Time to Kill (4 page)

Mason turned back into the car, shifting in the overcrowded rear seat to be able to look directly at Howitt. And he just looked, saying nothing, as he'd looked and spoken when Howitt had first tried to intimidate him, which was what he knew the man was attempting now, trying as best as his pea-sized brain could manage to make up for all the years of being so openly despised and ignored. Knowing, too, that Garson was driving more with his eyes on the rear-view mirror than on the road ahead and listening to everything, and despite having his head or whatever else up Howitt's ass, would spread the word back at White Deer, because it was too good to keep to himself.

Eventually, spacing the words, Mason said, ‘Remember a long time ago, Frankie? Try. Try very hard to remember what I told you when you came on to me all that long time ago. And then shut the fuck up.'

And, bully-like, Howitt did. Garson moved uncomfortably in his driver's seat.

To Mason's ear, to his imagination, the outside traffic to which he returned at last got noisier, almost deafening, the closer they got to the city and its airport. All the cars and the lorries and the air-horn bellowing rigs seemed to be travelling faster than he remembered, too, even though he knew they weren't and that it was an institutionalized, misleading impression. But after today he wouldn't be misled, just as he wouldn't, as soon as possible after his forthcoming release, be wearing an out of style suit. It was all made so much better by the irony of it being the fat asshole to whom he was tethered being the unwitting source of such early but necessary preparation. Mason looked back inside the car, although remaining expressionless.

‘What!' demanded Howitt.

‘Nothing.'

‘Nothing what!'

‘Nothing …'

‘Careful!'

‘Mr Howitt.' Using the respect made it the ultimate sneer.

As they approached the airport Howitt said to Garson, ‘You keep in touch, make sure there aren't any delays on the return flight, OK?'

‘OK,' said Garson.

‘We'll definitely be back tonight, whatever. If there's a problem I'll call your cell phone.'

Because they had to be back within a day, to cover what he was sure was an irregular excursion, thought Mason. Or was it?

‘We've been through it,' reminded Garson, with surprising impatience.

At the airport Howitt was far more careful getting out of the car than he had been getting into it, causing Mason no physical discomfort, but as soon as they entered the terminal Mason accepted it wasn't physical discomfort Howitt intended now. The towering man carried nothing to disguise their being handcuffed, actually creating space between them as they walked to the check-in for the linking chain to be obvious, even intentionally putting them in the path of people who, awkwardly and startled, needed to go around them. Howitt maintained the performance in the embarkation lounge, where he produced his ID authorization for the security official to ensure that they boarded, very publicly, ahead of everyone else. The charade went wrong when, to his immediate anger, Howitt discovered that their designations meant he had to be ushered into the inner seat for Mason to get the aisle. There was an ineffectual tug of war to be first to fasten their seat belts. Mason won, securing his ahead of the other man.

Mason waited until the moment the seat belt sign went off after departure before unbuckling his harness to turn to the chief prison guard to say, ‘I need to piss.'

‘Piss yourself.'

‘You think the parole board would go along with you on that? I don't think they would. Or my lawyer, either.'

This time Howitt did jerk Mason's wrist, unexpectedly, to unfasten his belt but Mason didn't react. Instead he stood considerately in the aisle for the man to get out but actually led their way up to the toilets. At the toilet door Mason said, ‘You think we can make it in there together?' knowing full well that they couldn't. He manoeuvred the two of them to put Howitt's back to the entire, watching cabin, so that none of the other passengers would be able to see who unlocked the handcuffs to identify who was the prisoner and who was the guard. Mason had difficulty peeing and took his time, and afterwards used all the offered astringents and soaps and colognes. He let Howitt rap on the door twice before unlocking it, keeping it open for the man to enter. Howitt hesitated but shook his head.

Back in their seats Mason said, ‘You done this a lot, prisoner escort?'

‘Enough.'

‘Surprised you didn't assign someone else – Garson, for instance.'

‘I wanted to look after you personally.'

‘Thought that might be it.'

‘As I'm going to,' added Howitt.

What trick was the motherfucker planning to pull? Or try to pull? It had to be something big enough, serious enough, to screw the intended remission. Which made it almost too obvious. Mason saw the stewardesses slowly approaching down the aisle with a breakfast trolley.

Probingly, he said, ‘You think we need to go on being joined at the hip like this? One of us is going to get a lapful of coffee and it's your right hand that's tethered.'

‘Maybe you're right.'

Too quick, too easy, thought Mason: altogether too obvious. Then he thought, surely not, surely nothing so stupid! But then Howitt
was
stupid, as institutionalized as any lifer; more institutionalized even.

Howitt released the handcuffs, dropped them into his bulged pocket and sat surreptitiously massaging his wrist until the trolley reached them. Mason waited until the other man chose and was served before ordering juice, coffee and rolls, more alert to Howitt than to the curious and attentive stewardess, all mockery abandoned.

At the pilot's announcement of their descent into Washington's Reagan airport, Mason, probing further, offered his left wrist and said, ‘We going Siamese again?'

‘What the hell?' said Howitt, shaking his head.

Mason was careful to block the disembarkation queue in the aisle to let Howitt precede him along the aircraft, and once they got on the ground he remained as close as Gerry Garson habitually did in the penitentiary. Inside the terminal Mason divided his concentration, aware of Howitt using the passenger bustle to change position between them but just as intently identifying police and security staff as they walked. For someone of his awkward bulk Howitt was surprisingly quick when he made the move Mason was anticipating. Mason could easily have dodged sideways behind the abruptly disappearing man if he'd wanted to. Which he didn't. Instead he went immediately to two uniformed policemen and said, ‘I'm a prisoner at White Deer Penitentiary, under escort from Pennsylvania to appear before a Washington DC parole board. I've become separated from my escort, Chief Guard Frank Howitt. I want to put myself under your supervision and into your custody until he's relocated and I'm taken to where I'm expected.'

Jack Mason checked his satisfaction at outsmarting the chief prison guard – reminding himself how devastated he would have been at not outsmarting him – but objectively acknowledged that he had benefited from a lot of luck in approaching those two particular airport police officers. Neither showed any disbelief or surprise at his approach, which he reinforced by dictating his prison number the moment he was shown into an airport office. They accepted just as quickly that they should confirm his identity by telephoning White Deer and from Hubert Harrison's office obtained the direct parole board number, further to confirm his scheduled appointment. There was only a five minute delay before a parole board official called back to affirm Mason's scheduled meeting, with the request that Mason be transported into the city to be placed in federal custody. It was only when the senior of the two officers sought permission to comply with that demand from their airport commander that there was the first indication that Howitt had reported Mason's escape to the FBI, who had alerted every airport security service with the request for a perimeter cordon to be imposed around the airport as well as the grounding of every departing flight until the arrival of agents from the Bureau's Washington field office. After a further thirty minutes, during which the cordon request was cancelled and the approaching FBI team stood down by a cell phone intervention, a sweating Howitt, his normally red face now puce, arrived at the terminal office, accompanied by the commander and two unidentified assistants.

So inadequate and unconvincing was Howitt's flustered improvisation of Mason's alleged dash for freedom that the commander insisted on the two officers escorting Mason to the parole board meeting, where two FBI agents were waiting as the obvious result of an advanced account of events from the airport. One agent attended the board meeting, from which Howitt was pointedly excluded.

The official encounter, prepared and rehearsed as Mason was from every well studied and glowing account of his prison behaviour, became an anti-climax by comparison to what had preceded it. Mason recited his thought of relocating to California and rehabilitating within the computer industry – without challenge from anyone on the board – and was introduced to his parole officer, a woman named Glynis Needham who wore a severely cut trouser suit and had a short, mannish hairstyle. In a deep voice she promised to have a list of temporary DC accommodation by the time of Mason's actual release.

‘There was a situation at the airport?' questioned the chairman, after what Mason assumed to be all the formalities were completed.

‘Yes, sir.'

‘We'd like you to tell us what happened, as far as you are aware.'

‘I'm really not sure,' said Mason. ‘I was handcuffed to Chief Officer Howitt when I left White Deer and for the beginning of the flight. It was awkward, obviously, so during the flight Chief Officer Howitt took the handcuffs off. I expected them to be put back on when we got to Washington but Chief Officer Howitt didn't bother. I tried to keep very close to him when we disembarked but suddenly he disappeared. So I immediately surrendered myself to the airport police, in whose custody I remained and who brought me here, together with Chief Officer Howitt.'

‘You didn't run, try to escape?'

Mason was sure he perfectly timed the apparently surprised pause at such a suggestion. ‘The two airport policemen are with me, here. Please ask them what I did when Chief Officer Howitt disappeared. I know only too well how any remission would be destroyed if I had tried to escape. But why should I have tried?'

The one FBI officer escorted Mason into a side room at the chairman's announcement that they did intend to hear from the two airport officers. When they were alone the agent said, ‘What the hell happened?'

‘It was like I told them back there.'

‘It didn't sound too good to me.'

‘It was what happened!' protested Mason.

‘I wasn't talking about you.'

It was thirty minutes before they were recalled to the hearing room. The chairman said, ‘I think we've heard all we need to. Ms Needham will be in touch.'

‘Can I make a request, sir, in the light of what happened?' asked Mason.

‘What?'

‘I really mean what I said about knowing full well how my situation might be affected if there were any further misunderstanding. Could there be an additional escort when I'm taken back to White Deer?'

‘The decision has already been made elsewhere that there should be,' said the tribunal chairman.

The fact that Mason had not been told of the impending Washington visit until recreational lock-up the night before, and with the two intervening nights, extended by the full day in between, an almost forty-eight hour break in his routine of hacking into his computer records had been created. At the first opportunity on his return, he tried again and felt an immediate surge of total satisfaction at discovering two new entries in his file. The first was the belated although customary CIA access from which he immediately learned that Dimitri Sobell was now Daniel Slater, living at 2832 Hill Avenue SE, Frederick, Maryland. The cherry on the cupcake was to read that Frank George Howitt – who'd actually been separated from him for his handcuff-free return to White Deer the previous evening – had been suspended from duty pending an internal enquiry into the Reagan airport episode.

That same morning, although three hours earlier, the formal CIA warning of Mason's release, together with CIA contact numbers if necessary, had been in Slater's mailbox when he left his Frederick house. Apart from its almost indistinguishable Washington DC postmark there was no outward indication of its sender, so he didn't bother to open it until he got to his security consultancy office.

When he did open it Slater was engulfed by a physical coldness he hadn't known since Siberia.

Four

T
he sensation quickly passed but before it did Slater's immediate thought, the camping weekend still fresh in his mind, was that mentally as well as physically he was out of shape. He instantly became irritated at the doubt. The surprise, shock even, was entirely understandable; certainly not a failing or a weakness. And most definitely not the result of complacency. He hoped.

Because of the camping expedition Slater had arranged an easy, early week beginning, his diary empty and two of the three outstanding security analyses already dictated on tape, for typed-up presentation, sufficient to occupy Mary Ellen, his receptionist/aide for the morning, if not the entire day. There wasn't any curiosity when he told her to hold all his calls. After doing so, Slater locked the communicating door to the outer office against any unexpected and unwanted intrusion, wanting complete, uninterrupted isolation.

There was welcomed reassurance in the lack of any physical reaction in his hands when he smoothed the letter out before him on his desk. He searched for – demanding from himself – all the necessary KGB tradecraft in which he had once been so expert. He was sure the watermark of the paper, which he held up against the light, was genuine, but the letterheaded Justice Department box number didn't accord with any listed against the main Pennsylvania Avenue address in the DC telephone book, nor in any of the specific reference manuals, or the unlisted logs he'd compiled during the twelve years he'd run his small security consultancy agency. Neither did the contact telephone number, although it carried the 202 DC dialling prefix. The printed although undesignated sender was J Peebles – not a name or a person he knew from his induction into the Witness Protection Programme – but the scrawled signature was indecipherable. It was addressed ‘Dear Sir', although his adopted name, in full, was on the envelope. At last, more intently than on his first reading, Slater studied the sterile lines: