Not My Spook!

by Tinnean

  I mumbled something about not being in the mood for sex.

  “Shhh.” He spooned up behind me and kissed the back of my neck. “It doesn’t all have to be about sex, Mark. Go back to sleep.”

  IV

  I DIDN’T want to give that up, not yet, so I delayed the move, telling Quinn I needed to replace all the furniture that had been destroyed in the blast that had resulted in me getting booted from my apartment at Forest Heights, or damaged by the fire hoses of DC’s bravest.

  “Of course, Mark. Take as much time as you need.”

  I gave him a sharp look, but he was engrossed in pouring himself a glass of wine.

  Well, sure he wanted me to stay with him. The sex was phenomenal. And as long as it stayed that way, we’d stay together. Once it stopped….

  “Hey, pour me a glass, will you?”

  V

  THEO recommended a furniture store in Rockville, Maryland. He even volunteered to go with me.

  “What? You think I’m decoratorively challenged?”

  His eyes almost crossed, and then he snorted. “Is that even a word, Vince? Never mind. It’ll give me something to do. Until Wills can come over,” he added a little too casually.

  I just as casually didn’t respond. What my agent did on his own time was not my concern, as long as he didn’t get me killed or let himself get soft.

  Theo cleared his throat. “I… I like him, Vince. I like him a lot. The thing is…. Shit.” A quick glance showed him gnawing on a finger.

  “That’s new.”

  “Huh?”

  “I never knew you to bite your nails before.”

  “It’s being in a… whatever. I’m a wreck. I don’t want to screw this up. I’ve never felt like this about anyone.”

  I kept my mouth shut and my eyes on the road.

  “I’ve been a professional for twelve years, and I don’t fucking know how to deal with this!”

  Where the fuck was the exit to Rockville?

  “Has he… uh… has he said anything about me to you, Vince?”

  “Jesus, Sweet—Theo!” I took my eyes off the road, and he seemed to wilt under my glare. “Dammit!” I muttered under my breath. I felt as if I’d kicked a puppy. “Yeah, he talks about you all the time. He wants to take you for long walks at sunset on a beach, holding your hand. He wants you to have his babies. Fuck, Theo! He’s a guy!” Guys didn’t talk about shit like that.

  He gnawed on his thumb and looked out the passenger window. The signs for Rockville appeared, and I guided the car into the exit lane. “Uh, Vince?”

  “Yeah?” I was checking my side-view mirror, waiting for the opportunity to merge with the flow of traffic.

  “Do you think he likes me?”

  I’d never heard the former rent boy so needy, so unsure of himself. “Trust me, Theo. He likes you; he really likes you.” I spared another glance at him. His face had lit up, and if he were a puppy, he would have been wriggling all over.

  I shook my head and turned my attention back to the road.

  Good thing I’d never let myself get like that.

  VI

  I TAPPED my pen against my desk. It sounded a little like “Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me.” Well, I hadn’t heard anything from Stanley, and I was losing patience. Maybe I’d hack into his computer and see what was—

  Matheson strode into my office without waiting for Ms. Parker to inform me of his arrival.

  A quick look at my watch showed me it was a little after 8:00 a.m. Well, no wonder she hadn’t stopped him. She wasn’t due in for another twenty minutes.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but I think you should take a look at this.” He extended a floppy disk to me, holding it so as to avoid leaving fingerprints. He radiated tension, but he was learning. The only reason I knew that he was tense was because I was looking for it, and I could see it in the faint lines that bracketed his mouth and tightened the skin over his cheekbones.

  I took the disk from him and slid it into the slot in my computer. A menu popped up. “All right, what am I looking for?”

  “If you’ll allow me, sir?” He leaned over, muttering, “I will be so glad when we phase out these dinosaurs. Um… sorry, sir.”

  I grunted but didn’t tear him a new one over it. He was right. This was 2002. We already used CDs for a lot of programs, but most of the younger agents had to make do with computers that still relied on floppies.

  Matheson concentrated on what he was doing. He placed his fingers on the mouse, right-clicked on something, then double-clicked on something else, a seemingly innocuous file, which opened up a page.

  I scanned it and felt my blood pressure begin to rise. “This is your debrief of the Curtin affair.” I’d still been out of town, so Matheson had run it entirely on his own. He’d done a good job, first in seeing that demon spawn got the doctored inhaler and then in keeping an unobtrusive eye on him until he’d used it. I’d read with satisfaction his description of how the man died. Terse, to the point, and with no extraneous adjectives. I could picture Curtin writhing on the sidewalk, gasping desperately for his last breath while bystanders looked on helplessly.

  And nothing to point a finger back at the WBIS. Nice.

  “Yes, sir.” He stayed standing; I hadn’t offered him a seat.

  “This was a confidential matter. No one was supposed to have a copy of this except Mr. Wallace and me. Where did you get this?”

  “I found it. In my secretary’s desk.” His eyes were challenging. “I was looking for a blank—”

  “Matheson,” I interrupted. “I didn’t ask why you were looking in her desk. Don’t explain when it isn’t necessary.”

  “Very good, sir. Sorry.”

  I picked up a pen and beat out a tattoo on the edge of my desk with it. “Why were you in her desk?”

  He was almost distracted by the pen. He took a deep breath and let it out soundlessly. “I don’t trust her.”

  “Obviously. Why?”

  “Mr. Vincent, the WBIS doesn’t hire fools. Well, not generally.” I wondered if he was thinking of his friend Mikey Shaw, or that asshole, Sperling. “Miss Jones acts like the quintessential dumb blonde, the kind who has to wear a T-shirt with the word ‘head’ on the front and an arrow that points to the neck. I tried to get into her file in Personnel, but I was denied access. It didn’t make sense. If she was just a low-level member of the typing pool, there shouldn’t have been any security on her file at all.”

  “So you went searching through her desk?”

  “Yes, sir.” He returned my gaze coolly.

  “Okay. Someone is keeping tabs on you. I want to know who, and I want to know why. It could be a simple matter of jealousy over your promotion.” Even in the WBIS there were instances of professional rivalry, and The Boss had chosen Matheson over a number of agents who had more years in the organization than he did.

  “Is that really likely, sir? What I mean to say is, none of the agents, even senior agents, have either the ability to access that kind of data or the capability of creating blocks like that. One of the reasons I was recruited to the WBIS was my background in computers.”

  “You think you could have hacked into it?”

  “Given the time, yes, sir. However, I didn’t have the time—it would take longer than the hour I had before Miss Jones clocked in. The last thing I wanted was for her to become suspicious and tip off whoever was running this.”

  I stared at him, but he didn’t drop his eyes, and he didn’t fidget. “You handled it well.”

  Surprised, he flushed and stammered, “Th-thank you, sir!”

  He’d done a good job. Why wouldn’t I tell him?

  I copied the floppy to my hard drive, then ejected the disk. I had a feeling it was more insidious than professional rivalry. There was a lot of unhappiness that I’d been promoted to deputy director, and odds were someone was trying to bring me down through Matheson. Fucking office politics. If that was the way it was, and if it came to that, I’d have no prob
lem erasing whoever it was behind this bullshit.

  Meanwhile, there were other matters that needed attending to.

  “The Curtin matter is a dead issue.” That startled a laugh out of him, which he hastily converted to a cough. What, did no one think I had a sense of humor? I scowled, and he blanked his expression.

  “I’ll replace the floppy then, and get right on this, sir.”

  “No, this needs to be thorough, and you won’t have time. I have a new assignment for you.” I needed him out in Phoenix, and it wouldn’t be a good idea to wait until he got back; who knew what could happen in the meantime? I’d just delegate it to myself. “Now pull up a chair.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I waited until he sat, noting that for a change he didn’t wince. Had he finally had Theo’s ass? Not that it mattered to me one way or the other.

  I gave him the rundown on the situation in Phoenix.

  He listened intently, asked some pertinent questions, then nodded. “When do I leave, Mr. Vincent?”

  “You’ve got a—” A tap on my door interrupted me. “Yeah?”

  “I brought you a fresh cup of coffee, Mr. Vincent. Mr. Matheson. Would you like one?”

  “No, I’m good, thanks.”

  Ms. Parker handed me the cup, took the used one, and left.

  “Okay, as I was saying, you’ve got a noon flight out of Dulles to MacArthur in Islip.” Having lived in New York before his family moved to Massachusetts, Matheson would know of the airport on Long Island. “You’ll have about ten minutes to get to Southwest Air’s gate; it’s a small airport, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “No, sir. I’m familiar with MacArthur.”

  “Good. Now, this man, Fitzwilliam, is overseeing both the building of Huntingdon Corporation’s new Southwest headquarters, and a nuclear power plant that’s going up outside Phoenix. How are you going to see he disappears?”

  “After I get to Phoenix, I’ll report to the job foreman as a traveler. Once I start work, I’ll learn Fitzwilliam’s schedule. From what you’ve told me, he does like to drink. Some construction workers are like that. I remember my Dad telling me—” He shook his head and shrugged. “None of the men who know him will be surprised to see him with a buzz on. I’ve been reading about the project, and it’s my understanding that the tubes of the powerhouse should be ready to be fired up in a couple of weeks. I’ll find a way to get him in one of them. Once it’s sealed, no one will hear him if he regains consciousness, although I can add a little something to his drinks to make sure he doesn’t. And when they’re done running the tests, all that will be left will be a handful of dust.”

  “How will you get the men to accept you?”

  He leaned back in his chair, confident of his abilities. “Once they see I can pull my own weight, all I’ll have to do is pick a foreign make car in the job’s parking lot and slash its tires, and I’ll be in like Flint.”

  I let his reference to a sixties spy spoof slide. “Blue collar workers tend to be resentful of anything that takes work away from them.” He nodded. “All right. I’m giving you three weeks to get this done. I don’t want it done fast, I want it done right.” I glanced at my watch. Miss Jones should have arrived by now. I buzzed my own secretary. “Ms. Parker.”

  “Sir?”

  “Get Matheson’s secretary away from her desk.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A good secretary was worth her weight in triplicate reports. Now that I was starting to feel Matheson was capable of doing the job, I’d have Ms. Parker see about getting him someone whose loyalty would be solely to him.

  Indicating our discussion was concluded, I returned the disk to him. “Put this back where you found it.”

  “Yes, sir.” He lingered at the door. Something else seemed to be on his mind.

  “What?”

  “May I—” He cleared his throat, and I raised an eyebrow. “It’s not important, sir. I’ll make sure my desk is cleared off, go home and pack—I took your advice and have a carry-on in my car, but I’ll need clothes suitable for a construction site, plus work boots, my tool belt, a hard hat. As soon as I pick them up, I’ll leave for the airport.”

  “Matheson. You can let Theo know you have to cancel any plans you’ve made.” I knew I didn’t have to tell him to reveal nothing of his whereabouts for the next few weeks.

  He looked relieved. “Thank you, sir.” He left my office, and I spared a thought for the agent I was training and the former rent boy he was involved with. That was an odd pairing.

  But no odder than deputy directors of the WBIS and the CIA.

  I turned to my computer.

  It took me forty-five minutes to hack into Miss Jones’s files, and that was using a backdoor program to overcome the obstacles that kept popping up in my path. If Matheson could have done it in an hour, then he was good. When I finally zeroed in on the man she was taking orders from, I frowned, tempted to shoot something. A senior director, and one who’d been close to Sperling. He’d been a deputy director when I’d first been recruited, and we’d had some run-ins even then.

  I set up a program that would have everything she sent to him forwarded to my computer first. It was untraceable, and it would give me the opportunity to correct any… misapprehensions.

  VII

  “ROUGH day, Mark?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You look a little—” He sighed and started to turn away. “Never mind.”

  “You’re not gonna sulk, are you?” I sniped. Jesus, why was I doing this? Was I looking to give him an excuse to ask me to leave?

  “Mark. I’m in the same business. I know there can be days like that. If you need to talk—and no, I’m not trying to trick information out of you!”

  “I know, baby. It’s—I’ve had better days.” And what was I doing, admitting to something like that? Still, I… trusted Quinn.

  He studied my eyes. What the fuck was he looking for? Oh, sure, the eyes were supposed to be the windows to the soul, but I’d learned long ago to keep the blinds down. And besides, anyone would tell him I had no soul.

  “What do you say we take in a movie?”

  I wanted to groan. I wasn’t in the mood for a retrospective of Akira Kurosawa’s work, or Mizoguchi, Ozu, or Oshima, for that matter, other postwar directors whose work Quinn had introduced me to.

  He kissed me. “Trust me, all right, Mark?”

  “All right, but don’t think it’s because you kissed me. Because it isn’t.” Although it actually was.

  “Of course not. Let’s go.” He grabbed his car keys.

  “Well, I guess you’re driving.”

  He ran his fingertips over my ear and smiled. I followed him out the door, locking it behind me. If I’d been in the mood, I would have mocked his security system, telling him he should let me update it with something that was really secure, but as it was, I didn’t even bother sneering at it.

  He didn’t drive us into the capital, as I’d expected, but to a small movie house on King Street in Alexandria. When I saw the name of the movie on the marquee, I started to laugh.

  He was taking me to see The Scorpion King.

  VIII

  MOST people had a thing against Mondays. Their weekend was over, they were battling hangovers, and a good number of them had to show up at jobs they loathed—so when Monday shit on them, they weren’t surprised.

  Me, now? I kept my alcohol intake under control, I liked my job, and the only time I’d had a quarrel with Monday was when I had to go up to Fall River for my old lady’s funeral.

  Wednesdays, on the other hand, were sneaky, middle-of-the-week bastards. You didn’t expect your car to break down on a Wednesday or your fridge to be empty or the last shirt in your closet to have a grease stain on it that had defeated the cleaners.

  Another Wednesday had rolled around, and here I was, chained to this goddamned desk while other agents were out in the field having the time of their lives. I gazed at the screensaver on my computer
. It wasn’t of Mann anymore—what did I need an image for, when I had the real thing at home?—and the Sperling spreadsheet was long gone. What I had up now was a tasteful screenshot of two guys, the blond facing the brunet, who lounged comfortably in bed, one hand behind his head, while the other beckoned his partner. The majority of the time I could stare at them, my brain pretty much detached from what I saw, and the puzzle pieces I was pondering would fall neatly into place.

  Not this time, though. Of course part of that could be because here it was, the middle of May, and I was still waiting to hear from Stanley. If I was out in the field, I’d have had this thing with our slaughtered agents straightened out in no time.

  But I wasn’t. Stanley had his people looking into it.

  Usually I liked him, but right now I wouldn’t have had any problem absconding with his prosthesis and leaving him to hobble around the WBIS. He was keeping his investigation under such goddamn fucking tight wraps….

  I called him. “Stanley—”

  “Jesus, Vincent. I told you I’d contact you when I got these clowns.”

  “It’s been a couple of weeks.” It was actually longer than that, but I didn’t want to rub his nose in it.

  “Nothing has come up, okay? Look. Don’t you have operations of your own to run? Go annoy Drum. Or better yet, Mann.”

  Everyone knew Drum had a wild hair up his ass when it came to me, but why mention Quinn? “Uh… why Mann, Stanley?”

  “He’s one of the best the CIA has to offer.”

  Right, that made sense. Nothing but the best for me. “Okay, but you’ll contact me as soon as you’ve got something.” That wasn’t a question.

  “Didn’t I say I would? Jesus, yes, I promise. Now just stop calling me!” There was such restraint in the way he set the receiver down that I knew he would rather have slammed it.

  Yeah, well, Josephson was mine, dead or alive. I thought of the little old man who’d opened the door when we’d gone to tell him his grandson was dead. His face had crumpled and fat tears had run down his cheeks, his sobs silent and all the more painful for that. Josephson was all he’d had. And the old man hadn’t lasted more than three weeks without him. It happened sometimes.