I dialed, got a busy signal. Damn. "Did she ask you who you were?"
"Nope, and I didn't offer. Hey, is this messing things up for you and this Paula?"
I tried again. Still busy. I put the receiver back down. "Let's just say that we're working through some things, and I wished I had answered the phone and not you, no offense. It's time to start grilling. You still starved?"
A smile. "Famished."
Three more tries on the telephone later, I managed to get past the busy Signals. But either she wasn't home or wasn't answering, but I did manage to leave a message for Paula to call back. By then, dinner was ready. Laura had ignored my instructions to stay out of the kitchen and she had found a couple of plumber candles, which I keep around to use when the power goes dead during an ice storm or blizzard. The meal of steak, baked potatoes and salad was simple --- one of these days I'll become a gourmet cook, right after learning to play the bagpipes --- but it seemed to suit Laura.
She said, “A home-cooked meal seems to blessedly heavenly. After eating restaurant food or takeout service for a while, it all starts to taste the same. One of the first things I do when I get home is to camp out in the kitchen and just cook to my heart's content. Some people get fat while they're away. Not me. I eat poorly, and I definitely don't eat enough."
"And where is home?" I asked.
"Don't laugh. A condo in a suburb outside of Las Vegas. Real estate still relatively cheap, and it's an easy commute to work."
"Live alone?" "Of course."
"So that story about your boyfriend, that wasn't part of the cover story?"
She had her fork about halfway up to her mouth when I said that, and then she lowered it down to her plate. "I may be guilty of a lot of things, Lewis, but telling lies about Tom isn't one of them. He really did go to MIT. He was in Air Force ROTC and was studying aeronautical engineering. Only way he could afford to go to that place and get the brass rat. We... we managed to spend a lot of good times together, even with me working in the DOE and him being a pilot. And yes, he did get shot down in Colombia. Hell, I even got word of it before his parents did... His poor mom. She couldn't understand why she couldn't see her boy in the casket before they buried him. She wanted to kiss him one last time. The poor dear didn't realize that what was left of him --- was left of the boy she had loved and kissed and wiped his nose --- once he and his aircraft slammed into the side of a mountain looked like a lump of greasy black charcoal. And I wasn't about to explain it to her."
Her eyes began to fill. "So that was all true. I was in fact wearing his sweatshirt. I wish to Christ it was a cover story, I wish the whole goddamn thing was a cover story, but it wasn't. Your curiosity satisfied?"
I found myself reaching over and touching her hand. "Quite. And my apologies for jumping to a conclusion."
She softly pulled her hand away, picked up her fork again. “Apologies accepted. I can’t rightly blame you, considering the crap I spun you way earlier. Which reminds me, belated and hateful congratulations for sniffing out my real job. You must have been a real pisser back at the Pentagon."
I wiped at my lips with a napkin. "It had its moments." "I've opened my life to you, my friend. How about repaying the favor?"
"Like what?"
"Like how did a nice boy like you end up working in the bowels of the five-sided puzzle palace."
I smiled at her. "You sure you have the clearance?"
She rested her elbows on the counter, leaned her chin into her folded hands. "Trust me," she said. "My clearance level is such that I know things even the President doesn't know."
"All right," I said. "Born and raised in New Hampshire. Moved to Indiana as a young boy. Went to the University of Indiana at Bloomington. Worked on the school newspaper. Was going to enter journalism when I got out. But there was... oh, I don't know. I had a sense that I should be doing more than just reporting on a zoning-board conflict or a car accident. I had a talent for writing, no doubt about it. But I had no talent for fiction writing and I wasn't too compelled to enter newspaper work after I graduated, but... let's just say I was a conflicted college youth."
She gazed at me. "Let me guess. Then a man from the government showed up with Great Lie Number One."
I laughed. "Good, very good. Close. A man from the government placed an ad in the very same newspaper I was writing for. They were looking for energetic, talented college students who wanted to make good money and do something in service of their country. So me and a few dozen others took a test in a gymnasium. I'm sure you know the kind of test I'm talking about."
Laura leaned up and picked up her wineglass. "Sure. Multiple choice. Number lines. Problem solving."
"The same. I guess I did well enough because I got an application to fill out, about two inches thick. One thing kept on leading to the next, and I ended up in the service of our country, at the Pentagon. Quite a heady time, a college student just out of school, thinking he’s going mano a mano against the Evil Empire. Until you found yourself in a cubicle contrasting rice-growing statistics in India and Pakistan. I got in trouble a few times and found myself transferred to an odd little unit where I actually thought I made a difference."
"The Marginal Issues Section," she said. "Where you and your cubicle mates worked on intelligence matters that fell through the cracks, that proved to be too sensitive for other people to look at."
"Yep, a motley group, but for the most part it was a lot of fun. You had a license to be a snoop, to find out anything and everything you needed to know. You read the day's newspapers and watched the day's newscasts, and you felt incredibly smug knowing that you knew so much more than the average citizen or even reporter. You had access to the most powerful computers and databases in the world, and ... " I stopped, feeling slightly ashamed. "Listen to me. I'm beginning to sound like a recruiting ad.”
"Good for you, that you had so much fun," she said.
I took a swig of wine, feeling a bit liberated at telling this young woman about who I was and where I had been, conversations I had never permitted myself to have with any other woman in my life, "Yep. Tons of fun, until we went out to Nevada on a training mission. Our group leader couldn't read a map, even if it was one given away on a McDonald's meal tray, and we ended up in a secure part of the desert. Then... well, you know the rest. The score ended up, U.S. Government twelve, Lewis Cole, one. And I don't think there's a Marginal Issues Section anymore, is there."
She shook her head. "If there is, then it's called something else. You lost someone out there in the desert near and dear to you, am I right?"
Cissy, my dear Cissy Manning. A fellow worker in the Marginal Issues Section. Long legs, auburn hair, a ready smile and laugh, and a mind so sharp she could do The New York Times crossword puzzle practically in her sleep. Cissy... who was going to move in with me and start a new life right after that trip to Nevada, a week of training in the desert, a week where only one of us would walk out alive. Cissy... "Yes, and I don't want to talk about it anymore."
This time, she reached over and touched my hand. "Not a problem. It's just that... well, you and I have a lot of things in common, Lewis. Besides being good at what we do, we both lost somebody we loved due to idiots higher up. Your woman due to a misread map by your section leader. My man because the idiots in charge of our efforts in Colombia won't allow our pilots to fly aircraft with antimissile technology. Thought to be too confrontational. Bah. High-priced idiots, all of them."
"Agreed," I said, picking up both of our empty plates. "High-priced idiots, all of them."
As I washed the dishes, Laura got on the phone and called over across the street, and I heard part of the conversation as I put away those few dishes we'd used.
"Well, I'm sorry if he called; I'll call him back when I get over there."
She paced the room like an angry lioness being held against her will, the phone in her hand. "The neutron flux detector? On the fritz again? Well, Gus, don't you think you can handle it?" A long pause as I wipe
d down a plate. "Telling me it's on the fritz isn't what I'm looking for. You telling me that it was on the fritz and that you and Tony got it recalibrated, that's what I'm looking for."
Then she noticed me looking at her, and she smiled. "My ETA? I'll be back there when I'm back there, all right? Look, gotta go."
She put the phone down and I said over the now-clean kitchen counter, "Our dessert options are limited. Either chocolate ice cream, or chocolate ice cream."
Laura sat down on the couch, picked up a Smithsonian magazine. "You decide."
"All right," I said. "I will."
When I got over to the couch with the coffee mugs filled with ice cream, I said, “Gus is the guy with the red h air, right?”
She gingerly licked at the side of the coffee mug, where a trickle of ice cream was working its way south. “Yep. The guy with the red hair and the eager-beaver attitude. That's the one. This is his first real field mission and he can't believe how boring it is."
"And how boring can it be?"
Another swipe of her pink tongue against the side of the mug, and then she picked up a spoon. "Looking through forty- or fifty-year-old records, getting dust in your eyes and your lungs. Trying to find a warehouse that existed in 1946, and which is a parking lot today. Using the best detection gear in the world, flying and driving around your target area, trying to determine where the uranium might be hidden. Locating a couple of potential sites. Going to those sites and finding out one of them was a medical facility back in the 1950s, and another place processed old watch dials in the early 1960s."
"And Gus finds this boring?"
"Can't hardly blame him," she said. "Entering NEST, you begin to think you're on the front line of squashing terrorism, and when you spend a week up to your elbows in old microfilm and newspaper files, the glamour goes away real quick."
I spooned in some of the ice cream. "You guys think the uranium is around here?"
"Sure," she said. "We know for sure it's not at the shipyard.
That place has been searched and re-searched ever since the stuff went missing back in 1945. Which means it got secured somewhere in the area, if this Libyan character came here to pick it up."
"And why do you think it's being put on the auction block now, more than a half century later?"
"A variety of reasons. Most likely, the guy or guys who took the stuff, they want to cash it in before they die."
"But if it's nearby, shouldn't your detection equipment have picked it up?"
She shook her head, a slight line of chocolate about her lips.
"If the stuff is well-shielded and well-buried, we could be within a yard of it and not even know. But it would have to be good shielding. And you know what? People who work at the shipyard, they know about good shielding. Which reminds me.”
"Yes?"
A glance my way. "The museum up there in Porter. Why did you go there?"
Because of the button on the man's lapel, I thought. That's why. The button that was there and that disappeared between the time I saw the dead man and his photograph was taken by you folks. I supposed I should have told her everything, but I was hesitating. What I knew back when I was working in spookland, you never gave up information you didn't have to. And something didn't seem quite right here, despite her assurances that she was revealing all.
I cleared my throat. "I had a source at the Porter Police Department. He was going to see what he could learn from the people he knew at the shipyard. Between him and whatever you guys have done over there, I thought the place was pretty well covered. So I thought, maybe an ex-worker or retiree. And that's why I went to the museum. Maybe there was a retiree's association or some old records there."
"And did you find anything out?"
"Not yet," I said, lying easily. 'There's an old guy at the museum who I'm going to visit again, probably tomorrow. But when I was in his museum, that's when I saw the little display about U-boats. And not to get any of your folks in trouble, but in one of my visits to your rooms over there at the Lafayette, I saw some documents printed in German. Not the language of choice for Colombian drug cartels, is it?"
"Documents lying out there in the open," she said, speaking slowly. "That'll be something I'll be raising at our next staff meeting. Okay, go on. What else?"
"What else is just putting the pieces together. You looking for someone associated with the shipyard. You guys looking into something related to German. The shipyard once having hosted four U-boats that surrendered there back in 1945. Nothing extraordinary about those U-boats except for the cargo of one of them, which was enriched uranium. Missing for more than a half century. I made a guess, that’s all. Missing uranium seemed to make a hell of a lot more sense to have your kind of guys crawling around here, rather than some bogus story about drug cartels."
She rattled her spoon around in the bottom of her mug, trying to get at the last of the ice cream. The room was now growing dark, the only faint light coming in from the kitchen. I was suddenly aware of her presence, her scent, everything about her, sitting beside me here on the couch.
"You ever feel bored here, sitting by the ocean?"
"Some days."
Laura gave me another gaze, and I forgot about the rattlesnake analogy. "Sure could use somebody like you, maybe as a consultant, when we wrap this one up."
"Laura---"
"Please, don't answer now," she said. "I know we came in like a herd of water buffalo and stirred everything up and trampled over you some. My apologies. That's the way I sometimes operate, especially when it's something concerning missing bomb material and some bad guys chasing after it. You'd think that a group like us would be overfunded and overequipped, but that's not the case. Some of our equipment is as old as I am, and we also could use some new blood. Which is where you come in. I like the way you don't take things for granted. I like the way you poke and ask questions and put things together."
I laughed. "Keep on saying that and how you like my merry smile, and maybe you'll get a deal."
"Maybe," she said, putting the mug down on the coffee table before us, the spoon rattling around. "If that's what it takes to get you on board." She looked at her watch, frowned. "Got to get a move on, or those boys across the street will come barreling through with guns drawn, wondering if you've kidnapped me."
"One visit from them was enough, thank you," I said. I got up and walked her to the door and said, "Need an escort back across the street?"
She smiled up at me, hands now holding on to her leather bag. "Last month I requalified on the weapons range, in the top one percent. I also know six forms of hand to hand combat. I think I can handle myself.
''I'm sure you can."
"Tell me something, will you?"
"Sure," I said, standing by the open door, the sound of the ocean now louder.
"Do you think you can do it, find Whizzer? Because right now, we are shit out of luck."
I held on to the doorknob. "I think I can. If he's around here, I think I'll be able to do it."
A nod. "Glad to hear it."
I thought for a moment. "If you can spare it, I sure could use the photo of the Libyan. A head shot that doesn't show much of the wound. When I head back to the museum.
"Sure," she said. "We'll have one ready for you tomorrow. And one more question, if you don't mind."
"Have I ever said no?"
It was nice to see the smile again. "You like it, don't you."
"Like what?"
"Being back in my world, of spooks and intrigue and finding things out. You had this energy about you, something I haven't seen before from you. I got the feeling that maybe you were bored with being here, bored with writing a magazine column each month. It just seemed like you were enjoying myself."
"You think too much," I said. "Another flaw of mine, I'm sure."
She was still smiling at me, looking up at me, her hair softly framing her face, and I leaned down to her and kissed her. At first she just stood there, hesitant, but when I star
ted to pull back she dropped her bag on the floor and her arms went up my back, and 1 returned the favor. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the taste and the sensations and the smell and the touch, and then she gently broke away and whispered, "That was nice. Unexpected, but very nice."
"I agree," I said, and kissed her again.
When she broke away, long seconds later, she took a hand and gently tapped it against my chest. “Nice, quite nice… but too complicated right now, Lewis. We…. I… Well, it’s too complicated. All right?”
I slowly let my arms down from around her slight waist.
"Sure. It's all right. I'll check in with you tomorrow."
She nodded and now she looked older and taller, and was back to being Laura Reeves, section leader, Nuclear Emergency Search Team, U.S. Department of Energy. "Good," she said, tapping my chest again. "Very good."
She eased her way past me and started walking up the hill, and I waited in the doorway until I saw her look back at me and give me a quick wave. I waved back and kept on watching until she disappeared from sight.
Chapter Thirteen
After a half hour of efforts the next morning, unsuccessfully trying to get a hold of Paula Quinn, it was time to go to work. I made a slight detour by going south and returning yet another collection of unwatched adult videos, and then I reversed track. On my way north to Porter I made another slight detour and went to the Sandtree Stables in North Tyler looking for Felix Tinios. I had called him earlier and he'd said he would be at the stables, meeting up with his girlfriend Mickey. I still had a hard time wrapping my mind around that term. Girlfriend. Usually the women who entered Felix's life weren't around long enough to earn the name girlfriend.
Before starting out that day, I had gone over to the Lafayette House, where I found that the entire NEST group had left early that morning. But a nine-by-twelve manila envelope had been left for me at the front desk, with a black-and-white photograph of the Libyan intelligence operative, sitting dead in his car. I opened the envelope far away from the elegant splendor of the front desk, not wanting to upset any potential guests with a photo of a dead man with a bullet to his head. But Laura had chosen well. The photograph made it look as if he were sleeping, not dead.
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