Courier (11 page)

Damn it, he'd left politics behind him. They had no right to just call him up and expect him to jump like a fucking monkey just because they said "national security" like those were magic words. Hadn't he ripped Hadley a new one after they called bitching about that story on the money getting laundered through that bank in the Bahamas? Hell, he'd made the prissy bastard do a public apology for that one.

The good old days were gone, and those bastards had to wise up. Sure, he'd gone along when a story just had to be spiked or his old boss wanted him to go after some liberal faggot on the Hill, but things had changed.

He spun around and jammed his cigarette into the ashtray. Damn it. He simply wasn't going to do it. This was the news business and, goddamn it, this was real news. Hadley was dead, but he could hand it off to Mayweather. That grouchy son of a bitch would run with it.

Running his fingers through his hair, he stood up and grabbed the film can. The phone rang, and he picked it up. "Smithson."

At the sound of the voice on the line, he closed his eyes and felt helpless resignation wash over him. He sat down heavily. When he finally spoke, his voice was flat and lifeless.

"Yes, sir. I do remember who gave me my first job. Don't worry; it will all be taken care of."

CHAPTER 13

 

The Suitland Federal Center had been built like many things around Washington – during World War Two to house whatever needed to be housed. From what Rick could tell, they didn't plan things back then. It was more that a branch of the military saw a piece of vacant land, grabbed it, and built something just in case they might need it. They seldom seemed to give any of it back.

He remembered that it was only a year or so ago that they had finally knocked down the "wartime emergency offices" that had covered both sides of the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument with row after row of poorly built wooden shacks.

Suitland seemed to be where government departments were dumped when no one could think of a better place to put them: a Federal Records Center, Naval Intelligence, and the Census Bureau. One of the cameramen had told Rick that the Library of Congress even kept thousands of feet of old newsreel in hardened munitions bunkers out there. The reasoning being that since old film was essentially TNT on a reel, it was probably a bad idea to store it next to the Capitol with the books, documents, and other equally flammable cultural artifacts.

The Weather Service had also ended up in one of the drab concrete buildings that seemed to have been all anyone had built in the 1940s. On the bright side, wartime urgency meant that the government had built a road dedicated to military use from Washington to Suitland, or, more correctly, out to Andrews Air Base, which was right next door, and which had originally been meant for fighter pilots to get to their planes quickly in case of a German attack making its way across the Atlantic.

In the absence of any likelihood of
Luftwaffe
bombers suddenly appearing, Suitland Parkway was open to civilian traffic, but it remained one of the hidden roads used exclusively by people who lived and worked in Washington. Like Beach Drive in Rock Creek Park, or the Whitehurst Freeway around Georgetown, they were the secret ways you could slide right through crowded neighborhoods and past the stoplights where tourists waited in increasing frustration.

It was an easy cruise through downtown, past the gay dance clubs, warehouses, and battered housing projects of Southeast and over the Frederick Douglass Bridge. From runs to Frederick Douglass's home, Saint Elizabeth's Hospital, and other places in Anacostia, Rick knew it had once been well-to-do suburban living for government workers, but that had been long ago. Now Anacostia was a nightly war zone between rival drug gangs – a place where innocent children were caught in the cross fire on a regular basis. He had read that the shooters called the children "mushrooms" because they just popped up everywhere and got in the way.

Rick was perfectly content to use the parkway to bypass Anacostia.

Once on the quiet, tree-lined four-lane road, the commuter traffic thinned out, and Rick opened up the BMW. He wasn't really dancing – it was too slick for that – but he didn't see any point in taking his time.

Suddenly, there was the thunder of a powerful engine only inches from his rear bumper. In the side mirrors, close-set headlights blazed. He felt a jolt, and the bike went crazy. The front pushed out of line and swerved wildly. Rick fought the handlebars and grabbed more throttle – speed would help straighten him out.

He risked a fast glance behind him. It was that Datsun he'd seen earlier, the glass-pack exhausts roaring and the two guys inside grinning. Grinning, damn it!

He heard a crunch from the rear fender, but no shock. They must have dropped back before they hit the tire. For a moment, the rear fender made dangerous noises. It was obviously cutting into the rubber. Then there was a backward jerk from the rear, and the noise stopped. Rick realized with a sense of relief that the end of the fender had folded under. At least it was off the tire.

Rick abandoned any ideas that this was just random road rage. The fact that he'd spotted them before meant these morons were clearly out to get him. He kicked down two gears and the engine screamed in protest. BMWs weren't really made for speed, but now Rick was thankful that they were very well-designed for stability and durability. For a moment, he drew away from the sports car as the speedometer needle crept upward. He crouched down over the tank, continued to nail the throttle to the stop, and kicked back up to top gear.

He was coming up fast on two cars driving side by side – blocking both lanes. Rick split between them like they were standing still and smashed the side mirror of the car on the right with the end of his handlebar. Let's see the Datsun do that, he thought.

The Datsun swerved right, passing the cars on the gravel verge, then smoked the tires as it fought its way back onto the parkway and straddled the centerline, catching up once again.

Rick shot a quick glance to his right. Too damn steep; he'd never make it. Without conscious thought, he locked his legs around the gas tank and whipped the bike down in as hard a left turn as he'd ever taken.

Time seemed to slow. Rick could feel the front tire bucking and slipping as he slammed across the grass median. Thankfully, the ground was still iron hard from last week's hard freeze, or the front end would have rammed into mud and he would have flipped over for sure.

Behind him, the Datsun's tires screeched as the driver slammed on the brakes and the sports car spun on the slick concrete.

Rick could see a car coming fast from the opposite direction, but it looked like he would get across the road in front of it, so he concentrated on trying to make out what was on the other side of the road. At first, it was just a solid wall of trees and bushes.

There. A hole in the wall. Some kind of path.

He went airborne for a few feet when he hit the curb of the southbound lanes, but he held the bike in alignment by shifting his weight with his butt, and as soon as he hit concrete again, he began struggling to turn toward that tiny empty space in the trees. The BMW's inertia was immense, and he had to use all the strength in his shoulders and arms to muscle it out of what was a clear intention to shoot straight into an enormous tree trunk. He backed off the throttle, but was afraid he'd lose control if he hit the brakes, so he slammed down through the gears instead.

Time accelerated as he ripped across onto the gravel and then the grass. The oncoming driver flashed by his rear bumper, and he saw a streak of red zip just behind him on his right, and heard a car horn voice fear and anger. He'd forgotten all about the oncoming car, but, luckily, he had been right about who would get there first.

For a long, terrifying second, he thought the bike would miss the path. Then his front wheel shot upward as the bike hit the clear slope. He threw his weight forward over the gas tank to keep the front down, and trees began whipping past. Still belly-down to the tank and peering just over the handlebars, he realized it must really be a footpath because he hadn't hit a tree yet – a lot of branches, but not a tree.

Not yet.

Now he could use the rear brake, feathering it just on the edge of breaking into a skid. He fought to bring the heavy bike under control, which was a relative term. The BMW was never designed to be a dirt bike, and he stood up on the foot pegs as it bucked and banged beneath him.

He kicked through neutral to first gear and gave it some gas. The rear wheel threw up a fountain of dirt and leaves as he began to surge up the slope. A log across his path almost took him down, but he managed to bounce the front wheel up and power the rear wheel over it.

A final screen of bushes tore at his arms, and he was clear – alone in an open field.

He skidded to a stop and carefully put down the kickstand. Slowly, he swung off and turned around. The woods were dark and silent behind him, no headlights following him up through the trees. Around him were the quiet, carefully tended expanses of grass and the rows of small, dignified white headstones of a military cemetery. He walked over and read one of the stones.

Andrew H. Sturris, LCpl. US Marine Corps, World War II, Sept. 24 1921 July 16, 1943.
Silently, he apologized to Lance Corporal Sturris and anyone else he might have disturbed, and then he dropped to the ground and just lay there – catching his breath.

After a while, he stood up and walked around the BMW to look at the damage. The rear fender was screwed, but the useless radio was still firmly attached. He pulled some branches out of the front end and marveled at how much damage that weird triangular front linkage could take.

Both mirrors were shoved back, but only the left one was cracked. Otherwise, the bike was in miraculously good shape.

He bent the mirrors back into place and used the small tire irons from the tool kit tucked under the seat to beat the rear fender to a reasonable semblance of its original shape. Swinging his leg over, it took three tries to start the engine. The familiar rumble was like the voice of an old friend.

Staying close to the backs of the headstones to avoid running over anyone – alive or dead – Rick drove slowly across the wintry grass until he found a gravel road and followed its solemn curves to an open entrance leading to a main road. Looking both ways, he spotted the enormous satellite dishes of the Suitland Federal Center to his right.

As he drove to the pickup he was wired as tight as a point man in country – focused on everything around him. The Datsun didn't reappear. Maybe they had just picked him up on the street in DC and didn't know his destination. He hoped that was the case since any other explanation would require someone at ABN ratting him out.

At Suitland, he moved slowly through parking lots and wove in and out of the old buildings – even stopping and cutting the engine at one point – but he didn't hear that distinctive sound of custom exhaust pipes – so he headed for the Weather Service.

He picked up the small can of film that held thirty seconds of clouds racing across the North American continent from the bored old woman at the counter and returned to his bike. As he put the can in his bag, he felt another round shape. Pulling it out, he read the Magic Marker on the red tape around the edge.

"Hadley B-Roll."

Thinking back, he realized that this was the can of film that Pete Moten had handed him at the bookkeeper's house on the day they died. It had slipped to the bottom of his bag, and he'd forgotten about it because he was concentrating on the Bolex camera and that damn twelve-hundred-foot magazine. It hadn't ever made it inside the bureau and couldn't have been developed.

Or lost.

Lost twice.

He slipped the can into the inside pocket of his leather jacket and took a different way back – north to Pennsylvania Avenue, across the John Philip Sousa Bridge, and through back streets and alleys to the bureau.

On the way, he made a quick stop at his house and hid the can marked "Hadley B-Roll" under the back steps.

CHAPTER 14

 

The Omega Restaurant had been a part of Washington's secret history for decades. A Hungarian, smart enough to get out before Soviet tanks crushed his fellow revolutionaries, first opened it in the 1950s. In those days, the tables were filled with conversations in German, Czech, and Polish, and the air laced with code words and watchful silences.

Now it served Cuban food, and if the name's resemblance to the Miami paramilitary group Omega 7 didn't make it clear enough, the sign out front spelled out "O-m-E-g-A". In 1962, when a Cuban refugee bought out the Hungarian owner, the Organization of American States – OEA in Spanish – expelled Cuba and declared Fidel Castro's government illegitimate. Some say this gave legal cover for the disastrous invasion at the Bay of Pigs.

A small room next to a little grocery store on Columbia Road at the edge of the Adams Morgan nightclub district, it was worth a visit even if you weren't there for a secret meeting or some revolutionary fellowship: the menu was one of the finest in Washington.

The quiet man in the gray suit was at his usual table in the back, where he could sit with his back to the wall and an escape route through the kitchen was only a few steps away. He looked around at the small oilcloth-covered tables and thought the place had recovered well from the firebomb that had smashed through the main window a year or so ago. He knew that the owner wasn't frightened by something as trivial as a firebomb, and it appeared that the cooks were cut from the same cloth.

He was eating pork with a bitter orange sauce, and though he resisted nostalgia as much as he did any other emotion, it was impossible not to be reminded of days in Miami when brave men had stood by his side and planned how to free their island nation.