The Secret of Rover (25 page)

“Been wantin' to do that for quite a while now,” he said calmly. Then Mike slid the gearshift back into drive, cut his wheels sharply to the left, and executed a tight, expert U-turn that peeled him out of the line of cars in which he had been stuck and pointed him straight back out of the jammed street. Reaching the corner, he turned neatly back onto the empty avenue on which they had been driving moments before.

“We can turn right on the next block,” he said levelly. His passengers were openmouthed with awe.

But as they zoomed toward their next right turn they heard tires squealing behind them. The black SUV—its fender gone, its front end deeply dented, and its cover blown—was now in hot and open pursuit.

They did not turn right on the next block. Before they even reached it they could see that it was just as jammed with cars as the one they'd left. And so was the next. As they sped toward the block after that, an enormously long
city bus cut between them and the SUV, offering them a moment in which to think. But they knew this reprieve was only temporary.

“How many blocks that way d'you need to get?” asked Mike shortly, jerking his head to the right.

“About four,” said Alex.

“Run,” Mike ordered. He flipped a switch to his left, unlocking the taxi doors. “Just get out and run like heck. And God bless.”

For a split second everyone was still. Then Alex threw open the door and leaped out, with Katie and David behind him. Somewhere a light changed and the city bus that had lodged itself between them and the SUV began roaring slowly forward, clearing the way for their pursuers to follow them.

They were on foot now, but what about Mike? Kicking the door shut behind him, David screamed at their driver. “
Go!
”

And that was good-bye.

Alex clutched Katie's wrist in one hand and David's in another. Thus dragged they fled for the side street. It was as narrow as a canyon between the tall buildings on either side of it, and they were desperate to reach the shelter of its walls before the bus cleared the intersection and the occupants of the SUV managed to see where they were going.

They didn't make it. Halfway down the block Katie
looked over her shoulder and saw three figures in dark clothes coming toward them.

The three were not running. The drivers of the cars that jammed the crowded side street would have noticed had they torn out after a fleeing man pulling two frightened children. But it did not matter. They were following and they were fast. Katie and David and their uncle were cornered and they would be caught.

“There they are!” gasped Katie. “They're right behind us!”

“Where are we going?” asked David, panting. “How far?”

“Straight across,” said Alex.

They had just reached the corner. Now they saw before them not another sheltering block, but a wide-open space of lawns and trees crisscrossed by lanes of fast-moving cars on either edge. Far away on the other side loomed a massive gray stone building in which a very few windows still twinkled with light. That was undoubtedly their destination. But to reach it they would have to cross the first road, sprint across the spacious and exposed lawn, and then cross the second road as well.

When Alex had told Mike they had four blocks to go, he had not mentioned that three of them would be like this.

“No
way
!” There was panic in David's voice. His head darted left and right, searching for a break in the traffic that barred their path. Both lanes zipped and zoomed with whizzing cars. “This is impossible!”

“We're crossing with the light,” said Alex with unexpected firmness. He still had an iron grip on each child's wrist.

“We'll be caught!” cried Katie.

“You haven't come all this way to be killed by a car,” retorted her uncle. “Besides—”

“Just walk!” commanded Katie. And she wrenched her arm free, set her jaw, and strode straight into the teeth of the oncoming traffic.

Horns blared and one car skidded to the left as its driver slammed on the brakes. So stunned were her brother and her uncle that for a moment they forgot to follow her. But then a driver leaned out of his window and shook his fist at Katie. “Whaddya think you're doing!” the driver yelled.

This seemed to shake sense into David and Alex. Instantly they scrambled after her.
Going to die
;
going to die right now
, thought David. They caught up to Katie in the middle of the road and—seizing her arms—propelled her to the opposite curb. At the very moment they arrived, their pursuers reached the corner they had just left. But there they were stuck; the traffic had closed like water over the gap that Katie and David and Alex had made in it.

David looked back. Three enraged and frustrated faces appeared in flashing glimpses between the swift-moving cars. They would not be held back for long. “Run!” shouted Alex, again taking hold of his niece's and nephew's wrists.
Half dragged, half running they tore over the grass, driven by fear and no longer daring to look behind.

One more road lay ahead. They had only to cross it, mount the imposing stone steps before the building's great glass doors, and walk inside.

One more road. This time there was a crosswalk and a traffic light too. But the light was red and the rush of oncoming cars was a roaring river. Jaywalking here would be like strolling across a superhighway. It was completely out of the question.

As if to signal as much to Katie, Alex twined his fingers around her wrist in a grip she could not possibly break. In the bright light of the intersection they waited. And in total silence the black-clad figures emerged from the darkness of the lawn behind them and they were surrounded.

Of course it was them. Nose stood beside Katie. Hair stood beside David, and behind their uncle they recognized the thick, squat form of Trixie herself. Something Trixie clutched in her fist gleamed in the light of the streetlamp. It was half concealed in the sleeve of her coat, but from the corner of his eye David could see what it was. It was the muzzle of a gun.

No one said a word. In this very public place their three pursuers dared not risk a struggle, and Trixie dared not fire that gun. But all six of them knew it was there.

Then the traffic light began to flash its Walk sign. Katie, David, and Alex stepped off the curb and headed across
the street. The three thugs walked with them, clustered around them like three black shadows.

Thank God for the lights, thought David. Thank God for the cars.

Please, God, thought Katie. What will we do if we can't find the person we came here for? What will we do if we have to walk back out of this building and face these people again, with all of us knowing we failed? Please, please, God, we must not have a gunfight, here in the middle of the city.

They were climbing the steps and the great doors were in front of them. Don't be locked, thought David. Don't be closed. Alex grasped the massive steel bar that spanned the door and pulled it toward him. It moved in his hand. The building was open!

Alex held the door as Katie and David passed through. But just as he himself entered—just as the door swung closed between them and their three pursuers—Trixie spoke.

“We'll be waiting?” she said in her familiar honey-slicked voice. “We'll be right here when you come out.”

With those words, she and her companions vanished into the night.

They were in at last, in the cavernous glass-fronted lobby of the gray stone building toward which they had been traveling for so many exhausting miles throughout the long, hard day. Katie's knees all but buckled from
the pressure and the relief and the terrible remaining uncertainty.

Where, precisely, had they arrived? David nudged his sister. Their eyes met and he mouthed,
“Look at the wall.”
She looked up. There across the wall before them—in letters as high as she was tall—were emblazoned the words:

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Above that was the Great Seal of the United States of America, with its fiery eagle clutching an olive branch in one talon and a cluster of arrows in the other. And arrayed below it were flags: dozens and dozens of flags, representing seemingly every country in the world.

“The State Department,” said Katie quietly. “We're at the State Department.”

Now Alex was striding across the gleaming marble floor toward the guard who sat behind a wide desk of polished wood. Katie and David hurried after him. The desk was as long as a city bus and the face of the guard behind it was very stern. But their uncle stood squarely before the guard and looked him straight in the eye.

“I'm here to see the secretary,” he said.

The Secretary of State? Uncle Alex?

“Do you have an appointment?” asked the guard. He turned to his computer and clicked on a screen. “I don't show anything for her right now.”

“No,” said Alex boldly. “I don't have an appointment,
but it won't matter. Would you please just tell her that Alex is in the lobby.”

Alex is in the lobby?

They saw it now, and it was brilliant. This was the plan that had taken them from the mountains of Vermont to Washington DC. It was a bluff, and a nervy one: a piece of pure genius. If Alex said he knew the secretary of state, then maybe, just maybe, she would be curious enough to let them in.

Who would have thought that their reclusive uncle could be so bold? Katie and David quickly composed their faces. They must play along, as if they saw the secretary all the time.

But would it work? The guard was taking in Alex's clothes. For the first time the children noticed how badly worn they were, and how many years out-of-date. The guard was eyeing Alex's hair, too; it looked as if he had cut it himself with a jackknife. He probably had.

Alex must have seen the skepticism in the guard's face, because now his chin lifted. He looked the man straight in the eye, and when he spoke again, he did so calmly and with great authority.

“The secretary is here, I take it,” he said. “She hasn't gone home for the day? Then would you please tell her that Alex is here, and that he needs to see her. Please tell her,” he said coolly, “that it's urgent.”

Urgent. The guard hesitated for another moment. But then he tucked the receiver of his phone between his shoulder and his chin and he punched in a number. As the line rang he looked back to Alex and spoke in a voice that was low and very cold. “You'd better hope she sees you, pal. Because if she doesn't, I'm calling the cops. Over there,” he said, waving them away to a bench along the opposite wall. “Sit. I'll let you know.”

With as much dignity as they could muster, and with footsteps that sounded too loud, they walked back across the great hall and sat themselves down on the bench. The guard's eyes drilled holes in their backs as they walked.

“What if she says no?” There was a trace of panic in
David's whisper. “Man, Uncle Alex! The secretary of state!” This was practically like asking to see the president.

“She won't say no,” said Alex calmly. “If he tells her what I told him to, she will see us.”

“How do you know that?” demanded David.

“And what if he doesn't tell her?” asked Katie. “What if he chased us away just so he could call the police? We can't go back out there!”

“Kids,” said their uncle, “this is my best hand, and I've just played it.”

Great.

There was a loud click from across the lobby. The guard had hung up the phone and now he stepped down from behind his desk. Slowly he sauntered across the floor to where they sat. Katie's eyes were riveted to his hip, where a gun hung low in a leather holster. His hand rested on top of it and it bumped against his leg with every step.

The guard stopped before the bench and stared down at them with ill-concealed dislike. “OK,” he said reluctantly. “You can head on up. Seventh floor.” And he gestured loosely toward a metal detector at the far end of the lobby. “Step through the machine, and the elevator's to the left.”

“She's going to see us?” David blurted this out.

“'At's what she said. Don't ask me why,” said the guard, turning away.

Success. Katie and David met each other's eyes and barely restrained themselves from whooping out loud.
Katie turned to her uncle in jubilation. “Uncle Alex!” she whispered. “You did—”

But her cry of triumph broke off, unspoken. Alex did not look jubilant at all. A flush had flooded his face and he rose unsteadily to his feet.

What on earth could be wrong?

Their uncle had just accomplished something amazing. He had done many amazing things, in fact—amazing for him, anyway. He had left his home in the woods and taken to the highway for the first time in practically forever. He had traveled almost six hundred miles in a single day—she had seen the map. He had eaten fast food and liked it, even. He had outrun three thugs in black suits and outsmarted a hostile guard. And he had just talked their way in to see one of the highest-ranking officials in the U.S. government.