by Tim Dorsey
“This is going to be awkward.”
The room grew closer.
“Oh, Mr. Littleton,” Reed called out. “There’s been a teeny misunderstanding.”
“We’re very sorry,” said Manchester. “I’m having lunch brought in. You like Chinese?”
Reed turned the knob and opened the door. “I hope you’ll—”
An empty chair.
The Royal Poinciana
Two police officers stood at bulletproof glass.
“Could you ring her room again?”
“If you insist.” The desk manager dialed. And waited. “Still not answering.”
“It’s important.”
“Something about her missing husband?” asked the manager. “Is he okay?”
“We think so.”
“What happened to him?”
“It’s better we spoke privately with his wife.” Because they’d just received eyewitness reports of someone matching Frank’s description running through the west part of town in his underwear, and the department was chalking it up to his having had a rough night. “Could you take us to her room?”
“Give me a sec.” He hung a “Back-in-Five” sign on the glass and led the cops to the elevator. They got off on three. The manager knocked on the door of 318. “Mrs. Littleton? Are you in there?” Harder knocking. “Mrs. Littleton, the police are here. I think they have good news.”
No answer.
“Open it,” said one of the officers.
The manager sorted through a large metal ring of keys and stuck one in the knob. “Mrs. Littleton?” Opening the door . . .
“Sure this is the right room?” asked an officer.
“Positive. But it’s empty, like nobody even stayed here.”
“Did she check out?” asked the cop.
“No,” said the manager, rubbing his nose. “That’s odd.”
They stepped back into the hall and headed for the elevator.
The door to 321 opened. A trio came out.
“Hold that lift!” said Serge.
They rode down with the cops.
“Where to today?” asked Savage.
“Thought we’d take a little drive,” said Serge. “A most excellent Miami historic site. And a can’t-miss for any true spy buff . . .”
South of Miami
Building 25.
Shades drawn. Ceiling fan whirled.
“Excellent infiltration,” said Station Chief Oxnart. “Sorry you had to get slapped around.”
“Thank you,” said Agents Sheffield and Winslow, otherwise known as Frank and Nadine Littleton of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania.
“Read your report.” Oxnart fed it into a shredder attached to a burn bag. “Lugar’s men must be in heavy shit to grab you off the street like that. They’re protecting something important. What’s your gut tell you?”
“They seemed awfully worried that we’d found out about Serge. Slapped me extra hard asking about him.”
“So he is working for them after all?”
“Looks that way. The Haitians, too.”
“Damn,” said Oxnart. “The Lugar connection means Serge is on the level. Actually protecting Guzman. That must be what this fake assassination jazz was about.” He smacked a desktop. “I never trusted that snake Malcolm Glide. He’s been working with Lugar all along. And when Serge foils the so-called plot, they both get credit and we look like schmucks.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” said Sheffield.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because they kept grilling me about the plot.” The agent pointed to a bruised cheek. “I think they genuinely didn’t know and were worried we’d found out about something they didn’t.”
“That makes no sense,” said Oxnart. He suddenly raised a finger in the air. “Unless there’s a second, real plot. And our fake plot is a diversion. That’s it! Glide’s setting me up to be the scapegoat!”
A hand raised in the back of the room. “I’m really confused now.”
“So am I,” said Oxnart. He turned around and grabbed a piece of chalk. “Let’s diagram it out on the big blackboard . . .”
Meantime, a few miles away:
An orange-and-green Road Runner cruised south on the turnpike.
Serge took Exit 16 and sped west on 152nd Street, a checkered area below the city proper, where Miami bleeds into tomato farms, unpaved airstrips, gravel pits, and vast new subdivisions of shortcut construction methods and identical orange-tile roofs packed so close they seem continuous from a distance.
The eye of Hurricane Andrew came through here.
Serge pointed out the window. “There’s the Metrozoo.”
The Plymouth swung left. A road with a private entrance.
“This doesn’t look like the way to the zoo.” Coleman bent over to light a joint.
“Because it’s not.”
Coleman passed the joint to Savage. “Then where are we going?”
“I’ve always been fascinated by the Cuban Missile Crisis, partly because that’s when I was born.” Serge’s hand was out the window, sailing up and down in the wind as he had done since childhood. “My granddad told me that while waiting in the maternity ward, they could hear the military trains rumbling south on tracks next to Old Dixie Highway. They carried all kinds of tanks and artillery and ran at night so it wouldn’t freak out the neighbors, but everyone knew. Beaches down in the Keys covered with rows of mobile-missile batteries, all pointing at Fidel.”
Coleman took a big hit and blew it out the window. “That would have been radical to lay out on the beach back then, get stoned, and look up at missiles.”
“It was a special time,” said Serge. “Remember that railroad crossing back there? Same tracks.”
“Far out.” Another joint-hit with a loud suction sound. “Shit. There’s a dude up ahead with a gun.”
“Get rid of the joint.”
“That’s a big fucking gun.” The doobie flew out the window. “We better turn around.”
“Negative. We’re going straight.”
“But that’s a serious guard shack,” said Savage. “And the guy’s dressed like a soldier.”
“Heightened checkpoint,” said Serge, “because of this place’s classified status.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here!”
“Shhhhh!” Serge applied the brakes and pulled up to the crossing-gate arm. “He’s coming over.”
The guard checked the windshield for a security-clearance sticker and didn’t find one. He walked to the driver’s side.
“Credentials?”
Serge grinned. “Don’t have any except a universal respect for others.”
The guard took an added step back, from training. “Why are you here?”
“History!” said Serge. “Always wanted to see Building Twenty-five. If those walls could talk! Operation Mongoose, CIA front Zenith Technical Enterprises . . .”
A hand went to the automatic rifle. “I must ask you to turn around.”
“What? We can’t see Building Twenty-five?”
“Sir, turn the vehicle around!” The rifle raised. “Immediately!”
“Look, we both know the drill. And in this line of work, sometimes it’s best not to carry credentials, if you get my drift.” Serge winked. “So if you wouldn’t mind, could you go back in your little booth, pick up the phone, call the station chief, and say ‘Serge is here!’ I wouldn’t want you to have to explain to him later why you turned me away.”
The guard stared a second, then went in the booth.
“Serge,” whispered Coleman. “Why on earth did you do that?”
“Because whenever they won’t let me in someplace, I love to say, ‘Call the person in charge and tell them Serge is here!’ Done it a million times.”
“Has it ever worked?” asked Savage.
“Never. But I get a big kick.”
“So he isn’t going to let us by?”
“Not a chance. Building Twenty-five’s been mothballed
for decades, and there hasn’t been a station chief since 1968. That guard’s probably just calling for backup. I knew it was a long shot seeing Building Twenty-five, but I’ll happily settle for pulling up to the security gate at the former JM/WAVE installation and saying, ‘Call the station chief!’ The key to life is self-amusement.”
“He’s been on the phone a long time,” said Coleman.
“Must be calling extra men in case they have to shoot out the tires.”
“I want to turn around.”
“Let me savor the moment a little longer . . .”
Inside Building 25, a phone rang.
“Station Chief Oxnart here . . . Front security? What can I do for you? . . . Could you repeat the last part? . . . He really said that? Those exact words? . . .”
Mandrake saw the chief’s expression. “What’s going on?”
Oxnart covered the phone. “Serge is here!”
“Where?”
He jerked a thumb toward the window. “Right at the front gate. As we speak.”
“Jesus, what are you going to do?”
“What do you think I should do?”
Back at the guard shack:
“Serge,” said Coleman. “I’m really scared. Let’s get out of here.”
“Alllllllll right. I guess that’s long enough for the joy.” He reached for the gearshift.
Ahead of them, the crossing-gate arm went up. The guard stepped out of the shack and saluted.
Coleman looked over at Serge. “What the fuck just happened?”
“There’s obviously been some kind of mistake,” said Serge. “A crack has opened in the cosmic star gate, and we’re going for it!”
He hit the gas.
Inside Building 25:
“Hurry with the erasers! Get that shit off the blackboard!”
“What’ll we say to him?”
“Play ignorant,” said Oxnart. “Rule number one: Gather the most amount of information while giving up the least.”
“I think that’s his car now.”
They ran to the window as a Plymouth Road Runner screamed up to the building and skidded into a parking slot.
“Back to the desks!”
Agents finished scrambling as three pairs of feet creaked up wooden steps outside.
A knock on the door.
Oxnart opened it. “How can I help you guys?”
“You must be the station chief,” said Serge.
“Come again?”
Serge smiled and waved dismissively. “Just kidding. There hasn’t been a station chief since ’68.” He walked inside. “So what’s going on in here? Some kind of class?”
“Class?”
“History. This old building. Must have been turned into a museum when I wasn’t looking—the perfect place to teach Latin American policy and espionage. University of Miami used to own it, so I’m guessing this is now an extension of their curriculum.”
“That’s right,” said Oxnart. “It is.”
“Makes perfect sense.” Serge reverently ran a hand along a wall.
Oxnart followed him. “So tell me, Serge, what do you do for a living?”
“Uh, data collection. Zenith Technologies.” He looked around at all the coats and ties. “They’re not dressed like students.” A chuckle. “You sure they didn’t reactivate the station?”
A pause.
Oxnart laughed. “Ha ha ha ha ha.”
Serge: “Ha ha ha ha . . . Too bad. I was hoping to get in on an operation where you slip diplomats LSD.”
Coleman raised his hand. “I can get you some.”
“Behave!” snapped Serge. He turned back around. “Sorry about that. Think we could sit in on your lecture . . .”
“I . . . don’t think—”
“Ooooo!” said Serge. “I see a coffeepot. Stay right here.”
Everyone murmured as Serge drained two Styrofoam cups and returned with a third in his hand. “Actually, I’d like to teach the class. What do you say?”
“Sir, we don’t—” Oxnart stopped and thought: Gather information. “Sure, the podium’s yours.”
Serge ran to the front of the room. “Good morning, students! . . . I said, ‘Good morning, students!’ ”
They all looked toward the side of the room at Oxnart. He nodded.
“Good morning, Serge!”
“Thanks! And I can’t believe I’m finally here! Few know it, but this one building launched an economic boom that single-handedly transformed Miami from a sleepy frontier town to a major American city—the largest CIA field office in the world, with a yearly budget in today’s dollars of almost four hundred million, employing thousands, buying up land, airplanes, creating a secret navy of fishing boats, and the laughs! Some teenagers threw firecrackers in a driveway, which was actually a commando safe house, and the kids fled in an explosion of automatic weapons. I’ve wanted to be a secret agent ever since I was a child and passed notes in class, but my teachers were nuns and experts in torture. I still toy with spycraft, like every Fourth of July, I make a copy of the Declaration of Independence, sign it, and mail it to the Queen of England in care of the British Secret Service. Next: evading capture. I need a volunteer to get me in a choke hold. You, in the second row, come up here. Now choke me . . . That’s not choking. I can still breathe. That’s . . . better . . .”
“Ahhhhh!” The agent jumped back, grabbing his hand.
“Forget all the fancy jujitsu stuff,” said Serge. “Just remember the Rule of the Pinkie. Someone grabs you, don’t fight the whole hand. Simply bend back the pinkie. Wherever the pinkie goes, the rest of the hand will follow. An exotic dancer taught me that. In fact, many ordinary citizens have used spy techniques for years and not known it. Hard to imagine now, but remember back when there was only one phone company, and long-distance minutes were droplets of gold? And you’d be traveling out of state and call home to let the folks know you made it okay, and say, ‘I’d like to place a person-to-person call to I. M. Safe’? . . . Or when you keep a sex-addiction meeting under surveillance because they’re the best places to pick up chicks.” Serge looked around the room at suspicious eyes. “Okay, maybe that last one’s just me. But you should try it. They keep the men’s and women’s meetings separate for obvious reasons. And there are so many more opportunities today because the whole country’s wallowing in this whiny new sex-rehab craze after some golfer diddled every pancake waitress on the seaboard. That’s not a disease; that’s cheating. He should have been sent to confession or marriage counseling after his wife finished chasing him around Orlando with a pitching wedge. But today, the nation is into humiliation, tearing down a lifetime of achievement by labeling some guy a damaged little dick weasel. The upside is the meetings. So what you do is wait on the sidewalk for the women to get out, pretending like you’re loitering. And because of the nature of the sessions they just left, there’s no need for idle chatter or lame pickup lines. You get right to business: ‘What’s your hang-up?’ And she answers, and you say, ‘What a coincidence. Me, too.’ Then, hang on to your hat! It’s like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get. Most people are aware of the obvious, like foot fetish or leather. But there are more than five hundred lesser-known but clinically documented paraphilia that make no sexual sense. Those are my favorites . . .” Serge began counting off on his fingers. “This one woman had Ursusagalmatophilia, which meant she got off on teddy bears—that was easily my weirdest three-way. And nasophilia, which meant she was completely into my nose, and she phoned a friend with mucophilia, which is mucus. The details on that one are a little disgusting. And formicophilia, which is being crawled on by insects, so the babe bought an ant farm. And symphorophilia—that’s staging car accidents, which means you have to time the air bags perfectly . . .” Serge chugged the cup of coffee he’d brought to the podium. “Did you know Gloria Estefan turned down a CIA gig while working customs at Miami International? Parts of Casino Royale were filmed here, Thunderball, too. Goldfing
er. Please listen carefully as menu items have changed. Shark in the road, Queen of England, when nuns attack. The star gate’s closing.” He ran out the door with Coleman and Savage.
All agents dashed to the window and watched the Plymouth patch out.
“Is everyone just going to stand here?” asked Oxnart. “Or does somebody have an inclination to follow them?”
Four agents raced outside. The rest huddled around their chief. “What did you make of him?”
“Better than I thought,” said Oxnart. “Took him no time to trace our infiltration at the Royal Poinciana. And the confidence coming right to our door—he was sending a message.”
One agent pointed back at the podium. “But what was that bizarre presentation? Remember I said I thought he was just some crazy criminal?”
“A well-honed act,” said Oxnart. “The most advanced method of holding back information is giving too much information.”
“So you believe he knows this station’s been reactivated?”
“Of course,” said the chief. “You think he just drove up here on some silly history tour?”
“What do we do?” asked another agent.
“Can’t go right at him now that he’s onto us,” said Oxnart. “But there is another lead we can follow up without detection—if Lugar hasn’t already thought of it.”
“What’s that?”
“Pack some bags,” said the chief. “We’re going to the airport.”
They headed out the door.
“At least now we know who’s been sending all those messages to the British.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Downtown Miami
A sheer, post-modern office building sat in the Brickell financial district.
Across the street:
Coleman repeatedly flicked a lighter for his joint.
“What’s the problem?” asked Savage.
“I think it’s dead.” Coleman kept flicking. “Serge, what are we doing here?”
“Just keep your head down or they’ll see us—before we want them to see us.”
“Are we spying?”
“Yes.”
“So this is part of your mission?”
“A different mission.” Serge kept a keen eye on the building. “I have an itch I need to scratch.”
