To Free a Spy (40 page)

Warfield didn’t see the mud hole until he’d leaped from the fence. It was six- or eight-feet across and a toy boat lay just out of the water next to a rubber duck. A water hose that had been used to fill the hole on a drier day ran from a faucet somewhere across the yard and disappeared into the hole. Warfield landed in the middle of it. It was deeper than he expected and he lost his footing. He scrambled to his knees and poked his head out. Mud dripped from his face as he made a quick reckoning. The dog in the next yard was having a heart attack. Warfield’s only shot now was north, through the backyards of the houses that fronted on both Fourth and Fifth, and he needed to move before the frantic Shepherd drew a crowd.

The Mercedes had circled around and now stopped in the middle of Fourth, about a hundred feet east of Warfield. The shooter, a blur in the rain, emerged from the car and headed toward the barking dog. Warfield ducked back into the hole until his head was submerged, groped for the water hose, managed his Ka Bar pocket knife and sawed off a three-foot section of the hose. Still holding his breath, he inched the end of the short section of hose out of the water and into the edge of the grass, blew it clear, expelled as much of the muddy water from his mouth as he could and sealed his lips around the submerged end of the hose to make a snorkel.

Finally!
As he began to breathe again, the shooter was trying to get a clue from the ballistic Shepherd in the adjacent yard as to the intruder’s location. Then something else attracted his eye and he gave up on the dog. It was the hose! Warfield could make out the stubby shotgun hanging at the end of the man’s arm as he moved around to the hose. When the shooter stepped into the edge of the mud hole, Warfield reached for an ankle and jerked. The shooter’s arms flew up in an attempt to maintain balance and Warfield heard the gun fire.

Warfield figured he’d been shot but felt no new pain yet. The shooter was under the water with him now but had lost control of the shotgun. Warfield grabbed it and pressed the end of the barrel into the shooter’s chest. When he cleared the mud from his eyes he saw that the gun was no longer necessary. Blood poured from what had been the shooter’s neck. When he had accidentally fired the shotgun it had blown the front half of his head away.

Warfield threw the shotgun to the ground, disgusted, having lost the opportunity to find out from this goon who was behind the attack. As he expected, the man had no I.D. on him.

Other dogs were barking by then but Warfield didn’t know whether they were yard dogs or if he were being hunted down. He was a threat now, to Quinn at least, and it had come to this. As unbelievable as it seemed, Warfield had been marked by the director of the CIA. Quinn’s man or men thought he was at his condo because his car was parked in the driveway. When they realized they didn’t get him, they went for him in the open, right on the street. Warfield had survived, but now an innocent man was dead, as well as this thug and the one he’d shot in the Mercedes.

The rain was heavier now and the wind stronger. The temperature was in the mid-sixties but Warfield was chilled from the rain and mud. He’d emptied Leroy’s gun into the Mercedes and left it in the truck, and he had no shells for the shotgun. He kicked it into the mud hole. It was time to go, but he heard the police and emergency vehicles coming from the vicinity of Leroy’s truck. He had to get out of there before they blocked off the area.

* * *

“Ready, Ms. Koronis?” Marybeth asked. Ana had made friends with the red-haired guard.

“He’s here?”

“They called up for you. Excited?”

A crooked smile hit Ana’s lips. “Don’t exactly know how I feel, Marybeth, but I don’t think it’s bad.” She took a last look in the mirror. Marybeth had sneaked her some drugstore makeup. She fidgeted with her hair.

“You’re lookin’ good, Ms. Koronis. Too bad it’s raining, this bein’ your first time out in a while. And you’re not gonna believe that wind.”

Minutes later Ana signed some papers at the desk of Captain Aubrey Holden and noticed Austin Quinn’s signature was already on them. “Where is he?”

Holden nodded toward a deputy waiting outside his office. “Sergeant Brighton there will walk you down to the garage.”

As they walked away, Holden said, “Don’t forget to come back.”

Ana wondered how many times Holden had used the line. Two floors down, Brighton led her across the basement to the black SUV. Quinn saw them coming and got out to greet her.

“Ana.”

She smiled somewhat apprehensively. “Austin.”

He pulled her to him. They embraced like siblings might, and talked for a few seconds as Brighton stood nearby. As soon as the SUV was off the jail premises she told Quinn she wanted to stop for a minute. The driver pulled over and Ana jumped out, raised her arms to the sky and turned her face to the driving rain. She stood like that for maybe thirty seconds before lowering her arms to shoulder level and winging like a graceful eagle exploring the skies. Her hair and clothes were soaked when she got back in. Raindrops ran down her cheeks, taking her new makeup with it.

* * *

Warfield’s most urgent need was transportation out of the neighborhood. The Mercedes with the first dead gunman still inside was not an option. He slogged through the soaked yards several lots further north, somewhat obscured by the rain and low clouds, and spotted an old Ford Thunderbird in a driveway. He had it wired in seconds and drove north then east and then south again to avoid the intersection where Leroy’s truck was sitting. Police hadn’t blocked off all the streets yet and he made it out of the neighborhood without being stopped.

The T-bird began sputtering minutes later and Warfield wheeled into a motel parking lot and coasted around the end of the building to a secluded lot partially filled with run-down cars. The stained sign on the roof of the old building read, “Clean Rooms By The Hour.” The round, seventyish woman behind the counter looked up at Warfield through eyes whose whites had long ago turned brown. She made no move to get out of her chair.

When Warfield pushed a soggy twenty-dollar bill across the worn Formica top she took a slow drag off the Camel cigarette she was smoking and surveyed the mud that covered him from top to bottom. At last she managed herself out of her chair, waddled to the counter and gave him a key stamped with the number
6,
and a sheaf of ones she retrieved from her skirt as change.

It hit him that she was going to call the police as soon as he walked out. Dopers and hookers were the norm. Muddy and bloody hair and clothes were another thing. His eyes caught hers as he left the ones on the bar, figuring he was the first person to make eye-contact with her in years, and the only one who’d ever left a tip. Maybe she would think about it long enough for him to get out of there. All he needed were a few short minutes.

He’d lost his cell phone in the mud but found a pay phone nearby and dialed Paula Newnan’s direct line. He’d spotted a Jiffy Lube oil change place down the street and told her to meet him there. “Soon as you can. Make it quick!”

When Warfield entered Room 6 the stale odors, dingy carpet and frayed bedspread reminded him of the quality of life experienced by those who were relegated to places like this. He took a shower, washed his clothes in the bathtub, wrung them out as much as possible and put them back on wet. Wet clothes would look normal on a day like today. He trotted along the back streets to the Jiffy Lube and was waiting when Paula arrived. They had the customer area to themselves.

“This better be good, Cameo. I don’t usually come to this part of town without a gun. And I didn’t need an oil change.”

“Listen, Paula. They’re trying to take me out. This has to be quick. I need—”

“
Take you…who? For what?”
she stage-whispered. Her eyes were saucer-size. “My God, you’re putting too much heat on somebody!”

“Quinn. Or maybe he convinced Fullwood I’m a problem that needs solving. Fullwood wouldn’t be hard to convince. Either way, I’m a target.”

“
You think Quinn—
”

“Yes.”

“You’ve seen them, these people who are trying to kill you?”

“They bombed my condo last night! When they realized I wasn’t inside, they chased me down and tried to shoot me and they killed a Samaritan who was trying to help me. Somebody’s going to pay for him if nothing else.”

“Oh, God.” Paula took a second to digest it all. “Out in the open? Come on, Cam, this can’t be happening!”

“These guys weren’t wearing coats and ties, Paula.”

“Contractors.”

“Exactly. Don’t ever think the nice boys at Langley or the Hoover building are above using dirty knives to cut their meat with. They got ’em on speed dial.”

Paula shook her head. “And what do I do?”

“I need your car. Catch a cab back to Hertz and rent something. We’ll work it out later.”

“That’s easy—but wait a minute. You can go to Cross with this.”

“What I’ve got on Quinn is too hot. And I can’t prove anything yet. If Cross knew about it at this point he’d have a helluva dilemma.”

“Where’ll you go?”

“Don’t know yet, but you haven’t talked to me.”

Warfield headed northeast out
of Washington, stopped at a mom and pop motel a few miles across the state line in Pennsylvania, registered under the name Pete Moore, avoiding even his aliases, and paid in cash. He’d jotted notes as he drove and now he looked them over from the perspective of a fugitive.

He called his voicemail and listened to a message Joe Morgan had left for Warfield at ten-forty that morning. Helen Swope hadn’t shown up for the meeting. No word from Helen or Filmore Dunstan, her attorney. Morgan was afraid Helen had decided against changing her testimony, but maybe the weather delayed her. The second call was from Fleming. She was fine.

He looked out of his window as he waited for the final message to queue. It was almost dark at mid-afternoon. The wind howled through the trees and he wondered how they could bend so much without breaking.

The message played. It was a second call from Morgan, at noon. Warfield strained to hear the recording over the line static. Morgan was pumped this time and said Warfield was to call him immediately.

When Warfield dialed him back, the line crackled, making communication difficult.

“Glad it’s you,” Morgan said. “Veronica’s about to run me out of my office, but listen to this, Warfield. Helen Swope was strangled to death in her bed last night.”

Warfield was stunned.

“Her lawyer’s dead too. Shot in the head as he—”

The line scratched and crackled before going dead. Warfield redialed and got a phone company recording that said phone lines were down in some D.C. areas due to winds from Veronica.

He hung up and put this news flash from Morgan into the equation. A few short hours earlier Warfield told Quinn that Helen Swope was going to tell Morgan this morning she had lied about Ana. Now both Helen and her attorney were dead—murdered. Warfield barely escaped the same fate—so far. He stood there watching the rain fly sideways by the window as he tried to put it all together.

“Oh, God!…
Ana
!” Warfield mumbled.
Quinn was eliminating everyone who held keys to his history. Ana would have known Quinn aliased as Donald O. Goodwin and now she was going to die for knowing it
. She was not safe from Quinn even locked up in the ADC. Look at Joplan, for example.

He remembered meeting an officer Holden at the Alexandria Detention Center, where Ana was being held until they assigned her to a federal prison. He got the AT&T operator to try the line, hoping it was still in service.

“ADC.” The line was noisy.

“Holden. Got a Holden there?”

“Captain Holden. One moment.”

“Aubrey Holden.”

“Holden, Cam Warfield.”

“Colonel Warfield! Help you with something?”

“Ana Koronis! Everything okay with her?”

Holden laughed. “Pretty revved when I saw her few hours ago. I guess you know that the CIA guy, what’s his name…Quinn? got her a pass for the weekend.”

“She’s with Quinn?”
That was very bad news, but Warfield wasn’t totally surprised.

“Yes, sir. I got an order to release her into Mr. Quinn’s custody until Monday morning.”

“
Tell me that you know where they were going, Holden!
”

“No idea, sir.”

“
You’ve got to find out, Holden. Now.
”

“I don’t…well, hold a second. I’ll see if anybody knows.”

Holden was back a minute later. “Deputy Brighton here, he escorted Koronis to Mr. Quinn’s car. Said Mr. Quinn told Ms. Koronis they were going to ‘AC.’ That mean Atlantic City, you think?”

“When did they leave?”

“This morning, right after eight.”

Warfield hung up and ran through his options. It wouldn’t be easy to stop Quinn. After all,
who in all of law enforcement had the will, the capacity—the thought that he could be a criminal—to apprehend the widely-known director of central intelligence?
Even Ana, in the dark about all of this, would laugh at the absurdity of it if anyone attempted to
save
her from Quinn. Cross was the only possibility, but Ana could be dead by the time it took Warfield to make the case to Cross that the man he loved like a brother was a traitor and a murderer. Even then, how much longer would it take Cross to assimilate the facts to the point of action?

Cross was not the answer. Warfield clicked on the motel room’s vintage TV and stood there while the tubes warmed up. Under normal conditions, Atlantic City would be ninety minutes max from his motel, but the Weather Channel showed Veronica moving northward now, paralleling the coast with winds at speed of hundred and twenty. A spokesman from the National Hurricane Center couldn’t say where or when she would turn westward to land, but the wind and rain would continue. Warfield knew it would only get worse as he drove closer to the coast.

He took I-95 north. The interstate was less prone to flood than the secondary roads he used earlier to avoid Quinn’s thugs. It was three p.m. when he turned south at Philadelphia to take the Atlantic City Expressway. The weather had traffic crawling at a time when he needed to make speed. Quinn and Ana, hours ahead of him, had reached Atlantic City by now—if Holden was correct.