Edge

Chapter 19

MORE DARK, WINDING routes.

Nobody was behind us, unless he was driving without lights, which was possible, thanks to the new night vision systems. But the way I was driving-fast then slow, occasionally abrupt stops, sharp turns down roads that I knew well but I doubted Loving would-left me convinced that no one was following.

After forty minutes I hit Route 7 briefly then Georgetown Pike and took it to River Bend Road. Then, bypassing downtown Great Falls, I took a series of tangled roads and streets on which GPS was helpful but not definitive.

Finally, after a drive through dense woods, during which we passed no more than three houses-three very large houses-we arrived at the safe house compound, separated from the road by a seven-foot-high stockade and, farther along, six-foot chain-link fences.

The compound had a seven-bedroom main house, two outbuildings-one of them a panic facility-and two large garages, as well as a barn, complete with a hayloft. The grounds were nearly ten acres of rolling fields, bordering the Potomac River, the turbulent part, the narrows, where there is indeed a series of falls and rapids, though “Great Falls” is by anyone’s estimation exaggerated; “Modest but Picturesque” would be a better name.

The property had been a bargain. You can’t be in any government service nowadays without being aware of the bottom line. In the nineties, the compound had been the residence of Chinese diplomats, a retreat from the embassy downtown. It was also, the FBI had learned, where the People’s Republic secret police regularly met their runners and agents, who’d been collecting information from contractors and low-level government workers and taking pictures of the NSA, the CIA and other unmentionable facilities in Langley, Tysons and Centreville. Most of the work, it was learned, was commercial property theft rather than defense secrets. But it was politically naughty, not to mention illegal.

When the Chinese got busted, the delicate negotiations involved an agreement that the diplomats and fake businessmen would leave the country without prosecution and, in exchange, the government would get the house… and some other, nondisclosed, treats. The property was used by a number of agencies as a hideaway until Abe had grabbed it for us about eight years ago.

The large, brown-painted nineteenth-century house itself had been retrofitted with all the accoutrements of modern-day security that we could afford. Which wasn’t as high-tech or sexy as people might expect. There were sensors on the fence, though they would deter only people who didn’t know about sensors on fences. The grounds themselves weren’t monitored everywhere, though at key approaches (not necessarily the obvious ones) there were weight sensors buried in the dirt. Of course, the whole place was amply covered by video cameras, some obvious, some not. I’d activated an employee, what we call spectators, or specs, that morning to begin monitoring the place. Ours sit in West Virginia, in a dim room, and watch TV screens all day long and-though they don’t admit it-listen to really loud music, usually headbanging. They can do so because our cameras aren’t miked. That takes too much bandwidth. Someday we’ll be able to afford both, and the specs’ll lose their sound tracks. But for now, it’s silent movies of the compound and Def Leppard coming from the speakers.

I called the spec assigned to us and he answered immediately.

“We’re here,” I said, though he knew that since he’d been watching us for the past five minutes.

It was quiet, he reported. He’d seen nothing suspicious.

“Where’re the deer?”

“Where the deer should be.”

Because of this job and some other aspects of my life, I’ve learned a lot about wildlife-for instance, what intimidates deer and other animals and why. I’ve told my specs-and protégés-always to watch for patterns of animal behavior that might give away clues as to intrusion. I’d actually lectured on this at professional conferences. An uneasy badger saved the life of one of my principals a year ago, alerting us to a hitter’s presence.

“No funny business with nearby traffic either,” was the spec’s twangy comment. I’d never met the man but I had some impressions. Given his residence in the mountains of West Virginia, his accent and his taste for heavy metal, how could I not?

I thanked him and punched in the code to the front gate, which swung open and a nearly invisible but impressive tire strip receded into the ground. We headed through the stockade fence and up the winding drive, which was about a hundred feet long. Garcia and Ahmad were looking around, carefully, as were Maree and the still alert Ryan Kessler, who I believed had snuck a drink or two. Joanne glanced out the window as if she were looking at a month-old magazine in a doctor’s waiting room.

I parked and we got out. Beside the front door-looking like wood but reinforced steel-I opened a panel and typed on the keypad below a small LCD screen. The program confirmed via motion, sound and thermal sensors that the house was completely unoccupied (it can identify a beating human heart but won’t bother me with the sound of a river rat nosing about for food or the water heater coming to life). I unlocked the door and stepped inside, then temporarily disabled the alarm; it would reactivate once we were inside and then would lock, though there was a panic button that would allow anyone inside to open it in the event of fire or intrusion. The same was true of most windows, which otherwise would open only six inches.

I got the lights on and the heat going-the temperature had dipped-and then I booted up our bank of security monitor screens, which mirrored the ones in West Virginia. Next the secure computer server. I checked to see that the shielded landlines were working. Finally, I verified that the generators were armed; they’d come on automatically if an intruder cut the main line.

I showed the principals briefly around the musty ground floor.

“Oh, neat!” Maree said, striding up to a number of old, sepia-tinted photographs on the wall, ignoring shelves of books and magazines and, yes, board games, though not ones I’d donated. Looking at the younger sister’s giddy expression, I tried to recall when I’d had a principal who could so quickly forget that she’d been part of a shootout an hour earlier. Never, I decided.

I explained about food, beverages, the TV. Like a bellboy. I took the Kesslers to their room on this floor in the back, Maree to hers next to it. The young woman seemed impressed. “You’re redeeming yourself, Mr. Tour Guide,” she said. She offered me a dollar as a tip, a joke, I guessed. I didn’t know how to respond and so I ignored the odd gesture. She offered another pout.

Ahmad, Garcia and I would sleep in shifts, with two guards always awake and on duty. The shepherd’s bedroom was a small one on the ground floor, between the front door and the bedrooms for the principals.

I knew the layout of the compound and the safe house perfectly and Ahmad, who’d never been here, had studied the place. I’d tested him several times-most recently a month ago-and I knew that he was familiar with the layout. I had him brief Garcia and I explained to the FBI agent about the com system and the weapons locker. I gave him the combination to the lock. Inside there wasn’t much; some H &Ks and M4 Bushmasters, tripped to fully auto, sidearms and flash-bang grenades, like the sort that we’d used against Loving at the flytrap.

With my principals now safely inside their fortress, I walked into the den, which I used as my office, sat at the ancient oak desk and booted up my laptop. I plugged it and my phone into the wall socket; in the personal security business there are many important rules, Abe had recited, but high on the list: “Never miss a chance to recharge batteries or use the bathroom.”

I’d done the former; I now did the latter, walking into the front bedroom. I washed my hands and face in the hottest water I could stand and checked the scrapes and bruises from the pursuit of Loving at the flytrap. Nothing serious, though my back ached like hell from the jarring escape in the Yukon at the Hillside Inn.

I walked through the house, checking sensors and making sure all the software and com systems were working. I felt like an engineer.

Personal security is a state-of-the-art profession; it has to be, since the bad guys know all the toys… and have seemingly unlimited budgets to buy them. Although, as you’d think with somebody who prefers board to computer games, I’m not inherently high tech, I nonetheless made sure we too had the latest gadgets: explosives sniffers as small as a computer mouse, which they resemble; high-density carbon-fiber detectors for nonmetallic firearms, audio sensors that can alert us to the sounds of an automatic weapon slide slamming a round into the chamber, or the click of a revolver cocking; microphones that will reassemble conversations from vibrations on the other side of the wall; communications jammers; GPS signal reorienters that will send the car following you right off the road.

I always carried in my breast or hip pocket a video camera disguised as a pen. It was linked to software whose algorithms alerted me that the body language of a person approaching was consistent with that of an impending attack. I also used it to record crowds in public when I was transporting principals, to see if faces of passersby in one locale turn up in another.

A second “pen” is actually a wireless signal detector to sweep for bugs.

There was even what we call a “mail box”; it’s about a foot square and unfolded explosively outward when it heard a detonation of an IED, shooting a Kevlar and metal mesh-like knight’s chain mail-upward, to intercept as much shrapnel and blast force as possible.

Sometimes these devices worked and sometimes they didn’t. But you do whatever you can to get an edge over your opponent, Abe Fallow used to say. That edge could be microscopic, but often that was enough.

I returned to my computer and downloaded several emails that duBois had sent. I was sending replies when I sensed a presence. I looked up and saw the Kesslers in the kitchen. I heard cabinets opening, the refrigerator door. This facility does have a bar, which separated the dining room and kitchen, but it’s stocked only with sodas. In the kitchen our facilities person usually has some wine and beer. Although we can’t drink on duty, of course, we try to keep our principals as comfortable as possible-and more important, try to give them little to complain about.

Ryan limped to the bar and poured some Coke into a glass that was already half full of amber liquid. Joanne got a Sierra Mist. “You want something in it?” I heard him ask.

She shook her head.

His shrug said, Suit yourself.

He glanced into the den and saw me looking at them. He turned and walked back to the bedroom.

I returned to my computer, reviewing the encrypted e-files duBois had sent me.

She was responding to several of my various requests that day and assured me that she expected to have more details about Ryan’s two relevant cases. There was some more research I needed to do-by myself. I logged into a secure search engine we use-routing my requests through a proxy in Asia.

The information came back instantly; I wasn’t looking for classified material but simply perusing the general media. For a half hour I read through hundreds of pages of news stories and op ed pieces mostly. Finally I had a portrait of the object of my search.

Senator Lionel Stevenson was a two-term senator, a Republican from Ohio. He’d been in Congress before that and a prosecutor in Cleveland before running for office. He was a moderate, and respected on both sides of the aisle, as well as in the White House. Judiciary Committee for four years, now Intelligence. He was the one who’d hammered together a coalition to get just enough votes in the Senate for the Supreme Court nominee. One politician was quoted as saying of Stevenson’s efforts, “That was tough work, building support-everybody seems to hate everybody else in Washington nowadays.”

Too much screaming in Congress. Too much screaming everywhere.

He made visits to Veterans Administration hospitals and schools back in Ohio and in and around D.C. He was part of the Washington social scene and was seen in the company of younger women-though, unlike some of his colleagues, that was not a problem, since he was unmarried. He was supported by political action committees, lobbyists and campaign fund-raising organizations that had never run afoul of the law. He was considered one of the icons in what was being called the New Republican movement, which because of its moderate stance was converting Democrats and independents and looked likely to win solid majorities in upcoming state and federal elections.

Maybe the most significant thing I found were his remarks delivered at a community college in Northern Virginia a few months ago. While in many ways a fervent law-and-order advocate, Stevenson nonetheless said, “Government is not above the law. It is not above the people. It is bound by the law and it serves the people. There are those in Washington-there are those in every state-who think that rules can be bent or broken in the name of security and attaining a greater good. But there is no greater good than the rule of law. And politicians, prosecutors and police who would turn a blind eye toward the will of our Founders are no better than common bank robbers or murderers.”

The reporter stated that these remarks earned Stevenson a standing ovation from the hall full of future voters. Other articles observed that this philosophy had cost him votes at home from Republicans and occasional enmity from fellow GOPers in Congress. Which told me that his motive for the upcoming hearings on government surveillance was rooted in ideology, not winning votes.

I continued to scroll through the voluminous material, jotting a note or two.

I felt at sea doing this, and again I envied Claire duBois her research skills. This, however, was not an assignment I would give to her.

I glanced up to see Joanne stepping into the doorway between the kitchen and living room, leaning against the jamb, her stern handsome face a bit less numb than before. I saved the pages in an encrypted file and typed a command to bring up the password-protected screensaver.

I stared at the monitor for a moment, the images of chess pieces appearing and dissolving, as I reflected on what I’d just learned about Stevenson. Then I rose and walked to the doorway, nodding to Joanne.

The inside of the safe house was surprisingly cozy. Many women principals fell in love with it. A few men too. When a lifter or hitter is after you, the nesting instinct swells fast, like a helium balloon at Hallmark. I’d even come downstairs once to find my principals had rearranged the furniture. Another time, to my horror, a couple had swapped the drapes between two rooms, presumably standing in full view of naked windows to do so.

The comfort made this my favorite safe house-not for my personal ease, but professional; my principals felt less agitated and that made my life easier.

Joanne picked up the remote, asking me, “Okay?”

“Sure.”

She turned on the TV, perhaps to see if we’d made the news. We had, albeit anonymously. “Possibly gang related,” the announcer said, referring to the shootout at the Hillside Inn. Then the story was gone, replaced by snippets on the Orioles’ chance in the playoffs, a suicide bombing in Jerusalem, a statement by the Supreme Court nominee, urging that the demonstrations in front of the Capitol, both for and against him, remain peaceful; there’d been some incidents of spitting and hurling bottles. I gave him my silent thanks for helping mask my transit to the flytrap.

Joanne sat staring at the screen, clasping her soda firmly. Her fingers separated as she tucked a strand of limp dark blond hair away. She still had her purse over her shoulder.

The comfort of the familiar…

Out of the blue, she looked at me and said, as if continuing a conversation we’d been having all along, “He’s frustrated. Ryan. Very frustrated. He’s guilty about bringing this on us. And when he gets guilty, he doesn’t know how to handle it. He gets angry. Don’t take it personally.”

She might have been referring to his biting comment that he was a better shot than me and the others protecting him.

Or to his implication that we were cowards, afraid to engage Loving.

“I understand.” I did.

“He’s never quite recovered from the deli shooting. I don’t mean the wound, the limp-he’s okay with that, most of the time. I mean the psychology. How it affected him. He had to move to a desk. He loved working the street. That’s what his father did, in Baltimore. After Ryan moved to Financial Crimes his father seemed to lose respect for him.”

I remembered that both of his parents were dead and I wondered what the relationship between father and son had been toward the end. My own father had died young; it was always a regret that I had been too busy to make it to the birthday party that had turned out to be his last.

A regret too that, because of his death, he hadn’t been at my son’s first.

Joanne continued, “He does his job but his heart’s not in it. Now they’ve saddled him with that administrative work.” She paused. “They know about the drinking. He thinks he covers it up. He doesn’t. You can’t.”

I reflected that I too would find it hard to give up what I do and not be able to play my games against people like Henry Loving, not to be with my principals.

But I didn’t tell Joanne this, of course. I always have to be on guard against sharing things with the people in my care. It’s not professional. They might spill something about you-if they were captured by a lifter or if they talked to the press. There’s another reason too. Principals and their shepherds are going to part ways. That’s as sure as the seasons. It’s better not to form any connection; minimize the risk of emotional hurt. This is why Abe Fallow told us to refer to them as “my principals” only.

“Keep them anonymous, Corte. This is a two-dimensional business. You have to be a cardboard cutout of a person. That’s how you have to look at them. Learn only what you need to learn to keep them alive. Don’t use their names, don’t look at their kids’ pictures, don’t ask ’em if they’re all right, unless you’ve been dodging bullets and you need to call a medic.”

But the irony is that principals love to talk to us shepherds. Oh, do they want to share. Partly it’s the presence of mortality that puts them in a talkative mode. Confessional, often. They’ve done some things wrong in their lives-who hasn’t, of course?-and they want to assuage the guilt by talking. More important, though, I’m no threat. I’m in their lives for twelve hours or forty-eight or at the most a few weeks. I go away at the end of that time and will never be in a position to repeat the secrets to their friends or loved ones.

So I listen and I nod, without being particularly encouraging, and I make no judgments whatsoever. Part of this is calculated, of course. The more they depend on and trust me, the more they’ll do exactly what I tell them to-instantly and without question.

Joanne glanced at my computer, though I’d turned the screen so she couldn’t see it. She asked, “Which of Ryan’s cases do you think it is?”

“My associate’s investigating them now.”

“At ten o’clock Saturday night?”

I nodded.

“Ryan doesn’t talk to me about his job much. You’d think it’d be pretty obvious who’s the… what did you call it, the primary?”

“That’s it, yes. You mean, to warrant hiring somebody like Henry Loving, there’d have to be a lot at stake?”

“Yes.”

“True. But sometimes you never know. I’ve had plenty of assignments where the identity of the primary was a big surprise.”

Maree appeared, poured herself a glass of wine and walked up to us.

I asked, “The room okay?”

“Very Martha Stewart, Mr. Tour Guide. Old paintings of horses. Tons of horses. They have skinny legs. Fat horses and skinny legs. I wonder if they really looked like that back then. You think they’d fall over a lot.”

Joanne smiled at this-an observation worthy of Claire duBois.

Maree then asked, “How do I go online? I need to check email.”

“I’m afraid you can’t.”

“Oh, not the spy stuff again? Please. Can I beg?” She said this with that teenager’s coy glint in her eyes. Her lips, of course, pouted admirably.

“Sorry.”

“Why not?”

“We have to assume Loving’s found your account. If you read messages or send any, it’s possible for him to correlate time with router and server traffic in the area here.”

“Corte, do you look four ways before crossing the street?”

“Mar,” Joanne chided. “Really.”

“Oh, puh-lease.”

I said, “Just taking precautions.” I regarded her serious expression and nodding head. “What’s wrong?”

“If I can’t get my masseur here, then somebody owes me a massage… Say, Mr. Tour Guide, is that in your job description?” I must have been staring at her blankly. She said, “You don’t joke much, do you?”

“Maree,” her sister said sternly. “Give it a rest.”

“Seriously,” she said to me. “I’d just like to send a few emails. I’ve got to get some images to a gallery for a show.”

“If it’s really important, I can encrypt it, send it to our central communications department and we could route it through some proxies in Asia and Europe.”

“Is that a joke?”

“No.”

“So other people would read it?”

“Yes, three or four. And me.”

“Then I think I’ll just opt for the exciting alternative of… going to bed.” She turned defiantly and vanished down the dim corridor.

Joanne watched her sister walk away, Maree’s slim hips shifting under the wispy skirt as she took steady, almost flirtatious strides.

“What’s she taking?” I asked.

Joanne hesitated. “Wellbutrin.”

“Anything else?”

“Maybe an Ativan. Or two or three.”

“And?”

“Nothing else she needs a prescription for. She never got insurance so I see her medical bills. Because I pay for them… How’d you know?”

I told her, “Language, some of her behavior. I found out about her hospitalizations. There were two, right?”

Joanne barked a cautious laugh. “You know about those?”

“My associate looked into anything that might be relevant. Suicide attempts? That’s what I deduced from the report.”

Joanne nodded. “The doctor said more of a gesture than an attempt. She’d been dumped by her boyfriend. Well, not even a boyfriend. They’d only gone out for six months or so but she was ready to move in, have his babies. You know the drill, I imagine.”

Her voice faded and she was looking me over, as if maybe I didn’t know the drill. Ryan had probably told her I was a single man with no children.

She continued, “A note, a little overdose. The second time, same thing. A bit worse. Different man. I wish she’d get as obsessed about going to therapy as she gets about lovers.”

I glanced up the hall and then asked softly, “Was it Andrew who hurt her?” I tapped my arm.

Joanne’s eyelids fluttered. “You’re good…” She shook her head. “To be honest, I don’t know. He has hurt her, in the past. He put her in the hospital once. She claimed it was an accident. They always do that, abuse victims. Or she says it was her fault. This time she was pretty convincing that some guy knocked into her. But I just don’t know.”

“And the forwarded mail? She broke it off with Andrew and moved in with you?”

Joanne caught her reflection in an old, scabby mirror and looked away. “That’s right. Andrew’s got a lot going for him. He’s talented, he’s handsome and he thinks my sister’s talented. Or at least he tells her she is. But he’s also jealous and controlling. He convinced her to quit her day job and move in with him. That lasted a couple of months. He was mad at her all the time but when she moved out he got even madder. Thank God we were in the area; she had someplace to go when she bailed.”

Maree, who’d been born Marie and never officially changed her name, duBois had learned, also had been the subject of some runaway reports, filed with local police, when she was in her teens, and a few drug and shoplifting charges, which had been dropped; it seemed the boys she was with had coerced her to join them. They’d tried to set her up to take the fall.

None of this was relevant to my job or to the conversation we were having, though, and I said nothing about it.

“So you do your homework, do you?”

“For the job? Yes.”

After a moment Joanne, who didn’t seem to joke anymore than I did, gave me a brief smile. “What’d you find out about me?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer. DuBois’s research on Joanne had revealed a thoroughly unremarkable life. She’d been a responsible student, grad student, statistician and homemaker. She was on the PTO at Amanda’s school. The only incidents that rose above, or descended below, the four decades of routine were in themselves not unusual: for instance, a backpacking trip abroad before grad school-the high point of her younger days, I imagined-and a serious auto accident years ago that required some months of physical therapy.

“I found out that you’re the one I don’t have to worry about.”

The smile dissolved. Joanne held my eye. “You’d make a good politician, Corte. Good night.”