To Free a Spy

by Nick Ganaway

  The T-bird began sputtering minutes later and Warfield wheeled into a motel parking lot and coasted around the end of the building to a secluded lot partially filled with run-down cars. The stained sign on the roof of the old building read, “Clean Rooms By The Hour.” The round, seventyish woman behind the counter looked up at Warfield through eyes whose whites had long ago turned brown. She made no move to get out of her chair.

  When Warfield pushed a soggy twenty-dollar bill across the worn Formica top she took a slow drag off the Camel cigarette she was smoking and surveyed the mud that covered him from top to bottom. At last she managed herself out of her chair, waddled to the counter and gave him a key stamped with the number 6, and a sheaf of ones she retrieved from her skirt as change.

  It hit him that she was going to call the police as soon as he walked out. Dopers and hookers were the norm. Muddy and bloody hair and clothes were another thing. His eyes caught hers as he left the ones on the bar, figuring he was the first person to make eye-contact with her in years, and the only one who’d ever left a tip. Maybe she would think about it long enough for him to get out of there. All he needed were a few short minutes.

  He’d lost his cell phone in the mud but found a pay phone nearby and dialed Paula Newnan’s direct line. He’d spotted a Jiffy Lube oil change place down the street and told her to meet him there. “Soon as you can. Make it quick!”

  When Warfield entered Room 6 the stale odors, dingy carpet and frayed bedspread reminded him of the quality of life experienced by those who were relegated to places like this. He took a shower, washed his clothes in the bathtub, wrung them out as much as possible and put them back on wet. Wet clothes would look normal on a day like today. He trotted along the back streets to the Jiffy Lube and was waiting when Paula arrived. They had the customer area to themselves.

  “This better be good, Cameo. I don’t usually come to this part of town without a gun. And I didn’t need an oil change.”

  “Listen, Paula. They’re trying to take me out. This has to be quick. I need—”

  “Take you…who? For what?” she stage-whispered. Her eyes were saucer-size. “My God, you’re putting too much heat on somebody!”

  “Quinn. Or maybe he convinced Fullwood I’m a problem that needs solving. Fullwood wouldn’t be hard to convince. Either way, I’m a target.”

  “You think Quinn—”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve seen them, these people who are trying to kill you?”

  “They bombed my condo last night! When they realized I wasn’t inside, they chased me down and tried to shoot me and they killed a Samaritan who was trying to help me. Somebody’s going to pay for him if nothing else.”

  “Oh, God.” Paula took a second to digest it all. “Out in the open? Come on, Cam, this can’t be happening!”

  “These guys weren’t wearing coats and ties, Paula.”

  “Contractors.”

  “Exactly. Don’t ever think the nice boys at Langley or the Hoover building are above using dirty knives to cut their meat with. They got ’em on speed dial.”

  Paula shook her head. “And what do I do?”

  “I need your car. Catch a cab back to Hertz and rent something. We’ll work it out later.”

  “That’s easy—but wait a minute. You can go to Cross with this.”

  “What I’ve got on Quinn is too hot. And I can’t prove anything yet. If Cross knew about it at this point he’d have a helluva dilemma.”

  “Where’ll you go?”

  “Don’t know yet, but you haven’t talked to me.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Warfield headed northeast out of Washington, stopped at a mom and pop motel a few miles across the state line in Pennsylvania, registered under the name Pete Moore, avoiding even his aliases, and paid in cash. He’d jotted notes as he drove and now he looked them over from the perspective of a fugitive.

  He called his voicemail and listened to a message Joe Morgan had left for Warfield at ten-forty that morning. Helen Swope hadn’t shown up for the meeting. No word from Helen or Filmore Dunstan, her attorney. Morgan was afraid Helen had decided against changing her testimony, but maybe the weather delayed her. The second call was from Fleming. She was fine.

  He looked out of his window as he waited for the final message to queue. It was almost dark at mid-afternoon. The wind howled through the trees and he wondered how they could bend so much without breaking.

  The message played. It was a second call from Morgan, at noon. Warfield strained to hear the recording over the line static. Morgan was pumped this time and said Warfield was to call him immediately.

  When Warfield dialed him back, the line crackled, making communication difficult.

  “Glad it’s you,” Morgan said. “Veronica’s about to run me out of my office, but listen to this, Warfield. Helen Swope was strangled to death in her bed last night.”

  Warfield was stunned.

  “Her lawyer’s dead too. Shot in the head as he—”

  The line scratched and crackled before going dead. Warfield redialed and got a phone company recording that said phone lines were down in some D.C. areas due to winds from Veronica.

  He hung up and put this news flash from Morgan into the equation. A few short hours earlier Warfield told Quinn that Helen Swope was going to tell Morgan this morning she had lied about Ana. Now both Helen and her attorney were dead—murdered. Warfield barely escaped the same fate—so far. He stood there watching the rain fly sideways by the window as he tried to put it all together.

  “Oh, God!…Ana!” Warfield mumbled. Quinn was eliminating everyone who held keys to his history. Ana would have known Quinn aliased as Donald O. Goodwin and now she was going to die for knowing it. She was not safe from Quinn even locked up in the ADC. Look at Joplan, for example.

  He remembered meeting an officer Holden at the Alexandria Detention Center, where Ana was being held until they assigned her to a federal prison. He got the AT&T operator to try the line, hoping it was still in service.

  “ADC.” The line was noisy.

  “Holden. Got a Holden there?”

  “Captain Holden. One moment.”

  “Aubrey Holden.”

  “Holden, Cam Warfield.”

  “Colonel Warfield! Help you with something?”

  “Ana Koronis! Everything okay with her?”

  Holden laughed. “Pretty revved when I saw her few hours ago. I guess you know that the CIA guy, what’s his name…Quinn? got her a pass for the weekend.”

  “She’s with Quinn?” That was very bad news, but Warfield wasn’t totally surprised.

  “Yes, sir. I got an order to release her into Mr. Quinn’s custody until Monday morning.”

  “Tell me that you know where they were going, Holden!”

  “No idea, sir.”

  “You’ve got to find out, Holden. Now.”

  “I don’t…well, hold a second. I’ll see if anybody knows.”

  Holden was back a minute later. “Deputy Brighton here, he escorted Koronis to Mr. Quinn’s car. Said Mr. Quinn told Ms. Koronis they were going to ‘AC.’ That mean Atlantic City, you think?”

  “When did they leave?”

  “This morning, right after eight.”

  Warfield hung up and ran through his options. It wouldn’t be easy to stop Quinn. After all, who in all of law enforcement had the will, the capacity—the thought that he could be a criminal—to apprehend the widely-known director of central intelligence? Even Ana, in the dark about all of this, would laugh at the absurdity of it if anyone attempted to save her from Quinn. Cross was the only possibility, but Ana could be dead by the time it took Warfield to make the case to Cross that the man he loved like a brother was a traitor and a murderer. Even then, how much longer would it take Cross to assimilate the facts to the point of action?

  Cross was not the answer. Warfield clicked on the motel room’s vintage TV and stood there while the tubes warmed up. Under normal conditions, Atlantic City would be ninety
minutes max from his motel, but the Weather Channel showed Veronica moving northward now, paralleling the coast with winds at speed of hundred and twenty. A spokesman from the National Hurricane Center couldn’t say where or when she would turn westward to land, but the wind and rain would continue. Warfield knew it would only get worse as he drove closer to the coast.

  He took I-95 north. The interstate was less prone to flood than the secondary roads he used earlier to avoid Quinn’s thugs. It was three p.m. when he turned south at Philadelphia to take the Atlantic City Expressway. The weather had traffic crawling at a time when he needed to make speed. Quinn and Ana, hours ahead of him, had reached Atlantic City by now—if Holden was correct.

  On the radio, the announcer said the New Jersey governor ordered the national guard to duty earlier in the day because of the threat from Veronica. The hurricane center broke in and said it now looked like the eye of the storm would hit a few miles down the coast from Atlantic City. Landfall should be around ten p.m. with winds near a hundred and thirty-five miles per hour. The accompanying storm surge could be as high as eighteen feet and would precede the eye of the storm by around five hours. Residents in Atlantic City and New Jersey coastal areas were ordered by the governor to evacuate.

  That meant Warfield had two hours to get to the Golden Touch before the storm surge—evacuation or not. He was an hour from there in normal conditions but at the present rate he needed some luck. There were no cars going in his direction but he couldn’t make out the roadway if he drove faster than forty.

  The maximum storm surge occurs to the right of the center of the storm as it goes onto land, and it is that dome of water, pushed up at sea by the winds and low atmospheric pressure, that causes the most deaths and property destruction. Far out at sea, the water dome dissipates and causes no harm, but as the ocean floor rises to shore the water is forced up with it and rushes inland. Category four hurricanes, with winds up to one-fifty-five, hammer anything near the shore with giant waves and wreckage from other structures. The water action can undermine foundations and even topple buildings. Roofs, windows and doors become airborne. Low-lying areas are flooded. Deaths are common among people who can’t get out of the way soon enough, or who say no to leaving their homes. Electric power is lost, which means stores and gasoline stations are down. The result is many deaths, billions of dollars in property destruction and total paralysis in the affected areas. Warfield flashed the thought of the Katrina victims and all the chaos in New Orleans afterward, and the more recent Sandy that devastated New Jersey and New York just months earlier.

  Ten miles out of Philadelphia, flashing lights filled the roadway a hundred yards ahead of Warfield. He stopped on the shoulder and watched for a minute. State police were turning all Atlantic City-bound traffic back! Cars in the southbound expressway lanes sat in line on the exit ramp to cross the bridge over the highway and merge into northbound lanes that were already jammed with drivers escaping the coast. Military vehicles idled under the bridge and in the road beyond the police cars. National guardsmen in rain gear milled around, some directing traffic. Warfield knew other troops had the harder job of locating and convincing people to leave their homes.

  Warfield surveyed the scene, pulled the Redskins cap down over his eyes, left Paula’s car beside the road and jogged up the ramp to the crossover. A Humvee sat there with lights on, engine running and no driver. There were no soldiers nearby, as they were down at the expressway directing traffic. Warfield climbed in. Hummers were not new to him.

  As he entered the ramp to the southbound lane toward Atlantic City, a soldier sitting beside the road in another Hummer threw up a hand in a casual gesture. Warfield waved back knowing recognition was not possible in this weather and moved onto the empty roadway south of the roadblock.

  State troopers monitored the flow of traffic, moving at around thirty. Military vehicles roamed the side of the expressway and no one seemed to pay special notice to Warfield, just another guardsman on duty. He continued on the shoulder until he came to other idling military vehicles blocking the roadway and was forced to the ditch. Water rose to hood-level on the Hummer, but the Humvee was equipped with large-diameter wheels and a snorkel system that extended the air intake and exhaust above roof level enabling it to take the virtual river in stride until he could get back on the pavement.

  Thirty-five was all Warfield could manage. Even if the wipers could handle the rain, he couldn’t see beyond the front end of the Humvee. He was hoping almost against hope now that he could beat the storm surge. And what if Quinn and Ana weren’t there? But he couldn’t worry about that. There was no other place to look. Phones were out. Same for transportation. But Quinn would be there. It was human nature to go to a familiar place in times of crisis.

  As Warfield approached the crest of a rise, a sea of car lights greeted him. Police vehicles, blue roof-mounted lights flashing, lined up across both sides of the expressway from fence-to-fence, and dead-still traffic lined up behind them as far as Warfield could see. There was no way around the roadblock. Warfield realized they were waiting for him, the idiot who had stolen the Humvee. He locked the doors, pulled to a stop near one of the state troopers who was flashing a light at him and lowered the window slightly.

  At least fifty New Jersey state troopers and national guardsmen surrounded Warfield’s Humvee. Some of the soldiers were talking among themselves and laughing at the absurdity of anyone stealing a Hummer, especially in this weather. Drivers who were lined up behind the row of police cars sat on their horns. A heavy state trooper captain with the name Haygood on his slicker focused a spotlight in Warfield’s eyes. His right hand was concealed somewhere inside his raincoat. “Step down out of the vehicle, sir!” he shouted.

  * * *

  Ana was in the kitchen trying to pull together a meal from a few things she found in Quinn’s personal suite at the Golden Touch. He hadn’t anticipated that Atlantic City—and all food service at the Golden Touch—would be shut down before they arrived.

  Quinn found himself with time on his hands. He’d put the five ten-milligram Valium tablets from his medicine cabinet into his shirt pocket and slipped the little .38 Smith & Wesson revolver from his bed table into the pocket of his slacks. He went over to the window to check on the storm again but the glass breathed in and out so much now that he feared it would break. He closed the heavy drapes so they might slow down any flying glass and poured himself another Glenfiddich. The main building power had gone off an hour earlier but his suite was connected to the auxiliary generators that came on in a power failure and ran the elevators and other critical areas of the Golden Touch.

  He returned to the den where the TV was on. A crew filming from the eighth floor of another building along the coastline showed waves lapping over the Boardwalk, crashing into the casinos and ripping out sections of the famous walkway that Sandy hadn’t already destroyed. His brow furrowed. Driving was no longer possible, but he hadn’t lost hope.

  He turned off the television and went to the kitchen. While Ana was looking for something in the fridge, he dropped the five blue Valium pills into her glass of Pinot Noir that sat on the bar.

  * * *

  “Who’s the national guard officer in charge,” Warfield said through the crack above the Hummer’s window. He had to literally shout down to state patrol officer Captain Haygood to be heard over the weather and car horns.

  “Military’s not running this show, buddy. Get out of the truck!” Haygood shouted.

  “Soon as I see the ranking military officer standing there.” A couple of the soldiers started to take closer notice.

  Haygood’s hand began to move about inside the slicker. “You’ll get out now, or we’ll take you out.”

  Warfield closed the window. He didn’t think the enraged trooper would go so far as to shoot him. Haygood consulted with his men and spoke into a radio. Minutes later additional troopers began arriving on the shoulder. The symphony of horns rivaled the noise of the storm. One of the s
oldiers grabbed his radio and started talking. Warfield looked at his watch. His chances of getting to the Golden Touch ahead of the storm surge diminished by the second. Even the Humvee had its limits.

  The standoff went on for fifteen minutes, by which time at least a hundred troopers and national guardsmen had congregated, all standing around Warfield’s Humvee in the rain and struggling at times to balance themselves against the gale. Another Humvee arrived on the shoulder and a general riding in the right seat got out and strode through the mass of troopers and guardsmen, who cleared a wide berth for him and threw their hands up in salute.

  “What’s the problem here?” The general stood at least six-four and had some meat on his bones. His voice had no trouble overcoming the sound of the weather and the cars.

  Warfield saw the star on his collar and started to emerge, but Haygood began to vent to the general about the disruption Warfield had caused, the number of troopers he’d tied up for too many precious minutes, and only God could know how many lives he’d cost by shutting down the evacuation. This thief had refused his order to get out of the vehicle and was under arrest.

  The general looked around at one of his own men. “Know anything about this, Sergeant O’Hare?”

  “Yes, sir, sounds ’bout right. The dude apparently stole the Hummer up the road. When the troopers stopped him here, he refused to get out ’til he could talk to you.”

  The general looked up at Warfield and started to speak but Haygood started again. The general turned to him, saying, “Is this the biggest problem you got today, Haywood?”

  “It’s Haygood. You see all these cars sitting here? Hear those horns blowin’?”

  The general looked at the cars. “Who stopped ’em?”

  “I did,” Haygood said. “Only way we could stop this thief.”

  “That’d be a little hard for me to understand, but I’ll handle this man and you can take care of the traffic—unless you want us to take that over too.”