Kitty Goes to Washington kn-2

by Carrie Vaughn

  He turned and continued down the street, hands tucked in his trouser pockets.

  So where were all the seductive Brazilian hunks when I had time on my hands?

  I picked up a visitor's badge, found my way to the Clinical Center building, and kept walking, like I was going to Flemming's office again: down the hall, around the corner to the elevators. At this point, I had no idea what I was doing. Cormac said he'd be watching for me.

  It was easy for him to talk about sneaking into government buildings. He hadn't been accosted by Men In Black on his arrival in town. He wasn't having paranoid delusions about the hallway in the Senate building being bugged so that some security goon heard all our plans and was waiting for us to make the first move and catch us red-handed.

  I clung to the wall, glancing around with wide eyes, convinced someone was following me.

  I scented Cormac—his light aftershave and the faint touch of gun oil that never left him—just before he stepped around a corner and grabbed my arm. I still gasped and had to swallow back a moment of panic. This isn't danger, I'm not in danger. He put his hand against my back and guided me forward, so that we continued down the corridor, walking side by side, like we belonged here. He'd left his guns at home this afternoon.

  We stopped by the elevators. Cormac pushed the button. No gloves, I noticed. Maybe that came later.

  I leaned close and whispered, "I have to ask, aren't you worried that maybe somebody heard us? That maybe the FBI or something knows we're here and is watching us? I mean, we planned this inside a Senate office building. They probably read our lips off the video surveillance." I glanced over my shoulders. First one, then the other.

  "Norville, the thing you have to understand is, the government is a big bureaucracy, and the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing most of the time. The fact that it gets anything done is a miracle. Nobody's paying attention to us. But they'll start if you keep acting like you're up to something. Stop looking around."

  We didn't much look like we belonged here. Cormac was still wearing jeans and a T-shirt. I was only marginally better in slacks and a knit top. But he acted like we belonged here, and that was the key. Keep quiet, don't spend too much time looking around like you needed directions, and know where you're going.

  The elevator opened, we stepped inside, after letting the few occupants exit: a couple of people in white lab coats, a woman holding a flower arrangement. She was dressed about like I was. Cormac was right. No one paid attention to us.

  He pushed the button to send us to the basement, carrying on like we had an appointment with Flemming. By the time the doors opened to spit us out, my stomach was doing somersaults.

  "We can't walk right into his office," I whispered at him, hoping I didn't sound as panicked as I felt. "What if he's there?"

  "He won't be. I sent him on a wild goose chase."

  "You what?"

  He looked down his nose at me, the long-suffering stare that made me feel like an annoying younger sibling.

  "I called him from a pay phone, said I knew him from the army and had information about his research, but I had to talk to him in person. I told him I was in Frederick." He pursed his lips in a wry smile. "He'll be gone for a couple of hours."

  Frederick, Maryland. Some thirty-five miles away. Close enough for Flemming to think that following the lead was worthwhile, far enough away to keep him busy for a couple of hours. Flemming would be gone all afternoon, assuming he took the bait. Considering Flemming was more paranoid than I was, I could assume he had.

  That was hilarious. I was beginning to think that Cormac hadn't just done this sort of thing before. I was sure he'd done it often.

  Now, Cormac put on gloves, made of thin black leather. I followed suit, though mine were cheap knit ones I'd dug out of my car. Not nearly as cool as his. By the time we got to the door of Flemming's office, he'd pulled something out of his pocket: a card key.

  "Where'd you get that?" I hissed.

  "Janitor," he said. "Don't worry, I'll give it back."

  Oh. My. God.

  The lock clicked; the door slipped open.

  I followed Cormac into the office. He closed the door smoothly behind me.

  The office was dark. Cormac made no move to turn the lights on. Enough ambient light showed through the frosted window in the door to find our way around the room. My sight adjusted quickly. Quicker than Cormac's—I headed toward the paper shredder in the corner while he was still squinting.

  The bin under the shredder was empty. So was the counter next to it. All those papers, gone. Of course they were, he'd spent the morning shredding them.

  I started working my way through the remaining stacks of documents piled around the desk and bookshelves. They were all medical journals, published articles, photocopies of articles, dissertations, and the like. Some of them I'd dug up on my own. At first glance, none of them offered insight into Flemming's research. It was all background and supporting documentation. The bread, not the meat at the middle of the sandwich.

  Cormac went to the desk to fire up the computers. After they'd booted up, the screens coming to life, he shook his head at me. "Password protected," he said. "Hacking isn't my strong suit."

  No, he was a stolen key and .45 revolver kind of guy.

  I wasn't prepared for serious digging. I'd assumed—wrongly—that in all this mess I'd find something just lying around, even with all the shredding going on. I studied the bookshelves, hoping for a spark of inspiration. The physiology reference books butted up against the folklore encyclopedias amused me.

  I sighed, on the verge of defeat. "Let's see if we can get into the next room."

  The second door also had a frosted window in it, but the other side was dark. I couldn't see anything through the glass. Cormac took out his trusty stolen card key, slid it through the reader, and popped the door open. The door swung away from him. He straightened and gestured me inside.

  "After you."

  I felt like I was stepping into an ancient Egyptian tomb. The place was so still, I could hear my blood in my ears, and it was cold with the kind of chill that seeped through stone underground. I could see well enough in the dark. The linoleum floor continued, and like the office this room had walls of shelves. It also had lab benches, sinks and faucets, and a large metallic refrigerator that hummed softly. Also, Flemming had here a good collection of the medical equipment I'd expected to find in his laboratory: racks of test tubes, beakers, Bunsen burners, and unidentifiable tabletop appliances plugged into walls. They might have been oscillators, autoclaves, the kind of things one saw on medical dramas on television, or in the dentist's office. Again, the place had more of the atmosphere of a college biology laboratory than a clandestine government research facility.

  The far wall was made of glass, maybe Plexiglas. Behind it, the room continued, divided in two by a partition. I moved closer. Both extra rooms had a cot, a washbasin, and a simple toilet in the corner. The Plexiglas had doors cut into it, with handles only on the outside. The doors had narrow slots through which objects might be handed through. Like meal trays. They were cells.

  Moving quietly, Cormac stepped beside me. "This is kind of fucked up."

  Yeah. "Do you smell garlic?" One of the cell doors was open. I wasn't mistaken; inside, the scent of garlic grew strong. It wasn't like someone was cooking with it, or there was a chopped-up piece of it somewhere. It came from everywhere. I went to a wall, touched it, then smelled it. "Is it in the paint? Did they put garlic in the paint?"

  "Check this one out," Cormac said from the next cell over. He shined a penlight over the wall, which glittered. Sparkling like silver—tiny shavings of silver, imbedded in the paint. I kept my distance.

  Two cells. One for a vampire, one for a werewolf, designed to keep each of them under control using innate allergies. They looked like they'd been empty for a while.

  The sheets were fresh, unwrinkled. They didn't smell occupied.

  "Hands-on research, looks lik
e," Cormac said.

  Involuntary test subjects was what it looked like to me. My stomach hurt.

  Cormac left the cell. "You seen enough?"

  "Just a minute." I scanned the room one more time. Most of the paperwork had been moved to the office and shredded, it looked like. Nothing here but empty tables and defunct equipment.

  To the side of the silver-lined cell, a clipboard hung on a nail. It looked like the kind of setup someone would use to keep medical records handy. It seemed rather forlorn and forgotten. I picked it up.

  Only three sheets of paper were clipped to the board. They were charts, with a list of names. Names—jackpot. Quickly, I scanned them. First names only, maybe two dozen in all.

  Halfway down the second page I read: Fritz, 6', 210 lbs., h.s. lupus. Homo sapiens lupus. It couldn't possibly be the same Fritz.

  I flipped back to the first page and caught another name, one I should have noticed right away: Leo, 5' 9", 150 lbs., h.s. sanguinis. Vampire.

  Riddle wrapped in an enigma… I wasn't sure I wanted to know how Flemming and Leo were tied together. I was about ready to buy into any conspiracy theory that came my way.

  "This is it," I murmured. "This is what I need." I took it off the clipboard and started to fold it, to take it with me.

  Cormac snatched the pages out of my hand. He stalked back to the next room and the tabletop photocopier parked near the shredder. The machine was so loud, and the scanning lights so bright, I thought surely security goons would find us. Quickly, in a perfectly businesslike manner, Cormac had the three pages copied. He handed the copies to me, clipped the originals back on the board, and returned it to its nail on the wall. He closed the door to the lab and made sure it was locked.

  He shut down the computers and surveyed the room. Satisfied, he nodded. "Looks good. Let's get out of here."

  After making sure the door to the hallway was locked, he stripped off his gloves and shoved them in a pocket. I followed his lead, then nervously curled the papers we'd liberated.

  We took one detour before leaving the building. Cormac stopped at a closet in a side corridor on the main floor. True to his word, he slipped the key card into the front tray of the janitor's cart parked there. It only took a second.

  We didn't speak until we were outside, walking down the sidewalk with a dozen other anonymous pedestrians. Daylight still shone, which seemed incongruous with the darkness of Flemming's offices and our clandestine activities there.

  "And that is how you break into a government office," Cormac announced at last.

  "Those Watergate boys could have learned something from you, eh?"

  He made a disgusted huff. "What a bunch of posers."

  Supper that evening was room service at Ben's hotel. Cormac sat on the bed, plate balanced on his lap, one eye on the news channel playing on the TV, volume turned way down. He and Ben drank beers, like a couple of college buddies. Maybe that was where they'd met.

  We'd debriefed Ben on our field trip. The chart from the lab lay spread across the middle of the table.

  Ben nodded at it. "Is this a copy or did you just take it out of his office?"

  "It's a copy."

  He pursed his lips and gave a quick nod, like he was happy with that answer. "Was it worth it?"

  They both looked at me. I rubbed my forehead. My brain was full. "Yeah, I think so."

  Ben said, "This doesn't prove anything, you know."

  "I know people on that list. At least, I think I do. If I can track them down, they'll give me someone else to talk to." I hoped.

  "Will they talk to you?" Cormac said.

  "I don't know."

  Ben leaned back in his chair. "Kitty, I know this Flemming character is suspicious as hell. But maybe he's exactly what he appears to be: an NIH doctor, ex-army researcher, nervous because he doesn't want his funding cut. What is it you think you're going to find?"

  Fritz the Nazi. I wondered what kind of questions Flemming asked him, assuming he actually talked to his subjects. I wondered if Fritz told him the stories he wouldn't tell me. What would an ex-army medical researcher want to learn from a Nazi werewolf war veteran—

  "Military application," I whispered. I swallowed, trying to clear my throat, because both men had set aside their forks and beers and were staring hard at me. "He told this story about a patient in a car accident, horrible injuries, but he walked out of the hospital a week later. Flemming seemed totally… entranced by it. By the possibilities. He talked about it in the hearing, remember? Curing diseases, using a lycanthrope's healing abilities. Imagine having an army of soldiers who are that hard to kill."

  "If he has military backing he wouldn't need to be explaining himself to Congress," Ben said.

  Cormac said, "Even if he's developing military applications, is there anything wrong with that?"

  "There is if he's using people," I said. "He has jail cells in his lab."

  "Look, I thought you liked what this guy was doing," Ben said. "That you wanted all this out in the open. You want him shut down now?"

  "Yeah, I think I do."

  "Why?"

  I shrugged, because it was true. I'd loved seeing this stuff in the Washington Post. I was enjoying the respect. But I could still smell the garlic paint in the lab. "Because he's unethical."

  I hadn't finished dinner, but I couldn't eat any more. It was dark now; time to see Alette. "Look, I won't be able to track one of these guys down until tomorrow, but I think I can find the other one tonight. I'm going to go do that."

  "Need company?" Cormac said. Read: need help?

  "No thanks, I'll be fine. I think." I collected the pages from Flemming's lab.

  "You might want to think about making a copy of those," Ben said. "Maybe put them in a safety deposit box. Just in case."

  "Or mail 'em to someone," Cormac said. "With a note to open it if anything happens to you. If you get in trouble you can use it as a threat and not be lying."

  "Or you could not do it, say you did, and use it as a threat anyway." Ben said this pointedly at Cormac, weighing the statement with significance.

  Cormac gave his best shit-eating grin. "Would I do something like that?"

  Ben rolled his eyes. "I'm taking the Fifth on that one." I stared. "Uh, you two go way back, don't you?" They exchanged a look, one of those familiar, it'd take too long to explain the inside joke looks. "You're not going to tell me, are you?"

  "You're better off not knowing," Ben said. Now I wanted to run to the nearest Internet connection and dig up what nefarious plot these two had cooked up in the distant past. At least, I assumed it was the distant past. Maybe I should get a different lawyer. Except it would take too long to explain everything to a new one.

  I wanted to show the list to Alette, both to find out if she knew any of the Homo sapiens sanguinis represented, and to rat out Leo. Yeah, I was tattling, and it hadn't felt this good since I was eight and ratted out my twelve-year-old sister's stash of R-rated videos. If she'd only let me watch with her, she could have kept the TV in her room.

  I rushed into the foyer, pausing a moment to debate whether to look in the parlor or the dining room, or find Emma or Bradley and ask them where'd she be. Think, if I were the head vampire, where would I be?

  A touch brushed my shoulder. I gasped and turned, shock frying my nerves. Leo stood behind me, calmly, as if he'd been there all evening, watching the scenery. I could have sworn he hadn't been in the foyer when I entered the house. But I hadn't sensed him approach, I hadn't seen him, smelled him, or heard him.

  "Hello, there," he said lightly. "Can I help you with something?"

  I wanted to punch him. "What the hell is your problem?"

  "You're so easy to rile up, can you blame a man for trying?"

  "Yes, yes, I can."

  "Ah. Well, then." He strolled, circling around me, blocking the exits.

  He was teasing me. That was all. Provoking me, like he said. I took a deep breath, determined to calm down.

  "I have
a question for you," I said, trying to sound bright and unperturbed. "What do you know about Dr. Flemming?"

  He shrugged. "Government researcher. What would you like me to know?"

  "I've spoken with him. Your name came up." Both were true, in themselves.

  "Really? What did he say about me?"

  "Nothing. He's closemouthed. That's why I'm asking you."

  "And I'm openmouthed, am I?" He smiled to show teeth and fang. Then his expression softened. "I might have spoken with him a time or two."

  "About what?"

  "This and that. About being a vampire. I was—how would you call it?—a native informant." He started pacing, hands in his trouser pockets, gaze downturned. "I'll give him this much, he knows his subject. At least, he knows enough to know where to find us, if he wants to. Then, would you believe he simply asks nicely? He proves how much he knows, and you don't feel bad about answering his questions. You become just another data point. There's nothing more to it."

  I had a hard time picturing Flemming traveling the streets, finding his way to a place like the Crescent, notepad and tape recorder in hand, and asking nicely.

  "What did you tell him? What's it like being a vampire?"

  He looked away for a moment, his gaze distant and thoughtful. It seemed he did have another personality buried in there somewhere.

  "Time almost stands still," he said. "The world seems to freeze for a moment. You're able to study every little piece of it. All the microscopic points become clear. And you move through this world like a lion on the veldt. You realize everything is yours for the taking. All you have to do is reach out and grab hold of anything you like. Anyone you like."

  In the next beat of time he stood beside me. Brushing my hair aside, he breathed against my neck, a faint, warm sigh. No teeth, no threat, only a caress. I shivered, but didn't move away from him. For some reason, I didn't move away.

  "Is that what you expected to hear?" he said.

  I turned and glared. But he hadn't done anything. They were only words.

  I knew better than anyone what a person could do with mere words.

  "Is that what being a vampire is all about?" I said. "Is that why you're such an arrogant prick?"