Liars & Thieves

CHAPTER SIX

The miles flew by as I zipped north on I-81. Before I knew it, I was at the turnoff for I-66, which would take me into Washington’s western suburbs. A few miles later I got off the interstate at the Front Royal exit and went south about a hundred yards to the McDonald’s. There was a pay phone on a low mount beside the parking lot. Although the telephone book attached to it with a woven wire was ripped to shreds, I got a dial tone when I lifted the receiver. I went into the McDonald’s and traded a five-dollar bill for more quarters.

Willie answered on the second ring.

“Hey, pal. It’s me.”

“They were here. Three of them came in about a half hour ago. Said you were wanted on a material witness warrant.”

“FBI?”

“Yeah. They wanted to search, but I wouldn’t let ’em. They’ll probably be back with a warrant in a little while.”

There was nothing in the shop that I didn’t want the law to see, so that news didn’t worry me.

“What about the woman, Kelly Erlanger?”

“She’s got an unlisted number.” He read me the number and address. “Better hope the car is there. My friend at LoJack is out sick. I called his house, and his old lady says the son of a bitch is shacked up someplace or on a roaring drunk — she hasn’t seen him in two days.”

“How’d you come up with Kelly’s address?”

“Got a friend’s wife who works at the telephone company.”

Willie’s circle of friends and acquaintances never ceased to amaze me. “Where in hell did you meet all these people?”

“I met this woman’s old man in the joint, which is where you’re gonna wind up if you ain’t real careful.”

“I’ve heard that song before. Can even hum it.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re into today, Tommy, but these were heavy federal dudes on a mission, not desk jockeys doin’ some damn background investigation. I figure they’ll have a tap on this line within an hour.”

“Thanks, Willie. I’ll be talking to you.”

Oh, boy. If the FBI was a bit quicker than Willie estimated, they now had Kelly’s number and home address.

I needed money. I figured that the FBI would take a few hours to freeze my bank accounts, so I had better get some walking-around money fast. The convenience store next to McDonald’s had an ATM sign on its pole, so I went in and tagged it for three hundred from my checking account. I also bought a Coke and a bag of jerky.

Rolling toward Washington, I tried to put everything in perspective.

The FBI! How did they get into this mess so quick?

Why did Kelly Erlanger steal my car and jackrabbit?

Who wanted all those people at the safe house dead? Russians, probably. If Erlanger was telling the truth, of course the Russians wanted their ex-archivist dead and the file copies destroyed. But those shooters this morning weren’t Russians — I would bet my life on that.

Mikhail Goncharov found the cabin by the river well after sunset, just before the onset of total darkness. He was staggering along beside a creek when he came to the culvert and the road. Beyond the road was a river.

He was desperately cold, his clothes sodden from the rain, so cold he was near the point of collapse.

He wasn’t thinking anymore, just walking, trying to stay upright.

Standing on the road as the last of the twilight faded, he couldn’t even see which way the river was flowing. Didn’t matter, really. Upriver or down, there was really no difference. Without conscious thought he turned right because he was right-handed and walked along the road.

Goncharov hadn’t gone far when he found a road leading off to his right, away from the river. He followed it. A hundred yards along he found a cabin. There were no lights, no car in the parking area.

Summoning the last of his strength, he climbed the three steps to the porch, tried the door. Locked. With a padlock.

The mind of the archivist began to work again. If he didn’t get shelter and warmth, he would die of exposure tonight.

There was a woodpile beside the cabin. He used a billet of wood as a hammer on the padlock. He ran splinters into his hand, but after an eternity of pounding the hasp tore loose from the wooden door.

Feeling his way around inside the cabin, he found a bed with blankets, one of which he wrapped around him. Further exploration revealed an iron stove in the middle of the single room. Fumbling in the dark, he found matches, newspapers, and wood.

Somehow he managed to get a fire going in the stove, then fed in wood until the stove would hold no more. As the stove crackled and popped and warmth spread in the darkness, Mikhail Goncharov pulled the blanket tightly around him and sank into the nearest chair.

He couldn’t sleep. The scenes ran back and forth through his mind— fire, shots, blood, his wife’s face frozen in death, faces from his past, the files, the fear… the terror!

Under the overcast the night became very dark. The rain stopped, finally. Occasionally cars and trucks drenched my windshield with road spray, so I kept busy fiddling with the wipers while I tried to figure out what in hell I should do next.

I didn’t like being in this predicament. Sure, before I got blackmailed into joining the CIA I spent a few years outwitting the law, but I was always meticulously prepared before I made my first move. I had never been a fugitive.

Funny how a man’s life goes. If my partner in that big diamond heist hadn’t got busted and finked on me, I might still be in the business. I will never forget the day that a CIA recruiter buttonholed me after class and suggested we have lunch in the student cafeteria. I was only a month away from graduating from Stanford Law School. She asked about my postgraduation plans, sounded so innocent. After I finished blowing air she remarked that a prosecution for stealing the Peabody diamond from the Museum of Natural History in Washington might give any law firm interested in me food for thought. Naturally, as the conversation progressed, the CIA became my number-one job choice.

Now I was legit as a postal clerk, right smack-dab in the middle of the great American middle class, accoutered with credit cards, debts, a savings account, and a green paycheck every month. Yet on this miserable wet July night, this loyal, paperpushing government employee was dodging the law as if he had never been persuaded to add his name to the civil service payroll. Ah, me…

I didn’t have a map of northern Virginia in the car, so I stopped at a convenience store in Manassas and purchased one. Thirty minutes later I was cruising a subdivision in Burke, Virginia, looking for my car.

There it sat, red and dirty, in the driveway of Erlanger’s house.

I drove past and looked the neighborhood over. It was a newer suburb, with twisty streets with cutesy names that were all dead-ends and small two-story houses painted earth tones. Judging from the size of the decorator trees, the subdivision was perhaps three years old. Every house had a garage and driveway — no cars parked on the street. Lots of streetlights, fenced backyards for dogs and tots.

If the FBI was also onto Erlanger, they were here, somewhere, watching and waiting for me. Even if they hadn’t yet learned that she had survived the massacre that morning, if they had the telephone line to the lock shop tapped, they were here or on their way.

I didn’t see anyone in any of the cars.

They might be waiting in Erlanger’s house.

Only one way to find out. I parked in her driveway beside my car. The MP-5 was just visible behind the seat of the old Mercedes. The driver’s door was locked.

But not the passenger door!

The electric door lock was broken, had been for months — the passenger door had to be locked manually. Obviously Erlanger hadn’t checked the passenger door after she pushed the button.

I kept a spare key in a magnetic box under the driver’s seat. I was sorely tempted to jump in the Benz and boogie. With the key in hand, I stood beside the car for a few seconds thinking about it.

Kelly Erlanger was a ditz — stealing my car proved that. The last thing I wanted to do was play white knight to some dingdong airhead who thought I might be a hit man.

I could always call the guy in Staunton and tell him where his heap was, mail him the key.

Of course, the guys who smacked all those people this morning were still running around loose, and the people who sent them were going to get aggravated at me before too long.

The light was on in Erlanger’s living room. I saw no heads looking out. The daffy broad was probably calling the damned cops.

I muttered a four-letter word that I thought summarized the situation and transferred the submachine gun to the rental heap. My clothes and some burglary tools were in the trunk of the Benz, so I transferred them, too. God knew when I’d see this heap again — and the Benz was completely paid for. I spotted my emergency roll of duct tape, pocketed that. I closed the Benz’s trunk, made sure it latched, then selected a pick as I walked up to her front door.

I could hear something going on in there — music or a voice.

Five dollars against a doughnut she was talking to the 911 operator.

I twisted the knob on her door, made sure it was locked, then inserted the pick.

The thought occurred to me that I was going to be in big, big trouble if she had a gun. She had struck me as a politically correct academic, which meant feminist, pro-life, anti-gun, and all the rest of the chorus, but what the hell, these days you never knew. Maybe she carried a shooter in her purse just in case. Please God, don’t let her shoot me!

I raked the pick while maintaining pressure on the knob. I felt one of the tumblers go up. I raked the pick savagely, releasing and reapplying subtle pressure to the knob, trying to make all the tumblers pop up at once and catch them there.

After six or eight rakes, the door opened. Yes!

She was on the phone, staring at me wild-eyed, screaming, “He’s coming through the door now!” I must have been a fearsome sight — it had been a long day and I had seen too many dead people, some of whom I killed myself.

I bounded across the room and popped her once on the jaw before she had time to rabbit. She went down like a sack of potatoes.

The suitcase full of paper was right there on the floor by the coffee table. She had been going through the contents when I showed up.

I shoved everything into the suitcase and tried to close it. Had to put it on the floor and use a knee on it to get the latches snapped. Then I threw her over my shoulder. Out on the porch I put the suitcase down and closed the door until it latched. I must not have been thinking too clearly, because I took the time to wipe off the doorknob. As if they didn’t know who I was.

The suitcase went in the trunk of the heap. She went in the passenger seat.

Out on the street I glanced at my watch. How much time did I have?

I drove toward the subdivision exit as far from her house as I could get and still see her driveway, which was only about seventy yards due to the way the street curved. There was a house sitting there with black windows and a FOR SALE sign in the yard, so I backed into the driveway and killed the engine. Then I used the duct tape on her wrists and mouth, then taped the seat belt to her arms so she couldn’t pull them out of the belt. She was moaning and starting to come around as I snapped the seat belt in place to hold her. I checked her jaw — didn’t seem to be broken, although the bruise was turning yellow and purple and swelling up right before my eyes.

She came to slowly, began thrashing as she realized she was restrained, eyed me wildly.

“Did you call 911?”

A look of defiance crossed her face.

“We’ll just sit here and see who shows up,” I said, and rolled down my window to let some air in — and so I could hear a chopper overhead, if one showed up.

After two or three minutes, she calmed down. At least she stopped squirming, trying to get loose. I ignored her facial expressions, just watched the street. I had about decided that everyone in the neighborhood had burrowed in for the night when a hardy soul wearing a raincoat came along walking his dog. Apparently the dog needed a potty break rain or shine. The man paid no attention to us in the car, didn’t even look our way.

Ten minutes passed, then fifteen. I checked my watch occasionally. After twenty minutes had gone by, I remarked, “These Virginia cops are certainly Johnny-on-the-spot. Good thing you weren’t getting murdered or raped, huh?”

After twenty-two minutes a ten-year-old rattletrap rolled down the street — woofers thudding — and parked in a driveway two doors away from Erlanger’s house. The driver went inside.

The bad guys arrived in two unmarked cars twenty-seven minutes after I parked in the driveway. I pushed her down and ducked my head as they went by. The cars went slowly down the street, one behind the other. At least two men in each car. They stopped in front of Erlanger’s house, doused the lights.

“Doesn’t look like cops to me,” I remarked. “Plainclothes, no cruisers.”

She was watching intently. Although the distance was about seventy yards, the streetlight beyond her house limned the men. One of the four men stayed by the cars while the others went toward the house, out of our line of sight.

“Seen enough?” I asked her.

For the first time she looked my way. There was fear in her eyes.

I started the car, snapped on the lights, and got under way toward the subdivision entrance. No one followed me.

When we were rolling out on the freeway, I ripped the tape from her mouth. She screamed.

“Hurts like hell, doesn’t it?”

“Who are you?”

“I told you, lady. Tommy Carmellini, CIA.”

“Who were those men back there?”

“They sure as hell weren’t street cops speeding to assist an honest taxpayer in distress.”

“They came to kill me, didn’t they?”

“Probably.” I shrugged. “A friend of mine got your address from the telephone company. The only reason I reached you first is because I knew your name.”

“Why me, for God’s sake?”

“Someone doesn’t want Goncharov’s notes read by anyone. You’ve seen them. You might know too much.”

“I don’t know anything!” she shrieked, then began sobbing.

I was fresh out of sympathy. The ditsy broad stole my car, which was now sitting abandoned in her driveway. Whatever slim chance I once had of talking my way out of trouble had evaporated. No doubt the hit men were looking for me, too.

The rain started again. I turned on the wipers and tried to concentrate on driving but found that impossible. What should I do now? How was I going to stay one jump ahead of hit men who showed up when someone called the police? If the police were tipping them off, intentionally or inadvertently, no doubt the FBI was also cooperating. Hell, maybe the hit men were FBI.

I felt like a man driving to his own execution.

“Get this tape off me,” she said.

“You gonna bail at the first stoplight?”

“No.”

I thought a little clarification wouldn’t hurt. “Those people back there came to kill us, lady. I thought they’d show up before long looking for you, which is why I went to get you out of there.”

“A knight in shining armor,” she said acidly.

“You’ve been told. You want out of this car, that’s fine with me. I’ll drop you anywhere you say. Call the cops, the FBI, your boss, your boyfriend, your mama, whoever. Someone kills you, that’ll be your tough luck.”

I pulled over to the side of the road and ripped the tape off her arms. It must have hurt like hell, but she stifled the scream.

“You got a cell phone on you?” I asked when we were rolling again.

She swabbed her face with the tail of her blouse. When she finished she said, “Yes.”

“May I use it?”

She removed it from a pocket and passed it over. I threw it out the window.