Liar's Market

by Taylor Smith

  “Oh, sure. I’ll need to see her ID, though.”

  “No problem. She’ll show you a driver’s license,” Carrie said pointedly, frowning at the two strangers in turn. That was all she needed, having someone show up and flash spy credentials before driving off with her son. Tengwall nodded and slipped the CIA document back into the pocket of her jeans.

  After Tengwall left to pick up Jonah, Carrie let Tom Bent lead her into the living room, where Drum’s mother watched her approach with the same look of contempt that Samson’s mother must have reserved for Delilah.

  “Althea, are you all right? What’s going on here?”

  “Where have you been, Carrie?” Althea asked angrily.

  “Running errands. I told you last night that I’d be out this morning.”

  “Errands…ha!” her mother-in-law snorted. Her angry gaze held Carrie for a moment, and then shifted past her. “My son’s midlife folly. No sense of duty of loyalty, that’s what’s wrong with young women today. They all have their own needs. Got to take care of those. Never mind taking care of their husbands and children. Well, go ahead, ask her. Ask her what she’s been up to. Ask her what she’s done to my son.”

  Carrie glanced around behind herself to see who Althea was talking to. There were three strangers in dark suits around the perimeter of the room, but from the nervous glances they were sending in the direction of the ferocious one, Tucker, they seemed to be underlings of his, awaiting orders.

  Her mother-in-law’s comments, however, had been addressed to a fourth man Carrie hadn’t noticed up until now. He was seated on one of the sagging, down-filled armchairs set off in one corner. He rose to his feet and nodded as Carrie made eye contact, his ruddy skin seeming to flush even deeper. Like Tucker and Tengwall, he was dressed casually—in his case, in a black T-shirt, webbed, military-style belt and khaki pants. But in spite of his dressed-down state, he, like Tucker, somehow seemed to carry more authority than the flunkies in suits. This man’s fair hair was wooly thick, his gray eyes direct and assessing, his face weathered and weary looking.

  “Mrs. MacNeil, how do you do?” he said. “My name is Mark Huxley. Your mother-in-law and me were just having a bit of chat. Would you care to join us?”

  An English accent. North country. Maybe Yorkshire, Carrie amended. Working class. Inwardly she grimaced. Three years of living in London, and she was doing that British thing—divining background by accent, reading a life into the subtle differences in pronunciation that probably sounded as indistinguishable to the average American ear as they once had to hers.

  But never mind that. What was a Brit doing in the MacNeil’s living room, taking charge like he owned the place?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  TOP SECRET

  CODE WORD ACCESS ONLY

  NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

  FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

  INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTION

  (continued)

  Just so you know, Carrie, no matter how this investigation may have been handled up before this, it’s now officially an FBI file. We’re liaising closely with the CIA and MI-6, so Tucker and Huxley here have become my new best friends, whether I like it or not, but this is a national security matter, so the Bureau has the lead and they are no longer running this show.

  Well, thanks, Agent Andrews. I’m sure we’ll all sleep better, knowing Mr. Hoover’s heirs have taken charge. You don’t mind if I tell you, though, that your interagency turf wars don’t really interest me?

  I figured as much. I’m just telling you so you’ll know I have the authority to say what I’m about to say.

  And what’s that?

  That you are officially enjoined from discussing this case outside of this room. You will not mention your husband’s disappearance or the investigation to anyone.

  What am I supposed to say when people ask me where Drum is?

  Away on business. Just carry on doing what you would normally do and we’ll keep you posted as appropriate as the situation develops.

  “As appropriate,” right. I won’t hold my breath for that.

  Needless to say, you shouldn’t make any plans to leave town.

  It’s not quite that simple. At least two people—my best friend, Tracy Overturf, and her partner—know I was getting ready to leave Drum.

  You have their legal firm on retainer, I believe.

  That’s right. In fact, Tracy suggested she come here with me today in case I needed legal advice. You did say I could have a lawyer present any time I wanted, didn’t you?

  Yes, that’s your right, if you think it’s necessary.

  So, as my legal counsel, I’m allowed to get her advice, right?

  As legal counsel, yes, you can consult her.

  Good. Because I have already and intend to continue doing so. And while we’re on the subject, I presume my mother-in-law isn’t included in this non-disclosure injunction of yours, either, since she’s been getting grilled, too, about Drum’s whereabouts. She’s obviously aware of what’s going on, given that her house is being overrun and pulled apart by the seams even as we speak.

  She was married to a five-star general. She understands about national security.

  That doesn’t mean she’s accepted that her son is guilty of anything.

  Do you think there’s something she knows that she hasn’t told us?

  Not that I’m aware of—not that she’d confide in me, anyway. Ever since she found out I’d been speaking to a divorce lawyer, she’s pretty much stopped speaking to me, except when it can’t be avoided. And even there, most of the time she just passes messages through Jonah or the housekeeper. But it does raise the issue of what I do next. I think I mentioned that I’ve been offered a house to sit. It belongs to Tracy Overturf’s parents. They both teach at Georgetown University, but they’re off on sabbatical right now. Even before all this happened, I’d told Tracy I might be interested in taking her up on the offer of her parents’ house. Now, given how upset Althea is with me, I’m inclined to take it up sooner rather than later.

  We’d rather you stayed where you are.

  Well, that may be, but I’d rather not. The atmosphere in that house is so tense you could cut it with a knife. It’s not a happy environment for anyone, least of all a six-year-old. He’s going to be starting first grade in a couple of weeks. I’m sorry Drum has taken a flyer—sorry and mightily angry about it—but if I’m going to have to move, anyway, the beginning of the school year just makes it that much more urgent to do it sooner rather than later.

  Let me put some cards on the table here, Carrie. We think there’s a chance your husband may still make contact. If he does, we’d like it to be under controlled circumstances. The surveillance on the Elcott Road house is already in place. We’ve moved it back into a low-profile mode, at least from the outside. If he shows up there, there’ll be no outward signs that we’re still on site. If he comes back, we’re well placed to nab him.

  He’s not stupid. If he really has done something wrong, he’s going to stay as far away from that house as he can. Anyway, why would he want to contact me? He obviously doesn’t give a damn about how I feel. If he did, he would never have snuck around behind my back, and he would certainly never have disappeared like this without telling me what he was up to.

  It’s not you we think he’ll be back for.

  You think he might try to see Jonah?

  Not “see.”

  What do you mean? You mean—oh, bloody hell! You think he’s coming back to take Jonah away with him?

  Possibly. We think it was part of his agenda until he twigged to the fact that he was being followed the other morning at Tyson’s Corner.

  Why do you say that?

  This was dropped at Nordstrom’s that morning.

  A passport?

  Nobody made the connection at first. It was found by a customer, who gave it to a sales-clerk, who stuck it in a drawer, then got busy and forgot about it until the end of the day, when she finally handed it in to sto
re security. They were planning to mail it back to the State Department. When we went out there earlier this morning with a warrant for their security videotapes, I happened to spot the passport on the security director’s desk and picked it up. As soon as I saw the picture, I realized what it was.

  It’s Drum’s passport?

  Not Drum’s. And not a valid document, obviously. A very good forgery, though. The name on it is Jonathan Michael Parkes. Date of birth July 28, 1996—the same as your son. Here, I’ll try to open it inside the evidence bag. Don’t touch it. Our fingerprint people still need to go over it. Hang on…okay, there. You see the picture?

  No! Oh, God, no, no, no!

  You knew nothing about this, Carrie? You’re sure?

  Nothing.

  You’d agree that it is a picture of your son, though?

  Yes, but I’ve never seen it before.

  You have no idea when it was taken?

  No, none. Unless maybe…

  What?

  It’s at least a few months old.

  How do you know?

  Jonah lost his first front tooth just after Easter. He’s still got them all in this shot.

  A passport photo has very specific size and head angle requirements. Did Jonah ever mention his dad or anyone else taking a picture like this?

  I’m not sure. Maybe. Drum took him out one Sunday afternoon, back when we were still in London. It was one of the few days he wasn’t at the office. He said he wanted to have a “boys day out” with Jonah. It was a rare enough event, so I certainly didn’t discourage it. When they got back, Jonah started to say something about getting his picture taken, but then Drum shushed him up and they got this conspiratorial look between them. I thought it was some sort of birthday or Mother’s Day surprise they were plotting, so I didn’t press for more information. But now that I think about it, my birthday and Mother’s Day have both gone by and I didn’t get any pictures. I’d forgotten all about it until just now.

  Dammit! This was what he needed the picture for? To get a false passport so he could steal my son from me? That means he’s been planning this for months. The bastard!

  Do you see now why we want you to stay where you are, Carrie?

  Because you think Drum’s coming back. Coming back for Jonah.

  Maybe. But if he does, we’ll be waiting.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  McLean, Virginia

  August 17, 2002—11:14 a.m.

  There were eyes everywhere. It had been five days since Drum’s disappearance, and Carrie felt them on her at every turn.

  She’d once accused him of paranoia. “Even paranoiacs have real enemies,” Drum had replied.

  Well, if he hadn’t had them before, Carrie thought, he certainly did now after pulling that very public vanishing act at Tyson’s Corner. What could he have been thinking?

  After that stunt, witnessed by dozens of civilians in the mall that morning, his CIA watchers had finally been forced to alert the FBI to his flight and the suspicions surrounding him. The Bureau, furious at having been kept in the dark up to then, was pulling out all the stops in an effort to locate Drum and bring him to task. The house in McLean had been crawling with agents ever since, turning drawers, desks and closets inside out, sifting papers, studying computer disks, examining every crack and crevice for evidence that might reveal his whereabouts, intentions and the extent of his betrayal.

  But if Drum was gone, his family was stuck behind like a collection of captive butterflies pinned to a board, wriggling helplessly under the cold scrutiny of federal officials determined to discover what role, if any, Carrie and Althea might have played in what looked to be a serious breach of national security.

  If Carrie had been ill at ease on Elcott Road before, trying to find her place in a family that seemed determined to keep her at arm’s length, the house now felt more like a prison than anything else. FBI, CIA Security, Fairfax County Police—at this point, there was no keeping track of the officials slipping in and out of the house at will, turning the place into Grand Central Station as they ripped apart everything from Drum’s sock drawer to Jonah’s toy box looking for clues to the missing deputy’s whereabouts.

  Althea has spent most of the last few days in her bedroom, pleading a migraine, leaving Carrie on the front lines of this assault on their home life, such as it was. But if these rude intrusions were uncomfortable for Carrie and mortifying to her mother-in-law, who’d always taken such pride in her family’s accomplishments, to Jonah they brought only confusion. On Saturday morning, he finally suffered a meltdown.

  He’d already been in a funk about missing out on the volcano project at camp. The morning after Drum’s disappearance, Carrie had gone in to wake him, determined to keep his routine on as normal a footing as possible, especially after Tucker and Huxley the MI-6 man, had promised a dedicated security person would stay with Jonah at all times. But when Carrie went up to his room that Tuesday morning, she found Jonah congested and running a low-grade fever—a summer cold, nothing more, but enough to keep him indoors for the rest of that week.

  Alternately curious and fretful about the taciturn strangers moving in and out of the house, Jonah had grown increasingly restless as the days wore on. Late Friday afternoon, though, he got a treat when Mindy, his much-loved counselor, came by the house with the papier-mâché volcano he’d made the morning his father disappeared, and which his fellow Sharks had painted for him in his absence.

  The camp counselor had seemed unnerved to find so many stern-looking people overrunning the big house she’d thought contained nothing more daunting than a little boy with a summer cold, but Carrie had convinced the watchers to let her come inside to visit Jonah, who at that point was sorely in need of a little distraction. The three of them proceeded to gather ingredients in the kitchen, then mix the “lava” and set off the volcano under the willows out in the backyard. Jonah went to bed happy that night, feeling better than he had all week.

  But then, on Saturday morning, he rolled out to find a dreary rain falling. When he went down to the den in his pajamas to play computer games, he found the way barred by burly strangers, the place in a shambles, and the computer packed up and carted away.

  “Mom!” he cried, charging back upstairs and into her bedroom, landing on the bed in one tearful leap. “Those people! They took the computer! And all my games!”

  “Oh, honey, I know. They had to borrow them for a while.”

  “But how come? They took the Spidey game! I want to play with it.”

  “We’ll get it back,” Carrie assured him. How could she explain to a six-year-old that the FBI thought his father was a traitor who may have hidden stolen intelligence files among his little boy’s game CDs?

  Jonah was fit to be tied, cabin fever finally taking its toll. With the rain falling outside, adding to the general feeling of gloom, there was no question of sending him out in the yard to run off steam in spite of the fact that his summer cold had dwindled to light sniffles. Instead, after breakfast, Carrie carted down a large bin of Legos and action figures from the playroom upstairs and settled him in the solarium, out of the line of foot traffic, while she set about baking some chocolate chip cookies to cheer him up.

  The cookies were just coming out of the oven when Tracy Overturf showed up, as she had every day since Drum’s disappearance, officially to provide legal counsel but, more importantly, to offer moral support while the FBI ripped the family’s life to shreds.

  “Oh, man, does it smell fatal in here,” Tracy groaned. Cinnamon and warm chocolate scents permeated the kitchen. “Goodbye diet, hello hippo hips. Hey, there, Jonah!” she called over to the solarium. “How you doing today?”

  “Okay,” he said, looking up at her over the table.

  “His cold sounds better,” Tracy said to Carrie. She perched on one of the bar stools at the baker’s table. “And look at you, baking cookies like you had not a care in the world. Who’d guess your whole life is being turned upside down?”


  “Nothing like denial to get you through the day,” Carrie said, as she slid the cookies off the hot sheets onto cooling racks. “I had to do something to cheer things up around here. Jonah went to pieces this morning when he realized the computer and all his games were MIA. He was already bummed about missing camp this week, so losing his video games was the last straw.”

  “He might have been better off carrying on with his normal routine,” Tracy agreed, grabbing one of the cookies and hot-potatoing it from hand to hand.

  “Part of me was kind of glad to keep him home. I was a little freaked about letting him out of my sight. When he came down with a cold, it felt like the fates were sending a message—trust no one.”

  Tracy glanced back at the game unfolding over in the solarium. “Looks like he found himself a new best buddy.”

  “Hmph. I was just about ready to tell the whole bunch of them to take a flying leap,” Carrie said quietly. “But this one has redeemed himself a little—for the moment, anyway.”

  Huxley had been at the round oak table in the solarium, reading a newspaper when Carrie had brought down the toys from the playroom. He was sitting in the same chair and the same position as Drum had been in that last morning, and when Carrie had walked in and seen the raised newspaper, only two hands and a pair of legs showing around it, her heart had pounded at the weird déjà vu of it all. For a split second, she’d even allowed herself the fantasy that Drum’s vanishing act had been a bad dream. But then, at the sound of footsteps on the terrazzo tile, the paper had dropped, and she’d seen that it was the man from British intelligence.

  “Must have kids himself,” Tracy said, watching Huxley with Jonah.

  “I guess. Whatever. All I can say is that it’s a nice change of pace, having one of these guys recognize for a change that there’s a little guy here whose life they’re completely upending.”

  Although maybe, she reflected, it was just that the Brit was looking for a little distraction of his own. That first day, he’d been right in the thick of things, asking probing questions about Drum’s habits and movements, but ever since the FBI had shown up, Huxley had seemed decidedly under-occupied, his presence in the middle of an American security operation barely tolerated, it seemed. Or was he simply underfoot because he’d been assigned the task of keeping the family under close surveillance?