Once A Spy Part 24

'Better than him,' Charlie said numbly.

'We need to hurry.' Drummond scrambled back to his horse blanket.

'You think he might have a car around here somewhere?' Charlie asked.

Drummond packed snow into the bald spots on his blanket. 'Maybe, but that shot was probably heard for miles. If there's a road down from here, they'll block it.'

Charlie pulled his blanket back on with all of the joy of getting into a cold bath.

'Fine diversionary tactic, by the way,' Drummond said.

'The old there's-someone-behind-you trick? Who'd have thought it would work?'

'It wasn't that simple. There was nothing distinctive about his appearance or dialect. Yet you deduced he wasn't in league with the helicopter. How?'

'Oh, that,' Charlie said. 'Lucky guess: I didn't hear anything when he was chattering. I got the sense he was missing a lot of teeth.'

'Ah, symptomatic of methamphetamine usage?'

'Like a big, old red nose is to whiskey.'

'I see.' Drummond rolled onto his haunches, pulled his blanket over him, and shoved off.

'Fine diversionary tactic, by the way' was as much commendation as Charlie ever would have expected. 'The young and impressionable profit more from constructive criticism than puffery,' Drummond had long maintained*an adage Charlie speculated had been originated by a childless Spartan. With a coping sigh, he resumed crawling downhill. The ground seemed particularly coa.r.s.e and cold.

'You have a good nose,' Drummond said. 'I was thinking of the first time I saw it. At the office, when you were ten. I let you go down to the bas.e.m.e.nt. Do you remember?'

'No.' Charlie braced for a recounting of an early trip down the Easy Way.

'There was another stairwell, down to the subbas.e.m.e.nt, but we'd walled it off before we moved in; we needed to keep the existence of the subbas.e.m.e.nt secret from the legitimate employees. And none of them ever guessed a thing. But you said, Dad, there's a secret room down here!' I asked, What makes you think that?' You just shrugged, so I dismissed it as childish fantasy. On the subway home, though, you blurted out, The closet opens inward!' Which was the key. We'd made the stairs to the subbas.e.m.e.nt accessible by what appeared to be a utility closet, which was kept locked. You'd noticed there were no hinges on the outside of the frame. You intuited that the door opened inward*which closet doors customarily do not*meaning the door led somewhere. Ten months we'd been there and no one had thought of that. I had it fixed that night.'

Drummond was fond of citing ability to frame underachievement. Charlie girded for the inevitable drop of the other shoe.

Drummond said no more.

When they'd crept another hundred yards downhill, Charlie considered that Drummond had told the story in appreciation. It kindled in Charlie a good feeling, like winning. He wouldn't have thought such a nice moment could arise from capping a meth head, but there it was.

As they forged onward, the terrain didn't bother him as much.

At a back table at Miss Tabby's, Fielding read the message, forwarded to him by Pitman. Two minutes ago, a man on the ridge texted the pool player: TEH 2 DEA f.u.x R HER.

'There are some who will tell you that with all of its haste and lack of punctuation, text messaging is the death of communication via the English language,' Fielding told Pitman over the phone. 'This message, however, is evidence of its singularly descriptive powers.'

'DEA f.u.x' is singular,' agreed Pitman, adding a chuckle.

Obviously the kid was just sucking up.

'What I meant was the readout of the lat.i.tude and longitude of the guy's cell phone to three thousandths of a degree,' Fielding said. 'Shakespeare couldn't have done any better.'

'Oh, that, of course. I put the hunting pack into a la.s.so perimeter around the coordinates.'

'Good. Also, it occurred to me that the rabbits must be using tarps or something like that, layered with snow, to mask them from the infrared. So pa.s.s along word to the boys in the hunting pack that if they step on a mound of snow and it says Ouch,' shoot.'

41.

Still shrouded by the snow-packed horse blanket, and on hands and knees that felt frozen solid, Charlie followed Drummond to the edge of a cliff. As the branches overhead thinned, he braced for a sky full of search craft. by the snow-packed horse blanket, and on hands and knees that felt frozen solid, Charlie followed Drummond to the edge of a cliff. As the branches overhead thinned, he braced for a sky full of search craft.

Other than a few unhurried snowflakes, he saw only blackness. Below was farmland, miles of it, dormant aside from an old truck meandering along a narrow road, headlights every so often revealing a dark house or outbuilding.

'I like that one,' said Drummond, pointing to an enormous dwelling, with three parallel gambrel roofs intersected at right angles by a pair of A-frames. It appeared as if five different houses had been roped together.

Someone had gotten carried away with their Design Your Own Country Mansion software, Charlie thought. He understood that Drummond's appraisal wasn't based on aesthetics, though. No lights burned in or around the house. The long driveway wasn't plowed. There might be a vehicle they could use, a weekend station wagon perhaps.

Reaching the house would require a simple two-hundred-foot downhill crawl*simple, providing no sniper lay in wait.

That threat made the relatively slow descent feel like a prolonged freefall. Charlie began perspiring for the first time tonight. Halfway down, his shirt was soaked through. The wind, no longer impeded by woods, threatened to freeze him in place.

They made it to the cornfield at the base of the slope. Here a sniper would have seen the field, in Grimm brothers fashion, sprout two grown men. Drummond let his frosty camouflage fall so that it conformed to the ground, taking on the appearance of just another patch of snowy field.

While shedding his blanket in the same fashion, Charlie picked up, on his periphery, the silhouette of a stout man with a rifle. His heart leaped, and the rest of him followed.

Drummond simultaneously drew the Colt and whirled around.

At what proved to be a scarecrow*a good one, replete with dungaree overalls, plaid shirt, worn cowboy hat, and a hoe that, in the dark, at a certain angle, could be mistaken for a rifle.

'If I were a crow, I would have been scared to death,' Charlie said. Embarra.s.sment burned sensation back into his cheeks.

With a brief smile, Drummond stole toward the house, choosing a route through the darkest shadows. Still shaken, Charlie tramped after him. Halfway, without explanation, Drummond veered toward the barn, an archetypal, apple-red two-story with a gable-roofed hayloft.

The sliding door was unlocked. Drummond raised the latch and threw his weight into the handle, grinding the wheels through a season's worth of decaying leaves. The building released a shaft of stale air tinged not with the hay Charlie had antic.i.p.ated but gasoline. The source was a vintage Jeep Wagoneer. With its wooden side panels, the old sport utility vehicle fit the cla.s.sic barn the way a round-back sleigh went with an Alpine chalet.

'I should be able to start it, provided it starts at all,' said Drummond. He felt his way through the darkness and opened the driver's door.

'Let me get this one?' Charlie said. He jangled the keys suspended from a hook on the inside wall.

The Wagoneer's dome light showed a lopsided grin crease Drummond's face. 'Maybe I ought to learn more about the Easy Way,' he said.

And so it was that*shivering, windburned, cut, aching, and painfully aware a h.e.l.lfire missile might at any moment turn the barn to splinters*Charlie, for the first time he could recall, shared a laugh with his father.

42.

If any among the handful of drivers on the Stonewall Jackson Memorial highway*a narrow, winding country road*were to look into the four-door GMC pickup, they would have seen a heavyset, prematurely gray-haired man at the wheel. Wearing an insulated red flannel shirt and a scuffed Hillcats baseball cap, Benjamin Stuart Mallory, known to colleagues as 'Bull,' hoped to pa.s.s for a worker on his way home from the late shift at one of the area mills. among the handful of drivers on the Stonewall Jackson Memorial highway*a narrow, winding country road*were to look into the four-door GMC pickup, they would have seen a heavyset, prematurely gray-haired man at the wheel. Wearing an insulated red flannel shirt and a scuffed Hillcats baseball cap, Benjamin Stuart Mallory, known to colleagues as 'Bull,' hoped to pa.s.s for a worker on his way home from the late shift at one of the area mills.

On the seat beside him, hidden beneath his coat, was a glossy black Steyr Tactical Machine Pistol, the weapon of preference in testosterone-fueled crowds. The shooting he was planning would be pa.s.sed off as crossfire in a meth dealer turf war. He liked that the Steyr was light and small enough to be held in one hand, yet capable of delivering the same firepower as a submachine gun. Its primary disadvantage was accuracy, but even if 90 percent of his rounds went awry, he could still do the job several times over.

He turned off the road at the position Pitman had texted him, a driveway leading to a darkened, tin-roofed farmhouse, a half mile below the ridge where the slain meth cook had been found. Bull parked in such a way that a pa.s.serby might think he'd stopped to collect his mail.

He lowered his window enough to allow the nose of the Steyr out, then took up his PVS-29. The difference between this monocular and a typical night scope was its proprietary light intensifier that amplified more electrons and thus delivered an unbelievably bright and sharp image. He'd once asked one of Langley's 'Toy Makers' exactly how many more electrons. 'Thirty-eight thousand bucks worth,' the man replied. From a hundred yards away, on this overcast and particularly dark night, an ordinary scope would have enabled Bull to distinguish only the gender of the occupants of the vehicle presently approaching, and maybe not even that much. The PVS-29 turned night into a hazy afternoon, meaning he would have little difficulty recognizing rabbits Drummond and Charlie Clark.

The vehicle was a late-model Toyota coupe. At the wheel was a young woman in her mid-twenties, fair-haired with a roundish face. Pretty enough, Bull thought, that it was peculiar she was out so late alone. Of course the rabbits might be hiding below the window line, one of them poking a gun into her hip. Also peculiar: she was speaking; she was too young and too normal-looking to be talking to herself.

When the Toyota was within seventy or eighty yards, he saw a glint of a cell phone bud in her ear. Her brow was knitted. Her lips pursed, then opened into the shape of an O, and finally snapped shut.

'Mom!'' he repeated to himself as the Toyota shrieked by.

A minute later came an SUV, an old one. Again he focused on the driver. A young man, also by himself, between twenty and thirty years old. At nine P.M. in areas such as this, where residents woke with the sun, 80 percent of vehicles were driven by lone men, and of them, 90 percent were between twenty and thirty. At a hundred yards, the driver looked like Abbott or Costello, whichever was the fat one. In other words, no resemblance to Charlie Clark, whose photo glowed on Bull's BlackBerry. Also the fat man was singing too boisterously for someone who'd been carjacked. Bull read his lips too: 'Stayin aliiiiive.' He let Abbott or Costello stay alive.

A few seconds later came an even older SUV, a late-seventies Jeep Wagoneer. In the front seat were two men. The driver was white, between twenty and thirty. Of course. He wore an old hunting cap, side flaps down. Hats of any sort ignited Bull's suspicion, especially when worn in a heated vehicle. But the Wagoneer was old enough that the heat had probably given out years ago. Parts and labor for a new heater core would run more than the old Jeep was worth.

When the Jeep was close enough, Bull saw that the driver, unlike Charlie Clark, had a buzz cut. Maybe old Drummond had come into possession of a pair of scissors, or a hedge trimmer even, and sought to alter the shape of his son's head. Probably he'd learned that trick on day one of Disguise. Then there was the driver's beard, like a billy goat's, the sort seen on the up-there mountain folk. Whenever people see a unique feature on a person, Bull knew*and Drummond Clark certainly knew too*they fixate on the feature rather than on the person. A fingerful of elementary adhesive, chewing gum even, followed by a few hair clippings, and a man had a beard that would surely have strangers asking, 'Does he know a woman who finds that attractive?' or 'How does he manage to keep it out of his soup?'

Bull had mere seconds to make up his mind whether to fire. He devoted the time to the pa.s.senger, slumped in an awkward recline, as if pa.s.sed out. His face was pressed against the window so that it was effectively hidden. He too wore a hat, a cowboy hat, with a wide brim that hid all except for a few dark strands of his hair. Drummond might have adhered his son's relatively dark hair clippings over his own white hair beneath the hat line. Drummond wasn't nearly as beefy as this redneck though.

Patrons of Miss Tabby's, Bull reckoned.

Once the Wagoneer had pa.s.sed, he texted the license plate number to Pitman and Dewart, just in case.

An hour later, Dewart received confirmation that a traffic camera at the Virginia-Maryland border photographed the same license plate. He pa.s.sed the pertinent information to state troopers in the vicinity, who soon found the Wagoneer in a rest stop parking lot, empty except for the well-dressed scarecrow in the pa.s.senger seat.

43.

At dawn on weekdays, ten piers full of commercial fishing boats brought Brooklyn's Sheepshead Bay to a boil. One by one they joined a bobbing traffic jam to the day's best fishing spots. With them always was the forty-five-foot stern dragger on weekdays, ten piers full of commercial fishing boats brought Brooklyn's Sheepshead Bay to a boil. One by one they joined a bobbing traffic jam to the day's best fishing spots. With them always was the forty-five-foot stern dragger Sea Dog Sea Dog. Every so often she bypa.s.sed the good fishing spots, and her captain ignited the pair of supplementary ten-cylinder diesel engines hidden in her belly. No one guessed it, what with the Sea Dog's Sea Dog's dented hull and ungainly array of masts and poles and tangled netting, but she could cruise at twenty knots, meaning Nova Scotia could be in sight in time for breakfast the next day. dented hull and ungainly array of masts and poles and tangled netting, but she could cruise at twenty knots, meaning Nova Scotia could be in sight in time for breakfast the next day.

'Ideally we can take the Sea Dog Sea Dog to Halifax,' Drummond said to Charlie, who was still unable to resist running his fingers through the stubble that used to be his hair. They were in a gas station minimart a few miles into Maryland, weaving around hanger racks of Baltimore Orioles souvenir T-shirts, heading to the pay phone to call the to Halifax,' Drummond said to Charlie, who was still unable to resist running his fingers through the stubble that used to be his hair. They were in a gas station minimart a few miles into Maryland, weaving around hanger racks of Baltimore Orioles souvenir T-shirts, heading to the pay phone to call the Sea Dog's Sea Dog's captain. captain.

Every few seconds a big rig blew past on I-95, rattling the flimsy building. The only other customer was a middle-aged man focused on keeping a low profile himself; he was selecting condoms. The woman at the register appeared poised to nod off. As benign as the two seemed, Charlie no longer regarded anyone without suspicion.

'From Nova Scotia we can obfuscate our trail with a stop at Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, the French territory ten miles southwest of the Burin Peninsula,' Drummond said. 'There we should have no difficulty finding cargo ship pa.s.sage to Europe.' Their eventual destination was a clinic in Geneva. 'And if at any time before we're at sea, I start blathering about the Merrimack River or for whatever reason you're unsure of what to do, where do we go to ground *?'

On the drive from Virginia, Drummond had drilled Charlie on contingencies which, unlike a Fairview Inn, were not on the law enforcement agencies' Fax Blast list. As if reciting a mantra now, Charlie replied, 'Fleabags, flophouses, and wh.o.r.ehouses.'

'Correct,' Drummond said.

'Sounds like it would make a good TV show, doesn't it?'

Amused, seemingly in spite of himself, Drummond deposited two quarters into the coin slot and dialed a Los Angeles number. Fifty cents bought three minutes of talk time to anywhere in the United States. After one fuzzy ring, a synthesized voice said, 'You have reached a number that is either not working or has been disconnected. Please hang up and try your call again.'

Undaunted, Drummond remained on the line and hit 2.

Nothing happened.

He waited two seconds, then hit 2 twice more.

'Three,' came the synthesized voice again. Then the line went dead.

'Excellent,' Drummond said. Turning to Charlie, he added, 'Don't worry, it's not contingency plan time yet. The captain of the Sea Dog Sea Dog is a former operative of the old school, which is to our benefit, because Fielding and his team are better equipped to pick up the trail when silicon chips are involved. Three' is the number for the dead drop where we'll book our trip.' is a former operative of the old school, which is to our benefit, because Fielding and his team are better equipped to pick up the trail when silicon chips are involved. Three' is the number for the dead drop where we'll book our trip.'

44.

The Chevy Malibu, which Drummond acquired in Delaware, gobbled up the remaining miles to New York State. Finally, Brooklyn rose at the far end of the Williamsburg Bridge, the twinkling lights and two-in-the-morning vapor giving the city the appearance of a distant solar system. At the wheel, Charlie blinked repeatedly to keep exhaustion from locking his eyelids shut.

'A salty Coleridge?' asked Drummond from the pa.s.senger footwell.

He was doing the crossword puzzle from the Newark Star-Ledger Star-Ledger. Before Charlie could even place the name Coleridge Coleridge, Drummond had filled the boxes of 44 Across with 'ancient mariner.'

'Not that a wrong answer makes a difference,' Drummond said. 'Forty-four is what matters, the approximate lat.i.tude of Halifax.' He pointed to the puzzle. 'This will be our message to the captain.'

Charlie suspected Drummond was in the midst of one of the rarer episodes of lucidity, several hours in length. Another thirty or forty minutes was all they would need in order to take care of business and hit the sea.

They crossed into Brooklyn, quickly nearing the dead drop site. 'If we can, let's find a spot on this block,' Drummond said, pointing to a bustling nightclub.

Charlie had a.s.sumed they would leave the car someplace out of the way, like a dark alley. This block was dicey to begin with, and it looked like Hoodlums Night at the club. 'But if the Cavalry finds the car, they'll know we're here,' he said.

'They'll find it, there's no doubt about that. Our hope is that when they do, the car will be at the chop shop to which our accommodating car thief will have driven it. Most of those establishments are in New Jersey and Westchester. Make sure to leave the keys in the ignition.'

'Got you. Leave the motor running too?'

'Now you're learning.'

Charlie clambered down the stairs into the Atlantic Avenue subway station. There was a chance, he thought, that the Baltimore Orioles fleece he had on*purchased at the minimart*could give him away. But at least it wasn't the Yankees.

Drummond, who'd put on a new ski cap as well as a canvas barn jacket he'd found by the Wagoneer, descended at a more leisurely pace, fifteen or twenty steps behind Charlie. They didn't appear to be together*or at least, that was the idea.

Charlie made it to the vending machine first, bought a Metro Card, pushed through the turnstile, and entered a tunnel that amplified the footfalls of the few other pa.s.sengers and the sporadic shrieks of far-off trains. He emerged onto a drafty D train platform. The small crowd of prospective pa.s.sengers had the hollow eyes and restlessness of having been waiting too long.

In a security mirror, Charlie saw Drummond scratch his left shoulder, the 'all's clear' signal. Charlie fell into step with him to the men's room at the far end of the platform.

'What if it's out of order?' Charlie asked. Out of Order signs dangled from subway restroom door handles as often as not.

'We have a backup,' Drummond said, pointing to the trash can beside the men's room door. Stout metal legs raised its base an inch above the floor. 'It's easy to leave an envelope beneath it without attracting any notice, while tying a shoelace for instance. The problem is, contrary to popular belief, the platform is cleaned regularly.'

The men's room was open, fortunately*unless the stench were taken into account; the ventilation grate looked to have been degrimed last in the '70s. a.s.suming his appointed position at the sink, Charlie rinsed his hands and tried to breathe as seldom as possible. The spotty mirror gave him a view of an empty room in which the white tile walls and floors were grayed with filth and the ceiling tiles had greenish stalact.i.tes*of what, he didn't want to guess.

Drummond entered, heading straight into the stall in order to place the vinyl pouch that had contained the Chevy Malibu owner's manual and now held the crossword puzzle turned cipher.

'What if, for any of fifty reasons, this place gets shut down after we leave?' Charlie asked.

'The cutout either will have a key or some other idea,' Drummond said as he placed the pouch in a cavity behind a loose wall tile. 'Speaking of things going wrong, you need to know that once the captain gets the note, he'll have someone use the ten digits I added to the puzzle*the phone number of the Mykonos.'

'The diner on Bedford?'

'Right. If the trip's a go, Stavros will flip a switch and light the neon waves of steam above the cup of coffee on the sign. We'll be able to see it from Desherer's. A help wanted flyer inside the door, on the other hand, means we need a new ride. But at the least, there will be handwritten instructions at the base of the flyer.'

That all this sounded reasonable to Charlie spoke to the way his thinking had adapted in a day. 'So I guess we always had to get dinner at the Mykonos for work reasons?'

'No, we only went because Stavros was a friend of Tony's. You didn't like it?'

'Just not the food.'