Liberty

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Tommy Carmellini took Anna Modin to a seafood restaurant on the northern shore of Inner Harbor in Baltimore. He wanted crowds, music, and a fine meal in the company of a beautiful woman. Anna Modin certainly qualified, he thought. She wasn’t cover-girl perfect, but she had a presence.

The restaurant was a stand-alone building with a lawn between it and the water, one tastefully landscaped with trees and benches and sidewalks. Along the seawall were moored several magnificent small ships from the age of sail. On the western edge of the little point was a basin for powerboats. Despite the fact that it was a raw, windy evening with low clouds scudding swiftly across the sky, before they went inside Tommy Carmellini and Anna Modin strolled the walkway along the seawall, inspected the sailboats rocking in the swells and straining at their moorings, watched a water taxi swing into a small dock and deposit a load of chilly people from the complex at Inner Harbor. Another group boarded the boat and away it went with the wind behind it, headed eastward for the bars and restaurants at Sewell’s Point.

In the growing darkness the lights of the city were illuminating. Carmellini pointed across the harbor at Federal Hill and the barely visible swell of headland where Fort McHenry stood, all the while talking about the War of 1812 while Anna stood with her coat wrapped tightly around her and the tails whipping in the wind.

His world felt normal again. He didn’t even notice his tender feet. After dragging in several deep lungfuls of tangy sea air, he led Anna to the foyer of the restaurant to warm up. He asked for a table. They were lucky; the maitre d’ seated them at a small table by the window overlooking the harbor and the moored ships. There weren’t many empty tables remaining. The hum. of conversation, laughter, well-dressed people, subdued classical music — Tommy Carmellini felt good!

Over a glass of wine he decided that Anna Modin was the most interesting person he had met in many a year. She was calm, self-assured, quite at home in a new country, surrounded by people speaking a foreign language. She looked around curiously, then paid attention to him. After they ordered he noticed that she carefully scanned the crowd from time to time and the shadowy strollers on the seawall, barely visible through the trees and shrubs a hundred feet or so away from the restaurant windows.

She had worked in international banking for years, she said, so they discussed that. And places they had both been, movies, music, the arts. Carmellini’s recent adventure never came up, nor did the reason Anna was in America. Carmellini would find out about it at the office, he knew, if and when Jake Grafton chose to tell him.

Eventually they discussed the Graftons, Jake, Callie, and Amy. Anna liked them and Carmellini did, too, so Tommy ended up telling her all he knew of the family history, including the recent adventure in Hong Kong.

Dinner was delicious, Alaskan king salmon and Atlantic halibut. They lingered over their meal, had more wine, scrutinized the desserts the waiter brought by on a cart, and ordered carefully. When the desserts came they shared, each sampling the other’s, then ended the meal with coffee.

The spell was broken when he noticed she was looking around again, scrutinizing the other diners, staring at the lights beyond the huge dark windows.

She was obviously worried.

“Is someone looking for you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Husband or boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

She glanced at him. “Who are you?” she asked.

“Just a civil servant.”

“Whom people try to kill.”

“Sometimes life gets complicated.”

“What branch of the government do you work for?”

“I’m working for Jake Grafton just now,” Carmellini answered, wondering if she would pick up on the subtlety of that answer. People who worked for the CIA were not supposed to advertise the fact since everything involving their employment was classified.

“Did he ask you to take me out tonight?”

“Nope,” he said, slightly relieved that she had moved off the subject of his employer. “Thought it up my very own self.”

“Would Jake Grafton have us followed?”

“Were we followed?”

“I’m not sure. There was a car behind us as we drove to Baltimore.”

“Why didn’t you mention it before now?”

“I thought it might be your police.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Protecting me.”

“I see.” He didn’t see, but if Grafton thought she needed protection, he was certainly capable of providing some. But not, Carmellini thought, without telling me beforehand. Not in light of my recent adventure. Grafton would not have overlooked that courtesy.

Unless there was some reason that Carmellini didn’t know about. Come to think of it, there was little he did know. He considered the situation while the waiter refilled their coffee cups. Frankly, everything he knew wouldn’t fill a coffee cup.

When the waiter moved out of earshot, Carmellini asked Anna, “Is there anyone here now that you think might be keeping tabs on us?”

“Tabs?”

“Watching us.”

“Several couples are possibilities.”

“Any single men? Or pairs of men?”

“No.”

For the first time the vulnerability of their position in front of the windows struck him forcefully. If someone wanted to kill her, they were outside watching through the glass, not inside.

Cursing silently to himself, he laid a credit card on the table, then fished in his jacket pocket for his cell phone. His stomach felt queasy, his skin clammy.

“The waiter will bring our bill in a moment or two,” he said with more confidence than he felt. God, what a fool he was! A normal evening! “It will take several minutes to process the credit card, I’ll sign the invoice, then we will leave. Tell me if they are also preparing to leave.”

Staring through the window beside their table at the shadows and dark areas of the lawn and the just-visible spidery masts of the sailing vessels, he toyed with the cell phone. He could call Jake Grafton, of course. But what would he say? I’m scared — send someone to save us?

Get a grip, Carmellini!

For the love of Christ — why didn’t I ask Grafton for a weapon?

The waiter drifted over, presented the bill. Carmellini didn’t even glance at it. He nodded, still fingering the cell phone.

“Please, sir,” the waiter murmured. “We ask our patrons not to use telephones in the restaurant. They disturb the other diners.”

“Do the credit card,” Carmellini said sharply, and pushed the plastic at the man.

When the waiter departed Carmellini asked Anna, “Who is after you?”

“I was in Egypt. They tried to kill me there.” She wanted to tell him more, but she refrained.

He felt a surge of anger. Why didn’t she tell him that earlier? He had accepted a table by the window and she didn’t even peep!

The manager came over, smiled, laid a hand on the back of his chair. “How was everything tonight?”

“Terrific.”

“Please come visit us again.”

“You bet.”

The waiter brought the bill and credit card invoice, all tastefully hidden in a leather folder. Carmellini bent over to figure the tip. Anna Modin reached for her purse, which was on the empty chair to her right. The strap had slipped over the back of the chair.

“Let me help you with that,” the waiter said and walked behind them. As he bent over the chair with the purse Carmellini heard a whap. And the tinkling of glass.

He looked up. The waiter was staring uncomprehendingly at his shirt … at a spreading bloodstain. Carmellini’s eyes went to the window, to a small hole in the glass.

As the waiter fell Tommy grabbed Modin’s wrist and dragged her from her chair.

“Let’s go!” he hissed, and ran for the door, pulling her behind him as people in the restaurant screamed and several people jumped up and tried to flee. Carmellini bowled over one woman and pushed another man aside, all the while dragging Modin behind him with a death grip on her wrist.

The killers could be waiting for them outside!

That thought ran through his head and competed with an overwhelming urge to flee this palace of windows; the urge to flee won. He charged down the hallway toward the foyer, still holding Modin firmly by the wrist.

“My purse,” she pleaded.

“Fuck it!” Tommy Carmellini roared, and charged through the crowd waiting for a table and blasted out the door into the night.

“Can you run?”

“Yes,” she said, so he released her wrist. Dodging and weaving, he led the way toward the parking lot as fast as he could go, oblivious of his sore feet. He never felt a thing.

Approaching the car he scanned the area … and saw no one. The rifle in the trunk — he wanted it in his hand, wanted it desperately.

There couldn’t be more than one or two of them, he thought as he savagely ripped his car keys from his trouser pocket. He pushed the button to unlock the thing as he approached and the fucking lights flashed! A 1987 model, the car hadn’t come with that feature — he had paid extra to have it installed when he purchased the car two years ago!

Oh, shit!

He jabbed the key into the trunk. It opened.

At least he was still ahead of them.

“Get down, get down,” he hissed, and Anna dropped to a crouch.

He grabbed the rifle, felt for the box of shells.

He hadn’t fired the Winchester since that day in West Virginia. Hadn’t even loaded the friggin’ thing. Now he ripped open the box of shells, poured four into his hand, and jammed more into his right jacket pocket. He rammed the brass cylinders into the loading gate on the side of the action. One, two, three, four, all the while scanning for people.

“Get in the car!”

She obeyed instantly.

He worked the lever, jacked a shell into the chamber.

The interior light popped on.

He sidled around the car, opened the driver’s door, and slid into the seat. The interior lights went out when he pulled the door closed.

He fumbled to get the key into the ignition. The rifle was awkward, too long. Belatedly he realized that the hammer was cocked and the rifle had no safety. He took time from the key struggle to ease the hammer down, then jammed the key in and twisted hard. The engine caught.

He looked aft as he pulled the transmission into reverse. As he did he saw a car roaring down the lane behind them. He heard its brakes lock up and the tires squall.

“Get down,” he shouted, slammed the transmission into park, and bailed out.

The rifle barrel hit something, then he had it and swung it as the sedan behind screeched to a halt and the man in the driver’s seat leveled a weapon through his open window.

Tommy Carmellini already had the rifle up. He aimed just in front of the driver’s door handle and pulled the trigger. From fifteen feet he couldn’t miss.

The rifle boomed and bucked.

Carmellini worked the lever and aimed and fired again, as fast as he could.

After the third shot, the car began moving, crawling away at idle. Carmellini stood, aimed carefully at the shadowy figure of the passenger and fired his last shot through the rear side window, shattering it. The car crept along at an angle and lightly impacted a parked car.

He fed another shell into the loading gate of the Winchester, worked the lever to eject the spent shell and chamber the new round. Walking toward the car he shot the passenger again. Shoved another shell into the rifle, worked the lever.

The driver was lying over on the passenger’s lap. Tommy fired another shot into the passenger, rammed another shell into the gun, worked the action, and stuck the rifle barrel through the driver’s window. That bullet exploded the driver’s head.

Standing there slightly deafened by the gunshots, Tommy Carmellini carefully loaded the rifle as he scanned the parked cars. Suddenly he realized that he could hear screaming, an ongoing scream that started some seconds ago.

He swung toward the sound with the rifle up. A woman stood frozen, staring with wide eyes, her hand over her mouth as her companion tugged at her arm.

He looked again into the sedan. The carnage created by the soft-nosed .30–30 slugs at close range was awesome. The interior was spattered with blood and brains.

Tommy Carmellini reached in and twisted the ignition key, killing the engine.

In the silence he walked back to Anna. She was lying on the seat. She looked up at him with fear in her eyes.

He opened the passenger door of the Mercedes.

“It’s okay,” he said. “We’re okay. Let’s wait for the police.”

His hands were shaking and his heart racing. He remembered the cell phone, felt for it in his pocket.

He had left it on the table in the restaurant, along with his credit card and her purse.

It was close to midnight when the first-class petty officer pulled the throttles of the cabin cruiser back to idle. The boat was about a hundred yards off Hains Point with its bow pointed upstream. Jake Grafton used his binoculars to scan the seawall. No one visible — which was what he expected. He could hear the faint sound of two army helicopters overhead, just under the clouds. They had been patrolling the golf course with infrared sensors since dark, and they had detected nothing.

Behind him he could hear Gil Pascal talking to the pilots on a handheld radio, and their tinny reply: “Nothing, Dog Leader. It’s clean.”

Jake touched the petty officer at the helm on the shoulder and pointed. The helmsman nodded and stroked the throttle. Despite the raw breeze, he brought the boat in expertly against the seawall. One of the sailors leaped from the fantail to the top of the wall, and another sailor threw him a line. While they were mooring the boat, two marines wearing night-vision goggles went ashore to act as perimeter guards.

With the help of the sailors, four army engineering officers off-loaded several boxes of equipment. They set up their gear in a location that Jake pointed out. Yes, right here. He could see the tracks from the van.

He, too, had night-vision goggles, but he carried them in his hand. Streetlights on tall aluminum poles were sited every hundred or so feet along the top of the seawall, so there was too much light for the goggles. Even without the streetlights, the glow of the city lights reflecting off the clouds raised the light level to perpetual twilight.

The rain late in the afternoon had soaked the turf. Jake watched the engineers work. Their equipment consisted of an ultrawide band radar normally used to look for cracks in concrete bridge structures. It had a fantastic ability to see through solids.

Soon the engineers had a picture on the scope. Jake bent down, examined the image with his reading glasses. Gil Pascal bent over, too.

“What do you make of it?” Jake asked the senior officer, a major with a Southern accent.

“Something down there all right, sir, but don’t know what. Can’t see too well from this angle.”

“Looks like rocks to me,” Jake said.

“Bound to be a lot of rocks in this fill, sir. Big ones, small ones, and everything in between. We’re gonna have to look for something that doesn’t look like a rock.”

They moved the transceiver several times, trying to find the best angle. All that could be seen on the screen were bright spots of high relativity and dark places of low. The major hooked the video feed to a computer and began playing with the image, seeing if he could improve it.

A shadowy line appeared across the screen, came and went as he increased some values and lowered others.

“What’s that line?” Jake asked.

“A wire of some kind,” the major suggested.

He and Jake walked away from the unit, inspected the earth. The major pointed out where the wire would be.

“Seems to run toward that streetlight pole,” Gil Pascal suggested.

“Seems to be, yes.”

“Follow the wire. I want to know precisely where it goes.”

“Yes, sir.”

Using the UWB radar, the engineers confirmed that the streetlights were wired together by underground cable. In addition, there was this other wire that ran in under one of the poles.

“There ought to be one more wire of some kind, an antenna,” Jake muttered to the major. “See if you can find it.”

It was Gil Pascal who called his attention to it. “Some of these trees seem to have wires running through the branches.” Jake walked to where Gil was standing. “See this wire running up beside the tree? When I saw it I assumed it was a lightning rod.”

“Isn’t it?” Jake donned his night-vision goggles and inspected the wire running up one of the trunks.

“It could be an antenna. See how the wire loops through the trees. Looks to me like it’s been there for years.”

Jake Grafton turned to Gil and slapped his shoulder. “The Corrigan unit works. We’re getting someplace now.”

Pascal was incredulous. “That’s a nuclear weapon buried under there?”

“You can bet your last dollar on it,” Jake said, and walked away to tell the army engineers to pack up.

His cell phone rang and he answered it.

“Grafton.”

“Tommy Carmellini, Admiral. I’m in Baltimore police headquarters with Anna Modin. A couple of guys tried to kill her tonight.”

“Baltimore? What the hell are you doing with her in Baltimore?”

“I asked her to go to dinner, and she said yes. Why didn’t you tell me the ragheads are after her?”

“I didn’t know you were taking her out.” He hadn’t been home since he left this morning for the L’Enfant Plaza bakery shop and his appointment with Sal Molina, and he had been too busy to call his wife. “She okay?”

“Yeah, but I killed two guys in the parking lot outside the restaurant. This went down about four hours ago. Police been trying to pump me. Every cop in Baltimore is milling around in here tonight. From what I gather, they think it’s a drug gang thing. They finally let me make a telephone call, and you’re it.”

“Don’t say anything.”

“I’m getting real good at that.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Jake broke the connection and walked over to Gil Pascal. “Have one of the helos land and pick me up. Two men tried to kill Anna Modin tonight in Baltimore.”

“She okay?”

“Carmellini says she is. He took her to dinner, then killed these guys in the restaurant parking lot. You get this stuff cleaned up and out of here.” He used the cell phone to call Harry Estep.

Carmellini was right about the Baltimore police brass — they were all at headquarters when Jake Grafton arrived. They kept popping into the waiting room where a uniformed officer had parked him, introducing themselves, feeding him tidbits of information while they looked him over, then leaving him to cool his heels. He used the dead time to call Callie on his cell phone.

He broke the news of the attempted assassination as gently as he could.

“Tommy said they are both all right. I’m in Baltimore at police headquarters waiting to talk to them.”

“My God!”

“They’re okay,” he said. “According to one of the cops, someone fired a rifle into the restaurant, killed a waiter standing beside Anna.”

She took the news pretty well, he thought. After telling her all he knew, he promised to come home when he could.

At three in the morning he was led into a conference room full of brass. Harry Estep was there and introduced him to a senior FBI officer from Washington.

The police chief was a black man named Carroll. “You’ll be delighted to hear that Carmellini and Modin were uncooperative. They identified themselves and refused to talk without a lawyer.”

Silence followed that remark.

The chief sighed. “We’re releasing them. It looks like self-defense. We’ll investigate, talk to all the witnesses we can find, give the file to the prosecutors. If self-defense holds up, I assume they’ll let it go at that.”

“Okay.”

“We’ll hold on to Carmellini’s rifle until our investigation is complete. He killed the living shit out of these two guys. We don’t know who they are. They fired a bolt-action Winchester into the restaurant, trying for Modin or Carmellini apparently, killing the waiter instead. New rifle, no visible wear, got both their fingerprints on it. We found it lying outside by a tree.”

“Sounds like these guys were real craftsmen.”

“Couple of rank amateurs. Fingerprints on the rifle, blew the shot, then drove up to Carmellini and he splattered them all to hell. You oughta see the car.”

“No thanks. Who were they?”

“Middle Eastern males in their twenties, looks like. They had wallets and ID, maybe fake. We’re working on that. We’ll get fingerprints and talk to the INS and FBI, and maybe we’ll know more tomorrow.”

“I’d like to keep Carmellini’s and Modin’s names out of the newspapers.”

“That we can do,” Chief Carroll said. “The reporters will get the rest of it, though. The television crews are outside now. I suggest you get your people out of here through the basement. We’ll give them something to put over their heads.”

“Okay.”

Carroll toyed with his pen. Looking at the senior FBI officer, he said, “I’m going to be frank with you people. The dead waiter was a kid working his way through Johns Hopkins. Name of Newhouse. John Wilson Newhouse. Had a wife and kid. We’re lucky only one innocent person was killed.”

“And your point is?”

“Keep your goddamn problems in Washington. Don’t want’em in Baltimore.”

“There’s a war on,” Jake Grafton retorted sharply, “or haven’t you noticed?”

“I’m just telling you, we’ve got enough problems with druggies and gang-bangers and all the usual crooks and creeps. We don’t need assassins — competent or incompetent — running around killing innocent people.”

“Tell it to the terrorists,” Jake Grafton snapped, and started for the door.

Carroll wasn’t finished. “Your man Carmellini is a real piece of work. The Maryland State Police tell me he killed a man with his bare hands Sunday night. This guy is a walking bomb. Seventy-two hours later he blew these two away before they had time to fire a shot. Oh, they both had pistols in their hands when he did it, but what if they’d been cops responding to a call from the restaurant?”

“What do you want me to say? He should have let them shoot first?”

“He could have stayed inside the restaurant until the police arrived. Any normal person would have done that.”

No one said anything.

The chief continued: “You people are going to ride off to Washington clucking over this mess, and I’m going to go see Newhouse’s wife and tell her she’s a widow.” Carroll put his face inches from Jake’s. “We don’t want your goddamn war. That ain’t fair, I know. Life rarely is. Oh, I know, everyone waves the fucking flag and wants the terrorists smacked — but they want them smacked somewhere else. And from now on it better happen somewhere else. Keep Carmellini and your other goddamn holy warrior killers the fuck out of my city! Got it?” He spun and pointed his finger at the FBI agents. “That goes for you assholes, too.”

Jake walked out of the room.

On the way to the basement Harry Estep said, “Boy, the chief was really pissed.”

“I know just how he feels,” Jake muttered. And he did. The greed and stupidity of everyday criminals he understood — those qualities were inherent in the human condition. The irrational, illogical hatred that drove the terrorists was a ray of evil leaking from a crack in hell. It was frightening — and horrifying.

Anna Modin rode silently in the center of the backseat of the crowded car. Traffic on the wide superhighway was light in this hour before dawn. Tommy Carmellini told Grafton and the two FBI officers about the evening in detail, answered their questions. Harry Estep chattered away on his cell phone, call after call after call.

Carmellini was seated beside her, against the door. She could feel the warmth of his body, the solidity of his upper arm against her shoulder.

The car was dark, so she found his hand and squeezed it. They sat with their hands together, holding them between their thighs so no one would notice.

“Are you certain they weren’t after you, Tommy?” Jake Grafton asked, half-turning in the front seat so he could look at Carmellini.

“Not certain, no. Pretty sure though.”

Estep stuck his oar in. His superiors wanted Carmellini and Modin to spend the next few days at the FBI barracks in Quantico. Grafton said it was okay and Carmellini agreed, after a glance and nod from Anna Modin.

“I want a pistol,” Carmellini announced.

“Harry?” That was Jake Grafton.

“We can do that, I guess.”

“Something like an old Browning Hi-Power, nine millimeter. Not one of those plastic jobs. And a shoulder holster.”

“We’ll do our best.”

“Like when?”

“I’ll make some calls.”

Dawn was well along by the time they had signed for their rooms at the FBI’s Quantico facility. As the clerk led them to their rooms, which were side by side, Modin held tightly to Carmellini’s hand.

Tommy thanked the man, who left after unlocking Anna’s room and handing them the keys. She pulled him into the room behind her.

After the door closed, Carmellini swept her into his arms and held her. “Hell of a first date,” he said.

Clutching his chest, she could hear his heart beating slowly, lazily, thudding along like an old, slow clock.

“Why were those men trying to kill you last night?” Tommy Carmellini asked Anna Modin. They had awakened in the same bed around noon, made love again, then he made two cups of instant coffee from a jar of the stuff he found in the kitchenette cupboard. Now she was seated in bed with the sheet pulled around her, sipping the hot drink, while he sat in the only chair in the bedroom with a towel around his waist.

Carmellini normally refused instant coffee, but at noon after the night he had had, he decided it wasn’t bad.

“Revenge, I suppose,” she said. “There was another woman, Nooreem Habib, who loaded the computer files of Walney’s Bank onto disks for Janos Ilin. I was her courier.” She went on, telling him about the bank that financed terrorists, about Janos Ilin … everything. She told all of it. “Ilin wanted Jake Grafton to have the CDs, so I brought them to him.”

Then she fell silent, slightly shocked by what she had done. To share information with people without a need to know was truly Russian roulette. People had a nasty habit of chatting, telling other people interesting tidbits, for a whole grab bag of reasons, not the least of which was to sell you out for their own advantage. Every Russian child learned that hard fact in grammar school. She knew all that and spilled it anyway.

Carmellini drank half his coffee and decided he didn’t want the rest. He put the cup on the nightstand.

“Those guys last night weren’t very good assassins,” he observed.

“Almost good enough,” she observed.

He shrugged. “Maybe they’re in Paradise in the arms of the virgins right this very minute, enjoying the start of an eternity of sexual delight. Isn’t that what they’re promised?”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Talk about sexually repressed! Playboy should give the holy warriors free copies, tell them a little of that is available right here on Earth while you are alive to enjoy it, and you don’t have to be a martyr to get it. But those guys last night were all bound up. I did them a favor sending them on their way. On the other hand, I hope Norv and Arch are shoveling coal in the hottest corner of hell.”

“Those were the men who tried to kill you in the airplane?”

“Yeah. Hell of a world, ain’t it?”

“Who are you, Tommy Carmellini?”

He shrugged. “I’m a thief. Joined the CIA to avoid prosecution for burglary. Another guy and I stole some diamonds. He got caught with the ice and finked on me. Now the agency has me working for Jake Grafton.”

He rarely told anyone the truth about himself. Certainly no women. But Anna Modin was special, he sensed. Only the truth would do with her.

She prompted him with personal questions, so he ended up telling her the story of his life. It was nothing special — he was just a kid who wasn’t like all the others, and had been smart or lucky enough not to get caught … most of the time, anyway.

When he ran down they sat in silence, listening to the muffled street sounds coming through the closed window.

“Are you ready to go find something to eat?” he asked.

“Later,” she said, pulled the sheet aside, and held out her arms.

Afterward, lying with her head on his shoulder and her hair brushing his cheek, he asked, “Where do you go from here?”

“I don’t know. Until those men in Cairo are dead …” She left it hanging.

“When will you know it is safe?”

“Janos Ilin will tell me.”

“The FBI is going to change your name and hide you. You’ll wind up answering the telephone for some dentist in Peoria or flying a cash register at a supermarket.”

“Ilin will find me,” she said simply. “When he needs me.”

“For what?”

“For something that needs to be done.”