Smooth Operator (Teddy Fay) (4 page)

S
tone checked into the Hay-Adams Hotel and discovered Ann had booked his favorite suite. In addition to the usual amenities, three shopping bags were displayed in the sitting room.

One held his bathing suit and the clothes he’d left at the tailor’s, and another held several sports shirts, slacks, underwear, socks, and casual shoes.

The third held an electric razor and various assorted toiletries.

Stone put the toiletries in the bathroom and hung the pants and shirts in the closet, where he also found a sports jacket.

Ann had done her job well.

There was a knock on the door. Stone opened it, expecting to find the bellboy with some forgotten amenity.

Margo Sappington stood in the doorway. “I hope you didn’t think you were going to get away from me that easily,” she said.

“I really wasn’t trying.”

“Going to invite a girl in? Or should I stand here in the hallway?”

Stone stepped aside. Margo came in and glanced around the room.

“Nice spread. You got a girl tucked in the bedroom?”

“Not yet.”

“Oh, big talker. Suppose you’re not my type?”

“Then I’d have to wonder what you’re doing here. Would you like a drink from the minibar?”

“An outrageously priced ounce of whiskey? Who could resist?” Margo kicked her shoes off and sat on the couch.

“On the rocks?” Stone said.

“Not if you have to go looking for them.”

Stone checked the bar. Ann had gone the extra yard in making sure it was stocked with Knob Creek. He poured Margo a glass, then one for himself, and sat on the couch next to her.

Margo tossed hers off in one gulp. She set down the glass. “I think we’ve spent enough time with social graces. It’s been a long evening.” She leaned into Stone, pressed her body against his. “I believe in getting to the point.” She smiled. “In fact, I think I feel it now.” She reached her hand down to his crotch. “Oh, yes. What a lovely greeting.”

Margo stood up and stepped out of her gown. Stone rose to
kiss her, cupping her breasts while she unbuttoned his shirt and unzipped his pants.

Naked, they fell onto the bed. Stone slipped his hand between her legs. She was already wet with anticipation. She climbed on top, reached down, thrust him inside her. He rose to meet her. She raised her head and arched her back, resembling nothing so much as a spectacular figurehead on a boat. It was all Stone could do to hold back and let her finish at the same time he did.

Afterward she lay across his chest, traced her finger around his nipple.

“If it’s not too much to ask,” she said, “where did you go in such a hurry?”

“It’s not too much to ask. It’s too much to answer.”

“You weren’t trying to get away from me, were you?”

“Heaven forbid.”

“Because I’m hard to shake.”

“Don’t tell me you’re a stalker.”

“Nothing like that. I saw you, and I had to have you.”

“I enjoyed myself. If you enjoyed yourself, we might get another chance.”

“Might?”

“Let me amend that,” Stone said. “I think the chance is arising now.”

The chance not only arose, it involved a variety of positions.

B
illy Barnett walked off the Centurion Studios back lot and hopped into the 1958 D Model Porsche Speedster parked in the space reserved for the producer. Billy was five-ten, 175 pounds, with short-cropped brown hair, graying at the temples, a wiry, athletic-looking man of about fifty-five.

Except when he wasn’t.

Billy Barnett, aka Teddy Fay, could be anywhere from five-eight, 160 pounds to six-two, 220, his age anywhere from forty-five to eighty-five. With the right makeup he could be an elderly Jew, a young Hispanic, or a middle-aged Muslim.

In his twenty years at the CIA, outfitting agents for assignments, Teddy had learned the game well. He could disguise himself as anyone, create the identity, upload it into the CIA database, the FBI database, as well as those of the NSA and
Homeland Security. He could create documents from passports to driver’s licenses, from credit cards to agency IDs.

He could also delete from the mainframe any identities no longer useful. Before leaving the CIA Teddy had carefully erased all his own fingerprints and photographs. For all intents and purposes, Teddy Fay had ceased to exist.

Teddy drove out to the Santa Monica Airport and pulled up in front of Peter Barrington’s hangar. Teddy had found the hangar for Peter, paved the way for him and his father to buy it on the cheap from a rock star who was selling off his aircraft and looking to dump the storage space. It was a nice setup, big enough for one jet and two smaller planes. At the moment it held Peter’s Cessna Citation Mustang and Teddy’s turboprop.

Teddy got out of his car, left the motor running and the lights on, unlocked the office, and fumbled on the wall for the switch.

A gun barrel jabbed him in the back of the neck.

Teddy couldn’t believe it. After a lifetime of diligence, the most clever, careful, and resourceful agent in the history of the agency, who had eluded an international manhunt orchestrated by the upper echelon of the CIA, was about to be brought down like this.

And he had only himself to blame. He had grown complacent in his new life as Billy Barnett, with his wife and his house and his job and his normal daily routine. That and the fact that no one was looking for him anymore.

Teddy had been on the run ever since leaving the agency. He’d had to be. The charges against him, including murder,
were so numerous it was hard to imagine a conviction that would not result in a life sentence. Teddy had resigned himself to being a fugitive all his life.

He probably would have been if he hadn’t helped Peter Barrington by dealing with some Russian mobsters who were stalking him. Teddy, disguised as Billy Barnett, had followed Peter to L.A., where he secured a job at Centurion Studios outfitting movie actors with weapons and rigging explosions.

Then he teamed up with Peter’s father to stop a terrorist attempt to detonate a nuclear weapon in L.A. Stone revealed Teddy’s role in the matter to then-president Will Lee, and obtained a presidential pardon, ending the CIA manhunt. Teddy had been able to settle down, though prudently not under his own name.

And, irony of ironies, his routine lifestyle had made him lazy and careless, and now he was about to die.

“Put your hands on your head.”

Teddy let out a breath and thanked his lucky stars. He’d been spared. This was no seasoned hit man. This was a rank amateur who didn’t know what he was dealing with.

Teddy complied immediately, raising his hands to the back of his head.

Then he spun like a flash, lunging sideways and chopping down.

The gun rattled to the concrete floor. Teddy ignored it. He grabbed the man’s arm, twisting it around and down.

The man came to his feet, his face contorted in pain. He
flailed at Teddy ineffectively with his left arm while Teddy twisted his right. Teddy dropped to the floor and scooped up the gun. It had a silencer. That was what had poked him in the neck.

Teddy scowled at his assailant. Even in the dark he looked young and inexperienced. Teddy snorted in disgust. “I’m sorry, kid, but you’re just no good at this. Who hired you?”

The young man said nothing and set his jaw.

“I don’t have time for you to be coy. If you don’t want to talk, I’ll shoot you. Who hired you?”

“No one hired me.”

“You do this just for fun?”

The young man’s eyes flashed with determined resignation. “For the cause!” he said, and lunged for the gun.

Teddy shot him in the head.

T
eddy switched on the light and examined the corpse. He was a young man, even younger than Teddy had thought. A blond all-American boy, perhaps a college student. The shot was a through-and-through, entering his forehead and exiting behind his left ear. Teddy fished an old newspaper out of a garbage can and slipped it under the kid’s head to catch the pooling blood. He found the bullet on the hangar floor, slipped it into his pocket.

Teddy checked his watch. It was ten o’clock, one in the morning in D.C. He was cutting it close. The small jet would have to refuel twice going cross-country. It was doable, he just hadn’t figured on having to dispose of a dead hit man.

Teddy scampered up the stairs. There was a small apartment that came with the hangar. He and his wife had lived there for a while, and only moved into a house when they
thought the coast was clear. When they had, Teddy had left much of his old life behind.

He went in the bedroom, grabbed a suitcase, and tossed in a handful of clean clothes, some useful caps and jackets, mostly reversible, and some sports clothes.

In the room that had served as his office, he spun the combination for the large safe he’d installed. He took out his sniper rifle, the one he’d handcrafted for himself at the CIA, and the small .380 semiautomatic pistol with a silencer he’d built to fit into the barrel.

He took out a lockbox, selected a passport, driver’s license, and credit cards in the name of Frank Grisham, and another set in the name of James Byrd. From the ID photos, Grisham was older and practically bald, while Byrd was young enough to sport brown hair with a thick mustache. He added several other identities, including credentials of all types in various names with various ID photos.

Teddy took out his makeup kit, along with the hairpieces, putty, glue, facial hair, and prosthetics he would require for these identities.

Teddy locked the safe, took everything downstairs, and loaded it into Peter’s Citation Mustang.

Teddy searched the body. According to his driver’s license, the man Teddy had killed was a twenty-two-year-old kid named Alan Johnson. According to his student ID, he was a sophomore at UCLA. According to his car registration, his parents had money. The kid drove a brand-new Lexus.

Teddy checked the exit wound at the back of the head. The blood had almost dried. He found an old canvas and rolled the body in it. He opened the bay doors, drove his Porsche into the hangar, and closed them again. He popped the trunk, wedged the kid inside. It took a little doing.

There were few cars in the parking lot at that time of night, and Teddy had no problem finding the young man’s Lexus. Luckily, there was no streetlight nearby, and the car was backed into a head-in space. Teddy backed in next to him, popped both trunks, and transferred the body and the silenced gun. He hopped in the Lexus, started the engine, and headed out of the lot.

He ditched the car in a dark alley about a mile from the airport. The distance was probably overkill, but Teddy wasn’t taking any chances. He was rusty, or the kid never would have got the drop on him. Teddy liked his new life and didn’t want to lose it. He couldn’t afford to be careless. He took pains wiping down the car, then hoofed it back to the airport.

On his way he whipped out his cell phone to call Peter on the set. He was in luck. They were in between takes, and Peter picked up.

“Hey, Peter, I know you’re doing me a lot of favors, but I need one more. You got room to put Betsy up while I’m gone?”

“How come?”

“I’m hoping it’s an unnecessary precaution. But if I didn’t take it, I’d never forgive myself.”

“You think she’s in danger?”

“I think someone might try to get to me through her.”

“You got it.”

“Don’t alarm her, but don’t take no for an answer.”

“Relax. I’ll handle it.”

Teddy hung up the phone with a huge weight off his chest. He hurried back to the airport, drove his car into the hangar, and cleaned up any trace of the intruder.

He filed a flight plan he had no intention of following, and took off for Washington, D.C.

S
alih showered, shaved, and put on a suit and tie. He picked up his attaché case and checked his appearance in a full-length mirror. Perfect. He felt a little anxious, but that was only natural. He’d be fine.

Salih took the Metro downtown and joined the crush of commuters heading for work. He walked down the block and went into an office building.

At the front desk, the security guard asked him where he was going, and he named a company on one of the higher floors. The guard nodded, asked him for a photo ID. Salih fumbled in his wallet for the driver’s license Abdul-Hakim had given him. The guard took it and compared Salih’s face to the photo. When they matched, the guard said, “Nineteenth floor,” and handed the ID back. He didn’t even write down Salih’s name.

Salih took the elevator up to the nineteenth floor. Two people
got off with him. One went into the office near the elevator. The other went into the office he’d named.

Salih waited until they were gone, then pushed his way through the fire door to the service stairs. He went up two flights, stepped over the chain, and went up the steps to the roof.

The door was unlocked, as he’d been told it would be. He pushed it open and stepped out onto the roof.

It took a moment to get his bearings. To his right was the back of the building, so the street was on the left. He crept to the edge of the street side and peered over. It was a long way down, but Salih had no fear of heights. He watched the traffic in the street below, slow-moving during rush hour. It would thin out soon.

Salih had a good view of the entrance across the street. People were arriving for work. He was early.

Salih set his attaché case on the roof. He knelt down, clicked it open, and raised the top.

His sniper’s rifle fit as perfectly as if the case had been made for it, which indeed it had. Custom built to look like an attaché, the case boasted a snug but carefully padded space for every piece of the disassembled sniper’s rifle, from the stock to the scope. There was even a space for the box of shells Abdul-Hakim had given him. Not that he would need them. One bullet would be sufficient, even at such a distance. He had spent enough time on the range to be sure of that. Nonetheless, Salih had packed the whole box of bullets. It was better to take them than risk having to explain why he hadn’t.

Salih took out the scope and lined up the entrance across the
street. It was crystal clear in the scope. He might as well have been standing right there.

Now for the hard part.

Waiting.

Salih found a nice spot where he could sit with his back against a chimney. He set his case on the roof, and carefully assembled his rifle.