The Firefly

6

Connie Wall thanked the police officer who'd driven her down to Steve's. She told him it might take a few minutes to retrieve her car, especially if they'd run into any parts problems. He told her he literally had all day. She smiled at him, closed the door, and went inside.

"Hey, Dorie," she said to the girl behind the desk. "Got Baby ready?"

"You bet, Connie. Steve took her out for a test drive an hour ago, before there was any traffic. He said she's balanced up and ready to rumble."

Connie paid the bill, got the keys, and then asked if she could talk to Steve for a minute. Dorie eyed the cop car parked out front, grinned, and went to find Steve. No secrets here, she thought, and then remembered she'd been the one running her mouth yesterday. Oh well. The night had been uneventful, except that the inside cops had used up all her coffee. Guys must be total addicts, she thought. She'd walked down to the Riggs Bank branch on Connecticut Avenue late yesterday afternoon to draw out a thousand in cash. One of the cops, who was not overweight but was a heavy smoker, had gone with her, visibly not thrilled with the prospect of walking twenty blocks up and back in the January air. With the cop puffing alongside, she'd felt pretty secure, even with all that cash on board. But her gear was already packed in the trunk of the Shelby, and all she had to do now was get the car on the street and out of sight of her shadows out there, both good and bad.

"Steve's elbow-deep in a Nova tranny," Dorie announced from the door leading into the shop. "He said to come on through."

Dorie took her over to one of the work bays, where Steve and one of the mechanics were indeed elbow-deep in the bowels of a Chevy Nova. It was cold in the shop, and Steve's breath was condensing on his work. A portable heater was radiating noisily but not very effectively at the two of them.

"She's ready to go, Ms. Wall," he told Connie. "And Dorie here says you maybe want to ease out the back, get yourself over to the Virginia side?"

"Sure would," she said. The Shelby was already positioned at the back of the open bay, sitting in front of an industrial garage door. Bless their hearts, they'd washed it.

"That there's gonna let you out onto Thirty-third Street. Take a left, go downtown to Reservoir Road, and then out to Chain Bridge. This time of day, you'll be on the GW in ten minutes, max."

"You think he might hear me, even from in here?" she asked.

"Mike'll rev up the engine on that Vette over there. We've got the mufflers out. Dorie will watch to see that he's not coming in or anything."

"That guy's here for my protection," she said. "He might get pissed."

"But not at us," Steve pointed out. "You told us there'd be less traffic on Thirty-third Street. So's you could get over to the Whitehurst Freeway, go downtown to New York Avenue, and out to Fifty and the Beltway. For your trip to Annapolis?"

She smiled. "I appreciate that, but you guys don't need to get into trouble. They haven't told me to stay in town or anything. I just need some space. Too much weird stuff going down over the past few days."

Steve grinned, his mouth a white half-moon against all the grime on his face. Nobody in a muscle-car shop loved the police. "Happy trails," he said. "Dorie honey, go make sure that cop's still out there in his ride."

Connie thanked him again and headed for the Shelby. The garage door began clanking upward at about the same time as one of the other mechanics revved the Corvette's unmuffled engine. The racket was terrific, but it effectively masked the deep rumble of the Shelby's heavy eight coming to life. She drove straight out the door, looked both ways to make sure there wasn't a second cop car lurking out back, turned left into Thirty-third Street, and drove as quietly as she could toward Reservoir Road, M Street, and Chain Bridge. M Street in Georgetown was its usual snarled mess, but she was making all right turns, so it was simply a matter of plugging through it. She didn't even notice the Suburban running three cars behind her until she was already over on the Virginia side on the George Washington Parkway, headed upriver toward the Capital Beltway. But when she did see it, she noticed it had red and white lights on its roof, not blue, and so she dismissed it. Red and white was the fire department, not the cops. No biggie.

The posted speed limit on the parkway was fifty, but she was being passed by everybody, so she notched it up just to sixty-five to join the flow. Once she hit the Beltway, she would take the Dulles toll roads all the way out to Lees-burg, where she could pick up westbound Route 7. That would avoid the crush of Saturday-morning traffic around Tyson's Corner. Besides, there-was a gun shop she needed to visit out there along Route 7, right where it crossed the Blue Ridge. She'd lost the derringer in the house fight, and the cops had relieved her of Cat Ballard's .45. Nobody with half a brain went into the hills of West Virginia without a gun.

Heismann backed the Suburban carefully up the roadside fire lane until he had a clear view of Route 7 where it descended the western flank of the Blue Ridge and snaked down toward the Shenandoah River. The woman had turned into a driveway about a mile back. There'd been a sign advertising gun repairs. Heismann had driven right on past, in case she was checking for a tail, but there was nothing but a cloud of dust hovering above the dirt road leading north into some hardwoods beyond the sign. Assuming she would continue west, he'd taken a right onto a county fire lane and then stopped to wait.

He'd had no trouble keeping up, even as he stayed a mile or so behind her. The road west had been rising steadily as it left Leesburg and approached the eastern side of the Blue Ridge, and even with periods when he couldn't see her, he knew they hadn't yet reached the state of West Virginia. That idiot girl at that garage had said Garrison Cap in West Virginia. A search of the index on his West Virginia map had produced a Garrison Gap, not Cap. Based on the map, he estimated that they had another half hour or so to go to the state line between Virginia and West Virginia, depending on which way she went once reaching the Shenandoah Valley. Fortunately, the American maps were excellent, and he could stay well behind her, even lose her, as long as she went to that town. Then he would simply search parking lots for that unusual car.

His plan was to track her to Garrison Gap and then finish this annoying business. And he must finish it soon, because he had more pressing priorities looming on the horizon: reinforcing the second-story floor to receive the marble deliveries, refining and practicing the escape routes, verifying the geographical coordinates, practicing the changes to his appearance, and dealing with the neighbor. Assuming he could squash this woman tonight, he could be back in the city by Sunday afternoon. That would give him four days to complete his preparations.

A large hawk slid by the Suburban's side windows, slanting down a thermal as it disappeared into a meadow below his line of sight. He could see the occasional roofline among the trees ascending the slope, evidence that others had figured out what a stupendous view was to be had up here. Across the highway was Mount Weather, according to the map. This was where the supposedly secret government bunkers for nuclear war were located. Well, war was coming, but it wasn't going to be nuclear. And it was not going to drop out of the earth's atmosphere at nine times the speed of sound. No. This war would come into the city in one of those boxy brown trucks one saw everywhere, followed by some very special delivery.

A flash of red down on the highway brought him back to the task at hand. He put the Suburban in gear and started down the firebreak road as her car disappeared down the mountain. So now she probably had a gun. So what.

What Connie had sitting on the seat beside her was a World War II flare pistol. Made of steel, with rubber grips, it was a twelve-gauge gun. It broke down just like a shotgun did, allowing one flare round at a time. It was large and bulky but had only an eight-inch barrel. "Hold it out beyond your knees," the gunsmith had warned her. "Bend your elbows a little to absorb the kick, grip it tight, and pull the trigger hard. Nothing sophisticated about this gun. No careful squeezing of the trigger, establishing a sight line, none of that, because this was never meant as a weapon in the first place." He'd given her a box of handmade cut-down shells with game load, since the old flare gun's chamber could not accept a standard shotgun shell of 2.75 inches or longer. "You'll get one shot," the guy had said, "and you'll want maximum coverage. The locals use these things as snake guns. Point it in the general direction of the rattle and fire. You'll carve out a red wedge of dirt about six feet long, assuming you don't shoot your own feet off. Dispersion is immediate. There's no safety, and the noise is truly impressive, especially from the front. Aim at the dirt and never at a rock. And if it's a bad guy, aim at his teeth."

She'd had no permit for her derringer at the time of the incident, so unless Jake Cullen worked something out, she didn't expect to get it back. If they tried to hassle her about it, she'd tell them who had gotten it for her, which should stifle any further movement down that line of inquiry. But this thing was just what she wanted. She only wished that they made double-barrel ones, but the gunsmith was right — pop a cap in this beauty and entire windows would blow out. The gunsmith had also sold her a box of signal flares in case she got caught with it. It wouldn't fool any of the county law, but it might serve as an excuse in the city. "Tell 'em it's for your boat," he'd told her.

Either way, she felt better having it on the seat beside her. Not that she expected trouble up here in the hills. She'd checked her rearview mirror several times once she cleared out of the traffic of Washington, but no one seemed to be following her. She let the Shelby out a little as she rolled down the big hill where Route 7 lined up to cross the Shenandoah River. She hit ninety before she reined it back in, remembering that the state cops liked to set up shop right at the base of the bridge to catch city people coasting down the mountain at high speed. She pushed the big flare gun down into the crack between the front seats, dropped a jacket over it, and crossed the river. Sure enough, there was a state trooper's cruiser parked nose-out on the access ramp on this side of the river. She waved as she went by, and the cop actually waved back. From there, it was not quite an hour up to Garrison Gap and the lodge. She already felt better.

At noon, Swamp was helping Ben Hardee replace a cracked window in the front parlor of the Jackson Inn, when Lila appeared with the portable phone. "Busy day," she said, handing Swamp the phone.

"Morgan," Swamp said, clearing his throat.

"Jake Cullen. We have developments."

"Developments. Oh, goodie." Ben, sensing business, put down his tools and left to give Swamp some privacy.

"First, Ms. Wall ditched our cops this morning at a classic-car shop and has blown town. Any ideas?"

"She in the Shelby?"

"Yeah, so I think we can find her. The shop people said Annapolis."

"I'd bet the other way — out here in West Virginia maybe."

"There's more," Cullen said. "The shop people said there was this foreign— possibly German — dude in the shop the day before, asking about the Shelby."

"Really. And?"

"Big-haired missy there says she just might have mentioned that the Shelby was going to be retrieved at nine this morning. Now tell me something: You sure your guys aren't tailing our nurse friend even as we speak?"

"Come again? No. What gives?"

"We sent out a BOLO to the Virginia and Maryland State cops. Got a hit an hour ago, from a radar trap set up where Route Seven crosses the Shenandoah River. Red Shelby GT crossed the bridge at eleven-oh-five, westbound. Single occupant, white female. Who waved at the trooper, by the way."

"Sounds like Wall. He wave back?"

"Didn't say. But here's the interesting bit. Two minutes behind her comes this black Suburban with an emergency light rack, tinted windows, DC plates, a coupla whip antennas. State guys are asking why we have a do-not-apprehend BOLO on a vehicle that the feds are already tailing."

"Not this fed," Swamp said, wondering what might be going on. "You want me to make some calls, see what I can find out?"

"I'd appreciate it. I know it's Saturday and all, but we've got a dead cop. Guys are all still here, leaning forward. Some of 'em aren't on safe."

"I'll give it a shot, Jake. I'll get back to you."

"You think it could be Secret Service? You know, black Suburban, tinted windows, whips, lights. That sounds like Secret Service wheels."

"Hell, I guess it could be, but they're the ones who turned me off. I even have a memo from the PRU director. Message: It's a firefly. Drop it and then go back to your sandbox."

"Okay. It's just—"

"Yeah, I know. Right hand, left hand. Wouldn't be the first time. Let me pull some strings."

"Appreciate it, Special Agent."

"Swamp. Call me Swamp. I'm definitely not special anymore."

Swamp took the portable phone back to the kitchen area, where he replaced it on the base station.

"Such a gloomy face," Lila said. "It's the weekend. Time for some fun in the sun. Wild and wonderful West Virginia and all that."

"Washington's calling," he muttered, looking in the refrigerator.

"Tell them to go away. Or better yet, let me talk to them. I'll tell them a thing or two."

"That's what worries me," he said. There was nothing that looked like lunch.

"Then just go outside. It's a beautiful day."

"Where?" he said, pointing with his chin to the window. The sun had been out before, but now sodden gray clouds were blowing in from the west and beginning to obscure the end of South Mountain over on the Maryland side. It looked like snow to him.

"Here now, you quit pawing through the commissary," she said as Ben joined them in the kitchen. "That food is all for dinner patrons tonight. I'll make you a fried-egg sandwich if you're hungry. You go on. I'll bring it upstairs."

Swamp shut the refrigerator door and headed for the stairs. Lila's brother, Ben, was about six inches shorter and ten years older than his sister, with graying hair, a mustache, and an expression of eternal patience on his face. He had tried his hand at running two restaurants and a motel in his time, but had never been able to earn enough money to make both a living and the mortgage payments, much less take on a wife. The Jackson Inn situation was perfect for him. All he had to do was be the innkeeper, at which he was entirely satisfactory. Lila acted as hostess, chef for the two nights they offered dinner, and provided the necessary female ambience to make the inn more than just another hotel/motel. They lived together in their parents' house next door. It might have seemed strange to outsiders, but in Harpers Ferry, people either escaped at an early age or never left at all.

He climbed the stairs back up to his rooms, passing some tourists in the lobby who were looking through the inn's brochure. He wondered if he shouldn't go back to town, but then he reminded himself that it was the weekend. Anyone he might contact would be home for the weekend. With their families. Which was why they still had families, because they managed to let go of business for two days out of every seven on a regular basis, unlike him.

Still. What Jake had described sure as hell did sound like a Secret Service vehicle. He had his duty-officer roster in the briefcase upstairs. Then he wondered if he ought not call Lucy VanMetre to make sure that Hallory hadn't put something in motion after all.

Connie parked the Shelby on the road side of the Garrison Lodge's circular check-in lane and got out. The air up here was frosty, courtesy of a foot of snow that blanketed the lodge grounds and surrounding landscape. The twin lumps of Barrows Mountain and Cobb's Hump were also snow-covered, with only the vertical rock faces that created the actual Gap clear of snow and ice. The sky was overcast, with a low scud drifting uncertainly through the nearby mountains. To the north and west, a darkening sky over the distant Alleghenies promised more snow. She was glad she'd brought her cold-weather gear, but she hurried into the lobby nonetheless.

The rooms here were clean and well appointed, just as she remembered them. She had stayed at many of the state's resort spots in her years of coming up here, and this one was one of the best. She took a shower, put on her swim-suit, piled into the oversized terry-cloth bathrobe hanging in the bathroom, and went down to the spa. The Garrison Lodge did not have a ski facility; instead, it offered a faux hot-springs spa, to which many of the neighboring ski resorts sent their rattle-boned, tendon-challenged guests at the end of the day, which meant that this lodge enjoyed the bounty of the ski crowd without the hassle of maintaining, operating, and insuring a ski resort. She'd once asked if they sold stock in the place.

Her plan for the rest of the day was uncomplicated: go get a sandwich in the grotto bar next to the spa, enjoy a soak in the warm-spring pools, get a massage, have a nap, dinner, and maybe, if she felt like it, and only if she felt like it, put on some war paint, a little black dress, and go check out the lounge lizards. She'd reserve a snowmobile for tomorrow and get the kitchen staff to make her a bag lunch. Take that and her camera gear up to the higher elevations behind the town, 3,800 feet above sea level and almost a 1,000 feet above the town itself. Put the clinic mess out of sight and out of mind.

She reminded herself to retrieve the snake gun before she went back to her room. But then she realized she couldn't go out in the snow-covered parking lot in her bathrobe and slippers. She'd have to go back up there and get dressed first. Screw it, she thought. I'll get it when I go up to bed for the night.

It took Heismann all of ten minutes to find the Shelby, which was parked in the rear lot of the Garrison Lodge. He'd tried two ski resorts first, then remembered that he'd seen no ski paraphernalia in her house. He'd stopped in a gas station, asked which was the biggest nonski hotel in town, and found the car immediately.

He never slowed down when he spotted the car, driving instead in a lazy loop around the lodge parking lots and then back out the main entrance. He turned left and headed back the way he had come, aiming for that cheap-looking motel he'd seen on the outskirts of Garrison Gap. He'd get a room there and then rest. In the late afternoon, he would make the requisite changes, then go to dinner at the Garrison Lodge. After that, he'd just need to find her room number. Or perhaps stage a diversion with that antique automobile; get her to come out into the parking lot. There were many ways to do it. It was simply a matter of picking the right one. And since tonight he would be a woman, he figured he should be able to move with impunity. He'd make it a test of his ability to change shape. Perhaps get right in front of his target. Remembering that savage kick to his genitals, he was looking forward to this.

Swamp struck out all across town with calls to various duty officers at Justice, the counterterrorism task force, the Bureau, the Agency, and the Secret Service. He'd had to make three calls to penetrate to the FBI duty officer, whose gatekeepers didn't believe Swamp was who he said he was, even after the OSI duty officer interceded. But no one owned up to having any sort of surveillance on a Ms. Connie Wall. He called Cullen back at 5:30 p.m., almost hoping the detective would have gone home. But he had not.

"Nada," he said. "Or at least nobody on my end is fessing up to tailing the Shelby or the pretty nurse."

"Then who the hell is following her in a black Suburban with red emergency lights?"

"Maybe nobody?" Swamp said. "Maybe total coincidence. I mean, it wasn't like he was actually on her tail. It was — what, five, ten minutes later that this guy came down the hill?"

"Two or so, according to the cop," Cullen said. "But that's probably a guesstimate."

"Did they get a plate number on the Suburban?"

"Shit no. He just said it looked like a D.C. plate. Actually, he said he thought it was a D.C. plate. That's what the report actually says."

"Well, there you are," Swamp said. "Now, it's possible someone's shining me on here, but I can't figure out why. There's one woman I need to reach. She's the deputy at the Secret Service Protective Research Unit. But she's in New York, apparently, at some weekend conference about vetting the UN people for the inauguration."

"Why her, if the duty office said no?"

Swamp hesitated. "Well, let's just say she might know shit the duty officer doesn't. I admit, she's probably a dry hole."

"She wouldn't thank you for that label," Cullen said.

Swamp laughed. "You'd need to meet her, then decide. So, you guys locate Ms. Wall?"

"Yeah. She's at the Garrison Lodge in Garrison Gap, West Virginia. Staties found the car in the parking lot. Verified she checked in there."

"Okay, so she's taking the weekend off. Going into the hills for what West Virginia does best — some gorgeous scenery, reasonable prices, and a chance to read one of our four-page phone books."

Cullen started laughing.

"You working tomorrow?" Swamp asked.

"I don't know about work," Cullen said with a sigh. "But I'll be here. We got all these guys tearing up the weeds for the cutter who did Ballard. And we don't even know what his ass looks like. Except maybe he's a German. Maybe real old, or real good at disguises. Carries a liquid Taser, so we're rousting every source of Tasers on the planet. He talked to the big-hair type at Steve's Vintage Motors, so we're canvassing the whole neighborhood around his place. Shit like that."

"Gotcha," Swamp said. "Motion, if not movement. Hey, I know it's late, but did anybody talk to that Chevy dealership across the street from the garage? If by some chance this Suburban is our guy, maybe he bought the damn thing right across the street."

"A foreigner?"

"If he's got cash money and a valid passport, a car dealer'd sell him his mother."

"Son of a bitch."

"Well."

"It's getting late. They may be closed. But I'll send some of these guys out. Get 'em out of my hair so I can get some chow anyway."

"You know where to reach me," Swamp said.

Heismann stepped back from the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door to admire his handiwork. Looking back at him, wearing a simple lace-bodiced knee-length black dress, stood a slim Hispanic-looking woman. The transformation had taken a full two hours. He'd begun by reshaving his head and then pasting on the hairpiece pad, to which he pinned a shiny jet black Liza Minelli shag-style hairpiece. Then the eyebrows, colored to match the wig. A small flesh-colored rubber prosthesis, stuck like a suction cup along the bridge of his nose and smoothed in with makeup base, relieved the pronounced hook shape of his new nose. A very careful and detailed shave of his face, visible sideburns, and neck to achieve an expanse of smooth, lightly olive-stained skin, followed by foundation for the coming makeup. Then he had shaved his chest, arms, armpits, and legs all the way to his groin, which always took a surprisingly long time.

The breasts had also taken longer than he'd anticipated. He first had to sterilize the pump tubing and his nipples, massage the loose folds of skin to shape them properly, and then pump each one up with saline solution through the stoma in the nipples to achieve the desired shape and size. His nipples stung after he was done, and he wondered if he'd done the sterilization procedure correctly or if it was just the saline solution. But the surgeons had performed their work beautifully: The breasts were just what he wanted — round, saucerlike, and balanced in size and shape, the nipples perhaps being a bit too large in proportion to the rest. But they were real enough: Any man seeing his naked torso would know he was looking at a woman. He finished shaping his upper half with a lightweight nylon bustier for support instead of a bra. It also helped to narrow him at the waist. He had a slim athletic build anyway, with almost no abdominal fat, so he needed the bustier to create the illusion of female hips. It also had a special compartment down against the small of his back to accommodate the flat five-inch-long Smith & Wesson stainless-steel throwing knife.

He'd spent some time over the past few months visiting Washington's surprisingly extensive transvestite shopping scene, where friendly large black ladies had taken him through all the paraphernalia available for whatever illusion he wanted to achieve. He had thought about telling them it was all for some play or act, then realized they'd heard every such lie under the sun and assumed he was just one of "the girls," as they put it, so he'd simply gone along. It was all amazingly private and discreet, requiring only lots of money to get everything he needed with absolutely no questions asked. The tight spandex bikini underwear effectively rerouted his genitals up into a surgically expanded groin pouch, so that even a suspicious grope between the legs would find correct "female" anatomy. He wished he'd had them on the night that woman kicked him. He wore a pair of black nylon briefs over the spandex; they were lightly augmented with padding across the buttocks to make up for his own relatively flat posterior.

Panty hose, simple black patent-leather pumps cleverly designed for a male foot, a half hour's worth of final makeup work, a touch of perfume, and the effect was complete. He'd practiced elements of this transformation many times once the breast work had been completed, and he'd even indulged in walking lessons at an acting studio that specialized in teaching men how to move like a woman. Standing in the motel room, he felt faintly ridiculous. If his old Stasi comrades could see him now! He had to admit that there was something mildly erotic about it, this wearing of women's clothing. But the truth was, he felt hot with his body encased in all this nylon and spandex. He shook his head. The things a woman had to put up with to attract a man. Amazing.

He looked at his watch. Almost 9:00 p.m. He'd called the Garrison Lodge and asked about the lounge. They'd told him the bar scene got going after nine. His plan was to go there, scout the lobby and the registration desk, check out the lounge, have a drink, and then find some way to get her room number. If he was lucky, she might even show up in the lounge herself. If so, he would do it directly — follow her to the ladies' room, slice her spinal cord, and stuff her body into a toilet stall.

He peered out through the curtain and saw light snow blowing across the parking lot. Not enough to coat the cars and trucks yet, but given time, it might. He made sure the bean-shaped Coach handbag he was going to carry had the hooded lightweight nylon tracksuit rolled into it, along with some trainers. He'd taken down the emergency light rack from the luggage rack on the hood of the Suburban and put it in the back, along with the two whip antennas. Now it would be just another dark-colored SUV among dozens of others in the lodge's parking lot.

He tugged at the hem of the dress and smoothed down the fabric around his hips and across his bust. So strange, having a real bust. He'd never been a breast man, really, but even so, it was interesting to touch them. To touch himself. What would it feel like to press these beauties up against another man and feel his reaction? He felt himself flushing red. If he kept this up, he'd soon be — what did the British call them? Nancy boys. That was it. Then he grinned a very unfeminine grin. Wait till these Ammies see what this nancy boy is going to do to them. Soon. Very soon. But he was going to have to rethink his movements right after the attack. This had taken much too long.

So he needed to get going. Time to take his lovely breasts out for a trial run. He patted the cold steel lump in the small of his back with his fingertips and felt the flattened eight-centimeter arrow-shaped blade. First-class, probably German, surgical steel for the surgical nurse. She'd appreciate the compliment, but not for long.

Swamp was finishing dinner at his usual corner table when Lila brought him the portable phone again. It was Cullen.

"No joy on the dealership angle," he reported. "Place closed at five, won't be open again until Monday."

"Can't you locate the owner? Get him down there?"

"Yeah, we could, but my boss says that this line of inquiry is pretty improbable. I mean, that this guy could go in and buy an expensive vehicle just like that. He'd need all sorts of ID, and it would mean letting people get a look at him, something he's avoided pretty well so far. And the boss also said what you said — that the Suburban might just have been on the road, nothing to do with Ms. Wall. Two minutes behind at sixty-five — that's about two miles. Pretty loose tail."

"He's probably right," Swamp said. "We're snatching at straws here. But I'm a little concerned that Ms. Wall is all by herself out in Garrison Gap."

"No way he could know that."

Swamp thought about that. "You got a name and home number for the girl at the classic-car place?"

Cullen told him to hold on while he found his notebook. Then he came back and gave Swamp the name and number. "You gonna call her?"

"Yeah, I think I will. Assuming she's home on a Saturday night. Maybe walk her back through what she told the German guy."

"She said it was all about that car."

"Let me drop the entire weight and majesty of the United States Secret Service on her, see if she may have revealed anything else. If by some chance she told Herman the German where Wall was going, he wouldn't have to tail her. He'd just have to go there. And probably not in some conspicuous Suburban."

"And find her how?"

"Same way you guys did — find that muscle car."

It was Cullen's turn to be silent for a moment. "Okay, fine, what the hell. You get a hit, call me back?"

"Absolutely."

Swamp looked at his watch. It was 9:15. He finished his glass of wine, glanced around at the other people dining at the inn that night. The standard mix of weekend couples, thinned out a little by the snow. No one seemed to be interested in what he was doing at his corner table. He called the girl's number.

A young man answered, his voice loud in order to make himself heard over the noise of a party going on in the background. Swamp asked for Dorie. The man told him to hold on, and then Dorie got on the phone. She sounded as if she was out of breath. From dancing, Swamp hoped. He identified himself. She said she couldn't hear him, told him to hold on. There was some banging around of telephones, and then she came back on in a much quieter setting.

"Who is this is, again?" she asked. He could hear her drinking something. The party sounds remained at full blast in the background.

"This is special agent Lee Morgan, United States Secret Service," he announced in his best federal voice. "Detective Cullen of the District police gave me your name and number. I need to ask you some questions about the foreigner who came into your shop asking about Connie Wall's Shelby."

"Oh, that," she said, finally getting her breath back under control. "I told the detective. Like you said, some foreign dude. Wanted to buy the Shelby, wanted—"

"Dorie? We know that part. Here's the thing. We think that guy was BS'ing you. About the car, I mean. We think he's after Connie." Connie, our mutual good friend, he thought.

"But why? I mean, he didn't even know her."

"Remember that cop getting killed out in Cleveland Park Tuesday?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess.

"Well, that happened at Ms. Wall's house, Dorie. That cop was a friend of hers. A close friend."

"Oh shit," she said in a small voice.

"And the guy you talked to? We think he might be the killer. So it's very important you think back. Did you by any chance tell him she was going to Garrison Gap this weekend?"

There was a long silence on the phone.

"Dorie, you still there?"

"You said you were what? Secret Service?"

"That's right, Dorie. We're working with the District police to find this guy."

"Well, like, I mean, how do I know you're not him? The foreign guy?"

"You don't, but listen to my voice. It's not the same, is it? Didn't he have an accent?"

"Sorta."

"This is very important, Dorie. Very important. Did you mention anything about Garrison Gap."

Another moment's pause. "Um. I might have. I mean, I thought she said Garrison Cap. Like, she'd mentioned the Garrison Cap Lodge, you know? I told him she did wildlife photography. But, man, I had no idea…"

"There was no way you could know any of this," Swamp said soothingly. "But that's what I needed. Here's Detective Cullen's phone number. Please call him, tell him what you told me. Ask him to call me back when you're done, okay?"

"Am I in trouble here?" she asked.

Cullen was back to him in five minutes.

"Now what the hell do we do? That guy could be out there in Garrison whatever. And we still don't even know what he looks like! Other than he's maybe in a Suburban."

"I say forget the Suburban — that's a red herring. First, call that lodge. Get word to Ms. Wall that this guy may have followed her out there. Then contact local law, see if they can put somebody on her until I get there."

"You?"

"You wanna do it? I'm an hour from Garrison Gap. Hour and a half, if this snow keeps up."

"Shit, I don't even know where West Virginia is. You got four-wheel drive?"

Swamp laughed. "Better. I've got the original SUV — an old Land Rover. Before they Yuppied them up. I'll go up, get her out of there. I can put her up here at the inn in Harpers Ferry."

"Then what?"

"One thing at a time, Jake. The game now is to keep her alive."

Cullen agreed and hung up. Swamp went into the kitchen and asked Lila to make him up a thermos of coffee. Outside, the wind picked up, as if to let him know it was waiting.

Connie chose a table for two down near the fireplace end of the lounge, away from the main bar. It was snowing in earnest outside, which appeared to have cut down on the size of the after-hours crowd. Or, more likely, it was simply too early.

She'd checked on the Shelby from a corridor window and found that it was slowly morphing into a red-and-white lump in the parking lot. Where the Shelby was concerned, though, anonymity was a useful condition. She thought about going out to get the snake gun, but her shoes weren't exactly Bean boots. She could hear Cat telling her the whole reason Annie got her gun was because someone was trying to gun Annie. Well, maybe. But there was no way she was going to walk out there in three inches of snow right now and then live with wet shoes and stockings all evening. Maybe later. Maybe never.

A bar waitress brought her a glass of white wine and started a tab without asking. Figures, Connie thought. Lady in her little black dress all alone in the lounge, she's going to stay for a little while at least. Although, now that she was here, she was beginning to regret coming down. It all seemed so pointless. She missed Cat and felt increasingly bad about what had happened to him. Maybe just have one drink and then pretend that she had something better to do up in her room.

The lounge area was shaped like a large U, with windows along the two sides overlooking the lighted grounds and adjoining tree-covered slopes. The bottom of the U contained the main bar, and the open end featured an enormous stone fireplace, right in front of a long dance floor. There were about fifty tables throughout the lounge, arranged in two rows, with the window row being two steps up from the inner, dance-floor row. The walls were paneled in different kinds of wood veneer, each highlighting pictures of an alpine scene framed in the individual panels. Connie found it refreshingly peaceful, and she eased her shoes off to catch some of the warmth coming from the fireplace.

Over the next half hour, she watched the place slowly fill up, mostly couples or foursomes, with only the very occasional single male easing his way to the bar, getting his drink, lighting up a cigarette or cigar, and then turning in the swiveling bar chair to scan the room. She was careful to return no appraising looks from across the room, because all of the men so far looked like professional lounge lizards. A couple of the more presentable men had given her the once-over, unfortunately while looking over the shoulders of their dates. When she realized that she was the only female sitting alone in the entire lounge, she decided she should cash out and leave. Just then, a striking Hispanic-looking woman in an almost identical black dress to her own came in and sat down at a deuce about midway up the dance floor, on the other side of the room. She ordered a drink and then looked around, saw Connie, gave a small smile, and then looked away. Okay, so what was that? Connie wondered. A sign of recognition from another lonely hunter, or a tentative hit from the Sapphic sisterhood?

Connie stood up and started walking toward the bar, but then the Hispanic woman motioned to the empty chair at her table. Connie hesitated. She didn't know this woman, and she sure as hell wasn't here to meet other women. But it was a gracious gesture, and to ignore it would be rude. So she changed course and went over.

"Hi. I'm Carla," the woman said. "You do not have to join me if you do not want to."

Connie smiled and hoped her discomfort wasn't too obvious. "I'm Connie. Thanks for the offer. I just came down for a drink."

"So? You are not here for sport? There are so many beautiful men in this place."

"There are?" Connie said, looking to see what had changed. "Where, exactly?" Then she saw that the other woman was kidding her. "Oh, yeah. Right. Beautiful men. Not."

Carla laughed — a throaty sound. She was porcelain-pretty, and Connie, the surgical nurse, suddenly wondered if Carla had had work. If so, they'd screwed up on her lumpy nose. Her dramatic front, on the other hand, was another story, because only made-to-order movie stars were that perfect. From across the room, she'd looked to be in her twenties, but now, up close, definitely thirties. Maybe cosmetically thirties, but actually older than that. Intense dark eyes. And makeup — lots of makeup.

Carla reached into her large bean-shaped purse for some cigarettes. "Do you mind?"

Connie didn't. Cat had been a smoker, and so had she, a long time ago, until she'd seen one too many blackened, cancer-ridden lungs flopped out into bloody stainless-steel bowls in the OR. "Feel free," she said. "It's a bar."

"Yes, it is," Carla said. "In America, smoking is almost everywhere a crime, yes?"

"Almost," Connie said as Carla blew a blue stream skyward. Definitely work, Connie thought, seeing the tiny scars under Carla's chin. But not at our clinic. Whoever'd done this had made her look almost mannish. "I used to smoke," she said. "But I quit. Where are you from, Carla?"

"Germany, actually," Carla said. "I work for a German business in Washington, D.C."

"Really," Connie said. "I would have made you out to be Hispanic, not German."

"Only in the movies are all Germans fair-haired and blue-eyed," Carla said with a laugh. "Especially German women. I am a Berliner."

I'll bet you are, Connie thought, remembering some posters she'd seen once at a photography exhibition — depictions of the ladies of the Berlin cabaret scene. Carla baby here would have fit right in, with that slicked-down skullcap hairdo and the plaster-and-lathe makeup. She could imagine Carla in an SS uniform, with some wicked spike-heeled boots. "That's fascinating. What do you think of the States?"

The waitress swept by and shot Connie an inquiring look, but she shook her head and passed her the tab and a twenty. "It is so-o interesting," Carla began, scanning the room while she talked. The waitress came back with Connie's change. Connie passed her a fiver and gathered her things. "It's been a long day," she said, getting up. To her surprise, Carla reached out to take her hand. Stronger grip than Connie would have expected. "Ladies'?" she inquired. "Do you know where?"

Connie flipped her head in a "Come with me" gesture. "I'll show you."

Swamp crunched down the country road at a steady thirty miles an hour, the Land Rover's four-wheel drive handling the snow with ease. Fortunately, it hadn't sleeted first, so it was all just snow. The boxy vehicle's air conditioner wasn't anything to write home about, but the heater worked fine, and he had taken off his coat. His cell phone screen was reporting that he was definitely on his own for the moment, so he'd had no word from Cullen as to whether or not they'd found Connie Wall and had her covered. He'd passed only one other vehicle west of Interstate 81. The road was typical of the hill country, one switchback after another and a steady climb. Coming back down would be more interesting. The deer were all bedded down out in the woods, and he'd seen only one coyote in his headlights in the past hour.

If Cullen had managed to get through, he should be able to go directly to the local sheriff's office in Garrison Gap and find out where she was. Probably at her room in the lodge. He knew the lodge, having stayed there himself on one of his occasional weekend trips. He wasn't a skier, but sometimes he'd get in the Rover and head west, if only to escape Harpers Ferry. Much like Connie Wall, he thought. Sometimes it was necessary to hit the road, just to make sure you still could. He looked at his watch. This was going to take longer than he'd thought, and that was beginning to bother him.

Headlights flared in his mirrors from a mile back, then were blocked out by a curve. Then back again, much closer. Brights, too. He flipped his rearview mirror down to negate the sudden glare, and then whoever it was came right up behind him and flashed his brights! What did this idiot expect him to do — go faster? Drive off the road into a snowbank? The lights flicked again, but Swamp couldn't see what was back there because Shit for Brains left them on high beam. He began to slow, his standard cure for tailgaters. The car closed in close enough that Swamp could finally see that it was some kind of sports car, with a low humped shaped and round lights. Two silhouettes in it.

He slowed some more, and this time he got a double beep from the guy's horn. Horn works. Try your brakes, asshole. He grinned. Good. Pretty soon the guy would become extremely impatient and come roaring around him. He slowed some more and saw brake lights flaring behind him, and then the car finally dropped back. For the next five minutes, Swamp resumed what he considered safe road speed in the blowing snow but as he came around another curve, he saw the beam of the headlights swing out into the other lane. There was a fairly straight section ahead, maybe two hundred yards long, so Swamp put on the brakes. The sports car obligingly came zooming around him in a whine of accelerating machinery. A Porsche, from the looks of it, although Swamp wasn't up on model numbers. He caught a brief glimpse of a mop of platinum blond hair in the passenger seat and then, as the little car fishtailed ahead, one gloved hand flipping him the bird out the open window on the driver's side. Then it was gone around the next curve.

He wondered if Connie Wall would agree to return to Harpers Ferry with him. She might not, and he had no legal authority to make her leave the lodge. He checked the cell phone again. One bar of signal. Getting closer to something, he thought. Then the single bar disappeared and he dropped the phone back into its hook in the center console. Swamp realized he was going too fast, so he let the big beast slow down as he went into a deep turn over a stone bridge. The creek below appeared as a black crack between fluffy snowbanks on either side. A pair of gleaming eyes flashed briefly from the woods as he steered left and up the next climb. He dropped the Rover into second, realizing there might be some ice out here, and was rewarded with a minor skid and then renewed traction. He climbed the next hill and then eased through a steep cut, passing several car-size boulders down along the side of the road, one of which was lying on top of the falling rocks sign. Got that right, he thought as he let the Rover coast down the hill in second. It made for a noisy ride, but he had seen the ice this time. At the bottom of the half-mile-long hill, the road bent to the right, and he almost missed the two tire tracks leading straight off the road on the left side and disappearing into a stand of tall spruce. He sighed, dropped into first, and then stopped in the middle of the road.

He reached for his coat, hat, and gloves, then retrieved the yellow emergency beacon he carried in a box in the rear seat. He had a blue one back there, too, but this was Good Samaritan business, not police business. Not yet anyway.

He was really going to be delayed now. He put the yellow beacon up on the roof of the Rover and went down into the snow.

Connie led Carla into the ladies' room, which was down a short hall from the entrance lobby to the lounge itself. There was an outer and an inner door, and when Connie, going first, entered the bathroom, she saw a lone woman at the sinks. The woman, who was in her forties and definitely not made for little black dresses anymore, if ever, turned to look at the two of them as they came in. She turned off the faucet, grabbed a handful of paper towels, and then openly stared at Carla as Connie headed for a stall.

"What the hell are you?" she said in a surprisingly authoritative voice.

"I beg your pardon?" Carla said, walking toward the sinks. Connie, about to shut the stall door, looked over her shoulder to see what was the matter.

"I said, What the hell are you? You sure as hell don't belong in the ladies' room, do you?"

Connie watched Carla stop right in front of the woman, do a little hop in place, and then, to Connie's total astonishment, kick the woman in the crotch hard enough to double her over. She hit the floor with a tremendous gasp, and then Carla was turning toward Connie, her dark eyes burning with intensity, something glinting in her hand. Connie reflexively raised her hand, but Carla grabbed it with surprising strength and spun her around in the doorway to the stall. Connie was too surprised to fight back, even as Carla put a knee in her back and pushed her face-first into the stall, cracking her head on the partially opened door. Before she could regain her balance, Connie felt a lance of white-hot pain in her back, pain so great, she would have collapsed to the floor, except for the fact that Carla was still holding her arm. It was bent painfully up behind her back, so she couldn't fall, even though her trembling legs were already giving way.

"I am sorry for this," Carla whispered. "But I will need your house."

Then there was a crash and a scream for help as the chunky woman appeared behind Carla and hit her with something. Connie couldn't see what it was, and she didn't care now that that iron grip on her arm had been released and she was free to sag down onto her knees, which landed in blood — lots of blood, running down the backs of her thighs, making the floor slippery. She grabbed for the toilet bowl, swaying sideways and bumping her head again, this time on the side of the stall, barely conscious of the noisy struggle behind her in the bathroom. She finally collapsed to one side of the bowl in time to see Carla jab the other woman's Adam's apple with the rigid fingers of her left hand while she was attempting to beat on Carla with the metal top of the bathroom trash can. The woman made a gargling noise, dropped the square metal top onto the floor with a tremendous clatter, and clutched at her throat. Carla stepped back and drove a stainless-steel knife shaped like a flattened rocket into the woman's midsection three times in rapid, grunting succession. The woman whoofed out a large breath and sat down heavily on the floor, one hand still clutching her throat, the other her midsection, her eyes crossing as blood fountained out of her mouth and cascaded over the front of her dress. By then, Connie's own vision was starting to blur from her vantage point down on the floor. She was still clutching the toilet bowl like some hungover college student, her lower back ablaze with pain. She thought she heard voices from outside the bathroom doors. Carla appeared in the doorway to the stall for an instant and stared down at her with her flashing, almost black eyes, and then she was gone. Connie tried to make a sound as a red haze began to envelop the edges of her vision.

Those eyes… Jesus Christ! Was Carla a man? Oh my God! Was it him? Then she heard a blur of excited voices, but they were slowly swallowed up by a humming noise that filled her head, then all her senses, and then the whole world darkened mercifully.

By the time Swamp arrived in Garrison Gap and found the Crass County sheriff's office, pandemonium reigned inside. Deputies were sprinting past him for their cars out front, and two dispatchers were yelling at each other and into their radios, calling for backup, ambulances, and EMTs to respond to a double homicide at the Garrison Lodge. He stood to one side as everyone in the central operations room scrambled to deal with the emergency. Two homicides, he thought. Even for a West Virginia mountain town on a Saturday night, that was a bit unusual, especially this early in the evening. That level of cutting and gutting usually didn't start until well after midnight. Finally, a short, balding deputy who'd been talking urgently to someone on the phone for the past five minutes looked across the room and saw Swamp. "You the Secret Service guy?" he called across the room, his words turning some heads.

Swamp nodded, and the deputy held up the phone, obviously wanting Swamp to take it. Swamp crossed the room and found Jake Cullen on the other end. "Where you been, pardner?" Cullen asked.

"Making a nice mountain drive through the snow. And rescuing two idiot Yuppies from themselves about seven miles out of town. Their Porsche, contrary to popular opinion and all the ads, cannot, in fact, fly. But why—"

"You don't know?"

A cold feeling spread into Swamp's stomach. "I know they're going nuts up here in the sheriff's office. What's happened?"

"Bastard got to her, that's what's happened. In that lodge. Attacked her in the ladies' room, stabbed her in the back, killed another woman who was in there."

"Judas Priest! When did all this happen?"

"Apparently, thirty minutes ago. I'd been talking to the cops up there, trying to see if they'd found her yet, but they hadn't. There'd been this three-car collision in front of one of the ski resorts, so they had everybody out working that. Next thing they know, Garrison Lodge security is calling in two homicides."

"She's dead?"

"Well, they're not sure about Ms. Wall. First reports said two, but then the EMTs got into it and took one to the hospital. The description of the dead woman is of someone older and heavier than Connie — Ms. Wall."

"Goddamn it! Any description on the killer?"

"Nope. They're still all going bananas up there, from what I'm hearing. One story was that a woman did it. But since you're on the scene…"

"Yeah, okay, I'll work it. Anybody official here know why I'm here, or what this is all about?"

"Yes. I spoke to the sheriff himself. That was just before all this shit went down. His people may or may not know anything."

"Okay, I got it," Swamp said. "I'll get back to you as soon as I have something."

Swamp handed the phone back to the deputy, who listened for a moment, but Cullen was already gone. He peered up at Swamp, taking in the Stetson and Swamp's green Air Force winter jacket with the leather name tag on the left side. Trying not to stare at Swamp's face, he asked, "Got some ID?"

Swamp fished out his OSI credentials and told the deputy about the two squirrels in their Porsche. The deputy told one of the dispatchers, who rolled his eyes. Then Swamp asked where the sheriff might be.

"Sheriff McComb's at the scene, last I heard. That's the Garrison Lodge. Go right out of our lot, down the main drag, three blocks. Look for lots of blue lights."

"Okay, and where's the hospital?"

"Other way, six blocks. Go right at the Burger King, big ugly building up the hill."

"I assume you have people at the hospital. Can you contact them and tell them I'm coming over there? And if the sheriff can meet me somewhere, maybe there? I'll give him the background on this mess."

"Y'all know what's behind this?"

"Theories, Deputy, theories is what we've got at this stage. And at least one of them went wrong tonight."

As he drove over to the hospital, he wondered how he was going to explain all this to his boss. Had their German found himself some hired help? Or were there two of them? A cell? It had been his idea to use Connie Wall as bait; unfortunately, it was beginning to look like the bait had been swallowed. So far, this killer had been kicking their asses. If she died, they were truly back to square one.

He spotted the hospital building up on the hill. If she didn't die, they might have one more chance to break their losing streak. If she could give any kind of description, maybe the thing to do would be to announce that Wall had died of her injuries, then try something else. They still had nearly a month to go before the speech to the joint session. Surely they could improve on this mess. He made a mental note to call McNamara in the morning, but now he steeled himself to go inside and face what might be really bad news. And if it turned out that a woman had done this, he would have the double pleasure of informing his bosses that they were now dealing with a terrorist cell, not just some lone wolf. Good deal.

Heismann's escape from the lodge had been a combination of quick thinking and good luck. "Carla" had bolted from the bathroom as soon as the fat woman went down for the last time, but not before making sure the damned nurse was done for. Based on the amount of blood and the glazed look in her eyes, she was as good as dead. He'd taken ten seconds to wash his hands and stow the knife. Coming out of the ladies' room, he'd seen a manager and a security man with a radio hurrying down the hall toward the ladies' room. He'd backed out of their way, put both hands to his face in mock horror, and gibbered incomprehensibly in really bad Spanish while pointing with his chin at the door to the bathroom. They pushed right past him and dashed into the ladies' room, while he backed up to the door of the men's room, made sure there was no one watching, and then slipped inside.

Fortunately, it had been empty, so he hadn't needed to knife anyone else. Unslinging the purse from his shoulder, he stepped into a stall and locked the door. There he stripped off the dress, his wig, and the bustier, then pulled on the one-piece black nylon running suit and flat shoes. He wadded the dress, wig, and knife into the bag. He came out of the stall and opened the bathroom window long enough to drop the bag into the snow outside. The commotion out in the hallway was growing. Keeping an eye on the door, he washed his face and hands vigorously in the sink and quickly toweled off all the makeup. When he was done, he wiped the sink and then flushed the paper towels down one of the toilets, almost choking it. He went to the inner bathroom door and listened. It sounded like there was a growing crowd out there, and he heard at least two security radios going. So, the window. He went out feetfirst, dropping eight feet into the snow-covered bushes with ease after first closing the window behind him and then hanging by his hands before letting go.

Ultimately, a good forensics team would be able to trace his exit route, but he didn't care. Pulling the tracksuit's flimsy hood over the hairpiece net, he retrieved the bag and then trotted through the falling snow to the parking lot where the Suburban waited. He got in, then casually drove back to his motel, watching in his rearview mirror as the cluster of blue strobe lights began to grow in front of the lodge. That damned fat woman had almost ruined everything, coming at him like that. He wondered how she had seen through his disguise so quickly, because obviously she had. And that kick should have done the job, but no, she had to get up and, instead of running, attack him again. Well, she and that nurse could compare notes now, wherever they were. But he should have been more prepared, should have expected there might be someone in the bathroom. Should have had a contingency plan in place. He thumped the steering wheel. Too many mistakes. He was losing his touch.

As he pulled into the parking lot at his motel, he decided to wait out the night, since the police might throw up roadblocks immediately. Any vehicle leaving town at this hour would be conspicuous, especially in a snowstorm, and according to the map, there were only two roads in and out of this town. Yes. He'd wait until late morning, when there would be city-bound weekender traffic, then join it. No one had seen him go into that bathroom, and the police should be looking for a slick-haired Hispanic-looking woman, not a man. He'd watch the local television stations to see what they would report in the morning. His nose itched, and he unstuck the prosthesis.

He felt both relief and apprehension. Relief that this damned woman was out of his way, apprehension at the sheer scale of the thing he was going to do very soon. But given the score so far, he didn't think he had much to worry about from the police, city or federal. Even the nurse had managed to evade them, despite the fact that they were probably trying to protect her. To her extreme cost, one had to admit. And now, if he couldn't get out of the city, he had somewhere to go to ground once the attack had been executed.

He'd go to her house. Somebody might as well make use of it.

By the time Swamp penetrated both the hospital's official wall of ignorance and the police barrier in the lobby, all he had learned was that the woman they'd brought in was in surgery, and that surgery was going to take awhile. There was neither a status nor an official prognosis available from anyone. Defeated, he punched a cup of coffee out of a vending machine and headed back out to his Rover. As he was exiting through the front door of the hospital, a county cruiser pulled up and a tall, lanky man in uniform got out of the front passenger's seat. As soon as he saw Swamp, he motioned him over.

"Sheriff McComb?" Swamp asked, getting out his credentials as he walked down the steps. He noticed that the snow was thinning out and that there were patches of cold, clear sky showing through the low-flying clouds.

"And you must be Special Agent Morgan," the sheriff said. He was tall enough to look down on Swamp's face. He had a weathered look about him, iron gray hair, and a huge Pinkerton-style mustache. "Detective Cullen said we'd recognize you when we saw you."

"Most people can," Swamp said. "I was just inside, but nobody seems to know much, except that she's still in surgery."

McComb nodded thoughtfully. "I'm sorry we didn't get to her sooner," he said. "But that's the same word my people are gettin'. You want to go get a better cup of coffee than that? Those hospital vendin' machines are hard-piped to the pathology lab, I'm told."

"Yes, sir, I'd love one," Swamp said, pouring the ugly coffee out into the snow.

He rode in the back of the cruiser, still holding his empty paper coffee cup. The driver, a deputy, had to open the door for him when they got to the Waffle House diner down the street, as there were no door handles inside the backseat area. They went in and the sheriff led Swamp to a corner booth. A waitress produced two fresh coffees and a handful of creamer cups without being asked, then left them alone. The sheriff's deputy came in and took a nearby stool at the counter, parking his tactical radio on the counter, where it faced him like a waiting gnome. The sheriff poured a creamer into his coffee, lighted a cigarette, and shot a cloud of blue smoke toward the air vent in the ceiling.

"Okay, Special Agent, what in the hay-ull is goin' on here?"

The diner was noisy, with waitresses calling in orders in Waffle House code and the clatter of crockery being dropped into the busing sinks. "Did Detective Cullen give you any background?" Swamp asked.

"He said they had a cop killer down there in D.C. and had lost a Homicide lieutenant. That it happened at the home of one Connie Wall, R.N., and that said Connie Wall was up here at the Garrison Lodge. Told me to please put some protective surveillance on her until one Special Agent Lee Morgan of the Department of Homeland Security arrived on the scene. Said there was a chance the cop killer was up here in Garrison Gap, intent on takin' out the only witness to the lieutenant's homicide. That's it." He sipped some coffee and then poured one more creamer into his mug, almost causing it to overflow. He raised his bushy eyebrows. "Sorta begs the obvious question, huh?"

In other words, Swamp thought, why are you involved, Mr. Secret Service Agent? He explained his own assignment in OSI, the background on the two cases, and how they had merged into what was rapidly turning out to be a perfect tar baby.

"A 'firefly' is what you called it?" asked the sheriff. "Right now, it seems more like an all too typical Washington cluster fuck to me. No offense."

Swamp grinned. "None taken," he said. "Although the police lieutenant getting killed added a certain exciting dimension to what I thought would be a fairly dull plod. Not to minimize that, but the government's interest here is still focused on that threat to 'bomb, bomb, bomb.'" He explained their assumption that the patient had been talking about the speech to the joint session in February, and his hope that Ms. Wall might yet give them a better description.

The sheriff wasn't optimistic. "The ER doc told me told me they were pumpin' her up with as much blood as possible, but he thought she was gonna scratch. Somethin' about some big vein takin' a direct hit. Strange thing is, there was a witness in the lobby, says he saw a woman, not a man, mind you, go into the men's room at the same time the lodge security people were runnin' into the ladies' to find the victims."

"Any description?"

"Witness was at the end of the hallway. All he got was dark-haired, pretty face, nice rack."

"Terrific," Swamp said.

"But a woman," the sheriff said. "And the lodge security guy backs that up. Said he collided with a pretty woman who came out of the ladies' room, actin' hysterical. He couldn't understand anythin' she was sayin'. On reflection, thinks she was Spanish. They were focused on what was goin' on inside the bathroom, tried to find her later, but she was long gone. Here's the best part: A lounge waitress said Ms. Wall and some Spanish-lookin' woman left the lounge together. She remembers them because they were wearin' the same style and color dress. She wondered at the time if they were gonna have a catfight."

Swamp shook his head in wonder. "Who was the other victim?"

"A Montgomery County lady probation officer, from down there in your neck of the woods. Lived in Bladensburg, Maryland. Up here for the weekend. She and her husband. Got herself stabbed three times in the gullet, bled right out."

"Damn. Wrong place, wrong time."

"More'n likely," McComb said. "Our detectives say it looks like there'd been a scuffle in the bathroom. Metal trash can cover was in one corner of the bathroom, had some blood and hairs on it. But by then, so did most of the bathroom. Until and unless this nurse talks, we'll probably never know. She got any kin you know of?"

"Don't think so. Parents are deceased. Her brother was a cop, got killed in some drug deal in southwest D.C. several years ago. She came from a cop family, dated cops, hung out with this Lieutenant Ballard, the one who was just killed. They were probably closer friends than they should have been, seeing as he was a married man."

"Oh boy. Maybe the D.C. cops would know about next of kin."

"I'll ask Detective Cullen, whom I have to call pretty soon. I drove up from my place in Harpers Ferry. There somewhere I can get a room up here tonight?"

McComb smiled. "Thought I heard some West Virginia. But Saturday night, ski season? Rooms are scarcer'n hen's teeth. Although I guess Ms. Wall's room is free."

Swamp shook his head at McComb's black humor. "I assume you'll have some people in there pretty quick."

"Already have. Only thing of significance there was that she had a grand in her makeup kit. So maybe she was off on more than just a weekend?"

"Maybe," Swamp said. "How about her car?"

"We had a quick look. She had a Very pistol in there — you know, a World War Two flare pistol? Boys up here sometimes use 'em for snake guns."

"Snake guns?"

The sheriff shrugged. "Eight-inch barrel, twelve-gauge? You get snake-burger, long as you keep the muzzle out beyond your own knees. Takes all the hiss right out of 'em."

"That car is probably valuable."

"My deputies were fallin' all over themselves to get into that thing. They'd been talkin' about it before any of this shit went down. Got it down at impound, so's it doesn't get boosted."

Swamp nodded. "Well, the government will help your investigation any way it can, Sheriff. Although I've already told you the gist of what we know. We have a name, too, but we made a big damn assumption pegging that name to this guy. Especially if he's acquired some female help, although that would be out of profile."

The sheriff got out a small notebook and pen and looked expectantly at Swamp, who gave him Heismann's name and some of the details from the CIA fax. He also explained about how PRU at Secret Service headquarters did not agree that there was even a threat.

McComb nodded. "I used to work for the Bureau," he said. "Long, long time ago. That's why I left — had to get some damn committee to agree to every step of the process. Couldn't do good police work."

"It's supposed to be better now, with this Homeland Security Department." He described the fusion committee.

"Law enforcement by committee, like I was sayin'," the sheriff said, unconvinced.

"It's a good idea, in theory," Swamp said, "But at the working level, everyone's still worried about their job and their budget. Anyway, this Heismann's the best candidate we got right now, so I'm continuing to work it."

"Prove it out, one way or the other?"

"If I can. But if he's had a year and a half of plastic surgery, I don't know how the hell we'll find him."

"The nurse cooperatin' before this?"

"She was, actually. At least I think so. It's just that there were so many patients. I think the second time he came after her, she would have been glad to tell us, if she knew."

"Why'd she rabbit, then?"

"Maybe because we were using her as bait, to suck the bad guy in?"

"Ah."

"We did tell her, and she agreed to it."

"Some people forget that when you're bait, your ass is necessarily on a hook."

Swamp nodded. Tonight's disaster was a perfect example of that little axiom. "I was thinking earlier about how to salvage something useful out of this mess," he said. "Assuming she pulls through, we might want to announce that Wall did not make it, even if she does. Get her off that hook."

"So to speak," the sheriff said with a wry grin. The deputy at the counter was bending forward and talking into his radio. One of the waitresses was watching, fascinated.

The sheriff explained the probable media reaction. "A situation like this will make state news for sure," he said. "We can start by sayin' that she's not expected to survive. That's the God's honest truth. Then next, maybe do a coma bit. TV news in this state has the attention span of a gnat. Ya have her go mamba for a few days, the vultures will usually move on to the next roadkill."

"That would help, I think. Assuming we understand the first goddamn thing about this mess."

"Comin' from the federal law-enforcement machine, that's quite an admission," the sheriff said.

"The older I get, Sheriff, the less I understand very much of anything about this world. But one thing is clear: If some squirming-brain terrorist is setting up evil shit in the capital, I feel it's my duty to accept help from wherever we can get it. And in my book, that's a two-way street."

"So Detective Cullen said," the sheriff replied. The deputy was standing by their booth. "Yeah, Tommy?"

"Larry over at the hospital says the nurse is out of surgery, but she's still unconscious and in a—" He glanced at his notebook. "In an induced coma."

McComb looked over at Swamp. "See?" he said. "That wasn't hard." Then his face sobered. "But what is hard is that I have to go interview the Bladensburg lady's husband. And I suppose you don't want me to tell him anythin' about what you've been tellin' me."

"No, I don't. Maybe you could just say two barflies got into a fight and his wife somehow got tangled up in it?"

"I'll think of somethin'," the sheriff said.

Connie Wall was dream-flying down the Potomac River. It was a cold moonlit night, and she was skimming soundlessly just a few feet off the surface, the winter air streaming past her face and numbing her cheeks. She was close enough to the surface to be able to see the flat ledges and deep pools lurking in the river. Crusts of ice winked at her from along the shores, where bare trees watched her pass in silent amazement. She swept down past the palisades below McLean, where darkened, many-windowed mansions surveyed the river below with quiet authority. Past Chain Bridge, past the spires of Georgetown University and under the arches of Key Bridge, past the graceful marble monuments of the Mall and the Tidal Basin, past the Memorial Bridge and the Fourteenth Street bridges, past the squat, baleful Pentagon building and one of its principal products, the thousands of white headstones dotting the Arlington heights in front of Robert E. Lee's old home. She saw commercial jets prowling the ramps and taxiways of Reagan National Airport, but she couldn't hear them, only the sound of her own wraithlike body slicing smoothly through the night, past the row of generals' quarters at Fort McNair, where the Potomac River was joined by the stinking Anacostia River, past Boiling Field and the ghostly white satellite dishes of the Naval Research Lab, then down past Old Town in Alexandria and under the notorious Woodrow Wilson Bridge, where semis sometimes punched through its rotting decks. And then past the marinas below Old Town, Belle Haven, and finally past George Washington's stately home up on its expanse of dormant lawns, down to where the river began to widen in earnest.

She shivered in the cold and then realized she was wearing almost nothing, some filmy gown that trailed out behind her, a rippling fabric tail streaming almost as far as she could see. This wasn't right. She shouldn't be out here like this. She should go back. She stretched out her arms and started a wide banking turn to the left, to go back up the river to wherever she had come from. But it was difficult. She encountered real resistance to the turn. She had to work at it, pushing one arm down, the other up, forcing herself to twist and bank, and now she could see that diaphanous gown trailing behind her like a wedding train, the back half still streaming down the river even as she passed it going the other way, back up the river. But she finally managed it, and this time she was soaring way above the river and the sleeping city with all its lights and monuments, and now she knew somehow that everything was going to be better, maybe even all right. But first she had to get back to West Virginia, back to Garrison Gap, back to the hospital, back to the ICU, where there were people calling out her name. Even from way down here, miles downstream, she could hear them.