by Jay Brandon
One member, whose contacts in academia numbered in the thousands, apparently took this personally, stepping forward to say, “Gladys, be fair. The man came out of nowhere. For God’s sake, he doesn’t even have tenure at that podunk college where he teaches. Apparently he wrote one paper, not even published, which he sent to the President, which so impressed President Dimsky that he lit on him for the NSA job when Sophie unexpectedly resigned. I think the President liked the fact that no one’s ever heard of this Wilkerson character. You know he thinks himself a great judge of diamonds in the rough.”
Several people, a couple of whom had known President Jefferson Witt since college, rolled their eyes. This group had helped him get elected, but not because of a high opinion of his intellect or abilities.
“Let me just be sure,” Ms. Leaphorn insisted. “Not one person here or elsewhere in our group has ever met this man face to face?”
Jack scanned the group carefully. No one appeared to be hiding anything, but that didn’t mean no one was.
He felt lucky that Arden was standing beside him, not looking at him.
“Why don’t we approach it from another angle?” Alicia Mortenson said helpfully. “Why did Ms. Cohen resign so abruptly?”
“Again without our having a clue,” the Chair muttered.
“Family health problems. Her husband.”
“That’s what they always say,” Ronald observed.
“Oh, he has a genuine health problem,” Arden smiled. “Sophie’s going to kill him because she caught him cheating on her. She resigned because she was afraid the scandal was going to go public and in order to devote more time to making his life miserable.”
The Chair from her seated position looked all around the room, and no one seemed to be looking down at her when they made eye contact. They knew what she was demanding now: learn everything about the Cohens’ marital history, whether the husband had indulged himself this way before, and most of all learn everything there was to know about his paramour. After a moment of silence the Chair said, “I’m glad we had this chat,” and rolled toward the bar.
“God, I love these meetings,” Ronald said.
So did Jack. He didn’t know yet that this would be the last enjoyable one, but he still enjoyed it to the fullest, still liked reminiscing about it.
CHAPTER 3
The two men went through airport security in Reno with great ease. Neither carried any luggage. They didn’t even wear jackets. They slipped off their black loafers and put them through the x-ray scanner while everyone around them struggled with coats, satchels, purses, laptops, briefcases, strollers, umbrellas. The two men didn’t even carry wallets. The only things they had to take out of their pockets were keys and money clips. They slipped past their fellow travellers and cleared security quickly, not having to pause to reassemble themselves.
They strolled down the concourse, one tall and thin, with blond hair buzzed close to his skull, the other shorter, bulkier, and dark, with a strong nose and even stronger brown eyes. He did the looking around while his companion just strolled. They stopped at a bar, leaning back against high stools. One ordered a Tecate, the other a Coke. When the boy brought the order he offered glasses, but neither man bothered. The blond one took a long drink of the Tecate, then frowned at his companion’s drink. “Coke?”
The dark man said, “I don’t like to waste good beer,” and he poured his drink into a conveniently placed potted palm. His companion did the same with his beer. Then, as if having a contest, each crushed his can on the tabletop by pressing down with one hand. The cans collapsed into flattened pieces of metal. Each man tore the result in half, creating a sharp edge, then sharpened it further with a key that was a disguised file. Finally, the blond man took his keyring in his palm, and stuck three keys out from between his fingers, turning his hand into a mace. In his other hand he carried the sharpened piece of can.
Now they were armed—and they felt very secure in the airport concourse in assuming they were the only people who were. “I love security,” the blond one said as they walked up toward the passenger gates.
The passenger lounge area around Gate 32 was fairly full. The two men stopped and looked over their possibilities. Several businessmen traveling separately: good possibilities. Three or four family groups they tentatively dismissed. Two thin, leggy women putting their heads together over a magazine. The blond man watched them appreciatively, until his partner nudged his arm.
There was another group of kids in their twenties at whom the men stared closely. Then a young mother with a toddler, who kept running across everyone’s legs. Geeky kid with an earplug, playing what looked like a Gameboy on steroids. Middle-aged man and teenage daughter, maybe on a college trip. The dark man looked at the father more closely: take away the girl and he could be the one, their target. Two flight attendants stretching their legs, chatting quietly to each other. Don’t turn your back on them: wouldn’t be the first time a flight attendant turned out to be a trained killer.
They concentrated first on the people facing them, assuming the ones who were careless enough to sit with their backs to the traffic were harmless.
Jack, the “kid” playing a game on his hand-held device, wondered who the two were. They obviously didn’t realize he could see them in two reflections: the glass wall in front of him and the television screen in the other lounge. The two men moved purposefully through the small crowd, obviously looking for someone. Jack appeared to continue playing his game. His cane leaned against the chair beside him. Security hadn’t liked that cane, but Jack had walked in with an obvious limp and the x-ray machine hadn’t shown anything inside the wooden stick, so they’d let it through.
Jack remained aware of the two men without ever looking directly at them, until they were standing over him. He felt their presence, heard their breathing, and sighed without making a sound. Jack turned off his game so he could see the two in the reflection of the small screen. Whatever happened, he wasn’t moving. He felt safe surrounded by people. Until he saw the points of the keys sticking out from between the taller one’s fingers. That hand was about a foot behind his neck.
Jack had some skills, but he was no martial artist. His superpower was networking. He had latched on to Chun Lee in Malaysia at just the right time, but here no one was available, there wasn’t time, and he seriously doubted he could make friends with either of the assassins standing behind him.
Quickly he ticked off escapes. The gate, “guarded” by a ticket taker, but if Jack leaped down that tunnel he would find himself trapped in an airplane. Farther away there was a door that would let him out into the runway area, but these two guys, especially the taller one, looked faster than he was. They wouldn’t let him get that far. The same was true of the path back down the concourse.
Couldn’t go around them, then. That left one possibility.
The taller one, the one with the keys in his fist, leaned over as if to speak to him quietly. Jack didn’t believe that, though. Those keys were about to come into the back of his neck, with paralyzing force. The hand was moving down.
Jack stood and turned quickly, then lost his balance without his cane and fell forward. His hand came down on the thinner man’s hand, pushing it down into the seat back. The keyring as a weapon was turned on its wielder, crushing his palm inside the closed fist. The man grimaced, he was tough.
Jack gave one more hard press on the hand as he regained his balance. “Sorry,” he mumbled. The taller man stepped back, shaking his hand. The other one, with a roll of his eyes, stepped forward. “Sir—” he began, as if about to deliver a confidential message. Jack leaned toward him attentively, noticing the glint of metal in the man’s hand.
The two planned to kill him right here in this passenger lounge! How did they hope to get away with such a thing? Possibilities ran through his mind—maybe it was a suicide mission, maybe they had no identities—which was a distraction, but he couldn’t help it. That was how his mind worked, even as he put on a dope
y expression for the benefit of the burly man.
As their heads leaned toward each other, as the man’s hand holding the sharpened metal came up, toward his intended victim’s throat, the cane came up too, Jack raising it as if it were part of him. It blocked the man’s thrust then the head of the cane rose into the man’s throat, left unprotected as he leaned forward.
“Unngh,” he grunted. Jack twisted the head of the cane, trying to crush his windpipe. But the man reached for the cane, and Jack knew he couldn’t afford to lose his only weapon. He yanked it back and stepped away.
The burly man was choking. A woman hurried up and began tending to him, her head leaning close to his, but her ministrations didn’t help. The burly man went down on one knee, then slumped to the ground.
A couple of people in the lounge watched the little drama, but most paid no attention. More people were watching the adorable blond toddler running up and down the rows. Several would have liked for him to shut up, but nobody said so, and several others smiled at him with genuine affection. Every parent in the lounge was reminded of what they had left at home.
The blond man was recovered now. He glared at Jack, whose only defense was to back up. The toddler bumped his legs, then cruised around him. The blond man closed in. He had dropped his keys, but a glint of metal remained in his right hand.
The woman who had been trying to help the other one leaned against the row of chairs, which knocked a paper cup off its small table between two chairs on Jack’s side of the row. It spilled its contents, ice and soda, just as the blond man stepped forward. His foot came down on a piece of ice and he lurched. He didn’t fall, he had good balance, but in trying to regain it his arm flailed. There was a sharp smack and the toddler, his cheek reddened, began screaming.
“Why did you do that?” the outraged woman shouted. The child continued to cry, his mother swooped toward him, the blond man started to explain or apologize, and the woman cried, “Don’t you dare hit him again!”
Most of the women in the lounge and several men descended on him as one raging parent-beast. In moments it was impossible to tell where the blond man left off and the outraged crowd began. His head bobbed for a moment atop the sea of angry adults. Apparently he was trying to explain that he hadn’t done anything, but no one was listening. Someone had just found what he had in his hand.
“My God, he was going to slice him!”
“Get him! Make him drop it!”
A woman’s voice shrilled, “He was with him,” and part of the crowd turned its attention to the burly dark man. Once he was found to be armed as well, his conviction was complete.
Jack stood staring. The scene had turned to chaos in an instant, but a chaos unexpectedly beneficial to him. Then a hand grabbed his arm.
The woman who’d spilled the drink and accused the blond man tugged at him. Jack saw that she was Arden. How had he not recognized her? She wasn’t in disguise, exactly, just a hat with her hair pulled up under it, and large glasses.
Neither of them said a word as she pulled him toward the ramp back up the terminal. There they turned to look back. Airport cops had arrived to begin sorting out the scene, and had Jack’s attackers firmly grasped. The attackers looked, if anything, relieved.
“I had those two from the time they cleared security,” Jack said.
“Sure you did.”
“I would have left them—”
“This is better,” Arden assured him.
“This—” Jack looked back at the scene in the lounge, where a dozen pointed fingers accused the two of various crimes, and obviously no one remembered that Jack had been involved, or even existed—has aspects of greatness, Jack finished his sentence in his mind.
“Thank you.”
“Stop that.” He had meant to finish his sentence, “is better.” But she had answered his thought.
She put her arm through his. They could stroll out now. “In answer to your next question,” Arden said, “Granny sent me to take care of you.”
“‘Granny’?”
“Please don’t tell me you don’t know that my grandmother, who brought me into this group, is Gladys Leaphorn, the Chair. I will lose all faith in your info-gathering—”
“All right, yes, I knew that. Although there’s a lot I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone—”
“We have to go see her. Now.”
“Now?”
“That was the second part of my assignment. I’m to bring you to her. Come.”
“Why? I’m not going anywhere until I get some answers.”
Arden glanced back. “We’ll take my car.”
They met Gladys Leaphorn in the painted desert, at the base of a mesa that protected their flank, a spot from which they could see miles in every other direction. Arden’s car, a baby blue Cadillac from the early 70s, looked anachronistic in that setting, but not as much as one might have expected. The Chair emerged from a small stone shelter, walking shakily on two arm-canes. There was no sign of another car, nor tracks of any kind other than Arden’s. Quite possibly Gladys Leaphorn had flown here under her own power. She had no entourage, not even one aide. The lines in her face looked as deeply etched as the cracks in this dry earth. But she seemed to draw strength from this landscape, standing straighter as Jack and Arden approached. One of her metal canes dropped to the ground as she hugged her granddaughter.
“Thank you, baby. Was he in trouble?”
“Just like you thought, Granny. But we got by.”
“I could have handled it,” Jack said.
“That is not the point,” the Chair said. “Who is trying to kill you, Jack, and why?”
He looked her in the eyes and neither of them spoke for several seconds. Gladys Leaphorn’s dark eyes gave him nothing but his own reflection. Of course Jack had been thinking of little else except the question she had asked. His suspicions ranged wide, and covered the Chair herself. She had saved him from this latest attack. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t plotted it herself, either for real or to take him into her confidence. Her mind was so twisty there was no way to follow its trails.
The way Arden had rescued him—if in fact she had—had left Jack no chance of questioning his attackers. This had occurred to him some miles back.
He turned to her. “When did you spot those two? If you had let me know you were there, we could have worked together, maybe gotten at least one of them alone and still capable of talking. Now—”
“That’s the way these assassins work, Jack.” Gladys answered the question. “Their attacks are in public or near-public. Either they succeed or they are taken into custody by authorities who don’t know the right questions to ask. That was true of the two who attacked you in Malaysia, too, wasn’t it?”
Jack had to admit that was true.
“Who are dead, by the way,” Gladys added. “We made inquiries. They were ‘arrested’ at the convention center, but somehow never made it to jail.”
While Jack pondered that, the Chair continued to study him. Arden stood a couple of feet from each of them, forming the third point of a triangle. Her arms folded, she kept her eyes mostly on her grandmother. She was more subdued in her ancestor’s presence, but had an avid look on her face, studying all the time. “Tell him the rest of that story,” she said.
“They were already dead when they attacked you, Jack.”
His eyebrows flew up. The Chair continued, “They had been poisoned. Whether they succeeded or not, they had not long to live.”
So the killer of killers was more ruthless than those he, or they, employed.
The Chair dismissed that subject. “But you’re available for questioning, Jack. And I have some for you. What were you doing in Prague?”
“Prague? When?”
“Three days before you arrived in Paris.”
Jack was shaking his head. “I haven’t been in Prague in four years.”
“You were seen there, Jack. By one of ours.”
Gladys Leaphorn’s voice was accus
ing. But Jack only listened thoughtfully, as if being handed a small puzzle. “DNA? Retinal scan? Are you saying it was just someone who looked like me?”
“You know you wouldn’t have left identifying marks. What about London? Why were you there?”
“This was supposedly—?”
“The same time frame. You were spotted entering an apartment in Chelsea.”
This time Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Where exactly?”
Gladys gave him an address. It was impossible to tell from Jack’s lack of reaction whether the address meant anything to him. Arden still stood in the same pose, her eyes going back and forth between the other two, but primarily staying on Jack. He was thinking, obviously, but didn’t seem to be trying to come up with an excuse.
“The only thing I did in London on this trip was change planes. I never left Heathrow. I was there for maybe two hours.”
The Chair’s voice remained level but relentless. “Then you would have arrived in France three days earlier than you did.”
“No one knows when I arrived in France. I travelled overland, I didn’t leave a paper trail.”
“Did you see anyone on your journey?”
“Ali Khatam. I wanted to get a feel for what the Kurds may be—”
“Ali Khatam’s son would be dead if not for you. He would say whatever you ask.”
Jack stared into her eyes and spoke flatly. “Why don’t you shoot him with truth serum and then ask him, Granny?” He let her look into his eyes for a long few seconds, then added, “Of what exactly am I being accused?”
Gladys sighed. “Of nothing, Jack. Honestly. But you’ve been going off on your own, acting unilaterally, and now someone is trying to kill you. What kind of mission—?”
“I did what I set out to do,” Jack interrupted. “And you and everyone else knows what it was. I’m done with that now.”
The sun would be setting soon, out in that western distance that appeared strangely intimate here. A breeze had sprung up, caressing their faces, its sandy touch tangible. Arden’s hair lifted and settled again. The Cadillac already had sand six inches up its tires. It would not take long here for man and any of his creations to disappear.