The Firefly

by P. T. Deutermann

  Swamp agreed, said he’d be in touch, and went to find his Secret Service car. He didn’t need to see any more of this scene. As he slipped into the front seat with the driver, he realized he did not want to see any more of the scene. He ratcheted the car’s bucket seat back, strapped in, and closed his eyes.

  The next twenty-four hours would be critical. Right now, she was apparently on the run, with no clothes except what she had on her back, no money, no car, and no ID or other plastic with her. If she’d been scared enough to hijack a UPS truck, there was no telling what else she might do to get away, but the longer she was out there, the more likely she’d think of something. She had to be desperately afraid.

  He tried to put it all together. If the transcript fragment was real, then somebody at that clinic, some patient, had been talking about a possible terrorist attack. Was the patient after Connie Wall? His brain was stalling. He made a mental note to call PRU in the morning, ask them to let him talk to the agent supervising the security survey for the presidential address to a joint session of Congress. Let him know they were still pulling strings. And now he’d have to delay the searches on the Pakistani doctors’ homes, which meant turning off the hurry-up push on getting those warrants. He’d tell Gary to get the warrants.

  But the main thing was that he no longer thought the transcript fragment was entirely a firefly. The good news was that they had some time to work it. That joint-session speech was literally weeks away.

  Heismann stared at the ceiling in his bathroom, unable to close his eyes and sleep. He lay in the bathtub, in cool water up to his chest, an ice pack pressed to his groin where she’d kicked him. As long as he didn’t breathe too deeply or try to lift his legs, he could stand the pain. He ignored the scrapes, bruises, and scratches he’d sustained in his slide down into the creek, the flash burns on his right cheek from that belly gun going off in his face, and the swelling in his left knee from hitting a submerged boulder. He’d barely been able to get to his van and clear out of the park before the world at the top of the bluff flared up with blue strobe lights.

  And the bitch nurse had gotten away. Again.

  This was real trouble, for now she was fully alerted. She had to know.

  First, he must ensure that Mutaib didn’t find out. There would be reams of news coverage, a policeman getting killed like that. He must be dead, of course, with all that blood, although the first news reports had been vague on that point. His own socks and shoes, soaked in all that blood, were now safely in a plastic bag down in the apartment building’s Dumpster. But he would have to communicate with Mutaib by telephone from now on. Absolutely no more face-to-face meetings, not until he could walk normally again. He eased from one buttock to the other and grunted when the pain lanced up his belly, calling forth the waves of nausea. If it hadn’t been for the groin pouch, he would have been paralyzed for days. Bitch!

  For some reason, she had decided to run from the police. She’d had plenty of opportunity to go back up there while he was floundering in that damned creek, but she hadn’t. The television news reporting the incident said that the police were looking for a nurse named Connie Wall. Well, he would have a totally different version for the banker: I took her, killed her, and stuffed her in a hole in the banks of Rock Creek. That’s why they can’t find her. That would be his official line.

  Back in the fall, when he was nearing completion of his course of identity-change procedures, he had begun his preparations to destroy the clinic and everyone in it. He’d come back late at night and let himself in with a stolen key and the filched code for the security system. He had gone through some of the records there and discovered that they were using code numbers instead of names. He had never found the code list that might turn numbers into names, but after an extended search, he had understood that the crooked bastards were dabbling in a little blackmail by recording the recovery-room babble of their patients. One of the transcripts had had a question annotated in the margin, and the question had been addressed to C.W., so it was a safe bet that Connie Wall was the trusted transcriber. He had mentioned the transcripts to Mutaib, and it had been Mutaib’s idea to use a fake one as part of the deception plan.

  If federal agents had taken the bait, that would explain the morning visit, but it wasn’t likely that they knew she had been the transcriber. They were probably talking to her simply because she was the last one left alive from the clinic. But if one of them had let slip something about transcripts while interviewing her, that might explain why she was now running from the police, instead of seeking refuge with them. That and the attack. She was fleeing for her life. Especially after his last little phone call.

  The question now was, Where would she go? He knew nothing about her family, relatives, place of origin. The phone call had been rash. He’d had no time to do his usual research, and this was the embarrassing result. The only good news was that she had had no time to take a purse, identification, her car keys. He had seen all these things in her kitchen. So at this moment, she was effectively homeless.

  He wouldn’t wait to entertain Mutaib’s anxious inquiries. First thing in the morning, he would ask Mutaib to use the resources of the bank to get details on the woman. He would say that he was just sweeping up, making sure there wouldn’t be anxious relatives appearing out of nowhere to search for her or talk to the press. Banks, even foreign banks, could find out anything about an individual in America—account information, medical history, insurance records, credit histories, mortgages. He would ask Mutaib to put surveillance on all that—to make sure no one was tapping into the dead woman’s accounts, he would say. And if they were, find who they were. And where they were. That way, if she accessed anything, it would give him a place to look. He must absolutely convince the princeling, and his factional masters back in the Kingdom, that she was dead and buried. They must have no doubts as to the efficiency of their hired gun. His reputation in Hamburg among the Arab fanatics was one of amoral ruthlessness: He would do anything or anyone for money, and without blinking an eye. That’s why they’d hired him in the first place.

  He’d watched enough Ammie television to know that the Washington city police would be in an uproar, searching for the perpetrator, even if the policeman didn’t die right away. All points bulletin. Cop killer. BOLO. Full court press. Lockdown on the streets. Scumbags up against the wall. He knew all the police idioms. But being police, they would concentrate on the easy route—they’d be looking for her, not him. They’d know there’d been a third party to that little mess. The dining room window broken from the outside. Mud and dirt in the front rooms. Glass from the front windows outside as well as inside. But he’d left no fingerprints, and the footprints could no longer be traced to his shoes, because by morning, they would be on their way to the landfill. They wouldn’t have a clue as to his identity.

  Unless.

  He tried deep breathing again to stabilize his feverish brain. He knew he was thinking in circles again. The bolus of pain in his groin was making him forget something important. There might be two sets of police looking for Connie Wall, local and state police. No, not state. Wrong word. Here, they called it federal. Geheim Stadt Polizei. Gestapo. State secret police. No, still not right: Secret Service, yes, that was correct. His mind was drifting badly. He figured it must be the painkillers he’d taken.

  Two sets of police hunting the nurse. The federals: What if they caught her? Would that help him or hurt him? She couldn’t really describe him. He’d deliberately put the flashlight under his chin when he’d shown himself through the window; she would remember only the monster’s face. There was a slim chance she might remember his face from the clinic, but the light should have distorted it beyond recognition. Plus, she had been visibly shocked by the vise coming through the window. No, she could not make the connection.

  But the bait might.

  He forced himself to concentrate, despite the waves of pain that were keeping perfect time with his pulse. Line by line, do the logic, one
more time. If the Ammies had taken the bait, they would need Wall to lead them to the name of the patient whose transcript he had faked in that record. Because that was the key to the deception: First aim them at the wrong date; all right, they’d done that. Then set them in pursuit of the wrong face. Which did exist, oh my, yes, it did, even though they’d have to look hard for details, all the way back to the Stasi files. The trick was that he no longer looked anything like Jäger Heismann, nor was Heismann even his real name. That was the whole idea behind the bait: Give them something to chew on, but tie them up in knots, focus them on the wrong target and the wrong man, make them spin their wheels hunting for code lists, patient records, anything that could identify the mad bomber. Waste their time. Tease them with a threat, but the wrong threat.

  But with the woman on the run, it would now be up to him to initiate stage two. It was still a bit early, but there was probably no avoiding it now. Besides, soon he would need to concentrate on other things. Like setting up the weapon.

  He leaned his head back against the cool tile. So, go forward. After calming Mutaib, he would activate the second stage of the deception. Without the woman, he would need a new channel. All right, how?

  He had no idea. He shifted position in the tub and instantly regretted it as his brain was overwhelmed by new lances of pain. He couldn’t think like this. His testicles were killing him. He took a long, very careful breath. His bones ached with the pain of it. Bitch!

  It was already Wednesday. Tomorrow, Thursday, he was supposed to occupy the house and begin his technical preparations. He needed to be physically operational again in twenty-four hours. He rubbed his cheek and felt the stinging powder-burn specks. His brain was spinning slowly, like some great galaxy. The deception plan—had it really been necessary?

  Focus. Back to the woman. He still needed to kill her. The house would occupy his days. But nights? Nights would be for hunting, injured or not. If she stayed in the Washington area, and did anything electronic, the bank would detect it. Assuming the Ammies thought they had a real transcript, his transcript, then they should be searching hard for the doctors’ code list. If they found it, they’d be off after their terrorist prime suspect, Herr Jäger Heismann. They’d query Interpol. The bank would be informed. And then he wouldn’t need her. If, after a few days, there was no indication of that, he’d find a way to prompt them. So either way, the nurse was now fully expendable. This time, once he found her, he’d cut her fucking head right off.

  Circles again. You just went through all of this, he told himself. God in heaven! Focus, idiot.

  He desperately needed to sleep, to rest. To make this pain stop. He reached for the bottle of pills sitting on the toilet lid and took two more pills. His stomach almost rebelled, but the thought of puking froze his senses. The pain would be unbearable. He drifted, trying the deep-breathing technique again. After awhile, he felt a little bit better.

  And then he realized how he could do it. After tonight, the police would be all over that house. And they would most certainly monitor her telephone. Why not leave her a telephone message at the appropriate moment? Assuming all this propaganda were true, that the local and the federal police were fully integrated these days, that might get them to work on the matter of Jäger Heismann. Put Mutaib’s stupid little plan behind him once and for all, and get ready for the big event.

  At 11:30 P.M., Connie Wall crept out of the ladies’ lounge in Lord & Taylor and into the bed and bath department. She had heard the cleaning crew come through this area an hour ago, and she had spent some anxious moments hidden behind the couch while two Hispanic ladies vacuumed the lounge and cleaned the bathroom itself. Listening at the door, she could still hear big vacuum cleaners running somewhere on the floor, so there shouldn’t be motion detectors waiting for her if she left the rest room area. She figured she had thirty minutes before the crews were done and the store went on to its nighttime security system.

  Keeping low to the floor to avoid cameras, she headed for a display area called Arabian Nights, which had freestanding columns, silk curtains, Persian carpets, and a half a dozen exotic-looking bed arrangements. Some delirious decorator overdid his special mushrooms, she thought as she slipped between the billowing curtains, checking continuously to make sure there wasn’t a brace of rent-a-cops headed her way. On the other hand, the display provided a perfect area to hole up for the night. Assuming they didn’t have Dobermans wandering around after they turned the lights off, she should be able to hide there until morning, when she’d get herself back into the ladies’ room and wait for the store to open.

  She’d taken the Yellow line all the way to Springfield, in northern Virginia, and then decamped into the sprawling Springfield Mall. The giant shopping center had been crowded with people. The whole place was heated, and it sported three food courts, where she could get something hot to eat and then hang out under one of the all-news TVs and keep an eye on what was happening. Once in the food court, she’d taken off the UPS jacket and turned it inside out, not wanting to display the one bit of clothing they might know she’d be wearing. But two teenage girls recognized it, and one offered to trade her brand-new L. L. Bean parka for the way cool UPS jacket. Connie took her up on it, then moved to a different food court in the next wing of the mall.

  She knew she didn’t have enough money for a Washington-area motel, not even one of the curry palaces down on Route 1. She’d remembered the story of the woman who had lived and even delivered a baby in a Wal-Mart store, and she began doing some reconnaissance of the various stores. The Lord & Taylor store looked like the best bet, so she had gone to ground in the rest room about fifteen minutes before the closing announcements began to purr through the cavernous store.

  Now she made herself a nest behind a pile of huge cushions, pulling an entire rug over her hidey-hole in case there were security people patrolling after hours. She nestled Cat’s gun under her right armpit. Right now, she was warm, secure in a locked building, and completely out of sight. She wondered if Cat Ballard was still alive. He’d been gravely injured, given the way those cops had been reacting up there in her yard. She had washed her hands several times after getting into the mall, but they still felt sticky to her. Surely by now the cops would have put the scene together and know she hadn’t done that to Cat. If they’d brought in dogs, they’d have found her trail down the bluff and into the creek area, and signs of the man who’d pursued her into the park. If she was really lucky, they had him in custody. But if not, then he was out there somewhere. She had visions of him prowling the mall parking lots in a sinister-looking car, like some predator hunkering down outside its prey’s burrow.

  She knew that was ridiculous, but this was all new territory for her. At the very least, the District cops wanted to talk to her, and they would have her high on the suspect list when they did. The guy with the monster face was looking for her, and those two federal agents would add their own pressure as soon as they found out she was on the run.

  She was pretty sure that big guy hadn’t been fooled by her deflections on the transcripts. The store had gone quiet, but she had to assume the entire place was now being swept by motion and heat sensors, along with video surveillance. She was thirsty, and she wished she’d bought a bottle of water, even at the mall’s exorbitant prices. But she couldn’t move now. Not until she heard signs of the staff arriving in the morning. And then what? She still had no money, clothes, ID, or transportation. She could try going back to her house, but surely there’d still be cops all over it.

  No, she had to get right out of town. If the clinic had not been destroyed, she could have hidden there.

  The clinic. Well, part of it was still there. The daytime doctors’ half. Yes, there’d been smoke damage, and the owners were probably going for a declaration of total loss, but the upstairs was physically still intact. The premises were shut down, of course, while the docs and their lawyers haggled with the insurance company and its lawyers. But the building was still there. The upst
airs office. The upstairs recovery room, with its beds. And then she remembered something. The night docs had a small safe in the back of the clinic, in the cleaning closet, where they kept the petty cash. And she, as the senior administrative assistant, had the combination. She opened her eyes. Had the investigators found that safe? There was never much money in there, perhaps five hundred to one thousand dollars, except for those odd occasions when one of the clients paid in cash at night, which Dr. Khandoor would always get deposited the next morning without fail.

  But if they hadn’t found it, and she could get to it, a thousand dollars could get her on a Greyhound bus for parts unknown. Then maybe she’d contact the cops and begin a process of long-distance negotiation. Tell her side of the story, but from a safe distance, not from the depths of a holding cell in the notorious D.C. jail.

  When to do it? Quickly. First thing in the morning. During rush hour, where she’d be one face in a crowd of thousands. Walk up Connecticut in broad daylight? Yes. Walk right up to the building and go inside. Like she belonged there. See if the money was there, and then hide out until darkness and the evening rush hour, when the Metro would again be full of people, and then get away. There were too many people chasing her right now. She wanted some distance, and then she’d sort it out—on her terms. I haven’t done anything wrong, damn it, she told herself.

  She revisited that terrible moment when she had tripped over Cat’s body. She had a terrible feeling that all of this was her fault. And if he did survive, he would still have some problems to face. Especially at home. She wept at the thought of her predicament, and his.

  3

  CARLTON HALLORY OF THE SECRET SERVICE PROTECTIVE Research Unit looked like a worried man when Swamp finally was ushered in to see him. He was in his early fifties. Of medium height and slightly overweight, he had a round face, a receding hairline, dun pouches under his eyes, and the midwinter pallor of a professional bureaucrat. Hallory was the supervisory special agent in charge of the security survey for the upcoming inauguration, and, from what Swamp could see, there were obviously not enough hours in the day or days in the week to get all the bases covered. There had been a steady stream of agents coming and going while Swamp waited in the PRU’s small conference room. Every extension light on the conference room’s phone had been on continuously, and there was an air of barely controlled panic in the offices along the hallway.