Iron Orchid

EIGHTEEN

HOLLY AND LEE ARRIVED at the Holiday Inn at seven, had a drink at the half-empty bar, then went into the dining room for dinner.

Lee looked over the menu. “No Chinese noodles,” she said.

“Looks like the steak is a safe bet,” Holly replied.

“I’m game.”

They ordered dinner and another drink. “So, Lee,” Holly said, “what brings you to Virginia?”

“Oh, I drove down to see Monticello,” Lee said smoothly, “and it was too late to drive back to New York.”

“Where do you live in New York?”

“Mott Street, in Chinatown. My parents have a laundry and a restaurant there.”

“What do you do?”

“I keep books for my father and do the ordering for the restaurant. What about you? What do you do?”

“I teach second grade in D.C. I came down here to see my parents and thought I’d stay the night before driving back.”

“Where’d you go to school?”

“At Georgetown.”

The two women continued quizzing each other, running through their legends, until dinner arrived.

“Well, that’s enough of that,” Lee said. “Who are you, really?”

“I’m Harry One,” Holly said, “and you’re Harry Three.”

Lee grinned. “I thought I might trip you up.”

Holly grinned back. “Not as easily as that.”

They finished dinner and went back into the bar for a nightcap. Holly looked carefully at every face; she didn’t want to run into Whitey Thompson, off his usual beat. She felt for the gun at her waist, too.

“You carrying?” Lee whispered.

“It was suggested that I should,” Holly whispered back.

“You worried about running into the instructor guy?”

“Yes.”

“Is that why you didn’t want to go to Buster’s?”

“Yes, it’s his regular hangout, I’m told.” Holly looked up at the TV over the bar, which was tuned to CNN. Somebody was reporting from a helicopter over New York. The camera panned from a shot of the U.N. to a nearby street, then zoomed in closer to reveal a large gap between two townhouses with a big pile of rubble at the bottom. “Excuse me,” she said to the bartender, “can you turn that up for a minute, please?”

“The explosion occurred late this afternoon,” the reporter was saying, “and no one has any idea if anyone was inside the house. Firemen can’t even start going through the rubble until the houses on either side of the site can be shored up. Although the police are refusing comment, we’ve heard from sources inside the department that the explosion is thought to be connected with the upcoming meeting of heads of state at the U.N. We’ll keep you posted as details come in. Now back to the studio.”

“Thanks,” Holly said to the bartender. “You can turn it back down.”

“What do you suppose that was about?” Lee asked.

“I don’t know any more than you do,” Holly said. At that moment, her cell phone vibrated, and she pulled it from her belt. “Hello?”

“Harry One?”

“Yes.”

“Is Harry Three with you?”

“Yes.”

“Both of you return to base at once. Go to the main house for a meeting in the conference room. Got that?”

“Got it.” She hung up.

“What is it?” Lee asked.

Holly put some money on the bar and indicated for Lee to follow her outside. When they were halfway to the car, she said, “They want us back at the Farm right now for a meeting at the conference room in the main house.”

“You think this is some sort of drill?”

“Who knows?” Holly asked, but she was willing to bet it had something to do with the explosion in New York.

As she was getting into her car a shiny new pickup pulled into the parking lot, and a man got out. She didn’t recognize him immediately, but then she saw the bandage covering his nose. She breathed a sigh of relief as she left the lot and turned onto the highway.

ALL FIVE OF THE HARRY SUBGROUP were gathered around the conference table when Lance Cabot walked in. “Good evening,” he said. “I’m sorry to break into your first night of liberty, but something has come up.” He flicked a remote control, and a TV in the room replayed the report that Holly had seen on CNN, then he turned off the TV and turned on a slide projector. A picture came up of the same block before the explosion.

“This is what the house looked like this afternoon,” he said, flicking to another photo. “We’ve had it under surveillance for a couple of weeks, because we learned that the house is owned by an Iranian millionaire with ties to Iranian and Saudi intelligence. We think that the house may have sheltered a terrorist team that was planning an attack during the heads-of-state conference at the U.N., which starts tomorrow.

“In this series of photographs, you see what is apparently a uniformed messenger walk down the street carrying a parcel. He rings the bell, a guard comes to the door, signs for the package, and the messenger walks away.” He cut to a series of closeups of the messenger. “He appears to be a middle-aged man of medium height and weight. As you can see, the bill of his baseball cap prevents us from getting a clear shot of his face. It’s almost as if he knows he is being photographed. He disappears around the corner and is gone. Fifty minutes later, the house goes up.” He switched to a photograph of the house collapsing on itself.

“It would seem that the explosion was larger than one that would have resulted from a bomb in a parcel the size of the one delivered. We speculate that a bomb in the package set off other explosive material already in the house, causing it to collapse.” He switched on the TV again. “Here is a statement made by the Iranian ambassador to the U.N. a few minutes ago, from the steps of their embassy.”

The ambassador read from a single sheet of paper in his hand. “The house in the block behind our embassy was used to house embassy employees,” he said. “We believe that the CIA is responsible for this act of terrorism, in which a number of embassy employees died.”

Lance switched off the TV. “Let me assure you that we were not responsible for the explosion. Either the messenger delivered a bomb or someone inside, while building a bomb, accidentally caused an explosion. We do not routinely commit such actions on our own soil, and the DDO and the DDI are annoyed that we are being accused of doing so.

“All of you are being trained to join a new counterintelligence team that is being assembled in New York to prevent such acts in the city or, if they occur, to work with the FBI to learn the identities of the perpetrators. The attack today has caused the Deputy Director for Operations to believe that it is more important for your subgroup to be moved to New York immediately than to complete the last weeks of your training. Accordingly, your training has been terminated, and arrangements have been made for you to join the team.

“Tomorrow morning you will be issued with your credentials and reassigned to New York with immediate effect. Two of you have cars and will drive there; the other three will ride with you. You’ll be told tomorrow morning where to report. I’m not going to take questions now, because I don’t have any answers for you, so return to your quarters, get packed, get a good night’s sleep and report here tomorrow morning at seven a.m. That’s all, good night.” Lance left the room, and the group broke up.

Holly walked back to her room in a state of excitement.