High Treason

CHAPTER FOUR

David knew he was in trouble the instant he heard his cell phone ring. He’d gone home to his apartment at the Watergate after work and scarfed down the rest of last night’s Stouffer’s lasagna. After a pair of Yueng-lings, he’d decided to lie on the sofa to watch the news.

And now it was 8:05.

Shit, shit, shit.

David snatched up the phone from the coffee table and swiped the virtual slide bar to answer it. “Deeshy,” he said. “I’m sorry I’m late. I’m on my way.”

“Jesus, David, this is scary shit, okay? I’m not kidding. How close are you?”

“I’m driving out of the garage now,” David said, pushing his left foot into his black Ecco loafer.

“No shit? You’re not like just waking up, right? Promise me?”

“No, dude, I’m like ten minutes away. I swear.”

“David, this is important,” DeShawn said. “You’ve got to hurry. I think I might’ve bit off way too much on this one. I’m in serious deep shit.”

David snatched the key fob off the Kirkland dresser he’d bought to fill the empty spot in the foyer. Its drawers were empty, but the long, wide, faux ebony — inlaid surface made a terrific key fob holder. “I’m turning out of the garage now. I’m surprised you can’t hear the traffic noise.”

“Just hurry, okay?” DeShawn sounded close to tears.

For the very first time since their conversation this morning, David wondered if the big black cop might actually be in trouble. Real trouble, not the imagined crap that he usually conjured up for himself. “What’s wrong, Deeshy? I mean, truly. You’re like really spun up. What’s going on?”

“Not on the phone.”

“Jesus, Deeshy.”

“Get here, okay? Just get here and bring your whole fourth estate with you.”

God pulled that string at the base of David’s spine that launched a shiver through his body. “Dude, you’re a cop—”

“Not for this, I’m not. This is about cops, okay? Feds. Secret Service. I’m gonna hang out in the Smithsonian Metro Station where there are people and it’s a little warmer. Call me when you’re close. For real close. Earn a ticket for this one, okay?” DeShawn hung up.

Deep in that cynical place where David preferred to live his life, he wanted to dismiss this as bullshit. DeShawn so wanted to break the big case, and the sensible part of David’s brain told him that this was mostly a made-up emergency.

Then there was the other part that heard the impending tears in his friend’s voice, the genuine fear. It turned out that fear begat fear, which pounded like a drum in David’s temples as he fast-walked to the elevator. He’d have loved to believe that his fear was rooted in an empathetic, philanthropic concern for his friend, but who was he kidding? David was scared shitless of getting into the middle of anything that scared a gun-toting officer of the law in a city as corrupt as Washington, DC. Hell, ex-mayors got to smoke crack before they’re reelected to the city council, and then don’t have to pay speeding tickets or federal income tax after they beat their wives and watch kiddie porn. If a cop in that environment is this scared, what the hell business did a Radford journalism grad have getting involved?

The elevator took David to the parking garage, where his black Honda Civic sat waiting in the parking space that came with his rent. The car chirped as he pushed the unlock button, and David climbed inside. The door was barely closed when the engine roared to life. Two minutes later, he was clear of the garage and on his way to God only knew what.

Earn a ticket.

David Kirk knew the streets of Washington as well as anyone, and he made good time. By this time of night, the congressional staffers had all gone home, and the lobbyists were done feting their clients in the big-name restaurants along the K Street corridor, leaving the city looking like someone had dropped a neutron bomb on the place — all the structures were there, but no one was inside. Visiting businessmen might be cramming the lobby bars at the Mayflower or the Saint Regis, but in the wide swath of real estate known as the National Mall, homeless vagrants outnumbered everyone else three to one.

That meant there was plenty of parking.

David punched DeShawn’s speed dial as he swung the turn onto Jefferson Street SW to tell him that he was only a quarter mile away. After five rings, the call went to voice mail and he hung up.

David nosed into a space twenty yards past the swollen phone booth of a building that marked the entrance to Ripley Center, more or less splitting the distance between the carousel and the Smithsonian Metro Station. If he hadn’t already slept through the meeting time, he might have waited in the car with the motor running while Deeshy climbed the steps from the Metro platform, but as it was, he owed his friend the courtesy of meeting halfway. He pulled the brake and killed the engine.

The frigid air felt like a wall as he climbed out of the Honda. He raised the collar of his peacoat against it, wishing that he’d thought to bring a stocking cap. He hated to embrace the reality of his thinning hair, but there was no denying the fact that breezes were a hell of a lot colder than they used to be.

The Smithsonian Castle loomed red and huge to his right, and as he crossed the street he cast a glance to the dormant and unused carousel, whose galloping horses, draped in shadows, seemed frozen in space and time. What was it about circus icons — clowns chief among them — that felt so very creepy?

He was still in the middle of the street when he tried Deeshy’s phone again. It didn’t make sense to go all the way down the escalator to the station just to come back up again thirty seconds later. He brought the phone to his ear and listened as it rang.

As he listened with his left ear, his right brought the sound of the reggae jingle that David recognized as Deeshy’s ringtone. Rather than coming from the station below, it was from the direction of the carousel. He turned, expecting to see his buddy waving and walking toward him, but instead saw nothing but carousel, naked trees, and the deserted Mall.

He was still squinting into the wind when the ringing in the night stopped, and Deeshy’s voice mail greeting kicked in. “If you don’t know who you’re calling, I’m not leaving a hint. Speak.”

David clicked the phone off.

“Deesh?” he called at a whisper into the night. “Deeshy, you’re creeping me out, dude.”

The night returned only the sound of the wind, and honest to God, it felt as if the temperature dropped another ten degrees.

A little louder, he said, “Come on, Deeshy, I know I was an asshole to be late, but this isn’t funny.” Still nothing.

“Dude, I know you’re there, so step out, or I’m driving away. I’m not playing this game.” He feigned a move back toward his car, but he knew there was no way he could walk away. Deeshy could be over there and be hurt.

Because someone hurt him.

The smart move would be to call the cops, but according to Deeshy himself, the cops couldn’t be trusted. If Deeshy was hurt, and the cops had hurt him, then who the hell could David call for help?

“Oh, this so sucks.” His feet started taking him toward the source of the ringtone before he was aware that his brain had given them permission to do so.

During the spring and summer, full, leafy trees provided shade for the kids and the kids at heart, a respite from the blistering heat of the largely shadeless Mall. In the darkness of the night, the dim illumination from the streetlights transformed the shadows of leafless tree limbs into menacing shadows of bony fingers beckoning him closer. His heart slammed behind his breastbone with so much force that it surely left a bruise.

“Dammit, Deeshy, stop this shit!” There, he’d yelled it, announcing to the world that he was pissed.

Apparently, the world didn’t care. Still, no sign.

He was on the carousel side of Jefferson Drive now, on the outer fringe of the malevolent shadows.

David tried the number again. Maybe he’d imagined the whole thing. That wasn’t possible, of course, but maybe if you wanted hard enough for the thing to be true—

The reggae beat launched again, a bit of Bob Marley dancing from the shadows. If David hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn that the noise had moved from last time. He blamed the wind. And his imagination, the curse of being a writer. Honest to God, if it turned out that Deeshy wasn’t dead — or at least seriously hurt — David was going to kill him.

When the phone went to voice mail, David disconnected, waited a few seconds, and then dialed it again. He’d let the sound of the ringtone bring him closer — if not to DeShawn, then at least to his phone.

David was among the trees now, just twenty or thirty yards from the carousel, and when it rang this time, there was absolutely no doubt that it had moved. Whoever was playing this game with him was circling around behind him. The skin on his back felt alive as he spun to confront the threat that was finally visible to him. Actually, it was two threats, and they were both overdressed for the cold. They wore all black, and even though it was hard to see in the dark, David could see enough of their faces to know they looked angry.

“David Kirk,” one of them said in an accent that sounded Eastern European. “We need to have a word with you.” The one who remained silent held something in his hand that reflected the streetlight. Not for long — just a blink — but it was all David needed.

He spun on his heel to bolt away when he saw a third figure emerging from among the dormant horses of the carousel itself. For the space of a heartbeat, David hoped that it might be Deeshy, but from the size of the silhouette alone, he knew that it wasn’t. And if he wasn’t Deeshy, he was trouble.

A second heartbeat later, David sprinted into the wide open spaces of the Mall. The other option would have been to streak toward the Smithsonian Castle with its gardens and shadows, but he rejected that instinctively. What the Mall lacked in cover, it made up for in the ability to maneuver. At least the Mall would allow him to run his fastest, reliving the glory days of his high school years, which had vanished from his rearview mirror nearly seven years ago.

He pumped his arms and legs hard, as if by gripping the air with his fists he could pull himself faster, force his fashionable, slick-bottomed black loafers to dig more dirt with every stride.

They were right behind him. He knew without looking, and he didn’t dare look for fear of freezing when he saw how close they were. Or, more reasonably, for fear of losing a half step of whatever lead he had on them.

The cold air tore at his face and dried out his eyes. His throat burned at the great gulps of breath. David had not run this fast in a long time — not since those days of high school stardom, if even then — yet it still felt like slow motion. He focused on the southwest corner of the Natural History Museum as his first landmark, and even though his muscles screamed and his throat ached, the goal never seemed to get closer.

The shortest distance between two points was a straight line. He remembered that from high school geometry, the last math class he ever took. But a person running in a straight line made the perfect target. He thought he remembered reading something about that.

Zigzag. Wherever he’d read about the danger of the straight line, he remembered that the solution was to run a zigzag course.

Screw it. If they hadn’t taken their shot already, they weren’t going to take it at all — not now, when he was this close to Constitution Avenue with all its official buildings and requisite guard staffs. He was sure of it.

Right.

He was still thirty yards from the sidewalk on the far side of the Mall when the calf muscle in his left leg seized, locking up like a flesh-covered rock and sprawling him face-first into the frozen dirt that pretended to be grass.

He went down hard. “Shit! Help me!”

At first, he thought he’d been shot. The pain was that intense. Clutching his calf with his right hand and pulling up on his toes with his left to ease the spasm, David rolled to his back to confront his attackers. He hadn’t been in a fight since elementary school, but he wasn’t going to die without one.

“Help me!”

Somewhere in the night there had to be a tourist or two. A couple sets of eyes might help to run off the men who would kill him.

Or maybe they’d kill the tourists, too.

Not his problem.

David was certain beyond doubt that the one man had been holding a knife. As he struggled to his knees to engage his enemies, he yelled again, a guttural, animal sound that gave voice to his terror.

But no attacker appeared. Beyond the thrumming of blood in his ears, the starless night revealed no sound but the wind and the grumble of distant traffic.

Where the hell were they? This was their perfect opportunity to take him out, slit his throat without a sound, and they’d blown it. Or maybe that wasn’t—

“Hey, are you all right?”

The voice came from David’s blind side and it startled the crap out of him. He spun to see a fortysomething guy in a beige trench coat with what looked like a suit and tie underneath. The soft jowls and prominent paunch set him far apart from the guys at the carousel. His face showed a look of concern.

With the threat of imminent attack gone, and with it the need for immediate assistance, David saw no upside in sharing details with a stranger. “I’m fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “Got a cramp. Hurts like hell.”

The Samaritan squinted into the darkness beyond David. “Somebody trying to mug you or something? I saw you tearing across the grass like your hair was on fire. If you don’t mind me saying, you’re not exactly dressed for a jog.”

Jogging? I was running with everything I had and this guy thinks I was jogging? He chose to say nothing.

The man in the trench coat pulled an iPhone knockoff out of his pocket. “Do you need me to call a cop?”

“No,” David said, and the answer sounded a little too quick. “No, I’m fine. Just got a little spooked.” He cast one more look back toward the carousel to make sure that those who spooked him were still nowhere to be seen.

Trench Coat planted his fists on his hips. He wasn’t buying.

“Honest to God,” David said. The spasm was easing as he massaged the muscle. “I’m a reporter for the Enquirer. I was doing a story and my imagination got away from me.” As soon as the words about his employer escaped his lips, he wished he could take them back.

He rose to his haunches to give his calf a good stretch. In another few seconds, he’d be able to trust it enough to stand.

“You looked awfully scared when you were running,” Trench Coat said.

David pointed back toward the carousel. “Nothing to be afraid of.”

“But you were yelling for help.”

“Just because there’s nothing to be afraid of doesn’t mean I’m not afraid of it.” Whatever happened to the coldhearted city dwellers who never wanted to get involved? He reached out his hand. “Do you mind helping me up?”

Trench Coat didn’t hesitate to grasp David’s hand in a power grip, one that involved more thumb than fingers. The hand was heavily calloused. A shiver — a warning shot — launched from his tailbone to his skull. You don’t expect a guy in a thousand-dollar coat to have workingman’s hands. On a night like tonight, anything out of the ordinary was a threat.

As David shot to his feet, he pulled his hand free and thrust a forefinger at the stranger’s face, the tip coming within an inch of the man’s face. In the same instant, he yelled — shrieked, really—“Stay away from me!”

Trench Coat jumped and took a step back. “What the hell—”

“Don’t you even!” David shouted. “Just stay the hell away from me!”

“What’s wrong with you? Jesus, I was just—”

David knew that he must sound like a lunatic, but what did he care? In the worst case, the stranger really was a Good Samaritan who’d gotten his feelings hurt. In the best case, he was a potential killer who’d been startled out of his mission.

David used the momentary confusion to take off again. With his leg still sore, he looked more like he was skipping than running, but he was putting additional space between himself and the people who would do him harm.

Behind him, Trench Coat yelled, “Ungrateful piece of shit!”

David hobbled on, stepping into the paltry traffic that straggled up Constitution Avenue. In the first bit of good luck for the evening, he found a taxi within hailing range. It pulled to the curb and David climbed into the backseat. “The Riverside,” he said, pointing the cabbie to his apartment building. “Quickly.”

Taking his orders a little too literally, the cabbie swung a U-turn in the middle of the street. David had to hold on to keep from getting thrown across the bench seat. “Whoa. Easy.”

What the hell had he gotten himself into? Goddamn you, Deeshy. Whatever his buddy had found, it had gotten the attention of some very bad people. What had he said? Something about the Secret Service, right? And he couldn’t talk to his own commanders about it.

They knew my name.

“Stop the car!” he commanded.

The cabbie pivoted in his seat to look through the security barrier, but he didn’t slow down.

“I said, stop.”

“Before, you said to hurry.”

“Well, I want you to stop now.”

This triggered a string of angry Urdu. But the driver stopped the cab.

David felt sick. If the attackers knew his name, then they would know where he lived. There was no way he could go home, not without knowing what was going on and making sure that it was safe. So, what was the alternative? All his stuff was in his home — everything. He didn’t even have a computer, unless you counted his iPhone, and as smart as the phone was, it was nobody’s computer.

“Oh, shit,” he muttered aloud. His phone! He’d used it to call Deeshy. If they had his phone, they had his number, and if they had his number, they could trace him. Like physically trace him. Wasn’t that how it worked?

“Hey,” the cabbie said. “You want to go someplace or not?”

“Your meter’s running,” David snapped.

“Waiting is not driving, my friend. You want to think, think outside. I make money driving.”

“Then drive,” David said. “Just not to the Riverside.”

“Where?”

“You want to wait for directions, wait. You want to drive, drive.”

The cabbie’s eyes flashed humor in the rearview mirror. David winked and the driver pulled the transmission into drive.

What the hell was he going to do? The first step, he supposed, was to turn off his phone, but would that be enough? Did turning it off make it invisible, or did he have to pull out that card, whatever the hell it was called. The SIM card, that was it. Did he have to pull that out to make it invisible? And how do you do that on an iPhone? The thing was one solid piece. As a first step, he turned the phone off.

And where was he going to stay? Having grown up in mansions, wilderness survival skills were nowhere near his wheelhouse. In David’s family, camping meant staying at the Four Seasons instead of the Ritz-Carlton.

I am so screwed.

He recognized that he might be panicking, blowing this out of proportion, but his gut told him that things were desperately wrong. Deeshy was as paranoid as they came, and he saw conspiracy in the sunrise, but this time, he was scared. He’d almost cried on the phone. He was very scared. Of the Secret Service and the police.

“Think,” he told himself. “Prioritize.” Oh, God, it had to be bad if he was channeling his father.

David needed to get off the streets. He needed to hole up somewhere in a place that would give him a measure of safety and buy him enough time to think things through rationally. But where? His parents’ place was out because that was too logical. How freaking sad was it that after a lifetime living in DC, he couldn’t think of a single person to call to take him in?

There had to be someone. Then he got it.

David leaned in close to the taxi’s security barrier as he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and withdrew a bill. “Excuse me, driver.”

The cabbie met his eyes in the mirror.

“Here’s five bucks. Can I please use your cell phone?”

The cabbie reflexively moved the phone from the center console where it lay and placed it on his lap. “No,” he said. “Use your own phone. I saw it in your hand.”

“I can’t. That probably sounds crazy, but it’s really complicated. C’mon, five bucks for one phone call. Two, actually.”

The cabbie was clearly uncomfortable with this. “I will take you to a pay phone.”

“No, no, no. You’ve got that look in your eye. The second I step out of your cab, you’ll drive away.” David pulled another bill from the wallet. “Here, then. Twenty-five dollars. For two phone calls. I could call the moon and you’d still make a couple of bucks. All I need is directory assistance and then a local call. I swear. C’mon, please let me borrow your phone.”

The cabbie studied what he saw in the rearview mirror, his eyes leaving David only to check his progress on the road. “Fifty,” he said at last.

“Fifty! For a phone call?”

“Twenty-five for the call, twenty-five to use my phone.”

This was outrageous. No wonder the world was at war with these guys. David went back to his wallet and retrieved the appropriate bills. As he handed them through the opening, he also handed the driver his iPhone. “Here,” he said. “A little extra something for your effort.”