Cold Frame

TWENTY-FOUR

Hiram picked up the phone and dialed a number. While it rang he asked Thomas if he’d managed to put the tracking button somewhere in Av’s clothing. Thomas nodded.

“This is Ellen Whiting.”

“We got him out onto the river and we’ve dealt with the clowns they sent to grab him here,” Hiram said.

“The HRT has him,” she said. “With any luck it’ll be going down in about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.”

“Where?”

“Fort Marcy Park,” she said. “Off the GW Parkway. You know, where that Clinton lawyer supposedly shot himself.”

“Do you have any kind of support?”

“Couldn’t reach out to anybody federal beyond the HRT, not for this, but the sergeant’s partners are with me. If he comes, he won’t come alone, but I think we can handle it.”

“Very well,” Hiram said. “I’ve got one loose end to deal with here, and then we’ll be right along.”

“Loose end?” she said.

“I think the first intrusion was a diversion. The real deal’s here now. One guy.”

“Watch yourself,” she said. “But hurry.”

“This won’t take long, Special Agent. He’s about to enter the snake pool garden.”

“Jesus, Hiram,” she said. “Snake pool?”

“Just a figure of speech, my dear,” Hiram said and then hung up.

He turned back to the big screen, while keeping one eye out for any activity on the front-gate display, visible on the right-hand screen. The figure creeping through the woods was clearly visible. Adrenaline, Hiram thought. Warms you up. Who are you?

“How far from the edge?” he asked.

“Thirty yards, maybe less. Looks like he’s checking a weapon of some kind.”

“Close in.”

The telephoto function revealed the man checking a semiautomatic handgun with a bulb of some kind at the end of the barrel. “Silencer,” Thomas said. “Start the warm-water matrix?”

“Yes. Add ten percent nitrogen and UV lights as well. Stir those things up. That’s a killer out there.”

Thomas punched control orders into his console, and eighty-degree water began to push out to what they called the snake garden. There were no snakes, of course, or at least none of theirs. Surrounded by strategically placed Spanish dagger plantings was an Olympic-sized pool with what looked like a narrow, grass-covered footbridge across the midpoint. Based on where the intruder had gained access to the grounds, there was really no other covert way to go if someone was trying to get near the house from the direction of the river without a lot of backtracking, other than taking a very exposed walk up the gravel walk between the cascading pools.

It was what was inside this pool that made it a wholly different proposition than the scary monsters on the landward side of the estate. The pool was roughly rectangular and twenty feet deep, and filled with a species of African water vine that had evolved to trap and feed on animal proteins. They grew just below the surface of still water and created a great mass of vines, tubes, and tendrils, all rooted in three feet of muck. They fed during the daytime, hence the injection of warm water into the pool and the rise of the UV radiation would stimulate their tendrils to secrete a water-impervious sticky substance all along the vines. Hiram had nurtured this particular specimen because it, of all his plants, acted most like it had a brain of some kind.

The figure stopped when he encountered the pool and the footbridge. He turned to his left but then saw the wall of Spanish dagger. He was wearing night vision gear with its own illuminator, which made it easy for the estate’s IR video system to track him. The man then went to his right and found the second stand of Spanish dagger plants. He came back to the footbridge across the pool.

He clearly did not want to cross that pool.

“This one senses the trap,” Hiram observed.

“Then we need to motivate him,” Thomas said.

“Right, do it.”

Thomas activated the line of small speakers that had been mounted in trees down near the river. He selected the program that would make the sounds of a group of men starting to spread out in the woods and then come forward on the trail of the intruder. The sounds were started at a very low level, barely audible behind where the intruder was now, unless he was listening very carefully. They’d continue, gaining slightly in volume, then stop suddenly for a couple of minutes as the search team “froze” for some reason. Then they’d resume, getting louder now but still barely audible. If that didn’t do it, Thomas could add the whining of eager but still restrained search dogs to the mix.

The posse program, as they called it, had run only for about sixty seconds when the intruder made his decision.

Hurry up and wait, Av thought. Just like being back in the Marines. He felt himself getting sleepy. He yawned. He was bushed.

A part of his brain reminded him that he’d just been plucked out of the river by some kind of military team, blinded by a black hood, and then deposited on the ground, only to be handcuffed to a park bench. He tried to recall how all this had started.

The McGavin thing. Then he tried to make sense of it. He couldn’t. He mentally recited his mantra of protest: I’m just a drone in the Metro PD’s Briar Patch. So why the hell am I sitting here, waiting to be reintroduced to some maniac on the National Security Council?

A cold sensation settled over him. You know exactly why, he realized.

The intruder pulled a length of white rope out of his backpack, fastened a loop around his chest under his arms, and then tied one end off to a tree near the edge of the pool.

“Good thinking,” Thomas said.

“That won’t save him,” Hiram said. “Look at the IR signature from the pool.”

“Oh, boy,” Thomas said. “I must say, boss, that I’ve never quite been able to get my head around the concept of a plant having a brain, but this one…”

“Is hungry, unless I miss my guess,” Hiram finished for him. “Ah — showtime.”

The intruder advanced across the footbridge, which had been built with a slight arch. His weapon was no longer in evidence, and he had both hands on that rope as it uncoiled behind him. He stopped a few feet from the top of the gentle arch in the bridge.

Hiram’s eyes gleamed as he watched. One sentient being — on the bridge — had just sensed another sentient being — under the bridge. He was convinced of it.

Then the bridge broke in half and dropped him into the water.

The man disappeared for a moment but then surfaced in a froth of water between the two segments of the bridge, which were sagging out of sight in the water. The piece of the bridge nearest the intruder’s start point snagged his rope, broke it, and pulled it underwater.

The man frantically tried to clear it, but not before the bridge had pulled him almost underwater. Then the rope snapped clear, but it was too late. The great mass of vines, sensing prey, had uncoiled a sponge of sticky tendrils.

The green man struggled in the water, pulling hard on his rope, but the mass of vines beneath him far outweighed his efforts to escape. He pulled harder, and then, taking a deep breath, dropped beneath the surface to get some leverage on whatever had his legs and then resurface and pull himself out.

He did not reappear. The two of them watched, waiting for the tell. Finally it came — a mass of bubbles surfaced on the pool. After that, nothing moved.

“Okay,” Hiram said. “Another bad guy returned to the biomass. Let’s go.”

Hiram checked the front-gate cameras before going down to the lab. The circus out by the gates had wound down to the point where only two Fairfax County cruisers were parked out front, and the cops appeared to be doing paperwork. The federal posse had decamped when the second news chopper showed up, and now both helicopters were also gone. Thomas had done one final perimeter scan and found no more intruders. One of the hydroponic lines was losing pressure, possibly from that burst of gunfire out in the defensive gardens.

Down in the lab Hiram went to one of the glass-fronted refrigerators and pulled out a short-stemmed white carnation that was standing in a solitary test tube. There was a clear plastic bulb at the base of the stem, filled with an amber fluid. He picked up the test tube and then he took the elevator back up to the main floor, where he went to the hall closet. There he shed his tweed jacket for a black frock coat that had been tailored for his towering frame. Steadying his hands, he extracted the flower and slid that stem into the boutonniere slit in the coat’s lapel He picked up a walking stick and a black homburg and then walked down to the front doors.

Out front was what they called the Batmobile — a specially configured Class B recreational vehicle made by Mercedes that could accommodate Hiram’s extra-tall frame just behind the two captain’s chairs in front. The roof was raised and there was an electric sliding door on the side that he could use to enter the vehicle, as well as handrails so he could position himself in the oversized middle seat without too much discomfort. All the windows except the front windshield were tinted. The living quarters furnishings in the back of the vehicle had been removed; that area now contained communications equipment that fed a small television screen set, facing aft, between the two captain’s chairs up front. The vehicle was painted a shiny black, hence its nickname. Two finlike communications antennae on the back of the roof added to the image.

Hiram carefully pulled himself into the center of the vehicle and then Thomas closed the electric sliding doors. He got into the driver’s chair and punched some data into the navigation device on the console.

“Drive the indicated route,” the robot finally said.

“How long?” Hiram asked.

“Thirty minutes,” Thomas said. “Assuming the Beltway is moving.”

“Very well,” Hiram said. “Let’s go.”

They drove down the big front drive out the gates past the two cop cars, and headed out onto Deepstep Creek Road toward the Georgetown Pike.

“Your meds are in the cup holder on the console.”

“And thank God for that,” Hiram said.

“Thank Thomas, too.”

Av had started to fall asleep when suddenly he heard another vehicle approaching. The cigarette smoke seemed to disappear, and he now could hear people around him, gathering themselves.

Showtime, he thought.

Someone approached and removed his hood. He took a deep breath and looked around. He was indeed sitting on a wooden park bench. It wasn’t any kind of large park, but more of a scenic overlook pull-off. The helicopter was sitting quietly to his left, its blades drooping over the grassy spot where it had landed. There were three crewmen in flight suits and helmets standing under it, looking at him. The vehicle he’d heard approaching was a black Expedition, stopped now in the small parking lot. All of its doors were open and there were armed men getting out. A hundred feet beyond, another vehicle was coming down the lane with only its parking lights on.

The approaching vehicle appeared to be an armored sedan, if the heavy crunching noise of the gravel was any indication. It pulled into the spot next to the Expedition and shut down. A man jumped out of the driver’s seat, hurried around to the right rear door, and opened it respectfully. The imposing figure of Carl Mandeville materialized and then headed toward the bench. He stopped about three feet away, looking down at Av like an eagle looks at a fat rabbit.

Av resisted an impulse to shout out a, Hey, Carl, what’s shakin’, dude. Instead, he cleared his throat, hawked up a presentable goober and spat it at Mandeville’s shoes. All the men around him looked at him as if he was insane. Somehow Av found that satisfying.

Carl Mandeville did not. He came closer, leaned down, and slapped Av in the face.

“Big, brave man,” Av said through stinging lips. “Pretty good when your target is handcuffed to a bench. They call that Chicago style up there at the White House?”

Mandeville straightened up. He pulled a handkerchief out of his trousers pocket and wiped his hand, as if to remove any contamination. “I hear they call you ‘average’ Smith,” he said. “Average asshole would be more like it, I think.”

“Better than average murderer,” Av said.

Mandeville stared down at him for a moment. “Well,” he said quietly, “in for a penny, in for a pound.” He turned to the operators standing near the Expedition. “Where did they pick him up?” he asked.

“Out on the river,” one of them replied. “Just above Little Falls Dam.”

“Good,” Mandeville said. “I don’t want him anymore. Tell the pilots to go put him back, right where they found him.” Then he turned to Av. “You know about the Little Falls Dam of the Potomac?” he asked.

Av shrugged. “Great Falls, Little Falls, all waterfalls look alike to me,” he said. Some of the men behind Mandeville seemed to have disappeared. Didn’t want to watch this? Or hear it?

“Well, this one’s different. It’s called Little Falls Dam because it only drops about five feet. Man-made, a long time ago, to divert water to the Washington city reservoirs. But here’s the thing, Detective. There’s a rotor on the downstream side. That means that anything, or anyone who goes over those little falls ends up underneath them, rolling and rolling for just about forever. The rotor never lets go once it takes somebody, and there have been dozens of people lost there. Dozens. You’re going to be next.”

Av didn’t say anything. What could he say to this lunatic? Please?

Mandeville stepped back and looked at Av with a satisfied smile. “My specialty, Detective. Loose ends.”

Then Av saw one of the pilots walking toward them. He called out to Mandeville by name.

“What do you want?” Mandeville said, obviously annoyed. “My instructions should have been perfectly clear.”

“Not going to do that, Mister Mandeville,” the pilot said.

“What did you say?”

The second pilot walked up. “He said we’re not gonna drop a guy into the river just above Little Falls Dam,” he announced. He was older than the first pilot and had the air of command about him. “In fact, we’re leaving now. You want us, you can find us over at Bolling. Good night.” A pause. “Sir.”

Mandeville was obviously stunned by this development. Then he realized that the people who had come with him were also leaving. The Expedition was backing up as the helicopter’s turbines began to turn. The man who had driven Mandeville here was walking toward the Expedition, which was now waiting for him, the right rear door held open.

Hey, what about me, Av wanted to shout out, but the only one who could hear him now was Carl Mandeville, who was becoming almost apoplectic. The Expedition made a wide turn and then went up the lane toward the parkway, its taillights flickering through the shrubbery that lined the lane. The helicopter spooled up to full power, lifted off, turned in place, blowing a whirlwind of leaves everywhere, and then dipped down into the river gorge.

Then it was just Av and his tormentor.

“What’s going on, big shot?” Av asked. “Rats abandoning the sinking ship?”

Mandeville glared at him, then looked around again to make sure that everyone had indeed left. The armored sedan was still there.

“Do you know where you are, Detective?” he asked, seeming to get himself under control.

Av lifted his tethered arm, yanking gently on the cord that held him to the bench. “Right here on this bench,” he said.

“This is Fort Marcy Park,” Mandeville said. “This is where the Clintons’ lawyer killed himself. Right on that bench, in fact. Shot himself in the head. Right side, as I recall, even though he was supposedly left-handed. I think he was also a man who knew too much.”

“So I’m going to be a suicide?” Av asked.

“An ‘apparent’ suicide,” Mandeville said. “Know the difference?”

“No.”

“An apparent suicide is one which doesn’t get investigated too closely. If it looks like a suicide, then, well, it probably was. Lots of cops eat their guns. You were suspended, accused of all sorts of strange behavior, detained in a federal penitentiary, from which you managed to escape. But then the authorities tracked you down, went to your home again, but you did a runner. And now here you are, alone, in the dark, obviously distraught at how your life has gone right off the tracks.”

“Is this what’s called spin?”

“Oh, yes, Detective. That’s exactly what it’s called. And people who work at the White House are masters of it. Trust me on that.”

“You really kill those guys, those two assistant secretaries?”

“Me?” Mandeville said. “Absolutely not. They were terminated by a professional, for the crime of treason. I simply lit the fuse, so to speak.”

“Treason? For what, disagreeing with you?”

“Hell, no,” Mandeville said, vehemently. “I am a servant of the state. I am the keeper of the DMX, which is one of the few remaining sharp arrows in the quiver of national security that can actually do some good. Those men were determined to take it all apart. Two of them have been dealt with, and the third, I am told, has gone, let me see, on vacation. As if that will make any difference.”

“You’re going to get him, too?”

“I am going to purify the DMX,” Mandeville said, the gleam of certain madness in his eyes. “The whole DMX, if necessary. Whatever that takes. But first, I need to take care of the insolent loose end sitting in front of me.”

Mandeville took a deep breath and looked around again. The park was quiet and dark. The river made its eternal rushing sounds down below in the gorge. The hum of traffic up on the parkway competed with the night breeze lifting up the rock walls of the Potomac gorge, annoying the trees.

“Good-bye, Detective,” Mandeville said. Then he pulled out a pistol from his suit coat pocket, approached Av from the right side, and lifted the gun to point at Av’s temple.

Av took a deep breath, tried to think of something really clever to say, and drew a panicked blank.

Then there was a loud snap, followed by a yelp from Mandeville as the gun went flying out of his hand, which was now spurting blood. The big man whirled away, clutching his bleeding hand, but looking for the gun. He saw it and bent down to pick it up with his other hand. He raised it, weaving a little from the pain in his right hand, and turned back toward Av.

Snap!

This time the gun itself was hit, along with one of Mandeville’s fingers. He screamed this time, trying to hold one bleeding hand with the other. He bent over at the waist, grunting in pain. Av watched in amazement as the big man finally sat down on the ground, almost weeping, his two bloodied hands held tight to his stomach, his breath getting ragged. The gun and one finger were on the ground right in front of him.

Then Av heard a wonderful sound, an earsplitting kiyai as Wong Daddy stepped out of the woods, stamping his feet on the asphalt and shaking the trees as he walked up to the huddled bleeding figure of Carl Mandeville and smacked him on the head so hard that Mandeville’s head almost came off. His body rolled to the right and out into the parking lot, where it lay very still.

Wong came over to the bench, took a deep breath, and then hand-chopped the board to which Av’s arm was tethered. The board shattered and Av was free. He looked up into the big and very pleased moon face above him.

“Took you long enough,” Av said, rubbing his wrist. “Who’s your sniper?”

“Miz Brown,” said a familiar voice. Mau-Mau and Ellen Whiting were approaching. “Told you he had two special talents. Uses an old, single-shot Remington model 513T with a sling. Sucker can shoot the eye out of a fly.”

As Av absorbed this revelation, two more federal-looking vehicles came down the narrow lane leading in from the parkway. Av eyed them warily, but Ellen was already talking to one of the SUVs on a small radio.

“Them’s the white hats,” Mau-Mau explained. “Your old buddy Tyree Miller is in one of them.”

“Somebody going to explain all this weirdness?” Av asked. His left cheek was a bit swollen after Mandeville’s love tap, and a part of him was still ready and willing to take off into the bushes if people became sufficiently distracted. He saw Miz Brown coming down to the parking lot with a stainless-steel scoped rifle held casually across his chest. For once he wasn’t talking, but he did wave.

Several FBI agents got out of the two SUVs, including Miller, who walked over to where Mau-Mau and Av were standing. He offered his hand to Av with an apologetic smile. “No hard feelings, I hope,” he said. “Anyone told you what’s going down here?”

Av took the proffered hand warily. “Not yet,” he said.

“Ever heard the term ‘stalking horse’?” Miller asked.

“Nope,” he said.

Two of the agents had roused Mandeville and had him standing up while a third was opening a first-aid kit. His bloody hands were clenched into quivering fists and his face was one big glare. Not at all like in the movies, Av thought, seeing a flash of exposed bone. Hands do bleed.

Ellen Whiting had been on her radio but now approached. “He’s actually coming,” she announced. Miller nodded and then walked over to where Mandeville was standing unsteadily, trying not to cry.

“Carl Mandeville, you are under arrest for the murders of Francis McGavin and Hilary Logan. You have the right to remain silent. You—”

“In your dreams,” Mandeville spat, wincing as the agent bandaged his ruined hand. “You can’t touch me. I am special—”

“We know who you were, Mister Mandeville,” Miller interrupted. “Right now, however, you are the prime suspect in two murders of senior federal officials. We’re still looking for your hatchet man and anyone else he used, but for the first catch, you’ll do just fine.”

“Never happen,” Mandeville said. “No matter what you think you know, you have no case. Nor do you have a venue, because everything to do with my job is classified way beyond even the almighty Bureau.”

“We can get around all that, Mandeville,” Miller said. “We have two people right here who can make a pretty good case that you were the mastermind here. And why.”

Mandeville’s face contracted as a spasm of pain went up his arms. But then the glare reappeared. “A good case?” He snorted. “Bullshit. You have nothing but hearsay. You have no evidence because there is no evidence.”

“How would you know that, Carl?” Ellen asked coolly.

“I know lots of things and, even better, lots of important people,” Mandeville said. “Tell me something, Mister G-man: you say I had a hand in killing those two people? Tell me how I did that? Can you do that? Do you know what killed them? How they died? No, you do not.”

“But I do,” said a deep voice from just beyond the perimeter of the parked cars. Several of the agents jumped when they caught sight of the towering, gaunt figure walking down toward them. One of the agents started to draw his weapon but then reconsidered.

Av felt the need to sit down. This had been the strangest day of his life, and he suspected it wasn’t over yet, as the larger-than-life figure of Hiram Walker stopped in front of the gathered agents.

“What the fuck are you?” Mandeville croaked. His heavily bandaged hand looked like a white blob now, but it wasn’t completely white anymore.

“I’m the one who handed over some rather exotic materials to your office at the request of a man named Kyle Strang,” Hiram said. “Supposedly in support of the War on Terror, as orchestrated by the DMX committee. You, on the other hand, are the man who took those materials and used them to kill two members of that committee because they lost faith in the entire concept of DMX. I can tell any forensic pathologist who wants to know precisely what killed those two men.”

“Then that makes you part of this, too,” Mandeville said, triumphantly.

“In your dreams, Mister Mandeville,” Miller said. “He’s on our side.” Then he turned to the other agents. “Get him to the nearest trauma center. Tight custody. No communications allowed. None, got it? When they’re done with him, take him to Quantico to the BSU, isolate him under guard, and wait for my instructions.”

The agents began to steer Mandeville toward one of the SUVs, but Hiram Walker stepped in front of them. He took the little white carnation out of his boutonniere slit and pinned it into Mandeville’s breast pocket. “Just a reminder, Mister Mandeville, in case you think I’d forgotten you. Consider it a memento.”

Hiram then turned around and made his way back up the hill toward his waiting vehicle. Av thought he was moving slower than before. Maybe it was the hill.

Mandeville made to brush the white flower out of his pocket, but the agents had a firm grip on both his elbows. They led him over to one of the SUVs and made him take the center seat in the back. One of them handcuffed each of his wrists to a strap running across the back of the front seat, and then put on his seat belt. Av’s last sight of him was of that big face grimacing in pain and Olympic anger as one of the agents closed the back door.

“Okay,” Miller said. “I think we’re done here. Ellen, if you would take your helpers back to town, I’ll go ahead to Quantico and set things up with Behavioral Sciences.” Then he turned to Av and his partners. “Gentlemen, Special Agent Whiting will explain things to you in due course, and I will personally smooth over any problems this case may have caused for you at MPD. That’s a promise. Your Bureau thanks you very, very much.”

“My Bureau?” Wong said softly as Miller joined the other agents at the second SUV. Mau-Mau snorted.

“Let’s go, boys,” Ellen said. “The detective sergeant here’s had a long night, and I need a drink. Or three.”

“Three’s good,” Wong said. “Four’s better. Man! That was nice shooting.”

Miz Brown positively beamed.

“Okay, let’s start with this stalking horse business,” Av said.

The four of them were sitting in his loft apartment; Miz Brown had decided to go home after shooting up Mandeville’s hands. He’d said he needed to pray on it. Av had thanked him profusely, but Brown had waved his thanks aside. “Don’t like to do that, shooting someone like that,” he said. “Had to be done, I know, but I still feel bad about it.”

“You hadn’t, I wouldn’t be feeling anything,” Av had reminded him.

“But you would be with the Lord,” Brown had said, with a suitably beatific smile.

Ellen had Scotch; Av and his partners were drinking beer. Ellen explained the concept of a stalking horse as something done to draw out someone who would otherwise never show his hand. “Political parties do it in primaries,” she said. “Put up some nobody candidate to see what the opposition’s going to do, or how strong their own candidate is.”

“I get that,” Av said. “But why’d you need one to deal with Mandeville?”

“Two reasons,” she said. “One, you’ve heard people talk about the White House as the Bubble. Totally protected. Totally insulated. Secret Service. Building guards. Military snipers and antiaircraft weapons on the roof. Armored transport. Top-flight secure communications. Bunkers. Undisclosed locations, around the city and elsewhere. Jumbo-jet airplanes. Helicopters. No-fly zones — the list just goes on and on.”

“But that’s all for the President.”

“Yeah, but it covers some of the senior staff, too, right? A guy like Mandeville, a senior presidential advisor? He’s in that bubble, too. You can not get at a guy like that unless you can draw him out of that Kevlar bubble.”

“What’s the second reason?” Mau-Mau asked.

“The Bureau knew about the dissent within the DMX. It wasn’t until I had that lunch with McGavin and then a little recap session with Mandeville that we realized how out-there this was getting. Problem was that Mandeville tricked me into being involved in what happened to McGavin. That gave him a pretty big stick to use on the Bureau if we did do something official.”

Bureau involvement, Av thought. Right. Now he understood. “How’d the Bureau even know?”

“I told my boss some of the things Mandeville was saying. He’s known to be a crusader for the DMX, so, yes, it was extreme, but no one ever thought he’d start killing people.”

Av blew out a long breath. “So: CT equals no rules, then.”

Ellen shrugged. “I think,” she said, “that they truly believe the CT effort is so important, so vital to the survival of the country, that the everyday laws don’t always apply. I mean, for God’s sake, look at the DMX.”

“And the fact that there are eighty-plus agencies makes it easier for them to do that,” Av said. “So why me, and who knew?”

“Second question first — we called Precious in and told her what we were thinking about doing. Let her see a videotape of Mandeville going off on some of his own staff for some mortal sin or other. It was persuasive, right down to the tufts of fire coming out of his temples and the blue light of madness in his eyes. She bought right in. Said you’d be perfect, ’cause you’d never catch on.”

“Well, thank you, Precious.” Av snorted. “And all those heavy dudes out on the towpath?”

“Those were Mandeville’s people, or, rather, Strang’s. He’s still a loose end. He was the man in charge of the other side of that Chinese wall. We had no frigging idea we had a twenty-six-year Agency CO operative working as a GS-7 in the basement. Or why he was there. We only got onto him because Mandeville had to use one of our ciphers to call in to the headquarters building. If he’d used the White House system, we’d have never known.”

“And he was the guy Hiram gave the joy juice to?”

“No,” she said. “That was three years ago. Hiram remembered him, because he already knew about the special plants. Strang wanted the plants, actually, but Hiram didn’t trust him.”

“Okay, okay, wait a minute,” Mau-Mau interjected. “All these people knowin’ everything, everybody plottin’ and schemin’, walking right through those Chinese walls and shit — everybody just one step ahead of everybody else: how they doin’ that?”

Ellen sipped some of her Scotch. “You read the Snowden revelations?” she asked. “About how the government is listening — hell, not just listening, but recording—every phone conversation and e-mail and text and IM and, fuck me, tweet in the country, if not the world? Lemme explain something: at every DMX meeting, a rep from the NSA stands up and gives us a briefing. He calls it the nugget brief. He talks about the nuggets of interesting information they glean from all that listening. You know what that rep told me one day? He said: we are the Cloud.”

“Holy shit,” Mau-Mau muttered.

“Well, it’s true. You put it out there, someone sees it. Guy like Mandeville? He knew how to get at some of that information, and how to have a funny-looking flower vendor show up in the Bistro Nord and entice me to buy a nice bouquet of flowers, which he placed right under McGavin’s nose. A minute later McGavin was dead on the floor, and—and—when the cops and the fake EMTs arrived, did anyone mention flowers?”

“So you told Mandeville that I was working the McGavin incident?”

“Nope,” she said. “Strang did that. Told Mandeville where the case was being handled. Mandeville told him to see if he could deflect you and the rest of the guys in the Briar Patch. Hence the fake-FPS stunt on the towpath.”

“But the FPS actually called our bosses and bitched about that,” Mau-Mau said.

“No, they didn’t,” Ellen said. “We checked — FPS didn’t know what we were talking about.”

Mau-Mau shook his head. Av suddenly wanted some of Ellen’s Scotch.

Wong announced that he was hungry, and did anyone else feel like some Chinese chow. The other three looked at each other and said yes.

“So everything after that, you guys were running it?” Av said.

“We were running you,” she said. “It was perfect. Mandeville could not believe that some cop in an office known as the Briar Patch was poking his nose into anything that was going on at his level. He called the deputy director of the Bureau, Mister Ederington, and told him to have you picked up by a tactical squad and sequestered in the special facility down in Petersburg. Matter of utmost urgency. FISA court warrant to follow. Can’t explain it over the phone, even over a secure phone. Presidential interest. DMX related. Just do it.”

“And just like that, he did?”

“No, actually,” she said. “When he heard ‘DMX’ he called my boss in and said WTF. We took it from there, called the colonel in charge down there, and then got Wong, here, to spring you out of there and begin the chain of events that, hopefully, would result in Mandeville coming up out of his lair and going for you, personally. That was the only way we figured we could get him.”

“Why did I end up at Hiram’s?” Av asked.

“I spent some time with Hiram,” she said. “He showed me his research facility, explained how he’d helped the government before, and why he’d given Mandeville the materials. It was his idea to get you out there, as bait for Mandeville. I think he wanted to see what his little plant arsenal could do.”

“It, by God, did the job,” Av said.

“And then he set you loose on the river.”

“Yeah, where fucking Mandeville’s operators were waiting and watching. Jesus, Ellen, they could have just offed me in the helo and thrown my ass into that rotor thing at Little Falls Dam.”

She smiled. “That was the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team,” she said. “Believe it or not, Mandeville called Strang and told him that he wanted you picked up at Hiram’s estate. Strang, God bless him, told Mandeville to call in the HRT — with White House authority, they’d do what he wanted, and bring you to wherever Mandeville said. The HRT boss called my boss to ask who this Mandeville guy was, calling in on a White House phone. My boss called me, and we saw our chance.”

“And why did you involve the Briar Patch in the first place?” Av asked. “You got the whole FBI to call on.”

She smiled again, with the hint of a blush in it. “My boss said to get you guys to front the operation. That way, if it all turned to shit, the Bureau could say: Who, me?”

The doorbell rang and Wong went to the front door, fumbling with his wallet. He peered through the peephole. White guy, holding up bags. He opened the door.

“So,” Av continued. “Did you roll up Strang and whoever he was using?”

“No,” she said. “We have no idea where Strang is.”

“Oh, I think we do,” Wong said, backing into the room, followed by Kyle Strang, carrying an H & K MP5 A2, with which he was casually covering the entire room.

“Aw, shit,” Mau-Mau said. “Where’s the damn chow?”

“Just outside the door,” Strang said. “I paid the delivery guy. Back up, King Kong.”

Wong backed away from the door and then went over to the couch, where he sat down next to Ellen and put on his best glare. Strang didn’t appear to notice.

“You people need to just relax,” Strang said, dropping into one of the living room chairs. “This thing’s for my protection, not for you. I need to fill you in on a couple of things, that’s all, so don’t anybody get stupid on me or we’ll have a terrible accident here. Hello, Ellen Whiting.”

“One moment,” Av said. He’d been sitting in a chair close to the couch. He got up now, put a finger to his lips in Strang’s direction, and went over to the couch, where he appropriated what was left of Ellen’s Scotch in one gulp. Then he went back to his chair, sat down, and said: “Shoot. So to speak, I mean.”

Strang snorted. “Okay,” he said. “First things first. I work for the Central Intelligence Agency, and have done so for almost three decades.”

“So what are you doing in the audiovisual section of the Bureau?” Av asked.

“I’ll get to that,” Strang said. “Just as soon as I tell you that I had nothing to do with either McGavin or Logan shuffling off this mortal coil.”

“Bullshit,” Ellen said. “Hiram Walker told me you came to him personally to get your hands on some of his more dangerous plants.”

“Yes, I did,” Strang said. “And you know what? He said no. Actually, what he said was: ‘Let me think about that, Mister Strang. I will need to consult with my colleagues in the society. But, on balance, I think we might be able to help you.’ That’s what he said.”

“And then, later, he turned you down?”

“He did,” Strang said. “Which begs the obvious question, doesn’t it.”

“Absolutely,” Ellen said. “If you weren’t behind what happened to McGavin and Logan, who the fuck was?”

“You know exactly who, Special Agent,” Strang said. “The ‘how’ is another matter, but we at the Agency have no doubt that Carl Mandeville orchestrated both murders.”

“Our sources tell us that you were the ‘how,’ if not personally, then the person who arranged for some operatives from beyond the Chinese wall to come take a hand in saving the DMX,” Ellen protested.

“Your sources?” Strang said. “Your sources were told what we wanted them to hear, Special Agent. You’re missing the big picture here.”

“Me, too,” Av said. “So—”

“It’s pretty simple, Detective. Before there was a DMX, the only agency that was allowed to go places and kill ‘persons of interest’ was the Agency. Then, because of all the so-called intelligence failures preceding nine-eleven, the DMX was created. The Agency became just one player among many. It was a signal demotion, both of federal trust, prestige, not to mention budgetary power.”

“Wait,” Av said. “Are you saying—”

“Exactly, Detective. The Agency was and is in total agreement with the senators who want to kill off the DMX. Not because of some arcane ethical concerns, of course, but for the reason that we want that particular mission back in our hands, where it rightly belongs. Once we found out Mandeville was planning to off the entire committee, to purify it, as he said a couple times, then we saw our chance.”

“Now you sound like Mandeville,” Ellen said.

Strang smiled. “Mandeville was told that I could be ‘useful’ to him, with the idea being that I could watch for an opportunity to unseat him. They gave him my classified bio, and then told him that I’d be hidden in plain sight in the Hoover building. He couldn’t resist the irony of that, apparently. They told him I could get things done for him, outside of the usual CT channels. But: Carl Mandeville’s not a trusting soul, as you can imagine. So he kept some of his own assets to himself, as you found out, Detective.”

“So Hiram gave him the magic potions?” Av asked.

“You’ll have to take that up with Mister Walker,” Strang said. “What I do know is he told me no.”

There was a minute’s silence in the room as they digested these revelations.

“Mandeville’s genius,” Strang said, “is that he saw how cluttered the CT world was becoming, with every Tom, Dick, and Harry agency in the government wanting in on the coolest intel action in town — the Kill List. If anybody tumbled to some of the shit he was doing, he could immediately implicate about a dozen different agencies, and then they’d all go after each other.”

“You said he was gonna take out the entire committee?” Av said.

Strang hesitated, as if trying to figure out how much more he should reveal. “He had a connection at Fort Detrick, the army’s bioweapons defense lab. The CO of that facility called the Agency and asked if they knew why Mandeville was asking for some truly bad shit that could be used to kill instead of warn.”

“A biological weapon?” Av asked. “We do that shit these days?”

“No, we don’t. But Mandeville had set up a lab within the lab. He covered it by reprogramming a few million into the USAMRIID budget. DMX business. Secret-cubed. The guy was the original loose cannon.”

“But now he’s in custody,” Ellen said.

“For the moment, perhaps,” Strang said. “I don’t know where you’re taking him, but I’ll give you one piece of advice: do not, under any circumstances, allow him to communicate with anyone, anyone at all, because if he does, you’ll never get your hands on him again, and you and all your bosses will be wading through a shitstorm for the next year.”

“We have him red-handed,” Ellen said. “He was about to shoot the detective here.”

“No, you don’t,” Strang said. “For starters, I’m willing to bet you had no federal warrant to even be there at that park. The only help you could muster up were these rather—interesting specimens, from the MPD, for God’s sake.”

“Hey,” Wong growled. “You want to see interesting? I’ll show you interesting.”

Strang rolled his eyes. “You guys did all this on the fly, didn’t you, Special Agent. Let me tell you how this will end: my director will come to see your director. I am confident that they will work something out.”

“We could subpoena you, then,” Ellen said. “You seem to know so much.”

Strang laughed a short bark of a laugh. “I keep forgetting — you work for the Bureau. It’s all about the airtight case, isn’t it? When Mandeville went from éminence grise to personally pointing a gun at a cop? He stepped out of the civilized light and into the same world he thought he owned — the world of ruby-eyed robots coming for you in the night. Besides, I’m going to be — unavailable, for a while.”

“Aw, lemme guess,” Av asked. “In one of those undisclosed locations, right?”

“Yes, indeed, Detective,” Strang said. “One last question, Special Agent — did Hiram Walker make an appearance at your little showdown at Fort Marcy?”

“He did,” she said.

Strang smiled broadly at something that obviously pleased him very much and then got up and walked sideways toward the front door.

“You gonna leave the chow?” Wong asked.

“Certainly,” he said, as he opened the door. “You just better hope I didn’t put something in it, you know, like some, hell, I don’t know, seven dragon loose-end sauce?” He gave them a wolfish grin and then left.

Nobody moved for a full thirty seconds after Strang closed the door behind him. Then Wong went to the door, opened it carefully, and retrieved the three white bags of takeout, which were already beginning to show oil stains.

“Seven dragon ‘loose-end’ sauce?” Av said. “I think I’ll pass, guys.”

There was general agreement on that strategy. Ellen yawned and said she needed to go home. Av said he would walk her out to her car.

Out on the sidewalk he said he had a couple of questions about their great adventure.

“Shoot,” she said.

“First, how’d you guys bug my apartment?”

She smiled. “We discovered that we had some ready-service help right there in your building. By the name of Special Agent Rue Waltham?”

“You’re shitting me—she’s an agent? She said she was a lawyer.”

“She is both. We’ve got lots of lawyers in the Bureau. In fact, back in the day, you had to be either a lawyer or an accountant just to be a special agent. Times have changed; she works in our international operations division.”

“You planted her in my building?”

“Nope. She did that rental all by herself. Our surveillance people needed a base of operations near your building, preferably something besides the traditional telephone truck. They scanned all the addresses in your area and hers popped out, right in your building. I wish I could tell you that this was all planned, but it was mostly serendipity.”

“Okay — one last question: you and Strang — you were a team in this, right? I mean there’s no other way it could have worked.”

She feigned surprise. “You’re suggesting that the Bureau and the Agency might have worked together on this goat-grab?” she said. “What are the chances of that?”

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said.

She smiled, looked away, but said nothing.

“Okay.” He sighed. “But who was the second man working for Mandeville? The guy he sicced on me?”

“We have no fucking idea,” she said, quietly. “That’s the disturbing truth.”

“Disturbing — that’s one way of phrasing it,” he said. “Because if he’s still out there, then I’ve still got a big problem.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” she said. “Whoever he is, he knows the rules of the game. Once Mandeville goes down, his tasking, as it were, goes down with him. What would be the point?”

He sighed again, not entirely sure her logic would hold up. Then asked if he’d see her again.

“Whatever for, Detective Sergeant?” she asked, with a sly smile. “Me being so very scary and everything. You’re not about to broach the R-word are you?”

“R-word?”

“As in: relationship?”

“Well, I guess I could make an exception, just this once.”

“Uh-huh.”

He felt himself blushing just a little. “I mean, well, um—”

“I’ve got some news,” she interrupted gently.

“News?” he said, warily. Oh, God, now what? he thought.

“I’ve got a date tomorrow, or I guess it’s today, now. Dinner, and then a walk in a park, I believe.”

“With whom?”

“Can’t you guess, you being a detective sergeant and all?”

Av was baffled, and not for the first time, by this high-energy lady. Then he did guess.

“Hiram?” he squeaked. “But — but—”

She was laughing now. “And why not?” she said. “He’s head and shoulders the most interesting man I’ve met in a long, long time.”

“Head and shoulders is right,” he said.

“We-e-ll, I didn’t say it was romance, did I. It’s drinks on the terrace, dinner served by the staff, and then a walk in the park. His park. At his mansion on his riverfront estate, where the gardens are alive in more ways than one. Frankly, I was flattered when he asked me. Besides, it’s just possible he may have already solved your potentially big problem.”

“Wow” was all Av could manage, trying to visualize them as a pair.

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “We could always be workout buddies again sometime, Detective Sergeant,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “Just keep an eye on your caller ID, okay? Bye, now.”

As she drove away, Av looked out into the tiny park by the canal lock. A young couple was walking by, the woman rhapsodizing about the historical canal, the guy looking over at Av, a sympathetic expression on his face when he saw Ellen leaving. Av put up his palms and shrugged. The guy grinned; they do get away, sometimes.

He went back upstairs, where Mau-Mau and Wong were taking beer bottles and glasses out to the kitchen. Wong was still griping about the compromised takeout.

“Gonna see that one again?” Mau-Mau asked him.

“Don’t think so,” Av said. “You know me.”

“Thought I did, till I saw that bra in the bathroom,” Mau-Mau said with a grin. “Although it wasn’t really your size and all.”

Av tried to think of a snappy comeback but all he could do was grin, too. After they’d left, he climbed up to the rooftop and stretched out in the lawn chair.

He thought about Ellen Whiting and her bewildering world of spooks, high-powered secret committees, and scary political games. He conjured up an image of her blasting through D.C. on a Harley with a swarm of feds on her tail — his Harley, now that he thought about it, have to get that back. He wondered if there were warrants out on that bike now. Did he really want to be involved with a woman like her?

Have to think about that, he concluded. Then he heard the house phone ringing. He ran down the stairs and barely beat the voice mail robot.

“Detective Sergeant,” Ellen said. “I forgot about your bike.”

“Where’d it end up?” he said.

“At the Hoover building. I’ll get it back to you tomorrow.”

“Take your time,” he said. “Bring it when you feel like taking a ride. So to speak.”

“Feel?” she said, ignoring his not very subtle suggestion. “As in feelings? You talking about feelings? You telling me you felt something that night?”

“It was morning,” he said. “And, yes, I did. Feel something. There was something in the bed. Like a rock, maybe. Piece of gravel? A pea?”

She started to laugh. “Careful what you wish for,” she said. “And remember, I don’t always knock.”

“I’ll keep the change jar open for you,” he said.