Liars & Thieves: A Novel

by Stephen Coonts

  “How do you live like this?” she muttered.

  “Well, I only hole up in hideouts a couple times a year, then only for a week or two.”

  “Asshole.”

  “Hey, kid. I know you’re scared. I am, too. So is Kelly.”

  She broke into tears. She pulled away when I reached for her.

  “I never had to deal with anything like this,” she sobbed, then headed for the stairs. After a while I heard water gurgling through the drain from the upstairs bathroom.

  Outside the rain came down hard and smeared the windows. When it began blowing across the porch, Kelly brought her papers into the living room and settled on the couch.

  The rain set in for the day, a nice steady early summer soaker. I read all of the newspapers I could stand and went from window to window, looking out.

  I was fast running out of patience. Knowing they were out there looking for us made the forced inaction very difficult. I turned on the television, flipped through the channels, snapped it off. Ten minutes later I did it again.

  At one point I found myself standing at the living room window with the pistol in my hand, out of sight below the sill, watching the occasional passerby. I would hate prison. They would probably carry me out in a straitjacket before the first month was over.

  Augh!

  I was cleaning the MP-5 on the kitchen table when I thought I heard a female voice upstairs. I glanced at the couch—Kelly Erlanger was asleep with papers heaped in piles on the floor and around her.

  I picked up the telephone. Dorsey’s voice. I slammed it down, shot up the stairs two at a time. She was sitting cross-legged on one of the beds, a towel around her head, talking on the telephone. I grabbed it out of her hand and slammed it down.

  “Are you crazy?” I snarled.

  She was full of righteous indignation, which meant that she knew she had crossed the line. I knew her too well. “That was a friend of mine, I’ll have you know. What gives you the right to be my jailer?”

  “Who was it? Gimme a name.”

  “Zara Raja.”

  “Gimme a break, goddamnit!”

  “That isn’t her real name, of course—it’s her professional name. Her real name is Suzy Rollins.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “She’s my spiritual adviser.”

  I was shocked. “I didn’t know you were into religion,” I said. Dorsey O’Shea, of all people!

  “She’s not a minister, not in the conventional sense—she’s in tune with the universe. Tommy, I need to touch base with someone who really cares.” She clouded up. “I feel so … icky. Helpless, defenseless.” Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  Now I remembered why Dorsey and I broke up two years ago. Beneath that gorgeous, sophisticated exterior was the soul of a twit.

  I gritted my teeth. “Hey, babe, those people found your house. To find you they can check your telephone records on the phone company computer, find out who you call, tap some of the most frequently called numbers, and simply wait. When you call a tapped number they trace it.”

  “That’s illegal!” she said indignantly.

  I couldn’t believe she was giving me this crap. “So is murder, Dorsey. Get a grip. These people aren’t playing by the rules. Stay off the damn phone.”

  She dissolved in tears. I put an arm around her shoulder and tried to calm her down. She got clingy, but I wasn’t in the mood. I finally went downstairs and poured a stiff vodka tonic and made her drink it.

  When Basil Jarrett went fishing he took Mikhail Goncharov along. The day was overcast, with low ceilings, not much wind. Goncharov was sitting outside on his chopping block when Jarrett came out of the cabin in his waders carrying two poles and the tackle box. He tugged at Goncharov’s sleeve to get his attention, showed him the rods, then made motions that he was to follow.

  They walked to the road, then walked along it parallel to the river for a hundred yards or so until they came to a gravel bar that Jarrett was fond of. He rigged a fly on a line and handed it to the silent man beside him. Then he turned his back and selected a fly for his rod.

  When he turned around, Goncharov was standing at the water’s edge whipping the fly into the eddies with an expert flip of his wrist. In and out, in and out, he made the line dance, then stopped and let the fly drift for a moment with the current.

  Although Goncharov wasn’t wearing waders, he was soon in to his knees.

  Basil Jarrett laid down his rod and stood watching. After a while he found a seat.

  The Greenbrier was a fabulous trout stream, flowing swiftly over a wide, shallow bed as it snaked its way through the steep hills covered with forest, which came literally to the water’s edge.

  A half hour after he began fishing, Goncharov caught a small trout. He held it up so that Jarrett could see it, then deftly took it off the hook and tossed it back. When Jarrett took the fly box to Goncharov to allow him to make his own selection, the man grinned.

  Basil Jarrett slapped him on the shoulder and returned the grin. Then he picked up his own rod and waded into the stream.

  That evening I flipped on the television to catch the news. I’m not a TV guy—an occasional ball game or movie and now and then the news takes all the time I am willing to devote to television, which is not much. That Thursday evening the network’s big stories were an earthquake in southern Russia, a flood in Bangladesh, another accounting scandal—this time at a big HMO—and lots of political news. This was an election year. The first convention was in ten days; the other one the week after that. According to the pundits the president had his party’s nomination locked up, so most of the coverage was of the opposition’s front-runner and his two closest rivals. When the broadcast was over I flipped off the idiot box.

  It was merely a matter of time before the bad guys learned we were here and came for us—the only question was, how much time did we have? I wanted to boogie right now and get on with the business of tracking these guys down. What was I going to do with the women? Where would they be safe?

  I was mulling over that question when I heard a car roll into the parking area near the front door. Ten seconds later I heard a door slam. I grabbed the pistol, went to the window, and took a fast look.

  Thank God! It was the owner of the house. And his wife. And … an elderly, white-haired lady. I ran for the door and threw it wide.

  “Admiral Grafton, am I glad to see you!”

  Jake Grafton looked at me in amazement. “Carmellini! What on earth are you doing here?”

  “It’s a long story. I needed a hideout and picked the lock. Hope you don’t mind.”

  It took a lot to shake Jake Grafton; this was nowhere near enough. He grinned at me. “Good to see you.”

  “Tommy, we were just talking about you the other day,” Callie Grafton said as she got out of the car on the passenger side. She smiled at me. “Come over here, meet my mother-in-law, Mother Grafton.”

  The old lady couldn’t walk without help. “Goddamn hell to get old, young man,” she told me as I helped her up the stairs into the house, carrying her walker. “Jake said the house was empty. What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “I brought a couple of girlfriends over for a long weekend. I knew the admiral wouldn’t mind.”

  She gave me the eye to see if I was serious. “Only two?” she said. “In my day single men went around with as many as they could afford.”

  “Two is about my limit,” I told her glumly. “These days everything costs more.” I introduced Kelly, then got Mrs. Grafton started off in her walker toward the downstairs bathroom.

  Perhaps I should tell you about Jake Grafton before I go any further. I met him a few years back in Cuba when he was in charge of a carrier battle group. He had been mixed up in a few things since, and I had worked with him on several occasions. He was now retired from the Navy. About six feet tall, he had thinning hair, gray at the temples, which he combed straight back, and a nose that was a tad too large for his face. Without a doubt, he was the toughe
st, most capable man I had ever met. Having him here was a huge relief.

  His wife, Callie, was one of the nicest people on the planet. She was tough as shoe leather, too, although you wouldn’t know it looking at her. She taught languages at Georgetown. She and Kelly Erlanger were soon engaged in an animated conversation—in Russian! Dorsey O’Shea came downstairs and I introduced everyone, then I took Admiral Grafton out onto the porch, closed the French doors, and told him how my week had gone.

  I chattered away, trying to hit all the important facts, telling everything as fast as I could. As I was talking Dorsey came out, closed the door, and found a chair. She listened in silence.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “It’s someone high in the government,” Jake Grafton said after listening to my tale. “They’ve kept it out of the newspapers and have police cooperation—those factors alone point to someone very high up.”

  Dorsey O’Shea thought he was ignoring the most important point. “There is a body lying in my foyer in a pool of blood,” she said coldly. “I want someone to remove it and the corpse lying beside the house.”

  “Indeed,” Jake Grafton murmured after an appraising glance at Dorsey.

  “Just who are you, anyway? Tommy evaded the question when I asked who owned this house.”

  “I’m a retired naval officer, Ms. O’Shea.”

  “I have a great-uncle who was an officer in the Navy. As I recall, he commanded some kind of ship. That was years ago, of course.”

  Grafton glanced at me, then murmured, “Umm.” I managed to maintain a straight face.

  Dorsey decided the long-retired nautical relative was a conversational dead end. She pressed on. “What can you do about this mess?” she asked the admiral.

  His reply came immediately. “I don’t know. Tommy and I will have to discuss that.”

  “I’m going to have my entire foyer torn out and redesigned,” she said. “Unless that room is drastically changed, I will see that dead man and all that blood every time I pass through it.” She pressed her fingertips against her forehead. “I haven’t talked to the police, and I think I should. They may arrest me. I feel so out of control … so …”

  We were going to have to hold Dorsey’s hand for most of the evening if I didn’t do something fast, so I said to her, “Didn’t you tell me the other night that you had an invitation to go to Europe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who invited you, anyway?”

  “Dino LaGassa. He wanted me to join him on his yacht in July. You met him several years ago at the Spencers’ party. He’s tall, with long hair and—”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, as if I remembered the guy and gave a rat’s ass. “Ol’ Dino. Truthfully, this might be an excellent time for you to go to Europe. I recall you mentioning that you know three or four people who are spending most of their time there. Call them when you get to Europe. If you don’t know or like Dino well enough to drop in for a visit, you might look up some of these other folks. When the police get around to investigating, you can make a statement for the authorities in Europe to pass along or come back and make a statement. In the interim you can hire a lawyer.”

  “I have a firm I use from time to time.”

  “Right.”

  She brightened. “Perhaps I should go.” She paused before she added, “It was self-defense, that man I shot. He broke into my house. Two women, there alone—my God, surely there will be no question! When the police investigate, I’ll be delighted to cooperate.”

  “I’m sure the authorities will see it as self-defense,” Jake Grafton said.

  “On the other hand, perhaps I should go to the police now, make a statement, tell them how it was. They can get the bodies, I can arrange for a contractor, then go to Europe with this behind me.”

  “What if they arrest you?” I asked.

  She sat staring at me, her mouth slightly agape.

  “Tommy can call you from time to time, keep you advised how things are going here,” the admiral said sympathetically. He could read her like a book. It had taken me six months, way back when, to figure her out. Slow on the uptake—that’s always been one of my failings. So Grafton was an admiral and I was just a grunt in the spy wars.

  “I don’t have any clothes,” she pointed out with a frown.

  “Do like the common people do,” I said curtly. “Buy some.”

  She ignored the tenor of my remark. We discussed the location of her passport—a dresser drawer in her bedroom—and I promised to get it for her tomorrow.

  On that note we went inside to see about dinner. I confess, I was feeling better already. I had someone to share the load with, and I was getting rid of Dorsey.

  Once inside, Dorsey sailed off to the restroom. That’s when I whispered to the admiral, “Corpses get so gross if you leave them lying around the house.”

  “I’ve heard that,” he said, nodding solemnly.

  Mrs. Grafton—Callie—opened cans and defrosted and warmed a precooked ham. Kelly chattered with her in a language I assumed was Russian while Callie worked. Every now and then Callie glanced at Dorsey or me as the tale progressed. I had had about all of Dorsey I needed for a few years, so I sat beside the admiral’s mom and chatted her up.

  After we had gone through the usual questions—where do you live, did you grow up there, etc.—and the conversation slowed to a trickle, the admiral said, “Tomorrow is Mother’s birthday.”

  “What do you want for your birthday, Mrs. Grafton?” Dorsey asked brightly.

  “I don’t want any more fucking robes, I can tell you that,” the old lady declared. “Got more of them than I’ll ever use.”

  Jake winked at me, I bit my lip to keep from laughing, and Dorsey looked flustered.

  I decided this would be a good time to show Admiral Grafton the submachine gun, so I did that while the beautiful Dorsey O’Shea, an heiress and socialite who had never worked a day in her life, attempted conversation with an old farm woman from western Virginia who had known nothing but hard labor all of hers.

  “Nice shooter,” Jake Grafton said to me as he hefted the MP-5. “Right out of a government arsenal.”

  After he looked it over I returned it to the corner near the porch where I could get to it quickly.

  “Do you really think letting Dorsey go to the airport is a good idea?” I asked. Yeah, it had been my idea, but now I was having second thoughts. “If there’s a warrant out for her, they’ll red-flag her passport. She’ll be arrested at the airport.”

  “I’ll lay money there’s no warrant for her,” Jake said. “For you, sure. Erlanger, perhaps. But why Dorsey?”

  “Someone has to take the fall for the bodies at her house.”

  “You, more than likely.” He looked me square in the eyes. “The real question is what degree of cooperation the person organizing this chase is getting from the various law enforcement agencies. The more he wants, the more he has to reveal. Do you really think he wants Dorsey hauled in on a material witness warrant to tell the authorities everything you told her?”

  “I guess not.”

  “I doubt it, too.”

  Dinner went reasonably well, considering. While things were looking up, I couldn’t get those killers out of my mind. They were out there, they had the resources of the police agencies at their disposal, and I knew it was just a matter of time before they found Kelly and me. When they did, it was going to be really bad. Our lives were on the line, and perhaps the lives of Dorsey and now the Graftons. As Dorsey so elegantly pointed out, the circle kept expanding with everyone I talked to. How much time we had left I didn’t know, but I could feel it slipping away.

  I wondered how Willie Varner was getting along. Poor Pulzelli, sliced up by assholes who knew damn well he didn’t know diddly-squat.

  I guess I had a sour look on my face, because Callie Grafton said, “Is the food okay, Tommy?”

  “Sorry. I was thinking about something a thousand miles away.”

  She smiled gently.

>   “What I want to know, young man,” the admiral’s mom asked loudly, “is how you got into this house without a key.”

  “He’s a cat burglar,” Dorsey said with her mouth full, defying all the social conventions. “He picks locks.”

  “Well, hell,” said old Mrs. Grafton. “A man’s gotta do something in this world, don’t he?”

  I gave her a big grin. Some of these old ladies were real dears.

  We were drinking coffee afterward when Jake Grafton excused himself and went upstairs.

  Twenty minutes later he came downstairs and motioned for me to follow him.

  As we stood beside his car, he said, “I’m going to make some telephone calls from a pay phone, just in case.” He pulled a small address book from his pocket just far enough that I could see what it was.

  “Who will you call?” I asked. He knew half the people in government, yet one or more of them were hunting me with a vengeance.

  “Relax,” he said. “I know a few people who can be trusted.” With that, he got in his car and drove away.

  Jake Grafton pulled into a filling station with a pay telephone mounted on a pedestal where drivers could use it without leaving their cars. After getting five dollars in quarters from the station attendant, Jake stood beside the phone to use it. He dialed a number from his address book.

  “Hello.”

  “Sarah, this is Jake Grafton.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation before Sarah Houston said, “How are you this evening, Admiral?”

  “Sneaking right along. Howgozit at NSA?”

  “So-so.”

  “By chance, are you alone?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t sound full of enthusiasm, but then her history with Jake Grafton had its serious ups and downs. The name her parents gave her was Zelda Hudson. She was a certified genius who became a master computer hacker, programmer, and network guru. She got her start in business hacking into government and defense contractor computers to steal secrets to sell. Although she was getting rich on that gig, she masterminded the theft of a U.S. Navy submarine in order to get richer; Grafton had hunted her down, and she wound up pleading guilty to thirty-seven felonies. Later he had been instrumental in springing her from the pen to help set up a computer network to hunt down terrorists importing nuclear weapons into the United States. Of course she had had to change her name: The FBI provided a new identity, and she became Sarah Houston. After that adventure Grafton even managed to get her a research job at the National Security Agency.