Tanana got slowly to his feet. “What about our stuff? Our wallets?”
“We’ll keep them. Maybe I’ll frame the CIA passes and display them over at the DIA. They’ll be wonderful souvenirs. Now get out.”
Tanana went.
Jake watched from the doorway as Tanana worked on the car. It took a couple minutes. “Rita, get a pencil and write this down. U.S. government plate, XRC-five-four-five.”
He was wondering if he’d hit the blond man too hard when Tanana slammed the hood down. He got behind the wheel, started the engine and backed out onto the street.
“I think you cracked the other guy’s skull,” Toad said as the sedan drove slowly away. Typical Tarkington, Jake reflected. He could almost read his boss’s mind.
Jake closed the door and locked it. “I could sure use a cup of coffee.”
Callie was sitting on the stairs waiting for him when he came through the front door. After he ensured the door was locked behind him, he hung up his coat and took a seat on the step beside her.
“Who were they?”
Jake passed her the wallets. She opened them and looked at the licenses, credit cards, and other items. When she had finished he handed her the CIA passes.
“CIA,” she whispered.
Jake extracted his own wallet from his right hip pocket and took out his driver’s license. He held it out so he could see it. “I got this about a year and a half ago. Look how it’s curved from being in the wallet and how the edges have frayed. Now look at those other licenses.”
Callie did so. “They’re like new,” she said.
“They shouldn’t be. They were issued a couple years ago. And the credit cards. Notice how the black ink on the raised numbers has yet to rub off. I don’t think they’ve ever been used.”
“So?”
“These two clowns were over at Tarkington’s when I got there. I slugged one and we searched the other.”
“They let you do this?”
“That’s an interesting question.” Jake pulled the pistol out and showed it to Callie. “You wave a gun around and everyone does what you tell them, just like in the movies.” And he had had the opportunity to surprise them. A couple of klutzs, or were they?
“What if they had had guns?”
“Then I’d have cheerfully shot the bastards and called the cops.” He stood. “So they didn’t have guns. They were betting I wouldn’t panic.” The more he thought about it, the more sure he was that the whole scene was just an act. But why?
“Let’s go to bed.”
He helped her to her feet.
“I still don’t understand,” she said. “Were they CIA or not?”
“I don’t know,” Jake said slowly. “Through the years several people have accused the CIA of using agents to deliver warnings — of intimidation attempts. Yet in every case where the accusation was made public, it turned out that the CIA had no agents like the people supposedly involved. Now you tell me — were those two guys CIA agents carrying their own ID, CIA agents carrying false ID, or someone else’s hired help using false CIA ID?”
“But the message is clear. Lay off.”
“Precisely. It’s from someone very powerful, someone who cannot be reached. And that is part of the message.”
He had the toothpaste on his brush and the brush in his mouth when it hit him.
He took the brush out of his mouth and stared at it. Then he examined the toothpaste tube. Nothing could be easier than poisoning a tube of toothpaste. Merely unscrew the cap and stick a syringe in, then screw the cap back on.
But they had had no syringe on them. At Tarkington’s house, anyway. For all he knew they could have thrown it in the gutter or put it in the garbage pail out behind the Graftons’ house where it would be hauled away on Tuesday.
A knot developed in his stomach.
He started to put the toothbrush back into his mouth, but he couldn’t.
Damn!
He rinsed out his mouth, then threw the toothbrush and the toothpaste into the wastebasket under the sink.
When he and Callie were in bed with the lights out, she asked, “How do you get yourself into these messes, anyway?”
“You make it sound like I’m a juvenile delinquent.”
“I’m scared.”
“That’s what they intended.”
“They succeeded. I’m frightened.”
“Me too,” he told her.
4
On Monday morning at seven-thirty Toad Tarkington opened the door to the DIA computer facility and signed the log. “Richard Harper, please,” he said to the receptionist when she came over to examine his pass. She had a cup of coffee in her hand and was polishing off the last of a doughnut.
“I’m sorry, but he doesn’t work here anymore.”
“Say again.”
She shrugged. “He doesn’t work here now. He’s gone.”
“Did he quit or what?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t come in last Wednesday. Or maybe Wednesday was his last day. Anyway, I heard someone say he transferred to another government agency. Can someone else help you?”
Toad Tarkington leaned his elbows on the counter and gave her a shy grin. “He was in one of our baseball pools and won a hundred bucks.”
“Maybe he’ll call you.”
“He doesn’t know he won. We don’t roll for the numbers on the grid until Friday.”
She smiled and shrugged. “I’m sorry. Maybe if you call personnel…”
“I’ll try that,” Toad said. “In the meantime, I need a little work done. I need someone to check the CIA data base.”
“Mabel can help you. Right over there.” She pointed.
Mabel’s terminal was in a corner. Toad removed a sheet of paper from a manila envelope stamped top secret and laid it in front of her. On it were two names: Paul R. Tanana and Rodney D. Hicks. “Please see if these two are on the CIA data base,” Toad asked.
Mabel apparently knew her way around a computer. Thirty seconds later she spoke. “No.”
“Nothing?” Toad asked.
“Nada.”
“Not employees?”
“Nope.”
“How about the FBI data base? Can you access it?”
“It’ll take a bit,” she murmured as she whacked keys. Toad watched the words and letters on the screen come and go, come and go. Last week when Harper played with the computer Toad had other things on his mind. Today he was interested.
All this high-tech…before it came along you would have just looked in the telephone directory.
The telephone book!
Toad spotted a directory under the desk and reached for it. He should have done this yesterday.
“I don’t have any Roger Hicks,” Mabel told him. “I have a Robert Hicks and a Rose Hicks and two R. Hicks.”
Toad flipped pages. “Could you print out what you have on the R. Hicks entries?”
“Sure. And you don’t have to look in the phone book. We have access to the phone company’s files. If they have an account with the phone company, we’ll see it. Maybe if you could tell me what you’re looking for?”
“Whatever I can get,” Tarkington said. He put the phone book back on the bottom shelf of the desk. “Check Tanana, then the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles. And how about the Visa and MasterCard lists. I’ll take anything.”
But he already knew what the answers were going to be. When Mabel gave him the printouts there it was in black-and-white. Each man had both Visa and MasterCard credit cards, but they had never made any charges on the cards. These accounts were less than a month old. The driver’s licenses were real, but the addresses weren’t. Burke, Virginia, had no such street as Wood Duck Drive, where Tanana’s license said he lived. Hicks’ address was equally bogus. The telephone company had never heard of either man.