The Art of War: A Novel (25 page)

“I tried that once and it didn’t work. I’m lowering the barrier. If I can get you over this little fence, get you to America, get you to see how great life would be with us together, then I’ll try another proposal. See, I’ve thought this out.”

She smiled at me. “I’ve been thinking, too,” she said.

“If you have a Swiss passport you don’t need a visa to get into the States. Do you have one?”

She nodded. Yes.

“Soooo…” I tried to contain myself. I reached for her hands. We were already knee to knee.

“Oh, Tommy. I—”

“Come on, kiddo. This is the best offer you’re going to get today. Let’s get on with life. Let’s worry about Anna and Tommy. Nobody else.”

She didn’t say anything. The thought that perhaps I was pressing too hard occurred to me. “What have you been thinking?” I asked.

“That I was a fool not to say yes the first time you asked me.”

That did it. She started laughing and crying at the same time and I started laughing and crying and we went on up into the stratosphere from there.

*   *   *

We managed to get on a plane to Washington, via London, the following morning. I used my Harold W. Cass credit card to buy both tickets. If the Company bean counters didn’t like it, they could rat me out to Grafton and he could fire me.

Anna called her office from the airport and told them she was resigning. We checked our bags, went through security and walked the concourse holding hands. As we flew across Europe we talked about the future, not the past. I was pretty sure there wasn’t much more of the CIA in mine. I was tired of going overseas for weeks, or months, often to places no sane person would even want to visit. Tired of pretending to be something and someone I’m not.

I had a law degree. Maybe I could go back to California and take the bar exam. What I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to stay in the Washington, DC, area. I had been there for enough years to know I didn’t like it. California! Yeah.

Changing planes in London, we had an hour to kill after we got to our gate. We walked into a bookstore/newsstand and I bought some newspapers. One of the stories at the bottom of the front page of
The Wall Street Journal
caught my eye. Homeland Security had been ordered by the White House to step up inspections on people leaving and entering the United States. Entering? The
Journal
predicted long lines for travelers. No kidding!

I stood there thinking about the envelope that Ilin had given me, which was in the breast pocket of my jacket. What if they found that? Confiscated it? Wanted an explanation? I was traveling as Harold W. Cass, Hoosier extraordinaire, with a fake passport issued by the U.S. State Department and a fake driver’s license and AAA card, all issued by the documents section of the agency. What if customs got curious about the map? The computer should let my passport slide on through, but this map … I hadn’t looked at it, but obviously Ilin had gone to a great deal of trouble getting it to me and thought it would mean something to Grafton if I could deliver it.

“Wait at the gate a moment,” I told Anna, and went back along the concourse toward a Royal Mail storefront I had noticed walking up. It was about twice the size of a telephone booth. The gray-haired lady in uniform behind the counter had envelopes and stamps. I bought an envelope, stuck Ilin’s envelope inside, and addressed it to Willie Varner at the lock shop. Bought enough stamps with my CIA credit card to get it all the way across the Atlantic, affixed them and dropped the envelope in the slot.

Feeling somewhat relieved, I strolled back to Anna, who was waiting at the gate. She smiled at me as I walked up and reached for my hand. A huge grin spread across my face. Life was looking up.

It was afternoon when we landed at Dulles Airport in the western suburbs of Washington. We got through immigration easily enough after the usual wait, me through the U.S. citizens line and Anna through the foreigners section, and found our baggage at the carousel.

The line to get through customs was severely backed up. From where I stood, I could see the inspectors pawing though luggage. Beyond the inspectors, against the wall, were armed Homeland Security officers in uniform, scanning the crowd. They didn’t look bored. Which bothered me. The whole scene reminded me of my last trip through the Moscow airport. Guilty until proven innocent.

“Get in another line,” I whispered to Anna. “If we get separated, meet me at Grafton’s in Roslyn. You remember the address?”

She nodded. She was a professional. She had committed that address to memory years ago, when she was sent by Ilin to see Grafton. She glanced at me just once and went, no questions asked, pushing her cart with her suitcase and carry-on.

It took an hour for me to get to the head of the line. I surrendered my customs form, which said I had not bought anything abroad and had nothing to declare. Then I dumped my stuff on the conveyor belt and watched them x-ray both items.

The fun began when the stuff came out of the X-ray machine on the belt. An inspector there had my customs form in hand. He gestured at the bag and carry-on. “Open them up.” He pointed to a nearby table. I carried the bags over and tossed them up.

After I opened them, I stood back when he gestured. He started through the stuff as if he suspected I was smuggling in a load of heroin or Cuban cigars. He emptied the clothes, felt the lining, wadded the clothes up and put them back in, then attacked the carry-on, which had the newspapers from London, a couple of books and my cell phone, which was off, a wall charger and my key ring. Plus a toothbrush and toothpaste.

When he had given all that stuff a very careful look, he gestured to a couple of the armed goons. “You need to go with these gentlemen. They will do a body search.”

“Guess this is my lucky day,” I said. “I hope they have warm hands.”

“Don’t get cute, buddy.”

I thought that excellent advice. I was taken through a security door into a long puke-green corridor. The feds must buy puke-green paint in railroad tank cars. Lots of doors. They picked one halfway down on the left side and sent me in first. My bags were brought in, too. As two people searched the luggage again, meticulously, I was told to strip to the skin. Then I was given a body cavity search.

When the jerk finished and was taking off his rubber glove, I said, “I hope you enjoyed that.”

“Keep talking, asshole, and we’ll do it again.”

There is a time and place for everything, I reflected, and this wasn’t it. The guy tossed me a small towel to wrap around my waist; then I was led back into the corridor and into a room at the end that housed a major X-ray machine. I expected to meet Dr. Frankenstein, but I got an overweight guy wearing a white gown. He coached me through a complete body series. If I had had an implanted microchip or a diamond in my ear, they would have seen it. Ditto a condom of coke in my intestines.

“How do my lungs look?” I asked. “I had a chest X-ray scheduled. Maybe I can cancel it.”

My technician ignored me.

Afterward, a heavyset guy with lots of tattoos took me back to the original cubicle, gestured to my pile of duds and told me to get dressed. When I was reunited with my luggage, I told the inked-up dude, “I assume you’ll send the bill to Obamacare.”

“Your tax dollars hard at work, Jack. Scram.”

The whole ordeal took about an hour and a half. Anna was nowhere in sight when I emerged. I took the bus into the long-term parking lot. I sat there feeling pretty good about my decision to mail the map to Willie Varner as we rode the rows and people got on or off the bus.

My old Benz was right where I left it. The tires still had air. After I loaded my bags into the trunk, the door lock admitted me. I arranged myself behind the wheel and clicked the seat belt. Inserted the ignition key, said my usual prayer, and twisted the thing. Nothing. The engine didn’t even make a noise.

I opened the door again. The dome light didn’t come on.

Uh-oh! I got out, opened the hood and took a look. Yep. The battery was gone. Some asshole had stolen it. They hadn’t taken off the terminal wires, but had cut them.

Welcome home, Tommy!

I was cussing when the realization hit me that I could have easily been dead. Instead of some lowlife stealing the battery, what if that Dumpster diver from Grafton’s had put some dynamite under the hood? Was this a warning from the bomber?

I felt the icy fingers of the devil run up and down my back. And now I had Anna to worry about.

*   *   *

I took a taxi to Grafton’s. On the way I played with my phone, got the video from the security cameras and saw Anna in the kitchen talking to Callie.

When the admiral got home at six o’clock, Anna, Callie and I were finishing off our second bottle of wine. He looked a little stunned when he saw Anna. Callie jumped right in. “Jake, Tommy and Anna are engaged.”

She and Anna looked at each other and smiled, as if they knew something we males didn’t.

Jake Grafton looked surprised. He gave me the once-over to see if I had lost it or suffered a severe head injury. After he decided I looked more or less normal, he made polite noises for a minute or two, “Congrats” and all that, then motioned for me to follow him into his office.

He closed the door behind me and demanded, “What the hell has gotten into you?”

“I’m going to commit matrimony. Hormones, probably. Anna and I got the urge at roughly the same time.”

“What if she’s a spy for the SVR?”

“If the FBI catches her doing nefarious stuff in the good ol’ U.S. of A., they can prosecute her.”

“I see. You know that you’ll have to resign from the agency when the preacher signs the marriage license. Before the ink’s dry. Why don’t you two just shack up together?”

I tried to look horrified. “You mean, like,
live in sin
? The shock might kill dear ol’ Mom. And I’d have to lie when I do the annual lie detector thing. You know how adverse I am to falsehoods.”

Grafton threw up his hands. “Oh, hell. Okay, you win. The day before the wedding, you resign. Get married unemployed.”

“Okeydokey.”

He dropped into a chair. “Where’s Ilin’s stuff?”

“I mailed it to Willie Varner. An envelope that he said contained a map. The stuff you asked for he said would take a couple of weeks.” I told him about the meet at the corner bar at the Willard.

“A map of what?”

“He didn’t say, and I didn’t open the envelope to peek. He said he got it from a guy in China. He said the guy had risked a lot and if anyone saw it his life might be in danger—all the usual crap. All of which meant hold it close. The thought struck me as I watched him that I was hearing precisely what he would have said if he were selling a map generated in a Moscow apartment to peddle to foreign spies for a thousand bucks a copy. I don’t know what you paid for this piece of graphic art. Maybe there is a lost gold mine or buried pirate treasure under the
X.
I suspect there is a very slim chance you got a bargain, and a much larger chance you got screwed.”

Jake Grafton watched my face as I spoke. When I ran out of words, he said, “Tell me what happened at the airport.”

I sat down across from him and went through it as best I could.

He had questions. “Did you get the impression that they knew you weren’t the guy on your passport?”

“Well, not really. But they were looking for something that they believed I had. I didn’t think they were just randomly searching. They were hunting for something they
knew
was there.”

He thought about that for a moment, then said, “Why did you decide in England to mail the thing?”

I shrugged. “An article in the paper … just a feeling I had. If they’d got their hands on it, as paranoid as they are, I’d be in a cell incommunicado until the very last terrorist goes to his reward in Paradise.”

“That’s the mystery.” Jake Grafton regarded me as an unusual specimen. “Why did you decide to mail it and not carry it—carefully—upon your person?”

I shrugged as I thought about my answer. Finally I said, “Because I thought it was more likely to get here if it was delivered by the post office. Willie isn’t on anybody’s list of dangerous characters, so I sent it to him. Also, I knew his address.”

Grafton sighed. Yeah, Willie was probably below the radar. If they were working off a list of the president’s ten thousand worst enemies, Willie Varner, black ex-con, probably wasn’t on it. “Let’s talk about your car,” he said. “Instead of stealing the battery, someone could have put a bomb under the car or under your hood.”

“That thought occurred to me.” I tried to keep my voice even.

Grafton grimaced. “The FBI says they can’t find anything on that Dumpster guy you ran into at Dulles.”

“I didn’t think they would.”

“Why not?” He regarded me with knitted brows.

“Just an itch between my shoulder blades. Something isn’t right.”

“A whole lot of things aren’t right,” Grafton said with feeling. “Welcome home!”

*   *   *

Mrs. Grafton insisted on fixing dinner. I sat and watched Anna’s face as she chatted, ran her eyes over me, sipped a glass of chardonnay, gestured with her hands. I liked the way her eyes moved, the way she smiled, the way she tossed her head occasionally to get a stubborn strand of hair back from her eyes. I liked the sound of her voice, the accent, the way she chose words and made them sound. I wondered if I would ever get over the wonder of being with her.

Jake Grafton was apparently relaxed. He smiled and chatted and his eyes took in everything.

Of course it was Callie Grafton who got to the nub of it. She asked Anna, “You and Tommy—isn’t this sudden?”

Anna looked at me and said, “I should have married him the first time he asked, several years ago, when I was here. Life gave us a … what do you say?… a do-over again?”

“A do-over.”

“Yes. A chance to make another choice, a better choice.” Her hand grasped mine. “He asked again, and this time I knew the right thing to say. The right thing for both of us.”

Dinner was salad with chicken, with Callie’s homemade dressing.

After dinner Grafton took me back to his office and gave me a pistol for my pocket. It was loaded. He put one in his pocket, too. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. Let’s go get the car and I’ll drive you two over to your place.”