David Silva - The Disappeared

D.C. looked up from the newspaper and watched a familiar face cross the patio in his direction. The man’s name was Jonathan Webster, and though D.C. had not been expecting him, he was not surprised to see him here. Washington had a way of keeping tabs on you even when you thought you had long been lost in the bureaucracy.

“And to what do I owe the pleasure?” D.C. asked, setting aside the newspaper.

The man pulled out a chair and sat across the table from him, his thoughts masked behind a pair of Eagle aviator sunglasses. “Just a friendly visit between associates.”

“Your visits are rarely friendly, Webster.”

The waiter arrived with lunch – a burger and fries, set in a bed of lettuce, parsley, and two dill pickle halves. D.C. rotated the plate, sat up, and reached for his napkin.

“May I get anything for you, sir?”

Webster shook his head and waved the man away. He had always been a man of few words. Tightly wound, with an undercurrent that rarely erupted, he had mellowed over the years, if one could believe that. In his mid-sixties, the years had been good to him. A little gray in the temple. Maybe four or five extra pounds, but no more. He had always been a presence , and the years hadn’t changed that.

“Not hungry?” D.C. asked.

“I caught a late breakfast.”

“Eating on the run, that’s not good for your system, you know.”

“I’ll try to squeeze in some fries and a burger a little later.” The man glanced across the river at the distant horizon, searching for something more than the local sights. D.C. had dealt with him on two previous occasions, both under similar circumstances – because someone in Washington had suddenly grown uneasy.

“I hear things are getting a little sticky,” Webster said.

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Doesn’t matter. I heard it.”

“Well, you heard wrong.”

“Did I?” Webster raised his eyebrows, knowing what they both knew – that he had heard things exactly the way they were, that things had become sticky. For awhile, maybe even dangerously sticky. “You’ve been with this one a long time, haven’t you?”

“Let’s not go down Memory Lane, all right, Web? What are you doing here?”

“You’re making people nervous. When people get nervous, they call me.”

“There’s nothing to be nervous about. It’s under control.”

Webster grinned, part amusement, part warning. “Look, I don’t want to quibble with you, my friend. I don’t have the energy or the interest. Six months from now, they’re going to throw a little dinner for me, tell me something stupid like how strange it’ll be at the office on Monday when I’m not there, and set me free. Me and the misses, we’re going to do a little traveling. Maybe Europe. Maybe the Caribbean. Wherever the muse sends us. The good life, you know? It’s long overdue, and I don’t want to jeopardize it. You understand me?”

“What are they nervous about?”

“What are they always nervous about? Exposure.”

D.C. took a bite of his hamburger, washed it down with some beer, then sat back in his chair and tried to look behind the sunglasses of the man sitting across from him. The operation, code named Karma, had been initiated in a joint effort between the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency during the late Sixties, early Seventies. Primarily a research project, things had grown considerably more complicated since then.

“The boy’s aging,” D.C. said bluntly.

“When did this start?”

“Just recently.”

“How fast?”

“We aren’t sure yet. Maybe ten or twenty times normal.”

Webster nodded, and looked past him, lost in a moment of consideration. “Not exactly what we had in mind is it?”

“Not exactly.”

“Maybe I better have a drink after all.” He ordered a beer and downed it in three or four tosses. It was the first time D.C. had seen the man take a drink and it left little doubt in his mind that alcohol was this man’s beverage of choice. He dropped the mug to the table with a loud knock, and looked across at D.C. “So… what now?”

D.C. stared back him a moment, then said, “Gee, I don’t know. You think we oughta flip a coin? Heads we tank the whole thing so some ass-wipe in Washington can sleep a little better? Tails we hang in a little longer and see what happens?”

“It’s not that cut and dry.”

“Never is.”

“I wish it were, but it’s really not.”

“Hey, that’s why you get the big bucks, Web. You understand all the nuances, all the ins-and-outs.” D.C. leaned forward, fighting the urge to grab the man by the lapels and shake him until his marbles finally fell into place. Didn’t he get it? Didn’t he grasp any of this? The boy was turning into an old man. “Look, all I need is—”

D.C.’s pager went off. It sent a vibration rippling across his side that very nearly brought him out of his seat. He would have thought he’d be used to it by now. He turned it off, checked the number, and pushed back his chair. “Got a call I better take.”

“Then by all means take it.”

“Give me a couple of minutes.”

“No rush. I’ve got all afternoon.”

On his way inside, he heard Webster call the waiter over and order another beer. Now, two beers for most drinking men didn’t amount to much, but he hated to think what it might set loose in this one. It was something to keep an eye on, D.C. silently told himself. Maybe even what a man might refer to as a tell .

He took a bit of delight in that knowledge as he went out to the phones and back again. And as he sat down he immediately noted that except for some suds at the bottom of the mug, Webster’s second beer was already history.

“Anything important?” Webster asked.

D.C. shook his head, and lied. The page had come from Mitch. He had called to say that the Knight woman hadn’t done much of anything the past day or two. She was still hanging around the ex-cop’s place. He had wanted to know if he needed to continue watching her. To which D.C. had answered with an emphatic yes . “Just a friend wondering if we could get together tonight for dinner.”

Webster nodded lazily. “If I call back to Washington and convince them to continue to support this Karma thing a while longer, I’m going to need some assurances from you.”

“Like what?”

“For one, that you’ll manage to keep a handle on this thing. The boy is back under our control, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And what about his mother?”

“She’s staying with a friend.”

“She hasn’t gone to the police?”

“No.”

“You keeping an eye on her?”

“Twenty-four hours a day.”

Absently, Webster spun the mug in one hand, stirring the suds at the bottom. “And how long until we have something concrete on this aging thing?”

“You know I can’t give you anything definite on that.”

“Well, what are we talking about? A couple of weeks? A couple of months?”

“Months,” D.C. said. He spooned some ice cubes out of his water glass, popped them into his mouth, and began to chew. “Maybe longer.”

“I can tell you one thing right now – you don’t have any longer than a couple of months. If I can’t offer up something concrete by then, they aren’t going to give a damn what you or I think about Karma’s potential. They’re going to shut it down and walk away and be grateful their backsides didn’t get singed. That’ll be the end of it. Right then and there. You got it?”

“Hard not to.”

Aaron was in a hurry. He came out of the building, both hands tucked into his pockets, and took the steps as if he were Gregory Hines in a Broadway musical. It was lunch hour, only he’d gotten himself caught up in a database search and now he had less than twenty-five minutes left.