Cold Snap (28 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

As soon as Madame Mumford saw his new
furniture and agreed to prepare a royal sit-down for Ari and
assorted guests, Ari began assembling his guest list.

The Mackenzies would no doubt be only too
glad not to be invited, seeing as they placed French cooking on a
par with insects eaten by soldiers during survival training.

Howie Nottoway? Not a party animal. Not that
this could be deemed a rowdy free-for-all, but Ari anticipated a
reasonable degree of noisy conviviality. Howie (and his wife, whom
Ari had only seen from a distance) would stare with incomprehension
and disgust at whatever floated in foreign broth.

Rebecca, most certainly. She had shown great
gusto as she downed her garlic soup at the Mackenzies. Diane was
more problematic, since she had veered away to the
cheeseburgers.

What about Ben? Or Pastor Grainger? Possibly.
He would have to approach them circumspectly to determine what
their food preferences were. Was it possible Grainger would find
Escargo a la Bordelaise un-Christian, even satanic?

Officers Mangioni and Jackson? They held Ari
in high esteem, believing Ari had busted a spy-and-drug ring while
simultaneously solving the murder of one of their peers. They were
also a bit in awe of his alleged connections within the
government—not suspecting that not all of those connections were
necessarily benign. Ari would have to deal with them the same way
as the pastor and veteran: with all the caution of a trainer
appeasing a pool of crocodiles with raw cauliflower.

And then he thought of one more guest, the
one whose adventuresome palate so upset the Mackenzie household.
Why not? There was a good chance ISAF and whoever else in the
government was interested in Ari already knew where he lived, by
virtue of the GPS. They had edited this information and passed it
on to...the Koreans.

The Korean wrecking crew and ISAF. An
unsettling combination. But inviting Sung-Soo Rhee to his private
gala would be pushing his luck too far.

Karen? Highly doubtful. He had only seen her
eat at McDonald's and Baskin & Robbins. The same went for Fred,
her partner. And the mixture of her plus the Mangioni and Jackson
team plus Bristol Turnbridge might prove toxic and ruin any
subterfuge Ari concocted for the occasion. Yet he felt he would be
remiss in not inviting the deputy marshals. Besides, toxicity had
its uses.

There was a good chance that no one would
come, of course. No certain date had been fixed, nor number of
guests. He would have to work hard if he wasn't to end up doing the
unthinkable: asking Madame Mumford to prepare her creations for his
freezer.

He needed no Rolodex. Phone numbers stuck in
his mind like so many numeric flies to a glue board.

He would start with the easiest first:

"Pastor Grainger!" he announced brightly when
a mellow voice responded. "This is Ari Ciminon. I wanted to invite
you and your lovely spouse to a most excellent dinner of French
cuisine."

"That sounds wonderful," Grainger responded.
"I didn't realize you were a chef."

"Not in the least. But I have arranged for an
imminent Frenchwoman to prepare her best."

"I'm all for that. When?"

Madame Mumford had given him several weekday
nights when she would be available.

"This Wednesday?"

"Perfect. I'm open. I'm sorry to day my wife
is in Idaho visiting her sister, but if you'll still have me I'd be
glad to come."

"Of course!" Ari said, pleased that the
invitational process was going so smoothly. "You will be most
welcome."

"I'm glad you called," Grainger continued.
"Ben Torson mentioned something about a commitment to attend church
this Sunday."

Ari was glad the pastor could not see his
expression tumbling into a gloomy chasm.

Ari believed his visits to Tuckahoe Library
would soon have to come to an end. Anyone monitoring the GPS in his
car would know about them, and a cursory investigation would reveal
he was not there to read. In fact, very few library patrons were
there to read. Most were clumped around the public-access computers
provided by the County of Henrico. This included Ari, who could not
communicate privately through his home computer because his keepers
assiduously kept track of his internet use. And indeed, sometimes
he did check out a book.

He had made friends with one of the
librarians, who often assisted him with the library computers'
idiosyncrasies. Lynn gave Ari an oddly blank look when he descended
the stairs to the computer workstation lobby.

"You didn't go see Dr. Hoffman," she said
when Ari leaned up against the reference desk.

Ari recalled the name of a doctor she had
given him during his last visit. He had not looked well—and that
was before he took a tremendous pounding from one of Uday Hussein's
hired assassins.

"You've been checking on me?" Ari asked,
managing to convey his annoyance as friendly chagrin.

"No, you just don't look much better. It's
been weeks since I saw you." Her soft brown eyes narrowed. "You
said some pretty ominous things. And now that I look at you...have
you been in a fight?"

"I was changing a light bulb and fell off the
ladder," Ari shrugged. Besides his wife, this was the one woman he
believed he should not lie to, but this falsehood came smoothly,
without a trace of guilt. He was, after all, protecting her.

Lynn straightened, her hands splayed against
a large dictionary on the counter before her. "You were in the
hospital?"

"For a couple of weeks."

Lynn craned her head over the edge of the
large reference desk. "You didn't break any bones?"

"I was most fortunate."

"But what was so bad that you had to stay in
the hospital two weeks?"

Ari had stepped into that one. His lies had
become careless, lately. He all but announced them, as if to say,
'See? I'm lying to you. Isn't it amusing?' But wasn't that the way
of his father? Baba would grandly declaim: "I'm going to the
Imperial Palace. Isn't that grand?" or "I'm off to the front. I'll
come back a hero!" And there was a chance—an almost equal chance in
both situations—that he would not come back alive. Was Ari adopting
his father's perilous savoir faire?

"I exaggerate, perhaps," Ari sighed. "Could I
be subconsciously begging you for sympathy?"

"You could have called."

With Uday hot on his heels? Hardly.

"I apologize profusely, but I cannot express
the truth to you," Ari said, dropping the facade of benighted
innocence.

Lynn was well beyond the phase of bereavement
for a stillborn romance, but there was no hint of irony in her
face. The shades of sadness were fading into rueful amusement
mingled with growing concern. There was also a trace of impatience.
She wanted no more of Ari's vacuous chitchat.

"Your usual station?" she said, nodding down
the row of computers.

"I've offended you," Ari said, with a touch
of sincere breathlessness.

"I suspect you've been very much yourself,"
said Lynn, pushing away from the dictionary and circling around the
counter. "I would be stupid to take offense."

"I should be speechless," said Ari.

"Yes, you should be. Ari...that phone call
you had me make a few months ago...and all these email accounts I
set up to you...are they..." She paused thoughtfully. Incapable of
producing a true frown, she transferred her doubts into her narrow,
pursed lips. Otherwise, there was no rupture in her air of polite
efficiency. "I don't think 'legal' is the word I'm looking for. But
for a while I was beginning to wonder if I was on the verge of
becoming a second-rate gun moll."

"Gun moll..." Ari mused.

"Of course, we never did become.... Talking
to you, going to the movies...it was all very nice. But we
never..." Her sudden blush highlighted several attractive
defects.

"Gun moll..." Ari repeated.

"Never mind," she said, regaining her inner
balance. She nodded in self-assertion. "Lucky for you, there's
plenty of openings this time of day."

She was referring to the vacant slots in the
central row of computers near the center of the room. She began to
lead Ari to his usual cubicle, but his attention was drawn to a
young man sitting at a terminal at the opposite end of the row.

"No, Ari," said Lynn, grabbing him by the
coat sleeve. "You've tormented that poor boy enough."

Hearing the hissed remonstration, the young
man raised his head from the screen. Seeing Ari, he quickly
alt-tabbed off the screen he was viewing and began to get up.

"That's all right, Mr. Toomey," said Lynn
reassuringly. "I'm putting him over there."

She sounded as if she was promising to cage a
rowdy pet. Ari put the lie to her words by slipping out of Lynn's
grasp and occupying the seat next to the young man.

"Ari, I promised Mr. Toomey you wouldn't
harass him."

"Harass? I'm merely fascinated by his
researches. I'm full of wonder at the advanced state of American
students."

But what Ari took for an amusing pastime
could be seen as unadulterated intimidation by others. It appeared
ogling porn on the library computer was perfectly within the young
man's rights. He never got far in this endeavor, since the
library's filters locked up Toomey's computer soon after he
contemplated his first nude. This did not prevent Ari from
sacrificing decorum for his personal entertainment.

"What do you have in store for us today?" Ari
inquired. "More Iron Age artifacts? Or the classical Venus de Milo?
Or shall we analyze buxom blondes in those classic Mickey Bogart
novels?"

"Mickey Spillane or Humphrey Bogart?" the
young man hissed.

"I am glad to see you are so cultured. In
that case, we can move on to the great phallic Washington
Monument—"

He was cut short when Lynn pinched his ear
and did not let go. It was not a friendly pinch to awake him to his
rudeness, but a real attack that dug into his cartilage. He
suppressed a yelp of pain and leaned forward. She did not let go.
He leaned in the other direction. The fingers remained clamped. But
when he stood his height played to his advantage and she lost her
grip. He clasped the side of his head, glaring down at her.

"I meant that," she said, her face blazing
red. She was breathing hard, either from effort or the unaccustomed
physical intimacy. She might have reacted the same way had they
embraced.

Ari whirled when he heard Toomey snickering,
but Lynn grabbed his arm and began pulling him towards the opposite
end of the row.

"I wish you would think of how your behavior
affects me when you act this way," Lynn whispered, pointing at a
chair.

He sat, still holding his ear, amazed that
this small woman had been able to inflict such pain. He had killed
men for less. He had killed men who had done nothing to him at all.
He had been under orders, of course, but that did not lessen the
fact that, with few exceptions, he had felt very little remorse in
the course of his duty. In some respects, he was blandly
practical.

Lynn pulled up a seat next to him and poised
her hands over the keyboard. "The usual?"

Ari nodded.

She proceeded on her now well-practiced
routine of creating a new email account for him, complete with
false name and address.

"Will 'Italianjerk' do as a handle?"

"What?" Ari protested.

"Too late, I've already submitted it.
Remember, this is set up for English, so you'll have to use the
Google Translator. You remember how, of course."

"I—"

She stood. Ari watched as she returned to the
reference desk. Then he caught Toomey leering at him and bared his
teeth in response. The young man flicked a disdainful brow and
returned to his screen.

Ari stared at his own monitor so long that
the screen saver came on: the Henrico County logo. He lurched
forward and banged on the space bar, bringing his blank email
template back on screen.

He discovered he was sweating profusely.
After removing a flash drive from his pocket, he shrugged off his
coat and draped it over the back of his chair, the bottom of it
crumpling on the floor. He inserted the flash into a USB port. A
series of ghastly images appeared as thumbnails on his screen. The
latest set of images from CENTCOM. Unwilling to make the thumbnails
larger, he squinted at each screen until he found the image he
wanted. He attached it to the email, then composed a brief note in
the Translator:

What are these three jokers doing in Nineveh
province? Don't know who the cameraman is. They torched Abu ibn Abd
Al-Samad, who didn't belong there, either. Hope your move goes well
and that no assassins interrupt your progress. Wherever you go,
work on your language skills. Indigenes have greater respect if
they understand you.

He studied the Google translation, which was
roughly adequate and at least maintained the integrity of the
Arabic alphabet. He copied and pasted it into his email, typed in
his latest cell phone number, and hit the arrow-shaped 'send' icon.
He logged off the new account, rubbed his still-sore ear, and
glanced in the direction of the reference desk. Lynn was not
there.

As he put on his coat he cast a furtive
glance down the row. Toomey was gone. His computer had no doubt
locked up. Without his usual library attendant to unlock it for
him—the assistant most familiar with his perversions—he had had no
choice but to jump his cyber-ship.

"Is Miss Gillespie available?" he asked at
the desk.

"She's on break," said the woman sitting in
for her. "Can I help you?"

"You are most kind," said Ari, stimulating a
bemused expression in the librarian as he turned and walked
away.

Lynn was waiting for him outside, sitting on
an uncomfortable-looking cement bench, looking neat and demure in
her coat and white gloves. Standing at Ari's approach, she pierced
him with a look of sorrow.