepped aside from the crowd on the tarmac to admire the old twin-prop airplane parked in the distance. He raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sun’s glare. As a boy, he’d dreamed of being a pilot because of that airplane. It had been his father’s favorite. “Everything before it was a vestige of the Wright brothers,” his father said of the model, “and everything after it was modern aviation.” That was in 1970 when he was a child and the plane was already ancient. Now, it was rare to even see one. Yet there it was—a Douglas DC-3 sitting stationary at the end of the taxiway at Key West International Airport. He considered it a positive omen, a blessing upon the decision he’d made in the Central Park Zoo while watching the snow leopards.
He stepped back into the crowd and entered the small terminal where he collected his checked bag that concealed his two securely locked firearms: a Glock 22 and a Savage Arms 220 bolt-action sniper rifle.
“Welcome to E-Y-W,” the woman’s voice barked as she grabbed the suitcase from him and hurried toward the parking lot. “Holy crap!” she shouted. “What the frig have you got stashed in this thing? Lead?”
His eyes sizzled with anger. He was a micro-second from injurious violence when he realized what had happened. She was a Key West cabdriver and this was her way of snagging a fare. For her, it was like spear fishing. You spot your fish, and when it passes, you strike.
He took a breath and decided to go with it.
“Gold,” he said. “I carry my pirate treasure with me.”
“Fricking great. Most New Yorkers come to the Keys hoping to find sunken treasure,” she said. “You’re the first to bring it back. Hey, listen, if you’re planning on dumping it in the ocean, let me help you with it. I won’t steal any. I promise.”
She was tall and big boned, with an old-style shag haircut and skin banded by so much sunburn it would rival a diamondback rattlesnake. Her husky voice and boisterous personality matched her lumbering body. She looked to be about fifty-years-old, but because of her skin, it was difficult to tell. She could have been as young as thirty.
“I spotted you on the tarmac,” she said. “You were eyeballing the DC-3.”
“Yes, I was.”
“Belongs to a good old Conch nicknamed Pangolin. He takes it up a couple of times a week for tourists. It’ll cost ya, but I hear it’s worth it. He’s known to buzz Cuban airspace just for fun. Apparently he likes risking World War Three.”
“Thanks, I’ll remember that. What was it you called Key West?” he asked.
“E-Y-W. That’s our airport designation. It’s right there on your bag check.”
He looked down. The tag on the case holding his firepower read “EYW.”
“Stupid, ain’t it?” she said. “Seems like it ought to be K-E-Y, or at least K-Y-W. But people who make those decisions don’t ask me how things ought to get done.” She gave a rowdy, barking-dog laugh at her own comment as they entered the parking lot. “That’s their loss.”
“Well, by one commercial aviation coding system it actually is K-E-Y-W,” he said. “It all depends on which system is being used.”
“No shit. I only know our bag tag system. So you in the airline business?”
“No. I just know about that sort of thing.”
“Okay. So where you staying?”
“No reservation yet.”
“Well, you’ve got the perfect Key West cabbie for that. So tell me, which one of our three reasons for visiting are you: boats-and-water, peace-and-quiet, or fun-and-party?”
“Something quiet in the Old Town area.”
“Right. The Poor House Inn on Poor House Lane. It’s right next to the cemetery. Dead people tend to be real quiet.” She hacked out another dog laugh. “Except when drunk college kids jump the fence at night to party among the graves. They love our cemetery where some tombstones are engraved with amusing messages, or eulogies, or whatever you call ’em. Course, Yankee snowbirds can overdo it sometimes too. But the frat boys from up north, holy crap, they’re the worst.”
Her cab was a twenty-year-old Buick painted yellow and sounded like a washing machine when she cranked it. He took her business card. It read “The Queen of Haul.” When she wasn’t working her old Buick as a taxi, she was hauling landfill and trash in her dump truck.
“How’d you know I’m a New Yorker?” he asked.
“When you been doing it this long, you just know. Besides, I’m from Jersey. Jersey can spot New York in the dark, know what I mean? It’s been twenty years now. Bayonne don’t miss me, and I don’t fricking miss Bayonne.”
Yet another dog laugh.
He paid the fare, tipped her, thanked her, and told her he might call her sometime just to see how she handled the pick-up line. It didn’t seem to faze her one way or another. After he got out, the big Buick lumbered up onto the curb and sidewalk to make a noisy U-turn, presumably heading head back to E-Y-W for another fare.
In his room, he showered, changed clothes, and returned his Glock to the small of his back. Using binoculars, he gave the neighborhood a careful sweep from the window. It was a sleepy, residential area that had no similarity to the frat party atmosphere that hammered 24/7 on the other side of the island. The gates to the cemetery were open, but only one lone cyclist in a Hawaiian shirt peddled slowly through.
McCanliss withdrew the components of his sniper rifle from his luggage. He snapped the stock to the barrel and trigger mechanism, mounted the telescopic sight to the free-floating barrel, and looked through the range finder reticle designed to adjust for distance and bullet drop. All was good. He loaded a magazine box containing five .338 magnum bullets. Setting the full assembly on the table by the window, he turned the dials to delicately adjust the butt plate and cheek rest. Everything was fine. He broke the rifle into its two main units and locked them securely in his luggage.
The tall bronze-skinned cabdriver couldn’t have known how perfect The Poor House Inn was for his purposes. After asking for a room on the second floor in front, he found he had a good view of the property he’d come to Key West to monitor. It was exactly half-a-block away on Olivia Street, the house where Navy Aviator Captain Eva Ghent, née Teagarden, lived with her baby daughter.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Washington, D.C.
He scarfed more NSAIDs in the dark.
It was still night when they circled the city on the Beltway and entered Washington, D.C., from the east, through Anacostia. They drove west on Pennsylvania Avenue, past the Capitol, Smithsonian, FBI Building and Justice Department.
“Pass up your Woodstock cap,” she said as they passed Federal Triangle.
From his hiding place on the backseat floor, he could see the flashing lights of the drones. Again about the size of basketballs, they were thickest where Pennsylvania Avenue doglegs around the Treasury Building and the White House. Teagarden knew they were routine security drones. Still, they’d probably been programmed with his and Cynthia’s images by now. It didn’t take IT people long to key in new facial recognition entries that could be shared by all of Washington’s security forces.
“Stay down,” she said. “As we used to say when I went to Georgetown Law, ‘this town’s got more bacon than the Smithfield Ham Company.’ We wouldn’t want to get nabbed when we’re this close to our appointment.”
Having attended GW for graduate school, he too knew Washington. “We’re near Justice. Are you going to park and wait for your son to arrive at his office?”
“No. I’m not getting my son involved in this. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me—way too precious.”
The question had been thoughtless. She was right, of course. It was the same way he felt about his daughter and granddaughter. He didn’t want them involved either.
“Besides, my son’s not in the office today. Or tomorrow. Or the next day. He’s at the World Court in The Hague defending the U.S. in litigation involving international torture. How ironic is that? Those Patriot Act cases are going to linger in the system for decades.”
“Well, he ought to be safe there.”
“He is. I’ve arranged to hear from him three times a day through his girlfriend.”
He recognized the façade of the Willard Hotel, then felt the pull of inertia as the car turned right on Fourteenth Street. In that direction, they’d soon be circling Lafayette Park and the White House.
“So tell me, why have we come to D.C. and driven past the very office building where John Edgar did his nastiness? Who’s the appointment with?”
“Sam, we need protection. And there’s no better protection than the House Speaker.”
“You’ve got an appointment with him!?” he shouted, throwing off his blanket with disbelief.
“No. That would be a little beyond the range of my contacts. But it’s close. We’ve got an early appointment with Danford Shackton.”
“Okay. Who’s Danford Shackton?” He tried not to sound deflated.
“Attorney. I went to Georgetown with him. After law school, he went into government service, while I went for the money. We’ve both succeeded rather well in our chosen fields.”
“Okay. So how’s he going to help us?”
“He’s the chief lawyer for a big-time House committee, called Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure and Security Technologies.”
“That’s a bureaucratic mouthful.”
“I know. The speaker of the House is a member and keeps a tight watch on it.”
“Okay,” he said again.
“Danford Shackton has the ear of the House speaker, and the House speaker has the ear of everybody on the Hill. Now all we have to do is fill him in on everything. Get him a copy of the Dear John File, and wait.”
“What will we be waiting for after we do all that?”
“First, we wait for the most important thing of all—for you to be cleared. Then, we wait for everything else: news reports, arrests, investigations, congressional hearings, mass firings, lawsuits, presidential pardons. But hey, let the chips fall where they may
.”
It sounded like a good plan, though time-consuming. Teagarden wanted to ask where he would live while waiting for all those falling chips. But he didn’t.
“Where’s his office?” he asked.
“Capitol Hill.”
“That’s the opposite direction.”
“We’re not going there.”
“Okay. So, may I know where we’re going to meet this Mr. Shackton?”
“His private residence. An apartment in Foggy Bottom.”
“Great. Under better circumstances, we could visit my old apartment. When I was a grad student in this town, I lived in Columbia Plaza. It’s near the Watergate. There’s a terrific pub nearby called The Red Lion.”
“That’s where he lives,” she said. “He has an apartment in the Watergate.”
Teagarden flopped back to the floor and pulled the blanket over his head.
“Do you see any irony here?” he mumbled. “The Watergate. What an appropriate place to report a government crime spree from the last century.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
The sun was just beginning to rise as Donnursk entered Washington via Wisconsin Avenue and drove south through Georgetown. In Foggy Bottom he cruised past The Kennedy Center and parked in a space within view of The Watergate Hotel. He left the front cab, walked around and entered the rear door of the truck labeled “Durgan’s Lawn & Garden.”
He was proud of the truck, proud that it had his name on the side. The FBI had only a dozen agents, give or take, in the DFC, and within the DFC it had only three satellite trucks: his, Ice Skater’s, and Street Cleaner’s Carpentry and Home Repair truck, stationed in Los Angeles. Each was a status symbol capable of turning the occupant into the controller of a clandestine fleet of mini-drones with enough firepower to qualify as a medium-sized air force.
Inside, he flipped dozens of switches and pressed a dozen more buttons to boot up every electronic device, including an AWAC box that connected directly to the DFC’s own satellite. He put on a headset and checked to make certain every member of the surveillance team he’d requested was in place and ready.
Flight of the Fox Page 18