“I’m sure there is, Mister Harrington.”
“Hal. Or just Harrington.”
“Okay.”
“I want you to help me. But I don’t want to discuss it on the phone. Not these phones, anyway. It’s personal and confidential. Do you understand my meaning?”
What he meant was that the phones might be tapped. With the FBI investigating an attempted kidnapping there was that possibility.
I said, “If you’re saying you want to meet in person, I don’t understand the point. I don’t see how I can possibly help you.”
“I worded it badly. I want you to help Lindsey.”
“Lindsey? I’m more than willing to help Lindsey in any way I can. But how?”
“You can start by granting me a small favor. Take the island ferry to the mainland. It leaves every half hour. Walk or drive to any pay phone you want and call me. I’ll expect to hear from you by… say, two P.M. Is that clear?”
I’ve met a handful of men in my life who had sufficient presence and confidence that when they issued an order, it was as if they were speaking in the past tense, as if the order had already been carried out. Harrington had that quality. On the other hand, I’ve taken enough orders in my life to know what’s required of me and what isn’t.
“I’ve got friends expecting me to join them for lunch. Sorry, Hal. You tell me a little more. Give a few more details so I know where all this is headed. Now. On this phone or not at all.”
I listened to several seconds of silence before Harrington said, “It’s a small thing to ask, Ford. Believe me, it’s much to your advantage if you do what I ask.”
“Oh?”
“Or do it for Lindsey. I love that little girl more than anything in the world. From some of the things she told you last night, it sounds like you maybe made a difference in her life. I approve of that, Ford. I wholeheartedly approve. Maybe you can continue to make a difference. She wants to change her behavior, I’m sure of it. I think you can help her, and I know I can help you, too. That’s what I need to discuss. How we can help each other. But privately.”
When I still demanded to hear more, his voice acquired an impatient edge as he said, “Let’s try another approach, then. Back when I was working in the White House, one of my tasks was to cross-reference old security files. Really top-secret stuff. The thing that struck me as funny was, in the most electronically advanced nation on earth, I had to dig through a couple of boxes of carbon paper that were found locked away in the hidden safe of a former President’s personal secretary.”
Harrington said the name of the President, then continued, “The secretary died about the time the President left office, and then the President died. In all the moving around, the safe was somehow overlooked. Three years ago, they were remodeling, ripped up the floors, and there it was. One of those floor safes that fits in flush. Because reviewing old documents for security designations was part of my job, the safe was brought to me. Inside were some very interesting documents, Ford. No… that’s an understatement. Explosive documents-that’s a word the media would use if they found out. Which they haven’t. But they could, if I choose to release the information. Care to hear more?”
No, I didn’t want to hear more. But I had to listen. Had Harrington really stumbled onto something? I said, “I don’t see what any of this has to do with me, but it’s interesting. Sure, I’m listening.”
“I thought you would. What I found in the safe were manila folders and envelopes sealed with thumbprinted wax-old-time security measures for stuff that was never, ever supposed to be opened. The President’s secretary, you may remember, was in her nineties when she died. She’d worked in the White House forever, way before World War II, and she still used the old ways to protect herself and her Presidents. In this case, the President she was protecting was the one I mentioned. He wasn’t the only one who needed protecting, though. There were other men involved, all of them highly trained and absolutely anonymous-until I opened those files.”
I felt an empty, rolling nausea in my stomach, and my voice sounded hollow when I said, “That means nothing to me.”
Harrington had become increasingly confident. “Of course it doesn’t. Just interesting reading, that’s all. So make up your mind. You really want me to continue discussing it on this phone line?”
I looked at my watch. Tomlinson and Ransom would be sitting in the Tarpon Inn, waiting. They’d have to eat without me.
I told him, “Give me half an hour. I’ll call you from a pay phone.”
Instead of taking the ferry across to the mainland, I fired up my little yellow Maverick flats boat and flew across Charlotte Harbor at sixty miles per hour, blasting a geysering rooster tail as I trimmed the Yamaha outboard, crossing ankle-deep bars and flats, translating my irritation into speed.
I’d call the man, but from a place he wouldn’t expect. It was way too easy for someone with the right connections to bug or place surveillance on every pay phone within several miles of the ferry landing.
So, instead, I ran across the bay to the little island village of Boca Grande, tied up at Mark Futch’s seaplane dock and walked the quiet tree-bordered streets downtown. I found a pay phone just across the street from the Temptation Restaurant and watched through the window as Annie served beers to a bar full of fishing guides.
I straightened my glasses and dialed the phone. Harrington answered immediately. He seemed much less formal, no longer on guard. “You on the mainland, Ford?”
“It’s what you told me to do, isn’t it?”
He chuckled. “Once again, bullshit. I’d be disappointed if you could be bullied that easily. But you are at a pay phone. That’s my guess. You’re too smart to call from anyplace else.”
“I’m flattered.”
“Not that I don’t believe you, but with all the technology these days, who knows? I’ve got a scrambler here on my office line that converts our voices from analogue to digitized, then back again. But know what I think? If I can have it electronically converted one way, any hotshot with the right computer program can have it electronically changed the other way. Which is why I maintain faith in the basics. Are you at a wall phone or in a booth?”
“It’s bolted onto the side of a building with chrome shielding.”
“Try to peek into the conduit that comes up from the ground. There should be a wire in there. An insulated wire, probably beige-colored.”
I looked and said, “A standard payphone, yes. A cremecolored wire comes up into the back.” I knew why he was asking, but made no comment. The man seemed to know his business.
“Plain old-fashioned telephone wire, something that’s easy to understand and monitor. Let me check my meter.” There was a pause. “Okay, my line’s secure here, and no trace of resistance on yours, no drop in voltage according to this little computer of mine, which means we can say anything we want about anybody we want and it goes no farther. Just between you and me.”
I replied, “Guess I’ll have to take your word for that.”
I was still watching the fishing guides through the window of the Temptation, but I was also maintaining a peripheral eye on the street, too. Watching for slow-moving cars. Watching for men moving on the tops of buildings.
If I’d been set up, I wanted to see it coming before it was too late to react.
There wasn’t much for me to see. It was a nice, balmy winter day with the smell of frangipani drifting above warm asphalt. A few blocks away, beyond the beach at the end of the street, was open ocean. A quiet afternoon. Boca Grande doesn’t get a lot of traffic. It’s way off the regular tourist track. A rich little tropical outpost with the atmosphere of a Vermont village.
Harrington started by saying, “If you’re the man I think you are, you have an impressive record, Doctor Ford. Or should I call you Commander Ford? If they gave out medals to people like you, I suspect there’d be a couple of important ones on your uniform. If they allowed people like you to have uniforms.”