Stuart Woods - Mounting Fears

“Hey,” she said.

“I got those two people on tape again,” he said. “I think either from the White House or the Executive Office Building, next door.”

“Did you get everything this time?”

“No, it’s a lot like the last recording. Get this, though-they said something about a coke plant.”

“You’re thinking drugs?”

“What else?”

“You think someone in the White House or the EOB is doing drug deals?”

“Shit, I don’t know, but there’s always the possibility. Do you have any idea where the woman in the conversation is?”

“I assume in D.C., but she could be anywhere.”

“Still no caller ID came through?”

“Nah, they’re probably talking on throwaways.”

“Well, if they’re going to those lengths to not be identified, there must be something weird going on.”

“Yeah, I thought it was just two people fucking on the sly, but if they’re talking about a coke plant, then I don’t know.”

“When I get home from work, we’ll listen to both tapes together and see if we can figure out what’s going on.”

“See you at home, then.” Felix hung up. As he did, a blue light started flashing in his rearview mirror, and a whooper went off. He pulled over and checked out the car in the mirror: black and apparently unmarked. He spread an unfolded city map over his radio installation and set his camera on the dash to anchor it, then rolled down his window.

A man in civilian clothes walked up to his car, holding out an ID. “Federal officer,” the man said. “Step out of the car, please.”

Felix got out and reached for his wallet.

“Easy,” the officer said, grabbing his arm.

“I thought you’d want to see my license,” Felix said.

“Slowly,” the man said.

Felix retrieved his wallet from a hip pocket, fished out his license, and handed it to him.

The man looked at it, then produced some sort of electronic device and appeared to scan the license. “You’ve been driving around and around the White House for over an hour,” the officer said. “What are you doing?”

“I’m a photographer,” Felix replied. “Freelance. I get shots of people visiting the White House, when I’m lucky.”

“What’s in your camera now?”

“Nothing. I haven’t been lucky today. I was about to go home when you stopped me. I’m not breaking any laws.”

The officer handed back his license. “See that you don’t,” he said.

“But you’ll see me around here again, doing the same thing. I’d appreciate it if you’d pass the word that I’m harmless.”

The agent snorted, got back in his car, and drove away.

Felix breathed a sigh of relief. He was going to have to work on concealing the equipment in his car.

Kerry Smith and Shelly Bach handed their overnight bags to the pilot and boarded the airplane.

“What kind of plane is this?” Shelly asked as they buckled in.

“A CitationJet Two,” Kerry responded. “The government has caught on to using smaller, single-pilot jets for a lot of flights-saves them a lot of money. We have the range to make it nonstop if the headwinds aren’t too bad. Otherwise, we’ll refuel somewhere.”

“I’ve never been on a private jet before,” she said.

“It will be especially time-saving in avoiding the airport scene,” Kerry said. “No security lines, no hordes. There’ll be a car and driver waiting for us on the ramp when we land.”

“Wow.”

“I’m sorry I can’t offer you a drink, but the Bureau isn’t that enlightened. There’ll be soft drinks and water in the fridge up front, though.”

The airplane rolled onto the runway at Washington National and accelerated. A moment later they were climbing fast, headed west.

An hour later, Kerry finished making a list of phone calls and looked at Shelly. She had fallen asleep, her lips parted, her chin on her shoulder. The top button of her blouse had somehow come unbuttoned, and he appreciated the glimpse of breasts. Her shoes were off, and her feet were surprisingly small for a tall woman. She must be, what? Thirty? He’d read her jacket, and she had done nothing but excel for her whole life-school, college, sports, the works. The Bureau was lucky to have her, he felt, and he was lucky to have time to look at her thoroughly without getting busted for sexual harrassment.

Kerry had recently broken up with his girlfriend of two years, or, rather, she had dumped him. She wasn’t up for his schedule-the broken dates and missed vacations-and it had annoyed her that he couldn’t talk about his work after he got promoted. When he had been an ordinary special agent, he could tell her most things, entertain her with stories of busts, but not when Bob Kinney got the director’s job, noticed him, and started promoting him. Shelly would understand that.

While strictly enforcing the sexual harassment rules, Director Kinney had quietly let slide any notion of a nonfraternization policy in the Bureau. He figured, he had said to Kerry, that with more and more women agents in the Bureau, attractions would exist, liaisons would form, and some marriages would result, and that might be a good thing, since agents would understand each other’s problems. Kerry thought so, too, but he had not been tempted until now. He was her supervisor on this job, of course, but that would end when they turned in their report, and he would be free to ask her out.

She opened her eyes and looked at him across the table between them. It was as if she had known that he had been watching her as she slept. She gave him a little smile, and the effect ran directly from his eyes to his crotch, as though a wire existed for that communication.

Barbara Ortega took off from Mather, a general-aviation field ten miles east of Sacramento, in a Beechcraft Baron, a twin-engine aircraft being used for air-taxi work, at ten o’clock Pacific time. She was in Tijuana and in a rental car three and a half hours later. She had a road map and the address the woman at the Coca-Cola bottling plant had given her. Pedro Martнnez lived near Baja Malibu, on the coast, not far from the U.S. border. Following directions, she turned left off the coast road and climbed a hill. A couple of turns later she came to a small adobe house that looked old but in good repair. She remembered the old man from San Diego, and he now sat on the front porch, looking out across the sea, a couple of miles away. A small duffel bag rested beside him on the porch. She got out of the car and switched on her Spanish.

“Pedro,” she said, “my name is Barbara. We met in San Diego last spring, do you remember?”

Martнnez fixed her with his gaze. “Ahhh,” he said, “you are the friend of Martin. Yes, I remember you-you gave me champagne.” He smiled broadly, revealing perfect dentures.

“May I sit down?” she asked, reaching into her purse and switching on her recorder.

“Of course, seсorita. What brings you to visit me?”

“I came because you told me a story in San Diego, and I wanted to hear it again.”

“A story?”

“The one about how you delivered Martin in the backseat of the Cadillac.”

Pedro threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, yes, it is true. I brought Martin into this world.” He began the story, starting when he drove to the Stanton home to drive the seсor to work. “Then we got to the border crossing,” he said, “and we were stopped for inspection. Big Martin said to me, ‘Pedro, you have to help her. I don’t know what I’m doing.’ So I got out of the car and got into the backseat, and Big Martin got behind the wheel, and little Martin was born. Then he drove us to the hospital in San Diego.”

Barbara switched off the recorder. “Pedro,” she said, “where were you, exactly, when Martin was born?”