by David Archer
“I got something in mind for him,” Morgan said. He turned to Noah. “Rex, did you get hold of your friend with the trucking company yet?”
“I’m afraid he hasn’t called me back yet,” Noah said. “I expect to hear from him anytime, probably today.”
“Well, I hate to start the distributorship without confirming that he can bring us the kind of inventory you expect, but it might be smarter to go ahead and at least take the first steps toward it.” He turned back to his son. “I’ll come by and get Ronnie this morning. There’s a building up in Blue Eye that’s big enough, and it has a ten-bay loading dock. Belongs to that TV preacher, but he’s not using it, and I’ve never met a preacher who didn’t like money.”
“Thanks, Pa,” Ralph said. “He keeps trying to tell me how I should do things, but I’ve already got more product out the door than he ever did in a single week.”
“And, speaking of product,” Morgan said, looking back at Noah. “Shame about Cabot,” he said, “and an even bigger shame about his wife—she was a looker, but that woman was colder than the bottom of a well.” He winked. “You know, there’s gonna be an awful lot of people in Missouri looking for a new supply of their drugs. Probably too much for Ralphie to handle, though, don’t you—”
“Like hell,” Ralph said. “Murkowski’s probably going to take over Joplin, and I’d bet on Stinky Dupree doing the same in Springfield, but that leaves most of Southwest Missouri up for grabs. I’ll have to send a couple people out there to hook up with the dealers, but most of the small-towners aren’t going to want to deal with either of those pricks. I’ll get them.”
Morgan was chuckling. “That’s how you handle a teenager, boys,” he said. “You just tell ’em they can’t do something, and they’ll do it to spite you.” He looked at his son one more time. “You’re right about Murkowski; he was Cabot’s lieutenant in Joplin, and he’s got enough loyalty from the punks up there that he’ll be able to hold on to it. Dupree, I don’t think so. I know Cabot had him in charge up there, but from everything I hear, nobody liked him or trusted him. Duane Goodwin’s the number two up there, and if he has a lick of sense, Dupree will be in the ground before the day is over.”
Ralph was frowning. “Well, maybe,” he said. “Dupree’s gonna be expecting it, though. He might be hard to kill, and he’ll probably send somebody after Goodwin just to try to show who’s boss.”
His father shrugged. “You just keep us out of it,” he said. “My money is on Goodwin, just because the foot soldiers up there know what Dupree was like whenever Cabot wasn’t keeping him under control. I don’t care how much product you got, you can’t scare your people into selling more of it if the customers just aren’t there, but that’s how Dupree likes to work. If his dealers don’t sell as much as he expects them to, he picks one of them for an example and blows his head off.” He shoved a forkful of eggs into his mouth and shook his head. “That’s not how you motivate people.”
There was a bit more discussion about the drug business, but then Ralph was ready to go. Forney got up to follow him, but the other man stayed seated as the two of them left. Once they were gone, Morgan pointed at the newcomer with his fork.
“Rex, this is Eric Carpenter,” he said. “Eric is a lawyer, the good kind. He never tries to tell me what I can’t do, and he doesn’t try to tell me what I can do, either.”
“No,” Carpenter said with a grin. “What I do is ask him what he wants to do, and then I tell him how to get away with it.”
Noah grinned but raised his eyebrows. “I wish I’d known you five years ago,” he said. “You sound like the kind of lawyer I needed.”
“Well, he’s the kind I need, right now,” Morgan said. “I’m thinking about making a couple changes, things that will make it a little easier to clean up the money that comes in. With all these rules the banks are putting on us nowadays, it can get pretty hard to get all this cash into the proper accounts. Eric’s here to figure out a way to simplify that.”
“I’m glad that’s his job,” Noah said. He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have a clue where to start.”
“Oh, it isn’t really all that hard,” Carpenter said. “The trick is to buy and sell. You buy up things that are easy to turn over, and you pay cash. When you sell, though, you insist on a check or a bank transfer. You’ll end up losing a little bit or breaking even, at best, but it gets the money into the financial system so that you don’t have all that Financial Crimes Enforcement BS hanging over your head.”
“Which we don’t need,” Morgan finished for him. “I told Eric about your trucker buddy and what we’re fixing to do on setting up a liquor distributorship, and he said this is ideal. We can send people out to buy booze in other parts of the state and then move it with our inventory. My bookkeepers can cook the numbers so it just looks like normal everyday business, but every load we drop at a bar or liquor store will mean some of that hot money gets washed and dried.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Noah said. “You want me and Aubrey with you today?”
“I’m not gonna be all that busy, today. Why don’t you take your pal there and just show him around? And that reminds me, you said he just got out, too? What kind of paper problems you got, Aubrey? Probation with the feds?”
“Oh, no, sir,” Marco said. “I been de bad boy in the feds, dey keep me almos’ all de whole time in de hole. When you like me, you don’ get no good time. I done did every damn day o’ my time, all nine years. I got no paper, no probation, no parole, no nothing.”
Morgan nodded. “That’s good. You need a gun?”
Margo grinned, and his eyes seemed to hold an evil glint. “I got me a gun de same day I got out,” he said. “Me, I keep two guns. One for shoot anybody I don’ like, and one for shoot his friend if he got any.”
Morgan laughed. “You know, Rex,” he said, “it just about sounds like you’ve got your hands full with this one.”
Noah chuckled and shrugged. “Aubrey’s cool,” he said. “Like I said, he’s always got my back.”
Morgan started to speak, but Noah’s phone suddenly rang. He pulled it out and glanced at the display, then got to his feet. “Gentlemen, please excuse me,” he said. “I need to take this call.”
He moved to the far end of the dining room and put the phone to his ear. “Hello?”
As Noah had expected, the next voice he heard was Monique’s. “I have a job for you,” she said without preamble. “You’ll need one or two days away from your mission, and I need you to be available to me within the next two to three hours. You may be gone overnight, so prepare for it.”
“Hey, Matt,” Noah said. “I’ll have to ask if I can get away, but we definitely want to get this show on the road. Hang on just a minute, let me check with my boss.”
He turned and looked at Morgan, who was watching him curiously. “Jimmy, this is Matt, the trucker. He wants to know if I can go and meet with him to discuss the whole thing in person.” Noah grinned sheepishly. “Matt just doesn’t like to talk about things over the phone—that’s how they busted him last time.”
“Yeah, that’s no problem,” Morgan said. “How long you gonna be gone?”
“Probably just a couple of days,” Noah replied. “Thing is, we might be able to get this happening pretty quick, and that would help with what Mr. Carpenter is doing, too, right?”
Morgan nodded. “Yeah. Okay, do what you gotta do, but try not to be gone any longer than necessary. I need people to get used to seeing you around here, and they can’t do that if you’re gone all the time.”
“Trust me,” Noah said, “I’m ready to stop doing all this traveling.” He put the phone back up to his ear. “Okay, it’s all set. Where you want to meet up?”
“Go to Memphis and straight to the airport. Call me when you get there, and I’ll give you further instructions then. Make sure that nobody knows where you’re going.” The line went dead.
“Okay, that sounds good,” Noah said, pretending the conversation was sti
ll going on. “I’ll be in touch this afternoon.” He put the phone back into his pocket and walked back over to the table. “He’s gonna meet me about halfway, in Indiana. Do you have anything you want Aubrey doing while I’m gone?”
“Not that I know of,” Morgan said. “Just let him take it easy till you get back, I guess. You can start showing him around then.”
“Yes, sir. Aubrey, you done eating yet?”
Marco said he was finished, said goodbye to Morgan, and then went into the kitchen to give Marlene a hug. When she finished laughing and blushing, he let her go and followed Noah out the front door. As he passed the two security men, he suddenly spun around and pointed his fingers at them, his thumbs up in the air in the classic hand symbol for guns, and yelled bang! Both of the men stared at him like he was some kind of an idiot, and Marco launched into a long belly laugh as he got into the car.
“Oh, but did you see de faces on dem boys? Dey almos’ piss deyselves…”
CHAPTER NINE
“That was Monique on the phone,” Noah said as soon as they were out on the road. “She wants me in Memphis, at the airport, as soon as possible. I’m going to leave this morning.”
“Want me to go with you?” Marco asked.
Noah shook his head. “No. Whatever it is she wants me to do, I have to go alone.”
The Charger rolled rapidly through the countryside, and Noah saw Sarah step out onto the porch as he pulled up to the house. He and Marco got out of the car and walked up the front steps, where she was holding the screen door open for them.
“Monique called,” he said. “I’m supposed to go to Memphis right now.”
Sarah stared at him for a moment, then nodded solemnly. “Do you think she knows…”
“We can only hope not,” Noah said. “If she does, I’ll deal with it however I have to.” He walked into the bedroom and grabbed his overnight bag from the closet, tossed it onto the bed, and started packing. Sarah went into the bathroom to get his shaving kit and brought it out to him.
“I hate this,” she said. “This woman is pulling your strings like a puppet, even though she really has no power over you at all. I wish you could just kill her and get it over with.”
“If I get the chance, I will,” Noah replied. “I think Allison would rather have her in custody, but being dead would put an end to her influence just as thoroughly.”
Neil stepped into the room and handed Noah something wrapped in paper towels. He glanced at the bundle and pulled one of the towels away to see a stack of four black, eight-inch-long knives, each of which bore a single bright red number.
“I made those for you the other day,” Neil said, “but I forgot all about them until I heard you say you were going to Memphis. A metal detector won’t pick them up, so you should be able to carry them right onto an airplane. And yes, before you ask, each one has a detonator chip embedded in it. Give me your phone and I’ll program the codes into it. Just be sure you know which one you want to set off before you tell it to go, and be careful because they’re sharp as hell.”
Noah handed him the phone and went back to what he was doing. Packing took him only a few minutes, and then he took a few more minutes to hold his wife. When he let her go, Neil handed him his phone.
“I marked them ‘knife 1, knife 2,’ etc. They’re at the top of your list.”
“Thanks,” Noah said. “This was a very good idea.” He turned and looked at Sarah again. “I’ll be back,” he said. “You can be sure of that. Keep Marco here until I get home, just in case any problems arise. And keep your guns handy, you and Neil. If she does know I’ve gotten rid of her little bomb, this could be a ruse to make you vulnerable. Anybody tries to come in this house, you shoot first and ask all the questions later.”
“No one will get in,” Sarah said. “Neil’s been working on security, you might say. He’s got some little toys from the printer scattered around the yard, and he’s memorized which ones are where so that he can set them off if he needs to.”
“Good thinking. Tell him not to hesitate if the time comes.” He tilted her chin up and kissed her, then picked up his bag and headed for the door. Sarah followed him out onto the porch, with Neil and Marco right behind her.
“Come back, boss,” Neil said. “And if you can bring that bitch’s head with you, so much the better.”
“I’ll definitely try,” Noah replied. “You guys take care of Sarah for me.” He kissed her one more time and walked down the steps and got into the car. The big engine fired up, and the car backed into the yard, turned around, and was gone.
“He’ll be back,” Sarah said. “He will.”
Noah waited until he was through Berryville and on a stretch of open road, then took out his phone and called Allison. She answered on the second ring.
“Camelot,” Noah said. “Monique called almost an hour ago. I’m en route to the Memphis airport. No idea where I’m going yet; she’ll let me know when I get there.”
“Damn,” Allison said. “Any idea whether she’s planning to meet you?”
“I don’t know anything yet. Just that I’m supposed to call her when I get to the airport. I’m assuming she’s planning to send me somewhere, and I’ll let you know where if I get the chance.”
“No, don’t. She’ll undoubtedly have someone watching you at the airport, so don’t risk making a call from there.” She sighed. “I’m tempted to have someone of our own there, but I’d have to use someone from the FBI, and I can’t be certain she wouldn’t know about it. That would blow your cover with her, and we just can’t risk that right now. Do whatever you have to do, Noah. If she does meet you, try to get any additional information you can that will help us identify her. In this day and age, it seems like it would be impossible for anyone to stay hidden, but she’s managing it. That has to come to an end, somehow.”
“I agree. If I get the chance, I plan to terminate her.”
“I prefer to take her alive, if possible, but you make the call. Dead or alive, we need to figure out who the hell she is so that we can try to determine just how much damage she’s done to national security.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Noah said. “So far, though, she seems to be more interested in wealth and power than actually engaging in serious espionage. If she’s using us to make herself rich, it might not be that hard to clean up the mess once she’s been put down.”
“You could be right, but I have to assume the worst. She’s obviously got some kind of connections to the intelligence community, or she couldn’t possibly know some of the things she knows. Just the fact that she’s been able to identify operatives of various agencies, including our own, and subvert them means that she has access to some of the most secret information in the world. I don’t know about you, but that makes me pretty nervous.”
“I can’t disagree. I’ll let you know more as soon as I have anything to report and feel it’s safe to do so.”
“Very good.” As always, the line went dead as soon as Allison was finished speaking.
Noah set the phone on the console and concentrated on the road ahead. Memphis was about a five-hour drive, according to his GPS. He tapped the display on the dashboard to turn on the stereo, and the strains of an old Beatles tune filled the car.
* * * * *
“When do you expect to be back?” The man who asked the question was sitting in the back seat of a limousine, looking at the tiny woman who was about to get out of the car. “I’ll manage, but I don’t like it when you’re far away. Sometimes I think you’re the glue that keeps me together.”
Monique smiled at him, her hand on the door handle. “Relax, sweetheart,” she said. “I’ll be back later tonight, or by sometime tomorrow night at the latest. Surely you can survive without me that long, can’t you?”
He smiled back. “Survive? Yes. Actually feel alive? Well, that may be a little more difficult, but I’ll be waiting with open arms when you get here.”
He leaned toward her, and she gave him a passionate kiss. �
�I love you, Charles,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back before you know it.” She turned and stepped out of the car, then waited while the chauffeur got her bags from the trunk and handed them to the redcap. The car pulled away, and the redcap followed her into the airport.
Monique didn’t bother with commercial flights, which is why she’d had the chauffeur drop her at the charter terminal. The woman behind the counter glanced at her ID and smiled.
“Ms. Lancaster,” she said, “welcome. Your plane is ready to go. If you’ll just follow the yellow line to the exits, you’ll find it waiting for you on the tarmac.”
“Thank you, Kelsey,” Monique said. The girl had been at the counter almost every time she had flown for the past few months, and they had become familiar with each other.
She turned away from the counter, and the redcap followed, carrying her two bags as if they weighed nothing. As soon as she stepped out the door, a man in a charter company uniform was waiting to take them onto the plane, while the pilot escorted her into the cabin. She was the only passenger, even though the plane was designed for a group of ten or more, and she sat down in the first pair of seats. There was a small table in front of her, and she laid her phone on it as she buckled her seat belt.
“Good to see you again, Ms. Lancaster,” the pilot said. “We’ll be leaving in about ten minutes. Flight time should be just about two hours, and I understand the weather in Memphis is warm and clear.”
“Thank you, Lester,” she said. “I’m glad you were available today. You are absolutely my favorite pilot.”
Lester broke out into a big grin. “Well, you’re undoubtedly one of my favorite passengers. All comfortable?”
She said she was, and Lester went into the cockpit. The flight attendant—the man who had taken her bags—pulled the door, shut and she heard the engines start to whine as they were started.
Ten minutes later, exactly on schedule, the plane leapt into the air.
* * * * *
It was almost two o’clock when Noah got to the airport. He put the car into long-term parking, locked it and set its alarm, then carried his bag into the terminal. He had left his gun locked in the trunk, inside the safe with his money, although he had a couple of thousand dollars in his pockets. He glanced up at the sun and then pulled the sunglasses out of his pocket and slipped them onto his face. They cut some of the glare but weren’t so dark that he would have to remove them inside.
