I kept the recording running as Tom brought hands to heart, then transitioned into calisthenics. He bent forward until his palms were flat on the floor, then slowly shifted his weight and lifted his feet off the ground. He took his legs up through a controlled arc until he was standing vertically on his hands. At this point, Tom’s nakedness became particularly distracting, but I still couldn’t look away.
It occurred to me that Tom and Skylar would make quite the couple, given their physical fitness fanaticism. If I hadn’t heard them speaking and known they had separate rooms, I’d be second-guessing their relationship at this point.
Tom launched off his hands into the most impressive gymnastics display I had seen outside an Olympic competition or mixed martial arts cage match. The man didn’t just look healthy, he appeared downright Herculean. I struggled to imagine what it would take to beat him in hand-to-hand combat. What kind of animal I’d have to become to be the one who walked away.
After Tom completed his fortieth inverted pushup, he sprang to his feet and sauntered to the bathroom. I exhaled when I heard the shower engage. Holy smokes! What had Lars stumbled into?
Who was Skylar up against?
Was I crazy for inserting myself?
Tom emerged from the bathroom five minutes later. He threw a towel onto the desk chair, slipped between the sheets and hit the lights. I found myself half-surprised that the man hadn’t lit a dozen candles and slaughtered a small animal.
I withdrew the camera carefully so as not to make the slightest sound, then plugged my side of the hole with a sliver of soap. Satisfied that even without overhearing any phone calls or observing a single laptop screen, the $520 I had dropped at The Williamsburg Inn was money well spent, I headed for my BMW. Hopefully I would soon see a lump in Skylar’s bed and hear her snoring.
28
Emergency Stop
SKYLAR ACKNOWLEDGED the wisdom inherent in a twenty-four hour wait. A cooling-off period made sense with decisions as momentous as abandoning one life for another. But she had already lost the only two meaningful things in her old life. Her ability to compete professionally as a triathlete and, as a distant second, her service as a firefighter. Her enthusiasm for the extraordinary new life on offer didn’t waiver, even for a second.
She slept well, woke excited, and then burned clock by running thirty miles. Her speed was no longer professionally competitive, but it was still a welcome source of pride.
When at last Tom’s Mercedes pulled into the parking lot, she was waiting with a packed bag and a big grin.
“You look like someone who knows what she wants,” he said by way of greeting.
“Purpose, service, and elite company? What’s not to want?”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“So you’re in?” he asked, a knowing look in his eyes.
She wasn’t about to play hard to get. “I’m in! Take me to HQ.”
“Excellent,” Tom said, shifting into drive. “This is my favorite part of the job, pulling back the curtain. Prepare to have your mind blown.”
“Oh, yeah? In what way?”
“I told you we work outside the bounds of congressional oversight.”
“I remember.”
“Well, that requires us to base our operation off the grounds of Camp Peary. But of course, by operating beyond the fence line, we expose ourselves to civilian oversight, so to speak. To minimize the unwelcome intrusions, we hide in plain sight.”
Skylar understood. “Makes sense. Where do you do that?”
“You tell me,” Tom said with a sly wink.
Skylar looked over and saw that he was serious. Given his facial features, he always had a no-nonsense look, but she knew the difference after hours of studying him across tables.
He clarified without prompting. “The office has to be someplace with minimal car and foot traffic, and yet in a location where people can come and go at all hours of the day and night without raising eyebrows. Someplace with natural privacy, where neighbors aren’t likely to get curious about what’s going on or feel inclined to snoop around. Any guesses as to how we accomplish that?”
Skylar quickly formulated a comfortable guess. “A utility company. Like a power station. Plenty of fences around those, and given the service needs, there would be traffic day and night.”
“Nice guess, although most of the cars entering and exiting those are white panel vans.” Tom tapped his steering wheel. “We need civilian vehicles to look at home. And we don’t want to walk around in hard hats.”
“People really pay attention to such things?”
“You’d be amazed. Spend an evening beside a police dispatcher and you’ll get a feel for just how many bored and shallow people inhabit our country. It’s downright depressing. Next guess?”
Skylar drew a blank. “Nothing’s leaping to mind. Where?”
Tom answered by dramatically flipping on the right-turn signal.
Skylar read the road sign. Good Graces Chapel and Mortuary. “You’re kidding me?”
“No. It’s actually a functioning funeral home. Not the kind of place where people are prone to do a lot of mingling, so the business adds cover without increasing exposure.”
“I never would have guessed.”
“Exactly.”
As they drove up the drive, a classic colonial building came into view. Its exterior was illuminated with accent lighting, but there was no glow behind the front windows.
Tom pulled around back and parked near the business entrance. A light over the door was the only sign of life besides half a dozen parked cars.
Skylar couldn’t believe this was actually happening. She was about to step into a secret CIA headquarters building—as a new employee. Would a palm reader open a hidden elevator door? Would she be scanned for weapons? Would the old lady behind the reception desk have a gun in her lap? Skylar was about to find out.
“Are you ready for this?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good. You can leave your bag in the trunk. We’ll only be here an hour or so. Then I’ll drop you at your new apartment.”
My new apartment. That sounded good. Skylar was expecting something more like a fire station bunk room. She slipped her wallet into her pocket and followed Tom with spring in her step.
He opened the door with a gentlemanly gesture. It appeared to have been unlocked but probably reacted to some transmitter on his person the way luxury cars did these days. There was no reception area, much less a lady behind a desk, but the hallway lights were on.
“Looks pretty normal, doesn’t it? Other than the metal detector we just passed.”
Skylar whirled around and saw the device she’d been too excited to notice. It was a two-foot-long gray arch placed about eighteen inches inside the door. She turned back to study the hallway, which was generic. “Remarkably normal.”
“Hidden in plain sight. It lets car keys and cell phones through, but not guns or knives.”
The employee atrium was essentially a wide corridor that gave access to administrative facilities on the left, and public facilities on the right. Tom led her past all that to a set of glass double doors at the end. They pushed through them into a covered walkway with glass walls. It extended about forty feet past flowering gardens until another set of double doors deposited them in an outbuilding. That atrium had double doors on every wall as well, an accommodation for caskets, she realized.
Directly before them was a curtained viewing window. She’d stood before a similar window in a similar building several years back to watch her grandmother’s cremation.