Labyrinth

Chapter 1

Brian Charney lowered his glass of Chivas Regal on the rocks to the coffee table, neglecting to use the coaster. Leaning forward off the couch, he grabbed the cassette tape and fingered it.

Its contents held the reason for one man’s death. Its existence almost surely held the basis for a second’s. Charney had been part of that death sentence, and the Chivas couldn’t change that no matter how smoothly it went down.

Charney drained the glass anyway.

He had walked back to his brownstone apartment from the State Department, hoping the walk would clear his head. Instead it only clouded it further. He had turned on only one light in the brownstone and didn’t raise the shades, keeping the early-spring sun beyond the windows so he might lose himself in the dimness. But the dimness did not blot out the effect of the apartment. It was expensively and exquisitely furnished. Charney much preferred the house in Arlington, but the divorce settlement had given that to Karen and their two boys. He saw them on alternate weekends. Sometimes.

Charney refilled his glass and ran the events of the day through his head yet again. Of the two best friends in his life, one was dead and the other had been chosen to follow him. Charney had come home early because the job was everything and the job had made him do it. God, how he hated the damn job, but he had to admit he’d be lost without it.

He had waited outside Undersecretary of State Calvin Roy’s office for only ten minutes that morning before being ushered in. Roy was his liaison in affairs of intelligence.

“I hope this is important,” Roy said in his southern drawl, offering Charney the usual seat before his cluttered desk.

“It is,” Charney assured him.

“I cancelled a full block of appointments to see you, son. There’ll be some people mighty upset over that. They came a long way to see me.”

“So did this,” Charney said, producing the tape.

Roy rose slightly out of his chair to look at it. He was a diminutive, balding man with a wry smile that expressed his uncompromising, often cynical approach to his position and politics in general. He would probably never rise beyond the post he held now, nor did he aspire to. Working behind the scenes suited him just fine, providing room to maneuver and breathe. A native Texan who had grown up amid much wealth but enjoyed little himself, Roy owed no one anything — a trait rare enough in Washington to make him a man to be both respected and avoided. He had nothing to lose. Stepping on toes didn’t faze him, even if it meant crushing them.

“It contains Alvin Lubeck’s last report,” Charney continued, popping the cassette into the recorder on the edge of Roy’s desk. “Rather incomplete but interesting all the same.”

Charney pressed PLAY. Lubeck’s voice filled the room, intermixed with static. The fear was obvious and, in his final words, the panic.

“San Sebastian was a farming community. I‘m in a position overlooking the fields now. It appears that … Oh, my God, this can‘t be. It can‘t be! I‘m looking out at—”

Charney pressed STOP. “That’s it.”

Roy’s face had sombered. “You mind tellin’ me where San Sebastian is?”

“Colombia. Deep in the southeast.”

“So Lubeck transmitted this to the Bogotá station. They send someone in after him?”

“Yes, but the team couldn’t get into San Sebastian or even close to it. The whole area’s on fire and all they can do down there is pray for rain.”

Roy nodded. “So whatever it was Lubeck saw ain’t there no more.”

“That’s right,” Charney acknowledged.

“What do you make of that, son?”

“Somebody started the fire to cover something up. And they took Lubeck out for the same reason.”

“Lubeck wouldn’t go out easily,” Roy muttered nervously. “You mind tellin’ me how he ended up at a giant barbecue in a South American piss country?”

“Following a trail he picked up in London.”

“What trail?”

“We assigned him to run interference for the World Hunger Conference scheduled for two weeks from now in Geneva.”

Roy considered the words. “Sounds like he was addin’ manure to a fallow field.”

“He was past his prime,” Charney said painfully. “We wanted to ease him out, but he wasn’t ready to go.”

“And set out to prove you wrong. Looks like he did a pretty decent job. You boys gotta let me in on your methods for personnel evaluation.” Roy hesitated, shook his head. “God damn, what’d he find down there that was worth murderin’ a whole town over? He file any other reports?”

Charney shook his head. “This was the first we heard from him officially. Wanted to be sure, I guess. If he was onto something big, he wouldn’t want us to pull him off or send in the cavalry.”

“Whole mess stinks to high heaven,” Roy muttered. Then his eyes sharpened. “We gotta find out what he saw down there, son, gotta find out what he knew.”

Charney nodded.

“But you didn’t go to Langley with this, you came to me. Musta had a reason.”

“Lubeck was working out of State on this assignment. I figured you should be the first to know.”

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.”

Charney took a deep breath. He hated himself for what he was about to do. “I don’t think Langley is the way to go with this. I want to keep all the three-letter people out of it for a while.”

“Got your reasons, I suppose.”

“Plenty of them. To begin with, we don’t know where to start a full-scale field case with what we’ve got. We send the Company or NSA out on Lubeck’s trail and all of a sudden the trail disappears. It’s happened before. I don’t think Lubeck changed the plans of whoever took him out in San Sebastian. I think he just hit on something and was killed for it. So the opposition has no call to change their plans and cover their tracks unless we give it to them by sending in the troops. The problem is time. We’ve got to figure that whatever Lubeck was on to has something to do with the hunger conference that begins in two weeks.”

“You sound pretty sure of that connection.”

Charney swallowed hard. “Lubeck and I went back a long time. He was a pro all the way, by the book. Never strayed from his assignment. We sent him on a goddamn throwaway mission and he came up with something.”

“So what do we do?”

“Send one man to retrace his steps. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“Son, I don’t fancy anything that depends on luck.”

“It’s a random factor just like everything else.”

Roy’s eyebrows flickered. “So it’s a one-man game. What players are available?”

Now it was time. “I want to stay away from the pros altogether. I want to use an amateur.”

“Son, you’re talkin’ crazy to me.”

“I don’t think so. Let’s look at some obvious ramifications of San Sebastian. Whatever Lubeck uncovered is big and whoever’s behind it is big — organized too. They’d make a pro in no time. They’d know Lubeck put us on to something and cover their tracks.”

“So?”

“So let’s assume they’re not even sure Lubeck got through to Bogotá or transmitted anything we could make sense of. They would stay in their original pattern, the pattern Lubeck uncovered and a pattern an amateur would fare far better in picking up again.”

Roy regarded Charney with a taut smile and a slight squint in his eyes. “Back where I come from, they say you can always tell when a bull’s got somethin’ on his mind, even though he don’t say much. You got it all figured, don’t ya?”

Charney leaned back. “You know about Lubeck’s steel pincers?”

“Never would arm wrestle with him….”

“Ever hear how he lost his hand?”

“Crushed or something, right?”

“The circumstances, I mean.”

“Not that I recall, son.”

“Then let me tell you a story, Cal.” Charney squirmed in his chair, fighting for comfort. The upholstery seemed to be tearing at him. “Twenty years ago, I went to college with Lubeck. Brown University up in Providence, Rhode Island. We met during freshman week. Both of us were football players. There was a kid who tried to make the team as a walk-on but couldn’t. He did end up as our friend, though, and for much of the next four years the three of us were best friends.”

“Should I get out my handkerchief for this one, son?”

“His name is Christopher Locke and at present he’s an English professor at Georgetown.”

“‘At present’?”

“Flunked his final tenure hearing. This is his last semester.”

“You checked.”

“I checked.”

“I suppose this is all leadin’ us somewhere.”

Charney’s expression looked pained. “Locke was responsible for Lubeck losing his hand. It was an accident. Happened at the Academy six months into our training; we all joined up together, you see. The Three Musketeers,” Charney added cynically. “Anyway, the details of the accident don’t matter now.”

Roy wet his lips. “Then this Locke’s not an amateur, after all….”

“He dropped out of the Academy a week after it happened. The ironic thing was that he was the best in our class. As far as skills went, there were none better. But something was missing even before the … accident. Locke had the stomach; he didn’t have the heart.”

“You think that’s changed now?”

“One thing hasn’t: his guilt. Locke ran away from the Academy into academia and he’s been running ever since. Georgetown isn’t the first school he’s quit or been released from. The accident with Lubeck seemed to set a tone for his entire life, a string of failures and incompletions. I guess he never got over it. Whoever said that time heals all wounds was full of crap. It didn’t heal this one.” Charney paused. “We can offer to help him heal it now.”

“By sending him into the field?”

“By sending him after the men who killed Lubeck.”

Roy hedged. “He’s still an amateur, son.”

“And the only thing that stopped him from becoming a pro and a damn good one was that he lacked motivation, a clear sense of why. He’ll have that now. Flushing out Lubeck’s killers will more than provide it. Locke could never face the Luber because those damn steel pincers wouldn’t let him. That’s not a problem anymore. Lubeck’s dead. Finding out who did it will give Locke a chance to finally finish something, maybe the most important thing he never completed and ran away from: his friendship with the Luber … and me. The guilt’s been bottled up in him long enough. We can give him a vent for it.”

“How generous of us….”

“Locke’s the human option,” Charney continued. “In this case, infinitely preferable to any other that presents itself given the time frame.”

“And how much do we tell this human option of yours?”

“As much as he needs to know.” Charney paused. “That includes nothing about the massacre.”

“So we just drop him blindly in the field and tell him to run.”

“I’ll be his contact, his eyes,” Charney said softly. “I’ll shadow him everywhere he goes. The relays, the codes, the contacts — he drilled with similar ones before. All in an afternoon’s work. When the time comes, Langley’s only a phone call away.”

“You’ve thought this thing out.”

Charney nodded.

Calvin Roy’s eyes wandered briefly. “I come from farm country, son, and still I didn’t understand why you needed shit to make things grow until I got to Washington. This hasn’t been easy for you, has it, Brian?”

Charney just looked at him.

“One of your buddies is dead, son. You could leave it at that. You could turn the whole mess over to Langley.”

“You want me to do that?”

Calvin Roy sighed. “Nah, I suppose I don’t. But Lubeck was a pro and what he found out there ate him up alive. And I don’t care ’bout Locke shinin’ brighter than a baby’s backside at the Academy twenty years ago, none of that’s gonna get him very far against what Lubeck came up against.”

“It’ll get him far enough.”

Roy nodded deliberately. “You got the ball, son. You’re the one who’s got to live with this in the long run.”

Now, drinking his third Chivas Regal, Charney ran Roy’s final words through his mind. He could live with himself, he supposed; he couldn’t like himself any less anyway. He was doing what had to be done, what the job demanded of him. Maybe that was the problem; he had been in Washington too long, had let his role consume him until it deadened his conscience. Locke was the best man for this assignment, so he would make the offer too tempting for Locke to refuse. Charney was good at that.

He recalled his earliest impressions of Locke at double-session fall football practice at Brown. No one hit the bags harder, took the tires faster. Locke was a kid driven to make that team. In the end numbers had done him in. Faceless men had posted his name and that was that.

Charney shuddered at the thought he had become one of the faceless men, playing with numbers and making cuts of a different variety. He didn’t relish that power but accepted it. It was part of the job and the job was him. He glanced at the phone on the coffee table in the gloomy room. One call and the wheels would be in motion, irrevocable from that point.

Christopher Locke had a wife and three kids. Charney wondered why Calvin Roy hadn’t asked about that. Then he realized. Roy didn’t want to know. The less said, the better. Charney glanced again at the phone. The choice, the decision, was his. He leaned back and squeezed his eyes closed, fighting back the pain that had started in his temples, only a dull throb now but certain to grow into a pounding ache.

I‘m looking out at—

What had Lubeck seen?

Christopher Locke was the man to find out, Charney told himself as he poured another glass of Chivas.

Chapter 2

“In the news this afternoon—”

Christopher Locke turned the radio off. Traffic was backed up all the way along 16th Street and the LTD’s air conditioner was on the blink as usual, leaving him a victim of the sweltering spring air.

Locke hit the horn out of sheer frustration.

The news from the tenure hearing shouldn’t have surprised him. He’d seen it coming for months now. The signals were all there. The department chairman didn’t like his methods, and popularity with the students didn’t count for anything. Of course he was popular, they told him, his courses regularly produced the highest percentage of A’s in the entire English department. Locke never cared much for grades. The academic pressure at Georgetown was sufficiently high without his adding to it. He wanted students in his classes to relax, to be able to learn and enjoy without worrying about their grade point average. So he was an easy grader, albeit a consistent one who never passed papers to his graduate assistants for marking.

But that apparently didn’t help his cause with the tenure board. His philosophy was the exception, not the rule, and so he was out of a job again. He would certainly have time now to work on his novels. Why kid himself, though? The truth was that all the time in the world couldn’t salvage them. He was a failure as a novelist and now, apparently, a failure as a professor as well.

A horn blared to his rear. Locke realized traffic was moving again. He waved an apologetic hand behind him and gave the LTD a little gas. His shirt was sticking to the upholstery now.

In the end, he thought, everything came down to security. You worked your whole life to reach a stage where worry was nonexistent, where the rudiments of happiness were available and, with a minimum of unpleasant effort, attainable. What would happen to that security now? Without the Georgetown salary and benefits, how would his family survive? Much of his savings would have to go toward the kids’ educations, and there was still the mortgage on their home in Silver Spring to consider. The bills came in piles Chris just barely managed to lower with the help of the check his wife had started bringing home from her real estate job. It was life on a shoestring and now even that was about to be severed.

And how was he to tell his family of his dismissal? His wife Beth, he guessed, would calmly remind him of all the times in the past she had urged him to go into business. He had always shrugged her off, saying he preferred the academic life. Practical as she was, she could never really understand his refusal even to consider leaving college for a “real” job. His oldest children, a seventeen-year-old boy and fifteen-year-old girl he knew less and less everyday, would brush the news off casually, becoming concerned only after considering how the dismissal might affect them. Only his youngest son would show Locke the love and support he so sorely needed. Just past twelve, Greg was the pride of his life. Chris wanted to freeze the boy just as he was, keep him forever from middle adolescence when hugs disappear and soft smiles are replaced by impatient frowns.

Locke would like to have been a better father, just as he would like to have been a better writer, professor, and husband. It was easy to see how people could live their lives for their children: It blotted out their own failures and missed opportunities. But Locke wasn’t going to fool himself. His oldest children were strangers and he couldn’t expect to hold on to the youngest forever.

Those thoughts had tied a knot of anxiety in his stomach by the time he pulled into the driveway of his Silver Spring home. He lingered briefly before moving from the car. His heart was thumping crazily against his chest.

“Hi, Daddy!” Whitney greeted him with an affectionate hug as he stepped through the door, leaving the phone dangling by the front hall stairway.

“Hi, beautiful.”

She seemed not to hear him. “You’re not gonna believe what happened to me today! I was asked to the prom, the junior prom! Do you believe it? And the guy is absolutely gorgeous, definitely tops in the whole junior class. I can’t believe he asked me. Of course, I knew he liked me ’cause Marcia knows someone who sits near him in study period and she overheard him mention my name….”

Locke looked closely at his only daughter as she moved back toward the phone, still jabbering away. She was wearing faded jeans and had tied her flowing blond hair atop her head in a bun. There was a naturalness about her beauty. It wasn’t hard to figure out why boys drooled over her. But she was only a freshman. Could she handle it? Locke wanted so much to discuss that issue with her but knew he’d botch things if he tried.

Whitney held the phone against her shoulder. “I’ll have to get a new gown for the prom, you know,” she said softer, as tentatively as she could manage.

“What about the one I bought you for the Christmas dance?”

“That old thing? Daddy, be serious, you can’t wear the same dress to two formals. Nobody does.”

“Maybe they just trade off so nobody notices.”

Whitney frowned, impatient to get back to her phone call. “Be serious, Daddy.” She whispered something into the receiver, then looked back up at Locke as he sorted through the mail. “Can I eat at Debbie’s tonight?” she asked.

“What does your mother say?”

“This is Monday, Daddy. Mom works.”

How could I not know that? Locke asked himself.

“Okay.” He shrugged.

“Thanks, Daddy!” Then, without missing a breath, Whitney was back in her conversation.

Still shuffling through the mail, flinching at each bill, Chris moved into the kitchen, realizing suddenly how thirsty he was. He found Bobby sitting in one chair with his feet up on another sipping Coke and scanning the latest rock magazine.

“What do you say, Pop?”

Locke sighed on his way to the fridge. He had never gotten used to Bobby calling him “Pop.” Somehow the word seemed demeaning. He grabbed a Diet Coke and joined his oldest son at the table.

“How was school?”

“Okay, I guess,” Bobby replied with his eyes still on the magazine. “Usual shit.”

“Give any more thought to that talk we had?”

“’Bout college, you mean? Not yet. I will for sure. But the band’s just starting to get it together and I just haven’t had time. We’ve got two gigs scheduled. Not much money but it’s a start. Things are really beginning to happen for us.”

“I’m glad,” Locke said lamely, and realized Bobby wasn’t wearing the usual bandanna tied around his forehead. Its absence allowed his sandy hair to fall almost to his eyebrows in tight curls that hung perfectly. He had never been much at sports, and as he grew older had never grown out of his boyish prettiness. A must for rock stars, Locke figured, as was the earring that dangled from his left lobe. Bobby’s jeans were thin and faded with the ragged bottoms tucked partially into a pair of battered high-top sneakers. His ever-present jean jacket was just as faded, barely blue anymore, stuck here and there with pins that Chris thought might be holding the material together. On the back was sewn an embroidered eagle, symbol of some band Bobby had once been fond of.

Bobby looked away, eyes down. “I’ve been thinking about taking next year off, really giving the band a full shot.”

Though not a complete surprise, the announcement jolted Locke. A son of his not going straight to college? It was unthinkable. Still, he kept himself calm. React too aggressively and Bobby would just storm away from the table. Give him a chance, Chris reminded himself.

“Got any specific plans?” he managed to ask.

Bobby hedged, seeming almost as if he was looking for support or approval. “I was thinking about going out west. That’s where all the action is — records, I mean.”

“What would you do for money?”

Bobby leaned forward in his chair, looking surprised the conversation had gotten this far. “I got it figured this way, Dad,” he said, and Locke knew at once what was coming. The only time Bobby called him Dad was when he wanted something. “Even with the load Georgetown takes off the tuition, college has gotta cost you five thou easy. I figured if you advanced me that much, like a loan, I’d have enough to get started.”

“Five thousand wouldn’t even pay the rent out west.”

“I’ll live cheap. Besides, there’s a bunch of us going out together. That’ll really cut the cost.”

“And what happens after a year?”

“We’ll be big by then. Everybody says we got the stuff. Everybody says—”

The slamming kitchen door broke off Bobby’s words. Beth stormed in with Greg trailing behind in his baseball uniform. She glared at Bobby.

“You tell him?” she demanded.

“Tell me what?” Locke asked.

“Tell him!” Beth shouted.

Bobby said nothing. Beth swung toward Locke.

“Our proud firstborn over there was suspended from school today.”

“What?”

“They caught him smoking in the parking lot.”

“I thought cigarettes were allowed.”

“Not cigarettes — pot! Marijuana!”

“Oh, Christ …”

“The assistant principal called me at work. I had to interrupt a meeting with some clients. It was so damn embarrassing. So I take him home and tell him we’ll deal with this later ’cause I’ve got to get back to the office.” Her raging eyes swung back toward Bobby. “And I leave him the car with instructions to do one simple thing: Pick up his brother at baseball practice.”

“Mom,” Greg started, “it was no big deal. I could have walked. Or hitched.”

“Hitched?” Back to Locke now. “You hear that, Chris? You hear that? So of course he doesn’t go pick his brother up like he’s supposed to and I get another call at the office from Greg’s coach telling me that practice is over and nobody’s there to get him. Then I have to borrow Sally’s car and rush to the field and I’m already late for another appointment.” Beth’s finger thrust forward violently enough to make Bobby shrink back. “I have had it with you, young man, just had it! Maybe a prep school’s what you need after all….”

At ten grand a year, thought Locke.

“I’ll tell you, Chris, we’ve got to talk about this. I can just see all the wives whispering at the next faculty lunch.”

Locke almost told her that wouldn’t be a problem anymore.

“I’m really fed up with all his nonsense.” Beth was already starting back for the door. “We’d better talk as soon as I get home. I’ve gotta run now. I’m late for that appointment and Sally needs her car.”

The door closed behind her.

Sighing, Locke turned slowly back toward Bobby, dredging his mind for the right response to his oldest son’s misbehavior. But the boy rushed out of the kitchen and up the stairs before Chris had a chance to say anything. Seconds later the roar of rock music, speakers on full, started pounding the walls, forming a barrier between Bobby and the rest of the world. Chris had never been much good at breaking such barriers down.

“Turn that shit off!” Whitney screamed from somewhere.

Locke sank down at the kitchen table and smothered his face in his hands.

Greg’s hand grasped his shoulder. “You all right, Dad?”

“Tough day, that’s all.”

His youngest son frowned. “Mom’s pretty mad.”

“Yeah.”

“You mad too?”

Locke reached up and touched Greg’s cheek, smoothing his wind-whipped hair, which already showed the first sign of the sun’s bleaching. “Not at you. Hey, it looks like it’s just you and me for dinner.”

Greg returned his father’s gesture, sliding down Chris’s face a small hand dominated by the Little League championship ring he wore proudly even to bed.

“McDonald’s?” he posed hopefully.

“You talked me into it.”

Locke ordered his usual two Quarterpounders with ketchup only and barely finished one, while Greg gobbled up his Big Mac and fries, washing them down with a giant cup of Coke with Ronald McDonald’s smiling face etched all over it. The boy had gotten braces in February and Chris hoped they would stay on forever, for as long as he wore headgear and had to sneak gum, Greg would be a boy and Locke didn’t want to let go of that.

It was Greg’s turn to pay tonight and pay he did, peeling a bunch of worn, rolled-up bills from his jeans, dodging the buttons of his baseball uniform top as he fiddled for the right change, just making it. It was a game they played. Greg liked to pay when they went to McDonald’s as an assertion of his independence. And Locke encouraged him. Later in the night he would sneak into the boy’s room and replenish the sock where Greg hid his funds from all except his father. Maybe the boy was on to the game. Maybe he wasn’t. Chris kept playing either way.

Locke had stowed the station wagon in the garage when he heard the phone ringing, hurried inside and grabbed the receiver, certain the caller had given up.

He hadn’t.

“Chris, it’s Brian Charney….”

Chapter 3

They chose the tombs for lunch, an early one since Tuesday was Locke’s seminar day and he would be tied up all afternoon. Since seating at The Tombs with its prestigious political clientele was difficult after twelve, the eleven-thirty meeting was probably the best thing anyway.

Locke arrived first and was ushered to a table at the very rear of the main floor, away from the chatter of other diners in an area usually reserved for more distinguished patrons. He hadn’t seen Brian Charney in six months and then only briefly at a reception at Georgetown. Their conversation had been strained. There was too much to catch up on and no sense in trying.

Brian Charney stepped into The Tombs, picked Locke out immediately, and started toward him. Chris rose, impressed as always by Charney’s appearance. The years had treated him well, left him with a fine physique and all his hair. There were lines under his eyes to be sure and something alien about those eyes, but for the most part Brian Charney looked a decade younger than his forty-two years.

For himself, Locke had managed a regular three workouts per week at the Georgetown athletic center. It was a constant battle, though, just to stay even and not fall back. His muscles didn’t respond as they used to and ached plenty for the effort.

“Good to see you, Bri,” Locke said, trying to mean it.

Charney took his extended hand with a faint smile. “You too, Chris. It’s been a while.”

Silently both men took their seats.

“I hope the table is to your liking,” Charney opened. “I figured we could use the privacy.”

“You arranged it?” Locke said, not bothering to hide his surprise. “You must pull some weight here. Government’s been good to you, Bri. What is it, still CIA?”

“Hasn’t been for years,” Charney said.

“But you told me—”

“I never told you anything. I just nodded and made lots of evasive answers. You drew your own conclusions.”

“So who do you work for?”

“It’s too complicated to explain. I’m sort of a liaison between the State Department and various tiers of intelligence. The Company is one of them. Basically, I’m just a simple bureaucrat.”

“Simple bureaucrats don’t get corner tables reserved for them in The Tombs.”

“This is the city of bureaucracy, remember?”

A waitress came over and took their drink orders. A Perrier with a twist for Locke, gin and tonic for Charney.

“So how are you doing?” Charney asked.

“You want the truth, Bri?” And suddenly their souls touched like best friends again and Locke felt his guts starting to spill. “Things aren’t too good and that’s an understatement. I’ve got two kids I don’t even know and a wife I have to get to show me a house if I need to talk to her. I’ve got two novels boxed in a closet and that’s probably as much circulation as they’re ever gonna get, not to mention the fact that I’m not exactly on best terms with the Georgetown administration.” Locke held the truth of his dismissal back. Admitting failure in his personal life came easier than admitting failure of a professional nature to someone of Charney’s status. “There’s something wonderful about passing into the great decade of your forties, Bri. For the first time you realize you can’t go back and start all over but that doesn’t stop you from trying; not me anyway.”

“It’s called a midlife crisis,” Charney said lightly.

“Screw that. My midlife crisis started when I was twenty-five. This is worse.”

Locke said that with a smile and Charney smiled back slightly. This was still the same person who had been his best friend in college. They shared both a room and their lives. Charney had thought he’d be able to put all that behind him. After all, twenty years had passed and all the change that went with them. Essentially, though, the two of them hadn’t changed. They were still the same people at the core, and that would make his mandate all the more difficult. Charney had sent men to their death before but never a friend.

“I know about the tenure review board,” he said suddenly, seizing the advantage. He had to take charge now if he was going to go through with it.

“You what?” Locke exclaimed.

“I read their complete report last night.”

“It’s supposed to be confidential.”

“And it is.”

“Yet you read it.”

“The need was there. Need overrides confidentiality.”

“Speak English, Bri. This is about to become the shortest lunch ever.”

The waitress arrived with their drinks.

“This isn’t a social call,” Charney told Locke, sipping his gin and tonic.

“I’m beginning to get that impression.”

“I need your help, Chris, and in return I think I can help you.”

“You’ve piqued my interest. Please continue.”

“The Luber’s dead.”

Locke’s mouth dropped. He felt a numbness in his brain. The glass almost slipped from his fingers but he recovered in time to place it on the table. He wanted to say something but there were no words. The grim finality of Charney’s statement had shattered any possible response.

“He was killed last weekend,” Charney elaborated.

“How?”

“We’re not sure.”

“Eliminated in the course of duty?”

“That’s the indication.”

“Where?”

“Colombia. That’s South America, not District of.”

“Oh, God.” Locke ran his hands over his face, letting the light of The Tombs back in slowly. “Why there?”

“Why not? It would have probably been his last assignment in the field.”

“The Luber wouldn’t retire.”

“We were retiring him,” Charney said.

“I can’t believe it….”

“He was the same age as you, Chris. Think back to what you just said to me about your life; all the questions, all the doubts. You’re starting to see shadows. So was Lube. Only in our business, shadows will get you killed, sometimes other people too. It was in the training, Chris,” Charney noted, meeting Locke’s eyes and understating his words just enough. “We went thought it together, the three of us.”

“Lube must not have learned that lesson very well.”

“No,” Charney said without hesitating. “He just couldn’t accept it in his own case. He knew what was coming and wanted to prove us wrong. The easy life in the sun wasn’t for him, never was. He latched on to something and followed a trail. It led him to something big, all right, but he never got the chance to tell us precisely what.”

“Why are you telling me all this? I assume it’s classified stuff and a man in your position wouldn’t just be exorcising guilt.”

“I want you to take his place.”

Locke was thrown back. “You’re kidding!”

“Hardly. We think whatever the Luber was on to has something to do with the World Hunger Conference, which is scheduled to start in thirteen days. That doesn’t give us much time. They’ll cover the trail if we send out the pros. I think—we think — you could slip by them.”

“Because I spent six glorious months at the Academy?”

“Because you’ve got a personal interest. Because Lube was your best friend. Because you … owe him.”

Locke flinched, stung by the comment. His face reddened. From somewhere down deep came a memory of the Luber pulling him from a crevice in the earth as the sides squeezed together, threatening to crush him.

“If you’re trying to make me mad, you’re doing a pretty damn good job of it” was all he said.

“I’m trying to make you anything that will convince you to help us.”

The waitress returned and took their luncheon orders: two Tombs special turkey clubs, though neither man felt much like eating. Charney opted for another gin and tonic.

“Lots of tonic this time,” he instructed. Then, back to Locke: “We wouldn’t expect you to work for nothing, of course.”

“Can you put my life back together for me?”

“Professionally I think we can. We could promise you a tenured position at the university of your choice.”

“That’s quite a piece of work.”

“There’s more, Chris. Those two novels you’ve got closeted — there are several hardcover publishers that would be glad to bring them out with large advances and a substantial sum up front for two more.”

“You’re trying to buy me, Bri.”

“Who’s kidding whom now, Chris? What person isn’t bought, hasn’t sold out in one way or another? It’s part of life. But there are levels of everything. I’m talking about helping you get your dream back.”

“You didn’t say ‘we’ that time.”

“I still have personal initiative.”

“And apparently a great deal of power.”

“It’s all in knowing how to use it.”

“That must have been the part of the training I missed.” Locke hesitated, suddenly unsure. “How much else did I miss, Bri? How in the hell am I supposed to remember anything after twenty years?”

“We won’t be leaving you alone. I’ll be shadowing you myself every step with the cavalry only a phone call away.” Charney waited as his second gin and tonic was set down before him. “I’m not asking you to act independently. I’m just asking you to run interference for two weeks at most, flush out the bastards who got Lube.”

“I was never good at running interference. Remember my brief football career? … You’re asking me to take a pretty big risk, Bri.”

“I can’t deny that.”

“I don’t know, old buddy, I just don’t know.”

Charney had one more argument to put forward, one he had hoped to avoid. “You weren’t born in this country, Chris.”

“I don’t make any secret of that.”

“Your father brought you over from England during World War II. Your mother, the papers said, was killed in a German blitzkrieg.”

Locke sat silent, waiting for Charney to continue.

Charney’s eyes went cold. “I know the truth. I know she was German-born and was a spy for Hitler all along. I know your father fled England in disgrace when her cover was blown.”

“Fuck off!” Locke shouted, rising.

“Sit down. I’m not finished. She walked out on you and your old man and tried to make it back to Germany. The British caught her and hanged her.”

Locke was still standing but he hadn’t gone anywhere. We completely changed our identities.”

“You can’t bury the truth, Chris. It’s always there if somebody’s willing to dig deep enough for it. You know that.”

Locke sat back down on the edge of his chair. He held his fingers taut on the table, fighting back the urge to fly across and choke the life out of the man who had been one of his two best friends. And he knew he could do it. That part of the training had never left him. Maybe none of it had. He wondered if Charney had enraged him just to illustrate that.

“Why’d you bring this up?”

“Because you owe this country something, Chris. Your mother got a lot of people killed, and some of them were Americans. Then you came over and started fresh with no hard feelings, so let’s say I’m calling in a debt.”

Locke felt the guilt swimming in his stomach like a shark — no, two sharks: one for a horrible accident that had cost a friend his hand, another for the crimes of a mother he barely knew. It was too much for him.

He tapped his fingers nervously against the table. “If I play ball with you, Bri, it’ll be to help nail the bastards who took out Lube. That’s all. I want you to know that.”

And Charney knew he had won. “Whatever you say.”

“You still haven’t given me any idea what the Luber was onto.”

“It’s sketchy. The only connection seems to be food.”

“Food?”

“He was working on the hunger conference, remember? And the village he died in was a farming community.” Charney stopped, reminding himself not to mention the massacre for fear of frightening Locke off. “He was looking at something in the fields during his last report and it scared the hell out of him. I’ll play the tape for you later.”

“And you don’t know what it was?”

Charney shook his head.

“Why don’t you go down there and find out?”

“We’re … trying.”

Locke regarded him closely. “There’s something you’re not telling me, Bri.”

“Only what it’s better for you not to know.”

“Your food connection’s a little thin.”

“It’s all we’ve got.”

“Then what exactly am I supposed to do?”

“We’ve pieced together the trail Lube took en route to Colombia. We even have an idea of the people he spoke with. We’re going to have you retrace his steps. The details and specifics can be worked out later.”

Locke’s features hardened. “But there’s one thing we’d better get straight right now. If I retrace all of the Luber’s steps, I’m gonna end up joining him by the Pearly Gates, and I don’t fancy that much. Please don’t insult me by bothering to deny that possibility exists.”

“Well …”

“So what I want is some provisions made in the event I don’t return. I want my family taken care of.”

Charney nodded. “Enough said.”

“I don’t think so. I want a treasury check in the amount of five hundred thousand dollars delivered to my lawyer in an envelope to be opened if I don’t make it back.”

“Sounds like you don’t trust me, Chris.”

“You haven’t given me much reason to.”

The club sandwiches came but neither man started his.

“I’ll take care of it this afternoon,” Charney promised. “The money will be tax-free, of course.”

“I wouldn’t have expected anything else.”

“They’ll never have to see it, Chris. You’ll be coming back.”

“I’m doing this for them, Bri, and for the Luber, not for you and whoever the hell it is you work for. I just wanted you to know that.” Locke rapped the table hard, then pulled the toothpick from the center of one of his sandwich quarters. “Now, when do I get started?”

“You leave tomorrow night for London,” Charney replied softly, pushing back the pang of guilt struggling to rise inside him.

Chapter 4

The next day was a hectic one for Locke. There were so many affairs to settle. To begin with, his passport had expired and obtaining a new one with twenty-four hours’ notice had proved impossible. Charney said he’d straighten things out. Just bring in a small picture and he’d take care of the rest.

With that behind him, Locke was left to deal with the massive Georgetown bureaucracy to obtain an emergency leave. He owed them nothing now, so he felt not the slightest compunction about taking off for two weeks in the middle of semester. If there was any regret, it was for his students. The classes would be taken by his fellows or canceled altogether.

Locke explained the leave was for medical reasons, refusing to elaborate further. He didn’t have to, as stated in the contract that come May was being yanked from under him. He smiled at them all, feeling suddenly powerful. Brian Charney could get him his job back or obtain him an even better position elsewhere.

As the day wore on, Locke found himself increasingly excited, even ecstatic. Charney was giving much in return for two weeks of his time, and Locke wasn’t worried about the danger. Risk plainly could not be much of a factor, or no government branch would allow an amateur to take the job. Charney was giving him the things he wanted most, and going after the Luber’s killers wasn’t so bad either. He could never express his sorrow and guilt when his friend was alive. Maybe he could make up for it now that he was dead.

Later in the afternoon, Locke found himself focusing on how to tell his family. Considering he hadn’t yet told them about his dismissal from Georgetown, it would all be quite a shock. But this might be good if it served to block their questions. He decided to tell Beth first and approach the kids after.

For the time being, he would say he was leaving Georgetown of his own accord, that they had made life unbearable for him there. Other offers had already come in and now he was going to Europe for two weeks to get his head straight and sort things out. He couldn’t tell his wife the entire truth. She wouldn’t understand; Locke wasn’t even sure he did.

On the way to Charney’s office in the State Department, he stopped off at his lawyer’s to learn that, incredibly, the envelope had arrived. Locke opened it, found the contents to be satisfactory, and then sealed the check in a fresh envelope along with a letter he had typed out before leaving his Georgetown office. The letter to his family was purely technical and advisory in nature, as he fully expected to return in one piece after his mission was complete.

Charney was waiting for him when he arrived. They sat down opposite each other in a pair of chairs before the desk, all of the small talk and personal fronts gone.

“We’re still piecing together Lube’s last days,” Charney explained. “He started in London where he met with a diplomat from the Colombian embassy named Juan Alvaradejo.”

“Colombian,” Locke echoed, noting the connection with where Lubeck had been killed. “Any idea why?”

“They’d worked with each other before and Alvaradejo was his country’s representative at the hunger conference. The Luber probably just wanted some background and ended up with the beginnings of something much greater.”

“And that’s what I’ll be after from Alvaradejo.”

“Just find out exactly what he told Lube. We’ve got to fit this thing together.”

“Where to after that?”

“Liechtenstein, then Florence.”

“Christ, Lube was a busy man….”

“But we’re not sure yet who he met with anywhere but London. That’s all you have to worry about for now. I’ll deliver the rest of your itinerary to you there with the names. You’ll be staying at the Dorchester.”

“Wow, you guys go all out.”

“We try. Besides, it fits your cover.”

“I didn’t know I needed one.”

“You probably don’t. But we’re going by the book here. You’ll be playing yourself on a research tour for your next book.”

Locke nodded. “Should be easy enough. You mean no codes, secret meetings, and all that?”

“Just one.” Charney crossed his legs. “We need a system whereby you can contact me at all times, so I’m going to give you a number where I can be reached. Call it if you need me, leave your number, and I’ll get back to you within two minutes.”

“You mean you won’t be watching me?” Locke posed a bit anxiously.

“All the time? Impossible. If someone else becomes interested in the trail you’re following, putting someone on your tail would be a dead giveaway that you’re working for us. The danger factor ends up rising substantially. No, this is a far better way to go at things. Help is just a phone call away. Just make sure you know how to use an English call box.”

“I’ve been back. I know how.”

Charney had almost forgotten. “I’ll have your tickets and spending money with me when I drive you to the airport. What are you going to tell your wife, by the way?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Don’t say too much. If someone tries to trace you, we don’t want her inadvertently aiding their cause.”

“You’re scaring me, Bri.”

“Just precautions again. We don’t know who or what we’re dealing with here and until we do we play everything safe. You’re going in under deep cover. Recall the term?”

“Vaguely. But how do I convince this Alvaradejo to see me?”

“Just mention Lube and you should be in. He’ll want to set all the terms — time, place, all that sort of stuff. Let him. He’ll be playing it safe too.”

“Do I mention my connection with you, your people, I mean?”

“It shouldn’t be necessary. He’d probably prefer not to know.”

The next ninety minutes passed with Locke asking increasingly technical, professional questions drawn from his six-month intensive tenure from twenty years before. Charney answered them all with a small smile playing on his lips. His friend was recalling the lessons. The afternoon had become a refresher course and Locke was taking full advantage. Charney was impressed.

Chris kept his words and gestures mechanical and impassive, anything to hide the conflicting emotions clashing within him. It felt as though he was back at the Academy with Bri and Lube, another training exercise about to be undertaken. Only the last one he’d been on had ended tragically, and during the ride back to Silver Spring the brutal memories of the accident Chris had suppressed for so long rose once more.

It had been a standard exercise for agents of the advanced, field operative level. A session of survival training in the Academy’s Disneyland, a huge wooded complex filled with obstacles promising very real danger. The object was to negotiate the serpentine paths safely with as little incident as possible, the point being to teach agents of Locke and Lubeck’s caliber an acceptance of risk. Instincts had to be honed. In the field there would be no second chances. The survival training drilled this home.

Three days into the exercise, Locke chose a path that formed a shortcut through part of the complex. The quicker they got out, the quicker the exercise would end. Lubeck resisted, urging caution. Locke was hearing none of that and started down the path, alert and ready, he thought, for anything.

The ground split beneath him thirty yards later, a ragged crevice that shook and rumbled. Chris managed to hold fast to the surface only to realize with horror that the crevice was closing, threatening to crush him. Then Lubeck was reaching down for the collar of his jacket, lifting with incredible strength as the vise continued to tighten. Locke’s breath had been squeezed away but at least he was rising, safe, he thought, until the vice closed on the lower portion of his leg.

He screamed in agony as Lubeck’s meaty left hand reached lower to free his jammed calf and foot. The crevice continued to close, jagged halves starting to meet once more. Only his foot was still trapped. Chris jerked it free with the last of his strength.

Another scream punctured the woods, Lubeck’s this time. His left hand, the one that had saved Chris’s life, was wedged in the crevice an instant away from locking tight once more. Locke fought frantically to free the Luber’s hand, though there seemed no space left to yank it through. He found a gap in the crevice wall and pulled with all his might.

Lubeck’s scream bubbled his ears.

The hand came free, a sickening mass of crushed bones and flesh, painted red from areas where the skin had receded altogether. Chris covered it immediately with a spare sweater. Lubeck slipped into shock and then passed out, regaining consciousness only sporadically in the day and a half that followed as Locke carried him through the mazelike woods, skirting obstacle after obstacle. Lubeck was rushed to a hospital from the base camp. Doctors saved his life but not his hand. Chris quit the Academy a week later, his drive gone, indecision and guilt replacing it.

He plunged back into the unvarying, uncomplicated world of college and academic rigors to pursue his masters and later his doctorate. Ivy-covered walls were as good a place to hide behind as any, insulated from the outside world if nothing else. A series of teaching positions followed, Chris never quite finding what he was looking for and inevitably moving on or being forced to.

He met Beth when she was a senior and he was coming to the end of his third teaching position. Chris married her two months after graduation and life had been relatively simple at first. The three children had come. Then something had started to turn their marriage stale and perfunctory, something Locke couldn’t put his finger on. They drifted apart slowly, not in leaps and bounds but in small strides neither took much notice of. Eighteen years had passed and they were both vastly different people from the two who had met in an American literature class. They were virtual strangers to each other now. The facade was convincing enough, though, making it easy for them to live the lie quite comfortably and to feel fortunate for that much.

Still, Locke had to admit that no matter what the situation of their marriage at present, it had been Beth who’d settled him down and helped him find the discipline and persistence required to win the position at Georgetown. Whether he ever really loved her, he couldn’t honestly be sure. But he knew she had brought warmth to his life at a time when the cold threatened to consume him. If he hadn’t loved her, he had at least desperately needed her, and when you came right down to it, wasn’t that the same thing?

Beth’s car was in the driveway when Locke swung his LTD in. The children were away.

“We have to talk,” he said to Beth. She was sitting comfortably on the living-room couch studying a brochure featuring the latest designs in kitchen cabinets.

“I’m due at work. Can it wait?”

“No, it can’t.” Chris paused. There was no sense holding back. “I’m leaving the university.”

She looked up at him dumbfounded. “You can’t be serious.”

“Never more so.” Locke sat down next to her. Amazing how you could live with someone so long and know them so little. “The administrative pressure’s become too much. They created an impossible situation for me.”

“And now you’ve gone and made it even more impossible.”

“Hear me out for a while. I’ve had other offers.” He paused, collecting his thoughts, trying to appear convincing. “I’ve known this was coming and I’ve prepared for it. Other universities have already expressed interest.”

“Where? Where are these universities?”

“All over.”

“Not Washington, though. We’d have to move, uproot the whole family. God, Chris, think of the kids. Is it fair to them?”

“Other kids adapt. Why can’t ours? They’re perfectly normal.”

“We should have talked about this.”

“We’re talking.”

“What about me? I have a job too, you know.”

“They’ve got real estate in other states.”

“You’re using this as an excuse to move, aren’t you?” Beth snapped out suddenly.

Locke knew his strategy was blown. He had to let on more. “We might not have to move at all really. There’s new interest in my novels and if things work out, I think I’ll give up teaching for a while, maybe check out George Washington for a part-time position.”

Beth eyed him curiously. “I thought they were still in the closet.”

“I mailed out fresh copies.”

“Who’s the publisher?”

“I don’t want to jinx myself by telling you until things are definite.” Locke took a hefty gulp of air. “But I will say that this publisher has expressed enough interest in me to finance a two-week trip to Europe.”

“Really!” Beth’s face brightened. “When?”

Locke had failed to consider Beth’s assumption she’d be coming along. “They’re, er, just sending me,” he stammered, “this time, that is. It’s just a two-week preliminary trip anyway. Very bookish. Sightseeing oriented. Gotta find new locales for number three.”

“I never realized locales were so important in your books.”

“They are if the books are going to keep improving. This is a golden opportunity, Beth. I don’t want to blow it.”

Beth’s eyebrows flickered and Locke thought he could read her mind. Being married to a published novelist of potential acclaim — she’d like that.

“When do you leave?” she asked.

“Tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“Things developed rather suddenly. I’ve got a seven-thirty flight.”

“But you’ll be gone two weeks,” Beth moaned. “We’ve got an important dinner a week from Friday.”

“Please express my regrets.”

His wife shrugged. “I suppose it’s for the best.”

“I know it is.”

For a long while neither said a word, only tension passing between them. Somehow Locke wanted her to question him more, to demand an explanation more substantial than the obviously thin one he had come up with. The fact that she hadn’t indicated how little she knew him … or cared how far apart they had grown. It had been months since they had been lovers and Locke had come to accept life without sex. It was life without love that was bothering him.

“I could drive you to the airport,” Beth offered limply.

“Someone’s picking me up” came Chris’s reply. “Thanks anyway.”

Locke finished carrying his bags down the stairs just as Brian Charney pulled up in the driveway.

“Need some help with those?” he asked when Locke opened the door.

Chris checked his watch. “Absolutely. It’s almost six thirty. We’re running late.”

“The plane will be held if necessary.”

“You never cease to amaze me.”

When Charney opened the trunk, Locke noticed the absence of his friend’s baggage.

“You won’t be coming along?”

“Not on this flight, Chris. Too risky. I’ll follow you out on a later one. We’ve got to avoid any even remotely direct links once in London. If the opposition’s good, they’ll know the Luber worked for me, which means they’ll be watching. That’s why I couldn’t pick up the trail myself.”

“Then I’ll be on my own for a while in London.”

“Proceed just as we discussed. Check into the Dorchester and call Alvaradejo immediately. Then call the contact number and leave word about the meet. I’ll be in just hours after you.” Charney hesitated. “Believe me, it’s for your own good.”

Dulles Airport was crowded with early-evening traffic. This was a comfort to Charney, who much preferred crowds to open spaces. As soon as the bags were checked through, he wished Locke luck and took his leave, appearing to be merely one friend dropping another off.

Locke had started for the gate, toting a single piece of carry-on luggage, when a man wearing a plaid sports jacket stepped up to a pay phone and dialed an overseas exchange.

“He’s on his way,” the man said simply and hung up.