“Very recently, to answer your first question. She applied for retirement from the service in August. September ninth, she closed out her bank account, canceled her credit cards, and left a message for her landlord that she had been called out of town for a family emergency. As for the other, that will require more research.”
Sara brushed her hand over her tablet. The screen on the wall blanked out, leaving the room in darkness.
“Is she the one we want?” I asked.
“I believe she is. But to find her, I need to be more direct.”
I interpreted that to mean her activities would definitely attract notice. “Let’s say you are more direct. How much time before your people come for us? And do we have enough evidence to convince your chief?”
“So many questions, dear Captain. No, we do not yet have enough evidence. We might, once we speak with our doctor, but I cannot guarantee my chief will agree on the necessity of that. We have half an hour, perhaps less.”
I sucked in a breath. “Well, then. We’d best hurry.”
Sara nodded. “Go, pack a few clothes.”
And be ready to run, I thought.
17
Our doctor’s new name was Katrina Bachman. Her new address was Newark, New Jersey.
Sara delivered the news just as I finished packing. “We’ll leave in five minutes,” she said. “We can get to Newark by noon if we take the back roads. Sooner by highway, though they might set a watch on the Jersey Turnpike.” She scanned the contents of my duffel bag and plucked out several T-shirts. “Forget these. You’ll need something warmer. Scruffier. Do you have anything from a thrift shop?”
I rummaged through a drawer for a sweatshirt. Sara scattered the T-shirts over the floor, and when I protested, she said, “Artistic license. We want a certain air of haste and disarray. We want them to underestimate us.”
“That only matters if we get away,” I said. “And how do we get away from DC without anyone noticing? Where do we get a car?”
“You shall have your answers, my love. Leave that here.” She pointed to my journal. “Also, your cell and text device. Do not argue. I have my reasons, as you know. Let me fetch things of my own. We should be safe and in custody by tomorrow, but one likes to be prepared.”
“Custody?” I said. “Sara, what—”
But she had vanished into her own bedroom. Muttering curses, I unpacked my journal and pens. Of course we would leave these behind. We had carefully arranged for me to write nothing about our investigations, after all, and its contents might prove another distraction. Why I had to leave behind my cell and text device was less clear, but I did as she asked—no, as she commanded, but the commands no longer rankled. Sara had clearly planned for this moment. Scratch that, she had planned for a dozen different moments, each with its own branching set of outcomes.
Question was, could those other agents figure out her plans and counterplans before we got to our doctor? And what about our adversary? What about Livvy Pharmaceuticals?
I won’t think about that. Not yet.
I grabbed my fleece jacket from the closet, slung my duffel bag over my shoulder. My left arm buzzed with excitement, with terror, flesh and metal alike. It was exactly like that morning in April when I heard the first explosions, the first rattle of gunfire.
Sara met me outside the kitchen. She wore a baggy leather jacket and knit cap, both dark brown and mottled with black. The jacket bulged with pockets. She had her satchel over one arm and her cell pressed against one ear. “Meet us at the corner of Twenty-Ninth and P,” she was saying. “Oh, and a distraction on Q Street would be lovely. Yes, yes, Micha, I know it’s short notice. Call it a challenge to your ingenuity.”
She dropped the phone into the trash bin. “Ready, Dr. Watson?”
“Ready.”
“Good. Wait here, please.”
Sara unlocked the front door and tapped the alarm sequence onto the security panel. But instead of motioning for me to follow, she herded me swiftly back to her bedroom, shushing my attempts to question her. Only twenty minutes had passed since Sara had ordered me to pack. The moon hung low over the horizon; the monuments had lost their illumination. Sara had switched on the overhead lamp and dialed the dimmer to its lowest setting. The room had a desolate, untidy appearance with its rumpled bed and the floor littered with dirty cups and an empty wine bottle.
“The answer to your first question,” Sara said. “How do we leave unobserved? Thus, my love.”
She slid the door to the middle closet open and pushed aside the dozens of dresses and coats inside. A waterfall of silk, all the colors dark and muted in the faint glow from overhead, but here and there the light caught and glittered off metallic threads. Clothes for whatever role she had played for her mission? Or merely an excess of costumes from someone who wore as many personalities as she could?
Sara ran her fingers along the interior of the doorframe. “I haven’t had to use this exit before,” she said. “I must trust that Jenna followed directions.”
She pressed some unseen button or device. I heard a hiss, then the back wall yawned open.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
She gave me that familiar slanting smile. “I would never josh you, Dr. Watson. And close that mouth before you catch a fly.”
Sara fetched a black cylinder from another pocket—a miniature flashlight—and switched it on. The beam illuminated a rough plaster wall and a narrow wooden staircase zigzagging downward. “You first,” she said, handing me the flashlight. “Wait for me at the bottom.”
I hurried as fast as I could down the stairs. From above came the rattle of hangers, then another hiss as the door slid shut. Sara’s descent was as swift and noiseless as mine was not.
“How much time?” I asked when she caught up to me.
“Twenty, thirty minutes.”
“You said—”
“Margin of error. Keep going.”
I muttered a curse at Sara, who laughed softly. But keep going I did, one hand of metal brushing the wall to steady myself, one hand of flesh clutching the flashlight, whose bright narrow beam jumped and bounced off the walls with every step. The rough plaster changed over to concrete blocks, then to dirt partially covered by wooden planks.
The stairs ended in a cramped and dusty chamber. The air here felt chilled and raw, thick with the scent of damp earth. I swung the flashlight around and caught a glimpse of empty spider webs. A narrow passage led off into the dark straight ahead, another to the right.
Sara grabbed the flashlight from my hand. “This way,” she said.
We headed single-file down the right-hand passage. The walls were lined with brick, but the ground was packed dirt. Here and there moss grew in the cracks. Other places the mortar had crumbled. I thought this might be how a dungeon looked, or a castle from antiquity.
“When did you have this built?” I asked.
“Three, four months ago. Convincing, isn’t it?”
At the next intersection, Holmes swung left. We were padding along faster now. Was that the echo of metal against stone I heard behind me? I kept glancing over my shoulder even though I could see nothing beyond the dim circle from the flashlight. I nearly ran into Sara when she abruptly stopped.
“Hush,” she said, though I had not spoken.
She ran her hands over the bricks, counting softly to herself.
“Ah.”
Sara laid both hands against the brick and leaned into the wall. A click sounded overhead. I jumped back to avoid a metal ladder that unfolded from the new gap in the ceiling. “Last-minute caution,” Sara said, handing me the flashlight. “I go first. If all is clear, I shall hoot twice like a screech owl. That’s a joke. Stop scowling. If we cannot laugh at death, we cannot truly live. But I do want to survey our exit.”
She dropped her satchel on the ground. Her gun had reappeared from another of her myriad pockets, then she swung up the ladder and into the darkness. I waited anxiously, shifting from foot to foot, until sh
e leaned down through the opening. “All clear. Hand me that bag, then follow.”
The exit was in a storage shed crowded with rakes and shovels and half-empty bags of mulch. One grimy window overlooked an immaculate lawn, which led up to a brick building, both silvered by moonlight. “Let me guess,” I murmured. “Hudson Realty owns this property as well.”
“Excellent deduction, my dear Watson.”
She restored the ladder to its slot and slid the metal cover back over the exit. Together we scattered mulch and dirt over the floor. Sara glanced at her watch. Made some silent calculation, and nodded. “Now for our next delicate maneuver. Did I mention this exit might be watched?”
I was no longer surprised by what Sara had or had not mentioned. “If we get caught, it’s because of your chatter.”
Sara laughed softly. “My apologies. So. We shall be serious. Turn off the flashlight. Did you bring your gloves? Tschah. I should have reminded you. Very well, roll down your sleeves and keep your left hand in your pocket. Metal catches light, you know. Good. Now, we have a dozen yards or so between this shed and the street where Micha awaits with the car. We shall not run, because that would attract attention, but neither shall we dally. We glide, like swans over a lake, our eyes cast discreetly toward the ground so that any chance light does not reflect from them. Keep a firm grip on your bag. Ready? Let us leap into opportunity.”
We did not exactly leap. Sara eased the shed door open and glanced around the corner, so exactly like spies in the movies that I almost laughed. This is not funny. This is dangerous, what we’re doing. But oh, this lovely flood of energy, this sense of everything right and proper, such as I had not felt since long before Alton. A bubbling excitement that reminded me of that day I stepped into the operating theater for my first solo round of surgery.
Sara touched my arm, my right arm, and nodded. Outside, she mouthed.
One by one, we emerged from our sheltering shed. Sara pointed toward a wooden fence and its gate. The gate opened onto a lawn populated by oak and dogwood trees. Beyond that the trees gave way to a brief verge of grass and then the street.
We passed underneath the trees and between two houses. The streets were empty, except for one car parked at the curb. Once more Sara signaled for us to pause. “Do not panic,” she whispered in my ear. “We shall proceed to the sidewalk, indifferent, unhurried. Get into the rear seat. Micha will be driving at first.”
We held hands for the last distance, and though mine was metal, I swore I could feel the beat of her pulse in counterpoint to my own—to my real pulse and not the ghost of memory.
The car was an ancient gray Saab, its rusted bumpers decorated with stickers from the Montreal International Jazz Festival. Sara bundled me inside first and tossed her bag after me. She had barely pulled the door shut when the car eased away from the curb. In the late dawn, our driver was little more than a shadow within darker shadows. I could just make out a bulky coat, a profusion of box braids, and the gleam of a bracelet as our driver spun the steering wheel for a left onto Twenty-Ninth Street.
“Micha,” Sara said in an undertone. “Thank you for your ingenuity.”
“Anything to make my Friday morning livelier,” Micha replied. Her voice was soft and rough, like Sara’s, but with a breathless quality. “You do know Grandmama will count this as a favor—a very great favor. She will insist on repayment with interest.”
“Of course she will,” Sara said. “I expected no less. Tell her I shall pay my respects the moment it’s safe.”
Micha nodded and turned left onto O Street. Four minutes later we pulled into the taxi lane for the Hotel Palomar. Micha exited the driver’s seat and handed Sara the keys. “Be careful.”
“I will.” Sara pressed something into Micha’s hands as she kissed the other woman on the cheek. “Thank you. Tell Grandmama she needs a sedative.”
Micha laughed and danced off into the shadows, her thick braids swinging from side to side. Sara slid into the driver’s seat. I took my place next to her.
“Next stop,” she said, “Newark, New Jersey.”
* * *
Dawn streaked the skies as we crossed into Maryland on State Route 5. The last time I had ventured into the outskirts of DC, I had been a med student at Howard University, visiting my parents in Suitland, going out with friends from high school and discovering we had all of us changed beyond recognition.
I had the same strange sense of vertigo now. I recognized a bowling alley, the building that had housed the first incarnation of Nick’s Market, the church hall where my sister, Grace, and I attended youth fellowship. Grace had continued her membership. I had dropped out after I started to wonder about my own identity. Sara negotiated the madhouse that was Old and New Branch Avenue and sent us hurtling south past the tumbledown house where Mary Surratt once lived, where John Wilkes Booth had planned for Lincoln to die.
“Tell me,” I said. “What more do I need to know?”
“A great deal,” Sara told me. “Humor me just a half hour more, then we can talk.”
Beyond Clinton, Maryland, we came to a series of new housing developments, then the road narrowed and we were in the countryside. Sara took the twists and turns as though she had grown up in this neighborhood. We coasted to a stoplight in Brandywine, turned left onto 301 North.
“Now?” I asked.
Sara glanced in the passenger-side mirror, made a minute adjustment to our speed. “Now, yes. Do you prefer to ask questions first or later?”
Oh, a complicated discussion. Color me not surprised, Agent Holmes.
“Questions later,” I said. “First you talk.”
She nodded. “Very wise. Well, as you know, our mysterious Dr. Calloway spent several years with Livvy Pharmaceuticals. You know about their contracts with the VA Medical Center. Perhaps you did not know they are the highest profit center for Adler Industries, with dozens of patents directly connected to drugs for treating our ever-growing numbers of veterans.
“Connections,” she repeated in a musing tone. “That is the heart of my work. Never mind the drama, the secret passageways, the guns and glamour. Pinpointing the link between A and B is what I do best. So. Dr. Calloway worked for Livvy Pharmaceuticals. Livvy in turn is one of three research companies owned by Adler Industries. AI’s history intrigues me on several points, including certain details about its founder, but the essential is this: Adler Industries won several major multiyear contracts to deliver medical supplies to the U.S. military. It also owns several laboratories in the DC area, including one called Capitol Diagnostics. It also owns a computer service company called tekSolutionsEtc.”
Oh. Oh, yes. I remembered those names.
Capitol Diagnostics handled all the standard lab tests from the VA Medical Center. Two other labs had lost the bid. The third had been acquired by Capitol’s parent company and dismantled. tekSolutionsEtc serviced the workstations in the VA veterans’ center. If I remembered correctly, they had also taken over the contract for the VA Medical Center as well.
I relayed this information to Holmes, who seemed unsurprised.
“Adler has a certain reputation,” she said. “Or rather, its CEO, Nadine Adler, does. She’s ambitious, thorough, and demanding. If Capitol Diagnostics loses even one test result, she knows. And if she knows . . .”
But Sara did not continue that tantalizing thought. Perhaps that spurt of honesty had exhausted her. Perhaps she did not want to reason ahead of our data.
And what data did we have? A dozen clues pointing to one Katherine Calloway, now known as Katrina Bachman, as our best source of information. A few more data points concerning Adler Industries. Troubling ones, but nothing definite. Pharmaceuticals would explain several aspects of our case, but we still had no motive, no hard details about what happened to our soldiers.
We need to know why, that will tell us who.
I hunkered down into my seat and stared out the window, pondering why. Crimson stained the horizon. Pale sunlight rolled over the bare fi
elds, which were covered in mist. My stump ached from several days of neglect. When I massaged my upper arm, I felt pinpricks of electricity deep inside. Next to me, Sara drove steadily, competently, as though the sleepless night had not occurred.
“I have a question,” I said at last. “Who is Micha?”
Her mouth quirked in a brief Sara smile. “Family.”
“Is she safe? I mean, what if—”
“Micha is safe. She has various protectors. Our family. Allies. However, I doubt she will need them. I suspect that Micha arranged for two, possibly three, other cars, identical to this one, to drive in contradictory directions from 2809 Q Street and its neighborhood. No doubt a fourth was parked around the corner from the Palomar for her use. Micha is a meticulous woman.”
“Your family has . . . interesting talents.”
“That is one way to describe them.”
Sara’s mouth had tucked into an unhappy smile, and I remembered what Jacob had told me, those many weeks ago. She comes from a rich family . . . Times they remember her. Times she remembers them.
And where was Jacob now? Was he safe?
I rubbed my knuckles over my eyes. My earlier exhilaration had faded. A headache lurked behind my skull, and I felt that old familiar queasiness from my on-call days at the hospital, from other days in the field when the casualties came fresh from the border and we worked ten and twelve and fourteen hours without a break.
Sara laid a hand on my shoulder, then clasped my metal hand in hers. “I haven’t forgotten our friends. My family will see to that.”
Grandmama will insist on repayment.
“How much will you owe them?” I asked.
“More than I like,” Sara said. “Less than I ought to.”
* * *
Onward, through the rusty brown of tobacco fields and subsistence crops that made up Maryland’s agriculture economy these days. Sara continued to handle the car as though she were an automaton, unaffected by sleepless nights and high anxiety. I dozed as much as I could, but I had lost the knack of my residency days, when any sleep came deep and easy. What I noticed, when I noticed it, was that more and more strip malls and apartment complexes interrupted the fields, but the businesses had died off in the last ten years, the apartment dwellers heading north or south, and leaving behind islands of asphalt and concrete, which the weeds were gradually overtaking.
A Study in Honor Page 22
