Cold Frame (33 page)

“You sure are an interesting date,” Av said. She rolled her eyes.

“Do this for me,” he asked. He wrote down a phone number on a notepad by his chair. “Call Sergeant Bento at this number, tell him where I am, and ask him to tell Precious.”

“‘Precious'?”

“She's our boss at the Briar Patch. She can be trusted.”

Ellen nodded and said she would. Then Hiram rang for Thomas, who escorted her out to her car and opened the main gates.

“What in the world have you gotten yourself into, Sergeant Smith?” Hiram asked.

“Beats the shit out me,” Av said. “But I'm ready to stop anytime.”

*   *   *

Hiram gave Av the same tour he'd given Ellen, after which he listened carefully as Av recalled the events surrounding McGavin's death and some of the things the pathologist had said. Av couldn't tell if his information was helpful or not; Hiram just listened, but with an intensity that made him think Hiram's big brain was recording every word. Then they discussed the second incident, and Hiram was most interested in Av's description of Logan looking like a zombie.

Over lunch, Hiram told Av about the Phaedo Botanical Society, how they'd begun sharing their research and how that had evolved into a study of nature's deadliest botanical substances. Av asked about the name.

“The word comes from the writings of Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher. It's the title of one of Plato's writings, but actually it's a man's name. The Phaedo describes the last hours and death of Socrates, another Greek philosopher.”

“I don't have a real college education, Mister Walker,” Av said. “You're talking over two thousand years ago?”

“Yes,” Hiram said. “In ancient Athens, Socrates was a bit of a rabble-rouser whose philosophic teachings began to worry the Athenian upper classes. The city was struggling to find a better form of government after the defeat at the hands of the Spartans, and Socrates was not a fan of democracy. They decided to shut him up by bringing him to trial for failing to honor the city's gods and for ‘corrupting' the city's youth.”

“What happened?”

“Well, Socrates being Socrates, he made something of a mockery of the trial and the charges. He annoyed the jury, so they found him guilty, and the city fathers took that opportunity to sentence him to death by forcing him to drink hemlock tea.”

“What would that do to you?”

“Modern medical theory differs, but what Phaedo describes was a wave of cold creeping into the core from the extremities; when it got to the heart, it was all over. Not quick, but apparently not all that unpleasant, if you can believe Phaedo. On the other hand, Phaedo hadn't been drinking hemlock tea.”

Av considered this story. “Then this Phaedo Society is all about poisoning?” he asked.

Hiram smiled. “Very perceptive, Sergeant, but not entirely accurate. Our interest in botanical toxins has more to do with the theory that plants are smarter than we know. So-called weeds, in particular. Anyone who has tried to make a flower or vegetable garden from scratch would know exactly what I'm talking about.”

“Never have,” Av said, suddenly feeling a bit sleepy. “But I have heard some of my neighbors with yards cussing weeds.”

“Well, basically, we think that the persistence of weeds has to do with some kind of botanical instinct to survive, analogous to our own human survival drive. That's why you see them in the cracks of sidewalks, for instance. Some plants have taken this instinct, if you can call it that, to a higher level by developing toxins to discourage predation, be it by animals, angry gardeners, or farmers who dump truckloads of glyphosphates on their fields.”

“What's this got to do with what's going on now?” Av asked.

“‘Toxin' is another word for poison, Sergeant. It's entirely possible that whoever's doing this is using botanical toxins. Some would be easy to detect—aconitine, for instance. Others would be damned near impossible. That's why I want to see those OCME reports.”

“Where the hell would a guy like Carl Mandeville get shit like that?”

“From me, unfortunately,” Hiram said.

Av just looked at him. He suddenly felt that he was back in the bowl again, going round and round but undeniably headed for an unpleasant ending.

Thomas came in, cleared the plates, and then announced that he'd heard from Ms. Whiting, and that she would not be able to make it back to Whitestone Hall this afternoon.

“Did she give a reason?” Hiram asked.

“No, sir,” Thomas said. “She did say to tell the sergeant here that she had been ‘unavoidably detained.'”

“Detained?” Av said, suddenly alert. “That could be a code word.”

Hiram raised his eyebrows. Av described how the people who had taken him to Petersburg had been very careful to distinguish between detention and arrest. Hiram frowned and then asked Thomas to follow up on expediting the OCME reports from the Bureau's lab people.

They sat in silence after Thomas left. Av was truly worried now. He rubbed his eyes, realizing he was more tired than he'd thought. Ellen had told
him
what to do when the big black helicopter showed up, but now? Was he in a safe house or was he back under a different form of detention? He had no phone, and he was pretty sure that getting out of Whitestone Hall would not be any piece of cake. And why wasn't Ellen coming back—had Mandeville figured out what had happened this morning and taken Ellen Whiting off the boards? When he opened his eyes, the giant at the head of the table was looking at him with a sympathetic expression.

“Ellen Whiting,” Hiram said, “strikes me as a woman who can hold her own in just about any circumstances. I can see that you're worried, and I understand your apprehension about everything that's happened recently.” He finished his coffee. “I have sources in the government,” he continued. “Not appointees who come and go, but people who've been in Washington for a long time. Let me pulse those sources, see what I can find out about this Mandeville person and the problems within the DMX.”

Av threw up his hands. “The National fucking Security Council?” he said. “The DMX? Black ops helicopters over Georgetown? The quiet room in the federal penitentiary at Petersburg? Mister Walker, I'm just a low-level Metro PD cop—so why do I think there's this big black dragon coming for me tonight?”

“Probably because one is,” Hiram said, with a smile. “But take heart, Sergeant—we know how to handle dragons here at Whitestone Hall.”

After lunch, Hiram had Thomas take Av up to one of the guest suites on the second floor. The rooms were seldom used, but beautifully appointed. Thomas suggested that Av relax, perhaps take a nap. There'd be drinks in the library at five-thirty. He said that Mister Walker would also be retiring for the afternoon, due to his condition.

Once Thomas left, Av decided that he'd been given good advice. He shucked his clothes, took a long, hot shower, and then flopped onto the large, soft bed. He thought back to his physical interlude with Senior Supervisory Special Agent Ellen Whiting earlier in the day. Special, indeed, but no longer just dangerous.

Lethal, that was the word. Then he was asleep.

*   *   *

Hiram Walker was not napping. He and Thomas were busy going through the security precautions that needed to be in place before darkness. From the communications room, he had Thomas start up the big emergency generator down in the basement, and then they switched the entire house and hydroponic system over to internal power. They then reviewed the switchboard settings for the house lighting systems, so that if an intrusion team arrived and cut the power from outside the perimeter, the visible lights in the house would go down—but only the lights. They then went to the lab, where they set up the grounds' hydroponic feeding system for manual control. They lined up specific chemical tanks to the plant networks that would need to be excited if someone came over the walls in the dark.

Hiram was pretty sure he knew what was going on and fully expected that some kind of government team would be coming tonight to recapture the hapless police sergeant. Av had related his conversation with Mandeville down in Petersburg, especially the part about Av telling Mandeville no, which was not a word anybody on the National Security Council staff was used to hearing. Mandeville sounded like a nut, but a nut whose sense of patriotism and self-importance had been inflamed to the point of Hitler-in-the-bunker madness.

Thomas came over and reported that the feeding systems were lined up and the same three huge screens used for teleconferencing were now switched into the estate's camera systems. He asked that Hiram recheck the settings. Hiram did so and then asked Thomas to patch the eagle's nest camera to the communications room display center. This was a trainable camera mounted at the very top of a sixty-year-old black Austrian pine tree at the southeastern corner of the property. It gave a full view of Deepstep Creek Road in both directions, with both day and night vision capability. Hiram did not expect an intrusion team to just come down the road and break down the front gates, but he did expect a fake VEPCo electric utility truck to show up before any raid began.

He smiled to himself for a moment. A man with Marfan syndrome had time to watch a lot of movies, but still, why not be on guard? The sergeant wouldn't wake up for a few more hours, thanks to the little something Thomas had added to his lunch. He was disappointed that Ellen Whiting wouldn't be here tonight. He'd been impressed with her brains and go-ahead style, not to mention her delectable physical attributes. He knew, however, that she needed to be on the outside for what was probably going to happen tonight. Perhaps after this adventure was all over he could get her to come back. Not for the first time, he regretted the stark fact of life that anything he wanted had to come to him and not the other way around.

He looked at his watch and sighed. Time for meds.

 

TWENTY-TWO

Carl Mandeville reached for the secure phone when it lit up. It was Strang.

“Everything in place?” he asked.

“Almost,” Strang replied. “I just need to confirm a couple of things.”

“All right—what?”

“This is a demonstration, correct? The team will penetrate the Walker estate and demand they hand over that cop. But deadly force is
not
authorized, and if there is real resistance, they back out. Right?”

“Yes, of course,” Mandeville said. “As yet I don't have a FISA warrant, so we're going bareback here until it comes through. Still, I'm pretty sure that this Walker fella will probably just crap his pants and hand him over. He's a scientist, but he's afflicted with Marfan syndrome, so I'm not expecting some kind of martial arts dustup.”

“Okay, I just needed to confirm all that. We'll have a diversion at the front gate, and a SWAT team on standby in the neighborhood. I haven't coordinated with Fairfax County, either. We hope to get in and out in under sixty minutes. Secure tactical comm. The people at the front gate will have a cover story if the locals interfere.”

“And no connection to the DMX, right?”

“Perish the thought,” Strang said.

“Who are you using for this?”

“Really want to know that?” Strang asked.

“No, I guess not,” Mandeville said. Mostly because you're not going to get him, he thought. I am. “I'll be here until you report back. When you get him, take him back to Petersburg yourself, this time to the penitentiary side. I'll tell them what to do from there.”

“Got it.”

Once Strang was clear, he called the secure drop for Evangelino. When the phone picked up with its usual silent hiss, he spoke four words: “Blue Line. Fourteen hundred.” Then he hung up, got his lightweight trench coat, and went down the hall. He had three secretaries, all of whom stood up when he appeared in the doorway to the executive secretariat.

“Going for a walk,” he announced.

Yes, Mister Mandeville, they all chirped in unison. No “when will you be back” or “how can we reach you.” They knew better.

Thirty minutes later he was seated on a wooden bench in the Metro Center underground station. It being early afternoon and not yet rush hour, the station was pretty empty. He glanced up at the lighted train board on the ceiling, which gave an ETA for the next train coming through and which line it was running. Blue Line coming through in three minutes. He looked at his watch. It was just now two o'clock. Close enough, he thought. When the train blew into the station, he got up and started walking alongside, front to back, as the cars squealed to a stop.

There.

He stepped through the next set of doors just before they chimed and slid shut. He went toward the back of the car, where the stone-faced operative sat all alone, dressed in a plain suit and a gray fedora hat, the left side of his face staring through the train and into the dark tunnel ahead. Mandeville gave a mental snort. Thinks this is occupied Berlin back in the seventies, he thought.

He took the seat behind him, the two of them facing forward as the train gathered speed and headed out toward the suburbs.

“Are you ready for tonight?” he asked.

The fedora nodded once.

“Good. They're going in sometime after sundown. They'll make a big-deal entrance at the gate while their intrusion team goes over the wall and into the mansion from the back. I'm guessing they're not going to succeed, but they might. Either way, as the commotion settles down, you know what to do.”

Another nod.

“If they do manage to pick him up, I'll send instructions to Petersburg to turn him over to you when I'm ready, and you're ready. If they don't get him, once
you
capture him, terminate him and put the body in the river. I'll send you a signal when their team goes in, and another when we find out what they did or did not accomplish.” He paused. “Sure you remember what he looks like?”