Iron Orchid (26 page)

“Got it.”

Lance closed his cell phone, picked up his desk phone and entered a twelve-digit number that would ring the cell phones of every man and woman in his unit. “Listen up, everybody; Teddy Fay has been spotted at Saks Fifth Avenue, that’s between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth. Everybody converge on Saks
right now,
no delay. When last seen Fay was wearing a tweed topcoat, a felt hat, a broken nose and a brown Vandyke beard. He’s carrying a red shopping bag with wrapped gifts inside.” He repeated the instructions, then dialed the front desk. “This is Cabot; I want a car out front
now.”
He ran for the elevator.

HOLLY WAS TALKING to a police detective when her cell phone rang and she got Lance’s message. “I have to go,” she said. “I’ll talk to you, Lieutenant, later.”

“You can’t go,” the detective said. “This is a police investigation.”

“No,” she said, “it’s a national security matter. Mr. Barker will continue to talk to you.” She sprinted toward Fifth Avenue, grateful that she had not worn high heels. Traffic was at a standstill, and she threaded her way through it and ran into Saks through the center revolving doors. She immediately spotted a team member guarding the entrance and ran up to him. “What’s the word?”

“He’s upstairs somewhere,” the man replied. “Lance is scrambling everybody. In the meantime, we’re to watch the exits; we can use your help.”

“How did he get upstairs?”

“Elevator. An agent saw him.”

Holly ran for the rear of the store. She was about to go for the elevators when she saw the escalator. That would give her at least a quick look at each floor. She got on and headed up. On the second floor she got off, looked slowly around for as far as she could see. No tweed topcoat, not that he would still be wearing that. She got back on the escalator and began ascending, looking for a man with no coat at all.

AS TEDDY REACHED the fifth floor he caught sight of someone coming up the escalator whose clothes he coveted. The man got off on five, and so did Teddy. He followed the man, who turned immediately through a door marked “Employees Only.”

Teddy followed him to a men’s room, and as the man stood at a urinal, Teddy fetched him a hard chop across the back of his neck. The man collapsed as if he had no legs.

Teddy stripped off the man’s outer clothing and got into his outfit. He put his tweed cap in a pocket, then pulled off the man’s beard and put it on. A quick check of the mirror, and he was out of there, headed for the escalator.

He had no sooner stepped onto it than he saw, coming up, a red tam. Holly looked up and directly at him, then looked away. Had she spotted him? Maybe, but she wouldn’t recognize him. He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead as she passed him going up.

Teddy continued to the ground floor and got off the escalator. He walked, but not too quickly, toward the 49th Street exit, and as he did, people passing him waved and said, “Merry Christmas!” to him. “Merry Christmas!” he said back, and occasionally, “Ho, ho, ho.”

He saw the woman with the baby carriage standing between him and the door. She no longer had the carriage, and she was looking desperately around the ground floor. “Merry Christmas,” he said as he passed her.

“Yeah, same to you,” she said, not looking at him.

Out on the sidewalk Teddy started walking toward Madison Avenue, looking for a cab. The air was filled with sirens, and people were still running away from Rockefeller Center. He made it to Madison and got lucky with the bus. A moment later, he was riding up Madison, and at 50th Street, he got a glimpse of the continuing chaos. He sat down next to a little boy.

“Hi, Santa,” the boy said.

“Hi, there. Merry Christmas,” Teddy said.

“Can I have a micro-motorcycle for Christmas this year?”

Teddy had no idea what a micro-motorcycle was, but the boy’s mother was shaking her head violently and mouthing “No!”

“You bet!” Teddy said, and the woman looked shocked. “If you’re really good, I’ll bring you two.”

He couldn’t very well take off the Santa suit on the bus; the kid would go nuts. He waited until he got off at 63rd Street before he stepped into a doorway, stripped off the costume and dumped it into the nearest trash basket, then he continued east, toward Lexington and his shop.

LANCE STOOD ON THE STAGE of the little theater on the twelfth floor of the Barn and stared at his agents. Kerry Smith sat beside him, looking depressed.

“Holly, what’s the story on Rockefeller Center?”

“Some cab driver went nuts,” she said. “He abandoned his taxi in the middle of Forty-eighth Street and walked into the Plaza with a gun in each hand. He shot a skater and two people in the arcade before Ham shot him. Oh, Teddy Fay shot him, too. Twice.”

“What happened with Teddy?” Lance asked. “I thought we had him trapped in Saks.”

A man stood up. “We sealed the place immediately, like you said, and when backup arrived, we scoured every floor. We found nothing.”

“Then he couldn’t have been in the store. Maybe he went up one flight, then came back down and left the building.”

“We had it sealed very quickly,” he said. “I can’t explain what happened.”

“Any theories?” Lance asked the group.

Holly tentatively raised her hand.

“Yes, Holly?”

“Maybe a Santa Claus suit,” she said.

“You think he was wearing a
Santa Claus suit?”
Lance asked incredulously.

“Maybe. There was a Santa Claus going down as I was going up. On the fifth floor there was a commotion; apparently, somebody had found an unconscious man in the men’s room. I’m just connecting the dots.”

Another woman stood up. “A Santa Claus walked right past me at the Forty-ninth Street exit and wished me a Merry Christmas,” she said.

Holly raised her hand again. “We found a red shopping bag in the sixth floor men’s room,” she said. “It was full of gift-wrapped, empty boxes. It’s being checked for prints right now, but I’m not holding my breath.”

Another agent stood up. “Listen,” he said, “how are we ever going to take this guy without a description? I mean, we had a good description this time, but nobody was looking for a guy in a Santa Claus suit.”

Lance wished to God he had an answer to that one.

FIFTY-TWO

IRENE FOSTER WAS BACK from New York in time for work on Monday morning, but she was a little late getting to her office at Langley. As she passed Hugh English’s office, she saw him looking through a stack of papers on his desk. “Morning, Hugh,” she said, sticking her head through the doorway. “Sorry I’m late; I just got back from New York.” She didn’t like it when Hugh got in before she did. Every time that happened, something invariably went wrong.

“Irene,” English said, “do you know somebody in Operations called Charles Lockwood?”

She did not, and she immediately had an awful thought. “Sounds familiar,” she said, trying to breathe normally. “Why?”

“I got a memo from payroll this morning, saying Lockwood is three weeks behind on his time sheets, and they won’t pay him, until he’s up-to-date. That’s what troubles me.”

“What’s that, Hugh?”

“If he’s turning in time sheets, that means he’s executive level, not just a clerical worker, and I swear, I know every mother’s son at the executive level who works for me.”

Irene walked forward and held out her hand. “Give me the memo,” she said. “I’ll sort it out.”

“Thank you,” he said, handing it over. English hated dealing with any administrative matter.

Irene took a deep breath; she might as well get it over with, she thought. “Hugh, have you got a second?”

“Sure. Take a pew.” He waved her to a chair.

She took off her coat and dumped it on the other chair, then sat down. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” she said, “and I’ve decided to put in for retirement.”

English blinked in surprise. “How long have you got in?” he asked.

“Twenty-seven years.”

“Then you’re fully vested in your pension, I guess.”

“I guess I am.”

English sat back in his chair. “Irene, I just can’t imagine the place without you. I mean, you’ve been in this office with me for as long as I’ve occupied this chair, and we knew each other a long time before that, didn’t we?”

“Yes, we did, Hugh. Better than twenty years, anyway.”

“I’ll probably have to assign two people to do your job.”

“Thank you, Hugh, but my shoes won’t be all that hard to fill.”

“I’m not going to count on that. What are you going to do with yourself?”

“Funny you should mention that; I was on the Internet last night, looking at houses in the Caribbean.”

“Where in the Caribbean?”

“I’ve heard good things about St. Thomas and St. Barts.”

“St. Thomas was looking overgrown, last time I was there,” English said, “but St. Barts is very nice.”

“It seems a bit more expensive than the other islands, but I’ll take a harder look at it.”

“Twenty-seven years,” English said, shaking his head. “I’m coming up on thirty, myself. It’s probably time I got out of here, too.”

“I can’t see you in retirement, Hugh.”

“Well, it’s become clear that I’m never going to get the top job, unless Kate Rule Lee drops dead, and I’m not going to count on that. When do you want to go?”

“I guess as soon as I can break somebody in,” she said.

“You got some ideas on who that might be?”

“I think either Bergin or Masters,” Irene replied. “They’re both good men; I suppose you should pick whomever you like best.”

“You can’t think of any women for the job?”

“There are a couple a level down who are comers,” she said, “but you need somebody with more field experience I think. As much as I’d like to see a woman in the job, I think you’re going to have to make do with Bergin or Masters for the time being.”

“Or both of them,” English said. “Okay, I’ll try and make a decision today, and you can start working with him.”

“Thanks, Hugh. It’s been fun, and I appreciate all you’ve done for me.” He had done fuck-all for her, she recalled. She was only in this job now because Kate Rule had wanted a woman high in Operations.

“I was glad to do it,” English said benevolently. “You deserve a happy retirement.”

Irene got up and walked to the door. “I’ll take care of this,” she said, holding up the memo. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Hey,” English said, “maybe Mary and I will join you in St. Barts.”

“Happy thought,” she said, quivering with disgust. She headed for her office, the memo clutched tightly in one hand, her coat in the other.

She hung up her coat and got behind her desk. She inserted her computer card into the machine, and it came on automatically, having read her codes. “Dear God,” she said, looking at the memo while the computer booted. “Don’t let this be Teddy.”

IT WAS TEDDY. Fifteen minutes later she had read the complete file of Charles Lockwood, and while it was credible, Teddy hadn’t bothered to do his usual thorough job on background. Lockwood was Princeton ‘88 and before that, Groton, but the Groton transcript was missing, and there wasn’t much on his parents. She’d have to call Teddy as soon as she got out of the office. She picked up a phone and called payroll.

“Payroll, Miriam Walker speaking.”

“Miriam, it’s Irene Foster in Operations.”

“Hi, Irene.”

“I’m calling for Hugh English about Charles Lockwood’s time sheets for the past three weeks.”

“Can you get them to me today, Irene? I’d really like to pay the guy.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Why?”

“Lockwood is on special assignment, and he’s unreachable for administrative matters.”

“For how long?”

“Another month, six weeks. It’s impossible to put a date on it.”

“All right, I’ll mark his record as such, but I’m going to rely on you to get him up-to-date when he returns.” She’d be gone by then.

“I’ll ride herd on him. Where are you sending his paychecks?”

“Let me check,” she said, shuffling some papers. “An account in the Caymans,” she replied, finally.

“That sounds like our Charlie,” Irene said. “Thanks, Miriam. Bye-bye.” She hung up. It was unlike Teddy to be greedy, but she supposed that if he had created Lockwood—and after all, it had been her suggestion—the man would have to be paid in order to be credible.

She was relieved that she had announced her retirement to Hugh English, because she had just painted herself into a very tight corner. She had used her authority to authenticate Lockwood and thus, to protect Teddy, and Miriam Walker was certainly going to remember every detail of their conversation. She would remember that Irene had sounded as if she had known Charles Lockwood well. Maybe that “Our Charlie” had been a mistake.

She fed the memo from payroll into her shredder, which immediately reduced it to ash, then she logged on to the Agency mainframe and began looking at any assets they might have in St Barts. To her relief, there weren’t any: no station, no resident, no stringers. How many places were there left in the world where the Agency didn’t have, at the very least, a stringer? She wouldn’t have to worry about bumping into somebody she knew while she and Teddy were walking on the beach. Except in the unlikely event that Hugh English followed through on his retirement threat. She shuddered again.

AS IRENE WAS LEAVING the office that evening, Hugh English shouted at her as she passed his office.

“Yes, Hugh?”

“It’s going to be Bergin; you can start on him tomorrow morning.”

“Right”

“Did you get that payroll thing sorted out?”

“Yes. Turns out he’s an analyst in Intelligence. Somebody in payroll had entered the wrong division code on his pay record. You won’t hear from them again.”

“Thanks, Irene. Good luck on the house hunt.”

“Good night, Hugh.”

FIFTY-THREE

TEDDY WAS BACK in his shop with a spray bottle of Windex and a cloth, wiping everything down. He was going to have to move, soon; he was seeing way too many people on the streets who were looking for him. He had been very lucky to get out of the Rockefeller Center imbroglio without getting collared.