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?