The Art of War: A Novel (34 page)

The view across the street was pretty good. I could see the back of the FBI sedan and the front of the building. I fished a small set of 6x binoculars out from behind the driver’s seat. Rolled down the windows so I could listen and treated myself to a piece of gum from a new pack. Sighed and tried to relax. I had a mild headache, and my muscles were sore. The December air coming in through the window was chilly, so I put on a jacket I had stuffed behind the seat. Drops of rain began to spatter on the windshield, and the breeze picked up. I rolled up the passenger window and left the one by my shoulder down.

The derringer was loaded with copper-clad solids. The serial number had been taken off with acid, which left a flat place. I put it back in my sock.

Damn Zoe Kerry!

I sat there savoring my memory of Fish’s screams, and feeling the pain of what might have been.

*   *   *

At four thirty I needed a break. I rolled up the windows, locked the car and dashed into Mickey D’s for a head call and a large cup of java.

I was back in less than ten minutes. Rain misting down. The FBI car was still sitting across the street. Those guys must have steel bladders or be pissing into their coffee cups.

Traffic was picking up. Cars began trickling into the apartment building lot across the street. People locked up their rides and went into the building. Lights in apartments began illuminating. The security lights on poles came on to fight the evening gloom. The rain stopped. Low clouds continued to churn overhead, and the breeze freshened again.

Cars drove into McDonald’s. Some parked, some lined up for the drive-through. I tossed my empty cup behind my seat. After a bit, I turned on my ride and ran the heater for a while.

I glimpsed Kerry turn into the apartment lot at six fifty. At least, I thought it was her. There was a lot of traffic going up and down the street.

Watching through the binoculars, I got another fleeting look at her car rounding the building for the parking lot in back. I wondered if she had seen the agents in the car.

*   *   *

Zoe Kerry parked her car and sat for a second. She had indeed seen the dark government sedan and two heads dropping out of sight.

Worried, she went upstairs and used her key to open her door. She went straight to the window and, without touching the curtains or turning on a light, looked out at the brightly lit parking lot. She saw the agents, now upright, sitting in the two front seats of the sedan.

Taking her purse, she walked out of her room, leaving the door ajar, and knocked on the door of 209. The Chinese gentleman opened the door. The television was on.

Kerry walked in, watched the man close the door behind him. “Have you been watching the lot out front? There are two men in a car in the row closest to the street.”

The man had venetian blinds on his window, now closed. He went to the window and looked. He turned back. “I haven’t been looking.”

“So you don’t know how long they have been there?”

“No, but—”

“Did you see anyone you don’t know on this floor today?”

“Yes. I was going down to check my mailbox, and I saw a man walking down the hall past my door. He got into the elevator.”

Now she was really worried. “Did you get a good look at him?”

“Yes. A big man, about three inches over six feet. Wide shoulders, close-cropped brown hair, tanned face and neck. Clean-shaven, square jaw, dark sweater and dark trousers, leather shoes, no tie or hat. He was very fit, walked like an athlete. About thirty years of age, I would say.”

Tommy Carmellini.

“Did he come out of my flat?”

“I don’t know. When I saw him he was walking toward me. He passed and entered the elevator.”

Kerry had always known this day might come, and she had made plans. It was time to go. “You haven’t seen me today,” she said. “I’ll get in contact through the drop when I can.”

She walked out, opened the door and strode to her apartment. Grabbed her getaway bag from under the bed and took a moment to glance again at the car out front. Still there. Watching and waiting for a warrant.

She pulled the door shut behind her and went out the rear entrance. Walked across the parking lot to an older Ford sedan that had been there for weeks. The FBI and CIA didn’t know she owned this one. She got in, inserted the key. The engine started. The battery was only three weeks old.

She drove around the building and picked the lane that would take her to the sedan where the two men sat. Stopped in front of it and put the transmission in park, left the engine running. Got her purse, opened the door and walked to the driver’s side. The window was down. She paused by the driver’s mirror, where she could see them both. She knew the man behind the wheel, didn’t recognize the other one. Neither was wearing his seat belt. Two empty coffee cups were in the cup holder, and a thermos between them.

“What are you doing here, Jay?” Zoe Kerry said, leaning down to look straight into his face.

“Aah…”

“Waiting for you,” the other man said, reaching under his coat.

She already had her hand in her purse. She pulled her service pistol and shot them both, as fast as she could pull the trigger. She got the driver in the face, and a shower of blood and brains sprayed against the headrest. The man in the passenger seat had his pistol half out when her bullet hit him just below the chin. She steadied the gun, aimed and shot him again, in the head.

Then she turned and walked back to her car, putting her pistol back in her purse. She got behind the wheel and put on her seat belt. Zoe Kerry drove out of the lot, waited for a break in traffic, turned right and accelerated away.

*   *   *

I was watching Kerry’s apartment, waiting for the lights to come on. When they didn’t, I got worried. Now what? Were these federal cops still waiting for some judge to sign a warrant?

Seven minutes after I saw her car go around the building, I saw a car stop in front of the FBI car. I got the binoculars up. Kerry got out. Walked over to the car. Between the vehicles speeding by on the street, I saw her shoot into the car. Three little pops, almost inaudible over the traffic noise. A semi rumbled by. When next I saw the car, a faded blue, it was waiting at the entrance. Then she turned right and was gone, her taillights fading down the street.

There wasn’t a chance in the world I could get out of McDonald’s, run the Benz over the median and chase her. And no chance to turn right, go to the next corner, hook a U-turn and catch up with her in rush hour traffic.

What I did do was drop the binocs, turn on my headlights, drive out of Mickey D’s, go down to the corner and U-turn to go back to the apartment building. Stopped in front of the parked sedan and walked over. One look was enough. No ambulance crew or doctor could help them now.

A woman came walking toward me. Middle-aged, wearing a coat, with a key fob in her hand. I got into my car, fished my phone from my pocket and dialed Jake Grafton’s cell. Behind me a woman screamed. I glanced back. She was standing beside the government sedan looking in. As the phone rang, I put the Benz in gear and headed for the street.

*   *   *

I got back to CIA headquarters at a little after eight that evening. Grafton was in his office with Sarah Houston and Sal Molina. I had met Molina a time or two in the past and knew he was a heavy hitter at the White House, a dumpy fifty-something guy in rumpled slacks and a ratty sport coat. Sarah looked as gorgeous as ever; you would never know she had just put in a long day at the office.

Grafton didn’t introduce me, merely asked, “What have you got, Tommy?”

I pulled the copy paper from my pocket and handed it to him, then sat down beside his desk facing Sarah and Molina. “These documents were in her getaway bag under her bed. New name, Janice Alice Johansson. Passport, driver’s license, credit cards, a lot of cash, old fifties and hundreds—I didn’t count it. Nice loaded snub-nose .38 Smith & Wesson, blued. Two speed-loaders ready to go. She had a notebook in there. I figured Sarah could do magic with all those phone numbers and account numbers.”

“Tell them about the shooting,” Grafton said.

I did so.

“After the shooting, you drove across the street and checked to see if either of the agents was still alive?”

“I did. They weren’t. I left and called you.”

“Why didn’t you follow her?” Molina asked.

“It’s a divided street with a raised concrete median. She turned right, I had to turn right. By the time I could get behind her, she was long gone. So I went over to see if I could do anything for the guys she shot. They were dead.”

“You broke into her apartment?”

“Earlier that afternoon, before she got home.”

“Why?” Molina asked.

“I told him to,” Grafton said flatly. “He was obeying my orders.”

Molina looked at his hands.

Jake held out the papers to me. “You and Sarah go copy this. Sarah, do your magic. Who the phone numbers belong to, what the other numbers are. Get a night’s sleep and get on it first thing in the morning. Tommy, bring the papers back after you’ve copied them. I’ll call the FBI with the passport and ID info.”

Sarah and I trooped out, leaving Grafton facing Molina, who looked tired and angry. I don’t know what he had to be pissed about. With the ID info we had, Kerry was going to get picked up sooner or later, and Molina wasn’t in the car with the agents and consequently was still alive.

*   *   *

“So the men who shot down Air Force One were Russians?”

“Yes. Russian mafiosi. Four of them. Here are their names.” Grafton held out a sheet of paper from the small envelope that had been passed to Carmellini at noon.

Molina glanced at the slip of paper, then handed it back. “Anything else?” he asked.

“They spent three or four months in China. Then their trail peters out. The FBI will tell you all about their activities in America.”

“China,” Molina muttered, and rubbed his chin. “How do you know this Russian of yours is telling the truth?”

“I don’t know, Sal. Do I look like Diogenes?”

*   *   *

As the copy machine did its thing, Sarah said, “I’m sorry about Anna.”

I grunted.

“Want to go get some dinner?” she asked.

“I’m not hungry.” I eyed her. “I could use a drink, though. Or two.”

After I returned Grafton’s paper pile to him and Sarah locked hers up in a secure safe in her office, we left the building together. She drove her car, and I followed her. It was raining lightly again. Windy. A miserable damned night. The wipers merely smeared the windshield, and a trickle of water dripped from the roof seal above the rearview mirror.

Maybe I should have just sat in Kerry’s apartment and waited for her. Cuffed her with her own cuffs and visited until the FBI got its paperwork blessed by a judge and came for her.

Ain’t hindsight wonderful? I’m sure she could have answered many of my questions.

Of course, if I had stayed, I’d have probably killed her before the feds knocked on the door.

Now I kinda wished I had waited.

*   *   *

Sarah and I ended up at a chain bar/restaurant. Safely ensconced in a booth by a window, with a football highlights show on a television above the bar that I could glance at from time to time, we ordered. I decided I was a bit hungry and ordered some wings with my bourbon. Sarah ordered white wine and a salad.

After the waiter left, I told Sarah about the Asian gentleman who lived in apartment 209, right down the hall from dear ol’ Zoe. “Great setup if he’s her control,” I mused aloud.

“The vast bulk of Chinese Americans are not spies,” she said, “nor are all coincidences suspect, but it wouldn’t hurt to check this guy out.”

“You can do that?”

“It’s what I do, Tommy,” she said, slightly exasperated.

Rain smeared the window. Looked like it was setting in to rain all night.

“I’m sorry about Anna,” Sarah said again.

I just nodded.

“I thought you were never going to get married.”

“So did I,” I said, a bit more forcefully than I intended. “I should have left Anna in Switzerland. She’d still be alive if I had.”

Sarah frowned. “Don’t start that what-if crap. Pretty soon you’ll be wishing you had never been born. I know! I have a patent on what-if.”

Sarah Houston had a good face. Actually, she was lovely, with big dark eyes that seemed to see everything. She had certainly made her share of mistakes though the years, enough mistakes for a dozen people, but she seemed to be trying to get on down the road. Maybe there was a lesson there for me. Sarah was no saint, and I wasn’t either. Just two very mortal people.

Our drinks came. We didn’t have much to say to each other. Superficial things about Jake Grafton and the agency and the state of the universe. I had finished my bourbon when my wings and her salad arrived, so I ordered another drink.

We finished eating and were watching the rain, each of us lost in our own thoughts, when she asked, “Where are you sleeping these days?”

I had been thinking about Zoe Kerry, wondering where she was tonight. Wondering if the FBI had alerted every badge-toter on the East Coast to watch for her. I abandoned Zoe and saw Sarah’s reflection in the window. I turned my head to see her face clearly. Well, she wasn’t drunk. Not with only one glass of wine in her. “At Willie Varner’s,” I said.

“Think he could spare you for an evening?”

“Is that an invitation?”

“Yes.”

“Picking up men in bars is bad for your reputation.”

She smiled. “I’ll try not to make a habit of it.”

“I accept.”

I followed her home.

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

War is not merely a political act, but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.

—Carl von Clausewitz

Finding the watcher or watchers at Naval Base Norfolk was an impossible task without bringing in hundreds of Homeland Security agents, FBI agents and police, and even that might not be enough. Or might cause the watcher to trigger the weapon, if he could. The best option, Jake Grafton thought, was finding the weapon or weapons that Grafton suspected were there without alerting the media or public. Or the watchers.