They came to the end of the tunnel. The steel door there was locked. Leon unlocked it, and handed Eric the key. “It fits both ends of the tunnel. Both doors are kept locked, and there’s no other way out of the tunnel.”
The basement was dark, and Leon switched on a light. Empty shelves floor to ceiling, and an oil furnace. They went up wooden stairs to the main floor. Beamed ceilings, Santa Fe style, but smaller than Leon’s house, two bedrooms, front and dining rooms, nicely but not richly furnished. A notebook computer sat on a bar counter in the kitchen. Fish swam lazily on the screen. Shelves were stocked with food, and the refrigerator was full. Two garage door openers were on the dining room table. One was for the gate. “Motion sensors all around the property,” said Leon, “and any alarm will be relayed to me.” He pulled open a drawer in the dining room hutch. A Beretta 92F automatic was there, loaded and locked, hammer forward, safety off. “Something familiar, right out of school. Just for emergencies, of course, but you might consider carrying it.”
“Lots of precautions for a data analyst,” said Eric. “I assume the reasons will be made known to me soon.”
“Tomorrow, when you’re settled. We start at eight, at the office. You know where it is?”
“I passed it on the way.”
“I’ll have the entire file there on what I know so far. Here are the house keys, front and back door, garage door to the house.”
They went back to the basement, leaving the upstairs lights on. The walk back seemed shorter. Eric picked up his briefcase again and Leon led him to the front door, stopping there before opening it. He looked up at Eric, and was suddenly coldly serious.
“In the coming weeks or months, however long it takes, I will try to be as honest with you as I can, and I will expect the same from you. This is not to say we must share information about our individual backgrounds, training or agencies. We each have our own agendas, I’m sure, but we must share where they overlap or this operation can turn out badly and even have tragic consequences. You’ll have to decide what you can tell me, and I will do likewise, but please believe me when I say we’ve been assigned to work together to save a project of high value to our country, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Leon smiled, and extended a hand. “Beginning tomorrow morning.”
Eric nodded, and shook his hand. “Fair enough. Your grip has improved in the past hour. See you at the office.”
Leon let him out, and waited at the door until the big BMW had cleared the gate, and then he went inside the house and placed a phone call to Colonel Alexander Davis to tell him what he’d learned about the new man.
Eric made the short drive to his house, and put the car in the garage. It was near midnight when he finished unpacking. He left the Beretta in the hutch, but kept his own forty-five-Colt-Modified in its holster, and put it loaded and locked, hammer on half cock, in the nightstand by his bed. The Walther PPK went under his pillow. He sent an e-mail to a sister he didn’t have, saying he’d arrived home safely and that Uncle Leo was doing fine, then fixed himself half a pastrami on rye from the refrigerator and washed it down with water. It took him over an hour to get to sleep, his senses alert to every sound, every creak and groan of an unfamiliar house settling in for the night. Twice he thought he heard footsteps in the dark hallway outside his closed bedroom door. The yard lights flashed on several times, alert to any motion: mouse, snake, perhaps a javalina on the prowl. Exhaustion overwhelmed all of it, and after an hour he slept without remembered dreams, awakening refreshed to begin his new assignments.
A few hundred yards up the road, Leon Newell’s night passed as well, but not without disturbance.
Davis listened politely, but reserved judgment until he’d met with Price. He was inclined to agree with Leon that the man was a CIA field operative, and not just an analyst. They spoke for only a few minutes, since it was getting late.
Leon went through his nightly bathing and manicuring ritual and sipped a glass of warmed brandy before crawling into bed around two in the morning. He set the alarm for seven, and lay awake for several minutes thinking about Eric Price, his words, expressions, stillness of his posture, and the focus of his eyes. It was vaguely like being in the presence of a predatory cat, he thought, not a man of science and mathematics. The real man was not well hidden, not from the view of a professional, and Leon Newell was a professional. He could swish with the best salon dandies, offer the limp hand to ladies and talk to them like a sister, but he’d killed seven times in the service of his country and also to meet his own agendas. And in just an hour, Price had been able to get a glimpse of what lay beneath the surface of the man he was supposed to trust. That made him insightful, and potentially dangerous, a condition that could be tolerated only to a certain point before Leon might be called upon to neutralize him.
The warm brandy took effect, and Leon gradually drifted off into a light sleep, a quiet place between wakefulness and dreams. Leon rarely slept deeply. It was a result of his training, and years spent in situations where a moment of careless preoccupation could result in death. He rested quietly, was not oblivious to sounds inside and outside the house, or the beating of his own heart. He was not oblivious to the texture of his silken sheets, or the lingering scents of lavender and fried meat in the air.
Hovering above the abyss of dreams, Leon first noticed a sweet odor, something familiar, like myrrh. His head began to swirl gently, a peaceful descent to a place dark yet safe, the place where his true self, his higher self, dwelt in contemplative solitude. He met himself there, his naked body glistening gold, sitting in lotus position, hands out from his sides, palms upwards. He opened his eyes, and they were black, and he smiled to himself.
“Welcome,” he said to himself. “I believe you have a truth to tell me. You may do it here safely, for only the one of us is here.”
“And what is that truth?” asked Leon.
“There is a new person in your life, and you have deep reservations about your association with him. You must bring these feelings forward and look at them with a quiet mind. They may be real, or an illusion.”
The black eyes blinked once. Leon felt peace.
“I have judged by instinct based on past experience. The man is more than what he says. He is a killer. He can be dangerous to the movement if he discovers what it really is.”
“Then you must watch him closely, and share with us what you learn, and I will guide you along the proper course. I will speak to the angels, and they to me, and the higher self of the one whom you speak of will also be consulted. Together we will choose the correct path. Together, we are in harmony with The All.”
Leon felt a kind of euphoria, an uplifting, and the golden man faded from view. The sweet scent returned, and he felt a cool breeze on his face, arms and chest that brought him near a waking state. He opened his eyes. The room was in deep gloom, but the silhouettes of tall figures surrounded his bed. One leaned over close enough for Leon to see a glow of reflected light in two large eyes, and the man’s voice was barely a whisper.
“Sleep now, friend, and return to the golden one, for it’s he who will guide you. We will be watching.”
A faint hiss, a burst of sweet odor, and Leon drifted away, thinking, these people are friends, and they have come to me before. They ask questions, and I must answer them, but always it’s things I’ve talked about with Colonel Davis. Why don’t they just ask him?