A Deadly Vineyard Holiday

by Philip R. Craig

  His grasp was strong, and his voice was hard and angry. I looked at the hand, then back at his face. “You tell me nothing, and you expect me to tell you everything. It’s true, then. That story about the girl with no face, and whoever it is out there who wants to do the same to Cricket Callahan. Take your hand off of me.”

  He looked at the hand and took it away. I had the impression he hadn’t noticed it being there. “Where did you get that information? That’s confidential material! Who gave it to you?”

  “How many people work for intelligence services in Washington? And how many of them know about the letters and the threats they contained? And how many of them have lovers or wives or husbands that they talk to? And how many of those people have other lovers or wives or husbands that they talk to?”

  “Who told you?”

  “A friend who has friends who have friends.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I didn’t say it was a he. In any case, you won’t get the name from me.”

  Karen and Debby arrived and looked around.

  “What did you find?” asked Karen, looking at the bomb squad.

  Pomerlieu told her about the bugs, but not about the bomb.

  Debby pointed at the truck. “What are they doing?”

  “We found something we can’t identify,” said Pomerlieu smoothly. “When in doubt, take it out. They’re removing it.”

  Karen frowned but, after a glance at Debby, made no comment about an operation she certainly must have recognized. Instead—deliberately, I thought—she spoke of the bugs, the lesser of two evils by far. “If they’ve been there long, it means that whoever installed them knew when we went downtown and could have followed us there.”

  I used my confident voice: “The good thing was that we went in John Skye’s Wagoneer. It wasn’t bugged, so they couldn’t know exactly where it went unless they followed it, and they didn’t have much time to get a surveillance car in place. We were probably in the clear all the time. Anyway, the house is messy but cleaned of bugs now, so you can go inside and say anything you want.”

  “Good! I’m calling Allen!” said Debby, and trotted into the house. Karen, frowning still more, went after her.

  “Holy moly” came Debby’s voice. “It looks like a hurricane hit in here!”

  Pomerlieu touched my arm. “You were saying . . .”

  “I was saying you won’t get the name out of me. My friends have enough problems without adding you.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean what you were saying about the inside agent.”

  “It’s nothing you haven’t thought about yourself. It’s just that the inside agent hasn’t done the job himself, when, supposedly, he’s had plenty of chances. I can only think of two reasons why he hasn’t done it: He isn’t the violent type, or he’s been afraid that he’ll get caught.”

  Pomerlieu studied my face, then nodded. “There are agents—criminals, too—who may join a violent conspiracy but who would never pull a trigger or detonate a bomb. They might drive the getaway car or even steal the dynamite, but they won’t shoot or light the fuse. They don’t have the heart for it. They may be wonderful agents, but they won’t do certain things.”

  I decided it wouldn’t hurt to ask. “Are Ted and Joan the shy-violet types, or are they the sort you can ask to do anything?”

  He stiffened. “They’re the sort who know their jobs and do their duty.”

  “The same might be said for the inside agent. But he’s like most people in his position. He doesn’t want to get caught. Especially doing something like this.”

  “No,” said Pomerlieu thoughtfully. “Especially doing something like this.”

  The bomb squad had succeeded in loading the plastic bag into the cylinder on the back of the truck, and the truck was now moving away up the driveway.

  “Now what?” I asked. “Shall Karen and Debby go away with you?”

  He looked around at the gathering darkness, then shook his head. “There is no away, Mr. Jackson. It’s always the lady and the tiger. No, let them stay here tonight, at least. I’ll fill the forest with agents.”

  While he arranged that, I went looking for Joan Lonergan. I found her out in my corral, taking yet another look around. She did not smile when I came to her, and I decided to get right to the point.

  “Somebody came down here from Felix Neck while you were on duty up there this afternoon. Did you see him?”

  “Who said I had the duty?”

  “Walt Pomerlieu. Did you see anybody while you were up there?”

  “I don’t report to you. You ask Walt all the questions you want to, but don’t ask me.”

  She walked away into the falling night, leaving me staring after her.

  When I had my anger under control, I went inside and started straightening up the house. Karen helped, but Debby stayed curled on the couch with her phone, talking, presumably, with Allen. Young love? By the time the place looked fit again, Pomerlieu and his crew were gone.

  I went out into the yard and looked up at the indifferent stars. The earth seemed without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.

  — 16 —

  I got a flashlight out of the Land Cruiser and went into the woods, circling the thread and retying the break to the south of the house, where the deer had gone on its way. The rest of the thread was intact. When I came back to the porch, I found Karen there.

  She pointed at the living room door. “She’s still on the phone.”

  “I understand it’s a teenage specialty,” I said. “You look a little weary.”

  She shrugged. “It’s been a long day.” She pushed her hair back from her forehead. She not only looked tired, she looked very young as well.

  “It’s martini time,” I said. “Care to join me?”

  “I’d better not,” she said. Then she hesitated. “But I think I will. Not too strong.”

  “Vodka or gin?”

  “Either.”

  I mixed her a three-to-one gin martini and added a couple of green olives stuffed with hot red peppers. For myself I poured a tall vodka on the rocks and added two more olives, black ones, from Zee’s private stock.

  “Up on the balcony,” I said, carrying both drinks.

  I went up and she followed me. I put the drinks on the table between our chairs, and we sat and looked across the dark waters of Nantucket Sound. To the right, the Cape Pogue lighthouse flashed at us. Straight across and to the left, the lights of Cape Cod were clearly visible. A couple of moving lights showed boats out on the sound. Above it all the August stars were beginning to fill the sky. The wind moved softly through the trees.

  I sipped my drink. It was cold and smooth as ice. I sipped again.

  “It’s lovely,” said Karen.

  “We think so.”

  “How long have you been married?”

  “A little over a year.”

  “Your wife is very beautiful.”

  “Smart, too. And famous for having excellent taste in men.”

  She was silent. The darkness hid her face. Then she said, “I’m sorry if I seemed to be coming on to you this afternoon. I apologize. It won’t happen again.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “I knew you didn’t mean it. You have somebody back in Washington?”

  “Washington is a long way off. It’s frustrating. I’ve heard all about husbands whose jobs take them away from their wives. How they find girls in foreign towns and all that. But I never thought it would happen to me.”

  “A little flirting isn’t bad, but you have to keep it light, so nobody takes it seriously.”

  She put some brightness into her voice. “Well, it’s only a few more days. We’ll be going back on Monday. I’ll see him then.”

  “I’m luckier,” I said. “Zee will be home just after midnight.”

  “Tell me about the bomb,” she said.

  I told her what I knew. When I was through, she said, “I don’t think Cricket needs to know about this.” T
hen she said what I’d been thinking. “The bomb was there. Why didn’t he set it off?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. But a lot about this whole business doesn’t make sense. Maybe it’s our lack of organization that’s keeping us alive. We haven’t made any long-range plans except for Sunday’s clambake. Everything else we’ve done has been sort of spontaneous. We’ve gone off here and there without any warning, so Shadow hasn’t been able to depend on us being anywhere in particular at any particular time.”

  She thought awhile. “But if I was Shadow, by now I’d be catching on to all this spontaneity and planning to take advantage of it. I’d lie outside your driveway and keep track of who came and went until I knew that Debby was in a particular place, and then I’d go after her, if that’s what I wanted to do. Right now, for example, if I was out there, I’d know that just the three of us were down here.”

  “Except for your fellow Secret Service agents out there in the trees.”

  “Yeah. Except for them.”

  “Of course if they weren’t there, and unless Shadow figures we’re a couple of idiots, he’d know that we’d know that he’d know there were just the three of us down here.”

  She managed a real laugh. “I really hate these I-know-that-you-know-that-I-know-that-you-know things. It makes us sound a lot smarter than we are.”

  True. “Well,” I said, “if there really are agents all around us, I guess we’re about as secure as we can get. On the other hand, if you think Shadow can get to us in spite of all those guardians out there, there are three or four things we can do. We can sneak off through the trees and hide out somewhere else for the night. Or we can get into a car and drive out past Shadow with you and Debby hunkered down on the floor so he can’t see you, and then hide out someplace else. Or I can drive out alone and try to make him think that you’re hunkered down on the floor, so he’ll follow me and you’ll be safe here. Or we can just stay here and take turns standing watch while Debby sleeps.”

  “I think we can stay,” she replied. “Nobody is going to get through the net that’s around us tonight.”

  I looked out at the lights on the far Cape Cod shore and thought about the bomb.

  “Hey,” said Debby’s voice from the bottom of the stairs. “Where is everybody?”

  “Karen and I are up here having martinis,” I said. “Everybody else is gone.”

  “Martinis, eh? I’ll fix one for myself and be right up!”

  “Only if you have your own booze supply,” I said. “I’m not going to share mine with a young whippersnapper like you. I’ll loan you a can of cola, though. You can pay me back later.”

  “First no beer, now no martini,” said Debby. “What kind of a place is this, anyway?”

  Her footsteps went away.

  “I don’t want to worry her with all this,” said Karen.

  “She’s not naive,” I said. “She knows something’s going on.”

  “She doesn’t need to know everything.”

  I wasn’t sure Karen was right about that. If somebody was trying to mutilate me, I’d want to know everything.

  The footsteps came back, then climbed the stairs, following the beam of a flashlight. The beam fell on us, then on an empty chair. Debby sat down in the chair and turned off the light. Our eyes readjusted to the darkness and the stars glowed down at us.

  “Oh, excellent,” said Debby.

  We sat and looked at the stars and the lights.

  “Allen’s coming,” said Debby in a happy voice.

  “Good,” I said. “If he comes early, he can help open quahogs.”

  “I’ll tell him. We can open them together!”

  Spoken with the enthusiasm of one who has never tried to open hard-shell clams. The famous phrase clamming up is based on their well-known capacity to stay shut when they want to. I decided not to lecture on the subject. “By the time you get back to Virginia,” I said, “you’ll be a master of island lore.”

  “Yes.”

  I wondered if anyone was watching us through those night-vision scopes I’d read about, or if I was just being paranoid. Of course, even if I was being paranoid, it didn’t mean nobody was out there watching us. I was very tired of not knowing what was going on. I finished my drink and got up. “I’m going out for a while. I’ll be back before midnight.”

  “Where are you going?” asked Karen’s voice.

  “To see a man.”

  Debby yawned quite clearly. “Apparently we ladies need our beauty rest,” said Karen. “Time for us to hit the hay.”

  I thought that Debby might indeed get some beauty rest, but I doubted that Karen would. I thought that she and her pistol would be keeping watch while I was gone, even though Walt Pomerlieu’s people out there in the woods supposedly provided all the security the house would need.

  We went down from the dark balcony, following Debby’s flashlight, to the porch. Karen took my glass at the living room door, and I went out to the Land Cruiser.

  At the head of my driveway, there were two men and two cars, one of which was blocking the entrance. I rolled down my window as they played a light on me. I told them I’d be out for a while, but back before midnight. They moved the car and I drove out and turned right toward Vineyard Haven. There might have been a car parked back from the highway beside the Felix Neck driveway, but I couldn’t be sure.

  I drove up to the blinker, looking in the rearview mirror at the headlights coming along behind me from the direction of Edgartown, then took a left. One set of lights followed me. I took a right on West Tisbury Road. The lights followed me. In West Tisbury I took another right. This time the headlights went the other way. I wondered if there was a second Shadow in a second car, but saw no such car behind me, so took a left onto Panhandle Road. Then I took Middle Road to Chilmark and went on to Gay Head. It was late, but I hoped that Joe Begay was still up.

  He was.

  “J.W.,” he said, coming out of the house to see who had arrived.

  “Is Toni asleep?”

  “She’s eating and sleeping for two these days, so she’s in bed, at least. I’m about to join her.” He cocked a brow. “Or am I?”

  “I need some help. Maybe you can give it to me.”

  “This have to do with your Virginia cousin?”

  “It does. I need to know things I don’t know.”

  “And I know those things?”

  “Maybe.” I told him what had happened since last we’d talked, and what my thoughts were. He listened without saying a word. When I was through, he said, “A bomb, eh? He’s getting serious. What do you want from me?”

  “Anything you can tell me.”

  He got out his makings and rolled a cigarette. I had rolled a few joints of my own long ago, but it was a skill I no longer practiced. He filled his paper with Prince Albert, I noticed, not grass, and lit up with an old-fashioned Zippo, the world’s champion lighter even though the modern Bic throwaways have replaced it in public fancy.

  “Well, there is one thing,” he said. “About that bug we found on Zee’s car. I’ve seen that kind before. They’re used in special ops by one or two agencies I’ve worked with. But not too many outfits used them, and they’re not the sort of thing you can find in Soldier of Fortune or any of those other mags that sell stuff to would-be paramilitary types. You can buy all kinds of stuff from those mags, but you can’t buy that bug. It’s pretty much unavailable to anybody outside certain agencies.”

  “What agencies?”

  He puffed on his cigarette. The ember glowed hot, then only warm. I inhaled the smoke and waited.

  “Well, there’s the CIA. Some of their operations people liked these. And then there’s the IRS.”

  I wondered if I’d heard right. It sounded so weird that it might actually be true. “The Internal Revenue Service? You’re kidding me!”

  “Not that IRS, although I wouldn’t put it past them.” He allowed himself a laugh. “I mean the International Research Service.”

&n
bsp; I ran all the federal acronyms I could think of through my head, but I’m not good at such things in the best of circumstances, so I wasn’t surprised that I’d never heard of the International Research Service. I said as much to Joe Begay.

  His cigarette flared and faded. “If you read the annual budget reports, you’ll see it right there, sort of buried between other agencies having to do with foreign activities. It doesn’t have much of a budget of its own, so it doesn’t attract much attention, but it gets a lot of money from some big-budget outfits that don’t like to tell Congress or anybody else just where all the money goes.”

  “How does it manage that?”

  “IRS gets contracts from those agencies to perform certain services. In turn, the IRS contracts with private businesses for them to do some of the work.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “Like helping our friends and undercutting our enemies. Finagling with currencies, maybe. Spreading information or disinformation. Buying people in powerful positions. Maybe an occasional unsociable act. All in the name of research, of course. All IRS agents are researchers.”

  “What kind of unsociable acts?”

  Joe Begay dropped his cigarette butt and ground it out under his foot. “Like helping a friendly political faction win an election with the help of high explosives.”

  An image came uninvited into my mind. “The little girl with no face.”

  “The very same. The bomb under your house is an echo of that other explosion, wouldn’t you say? Poetic justice, as it were?”

  Ye gods! “And these bugs we’ve found on the cars. They’re the sort the IRS uses?”

  “Indeed.” He hesitated.

  “What?”

  “Remember me mentioning that some people call this island Spook Haven? Well, they do. Because of all the retired intelligence types who live here or summer here. There are a lot of them. Rich old guys from the OSS days and the early days of the CIA, and some younger rich and occasionally not so rich guys, lots of them married into families playing the same games, and all of them from those alphabet outfits down Washington way that do some work they’d just as soon not talk about in public. Black ops and gray ops, and like that. They do white ops, too, of course, though they probably don’t count in this case. It’s the black and gray operatives who might interest you.”