Maybe Grafton just wanted me to bug someone’s embassy. As soon as possible, as if there were any other time schedule in the spook business. Knowing what the other guys were actually saying to each other, their real negotiating strategy, their real assessment of the international situation, was the gold standard of intelligence. I kinda hoped that was all there was to it, but doubted it. I knew Jake Grafton too well.
On the way upstairs after coffee and blueberry pie, I swiped a manila envelope from Mom’s tiny office and carefully deposited the filched knife and fork in it, taking care not to smear any fingerprints on the handles. I wondered if Cuthbert Gordon also waxed off his chest hair.
In Mom’s guest room I used my cell phone to make an airline reservation to get myself, complete with body hair, back to Washington, Sin City USA. Washington wasn’t hell, but you could see the smoke from there. And smell it. The good news was that when politicians died, they didn’t have far to go.
After I broke the connection I looked at that cell phone with distaste. I may be the only person in America under seventy who loathes the damn things. I left it in my stuff here at Mom’s when I went climbing, but now I was back tethered to the thing. Aaugh!
CHAPTER SIX
All warfare is based on deception.… Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.
Accidental deaths are difficult to arrange. That is why murderers and hired assassins usually kill their victims the tried-and-true traditional ways, with gun, knife, bomb, garrote, poison or blunt instrument. Amateurs rarely use accidents because they miss out on the satisfaction that comes from using violence on an enemy. Professional assassins don’t have enemies; they have targets. So when an assassin has time to set it up and wants to keep police guessing for a while, accidental death is the logical choice.
Fish was a professional. Had been since he got out of reform school at the age of eighteen and an up-and-coming mobster paid him to whack his boss. Fish did the job cleanly and fatally, leaving the police with no clues. The mobster was appropriately grateful and began steering business his way. Five years later, Fish was paid to whack his benefactor, and did so. He had no sense of loyalty, none of the so-called higher emotions. He was a sociopath without a shred of conscience. Smart, too. He read up on police methods, knew most of the latest scientific discoveries used in forensics and was a methodical craftsman. He also enjoyed his work in the same way a fine mechanic enjoys repairing a well-made machine. He knew how to do it and he did it well. That was enough.
His nickname, Fish, came to him early in life. His childhood acquaintances labeled him a “cold fish,” later shortened to Fish. He didn’t care one way or another.
Tonight he sat in a stolen car in the parking lot of a large apartment complex near the Potomac in Georgetown. He was waiting. Had been since six that evening. Now, at twelve minutes after ten, his target arrived in a limo followed by a car containing two guards. The target got out of the car, muttered something to the driver, flapped a hand at the guards in the trailing car and went inside the building.
The limo and guard car soon disappeared into traffic.
From where Fish was sitting, he could see the windows of the target’s apartment on the eighth floor. Sure enough, six minutes after the target entered the building, the lights in the apartment came on. Fish rolled down the window of the Lexus, chosen because it would blend in perfectly with the other cars parked nearby, and lit a cigarette. He smoked it down and crushed it out and put the butt in his pocket. Time passed. After an hour, he lit another.
He was patient. He watched other cars arrive and people enter the building. He paid attention to the sights and noises from the street. Listened with the window down and occasionally smoked a Marlboro.
At two minutes before midnight, the lights in the target’s apartment went out. Or almost out. There was a suggestion of a light in one window, perhaps a night-light or an adjustable light that functioned as one.
Thirty minutes, precisely, after the lights went out, Fish reached behind him and took a small box from the backseat. He opened it on his lap. Two remote controllers were there. He selected one that he had previously labeled, turned it on, waited for a green “ready” light, and when he got it moved the control lever forward, then full aft. He looked again at his watch, turned off the power and put the first controller away.
He had allowed ten minutes in planning for the next stage, so he lit another cigarette and sat smoking it as he watched the windows of the target’s apartment, checked traffic and the rare pedestrians, watched two more cars arrive and their drivers and one passenger go inside the building, and he listened. Listened to the night. Listened to life happening up and down the length and breadth of the great city.
When the ten minutes had passed, Fish opened the case and removed the second controller. He turned it on and waited for the green light that indicated it was ready to use. Meanwhile he started the engine of his car.
The green light came on. Fish aimed the controller at the window and moved the joystick full aft, then full forward.
Five seconds later he saw the glow in the apartment window, which quickly grew brighter. Then the apartment exploded. The windows blew out in a gout of fire.
Fish put the controller back in its box, closed the box and laid it on the seat behind him. He snicked the gearshift lever into drive and fed gas. Thirty seconds later he was rolling eastward, paralleling the Potomac, toward the center of town. Two minutes passed before he heard the first siren. He lit another cigarette.
The newspapers carried the story on the front page. Navy Rear Admiral (ret.) Jake Grafton had been appointed by the president as the new acting director of the CIA. I bought copies of three of the papers before boarding my plane in San Francisco and read the stories as the big bird winged its way eastward toward Sodom on the Potomac. According to the White House propaganda minister, the president needed several months to find a suitable candidate to be permanent director, nominate him or her and let the Senate do its advise-and-consent role.
Staring out the window as we flew over the Rockies and out over the Great Plains, I wondered what in the world Jake Grafton needed me for. He certainly wasn’t going to give me a big promotion and a department to run. Maybe he wanted me to bug the Oval Office. Or maybe not. With Jake Grafton, predictions were worthless.
I’d worked with him enough the last few years to know how his mind worked, which might best be described as unconventionally. He didn’t go from A to B to C and thereby arrive at D. He went straight from A to D. He was usually sitting on D while I was trying to figure out where B was. So Grafton was now acting director while I remained a grunt in the spook wars.
My old 1964 Mercedes 280SL coupe was right where I’d left it in the long-term parking lot at Dulles Airport. I threw my bag in, stuck the key in the ignition as I said a little prayer for the battery, then gave the key a twist. The starter ground a while before combustion began. I pumped the accelerator. After a pleasant roar, the old gal settled into a rocking idle with clattering valves. One of these days I am going to be forced to choose between trading cars and becoming a long-distance hiker.
It was nearly six in the evening, but I figured with his new elevation and all, Grafton would still be at the office. I confess, I was kinda curious about the sudden summons from an all-too-rare vacation. I tooled over to Langley, showed my pass to the gate guard and was admitted to the grounds.