Liar's Market

by Taylor Smith

  “Agreed,” Huxley said. “And I saw her when she pulled in and spotted his car. She was stunned to see it there. No way she was expecting him. But, on the other hand—”

  “The kid,” Tucker said.

  “—the kid!” Huxley echoed.

  “Better get in there.”

  “Right-o,” Huxley said. “I’ll go in and Bree will…no, hang on, here they come now. It’s MacNeil and the wife, but sans the kid.”

  The MacNeils emerged from the building, deep in sober conversation. A few moments later, they parted, heading to their respective cars.

  “Okay, I’m off,” Huxley told Tengwall.

  The radio crackled again. “Maybe I should call in more support?”

  “I don’t know,” Huxley said. “We may be back on track here. I’d hate to cry wolf prematurely.”

  “Fair enough, but let me know if anything else gets hinky out there. Like it or not, I think the boss is going to have to consider kicking this up another notch.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” Huxley agreed. He loped back over to the Harley and rolled it quietly behind the rink fence before kicking it to life and tailing MacNeil out of the rec center lot, leaving Tengwall to continue her surveillance on the wife.

  When the Jaguar turned onto Dolley Madison Boulevard a few minutes later, it looked as if MacNeil was returning to Langley, after all, where he could be safely contained and observed. Whatever else had been going on, Huxley decided, it seemed MacNeil was in for another routine day at the CIA salt mine, after all.

  He couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Seen from above, the CIA site is shaped like a clenched fist. By accident or design, the fist seems to rise out of Dolley Madison Boulevard in angry defiance of all the Agency’s enemies, internal and external.

  From the ground, however, the Agency is shrouded in dense landscaping, its own and the thick woods of Langley Fork Park, which hide the top-secret facility from prying eyes. To pass through the well-guarded gates and pierce that woody veil is to discover a complex of fortified buildings bristling with antennae. Every second of every day, those sprawling arrays of roof-mounted steel hum with the inbound and outbound encrypted signals that form the Agency’s pulsing lifeblood.

  Drummond MacNeil had spent most of his adult life riding the ebb and flow of those secret signals that thrummed the air, setting Langley’s supersensitive electronic ears atingle. From out in the field, operatives with their ears close to the ground reported back every whisper of political intrigue, every hint of shifting power bases, every rumor of military thinking that might give the U.S. a tactical edge, whether in a fight or in sensitive international negotiations. Inside Agency walls, thousands of analysts weighed and sifted communiqués from around the world, massaging discreet bits of information plucked from the vibrating airwaves into coherent strategies designed to safeguard America’s position as the only superpower worthy of the name.

  As MacNeil’s car approached the main CIA entrance on Dolley Madison, Huxley wondered if the man had any inkling of what he had, in fact, already lost. As Operations Deputy, those antennae would have hummed with a tune MacNeil himself conducted, sending instructions to operatives, overt and covert, in every major city and political hot spot on the globe. Did the man guess yet that the baton had already been snatched from his grasp, and that he would never get to conduct that secret symphony?

  There was no way to be sure. But in the end, it was the electronic buzz from those bristling antennae that was probably the undoing of Huxley’s year-long surveillance, allowing the once-and-never Operations Deputy just enough leeway to finally give him the slip.

  Huxley knew something was amiss the moment MacNeil sailed past the CIA turnoff without ever giving it a sideways glance. Gut sinking, he switched on the radio to call Tucker for the backup that he now realized he should have asked for back when MacNeil pulled that sudden U-turn on the George Washington Parkway.

  No, even before that, Huxley decided. It should have been in place that morning from the moment they’d realized that MacNeil’s routine was undergoing a sudden and unexpected shift. Always be suspicious of any change in the status quo, however minor or innocuous it may seem. Wasn’t that one of the prime directives of surveillance?

  So Huxley put in the call for backup—or tried to. But as anyone knows who’s ever tried to have a cell or radio conversation near CIA headquarters, the area is an electronic Bermuda Triangle because of the intense interference generated by its vast communications array.

  Huxley tried over and over again to raise Tucker, but there was nothing but static on his headset. For four and a half agonizing minutes as he chased the silver-gray Jag south and west through dense traffic, Huxley experienced the sickening premonition that all the watchers’ work and effort—not to mention a year of his own life—was about to crumble to dust in front of his eyes.

  He was halfway to the expressway leading to Dulles Airport, weaving in and out of traffic to keep the Jag in sight, when the static finally lifted and he was able to raise Tucker and let him know what was happening.

  “I’m on it,” Tucker said. “Keep on him, but at a safe distance. Don’t get yourself killed. The GPS tracker on his car is functioning just fine. I’ll order up a copter and we’ll cover all the airport access points. He’ll never make it onto a plane.”

  There was a mile to go until they reached the junction for the Hirst Brault Expressway, which would take MacNeil directly to Dulles International Airport. Huxley’s mind was racing, keeping an eye on the Jaguar in the center lane up ahead, at the same time glancing overhead for the surveillance helicopter that Tucker had called in. Would the chopper come from Dulles? Highly unlikely. From the Agency itself? There was a landing pad there, he knew. Or would it be based all the way over at Bolling Air Force Base in D.C.? Or, farther away, at Andrews AFB?

  One way or another, MacNeil would be nearly to Dulles by the time it arrived, Huxley calculated. All the more reason not to lose the guy now.

  He started making contingency plans for when and how he would stop MacNeil if he made a run for it inside the airport. How fast could Tucker get his people into position? Would he have all the exits and entrances covered?

  A sign for the airport expressway flashed by. Half a mile. The traffic was dense with commercial vehicles but moving steadily. Fighting his instinct to look for the exit on the left, where it would be back home, Huxley moved the bike over into the right lane, not giving any of the twelve-wheelers around him the chance to box him out of his escape route.

  Dulles Airport—Next Exit 1/4 Mile

  Huxley frowned. Up ahead, the silver-gray Jag still hadn’t moved out of the center lane. Was MacNeil planning another last second charge to confound any tail following him? If so, then he clearly wasn’t aware of the motorcycle that had been on him since he left home.

  The exit was in sight now, but the Jaguar never budged from its center lane position. So if it wasn’t the airport expressway, then what…? Huxley consulted his mental map of the surrounding area.

  The Beltway, he decided. The junction for the ring road that looped around the capital was about a mile beyond the exit for Dulles, if he wasn’t mistaken. And if MacNeil was taking the Beltway, who knew what his ultimate destination might be. He could be going anywhere.

  He couldn’t just vanish, though. Tucker had attached a Global Positioning System tracking device to the Jag’s undercarriage weeks ago, and the GPS had been pinging out MacNeil’s location ever since. Even if he were to decide to drive all the way to Mexico, they’d pinpoint his position within a radius of ten feet. So let him take the Beltway, Huxley thought. The Harley had a full tank of gas and he could drive for as long as that smug bastard could, with or without backup.

  But it wasn’t the Beltway, either. Huxley was just getting ready to alert Tucker when the Jaguar sailed right past that exit, as well. A few seconds later, however, it veered over to the right at last and took the next exit leading to Tyson’s Corner. Huxley foll
owed several car lengths behind as MacNeil turned left next to a big red Circuit City store, then wheeled along the outer roadway of the Tyson’s Corner Center shopping mall as if trying to decide where to park.

  Huxley glanced at his watch. Not yet 10:00 a.m. The stores wouldn’t be open yet, but employees were streaming in. And even at opening time, he estimated, the mall would be busy enough, with kids still on summer holiday and harried moms checking out back-to-school sales. If MacNeil forced their hand here, it was not the ideal location to have to round up a suspect who could be armed and dangerous.

  Huxley clicked on his radio transmitter. “Leapfrog here, come in.”

  “Auntie here. Where are you?”

  “Tyson’s Corner Center. Looks like our boy’s planning a spot of shopping. Or a meet. Over.”

  “Can you stay on him? We had additional support heading for Dulles, but I’ll divert them and have them to you there ASAP.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem. I haven’t seen any obvious sign he’s spotted me, and as far as we’re aware, he doesn’t know me from Adam.”

  It was the one advantage he’d had throughout the surveillance, Huxley thought. They’d had to presume that MacNeil knew Tucker by sight, since the big fellow had been with the Agency forever, it seemed, and the two had actually met once or twice. But Huxley’s and MacNeil’s paths had never crossed in London, except at the discreet distances Huxley himself had choreographed, once MI-6 had put the American under surveillance in the wake of one too many sacrificed assets.

  “Looks like he’s pulling in to a parking structure,” Huxley told Tucker now. “Terrace C, it is.”

  “Stay on him. You’ve got a handheld unit with you, right? Don’t bother with the cell phone. They’re useless in there.”

  “Got it.”

  “Okay, go. I’ll be in touch as soon as the backup’s in position.”

  “Roger. Over and out.”

  Inside the parking structure, Huxley drove the Harley behind a pillar half a level down from where MacNeil had parked the Jag, still in his line of sight. He watched the lights on the Jag blink as MacNeil locked it. He was empty-handed, and if he was glancing around the lot behind those dark glasses he had on, looking for a tail, he was being subtle about it. A light but steady stream of cars was flowing into the lot, and while MacNeil held back to let a couple of them pass by him, he showed no sign of having spotted Huxley.

  Watching MacNeil out of the corner of his eye as he headed for the mall entrance, Huxley removed his helmet and busied himself with clamping it to the bike’s backrest. He took his time dusting himself off, then slipped a portable radio unit out of the bike’s saddlebag and onto his webbed khaki belt, checking first to make sure the unit was turned on and the battery charged. By the time he reached the exit, MacNeil was at the pedestrian bridge leading over to the mall.

  They were at the second level, but on the other side of the bridge, MacNeil ducked down a staircase and entered on the lower level. Huxley followed, blending into the background behind a couple of young mothers pushing toddlers in strollers and three black-clad teenage boys in hip-hanging baggy pants who loped along, punching each other in the shoulder with every couple of steps.

  The mall’s bottom level housed a food court, illuminated by bright sunlight from the arched glass roofline two stories overhead. Take-out places around a spacious black-and-white-tiled seating area were serving their first customers of the day. Huxley’s stomach rumbled at the smell of bacon and cinnamon rolls. He’d had nothing that morning but that cup of coffee from the Kleins’ kitchen—but then, neither had MacNeil eaten breakfast at home, come to think of it.

  Good. If he settled in for breakfast, it would give Tucker’s backup time to get over here and make up for the time Huxley had lost when he was out of radio contact around CIA headquarters.

  But MacNeil wasn’t stopping. Slipping his sunglasses off and into the breast pocket of his suit jacket, he bypassed the fast food places in the atrium and headed deeper into the mall. Huge potted palm trees in buff-colored marble planters stretched over the second level, fronds dangling greenly, oddly thriving in the mall’s cool, recycled air. Steel security grills were still rolled down on most of the stores, although one or two were lifted halfway, allowing employees to duck under and enter the premises.

  MacNeil approached a gourmet coffee shop whose grill was already up. A young girl was working alone inside at the steaming, spitting machines behind the counter. Huxley hung back next to a jeweler’s across the way and around the corner while MacNeil spoke to the flustered-looking teenager. She nodded and reached for a foam cup. As he waited for her to make up his order, MacNeil proceeded to flirt with and tease the girl. Even from his distant vantage point, Huxley could see that she was giggling and blushing to beat the band.

  He pretended to examine the diamond rings in the jewelry store window. From all appearances, he might have been some anxious suitor eager to pop the question just as soon as he found the right ring for his girl. Through the glass corner window, he kept one eye on MacNeil as he peered at the solitaires and gem-studded bands in gold and platinum scattered across a rippling bed of royal blue satin, sparkling and gleaming under display spotlights.

  There’d been no diamond rings for Phyllis, Huxley recalled. His late wife had been a no-nonsense Dublin nurse who worked for Doctors Without Borders in a refugee camp in Lebanon. Phyllis had made it very clear that she hated diamonds and everything associated with them.

  “All that De Beers marketing hype for a colorless rock that’s common as dirt and plain as water,” she said one night, head shaking as they watched the sunset off the Corniche. “And yet, all those poor souls are dyin’ for ’em over in Africa. Don’t you even think about buyin’ me a diamond ring, Mark Huxley, when you ask me to marry you.”

  Huxley had been taken aback as much by her ability to read him as by her cheek. “You’re pretty sure of yourself,” he’d answered, grinning. “Who says I’m going to ask, then?”

  “Oh, you’ll get around to it,” she said, her warm brown eyes crinkling with laughter, “soon as you work up a little nerve.”

  “Is that so? And what’ll you say when I do?”

  “I’ll say yes, of course, you daft fool. What else would I say?”

  And that was it. He hadn’t even had to go down on one knee. She hadn’t wanted a diamond, but he’d tried to make her happy in other ways. He thought he had, too—although if he’d known how little time they would have together, he thought, he would have done so much more.

  The black-and-white floor tiles and marble planters echoed with the clang of steel as grills rose on stores opening for business up and down the mall. The crowd was still light, but when MacNeil emerged from the coffee shop, blowing across the top of his uncapped foam cup, there were enough shoppers about that Huxley was able to blend into the surroundings as he followed the other man’s stroll down the mall.

  MacNeil walked slowly, tentatively sipping his coffee that seemed to be lawsuit hot. Now and then, his silver head tuned to follow the gait of a pretty girl passing, but he seemed otherwise to be a man with nowhere special to go and no particular time to be there.

  The radio on Huxley’s belt suddenly crackled and his nerve endings thudded. He dropped back a few more paces and lowered the volume, ducking behind the sound blind of a splashing fountain to try to mask the noise as he unclipped it and held it to his mouth. “Leapfrog here.”

  “Your backup’s arriving as we speak and monitoring on this channel,” Tucker said. “Where are you?”

  “Lower level, beyond the food court. There’s an atrium near Lord & Taylor. The target’s just passing through, heading east.”

  “Watchers one and two here,” an unfamiliar voice said. “On the lower level, approaching subject’s location now.”

  Huxley saw them before they saw him, two bland suits in Ray-Bans who might have been inconspicuous had it not been for the coiled wires rising out of their collars, connected to plastic ear piec
es. That, plus the fact that one of them was muttering into his shirt cuff like some mad accountant who’d tallied one too many spreadsheets. None of the shoppers seemed to take any notice of them, though, so maybe you had to be in the business.

  When Huxley lifted a hand, the non-mutterer spotted him, elbowing his partner, who dropped his cuff back to his side. Huxley pointed at MacNeil up ahead, brought his two index fingers together, then separated them and circled each hand around in opposing directions, signaling them to spread out but keep the target in sight. The two suits nodded and their paths instantly diverged.

  MacNeil wandered on, apparently oblivious, sipping his coffee. Huxley had a moment of unease when he stopped at the window of a pen store, apparently studying the Cross sets in the window, but if he was checking the reflection in the glass for watchers, he showed no sign that he’d spotted Huxley or the suits on opposite sides of the corridor, who’d both chosen that moment to become engrossed in a little window-shopping of their own.

  MacNeil moved on, rounding a corner at a Hecht’s anchor store, then heading down a southbound corridor, followed at a distance by the others. Huxley hurried over to an information kiosk.

  “Can I help you, sir?” a young clerk behind the desk asked.

  “Can I see a layout of the mall?”

  “Certainly, sir. There’s a directory right here,” the clerk said, lifting a folded brochure from a rack. “Were you looking for something in particular?”

  “Just getting the lay of the land, thanks,” Huxley said, taking the brochure and unfolding it as he followed the others around the corner.

  The mall was huge, he realized. The corridor MacNeil was following looked to be a few hundred yards long, passing through another atrium area and then continuing on until it terminated at a large Bloomingdale’s department store.

  What the hell was the man up to? If it was a meet he had planned, he must be early, because he appeared to be in no hurry whatsoever.

  MacNeil paused outside a store featuring science and educational toys and sipped his coffee as he watched a young salesman spin a large, Mylar disc that resembled a flying saucer designed, it seemed, for no other purpose than to catch the attention of children and other gullible passersby, drawing them into the store. The salesman apparently tried out his line of patter on MacNeil, but without success, because MacNeil shook his head and walked on.