Final Winter

by Brendan DuBois

  Brian eyed Adrianna curiously as she talked, sensing something was going on behind those quiet brown eyes. This was the longest he had ever spoken to her, face to face, and he was surprised at how much he was enjoying it. He said, ‘Seems like lots of problems yet to be solved.’

  ‘Yeah, ain’t that the truth.’

  They ate in silence for a while, and he helped her bring the plates and silverware and glassware into the kitchen when they were done. The crockery was rinsed and placed in the dishwasher, and from outside he heard the yelps and squeals of children playing. Through the large living-room window he could see three or four boys and girls on a grassy lawn, playing with large plastic balls and bats. Adrianna stood beside him and folded her arms, watching with him. Something felt out of place inside Brian as he thought about his son Thomas. Growing up without having his boy near him, not being able to teach him those one hundred and one important things - how to play basketball, how to rollerblade, how to correctly hate the Red Sox - sometimes made him clench his fists in anger at the oddest moments. Like right now. He shouldn’t be in Maryland with this attractive and odd woman. He shouldn’t be working with the Feds. He should be home where he belonged, working out the difficulties of his new relationship with Marcy and seeing Thomas as much as possible.

  Adrianna said, ‘You know how many places there are in the world where this can’t happen? Where children can’t go outside and play without fear of being shot or bombed or stolen? Plenty of places. Plenty.’

  She motioned to the lights coming on in the surrounding condo units. ‘There are people out there who have put their trust in us, Brian. Who trust us to protect them and their children. Trust us so that they can wash up their dinner dishes and send their children out to play without worrying that they will be kidnapped, or blown to pieces by a suicide bomber, or die choking to death from something invisible dropped upon them from the sky.’

  Brian said, ‘I guess the time for shoptalk has arrived.’

  ‘It has.’

  ‘All right.’

  Adrianna turned to him and he was conscious of how close she was, the light fragrance of whatever scent she had on (so unlike Marcy, who would sometimes drench herself with some flowery concoction after spending time and money with an aromatherapist), and just how delicate her eyes looked. She said, ‘I’m going to need your help tomorrow, Brian.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Come,’ she said, ‘let’s sit on the couch, where we can talk comfortably.’

  Brian sat down on the couch while Adrianna went to the kitchen and returned with two tiny glasses that each seemed to hold a thimble-sized amount of sherry. He wasn’t particularly fond of sherry, but he decided that being polite wasn’t going to kill him. He sipped a bit at the sweet liquid and said, ‘Once we thrash out the Final Winter scenario and the immunization options, what are you looking for?’

  ‘I’m looking for you to speak up for the only immunization option that can work. That’s what.’

  He shook his head. ‘Don’t like the idea of secretly immunizing a couple of hundred million people. Too drastic, too overwhelming. ‘

  She seemed to sink down into the couch cushions, ‘I agree.’

  That surprised him. ‘You do?’

  ‘Of course.’ Adrianna put her glass down on the empty and clean coffee table and put both of her hands behind her head. ‘It could turn into an utter fiasco that would make that swine flu screw-up look like the greatest public health project of the last century. There’s no doubt that some people out there will react poorly to the vaccine. We will end up putting some people in the hospital, will no doubt kill some very old and very young people, as well as some who are already very ill, News of what we’ve done could send all of us to jail for life, if it gets out. It would bring the Tiger Teams out into the open and destroy the progress we’ve been making in protecting those kids out there and their families. And, of course, the damn vaccine might not work.’

  ‘Good points,’ Brian said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, dropping her hands to her legs. ‘Yes, all good points, and I keep on looking at it and looking at it and ... damn it, Brian, what else is there? What else can be done?’

  Brian tried to think of what to say. Different things went through his mind as he heard the squeals of the children out there, safely at play. What to do? Remembered his Academy training, the times when his shooting skills were challenged by pop-up targets that either posed a threat or didn’t. Shoot or not? Live or die? Don’t just stand there, the instructor had said. Do something!

  ‘I don’t know what else can be done, Adrianna. I really don’t. I only know that the option that’s out there, if it’s the only one, sucks.’

  She nodded. ‘Sucks wind.’

  ‘And what do you want me to do tomorrow?’

  Adrianna rubbed at her eyes and said, ‘Monty will be in support of the immunization. Victor and Darren will be arguing against. But I guess that you’ll be supporting it. Even if you don’t like it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of who you are, Brian. A cop. A cop who’s been out on the streets, knows the depths of evil that some people can sink to, and knows how to cut through the bullshit and be realistic. For Victor, his universe begins and ends in a laboratory. For Darren, it begins and ends on a computer screen. Intellectually, they know what we’re up against. But you, Monty and myself, we know the evil that men can do. Up front and personal.’

  ‘You know about evil, eh? And where did you come across that knowledge?’

  And by God, for the briefest moment Brian felt as if he had burrowed through her defenses and seen the real Adrianna, for her expression flickered like a picture coming into snap focus and then broke up, back into something indistinct. And when she’d been in focus, her expression had been bleak and had suddenly reminded him of a case from a couple of years ago. An old woman, a survivor of the Holocaust, in her apartment, sitting in a stiff wooden chair, looking down at her husband — another Holocaust survivor — who lay on the floor, dead. Knifed in the heart by a sixteen-year-old boy who could barely spell his own name and who had been trying to rob the apartment. The look on the old woman’s face ... as if God, having tortured her years earlier, had saved up one more awful torment for the end of her life.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Adrianna said, her voice now snappish. ‘That’s classified, Brian.’

  ‘Oh. All right, then. Look, why don’t—’

  ‘Hold on,’ she said, a hand scrambling around the couch cushions. ‘It’s the top of the hour. I want to catch the news.’

  Her hand emerged with a television remote, which she pointed at the television screen. It popped into life and she selected a cable news channel. The young male anchor looked somber and at his side on the screen was a graphic, showing a map of Connecticut with a rifle superimposed over it.

  ‘... We go to Bloomfield, a community north of Hartford, Connecticut, where a workplace shooting has left nine dead earlier today.’

  The anchor tossed the link to a young blonde female reporter who was standing in front of a length of yellow police tape, microphone in her delicate hand. ‘State and local police are investigating a workplace shooting here at Tompkins Consulting, a business firm specializing in software in Bloomfield, Connecticut. While no police official will speak on camera, it is believed that a disgruntled former employee - not yet identified - entered the workplace and began shooting. Eight employees were killed before the shooter turned his weapon on himself and committed suicide.’

  ‘Kimberly, do police have a motive yet on what caused this former worker to return to kill these people?’

  ‘No, they don’t, and—’

  Adrianna clicked off the television. Brian shook his head. ‘Some cover story, Adrianna.’

  ‘Has to be done.’

  ‘How the fuck did it happen?’

  ‘Intelligence leak, someplace. How else? You can bet the lights will be burning late tonight in Langley and other places, trying to fin
d out how those clowns learned about this.’

  Brian said, ‘Too fancy.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Intelligence leak. Sounds very hush-hush, very fancy. Like somebody in the pay of al-Qaeda or whoever, giving out information for money or because they’re being blackmailed. Somebody high up. Hell, they’ll probably find out it was something as simple as somebody getting drunk or getting laid and letting out the story of who actually worked at the site of Tompkins Consulting. Adrianna, look, people talk, people gossip. Information loves to travel, loves to find a welcoming place. All it took was a piece of information finding its way to a cell here in the United States, and there you go. Nothing fancy. Just rather fucking direct.’

  Adrianna smiled. ‘See? That makes a lot of sense. In fact, I’ll pass your suggestion along, at our daily conference call. Told you I liked your cop mind. Suspicious, cuts through the chatter ... a true asset, Brian. A true asset.’

  Something about that made Brian laugh and when he saw her expression he said, ‘Just for a second, I thought you said something about my ass. A true ass.’

  She laughed in return and said, ‘Oh, you have quite a nice ass, Brian.’

  That got his attention. ‘Really? You think I have a nice ass?’

  Adrianna seemed to blush - if that was possible. A hand rose up to her lips and she said, ‘I’m sorry. That’s the sherry talking. Or the wine. Or both.’ She got up from the couch and Brian followed, sensing again that whatever he had learned about her these past months had only revealed the faintest background glimmer of what made her tick.

  And damn it, that flip comment, about his butt...why had it made him grin like a teenager, happy that the It Girl in high school had noticed him in the hallway between class? Before he knew it, his coat, gun and shoulder holster were in his hands as Adrianna gently shepherded him to the front door.

  At the open door Brian turned to say something and she was there. His free arm went out and around her slim waist, and he pulled her close. He kissed her and she responded, folding her body into his, pressing her pert breasts against his chest. He felt the eagerness in her open mouth and smooth tongue. The embrace went on for long seconds until she pulled away and kissed him firmly on the lips. He returned the favor.

  Adrianna smiled. ‘Later, Brian.’

  ‘How much later, boss?’

  ‘When we get Final Winter under control. . . it’s going to be a good time to take a long break from running a Tiger Team. I... it’s a lot of pressure, my dear friend. A lot of pressure. And right now, engaging in a somewhat improper relationship with a subordinate—’

  ‘One of my favorite positions is being subordinate,’ he responded, liking what the phrase did to her expression.

  ‘Maybe so, detective, but now’s not the time.’

  Brian was still holding her and she stood still, seeming to enjoy his touch. Then her tone grew somber and she said, ‘Bloomfield.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I knew two of the Tiger Team members up there. Man and woman.’

  ‘There are survivors - that’s what the news said.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I got the call, earlier today. They’re both dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Tears came to Adrianna’s eyes and she said, ‘I am, too. But that doesn’t mean we stop.’ She took a deep breath. ‘September eleventh. I was in my cubicle when the word came down about the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We got the order to evacuate, because Langley’s a goddamn easy target to find. So we did. Later on, we found out about something else that had happened that day. It seems the director wanted the entire building evacuated, everybody out, and the head of the Counterterrorism Center at Langley said no, we needed to keep some of his people working up on the sixth floor, at the Global Response Center. And the director said, they’re at risk. They could die if the building was attacked. And the CTC head said, well, then they’re just going to have to die. Just like that, in the space of that conversation, the entire culture of the CIA changed. Just like that.’

  Another kiss on the lips, and Brian knew that was not a ‘wanna spend the night?’ kiss but a ‘come on, get your ass out of my house’ kiss. Adrianna said, ‘That’s where we’re at, Brian. The war isn’t over there, it’s right here. In Bloomfield, or in the airstream over our cities. And this is a war we have to win. Have to.’

  He reached up, touched her cheek. ‘Okay. You got me, boss.’

  ‘Good.’ Another smile.

  And as Brian turned to go out into the evening, he said, ‘Oh. One other thing. You also have me for tomorrow, to support you. Got it?’

  ‘Seven a.m., Brian. Seven a.m.’

  ~ * ~

  Adrianna Scott folded her arms and from her kitchen window watched Brian Doyle make the short walk to his parked car. He did have a nice ass, she thought, smiling. Then another thought came to her, about what had just happened this evening, and she was surprised at the spike of guilt that shot through her. She’d thought that guilt was something she had under control, over the years of experience and training, but there it was. Guilt at having lied to poor Brian Doyle, her own personal New York cop.

  She hoped that when the time came he would forgive her.

  ~ * ~

  Brian Doyle got into his car, tossed the shoulder holster, gun and coat next to him, and backed out from the parking space. He looked up at the lit windows of Adrianna’s place, and thought about the day just gone and what had happened up in Bloomfield. He guessed he should have offered to spend the night - on the couch, of course - pistol within easy reach, because he had a thought of another nameless holy warrior breaking into her home tonight, to do her harm.

  But hell, she was CIA. Trained in counterterrorism and God knew what else. She could take care of herself.

  Still... there was a feeling, and as Brian headed back to his own place he knew what that feeling was. Guilt. At having lied to Adrianna tonight and on many other occasions. Brian had lied before on the job, often and with great gusto, but this particular spate of lying ... it stuck in his craw.

  He hoped that when the time came she would forgive him.

  ~ * ~

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It was now seven p.m. on Monday. Tiger Team Seven - a/k/a Foreign Operations and Intelligence Liaison Team Seven — had been meeting for twelve hours, and now, finally, it was done. The arguing had gone on, back and forth, back and forth, throughout the long day, and at one point Adrianna had had tears in her eyes, and so had Darren, her NSA guy. Voices had been raised, hands had been slammed down on the conference-room table, and now Adrianna had called a halt. It had gone on too long. Her mouth tasted like it was filled with fuzz, her legs had been quivering off and on all day, and now she held her knees firmly together.

  It was time.

  She said, ‘My friends…we’ve talked and debated our response to Final Winter for the whole day. This evening, at midnight, I need to make a recommendation to the Tiger Team director. I need to tell him what the group feels, what our response to Final Winter is going to be. So the question before the house is: What is your reply to this question? Do we or do we not recommend that our response to Final Winter should involve the covert immunization program? Monty?’

  His dark brown eyes looked at her, unblinking. ‘Yes. Without a doubt. I don’t see how else we can do it.’

  She nodded, switched her focus to her cop. ‘Brian?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nothing else to add?’ she asked.

  ‘Enough talk. You’re just going to have to sell it to the Director later on. That’s when the talking will resume.’

  ‘True. Darren?’

  The tears were back in the eyes of her NSA representative. ‘I...God help us, yes. We can’t allow the population to be exposed to what’s being planned. Not doing anything is worse than what we’ve outlined.’

  The shaking in Adrianna’s legs resumed, no matter how hard she pressed them together. ‘Victor?’
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