Dean had no shovel. The best he could do for his friend was hide him in the brush. Dean marked several trees, and in the morning took two mea sure ments to the trail so he could be certain of the location. Tears streamed down his face as he headed in the direction of the Marine camp. It was the first and last time he ever cried in Vietnam, and one of the very few times he was moved to tears in his life. They were tears of shame, for in his heart he felt that he had failed his friend by abandoning his remains.
Four or five hours later, too exhausted to go on, Dean stopped for the rest of the night. He crawled under a large tree about a hundred yards from the trail and slept fitfully.
An hour before dawn, he woke and began walking again.
When he reached a road about a mile and a half later, he collapsed by its side.
Within a few minutes, he heard American voices nearby.
Dean shook his head and feet, rocked back and forth, made sure he was awake. The voices continued.
“Hey,” he said finally. “Hey, are you guys Marines?” The silence that followed convinced him he’d imagined the voices.
“Damn,” he muttered.
“Where are you?” came a voice back.
Dean got to his knees. “Are you Marines?”
“Who are you?”
“Dean. I’m a sniper. What unit are you in?” It turned out to be the company they’d come up with. The men were waiting for a he li cop ter, due any minute.
Dean told the commander where he’d left Longbow’s body. Four Marines were sent up the trail immediately—
Dean was too wasted, though they had to hold him back — but couldn’t find him.
“We’ll be back to get him,” said the captain. “I’ll bring a platoon — I’ll bring the damn division if I have to.” That captain was as good as his word, rallying a sizeable search force, but Longbow’s body was never found.
* * *
Dean rose and began pacing back and forth in the large hotel room.
If he didn’t shoot Phuc Dinh, who had he killed?
And if Phuc Dinh was alive, was Longbow?
They were both dead. Dean was sure of it. Sure of Longbow, and sure of Phuc Dinh. But in the gray stillness of the hotel room, Dean wondered if he was the shadow and they were the ones living and breathing.
44
The Art Room didn’t turn up anything interesting on the other computers. Though it was already after three, Lia decided she would go over to Pine Plains and see if she could talk to the police chief there. His dispatcher said he would be in the office until five and after that would be available at home.
“It’s jess around the corner,” the dispatcher added. “You can walk.”
Forty-five minutes later, Lia drove down the main street of the small town, gazing at the one-and two-story clapboard buildings as she searched for the police station. The town reminded her a great deal of the Connecticut village where she’d grown up. A sleepy farming community for most of its existence, it had recently been overrun with weekenders from New York City, who found the two-and-a-half-hour drive a worthwhile trade-off for relatively cheap real estate and the illusion of a simpler life, so long as that simpler life included Starbucks and a pricey dress shop tucked into a side block behind the bookstore.
Old-timers had made one of two choices: cash in on the newcomers by catering to their whims or slink back and mutter about them behind the closed ranks of old friends.
Lia’s hometown had negotiated a similar clash twenty years earlier; the result was an ambiguous and somewhat uneasy truce, where the old-timers held on to the low-level political and business positions and the transplanted city people ruled everything else.
Lia’s mother and father had feet in both camps, and regarded the transition with mixed feelings. It was not always easy to predict their views, however. As she parked behind the village hall, Lia thought of her father, ostensibly a member of the old-timers’ camp, with eight generations in the local graveyard. He viewed the local police chief, whose family had been in town since the mid-1800s, with twice as much skepticism as he would have shown a newcomer.
Pine Plains’ police chief was about the age of Lia’s father, but there the resemblance ended. Tall and still fairly trim, Christopher Ball had a narrow face set off by a graying brush cut and a tight-lipped smile. He greeted her with a crusher of a handshake.
“I’m with the marshals’ ser vice,” said Lia breezily, showing him the credentials. “I’m following up on the Forester case.”
“So my dispatcher said. I don’t recall the case.”
“Agent Forester. The Secret Service agent who killed himself in Danbury?”
“Oh, OK. Sure.”
“Did he speak to you the day he died?”
“No. He was supposed to show up the next day. We had an appointment. I stayed in the office waiting. Had to have a part-timer come in to do my road patrol because of it.”
“Did he tell you what he was looking into?”
“Not at all.” Ball pushed his chair back and got up. “Service agents out of Danbury told me about it the day after. Or maybe it was Poughkeepsie.”
Ball stared at her. His rising was evidently intended to signal that they were done talking, though Lia didn’t budge.
“So you knew nothing about the threat against Senator McSweeney?”
“I have no idea why your man thought that someone from Pine Plains was involved. I’d’ve been happy to investigate anyone — happy to do it still.”
“When Agent Forester came to talk to you, did he have a notebook with him?”
Something flicked in Ball’s eyes. “He never came to talk to me.” Ball took another step, reaching the edge of the desk.
“Something wrong, Chief?” Lia asked.
Ball frowned. “It’s getting toward dinner.”
“Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”
His frown turned into a full-blown scowl.
“Senator McSweeney has a house near here, doesn’t he?” asked Lia.
“That’s up in Columbia County. Forty-five minutes — an hour, if you drive the speed limit. Most don’t.”
“You deal with him a lot?”
“Are you trying to investigate me, miss?”
“Do you need to be investigated?”
“Get the hell out of my office.”
“Gladly,” said Lia.
* * *
“Why’d you antagonize him?” Telach demanded when Lia reached the car.
“Something about him doesn’t jibe,” said Lia.
She pulled out the booster unit for the audio fly she had left in the office and activated it. Lia looked around, trying to decide where to leave the unit. The fly couldn’t transmit very far on its own.
“He’s just a macho ass,” said Telach. “Unfortunately, that’s not against the law.”
“I planted a bug. Are you picking it up?”
“A bug? I didn’t authorize you to plant a listening device, Lia.”
“Since when do I have to ask?”
“Stand by,” said Telach abruptly.
45
Chief Ball kept his wrath and tongue in check as he contemplated the arrogant federal agent whom he’d just dismissed.
Teeth clenched, he stomped out of the village hall, down the white wooden steps, and around the back to the path that led to Maple Avenue, where he lived with his wife.
The federal people had egos the size of the Lincoln Memorial. The younger they were, the more full of themselves they were. And the women were the worst.
Ball waved at his neighbor, who was ushering his two sons to Little League practice. Ball had to be nice to Marco, because the shortcut was on Marco’s property.
Actually, Ball decided, he didn’t have to be nice to anyone. He made up for it by scowling at Scott Salotti, who was mowing his lawn next door.
So they were still interested in Forester, were they? They couldn’t just take “no” for an answer and move on?
“Hi, honey,”
said his wife from the kitchen when he came in the front door. “Dinner’s ready.” Ball didn’t bother answering. He went up to the bedroom and changed out of his uniform.
“Your beer’s on the table,” his wife said when he came into the kitchen. She rose on her tiptoes and kissed him on his cheek. “Something wrong?”
“Just the usual.”
“Village board talking about cutting back the part-timers’ hours again?”
“Nothing specific.” Ball took a swig of the beer, Miller Lite. “I’m going out after dinner.”
“But we were going to watch Survivor together.”
“Another time.”
A pout appeared on his wife’s face. But it dissipated quickly, as they always did.
46
Rubens was so angry he pounded his desk. He barely kept himself from shouting. “Lia left a bug in the police chief’s office because he was rude to her?”
“You know Lia,” said Telach, frowning uncomfortably.
“It’s one thing for her to trash-talk someone and quite another to leave a bug in his office.”
“Well, she did both.”
“We’re not overseas, Marie. We can’t be leaving audio devices in people’s offices— especially the police.”
“I didn’t tell her to. But—”
“There’s a but?”
“The operatives are trained to work a certain way. That’s what she’s doing. If she were in Vietnam—”
“She’s not in Vietnam. Why did she even bother?”
“It’s just standard procedure. She’s not used to working in the U.S.”
As angry as he was, Rubens realized that Telach was right. The Deep Black operatives had been trained to operate overseas, under very dangerous conditions, where the rules of engagement — what could or couldn’t be done under different circumstances — were much looser. Listening in to other people’s conversations was something they did all the time. America was a very different environment, and the ops and support team had not been trained to operate in it.
Admittedly, the lines could be difficult to discern. Examining the contents of a public-access computer was OK, because it was by definition open to the public and there was no expectation of privacy, the same as walking down the street. But a computer in a home was different; Desk Three needed permission to access it.
My fault, thought Rubens. Ultimately, my fault. I haven’t properly prepared my people.
What would Senator McSweeney and his committee say to that?
“Disable the bug immediately,” Rubens told Telach. “Lia is not to place any more surveillance devices without my ex-plicit approval. If she has a problem with that, have her talk to me.”
“Yes, Chief.”
47
Tommy Karr had cut a good jagged line into the bottom of his calf. It wasn’t deep, but it was definitely artistic, looking like a bolt from a Scandinavian lightning god.
Which suited Karr just fine. He cleaned it up and re-dressed it as soon as he woke, pronounced it patched, then went down to the hotel’s breakfast lounge, where he found Charlie Dean drinking coffee at a table tucked between plastic fronds.
“You’re limping,” said Dean.
“Scandinavian, actually.” Karr smiled, then went over to the coffee urn at the side of the room. While he was gone, a waiter came over to take his order; Karr found the man standing idly by the table when he returned.
“You can get the next one,” said Karr, sitting down.
“You sleep all right?” asked Dean.
Karr nearly choked on the coffee. “Whoa — high-test.”
Coffee in Asia tended to be as weak as tea; this was the exception. He felt a caffeine shock rush through his body. “Really gets ya goin’, huh, Charlie?”
“I guess.”
“I slept OK,” said Karr, getting back to Dean’s question.
“How about yourself?”
“Like a lamb.”
“I always wondered about that,” said Karr. “How do lambs really sleep? They look all cuddly and all, but do we really know that they’re sleeping soundly? Maybe they have nightmares about wolves.”
“Could be.” Dean sipped his coffee. “What do you think about swapping assignments? Your leg seems pretty bad.”
“Nah. I’m fine.”
“You’re limping.”
“Chafing from the ban dages.” Karr held up his cup.
“Ready for a refill,” he said to the waiter, who was across the room.
“Tommy, is your leg really bad?” asked Marie Telach, who’d been listening in over the com system. Unlike Dean and Lia, Karr almost never turned the system off.
“See, now ya got Mom worried,” Karr told Dean. “I’m fine,” he added, speaking to the Art Room. “What’s the latest on Thao Duong?”
“Still sleeping in his apartment. He got back about three hours after you left.”
“What do you figure he was doing?”
“I believe that’s your job to find out,” said Telach.
“Must be getting toward the end of the shift,” Karr told Dean.
“He’s stirring,” interrupted Sandy Chafetz, their runner.
“Tommy, your subject is getting up.”
“Boy, and I was just about ready to see what they had for breakfast.”
“I’ll go,” offered Dean.
“Nah. Coffee’s got my heart racing anyway. Got to do something to work it off.” Karr got up. “Check in with you later.”
48
Amanda Rauci had no trouble finding the state police impound lot; she simply located the police barracks and then cruised the junkyards and ser vice stations in the area until she saw a lot with two Ford Crown Victorias parked near the fence. The Fords, unmarked police cars put out to pasture, stood guard before a small array of wrecks, a Mustang confiscated from a drug dealer, and Gerald Forester’s Impala, con ve niently located not far from the fence.
It was only just past five, but Amanda decided the place looked deserted enough that she could hop the chain-link fence from the back and not be noticed. But she hadn’t counted on the two large German shepherds, who bounded up on the other side of the fence as she approached.
Amanda backed away.
A supermarket about a mile and a half away was having a sale on hamburger meat; she bought four pounds. But as she checked out, she worried that it wouldn’t be enough of a diversion. She needed something to put them out, not just fill them up.
Amanda found a diner with a phone booth nearby. Setting the tattered phone book on the narrow metal ledge beneath the phone, she began calling vets until she found one willing to give her a mild tranquilizer to calm her dog’s motion sickness.
The office was several miles away, and Amanda got lost twice before she found it. By then it was just a few minutes before closing, and when she went in, the night assistant was walking toward the door with his keys in his hand, ready to lock up. She felt a flutter of panic but quickly pushed it away.
“I called a little while ago about my dog,” she said. “The pills?”
“Uh, pills?”
“Acepromazine,” said Amanda. “It’s for motion sickness, right?”
While generally given for motion sickness, acepromazine was actually a tranquilizer; it mainly calmed dogs down so they could make a long trip. But though the woman Amanda had spoken to on the phone had seemed easygoing and said getting the pills would be no problem, the kid now was suspicious.
“You were supposed to come earlier,” he said.
“I came as quickly as I could.”
“Well, where’s your dog?”
“I couldn’t take him in the car, right? He throws up.” Amanda tried to smile. “The nurse said there would be no problem.”
“That was just Sandy. She’s not like a nurse or anything.
Not even an assistant.”
The young man frowned. Amanda tried smiling again.
“I know it’s late.”
“Let me see if they left
you anything,” said the kid finally.
He turned around and went back toward the front desk.
As two or three dogs being boarded started barking in the back, the vet’s assistant stooped under the front counter and retrieved a yellow Post-it.
“Um, what was your name again?” he asked, squinting at the note.
“Rauci.”
“They couldn’t find the file.”
He showed her the note. It explained that they couldn’t find the file and that the young man — Dave — was not to give her the pills without it.
Amanda noticed that the boy was staring at her chest. She wondered if she could somehow seduce him into giving her the tranquilizers.
“We haven’t been in in ages,” she said, taking a step toward him.
“See, usually, if they know you pretty well, it’s not a problem,” said the boy. “But I think Sandy got you confused with someone else.”
“I think I’ve gotten pills from the doctor before.”
“Could you spell your name.”
“R-a-u-c-i. Maybe they looked under R-o-s-s-i. A lot of people think that’s the only way to spell it.”
“Oh, that’s a funny way to spell it,” said the young man, turning toward the filing cabinets.
“It’s not funny if it’s your name.” The young man blushed. “I just meant, uh, she might have gotten it wrong.”
“No offense,” said Amanda, thinking she was making progress.
She stepped around the counter and joined the vet’s assistant at the lateral files. She’d never been very good at flirting, let alone seduction. She wished she’d been wearing a skirt.
Amanda touched the kid’s hand. His face reddened. But before she could go any further, his cell phone began playing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”
“Go ahead; you can answer the call,” she told him, stepping back. “I’m not really in a rush.”
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