Atropos (15 page)

“Thanks, Mark. When you come back, we can talk about what your father ought to do when the farm bill comes out of committee.”

“Good. I can bowl him over at the party with my mature wisdom.”

If he can recognize it, Ainley thought.

Mark came back in a robe so red it could be found in the dark. They had a laugh over it, then sat and talked about the farm bill. When they were done, Ainley looked at his watch and said, “Well, I think I’ll take that shower you mentioned.”

“Good,” Mark said. “I’ll start getting dressed.” He started walking toward the room Ainley had given him.

“Oh, Mark,” Ainley said.

Mark looked back over his shoulder. “Yes?”

“You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, it’s just curiosity on my part.”

Mark was amiable. “Okay,” he said.

“Why did you have your father invite Regina Hudson and her fiancé?”

“Trotter,” Mark said. “His name is Allan Trotter. Boy, did I get an earful of him. But I didn’t.”

“You didn’t ?”

“Didn’t get Dad to invite them. It was strictly his own idea. Maybe he’s a member of the same club as you and my mother.”

“Club?”

Mark grinned. “The ‘It’s a Shame You Two Broke Up Club.’” He shrugged. “It wouldn’t have worked out, in any case. Regina could never have loved me as much as she loves this Trotter. In a way, I’m kind of eager to get a look at him.”

“I had the same idea.”

“Besides, Regina is a terrific girl, but the older I get, the more I see she’s not my type.”

Ainley rubbed his beard. “What is your type?”

Mark’s grin turned sly. “We don’t have enough time to go into that. Maybe Dad just wants to make things interesting for the Russians. Especially this new guy, Dudakov. He seems to be important enough to have been one of the first to know that Regina’s mother was tired of spying for the KGB.”

Ainley thought about it for a second. Now it was his turn to grin. “That should indeed be entertaining. But isn’t it a little subtle for the Senator?”

Mark laughed. “You should have more respect for your employer,” he said.

“I have always had the greatest respect for the Van Horn family,” Ainley replied.

“And that, my friend, is unresponsive—and you know it.”

“You’ve learned
something
in law school, I see.”

“We could always
ask
my father, I suppose.”

“Yes,” Ainley said. “Perhaps we should.”

Mark went to get dressed.

S
PECIAL AGENT JOE ALBRIGHT
was nervous as he waited for the elevator that would bring him to the offices of Rines Investigations. He wondered what the maniacs who ran the Agency had in store for him
this
time. He’d never been summoned like this, in the middle of the day, to come get orders from Rines, at least not since Rines had supposedly gone out on his own. Usually they met at the Lincoln Memorial, like tourists, or on line at a bank, or something like that.

It had been different, of course, before Rines had left the Bureau. Then he just had Albright report to his office. Now things were a lot more complicated. As Rines (and Trotter, on those rare occasions Joe spoke to him) never got tired of saying, Joe was now the Agency’s main man in the FBI. They were depending on him.

And thank you so very goddam much, Joe thought bitterly.
I
never wanted to get involved in this sort of crap in the first place.

He had Rines to thank for this. Joe had been getting along very nicely, working for the Bureau out of the Portland, Oregon, office. One day, he’d had orders passed along to him—orders, he later found out, that originated with Rines—that he was to find a man named Allan Trotter and bring him to Washington, D.C. He should have known something was wrong when they gave him fifteen different descriptions for this Trotter character, and told him not to threaten the man in any way.

All Albright had done was follow orders. But before he was done with that one simple assignment, he knew who Trotter was, and he knew a certain small office building in Silver Spring, Maryland, just past the District line, was more than it appeared to be. The way these people thought, that meant they either had to recruit him, or kill him.

Of course, they’d never planned to kill him. Rines had sniffed him out for the mysterious whoever who actually
ran
the Agency. Joe sometimes wondered what kind of being this Trotter was willing to take orders from, but never out loud.

Joe pushed the elevator button again, which was dumb but made him feel better. About ten seconds later the doors slid open, and he got on with a bunch of other silent, impatient people. You’d think they were
all
spies.

It was too crowded for Joe to get to the buttons. He said, “Eleven please,” to the woman nearest the control panel. He was glad that his voice didn’t crack.

Now that he was safely on the elevator, at least one of his fears was receding. He’d been more nervous than he’d wanted to admit about running into someone from the Bureau. It wasn’t just that he’d been looking around for something to worry about, either. It could happen. Rines hadn’t moved far away from his old haunts at Justice, and there were a lot of insurance companies and things like that here. None on the eleventh floor, though. A smart agent—and they were practically all smart—would wonder why Special Agent Albright would be consulting a private eye, even a private eye who’d once been pretty big in the Bureau.

Of course, they had a cover story worked up to use if they needed one—Joe was coming in to get Rines’s take on a bank robber Rines had arrested during his days with the Bureau—but it sounded pretty lame to Joe.

Number 11 lit up above the door of the elevator, and the door slid open. Joe muttered excuse mes as he elbowed his way out. He walked a few steps, opened a door and gave his name to Rines’s receptionist, who showed him to the man’s office and announced him.

Rines got up and actually walked around his desk in order to shake hands with Joe. The man was constantly showing him these little unforced rituals of courtesy and respect. That was one reason that, no matter what Rines had done to him, Joe had a tough time disliking him.

“Sit down, Joe,” Rines said.

Joe sat.

“We’ve got a big job for you tonight.”

“I’ve been expecting this. I don’t know if I can do it.”

There was sincere confusion on Rines’s face. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t be coy, all right?”

“I’m not being coy.”

“You have a big job for me? After making me practically sneak away from the Bureau and come here in person? You want me to bag somebody, don’t you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. For God’s sake, Joe.”

“Now you’re going to tell me the Agency would never stoop to such a thing.”

“Now I’m going to tell you that in the
rare event
we are forced to stoop to such a thing, we call upon a professional wetworker to do it. Is that clear?”

The Agency was a whole different culture. Here the man had more or less just confessed to having the occasional murder committed, but Joe was the one who felt sheepish.

Joe cleared his throat. “Why the big buildup, then?”

“You’re about to get an assignment that means meeting your boss.”

Joe supposed it didn’t make any difference—he was in this outfit for life, anyway. At least he could satisfy his curiosity about whoever it was who could make Trotter jump through hoops.

“What’s the assignment?”

“The Congressman will tell you himself.”

“Congressman?”

“You’ll recognize him,” Rines assured him. “Can you think of a better cover for the Agency?”

Joe rubbed his lip. “No,” he said, “I guess not.”

“Neither could he.” Rines stood up. “Come on,” he said. “Be quiet, though. He’s probably on the phone.”

Rines eased the door open and allowed Joe to precede him into the room. Rines had been right. Joe
did
recognize him. It was that Southern one, the one who’d had a stroke a while ago. The one, Joe remembered now, who was chairman of the House Intelligence Oversight Committee. The cover got better and better.

The Congressman was in fact on the phone. Joe could hear both sides of the conversation, because the old man was leaning back in a chair with his eyes closed and his hands folded across his lap, talking into a speaker phone.

“No, Senator, I understand how busy a man in your position can be. I’ve put plenty of people on hold, myself.” He chuckled.

Joe was amazed to hear that rich, Dixie voice coming from the wasted body of the man in the chair. It was almost as if the Congressman were lip-syncing to a recording of a healthy man’s voice.

“To tell you the truth,” the Congressman went on, “I never expected to talk to you personally at all.”

“Nonsense,” a voice boomed from the speaker. That was Senator Van Horn. “Always time to talk to one of my colleagues. How are you coming along? You sound quite well.”

“Well,” the Congressman said, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m
quite
well, but I’m feeling well enough to try to wangle an invitation to your party tonight.”

“What? Oh—oh, of course! I’ll arrange it with my secretary. Needless to say, if I’d known you were feeling up to going out again, you would have gotten one of the first invitations.”

“That’s awfully kind of you, Senator; I know this is really the most atrocious bad manners—”

“Not at all.”

“Very
kind, but I understand both the Party’s major candidates will be there, and I haven’t had a chance to talk to them yet, being laid up and all. And since I don’t really think I’m going to be up to going to the convention, I thought—”

“Please, Congressman, no explanation is necessary. It will be an honor to have you.”

“Well, I’m afraid I haven’t come to the end of my bad manners yet, Senator. I’ll have to ask if my nurse can come, too.”

“Well, give her name to my secretary, and she’ll take care of everything.”

“Actually,” the old man said, “it’s a male nurse, a young man named Joseph Albright. He’s terrific. You’ll never know he’s there.”

“That’ll be fine. I’ll put my secretary on now. Nice talking to you, Congressman.”

“Thanks again, Senator, see you tonight.”

There was a click, and a female voice came on the line. The Congressman gave her details, said good-bye. He sat up and strained a feeble arm toward the button that would break the connection. Joe was going to do it for him, but thought better of it. It took the old man a good fifteen seconds to reach the button, and when he did he scrabbled around the top of the box before he could push it.

He collapsed back in his chair, puffing as if he’d just run a mile. Joe was beginning to think that if the Congressman really wanted to go out tonight, he’d be better off getting a real nurse.

“So you’re Albright,” the Congressman said. He smiled. The smile was lopsided, but it did involve both sides of his face. Either the stroke he’d had had been fairly mild, or this old man was curing himself through sheer willpower. “I’ve heard a lot of good things about you.”

“I’m glad to hear that, sir.”

“That boy Trotter thinks you’re the ant’s ankles.”

“I’m honored.”

“What do you think about him?”

Oh, boy,
Joe thought. “I ... I think he’s a remarkable human being, sir.”

The old man laughed. “Remarkable. I like that. That’s the word, all right. Remarkable. You’re a very tactful boy, Albright.”

Joe felt a twinge of anger at the word “boy,” but he decided to be tactful and stifle it. Besides, he’d just called Trotter a boy; it probably wasn’t a racial thing. Even if it were, the only thing he could do about it was pull his weapon and shoot Rines and the old man. He sure as hell couldn’t pound the desk and resign in a huff.

“Tactful,” the Congressman went on. “You’ve got to be surprised to find me the boss of this outfit, but you don’t say anything about it.”

“I try to take things as they come, sir.”

“I saw your hand twitch when I tried to hang up the damned phone. Why didn’t you help a poor old man?”

“I figured you’re used to giving orders. If you wanted someone to push the button, you would have said so.”

“All right, then. All right. You’re going to be my male nurse tonight. Basically, you just have to help me upstairs, carry my medicine, like that.
And
keep your eyes and ears open, but you already know how to do that.”

“I assume nobody at this party is going to make me as an FBI man.”

“That’ll be taken care of,” Rines said. “Don’t even worry about it.”

“Just bring your piece,” the old man said.

Joe raised an eyebrow.

“I may need to borrow it.” The Congressman was grim. “I may need it to shoot a Russian son of a bitch or two.”

T
ROTTER HAD BEEN PLANNING
to take a cab from the hotel to Senator Van Horn’s party, but that was before the Congressman’s phone call. Now they drove up in a stretch Cadillac limousine, a very special one. Inside those shiny black panels was armor that would stop anything short of an 88-millimeter shell. All the windows were bulletproof. The driver was an employee of the Agency, though he probably didn’t know it. Trotter looked at the back of the driver’s head through another sheet of bulletproof glass, saw the well-trimmed salt-and-pepper hair and the old scars on his neck, and decided the man probably thought he was working for Army Intelligence. It wouldn’t do to ask.

This limousine symbolized two facets of the Congressman’s genius in setting up the Agency. One, hardly anybody who worked for it was aware of it. If anybody were to get the notion that it would be interesting to learn what this driver could be forced to say, the man would hold out as long as he could. When he spilled, he could spill nothing but misinformation, because that’s all he would know.

The other neat trick was that the Congressman never let the Agency’s assets lie idle. This car belonged to the Agency, but to the world it belonged to TranSecure, an outfit with branches in major cities that specialized in renting bulletproof vehicles to people who thought they were in danger. And who could afford high rental fees.