Helen was talking excitedly, relieved. “What a shot!” she said. “An impossible shot!” She hugged him and kissed his cheek.
“What? You think I haven’t practiced that shot?” Joe said. “I used to practice with handcuffs on. Not with a pole at my back, though.”
“Oh, come on,” she protested.
“A man’s got to be ready,” Joe insisted. “It’s too late to practice when the deal is going down. You remember I used to go out shooting left-handed? It’s all part of being ready.”
“What is it about men?” she said, folding her arms. “They’re all heroes. In their minds.”
Joe rolled down the window. He was bathed in sweat, he realized. The cold air felt great. He drove more carefully now. Not far away he could hear an owl hooting repeatedly.
Jammie
Agent Dinah Schwind was looking at a file, actually a printout of a computerized file, from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The file had been obtained in the usual way, except that the INS had no record of it having been requested by Special Agent Tucker, Vernon. He was sitting across the table from Schwind while she looked through it, in a newly opened restaurant on Telegraph Road, in a northern suburb of Detroit.
Ms. Schwind was an athletic woman in a business costume of blue suit jacket and blue skirt. The colonel was intrigued that Dinah looked more attractive than formerly. She had a square face with a square jaw, not very full lips, but seemingly fuller these days. She had done something about the faint shadow of pale facial hair that she didn’t used to be concerned about. Her hair was still short, but now it was more blond than brown. The short cut revealed tiny diamond studs in her neat little earlobes. The colonel wondered if she had a boyfriend. She was one of the charter members of the Lucani.
“Quite a nasty boy,” Dinah said, looking up. “Not so little anymore. Harold Hartsfeld, a.k.a Barry Barsouk, later Bozi ‘Boz’ Bazok. Age”—she leafed back, found the page—“approximately twenty-five. Last seen in Belgrade … possibly the same individual who entered the United States two weeks ago, using a stolen passport registered to a Swedish businessman named Ake—”
“The name doesn’t matter,” the colonel interrupted. “Handsome Harry, busy Barry, boisterous Boz, nickname ‘Badger.’ It’s the same guy. He’s back. Bozi Bazok is the object of some interest to the INS, also to the FBI, but especially, the international tribunal on war criminals in the former Yugoslavia, in The Hague. He’s come a long way, our Harry.”
Dinah riffled the pages. She glanced at them but she had already absorbed the useful information. Harry was an orphan, adopted by an American aid worker named Thelma Hartsfeld, now deceased. Somehow, this never-married woman had managed to assert her will over obdurate bureaucracies of various foreign and American agencies to become the mother of a child thought to be eight years old that she’d found on the streets of Salonika. She had raised the child in Atlanta. He did well in school, seemed a good boy. Unfortunately, Thelma had died when he reached twelve. Evidently, whatever disease that had taken Thelma at the relatively young age of forty had struck her very suddenly and swiftly, and she had been unable to formally provide for the boy.
Distant relatives of hers, in Texas, had intervened. Harry’s further upbringing had been taken over by them, but they hadn’t done a very good job of it, apparently. There was a suggestion in the file of abuse, neglect, misuse of his mother’s estate, and alienation. He had attended a private school in San Antonio for a while, had not done very well there, he’d had some minor scrapes with authorities, and then had run away. According to this file, his name had popped up on police blotters in California, Montana, Wyoming, Illinois, and Michigan. Vandalism, delinquincy, minor alcohol and narcotics violations … nothing requiring more than a few weeks of incarceration and desultory attempts at reform.
At some point, he had taken the name Barry Barsouk and had even obtained a social security number. No known record of employment, though. Vagrancy charges, then some harder raps, like possession of firearms and a minor assault or two, again with only a few weeks of incarceration and suspended sentences.
Thought to be a “runner” for known narcotics dealers in Chicago, later on. Left the country and reappeared on Interpol lists in Italy, then Bosnia, and finally Belgrade. A notation of “dangerous” was attached to some later files. Should be approached with caution, thought to be habitually armed. Known associate of narcotics dealers.
And then a member of a paramilitary group in Serbia. Thought to have murdered no less than fifty individuals. Dinah Schwind was a hardened agent in the war against crime. She had seen a lot of horrendous behavior. But this was a stunner.
“What’s our interest?” she asked, in her best blasé style. By “our,” she meant the Lucani, and the colonel understood it as such.
“I believe he may be in Montana,” the colonel said.
“That’s where Joe is,” Dinah said. “Didn’t he and what’s-her-name go off in the sunset, to stay out of trouble until we figure out what to do about him?”
“You mean Helen,” the colonel said. They fell silent as the waiter brought dessert menus. Nothing looked particularly interesting, unless one were a devotee of crème brûlée. They ordered coffee. “Actually, I asked Joe to look into a few things for us, just to keep him busy,” the colonel resumed, when the coffee had been brought. He looked, possibly, a little uneasy. “Nothing serious,” he assured Dinah.
He explained the Franko affair, some of which she already knew. Joe and Helen’s task, he said, was merely to inquire about the background of this mysterious Franko.
“Joe and Helen,” Dinah said, surprised. “What’s her involvement? She doesn’t know about the Lucani?”
“Under the circumstances,” the colonel said, “I couldn’t very well keep her totally in the dark. I told her that she and Joe would be operating on the behalf of a sub-rosa governmental agency—well, a quasi-governmental agency. I had to assume, as a matter of caution, that Joe had probably told her something about his new employment. I’m confident that it’s not a problem.”
He didn’t look that confident, Dinah thought. The problem really lay with the rest of the Lucani. There was no way Helen should have been brought in without discussion with the group. Or had there been some discussion, to which she had not been privy? She asked if the others had been consulted.
“Not as a group,” the colonel said blandly. “I broached the possibility to a couple of them, Bernie and Edna. The others weren’t available. They didn’t see any problem with Helen.” He watched her carefully, sipping his coffee, to see how she took this.
Dinah was a professional. She was good at concealing her feelings. She asked, “When we talk about ‘others,’ how many and who are we talking about? To me, it’s just us and Bernie and Edna and Dex, now that Pollak’s … missing.”
“Pollak’s dead,” the colonel said, bluntly. “Joe killed him. I thought you had figured that out.”
Dinah had been leaning toward that hypothesis, but to her knowledge no one had actually said as much. “Did he admit it?” she asked.
“No. But it’s obvious. Pollak doubtless overreacted at the scene, with DiEbola, and Joe had to do what he had to do. I blame myself. I wasn’t as concise in my instructions—my advice—to Pollak as he required. He read too much into it. It was my fault. I can’t blame Joe.”
My God, Dinah thought. What have we become? “What are we going to do? That is, what should we do?” She realized that she had slipped into the habit of thinking of the colonel as the chief, the unquestioned leader. This was what had gotten them to this state, she thought.
“I’ve managed to cover up Pollak’s disappearance,” the colonel said. “I had to call in a few favors. It appears that he went off on some quite unrelated wild goose chase, another case entirely, with which none of us are associated—in Central America, actually. What happened to him there, well, we don’t know. He was seen by a couple of agents, at a distance. Presumably, he was meeting some know
n gunrunners, in Belize, or nearby. Such a hothead, Pollak, a loose cannon.”
Dinah digested this. It couldn’t really be washed down by coffee. She’d have to sort it out later. “How many are we?” she asked again.
“Dinah,” the colonel said, quietly, “don’t get alarmed. ‘We’ are just who we’ve always been. But the group, by its nature, is fluid, to a degree. We all know at least a half dozen others whom we’ve wondered about, considered for inclusion, vetted, as it were. For all we know, there may be several other groups just like ours, informal ‘posses,’ as the kids might say. We are who we are. I’ve always considered a few others as sort of peripheral adjuncts, so to speak. It’s a collegial kind of thing.” He mentioned a few names that had come up in discussion in the past, particularly Jamala Sanders, a candidate that Dinah had herself proposed.
“Well, Jammie … sure,” Dinah said.
“Jammie is invited, it’s my pleasure to inform you,” the colonel said. “All the others have agreed. I polled them. That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about, today. You should meet with her and ‘bring her in.’ If your schedule permits, I could arrange it this afternoon. I think you could meet her in Cincinnati, tomorrow. Would that work?”
Dinah was happy about this. She saw Jamala as an ally. But now she had some misgivings about involving her in the group. It no longer sounded like quite the tightly knit band of like-minded pals that it had once seemed to be.
“It’s this thing with Joe that I’m concerned about,” the colonel said. “If our Harry turns up in Butte, it could complicate things. The question in my mind is, should you go out there to deal with it, brief Joe, et cetera, or mightn’t this be a good opportunity for Jammie to get her feet wet? What’s your feeling? I know you have a certain … rapprochement … with Joe. I’d like to advise you against any proprietary feelings, however.”
“I have no ‘proprietary feelings’ toward Joe,” she said, briskly brushing aside the implication of a special relationship. Immediately, however, she felt regret. The prospect of seeing Joe, even with Helen lurking about had momentarily lifted her spirits. But she saw that it was impossible. Had the colonel maneuvered her into this? It would have to be Jammie.
“But I’m not sure why Harry is a problem for Joe,” she said.
The colonel explained that there was reason to believe that one of Harry’s victims, in Kosovo, had been Franko. Possibly Theo Ostropaki, as well. The speculation was that Harry might have coerced some information out of Franko, the nature of which they could not know at present, but which had driven him to go to Montana, to Butte, in fact.
“Here’s what you have to do,” he said. “Bring in Jamala, sound her out on her schedule, her feelings about an assignment, and if it looks propitious, have her look in on Butte. The thing to keep uppermost in your mind is that this Harry is not just dangerous—the record shows that, heaven knows—but he’s running from an international tribunal. So he’s like a wounded bear. Doubly dangerous. To say nothing of the fact that he could be leading other investigators into our sphere.”
* * *
“We may have a problem,” said Dinah. She was talking to Jammie at the airport in Cincinnati. They were old friends, had been at the CIA’s training program together, years ago. Between them, they had worked for or with a veritable alphabet of federal investigative agencies and bureaus, sometimes as partners or associates. Presently, Dinah was temporarily attached to Immigration and Naturalization Service, and Jammie was with the Secret Service, assigned to counterfeit-money investigations.
They were sitting in the main concourse, chatting across a table, in one of those islands of padded chairs for the weary travelers. They appeared to be two travelers who were not known to one another, passing the time of day until the next flight. Dinah looked athletic in a stretch pants suit and a fleece jacket. She had a kind of clean, square-jawed, all-American, white-bread look.
Jammie was not so ordinary looking. One had to examine closely that pale, lightly freckled complexion, the slightly broadened but still aquiline nose, the darkish full lips, and the hair that was either curly or frizzy or kinky, to decide if she was African-American or Mediterranean, possibly Semitic. Her brownish-red hair was pulled back and secured with a colorful elastic band so that the bulk of it formed a buoyant ball at the nape of her neck. She wore ordinary, drugstore dark glasses, presently propped in her hair; neat tapered gray flannel slacks; a dark green blazer; and expensive leather walking shoes.
At first glance, one might think her a secretary, a businesswoman, the director of a service agency, perhaps. They both were surrounded with purses, briefcases, laptop computer cases—the usual paraphernalia of traveling businesswomen. They both had large paper containers of the ubiquitous latte confections available especially in Seattle but now spreading across the country, particularly in airports. Jammie had flown here from Europe to meet Dinah, who had flown in from Detroit. This was an excellent place to talk very privately, with crowds surging past, oblivious, constantly changing. The only better place might have been in a rental car, but neither was staying in Cincinnati; both would be catching flights in different directions within a couple of hours.
Dinah had just concluded her pitch to Jammie about the Lucani, a name that she hadn’t used yet, however. Jammie’s interesting reply had been, “I was wondering if you were ever going to ask me in.”
Their intense conversation soon revealed that while Jammie didn’t know anything at all about the Lucani, per se, she knew about it, or about similar groups. She was eager to be accepted, that was clear. She quite approved of their purpose. And she was happy to hear about the colonel, whom she knew quite well.
Dinah could not shed her misgivings. She felt honor bound to voice them to her friend. She said she was wondering lately if the group wasn’t becoming too dangerous an association.
“Any group like this is dangerous from the git,” Jammie said. “What’s new?”
“It might not be the best time for getting involved,” Dinah said. “Things seem more fluid.” This was the colonel’s usage. “It won’t be so easy to distance yourself, if it is discovered.”
Jammie wondered aloud if it was ever possible to detach oneself, once one was admitted to such a group. “Where you gonna go? Where you gonna hide? If they tumble to us, it’ll be because one of us blew the whistle. We’ll all be fingered. Unless …”
It wasn’t necessary to finish the thought. One could eliminate the Judas, if one could determine that there was one and who it was.
“You don’t think, then, that we could be discovered otherwise?” Dinah asked.
Jammie doubted it. “There might be suspicions of some kind of extralegal or out-of-school collaboration,” she opined, “but that wouldn’t necessarily lead anywhere. The brass has to assume that the grunts are always up to these kind of tricks, anyway, no matter how they try to discourage it. Every posse’s got circles within circles. Well, look at the two of us … that’s what we’re doing, isn’t it? I mean you and me, within your—our—group. The colonel probably has his own confidants, I guess…. You aren’t sleeping with him, are you?”
Dinah laughed. “No. He’s never even patted my butt. Are you?”
“Maybe he’s gay,” Jammie said. “He’s never even winked at me. You might be more his type. I always thought you were his protégé.”
“My God! You think?” The thought had never occurred to Dinah. “If it’s anybody, it would have to be Edna. Seems like they work together a lot.”
“Edna? Edna Payne? She’s in? I knew she was in INS…. Isn’t she kind of … cold?”
“Edna’s nice,” Dinah protested. “I mean, I never really talked to her, you know? Maybe she is a little cold.”
“Maybe Tucker likes that,” Jammie said. “Some men, they go for the icy type. You know, this guy is starting to be like one of those dentists, got a whole harem running around the office. That why I’m coming aboard?” She shook her head in wonder.
D
inah laughed. “It’s nothing like that,” she said.
“Forget Tucker,” Jammie said. “Who are you sleeping with?”
Dinah told her about Joe Service. Jammie had been working in Europe for months and hadn’t seen Dinah to gossip. No, Dinah swore, she hadn’t actually made love with Joe, although it had been a near thing at her apartment, in Chicago, a few months back.
“You were actually naked? Both of you, in a bed?” Jammie said, feigning shock. “And you didn’t knock the dude over? Honey, was the man alive? I mean, was he functioning? ’Cause, otherwise I can’t imagine you not having your way.”
Oh, no, Dinah assured her, Joe was functioning, all right. She declined to describe his equipment, except to say that it looked more than adequate for the purpose. A minor digression ensued, about the unfunctionality of so many men, some offhanded discourse on preferences in that area, before they returned to the chief topic.
Dinah gave her a succinct briefing of the situation with Joe, his recruitment. Jammie was concerned to hear about Joe’s integration into the group and, especially, the absorption of his friend Helen. She judiciously passed over the obvious: Joe’s unwillingness to sexually engage with Dinah because he already had a preferred partner. The more serious problem was what the presence of Joe and Helen meant to the group.
“I’m beginning to see what you meant about ‘fluid,’” Jammie said. “But don’t feel bad about asking me in. Anyway, it’s too late now. I’m in.”
She went on: “I can see the usefulness of someone like Joe. But it’s so dangerous! We’re really at his mercy. Didn’t the others object? Have you discussed it with them?”
Dinah explained that there had been a formal meeting, with a quorum of members present. The objections voiced by Jammie were raised and dealt with. The feeling was that Joe was so utterly dependent on their good offices that no overriding reasons to betray them could be envisioned. The consequences to him would be disastrous, no matter what happened to the group.
Badger Games Page 17
