Alien Diplomacy (41 page)

“Apparently I do somewhere. We can look for it when we’re
back. Did anyone pay attention to where Marcia and Nathalie went after we left them?”

Kyle nodded. “Our sunglasses have mirroring inside, on the outer parts of the lenses.”

“You have rearview mirrored sunglasses? Really?”

He shrugged. “The C.I.A. has all the cool toys. Anyway, they watched us, then they walked off in the other direction.”

“They went out of range once we’d stopped again,” Len added.

“Why are the dogs still staring back there, then?”

Len shrugged. “Dogs have better senses of hearing and smell than we do. Do you want us to go back and follow them?”

I tried to sight along the same way Duchess was looking, since she was the best trained of the four dogs. As I did so, I saw that she was actually looking across the street. I could just see the Paraguayan Embassy in the distance, but that wasn’t what my dog was watching.

She was watching a man I recognized. I’d been seeing him a lot recently. “Why is Malcolm Buchanan hanging out down the street?”

The men with me all turned. Either Buchanan noticed or he had seen enough of whatever he was watching, because he wandered off in the opposite direction.

“Who’s he?” Len asked, sounding suspicious and willing to make Jeff proud in the defending my honor category.

“Yet another person from my Washington Wife class. Not one of the jerks. At least, as far as I know.”

“I believe he was watching you,” White said.

“I saw him earlier,” Len admitted. “But he didn’t seem interested in us.”

“Before.” This was now the third time I’d spotted Buchanan somewhere just hanging around.

“He was watching you,” Len said. “I just thought it was because he thought you were hot.” Len seemed to realize what he’d said, because he matched Kyle in the turning red department.

While Len busied himself with being embarrassed, I wondered if it was time for a restraining order, but dismissed the idea as a little too flattering toward myself. If Buchanan was following me, I had to figure it wasn’t to see if I wanted to have an illicit affair. “I honestly don’t think he’s after me like that.” I didn’t. There was too much going on, and Buchanan had now been identified as likely being involved in it in some way.

“Do you want to follow him?” Kyle asked. He didn’t sound like he thought this was a great plan, but he’d be willing if I was all for it.

Part of me did, but I honestly didn’t have any guess about what we’d find out. And with Jamie along, it didn’t sound wise. Plus, if I sent the boys without me, Jeff would have a conniption fit if he ever found out, and I was fairly sure he’d find out. And if they spotted both Buchanan and the women, and they weren’t together, then the boys would likely split up, and that meant they could be in danger.

“No. This is yet more weird to add to the almost nothing we have to work on.”

“True,” White said, as we all started walking again. “However, we have another person dead, before the main event.”

“And there would have been more dead, too, if Mister Joel Oliver hadn’t been around and we hadn’t worked really well as a team yesterday.”

The conversation died down as we strolled along. I wondered if anyone else from the Washington Wife class was going to call me or leap out from the bushes to share some more weirdness. While I waited for the next round of strange and unusual, I pondered everything, but doing it silently meant I was getting nothing other than the strong feeling that Ryan had been murdered.

I hadn’t liked him at all, and he hadn’t liked me, either. But he’d still called to warn me, and I knew he’d been warning me about real danger, even if the others he’d contacted didn’t. And now he was dead, and it didn’t seem like any of his so-called friends really cared.

Why I cared I couldn’t say. But I did. We’d lost six agents and now Jack Ryan, and I had no idea if the events were connected, but my gut said they were. My mother believed in listening to the gut.

Sadly, my gut had no concrete information to share, like who was behind this, who the real assassination target was, or what we could do to stop it. My gut was totally letting the rest of me down, but there was nothing I could do about it.

My brain suggested I run my mouth, as opposed to continuing on in silence, which clearly wasn’t working for me. But I didn’t really want to chat about the nothing we’d gleaned so far from this excursion, mostly because we were going to have to rehash it the moment we got back to the Embassy.

Of course, we could always talk about something else. I went for continuing our prior conversation. “Did Jeff and Christopher go to school at the Embassy, Richard?”

He took this out-of-the-blue question in stride. “In a sense. They were the only children here when Theresa was our Head Diplomat.
She handled their schooling.” This I knew to be true in more ways than one. “Once she…passed away, the boys were schooled at East Base.”

We reached Sheridan Circle and crossed into the park to give the dogs one last chance. “You know, I hadn’t thought about day care or anything for Jamie.” Yet another one in the Good Mother Fail column. “I didn’t think she’d need it this young.”

White coughed delicately. “Your penchant for running off into danger isn’t exactly a secret.”

“Hey, I didn’t go into the Paraguayan Embassy. Either time.”

“Yet.”

“Fine, fine. But it’s not like I’d have raced in there, even if something exciting had happened when were nearby, not with Jamie along.”

“No one believes that, Missus Martini, Pierre least of all. Yesterday was all it took for Pierre to declare that the day care center needed to be put into operation immediately.”

“Can’t argue with the logic.” Dog duties done, we crossed the street. Because of how the circle crosswalks worked, we ended up in front of Ireland’s Embassy, with another street to cross to get home. I looked down Massachusetts Avenue and heaved a sigh. “Especially since we have unfriendly company. Again.”

L
EN SPOTTED WHAT I HAD
—three taxis heading for us. Three very familiar taxis.

He stopped walking at the corner by an open area between buildings, presumably so we’d have an exit strategy. We were close enough to home to make it if we ran, but under the circumstances, crossing the street didn’t seem wise. White and I moved closer to him, and Kyle did the same, still flanking us.

I contemplated my options and put Jamie back into the stroller. Once she was in, I lowered the sun shield completely, so no one could see her. “Poofies, be on small and quiet guard duty. Protect Jamie.” Poof purrs and tiny growls assured me that the Poofs were on top of things. I also kept my finger over the laser shield button.

“Let’s buddy up to the stroller, just in case,” I suggested, as I pulled Len a little closer. White did the same with Kyle. Good, ready for anything they’d want to throw at us—literally, I hoped.

The three taxis drove around the circle and pulled up to the curb next to us. “You folks need a ride?” the driver of the first taxi asked. He was disguised as he’d been the day before—poorly. I still couldn’t tell what country he might originally be from, including if it was this one.

The boys had made the dogs sit, but all four of them were sniffing like mad.

“Seriously? You’re trying this tactic again, after it worked
so
well for you yesterday? Oh, by the way, give me back the picture and the rest of the things you stole.”

He grinned at me. “Finders keepers.” He had good teeth, which
tended to indicate an affluent country of origin. Or at least an affluent upbringing.

I did a quick check. The other taxis were behind his, idling, with their drivers behind the wheels, no firearms in evidence. If this was a kidnap attempt, it was a really low-key one.

I wasn’t particularly worried, not the way I’d been the day before, and not just because we had more, and better, backup than yesterday, or because we were less than a block from our Embassy. I just wasn’t getting any indicators that it was time for fight
or
flight. “What’s going on?”

“We’re hoping you can tell us.”

“Who is ‘us’?” I could see Len out of the corner of my eye—both girl dogs were on their feet and straining at their leads. Checked Kyle out of the other corner—same with the boy dogs. All four seemed quite intent, though they weren’t barking or growling.

“We’re friends.”

“Right. Friends don’t kidnap each other.”

“That depends.” He cocked his head. “If you’d come with us yesterday, you wouldn’t have ended up in the river.”

“I like swimming. And I’m sure I’d have ended up somewhere else unpleasant.”

“Unpleasant is in the eye of the beholder.” He checked his rearview mirror. “Some of what you have to do is very unpleasant. Many of those you consider friends are considered by others to be unpleasant. But you still trust them. And you should trust us, too.”

“Why would you think I’d trust you at all? Especially since I have no idea who ‘you’ are, whether it’s just the three of you on some bizarre crusade or if there’s a whole bunch of you out there, or what you actually hope to achieve with any of this, other than stalling us from getting around the block.”

He shook his head. “Just because you refuse our offers of help doesn’t mean we’re your enemies.”

“It also doesn’t mean you’re our friends. Why are you protecting the Dingo?”

He rolled his eyes as he checked his rearview mirror again. “We’re not. We’re not the ones who took him. We’re trying to protect
you
. Why do you think we arrived before?”

“You mean after the bomb two days ago before, when you chased us, or last night before, when you also chased us?”

“Both. You needed us, we arrived. Just because you didn’t take advantage of our services doesn’t mean we’re not here to help you.”

“Why are you here now? Nothing’s going on.”

“There’s always something going on. You know that. Besides, you’ll enjoy the ride, trust me.”

“Fine. You want us to become bestest buds? Start with sharing your names. And your affiliation.”

Dudley started it. He growled, low, deep, long, and nasty. Duke followed suit, then the girl dogs joined in. Dottie started the barking, but it took almost no time for the others to add in. They were barking at the taxi and the ones behind it, as near as I could tell, and it was taking all the strength the boys had to keep them under a semblance of control. These weren’t friendly barks—these were Enemy Alert barks.

The reason for my dogs’ reactions raised its head. There was a German shepherd in the backseat. It bared its teeth at my dogs, who shared that they were perfectly willing to take him or her on, best two out of three.

I checked the other cars. I could see dog ears in the taxi behind us, and I heard the sound of other dogs barking, so I assumed each cab had a dog of some kind in it.

“What the hell is going on and who the hell are you?” I shouted over the din.

The taxi behind him honked. He grinned. “Call me Ishmael,” he called. “And I’m affiliated with Rapid Response Taxi Service.” With that he gunned it, and the taxis headed off, each one with a German Shepherd leaning out a window, barking and snarling right back at my dogs.

All of a sudden, Dottie’s bark changed. She spun and started the Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy bark. The others caught on and did the same. I recognized this greeting.

I turned around to see whose arrival had signaled to the Three Stooges that it was time to go and to my dogs that it was time to calm down. I was sort of unsurprised to see that it was Chuckie.

C
HUCKIE WAS ALONE, WHICH DID SURPRISE ME.
“What the hell is going on?” he asked as he got nearer to us.

“Where’s Jeff?”

“Back at the Embassy, being the ambassador. The one who doesn’t get to run off at top speed any time he feels like it.” He patted the dogs, and they calmed down. The dogs loved Chuckie. Not as much as they loved Jeff, of course. I didn’t think they actually loved me, Mom, or Dad as much as they loved Jeff. But Chuckie was definitely up there on my dogs’ Top Ten List of People We Love the Mostest.