Art bashed against the low island of cabinets that set the kitchenette off from the front room, his eyes searching back over his path, one hand bringing the sweatshirt up as the other reached for his Smith. Simon was crawling toward the bedroom.
And on the floor two yards away a woman with black hair was coming up from all fours to her knees, a boxy black gun in one hand.
Shit!
Art rolled right as she fired, bullets coming not in singles or in double taps, but in steady burps that peppered the cabinets and followed the wall behind Art across the front room. He gave Simon a shove, sending him sliding across the floor into the bedroom, and fired back twice, blindly.
One round impacted the edge of the door just left of Keiko’s head, sending a spray of wood splinters over her. She rolled backward and fired a last burst at the couch, through the couch, as she tumbled into the hallway and scrambled to her feet.
The sound of feet beating a retreat brought Art up slowly from where he lay atop Simon. The last volley of fire had shredded the couch and had punched a half dozen holes in the wall between the front room and the bedroom.
“Simon? Are you all right?”
Simon came to a curled sort of sit, something Art had not seen before, an almost fetal position.
“Are you all right?”
“She was a stranger,” Simon said.
Art stood and checked the front room, and, thinking as fast as he’d ever had to, grabbed the items Pooks had gotten for him and lifted Simon to his feet. “We’ve got to go, Simon.”
“To the basement. The loud noise, and Mommy and Daddy aren’t…” The recital ended in several short breaths.
“Dammit,” Art swore, and took Simon’s hand in a firm grip and led him out of the apartment, checking the hall in both directions, and then to the back stairwell.
As they exited into the alley, sirens were approaching from all directions.
Chapter Twenty
Price of Admission
Kimura…
Nothing made any sense now, Lomax thought.
The week sucked, the day sucked, everything sucked. That was Bob Lomax’s estimation of life at the moment as he gazed uselessly out his window to the traffic below. And the real bitch of the matter was he saw no way to make it any better, no way to understand it even.
Sure, he could peck away at the incriminating cloud that surrounded his number two, he could seek answers from the low life scum he endeavored to put away. And he could swear at Breem under his breath every chance he got.
But for what? Art was still out there, running, and Lomax hadn’t the foggiest idea what was really going on.
And then the newest hole to filclass="underline" Kimura.
“Damn,” the SAC said, tapping the cool glass with the edge of his fist, leaving fat, muddled smudges on the window.
“Sir?”
Lomax turned, surprised to see Van Horn wheeling in.
“I knocked, but there was no answer.”
“Come on in,” Lomax said. He rolled his shoulders once and assumed the position behind his desk. After several years piloting the damn thing he still hadn’t gotten used to the feel. “What’s on your mind?”
Van Horn steadied himself with a breath. “Sir, Art Jefferson came to my house on Saturday night.”
After a moment’s absorption of the admission, Lomax sniffed a brief laugh. Son of a bitch, Art. “And why was that?”
He’d expected maybe a dressing down first, at least, or maybe a question as to where the fugitive was now. Not a Why? “He wanted something.”
“Money, what?”
“A trace of a phone number,” Van Horn answered.
Lomax looked off and shook his head. “He’s still investigating. That’s a strange thing for a guilty man to be doing.”
“You don’t think he did it…” Van Horn quizzed the SAC.
“Hell, no, Nels. I just wish I knew what—” A number? What number? “What number?”
“That’s what I was coming in here to tell you. I promised Art I wouldn’t, but after that shootout, well, sir, I’m worried.”
Shootout. It wasn’t much of that, Lomax knew. Only two slugs matched Art’s duty weapon. The remaining thirty came from someone else, someone shooting at Art, and at Simon Lynch.
And then there were the fingerprints, matched to Art, Simon, Pooks Underhill, an unknown, and, low and behold, Keiko Kimura.
What in God’s name is she doing gunning for my number two?
“I’m worried, too, Nels.”
“Anyway, he came to me and gave me this number to trace.” Van Horn passed the slip to the SAC. “It’s an eight hundred number, only it doesn’t exist.”
“Excuse me?”
“No listing, sir. I ran it up and down.”
“So, it was a mistake,” Lomax observed.
“I don’t think so,” Van Horn said.
“Why is that?”
“Because he got that number out of a page of KIWI ciphertext. From a magazine.”
From a what? Pieces began to fly in Lomax’s head. Kimura. Vince Chappell. Betrayal by MAYFLY. And now KIWI. “Nels, from the top, tell me everything you know. Everything.”
Rothchild was at lunch, away from his office, when Kudrow stopped by and let himself in. The monitors glowed weak, and the darkness they could not defeat surrounded him like a shroud. At this moment he found comfort in the din.
He had come for that and to be reminded of his position.
Kudrow eased into Rothchild’s chair and felt the warmth it retained. He scanned the numerous controls associated with the systems, finding with little trouble the series of switches that Rothchild had once explained to him. The left switch first, and a picture window appeared on the large monitor before him, then the switch next to it, and an image flooded the window.
I can do this, Kudrow told himself. Things could go wrong and still he could do this, could, with the flip of a switch, watch the President of the United States sit at his desk in the oval office and go about his business as if nobody was the wiser. If you pick your nose, I have it on tape. If you call the Russian President, I have it. If you speak unkindly of a friend, I have it.
Art Jefferson might still elude him. Simon Lynch might still be out of his grasp. But not this.
I have this. And I will have them.
“So you decoded these two pages of KIWI for him,” Lomax said. “You don’t remember what they said?”
Van Horn shook his head. “Just the number when Art gave it to me Saturday. That stuck in my mind. And…”
“And what?” Lomax pressed. It was no time for reticence.
“Well, I remembered something from the Academy. A lecture I attended about a year ago, just before I took over Com. The guy giving this one talk went heavy on the anecdotes, and he was telling us how some of the people who develop codes put pieces of them in puzzles, and then put those puzzles in magazines, or textbooks even, with messages in them. It’s a test to see if anyone might see something they missed. He said that kind of thing has been going on since the sixties.”
“And…”
“Well, I remembered one thing from the pages of KIWI Art showed me. One was a photocopy, and down at the bottom was a page number, and, it looked like to me, the name of a magazine. Something called The Tinkery.”
“And being the diligent agent that you are, you checked that out,” Lomax theorized.
“This morning. When I heard about the shootout I decided to do some checking. In case Art needed help.”
“Of course he needs help. So?”