Iron Orchid (2 page)

Ham handed her a loaded magazine. “See if you can hit anything with it”

The target was still set at twenty-five feet. Holly set herself, pushed and pulled and squeezed off the round.

“Half an inch off dead center,” Ham said. “Not bad, considering it’s a three-inch barrel, instead of four.”

“Sweet trigger,” Holly said. “Four, four and a half pounds?”

“Four, exactly. Try it with both eyes open, and use up the magazine, rapid fire.”

Holly obliged.

“That target no longer has a center,” Ham said, a touch of pride in his voice. He went back to his range bag and came back with some gun leather. “Mitch Rosen made you a shoulder rig, a belt and a holster for it,” he said.

“It’s beautiful work,” she said, caressing the mahogany leather. “Thank you, Ham.” She put her arms around him and hugged.

Ham, uncharacteristically, hugged her back, but then he looked a little embarrassed. “What time did you file for?”

“Ten,” Holly said. “My stuff’s in the car.”

“You’ll have to clear out at Fort Pierce for the Bahamas,” Ham said.

“I know, Ham.”

“I don’t know why you want to go to the Bahamas alone for a weekend,” he said.

“I just want to take Daisy and spend the weekend alone; I have a lot to think about.”

“Whatever you say.”

“I’ll be back on Monday, maybe Sunday night, depending on the weather.”

“Okay.”

She packed up her things, put her new gun into her range bag and went to the car. She gave Ham a wave and drove off.

AT FOUR O’CLOCK that afternoon, Holly landed the rented Cessna at Roberts International Airport in Grand Cayman, having flown first to the Bahamas, checked into a hotel, filed a new flight plan and left Daisy in a prearranged kennel. She dropped off her bag with the doorman at her Georgetown hotel, then kept the cab for the trip to the bank. Refusing the driver’s help, she hefted the two nylon duffels from the trunk of the cab and carried them inside.

A Mr. Dellinger—English, well-tailored and very discreet looking—was waiting for her. He nodded for a guard to take the bags, and the man went into a side room while Dellinger showed her into his office.

“How do you do?” Dellinger said, offering his hand.

I’m very pleased to meet you,“ Holly replied.

“The money will be machine counted in there,” Dellinger said. “It will take a little while; why don’t we get the paperwork done?”

“All right.” She sat down at his desk.

He handed her a sheet of paper. “It’s a very simple form,” he said. “You may use any name you like, and you needn’t put down an address, since we will not be mailing you account statements.”

Holly put down “H. Barker” for a name. “I’d like two credit cards in the same name,” she said. “They may be used by two different people, and I brought a sample signature of the other person.” She gave him a photocopy of Ham’s signature. It was illegible to anyone but her. She signed “H. Barker” for her own card.

The guard came back and handed Dellinger a slip of paper.

“Five million, seven hundred and sixty thousand dollars,” Dellinger said. “Does that sound right?”

“It sounds exactly right.”

“Let me tell you a few things about our service,” Dellinger said, “and I hope you won’t take offense at what may seem to be our assumptions. We give all our clients this information without regard to the amount deposited or the source of the funds.”

“I won’t be offended,” Holly said.

“First of all, because of the way we disperse cash around the world, these funds will immediately become untraceable. In the unlikely event that the United States or any other country should invade our island and take over our bank, they will not find a name on your account, only a number, which will not be in any way traceable to you. The number will not be coded in any way that would reveal even the nationality of the customer.

“The only thing traceable to you would be the credit card charges. When you view your credit card statement, you’ll be given the option of erasing the names of the payees—hotels, restaurants or shops, for instance. Only the amounts and dates of the charges would then appear on your statement, which you may access by entering your account number and a password, which you will designate. You may use as many as three passwords, each from four to twelve letters or digits or a combination of both.“

“That sounds good.”

“It is very important that you never forget the passwords, because if you do, you will not be able to access your account statements. In order to change the passwords, you would have to come personally here, to the bank.”

Holly signed one card and put them both into her pocket.

“The paper I gave you also has instructions for going to your account online,” Dellinger said. “Will there be anything else?”

“No, I think that does it,” Holly said. She shook his hand and left the bank. Now the drug money she had stolen from the hundreds of millions confiscated in a huge raid was safe from anyone but her, and no one would ever be able to prove that she had it. At least, she hoped not.

She spent the night in Georgetown, then, the following morning, flew back to the Bahamas. She spent two days there, shopping, eating and walking on the beach with Daisy, and on Monday morning she flew home to Orchid Beach.

She, Ham and Ginny, Ham’s girlfriend, had dinner that night at the Ocean Grill in Vero Beach, then the following morning, she gave her house keys to the young policewoman who would be her caretaker, loaded her Jeep Grand Cherokee and drove with Daisy ninety miles to Palm Beach. There, at the Porsche dealer, she traded in the Jeep for a Porsche Cayenne Turbo, and paid for it, not with her new credit card, but with a check on her own bank account. Holly had been a woman of some substance since Jackson’s will had made it so.

By noon, she was headed north to Virginia.

Two days later, at the appointed hour, she turned into an unmarked gate on a country road, went around a bend and saw a roadblock ahead. A man in civilian clothes, carrying an assault rifle, stopped her.

“You seem to have taken a wrong turn,” he said. “Please turn around and go back to the highway.”

Holly, as she had been instructed to do, handed him her U.S. passport. “My name is Barker,” she said. “I’m expected.”

The man consulted a clipboard, very thoroughly compared her passport photograph to her face, then returned it to her. “And who might
that
be?” he asked, pointing to Daisy, who sat in the front passenger seat.

“That is Daisy,” Holly replied. “She doesn’t have a passport.”

The man checked his clipboard. “Her name is on the list,” he said. “Go all the way to the end of the drive, park your car and go into the white house, which is the administration building. You’ll be met.” He walked to the side of the road, tapped a code into a keypad, and the concrete roadblock swung slowly out of the way.

Holly gave him a wave and drove past the barricade. After five minutes of winding through woods, she emerged at what appeared to be a large farmhouse.

She had arrived at Camp Peary, which members of the Central Intelligence Agency referred to as “the Farm.”

TWO

HOLLY ALLOWED DAISY a moment in the bushes, then entered the old farmhouse. Immediately, a trim, middle-aged woman emerged from a side room.

“Ms. Barker?”

“Yes.”

“I am Mrs. Colville, the chief administrative officer at this installation. If you’ll come with me, we’ll get you processed, and then you can have dinner. First, may I have your car keys? What a nice dog.” She gave Daisy a pat.

Holly handed the keys over, and Mrs. Colville walked outside for a moment, then returned. Holly followed the woman through a living room furnished with eighteenth-century American furniture, down a hallway and into an elevator, which took them down. They emerged into a perfectly ordinary open office floor divided into cubicles, with a row of private offices along one wall. Mrs. Colville showed her to a seat at a table, upon which rested a fairly thick file.

“The file contains the rather extensive application and personal history that you filled out many weeks ago. You may review it, if you wish, and make any changes you feel are necessary for accuracy. Once you sign the sworn statement, at the end, the Agency will accept what you have entered, and you will be henceforth held responsible for its accuracy, in every respect, on penalty of perjury. Is that perfectly clear?”

“Yes,” Holly replied. “I don’t feel the need to make any changes.” It was as accurate as she knew how to make it, except for the new bank account in Grand Cayman. She countersigned the document and handed it over.

“Very well.” Mrs. Colville put what appeared to be a large identification card in front of her. “Please sign this, and we’ll get you photographed.”

Holly signed it and was taken down a hallway to a bare-bones photo studio and photographed. Colville left the paperwork with the photographer and returned to her office with Holly, where she handed her a thick envelope. “This is a document explaining all of your obligations and rights as an employee, everything from the health plan to the pension plan to your legal rights. Please read the entire document carefully, then return it to this office, since you are not allowed to have in your possession, after leaving here, any document belonging to the Agency, except your identification card.”

The photographer came in and handed Colville a leather wallet. She inspected the contents and handed it to Holly. “This is your identification,” she said. “From this moment, you are a probationary employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. When you have completed your course of training here, you will surrender this card and, if you have been successful, given new identification.” Colville took a sheaf of typed papers from her desk drawer and handed it to Holly. “This is your schedule for tomorrow; you will be given a new schedule each morning, so that training may be adapted to whatever your special needs may be.”

“Thank you,” Holly said.

Colville walked her to the elevator. “While we have been speaking, your car and everything in it is being searched. Your car will be garaged until you have finished your training. You won’t need it, since you are not allowed to leave the Farm during training. Your luggage will be delivered to your room presently, and in the meantime, I suggest you walk over to the dining hall, there,” she pointed out a barn, “and have dinner. Someone will escort you to your room after you’ve eaten. While you are here your code name will be Harry One,” she spelled it, “and you are not to tell anyone, neither your fellow trainees nor even an instructor, your real name. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” Holly said.

Colville leaned over and patted Daisy. “You will remain Daisy” she said. “Good dog.” Daisy received this attention with gratitude.

“Thank you.”

“You may take her to the dining hall with you. When your luggage is returned, so will be her dog food, and you may feed her then.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Colville,” Holly said. She shook the woman’s hand and departed for the barn. During her short walk, she could not see anything that would reveal that the Farm was anything other than a farm. Even the parking lot didn’t look like a parking lot.

She walked to a door in a corner of the barn and went inside. She was in a large dining hall with a cafeteria line down one wall. She served herself and took a table alone. The food was good, and no one joined her. When she had finished dessert, a young man approached, as if on cue. “Harry One?”

“Yes.”

“Please follow me.” He led her to another long, low farm building, which turned out to be a dormitory. She was shown to a decent-sized room containing a queen-sized bed and a comfortable chair. A wall was fitted with built-in furniture: a desk, bookcase and television set. Her luggage was stacked, empty, in a corner, and when she looked she found that everything had been hung up or tucked into a drawer, except her gun, the gift from Ham. She didn’t ask about it.

“I hope you’ll be comfortable here,” the young man said. “Attached to your schedule is a map showing the places you’ll need to go tomorrow.”

“May I take my dog for a walk after she eats?” Holly asked.

“Yes, but stay on the map. If you wander beyond that, you’ll be challenged, and the trespass will go in your record. Good night.”

The young man left. Holly fed Daisy, took the map and went outside. There wasn’t much daylight left, so she exercised Daisy by throwing her ball, which got the job done in a hurry. When Daisy was finally tired, she returned to her room and began reading the document she had been given, then her schedule for the following day. That took much of the evening, and when she had finished, she watched the eleven o’clock news on TV, then went to bed.

HER PHONE RANG at six a.m. “Yes?”

The young man. “Breakfast now, your first class at seven. This is the last wakeup call you’ll get; from now on, you’re on your own as to schedule. Don’t be late for anything.” He hung up.

Holly showered and changed into sweat clothes, as her schedule had dictated. She would miss her morning run today, and she’d have to ask about that. She fed Daisy, had breakfast in the dining hall, threw the ball for Daisy for a few minutes, then followed the map to her first class, which was in an auditorium below the dining hail. Daisy remained at her side.

She took one of about two hundred seats, near the front. The room was less than a third full. At the stroke of seven o’clock, a lean, military-looking man of about sixty strode onto the stage and switched on a microphone at the podium.

“My name, for the purposes of your visit here, is Hanks,” he said. “During the coming weeks or months, depending on the course of your training, you will come to hate me.”

Somehow, Holly didn’t doubt him.

“Most of you have been here for less than twenty-four hours,” Hanks said, “and it may have occurred to you that this installation has been designed to look like a farm, which it has been for a couple of hundred years. Particularly, it has been arranged to reveal none of its secrets in satellite photographs. Most of your classes will therefore be conducted underground.