Mourning Dove (19 page)

“Let’s walk around the
back of the building and come up on the other side. Once we’re out of sight,
you keep walking and I’ll sprint ahead. I want to tag that bastard. He’s been
following me ever since I arrived in Portland.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m trained to know.
Start walking.”

“Where the hell have you
been? It’s almost eleven!” Ron shouted from the top of the stairs. He was
balancing on one leg and a crutch.

“I told you I’d be late.
I had several crises to deal with at work.”

“You weren’t at work. I
called. Your cell was turned off, too. You look like you’ve been romping around
in a field.”

“Calm down, Ron. I had a
business dinner and it ran late, not that you have any right to ask. Then, I
lost a hubcap when I hit a pothole. I spent thirty minutes wandering around the
edge of Route 1 looking for it with just the light from my flashlight.”

“Did you find it?” He
didn’t buy her hubcap story. She’d been with another man.

“Yes, it’s in the trunk.
I need to clean up; then we can talk.”

She held up a skinned
palm with dried blood and dirt stuck to it.

“How did that happen?”
What kind of a beast was this guy?

“We’ll talk in a minute.”
She walked into the kitchen out of sight.

She was going to make him
come all the way down these stairs just to find out what was going on. Hop,
clunk, hop, clunk, hop, clunk, he sounded like peg leg Pete in Treasure Island. He was three stairs from the bottom when she finally stuck her head around
the kitchen doorway, wiping her face with a kitchen towel.

“Now why did you do that?
You’re just going to have to shimmy all the way back up.”

“You’re not a very good
liar, Sara. Separation or no, you are still my wife and I don’t like to see you
come home battered and bruised. What happened?”

“Nice of you to care, but
if I was going home I wouldn’t have fallen and scraped my hand and my knees
looking for the damn hubcap. I would have been home an hour ago.”

“You’re going to stick to
that story?”

“It’s the truth.”

She leaned back against
the banister at the base of the stairs and closed her eyes. He reached out and
brushed the back of his hand against her cheek; a trickle of wetness overflowed
the path. He dropped the crutch and pulled her into his arms. “Sweetheart, it’s
okay. You’re safe now.” He rubbed his palms up and down her back. God, this was
tearing him apart.

She spoke into his neck,
“It’s not safe; we can’t talk here.”

“What?”

“Sh, can you make it to
the patio?”

“Why?”

“Just trust me.”

Minutes later she had him
stretched out on a chaise lounge on the patio with the blanket from the den
around his legs. The only light came from a canopy of stars overhead and the
nightlight over the stove shining through the kitchen slider.

“There is so very much
you don’t know. First, the house is bugged.”

“Wait a minute,” he
stopped her.

She put a finger to his
lips. “Don’t interrupt. When I’m done you can ask questions.”

He thought the strain of
everything that had happened had pushed her over the edge. He gently picked up
her wounded hand, tested the tenderness and wrapped it in the edge of the
blanket.

“Carl was working for the
government,” she started. “He was what they call a mole. He smuggled out some
really bad stuff to give to his contact and died before he could pass it on.
The bad guys want it and the good guys want it. They think he hid it somewhere.
Everyone who may have come into contact with him the last few days of his life
has been checked, I think by both sides. They all want this stuff back. Nobody
knows where it is. When you started researching the things you found, it made
the bad guys nervous and they tried to scare you into dropping your
investigation. I don’t know who the bad guys are, but I think I can trust one
of the good guys. I’ve been told that both this house and your office are
bugged – the van maybe, definitely my car, my house and my office. The bad guys
even put a bug in the car of the good guys.”

When she first started
explaining, he thought she’d become delusional. On top of what he’d found,
maybe she wasn’t. “You’re saying Carl was murdered? I mean, you always believed
he was murdered, but do you have proof?”

“His contact believes
it.”

“The bad guys are the
Nazi’s, aren’t they?”

She nodded her head,
“and, another group from the Middle East. There’s a time value on this stuff.
For six months the bad guys thought they had a duplicate of the information.
Now they know they don’t. The second group is expecting delivery. The group
Carl infiltrated is getting desperate and careless. That’s why Stacey was
killed.”

“Oh my God,” he
whispered. “Delivery of what?”

The sound of a muffled
crash echoed from behind the garage. His brave, beautiful wife stood and slowly
picked up one of his crutches holding it like a baseball bat, topside out.
“Sara, don’t.” He grabbed the side of the crutch. “It’s probably a coon.
There’ve been a lot of them this year.”

“It’s not a coon, just
me, Sara,” a British accent whispered from the general direction of the garden
shed. “I seem to have gotten tangled up in some wire.”

“Who’s there? Come out
where we can see you. We have a phone here and I’m dialing 911.”

“Ron, it’s okay. It’s
Matthew.” She pulled his grip from the crutch.

Ron might be slow, but he
wasn’t dumb. It figured that the other man in her life would be the Brit. “You
might as well come out and stand were we can see you,” Ron said.

“I am trying to. I appear
to be standing inside two wire cages.”

Ron laughed. “You put
your feet inside two of my tomato cages. When you’ve freed yourself come on
over.”

After a pregnant pause
the Brit crashed into the side of the garden shed one more time. “This damn
wire should be used for booby traps in the Middle East. Doubt they’ve ever come
across bloody traps like these before.”

Finally, the Brit
appeared on the patio. It was hard to wipe the satisfied grin off his face, but
for Sara’s sake Ron was trying. “Welcome to my home. Next time try the front
door. I save the booby traps for the garden varmints.”

“Be nice, Ron.”

“I thought I would help
with the explanations and see if you’ve discovered any more information in your
investigation.” Farrell lifted an expanded metal chair from the far side of the
concrete pad and placed it on the other side of the chaise.

“Sara?” Ron asked.

“Yes, he’s the contact.”

“No wonder we’re losing
the war.” Ron shook his head.

“Actually, I’m very good
at this sort of thing. I seem to klutz out only when I’m around Sara. I heard
most of what you told him. Smart move to come outside, by the way. I swept
through again this morning. Those cages weren’t there before.”

“Wait just a minute, bud.
What do you mean you swept through here?”

“Ron, shush. Being out here
won’t help if you shout loud enough for Mrs. Murphy to hear.”

“This guy is full of it,
Sara. He’s just trying to get into your...”

“Don’t say it, Ron.

“Matthew, he’s going to
have to see it to believe it. His ancestors are from Missouri.”

“Missouri?” Farrell
asked. “Oh, okay, I get it, the ‘show me’ state. Just bear with me here, Ron.
Before we go back inside the house I want you to know if we pull all the bugs
the bad guys are going to know we’re on to them. They might come back and do
more than set bugs. I believe Sara has explained their desperation.” Matthew
looked down at Ron’s cast.

“I tripped.”

“Right.  Start by telling
me everything you know about the vehicle that didn’t run you down? Before you
begin answering my questions, beware that we also had a little run in this
evening with a black Jeep Cherokee with tinted windows.”

“Ron, what you need to do
is trust him. And, no, I didn’t scrape my hand then.”

He watched the look
change on the Brit’s face. The man didn’t know about her hand. “What do you
want to know?”

***

Sara sat at Ron’s desk
trying to cover her ruined nylons and scraped knees. Ron watched her cross her
legs, then reminded of their tender condition, pulled her skirt over the
damage. Farrell leaned forward on a kitchen chair, elbows to knees. Whatever
she got into Farrell wasn’t part of it. Ron was sure of that.

Ron propped his broken
foot on a pillow and observed his wife’s body language toward the Brit. On the
desk beside her, sunk in the bottom of a clear glass of water, were two identical
small black devices no bigger than a pair of buttons from a child’s sweater.
How could this be real?

“Ron, we asked you if you
have the printout and pictures you mentioned. I can retrieve them if you tell
me where they are.”

“I’m sorry, Sara; I was
just trying to figure out how we got to this point. Please don’t respond to
that.”

“Where are the pictures
and the code?” she asked again.

“The things you want are
in a folder in the nightstand.”

“I’ll get them.”

“Sara, wait.”

She turned back at the
door.

“Just, ignore everything
else,
please
.”

Ten minutes later,
Farrell asked, “I wonder what’s taking her so long.”

“If I know Sara, she’s
picked up the blankets and clothes on the floor and is making the bed.” He
thought about what else was in that drawer and her reaction to the key chain
last night. He probably should have sent the Brit but he didn’t have a permit
for the gun. He drew in a big breath to bellow up the stairs.

“Don’t yell,” the Brit
said. “Remember the other bugs still in existence.”

She walked into the room
past Ron and straight to the agent, balancing the folder like a tray of
champagne glasses in a crowded restaurant. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and
ran back up the stairs slamming the bathroom door.

“What’s that all about?”

“She’s gone back upstairs
to throw up.”

“She’s what?” Placing the
folder on the computer chair, Farrell headed for the stairs.

“She probably doesn’t
want you to see her this way. It’s best to wait down here.”

“What’s going on? What’s
in the drawer?”

“Some protection and the
folder she brought down. If you’re going to be helping us you need to
understand Sara’s history.”

“I know both your
backgrounds. What particular point are you trying to make?”

“If you don’t know why
she’s emptying her stomach right now, you don’t know it all. Sit down and I’ll
see if I can explain before she gets back. She’ll be embarrassed if she hears
me telling you.”

***

Several hours later Sara
asked, “Does anyone want another cup of coffee?”

“No hon, I’m about done
in.”

“No thanks, Sara. I’ve got
to get back to where I’ve hidden my car.” Both men spoke at once.

“Don’t share this code or
anything we’ve talked about this evening with anyone else. I’ll see what I can
come up with on my own. Sara, Ron, thank you both for your courage and your
help.” He slid the printout with the double column code into his jacket pocket
and headed for the door.

“Brit,” Ron called out
before the agent left the room.

“My name’s Matthew
Farrell, I wish you would use it. I have dual citizenship and I work for the U.S. government.”

Ron grinned and
continued, “
Mr
.
Farrell
, what do we do with
those
?” He
nodded to the glass of water on his desk.

“Throw in a bicarbonate
wafer, when it’s done fizzing, take them out, dry them off, and place them back
where we found them. They won’t ever work again, but if the people who put them
here check, they won’t suspect they were tampered with either.”

“I thought you put one of
them here.” Sara said.

“I did, but I’m not
always the one listening and I don’t want anyone else knowing we’re working
together.”

***

“What do you think, Ron?”
Sara asked when they were alone.

“This has gone way beyond
bizarre.”

“Do you trust him, or
not?”

“Well now is a hell of a
time to question his trust, we just told him everything we know and he walked
out with the only clue we have.”

 “I don’t think we have a
choice. We have to trust someone; we’re right in the middle of a hornet’s
nest.”

“Believe me, I
understand. There’s some Alka-Seltzer in the medicine cabinet upstairs.  We
have to put the bugs to bed. Help me up and we’ll go up together. And Sara?”

“What?”

“About what you saw in
the drawer, I’m sorry. It’s just in case, for protection.”

“I figured that, I just
didn’t know you felt you needed it,
any
of it.”

“And Sara?”

She handed him his
crutches and waited for him to lift off the couch. “What?”

“I’m sorry you had to be
the one to retrieve the folder. I know how hard that was for you.  I would have
asked the Brit but he would have seen the gun and asked questions.”

“I understand.”

“It’s not the only copy
of the code. I gave a copy to Jordie, too. He’s been helping me try to decipher
it.”

“My God, Ron, you can get
him killed this way! Call him right now. Tell him to back away.”

“It’s three o’clock in
the morning, he’s probably asleep.”

“This room is the only safe
place to talk. Call him now!”

***

Mom?

“I’m awake.”

Think your thoughts,
please.

“There’s no need. We
destroyed the bugs in this room.”

Farrell put another
one in the room before he left.

“Shit.”

You can trust him. He
just doesn’t trust anybody else. It’s how you stay alive in this business. The
bug is probably here for protection. Just leave it. He’ll be the only one
listening into it.
I hope
.

“Carl, you were right. He
didn’t believe me. It’s like he wants to, but can’t.”