Zane, in behind Russell on the right, pistol swinging to cover that flank.
Me, on Penetrater Russell’s left with my tranquilizer gun as Preferred Shooter.
Ticks froze.
Until Russell whispered: “Oh, fuck.”
“What?” hissed Cari from the hall.
“All in!” I whispered.
Eric stumbled against a door jam, but made it in ahead of Cari, her gun swinging a safe arc to not put any of us in her line of fire as her eyes widened with what she saw.
What we all saw.
An empty office. Bare white walls. Bare ivory tile floor. Bare ceiling except for standard fluorescent light fixtures. A storage closet standing open and empty.
“Close the door,” I said.
Zane did and its latch click echoed through this bare room.
No prisoners. No interrogations. No evidence. No tracks.
“Gotta be the right place!” Russell’s pistol sought a reality beyond what he saw.
“’Xactly.”
Ever cautious, Eric replaced the pin in my flash/bang grenade.
The telephone filled my left hand. “Stand by.”
Hailey transmitted the OK that let us know she was still out there, still safe.
Zane shone a flashlight over the empty closet walls. Jerked open the only other door and flinched from the blinding white glare of sparkling toilet fixtures.
Cari ran her finger over the windowsill. “No dust.”
“Smell that?” I said and everyone sniffed. “Pine ammonia. Look at the walls: absolutely clean white. I bet there isn’t a fingerprint or DNA drop in this place.”
“Give me somebody to shoot!” Russell whirled from blank wall to blank wall.
“Can’t,” I said. “Here isn’t there anymore.”
“Um,” said Zane as the sunshine streamed in to us through the landlord’s blinds over the windows: “Does it occur to anybody else that the only thing in here now is us?”
“Fuck!” Russell zeroed his pistol at the shut exit door.
“Shhh,” I said. “Shhh.”
Closed my eyes. Heard the rushing void of this empty room. Heard no radio through the thick door. No clatter of a city street beyond these bare walls. No ring of bells from the nearby schoolyard. No laughter of children as they dashed back to class. No whirl of dust particles dancing in golden shafts of sunlight breaking through the windows and sliding past the blinds.
My eyes opened.
Spotted magic marker red letters on the ivory tile floor.
Three letters. One word.
run
52
“This is a terrible idea,” said Russell that night as we trudged through the forest.
“It’s my last one,” I said, my shoe slipping on damp dead leaves.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Russell. “Guy like this, times like these, he’s bound to have tech security, bodyguards, counter-surveillance coverage, home heat.”
“He might not live here anymore,” said Hailey. “He might not be home.”
“And Victor,” said Zane, “even if he is here, you barely know him.”
Eric said nothing as we muscled our way through the dark woods.
“One of us should have stayed with the car,” said Cari.
“No,” I said. “We’re a package deal.”
We marched through a night of trees.
Washington, D.C. is full of forests. The biggest one crescents through the city centered by a vein road called Rock Creek Parkway for commuters to zip from swell northwest neighborhoods to money castles of steel & glass along K Street and stone government bureaucracies stretching up Pennsylvania Avenue to the white icing Capitol Dome. Though the swath of forest separating Rock Creek Parkway from houses and apartment buildings is sometimes barely five blocks wide, the park meanders for miles and is treasured turf to joggers, horse trail riders, bold lovers, bicyclists, deer, coyotes and more than one murder.
The forest we marched through barely deserved that name. Call it a glen or a glade or a swath of wild trees along a ravine preserved because its aesthetic worth outweighed the cost of zoning exemptions. In point of fact, those woods were not in Washington, D.C., but rather were across the Maryland border in the ritzy suburb of Bethesda, and then not even in Bethesda itself, but in a Korean War era subdivision surrounded by a low stonewall. The subdivision had a name straight out of a Victorian British novel and four unguarded gates leading to its chessboard blocks of grand houses.
Our white Caddy drove through the main stone gate at 8:35 that night. I rode shotgun, directed driver Zane past glowing dwellings in which many a Dad and Mom had just gotten home from the big office to eat warmed-up dinner at the mirror polished dining room table and wait for Sarah and Ben to clumpity-clump downstairs all giggly in snug pajamas with that warm toddler smell and give the seldom-seen parent a kiss ’n’ hug around the neck night-night before they ran back upstairs past Mommy. Daddy’s scuffed briefcases full of Important Work that surely could Fix The Whole Wide World.
“Would help if you had an address,” said Zane.
“Not really,” I said. “Getting here was almost like one last field test. It’s an out-back place. A cabin. Like a groundskeeper’s place, servants’ quarters, it’s not much.”
“Out here, ‘not much’ rings in at a million dollars,” said Hailey. “How does he afford that on the checks he’s gotten from Uncle?”
“Rented it for years,” I said, remembering a discussion from my congratulatory NOC agent graduation evening of red wine and cheese with a handful of Agency priests and bishops. “When his landlord on the main lot put the whole package up for sale, he got loans and bought it, reversed the economic structure so that now he rents out the big place to afford to live in the cabin.
“These woods are the only ones in this development,” I said as we cruised past a wall of shadowy trees on our heart side. “He has to be in there.”
We left the Caddy glowing with purity under a streetlight near the swim club, watched the lit windows in the nearby big houses stay empty, and walked into the woods.
A cold damp forest smell swallowed us. We could see a corpse length in most directions courtesy of the urban glow trapped by a curving sky. The skins of visible trees glowed a shade of pale grayer than the pallor of our faces. Rocks stubbed our feet and deadfall snapped under our shoes. Spring was officially here, but that night kept such news a secret. Bare trees pressed towards us like a crowd at a rock concert or pallbearers at a funeral. Branches scraped cheeks, foreheads near blinking eyes, clothes. An owl hooted. Who knew if he’d spotted us or was working his own covert agenda. Our plan to move in a straight line choked in thick brush and interlaced trees too stubborn to step aside. We followed a ravine through the tangle.
“Look!” Russell pointed off to his right.
Through a score of sentinel trees, I saw a log cabin under a tall watchlight, with a vast apron of grass running from it to a three story white house.
“Is that it?” said Zane.
“Gotta be,” I said.
Zane whispered: “If you’re wrong…”
“Wrong or right,” said Russell, “it ain’t good.”
We made sure none of us had twisted an ankle, gotten lost. Spread out in a skirmish line, crept to the edge of the forest. Waited 20 minutes.
“Lights on,” said Zane. “Shades down, can’t see who’s inside.”
“No sign of anybody out here in the big cold dark but us crazies,” said Russell. “’Course, we’d never see a Marine Corps sniper. And there could be an Office of Security cover car or van parked beyond the big house, in the street.”
“Where we could have driven,” said Zane.
“You know better than that,” Cari told him. “We made it this far.”
“Almost 50 yards of open gr
ass between here and there,” said Russell.
“’Xactly.”
“Eric?” I said.
“Could be motion sensors. A web of infra-red beams dropped all around cabin. Horizon radar. On-site alarm. Instant relay to a react center.”
“Or a barking dog,” said Hailey.
“Fuck it,” said Russell. “We going or are we gone?”
“Walk it like you own it,” I said.
And led them out of the trees.
We spread out in a single line, a wave of six people walking across a night glade from the woods to a well-lit cabin. Walking slow. Standing tall.
No bullets shredded our chests. No machineguns rattled the night. No popped flares lit the sky. No spotlights hit our faces. No snarling German shepherds charged.
We made it to the front porch.
Cari knocked on the door. I stood to her left. The others fanned out in a tight line behind us. Again, Cari knocked.
The cabin door swung open and there he stood—his right hand out of sight beyond the doorjam. The lamps behind him and the watchlight above us glistened the sliver of his thinning hair as his lean face locked on Cari.
Blink, his smile dying as he truly saw me.
Same heartbeat, I blurted: “Please no! No gun, no alarm if that’s what your right hand is on, please no. Give us, give me a chance.”
His focus zoomed out to the quartet waiting on his lawn; zoomed back to Cari as he said: “Agent Rudd?”
“Yes sir.”
I said: “Please, whatever you’re thinking, Sir, don’t. I’m going to move.”
My right hand eased out from behind my leg. Showed him what I held.
“Tranquilizer gun,” I said. “Over-under barrels, two darts. Cari—Agent Rudd—says the neurotoxin takes 10 seconds to put you down. Not unconscious, but you’ll be good for not much for at least half an hour and we may not have that much time.”
“Really,” he said.
Kept his right hand inside the cabin where I couldn’t see it.
Cari said: “Sir, on my belt. One weapon, I’m armed. I’m not here as a hostage or a prisoner. I’m operational. These people represent no threat.”
“Really.”
I said: “Director Lang—”
“Deputy Director,” he answered. “And that’s a classified title. What’s your—”
“Sir,” I said, “you can work me in a minute. Right now you need to know you’re safe but we’re serious. If we’d come here for wet work, I wouldn’t be holding a tranquilizer gun and by now, you’d be past feeling whatever’s hidden in your right hand.”
“Ahh.”
“One step at a time, right? But we’ve got to move. And how is up to you.”
“How about we all go back in time?” he said.
“We’re ready if you’re able.”
And his smile came back. “Maybe we should think of something else.”
“You should invite us in.”
“The place is a mess,” he said. “And small, for the… six of you.”
“We don’t mind.”
“So I’ve been told.”
And I had to smile. Wipe it off.
“We showed you our trust,” I said. “Because it’s just a tranquilizer gun. Because nobody squeezed any trigger when you opened the door. Now it’s your turn. Fair’s fair.”
Lang frowned. “Fair? Like in a negotiation? Do you think I asked for this?”
“What you ask for doesn’t always come. What’s in your hand? A weapon? An alarm signal? A ham sandwich?”
“That’s what you’re asking?”
“We’re both doing more than asking.” My stare broadcast I wasn’t ceding him control.
Lang shrugged. “I’m holding a 1911 Colt .45 automatic. Beautiful weapon with a bullet for each of you.”
Behind me, Russell said: “Never happen.”
Lang’s gaze filled with the whacko samurai in the black leather trenchcoat.
“That I believe,” said Lang. “You’re… Sorry, I don’t remember all your names.
“But,” he said, “now… I’m going to slowly turn to my right—keeping my body in the open doorway. I’ll lay my pistol on that table. Walk to the far wall where there’s only the kitchen sink. Count to 10, then turn around with my hands empty.
“All of you,” he said, “may come in. You can shoot me in the back or not, but if you do, forget the tranquilizer darts: have the balls to use a real bullet.”
That’s what he said. That’s what he did.
When he turned around, he saw us all standing there in his house. Door closed.
“So,” said Lang, watching Zane pick up the .45. “Agent Rudd, good to meet you.”
“First, are you all right?”
“Yes sir, I—”
“Do you know where you are? I suppose it’s more important where you’ve been since your team was neutralized—reports say your men are fine, by the way, though we are worried about you. It’s like you got teleported to Sweden.”
His blue eyes kept their warm hold on her, yet also watched as the rest of us fanned out in this living room/dining room/open kitchen of a solid log walled cabin.
“Stockholm syndrome,” I told Cari. “He’s worried you’ve lost your will and rationality, gone over to your captors.”
Eric added: “’S a kind of crazy.”
“No way, man,” argued Russell as he opened the door to Lang’s bedroom, let his eyes search it. “Stockholm is its own place.”
“Go ahead and snoop,” Lang told the samurai peering into his bedroom.
“Hey,” said Zane, “we’re all spies. We don’t want you to hit us with a surprise—and Deputy Director Lang, don’t so casually drift towards your computer work station.”
Lang stopped where he was. Gave us all a smile. “Call me John.”
“OK, John…” said Zane, motioning the senior spy in the room closer to me. Zane gestured to our technical expert, pointed to Lang’s computer: “Eric, check it out.
“And hey, John,” said Zane: “Do you always answer your door holding a .45?”
“These days,” said Lang, “what do you want me to hold?”
“Where’s your security?” said Zane.
“You mean beyond my pure heart and a classic Colt?”
“You know what we need to know.”
Lang shook his head. “From what I’ve read in the action reports over the last week, I don’t think anybody knows what you want to know.”
Zane wouldn’t let him wiggle away: “Why no coverage outside? No guards?”
“I’m an ex-brick agent. A street dog. Back-up boys or minders covering me feel like wolves on my heels. Make my hairs stand on end. I insist that I be left free most of the time. Besides, every Trouble Boy the Agency can beg, borrow or steal is running up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Looking for you. How ironic that all I had to do was stay home.”
Eric let first his eyes, then his fingers caress the computer system on a table, asked: “Video monitoring? Technical counter-measures? Alarms?”
“Window and door alarms wired in to the Office of Security and the local badges. Motion sensor for this room when I activate it. Panic button on the wall by the bed, one on the wall there by my leather chair.”
Knowing him, I said: “What ones wouldn’t we find?”
“Very good, Victor.” He eyes kept weighing and courting Cari. “You might not find the button mounted under the computer desk—I accidentally kneed it once and two minutes later… Let’s see if we can avoid another riot blitz.”
“Let’s,” I said. “What else?”
“You’d find the pendant button if I had it on, which I don’t, it’s on the bed table.”
“You know,” I told him, “we’ll find everything else.”
He smiled. “Good luck.”
The man who’d talent spotted me for the Agency, the executive who here, in his modest home, had hosted the informal graduation ceremony that secrecy allowed when I became a deep cover spy, the bishop of the church of intelligence who fire-axed partitions and ran my de-briefing on the day of my second suicide, the man who Cari said had been “bumped up, some sort of cardinal in the new Homeland Security maze,” that gray haired, slight but strong man named John Lang stood in the living room of his cabin and raised his hands to be body searched.
Smooth, I thought. Don’t wait for us to ask or tell you what to do. Volunteer. Work on winning our trust. Seduce us with your co-operation. Until.
He caught the knowing shake of my head. Knew I knew. Knew I knew he knew.
We’re trapped on the circle of knowing, I thought as Zane ran his hands over the spy who was about his same age. Trapped chasing each other round that circle until.
I’d met Lang at a bagua martial arts seminar not far from this cabin. Like T’ai Chi or Aikido, bagua is an internal art, only its practitioners specialize in circles, in turning and twisting and walking around an opponent, deflecting attacks until the circled foe gets dizzy or out-of-rhythm/balance—and at that until, the bagua expert blasts his foe with a myriad of shattering techniques.
We’ve got to get off this circle.
“He’s clean,” said Zane.
“How are all of you feeling?” said Lang.
Trying sympathy. Empathy. Bonding.
“Still crazy?” he said.
Trying provocation. Challenge. Destabilization.
“We’re still not stupid,” I said.
“No one’s ever thought you were stupid,” said Lang. “That’s why all this… wildness and killing doctors and nurses proves what everyone knows: you are… medically challenged.”
Russell said: “Man, you Washington warriors love to spin words.”
Zane said: “He’ll spin us if we give him a chance.”
“My guess is you’re all already dizzy,” said Lang. “Even if you weren’t crazy, coming down off all your medications must be quite a crash.”
“As long as we’re together, we’re together enough,” I told him. Forced my hands to stop trembling and knew he saw my effort.