The Old Boys (29 page)

“It was my job to tell her what happened,” he said.

Again I offered no encouragement. It would have done no
good to tell him to shut up. Jack was spilling a secret. This was a rare, maybe even a unique event in his life.

He said, “I
had
to tell her. Two of the rapists were HIV positive. Paul and his rescue party shot them all dead, but it showed up in the autopsies.”

He looked ravaged.

I said, “Did you give her a blood test first?”

Jack said, “We would have to have had her permission to do that.”

“Needed her
permission
?”

“It’s the law.”

“But she had the test?”

“Yes, it came back negative.” Jack said. “But she didn’t believe the results.”

I was speechless. I had always wondered what genius had given Zarah the news. Jack Philindros, tomb of discretion, was the last person I would have suspected. At this point, in the nick of time, Charley appeared.

Harley was going to be all right. They had given him a pacemaker.

Exactly what the Hungarian doctor ordered. Charley was even happier than usual because he was the bearer of good tidings. And so he should have been.

“When are they going to do this?” I asked.

“They’re doing it right now,” Charley said. “If all goes well he can go home tomorrow. Harley will be right as rain. He can come to my place.”

After Charley left, Jack said, “Look, I’m sorry about the outburst,” he said. “I guess I didn’t know how much that business about Zarah had affected me until I started to talk about it.”

“Then it’s just as well you got it out of your system,” I said.

“Maybe. But she shouldn’t have to go through anything like that again.”

“I agree,” I said. “But it’s up to her, isn’t it?”

“That’s probably what Patchen told himself,” Jack said.

“He
was a headquarters man.”

So was Jack, of course. Even when he was posted overseas he stayed behind a desk in an embassy while third parties made the messes and cleaned them up. He just read about it, wrote about it, and signed the vouchers. For that matter, I wasn’t so very different.

Jack said, “‘He was a headquarters man?’ What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Blood and ink don’t smell anything alike.”

Jack looked me over, shrewd eyes the color of brown eggshells and just as expressive.

By now it was rush hour. The automobiles on Massachusetts Avenue alone, bumper to bumper from Union Station to the Maryland line, were probably worth more, collectively, than the gross national product of most of the countries that owned embassies on Embassy Row. I have never in my life commuted. Like Harley, shank’s mare has been my transport and I’ve been lucky enough, thanks to taxpayers like these idle folks in their idling Fords and Toyotas, to live most of my life in cities where walking is a pleasure.

Washington is one of those towns, if only in the cool weeks between mid-October and mid-March when open-air exercise is possible without drowning in your own sweat. Right now I was walking past the vice president’s fortified residence, on my way to the Wisconsin Avenue Whole Foods store to buy some groceries and be snubbed by the politically fastidious regular clientele, who could tell at a glance if one’s shopping cart contained vegetables contaminated by chemicals and pesticides or chickens that had not ranged free before their heads were chopped off.

I felt oxygen-deprived after breathing exhaust fumes during nearly an hour of uphill walking. No wonder the drivers looked so dazed, so overcome. Someone had fallen into step beside me. I
looked over my shoulder and saw two more pedestrians, one about ten meters to the rear, the other across the street. Our old friends A, B, and C again. This time they weren’t Russians or Chinese or clean-cut Ohio boys with Glocks in their jeans, but fellows in matching dark raincoats and polyester tweed hats.

As I turned into the cross street that led to Wisconsin Avenue, the one beside me, a stocky broad-shouldered man with Nixonian five o’clock shadow, looked up at me and smiled.

“Hi,” he said.

Let’s call him “A.”

I said, “Good evening.”

A said, “My friends and I would like it if you can join us in for a drink. Our place is just around the corner.”

“Very kind of you,” I said. “But I have some shopping to do.”

“This won’t take long. For old times’ sake.”

“Maybe some other time.”

“Right now would be better for us.”

A was showing me something. It was one of those flip-open leather cases you see on television when federal agents flash their ID and everyone either becomes cooperative or starts shooting. Plainly A regarded it as a talisman. I took it out of his hand—no tug of war; he let me have it. A picture, unmistakably A, a fictitious name, Robert F. Gordon, and the official name of the Outfit embossed above its official seal. What, no badge?

I handed it back to him and said, “I thought that secret agents never carried credentials.”

“Times have changed, Horace,” A said. “This way, please.”

Squat and muscular and sure of his strength, he reminded me of the man on the stairway in Moscow.

We were standing next to the iron fence that marks the boundary of the vice president’s grounds, not the best place for a clandestine conversation. This perimeter bristled with hidden cameras and listening devices and motion detectors, and the times being what they were, maybe even atomizers filled with some kind of secret gas that freezes trespassers in their tracks. His feet planted
on the sidewalk, A had taken what police training manuals call the stance of authority, not exactly blocking my way but giving me a broad muscle magazine hint that it would be unwise to try to step around him.

I said, “Tell you what, my friend. I’ll meet whoever’s waiting for me around the corner at the café in Whole Foods in half an hour. Alone. He or she should pick up two tomatoes on the way in and place them on the table when sitting down with me.”

“That’s not what we had in mind,” A said.

“Life is full of adjustments.”

“You’re making unnecessary difficulties.”

“Well, you and your friends can overpower me if you think that’s a good idea,” I said. “But for all you know I have a friend watching over me, ready to dial 911 and take pictures of the mugging with a fancy cell phone while waiting for the cops to arrive. Or maybe the vice president’s security cameras will pick up the action. ‘Goon Squad Jumps Notorious Ex-Spy.’ The ten o’clock news should love it.”

“One minute,” A said. He stepped away, turned his back, and made a call on his phone. Then he said, “Okay, the Whole Foods café at seventeen fifty-five hours.”

“I’ll be there,” I replied. “And no offense, but I’d rather not see you or your friends in the elevator or shopping for cabbages.”

A controlled himself quite nicely.

At precisely five minutes of six, just as I had begun to drink a scalding hot caffe latte that had too much milk and too little coffee in it, a thirtyish couple wearing barn coats over office attire joined me in the café. The man glumly placed two bright-red vine-ripened tomatoes on the table. He had palmed them like a shoplifter, as if they might be of overwhelming interest to whoever was shadowing us. The woman was slender with buzz-cut hair and discreet gold earrings and slightly unfocused eyes, large and blue, behind contact lenses. She did not return my smile. Neither did her colleague. Both wore wedding rings. The rings were of different designs. Apparently they were not married to each other
except professionally. They looked like GS-12s or -13s, go-ahead young officers who had just started to rise through the career bottleneck that would probably be corked, for them as for most, at GS-14.

They looked around in dismay. All the tables in the café were occupied by homeward-bound lawyers and such, so we were cheek by jowl with a roomful of fruit-juice and latte drinkers, none of whom had a right to overhear our conversation.

“These are not ideal circumstances for this meeting,” the man said.

How right he was from his point of view. Clearly and distinctly I said, “My name is Horace Hubbard. What shall I call you?”

“I’m Don,” he muttered. “This is… Mary.”

“Just act like you’ve never heard the word
security,
Don and Mary, and everything should be all right. Want something to drink? My treat. Mary? No?”

They shook their heads in unison. Their eyes were fixed on me, matching what they observed to whatever description had been provided to them. I guessed that I had been painted as a difficult, unpredictable, a dinosaur in disgrace. I had the impression that I was going to conform to their worst expectations no matter how hard I tried to be good company.

I said, “If you’re not thirsty why don’t we just get this over with? What can I do for you?”

“We have some unpleasant news for you,” Don said. “You’re wanted for murder in Moscow.”

Of course I was. I asked no questions and, I hope, showed no sign of worry.

“I’m innocent.”

“They have an eyewitness,” Don said.

Of course they did. I said, “Do they also have an extradition treaty with the United States?”

Don’s turn not to answer.

Mary said, “That’s not all, Horace. A rare and valuable painting by Edward Hicks, known to have belonged to the late Paul
Christopher, has surfaced in the Paris art market.” To go with her big blue eyes she had a sweet little-girl voice. “According to our information, the painting was sold privately,” she said. “If it was sold by an American citizen, that person has broken federal law.”

I sipped my latte and held my tongue. This had the usual effect. My questioners filled the silence.

Mary said, “You’ve spent a lot of money lately, Horace. Airplane tickets, hotels, fine restaurants.”

I didn’t remember the fine restaurants, but denied nothing.

“This spending pattern is interesting,” Mary said. “It makes people wonder.”

“Makes what people wonder about what?” I asked.

“Well, two things, actually,” Don said with an edge of sarcasm in his voice. “Why you’re spending all this money and where you got it.”

“The answer to the first question is common knowledge,” I said. “I’m trying to find my cousin, Paul Christopher.”

“But he’s dead.”

“That’s the official report. I happen not to accept its accuracy.”

Don said, pouncing, “Where did you get the money?”

I said, “What a rude question, Don. That’s none of your business, is it?”

“The IRS might consider it their business.”

“You mean you’re not with the IRS?”

Mary blinked rapidly, as if the insult—IRS indeed!—was a speck of grit that had gotten into her eye. Don flushed and injected more menace into his tone.

“You may think this situation is funny,” he said. “But I assure you it is not.”

“Then maybe you should tell me what this is all about.”

“We’ve been trying to do that.”

“Then please try harder. You’re too subtle for me.”

After a long moment of hard eye contact, Don said, “Mary, you try.”

Mary,
the good cop, said, “Actually, Horace, it’s pretty simple. We’re just trying to give you a friendly heads-up.”

“Thank you very much. About what? And why?”

“For old times’ sake,” Mary said. “You’re in danger. You should take precautions before it’s too late.”

First you try to kidnap a fellow in broad daylight, then you advise him to take precautions? Who wrote this comic strip?

“Funny,” I said. “Just days ago I had this same talk with some fine young folks in Budapest and before that in Moscow. Except that they were armed to the teeth. Friends of yours?”

Don said, “We don’t know anything about that.”

I believed him. He and Mary weren’t high enough on the totem pole to be told about such interesting people as Kevin.

“Look, it’s very simple,” Mary said. “We’re fond of people like you. You’re well and gratefully remembered. But you and your old-timer friends are causing a lot of unnecessary trouble. You’re getting between our people and an important target. What is desired—and this comes from the very highest level—is for you and your shuffleboard team to get out of the way. And stay out of the way.”

Maybe Mary wasn’t the good cop after all.

“I don’t quite follow,” I said. “All I’m doing is looking for my missing cousin who, if I may say so, should really be remembered fondly and gratefully.”

Mary’s glassy eyes came into focus behind the contact lenses. Through her teeth she said, “Look, Horace. The message is simple. I’ll deliver it one more time. Get out of the way. If you’d rather make fun of us than do the sensible thing, be my guest. You can be debonair or you can be something else that starts with
d
.”

What a shocking thing for Mary to say. I stared at her.

“You’ve embarrassed us in the past,” she said. “All we’re asking is that you don’t get you and your pathetic friends killed and embarrass us even worse.” With a squeal of chair legs, Mary got to her feet. “I hope that’s not too much to ask,” she said. “Because this is the last time we’ll ask you nicely.”

The
Outfit certainly was using a tougher vocabulary since it started recruiting female case officers.