Kirby followed Joe through the house, past the crew members and the naked performers who stank of sweat, bodily secretions and lubricant jelly. She kept her eyes on the floor until she was out in the street where the air was heavy with sage, jasmine and wild fennel, and automatic sprinklers hissed and whispered.
Joe’s car was already running when she got in and he accelerated before she’d closed the door.
“Hope you have no pressing engagements,” he said.
“Why?”
“We’ve got what you might call a medical emergency so I have to go somewhere before I take you home.”
“What emergency?”
“He’s been shot. The husband.”
“Whose husband?”
“Hers. Catherine Finch’s.”
SEVENTEEN
“You know I almost bought her?” Kip Littlefield said.
“The Finch bitch?” asked one of the pair of septuagenarians who sat across from him in the suite he’d taken at the Mandarin Oriental in downtown D.C.
“Yes,” Finch said, as he poured himself a single malt from a cut glass decanter, deliberately not offering a drink to either man.
Both were named Jack, and liked to refer to themselves as “the Two Jacks,” alluding to their bipartisan alliance. Boston Jack, the one who had spoken, eyed Littlefield’s glass and as good as licked his lips.
“Just last week Islamic State let it be known that they would release her for a pretty hefty chunk of change,” Littlefield said, drinking. “The caliphate always needs cash. I thought it was a sweet deal and was about to drop the money on a Turkish bagman when we hatched this little plan.”
“A pity, in retrospect, that you didn’t buy her. It would’ve prevented this imbroglio,” Washington Jack said.
Littlefield shrugged. “We’ll play it as it lays.”
He stood and crossed to the window and looked down at the Jefferson Memorial, aware of the two men watching him, enjoying the knowledge that they were afraid of him.
Littlefield was in a sour mood, his mind filled with his marital dissatisfactions, and his temper was running hot. He had little patience with this duo, a pair of senators in their dangerous declining years, from opposing parties, who had disregarded political boundaries (or, as they liked to say, spanned political disagreements) to forge an alliance that was all about power and piling up loot.
They both sat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and routinely pushed through bills that pillaged the Pentagon’s war chest, sending billions into the pockets of the arms manufacturers that Littlefield fronted. For this they were handsomely rewarded.
Boston Jack, the Democrat, was descended from bog Irish immigrants and had made his fortune any way he could. He was a Catholic, an alcoholic, and a womanizer with a hair-weave and porcelain veneers. He had a wife tucked away in Beacon Hill and a townhouse in Georgetown where, his libido fueled by fistfuls of Cialis, he sported with his concubines.
Washington Jack, the Republican, was by contrast, a buttoned-down, white shoe Episcopalian. Thin and bloodless. Prim. Perfectly spoken. Lethal. He and his dowdy wife had been together since college and neither had strayed.
These crooked ancients were useful to Littlefield. They’d used their backchannel influence with CentCom to orchestrate the drone strike on Ahmed Assir and Catherine Finch, but he had little time for them today, when they could offer him nothing, and were here to tithe him.
Both Jacks had decided to throw their hats into the ring in the next election, and both were seeking Littlefield’s patronage. Hungry for the gush of his dark money to swell the coffers of their super PACs like the livers of force-fed geese.
“For what it’s worth,” Boston Jack said, “I don’t believe the president is aware of this deception. There are confused signals coming out of the White House.”
“Which, ironically, is lending this whole thing the ring of authenticity,” Washington Jack said.
“It’s becoming annoying,” Littlefield said, returning to his seat, setting his glass down.
Boston’s Jack, his rheumy eyes fixed again on the gently undulating liquid, said, “Yes, it’s a bitch that it’s still afloat, this peace thing. Taking water, sure, but still afloat.”
“Then let’s redouble our efforts,” Washington Jack said, looking across at his crony. “I’ll talk to the Israelis. You talk to the Palestinians. Let us sow dissent.”
“I partied just yesterday with my point man in Hamas,” Boston Jack said. “Told him that Finch was deader than disco and that he was being sold down the Jordan.”
“His response?” Littlefield said.
“You coulda heard a frog piss on cotton.” Boston Jack shrugged. “I think he’s being incentivized by the presidency.”
“Incentivized how?”
“Weapons? Money? Norwegian blondes? Who the fuck knows?”
“It’s going to blow back,” Washington Jack said, “and at the risk of an acute case of schadenfreude, I’m relishing our friend in the Oval Office getting egg on his face.”
“You two old pricks talk a good game,” Littlefield said, rising, hands on hips, “but talk is not going to do it.”
The Two Jacks looked up at him like dogs who have tasted their master’s whip.
“Maybe this Catherine Finch thing was too subtle. If we want to end the peace talks then let’s end them,” Littlefield said. The old men waited, dewlaps aflap with nervous swallowing. “Hell, things were way more critical back in 1995, as you two will remember better than me.”
“Sure,” Boston Jack, on firmer ground, said, “I was there on the White House lawn when Slick Willie grinned like a coonhound as he watched Rabin and Arafat get cozy.”
“Then Rabin was shot and that was that for the little Levantine rom-com,” Littlefield said. “Sometimes we can all get a bit too smart for our own good. Simplicity. Direct action. I think that’s what’s needed here.”
Washington Jack looked at him. “Surely to God you’re not considering killing the Israeli prime minister?”
In fact Littlefield was just spitballing, venting, but the idea held some appeal, and he rode its coattails, improvising as he spoke. “Not kill, no. Merely wound. That’ll be enough to put an end to this business.”
Washington Jack pursed his lips. “You’ll need a very skilled marksman. Wounding is a more exacting art than killing.”
“I have just the man. An Ossetian-Uzbek who took bronze in the 50 m rifle prone event at the Rio Olympics.”
This was a lie, of course. All he had was Hunt Gidley, who was looking more like a liability by the day.
As if by some occult machination Littlefield’s phone chimed. Gidley. He stood and walked into the bedroom, offering no apologies to the two men who were left sitting unwatered on the plump sofa.
He opened the message: WATCH THE NEWS.
Littlefield went back into the other room and when he clicked on the TV he was confronted with images of the fiasco in Los Angeles.
Two dead FBI agents.
Richard Finch missing.
So this was why Amy Branch had been recalled to D.C.
Washington Jack stared at Littlefield. “Is this your handiwork?”
Littlefield ignored him. His phone gonged again and he thumbed the screen and saw a photograph of a man with gray hair walking up the pathway to Richard Finch’s house.
“Do either of you know this character?” he said and set the phone down between the two Jacks.
They leaned in and squinted at the screen.
Washington Jack shook his head but Boston Jack said, “Hell yes, I know him. He’s ex-CIA. Asshole by the name of Town. Pete Town.”
EIGHTEEN
Town stood outside a derelict warehouse somewhere in South Central L.A. A little distance away Kirby Chance hunkered down beside an abandoned car, hugging her knees. It was dawn, and the sky was the color of fresh blood behind a row of skinny palms. A freight train thundered by, visible through gaps in the decomposing buildings. The ground moved
beneath Town’s feet.
Richard Finch was inside the warehouse that doubled as a clandestine emergency room. He lay on an improvised operating table, intubated and anesthetized, and a swarthy, tattooed man who looked more like a butcher than a surgeon was busy removing a bullet from Finch’s right shoulder. He was assisted by a slim young woman whose dark eyes were wary above her surgical mask.
After Golding’s call, Town, in desperation, had reached out to Joe Go.
“There’s a situation,” he’d said when Go’d answered his cell. “I need help.”
“Speak.”
“I have a seriously injured man who needs treatment but I can’t take him to the ER. Do you know of anybody who can treat him discreetly?”
“This anything to do with that clusterfuck out in Eagle Rock?”
Town had hesitated before saying, “Yes.”
“Whoa, this is waaaay outta my wheelhouse, man. I’m all about the digital.”
“It’ll count in your favor, if you help me. If you don’t…” Town let it hang.
“You threatening me, dude?”
“No, just being clear.”
“Fuck.”
“Does that mean you know somebody?” Town said.
“Yeah, I know somebody.”
“Call them. Tell them money is no problem and confirm the venue. I’ll call you back in five minutes. Yes?”
“Yeah,” Go said and he was gone.
When Town had called back Go’d told him to meet him in the parking lot of Ralph’s in North Hollywood. Go, still with Kirby Chance in his car, had pulled up next to Town, eyed Finch slumped in the rear and said, “Follow me.”
Without speaking the girl had left Go’s car and slid into the back of the Toyota with Rick Finch. When the dome light clicked on Town had been astonished at her transformation.
“He’s been shot?” she’d said.
“Yes,” Town had said, flooring the Toyota to keep up with Go who’d sped from the parking lot.
As Town had followed Go into a maze of cramped streets, Kirby had torn a length of cloth from Finch’s shirt and used it to stem the blood. Town watching her in the rearview as streetlights illuminated her in orange bursts.
Go had led Town to the warehouse and, after making introductions to the medics, had driven away into the first light of dawn. The girl had elected to stay.
This place was where Latino gangbangers came when they couldn’t go to the ER. Town realized he was risking Finch’s life, but he knew that putting him into the system would be as good as hanging a target around his neck. And the medics inside had to know what they were doing. Surely sewing up gangsters brought greater risks than medical malpractice suits?
Finch hadn’t yet regained consciousness. Hadn’t given him any clue about who had shot him, or why. All Town knew was what he’d gleaned from the radio: two FBI agents dead.
Kirby Chance walked over to him.
“So he’s going to be okay?” she said.
“Yes. The bullet missed anything vital. The greatest danger is blood loss.”
“Why couldn’t you just take him to the hospital?” Kirby said.
“Because whoever tried to kill him could try again.”
“Okay.” She stared down at her shoes. “What you want me to do…”
“You’re not going to do anything.”
“No?”
He looked at her, her face washed by the early light. Again he was struck by how closely she resembled the dead woman. “No. It’s too dangerous.”
“So I just go back to my life?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe that’s better.”
“Believe me, it is.”
“I’m no hero.”
“Nobody is.”
“Oh, some people are brave. Catherine Finch was.”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t think she was brave?”
“I suppose she was, but I think of her more as defiant. Like a person who was using that situation to define herself, to set herself apart as somebody special. There was an ego at work.”
“Is that bad?”
“No, not always. I suppose you don’t have to be likeable to be admirable.”
“You didn’t like her?”
“On an instinctual level, no. I admired her, but there was something too predetermined about her. Something bloodless.”
She looked at him and made as if to move her hair away from her face and then realized it wasn’t there anymore and stared at the ground and then up at him again. “You’re not with the State Department, are you?”
“No,” he said, “I’m not.”
“And your name’s not Ronald Abernathy?”
“No.”
“But you won’t tell me who you really are?”
“I can’t.”
She nodded and watched a crow as it landed on a power line and then flew off, the wire left aquiver like a bow string.
He heard a voice calling and he turned to see the young woman standing in the doorway, beneath the canopy. “He’s conscious,” she said.
Town stood and walked across to the door, his leg dragging. The girl followed him.
- - -
When Richard Finch opened his eyes he was groggy as all hell, lying on some kind of an operating table, monitors chirping. He thought he was staring up at the stars but then he saw rotting timbers supporting a rusted sheet metal roof riddled with holes that allowed pinpricks of sunlight to burn through.
He glimpsed the shape of a man—a meaty, heavily tattooed arm moving in and out of the light, and then away.
Another shape came into focus and he saw a gray-haired man staring down at him.
Did he know him?
He couldn’t recall.
He shifted his eyes and saw a woman standing at the man’s shoulder.
Finch blinked and tried to lift himself and said, “Catherine?”
PART THREE
ONE
She surfaced from a drugged sleep and kept her good eye closed and didn’t move, as she had learned to do over the last numberless days. Her sense of time was a broken thing, due to both the sedatives (probably ketamine, the anesthetic of choice in conflicts and disasters) and a skull fracture that had left watery blood leaking from her nose and her right ear. The agony, now that the sedatives were wearing off, ignited her pain receptors and hit her like a barrel bomb, almost causing her to cry out.
But she made no sound.
She bit down on her left molars—most of the teeth in the right side of her jaw were missing, some from the blast she could only vaguely remember, the others from the boot of the man who held her captive.
She listened for him. Even though her wrists and ankles were bound and her dislocated jaw stopped her from yelling, he was in the room with her most of the time. He was a mouth breather, sipping in glottal gusts of air. He was a spitter too, hawking phlegm and discharging it on the floor and at her when the mood took him.
She heard the cackle of chickens, the distant lowing of cattle and the scrape of a broom sweeping dirt in front of the house, which meant it was morning.
But she didn’t hear him.
This allowed her to relax a little, knowing that an assault was not imminent. She did what she did every time she became conscious: tried to lasso bits of memory and draw them to her, like an amnesiac, reassembling herself fragment by fragment.
Her name?
Her name was Catherine.
Catherine Brown.
No.
That wasn’t right.
That had been her name, once, a very long time ago, but it was no longer her name. Catherine. Yes, Catherine. But not Brown.
What then?
This knowledge escaped her and her thoughts spilled away like scrabble tiles on a childhood table and the pain took her and she wept silently.
The wave of agony peaked and then ebbed a little and she was able to take stock of her injuries. Based on a fragmented flashback of the explosion—a ceiling beam falling
on her leg at the same moment that she was flung into the air and twisted by the blast—she knew she had a fracture of the femoral shaft of her left leg. A spiral fracture.
How did she know this?
Had she once been a doctor?
The answer to this eluded her, but she was certain that an X-ray would show the fracture line encircling the shaft of her femur like the stripes on a candy cane. But there had been no X-ray. Her leg had been crudely splinted, strips of wood bound by rope. The rope bit into her swollen flesh. If the injury was left untreated she would lose the leg.
Her right wrist was shattered and carelessly bandaged. She had numerous lacerations on her body. Her jaw was bound closed with a strip of filthy cloth, topknotted on her skull.
A woman who wore a head scarf and a long skirt—who could not look her in the eye, who had said not one word to her—changed her bandages, fed her slop made of yoghurt and honey, cleaned her shit and piss and jabbed the needle into her arm to keep her sedated.
She opened her left eye. The right eye was still swollen closed. She saw the dirty floral cover of the thin mattress on which she lay face down and beyond it the beaten-earth floor and the walls of unplastered mud bricks. A rectangle of black cloth covered the one small window, its corners nailed in place. Sunlight bled in around the edges.
She had never seen outside. She had no idea where she was or how she had got here.
Something nagged at her and she blinked and forced her eye to focus. She registered that the wooden door that separated this room from the one where the woman and two children and another man she had never seen ate and slept, was open a crack.
The children, a boy and a girl both under ten, she had heard often but had only seen once, when they had peered around the door at her before being berated and smacked by her captor, who had raged long and loud. He must’ve issued threats that had kept them away. But now she saw a small shadow, fleet and feral, dart off and she knew that one of the children had been spying on her again and had left the door ajar.
Double Down Page 12