Nelson DeMille - Spencerville

"Maybe an hour or more with traffic. You may want to leave now to play it safe."

"No. I have time for a beer."

"Come on inside."

Charlie got off the tractor, and they went into the house through the kitchen door. Keith said, "I'm out of beer."

"It's a little early anyway. I'm just thirsty."

"I don't doubt it. You've been blowing steam for the last half hour." Keith opened the refrigerator and got a jug of water. He poured two glasses. "This is genuine spring water."

Charlie drained off half the glass. "It's good."

"There's mostly limestone under the soil. This was a prehistoric sea. You know, a billion years of little sea creatures compressed into layers of limestone."

Charlie looked at the glass suspiciously. "Is that a fact?"

"I'm going to bottle it. Sell it to the yuppie swine in D.C."

"Good idea. Let's sit a minute." They sat at the big table, and Charlie stayed silent for a while, which Keith didn't like. Charlie said, "Did you intend to stay here with her?"

"No."

"Where were you planning to go?"

Keith didn't like the past tense of that sentence. He replied, "I don't know where we are going."

"You'd have to let us know. It's the law."

"I'll let you know so you can send my checks."

Charlie nodded absently. He said, "You know, something funny happened on my way here."

Keith didn't reply.

Charlie said, "When I stopped at the police station, this guy, the desk sergeant, named Blake, I think... I asked him if he knew where you lived, and he got sort of weird. Started questioning me. I mean, I'm asking the questions. Right? He wants to know what my business is with you. Can you believe that shit? I thought I was back in East Germany or something. Can I smoke in here?"

"Sure."

Charlie lit a cigarette and tapped the ash into his glass. "So I get to thinking. I mean, I'm a spy. Right? Used to be anyway. I'm thinking that maybe someone is bothering you here, and the police are being protective. Or maybe you contacted them when you got here, identified yourself as an ex-spook, and asked them to notify you if anyone was looking for you. Like someone named Igor with a Russian accent. But that didn't make sense, and when I got here, you looked surprised, so I know they didn't call to tip you off."

"Charlie, you've been in this business too long."

"I know. That's what I decided. But then I go outside, and this other cop follows me out to my car. Heavyset guy, said he was chief of police. Name's Baxter. He asks me what my business is out at the Landry farm. I'm too clever to tell him to fuck off because I want to draw him out. By this time, I'm thinking you're in trouble with the law. So I flash my official-looking ID and tell him it's official government business."

"You have to learn how to mind your own business, Charlie."

"No, I don't. Anyway, I'm concerned about you now. I mean, these guys were weird. Like in some grade B horror flick, you know, where that whole small town is taken over by aliens? You remember that one? Anyway, now this guy Baxter is a little less ballsy and asks me if he can be of any help. I say maybe. Mr. Landry has been pensioned off by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service." Both Charlie and Keith smiled at the old joke. "Anyway, Mr. Landry has applied for part-time work with the local office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and I'm here to do a background check on him and see if he's of fine moral character and an accepted member of his community. That was pretty quick, wasn't it?"

"How are the mighty fallen. Is that what you've been reduced to?"

"Give me a break. I haven't done fieldwork in fifteen years, and I miss it. Anyway, Chief of Police Baxter informs me that Mr. Landry has had several scrapes with the law — in the park right across the street — drunk and disorderly. Trespassing on school property. Interfering with police officers in the performance of their duty in some parking lot. Menacing, harassment... what else? I think that's it. He said he talked with you about your antisocial tendencies, but you gave him a lot of lip. He recommended you not be hired. He also said someone should see if you deserved a government pension at all. I don't think he likes you."

"We were high school rivals."

"Really? Something else. He said he tried to run your D.C. plates through the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, but you don't exist. At that point, I got interested in Mr. Baxter." He dropped his cigarette in the glass. "What's happening, Keith? We did high school rivals already."

"Yeah. Well, then, cherchez la femme, wise guy."

"Ah."

"I'll take one of those cigarettes."

"Sure." Charlie handed him the pack and the lighter. Charlie asked, "You're not fucking the police chief's daughter, are you?"

Keith lit the cigarette and exhaled. "No. His wife."

"Right. The woman. I thought you came here to relax."

"I told you, this is a preexisting condition."

"Right. That's very romantic. Are you out of your fucking mind?"

"Probably."

"Well, we can integrate this situation into the equation."

"Speak English."

"Okay. Are you running off with her?"

"That's the plan."

"When?"

"Saturday morning."

"Can it wait?"

"No. It's getting hot here."

"I'll bet it is. That's why you have that piece stuck under your shirt."

Keith didn't reply.

Charlie asked, "Does the husband know?"

"No. If he did, this place would have been under fire when you drove up." Keith added, "He knows his wife and I were an item way back. He doesn't like that. He gave me until tomorrow to get out of town."

"Are you going to kill him?"

"No. I promised her I wouldn't. They have two kids. In college."

"Well, they had him around a long time. Good memories, life insurance, tuition taken care of."

"Charlie, don't joke about killing. I've had enough of that."

"Termination. You don't say kill, and you have to make a joke about it or it sounds ugly." He added, "Wouldn't life be easier for you if this guy committed suicide or had an accident? I didn't like him."

"He doesn't meet our requirements for termination."

"Did he threaten you with bodily harm?"

"Sort of."

"There you go. Paragraph five of the rules of termination."

"Commandment one. Old Testament."

"You got me. Hey, do what you have to do. Actually, if you come live in D.C., you'll be okay. She'll like the capital."

"Not to live there for five years. She's a country girl, Charlie."

"I'd like to meet her."

"Sure." Keith put out his cigarette.

Charlie said, "You're coming back with me on the two-fifteen. You know that, don't you?"

"First I've heard of it."

"There's no way out of this one, Keith. Believe me. But I'd rather you come as a favor to me. Not because you owe me a favor, but so I can owe you a favor."

"I'd like to keep the bullshit out in the farmyard."

"You're coming to Washington to save my ass. I can't go back there and report to the secretary of defense that I couldn't get you to see him and the president. Jesus, I'd be spending the next five years in Iceland counting radar blips. My wife would run off with somebody like you."

"Cut it out." Keith stayed quiet for a while, then said, "They rely on our loyalty toward one another more than our loyalty toward the government, don't they?"

"That's all that works these days."

"Don't you feel used?"

"Sure. Used, underpaid, unappreciated, and unneeded. You're right, the danger has passed, and we're... how does that ditty go? 'The danger's passed, the wrong is righted; the veteran's ignored, the soldier's slighted."

"There you are."

"But so what? We'll play if they pay." He looked at Keith. "You know, buddy, I sometimes feel like I'm on a football team that just won the big game. The other team's gone home, the stands are empty, and we're running plays against nobody, in the dark." He sat quietly a moment, and Keith could see that Charlie Adair was having his own little crisis of conscience and confidence. But with Charlie, you never really knew.