Jeffery Deaver - Edge

As we checked the tires, I glanced up and saw Joanne, still in the back seat, look at her watch and place a call. It was to Amanda. From the conversation, which I could hear through the open door, it seemed everything was fine. She caught my eye again then lowered her head and continued the call. She was struggling to be animated as her stepdaughter apparently pelted her with a report of her day in the country.

Ryan took the phone and, his face softening, also had a conversation with the girl.

Parents and children.

For a moment some of those memories I’d had earlier surfaced, some children’s faces among them, memories I didn’t want. I put them away. Sometimes I was better at that than others. Tonight they vanished more slowly than usual.

I got back inside and when the door slammed Ryan spun around, startled, and gripped his gun. I tensed for a moment but he oriented himself and relaxed.

My Lord, did he want to shoot everybody?

As I started to drive, my phone buzzed and the caller ID voice announced a number I recognized as the Justice Department. My finger hovered over the ACCEPT button.

I didn’t press it. The call went to voice mail and I steered the Yukon back to the main road.

MORE DARK, WINDING routes.

Nobody was behind us, unless he was driving without lights, which was possible, thanks to the new night vision systems. But the way I was driving-fast then slow, occasionally abrupt stops, sharp turns down roads that I knew well but I doubted Loving would-left me convinced that no one was following.

After forty minutes I hit Route 7 briefly then Georgetown Pike and took it to River Bend Road. Then, bypassing downtown Great Falls, I took a series of tangled roads and streets on which GPS was helpful but not definitive.

Finally, after a drive through dense woods, during which we passed no more than three houses-three very large houses-we arrived at the safe house compound, separated from the road by a seven-foot-high stockade and, farther along, six-foot chain-link fences.

The compound had a seven-bedroom main house, two outbuildings-one of them a panic facility-and two large garages, as well as a barn, complete with a hayloft. The grounds were nearly ten acres of rolling fields, bordering the Potomac River, the turbulent part, the narrows, where there is indeed a series of falls and rapids, though “Great Falls” is by anyone’s estimation exaggerated; “Modest but Picturesque” would be a better name.

The property had been a bargain. You can’t be in any government service nowadays without being aware of the bottom line. In the nineties, the compound had been the residence of Chinese diplomats, a retreat from the embassy downtown. It was also, the FBI had learned, where the People’s Republic secret police regularly met their runners and agents, who’d been collecting information from contractors and low-level government workers and taking pictures of the NSA, the CIA and other unmentionable facilities in Langley, Tysons and Centreville. Most of the work, it was learned, was commercial property theft rather than defense secrets. But it was politically naughty, not to mention illegal.

When the Chinese got busted, the delicate negotiations involved an agreement that the diplomats and fake businessmen would leave the country without prosecution and, in exchange, the government would get the house… and some other, nondisclosed, treats. The property was used by a number of agencies as a hideaway until Abe had grabbed it for us about eight years ago.

The large, brown-painted nineteenth-century house itself had been retrofitted with all the accoutrements of modern-day security that we could afford. Which wasn’t as high-tech or sexy as people might expect. There were sensors on the fence, though they would deter only people who didn’t know about sensors on fences. The grounds themselves weren’t monitored everywhere, though at key approaches (not necessarily the obvious ones) there were weight sensors buried in the dirt. Of course, the whole place was amply covered by video cameras, some obvious, some not. I’d activated an employee, what we call spectators, or specs, that morning to begin monitoring the place. Ours sit in West Virginia, in a dim room, and watch TV screens all day long and-though they don’t admit it-listen to really loud music, usually headbanging. They can do so because our cameras aren’t miked. That takes too much bandwidth. Someday we’ll be able to afford both, and the specs’ll lose their sound tracks. But for now, it’s silent movies of the compound and Def Leppard coming from the speakers.

I called the spec assigned to us and he answered immediately.

“We’re here,” I said, though he knew that since he’d been watching us for the past five minutes.

It was quiet, he reported. He’d seen nothing suspicious.

“Where’re the deer?”

“Where the deer should be.”

Because of this job and some other aspects of my life, I’ve learned a lot about wildlife-for instance, what intimidates deer and other animals and why. I’ve told my specs-and protégés-always to watch for patterns of animal behavior that might give away clues as to intrusion. I’d actually lectured on this at professional conferences. An uneasy badger saved the life of one of my principals a year ago, alerting us to a hitter’s presence.

“No funny business with nearby traffic either,” was the spec’s twangy comment. I’d never met the man but I had some impressions. Given his residence in the mountains of West Virginia, his accent and his taste for heavy metal, how could I not?

I thanked him and punched in the code to the front gate, which swung open and a nearly invisible but impressive tire strip receded into the ground. We headed through the stockade fence and up the winding drive, which was about a hundred feet long. Garcia and Ahmad were looking around, carefully, as were Maree and the still alert Ryan Kessler, who I believed had snuck a drink or two. Joanne glanced out the window as if she were looking at a month-old magazine in a doctor’s waiting room.

I parked and we got out. Beside the front door-looking like wood but reinforced steel-I opened a panel and typed on the keypad below a small LCD screen. The program confirmed via motion, sound and thermal sensors that the house was completely unoccupied (it can identify a beating human heart but won’t bother me with the sound of a river rat nosing about for food or the water heater coming to life). I unlocked the door and stepped inside, then temporarily disabled the alarm; it would reactivate once we were inside and then would lock, though there was a panic button that would allow anyone inside to open it in the event of fire or intrusion. The same was true of most windows, which otherwise would open only six inches.

I got the lights on and the heat going-the temperature had dipped-and then I booted up our bank of security monitor screens, which mirrored the ones in West Virginia. Next the secure computer server. I checked to see that the shielded landlines were working. Finally, I verified that the generators were armed; they’d come on automatically if an intruder cut the main line.

I showed the principals briefly around the musty ground floor.

“Oh, neat!” Maree said, striding up to a number of old, sepia-tinted photographs on the wall, ignoring shelves of books and magazines and, yes, board games, though not ones I’d donated. Looking at the younger sister’s giddy expression, I tried to recall when I’d had a principal who could so quickly forget that she’d been part of a shootout an hour earlier. Never, I decided.

I explained about food, beverages, the TV. Like a bellboy. I took the Kesslers to their room on this floor in the back, Maree to hers next to it. The young woman seemed impressed. “You’re redeeming yourself, Mr. Tour Guide,” she said. She offered me a dollar as a tip, a joke, I guessed. I didn’t know how to respond and so I ignored the odd gesture. She offered another pout.