by Joseph Flynn
There was one conspicuous absence, however.
“Where’s Chairman Mao?” John asked.
The Andy Warhol serigraph of the Great Helmsman had hung prominently in DeWitt’s former FBI office, serving as both a declaration of DeWitt’s independence and a rebuke to the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary and reactionary first director of the Bureau.
“In storage,” DeWitt said. “He wouldn’t be comfortable in here. It’s too bourgeois for his kind. I’ve given myself a year to find the right spot for him. If I can’t locate one by then, I’m going to put him up for auction and donate the proceeds to a Taiwanese little league team.”
John laughed and took a visitor’s chair.
He was pleased to hear how fluent his friend’s speech had become.
DeWitt sat behind his desk, cutting off John’s view of the lower half of his body.
John asked, “You going to be ready to play on my lacrosse team this spring?”
“Absolutely, and if I’m not, I’ll bring my girlfriend to a game and we’ll cheer you on.”
John could just imagine that, the President and her mate showing up to take in an amateur athletic competition. There would be more Secret Service agents in the stands than fans. Still, it might be a high old time for everyone.
“Okay, good deal,” John said, “but enough with the subtlety. How are you doing, really?”
“Well, if you want reality, I’m doing better than okay. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot of damn hard work ahead of me. The docs tell me how tough it will be without blinking an eye. What they dance around is whether I’ll ever get to be seven-eighths or even three-quarters of my old self.”
John had heard from Jim McGill other things the medical team had withheld from Byron DeWitt: To wit, they were amazed that the stroke he’d suffered hadn’t killed him. And each new step he took in his mental, physical and verbal recovery surprised them daily.
It was DeWitt’s progress that deterred his physicians from criticizing the acupuncture treatments and Chinese medicines he insisted on receiving. Cumque operatur, John thought. Whatever works.
“You know,” John said, “I bet you make it back to fifteen-sixteenths.”
DeWitt laughed. “I’d try to figure out the decimal equivalent of that fraction, but no way I’m up to that yet.”
“See, simple math is what you might never have again. It’s about 94%, by the way.”
“Show-off,” DeWitt said with a smile. “Okay, friend, you’ve brightened my day long enough. Why are you really here?”
John got right to it. “Two reasons. The first is the President called me earlier today to ask me to become the Secretary of the Interior. She thinks it would be good to have a second consecutive Native American in the job.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think every child born in this country is a Native American. Besides that, one of the Secret Service people I spoke with on my way in said I should hold out for the Secretary of State job.”
DeWitt beamed. “Now, that is a brilliant idea, having a son of our earliest inhabitants speak to the world for our country. I love it. Do you want me to talk to Jean about the idea?”
That was the last thing John wanted, but he saw DeWitt was so taken by the idea he didn’t want to spoil his mood. Hell, who knew if a harsh rebuttal might set back his recovery? God help him, might an outright rejection even kill his friend?
John said in a gentle tone, “Let’s just give the idea a little time for reflection. See how it looks in a week or two.”
“Sure, sure,” DeWitt said. “Can’t be too hasty. Did you say you came for another reason, too? Sometimes things slip right by me.”
John silently prayed the idea of him as Secretary of State would be quickly forgotten.
“Yeah, I want to ask if you might be up to doing a little desk work for me.”
“Help you with a case?” DeWitt smiled brightly again. “What is it?”
John told him about Dr. Yvette Lisle’s stolen research work.
“Damn, that’s awful, especially if she’s really near a breakthrough.”
“Yeah.” John told DeWitt about going to see Hezzie Jones-Greer at the USPTO to alert her to the chance the thief might try to patent the stolen research. “What I need help with is someone trying to file for a patent abroad and then using that as a backdoor to a U.S. patent.”
It took a moment for DeWitt to process that idea, but then he nodded. He saw what John was getting at. “Yeah, could be if the thief is slick.” He paused again, either exploring possibilities or trying to gather a thought.
John thought he’d gone to his friend too soon. Maybe he wasn’t ready to go back to work yet. DeWitt began to nod as if being privy to John’s thought and agreeing with it.
Which was halfway right.
DeWitt said, “I think I’ll need help with this. I’ll call Abra Benjamin.”
Benjamin was the new deputy director of the FBI, John knew.
“You think she’ll help?” John asked.
DeWitt had no doubt. “Sure she will.”
Just to be careful, John asked, “Will you ask her to call me, after the two of you talk?”
“No problem.” To John’s eye, DeWitt now seemed more energized.
Maybe one-sixteenth closer to his old self.
He only hoped there would be no backsliding.
“One more thing,” John said. “You know anyone at the NSA?”
The National Security Agency — Fort Meade, Maryland
John had called ahead to the NSA before arriving, but the security protocol there was still a lot stiffer for him than it had been at the White House. An unsmiling male escort took him to what was described as a “clean” room. It appeared to be a decently furnished waiting room of the type you might find in a dental office suite. But John was told his phone wouldn’t be able to place calls from the room. He’d also be unable to connect to the internet.
If he had electronic games resident on his phone, he was welcome to play them.
Then the escort left John alone in the room. He didn’t hear a lock click when the door closed, so presumably he was free to leave the building. With another escort, to be sure. John didn’t play video games, and there were no copies of Modern Eavesdropping magazine on the end tables. So he sat quietly and tried to think productively.
About his problems, not Dr. Lisle’s difficulty.
His first problem, of course, remained the vanishing act of Marlene Flower Moon. Being a woman of means, she could have jetted off to any country in the world. Being Coyote, she probably had the same range without the need of an airplane. The idea that she was up to some sort of devilry went without saying. Who the target of her scheming was remained to be seen.
If it was him, he wanted a distant early warning.
Of course, he didn’t have to be the target. Any number of people might have raised Marlene’s ire. Still, he wouldn’t be unduly flattering himself to think he was at or near the top of Coyote’s list of unfinished business. Quite likely, he was number one.
As a precautionary exercise, he felt it would be wise to compose a mental list of others whom Marlene might single out. After he finished helping Dr. Lisle, such a roster might well help him find Marlene. Having been stalked by Coyote for years, though, the idea of having to hunt for her rang loud with irony.
His other worry was deciding what to do with Alan White River. He found it odd that White River had been released to his custody without him receiving a notification of that condition. Was that really the way the parole boards worked? He didn’t have any experience with the situation, so he couldn’t say.
He thought that as aged as White River was, the person responsible for his release had considered the old Indian to be incapable of further mischief. Physically, that might be true, but White River hadn’t had to strain any muscles stealing the Super Chief. What’s more, John felt Great-grandfather still was capable of having a few tricks up his sleeve.
The idea of whether he might ask his parents to take in White River had just occurred to him when the door to the room opened and a thin, young country-looking guy with strawberry hair, freckles and a prominent Adam’s apple stepped in and extended a hand.
“Cale Tucker,” he said with a soft Southern accent.
John got to his feet and shook the young man’s hand.
“John Tall Wolf, Director of the Office of Justice Service, BIA.”
“Yeah, they told me that. That’s cool. Never met anyone from the BIA before. You want to sit back down, and we can talk about how I might help you?”
“Talk right here?” John asked.
“Yeah. No offense, but they just ran a quick check on you, established your bona fides. Normally, they like to go back into a few generations of family history before you can go any further into the building.”
John said, “The President offered me the Secretary of the Interior job this morning, but I’m thinking I’ll hold out for running the State Department.”
Tucker grinned. “That’s cool, too, and you can bet any of this new administration’s Cabinet post nominees will get checked out all the way back to Eden. Unfortunately, they haven’t shared your biography with us. There’s a nice diner a straight shot down the road a mile, if you’d rather talk there. We could get a corner booth and nobody’d hear whatever we have to say.”
“They have good milkshakes?” John asked.
“Great shakes.”
“Let’s go,” he said.
John drove, following instructions without a hitch, even though there were three turns and not the straight shot Cale Tucker had described. John also noticed, without being obvious, that the young man was subtly checking the side view mirror to see if they were being followed. John didn’t say anything, but he wondered if some big but secret international confrontation was underway.
Wasn’t his place to inquire, though, and as Cale had said, they got a corner booth that gave them all the privacy they needed. Assuming the diner wasn’t an NSA front and their every word and facial tic wasn’t being recorded. They both ordered and promptly received chocolate milkshakes.
Every bit as good as promised.
“What can the NSA do for you, Mr. Director?” Cale asked.
“You checked out whether I have any pull beyond the BIA?” John asked.
It would be helpful to know whether he was going to get more than a free milkshake here.
Or if he’d even have to pick up the tab.
Cale said, “Per instructions from on high, I did just that. You might well become Secretary of the Interior. You are wired in mightily, right through to the Oval Office. That’s why I’d be happy to buy you a burger and fries, too, if you’d like.”
“The milkshake is enough, thanks. What I’d like to know is whether the NSA can help me find a missing laptop computer.”
“Yours?” Cale asked.
John shook his head. “A medical researcher is looking into something that could be of critical national interest.”
“Are foreign power involvement or military implications involved here?”
“Good questions,” John said. “I hadn’t taken my thinking that far but, yes, I can see how this might relate to both of those things.”
“How?” Cale asked.
“My investigation concerns a possible medical breakthrough that might produce a multi-billion dollar revenue stream for a lot of years. What country wouldn’t like to have the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow?”
Cale chuckled. “Nice turn of phrase, Mr. Director. I write lyrics for a band I’m in; you mind if I use that, changed around just a little?”
“Go right ahead,” John said. “As for the military implication, imagine one side has a biological weapon and the only antidote for it.”
The kid was quick on the uptake. “You wouldn’t need nuclear weapons anymore. You just inoculate your own forces, let the bug do all the dirty-work, plant your flag and yell, ‘Victory!’”
John hadn’t thought of things that graphically, but he couldn’t argue with the summation.
He told Cale that the medical researcher was partially funded by the federal government, and gave him her name. The kid grinned and nodded.
“That’s a big help. She’d have to reveal everything up to whether she kisses on first dates to get a grant from Uncle Sam. We’ll look into her financials. Get the purchase date of her laptop, its serial number and find out where it’s been stashed …” Cale’s optimism did a fast fade. He added, “That’s assuming the laptop’s password hasn’t been cracked, the hard drive hasn’t been downloaded to another machine, wiped clean and sent to a junkyard. You’ve improved your odds by coming to us, Mr. Director, but it’s no sure thing we’re gonna grab the brass ring.”
Neither of them liked that possibility.
Nonetheless, a gleam in the kid’s eyes said he’d come up with another line of a lyric: There’s no sure thing we’re gonna grab the brass ring. Problem was, John was sure he’d heard it somewhere before. Could be they were both out of luck.
Cale said, “If you don’t mind my asking, this Dr. Lisle, how’d she wind up turning to you for help?”
“My great-grandfather brought her to me.”
“He’s with the government, too, or another research doc?”
John said, “Neither. He’s an ex-con.”
Florida Avenue — Washington, DC
In the fashion of many densely populated American cities, Washington had become too expensive a place for the people who provided its basic services to find decent domiciles. Providing affordable urban housing had become a prominent political issue in California, which, as usual, was ahead of the rest of the country in social trends. Still, the same discussion was getting underway elsewhere, including the nation’s capital.
Rebecca had told John she’d found a cozy one-bedroom apartment on a nice street in Santa Monica just a few blocks east of Ocean Avenue. The rent was less outrageous than normal because the building was owned by a Canadian friend of her father. Given her new digs’ location, she could get up early, jog over to Palisades Park, turn on the jets and run for a couple of miles with a great ocean view. John knew the park from his own visits to Los Angeles. Signs said the bluffs there were subject to collapse if an earthquake jolted them hard enough.
John told Rebecca to run inland as fast as she could if things ever got shaky.
She promised she would. Any other threats to life and limb would be handled the old-fashioned American way. In other words, she was applying for a concealed carry permit. She was counting on her RCMP experience, being married to a federal copper and working for James J. McGill to help her gain permission to pack heat legally and discreetly.
John had repressed a sigh upon hearing that.
As far as he knew, Rebecca never had fired a shot in the line of duty in Canada. The fact that he was comforted that she would be armed in L.A. made him sad. He and Rebecca had discussed the notion of having a child or two, but there were times when he doubted the wisdom of that idea.
At the moment, he and Alan White River got out of the government sedan John had parked in front of the dwelling where he was subletting a flat from a neighbor of Margaret Sweeney and Putnam Shady. The townhouse’s owner was an archaeologist working on a dig in Rome. Excavation for a new line on the Rome Metro subway had revealed remnants of the city as it had existed 1,800 years earlier.
The scholar had been recruited by Italian authorities to consult on the job. He was expected to be away for at least two years and possibly five. He’d passed the word to people on the block that he was looking for respectable tenants t
o rent the place while he was gone. Rather than charge prevailing rents, he’d peg the cost to covering his property taxes and the building’s routine maintenance needs.
In other words, it was a steal.
A retired cellist, Barbara Lipman, late of the National Symphony Orchestra, took the second- floor apartment. She still kept up with her instrument, something John, the new first-floor tenant, found relaxing. The basement space, as of now, remained vacant.
Margaret Sweeney had seen the basement flat and said it was easily as nice as the one she’d first rented in Putnam Shady’s townhouse.
As John and White River got out of his car, the old man took in the building and said, “This is where you live, Grandson? It is much nicer than my last residence.”
That was FCI Morgantown, a minimum security federal correctional institution in West Virginia.
Looking up, White River added, “Did you leave a light on up there?”
John saw what he was looking at and said, “That’s the upstairs tenant, Ms. Lipman, a retired musician.”
White River smiled, “Ah, yes, so she is.”
“You can hear her?” John asked.
He cocked an ear but all he could hear was a distant car horn and approaching footsteps.
“No, Grandson, I can feel the music in her. She’s given to melancholy pieces, no?”
Surprised that the old man could know that, John was about to say yes, but the sound of the footsteps was closer now and moving with urgency. Running. Closing in fast.
John looked over a shoulder, saw a man coming straight at them.
Until Alan White River stepped back, stuck out a foot, face-planted the guy into the sidewalk.
Metro Police Headquarters — Washington, DC
Captain Rockelle Bullard’s phone rang at the end of a long day. A damn near interminable day. She’d been waiting to hear whether Mayor Arlene Tolliver was going to appoint her as the city’s next chief of police. In terms of on-the-job experience, commendations and relevant education, Rockelle should have been a shoo-in. Two questions remained, however.
