Once A Spy Part 23

'I've gotta get all the way back up to Georgetown tonight. f.u.c.king breakfast meeting first thing maana.'

'Mind me asking what brung you all this way?'

Fielding looked him in the eyes. 'I'm guessing you're not a cop, right?' Sideburns would have to be in world-record deep cover: He was missing most of his upper teeth.

The kid chuckled softly. 'I work construction, mostly.'

'There's a guy, I don't know his name,' Fielding said, his relaxed stance and tone befitting the release of catharsis. 'Thin, like twenty-five or thirty, buzz cut, lot of tattoos. He works out of a trailer on the ridge north of here, sometimes he does a little business here. Know who I mean?'

'Dude, that's, like, half the guys here,' Sideburns said with a grin.

Fielding regarded his new friend with grat.i.tude for the bit of levity. 'I started out tonight driving to his place, but, like a mile before the turnoff, around Hickory Road, I saw a government-looking car pull over and park. Two suits got out and headed into the woods. So I figured it probably wasn't the best idea to stick around. I hoped I'd see my guy here. And, mostly, a friend of his.' He lowered his voice. 'Tina.' 'Tina.'

This elicited a knowing look. 'Her, I think I've heard of,' Sideburns said.

'Yeah?'

'I might be able to find her for you.'

'Dude, that would be huge!'

'I just wanna know one thing. Those suits. You get a look at them?'

Fielding wasn't fooled by Sideburn's casual manner. The meth man's underlying alarm was as obvious as sirens and strobe lights.

'Just a couple a.s.sholes in gray suits is all I can tell you,' Fielding said.

With a little prodding, he provided physical descriptions of Drummond and Charlie that would have been good enough for a blind man.

Sideburns hurried back in to the other pool players. Fielding followed as far as the bar, then made a call using his BlackBerry.

'Ginger, you there?' he demanded into the mouthpiece.

'You got the wrong number, amigo,' came a young man's voice.

Fielding hung up and happily ordered another beer. His use of 'Ginger' signified all had gone according to plan here. 'Amigo' meant that Dewart and Pitman, who'd answered, would now start monitoring all a.n.a.log and digital traffic to and from Miss Tabby's.

In the next three minutes, Dewart and Pitman captured nine telephone calls and relayed the gist of them to Fielding's BlackBerry. The callers included the bartender, checking that her grandson had done his Bible study, and a plumber leaving with a prost.i.tute*he told his wife he was having car trouble. Sideburns and another pool player also made calls. Both left messages urging local familiars to call back ASAP. A third player texted someone located on the ridge a hundredth of a lat.i.tudinal degree north of Hickory Road: DEA f.u.x on prowl 2nite!!! get ready to play D bro!!!

39.

Charlie was woken by a rapid crunching of hooves through snow. His sleep had been so deep, he'd lost the ability to gauge how long it had been. Still, he was exhausted, and dehydration had left him woozy. The rest of him was sore or stiff. Seeing he was alone in the tent, panic jolted him to alertness. woken by a rapid crunching of hooves through snow. His sleep had been so deep, he'd lost the ability to gauge how long it had been. Still, he was exhausted, and dehydration had left him woozy. The rest of him was sore or stiff. Seeing he was alone in the tent, panic jolted him to alertness.

He looked outside to find Drummond scurrying back from the tree Candicane had been tied to.

'Where's the horse?' Charlie asked.

'On her way home, I'd imagine,' Drummond whispered. Her bulky blanket was draped over his shoulder.

'What, were you cold?'

Drummond pointed at a looming, black hill. 'Listen *'

Charlie distinguished the far-off beat of helicopter rotors from the rhythmic patter of the stream.

'They'll have infrared,' Drummond said. 'The horse was too big a target.'

'What about us?'

'Not with the horse blankets over us, if we pack snow onto them. We can appear no more anomalous than ripples on a pond.'

Charlie didn't see the entirety of the plan. But Drummond was clearly back online, meaning the plan was almost certainly good.

Drummond spread his horse blanket flat on the ground and began packing powder on top of it. Charlie tugged the other blanket free of its makeshift tent poles and anchors.

'How long do you think we can hide here like this?' Charlie asked.

'We'll have to move, otherwise they'll find us. Once you've put about two inches of snow on top of the blanket, get underneath it. Use the Velcro straps on the underside to fasten it at your wrists and ankles and to your belt, if you can.'

'But we still don't know which way to go.'

'East is that way.' Drummond pointed.

'How do you know? Is it that moss grows on the north side of trees?'

'It does. It also grows on the south, east, and west sides. What I did was, I took the steel clip off the fountain pen in the saddlebag, flattened it, magnetized it by rubbing it through my hair, then dangled it from a shoelace. It pointed to the nearest magnetic pole, which is, of course, north.'

'Oh, that old trick. Good, I was worried you wouldn't find the fountain pen.'

With the snow-packed horse blanket covering him, Charlie crawled after Drummond. They moved slowly enough that the snow, for the most part, stayed in place on top of the blankets, providing extra insulation from the cold. The problem was the frozen and jagged terrain. Charlie's suit pants offered little more protection than another sixteenth of an inch of snow would have. His bones became circuitry for shivers. Factoring in an increasingly potent wind, he considered that his body temperature might drop to thirty-two degrees on its own.

He turned his thoughts to Gary Carter of the New York Mets.

It helped.

When the wind reached enough of a howl that no one farther away than Drummond could hear him, Charlie said, 'So, Dad, I have some office scuttleb.u.t.t to catch you up on.' He filled him in on the happenings at the house.

Drummond's pace through the snow never varied nor did he act shaken or surprised in any other way. 'Around the time I went on disability, there was an NSA operator named Mariateguia in Lima who, we thought, had figured out what we were doing,' he said. 'Word was that the Shining Path discovered him as a traitor and executed him, though I suspected Nick somehow was behind it*I never got the chance to look into the matter. In any event, what you've described tonight is ample evidence that Nick is resorting to tactics that put him at a level with the most contemptible of our enemies. I have to say, though, that in my case, he's not entirely wrong.'

'What are you talking about?'

'I am am a liability.' a liability.'

'Please don't tell me that you've gotten me into the frozen middle of nowhere and made a compa.s.s out of a pen clip and a shoelace just to pop your L-pill?'

'When I first made plans to go to Switzerland, the lapses had barely begun. Now, I could fall into enemy hands and be utterly defenseless.'

'There are how many Americans, three hundred something million? Out of that many, we ought to be able to find enough people to look after even you.'

'But the cost and the risk*'

'What about We take care of our own' We take care of our own'? To have heard Burt Hattemer tell it, it's a cornerstone of democracy.'

'That's not wrong either.'

'Well, the problem is good old Nick and the rest of your Cavalry kids got the lesson somewhere somewhere,' Charlie said, in bitter realization of exactly where, 'that business comes first.'

Drummond said nothing. For several long seconds, Charlie heard only lashes of wind against them and the squeaking of snow as they crawled through it. He suspected that, in spite of the conditions, his father was simmering.

'I see your point,' Drummond said. 'It's valid. Also, I've been remiss, and I'm going to rectify it.'

The contrition threw Charlie. 'Rectify what?'

'Alzheimer's disease shouldn't be fatal to a thirty-year-old. I'm going to take care of my my own.' own.'

Charlie appreciated the sentiment. Unfortunately, Alzheimer's disease, on top of the circ.u.mstances, probably dictated the sentiment would be fleeting.

'No doubt Fielding will pin Burt's death on me,' Drummond said. 'What we need now is to buy some time.'

'You know somewhere that sells that?'

'Brooklyn. If we can just get a vehicle*'

'And drive to Brooklyn? Why not just save gas and drive right to Langley?'

'Brooklyn's so obvious that, ironically, it will provide an element of surprise. Also I have a safe house there that no one else knows about. For years, under an alias, I've rented one of the little offices in the back of the Desherer's building.'

For more than a century, Desherer's Sweet Shop on Bedford Avenue, with its iconic art deco front, was a favorite destination of every kid in Brooklyn. Every kid except Charlie, that is, and not by his choice. 'So all of the times I wanted to go to Desherer's, your litany of horrifying facts and figures about sugar *?'

'I didn't make those up. But I did have an ulterior motive. Desherer's is as crowded as any place in the neighborhood. If I were wary of surveillance, I could enter the candy store, then exit from the offices having changed my hat or coat or face. It wouldn't have done to run into you there or have the people who worked there see you with me.'

As they crept down a dark slope, Charlie reflected that as he learned more of the truth, the corresponding scenes from his youth were no longer as bleak.

'I've always kept a flight kit there in case I ever needed to disappear,' Drummond said. 'It has travel doc.u.ments and enough cash to tide us over until we can draw on the Bank of Antigua account.'

Charlie sensed that another bleak scene was about to be re-rendered in Technicolor. 'What Bank of Antigua account?'

'The numbered account with eight million dollars. Remember, I told you*'

'Yeah, I know, but at the time I figured you were delusional. With all due respect, you're okay now?'

'Just a bit chilly.'

'The thing is, you said you made the money at Perriman.'

'Correct.'

'But at Perriman, you really were just an appliance salesman, right?'

'When I started there, as a loyal company man would, I elected to take my bonus in stock options, which were close to worthless in the aftermath of the Chubut Chubut fiasco. But my end of the business ended up being very profitable*bombs that cost relatively little to make sold for hundreds of millions*and it was least conspicuous to keep the profits in Perriman, so the stock price increased.' fiasco. But my end of the business ended up being very profitable*bombs that cost relatively little to make sold for hundreds of millions*and it was least conspicuous to keep the profits in Perriman, so the stock price increased.'

'So why didn't you ever buy a new car? Or a new chateau?'

'My role was middling sales executive, not multimillionaire arms dealer. Also, there was nothing I needed. The Olds is reliable; I rarely drive it more than five thousand miles per year*'

'Well, if you want to get me a Christmas present this year *' Charlie felt giddy in spite of the enormous odds against surviving to spend a dime of the fortune.

'There is one hitch,' Drummond said.

'It's eight million in Antiguan dollars?'

'You'll need to leave the country, likely for an extended period of time. You'll be able to say no good-byes, and while you're away, you can't have contact with anyone you know. You won't be able to maintain connections to any aspect of your current life.'

Charlie considered shedding his current life a significant net gain. Only one negative came to mind: He would miss having that beer with Helen. Which was silly, of course. She was a spook. Probably she'd meant to poison the beer.

'I suppose I can handle it,' he said.

The tree limbs and needles began to hiss. A helicopter rose over the hillcrest.

Mimicking Drummond, Charlie stopped and became a random mound of snow on the hillside. As the helicopter thundered overhead, the only movement on the hill was that of snowflakes stirred by the rotor blades.

The ship flew on to the ridge behind Charlie and Drummond.

The racket receded into the usual babble of wind and woods.

'Get up now, both of you, nice and slow,' came the voice of a man behind them. Charlie saw the shadow of a machine gun. 'Hands up high where I can see them.'

40.

Charlie rose inch by inch, so as not to spur the unseen gunslinger into precipitous use of his trigger. Charlie was confident that Drummond had had the presence of mind to take the Colt from Candicane's saddlebag when he took the fountain pen. When Drummond stood and followed the instruction to put his hands up, however, Charlie saw no hint of the gun. inch by inch, so as not to spur the unseen gunslinger into precipitous use of his trigger. Charlie was confident that Drummond had had the presence of mind to take the Colt from Candicane's saddlebag when he took the fountain pen. When Drummond stood and followed the instruction to put his hands up, however, Charlie saw no hint of the gun.

'I could stand another fifty-fifty proposition,' Drummond said. Charlie understood this to mean Drummond required a diversionary tactic, like at the battlefield.

'Zip it,' the stranger barked.

His black-lacquered machine gun was distinguishable from the night by a filament of light. Although Charlie saw him only in silhouette, it was obvious the barrel of his machine gun was shaky. Probably not coincidentally, the man was chattering furiously*oddly, without making any sound. He collected himself sufficiently to steady the barrel, point it at Charlie, and get out, 'Time to say your prayers.'

An idea struck Charlie. 'Sir, first, there's one thing that, legally, I need to inform you,' he said.

'What?'

Charlie looked past him, in the direction the helicopter had flown. 'Our helicopter has you locked in its sights.'

The stranger peeked over his shoulder at the dark sky. 'I can't even see it anymore.'

Drummond's bullet hit the man in the head. He fell dead long before the brash report ceased bouncing around the ridge. Charlie was at once sickened and glad the diversion worked.

'Are you okay?' Drummond said.