The Casey Collins Trilogy

4

4“You guys belong at Buzzard Point,” I said. “So apt, given the way you do your jobs. Feeding on dead flesh.”

Mike didn’t raise an eyebrow. “Right. We go wherever we smell something rotten. Brought us straight to you.”

“It was you, wasn’t it? You blocked the upgrade of my clearance. You decided I couldn’t be trusted.”

His laugh was short. “Don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out you’ve had a major conflict of interest all down the line.”

“You’re wrong,” I said, reaching for the doorknob.

He jerked his head toward the adjoining case room. “See you in there. You can tell me all about it.”

I pulled the door shut with a defiant click. Nobody tried to speak to me as I left the building. Probably afraid of getting punched in the nose. My fury had to be obvious, from the tight line of my lips to the rough scrape of my boots against the carpet. Once outside, I strode over dirty gray concrete for ten indistinguishable blocks, until my legs ached and I was winded. Still mad, but no longer steaming. Cooled off enough to realize I was feeling more than anger.

Surprise. Definitely. Kathryn Collins, an exemplary career Foreign Service Officer, is implicated in a terrorist bombing? A charge so ludicrous I’d have laughed if Buchanan’s misjudgment of me hadn’t cut such a deep wound. It felt like betrayal.

I took a back booth in a hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop and hunched over a mug of evil-smelling coffee. I was the only customer, the cramped space silent except for a droning television set.

I thought back to June when I’d last worked a case with Buchanan. I’d gotten no hint then he viewed my romance with Stefan Krajewski as a security issue. Something must have happened during the last six months to trigger FBI interest in me.

Stefan’s SB past and his current work for “that damn Father-Major” were two matters bothering Buchanan. Those concerns plus his mysterious “new slant on doings in that part of the world” had prompted him to block my promotion to the task force. Somehow, the FBI had obtained authority to snoop electronically in my phone and credit card records. That explained how they knew my Christmas plans and unearthed the details of my travel so quickly.

I picked up the coffee cup, set it down again without drinking.

So far, Buchanan wanted only to question me about the bombing. But I couldn’t talk to him. What I knew about Global Flight 500, I knew from Holger Sorensen. If I submitted to Buchanan’s inquisition, I might jeopardize Holger’s investigation. And I had less confidence in the FBI than I did in Holger.

A chill started at the base of my neck, slithered down my spine. You talk to us. Or you go to jail. The first time he’d said “arrest,” I’d scoffed. All I’d done was make some inquiries, fly to Denmark, and visit an FBI agent. Nothing in that merited incarceration.

But I hadn’t thought it through. Someone had granted a search warrant for my condo. For reasons I couldn’t fathom, a federal judge was letting the FBI treat me as a potential criminal. I couldn’t explain Buchanan’s interest in me but I had to take it seriously. I’d seen the Bureau mistakenly pursue an innocent security guard after the 1996 Atlanta bombing. I shivered. I had to admit it. I was frightened.

I’d made a big mistake returning to the US. I had to go back to Europe. Tonight, before the FBI served me with its subpoena. A rash action, fleeing the country when I had no grasp on Buchanan’s case against me. Yet if I remained here, I risked spending the next month of my life struggling to stay out of prison.

I shoved the cup to the other side of the table.

No way. I wasn’t going to waste more time. I had a job to do. I tracked down terrorists. And the terrorist who’d engineered Stefan’s death was the one I wanted. I had to get to Holger. Once I explained the problem, he’d help me soothe the Feds. I felt a twinge of doubt. I ignored it. Holger had been wrong to send me away. This time I’d listen to my heart.

So how was I going to get out of the USA without showing my passport to an airline ticket agent?

I recovered my coffee and took a sip. Cold. I craned my neck, looking for the counterman. The TV screen caught my eye, hooking me with the standard shot of the State Department’s C Street lobby. In front of the row of foreign flags was a face I recognized. I rose in my seat to get a better view. I saw the diminutive figure of Lura Dumont, reporting for United Network News. Lura. She could get me out of the country.

Lura and I came from the same rural area of Oregon. Our elementary school’s tendency to arrange students in alphabetical order had guaranteed that Collins and Dumont would be seatmates. We decided on our own to be “best friends.” As girls, we raced our bikes down country lanes, pretending we were riding ponies bareback. Progressed from there to games with Ken and Barbie that got kinkier as we matured. I still remembered the day Lura got her first period. I’d walked a half step behind her all the way home to hide the stain on the back of her skirt.

At age fourteen, I suddenly shot up to my adult height, a skinny blonde destined to play center on the girls’ basketball team. Except that year my mother’s mental health problem worsened and she clamped down on my life like a vise. If I wasn’t in the house by three-thirty in the afternoon, she got hysterical. “I only want you to be safe,” she’d sob. “I only want to take care of you.” I struggled, but I had to give in. By then she feared strangers indoors, too. Trembling, unable to speak, that panicky look in her eyes—I couldn’t bear to see her like that. I stopped inviting other kids over.

Except for Lura. My mother was used to her. Lura was head cheerleader, wildly busy with school activities, no shortage of people wanting to be her friend. But still she came to my house every afternoon from five to six o’clock and we did our homework together. Looking back, I sometimes wonder if I would have survived those four years without Lura.

My tutoring improved her grades from a C-plus average to an A-minus. One reason, certainly, that she kept busting in on my miserable loneliness. She’d always had an unchildlike understanding of the increased payoff from long-term investments. Hard to sort one motive from another when it came to Lura. When I was eighteen, my father helped me escape to college. I lost touch with Lura.

I ran into her one week into my first assignment in the Foreign Service. I was trying to make sense of what was happening around me in San Salvador. Lura was there ostensibly to do “local color” for National Public Radio. Her real assignment was an exposé on civilian massacres by US-trained Salvadoran troops. She was a struggling media wannabe. I had the access that goes with diplomatic status. And I stayed on in-country after death threats forced her out. It was inevitable that she’d use me. I’d been lucky to lose only my dog.

I forgave her in less than a year. Her trenchant reporting helped put Salvador’s bloodstained Atlacatl Battalion out of business. She spoke for terror’s victims and I was glad I’d given her the words. Lura liked to claim that she’d shown me my mission in life. But I heard the irony in her voice. She knew she’d risked my life—not hers—to get her story. I’d forgiven her for that. But I liked her less and I didn’t confide in her anymore.

Her San Sal work won her the job with UNN. She’d been based in their Washington office for the past year. My girlhood chum worked for a network with its own fleet of planes.

I reached for my cell phone. Stopped. I didn’t want this call monitored. I spotted a pay phone on the wall beside the coffee-shop door. My fingers touched a quarter in my jacket pocket. At last, a good omen.

The UNN receptionist told me that Miss Dumont was in conference.

Damn. I didn’t have time for telephone tag. “Tell her Casey’s trying to reach her,” I said. “It’s urgent. I’ll call back in twenty minutes.”

I paid for my coffee with a five-dollar bill and asked for my change in coins. I headed up the street on foot. It was clear in Washington, the sky a washed-out blue. Office workers on errands pushed by; early-morning shoppers moved briskly around me. I stopped now and then to examine shop windows. And to identify anyone else strolling at my leisurely pace. Any FBI tail would become obvious fast.

What had happened to my life, that I was using my tradecraft to evade the FBI? I had to get out of this mess. I located a secluded phone booth in a hotel lobby and made myself comfortable. This time, the receptionist connected me to Lura at once.

Lura’s tone was apologetic. “She was supposed to put you through the first time.”

Puzzled, I said, “You were expecting to hear from me?”

“I’d given up hope. Okay, what do you say we plan for a long sit-down? Set things up where we have two or three hours?” She made a pondering noise through closed lips, then said, “Wednesday afternoon’s good for me. If you’re free then—”

“Lura,” I interrupted.

But she kept going. “We could do lunch—”

“Lura.” I waited for her to stop. “You’ve lost me. I didn’t call about lunch. I have something to ask you.”

“But I left a message—”

“I must’ve missed it. Listen, I need to hitch a ride with you to Europe.”

“That might be possible.” I heard her flipping pages in her appointment book. “The latter part of next week I might go to Rome. I’ll know something in a couple of days. Can I tell you for sure when we get together Wednesday?”

“Too late,” I said. “I want to leave today.”

“Not possible,” she said. “There’s no way I’m getting out of town this week.”

“You don’t have to come,” I told her. “Just get me on a plane.”

She laughed. “What am I, your travel agent?”

I shoved at my hair. Lura was making this too difficult. “I’m asking for a favor, that’s all.”

“And I’d love to do you one.” Her voice grew cajoling. “But what’s your rush? You meet me Wednesday, we can talk—”

“Lura,” I interrupted again. “I have to go today.” I said it slowly, punching each syllable the way newscasters do at the end of a story. Making my meaning clear without saying the words: You owe me.

Fifteen seconds of silence, a prohibitive amount of dead air for Lura. “Let me check what’s going out today.” Her voice was flat. I spent another minute on hold, listening to elevator music. She came back, all business. UNN had a backup crew leaving for Hamburg at three that afternoon from Dulles. There was room for me. Her admin people insisted that she ask—Was my passport current?

The question was a good sign. It meant no one from UNN would be checking documents at Dulles. I told her my papers were all in order and she said she’d get my name added to the passenger list. She hung up while I was saying thanks.

I piled my coins in front of me. Harry had said my father was looking for me. I had to let him know I was all right. Cancer had claimed my mother four years before, and I was his only family now. He was seventy-five and he worried about me. Safe enough to call him. I doubted the FBI was tapping his line yet. And even if Mike Buchanan were that thorough, a quick hello wouldn’t give my flight plan away.

I got a busy signal.

I traveled by bus to Metro Center, then spent the next hour going in and out of hotels and stores, getting rid of any FBI tail I hadn’t spotted. I made my way to Western Union’s downtown office where I paid cash to send my message to a cut-out in Roskilde, Denmark, giving my travel plans and adding the pseudonym that signaled I was on the run. When we’d set up the code, I’d assumed my pursuers would be coming out of the Middle East—not from Buzzard Point. No matter. Holger would get the message. He’d know what to do.

I tried my father again. Still busy. Off the hook? Probably. Twice during my last visit, I’d discovered the handset dangling from its cord, as if he’d stepped away from the phone to answer the door and forgotten to return. Getting older wasn’t helping his memory.

Back on the street again, I made a mental list of things I needed to buy: toothpaste and a toothbrush, shampoo, deodorant, a three-pack of cotton panties. What does the successful fugitive require? There had to be some practical necessities, but all that came to mind were the elimination of body odor and a supply of clean underwear.

In the lingerie section of Woody’s, I passed two women pawing through a table of sale-priced nightgowns. A hot-eyed blonde held a midnight-blue negligee in front of her and gave her stout companion a sultry look.

The second woman said, “Bardzo ladny.” Very pretty.

I tuned in to the sound of Stefan’s native language, yearning for more, but the blonde ran one hand across her breasts and lowered her voice, so I caught only the suggestive tone and not the words.

The second one laughed, old-world music rich with s****l innuendo. “Oczywiscie!” Absolutely.

My heart lifted in my chest, as if answering a call from the man who had so often murmured that word to me. I heard it repeating in my head, this time in Stefan’s husky voice. Oczywiscie. One of the promises he made to me in the languorous moments after our passion was spent. Absolutely. Completely. Always.

No equivocation, no half measures, no holding back. Not with his love for me, not with the work that he did. I felt my loss then, a pain so terrible, I covered my mouth to muffle my torment. I bit my finger, tasted salt, then the copper flavor of my blood.

An anxious clerk touched my shoulder. When I looked up, she took the crushed box of underwear from my hand. Did I want to pay for it now? She accepted my twenty and counted out the change, all the time treating me with the wary courtesy we use to avoid triggering a reaction from the mentally unstable. By the time I’d finished, the Polish shoppers had disappeared, leaving behind a tableful of tangled nylon glistening like a new bruise.

Outside, the sunlight was sharp-edged and without warmth. I pulled my coat tighter, but still I was cold. I tried calling my father from the Capitol Hilton. I sat there, phone to my ear, waiting for my father’s “Howdy.” I hung up after fifteen rings, wishing he’d connected the answering machine I’d sent him for Christmas.

I was running out of time. In the gift shop, I bought a greeting card with a three-color drawing of Snoopy in cap and goggles, his bullet-riddled doghouse hurtling downward after an unsuccessful encounter with the Red Baron. Sitting on an overstuffed chair at one side of the bustling lobby, I crossed out the birthday message and addressed the envelope to my father. “Your favorite appears to be going down in flames,” I wrote to him. “But we all know we’ll soon be toasting success with root beer. In my case, real beer. Hope to see you soon.”

I shoved hair off my forehead. Too cryptic? But if I spelled out why he might be worried about me, he’d seize on it, worry like crazy. Better to bury my reassurance where he’d be likely to find it only if he needed it. I added a “Happy New Year” wish, a string of X’s and O’s, then my nickname the way he wrote it: KC. I hiked back outside to find a mailbox instead of using the informal drop box offered by the hotel.

I tried a few more maneuvers to expose anyone following me, but turned up nothing. Sale signs were posted in all the store windows, reminding me of a December day when my mother had taken me shopping, in search of an after-Christmas bargain on a girl’s winter coat, size 6X. I remembered our jerky progress along the city sidewalk as she yanked me first in one direction, then in another, threatened by cars passing twenty feet away. By the time we reached the JC Penney store, her terror had infected me. We huddled against the building, my mother crouched over me, both of us sobbing. Someone eventually figured out my father’s name and called him to come and get us.

No matter how scared you are, you have to keep moving. I absorbed that lesson, living with my mother.

At two o’clock, I took the airport shuttle out to Dulles. I paid for my bus ticket in quarters, no need any longer to hoard coins for the phone. I hiked from the main terminal to one of the smaller fields abutting Dulles and waited in a secluded spot with a view of the UNN hanger.

A Boeing 707 jet was outside the hangar, and a service crew was getting it ready. At two-thirty, three men arrived with a vanload of equipment. They had the unkempt look of behind-the-camera TV people and I let myself relax. During the next fifteen minutes, friends or spouses dropped off two women—one blonde, one redhead—and a balding man, all weighted down with luggage and grocery bags. Still no sign of the FBI. When the pilot and the co-pilot appeared, I followed them on board.

The jet was the size and vintage of the old Air Force Two still used by the Secretary when I first started with the State Department. The section directly behind the cockpit was taken up by the same high-speed communications equipment that was mandatory on planes carrying top officials. But that was the end of the resemblance. Instead of the plush forward accommodations, there were aged economy-class airliner seats. Four were grouped around a scratched table; the rest were scattered in pairs along both walls of the plane. The cargo area had been given over to extra fuel tanks, and every bare piece of floor in the passenger area was taken up by tied-down electronic equipment, luggage and other paraphernalia I didn’t recognize.

The six other travelers appeared to be veterans of the unglamorous side of all-news programming. The three early arrivals had claimed the table and started a poker game. The bald man was reclining with his eyes closed. And the two women had taken a pair of seats together. The redhead was in the process of lighting a Tiparillo. She exhaled a cloud of smoke and asked me in an abraded voice, “You Casey?”

“That’s me,” I said. I gestured toward the empty seats. “Make any difference where I sit?”

“Don’t take the one next to George,” the redhead said. “He snores. Besides, Lura’ll probably want to sit with you.”

“Lura?” I headed for an empty double in the rear. “She said she wasn’t traveling today.”

The redhead coughed, a pre-emphysema wheeze that left her breathless. The frizzy blonde beside her said, “Lura’ll be here. You can count on it.”

The redhead elbowed her. “But not early. Never early. You know Lura.”

I dropped into the seat, hoped my alarm didn’t show. Lura’s sudden change of plans made me uneasy.

I was buckling my seat belt when she arrived, her cherry-red pumps clicking up the stairs like castanets. In spike heels, she wasn’t five feet tall. She dropped into the seat beside mine. “You all set?” she asked.

“All set. And surprised to see you.”

“You’re surprised? Can you believe my producer is making me spend my New Year’s Eve in Germany?”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

Lura shrugged. We’d taxied out to the end of the runway. The pilot revved up for takeoff and the engine noise was deafening. She asked loudly, “So how come you needed a ride so bad? Some reason you couldn’t buy a plane ticket like an ordinary person?”

I leaned closer. “I’m meeting an old friend. It’d be better for me if I could keep that quiet.”

She gave me a knowing look. “The spy?”

Shocked, I looked at her hard. When I talked to Lura about my personal life, I left out a lot of details. She’d never heard the word “spy” from me. Now we were airborne; no way to escape. I made a show of settling comfortably into my seat and tried to sound as if I were talking about a man who was alive. “That was in Poland, years ago,” I said. “He works for a Danish business now.”

“Let me guess. Could his employer be Universal Export?”

James Bond’s original cover job. Cute. I gestured impatiently. “A shipping company.”

She snickered. “So what’s the problem?”

“My security clearance is under review. I don’t want to slow things down.”

“Going to Europe to get laid—that’ll slow things down?”

I shrugged. “You know how they are. Can’t handle a woman who’s got a s*x life.”

“A s*x life with an ex-Commie spy, you mean. You should stay away from him. Or maybe you don’t give a damn about your job?” She was quiet for a few seconds. When she spoke again, her voice was softer, more conspiratorial, and her sentence didn’t end in a rising inflection. “I know about your security problem.”