She picked up the image of the map the FBI surveillance man had created, along with the routes he took when he walked his dog. Those walks were how he made his pick ups and drop offs.
Wait a minute. Lucy paused, trying to focus her thoughts. The drawer of food was empty, and her baby was clamoring for something hot. Something hot and preferably greasy, like a hamburger. But there was something there in the notes, something that snagged at her mind.
That was it. Did he take the dog on the flight? She pulled up the travel records. No, there was no dog checked on the flight. What did he do with the dog? She was an English springer spaniel named Fancy, and he evidently took good care of her, judging by the veterinarian record and the FBI reports.
Lucy thought, her fingers poised over the keyboard. Then she searched Animal Shelter listings in Colorado. In a few minutes Lucy had a possible listing. He might have dropped her off at a Denver Animal Shelter before flying out. The shelter listings tried to make the animals as appealing as possible, in hopes of an adoption before the relentless syringe.
“English springer spaniel,” the note read. “Female, spayed, three years old. Beautiful dog, very well behaved. Good with children. Please adopt her! Left at 11:25 a.m. this morning.”
Lucy leaned back in her chair and rubbed at her upset stomach. The baby was too small to be felt, but she imagined the tiny fetus floating inside her, eyes still unformed, with webbed fingers and little gill slits, listening quietly to her and the steady sound of her heart.
“Well little fish,” she said to her stomach. “I think Mr. George Tabor was a very careful person. He was well prepared. And he loved his dog. That's what the FBI report said, anyway. You can tell a happy dog. So if he knew he was going to be leaving town, would he have left his dog at an Animal Shelter? I don't think he would. He would have found a home for her. I'll call the Shelter tomorrow and see if I can find out if that's her.”
Lucy paused. Or was she being too sentimental? She sighed, and stretched, and started shutting down her computer links. It was time to go to bed and think this one over. There was a Taco Bell on the way home, too.
Colorado Springs
When Eileen slotted her key into her townhouse lock it was nearly 11 o'clock. Her cat was waiting at the door, angrily meowing.
“Oh, Betty, you've got plenty of food,” Eileen said, picking up the big orange tabby and stroking her fur. The cat settled in her arms and began to purr loudly, meowing occasionally through her purring as though she were not quite ready to stop being angry. Eileen kicked the door shut behind her and leaned against it, exhausted. “Are you fatter than usual or am I just tired?”
Eileen had never thought herself a cat kind of person. She was a dog person. Cats were to keep the mice population down on her parent's ranch. Then Betty appeared on her doorstep, a scrawny fluff of orange, furiously hungry. She kept her. She always meant to get a dog but she was away from home too much to have a dog.
“I'm away too much to have a cat, too,” she murmured, rubbing Betty's ears. “Time for a beer and the news and bed.”
There were sometimes men who shared the bed. Two, maybe three, and they hadn't lasted and Eileen wasn't sure why. She liked her solitude too much, perhaps, or she was too used to it. She wanted a man like her cat, self-reliant and self-entertaining. After a few weeks they wanted her to pick up their socks and cook their food and rub their feet after their hard day’s work; in short, to turn into a wife. Eileen wasn’t ready for that. Not now, maybe not ever.
She set Betty down and the cat stalked over to her dish, looking back at Eileen pointedly. One half of the double dish was full of dry cat food. The other side was licked clean. “And some of that wet stuff for you, too, Bets.” Eileen yawned hugely. Maybe she would just forget the beer and the news. She had to be back out to Schriever at eight o'clock. Then she walked over and switched on the TV anyway, just to give herself some company.
Paris, France
When George Tabor opened the door to his modest hotel room the man standing outside was not familiar to him. That only made sense. George had never seen the face of his major contact. The man was not very reassuring in looks or manner. He had curly black hair and olive skin pitted by acne. He could have been Italian or Spanish or Arab or Eastern European. His clothes were Paris rummage sale, wool turtleneck fraying at the collar and cuffs, sturdy no-color twill pants. He slumped in the doorway, hands shoved in his pockets, and his breath was bad. George immediately mistrusted him.
George mistrusted everything about this horrible adventure. He’d forgotten how clean and empty the American West was. George felt a horrible pang of homesickness.
“You’re George?” the man asked.
“Yes, and you are?” George asked politely.
“Mr. Brown,” the man said, after a pause. “I’m married to Molly. She’s unsinkable.”
“Come in,” George said grimly. This was his contact. He knew the password, specific to Colorado. The unsinkable Molly Brown was a famous Colorado heroine but virtually unknown in Europe. It was a hasty password but a good one.
“I’m to take you with me,” the man said. He didn’t shift his slumped position from the doorframe. “Muallah would like to meet you.”
“Muallah?”
“Muallah, the boss,” the man said.
“I thought I was going to meet Mr. Wulff,” George said in surprise. His major buyer was a polite German, Mr. Wulff. Who was Muallah?
“Wulff is one of his names,” the man said impatiently. “But his real name is Fouad Muallah. And he doesn’t like to be kept waiting. Let’s go.”
Colorado Springs
Wednesday morning was breakfast day. Eileen hadn't missed a breakfast with Gary Hillyer in three years. They changed locations occasionally, to sample new restaurants, but they always met at 6:30 a.m., somewhere, on Wednesdays. This month was the Omelet Parlor on Fillmore street, where Cathy the waitress already knew their favorite breakfast dishes and when to refill their cups of coffee. Eileen pulled into the dirt parking lot feeling cheerful. The Procell file lay, still unread, on the passenger seat. The notes she took yesterday were in a neatly typed stack underneath.
“Morning, Eileen.” The waitress showed her to the corner booth she and Gary decided was the best in the restaurant. The new day's sunlight shone through the windows but left the seat in enough shadow so reading the newspaper wasn't a painful experience. Gary Hillyer was buried behind the morning's Gazette, a steaming cup of coffee in front of him.
“Morning, Gary. Thanks, Cathy.” Eileen slid into the booth and reached for the sugar.
“Why are you so happy this morning?” Hillyer asked grumpily. He put down the paper, revealing a basset-hound face and tired eyes. Gary Hillyer was tall, with brown hair and eyes and a perpetual stoop to his shoulders. The stoop was more pronounced this morning.
“What kept you up all night?” Eileen asked, stirring sugar into her coffee.
“What makes you so happy?” Hillyer responded. He was a newspaper reporter for the Gazette Telegraph. They met over a case four years ago. Eileen wanted the information kept confidential. Gary Hillyer wanted the facts known. The classic confrontation. Casual gossip linked them as lovers, but not to anyone who knew Gary Hillyer very well. Gary lived in a handsome Victorian on the West side of Colorado Springs with Frank, his lover of twenty years. Gary occasionally took Eileen home for dinner, a treat she appreciated. Frank was a gourmet chef and his dinner parties were legendary.
“New case,” Eileen said. She reached for the paper.
“The latest on Nevada Avenue? No? The body at Fort Carson, that Pendleton boy? Oh, no, that wouldn't put such an interested look on your ravishing face. He’s a standard overdose, case already pretty much closed. Must be the death at Schriever? It was a murder, then?”
“Yes,” Eileen said.
Hillyer nodded, and Eileen grinned at him. Hillyer would be able to use that.
“What shall it be this morning? Shall I just choose for y
ou? What do you hate the most?”
Hillyer grinned up at Cathy. She smiled, expertly re-filling their cups.
“Today's special,” Eileen said absently. She'd found the column on Terry Guzman's death.
“Make that two,” Hillyer said. “I'm starving.”
Paris, France
When George saw Fouad Muallah he felt an immediate sense of recognition. This man, like George, had style. He was dressed much the same as his delivery man, in wool turtleneck and sturdy twill trousers. But Muallah wore them like a king’s robes. He would look completely natural with a cloak waving behind his broad shoulders. His skin was olive and flushed with health. His eyes were brown and sparkling with good humor and intelligence. He shook George’s hand with a grip that was reassuring and intimate and friendly.
“Mr. Tabor,” he said warmly. “At last.” His hair was black and tightly curled and he smelled of sandalwood soap. His breath was clean and healthy. George realized with a sense of amusement that he was feeling a little jealous. George had always felt he had a great blend of sophistication and savior faire. Fouad Muallah made him feel like an awkward adolescent.
“Mr. Wulff?”
“That’s one of my names,” Muallah laughed. His laugh was terrific, deep and full of delight. George found himself smiling and noticed the deliveryman. The deliveryman had a goofy, infatuated look on his face. Muallah noticed George’s glance and turned to the other man. “Ali,” he said gently. “We need to be undisturbed. Let no one enter.”
Ali’s expression was more than infatuation, George realized uneasily. It was adoration. Ali nodded and left. George looked around for the first time. He had been so dazzled by Muallah he had noticed nothing. The apartment was old and very small, but extremely clean and decorated in a distinctly Arab style. There were small lamps, a length of rich Persian carpet, and pillows arranged around a low coffee table inlaid with a mosaic in tile.
“Shall we have some coffee?” Muallah asked, gesturing with his arm towards the coffee table. “We have known each other so long, you and I, and here we are meeting for the first time. We shall relax, and talk.”
George settled on the richness of the pillows. Muallah clapped his hands sharply and a young woman appeared. She was robed and veiled in the traditional Arab way, with kohl rimmed eyes. She carried a coffee service in silver on a gorgeous tray. Her eyes never glanced at George. She only looked at Muallah, with the same intent adoration as Ali.
“I thought we were going to be alone,” George said, as the woman poured coffee and settled back on her heels next to the table. The coffee smelled delicious, strong and fragrant and fresh.
“We are alone,” Muallah said with a slight frown.
“I have spent long in America,” George said, smiling uncomfortably. “American women --” Muallah waved his hand in dismissal.
“Are rubbish,” he said shortly. “As all America is rubbish.”
Muallah sipped his strong coffee in the small cup, and George copied him. The coffee was deliciously hot and strong and George used the moment to try and get his mental feet underneath him. Finding that his German buyer was really an Arab was a shocking discovery.
George, like most Russians, had a deep distrust of all things Islamic. He’d deliberately avoided selling to the Arabs. George’s grandmother claimed that she was descended from Batu Khan, grandson of Ghengiss, who plundered the whole of Russia and Poland in the eleventh century. Grandmother took care of George when he was small and some of his fondest memories were of sitting cross-legged on the kitchen table while Grandmother kneaded dark bread dough with her strong arms.
She would tell him story after story handed down through the generations, embellished over time until they had the patina of fairy tales. Their ancestress was a lovely woman, as beautiful as a princess, who willingly became one of Batu’s many concubines. She had a paiza, a special coin, that allowed her to travel wherever she wished in the conquered lands. Grandmother let George hold the paiza once, a strange worn piece of ordinary metal carved with what looked like snakes and swans. It went to his sister, not to George, when Grandmother died. The paiza had been handed down through the females of George’s family for generations, undoubtedly cherished because it was worthless base metal and could not be sold for food.
So George had Mongolian blood, however diluted, royal blood of the Khans. He’d felt a sense of pride about that. But the Arabs had fared even more poorly than the Russians under the Khans.
Once the most civilized in all the world, the Arabs had great technology, medicine, and literature before Hulagu Khan, another grandson, pillaged and subjugated the Arab world. Hulagu had the last of the caliphs rolled up in carpets and trampled to death by horses, a story that George’s grandmother told with relish.
George, remembering his grandmother’s stories, had done a little research in the fabulously free libraries of America. The Arabs had nearly risen to conquer again before the Ottoman empire took over. The empire had kept the Arab lands until the British took over the rotting hulk of the Ottomans. Who was to say there would not be another reversal, now that the Arabs had technology and education? Oil brought the Islamic world out of the Dark Ages and into the modern world, but their culture was still -- George looked over at the submissive girl and looked away again quickly -- barbaric.
Now he found he’d been dealing with Arabs all along. But there was nothing to be done about it. George gave a mental shrug and determined that he would make the best of this situation. Muallah did not know that George was a descendant of Hulagu Khan. And George didn’t care who he dealt with, not really, he told himself. He would make his final sale and disappear. It was long past time to stop playing the game.
“Americans are such rubbish, my friend,” Muallah said thoughtfully, sipping his coffee. “And rubbish is meant to be burned, is it not?” He smiled at George, showing dazzling white teeth, and gestured to the girl to serve them more coffee.
Chapter Thirteen
Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado
Eileen was late. The number of cars heading out to Schriever at 8:00 a.m. was astonishing. Eileen sat in bumper to bumper traffic and drummed her fingers on the wheel and looked at the cattle moving through the summer grass. There was a big hill at the edge of the horizon, and the sun had risen right through the notch the road made in the hill. The light was blinding even though the sun was well up into the sky. Eileen looked at the streams of cars and thought about Harben's warning. In winter that hill would be treacherous. In winter the sun would be just at eye level at 8 o’clock in the morning.
As she approached the bottom of the hill she saw a garbage truck pull out from a dirt side road. The truck accelerated towards her, huge and dirty, and as it passed her she saw another one pull out of the same road. This was the land fill for Colorado Springs, Eileen realized. She didn't know where it was located. Her own garbage was carried out here each week, to be churned up and buried. She moved forward in the traffic another few car lengths and looked at the truck as it thundered towards her.
“John Richmond,” she said to herself. “John Richmond died when he hit a garbage truck.” Eileen tapped her fingers impatiently on the wheel and looked over at the Procell file. “I can see it now, a spy getting all dressed up in overalls and a cap, and stealing a Great Western garbage truck.” Eileen laughed aloud. “Right,” she said to the file. She felt much better.
Eileen parked in the same place she had the day before. She remembered how many of the Gamers had mentioned how long it took to get to their desks.
Major Blaine was waiting.
“Took a while, eh?” he said. “I was late too. Lets process you through.”
They entered the security building and Eileen smiled at the sound of the gates clicking and clacking as people passed through. Most people had bored, impatient expressions on their faces, putting their faces to the retinal scanners as though it were the most natural thing in the world for them to do.
“You can get used to anythi
ng, I guess,” Eileen commented absently. She was looking in the crowd, looking for someone. She wasn't sure what she was looking for, until she realized she was looking for the murderer.
“It's worth it to be safe,” Blaine said. He was next in line at the scanner.
They processed through the scanners without comment. Eileen drew a deep breath when she entered and let it out when the door clicked open. Evidently Blaine was right and her guns were not going to cause problems.
“You’ll be looking at tapes today,” Blaine said. “I’ll be tracking the visitors’ military clearances. We’ll get together for lunch at 11:30 or so. I’ll call you.”
“I’ll be in the Gaming Center,” Eileen sighed. She still didn’t have a handle on Major Blaine. As far as he was concerned, she was a member of his team and he was running the show.
“The Games are cancelled so there won’t be anyone in the Center,” Blaine said. “I have it all arranged.”
They walked along the side of the CSOC building. The early summer sun was brilliant and already hot, but the shade of the huge building made the sidewalk chilly. Eileen couldn’t wait to get rid of Major Blaine.
Paris, France
“It is late, my friend,” Muallah said. The coffee was gone, and the tiny sandwiches, and the rich little seed cakes. George was exhausted and humming with caffeine all at the same time. And he was waging a battle to keep from falling under the spell of this remarkable man. To say Fouad Muallah was a gracious host was completely inadequate. He listened to George. When Muallah turned his dark gaze on him George felt like he was being bathed in a soothing light. Muallah spoke lightly of the documents he’d purchased from George, in an offhand yet flattering way that made George feel good all over. He found himself wanting to like this man. He was vaguely surprised at himself. Whatever mistrust he had towards his ancient enemies seemed to be dissolving in the remarkable personality of this person, this Muallah.
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