The Firefly

by P. T. Deutermann

  Gary’s smile was a bit weak. “Do I have your phone numbers, sir?”

  “Well, let’s see. West Virginia, the apartment—you have those. Although the apartment’s going to go away, I guess. And I suppose I need to go get a cell phone now that Uncle’s reclaimed his.”

  “Call it in when you get one,” Gary said. “I don’t want to lose touch.” He looked around to see who might be listening. “I’m beginning to think this career move of mine wasn’t such a great idea. I may want some advice from time to time.”

  “Absolutely,” Swamp said. “But this wasn’t personal, Gary. I got in the way of a little man with a big mission, that’s all. The Secret Service is a great outfit. You’ll see.” They shook hands and Swamp walked out onto Eighteenth Street, where he was met by a brisk wind. One of the Secret Service agents got out of the car and came over.

  “We got the word an hour ago, direct from La Mamba,” he said. “Said to keep tabs until you left for the countryside. For what it’s worth, we both think it’s a bum deal.”

  “Thanks for that,” Swamp said. “I need to clear my stuff out at the apartment and then unrent that thing. I’ll probably sleep over there tonight, take the train out to Harpers Ferry in the morning.”

  “We’d be happy to offer you a ride over there,” the agent said.

  Swamp just looked at him for a moment, wondering if he should be alarmed. But the expression on the agent’s face seemed to be more one of genuine sympathy than hard-ass procedure. As if sensing Swamp’s curiosity, he pointed out that if they went by car, one of them wouldn’t be forced to get out and physically follow Swamp around in the cold. Swamp nodded and got into the backseat of the car.

  As they drove downtown toward the river, the agent riding shotgun asked if he’d mind telling them what this was all about. He did. When he was finished, they rode in silence across the Fourteenth Street Bridge. The driver finally broke the silence.

  “I was a rookie when you were a DAD,” he said. “I sure as shit hope they’re right and you’re wrong.”

  “So do I,” Swamp said. “Mostly, they hurt my feelings. Know any good bars along the way?”

  “Yes,” both agents responded simultaneously.

  Heismann drove around for almost an hour in search of the perfect parking spot for the minivan. He wanted it to be within three blocks of the town house, but far enough away that anyone who might chase him on foot would have to be in pretty good shape. He drove through several back alleys and up and down streets and cross streets around his neighborhood. This area was all outside the security zone, so there were no barriers and only the occasional police car.

  Mutaib had relayed the realtor’s warning about on-street parking in the Capitol Hill area, that it was all by permit only and that permits were color-coded for various neighborhoods. He wasn’t worried about a policeman ticketing the vehicle as much as some irate resident calling the police to tow off an interloper. Once he’d made his decision, he would have to find some colored acetate to convert his own street permit to the right color. Then he would spend an hour or so laying out his escape route from the town house to the minivan. He needed the first leg of it to be across the street and into an alley, because he was going to be something of a spectacle when he made his escape. He’d position the minivan tomorrow morning, after people had left for work but before the neighborhood commuters returned, so that there would be more open spaces on the street he finally chose.

  Once his route had been set and the parking permit taken care of, he would then have to move the Suburban completely out of the Capitol Hill area and away from all the avenues where the inaugural events would take place. He’d narrowed it down to two options: going deep into the southeast quadrant of the city, which he’d already discovered was something of a no-go zone for anyone who didn’t live there, or finding some extremely public place where the Suburban, made up as a federal police vehicle, would blend in with the background for Inauguration Day. He had selected two possibilities for that: under the bridges where Interstate 95 and Fourteenth Street crossed Haines Point—a spit of land in the river, it was now a park—or on one of the perimeter roads near the Tidal Basin.

  He planned to re-equip the Suburban with the light bar tomorrow night and drive it down to one of these two spots, then walk over to the nearest Metro station to get back to Capitol Hill. There was a direct route from Capitol Hill down to that general area, and from either location he should be able to determine how much of the downtown had been blocked off by the time he got there. His ultimate destination was in northwest Washington, after one stop at the Arab bank, but he wanted the option to cross the river if he had to. There would be pandemonium in the downtown area, and he fully expected the government to shut down the Metro and all other modes of transportation once the attack occurred, if not before then. He might just have to walk out.

  He had a final teleconference with Mutaib set for tonight at midnight. He didn’t expect anything in the way of new information, but he did need to find out one last thing: where the princess would be at noon on der Tag. Ideally, right there at the bank, along with all his pretty minions.

  After dinner, using a walker, Connie made her second trip of the day from the bed to the bathroom all by herself. The first one had taken some help, but having been up once, she was determined to stay up if she could. Afternoon rounds had been encouraging. The surgical repairs seemed to be holding up well, and there were still no signs of infection. When she’d broached the subject of getting out of there, the docs had waffled a bit, coming down on the side of her staying a few more days just to make sure. She could take the pump, of course, but they’d prefer to migrate her to the next tier of pain meds before they discharged her. She’d had the feeling that they’d been a little more honest with her in deference to her own medical background, so she’d casually reminded them of the dangers inherent to the hospital environment, even at a first-rate place like GWU. That had provoked some throat clearing, watch checking, and questions for the interns, and then they moved on.

  She’d gone down for a nap after lunch, and then put a call in to the business office to discuss the really important issue. The insurance nazi on duty obliged her immediately with a lecture on financial responsibility. Connie theoretically still had medical insurance, courtesy of the COBRA law, but, as she pointed out, the company had really consisted of the two docs. They were dead, their families gone, the accounts closed, which left the question of premium payments kind of up in the air, which in turn might make the claims process “interesting.” She made a bet with herself after hanging up that there’d be a wholly different take on her prospects for discharge by morning rounds.

  The offer from Jake was tempting on several levels. She was growing to like him a lot, more than Cat, in fact, who’d been focused entirely on the physical side. She had no illusions about what long-term recovery was going to be like, especially if there were any setbacks, which were more likely than not, given her injuries. If she was going to get something going with Jake, she wanted it to be on a whole and handsome woman basis, with no memories of bedpans and vomiting episodes in the night to get in the way later. Besides, she really did want to go home. She didn’t care much for that business of the car keys in the Shelby’s tailpipe. And home should be the last place that bastard would expect her to show up.

  She let herself lie back down in the bed and murmured a prayer of thanks for articulating hospital beds. She’d have to get one into the house, and the idea of a nursing service seemed attractive, too. She had the money for that, even if the insurance fell through. But for now, a night’s sleep looked pretty good.

  She smiled to herself as she thought about the memo being put out on the hospital intranet right about now: “The billing department notes with concern…”

  Swamp finished his solitary dinner at Caruso’s and settled up with Mario, probably for the last time, he realized. He left a generous tip and told the old man he’d be away for a while; then he walked back to
his apartment building. There were two new faces peering at him from the watch car out front, and he nodded to them as he walked up to the entrance to the building. He’d told them where he was going and when he’d be back, and they’d taken him at his word. Apparently, his conversation with the two agents who’d picked him up at OEOB had been percolating through the grapevine.

  Back in the apartment, he got out his newly acquired cell phone and skimmed through the instruction booklet. He saw his wallet sitting on the living room table, next to the empty credentials holder. He felt naked without his government phone, credentials, building passes on chains, and the whole infrastructure of police powers they represented. Poor me, he thought. Just a plain vanilla civilian now.

  He made himself a short drink and went out onto the balcony, which faced three other high-rise apartment buildings across the alley. Looking to his right, he could see the amber glow of Washington on the horizon, and the twinkle of aircraft warning lights on cell towers and television antennas all over northern Virginia. A jetliner passed overhead with a crisp engine sound as it descended into Reagan National, leading the formation of landing lights that was shaping up in the western sky.

  He would miss it. Washington pulsed with the energy of the center of empire, twenty-four/seven. Everything was always urgent, even the nominally routine, because a boss was always worried about being caught off base by a bigger boss. “Did you know about this?” was the one question that could spin up an entire department. If you had to stand up at the morning briefing and admit that you didn’t, and the issue lay in your area of responsibility, the backroom gossip would have you on that infamous slippery slope. He heard the phone ringing and went back inside the sliding glass doors to get it. It was Bertie.

  “A ripple of news came under my door,” he said cryptically.

  “That ripple started out as a wave of shit,” Swamp replied, sitting down on the couch.

  “Are you now officially a nonperson?” Bertie asked.

  “If you have to ask…”

  Bertie was laughing softly. “So whatever happened with your firefly?”

  Swamp told him, aware that any listeners might be hearing all this for the first time. Good, he thought. The more working stiffs in the Secret Service who knew about this now, the better if it blew up in their faces. Bertie said nothing for almost thirty seconds. Then Swamp heard him light a cigarette. “And they’re just going to let all this—what, compost until after the inauguration?”

  “Hallory’s certainly not going to work it,” Swamp said. “I think the District cops will keep trying to find this guy, but, you know, they’re all being folded into the inauguration security effort, too. They’ve got detectives going back into uniform starting late tomorrow night.”

  “But it sounds so damned plausible,” Bertie said.

  “Unless you’ve got your hands full and thirty-six hours until showtime. Hell, Bertie, it wasn’t like they didn’t warn me off.”

  “So what’s next? I was depending on you being here to show me some decent watering holes.”

  Swamp laughed. “Next is, I’m going back to Harpers Ferry. Let someone else carry the Entire Free World on their shoulders for a while. Come next month, I’ll go to Acapulco, watch CNN the night of the joint session address, and hope they were all right and I was all wrong.”

  “Yeah, that’s what worries me. You weren’t exactly famous for being wrong all that much. Pain in the gump stump, yes, but wrong? Not often. Hang on a minute—I’ve got another call.”

  Swamp finished his drink while he waited. Then Bertie was back. “Just checking something. Your line’s clean tonight. Look, would you consider maybe going solo on this thing?”

  “La Mamba was pretty explicit about my not doing that.”

  “How about if you were working for us?”

  “Me? Work for the Agency?”

  “Why not? We hire ‘consultants’ all the time. We pay better than your dear old Secret Service, too.”

  “Would I get a secret decoder ring?”

  Bertie laughed but then grew serious. “If there is some evil shit afoot, I would love to surface it. We would love to surface it, if you catch my drift.”

  “Ah. And stick it up DHS’s ass in some memorable inter-agency meeting.”

  “Why, yes, I suppose that’s possible.”

  “You suppose. Actually, you’re supposed to be cooperating and collaborating with all the working stiffs across the river these days, Bertie. I can’t believe you’d let a little bureaucratic one-upmanship guide Agency policy.”

  “Are you all through?” Bertie said. It was Swamp’s turn to laugh.

  “Because I’m not retired, remember?” Bertie continued. “If there’s even a chance you’re right, it would be positively delicious to break Hallory’s balls with it. And to step on La Mamba’s pretty neck. She was the one who called to tell me you were being sent home, by the way. Sounded very pleased with herself.”

  “And did she also tell you they’d warned me not to go solo?”

  “Where do you think I got this idea, old buddy?” Bertie replied softly.

  “They find out I’m still beating these bushes, they’re gonna shit, Bertie.”

  “If you’re right and they’re wrong, they’re really gonna shit,” Bertie said. “So call me in the morning. Early’s good.”

  Swamp shook his head after he hung up the phone. What the hell, he might just do it. And not tell McNamara or anyone else. Except maybe Jake Cullen.

  Heismann called Mutaib’s private number at the bank from a phone station in the lobby of the Sheraton Capitol Hill at midnight. It was picked up by one of the whispering minions, who put him on hold. A minute later, the emir came on the line.

  “Everything is in readiness,” Heismann announced.

  “Very well.”

  He paused while two men walked by in the lobby. “And you still wish me to proceed?”

  “We do.”

  “You will not forget the second payment?”

  “My dear fellow, it will be deposited to the agreed-upon account one minute after we hear the, um, appropriate noises. One minute. I will do it right from here unless they cut off all the telephone lines in the city.”

  And that’s what I needed to know, Heismann thought. “All right. What time do you wish me to turn on the special phone?’

  “Turn it on fifteen minutes prior to midnight tomorrow. When it rings, hit the talk button, but do not speak. It will be a text message only.”

  “Ah. A code?”

  “No. Plain English. You will understand it. After midnight, put the phone outside in the sink. There is an acid destructor inside that will melt its circuits when it receives the execution-order string.”

  “And if your people change their minds at the last minute?”

  “Midnight tomorrow is the last minute. We think communications in the city will become difficult, if not impossible, as the event approaches.”

  “What will be the cancellation code?”

  “No code. Plain English. And if that happens, leave the house. And leave the city at once. And if you do run, don’t use that Suburban.”

  The lobby was starting to fill up with formally dressed people as a banquet came to an end. A couple walked by Heismann, a man and a woman this time. The woman was a little drunk and laughing noisily. “Where in the world are you?” Mutaib asked.

  “A safe place,” Heismann said, and then he asked Mutaib the question he’d been wanting to ask ever since this thing began. He had all the money he really expected to get, so he risked nothing by asking it. “Do your people have any idea of what the Ammies will do if they tie this thing to the Saudis?”

  “I don’t think they can, my dear fellow. Besides, if they do, it’s going to look a lot like Al Qaeda, not the Saudis. The Kingdom will be suitably apologetic, just like last time.”

  “But if this succeeds, and it should, and all the civilians die, it will be the generals in charge this time.”

  �
�In Russia, that might be a problem, but not here, Herr Hodler. That’s why they call it the Department of Defense. They’ll buzz around for a while, but until there’s a president, they won’t do anything.”

  “I hope you are right about that,” Heismann said. “I would hate to find out that your bank had been atomized before that check clears.”

  Mutaib laughed. “You just tend to your business and we will tend to ours.”

  Heismann couldn’t say what he was thinking, so he hung up. He felt suddenly exposed in the brightly lighted lobby area, and he was anxious to be out of there.

  Once he was back out on the street, he decided to take an oblique route back to the town house. He had little doubt but that Mutaib was not only going to cheat him of any second payment but would try to have him killed soon after the attack took place. Mutaib could never allow the single person who could tie the Royal Kingdom Bank to the attack to survive the incident. And the obvious way to do that would be to create some difficulty with the second payment that would require Heismann to meet Mutaib or one of his security men somewhere. Like claim the city’s telephone system had been shut down, tell him they’d pay him in cash instead.

  He crossed the avenue in front of the hotel and then kept going east, walking toward the Anacostia River. Or, he thought, they could have marksmen waiting somewhere in my street on der Tag. Well, he had a plan for that. When he burst out of that house right after the attack took place, he was going to look very, very different, which should distract any of Mutaib’s shooters long enough for him to get into the alley across the street to begin his run to the minivan. By the time they figured it out, there would be other distractions going on in that street.

  Two blocks farther east, he turned north onto Fourth Street, SW, then reversed course suddenly to see if anyone was following him, either on foot or in a car. When he didn’t see anyone, he resumed walking toward his town house. The row houses along here ran the gamut from expensively refurbished buildings all the way to some decidedly derelict burned-out shells. The furtive shapes of Washington’s nocturnal drug trade melted back into nearby alleys as he came walking purposefully up the street, looking like a man on a mission. There was a car at the curb, its parking lights on and its engine running. As soon as the clockers began to fade into the shadows, the car pulled out into the street and then executed a lazy turn around the corner. Even so, Heismann kept a grip on the Walther in his coat pocket until he approached his own block.