Giving in to the freedom of a fresh divorce, the successful navigation of a midlife crisis and a secret yen to be James Bond after seeing Goldfinger as a young boy at the Neuadd Dwyfor cinema in his hometown of Holyhead, Wales, the professor whom Holliday was replacing for a year had purchased a silver Aston Martin DB9 for his fiftieth birthday. He'd given Holliday free reign to drive the car while he was away, as long as he took it in for monthly tune-ups, paid for its maintenance and took out his own insurance.
The magnificent twelve-cylinder brute of a car drank gasoline like a man dying of thirst in the desert, but it was worth every drop; Holliday had never had such fun driving a vehicle in his entire life. Both Brennan and Peggy wanted to go along with him to the dead drop in Rock Creek Park, but the car was only a two-seater.
Peggy cited her superior driving skills while Brennan simply stated that it was a man's job and "no task for a slip of a girl, begging your pardon." In the end Peggy won out after Brennan admitted that it would be extremely difficult for him to last that long without a cigarette, and the one thing stressed by the Aston Martin's owner was a no-smoking rule.
Before they set out for the park Brennan told Holliday to wait for a moment and went upstairs to the guest room. He returned with a flat-black, short-barreled Beretta Storm semiautomatic, small enough to fit in a jacket pocket, and an extra clip. The bullets were.40-caliber hollow points, fifteen to a clip. A police load.
"How on earth did you get that through customs?" Holliday said, astounded that the priest had brought a pistol with him in his luggage.
Brennan gave a very Italian shrug. "I travel on a Vatican diplomatic passport." He smiled sourly. "Anyway, people suspect all priests are pedophiles, not gunrunners."
"You really think we're going to need that?" Peggy asked.
"Weapons are like the Garda," said Brennan, referring to the Irish police force. "When you really need them, they're never there."
Holliday took the pistol, gave it a quick once-over to familiarize himself with it, then tucked it away.
It was only four in the afternoon when they left Prospect Street for Rock Creek, but it was already almost dark. In an hour or so the park police would be out in force, looking for kids tearing at each other's clothing in the backseats of their parents' cars.
Peggy drove and Holliday rode shotgun, giving her directions. If there was any trouble, Holliday had given her explicit orders to get the hell away as quickly as she could; if it came down to a chase, there wasn't a cop car outside of Germany that could catch an Aston Martin.
It was still snowing as Peggy drove the powerful sports car north toward Ridge Road and their destination, the wipers keeping up a steady metronome beat as night fell and the snow turned to slush under their wheels. It was getting warmer and the snowflakes were getting big and soft. If they had another cold snap the streets would be skating rinks and there'd be hell to pay on the morning commute.
"What good is a dead drop or whatever you call it? Just seems like a lot of trouble to me," said Peggy.
"Dead drops are used so the parties involved don't have to meet, but in this case I think it's only window dressing to make Potsy's story a little more credible. There's probably nothing to worry about; they want us to have this material."
"So, how do we do this?" Peggy asked. "I'm not up on my spy-craft techniques."
"Tradecraft," corrected Holliday. "We just do exactly what Potsy said. Coming in from the north puts the passenger's side closest to the abutment and the pipes that make up the bridge. I get out, with the car blocking the view from the other side of the road. I retrieve the files, get back in the car and off we go."
Holliday guided Peggy north up Nebraska Avenue to Military Road, then east into the park. The pines and cedars were postcard perfect with their heavy mantles of snow, and as night came a peculiar, muffled quiet settled on the park as though the land was holding its breath just before shimmering out of the present day like some illusion, reverting to the empty, lonely place it had been ten thousand years ago.
Peggy turned the powerful car due south down Ridge Road. The snow was pristine, almost phosphorescent in the utter darkness, a gleaming white pathway between the dense stands of trees. No one had traveled here in quite a while; not surprising since the average Washingtonian had little experience driving in snow.
"Spooky," said Peggy.
"Nervous?" Holliday asked. "I can take the wheel if you want."
"I'm fine," said Peggy defensively.
"Just go slow and easy," suggested Holliday. "Put it into the lowest gear you can."
Peggy blew Holliday an expressive raspberry. "Sure, Granddad. Then you can tell me how you used to walk five miles to school." She dropped the shift lever into the lowest of the six gears and headed even deeper into the park.
The snow was developing a light crust and the big tires crunched over it, making the silence even more profound. For most of the way the road followed the course of an ancient streambed. The trees here were mostly birch and hickory, their leafless branches stark and skeletal as the Aston Martin's halogen headlights swept across the forest with each turn in the twisting road. Holliday watched the odometer. At half a mile, just as Philpot had said, they rounded a corner and the headlights found the three-pipe bridge. The ground sloped away on both sides and the trees were thinly spread. The crunching sound under the tires was louder now; the temperature was rising. If it fell again before morning the roads here would be a skating rink.
"There it is," said Holliday.
"I see it, Doc," said Peggy.
She slowed the sports car to a crawl and eased over the culvert bridge to the far abutment. There was a graffiti tag that looked as though it said Bad Idea. Below it was a single spray of red. Peggy stopped.
"Kill the lights," said Holliday. Peggy did so, the only remaining light coming from the faint blue glow of the instrument panel. Holliday eased open the door and kept low as he approached the abutment and the capped ends of the pipes. The middle one unscrewed easily. He'd been expecting a rolled-up bundle of paper, perhaps in a plastic sleeve. What he got was an ordinary mailing-room address tag attached to a USB flash drive.
He grabbed the tag, pulled out the miniature hard drive, then recapped the pipe. The way the snow was falling his footprints and even the Aston Martin's tire tracks would disappear in the next few minutes. He slipped back into the car.
"Mission accomplished," Holliday said.
"Famous last words," warned Peggy.
The other vehicle came over the hill in a rush, blinding headlights blazing. Even from the inside of the Aston Martin, both Peggy and Holliday could hear the heavy clatter of tire chains.
Peggy flipped on the Aston's headlights, briefly illuminating the monster bearing down on them. "Oh, crap," she said. It was a behemoth of an F150 truck with a gleaming, lethal-looking snowplow attached to the front, half raised. If it hit them head-on, the huge pickup truck would either ride up the Aston Martin and crush them or the snowplow blade would slice through the windshield and the roof. Either way they'd be dead.
Peggy shifted the car into reverse and dropped her foot down on the gas in a long, smooth motion. The Aston Martin raced backward as the F150 came at them, gaining with each second. Peggy suddenly twitched the wheel to the right and simultaneously dragged up on the emergency brake to the left of the driver's seat.
The big car went into a sliding, perfectly executed bootlegger's turn and stopped. Peggy released the hand brake with one hand and pushed the shift lever into second gear. They were now facing back the way they'd come. She hit the gas again and the car gathered speed until they seemed to be skating over the snow, the rear end of the car fishtailing as they went around every turn. The only things that kept it from plunging off the road and into the woods were its weight and its low center of gravity. Throughout the whole operation neither Peggy nor Holliday said a word, Peggy completely focused on her driving and Holliday doing some quick computations in his head.