20. Home Free

by Fern Michaels

  The marine smiled. “The president only does that to people she really likes.”

  Maggie felt flattered and flustered as she settled herself in the golf cart. How many people could say the president of the United States blew them a kiss? Not many, that’s how many, Maggie thought smugly. “No kidding,” was all she could think of to say.

  Chapter 13

  The boys and the Sisters parted company when they reached the District. The women splintered off to head toward Yoko’s nursery and what Kathryn called “the evergreen” weekend, where they would trim the fragrant trees that would line the perimeter of Yoko’s nursery, and fashion Christmas wreaths, grave blankets, and table centerpieces. Ted and Espinosa waved as they got out of Bert’s SUV and grabbed a cab that would take them to the Post. Jack, Bert, and Harry headed toward the dojo.

  “Amazing how the snow here is all but gone,” Jack said as he climbed out of the truck. He turned to Harry and asked what was on his agenda.

  Harry just shook his head like it was the stupidest question he’d ever heard. At first, Jack thought Harry wasn’t going to answer, but he surprised them by saying, “I’m going to do what I’ve been doing for the past months, train. I lost two whole days and half of this day already by going out to the farm. That’s two and a half days I can’t get back.”

  Jack blew his top right there at the back door. “When are you going to get it through your thick head, Harry, that you cannot train twenty-four /seven with no breaks? Catnaps and eating weeds for nourishment are not going to help you. Even with those baggy clothes you’re wearing, I can see you’ve dropped ten pounds. That is not good. I’m not even going to mention that worthless master you hired, who sleeps twenty-four hours a day.”

  Harry ignored him as he unlocked the door.

  “Damn, it’s cold in here, Harry,” Bert said. “Why did you turn the heat down so low before you closed up shop?”

  Harry peered at the thermostat. “It’s seventy degrees in here. Seventy degrees is not cold.” He headed toward the training room. “You guys need to update next week’s roster. And someone needs to call those guys at the DOJ and tell them if they miss one more session, they’re outta here.”

  “I’ll do it,” Bert said as he shucked his jacket, but Harry didn’t hear him. He was already gone.

  “Let’s go check on Harry’s master. What the hell did that old guy do here for two whole days all by himself?” Jack said.

  “Watched old Bruce Lee videos, is what Harry said he would do. Look! He’s sitting in the same spot he was in when we left. Just waiting for Harry to get back so he can train himself.” Bert guffawed.

  “I think it’s time you and I had a talk with the old guy. You know, shake him up a little so he contributes something to this training Harry is counting on. When I think of all the money Harry paid out to his organization, or whatever the hell you call it, my blood boils. I hate seeing Harry getting ripped off like this.”

  “Look, Jack, Harry told us to mind our own business, and he meant it. We need to leave well enough alone and let Harry do his thing. I’m not saying I like it, but that’s the way it is.”

  “Oh yeah! Well, check this out! This guy’s dead!” Jack said, feeling the old master’s neck for a pulse. “He’s been into rigor and out again, and he’s starting to smell. You better get Harry in here to see what he wants to do about this.”

  “You mean like stash him in ice and pretend he’s still here working? I don’t think that will fly. Harry is going to be so upset. I bet he cries. Two down! Harry!” Bert bellowed at the top of his lungs.

  Harry appeared out of nowhere. “What?”

  “Your master here . . . He’s dead! That means no pulse and he isn’t breathing, which translates to d-e-a-d.”

  “Nah, he just sits like that.” But Harry looked worried as he approached his assigned master.

  “Harry, I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies in my day, and this guy is dead!” Bert said. “How do you want to handle this?”

  Harry threw his hands in the air. “Shit, they’ll blame me. I left him here. They might send in their enforcers to take me out.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Harry, get real. You watch too many of those Bruce Lee movies. The guy was old. He died. People die when they get old. You didn’t have anything to do with it. Worst-case scenario is, they send you another old geezer as a swap,” Jack said.

  “I say we ice him until Harry is done with his training. You have that big freezer in the basement. Let’s just stuff him in there until it’s time to . . . give him back.” Bert looked at Jack and Harry to see what they thought of his suggestion.

  “No! You aren’t even sure he’s dead,” Harry said. “Are you crazy? Don’t answer that. Of course you’re crazy. I have to call . . . We are not . . . icing anyone.”

  “He’s dead, Harry. Look at him. He’s blue. And he’s starting to smell. Okay, call whoever it is you have to call, but you should call a doctor first, right, Bert?”

  “I’m going home,” Bert said.

  “Like hell you’re going home! You found him! You have to . . . talk to . . . whoever it is that is in charge of the old guy. God, Harry, how could you have been so stupid as to get involved with these people? Now what are you going to do?”

  Harry dropped to the floor and stuck his head between his knees.

  “Harry, you son of a bitch, look at me,” Jack ordered. “Bert and I are going to take charge. We are going to make all of this go away. Are you listening to me?”

  Harry nodded.

  “Okay, this is what we’re going to do. Call those people and tell them to come and pick up the old guy. Bert and I will set them straight. Neither Bert nor I give two shits if you lose face with them or not.

  “For starters, Harry, you are not one of them. You are American! You getting all this, you dumb shit? If not, I’m calling Yoko right now, and she’s going to be pissed to the teeth that you and your problems are interfering with the evergreen party she has going on at the nursery with the Sisters. Now, make the call!” Jack said, stomping his foot on the wood floor. His eyes popped wide when the old master toppled over.

  Harry winced.

  “I’m waiting to hear your melodic response, Harry Wong,” Jack singsonged.

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Okay, who . . . what?” Jack snapped.

  “Okay to everything. You win! You happy now? You and Bert are now my new masters. If I don’t win the competition, I will kill you. You know that, right?”

  “Ha-ha-ha! If Bert and I are good enough to get you to the competition, what makes you think you could take us both out?”

  Harry smiled. Jack’s blood ran cold as he watched Harry place his call. Bert and Jack gave up trying to understand what he was saying in what seemed like five different languages, including Russian. They did, however, grimace at Harry’s grim look. Then they watched in horror as Harry went over to his desk and fished around until he found his checkbook.

  “No, no, no, you are not paying again. Put that damn checkbook back where you got it. Right now, Harry!” Bert and Jack roared in unison.

  To their surprise, Harry did as instructed. They watched as Harry walked over to his dead master, sat down, and assumed the lotus position.

  With nothing else to do, Jack and Bert sat down and waited. Twenty minutes later, a dark-colored station wagon pulled into Harry’s driveway. Minutes later, four Asian men walked into the dojo. Jack wasn’t sure, but he thought they were the same four men who carried out Harry’s first master. They watched as the men approached Harry, who was so still, Jack wasn’t sure his friend wasn’t as dead as the master at Harry’s side.

  “I’ll take the two on the left. You okay with the other two, Bert?”

  “I am. Harry’s eyes are closed. Is that a good or bad sign?”

  “Like I know! We’re not going to get any help from Harry. He’s in one of his trances.”

  “You pay now,” one of the four said.

  Harry remained still a
nd silent.

  The second man said, “You pay now.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jack said. “Take your master and go. Don’t come back. Mr. Wong no longer requires your services.”

  The third man said, “You no pay, we no take master. You pay now!”

  Harry’s eyes flew open.

  “Oh, shit!” Bert said.

  The four men eyed Harry intently before they turned to look at the two men who were advancing behind them. The fourth man, who hadn’t spoken, nodded to his companions.

  “Lights! Camera! Action!” Jack roared as his feet left the floor. When they came down, the third man in the group was so dazed, he crumpled to the floor. The air moved at such a high rate of speed, the figures blurred and merged into a giant globe of human movement. Arms flailed, legs went everywhere as bodies twirled and twisted as grunts and high-pitched sounds swirled around the dojo. It was over within minutes.

  Bert ran to his locker and returned with a bunch of flexicuffs from his duffel bag.

  “I assume you have a plan, Mr. ex–FBI director,” Jack drawled.

  “Jesus, I can’t believe you did this and that I helped you,” Harry said, awe ringing in his voice.

  “And your checkbook is intact,” Bert said as he clipped the flexicuffs onto the four men. “We drag them out to that vehicle they came in and we lay the master out in the backseat. What they do after that is up to them. You okay, Harry?”

  “Yeah. They’ll send another master when these guys report back. That’s the rule.”

  “No, they won’t.” Bert whipped out his old FBI pass and badge and told Harry to photocopy it. “I know for a fact these guys won’t mess with the FBI. You’re still standing there, Harry. C’mon, chop-chop. Jack and I will drag these guys out to the car. Then we’ll come back to get the other two, and you bring the esteemed and very dead master. It’s the least you can do, Harry.”

  Outside in the frigid air, Jack grunted and cursed at the weight he was dragging. “You think there will be any fallout for Harry?”

  “And I would know this . . . how? I just made up that shit about the FBI for Harry’s benefit. I absolutely hate it when his eyes glaze over,” Bert snarled as he shoved his guy into the driver’s seat, where he used another set of flexicuffs to hook his left arm to the door handle. Jack did the same thing to the man he’d pushed into the passenger seat.

  “Problem, Jack. I thought these old babies came with two seats in the back. Where should we put the dead guy?”

  Jack pondered the question. “Well, he should have the backseat out of respect. He is dead, you know. One guy goes on the floor. We hook his left arm to the master and his right arm to the door. Dump the fourth guy in the trunk. But you better put that on your note, or they might not look for him.”

  Harry looked decidedly green when he carried his dead former master to the car. He was sweating profusely. “It’s snowing,” he said inanely.

  “No shit! And this means something?” Jack snarled.

  “Well, it might mean something if you don’t turn the car heater on. It’s in the low twenties, and they could freeze to death. This is just a guess on my part, but it looks to me like you guys really did a number on them. They might not wake up for an hour or so. Ergo, they could freeze to death. On the other hand, if you turn on the heater, the old guy is going to start cooking, and he smells already. Your call, boys,” Harry said, turning on his heel and going back to the dojo.

  “Do you believe this? He lets us do his dirty work, and off he goes.”

  Bert laughed. “He’s going to Clorox the entire dojo. How much you wanna bet?”

  “Not a cent. What do you take me for? A sucker? So, do we cook the old guy or freeze these cruds?” Jack started to laugh and found that he couldn’t stop.

  “Harry was right. It is snowing. So we turn on the engine and open the car windows. If the gas runs out, oh, well.”

  Back in the dojo, Harry Wong was indeed cleaning his dojo. The smell of Clorox was so strong, Bert and Jack rushed to the doors and windows and opened them wide.

  Jack went to the minikitchen and popped two bottles of Budweiser. “I love to see Harry work, don’t you, Bert?”

  “I do, Jack. I truly do.”

  Both men walked up to Harry. They wore the most evil looks they could conjure up. “You’re all ours now, Harry Wong!”

  Chapter 14

  Maggie showed up at Yoko’s nursery carrying fragrant bags of food. She took one look at the tired Sisters and called a halt by saying, “I brought food, and I have news. Of a sort. I love this place, it looks so festive, and it smells just like Christmas. Go ahead, clean up, and I’ll find a place and a way to set up all this food. Chinese and Italian, wine, beer, and soda, and a huge thermos of coffee. Brownies for dessert.”

  The Sisters scrambled to scrape the pine resin from their hands, then washed with a strong grease-cutting cleaner. When they returned to what Yoko called the “cutting room,” Maggie had cleared a space against the far windows and spread a roll of colored felt she’d found in the corner of the cutting room. A picnic was a picnic no matter the time of year.

  “My dear, you and this food are an absolute lifesaver,” Annie said as she parceled out the food. “I’m starving. I had no idea this kind of work was so . . . taxing. Even wearing gloves, the pine sap and the branches cut through the leather. Not to mention being hard to work with as well as clumsy.”

  “But look what we accomplished! We made three hundred wreaths, two hundred grave blankets, and we stacked and trimmed five hundred Christmas trees. If we work tomorrow and Sunday, Yoko should be good to go for the season if we can keep our momentum,” Myra said.

  “I’ll help now that I’m back,” Maggie said as she eyed her plate of food. “It’s not like I have any immediate plans, and we do need to talk here, girls.”

  “Charles isn’t here, so we can talk and eat,” Nikki said.

  Between bites of food and chewing, Maggie talked and talked about her short visit to Camp David. She ended up with, “So in the blink of an eye, I fell in love. I am in love, guys! Totally, completely, heart and soul!”

  The women stopped eating, their tiredness forgotten, the evergreens just a backdrop as they wiggled and squirmed to congratulate and hug their friend. Maggie flushed and blushed and beamed with happiness.

  “You need to play this cool, Maggie,” Nikki said. “This is uncharted territory for you. Ted was . . . Ted was . . . Well, he was what he was. If you’re thinking of marriage, you need to take this slow and easy. I hate asking this, but are you sure, really sure, Maggie, that Gus feels the same way? You said it started out as a joke.”

  “I’m sure,” Maggie said solemnly. And she knew in her heart that she was sure.

  “Okayyy,” Kathryn said jubilantly. “That’s out of the way. Now, let’s discuss what you think went on at Camp David that we should know about.”

  Maggie leaned into the circle. “For starters, Jason Parker is out of the picture. At least I think he is. It was a fluke that I invited him, so he really played no part in what went on, and I am not really sure anything went on. There is that notebook I found. Jason is so into himself, he was probably just listing the initials of the people there so he could hit them up as possible investors for when he got back.

  “He’ll probably send out his commemorative picture along with a brochure soliciting new clients. I racked my brain about the initials JJ and can’t come up with anything. It could be something as simple as a reminder of something. I do it myself all the time. I am not seeing anything sinister in that notebook.”

  “Then for the moment, let’s take him out of the mix. What else, Maggie?” Alexis asked.

  “I guess the thing that got in my face was all those people who gave up their family Thanksgiving to go to Camp David. All those politicians. It’s easy to understand someone like me, the teacher from Maine, and the college boy giving up our holidays and agreeing to go to Camp David, but those politicians have been there before and
undoubtedly will go there again. So, why give up a family holiday unless it was a command invitation?

  “The other thing is Fergus and his colleagues. Thanksgiving is not a European holiday, so in a sense I can understand those men coming here to the States and going to Camp David, but they’ve all been there before, too. That’s what is not computing for me.”

  “Then we need to work on making it compute for you and us,” Isabelle said.

  “I have Ted doing a deep background check on Jason Parker. I can have him do the same for every attendee that was there. I’m sure we have tons of stuff in our archives we can pull out, but we need recent stuff. We need to know what’s going on in their personal lives, personal finances, scandals, if any, friends. We need to know if any of them have stepped out of the box recently and what their true feelings about this president are. It’s a given that every politician in this damn town has his or her own agenda,” Maggie said.

  “Think about this. Adam Daniels is from the CIA, Barney Gray represented the FBI, Henry Maris is a deputy over at Homeland Security, and Matthew Logan is in the DOJ. Not represented was the NSA. Now, let’s ask ourselves why the National Security Agency didn’t have representation there. Was the Department of Justice opposed to the NSA?” Annie asked thoughtfully. “Justice opposed to security. Doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “Unless the NSA person declined the invitation or couldn’t make it for some reason,” Myra said.

  “That’s a possibility, but the media would have mentioned that. I met up with the media before I had lunch with the president. And they were as puzzled as I was about the guest list. They were trying to pump me while I was trying to pump them,” Maggie said. “We both came up dry.”