by M. A. Lawson
Shit, Prescott thought, but she didn’t think Hamilton would be insane enough to go after a Chinese diplomat. She asked Tate if he got a picture of the man and he said yes and e-mailed it to Prescott. The NSA had files on everyone at the embassy—including cooks and gardeners—and ten minutes later Prescott knew that the man in the photograph was a cultural attaché named Fang Zhou.
At twelve thirty p.m., Tate reported that Fang had left the embassy accompanied by a Chinese woman, and right after that, Hamilton had driven to M Street in Georgetown.
Thank God, Prescott thought. At least Hamilton wasn’t following Fang any longer. But what the hell was she doing on M Street?
• • •
NOW THAT KAY HAD JOHN’S PICTURE, she decided it was time to call Prescott. She also decided it was time for lunch and drove to Georgetown, miraculously finding a parking spot.
She couldn’t remember Prescott’s private number—that had been in the contacts directory in the NSA iPhone now in Otis’s truck—so she once again called the NSA operator, said that her name was Kay Hamilton, and she needed to speak to Olivia Prescott.
Prescott came on the line snarling. “Why in the hell do you keep calling me through the operator? What do you want?”
“I’ve got a picture of the guy who ordered the attack on Callahan’s office. Give me your e-mail address and I’ll send it to you. I need you to identify him.”
“No!” Prescott screamed. “You have no idea what’s going on right now and how much damage you can cause, and I mean damage to the United States. We need to talk, but not on a phone.”
“Then why did you call me last night?” Kay asked.
“I didn’t call you. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Kay suspected Prescott was lying about not calling last night as she was approaching Billy’s house, but before she could say so, Prescott said, “I want you to come to Fort Meade. Immediately.”
“I don’t think so,” Kay said. She could see herself leaving Fort Meade in the back of a windowless van with a black hood over her head. She would meet Prescott someplace public. “I’m at Clyde’s in Georgetown, in the back room where they have all the hanging ferns. I’ll give you an hour to get here.”
She hung up before Prescott could scream at her again.
• • •
PRESCOTT WALKED INTO THE RESTAURANT, looking mad enough to kill. Kay had just finished a steak lunch and was now having a glass of iced tea. She’d felt like having a martini to celebrate, but it was too early in the day for a cocktail, and considering that she hadn’t slept in over thirty hours, a martini might put her right to sleep.
Prescott sat across from her and immediately said, “Tell me what you’ve been doing.”
Kay almost said, “You first,” but decided not to.
“I found out that a guy named Dylan Otis was in charge of the crew who attacked Callahan’s office.”
“Yes, go on,” Prescott said, which surprised Kay. She’d expected Prescott to ask how she found Otis, but she didn’t, and Kay got the impression that Prescott already knew about him. But how could that be?
“Otis told me that he did the job for a Chinese guy named John. He didn’t know John’s real name, but he had John’s address.”
“Then what?” Prescott said—which again struck Kay as odd.
“I went to the address Otis gave me and followed a man to the Chinese embassy. About an hour ago I took his picture.”
Kay took out her phone and showed Prescott the picture. “Do you know who this guy is?”
Prescott glanced at the picture. “Yes.”
“Well, what’s his name?” Kay said.
“You don’t need to know that.”
“Olivia, I know where he lives and where he works. So you might as well tell me.”
Prescott glared at her, then finally said, “His name is Fang Zhou and he’s supposedly a cultural attaché at the embassy. We suspect he’s part of the Chinese intelligence apparatus in this country, but we’ve never caught him actually engaged in an operation.”
“Fang Zhou,” Kay repeated.
“Yes, and the only reason I gave you his name is that I can’t afford to have you stumbling around like a bull in a china shop, killing more people.”
“More people?” Kay said. “What do you mean by that?” Prescott knew Kay had killed Otis’s guy, Quinn, on K Street but how would she have known that she’d killed Billy?
Prescott ignored the question. “Okay, Hamilton, I’m about to tell you something, even though you don’t have the clearance. This information is so sensitive and so vital to national security that you won’t be given a trial if you ever tell anyone. You’ll be tossed into a cell and placed in total isolation. You won’t be freed until we’ve achieved world peace.”
“Yeah, yeah, enough with the threats. Talk,” Kay said.
“My people identified the man at Zytek who sent the e-mail attachment that was in Callahan’s safe. I’m not going to tell you his name. We also figured out that the e-mail was sent to the Chinese. Normally we’d have the FBI arrest the spy at Zytek, but instead, we’re going to use him to feed information to the Chinese that could give the United States a significant military advantage.”
“Gee, could you be any more vague, Olivia?”
“Don’t get smart with me. I’m not in the mood. But now do you understand why you need to stop pursuing Fang? We don’t want the Chinese to know that we’ve identified their spy. We want to let them think that no one ever saw the attachment, and that we would never be able to identify the sender or the recipient. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, I understand. But this guy killed two of Callahan’s people and almost killed Callahan. He killed Danzinger and her secretary. He may not have done it personally, but he hired the people who did.”
“Well, that’s the way these things go sometimes,” Prescott said.
“What the fuck does that mean?” Kay asked.
“Lower your voice! It means, that sometimes there are casualties in intelligence operations.” Before Kay could go ballistic, Prescott said, “What do you think we could do to Fang? Even if we wanted to arrest him, we can’t prove that he had anything to do with the attack, and he has diplomatic immunity. We could invent some reason to expel him from the country, but then the Chinese would retaliate by expelling some of our people from China.”
“Okay,” Kay said. “I’ll leave Fang alone. For now. But I want you to locate Otis for me.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?” Prescott asked.
“I put the cell phone you gave me in his truck, so I know you can find him.”
“I’ll think about it. I’m not sure I want to do anything about Otis at this point.”
“Goddamnit, he killed two of Callahan’s people and I’m not going to let him get away with that. And if we’re not going to do anything about Fang, we can at least make Otis pay.”
“I said, I’ll think about it,” Prescott said. She rose from her chair. “I’m leaving. But I want you to know that I’ll be watching you, Hamilton. And I think you’re bright enough to understand that I’m not just talking about having a guy in a trench coat follow you around.”
25
DAY 4—1:30 A.M.
While Kay was parked on the corner of Utah and Tennyson, Otis and Simpson left Billy’s place. They stopped at the motel in Lorton where Otis had stashed Shirley, and Simpson had to help Otis get out of the truck and walk to Shirley’s room. Shirley didn’t answer the door when he knocked, and Otis figured she was probably passed out. Since he didn’t want the motel staff to see him—his ripped jeans, and the big bandage on his left knee—he had Simpson get a screwdriver from his truck and forced open the cheap motel room door.
Shirley was on the bed fully clothed, dead to the world, snoring and stinking of booze, and Otis wasn’t able to reviv
e her—which was probably just as well. He wrote a note saying her Prius was in the parking lot and that he’d call her later. He placed the note, her car keys, and her cell phone on the toilet seat, figuring that was the first place she’d stumble to when she woke up. He thought for a moment about leaving her brother’s share of the money but decided not to. Things had changed now that he was on the run.
With Simpson driving Otis’s pickup, they left Lorton and headed for North Carolina. Simpson knew a guy there, an older guy he’d met in prison, named Younger. Younger had been a good friend to Simpson when he was inside and Simpson, in turn, made sure the hard-core cons didn’t take advantage of the old man.
Simpson said Younger would let them hide out at his place until they could figure out what to do next.
Younger was about seventy, and he’d spent the last twenty-two years in a cell for shooting a woman when he was holding up a liquor store. At the time, he’d been so drunk he didn’t remember pulling the trigger. He now lived in a little cabin on the edge of Nantahala National Forest. He lived alone, hunted and fished, made his own whiskey, and grew a little pot. The pot, in fact, was his only source of income, and he sold it to a few folks in the small town of Franklin, North Carolina.
By the time they got to Younger’s, it was ten in the morning—nine hours after leaving Billy’s place. Otis’s knee was killing him, and he had a fever. He had to do something about his knee soon or he might lose his leg.
• • •
EVA BECKMAN WAS STILL MONITORING Otis and Simpson, and it looked as if they’d finally stopped driving for the day.
When Prescott had called her at one in the morning and told her to start bird-dogging Otis, Beckman had to go to Fort Meade to get a briefing from Brookes and pick up the equipment she would need. By the time she was ready to leave, Otis and Simpson (per the cell phone in Otis’s truck) were past Richmond and on I-85 headed toward North Carolina—but that didn’t pose a problem for Beckman, because she had access to an NSA helicopter.
Beckman boarded the chopper and caught up with Otis, then called back to headquarters and told Brookes to have a car waiting for her in Greensboro, something fast with four-wheel drive.
At six a.m., Beckman was parked on I-85 and was watching Otis approach her on the GPS monitor mounted on her car’s dashboard. She let him pass and then fell in behind his black Toyota Tundra.
At nine a.m., Otis’s truck had passed through Asheville, got onto US Route 23, and headed toward the small town of Franklin. After Otis passed through Franklin, however, following him became problematic. He headed into the Nantahala National Forest and began taking unmarked, unpaved roads and Beckman had been forced to stay well behind.
Finally, an hour after Otis left Franklin, Otis’s pickup stopped. Half an hour later, the pickup was still in the same position, and Beckman wondered if Otis had finally reached his destination. There wasn’t an address corresponding to his location, so he was definitely out in the boondocks, in fuckin’ Deliverance country. Beckman could envision a small cabin sitting in a dark clearing, surrounded by tall trees.
Beckman decided that if Otis’s pickup was still in the same spot when it turned dark, she’d creep up closer to see what Otis and Simpson were doing.
Beckman smiled. She loved her job.
Beckman was twenty-seven, had spent four years in the army—two tours in Afghanistan—and had worked for the NSA for four years. Her civil service job title was “security specialist”—which could mean almost anything: a uniformed guard at Fort Meade, a geek involved in IT security, or a person who did background checks on NSA employees. Or it could mean that she was a field agent who was dispatched when a situation required someone in the field. Beckman didn’t know why she was following Otis—but that wasn’t all that unusual. It was the principle of “need to know,” and apparently Prescott didn’t feel that a lowly agent like Eva Beckman needed to know much of anything.
• • •
WHEN ROY YOUNGER HEARD A VEHICLE pull up to his cabin, he looked through a fly-specked window and saw a big black Toyota pickup with two men in it park in front of his porch. No one ever visited him and he couldn’t figure out who the men could be. He grabbed a shotgun that he kept near the door and stepped out onto the porch, trying to look tough, knowing he didn’t. He hoped the shotgun would scare these two guys off, whoever they were.
Then the driver stepped out of the pickup and he recognized Simpson, whom he hadn’t seen in two years, and he let out a whoop of joy. He didn’t know what the hell Simpson was doing here, but Younger was glad he’d come. He didn’t have many friends and the only time he ever talked to anyone was when he went into Franklin to sell his pot.
The guy with Simpson stepped out of the pickup next: a big, hard-looking guy, older than Simpson, who had a bloody bandage on one knee. Simpson went over to the injured guy and helped him walk to the porch.
“Roy,” Simpson said, “this is my friend Otis. We need to stay here for a bit.”
And Roy Younger thought, Uh-oh.
• • •
YOUNGER WAS SCRAWNY, with wispy white hair and white whiskers he hadn’t shaved in a week. He still had about half his teeth. He was wearing bib overalls without a shirt, and his feet were bare and dirty. Otis could tell Younger was pleased to see Simpson but he was leery about them staying with him. His attitude changed when Simpson said they’d pay him five grand for the privilege of sleeping on the floor of his shack.
“The thing is,” Simpson said, “I’ve got to get a doctor for my buddy, one that will keep his mouth shut. He’s got a bullet in his knee, and if he doesn’t get it out, he could lose his leg.”
“I don’t know any doctors,” Younger said. “But I know this woman. She’s a nurse, worked at a VA hospital in Asheville for years. She lost her license, some kind of malpractice thing, and now she calls herself a midwife and does abortions and helps folks who don’t have insurance. I went to see her once when I had a bug bite that got infected. She’s a mean bitch, but if you pay her enough, she’ll help and she won’t talk.”
Otis thought about having Younger bring the nurse to him, but he didn’t want anyone to know where he was staying, so they all piled into Otis’s truck and took off for the nurse’s place in Franklin. They needed Younger to introduce them to the nurse and to find her place. They’d make sure they weren’t followed returning to Younger’s cabin, but they were just going to have to take Younger’s word that the nurse wouldn’t say anything.
• • •
BECKMAN COULDN’T FIGURE OUT what was going on. The GPS monitor showed that Otis’s pickup had started moving again, and it was headed right toward her. She was on a narrow, unpaved road, and there wasn’t room to turn her car around. She backed up fast and spotted an area where there was a bunch of tall bushes but no trees. She was driving a four-wheel-drive SUV, so she stepped on the gas and crashed through the brush until the SUV was almost invisible. If Otis looked closely, he might see her as he passed—but he didn’t. Beckman waited five minutes, then took off after him.
An hour later, Otis was parked in front of a small clapboard house in Franklin with a front lawn that was completely covered with dandelions. Beckman parked so she could see the house. While she waited, she learned that the house belonged to a Viola Patterson and that Patterson was a nurse; it said so right on her Facebook page.
• • •
THE NURSE IN FRANKLIN turned out to be a fat woman with dyed black hair and the mean black eyes of a snapping turtle. The only anesthetic she had was a bottle of Gordon’s gin, so all Otis could do was grit his teeth as she probed his knee with a dental pick to locate the slug. Then she shoved a handkerchief in his mouth so the neighbors wouldn’t hear him scream as she dug out the slug with a pair of needle-nosed pliers.
After she removed the bullet, the nurse poked around in the wound some more, removing remnants of clothing and bits of bone. He pa
ssed out when she poured what felt like gasoline into the wound to clean it out before she bandaged it. Otis figured she’d probably destroyed his knee beyond repair, but at least he wasn’t going to lose his leg to gangrene.
By the time she finished, Otis’s clothes were soaked with sweat and he felt as weak as a kitten. He asked how much he owed her, and when she hesitated, he said, “How ’bout two grand.”
She nodded and he could tell she would have settled for less, but Otis could afford to be generous. She gave him a pair of old crutches and an aluminum cane for when he didn’t need the crutches. She also tossed in a bottle of antibiotic pills to fight off infection and, even better, gave him a dozen OxyContin for the pain.
As they were leaving, Otis said, “You talk to anyone about me, I’ll come back here and kill you.”
“Get the fuck out of here,” the nurse said. Florence Nightingale she was not.
• • •
BECKMAN WATCHED as Otis, Simpson, and an old man in overalls emerged from the nurse’s house. Otis was now on crutches, his left pant leg was split from crotch to ankle, and there was a large clean bandage on his knee. Simpson was twirling a cane in one hand. Beckman didn’t know who the old man was but guessed he probably owned the place in the forest. The three men got back into Otis’s pickup, and headed back to the woods.
When it was almost dark, Beckman took a knapsack from her SUV, tossed in two bottles of water, three protein bars, a flashlight, a Glock, night-vision binoculars, and a switchblade knife. Holding the GPS monitor in her hand, she made her way through the woods to Otis’s pickup.
The pickup was in front of a small shack. The lights were on—she could hear a generator running—and through a window, she could see Otis, Simpson, and the old man at a table, eating. Beckman was going to have to spend the night watching the cabin. She just hoped the fucking bugs didn’t eat her alive.
26
DAY 5—8 A.M.
When Otis woke up the next morning, he felt fairly good. He hadn’t slept well and his knee hurt like a bastard, but his fever was gone and he could think again. He borrowed a pair of overalls from Younger to replace his jeans that had been destroyed by the nurse; the overalls were two inches too short and smelled as if they hadn’t been washed in a month.
