Favors and Lies (32 page)

“This house?”

“It was under surveillance.”

“What kind of surveillance?”

“Electronic. Human.”

“Human who?”

“The elderly man next door. He is a retired colleague.”

“What else did you have? Cameras? Video? Audio?”

“Yes.”

“Then you have evidence and I want it.”

“It has been destroyed, or will be shortly. The last bit of evidence left this house with Reed Temple minutes ago.”

“Who is Reed Temple?”

“A talented agent with a distinguished career.”

“What is his real name?”

“I cannot divulge that information.”

“Does he know who you are?”

“No. I met him in person for the first time tonight. Of course, I refrained from divulging my true identity.”

“You mean he doesn't know you are Connor's grandmother?”

“I told you we met for the first time this evening. We have spoken before, anonymously.”

“Is Reed Temple a prodigy of yours?”

“Not my prodigy. Certainly my peer when it comes to being convincing. Believable. As you have witnessed.”

“Why are you protecting him?”

“Because our country needs him. We need people like him. People who are willing to do what is asked, and sometimes willing to do what is not asked. This country is becoming a land of whiners, lawyers, and pussies. Excuse my language.”

“I always knew I got my propensity for cursing from you.”

Dan paced the living room, never taking his eyes off his mother. He glanced out the front window and could see Detective Wallace in his police car. Sue was still seated next to him.

“Who is Sue Fine?”

“An agent. We infiltrated your email and set up the internship. It wasn't difficult. It wasn't without risks, but it wasn't difficult. I sent her to protect you. To keep an eye on you.”

“That is what she said.”

“Is she still alive? She neglected to provide an update today.”

“She is alive. Thanks to an old wooden chair and a bit of luck.”

“For what it's worth, she reported that she was uncomfortable with this assignment after spending a few days with you. She inquired about reassignment.”

“Maybe she should have been reassigned. She did a poor job of protecting me.”

“It was not from lack of effort. You know, as hard as this may be to believe, I tried to keep you insulated. After Connor's death, I ordered the sterilization of most of your existence. Access to the majority of information about you now requires a top-level security clearance. Your medical history. Your employment records. Your tax records. Birth records. You were cleaned up, redacted, removed from various databases where normal people have their lives stored.”

“I discovered the lack of medical records.”

“Outside of the witness protection program, there are few people in the civilian population with less history than you. It was not a trivial undertaking. And it was done to protect you.”

“And yet, why do I think this was done for you? I mean, if you wanted to protect me, you could have handled Reed Temple. I'm sure you were aware of the seriousness of the situation when you saw my face on the news after the bomb at my office. I don't think you were trying to protect me very hard, if at all. I think you assigned Sue to the case so she could keep an eye on me and inform you when I got too close to the truth.”

Dan watched as his mother stared stoically ahead.

“In fact, you know what I think? I think Connor died and you hit the panic button. You didn't want anyone connecting the dots between your domestic pain study and the fact that experiments were being performed on your own flesh and blood, on US soil. I imagine, even in the CIA, people would protest the perversity of that dynamic. I also imagine, someone, somewhere in the food chain at Langley would be able to connect the dots between Connor and his not-so-dead grandmother. Birth records, the last name of Lord. Someone could have figured it out.”

Dan's mother remained silent and he knew he'd hit the nail on the head. “I think when Connor died, you ordered a cleanup. But thanks to Reed Temple and his sidekicks, it got out of hand. Somewhere along the way your cleanup became a cover-up. And you decided to see it through to the end.”

Dan's mother turned away and glanced out the window into darkness. “I'm not the only one covering their tracks. We all have secrets. Even you. For a period of five years, you do not exist. Not even a credit card or utility bill in your name. Nothing. Even a CIA agent struggles to imagine how you pulled that off.”

“My life is my life.”

“I am still curious about my son. It's a mother's job.”

“As is deception, apparently, which you excelled at throughout your life.”

“You were always perceptive as a child, Dan. You would have made a great operative. For years I was certain you would be the one to discover my real occupation. But you didn't. All that time you spent doing martial arts and hanging out with diplomatic security and marines at all those embassies kept you occupied. And the times you weren't in the dojo, you were out with your father on some expedition or you were studying.”

“Your life was a lie.”

“But my love was not.”

“Your definition of love has no basis in reality.”

“I am sorry you feel that way.”

“And I'm sorry my mother is going to prison for the rest of her life.”

“Good luck, my son. I don't exist. Shoot me now or chase a ghost forever.”

“Ghosts are becoming my specialty.”

Dan stared into his mother's eyes, wondering how the woman who raised him had lost her moral compass. Maybe she'd never had one.

“The only solution with a happy ending includes you telling me where Reed Temple is. I know he must be close,” Dan said.

“Why do you say that?”

“It took me twenty-some minutes to get from Alexandria to this house on the night Vicky and Conner died. In that time, someone had to get here, remove Conner, and kill Vicky. In twenty-five minutes, tops. Someone had to be close.”

His mother remained silent.

“Last chance for directions to my friend Reed Temple.”

“I cannot help you.”

Dan looked down at his watch and then out the front door at the gray BMW in the driveway. Then he smiled.

“Yes, you can,” Dan replied. He reached into his pocket and removed a handful of zip ties. “And it won't require you to move.”

—

Dan removed the key ring to his nephew's Nissan hatchback from the
Welcome Home
plaque near the back door of his sister-in-law's house. He plotted out the plan in his head and checked the time on his watch.

He opened his cell phone and dialed.

“Sensei, it's Dan.”

“How do you like the SUV?”

“Oh, it's great. Rides like a charm. Any chance you have LoJack?”

Gary Raven fell silent, but Dan could hear bodies falling on the mat in the background, dispersed intermittently with a combative yell.

“What happened?”

“Your SUV was borrowed. I need you to provide its current location. You claimed it had all the bells and whistles. I assume that includes LoJack, and whatever version of remote-access software you installed.”

“Give me a second,” Gary Raven replied. “I am on the mat. I have to boot up the computer.”

Dan stood in the dark near the entrance to the back door of his sister-in-law's house and counted the seconds until he heard Gary Raven's voice. He eyed an old sweatshirt of his nephew's hanging on a hook near the back door and looked down at himself and his attire. Tattered, dirty, and bloodied. He removed the sweatshirt from the hook and pulled it over his head while he waited for Gary Raven to return to the phone.

“You there?” Gary asked.

“Yep. Tell me you got it.”

“In the alley behind Twenty-Ninth Street, a block south of R Street, Northwest.”

“Thanks,” Dan answered. “Is your insurance on the vehicle current?”

“Yes. And I don't want to know why you are asking.”

“If you don't hear back from me in the next forty-five minutes or so, report the car as stolen.”

“Will do.”

“Thanks, Sensei,” Dan said. He hung up, placed his cell phone on the top of the refrigerator near the back door, and walked out the rear to his nephew's car.

—

Reed Temple pressed the lock release button on the key ring for the security-laden Mercedes SUV and threw his bag in the rear hatch of the vehicle. One bag was enough. Everything else he needed on his new assignment would be packed with white gloves and shipped to his final destination at taxpayers' expense. It was a perk of the job. Diplomatic personnel, official and unofficial, spent half their lives waiting for the arrival of their furniture. He whistled quietly as he closed the lid on the trunk. He patted the breast pocket on his suit jacket one more time, smiling broadly. A forty-minute ride to the airport, an overnight flight to Kuala Lumpur with a connection in Tokyo, and he would vanish into a new assignment in Southeast Asia. In forty-eight hours he would be sweating through his pressed linen shirt, sipping an umbrella drink on a sidewalk café somewhere between Jakarta and Bangkok.

He threw himself behind the wheel of the car, turned the ignition, and straightened his tie in the mirror. The car's engine went silent and he turned the ignition again. No clicks. No chugs.

Reed Temple's eyes danced across the displays on the dashboard looking for an indication to the car's mechanical hiccup. By the time he saw the thin wire drop from above his head and disappear beneath his chin, it was too late. Reed Temple clamored for his neck, his fingers insufficiently strong to pry the wire away from his crushing larynx and constricted jugular. Dan, behind the driver in the backseat of the SUV, pulled downward, his body weight sinking into the foot well. His forearms, beneath his nephew's old sweatshirt, were taut with strain.

Reed Temple's flailing arms scratched at the headrest. For a brief moment, Dan allowed himself to be seen in the rearview mirror. His eyes locked with Reed Temple and there was recognition that it was over. There would be no escape.

Reed Temple's flailing right hand found his coat pocket and managed to remove his semi-automatic government issue as blood filled his throat. His head arched back, beckoning for room that was not available. Grappling for life, Reed Temple raised the gun and fired backwards, aiming at Dan through the headrest, the only available angle on his assailant. The gunshot illuminated the car for a split-second and Dan's heart rate increased. Blood slowly began to drip from the back of Reed Temple's head, running down the back collar of his suit jacket.

Bulletproof headrests, indeed
, Dan thought.

Dan held tightly until Reed Temple stopped twitching. Then he maintained pressure for another ten seconds. When he released his grip on the wire around Temple's neck, a sharp crease remained in the dead man's collar, neatly dissecting a spot just above the double Windsor.

Dan moved the wire, raising his hands back over Reed Temple's head. He retracted the garrote to the wristwatch and returned the bevel to the face of the timepiece.

He looked around once and exited the car, sweating, pulse elevated. He walked towards the dark end of the alley and turned right where it intersected with another alley running perpendicularly. He was back in his nephew's Nissan hatchback ten seconds later. Six minutes after that, he pulled into the rear parking spot behind his sister-in-law's house.

He entered the backdoor near the kitchen, took off his nephew's sweatshirt, and put it back on the hook. He reached up and removed his cell phone from the top of the refrigerator and checked the time. Twenty-seven minutes, round-trip.

—

Dan walked back into the living room and found the wingback chair in the corner empty. The zip ties were cut and lying on the carpet. He reached down and picked up the evidence, stuffing them in the same pocket he had removed them from earlier. He noticed the plantation shutters had been closed, concealing the view to the outside. Dan pushed open the shutters and eyed the gray BMW still parked in the driveway. He glanced away from the window and noticed his mother's walking cane resting against the wall on the other side of the chair.
Everything is a lie
 . . .

Dan exited the front door with no attempt to conceal his presence or intention. He beelined it across the manicured lawn and crossed the street to the police cruiser. Detective Wallace lowered the window and Dan motioned towards the back door. Sue was still in the passenger seat and turned towards the rear as Dan landed in the back of the car.

“Did you see anyone leave the house?” Dan asked.

Detective Wallace adjusted the rearview mirror until Dan's face was in view. “No one left the house once you went in. But then again, you should know that given you were in the residence.”

Dan rubbed the lump on the back of his head. “I was momentarily incapacitated. Someone hit me from behind. When I regained my faculties, the house was empty.”

“You were ambushed from behind in a living room with the lights on?” Detective Wallace asked sarcastically.

“Yes.”

“Who else was in the room? I could see a partial silhouette in the chair. Until the blinds shut.”

“The woman in the house was my mother.”

“The driver of the gray BMW, which I followed from Langley, is your mother?”

“That is correct.”

“I thought your mother was dead,” Sue responded.

Detective Wallace turned at the waist from the driver's seat and stared at Dan. “You want to explain?”

“It caught me off guard as well.”

“And?”

“And what? For ten years I thought my mother was deceased. She is not.”

“And she works at Langley?”

“Let's not act completely surprised. It is one of the few employers where death doesn't mean the end of your employment.”

“Does she have anything to do with Nguyen's death?”

“Not in any way that could be proven.”

“She could be charged with illegal entry.”

“She probably had a key and it was her daughter-in-law's house. But it doesn't matter. You have to find her to charge her, and she won't be found.”

“What about the guy who ordered Nguyen's murder?”

“He was gone by the time I got inside. My mother implied that I missed him by a few minutes.”

“Where did he go?”

“Don't know.”

Dan felt the heat of the detective's stare and knew his lies were transparent. Dishonesty by those being questioned was a shared occupational hazard both men could smell in high wind.

“Take us to the nearest hospital, Detective. We need to be treated for shock. We have been through a lot this evening. We need medical treatment. I am starting to feel cold. Dizzy.”

Dan looked at Sue and winked subtly.

Dan watched as Detective Wallace eyeballed Major's driver's license resting on the dash of the cruiser. Then his eyes again met Dan's in the rearview mirror. “Let me call it in.”

Dan closed his eyes as the car moved down the street. At the stop sign at the end of the block, the radio in the detective's car chirped out a BOLO for a stolen black Mercedes Benz SUV.