Cold Frame

TWENTY-FIVE

“You ever seen a guy that big?” the agent driving asked his teammates as he turned the SUV south onto I-395 near the Pentagon and headed for Quantico.

“Looked like fucking Frankenstein,” one of the others said.

“Frankenstein was the mad scientist, not the monster,” said the third. “But, yeah, that’s what I thought of when I first saw him. Had to be what, six-ten, maybe even seven?”

“Had to be. The funeral director from hell. I stopped breathing for a moment. You see Bruno going for his weapon?”

They all laughed at that, except their passenger.

Carl Mandeville was still bound into his personal wiring harness in the middle of the backseat, with a bulky agent on either side. His hands were in his lap, the right one throbbing painfully under bulky bandages and one plaster cast. There was a plastic restraining wire strung between his forearms, supporting a third restraint wire that was clipped to a ring in the floor. His suit-coat sleeves hung empty on either side of his chest. His eyes were closed but he was definitely not asleep.

He was waiting. Wherever they were going, there’d be a phone. Or someone who had a phone, or someone who could get to a phone who could be intimidated to make one call, just one call to the White House operator, say a single code word, and then every one of these clowns would be shaking fries at a McDonald’s the next day and wondering what had just happened.

Then he would deal with the high-and-mighty leadership at the Bureau, itself. He would smother them under so much superclassified national security bullshit, special task-force inquiries, and maybe even a special prosecutor, that they’d be digging out for years, from the director on down. He would bury them for pulling this stunt tonight, and even dumber, claiming they had a case on him.

They thought they had a case. Bullshit. Besides, even if they did, it hardly mattered, because what good’s a case without a court? There wasn’t a court in the land cleared to hear any part of this, not even everyone’s pet panel of judges over at FISA. As any real player in the CT business knew, FISA was a judicial fig leaf and nothing more. No agency with any real clout took serious operational cases to FISA — instead, they took the litter-box stuff, the hypotheticals, the borderline targets, the international hairball cases, and so many of them that all those learned judges all thought they were being groomed for the Supreme Court.

Through slitted eyes he watched the exit signs for the northern Virginia suburbs flash by in the darkness. In all his years in Washington, he’d never been able to drive faster than ten miles an hour down this stretch of I-95. No, he wasn’t worried about any so-called case the Bureau would try to build against him.

Hiram Walker. There was the real threat. Hiram Nightshade was more like it. Clever bastard had been unwilling to deal with Strang. Oh, no, if he was going to hand over some of his black-widow juice, it was only going to be to the man in charge. And, like a dummy, he, Carl Mandeville, had fallen for it, thus giving Hiram a permanent, stainless-steel fishhook into his guts. He still wondered if Strang had maybe arranged that precondition on purpose.

Smug bastard, Hiram Walker, he thought, looming over everyone out there in that park in his Jack the Ripper frock coat, like some kind of Victorian vampire. He glanced down at the little flower in his buttonhole. Something to remember him by? Hiram Walker would be remembered, all right. Evangelino would see to that, personally. What he would do to Hiram Walker would be memorable, indeed.

He tried lifting his arms to see if he could dislodge the annoying flower, but the cast on his four-fingered hand was too heavy and the restraining wire made it impossible. Frustrated, he leaned forward so that his unbandaged hand could just reach his chest and then mashed the flower.

There, he thought. That’s what’s going to happen to you, you fucking freak.

“Hey, Harry,” the agent on his left said. “I think I had too much coffee at the ER — any chance of a pit stop along here?”

“Not until Occoquan,” the driver said. “And two of us have to stay with what’s-his-name back here.”

“He’ll be good,” the agent said. “Won’t you, bud.”

“Cold,” Mandeville croaked.