The 500: A Novel (19 page)

“Why the shift?” I asked.

He looked along the paneled ceiling of the break room, and then said, “Why don’t we take a walk.” I glanced at the cameras hidden in the joinery overhead, then followed him out.

We walked outside, past the oddly juxtaposed compounds of Embassy Row: a Beaux Arts mansion beside a concrete box beside an Islamic complex crowned with minarets. Tuck went on about the dossier he’d be working on at State, about big opportunities and the family tradition of public service, but I could tell something else was on his mind.

“Why are you really leaving?” I interrupted.

He stopped walking and turned to face me. “I talked to my grandfather”—he’d been CIA director in the 1960s—“and he doesn’t say much, as a rule, but he told me maybe I should try a few different posts. That maybe Davies Group wasn’t the right fit for a man like me.”

“What does that mean?”

“That’s all I can say. My grandfather knows just about everything that happens in DC, but he never tips his hand. You ever wonder how Davies does it, how he has the whole town wired?”

“Not by being a Boy Scout.”

Tuck raised his eyebrows. “Maybe that’s what my grandfather was getting at. You’ve had an amazing rise, Mike. Just be careful. I’d hate for it to be too good to be true.”

He started walking again, and as much as I tried, for the rest of our walk I couldn’t pry any more information out of him. We circled around toward the office, and as we crested the hill on Twenty-Fourth Street, we could see the city laid out below us, tinted red by the setting sun.

“When trouble comes,” Tuck said, “it’s not the guys at the top who take the fall.”

Some of what Tuck told me I might have been able to dismiss as sour grapes; after all, he’d seen me, an outsider with no family connections, rise above him at Davies Group. But that sort of warning, however vague, from a guy as plugged in as Tuck’s grandfather only rekindled my concerns.

I certainly wanted to keep an eye on Irin and Marcus, because if my worst fears came true—that there was something to the talk of killing on that tape I’d stolen—I could never forgive myself. And chances were that if something terrible did happen in the Rado–Subject 23 affair, I would end up taking the blame. I just wanted a little insurance, to keep my eye on what Marcus was up to.

I’d done lots of homework about how to tail people in the traditional shoe-leather style. But then I found out those methods were more or less obsolete. After extensive research (well, not quite; I got stuck on a plane for two hours on the tarmac at Reagan National and had nothing to read but the
SkyMall
), I found out that for a hundred and fifty bucks, you can buy yourself a little magnetic stick-on real-time GPS tracker. After you place it on your mark’s car, you can kick back, sip your coffee, and track your prey on Google Maps, risk-free. Irin’s tracker was already firmly adhered to the wheel well of her Porsche, but I was taking extra care planting Marcus’s. That’s why I was skulking outside his house. It would have been easiest to do it at work, but I didn’t dare. The whole Davies Group building was lousy with cameras.

It took a quick dash from the bushes to clap the tracker in Marcus’s wheel well. I heard a dog bark (well,
yap
would probably be more accurate) behind the fence and sped out of there. Mission accomplished. A little cash out of pocket, and now even an idiot like me had the drop on William Marcus, superspy. Don’t you love technology?

I did. Maybe I geeked out a little too much. There were, as far as I could tell, no more Irin-Marcus meet-ups, but I was always peeking at their locations in a Web browser or on the little app for my phone. It was fun, like live Pac-Man in the city. And gradually, my concerns about Subject 23 receded.

Until six days later, when Marcus’s assistant called me up to Marcus’s office. Marcus was at his desk. He didn’t stand, didn’t offer me a chair. No greeting, no warm-up.

“You’ve been talking to Irin Dragović,” he said.

“I ran into her, yes.”

“I thought I told you to stay away from that case.”

“She was out running and hurt her knee. I happened to be walking by, pure chance, and gave her a lift home. That’s all there was to it.”

He stared at me. “You recall how dangerous I told you things would get for you if you meddle.”

When Marcus had talked to me about it in Colombia, his warning seemed more of a friendly I’m-looking-out-for-you message. This sounded distinctly like a threat.

“You understand me, I trust,” Marcus said.

I did. I had no idea how Marcus knew about what I’d been up to, and hopefully he only knew about my relatively innocent encounter with Irin and not my theft of his expense reports and tracking of his car. Whatever he knew, his point was unmistakable: back off or get hurt. Making excuses or pleading ignorance would only dig me in deeper.

“Absolutely,” I said. “I’ll steer clear, no matter the circumstances.”

Marcus looked over my shoulder, toward the open doorway of his office. I turned. Henry Davies stood behind me.

“Is everything clear, Mike?” Henry said. He obviously knew what this little check-in was about, and he’d stopped by to underscore the gravity of the situation.

“Yes,” I said.

“Then you can go.”

I left. As I rounded the columns that framed the entrance to the executive suites, I overheard Henry saying to Marcus, “I have to head out. We’ll talk about this more tonight.”

After Marcus’s warning, I didn’t get much work done. I was glued to the screen showing my GPS trackers all afternoon. Marcus’s threat sounded like he was just keeping me in line, but if he and Henry were going to have a chat about my fate, I certainly wanted to know as much about it as I could.

Around six o’clock that evening, Marcus’s tracker left the office and headed west along Reservoir Road. The proximity to Georgetown caught my attention. I was always watching for him to circle round to Irin’s place. He drove straight over the Chain Bridge, however, to the Virginia side of the Potomac, near the CIA. That had my paranoia working overtime, until I remembered that Henry’s house was in that neighborhood, perched over the Potomac Gorge. Marcus’s car turned off onto a winding street that served the riverside mansions just north of the Chain Bridge. Most likely he was headed for Henry’s.

That was enough for me to want to check it out. I cleared my desk, then headed downstairs and pulled my Jeep out of the garage. I had about two hours before I was supposed to meet Annie for dinner. I would just take a ride past, I told myself, to see if Marcus was really going to Henry’s house. With traffic, it was a half-hour drive.

The long lane that led down to Henry’s mansion had a formidable gate with video security. I drove on and stopped at a dead end near the river. I watched the white water break over the rocky course of the Potomac far below me.

The Virginia side of the Potomac is mostly parkland: all gorges, rock scrambles, and rope swings into the river. I bushwhacked down the steep hill and cut back on the far side of Henry’s grounds. I still hadn’t crossed onto private property. Seen from the road I had just left, his house was a well-hidden fortress. But vanity and river vistas trump security any time. Near the water, I had an unobstructed view of casa Henry: a manor house on a commanding spot high over the river. As I hoisted myself over and around the rocks and boulders, I made out two figures talking on the terrace, silhouetted by the warm yellow lights inside the house.

What I was thinking of doing next seemed crazy. But I was in danger. Marcus had more or less stated that outright. If I was being set up to take the fall in some matter of life and death I barely knew anything about, it seemed crazier to do nothing. I’d already gone too far. If they discovered what I had done—stealing the tape and the expenses, tracking Marcus’s car—I was done for. I’d rather find the truth now and deal with what was coming with open eyes.

Henry’s fence was high and so well hidden by hedges you could barely see the razor wire along the top. There was no chance I’d make it over, certainly not without ruining my dinner clothes and needing to stop by the hospital afterward.

I circled around to the side of the property and a utility area—a pair of Dumpsters and a lane for garbage trucks. There was a gate, electronic and accessed by an RFID—the kind you open by waving a key fob or access card. Picking the lock was beyond my skills. But high tech cuts both ways. Once people pay for the open-sesame stuff, they tend to want automatic exit on a motion sensor, doors that whoosh open like on
Star Trek
when you approach them from the inside. That’s the trick: nothing but the key will open them from the outside, but anything will from within.

I found a nice knobbly stick, slotted it through the side of the gate, and waved it around at what I guessed was head height inside. I heard the telltale
thwock
of an electromagnetic bolt being drawn, then I opened the door and, wary of being seen, crawled through on my stomach.

Back by the Dumpsters, there’d been a single super-bright wall-pack floodlight, there to lend a false sense of security. You’d be better off with motion sensors or nothing at all, the better to spot flashlights. Inside the fence was a different story. During a careful scan just inside the gate, I managed to pick out a half a dozen motion sensors—IR and ultrasonic, it looked like—mounted in the woods that led up to the house.

I’d spent many hours during my burgling years trying to learn how to defeat this sort of setup, and I’d heard all kinds of theories—wear a sheet over your head, walk the perfect pace, don a full-body wet suit—but the fact was I couldn’t get within listening distance of that deck without getting caught.

So I would just get caught. The crying-wolf bit is an old trick, but it usually works.

I found a nice spot to hide: a hollow between the roots of a towering tree. I was still around the side of the house, out of view of the terrace where the two men stood. I stepped in front of the nearest motion sensor and waved my arms around like an idiot. That was plenty to set it off, but there were no lights, no sirens: bad news, hinting at some sort of central control and silent alarm. I walked about twenty feet the other way and did a few jumping jacks in front of another sensor. Then I hid in my hole.

It only took a few minutes for a grumpy guy with bowlegs, some kind of handyman, to come for me, swinging a flashlight. The beam of light passed over my tree two or three times. I was well hidden, though that wasn’t very reassuring as I imagined the possible fates that awaited me if Henry Davies discovered me breaking into his sanctum.

The man walked away muttering curses and something about deer.

As soon as he got back to the house, I pulled my monkey act in front of the sensor again, then hid. After three rounds of this, the guy didn’t even bother pointing a flashlight in my direction. I was safe to move.

I ran around the corner, then dragged myself on my stomach along a gully and, eventually, under the wooden deck where the two men were chatting. As I eased myself silently over the ground, I could hear my bosses’ voices.

I lay awkwardly, with a rock in the small of my back, hearing their footsteps pass four feet over my head. I thought every breath would give me away. I could just barely keep it together a half an hour later when a charley horse twisted through my right leg. Their conversation ranged over office politics and a handful of cases that didn’t interest me before they moved on to weightier matters.

“Was Ford on the level with you today?” Henry asked.

“I think so,” Marcus said. “He hasn’t been pestering us about what’s happening with Radomir. I think he’s let the case go. The girl did approach him, not the other way around. And we certainly put the fear of God into him today. He’s a good kid.”

“Has Subject Twenty-Three moved any closer to finding the evidence?” Henry asked.

“We can’t say,” Marcus said. “He went silent on the tapped phones, very cagey all of a sudden.”

“Do you have a close enough watch to know whether he passed on anything incriminating?”

“Yes. We don’t believe he did.”

“So it’s safe to ease him out of the picture?”

“Most likely,” Marcus said. “Say, eighty percent confidence.”

“Your thoughts?”

“He’s close to that envelope. As much as we’d like him to lead us to it, if he gets it he can shut down our whole show. The prudent thing would be to take care of him sooner rather than later.”

“Can we catch him one-on-one? His wife died years ago, but are there any girlfriends? Is the daughter ever around?”

“He’s not sleeping with anyone. Creature of habit, spends most weekends out in the country, with no security detail. The daughter’s in boarding school, almost never visits during the school year.”

“Any other loose ends?”

“One. The Dragović girl won’t stop meddling. I met with her last week to back her off.”

“How much does she know?”

“The particulars of her father’s case: beating extradition, staying out of the courts.”

“Subject Twenty-Three?” Henry asked.

“She knows there’s one linchpin, but she didn’t let on that she knew who he was.”

“What does she want?”

“To help, apparently,” Marcus said. “Save her father from extradition. She thinks her cunt is the ultimate weapon, that she can get anything by scratching the right itch. I gather that’s how she learned what she knows about the case. I shut her down. Full stop.”

“If she’s as stubborn as her father, we still have cause for concern.”

“Twenty-Three is jumpy enough. If she gets close to him with that clumsy seduction act, she’s liable to get herself hurt, badly.”

Henry didn’t respond.

“You think she could actually help find the evidence?” Marcus asked.

“Maybe. Twenty-Three is lonely. It doesn’t matter, though. If she did get a look inside that envelope, her days would be numbered. It’s dangerous intel, and then we’d have to take care of her ourselves to protect our end.” Henry exhaled in frustration. “Anyway, we can’t possibly use her. The whole thing gets so goddamn messy with Radomir, that psycho, and Twenty-Three on edge already. What a shit-show. We’ll hold off for now, watch and wait. I’m still lining up clients. It’s worth billions. If we pull this off, it’ll be the last case we ever need.”