Shockwave (22 page)

“You meant to protect Mack, baby. And the work he does. You put your faith in me. What was I supposed to do, use my influence down at City Hall? Hell, I wouldn’t even know who to bribe.”

“Stop it!”

“Stop what? Stop trying to help Mack get Homer out, or stop reminding you that I only got into the whole thing because you wanted me to?”

I wouldn’t have been surprised if Dolly had thrown a punch at me—she’d done it before. But I wasn’t ready for tears.

“I shouldn’t have ever said a word, Dell. I’m sorry. I never meant for you to be in any …”

“I know,” I said, speaking the truth to set up the forthcoming lie. “But now that I see how important Mack’s work is, I want to help him.” Then I covered the lie with a blanket of total truth: “I’ll be careful, little girl. Very, very careful. You know I’m good at that.”

T
here’s more than one level of cryptographer. The reason this leave-no-trace safecracker had gone undetected was not only his masterful touch on the dial, but his knowledge. He knew—and had warned me—that, no matter how well shielded,
any
traffic could be intercepted, even his own.

Now that everything is stored in some data bank, somewhere, getting in wasn’t a problem for him. That “cloud” created for data backup just made his work easier. But all traffic
is monitored for “chatter.” So, even if someone was listening, his own communications were always designed to be read as if they weren’t coded.

“Dependent on routing” could only mean one thing—if someone inside the Nazi organization was informing, he was also being
kept
informed. So the payoffs depended on who was getting them. But what kind of agency man would hand over info to any of the same people he was supposed to be keeping under surveillance?

I had to be very careful, just as I’d promised Dolly. So all I sent back was:

T
he young man was a few inches taller than me, and at least a hundred pounds heavier, none of it fat. He was holding a huge tree’s bole in both hands, gently lowering it into the earth. I treated the operation with the respect it deserved, standing quietly a few feet away.

Franklin patted earth into place. Then stepped back to make sure he’d handled it perfectly. That’s when he spotted me. “Mr. Dell! MaryLou said you’d be—”

“I know,” I said, speaking extra softly so he’d lower his voice. Any sound coming from Franklin’s double-barreled chest would carry a long way, and any excitement amped it way more than usual. “Don’t get fussed, Franklin. I know she told you not to talk with me about anything important unless she was there, too.”

“Yes, sir. But I told her she didn’t need to worry. I’m a big boy now”—not a trace of irony in his words—“and I know I can always trust you, Mr. Dell.”

“That’s okay, Franklin. You can’t blame MaryLou. She knows you can look after yourself. It’s just how women are.”

“Really?”

“Sure. Didn’t your mother—?” Immediately cursing myself for opening that can of dirt. Franklin’s mother had no love for her “retard” of a son, but sure found a
use
for him when his football skills earned his worm of a father a no-show job … the only one he was qualified for.

“My mother?” The giant looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “She knows I can look after myself.”

Easy enough to translate:
What other choice did I have?

“Sure. What I meant was, there’s no reason to worry MaryLou. I only stopped by to see how you were doing.”

“He’s doing just damn fine,” a voice snarled behind me. “And he’d be doing even better if guys like you didn’t stop by for a chat while he’s working.”

Spyros, the horticultural wizard who didn’t much care for humans but loved plants, especially trees.

“What other guys?” I asked, not smiling, so he’d know it was a question, not some banter.

“You, you’re enough, all by yourself,” he said, changing his tone from snarl to sour. And telling me nobody else had been around lately, too.

“Mr. Dell’s my friend,” Franklin said. His voice still quiet, but now it was as muted as a heavy crowbar.

I could see Spyros deciding how to play this: he didn’t like seeing me come around, but he knew Franklin would jump to my defense as quickly as he’d defend Franklin himself if anyone got stupid and called the giant by anything other than his name.

“Yeah, well, Franklin’s working, so …?”

“Couldn’t I take my lunch break a little early today, Mr. Spyros?”

“Sure,” the old man said, grateful that the giant had shown him a way out of the closing vise—his ego on one side, and my presence on the other.

“I
don’t think MaryLou understands,” the giant said.

His lunch box sat next to him on the downed limb of a dead tree, unopened.

“What doesn’t she understand?”

“That she doesn’t have to … protect me, I guess. I mean, that should be my job, shouldn’t it, Mr. Dell? To protect her?”

“Franklin, listen close, now: MaryLou absolutely, positively knows you’d protect her. Anytime, anyplace, anyhow, okay?”

“But, then, why would she have to be here just for me to talk to you? About anything important, I mean.”

“Because she thought what I wanted to see you about was something that involved her, too.”

“Is MaryLou—?”

“MaryLou’s fine,” I said, trying to keep Franklin from going off the rails. If he thought MaryLou was having trouble with someone at her school, he’d be in his truck and rolling before I could finish another sentence.

“Then why
did
you come over, Mr. Dell?”

“Dolly wants to put some kind of tree—a Japanese something?—out back, but she’s not sure if it’d survive in heavy rain. So I told her I’d ask you.”

“Me? Not Mr. Spyros?”

“Sure. But if you aren’t … comfortable with that, I could—”

“I think she means a Japanese maple,” the giant said, back on familiar ground. And secretly thrilled to be consulted. “The kind with red leaves. If that’s the one, it’ll do great, Mr. Dell. That’s a very strong tree.”

“I knew you’d know,” I told him. “Thanks, Franklin.”

As I walked away, I could feel the glow of his pleasure at knowing something of value to me more strongly than the sun on my back.

D
amn me and my stupid ideas.

The thought stayed with me all the way back to our cottage.

“Dolly, you think a Japanese maple tree would look nice out back?”

“What? Dell, since when do you care about stuff like that? Besides, you know I’d ask Johnny and Martin”—she never said one partner’s name without the other’s—“if I wanted anything like that.”

“I went over to see Franklin. But once I started talking with him, I realized that it wouldn’t be a good idea to get him involved. I had to come up with
some
reason for dropping by, so I told him you were interested in having that tree.”

“In case he asks me? Or because now we have to get one?”

“Both.”

Dolly gave me a look I couldn’t translate. I could feel it on my back as I went toward my basement, too. But it didn’t feel like sunlight.

W
hen I checked, there was a message.

I copied it as fast as I could, knowing I’d have to study it for a while.

A government spook running an operation solo? Nothing special about that. No cop on any level ever gives up his “Confidential Informant” list. There’s no central data bank. Maybe it’s all about breaking some spectacular case, getting interviewed on TV; maybe they just don’t trust each other. But that “Trade-off = permit” had to be connected to the coding system I’d memorized years before.

So: first number before first hyphen, fourth number after second hyphen, second number after fourth hyphen … The code always went on in that sequence for as long as the message ran, but the “R” meant “over.”

“Over” was another double-edge: could mean “over to you,” or “no more info.” Only one way to find out, but, first, I’d have to puzzle this one through so I didn’t come off as … someone you have to explain things to in detail. The more detail needed, the longer the line has to be open. I didn’t know the shadow’s limit, but I knew I didn’t want to test it.

I stared at the three-digit number I’d pulled out of the message to make sure I had it. Then I went back upstairs.

Dolly was at that huge slab of butcher block she uses for everything from making sandwiches to studying medical charts. It was long enough to ensure that any of that mob of teenagers who always seem to be around in the afternoon during school weeks had a place to sit. A place of their own.

“Does this mean anything to you?” I asked, as I put the piece of paper in front of her, my nose full of the fragrance of her fresh-washed hair—she hadn’t yet pulled it back and banded it for working outside, or put it up in a chignon the way she does when she wants to look professional.

“Oh-oh-seven? Are you serious, Dell?”

“Dolly …”

“I know,” she sighed. “Come on, baby. Double-oh-seven, that’s from the James Bond movies.”

“Uh …”

“Ah, if you’d— Never mind,” she interrupted herself. “The spy movies, the fun ones, I mean. There’s a whole series. Bond, he works for some British spy agency. And that double-oh-seven—they even call him by that name—it means he’s licensed to kill.”

“How old is this movie? I mean, when did the series start?”

“I don’t know. A long time ago. I can get you the exact—”

“No, that’s okay.”

“What difference would that make?”

“If that’s some kind of serial number, like on a car or a gun, it would
have
to be real old. The seventh Brit spy licensed to kill? That’d be—what?—at least a hundred years ago?”

“It’s a
movie
series, honey, not a documentary.”

“But this oh-oh-seven thing, most anyone would know what it meant?”

“Everyone but you, I think.”

I didn’t say anything. Not out loud. I was too busy doing the math in my head: a government-agency man, operating on his own, running a CI? Sure. But giving him a license to kill …?

I went into my den, closed the door, set my oxblood leather chair to near-recline, closed my eyes, and tried again.

When Dolly tapped on the door, I said, “Come in, girl. I was just about to go and get you.”

D
olly was ahead of me.

I could tell, because she had one of those small notepads with her, and a gel pen in her hand.

“If you’ll just move that chair up straight …”

She dropped into my lap while I was still sitting up, legs crossed at the knee, pen poised over pad like a secretary in a bad movie.

“Has there ever been a … case, I don’t know what else to call it … of a government-agency man running a separate operation? I mean, running the whole operation on his own, and—” I dictated.

“A covert agency?”

“At least whatever part of an agency he was in, yeah. But it’s probably got to be the FBI or the CIA.”

“There’s a lot more—”

“Sure. But this would have to be info that was public record. After it was exposed, I mean.”

“Ah.”

“I don’t mean a rogue, Dolly. He’d have to still be in whatever agency
while
he was doing this.”

“ ‘This’ being …?”

“Let’s say he’s got an informant inside some major gang. Drugs, my best guess, but that’s only a guess. This is the only part I need: the agency man gives the informant a license to kill.”

“How could—?”

“Not a written license. Or even a recorded one. If what you want is maximum infiltration, you’d have to pass certain tests. That’s why no agency—not even Interpol—has ever placed a man inside one of the kiddie-rape filmmakers’ rings—he’d have to do one of those rapes himself. But no informant would ever be made as a rat if he was killing people the gang
wanted
killed. Even better, if the killings were his
job
, see?”

“I … think so. If it was ever a news story, I can find it—I’ve got full Nexis access now that Gabi is in law school, and I can make it look like a much wider search easy enough.”

I didn’t know what that last part meant, but I wasn’t stupid enough to ask.

I
n the life I have now, there’s never a “nothing to do” mode.

Maintenance is critical to machinery of any kind, whether it’s metal or flesh.

Before I stopped working, I’d learned something really valuable from a legendary street beast. He wasn’t just another man-for-hire; he’d survived doing his work for such a long time that men doing that same work saw him as a kind of guru. What he told me, I never forgot: “When you can’t increase speed, you have to decrease distance.”

He wasn’t talking about building a better cartridge—there’s been stuff good enough to do any firearms job around for a long time; it’s only the hobbyists and collectors who want the ultra-exotic stuff. What he was saying is that you’re not going to move as fast at fifty as you could at half that age … but you can be a lot less visible. In a fight—any fight—the closer you get to your enemy before he knows you’re coming, the better your chances.

So I do my exercises, but I don’t fool myself. I know things I didn’t know when I was younger, sure. But the older I get, the more I rely on weapons other than my hands and feet. Or teeth, if it came to that.

Firearms have to be maintained. Knives, too. Cars. Motorcycles. Scopes. Transmitters. The list is so long that by the time I’ve run through it completely, it’s time to start over again.

I’ve seen too much to believe in God. I do believe there’s such a thing as a random chance that some people call “luck.” But I know only a fool believes he can summon it.

So I work very hard to keep random chance out of the picture. The best way to do that is not just to always be ready, but to always be ready to go past any boundaries the targets think
must
be there. Or maybe that’s just what they hope, like the guerrilla who surrenders, holding his hands high, desperately
trying to convince himself that mercenaries actually take prisoners.