The Spy Across the Table

by Barry Lancet

  “I hear you talked to Joe and Joan,” Swelley said. “Bet you’re feeling superior.”

  There it was. I should have guessed. The Department of Homeland Security had been born in the post-9/11 scramble, and its power had expanded almost exponentially since then. It had sucked up a number of agencies, among them the Secret Service. Which meant the DHS had eyes in the White House.

  “Actually, I’m not feeling anything except late for my appointment. Which I plan to keep.”

  I took a step forward and the biggest of the Homeland agents stepped in front of me. Another slipped behind me. In an instant I was boxed in on all four points of the compass, though Swelley’s goons had been careful to take up positions just outside striking range. No doubt a takeaway from our previous airport run-in.

  Swelley ambled over. “You’ll go when I’m done with you, not before. In fact, from now on, you’ll do exactly what I say, when I say. First order of the day is you report to me first. Not Joan. Not Joe. Not anyone in the White House. This is a national security matter.”

  “The first lady did say something about exchanging information.”

  “This is me exchanging.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “You got it wrong, Brodie. I give orders, you listen.”

  “I think the first lady had something else in mind.”

  “I don’t give an armadillo’s ass what the little lady wants. We have bigger issues than Joan’s college roomie. You need to back off. We’re working on the case and don’t want you in the way. So take it real slow, if you get my drift. You can follow up on her little assignment but you report to me. I’ll decide how much you can pass on. We clear?”

  “Sure thing,” I said. “So what can you tell me?”

  “You just got it. Everything else is classified.”

  I shook my head. “Of course it is. Always a pleasure doing business with you, Swelley.”

  “Comments like that remind me what I like about you, Brodie—nothing. Boys, give our new friend a memento of our powwow so he remembers his place. Nothing that’ll show. He’s got an ‘appointment.’ ”

  Of the four agents around me, I could see only three. I was moving before Swelley finished his grandstanding. On memento, I slammed the heel of my right foot into the kneecap of the agent in front of me. On place, after a split-second pivot, I thrust the hard bottom edge of my palm into the chin of the agent advancing from the left. Swelley strolled off as soon as he finished his lecture, confident his message would be delivered. Despite my preemptive attack.

  My first victim toppled to the ground, clutching his knee. The second one staggered back, wagging his head to shake off the pain. The remaining pair of bullyboys backpedaled and circled. I did the same, alert for a tell.

  I needn’t have bothered. The younger of the two men left standing slanted his eyes at his partner, then charged.

  The message I thought I’d sent with my first volley was I’m not so easy, so let’s call it a draw, but the third man interpreted it differently. He rolled in on me with a combined judo–Krav Maga move. His right hand shot forward with a feint to my solar plexus while on the back end of the combination strike his left hand snaked in toward my throat. I slapped the feint away even as it faded, then blocked his stealth jab with a sweep of my forearm.

  A textured follow-up, with layers of fakes and punches and support from the fourth man, might have been tough to fend off, but his hand-to-hand combat skills turned out to be basic security service issue. Like the weapon under his arm. In the field, it would suffice for an easy takedown of the minimally trained.

  Which excluded me. Large and eager though he was, Swelley’s young recruit had brought the wrong toys to the party.

  My first victim was rocking on the ground in agony. The agent who had taken the blow to the chin had recovered and stepped forward to rejoin his fellow agents. Had the trio charged immediately, they could have overwhelmed me. But they didn’t. They continued to circle. I followed suit, now an unwelcome ringer in their rotating foursome.

  I watched for a weak link but never found one. On the third rotation, when my first victim once more slipped momentarily into my blind spot, he rolled closer and stuck out a foot. Which I obligingly tripped over. His partners piled on. The blows rained down, mean and abundant and targeted with precision.

  Orders were orders, so no one struck my face. No one swung at the ribs. But they pummeled everything else. Stomach, arms, legs, and groin. I curled up, knees to chest, hands clasped over the back of my neck, bent arms bracketing my head.

  In the distance I heard a police whistle, then the pounding of boots on hard earth. Swelley’s men leapt off me. I sat up. Everything throbbed. The scenery wavered.

  Pulling out their badges, two of Swelley’s puppet soldiers moved to head off the advancing policemen while a third protected the middle ground, throwing a jaded look my way.

  His upper lip curled. “Stick around, Brodie.”

  “Not likely,” I said, dragging myself up, flashes of white pain sparking behind my eyes.

  “I’m warning you, Brodie.”

  “How’s that chin?” I said.

  He shot me a spiteful glance, but with the approaching uniforms he made no follow-up move. I brushed myself off, turned my back on Swelley’s squad, and hobbled off to keep my appointment.

  Tardiness is not a virtue, but sometimes just showing up can be.

  CHAPTER 11

  I FOUND my way into the bowels of the Freer and Sackler. Past a marbled entrance. Past a lush arrangement of flowers and bushy clippings in an enormous vase set out on a waist-high table. In transit, bouts of dizziness brought me to halt more than once.

  At the information desk a docent called ahead to announce me. “Dr. Kregg says for you to go right down. Do you know the way?”

  “Know the way, the place, the collection.”

  The docent smiled. “And they’re all good.”

  “No argument here,” I said.

  The Freer and Sackler Galleries were part of the extensive Smithsonian museum complex. At one time separate entities, the two had merged, combining staff, resources, and collections. So far it seemed a viable notion. Between them they covered the Asian art world from Japanese, Korean, and Chinese to Middle Eastern, Egyptian, Indian, and beyond.

  I took the stairs to the basement, then pushed through an employees only door. Sheathed in a creamy-beige skirt and a light-green blouse, Dr. Lisa Kregg watched my approach with the cultured repose of her Bostonian upbringing. She was tall and in her thirties, with incandescent silver-gray eyes and a delicate nose. A bloom of red hair cascaded over slim shoulders and silky pale features.

  “Brodie, you nearly stood me up,” Kregg called from the end of the hall.

  “Never would,” I called back.

  Satisfied, she spun adroitly and dove into her book-lined lair. I followed. She trooped briskly around a large desk stacked high with art catalogs, a mild irritation riding her spine.

  “Well?” she said, settling into a black-leather chair and giving me a piercing look.

  “Sounds like I’ve been tried and convicted.”

  She tented her hands. “All but.”

  “The neglect was not intentional,” I said.

  Discerning eyes followed my efforts as I lowered myself into the visitor’s chair. I tried not to favor the parts Swelley’s thugs had worked over, and failed.

  “What’s wrong with you, Brodie?”

  “Depends on which girlfriend you ask.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Can I plead a migraine?”

  She raised two fingers, then pushed one down. “First, you’re the wrong personality type for a migraine. And second, you’re not favoring that part of your anatomy.”

  “Come to think of it, my girlfriends never complained all that much.”

  A faint smile crossed Kregg’s lips. Behind her natural beauty lay a self-assured woman, two master’s degrees, a PhD, and a spirited irreverence.


  “You’ve come to us not so different from a suspect vase that crossed my desk a few days ago.”

  “Suspect how?”

  “Wobbly. Damaged, perhaps, in unseen places.”

  “I had an eventful stroll across the Mall.”

  Her eyes dropped to my jeans. I followed the look. I’d missed a spot. Faint traces of Mall turf clung to the black denim at my left knee. I brushed it away.

  Her eyes sparkled. “You are the most intriguing of my art dealer friends, Brodie. This wouldn’t have anything to do with your visit to the White House yesterday, would it?”

  A jolt of surprise electrified my every limb but I held my expression in check. “I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said I had no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Because?”

  “This is my town.”

  “I’m beginning to think confidentiality in DC is an illusion.”

  “Our nation’s capital has more security agencies than any other place on earth. Our country has over three thousand government and private-sector entities working on intelligence, counterterrorism, and security issues. There are eight hundred thousand people with top secret security clearances, many of them employed in the greater DC area, so the odds suggest some of them can be bribed or coerced or might just like to gossip. Even if they don’t, the place leaks like a tire rolled through a nail factory.” She leaned forward, a mischievous smile skirting across her lips. “When I say the White House, I use the term loosely. Care to divulge?”

  The question was pitched with more charm than a Southern belle flirting with a potential suitor.

  “You’re hard to resist, but I’m afraid I must,” I said.

  “Disappointing, but a wise course. You may actually be as smart as I think you are. Moving on, how’s Jenny? Is she tougher than her father yet?”

  “Getting there.”

  “Still in pigtails?”

  “Yes.”

  Kregg’s smile surrendered its wry edge to a maternal softness. “You’re safe until she outgrows them. Once that happens, the road gets hard.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  I asked after her husband and two daughters, then my curator friend shifted to business. “So tell me about the robes you have lined up.”

  The museum had a new endowment for Japanese art, and with the Kabuki troupe playing the Kennedy Center, Kregg thought a traditional Japanese theatrical costume seemed a timely addition to the collection.

  “I’ve tracked down two. They’re hard to find.”

  “I know.”

  Kabuki robes were scarce for a reason. They get treated roughly. Abrupt movements on stage and quick changes between acts take their toll. Then there’s the long storage between uses and the requisite cyclical airing, which on occasion gets neglected, leading to mold, mildew, and moths.

  Unlike such traditional antiques as furniture, lacquerware, and ceramics, Kabuki garments don’t grow richer with age. A patina does not emerge. When an outfit begins to fray, it is discarded, although sometimes a portion can be salvaged and reused. So, by definition, pristine Kabuki attire is nearly unobtainable.

  I explained all this to Kregg, who said, “So museum-quality specimens are even tougher to find?”

  “Extremely.”

  “Which makes them all the more desirable.”

  On my cell phone, I pulled up photographs of the two robes I’d managed to unearth and passed the device over to Kregg. Both were in good condition and from the late Edo period. About two hundred years old. One of them was an earlier version of a robe that appeared in last night’s play.

  She inclined her head. “After the shooting at the Kennedy, I suspect we should pass on the first one. The museum board would probably balk. What about the other?”

  “An omigoromo.”

  Kregg sat up straighter. “A robe of the elite. Perfect.”

  We were discussing regal indoor leisure wear for a male samurai of rank. A prince, a shogun, a general, and the like. The garment I’d found was full-length and brocaded. The material’s design was elegant and rich and classically Japanese. Gold clouds floated on a royal-blue field. A tall red pleated collar framed the head in a regal flourish.

  Kregg flipped through the close-up shots on my phone as I filled in the details, then she said, “Delightful. A real crowd-pleaser.”

  “Glad you like it. I’ll send you high-resolution images to show the board.”

  “Thank you. Allow the usual two to three weeks for a consensus, but in the meantime, if you come up with something better, please let me know.”

  “I do have feelers out.”

  My dealer friend in Kyoto was hunting around for Kabuki costumes. I’d expected him to bow out, but he surprised me by accepting my request, saying that although good robes were rare, his wife was active in traditional performing-arts circles.

  “Then please pursue them. Now I have something for you. It’s a token of appreciation, since you are always so thorough.”

  “Thank you, but it’s really not necessary.”

  “Oh, but I think it is. I make it my business to keep abreast of what goes on in this town. Knowledge translates into donations for us.”

  I kept my face devoid of expression. “Why do I have the feeling you’re circling back?”

  “Because your instincts are impeccable, and you are a dear friend. DC has changed dramatically since the Twin Towers were flattened, Brodie. The town’s had a major face-lift. You might say it now resembles a Picasso woman with three faces who is not aging well. Washington has become bigger, darker, meaner. National security has taken the helm of the military-industrial machinery. A lot of money is circulating. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

  I knew the Beltway corridor was dotted with new clusters of secured sites. Where the GPS on your car’s navigational system suddenly went fuzzy and the usual street signs were nowhere to be seen. Where posted sentries peered out from guard booths stationed behind tall chain-link fences capped with concertina wire. All post-9/11 changes.

  I said, “The new growth industry.”

  “Not so new anymore but still growing. The town has been flooded with government funds for intelligence work. The salary level per capita is way up, which is good for those of us seeking donations but not for you. Or, to be more precise, not for your other job.”

  “How so?”

  Her luminous eyes grew apprehensive. “These people are territorial. If you intrude on their turf, you threaten their golden goose. They won’t hesitate to come down on you. So be careful. I am including government employees here because many of them have their eye on lucrative private-sector jobs once their pensions are secure.”

  We were back to talking about wobbly vases.

  I leaned back in my chair. “I think you’re off target this time.”

  Kregg protested with a shake of her head. Waves of red locks shifted. “Everything in the White House concerns the security-military-industrial complex these days. If not directly, then indirectly. If you’ve bumped into something that bumped back, you ran into them.”

  “I can’t really talk about it, but to put your mind at ease, let me just say it was an East Wing matter.”

  She drew up short. “The first lady?”

  “Keep it between us.”

  Kregg dropped into thought. She brooded. She brought clasped hands to her chin. She was stumped. Then a renewed look of determination suffused her features.

  “Did the president put in an appearance?” she asked.

  I felt a nerve in my arm twitch. “Yes.”

  Her look was triumphant. “I rest my case. Be careful, Brodie.”

  CHAPTER 12

  DAY 3, TUESDAY, 2 P.M.

  THE CATHEDRAL OF SAINT MARY OF THE ASSUMPTION, FILLMORE DISTRICT, SAN FRANCISCO

  THANKS for coming, Brodie,” Mikey’s older brother said as we shook hands.

  “How could I not?”

  Ian Dillman anchored
the receiving line just inside three sets of Saint Mary’s sculpted doors, thrown open for the funeral mass. He had his younger brother’s auburn hair and bright-green eyes. But where Mikey was shy and retreating, Ian was hearty and outgoing. Eclipsing his smaller brother by six inches and forty pounds, Ian was a big lumberjack of a man, out of place in the black suit he’d stuffed himself into for the funeral.

  “The first lady sent flowers for my baby brother,” Ian said. “Called to talk to Ma and Pa all the way from Washington. Was that you’re doing?”

  I shook my head. “All hers.”

  Big Ian grunted. “Didn’t vote for the husband but now I wish I did. That Joan Slater’s a class act. Did my folks a world of good.”

  “Extremely glad to hear that,” I said.

  Mikey and Ian were seventh-generation San Franciscans. Their grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather had arrived with the first wave of fortune seekers in the California gold rush of 1848. Rory Dillman dug and panned and battled the dust and the heat for a year and a half before striking a minor vein. Once the magic yellow glitter played out, he plowed his modest windfall into land and a steakhouse along what later became Market Street, in San Francisco.

  Rory’s place nurtured the City by the Bay through all her growing pains: from her pioneer shantytown days through the prosperous times fueled by the gold and silver finds in Northern California in the last half of the nineteenth century; through the growth spurts of the early 1900s and the Roaring Twenties; through the down decade of the Great Depression and the sacrifices of World War Two; through the postwar prosperity when America was flush with victory and optimism and big cars.

  In the 1960s the fifth-generation Dillmans moved their family enterprise to the district rejuvenated by the newly built Ghirardelli Square. They recast their restaurant as an Irish eatery-and-bar combination to accommodate the new gold rush: tourism. Hearty meals, free-flowing beer, and a wicked Irish coffee drew visitors from around the world during the day. In the evenings and well into the night, the booths in the back rooms provided a late-night gathering place for Jack Kerouac and other legendary beatniks of the fifties, then luminaries such as Ken Kesey in the Haight-Ashbury sixties. After his graduation from San Francisco State, when it fell to Ian and Mikey to step into the family business, Mikey ceded his interest to his brother and took a position at Lucasfilm.