Seven Grams of Lead (11 page)

Eppley wasted no time in responding with another of the ancient Chinese general’s maxims: “Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”

A few hours later, Eppley’s trial assignment commenced with a Hushmail from Steve Griffin, the VP of security based at Blaise’s D.C. office. When deciphered, the message instructed Eppley to go to the Starbucks a mile from his Denver apartment, then
check beneath the composting barrel left outside, full of coffee grounds for use by gardeners. The metal hoop around the bottom of the barrel extended below the base by an inch. Duct-taped into the hollow beneath the base, Eppley found a freezer bag with $45,000 in cash, his advance plus operating expenses.

Now Eppley turned right onto Griffin’s street, Hill Road. After a mile, the beachy houses ended, as did the pavement, but Hill Road itself continued in dirt, ascending its namesake, terminating after another mile. He swung the Kia onto the dirt driveway, his headlights showing him a solitary saltbox cottage on a bluff with a commanding view of a bay, a matrix of purples, blacks, and grays intermittently flickering white in the starlight. There was one car in the driveway, another Kia. Although Hertz had given Eppley his Kia at random, he congratulated himself for driving the same car as Griffin, who was probably, like most tech-firm security guys, ex-CIA.

A few lights were on in the house. Getting out of his car, Eppley heard the ebb and flow of televised talk-show audience laughter. Anticipation offsetting his nerves, he hurried up a gravel path to the front door, on which, as instructed, he knocked four times.

The door opened inward, revealing a man in his mid- to late thirties with the erect bearing and boxy build indigenous to the military; his gray business suit conformed to muscles that looked like rocks. He wore his sandy hair cropped close. Not a crew cut; more
like the cuts on actual oarsmen. His sturdy, chiseled face could have made him a soap-opera heartthrob if not for the cold eyes.

“Mr. Griffin?” Eppley asked, regretting the tradecraft breach as soon as the name was out of his mouth.

“Call me Steve, please,” the man said in a voice that was surprisingly soft and cultured, rather than the bark presaged by his appearance. “Mr. Griffin was my father, and a deadbeat.” He offered his hand.

“Great to meet you, Steve,” said Eppley, struggling to keep from squirming as his right hand was nearly crushed.

“How about a drink?” Griffin asked.

What Eppley wouldn’t have done for alcohol. But something told him the correct answer was no. “I’m good.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not a test question. I could tolerate a vodka tonic myself.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want you to drink alone.”

“Excellent.” Griffin stepped into the kitchen, where the drink fixings waited on a granite counter. He waved Eppley ahead into the living room, which was painted sky blue and furnished sparsely in typical rental-house fashion, things the owner wouldn’t give a damn about if they were broken or stained with red wine.

A few moments later, Griffin carried in a pair of translucent red plastic cups, the indestructible sort often found in such houses. Handing Eppley his, the
Blaise exec said, “Here’s to being single, seeing double, and sleeping triple.”

“Cheers,” said Eppley, put at ease.

Griffin dropped into the adjacent wicker armchair, gesturing Eppley into the vinyl-covered sofa on the other side of the laminate coffee table.

“So tell me about your trip here,” Griffin said.

This
was
a test question, Eppley knew. Secrecy was as much a part of Blaise as science. “That’s a long story, starting with a severely mentally handicapped guy about my age who’s been confined to a state-run home in northern Nevada for eight years.”

Griffin sat back, propping black loafers beside the laptop case on the coffee table. “That’s exactly the type of story I was hoping to hear.”

“I took a back door into the state home’s system and obtained a copy of the guy’s birth certificate. I used it to get a driver’s license and a credit card in his name, sent to an accommodation address. For the record, it was he who rented the Kia parked outside, and you’re now talking to him. Then he—or, between us,
I
—drove cross-country in six days, stopping to buy our components at out-of-the-way academic supply stores, mom-and-pop electronics shops, places like that, paying in cash—thanks for that, by the way.”

“I’d tell you you’re welcome, but I get the feeling that I’m the one who ought to be thanking you,” Griffin said.

With rising confidence, Eppley resumed his account.
“When I got to your facility, I told the office manager that I was the representative from Exxon’s engineering division, there to assemble the prototype of the portable petroleum hydrocarbon detector. Just like you’d said he would, he asked me how the drive from
New Orleans
was. So I said the line, ‘Great, because I won a hundred bucks playing the slots at a Choctaw casino along the way.’ Then he showed me into the back office, and that was about as much interaction as we had in the five days it took me to assemble the ‘portable petroleum hydrocarbon detector.’ ”

Griffin gripped the arms of his chair, seemingly bridling his excitement. “So you did it?”

Eppley put on whiz-kid nonchalance. “It wasn’t that much more complicated than following a recipe.” He unzipped his jacket pocket, dug out the dedicated cell phone, and placed it on the coffee table. “And now it’s good to go.”

“
This
is the remote detonator?” Griffin asked.

Eppley worried that Griffin was disappointed. “I know, I know. You see it all the time in B-movies, but ordinary cell phones really are the state-of-the art remote detonators. All you need to do here is press down on the five key to speed-dial the number for Bob programmed into the contacts. Bob is the cell phone that’s inside the weapon. When it gets the call, its vibrate wheel spins, triggering a low-amp wire fuse that detonates the half-pound brick of Comp C and PBX-9501.”

“What if ‘Bob’ were to get a wrong number?”

“He can’t. This is the only phone that can call his cell phone. I coupled the two phones into what amounts to their own Centrex network.”

Griffin sat back, regarding Eppley with what appeared to be awe. “Mr. Eppley, Blaise Advanced Development Programs owes you a debt much greater than the fifty thousand dollars you’re now due. I’d like to read you an e-mail that says exactly what Curtis Brockett has in mind.”

Eppley tried to rein in his smile as Griffin reached into the laptop case on the coffee table. Griffin drew out a pistol. Eppley felt his scalp tighten with fear and—

Canning snapped the trigger, the loudest part of firing the integrally suppressed .22, sending a hand-cast thirty-eight-grain soft-lead bullet over the coffee table and into Eppley’s forehead. The kid fell over backward, taking the cheap sofa with him. He bleated pathetically, but only for a few seconds. Then his central nervous system quit and he lay still. Canning liked the soft-lead rounds because they stayed in the head, which meant no gore on the safe house furniture. A little blood and brain matter oozed from the entry wound, sliding down Eppley’s face, but that was the extent of it. Now all Canning needed to do was get rid of the corpse, and he would be in the “portable petroleum hydrocarbon detector” business.

The so-called barn
on Madaket was almost as large as Nolend’s house, with an interior of burnished cedar planks that would have been gleaming tonight even without the constellation of candles suspended from the rafters. If the place had any of the smells found in actual barns, like the musky scents of horses and hay, they were lost in warm air redolent of the exotic flowers representing every color in the spectrum, in mountainous centerpieces on fifty tables brimming with crystal and silver. Enjoying hors d’oeuvres and aperitifs, guests milled about a space that could be divided into dozens of stalls were the barn ever to accommodate livestock. Where a hayloft might go, there was a stage on which twenty-six Boston Pops musicians, all clad in tuxedo jackets and pairs of
Nantucket Reds, played an up-tempo waltz. Mallery sat alone at table eight, the fluttering candlelight underscoring the sharpness of her features in a way that reminded Thornton of Garbo.

He planned to wander over, introduce himself, then, at some juncture, ask her to dance. If she accepted, he would try to feel for a capsule underneath her scalp.

Before he could take a step in her direction, she was joined at table eight by a towering man whom Thornton had interviewed years ago. Back then, Clay Harken was the chief of the CIA’s Special Activities Staff. Thornton didn’t know what Harken had been doing professionally since retiring from the Agency, but in graying, he’d acquired the right look for a dramatic turn as King Arthur. Harken took the seat beside Mallery’s, setting champagnes in front of both of their places. They clinked the flutes, her smile measurable in kilowatts. She was left-handed, for what that was worth. Nothing, thought Thornton, trying to conceive a new plan of approach.

He doubled back to the entrance, stopping at the table covered with tented white cards on the one-in-fifty shot that his read
Eight.

Thirty-four.

The card gave him an idea, though.

A few minutes later, he returned from his room and headed for the nearest of the barn’s five fully stocked bars. On receipt of a club soda, he weaved
his way through the crowd and toward table eight, drawing inordinately long looks from strangers. His stitches had been removed, but the week and a half that had passed since his admission to the hospital was clearly not enough time to preclude guests from wondering what the hell a skinhead was doing here. It would have been smart, he thought, to buy a wig. And to get his tux taken in; it fit like a poncho. Then again, these things might work to his advantage right now.

Adding a stagger to his step, he jerked the chair next to Mallery’s away from the table, the legs scraping varnish off the floor, drowning out Harken’s attempt at a humorous impression of some sheikh.

Thornton said, “General Harken, I’m not sure that you’d remember me. I’m—” Casting out his right hand, he toppled Mallery’s flute as well as Harken’s, sending champagne streaming toward the ex-spy. Despite Harken’s uncommon quickness in retreat, his lap was soaked. Thornton amended his introduction to, “I’m on the lookout for a rock to crawl under.”

Beneath the table, Harken clenched a fist, which would have been lost on Thornton, as it appeared to be on Mallery. In keeping with his act, however, Thornton sat slumped forward in his seat and could see under the table.

Harken rose. “Actually, you’ve done me a favor, Thornton. I’m glad for an excuse to get out of this monkey suit.” He turned to Mallery. “Beryl, will you be okay for a minute while I run to the house?”

“As long as you put something else on before you come back,” she said.

With a laugh, Harken hurried to the exit, leaving her alone with Thornton.

She turned to him with the air of a child who had received a surprise gift. “You’re Russ Thornton, aren’t you?”

“Afraid so.”

“I admire your work.”

Good, he thought. When people didn’t like it, they said,
I know your work.

After she introduced herself, he said, “I thought I recognized you.” He uprighted her flute. “Let me get you another drink.”

“No need to bother. They’re coming around.” She turned, a simple string of pearls emphasizing a slender and graceful neck, and pointed to one of the servers. “Also you’re probably best off remaining seated.”

“Sorry. I took a header recently that landed me in the operating room. I’m starting to think there was a chart mix-up and they took out my cerebellum.”

She nodded knowingly. “Skiing accident?”

“I wish it were something sexy like that. Truth is, I fell on a sidewalk. Luckily, what saved me, if you listen to phrenologists, is that I’m combative.”

“So that sidewalk won’t be messing with anybody else?” Her pleasant demeanor ebbed almost imperceptibly. Almost.

“I’m going to hazard a guess that you don’t listen to phrenologists,” he said.

“I’ve never had the occasion to, as far as I know.”

“What do you know about phrenology?”

“Isn’t it the theory that the shape of the skull is indicative of personality?” she asked. She’d paused, he noted, as though carefully choosing the word
theory.

“That’s almost it,” he said. “In 1796, the German physician Franz Joseph Gall first put forth the notion that the shape and size of twenty-seven different areas of the cranium serve as indicators of character as well as mental abilities. Phrenology was relegated to pseudoscience not long afterward—in the mainstream. Tragically, if you ask me. I’ll bet I can use phrenology to tell three things about your character.”

She glanced at the server balancing a tray of canapés a table away. “You know, Russ, I’m absolutely famished.”

“How about this? All the canapés you can eat, on me, if I’m wrong.” Squaring his chair to face her, he raised his left hand. “May I?”

“Please.” She smiled, amused. Or just a natural politician.

Veiling his discomfort with the sober air of a clinician, he waded his right forefinger into her soft hair, past her left ear, onto an area of scalp that seemed to conform to a smooth and rounded temporal bone, which told of confidence, according to one nineteenth-century phrenologist. Other practitioners maintained that the same space told of insecurity.

“Very interesting,” he said, trying to buy time as
he probed further, pressing harder and delving deeper into her scalp, in search of an unnatural rise on the temporal bone. He felt only a smooth surface. Nothing else. Damn.

She laughed as though she were being tickled, really to mask her agitation in all likelihood. “Okay, Doc, okay.” She held up a palm.

Her left palm. She was left-handed, he remembered. Maybe they placed the device on the side opposite the subject’s dominant hand, making it that much further out of reach?

“One more cranial module, and the analysis will be complete,” he said, extending his left hand, his index finger dipping into the hair behind her right ear and feeling for the temporal bone. He’d barely made contact with it when she pulled away. But the motion caused his fingertip to skip over a bump. A mogul, as her skull went. And rounded. Almost certainly the flank of an embedded capsule.