Sebastian weakly clearing his throat.
“Ahem?”
Jane looked down to see a set of Vespa keys dangling from his forefinger.
29 Seven Nation Army
In the Cascade Systems office, Jen was cursing softly.
“Come on, come on. God, I hate Windows. Bill Gates should be hung, drawn, quartered, shot, poisoned, disemboweled, and then REALLY hurt.”
John was pacing again. His phone vibrated. “Oh great,” he said, scanning the message. “Jane’s ex says to sit tight, he’s on his way. Playtime is over. Time to un-ass, Sparky.”
“All. Most. There. Wiping up. Here.” Jen detached the flash drive and tossed it, keys and all, over her shoulder to John.
“I don’t suppose I could test drive a cruise missile instead?”
“Yippee-ki-yi-yay, motherfuckers! One for you, one for me.” She ejected and brandished the CD.
“That reminds me. As far as escaping goes – is there a Plan B?”
Jen dug into her computer bag and brought out a pad of paper and a ballpoint pen. She scribbled a few words and held it up for John to read.
“Memorize. Got it? Deliver that lowly tchotchke in four weeks or less and you and Jane can look forward to a nice little happy ever after, courtesy of the Forbes 500.” She stripped the paper off the pad, balled it up, and stuck it in her pocket.
“With a little help from you and coffee shop guy?” John asked, as the office door closed behind them with a click and they backtracked up the hallway.
“Yeah, I get by with a little help from my friends. I get high with a little help from my friends,” she sang. “Can you say – “ she looked around conspiratorially at the military personnel passing by, “- Wikileaks?”
John blanched, choked, and glanced around to ascertain whether or not Jen’s remark had been overheard. He closed one hand around her upper arm to hurry her along.
“I thought you could,” Jen grinned. “The assholes may be rich, but we are many.”
The hallway stretched on interminably. Buzz cuts with side arms seemed to come at them from every direction. Trying to project an air of normality, John began talking nonsense. Extras on a movie set are taught to say “Peas and carrots, peas and carrots.” He just said the first thing that popped into his head: “Speaking of rich, do you mind if I ask what exactly you mean by a ‘nice’ happy ever after? Is that like a minimally comfortable but no-frills nice or a fairly affluent bordering on luxurious nice, because Jane – “
“Naughty!” Spoken loud enough to make heads turn, the word brought them up short. It was the Brit, returning with his cuppa and shaking an admonitory finger. “No wandering about. This isn’t an amusement park, you two. If you’re not careful, the boogeyman will get you.”
Jen tugged at the coil of cable over her shoulder. “Needed angel hair, brought vermicelli. Thought it would be faster if we met you halfway.”
Before they had gone much farther, the sound of heavy footsteps began to echo somewhere up ahead, approaching in double time. Jen pulled up short and looked at John.
“Aaachoo!” She feigned a violent sneeze. “Achoo, achoo! Oh golly. Kleenex,” she said, holding one hand over her nose and plunging into the nearest ladies’ room. John’s phone began to vibrate. Two rings. Stop. Two more. Jane! He smiled beatifically at the Brit and jerked his head toward the men’s.
“Probably a good idea.” And he too vanished from view as a squad of military police thudded around a corner.
Having traded the burka for a Bluetooth helmet, Jane was trying to make her way to the Pentagon through total gridlock, dodging between cars, speeding along medians where necessary. She was calling from the congestion and chaos of the freeway. John was listening in the tense quiet of the Pentagon restroom.
“Baby, the traffic is hell, but I can be there in five,” she shouted.
Pretending to check out his borrowed soul patch and watching a corporal wash his hands, John asked casually, “How’d you make out at Walmart?”
“About like you’d expect. Scratch that. Exactly like you expected. The inmates are running the asylum. Meet you at the I-395 walkway?”
“Make it the pet store,” John said. “You owe me a parrot.” The door closed on the corporal, leaving John free to strip off his soul patch, cap, and jacket and stuff them in the waste bin.
“With the whole world crumbling,” Jane groaned. And the connection went dead.
“Tell me about it,” John said bleakly. He sighed, closed the phone, and stood there tapping it against his upper lip.
He emerged cautiously to find Jen shifting her computer bag from hand to hand. She too had shed her Chertoxx togs.
“I say,” the Brit said, putting his head on one side as the tumblers in his brain sought to click into place. But before he could analyze what was wrong with the picture, John said, “Nice tie. Manchester United?”
Instantly diverted, the Brit held up the tip of the tie, where a tiny devil danced with a tiny pitchfork. “Glory, glory, Man United,” he sang in a rich baritone. To the tune of Ms. Howe’s immortal “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
“We should all be marching on,” Jen urged, not waiting to see who was following.
“Heard the Chipmunks’ version?” John asked and squeaked a few bars. Between laughing and sloshing his tea, the Brit was having a hard time keeping up. They were close, so close to the main entrance. Up one more ramp, into the wider hallway, almost in sight of all the saintly sober portraits of the men who ran the wars. That was when they heard it, impinging at the very edge of hearing at first, but growing unmistakably louder. The sound they had been dreading. The tramp of many boots in unison, coming this time at a dead run. Worse luck, up ahead they could see a bottleneck of sorts, a spot in the corridor where people were pooling up.
“Reminds me,” the Brit said, choosing that moment to cross the hall and press a buzzer. “Just need to nip in here and lay a friendly bet on tonight’s game. Won’t be half a mo’. Arsenal fan,” he confided with a wink as the office door opened. Before John had time to react, the door closed and he was staring at a “Restricted Area” sign.
“I don’t suppose,” John said to Jen in a tone that indicated he tended to doubt it, “you brought us any toys to play with?”
“Life saver?” she asked cheerfully, as they drifted in among a knot of bystanders watching some sort of film being shot. Four generals and a chaplain faced a camera, a boom microphone, and a bank of lights. A sign on an easel reads, “Thank you for being quiet. Faith Embassy Productions.” John looked down and saw that Jen was passing him a string-pull smoke bomb masquerading as a roll of Wint-O-Greens. Also a cigarette lighter and the balled-up paper from her pocket. “That’s nitrocellulose by the way,” she added in a whisper. “And did I mention we’ve got a taxi waiting?”
“I’m meeting Jane at the mall,” John said.
“Shhh!”
A dude wearing a headset and working a movie clapboard leaned backward to see who was ruining the take. He was wearing a white button-down, a skinny black tie, and black-rimmed glasses. Just like Jen and John.
“Oh my god, look. We’re Mormons,” John muttered.
“SHHH!”
The clapboard dude gave them a decidedly un-Christian look, which John and Jen sought to deflect by shushing the people in front of them. Meanwhile, the officer with the most chest candy burbled on.
“I tell every recruit I meet that it’s God first, then family, then country. That we are a nation under God and my faith is at the forefront of everything I do. That’s why I have been a Prayer Warrior for twenty years and why I support all the fine folks at Faith Embassy.”
“Praise Jesus!” Jen yelled. “Hallelujah!”
30 Turncoat
All eyes turned in her direction. Which gave John the split second he needed to drop the smoke bomb in the trash bag of a janitor’s cart standing near at hand. As the smoke b
egan to well up, he surreptitiously lit the flash paper, which followed the smoke bomb into the trash bag. Ditto the zippo, still burning.
In the nick of time. The heavy boots and the ten soldiers wearing them chose that moment to burst upon the scene, guns at the ready. WHOOSH went the trash bag. “FIRE!” went John. And made a dash for the nearest fire alarm.
“Here now!” said the Brit, emerging to find the place in total chaos. The fire alarm was whooping, strobe lights were flashing, the film crew was panicking. “Want me to get that?” John asked the cameraman, who was struggling with his equipment. Without waiting for permission, he picked up the easel and the “Faith Embassy” sign. Like ants presented with a more immediate danger, the soldiers automatically regrouped and divided to combat the burning trash bag, flames from which were now shooting up to threaten the drop ceiling. Over the intercom a mechanical voice droned, “Code Red, M-1. Code Red, M-1. This is not a drill, repeat this is not a drill.” Offices on every side began to disgorge tens then hundreds of workers, all of whom streamed toward the nearest exit, John and Jen bobbing anonymously in their midst.
They were actually on the pedestrian walkway, approaching the last set of gates and turnstiles when up ahead a cordon of Pentagon police officers in full winter dress marched into position, blocking the way.
“Remember, remember, the fifth in Vesturbaer,” Jen chanted and sidled away through the crowd to stand beside a crying child, who
To Iceland, With Love Page 18
