Fatal Harbor (13 page)

“No reminding necessary.”

“So maybe it was another section in the Agency. Or any one of a number of agencies covered under the government. Or contractors . . . when you have slippery work that needs to be done, without wanting to leave a clear trail behind, you use contractors. Or foreign interests . . . or foreign interests using domestic contractors. So many possibilities.”

Another jet flew overhead, once again seeking a safe landing. “So, where do we go from here?”

Lawrence turned to me, eyes red-rimmed. “Do you have a suggestion?”

“I do.”

“Then tell me.”

“You might not like it.”

“Try me.”

“When it comes to who’s involved, I don’t care.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let me make it clear. As to who’s involved, who’s behind it, who’s paying, I don’t give a crap. I want Curt Chesak. I get the feeling you want him too. So that’s my only focus.”

Lawrence slowly nodded. “You said he hurt a friend of yours. Do tell me more.”

“When the protesters in favor of violence finally breached the fence the last demonstration day, Chesak led the way. He and some others ambushed a couple of cops. One of them was my best friend.”

“Name?”

“Detective Sergeant Diane Woods.”

A tilt of his head. “Girlfriend? Fiancée?”

“No. Just the best friend I’ve ever had.”

“How is she doing?”

“She received serious head injuries. She’s in a coma. She may die.”

Lawrence seemed to consider that. “When you say you want Curt Chesak, what do you mean, exactly?”

“I want to find him, talk to him, and then kill him. That’s what I mean. Exactly.”

A smile creased his old face. “Would you care to stay for dinner, Mister Cole?”

Despite the fact that I was in a mourning household, dinner was fine indeed, and Lawrence took care of the bulk of it. His wife Frances was a thin blond woman with an engaging smile who had on gray slacks and a light blue sweater, with gold jewelry on her tanned wrists and neck. One had only to look at her eyes when she was quiet to see the sadness that was now living there. Our meal was grilled steaks, brown rice, and a mixed salad, with a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Lawrence introduced me as someone who had retired from government service on a medical leave, and our conversation revolved around the weather, the upcoming election, and what kind of winters Virginia had versus New Hampshire.

With coffee and cake and a bit more conversation, Frances led me upstairs to the spare bedroom. “This used to be John’s, before he . . . before he left for school.” She opened the door and the room was plain, with a bed and a colorful quilt on top of it, a writing desk, a bookshelf, and a closet door. There were no photos or certificates or trophies or anything else that announced that this room belonged to an only son.

“It looks fine, Frances, thank you,” I said.

Her hand idly traced the doorknob. “Are you married, Lewis?”

“No”

“Any children?”

“Not a one.”

Her hand still worked the shiny doorknob. “One always expects that your child will long outlive you.” She brought her hand up, squeezed it with the other. “It’s a special type of hell, to be a parent who must bury her boy.”

Frances stepped out in the hallway and quickly walked away.

Alone in the room, I opened the closet door, looking for hangers for my clothes. There I came upon John’s clothes, neatly hanging in rows, and below that, plastic bins of his possessions. I stared for a moment, thinking about a young life now gone, just tidied up and placed in the closet, with the door sadly closed behind it.

I closed the door and left my clothes on the writing table’s chair.

The bed was comfortable and the sheets were clean and crisp. I stretched out and tried to relax. It was hard to do. Lots of thoughts and possibilities were racing through my mind, like the proverbial hamster running its wheel that went nowhere. I looked up at the ceiling, thought of the young man I had met just last week, a young man who was in college and was so proud and sure of his beliefs and his future.

I rested my head in my hands. I had been like that, once, in a time and place that seemed as far away as the Great Depression or the Civil War. In my college days, I had been active in student journalism, had covered great protests and assemblies over the nuclear freeze at a time when it seemed terrifying that a former Hollywood actor was now our president. The debates were over silos, throw-weights, arms limitation, and insurgencies in Central America. And before I slid into my chosen career as an activist journalist, I took a very different route, being co-opted by The Man, joining the system of oppression organized by the oligarchy patriarchy.

Or something like that.

And less than six months into my job in the DoD, I quickly learned that my four years of college, save the time drinking and dating, had been pretty much a waste when it came to learning what was really going on in the world.

I shifted some in the bed.

The poor boy who had once slept and dreamed in this bed, well, at least he didn’t live long enough to see his illusions shattered.

Not much of a silver lining, but it was the only thing I could come up with.

During the night, I had some sort of nightmare that I thankfully forgot when my eyes opened up. The sheets and blanket had been tossed to the floor, and I moved as quietly as I could, bringing everything back to where it had been.

I froze, now in bed. There were murmurs and soft crying from a room down the hall.

I lay very still.

The night turned out to be so very long.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I
n the morning Lawrence made breakfast, tea and toast, and apologized for the thinness of the meal.

“Frances had a rough night,” he explained. “So I’m letting her sleep in.”

“I’m afraid it might have been my fault.”

He buttered a slice of toast. “How’s that?”

“I had a bad dream last night. Moved around a lot in the bed. I think that might have awakened Frances.”

He kept on buttering his toast.

“And I think . . . maybe the sound of me moving around in your son’s bed, that might have disturbed her. Brought back some memories. Maybe . . . some hope.”

Lawrence took a bite of his toast. “Yes, you’re correct. She poked me in the ribs, half-asleep, telling me that rascal John was trying to sneak back into his room. That I should go to his room and check him out, to see if he had been drinking. Then she realized what she had been saying. And that was that.”

“Sorry.”

“No more sorrys,” Lawrence said. “So what now?”

“Got one last appointment to keep, and then back to New Hampshire.”

“Do you think Chesak is still up there?”

“Don’t know where the hell he is,” I said. “But I intend to keep pressing and pressing.”

“Doing what, then?”

“Sometimes you press and poke, you get a reaction. That reaction can prove to be useful. It can lead you to places, to people. That’s what I intend to do.”

Lawrence nodded, got up from the table, went to a door that seemed to lead into a cellar. I finished my tea and toast, and then he came back up, holding a cell phone in his hand.

“This is for you.”

“Already have a cell phone.”

“Not like this one,” he said. “This one is shielded and encrypted. Your standard cell phone can easily be triangulated with the right equipment and the right agency, such that you can get a caller’s position within a certain number of yards. This one, however, is quite black and untraceable.”

I took the phone. “It’s already pre-programmed with my number,” Lawrence said. “You get anywhere, you have more information, you pass it along. If I come across anything of interest, I’ll pass it along as well.”

“You got a deal.”

A sharp nod. “I didn’t know about Munce, Price & O’Toole and their connection with Curt Chesak until you showed up. For that, you have my thanks.”

“Fair enough. But I want to make something quite clear before I leave here with this very cool James Bond phone. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You and your friends in the Agency might want to scoop up Curt Chesak, interrogate him, find out who’s paying him and why they’re paying him. My interest in him is more medieval. Do you understand?”

“I do.”

“So if there’s going to be a conflict between the Agency’s wishes and my wishes, you can guess who’s coming out on top.”

Lawrence sighed. “As a retired yet active member of this nation’s intelligence community, I’m horrified at what you’re saying. As a father who’s lost his son, you have my full and total support.”

I went through the phone’s features one more time, and Lawrence said, “You said you have an appointment. Here, in Arlington?”

“Nope. In D.C.”

“How are you planning to get there?”

“Walk until I find a cab. Then get to the Metro station.”

Lawrence shook his head. “No. I’ll arrange for a ride.”

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea. I don’t think you want a record with a cab company that I was picked up here.”

He started gathering up our meager breakfast dishes. “You think just because I’m retired, I’ve gotten stupid all of a sudden? I have friends, I have previous arrangements. I’ll have a car and discreet driver ready to pick you up in a few minutes.” He went over to the sink. “May I ask where’s your appointment?”

“At the election headquarters of Senator Jackson Hale.”

That got his attention. “What, you intend to volunteer?”

“No.”

“Confess all?”

“Hardly. No, I’m going to see a friend of mine.”

He put the dishes in the dishwasher. “Former DoD co-worker?”

“No again. She’s a close friend. Girlfriend, I suppose you could say.”

“But you live in New Hampshire.”

“I do. And I intend to stay there.”

“Does she want to go back to New Hampshire after the election?”

I stood up from the table, new phone in hand. “Not for a second.”

He smiled. “Now I know why that’s your last appointment.”

My ride was a black Lincoln Town Car, and my driver was a cheerful Nepalese man who proudly told me that he had once been a Gurkha soldier, serving in the Royal Gurkha Rifles, and that Lawrence had once saved his life at some remote outpost in Afghanistan. His name was Suraj Gurung.

At a traffic light he turned, grinning. “So ever since then, I am in Mister Lawrence’s debt. Especially since he arranged for my family and me to come here, to this blessed land.”

“Mister Lawrence is lucky to have you at his side.”

Suraj chuckled. In the front seat of the Town Car was a copy of that day’s
Washington Post
. He reached underneath the paper, pulled out a long, curved knife called a
kukri
. “Many Taliban have felt the kiss of this, and if anyone attempts to harm Mister Lawrence, they will get a sweet kiss, indeed.”

I was dropped off on M Street, at an impressive office building that had a huge banner stretched across the lobby entrance:
HALE
FOR
PRESIDENT
CAMPAIGN
HEADQUARTERS
. I went down the street and purchased that day’s
Post
from a kiosk, and then slowly walked back to campaign headquarters. I took my time. I slowly went up the sidewalk and down, and then, on a return trip, my patience paid off.

Two black limos rolled up and a group of serious-looking men and women in power suits bailed out. I resisted the urge to make a serious circus clown car reference. Half of them were talking on cell phones, and the other half were talking to each other, hands and arms flying. They went through the double glass doors, and I fell in step behind them. They skirted past a security desk, flashing badges, and they didn’t hesitate as they approached a bank of elevators. A uniformed security guard—a young female—waved us all through.

So much for D.C. security.

With the aid of cheerful campaign workers who were no doubt impressed with the newspaper I was carrying and my age, it took just a couple of minutes to find Annie Wynn’s office, which was an impressive office indeed. When I had first seen her at work for Senator Jackson Hale of Georgia, it had been a frigid January in New Hampshire with lots of snow and ice. Her office back then had been a battered surplus battleship-gray desk, jammed up against a host of others in a rented space that had once been a clothing store in downtown Manchester. The phones would always be ringing, voices would be raised, and trash barrels were overflowing with pizza boxes and Chinese takeout food containers.

Now she had a private office, with expensive-looking furniture, leather chairs, a couch, a credenza, and piles of newspapers and briefing books. I sat down on the couch, looked out the window which had a jaw-dropping view of the office building across the street. The whole floor was neat, with nary a pizza box to be found, and the phones had low ringing chimes that seemed to gently ask you to pick them up.

Yet there was still a sense of energy to the people out there in the other offices and cubicles, a grim determination to fight these last few weeks to elect their man president. I recalled my father, years and years ago when I was in high school, talking about the last presidential candidate who had seemed to enjoy it all, Humphrey, the former V.P. from Minnesota. A “happy warrior,” my father had said, the very last of the breed.

I took in the office. A television set that was muted, showing CNN, and a computer monitor. No photos, no mementoes, nothing personal in here that said it belonged to Annie Wynn, formerly of Massachusetts, who spent a lot of time in New Hampshire.

Her voice, coming down the hall: “. . . and tell Eddie to bump back the caucus meeting to two
P
.
M
. The Senator’s BBC interview is going to run over, I know it. And get me the latest numbers from Colorado, and damn it, I don’t care what they say, I want a better sampling this time!”

She breezed in, dumped a set of black briefing books on the table, and turned to me, cell phone in hand.

Her hand lowered. Her face showed shock, but still looked pretty good. Pretty damn good, in fact. She had on black high-heeled shoes, black hose, and a dark gray skirt cut just above her knees. The blouse fit her curves nicely and was ivory with lots of collar and lace, and her fine auburn hair was curled around at the base of her neck in some sort of braid. I was pleased to see she was wearing a gold necklace that I had bought for her last summer at a crafts fair up at Sunapee, New Hampshire.