Choppy Water

42

There was a note on Tom Blake’s desk to call Mamie Short. He did so.

“Same as before?” she asked.

“Right. Five minutes.” They hung up and he walked downstairs to her conference room and locked the door behind him. “Good morning. Did you find out about Elroy Hubbard?”

“Well, I had a dream,” she said.

“Do I look like Sigmund Freud?”

“No, no cigar. It was more of what you might call a reality dream.”

“Spit it out, Mamie.”

“Did I ever tell you I was employed at the CIA for a couple of years?”

“No, but it’s in your file. You were unhappy there, I believe.”

“It was more like they were unhappy with me,” she said. “Anyway, during my training at the Farm, there was a black guy named Leroy Collins in my class. What I remember about him was that he was good at everything he did, and also he was a good cook. He specialized in Southern cooking, which he said he’d learned from his mother, and he made dinner for a bunch of us a couple of times.”

“So you think that Leroy Collins is now Elroy Hubbard?”

“I think it’s a good enough guess for you to check it out with the Agency before I spend any more time identifying him. Don’t you?”

“I’ll get back to you,” Tom said, then went back to his office and called the director of central intelligence, Lance Cabot.

“Good morning, Tom,” Lance said.

“Good morning, Lance.”

“I’ve got a meeting in half a minute, but if this is important, I’ll hold them at bay for you.”

“Thank you. I believe you have an operative imbedded with a white-supremacist group down in Virginia, posing as a retired Navy cook.”

Lance was silent while he apparently tried and failed to figure out why Tom had this information. “Anything is possible,” he said, finally.

“In that case, I have some information you might find interesting. Are you available for lunch?”

“I am, if we do it at Langley. Anyway, we have a better chef here than you do at the Bureau.”

“We don’t have a chef,” Tom replied.

“My very point. One o’clock?”

“See you then.”

They both hung up.

Tom was waved through the gate at Langley; he had been there before. He liked visiting the Agency; it was a brighter workplace than the Hoover building, and the people seemed smarter than most of his agents.

He was issued a visitor’s pass at the reception desk, and a uniformed guard walked him to the elevator and rode up with him to the executive floor. Lance’s secretary met him and walked him to a small sitting room adjacent to Lance’s office, where a table had been set for two. She inquired if he would like a drink, and he requested iced tea. He was halfway through the glass before Lance swept in.

“So sorry to be tardy, Tom, but there is always someone wanting to save lives and needing my permission.”

“I know the feeling,” Tom replied, shaking the offered hand.

Lance waved him to a seat at the table, where a cold soup had already been served. “Tom, I don’t mind telling you that I am deeply concerned that your people have unearthed our man in Virginia.”

“Relax, Lance,” Tom said. “He isn’t exactly blown, so you needn’t be worried.”

“Just what, exactly, does ‘isn’t exactly blown’ mean?”

“Well, and what a coincidence, we have an operative inside, as well.”

“How did Collins reveal himself to this gentleman?”

“He didn’t. And I may as well tell you, the gentleman is a lady. She’s been with the Bureau for twelve years, and her cover is that she’s secretary to a deputy attorney general.”

“Well, we seem to have our Colonel Sykes boxed, don’t we?” Lance said with obvious pleasure.

“I’m not sure about that,” Tom said.

“Why not? How many more people do we need on this?”

“Because we can’t prove he’s done what he’s done. At least not yet.”

“Well, we know he did the Maine murders.”

“Knowing is not the same as proving. At the Bureau, we have to do both.”

“How about this business at the White House earlier this week?”

“There are other problems there as well,” Tom said.

“I was afraid there might be,” Lance said. He picked up his soup by the two handles on the bowl and drank it down. “Go on, enlighten me further.”

“Not surprisingly, Sykes doesn’t trust your man because he’s black.”

“Is your agent white?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

“Not really.”

“Now what?”

“She’s told Sykes that she’s a lesbian — to keep his hands off her. And for Sykes, that’s at about the same level as being black.”

“Oh, dear. He’s not trusting either of them, then?”

“Correct.”

“What has your agent accomplished so far?”

“Well, she managed to get word to us that the White House event was upcoming, but communications from that compound are problematical, and her message was garbled. We managed to head them off, though. We set up a dummy in a window, and they took that out.”

“Oh, good.”

“But we still can’t prove anything. We don’t even have enough for a search warrant, and now they know that Holly is still alive.”

“Has your girl made contact with Collins?”

“Yes, but they don’t know each other’s identities.”

“Well, as long as we both have people there we ought to arrange for them to work together, ought we not?”

“We ought.”

“How should we accomplish that?”

“Let’s each send a message to our respective operative, tell him or her who the other is, and ask them to have a heart-to-heart talk,” Tom said.

“What name is your operative using?” Lance asked, pen poised over his notebook.

“Bess Potts.”

“And her actual name?”

“Elizabeth Potter.”

“Consider it done,” Lance said.

“I’ll inform Elizabeth at the first opportunity.”

“All right, then.”

Lance’s secretary came into the room. “Director, I’m afraid...”

“Say no more,” Lance said, rising. “Tom, I’m needed. Finish your lunch at your leisure.”

“Thank you, Lance,” Tom said, rising and shaking his hand.

Lance fled.

Tom stopped at a fast-food restaurant on the way back to his office and had a burger.