The Eldridge Conspiracy

by Stephen Ames Berry

  “Going on? Oh, you must mean the security force.”

  “Is that what they are?” He jerked his head toward the bluff, off to their left, where a solitary black figure stood, silhouetted against the morning sun, a machine pistol slung over his shoulder. “We were here this morning early. This big chopper lands, a buncha those guys jump out, carrying machineguns. Five minutes later, they’ve occupied the island and your uncle’s telling us to leave. I say I’ve got just a bit more work to do, so I can be ready to start again when he says. He says, okay, you can stay ‘til noon.”

  “You just stayed to ask me about it, didn’t you?” she said, bending to snap the lid back onto the cooler.

  “Well, yeah,” he confessed, grinning sheepishly.

  The guard on the bluffs had turned and was watching them.

  “Walk with me to the house,” she said, glancing at the sentry. “You can carry the fish.”

  “Thanks,” said Johnny, lifting the cooler.

  “There’s an important official here from Washington for a few days,” she said as they walked. “He may be discussing some sort of classified work to be done in those new facilities you’re building for my uncle. I assumed that the merry men in black are his security escort.”

  “Really?” said Johnny. “Have you heard those guys talking?”

  “No. Why?”

  “They speak Russian.”

  “How do you know it’s Russian?” she asked.

  “Dumb blue-collar guy like me, you mean?” he smiled.

  “I didn’t mean...”

  “I’ve done a lot of work over in Brighton—it’s about one-third Russian. I don’t speak it, but I know it when I hear it.”

  “Oh,” said Maria, looking toward the commando slowly pacing in front of Hull House. “So, they’re probably not from Washington.”

  “Someplace colder, be my guess.”

  “Tooky’s okay,” said Angie, joining Jim and O’Malley at their table. “He’s at home, watching football.”

  “Definitely not on the critical list,” said O’Malley.

  “You called his house?” said Jim, looking up from his clam chowder.

  The fall foliage had peaked weeks ago yet the Windermere’s dining room was full, testimony to the old inn’s popularity. Their table, draped in white linen and set with silver and English china, sat beside a set of French doors leading out onto the veranda, closed now against the chill autumn air. Down across the sloping meadows, Dorset village was visible in picturesque miniature, a handful of clapboard houses and a white-steepled church around a town common. Beyond Dorset the sun was setting behind the Presidential Range and gargantuan, eternally snow-capped Mount Washington.

  “Of course I called Tooky’s house,” said Angie. “I move stuff. I’m not telepathic.”

  “Nor the weathergirl,” said Jim. “Did you use your cellphone?”

  “No,” she said, puzzled. “I used the lobby phone. Why?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Even if Phil Martin’s still around, he’ll have to regroup. And I don’t think Martin’s got the smarts to monitor incoming calls to Tooky’s and compare them against likely points of origin. He wasn’t what you’d call one of France’s top men in the field.”

  “Points of origin?” said O’Malley. Seemingly recovered from the morning’s kidnapping attempt, he was munching his crisp Waldorf salad.

  “Places associated with me in the past,” said Jim. “There are a lot of them, and it would be a long shot. And require Agency cooperation. Not to worry—we should have a few days before they’re reorganized.”

  “Who’s next?” asked Angie.

  “Dede Tinker,” he said. “She lives in Portsmouth, on the New Hampshire coast. It’s about ninety minutes south of here. Problem is Whitsun has her name.”

  That startled them. “How?” asked Angie.

  “GDR recovered a partial list of names when I ran the query from George’s list. Tinker’s grandfather was one of them. We’ll get to her tonight. She’s expecting us—Tooky’s called her.”

  “How do you know this?” asked Angie.

  “Friends in low places,” said Jim vaguely.

  “You have a source,” said Angie.

  Jim carefully buttered his cornbread.

  “I see,” she said.

  “How come everyone you’ve found so far is from New England?” asked Tim. “Synchronicity?”

  “I think it’s just ‘shit happens,’” said Jim.

  “I don’t suppose this trip to Portsmouth could wait until, say, oh-five-hundred?” asked Angie. “I’m beat.”

  “I’ll drive,” said Jim.

  “You know, Jimbo, for a guy with so much going on in his life, you look remarkably fresh,” she said resentfully. There were dark circles under her eyes. Jim wondered how much of herself she’d used up dispatching Paul’s killer.

  “What about me?” asked an alarmed O’Malley as his chicken cordon bleu arrived. “What if they find out we’re here?”

  “I’ll ask Henry to switch your room,” said Jim, tucking into his prime rib, “but leave you registered to your original room number. If any visitors arrive with malice intent while we’re gone they won’t be able to find you. There’re over two hundred rooms, suites and cottages.”

  “Excuse me, guys, but I don’t like being left alone here,” said O’Malley. “I’d rather go with you.”

  “I’ll stay with you, Tim,” said Angie. “Unless you think you’ll need me?” she said to Jim.

  “No. I’d feel better if you were both here. And once we’ve gotten Ms. Tinker we go on the offensive.”

  “How?” asked Tim.

  “Best you don’t know until we’re ready,” said Jim. “Just in case.”

  “I see,” said O’Malley, looking out the window at nothing in particular. “Something very bad’s about to happen.”

  “What?” asked Angie.

  “When?” asked Jim.

  Tim looked back at them, though his thoughts were still Somewhere Else. “Don’t know. Soon though. Very soon.”

  Unseen by them, the hotel courtesy van pulled up to the Windermere. Sliding open the side door, the doorman signaled the bellhops to come take the gentlemen’s luggage, of which there was very little. Except for the older scar-faced man, they were in their twenties, very fit with close-cropped hair. More computer geeks, thought the doorman, slamming the vehicle’s door shut as the five new guests disappeared into the hotel.

  Driving back across the bridge from Quincy where he’d gone to do his banking, Schmidla passed Johnny Kim’s big green Chevy Suburban, the two vehicles flashing by each other on the otherwise empty bridge. He caught only a brief glimpse of the two occupants: Johnny driving, Maria in the front seat next to him. He could have sworn she was laughing, but hoped he was wrong.

  Schmidla watched the Suburban dwindle to a green speck in his rear view mirror then disappear onto the main roadway.

  Chapter 19

  “I hate this,” said Jim, letting go of Angie. They were in their room, Jim by the door with his leather jacket on.

  “Ah, Jimbo,” she sighed, touching his cheek. “You know, all I ever really wanted was a cozy cliché—a yellow, blue-trimmed house with a white picket fence, a couple of smart bratty kids and a guy who loved me. And, of course, a lucrative, highly-portable skill set.”

  “In case the guy didn’t love you anymore?”

  “And what do I get? I get the fucking Eldridge! Here,” she said, clenching her fist to her chest. “Forever! It’s a disease. I used to think it’d be wonderful to have a baby. But now after this morning, skewering that man—I couldn’t pass that curse on to a child.”

  “He was a very horrible man,” Jim said gently.

  “Doesn’t matter. No one deserves to die like that.” She looked up at him, face pale and stricken. “What if I lost my temper and did that to you? To anyone? All I felt was fear, panic and anger when I saw him with his pistol at your head. Then the images of Paul’s death just p
opped into my head...”

  “So why didn’t you just shoot him?”

  “I didn’t have a clear shot. And before I could move, there was this sort of flash and the next thing I knew he was a gory mess spitted on the fence and you were puking in the garden, saying, ‘Did you do that?! Did you do that?!’ like I was a bad dog.”

  “I’m sorry. I was shocked.”

  “Jim, I’m scared of me. Aren’t you?”

  “I’m not scared of you,” he said, pulling her to him. And he believed that, standing there in the hotel room holding her as she cried, her body shaking, the tears running down his thick leather jacket. “I love you.”

  “And I love you,” she said, stepping back, drying her eyes with her sleeve cuff. “But you’re a masochist. There are a lot easier women to love.”

  “Sure, but none so complex and interesting,” he grinned.

  “Probably not,” she said, smiling weakly. “Wish they had a training school for Potentials.”

  “Call Schmidla. He’ll be happy to arrange something.”

  “Sure. Now get going. It’s getting dark. Best of luck with Ms. Tinker. And don’t worry—Tim and I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll call you from Portsmouth,” he said. “Leave the connecting door unlocked.” Henry had changed their rooms and given O’Malley an adjoining suite. “Despite his premonition, there’s no logical reason to worry.”

  Baby? he thought later as he drove south of Dorset on the all but deserted four-lane highway.

  It was only the second time he’d ever seen her cry.

  Coming out of the bathroom wrapped in the soft Windermere robe, hair in a towel, Angie spotted the red message light blinking on the phone.

  The lobby picked up on the second ring. “Desk,” said Henry. Has a large staff, but still man’s his own front desk, she thought. Smart guy. “Jim’s out, Henry. I can take the message.”

  “Sure. “Message reads: ‘Can’t reach your cell. The Frog is dead. W. has hired Anton Lokransky. Lokransky enroute Washington to Boston via helicopter this afternoon. Lokransky given access to all your case files and personnel jacket. Garde vous. D’Artangan.’ How come I never get messages like this?” he added wistfully.

  “Thanks, Henry,” she said. Hanging up, she called Jim and relayed the message adding, “Who’s Anton Lokransky?

  “Jim, you there?” she asked after a long silence. Dead zone, she thought.

  “Take O’Malley and get out of there, now!” he ordered, voice strained.

  “Why?”

  “Lokransky’s ex-Spesnatz—Russian Alpha Brigade commando. He and his team are available to the highest bidder, usually through the Russian mob. He’s the best. Remember all those bankers in Rome and New York, the ones who couldn’t testify about money laundering because of their tongues hanging out of their slit throats? Lokransky. Get a car from Henry and bail out. Don’t stop driving until you get to Portsmouth. Call me as soon as you’re on the road. Clear?”

  “Perfectly. We’re outta here.” Hanging up, she went over to the doorway between the two suites and rapped sharply. She could hear Tim’s TV. “Tim! You decent?” she called, loudly knocking again.

  There was no answer. Angie opened the door.

  “I hope you didn’t ask me here just to eat greasy fish and chips, Johnny,” said Maria. They sat in a diner along Quincy Shore Drive. The diner afforded a grand view of Quincy Bay, Smalls Island and the bridge connecting the island and the Quincy shore. The food was fast and mediocre. At least the haddock’s fresh, thought Maria, wiping her fingers on her napkin.

  “Food sucks, doesn’t it?” Johnny put down his coffee. “It’s time we talked.”

  “Really?” she said coolly. “About what?”

  “You know the work I’m doing on the island? Was doing?”

  “You’re expanding and remodeling part of the old fort,” she said.

  “Sure, that’s part of it. Your uncle’s adding a lab. What does a small residential psychiatric hospital need with a large laboratory?”

  “How about you cut to the chase, Johnny?” she said, glancing at her watch, then outside. “I was raised on the Socratic method. If you don’t mind my saying so, you’re not very skilled at it.” She looked across the road at an elderly couple strolling beside the cracked old seawall.

  “Spare me the preppie bitch act,” he said quietly. “You’re too genuine to carry it off.”

  She turned back to him, her face flushing with anger.

  “Your uncle’s building a small but highly sophisticated genetic research facility,” he said, before she could lash out. “Possibly with an invitro fertilization component. And he’s not your uncle.”

  Astonishment and anger all crossed her face. “Who are you?” she asked, mastering her emotions. “You’re not talking funny anymore,” she added warily. His English was now perfect and perfectly bland.

  She has her grandmother’s eyes, he thought. Why didn’t I notice before?

  “Since you haven’t stormed out of here or told me I’m crazy, I think you’ve had your own suspicions about your non-Uncle.”

  She just stared at him.

  Johnny reached into the side pocket of his old Army surplus field jacket. Taking out a photograph, he slid it across to her. She didn’t touch it, looking at it as though it might bite her.

  “That’s you at age two, at your birthday party with your parents.” It was an old color photo, the details sharp but the colors faded. A very pretty woman with delicate, exquisite features sat at a table beside a broad-shouldered, round-faced man. They couldn’t have been more than thirty. The woman had long luxuriant black hair and wore a jade pendant at her throat, a gold dragon in its center. Maria clutched the identical ornament that hung from her own neck

  A little girl sat in a highchair between the couple. The child’s ears and possibly her nose owed something to the man, the rest of her features were entirely the woman’s, especially her eyes, alive with merriment. All three wore silver tasseled green-and-red paper party hats. Her parents were laughing at the girl, who’d smeared herself with great gobs of chocolate cake, scooped with greedy little hands from the remains of the birthday cake imprudently left within her reach. Her face and clothes were layered in chocolate confection. There was something naggingly familiar about the man, but it eluded her.

  “I don’t know where you got this or who you are,” she said carefully, “But my parents were professors at the University of Colorado at Boulder. They were killed in an avalanche in Snowmass, Colorado when I was five years old. This,” she touched her pendant, “was my mother’s.”

  “Don’t you think it odd that you’ve no relatives, other than your uncle?”

  “My uncle never married. My father, Professor John Nelson, had no siblings. All my grandparents are dead. So no, it’s not odd.” She said it all flatly, without indignation, a lesson learned. Not surprising, he thought.

  “Out of all that, two things are true,” said Johnny. “Schmidla never married and the locket is your mother’s. It was taken from her body after she died trying to protect you from your kidnappers. If Schmidla gave it to you, it wasn’t out of compassion but because it amused him.”

  “What was her name?” asked Maria, looking at the photo. “This woman you say was my mother?”

  “Emma. Emma Kowamoto. She was a well-known artist in Tokyo in the late 1960’s and early 70’s. Both her parents were physicists. Her father was Japanese—a brilliant, aloof man, though I’ve no doubt he loved your grandmother very much. She was German, at least as smart as he and very beautiful. Funny, too,” he added in a softer voice.

  “And the man you claim is my father?”

  “James Beauchamp. He was a CIA officer.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where was he when... this woman died?” She tapped the image of Emma captured in the photo.

  “Away on an assignment.”

  “And why would anyone want to kidnap me?”
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  “You know why.”

  She looked away, staring at the ocean. It was raining now and almost dark.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said suddenly, rising. “You can buy me a drink.” She slipped the photo into her purse.

  He put some money on the table and they left.

  “So, what’s your real name?” she asked as they got into his Suburban.

  “Musashi. Tennu Musashi.”

  “And what are you really, Mr. Musashi?”

  “Mostly I’m a teacher. Before that I was in the military.”

  Jim remembered Portsmouth from his college days. It’d been a place you drove past on the way to someplace else, a once-prosperous Yankee seaport decayed into a hard-scrabble town of boarded up storefronts and rusting unused port facilities, its ship building and repair business gone south and west. Now he drove through the downtown feeling like Rip Van Winkle—Portsmouth was reborn. Many of the downtown shops were open despite the hour: restaurants, art galleries, bookstores, coffee shops, a theatre. The people strolling about looked at ease and most of the cars along the streets were new. “Well, I’ll be danged,” he said.

  Spotting the sign he wanted, he turned the SAAB down Green Street, following it to the last house on the right. It was more a cottage than a house and judging from its stern, no-nonsense lines, either a seventeenth century Puritan cottage or a good imitation. It was painted blue and green, with morning glories and roses climbing the white trellis in front. Dee’s Pottery read the sign hanging from the gas lamp beside the gate.

  Jim walked with loud crunching steps up the seashell path and tugged the brass doorpull.

  He was savoring the sweet scent of roses and the low chirping of crickets when the overhead light flared on and the door swung open.

  “Hi there. You’re Jim?” She’d come quietly to the door in bare freckled feet.

  “You must be Dee.”

  “Come in,” she said, opening the screen door for him. Dee Tinker’s voice was much too deep for her short, slender frame. He followed her down the hall, captivated not by the glazed earthenware he passed but by the fiery red hair cascading in a lustrous stream down her back to her waist.