The Temporary Agent (5 page)

Nine

“Tomas Sexton?”

Tom did not recognize the female voice, and this bothered him immediately. But he kept his mind clear and his body calm.

Fear had long since been conditioned out of him.

“Who is this?” Tom said.

“Tomas Sexton?” the female repeated.
Tah-mis
, she said, instead of
Toe-maas
. Everyone called him Tom, just plain Tom, but those who knew him well knew the correct pronunciation of his first name.

“Who is this?” Tom repeated.

“I’m told you won’t need to write this down.”

She began to rattle off a series of numbers.

The first, a single digit, was followed by several double-digit numbers.

She spoke evenly, pausing for only a second between each number. Her voice was a soft and soothing alto.

“Do you need that repeated?” she asked.

Tom said he didn’t.

There was a moment of silence. Tom listened for any telltale background noise but heard none. He had already determined that she had no noticeable accent and that there were no tones in her voice that would indicate excitement or stress.

Finally, she spoke again. “I look forward to meeting you, Tom. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Before Tom could say anything else, the call abruptly ended.

A quick look at the phone’s display confirmed what he already knew. The number was the same one he had seen on his own phone three times that day.

Lowering Stella’s cell, Tom hesitated.

“What’s going on?” Stella said.

He replied with the only thing he could say. “I’m not sure.”

He handed her phone back to her and headed down the hallway to the bedroom.

“You should get dressed,” he said.

“What’s wrong? Who was that?”

“Get dressed, okay?”

Stella followed him into the bedroom. “Tom?”

“Get dressed, Stella. Please.”

He reached under Stella’s dresser and pulled out a black canvas shoulder bag. Moving to the bed, he opened and upended the bag, dumping its contents onto the tangled sheets.

Stella dropped her robe and grabbed a pair of jeans. She watched him as she pulled them on.

The bag contained two bottles of spring water, several protein bars, a Leatherman multitool, a mini-flashlight, a Moleskine notebook, metal draftsman’s pen, and two smartphones and chargers.

Tom grabbed the phones and powered them up. Stella had pulled on a T-shirt and was about to put on a dark sweater when Tom handed her one of the phones.

“The only number programmed into this is the number to this phone.” He held up the one he’d kept. “And vice versa, okay?”

“Okay.”

“We’re leaving our phones here, using only these for now. And we should shut our phones down, too.”

Stella clearly balked at the idea of being separated from her phone. But then she focused on the more important point in Tom’s statement.

We’re leaving our phones here.

“Where are we going, Tom?”

“Out for a minute. You’ll need shoes.”

Stella looked around the floor for her boots. Spotting them, she hurried to where they were and began pulling them on.

“Out where?” she said.

Tom ignored the question. He quickly shoved the items on the bed back into the shoulder bag, then moved to his nightstand, opened the top drawer, and removed his Kindle.

It contained the thousands of books he had read in the past five years.

It was also his only secure means of deciphering the code he had just received.

On his way back to the bed, he grabbed a hooded sweatshirt from the closet.

Powering up the tablet, he placed it into the bag, secured the flap, then pulled on the sweatshirt and shouldered the bag.

“Please tell me what’s going on, Tom. Who is that woman?”

“Not someone I’ve ever met. I didn’t recognize her voice.”

“Why did she call you on my phone?”

“We’ll know more in a few minutes, Stella.”

“Are we in danger?”

“If we were, I think we’d know it already.”

He saw the look of confusion on her face.

“We’ll only be gone for a few minutes,” he assured her. “I just need to keep you in sight until I know exactly what’s what. Okay?”

She nodded stiffly.

They left her building together, holding hands as they walked steadily toward the entrance to an alleyway five paces from the street door.

The early movie had ended, so moviegoers were leaving the theater. Others were waiting for the next showing. This meant that there were more people than usual on the sidewalk.

Tom studied the face of every person who approached.

In the back parking lot, he led Stella to his truck.

“You’ll drive,” he said. “Okay?”

She nodded. He let go of her hand and gave her his keys.

“Where are we going?”

“The McDonald’s on Route Forty-Four.” Before she could ask why, Tom said, “They have free Wi-Fi.”

They parked in the back of the lot, within the long shadow of the restaurant.

Tom studied the parking lot for a moment, making certain they hadn’t been followed.

He could feel Stella watching him.

Satisfied that they were in the clear, Tom removed the tablet from the shoulder bag, located the Wi-Fi signal, and logged on. He tapped the “Home” icon on the display. Within seconds, the Amazon.com homepage had opened up. Without signing into his account, Tom typed a title into the search box and was brought to a new page. The Kindle edition of Thomas Paine’s
Crisis.

He scrolled down the page till he found a review entitled: “These Are the Times That Try Men’s Souls.”

“There’s a notebook and pen in the bag,” Tom said. “Could you get them for me?”

Stella quickly found the notebook and pen, pulled them out.

Tom took the notebook, tore out a page, and handed it to her.

He looked at her, then said, “I’m going to point to some words and you’re going to write them down, okay?”

Stella nodded.

The review was lengthy, its many paragraphs comprised of dozens of sentences. Tom began scanning, stopping first at the ninth word in the first sentence, underneath which he placed the tip of his index finger.

Man

From there he skimmed again, counting as he went and stopping this time on the word
fallen.

He continued to skim the review, word by word, line by line, pointing to key words as he found them.

Meet

Black

Revolution

Four

Six words in total.

Man Fallen Meet Black Revolution Four

The instant Tom had read the last word of that directive, he exited the page and shut down his tablet.

“What’s it mean?”

“It’s a distress call. Someone I used to know is in trouble.”

It took Stella a moment to respond.

Minutes ago they had been about to eat dinner.

Minutes before that they had been together in her bed.

“What kind of trouble?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who is the call from?”

“That’s the problem.”

“What does that mean?”

“There isn’t a lot of time, Stella, but I’ll tell you what I can, okay? And then I have to go.”

“Where?”

“New York City.”

“For how long?”

“It’s seven now, so I should reach the city by ten thirty, if not sooner. If I can get on the road again by eleven thirty, I’ll be back here before you leave for work in the morning.”

“Why don’t I come with you?”

“It would be better if you stayed behind.”

“Why?”

“Please, let’s get back home. I’ll explain on the way.”

Ten

Tom would have preferred that Stella wait for him in the roadside motel just south of Canaan, the place where he had stayed several nights a week prior to moving in with her, but she refused.

She’d be fine at home, she assured him. The police station was a minute away, plus she had the phone number of every cop and half the state troopers in her cell.

Any one of them would come running—to save her if necessary, comfort her if she were scared, or keep her company should she get lonely.

“Maybe I’ll just invite them all over for a party while you’re gone,” she teased.

The joke, whispered into Tom’s ear, was her way of letting him know that she was okay.

Okay with what he had told her, and what he had to do.

Before leaving, however, Tom secured the apartment, as much for his peace of mind as hers.

He dug a wind chime out of a kitchen drawer that had hung outside her bedroom window during the summer months, then grabbed a hammer and nail and suspended the chime above the downstairs door.

Opening the door even an inch would rattle the chimes, and that sound echoed up the stairwell and could be heard even in the back bedroom.

Tom then grabbed an empty can from the recycling bin, half filled it with coins from the jar of change on Stella’s dresser, and instructed her to balance the can on the old brass knob of the apartment’s front door after he was gone.

The knob was so wobbly that someone just gripping it from the other side would be enough to cause the can to fall to the floor and all the change to spill out.

His final security measure was taking the triangle-shaped block of pine Stella used to wedge the bedroom door open on windy nights and flipping it around to show her how it could also be used to wedge the door closed from inside the bedroom.

All of these precautions would, should the worst happen, buy her enough time to get to the chrome-plated Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum in her nightstand drawer.

Her father’s service revolver from his days as a state trooper.

A weapon that, years ago, the man had taught his only daughter to use effectively.

It was ten minutes past seven o’clock when Tom left. Stella watched him from the bedroom window as he unlocked the metal toolbox bolted to his truck’s bed and removed yet another shoulder bag, also identical to the one he had kept hidden under her dresser.

In it were various survival necessities for two, as well as $1,000 in twenties.

Kept there for this very reason.

At the truck’s door, Tom paused to look up at the bedroom window and the woman standing in it.

She was not posed provocatively this time, but all Tom could think about was getting back to her—to the life they’d made in six short months, even to the long hours they both worked so they could spend their nights together.

A simple existence, but that was all he wanted.

She waved to him. He nodded, then got behind the wheel.

Heading south on Route 7, New York City a good three-plus hours away, Tom had plenty of time to prepare mentally for whatever awaited him.

Consider all the options—the ways in, the ways out.

All that needed to go right, all the things that could go wrong.

And those things that could go very wrong.

Eleven

Tom was on I-84 eastbound, about to cross the border into New York State, when he pulled his truck to the shoulder and stopped.

The last time he’d been in the city, he had gone there to meet with the same man he was expecting to see tonight.

Hoping to see. Counting on seeing.

This was five years ago, when Tom had decided not to sign on as a private military contractor with Carrington’s fledgling security firm.

There was reason now, though, for Tom to doubt that Carrington would be the one to meet him tonight, since the first of the several protocols that had been broken was the very protocol put in place to confirm the identity of the sender of any message Tom might receive.

The call should have come from Carrington himself, no one else.

That was protocol number one: voice-to-voice communication.

Texts, even those coming from a known phone, could be sent by anyone.

Also, texts could be ignored by the receiver.

Therefore, protocol number one was critical because it would leave no doubt that the message had come from Carrington, and Carrington would know that Tom had received it.

There were only two reasons why Carrington would reach out in this manner.

Someday I may need your help,
the man had said.
Or someone we know will need ours.

At the time, Tom had wanted to know why Carrington had come up with such an elaborate system.

You’re an asset to me, Tom. The more secret an asset is, the better, so I prefer not to draw attention to you, should I need you.

Carrington had paused, then said,
And frankly, it would benefit us both greatly if my enemies never saw you coming.

Parked now on the side of the dark highway, Tom considered all the reasons why this did not feel right.

The voice he had heard tonight was not Carrington’s.

The call had not come from Carrington’s number.

And perhaps more important, Tom’s first name had been mispronounced.

Though not in and of itself a broken protocol, it was at the very least an indication that the caller was not a friend.

Still, all the other established protocols had been observed.

The code in the review of Thomas Paine’s
Crisis. Black
instead of
zero dark
, the standard military designation for midnight.
Man fallen
instead of
man down
—another of Carrington’s variations that meant someone had been injured and was assumed to be currently in distress. And
revolution four
was the correct term for one of the five locations in and around New York City that Carrington had selected, all of them Revolutionary War landmarks.

Maybe Carrington was the fallen man, and someone who knew the code—if Tom knew it, then likely others did as well—was reaching out for help.

Someone who knew not to leave a voice mail. Someone determined or desperate enough to keep calling till Tom finally answered.

And who then adapted when Tom did not.

But of the people who might also be aware of Carrington’s system of encrypted communication, Tom could not imagine that one of them was female.

The Seabee Engineer Reconnaissance Team that Carrington had commanded, and in which Tom had served, had been an all-male team.

And the combat marines their team supported at Forward Operating Base Nolay in Afghanistan’s Sangin Valley had all been male as well.

Then again, Carrington had been in the private sector for a number of years and would have made all kinds of associations by now.

Female or not,
Tom thought,
the question isn’t simply who the caller is, but how she got Stella’s number. And how she knew to call it when I had shut my phone down.

Tom needed answers—all kinds of answers. And he would find those only by continuing forward.

Shifting into drive and steering back onto the interstate, he resumed his course toward New York City.

Eight blocks from his destination, Tom parked his truck and began to walk.

It was a Friday night, chilly but not cold, so Manhattan’s Lower East Side was busy.

Bars and restaurants full, a steady stream of people on the sidewalks, cars passing on the narrow streets.

Tom reached the corner of Rivington and Forsyth Streets and immediately spotted two black SUVs parked nose-to-tail halfway down Rivington.

He then looked toward a small restaurant called the Gentleman Farmer.

During the Revolutionary War, several of General Washington’s
spies had regularly used it as a meeting place.

And the street it was on—Rivington—had been named after a publisher whose loyalist newspaper was in reality a means of dispensing crucial information about the British to Washington and his officers.

Normally, Tom enjoyed historical places, made a point of always pausing reverently in their presence to sense their aura. To remember the important events these places had witnessed, honor the generations of men and women that had moved through them over the course of hundreds of years.

But there wasn’t time for that tonight.

After a careful survey of the area, he crossed Rivington and headed for the front door.

Through the storefront window he could see a man seated alone at a small corner table, his eyes fixed on the tumbler of whiskey before him.

A man at that moment lost in thought.

To Tom’s relief, that man was James Carrington.