Safe Houses

by Dan Fesperman

  Henry looked down at his eggs.

  “You know how Scooter is. Lives by his own calendar. He’s probably not due back for at least another night.”

  “Maybe you should call a neighbor?”

  “Tomorrow. He’ll be fine.”

  He pushed away his plate and called for the check, while thinking of that dimple of freshly turned earth beneath the pine needles.

  An hour and a half later they reached the night’s designated stopover, the humbly named Value Place Hotel on U.S. 29 near Manassas, Virginia, where they registered, per Audra’s instructions, as Mr. and Mrs. John Pulver. She’d advised them it would be safer to stay in one room, and Henry sensed Anna’s relief when they opened the door and saw two double beds. They had no luggage apart from Henry’s shoulder bag—with all their papers and tapes—but they’d stopped along the way to buy fresh underwear, socks, and toiletries.

  “Well, now,” Henry said, dumping the plastic bag full of items on a table by the door. “Ugly bedspreads, the hallway smells like an ashtray, and the mattress feels like a slab of granite. But there’s flat-screen TV and free Wi-Fi.”

  “She said not to use that.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Is ESPN permissible?”

  “Only with the volume down. I’m ready to crash.”

  “You know the real reason she picked this spot, don’t you? Convenience for our babysitters.”

  “You really think so?”

  “We’re, what, half an hour from Langley? It’s straight down I-66 from here.”

  “I’m glad she has someone looking out for us.”

  “Yeah, very warm and fuzzy. Remind me to shut the curtains.”

  “Okay, Mr. Pulver. I’m showering, putting on my Walmart undies, and going to bed.”

  Henry was almost asleep by the time Anna emerged from the bathroom, toweling off her hair. She switched off the light and he heard her sigh as she slid between the sheets.

  “What a day,” she said. “Do you really think we can pull this off?”

  Henry wasn’t sure what he thought, other than mildly troubled by how easy it suddenly seemed. A clear path south, along which they would apparently be watched by unseen protectors. Upon reaching their destination, they would hand over their findings to a veteran spy, to let her do battle by proxy against the forces of darkness.

  “Hope so. By this time tomorrow I guess we’ll know for sure.”

  “I’ve been thinking again about that last letter from Claire.”

  “Me, too. ‘The worst is true and the strands have crossed.’ ”

  “Meaning Kevin Gilley and the Pond, don’t you think?”

  “But crossed in what way? Had he gone to work for them, or did he find out about it and do something extreme?”

  “The Newsweek piece,” she said.

  “That thumbnail on Gilley? It hardly said a word.”

  “But wasn’t there some reference to his preference for private intelligence firms?”

  “Probably because he was working for one. But we could look it up.”

  “Audra said not to use the Wi-Fi.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  “We’ll check it tomorrow, on the way down. Oh, and don’t forget to call about Scooter!”

  “Right.”

  That ended the conversation. It was nearly midnight. They switched off the lights.

  Two hours later, Henry was still wide awake.

  He climbed quietly out of bed, pulled back the edge of the curtains, and peeped through the opening. All quiet. Their room was on the second floor, and there were certainly enough cars and vans in the parking lot to shelter an unlimited supply of surveillance personnel. He paced the room, stopping at the mini-refrigerator for a look. A whiskey, a gin, a couple of beers. He could polish off those in no time and then sleep like the dead. But he needed to be sharp in the morning, so he shut the door. The condenser began to buzz.

  Something was making him uneasy, and it wouldn’t go away. He listened to Anna’s breathing, steady and secure. He took his phone and his overnight bag into the bathroom, where he flipped on the light and then put down the lid of the toilet for a seat.

  Using the Wi-Fi whether Audra liked it or not, he found the Newsweek story from four months ago. The six paragraphs still told him very little, although the reference Anna had remembered was intriguing in light of what they knew now: “Gilley believes the intelligence community’s burgeoning ties to the private sector could be exploited to even greater purpose.”

  He reached into the bag for the pile of blue papers, their copies from the National Archives. They’d been so busy that they hadn’t had time to go back through them since Hilliard’s quick summary.

  He reviewed the “Jewelry” correspondence—Grombach’s frantic attempts to keep the Pond up and running past its sell-by date. Obviously something in these pages had clicked for Anna’s mom, but even upon closer reading Henry couldn’t find it. Nor was the Grombach crib sheet much help. Most of it still read like gobbledygook. Hilliard had characterized Grombach’s people as far-right ideologues, in line with Senator Joseph McCarthy. If they’d stayed in business, presumably they would’ve always had a receptive ear in certain corners, and he supposed that the right mix of corporate clients could have kept them going right up to today.

  He flipped through the remaining pages—Baucom’s field reports, the stray mentions of “Beetle.” He yawned, and his back began to ache from his uncomfortable perch. At the bottom of the pile were a few pages Hilliard had never discussed, because they had nothing to do with Anna’s mom’s main areas of interest. When Henry read them he wondered why Helen Shoat had bothered to make copies. They were memos from Grombach about seemingly trivial shoptalk. One, dated from the Pond’s supposed final month in 1955, was a list of tradecraft tips to all field operatives—how to best choose a dead drop, advice on their newest ciphers, how to deal securely with hotel switchboards, how to choose cryptonyms in a hurry.

  It was the final item that caught Henry’s eye, and when he read the words a second time he felt a prickling sensation at the nape of his neck.

  One sure way to avoid wastage of time is to adopt this system from Tempest, an assiduously efficient young archivist we’ve recently hired to put our field reports in the best possible order before the close of our import-export business. She suggests that on such occasions one may simply take a name from the three-letter airport codes that have come into common usage during the past few years.

  Just as the Sisterhood had done.

  He checked the crib sheet for the cryptonym, Tempest. Nothing, although Henry doubted it was a real name, because Grombach even used a code name for his personal secretary, Virginia Schomaker, known as “Honeyshu.” Grombach’s code names were rife with puns. “Church,” for example, stood for the Pond’s liaison with the CIA, Lyman Kirkpatrick, whose real-life nickname, Kirk, was the Scottish word for a church. “Bishop” was the code name for a retired admiral named Knight, a bit of chess wordplay. What could have been the origin of Tempest?

  Using the Wi-Fi again, he searched for the origins of Audra’s last name, Vollmer: “Germanic. Composed of the elements volk, or folk (people) and meri, mari (famous).”

  Famous people? Not really a tempest, or anything to do with one.

  He looked up Audra: “Anglo-Saxon. Variant of Audrey, used since 19th century.”

  A second source disagreed, saying: “Lithuanian. Means ‘storm.’ ”

  Storm. Tempest.

  “An assiduously efficient young archivist,” Grombach had written. And a brand-new hire. They had already surmised that Audra had something to do with record-keeping at the CIA. Maybe it was nothing, and maybe it was something.

  Did the dates work? If Tempest had been hired at the age of twenty-one in 1955, then she would be around eighty now, or about twenty years old
er than the other two women in the Sisterhood. Plausible. It would also mean she hadn’t retired until the age of seventy-one or seventy-two. Not unheard of, but a little unusual.

  If Audra was Tempest, what did that mean? For one thing, she might want possession of the first tape, the one featuring evidence of the Pond’s later existence, even more than the one implicating Gilley as a serial rapist. That thought sharpened Henry’s vague sense of unease. He considered waking Anna, but figured she would either be pissed off or laugh him out of the room. But Helen Shoat had seen the reference and copied the page.

  He thought of something else as well. Helen could have mailed off the tapes to either or both of the other women—accomplishing the latter by making copies—but instead she had chosen Claire. And Claire, judging from the reply, had written back only to Helen.

  Henry’s brain was abuzz with doubt. Dwell on this long enough and he might link Audra to the JFK assassination. He was making a big assumption based on a single vague reference in one stray memo. And maybe also because of the odd way Audra had sealed herself off on a secluded island. Plus, Claire’s final letter, with its alarming tone. The lateness of the hour was surely another factor.

  Sleep on it, he thought. But first, just in case, he would make a phone call.

  A sleepy voice answered, but didn’t sound surprised. They spoke in lowered tones for the next ten minutes, and by the time Henry hung up he felt better. He got up stiffly from the toilet seat and switched off the light. Then he groped his way back toward the bed. Anna was still snoozing. It was up to Henry to be the designated worrier, the resident skeptic.

  The next morning, he made his case at the breakfast table, while they sipped coffee in the booth of a diner on U.S. 29 in Northern Virginia.

  Anna scoffed.

  “Go ahead,” Henry said. “Say I’m crazy. But your mom copied it, and she sent the tapes to Claire, not Audra. And now Audra is desperate to have them.”

  “Desperate? Yes, she wants them, but that’s because of Gilley. And if she was covering for the Pond why would she go to all this trouble to keep us safe? Safe from Gilley, I might add.”

  “I didn’t say it was foolproof.”

  “It’s not even plausible. And based on what, because the name Audra might be the Lithuanian word for storm? I’ve seen more convincing theories about the Royal Family running the international drug trade through the Trilateral Commission.”

  “Then why did your mom copy it?”

  “For some other reason? Or maybe because she was amused to find that they weren’t the first people to use airport codes? Nor will they be the last, I’m betting. Besides, while I do think Audra is older, I really didn’t get the sense she’s eighty.”

  “Didn’t get the sense? Very scientific.”

  “True, it’s not as scientific as basing your whole theory on the name Tempest, the Lithuanian storm sister. Oh, and by the way, did I hear you talking to someone in the bathroom late last night, or did I dream that?”

  He blushed, and hoped she didn’t notice.

  “I’d texted a neighbor about Scooter. He must have been up at the time, because he called me right back.”

  “Well, at least you took care of that. Let’s order.”

  Henry buried his face in the menu. Even he had to admit his theory wasn’t nearly as convincing by the light of day. He’d nonetheless felt like he’d owed it to Anna to make the case.

  But his worries did not go away.

  60

  The breeze from across the sound was soft with humidity, tangy with brine. In the water below, two crabs fought for supremacy, swinging claws like switchblades in the murk of the pilings. Henry watched by the glow of the light at the end of the dock. Without it they would have been standing in darkness. The new moon was a mere sliver, and the only other illumination came from a distant thunderhead, popping like a flashbulb out over the Atlantic.

  Anna gazed off toward the sea. She was quiet now that they had reached the point of departure for their final destination. Somewhere out in the blackness was Audra’s island, and from across the chop they now heard the rising whine of an outboard engine, right on schedule.

  “Do you think that’s the boat?”

  “Don’t know why anyone else would be out there at this hour.”

  “God, these mosquitoes!” Anna brushed at her arms.

  “Maybe that’s what we’re hearing. The mother of all mosquitoes.”

  Then they saw the running lights as the boat appeared from around a stand of saw grass. The man at the helm wore black jeans and a black T-shirt. Given the momentous feel of the occasion, Henry half expected to see his face smudged with antiglare blacking, like a commando on a night raid. His hair was slicked back, his muscles chiseled. More bodyguard than waterman by all appearances. The boat was no-frills, about fifteen feet with a small cuddy cabin and an open rear deck. The boatman looped a line around a piling but didn’t bother to tie up.

  “Hop aboard,” he said. “There at the stern.”

  Anna went first, Henry followed. They joined him at the wheel, partly out of curiosity, since he was their first human contact with Audra’s insular little world.

  “How long is the ride?” Henry asked.

  The man shrugged, turning the wheel as he set his course.

  “Maybe ten minutes. Light chop tonight. Nothing to really slow us down.”

  “Do you work directly for Ms. Vollmer?” Anna asked.

  He teeth showed in the darkness.

  “Not to be rude, but I’m not paid to answer questions.”

  The teeth flashed again and he looked straight ahead. Henry headed back to the stern and sat along the port side, letting the wind scour off the last of the bugs. Anna joined him.

  “Well, that was pleasant,” she said in a lowered voice.

  “I guess Audra’s people operate by the ‘need to know’ doctrine.”

  “Old habits die hard.”

  They settled in for the ride. Henry thought he noticed something glide beneath the hull, like a ray or a large fish, but it could have been a trick of shadows from the running lights. He hadn’t realized until now how cut off they were going to feel. By daylight it probably would have been quite pleasant, with views in all directions and other boats within sight. Maybe Audra had insisted they arrive after sunset to make an impression. If so, she’d succeeded.

  “Doesn’t this strike you as odd?” he asked. “A powerful woman like her, holing up like this? It’s usually men who do that. Howard Hughes, Salinger. Charles Foster Kane.”

  “Emily Dickinson, Greta Garbo. And Kane was a movie character. Next you’ll accuse her of being a dotty old cat lady.”

  They huddled closer on the seat as the boat rounded a point. Just ahead was a lighted dock. Beyond it, a row of trees and then a white clapboard house on stilts. It was of modest size, well lit and well maintained.

  “Not as gloomy-looking as I feared,” Anna said.

  “Still…”

  “What?”

  “This whole business of having us arrive after dark. Look, I know you think I’m being melodramatic, but promise me one thing. If she shows as much interest in the first tape as she does in the one about Gilley, do me a favor and pretend we never listened to it.”

  “Why? Because that’ll mean she must be Tempest?”

  “Just humor me, will you? The less she knows about what we know, at least on the topic of the Pond, the better.”

  The boatman deftly secured the bowline to the dock. They scrambled ashore just as a brindled cat darted in front of them and disappeared into the night.

  “Don’t say a word!” Anna hissed.

  A welcoming committee of mosquitoes arrived. The house was eighty yards ahead, across a trim lawn via a slatted boardwalk with footlights. Beyond were several outbuildings. One was as big as a barn, with concrete
walls and a pitched roof of corrugated metal.

  “This is quite the compound.”

  “She has to have somewhere to keep all the cat food,” Anna said, but Henry was too nervous to laugh.

  They climbed the steps to a screened porch. Henry was a little surprised Audra wasn’t there to greet them.

  “Maybe she’s an invalid,” Anna said, as if reading his thoughts.

  At the door, he gestured for Anna to do the honors. She took a deep breath and knocked.

  Brisk footsteps. The rattle of a knob. The door opened onto another hired hand in black, except this one wore a sport jacket with a bulge, undoubtedly from a handgun. Henry wondered if Anna noticed.

  “Anna and Henry?” the man inquired.

  “That’s us,” she said. “And you are?”

  “Come with me.”

  He led them through a modestly furnished living room with a telescope on a tripod, aimed through a bay window toward the sound. They turned up a short hallway where he knocked at a heavy oaken door. A woman’s voice answered from within.

  “Show them in, Lloyd.”

  Lloyd opened the door and stood aside.

  61

  Audra Vollmer was no invalid. She stood on the opposite end of the room in front of a large mahogany desk, smiling broadly. Her posture was upright, her brown eyes clear and alert. She wore a navy business suit, as if she might have just returned from a day at the office, and her gray hair was pulled back tightly in a bun. She was considerably older than either Claire or Anna’s mom.

  She opened her arms and called them forward.

  “It is such a relief and a joy to see you!”

  Anna, approaching with Henry in her wake, held out her arms as well, but instead of a hug there was an awkward clasping of hands. Still, Audra’s smile seemed genuine, and it was a second or two before she let go.

  “You are the image of your mother. Did she ever tell you about us?”

  “No. Nothing. I hardly know anything about that part of her life, except from what I’ve read in your letters.”