Simple Simon (15 page)

They meandered on interstates and state routes until, just outside a place called Sunshine, Kudrow said, “We’re being followed.”

Dean looked cautiously over his left shoulder, out the tinted rear window, but all he could see were headlights that appeared no different from any other. “Where? Why would anyone follow us?”

A rural intersection came fast upon them, and Kudrow hardly slowed when he turned the LHS right, heading now for Patuxent River State Park. “Because we’re about to save your life,” Kudrow said, looking briefly at his passenger. “I’m disappointed in you, son.”

The bulge that had rolled down his throat now seemed minuscule to what Dean fought to keep down. He slid a hand onto the armrest built into the door, searching for the door release.

“It won’t open unless I want it to,” Kudrow said, flicking a switch quickly once to demonstrate. “Good old American ingenuity.” He turned left onto a narrow, rutted access road that snaked into the trees. “But you’re more familiar with how our Japanese friends work, aren’t you, son?”

“I…”
Cool, cool, oh, shit, no…

The LHS bounced, and Kudrow slowed to match the road’s condition, the headlights sweeping the desolate path ahead. Dean looked out the back window again.

“They’ll wait at the road,” Kudrow said. “To make sure we’re not disturbed while we talk.”

“Mr. Kudrow, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dean said, not pleading yet, even though the urge to was almost overpowering. Apologize, express remorse. Come clean. No. Not yet.
He has nothing. Noth—

The micro cassette player Kudrow pulled from inside his jacket brought an abrupt end to Dean’s self reassurance. “Are you aware how far surveillance technology has come?”

Dean stared at the silvery player, the brand name almost bringing a smile to his pained face.

“Rock Creek Park, not far from the planetarium,” Kudrow said to freshen Dean’s memory and lower his resistance. His thumb hovered over the PLAY button as he spun the wheel with his free hand, guiding the car into a circular bald spot in the forest, a turnaround for construction vehicles that maintained the park’s network of primitive interior roads. As the car stopped, Kudrow looked hard at Dean and asked, “Would you like to hear what you said to Mr. Atsako last night?”

The young eyes, tired, defeated, looked away.

“Or see the pictures?” Kudrow challenged further.

Dean had no reason to consider the option at any length and shook his head. Kudrow slid the player back inside his jacket and flipped a switch on his armrest. The latches clicked. “Get out.”

Dean hesitated.

“Your new life begins tonight, Mr. Dean,” Kudrow said in a calm, yet firm voice. Reassuring, he thought with some satisfaction. “Your treachery has cost a great deal. Both in dollars and in some lives.” He noted that Dean actually flinched at that. It was a touching, but futile flash of humanity. “And that was from MAYFLY. If you had succeeded in giving your friends someone who might have broken KIWI, well…the consequences would be unimaginable.”

Silence held Dean. What could he say? Should he tell Kudrow that money had been his motivation.
Money
? Cash. A growing bundle stashed, of all places, in a shed behind his brother’s farmhouse in Iowa. Nothing he could say could change what he’d done. He was suddenly sorry beyond words, and fought to hold back the tears.

“So now, what happens?” Kudrow continued. “I’ll tell you. You and I will get out into the fresh air, and we will have a talk. You will tell me everything. Everything about what you’ve done, and what you are still to do. About this contact you are supposed to meet Saturday. About what you were going to tell her.”

A sniffle got past Dean’s resistance. He dragged his coat sleeve across his nose and nodded.

“And then, Mr. Dean, you will be gone.” The young, now read eyes, turned worried and locked on Kudrow’s. “A new identity, son. Your Japanese friends won’t be too happy with you for failing. And certain people on our side either, if things should get out.”

“No jail?” Dean asked weakly.

Kudrow shook his head in complete truth. “No jail.”

Dean could hardly believe it. He’d always expected that, if he were caught, it would mean a long time, if not life, in a solitary cell in a federal institution somewhere. Not a new start. He couldn’t finger his emotion right then. Relieved was closest he could come, but that was not strong enough. “I’ll turn the money over.”

“That goes without saying. Now…” Kudrow opened his door. “Shall we have our talk?”

Dean followed Kudrow to the clearing in front of the car. They stood facing each other, talking for almost an hour, the deputy director asking frequent questions and the youthful cryptographer answering every one to the best of his ability. Dean never became boastful of what he was able to accomplish, but the atmosphere was actually becoming cordial.

He was quite surprised, then, when Kudrow removed a pistol from the pocket of his overcoat and pointed it at him.

Kudrow said nothing at first, watching instead as Dean took a half step backward, and as utter shock hardened his expression. “I have to thank you for your cooperation,” Kudrow said, then lowered the pistol a bit and shot Dean in the left knee.

“SHIT! AHHHH!” Dean collapsed on his right side and pulled his shattered joint to his chest with both hands over the wound. Blood trickled between the fingers and spilled onto the ground.

“But I’ve never trusted the Hollywood depiction of moments like these. I’ve always figured that a person who has a gun pointed at them and knows they’re going to die would fight to survive. Rush their would-be executioner.” Dean pushed with his good leg, scooting his body toward the trees, frightened eyes wide and watching Kudrow follow. “I would.”

“Don’t, Mr. Kudrow!” Dean pleaded, a wave of pain twisting his face into a wincing mask of agony.

“I come here often to walk,” Kudrow told Dean. “There’s a crevice about a hundred feet into the woods. That way. A few shovels of dirt and some dead wood tossed in, and no one will find your body.” Kudrow pointed the pistol at Dean’s face, his finger on the trigger, feeling the steel, bringing another hand up to steady the weapon, breathing, breathing, breathing…

“There was no one following us,” Dean said through the pain, as if it were some timely, salient point to make.

Kudrow shook his head and squeezed the trigger four times.

When he was able to lower the pistol more than a minute later he was surprised, utterly astonished at how easy killing a man had been.

*  *  *

Five men sat around a poker table, cigar smoke wafting upward into a fan whose wasted motion only served to circulate the fumes for later inhalation. Each man held five cards, and each had chips before them, some in neat stacks, some in tilted and fallen piles. One man, the dealer at the moment, had far more chips than any other player. And he was smiling, teeth clenched on a stogie.

Two players folded, then a third after examining his hand long and hard. That left the dealer just one challenger.

“I’m waiting,” the dealer said jauntily. The others at the weekly game knew him as Mr. Pritchard.

The challenger, setting his cigar in a flat metal ash tray, tossed two blue chips into the pot as a door opened behind Mr. Pritchard. A young man entered and leaned close to Pritchard’s right ear. “There may be a situation developing.”

“In a minute, Sanders,” Pritchard said, and the young man retreated out of the room. “Is that a call?”

The challenger nodded and laid his hand on the table. Three queens and two fours stared into the whirling, smoke-shrouded fan blades. “And you?”

Pritchard’s smile never waned as he laid a pair of eights on the felt.

“That’s it?” the challenger said, shock turning to laughter an instant later. “You stupid son of a bitch.”

“Had you going, didn’t I?” Pritchard said as the challenger scooped up his winnings.

“You get joy in bluffing, don’t you, Pritchard?” one of the men asked.

Pritchard left his trash cards on the table and stood, blowing smoke toward the fan. “I’d rather have four aces. Now, if you’ll excuse me for a moment.”

His cigar clamped firmly in one side of his jaw, Pritchard left the smoky room and found Sanders waiting in the hall. “Go ahead.”

“A situation may be developing,” Sanders repeated.

“You said that. Where? And what’s the involvement?”

“It’s coming from inside and it involves an extreme innocent,” Sanders elaborated.

Pritchard removed his cigar. “An
extreme
innocent?”

Sanders nodded. He knew what that characterization would mean to Mr. Pritchard, what weight it would carry.

“You’ll watch the situation closely and let me know,” Pritchard said.

“If we wait, sir, it may be too late,” Sanders said, every bit of seriousness he could manage thrown into his tone.

Pritchard, though, met him with his own brand of seriousness, a stare that had melted the toughest of men where they stood. “Nothing, Sanders, I repeat, nothing, is worth rushing into. Nothing.”

Sanders swallowed and accepted the dressing down with a deferring nod. “Yes, sir.”

The cigar found its way back between Pritchard’s surprisingly white teeth. “Extreme innocent, you say?”

“Yes.”

Pritchard considered that through two puffs. “In the morning, Sanders. Get the particulars to me. I’ll bring it up with the boys.”

A somewhat re-inflated Sanders nodded crisply. “Yes, sir.”

The young man hurried off down the hall. Pritchard watched him, admiring the eagerness, thanking whoever was up there that people like Sanders had chosen his side of the fence to play on. There were enough on the other side already.

Pebbles

Art Jefferson came into the kitchen Friday morning, eyes tired, wanting coffee and answers. The former was waiting for him on the counter, along with a granola bar for breakfast. In search of the latter he sat in the nook across from his wife, who stared out the window at dawn breaking over the garden.

“Is he still asleep?”

Anne nodded and sipped at her own steaming cup of coffee, caffeinated unlike his, though that hadn’t kicked in yet.

“I need to ask you something,” Art said, and Anne turned his way. In her robe and barely awake, he felt awful having to probe her, but he had no choice. “Do you think Simon remembers what happened that night? Enough to tell me if I asked him?”

Hands wrapped around the warming mug, Anne’s mind worked behind quiet eyes, through the mental gears, coming up to speed. “Art, have you looked at his cards?”

“His cards? Not really. But what—”

“He doesn’t use
E
’s. In anything he writes he doesn’t use the letter
E
. The most common letter in the alphabet. Do you know why?”

He’d asked a tired woman a question and he was getting what he deserved. “No, why?”

“I don’t know. If you ask Simon, he can’t explain it, but it still is part of how he functions.” Anne sipped slow and set the mug down. “Not everything can be explained. Don’t expect too much.” She might have said ‘Don’t push too hard,’ but what she had seen develop between Art and Simon made that unnecessary.

It wasn’t how Art wanted to start the morning. But less than hopeful had more wiggle room than hopeless. “I’ve got to try. For his sake.”

Anne was about to take the mug in hand again when the tone of Art’s statement struck her. “I don’t like the way you said that.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Liar.”

Art took her hand and kissed the back of it. “Babe, you’re the doctor. Give me some pointers. I’m used to questioning bad guys and not giving a damn about their feelings.”

“Make him comfortable.”

“The rocker only worked for a night,” Art reminded her. “What’s comforting to him?”

She kissed his hand now. “I think you know.”

It took him a minute to realize she was, as usual, right.

*  *  *

Far later than usual, Brad Folger arrived at his office in the Chocolate Box and learned that he was needed immediately in Kudrow’s office. He told his secretary to let the boss know he was on his way, then went in his office and downed two shots of whiskey behind closed doors.

A few minutes later, feeling bolder if not better, he entered Kudrow’s office without knocking and sat on the couch, far too casually for his own good.

“Glad you could join us today,” Kudrow said, swinging his chair to face his assistant. “How was breakfast?”

“What, Rothchild have my office wired, too?” Folger gave the office a mock visual inspection. “How about yours?”

For now Kudrow would let the insubordination pass. For now. When all was again right with the world, Bradley Folger would be promoted out of Z on Kudrow’s recommendation. A nice, cushy spot somewhere in S, probably, overseeing security reviews. Or maybe T-Com. Somewhere, anywhere, just no longer here.

And after that, a car swerving out of control as he crossed the street one day. Who knew what could happen when one started his or her day?

But for the moment, Folger would have to join the team. “Brad, you’ll be replacing Dean in the Puzzle Center until this affair is cleared up.”

Still pressed into the cushions, Folger’s manner became instantly less cocky. “Why?”

“Craig Dean is no longer with us.”

Folger began to sit forward. “Why?”

“Our Mr. Dean was selling the store out from under us, Bradley. He gave away MAYFLY, and he was about to do the same with KIWI.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“A leak,” Kudrow said. “Dean was it.”

“Bull,” Folger said, coming to his feet and pacing once in front of Kudrow’s desk before facing the man, taking on the appearance of an animal that wanted to fight but knew better. “I don’t believe it.”

“I’ll make the tapes and photos available to you, if you require proof. And aside from those he admitted it to me, last night.”

Five feet separated Folger from his supervisor. He wondered if the contempt could be felt at that distance. He fervently hoped so.