Keith Thomson - Twice a Spy

“It’s just a rent-a-plane, of course.” Bream flashed a smile. “You know how it is, when you’re flying highly wanted fugitives across international borders to go fetch a nuclear bomb. It’s usually a good idea to rent, under an alias.”

“Oh.” In fact, Charlie would have bet the chalet that the Gulfstream was a rental. But he hoped that by playing the naif, he might lower Bream’s guard. “So how does one get into flying highly wanted fugitives across international borders to fetch nuclear bombs?”

Bream laughed. “Thinking of a career move?”

“Should I?”

Nudging a lever beneath the instrument panel, Bream pivoted to face Charlie. “I can only tell you one man’s experience.”

“Okay.” Charlie glanced at Drummond. Still in dreamland.

“When I was in my twenties, I signed on with the Skunk Works,” Bream said. “Know it?”

“Vaguely.” Once upon a time, like many American boys with an aptitude for numbers and a hankering for glory, Charlie had dreamed of working at the Skunk Works, Lockheed’s legendary advanced aircraft division in Palmdale, California. The closest he ever got was Arcadia, California, an hour away, to watch the Santa Anita Derby.

“I was a test pilot on an experimental stealth fighter,” Bream said.

“Wow.” Charlie’s wariness gave way to intrigue.

“I figured I’d put in five years or so there. Then, just north of thirty, I’d be able to transition to cushy corporate jets-play that right, you can make near as much as a ballplayer and get yourself a mansion and all that. The problem was, our client was an Air Force bureaucrat in real bad need of a punch in the face. And one day I gave it to him. He saw to it that I wasn’t just shit-canned but kept from flying so much as a paper plane again for a U.S.-based outfit. Then he had me thrown to the cops.”

Charlie almost sympathized. “Did you have to do time?”

Bream chuckled. “Only if you count my marriages.”

Lately when Charlie met men close to his age and learned that they had already been divorced several times-there was no shortage of them in horseplayer circles-he felt he’d frittered away his youth, never even marrying once. But he didn’t feel that way with Bream.

Charlie suspected he had been listening to a cover story. And why would Bream tell him the truth? Charlie cursed his naivete in thinking that, like some sort of seasoned covert operations officer, he might “elicit” here.

“I appreciate the in-flight entertainment,” he said, rising and wandering back to the bar, which held far greater appeal than it had a minute ago.

“My pleasure,” Bream said, turning back to the controls.

On a crystal decanter, Charlie caught a reflection of the pilot biting back a grin. It revealed an extra helping of ego, Charlie thought.

Now he had something to work with.

“Ever heard of Perriman Appliances?” Eskridge asked.

“Rings a bell.” Stanley had lived in Madrid for more than a year before he noticed that his kitchenette had no oven.

“It’s basically junk that runs on electrical current. I made the mistake of buying one of their ‘affordable’ refrigerators and one of their dishwashers, back in the days when I, too, thought you could have a family in our trade.”

So Eskridge had read deep into Stanley’s file-or one of the division chief’s adjutants had and distilled it for him. Stanley traced the disintegration of his brief marriage to the day he left for the Farm.

“You know what they say about the third generation losing the money?” Eskridge asked, rhetorically. “In the mid-eighties, one of the agency’s geographical analysis subcommittees bought Perriman Appliances from the Perriman grandkids for practically nothing.”

“For the usual reasons that a geographical analysis subcommittee needs a second-rate appliance manufacturer?”

“Third-rate would be kind.” Eskridge glanced around, as if wary that, even here, someone might be watching or listening. “Geographical Analysis Subcommittee is how the Cavalry is listed on the books. I take it you’re familiar with the Cavalry.”

“Just the water cooler intel.” Stanley had a nagging feeling that there was an important cable he’d neglected. Rumint-the intelligence community’s brand of rumor-had it that the Cavalry was a special ops unit that recruited the gutsiest of the best and the brightest and pulled off covert operations that no one else would dare. It was hard to know, though, what was apocryphal and what was true.

“At the moment, they’re an off-the-books joint project of this division, Counterproliferation, and Counterterrorism. They administer the secret side of the Perriman worldwide network, trafficking weapons. To terrorists, principally. Or any other nutjob whose check won’t bounce. The Cavalry’s best seller is a non-detonative version of a ten-kiloton Russian ADM from the seventies. The device looks like the inner workings of a washing machine, and its weight is only a pound or two greater. So the Perriman washer makes an excellent concealment. On top of that, the Cavalry created special insulation to veil the bomb’s radiation. What the buyers don’t know is that the ADM is a complete dud-even less useful than an actual Perriman washer. Once a purchase is made, the buyers are monitored by the Cavalry and taken out of play before they can use the weapon. In sum, we found that the way to beat the illegal arms dealers was to join ’em.”

For the first time in twelve hours, Stanley breathed free of the worry that he’d been hoodwinked by Ali Abdullah. He’d sent Abdullah to a covert American detention facility in Genoa, purportedly to protect him from reprisal by the French but, really, to protect the arms dealer’s secret identity.

“So Abdullah checked out?”

“There was no need. His real name’s Austin Floyd Bellinger. I was in his wedding, in Cleveland. Your decision to keep DCRI and DGSE out of the loop was spot on. A few weeks in the detention facility will bolster Bellinger’s cover. Then the special effects department will make it look like he killed some guards and escaped. Or maybe they’ll just let him buy his way out. The point is, you really did earn that stationary bike. And in so doing, you’ve earned yourself a role in the best show on the Great Dark Way.”

“What sort of role?” Stanley exhibited less detachment than he would have liked.

“Do you know anything about Nick Fielding?”

“The Ali Abdullah of the Caribbean. Is he Cavalry too?”

“Yes. Was . Died recently in an electrical fire in the New York City subway-you hear about it?”

“I don’t think so.” If it was something Stanley should have known, he could attribute the memory lapse to fatigue.

“Good. There was no electrical fire. What happened was, one of the Cavalry ADMs detonated in the sub-basement of the Perriman Manhattan offices, which happens to be close to a subway tunnel. As far as I know, the extent of the coverage was just a paragraph or two, buried deep in New York’s Daily News , decrying the city’s dangerously outmoded subway system.”

“I thought the ADMs were duds.”

“Their uranium components are essentially fake, but that sort of weapon also packs a hundred pounds of plastic explosive, supposedly to generate critical mass, and that part we can’t fake, though the boys in the white coats are working on it.”

“I imagine a device of that nature doesn’t go off accidentally?”

“No. In an actual deployment, it would’ve been armed by three different Ivans, each man knowing only one-third of the code, for security’s sake. In this case, one man had all the codes. Drummond Clark. Now, what do you know about him?”