The Firefly

by P. T. Deutermann

  He started back toward the Metro station, keeping to the opposite side of the street from the Capitol. It was a magnificent old pile, he had to admit, and such a perfect symbol of America. It amazed him that the professional lunatics of Al Qaeda hadn’t already taken it out. He wasn’t sure what his attack would do to the building itself, and he didn’t care. Because his target wasn’t the building. His target was the American government. Head right off!

  He was somewhat surprised that the Arabs were going through with this and that it wasn’t actually the usual suspects behind it. But maybe Mutaib’s faction was a part of The Base. Everyone knew that their heart, mind, and all their banks lay in the Kingdom. And yet here he was, concealed in plain sight in America’s capital, with an operational cover, a legal work visa, all the terms of his contract with the Arabs fulfilled as agreed, and proceeding with his time line. The loose end from the cosmetic surgery clinic had been snipped off, so now all he had to do was establish his artist cover story at the house not five blocks from here and wait for the weapon to be delivered. Then some home-remodeling work on the second floor, and the final arrangements for his swift and successful departure from the scene of the crime.

  Another police car came by, slowed, and then resumed its patrol when they saw it was just him, obviously on his way home, and, more to the point, walking away from the sensitive areas around Capitol Hill. He wondered idly if those police officers would be on duty when it happened, and if they would survive. Probably not, he thought. But then, they were just policemen. Compared to everyone else he was going to obliterate that day, a pair of policemen would barely make a ripple on the casualty lists.

  He smiled in the darkness and then winced. His face, among other parts of his body, hadn’t quite settled in to its new look and shape. But he was confident that it would work just fine when the time came.

  2

  SWAMP MORGAN CALLED CONNIE WALL AT NINE O’CLOCK the following morning.

  “Connie Wall,” she said. A smoker and a drinker, Swamp thought when he heard her voice.

  “Ms. Wall, this is Special Agent Lee Morgan, U.S. Secret Service, calling from the Department of Homeland Security. Good morning.”

  “I doubt that,” she said.

  Swamp smiled. “Ma’am?”

  “Nobody in Washington getting a call from the American gestapo at nine A.M. on a Tuesday would anticipate a good morning, Special Agent.”

  Swamp laughed. “Oh, c’mon now. If we were those guys, we’d come at two in the morning and just kick your door in.”

  “Your department is still young,” she said.

  “Well, let me put your mind at ease, Ms. Wall. I’d like to talk to you, if I may. And preferably not on the telephone. It concerns that fire at your former place of employment, the Khandoor Cosmetic Surgery Clinic.”

  “Oh God,” she said. “I’ve been trying to forget all that.”

  “I can imagine. Actually, I can’t. I’ve never lost friends and colleagues that way.”

  “Nor do you ever want to,” she said. “But what in the world does that fire have to do with Homeland Security?”

  “I’ll explain that when we talk, Ms. Wall. Now, I can invite you to come downtown to our offices here on L Street, or, if you prefer, I can go out there. I have your address, and you’re near a Metro stop, correct?”

  “Here would be fine.”

  “Ten-thirty work?” he asked.

  “Sure. Although I can’t imagine…I mean, I told those fire department investigators everything.”

  “Relax, Ms. Wall. Nobody’s gunning for you. I need to pick your brains about that clinic and its operations.”

  There was a sudden silence on the line. He let it ride, interested to see what she’d say. “I signed an entire stack of confidentiality agreements,” she said. “Plus, there are patient-doctor privilege rules. I mean…”

  “Yes, I know all that and I understand,” he said. “It’ll be clearer when we can actually talk, face-to-face. I’ll be bringing my assistant, Special Agent Gary White, with me. If you’d like to confirm that I am who I say I am, I’ll give you a number you can call to verify our identities. And my name again is Special Agent Lee Morgan, and I’m from an office called OSI.”

  Connie put the phone down and stood there chewing on a fingernail. The Secret Service? Her immediate reaction was to call Cat Ballard, but of course that wouldn’t work, because she’d have to listen to him bang on again about the damned clinic. Cat hadn’t been the least bit interested in the clinic when she worked days, but the night duty had first interested and then bothered him. Her refusal to talk about any aspect of what she did there had only whetted his appetite. Then the fire, and the horror of four people with whom she’d worked for four years dying like that. And now, what he’d revealed last night, that there were still questions about the fire. And here comes the Secret goddamned Service to talk to me about—ta-da—the clinic. She shook her head and went to refill her coffee cup. Then she called that number, and a DHS government operator verified that there were indeed two special agents named Lee Morgan and Gary White. The operator did not have a physical description of Agent White but was able to tell her that Special Agent Morgan was a very large and somewhat scary-looking man. She gave Connie the last four numbers of each agent’s credential serial numbers, told her it would be okay to ask them to verify those numbers when they showed up, and wished her a nice day.

  Yeah right, I’m gonna have a nice day, Connie thought. Especially after a sleepless night. She’d gone around the house checking windows and doors, and then spent a few minutes of each hour thereafter imagining bogeymen in the bushes every time the wind blew. She had fished out the .45 derringer and now had it in her jeans pocket, where it created a heavy and fairly obvious bulge. Should she get rid of it before the agents showed up? Surely they’d know what that was, and then she’d be explaining why she was sporting a .45-caliber belly gun in her pocket. Concealed weapons in Washington were a definite no-no. On the other hand, it was her house.

  And then there was the heart of the matter: How much should she say about the clinic? The D.C. Arson cops already knew that she had been more than just a shift nurse there. Christ, this wasn’t about one of those damned transcripts, was it? She suddenly had a cold feeling that it was.

  Heismann, decked out as a bird-watcher, stood on a knoll in Rock Creek Park, his ten-power Leica binoculars trained in the direction of the white house on the distant bluff. He carried an Audubon guide under one arm, and he occasionally pretended to enter notes into a bird-count notebook. From his vantage point, he could see both the front door and the top of the nurse’s driveway. The day was gray, cold, and damp. The race car was still parked in the drive, its back window frosted from the night’s condensation. That was a good sign. He was trying to make up his mind whether or not to go up there, see if she’d had a glass of milk lately. Preferably before she spoiled, so to speak.

  Then, to his surprise, he saw two men in suits and coats, a bulky one whose face looked like that of a caveman, the other average size, walking down her street and turning up the sidewalk to her front door. With the sensitivity born of almost twenty years on the wrong side of the law, Heismann recognized them immediately as police. As far as he could tell, the entire city police force was black, so, since they were both white, they were probably government police. Improbably, the big one was wearing a gray Borsalino-style hat; with that face, he needed all the style he could get. The younger one waited at the foot of the steps while the big man rang the bell. When he realized the younger one was looking around, gazing out into the park, Heismann lowered his binoculars and pretended to scribble in the book. This would be the test: Would she come to the door? He saw movement in the distance and lifted the binocs again. And, damn her eyes, there she was, standing in the doorway, looking at something the big man had handed her. Credentials, not a badge. Government police. The big man turned to say something to the other man, and Heismann got a good look at his face this time
. Late fifties. Heavy eyebrows, huge jaw. A fighter’s face. Then she was letting them in, closing the door.

  He swore out loud and began stuffing the binocs into their side case. Then he walked down the long slope of the knoll toward his vehicle, a homely gray minivan, whose most useful quality was that it was utterly forgettable. It was a good thing he hadn’t gone skulking around up there. On the other hand, why were federal police visiting Wall now, weeks after the fire? Had the bait surfaced at last? He wondered if he should ask Mutaib for a bugging system, because it might be useful to know if that was why they were there. He stood there at the door to his minivan and turned to look back toward the house, but only the rooftops were visible. The timing was about right. About six weeks since the fire. The holidays were now over. Official Washington getting back to work, so, perhaps yes?

  He needed to contact Mutaib. Today.

  On second thought, no. He had told Mutaib that he would take care of the nurse problem. He had failed. Perhaps it was now time to do it the old-fashioned way. No more of this indirect shit. Heave a cinder block through a back window at two o’clock in the morning to make it look like a break-in, go in there and brain her with a tire iron. Take her purse, put the spare key back on its hook, and leave.

  No, no, no. Not now, not like that. Not with government agents coming to see Connie Wall, the sole survivor of the night clinic. Who then turns up dead in her bed? Too much coincidence. No.

  Think, he told himself. Adhere to discipline. Execute the plan. There is still plenty of time to take her off the board. If this visit was provoked by the bait, maybe he should go back to his original plan. Let her lead them to the name. When Mutaib’s resources indicated that they were focusing on that name, then kill her.

  He got into the minivan, put his keys in the ignition, then paused again. Or perhaps don’t kill her at all. Terrorize her instead. Make her run. He didn’t need her dead as much as he needed her gone. After the attack, what would he care what she knew or told anyone, because everything would be over and he would be long gone. What had been going on at that clinic would pale into total insignificance in light of what he was going to do to them.

  So yes, terrorize her. Why not? You’re a professional terrorist, aren’t you? He smiled. Frighten her. If she bolted, it would only make the bait more believable. Except he had told Mutaib that he would take care of the problem.

  Well, if she ran, that was removal, yes? He shook his head in frustration. He hated it when he didn’t know what to do. That was always the big problem with loose ends. At the very least, he would have to watch her until he made up his mind. And keep the embarrassing fact that she was still alive away from Mutaib and his helpers.

  Connie Wall led the agents back to the kitchen area. It was obvious to Swamp that she, like many single people, lived mostly in the kitchen and dining room, which he saw was set up as her personal home office. Gary White followed him in, looking around at everything, as if observing a crime scene. That’s good, Swamp thought. White would focus on the house, which would allow him to focus on the woman walking in front of him. She was about forty, he guessed. Dark-haired, fit, an attractive, if slightly wary, face, even without makeup. She was wearing old jeans, slippers, and an oversized sweatshirt, which did not disguise a bounteous figure. She offered coffee and he accepted for both of them. When she reached up to pull some mugs down from a cupboard, he thought he saw what looked like a derringer outlined in her jeans pocket. He glanced at Gary, who nodded slightly to confirm he had also seen it.

  “January in Washington,” Swamp said, making conversation. “Cold, dark, and wet.”

  “I expected an unmarked car with antennas all over it,” she said, pouring out coffee.

  “I never use a car if the Metro can get me close,” Swamp said, taking off his coat and hat and draping them over a kitchen chair. “Our offices are airless cubicles. It’s good to get outside, even in January.”

  She passed over the mugs of coffee and sat down on the other side of the kitchen table. “So,” she said in a businesslike tone of voice. One that went with the gun in her pocket, he thought. “You called.”

  “So I did,” Swamp said. “Let me begin by saying we’re here to talk about the cosmetic surgery clinic where you worked. The one that was burned.”

  “Was ‘burned’? As in deliberate fire?”

  “I think so, yes,” he said. “At least that’s a distinct possibility.”

  Her complexion lost a little color, as if she had just realized something. “Am I a suspect or anything like that?”

  “No. Nor are we aware of any criminal enterprise at that clinic. We’ve come to see you basically because you’re the only survivor.”

  “Have you talked to the owners of the building? The American doctors?”

  “Yes. Or rather, the District police have. They explained the nature of the leasing arrangement, and that the night doctors, as they called them, specialized in patients who demanded absolute discretion. They also made it clear that these were two entirely separate operations.”

  Connie Wall nodded at that. Swamp thought that she seemed to be loosening up a bit. “I worked for them, too,” she said. “Initially, full-time. Then when the other group showed up, they offered almost twice the money. So then I worked nights, but I occasionally did fill-in work in the day clinic.”

  “Let me get right to it, Ms. Wall: What kind of procedures were they doing in the night clinic?”

  She shrugged. “The usual, except they treated only male patients. These men wanted to get work done, but gradually. A little here, a little there. Minimum bruising and bandaging. A lot of special timing if it was going to be something significant. Very little visible evidence they were having work done, but a steady cosmetic improvement. Multiple procedures.”

  “These were prominent people?”

  “They may have been,” she said, looking right at him. She had clear hazel eyes, and he could see that, under the right circumstances, he’d find her very attractive. But right now, her expression revealed nothing. She was a surgical nurse, which meant that there was a good brain under there, so that completely neutral expression was worrisome. “But we were never told who they were,” she went on. “The records didn’t have names, just patient numbers.”

  So she knew about the codes. “Who would have known who the patients were?”

  “Dr. Khandoor, the boss. He acted as his own patient coordinator.”

  “Did you handle patient records?”

  He thought he saw her tense up a bit as she fiddled with her coffee cup for a couple of seconds. “I did admin work in both clinics,” she said. “Putting medical charts and case history records together. Postop documentation. Mary and Karen did admin work, too. But reservations, patient interviews, billing, that was strictly Dr. Khandoor.”

  “Did the doctors record what they were doing during operations? You know, speak into a microphone while they did the operation, so that there’d be a record of the procedures?”

  “Yes,” she said, but she did not elaborate. She had folded her hands in her lap, out of sight beneath the edge of the table. A certain stillness settled over her. Careful here, Swamp thought.

  “Were these notes transcribed after the operations?”

  No blink at the mention of transcripts. No reaction at all. But she did not look at him when she answered. “No,” she said. “We simply kept the tapes as part of the patient’s record. We wouldn’t need them unless a problem came up, so there was no point in transcribing them.” Swamp saw her look over at Gary White as if to say, Where is your partner here going with this?

  “Were there ever problems? Complaints?”

  “Not that I was aware of. Both doctors were very good at what they did. Dr. Khandoor especially—he was amazing.”

  “Better than the American doctors?”

  “Much better. He was nearly sixty, so I think he’d been cutting for a while.”

  “Do you know who set them up in this country? As foreign n
ationals, I mean.”

  “That was sort of vague,” she said, patting a few stray hairs back into place. “There was something about a foreign bank, but, really, I never knew.”

  “Did they ever work on foreigners?”

  “Yes, I think so, based on some of the accents I heard. Dr. Khandoor said that they were people from the Washington diplomatic corps. He said he had an international reputation, and I believed it. Like I said, he was very good.”

  Swamp had been writing in a notebook as she answered his questions. So had Gary White. He took a moment to review his notes, even though Gary had a voice-activated tape recorder turning silently in his suit pocket. Swamp had already decided that he was going to reinterview her later, after they learned more about Dr. Khandoor, but right now he needed to focus the interview.

  “You said they offered you twice the money. Why was that, do you suppose?”

  She shrugged again. “Well, for one, I was ready-made, I guess. I knew that OR and also the computerized office-management system. I’m a very experienced surgical nurse. I have a Master’s degree, in fact. It was all going to be nightshift work. They wouldn’t even have to advertise.”

  “Why was that last bit important?”

  “Like I said, I got the impression that privacy and staff discretion meant everything to them.”

  “The other two nurses?”

  “They came with Dr. Naziri, who was Dr. Khandoor’s assistant.”

  “Did the docs ever hand out bonuses?”

  She hesitated. “Bonuses? Yes, they did. Christmastime, usually. I think they made a ton of money.”

  Swamp made a note to check with IRS on her tax returns. “More than the day doctors?”