Edge

Chapter 8

RYAN KESSLER BLINKED, drawing his pistol. “Should I aim for the wheels? The driver?”

“No, no!” I said quickly. I hadn’t been speaking to him but to the woman who’d been looking into my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Maree, with your camera. Shoot the license plate.”

The woman had a serious telephoto lens mounted on her Canon. I wanted the tag of the car. It was too far behind to get a visual with naked eyes.

“Oh.” Ryan sat back. He seemed disappointed.

Maree played with the camera’s controls, spun around and shot, with the click-buzz of single-lens reflex cameras. I wondered, with the digital models, like they all were nowadays, if that was just sound effects and speakers.

A moment later she was looking at the screen. “I can read the plate.”

“Good job. Hold on a minute.” I called Freddy and told him I needed a tag run immediately.

Maree gave me the letters and numbers and I recited them into the phone.

Ryan was looking around, gripping his gun again.

Fewer than sixty seconds later, Freddy came back on. He was laughing. “Registered to one Jimmy Chung. Owns a restaurant in Prince William. His son’s driving around, dropping off flyers for the restaurant. I got his number and talked to the kid. He said he’s behind a gray SUV-that needs washing, by the way-and it looks like somebody just took his picture, which he’s not too happy about. They have a good menu, Corte. The General Tso’s chicken is a specialty. Was there really a General Tso?”

“Thanks, Freddy.”

I disconnected and noted the passengers were staring at me.

“It’s safe, there’s no problem. Chinese food delivery.”

After a moment Maree said, “Let’s order out.”

A fragment of a laugh from her sister. Ryan seemed not to hear.

Now that the vehicle had turned out to be harmless, I relaxed somewhat and fell into the rhythm of the road. I enjoyed driving. I never had a car as a teenager. But my father, a lawyer for an insurance company and a good one, made sure I learned to drive safely and well. Once you realized that most of the other people on the road were idiots-he knew this firsthand from his job-and took appropriate precautions you could enjoy the process of tooling around the roads quite a bit.

He himself drove a Volvo, claiming it was the safest thing on the highway.

In any event I liked the act of driving. I wasn’t sure why. It certainly wasn’t speed. I was quite a cautious driver. Maybe it was that, as a shepherd, when I was driving, my principals and I were moving targets and therefore, incrementally at least, safer. Though not always, of course. Abe Fallow had been captured by Henry Loving and killed during a convoy transport. The chicken truck incident in North Carolina.

I pushed the thought away.

At the moment we were on a road heading west, dancing in and out of Fairfax and Prince William counties. We moved past the Tudor turrets of strip malls with their assembly-line chain outlets and busy fast food franchises, manned by teen clerks counting down the hours, the glistening humps of used cars in rows, their features touted with exclamation points, doctors’ offices and insurance agencies, the occasional antiques store in a fifty-year-old single-story building, gun shops, ABC stores. A sagging barn or two. Some high-rise wannabes in office parks.

Northern Virginia could never decide whether it was a suburb of New York or a part of the Confederacy.

I checked the time. It was a little after 1:30 p.m. We’d been on the road for less than two hours. I’d decided not to go directly to the safe house but to stop at a way station-a nearby motel-to confuse the trail and switch cars. I often moved my principals in stages. We’d stay there for three or four hours, then continue to the safe house. My organization had a list of about a dozen hotels or motels in the area that were secure and out of the way; the one I had in mind was perhaps the best.

Checking traffic, I hit SPEED DIAL.

“DuBois.”

I asked her, “Who are we at the Hillside?”

We have different covers for the various halfway houses we use. Even if I’m sure I know, I always ask.

There came the clatter of a keyboard, the jingle of her charm bracelet. The young woman said, “You’re Frank Roberts, sales director of Artesian Computer Design. You were there eight months ago for two days with Pietr Smolitz and his friend.” The last word was delivered frostily; duBois had formed an indelible opinion about the whistle-blower’s condescending mistress, who’d accompanied him. “Roberts, that is, you, was making sales calls in Tysons and Reston, along with your associate from Moscow. The bullet hole in the wall got repaired before they knew about it.”

“That, I remember.” We hadn’t been attacked. The crazy Russian had a hidden gun that had emerged after significant consumption of equally clandestine vodka. The discharge of the silenced weapon was accidental but the Taser hit to his back, compliments of me, had not been.

I told duBois, “I’m checking in now. I’ll call in twenty.”

“In twenty. Okay.”

In a few miles I slowed, signaled and turned into the long drive of the Hillside Inn. The white colonial buildings, stuccoed and gabled, squatted in the middle of five acres of attractive landscaping: geometric lawns, trimmed trees, English gardens, roses still in abundant bloom. Though I doubted she was in the mood to appreciate it, I hoped Joanne would enjoy a brief glance at the grounds, given her interest in gardening. Despite Maree’s sarcasm earlier, I am a bit of a tour guide, in that it works to my advantage to keep my principals occupied and content.

The Hillside Inn was indeed situated on an incline, though more at the bottom than the side, and was backed by naked farmland. There was an anemic forest to the right but a lifter or hitter would have a tough time approaching from a distance without being seen.

I headed up the drive, then cut right and through the parking lot to the back of the motel, avoiding the large windows in the lobby. I parked and told everyone to stay inside. I walked through an archway between two wings of rooms at the back and headed for the office. There were twenty-two cars in the lot. I have a scanner with a direct uplink to a national DMV database but to scan that many cars would take some time and look suspicious. Besides, in all my years of this business, I’d never known a lifter or hitter to park at a halfway or safe house in a vehicle with tags that would give him away.

I fished in my wallet from among the ten credit cards in various personal and company names and found the Artesian MasterCard, issued in the name of Frank Roberts. Artesian is a real company-well, it’s incorporated, that is-and has an impressive Web site. Had we ever decided actually to go into computer software design, we had a lengthy list of potential customers who’d emailed us. My organization has a number of cover companies like this, and research specialists like duBois have fun writing up a briefing sheet on each of them, incorporating all sorts of information like bios of chief executives, exotic locations for sales conferences and even ad campaigns. Shepherds spend hours memorizing the data so we can have credible, if brief, conversations on the subjects of computer design, aircraft hydraulics, deli meat and cheese and a number of other products and services-I’ve been told my recitation of these cover stories is unsexy, if not boring, and discourages further inquiry. Which is, of course, the point.

I checked in, noted nothing out of the ordinary with the desk clerk and a bellboy, then returned to the SUV, seeing nothing that aroused suspicion in the parking lot either.

I opened the driver’s side door and announced, “Bring your things with you.”

“I thought we weren’t staying here,” Maree said.

“For a little while. We’re switching vehicles.”

“You think that’s necessary?” Ryan asked.

“Just a precaution.” If there’s a mantra in the personal security field, that’s it.

“There a hot tub?” Maree asked. “Preferably with a cute masseur named Raoul?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to stay inside,” I repeated.

Maree’s look silently reiterated her comment about my attitude as a tour guide.

I ushered them quickly into the two-bedroom suite, tactically the best in the Hillside Inn for defense since there was no sniper vantage point outside. Joanne looked around blankly. Her sister seemed genuinely disappointed at the small, sparse place. Maybe she thought the federal government should put some stimulus money into her accommodations. Like a SWAT officer Ryan opened doors to bathrooms and closets. Then he went to the window and carefully pulled back the curtain to look outside at a blank wall about thirty feet away-the side of the banquet hall. There was something defiant about this gesture, as if he half expected to see Loving on the other side of the glass.

He seemed disappointed to find gray cinder block rather than a target he could gun down. Still, he said, “Good choice. Defensible.”

I nodded.

“Oooh, can I have that room?” Maree asked, pointing to the larger. I shrugged. The rooms were just for showers and a nap, if they wanted. I wasn’t going to be using one. The others agreed and the young woman stepped toward it.

I said, “The phones in there don’t work.”

Her step slowed. I’d had a feeling that she’d wanted to have a longer, and private, conversation with her friend Andrew. But she gave an exaggerated pout and said, “Then you’ll have to arrange for my masseur, Mr. Tour Guide.” She winked and vanished.

With a tired glance after his sister-in-law, Ryan lifted his cold phone. “My boss?”

“Sure. Just nothing about the location.”

A nod. He took his backpack and stepped into the other bedroom, dialing. He swung the door closed with his foot.

Leaving me in the living room of the suite with somber Joanne. She clicked the TV on, flipped through the channels. There was nothing about the assault on her home, only a report about the false alarm of a shooting at George Mason University.

“How did they keep it out of the news?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I told her.

Though I did: Aaron Ellis, my boss. He had never been a shepherd, like me. His background was administration in federal security agencies and he was experienced at congressional liaisons, budgetary infighting… and media relations. When Abe Fallow died, six years ago, there was some talk of me taking over the organization; I was Abe’s protégé. But it would have meant less time in the field and I didn’t want that. So the powers that be shopped around and found Ellis, who’d been doing some good work at Langley.

He didn’t completely get the subtleties of what shepherds did but when it came to gutting a news story that might work to our disadvantage, he was the man for the job. Though he couldn’t completely eradicate accounts of an assault in a quiet suburban neighborhood he could delay the report and turn it into something like a break-in gone bad.

Of course, Ellis’s skills were as mysterious to me as mine were to him and I never quite figured out his magic. I supposed part of his talent was rooted in finding an edge too, the same sword that Henry Loving used. And I did that too, on occasion.

As does nearly everyone, of course, from time to time.

Joanne stared unseeing at the screen, her shoulders slumped. Her face was free of makeup. She wore only a watch and her wedding and engagement ring, while Maree, I recalled, was decked out in a flare of funky jewelry. Joanne examined one of her broken nails.

I stepped to a window, gazed out through the curtain at the cinder blocks and placed a call to Aaron Ellis. I gave him an update on our progress, though I didn’t share with him where we were and which of the three or four dozen government safe houses in the area we were going to. That was need-to-know only. If a fellow shepherd or an agent from Freddy’s office was providing backup or-as was about to happen-our transport man was bringing a new vehicle, I’d part with the information. But I always tried to minimize the number of people who knew where the principals were.

It’s not that I didn’t trust colleagues but there was no doubt in my mind that if Henry Loving got to my boss, he’d do anything he could to find the location of my principals. Ellis had a charming wife, Julia, and three children, exactly fourteen months apart, the oldest being eight. Loving would get Ellis to give up my principals’ location in about ten minutes.

I didn’t blame him one bit. I’d give them up too, in circumstances like that. Abe Fallow himself said to me when I joined our organization, “Corte, listen. Rule number one, and it’s a rule we don’t mention to anybody but ourselves, is at the end of the day your principals are packages. They’re a dozen eggs, they’re crystal vases, lightbulbs. Consumer goods. You risk your life to keep them safe. You don’t sacrifice your life for them. Remember that.”

Ellis asked a few questions but I sensed he had something else on the agenda, so I preempted, saying, “Westerfield called.”

“I know. He said you didn’t pick up… Or was it a missed call?”

“I didn’t pick up. I decided I can’t add him to the mix right now, Aaron. Can you keep him off me?”

“Yes.” But it was a yes with the flu. My boss added, “Just let him know from time to time what’s going on.”

“Can I let you know and you let him know?”

“Just give him a fast call. What can it hurt?” he chided, like one brother reminding another to phone Mom on her birthday.

I relented and agreed.

“No word on Loving’s location?” Ellis asked.

“No,” I said.

“And an accomplice?”

“He’s got one, we’ve confirmed. We have a rough ID.” I described the tall, sandy-haired man who’d been spotted flanking the Kesslers’ house. “We don’t know anything more about him. I should go, Aaron. I’m going to talk to Ryan about his caseload. With the lifter out of sight, I really want to move forward on finding the primary.”

After we hung up, Joanne asked for my cell phone and called her stepdaughter. She continued to put on a good facade for Amanda. She said she was going to call the school on Monday and have the girl’s absence excused. It seemed the girl was genuinely upset to be missing school and her various extracurricular activities.

Amanda reminded me of myself at that age. I actually enjoyed going to class. I liked the precision of study, taking exams. I got bored easily-still do-and school was a chore originally. But when I began to look at classes as a series of increasingly complex games, I devoted myself to the courses intensively. Once, my father wanted me to come to his office with him, some holiday party. I was happy he wanted me to go. But I told him I was sick. After he left, my mother still in bed asleep, I tossed off the blankets-I was fully dressed-and headed off to school. The only instance I ever heard of where a student played sick to attend class. I nearly went into academia. Only through some veering of circumstance did I end up in personal security work.

I whispered to Joanne, “Let me talk to Bill.”

She nodded and when she concluded her conversation with her stepdaughter she asked to speak to him. She then handed the phone to me.

“It’s Corte.”

“Hi. Talked to a friend downtown,” Carter said. Meaning, I assumed, somebody at MPD had told him what happened at the Kesslers’ house. He added, “On my fancy new phone-don’t worry. Sounds like we just missed an interesting party.” He was speaking euphemistically because the girl would be listening.

“He got close. Nobody was injured.”

Carter said, “What I heard. Nobody knows where our friend is.”

“Correct.”

He gave a laugh. Sometimes I was chided for using stiff or old-time language. I prefer to think it’s being precise. Besides, by the time you get to twenty or so-when I graduated from college-you talk the way you’ve learned to talk. No sense in trying to change it. That doesn’t work. And why should you anyway?

I added, “Our information is that he’s in the dark about you.”

“That part’s good.”

“How was the drive?” I asked.

“Uneventful. I got lost. Saw the same scenery three or four times.”

His way of telling me he’d used evasive driving techniques.

“Good. Keep Amanda busy and don’t let her near your landline.”

“Oh, about that. I just remembered it’s broke.”

I liked the old detective. “Thanks.”

“Keep ’em safe, Corte.”

“I will.”

A mysterious chuckle. “I wouldn’t want your job for any money.”