Whirlwind (10 page)

An inquisitive clerk, a question she couldn’t answer some friend of Mitch’s might worry enough to stop by the house; he might worry more than that, and call the police.

Getting food was too risky. She’d have to endure her hunger until nightfall, and she was back on the road. There were plenty of restaurants on the interstate. No one would pay attention to her; no one would guess she was driving a stolen truck.

Frustrated and famished, Irina pushed Mitch’s collection of empty burger cartons onto the floor. A small green package caught her eye. She picked it up. Chewing gum. And, wouldn’t you know, there was only one stick left.

She decided to save it for later something to fool an empty stomach after she’d slept.

Sleep was more important than food anyway. Awake for more than twenty-four hours, her body ached from muscles that had been tense too long. Just a few more minutes, and she’d lie down and sleep and sleep and sleep.

She patted her hair. Almost dry. It had taken longer than she expected.

After changing its color with the dye she’d snatched up at that drugstore, she’d had no choice but to towel her hair hard and wait for Texas’s arid air to do the rest. A man like Mitch didn’t own a hair dryer Of course not.

Leaving the kitchen, she walked across the living room and into the bedroom. She glanced at the closet. Mitch was inside, immobilized nearly mummified by the duct tape she’d found in his carport. He’d quieted down at last, stopped his yelling. For that she was thankful. She didn’t want to tape his mouth. He’d already thrown up twice the predictable aftermath of a punch in the solar plexus and she knew a man with his mouth taped closed could choke to death on his own vomit.

Now in the bathroom, she studied herself in the mirror. Her hair had turned out better than she’d expected. No longer gold, but rather glossy brown, almost chestnut, the new color made her look… more American, I think. More ordinary. Part of the crowd.

Later, when she woke up, she’d see to her eyebrows. She’d thicken them with the makeup she’d bought, flattening their distinctive arch. She’d do something about her lips too. Pale lipstick waited on the sink, ready to mask a red that men found too attractive. Then there was the question of her nails.

She’d bought a bottle of scarlet polish. She wasn’t sure she could bring herself to put it on. She’d never painted her nails, in truth had never used makeup at all. Father forbade it.

She ran a brush through her hair one last time. Surely it was dry enough. Even if it wasn’t, she could keep her eyes open no longer.

She stretched out on Mitch’s bed, nestling her head into his pillow. The air conditioner hummed in the background. Such a comforting sound. White noise. More relaxing than silence, really …. If she dreamed, she did not know it. Wrapped in sleep and forgetfulness, she knew nothing at all.

“Hey, Mitch! I know you’re in there. Your truck’s in the garage.”

What?

“Open up the door, boy. I’ve got something for you.” A man’s voice.

Drowsy and confused, she looked at the alarm clock on Mitch’s nightstand. A little before four-thirty in the afternoon.

“Quit fooling around and get out here.” Not urgent, but resolute.

Still fully dressed, Irina leapt out of bed. She jerked open the top drawer of Mitch’s dresser. A half dozen sets of underwear lay inside. Shedding her blue pullover, she snatched up a yellowed T-shirt.

“Mitch, I’m not leaving until I see your ugly face.” A friend joking at a friend.

Off with her bra, and on with the T-shirt. Fingers through her hair, mussing it. Pistol snatched from the nightstand, slipped behind her back. Quick to the closet. A groggy man tried to speak. Once, twice, three times duct tape crisscrossed his mouth. There still was no hatred in his eyes, and that was hard to deal with.

“Come on, Mitch. What are you doing in there?”

One last thing. The chewing gum. She popped it into her mouth, grinding it with her rear teeth.

She narrowed her eyes to slits, forced her mouth into a frown, tried to look as angrily sluttish as possible.

Her voice, her perfect pronunciation, was a problem. She knew she couldn’t credibly imitate the saw-toothed tones of a Texas bad girl. But maybe, just maybe, she could fake the next most dangerous thing: a recently relocated New Yorker.

Flinging the door open, she rasped, “Yeah, so whatchya want?”

A lightning-quick reading. A tall and dignified man. Older but not too old; “mature” was the proper word. Expensive grey whipcord trousers and a pricey desert-tan bushman’s shirt. An alpha male, no disguising that. But deferent and not threatening a man who glanced only briefly at distracting breasts barely concealed by a thin T-shirt.

He carried himself… he stood like … he seemed to be … A businessman? A lawyer? A doctor? Surely some sort of professional. And his smile? Why was he smiling with such… more than friendliness… with such affection?

He lifted his left hand. An inexpensive wedding band on his fourth finger told her he’d started poor, but a costly gold watch on his wrist proclaimed he had risen to a higher station. What was he? And …I do not believe this… what was he holding in that hand?

A white paper bag. A McDonald’s logo. Food! “This is for you. I figured you’d be getting pretty hungry. By the way, my name’s Charlie.”

Oam slammed down the telephone. Charlie, goddamn Charlie, was off the radar! The cunning sonofabitch hadn’t been on the ground two hours before he dumped his thoroughly bugged car, eluded a supposedly skilled FBI surveillance team, and merrily scampered off to who knew where.

Insult to injury, he now was in possession of a bag full of untraceable cash. A courier had met him at the airport, delivering a great big leather satchel to Charlie boy. At the time, the watchers didn’t know what was in it. Now they did, and there was little hope that Charlie would use the twenty thousand dollars in sequentially marked bills that Sam had given him. The evil old bastard would leave no trail at all.

“I’d kill him if I could.” Sam didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until he saw Claude cock a patrician eyebrow and slowly shake his head.

Sam still wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing by letting the DCI in on Whirlwind’s secrets not that he had any intention of letting the spymaster learn the most important secret of all. “I know, I know. His insurance policy, that goddamned Internet data vault.” Sam kneaded the bridge of his nose, trying to rub the agony out of his sinuses. Charlie McKenzie. As welcome as a penis canker. Harder to get rid of. “Come on, Claude, surely your people could-“

“Under ordinary circumstances, we’d turnipize him. You know, put him in a coma, leave him on life support for thirty years. We don’t dare try that now. Not if he’s hooked up a de adman brake.”

“What the devil is a de adman brake, anyway?”

The director of Central Intelligence steepled his fingers. “You ever ride the New York subway, Sam?”

“Please!”

Claude flicked an invisible speck of dust off his pin-striped lapel. “I thought not. You don’t exactly keep in touch with the common man, do you? No criticism implied. Anyway, when a subway train is in motion, the engineer squeezes two levers together. As long as he does, the train keeps rolling. If he loosens his grip falls over with a coronary or something the brake circuit closes and the train stops safely. Dead man’s brake. Charlie’s using a similar gimmick. He’ll have arranged some sort of signal maybe he’s supposed to send an e-mail every Friday to the same address, or maybe visit a certain Web site once a month. I doubt if we’ll ever know. All we know is that if the signal doesn’t get sent, whatever is in his vault will be broadcast automatically to every journalist in the world.”

“There’s nothing you can do?”

“A waste of time. Charlie’s on a first-name basis with half the hackers on the watch list. They’ll have set up an uncrackable system for him.”

“Get your people to work anyway!” Sam slapped his palm on his desk. “Getting rid of that bastard is an alternative I want open to us if…” A smile formed on his lips. He had a fresh idea. “What about his kids? If we had them, we’d have leverage.”

“I already thought of that.” Claude sighed. “His youngest son is an anthropologist. He’s somewhere in Borneo, but who knows where? It’d take months to locate him. The other one his name is Scott is a surgeon with the Indian Health Service in Arizona “

Sam snapped, “Right. Free health care for the redskins. I’d like to see that expense lined out of the budget. Have the FBI bust the little twerp. Put him in custody as a material witness or something.”

“Too late. Young Dr. Scott McKenzie has a private pilot’s license. He disappeared out of the Three Turkeys clinic this afternoon, flew off somewhere in his Cessna. We’re running a search, but it’s a big country out there. Little dirt airstrips all over the place. He could be anywhere.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “Charlie got word to him? How did that happen? I thought we were tapping every phone he touches.”

“Maybe his daughter made the call. She’s been in the Israeli embassy since “

“What!?!” He was on his feet. “She’s where?” A floral paperweight shattered against the wall. “Why the fuck, just why the fuck” his trash can spilled its paper guts across a carpet of presidential blue “hasn’t anyone told me this wonderful fucking piece of news?” Was he reaching for Claude’s shirt? Why, yes, he was. And his hand was no longer a hand, it was a fist. “That motherfucking cocksucking sonofabitch, I’ll “

What will you do? he asked himself. Punch out the director of Central Intelligence? Go postal in the Executive Office Building?

Charlie fucking McKenzie. Insubordinate pricks like Charlie always drove him into…. .. pure…. .. crimson …… frenzied…

Swallow it, he ordered himself. Clench your teeth and swallow as hard as you can.

It wasn’t easy. He did it anyway. He didn’t like the way it tasted, liked even less the expression on Claude’s face. Inhaling deeply, he lifted a carafe of ice water. Claude flinched. Sam wanted to smash the pitcher in his face. Instead he poured a glass, drank, and poured another. “I, uh, shit! Sorry, Claude. My allergies. It’s my meds. I have a reaction to them. Gotta get the prescription changed.”

Claude gave him a long slow look. Sam recognized it for what it was: wary reappraisal. “You all right now?”

Sam slumped back in his seat. “Yes,” he murmured weakly, “yes, I am. I apologize for that. Really. Christ, Claude, I take a tablet and something comes over me. Who’s our point man at the FDA? I should talk to him about this stuff. It’s a public menace.” He reached into his pocket, removed a small brown bottle of harmless allergy pills, and with a flourish emptied them into an ashtray.

Claude seemed to buy the act. “Can I get you something? Should I call someone?”

“No, thank you. The last thing I need is more chemicals in my bloodstream. I’ll be fine.” Sure he would. As long as he kept it controlled, and as long as there weren’t any more nasty surprises, and as long as that cunt McKenzie…

Don’t go there, Sam. Keep the reins held tight.

He puffed up his cheeks and blew a long sigh. “Look, just forget about it, okay? Let’s get back to the problem.” Eyes firmly locked on Claude’s, Sam seemed a soft-spoken model of rationality. “McKenzie’s daughter, her name’s Carly, right? How come I haven’t been briefed that she’s hiding out with our Hebrew brethren?”

Claude still looked like a nervous man who didn’t want to provoke another explosion. “We’ve been emailing you status reports every hour.”

Sam bit his tongue. “I didn’t see it. Tell me what it said.”

Sam knew little about computers, distrusted the things, considered them beneath his dignity. His secretary, Josephine, was supposed to print out e-mails so he could dictate his replies. Today, she’d left early.

Claude, faintly amused at a superior’s weakness, answered, “Ms. McKenzie, accompanied by her two children names Molly and Jason and six pieces of luggage, entered the Israeli embassy at approximately noon today. I expect she will remain there until… well, I suppose until all this is over. We can’t touch her, Sam.”

The Mossad, Sam thought. Ak.a. the Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks. Charlie was asshole buddies with them. They’d give the daughter and the grandchildren sanctuary as long as Charlie wanted.

“Do you think she’s helping him?”

“Unlikely. Charlie always made a big deal about keeping his family life and professional life separate. If anybody in the Agency tried to … well… there was this chap named Cole who asked Charlie’s wife to do a courier job. Charlie found out. Now Cole signs his name with his left hand. The right one doesn’t work very well.”

Sam drummed his fingers on his desk. “If his daughter isn’t involved, how did he get all that cash?”

“Someone the Israelis, I presume ran a wire transfer through an off shore bank. Then a courier flew up from Belize. He gave Charlie the goods as soon as he deplaned.”

Sam’s sinuses throbbed. His eyes watered with the pain. “You’re saying I have to worry about the Mossad too?”

“No, I think not. They won’t directly involve themselves. Moving money is one thing. Mounting operations inside U.S. borders is another.”

Pressing his fingers hard against his eyebrows, Sam muttered, “Great. Charlie’s talking to Israeli intelligence, and we can’t hear what he’s saying. They’ve already sent him a bucket of laundered cash probably with clean credit cards and fake ID. Next time, they’ll send him… what? That’s the question that worries me.”

Claude nodded. “The other worrisome question if you don’t mind me asking is how is the president taking this?”

“Better than expected.” Sam left it at that. No need to tell the DCI that, immediately following his morning security briefing, the man in the Oval Office had politely politeness being a hallmark of that fundamentally decent, fundamentally dim soul described the fate that awaited Sam if a certain recently stolen object was not recovered “toot sweet, Sam, very toot sweet.”

Immediately following that remarkably unpleasant conversation, Sam pale and shaking returned to his office and started working the phone.

First call: the secretaries of state and defense. Second call: the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Then calls to everyone else every federal law enforcement agency down to and including the park rangers. After that, the spook shops. There were twenty-eight, count ‘em, twenty-eight intelligence-gathering organizations tucked away in various federal agencies. Sam alerted them all, even the yahoos at the Department of Agriculture.