Stuart Woods: Iron Orchid

AS TEDDY REACHED the fifth floor he caught sight of someone coming up the escalator whose clothes he coveted. The man got off on five, and so did Teddy. He followed the man, who turned immediately through a door marked “Employees Only.”

Teddy followed him to a men’s room, and as the man stood at a urinal, Teddy fetched him a hard chop across the back of his neck. The man collapsed as if he had no legs.

Teddy stripped off the man’s outer clothing and got into his outfit. He put his tweed cap in a pocket, then pulled off the man’s beard and put it on. A quick check of the mirror, and he was out of there, headed for the escalator.

He had no sooner stepped onto it than he saw, coming up, a red tam. Holly looked up and directly at him, then looked away. Had she spotted him? Maybe, but she wouldn’t recognize him. He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead as she passed him going up.

Teddy continued to the ground floor and got off the escalator. He walked, but not too quickly, toward the 49th Street exit, and as he did, people passing him waved and said, “Merry Christmas!” to him. “Merry Christmas!” he said back, and occasionally, “Ho, ho, ho.”

He saw the woman with the baby carriage standing between him and the door. She no longer had the carriage, and she was looking desperately around the ground floor. “Merry Christmas,” he said as he passed her.

“Yeah, same to you,” she said, not looking at him.

Out on the sidewalk Teddy started walking toward Madison Avenue, looking for a cab. The air was filled with sirens, and people were still running away from Rockefeller Center. He made it to Madison and got lucky with the bus. A moment later, he was riding up Madison, and at 50th Street, he got a glimpse of the continuing chaos. He sat down next to a little boy.

“Hi, Santa,” the boy said.

“Hi, there. Merry Christmas,” Teddy said.

“Can I have a micro-motorcycle for Christmas this year?”

Teddy had no idea what a micro-motorcycle was, but the boy’s mother was shaking her head violently and mouthing “No!”

“You bet!” Teddy said, and the woman looked shocked. “If you’re really good, I’ll bring you two.”

He couldn’t very well take off the Santa suit on the bus; the kid would go nuts. He waited until he got off at 63rd Street before he stepped into a doorway, stripped off the costume and dumped it into the nearest trash basket, then he continued east, toward Lexington and his shop.

LANCE STOOD ON THE STAGE of the little theater on the twelfth floor of the Barn and stared at his agents. Kerry Smith sat beside him, looking depressed.

“Holly, what’s the story on Rockefeller Center?”

“Some cab driver went nuts,” she said. “He abandoned his taxi in the middle of Forty-eighth Street and walked into the Plaza with a gun in each hand. He shot a skater and two people in the arcade before Ham shot him. Oh, Teddy Fay shot him, too. Twice.”

“What happened with Teddy?” Lance asked. “I thought we had him trapped in Saks.”

A man stood up. “We sealed the place immediately, like you said, and when backup arrived, we scoured every floor. We found nothing.”

“Then he couldn’t have been in the store. Maybe he went up one flight, then came back down and left the building.”

“We had it sealed very quickly,” he said. “I can’t explain what happened.”

“Any theories?” Lance asked the group.

Holly tentatively raised her hand.

“Yes, Holly?”

“Maybe a Santa Claus suit,” she said.

“You think he was wearing a Santa Claus suit?” Lance asked incredulously.

“Maybe. There was a Santa Claus going down as I was going up. On the fifth floor there was a commotion; apparently, somebody had found an unconscious man in the men’s room. I’m just connecting the dots.”

Another woman stood up. “A Santa Claus walked right past me at the Forty-ninth Street exit and wished me a Merry Christmas,” she said.

Holly raised her hand again. “We found a red shopping bag in the sixth floor men’s room,” she said. “It was full of gift-wrapped, empty boxes. It’s being checked for prints right now, but I’m not holding my breath.”

Another agent stood up. “Listen,” he said, “how are we ever going to take this guy without a description? I mean, we had a good description this time, but nobody was looking for a guy in a Santa Claus suit.”

Lance wished to God he had an answer to that one.

IRENE FOSTER WAS BACK from New York in time for work on Monday morning, but she was a little late getting to her office at Langley. As she passed Hugh English’s office, she saw him looking through a stack of papers on his desk. “Morning, Hugh,” she said, sticking her head through the doorway. “Sorry I’m late; I just got back from New York.” She didn’t like it when Hugh got in before she did. Every time that happened, something invariably went wrong.

“Irene,” English said, “do you know somebody in Operations called Charles Lockwood?”

She did not, and she immediately had an awful thought. “Sounds familiar,” she said, trying to breathe normally. “Why?”

“I got a memo from payroll this morning, saying Lockwood is three weeks behind on his time sheets, and they won’t pay him, until he’s up-to-date. That’s what troubles me.”

“What’s that, Hugh?”

“If he’s turning in time sheets, that means he’s executive level, not just a clerical worker, and I swear, I know every mother’s son at the executive level who works for me.”

Irene walked forward and held out her hand. “Give me the memo,” she said. “I’ll sort it out.”

“Thank you,” he said, handing it over. English hated dealing with any administrative matter.

Irene took a deep breath; she might as well get it over with, she thought. “Hugh, have you got a second?”

“Sure. Take a pew.” He waved her to a chair.

She took off her coat and dumped it on the other chair, then sat down. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” she said, “and I’ve decided to put in for retirement.”

English blinked in surprise. “How long have you got in?” he asked.

“Twenty-seven years.”

“Then you’re fully vested in your pension, I guess.”

“I guess I am.”

English sat back in his chair. “Irene, I just can’t imagine the place without you. I mean, you’ve been in this office with me for as long as I’ve occupied this chair, and we knew each other a long time before that, didn’t we?”

“Yes, we did, Hugh. Better than twenty years, anyway.”

“I’ll probably have to assign two people to do your job.”

“Thank you, Hugh, but my shoes won’t be all that hard to fill.”

“I’m not going to count on that. What are you going to do with yourself?”

“Funny you should mention that; I was on the Internet last night, looking at houses in the Caribbean.”

“Where in the Caribbean?”

“I’ve heard good things about St. Thomas and St. Barts.”

“St. Thomas was looking overgrown, last time I was there,” English said, “but St. Barts is very nice.”

“It seems a bit more expensive than the other islands, but I’ll take a harder look at it.”

“Twenty-seven years,” English said, shaking his head. “I’m coming up on thirty, myself. It’s probably time I got out of here, too.”

“I can’t see you in retirement, Hugh.”

“Well, it’s become clear that I’m never going to get the top job, unless Kate Rule Lee drops dead, and I’m not going to count on that. When do you want to go?”

“I guess as soon as I can break somebody in,” she said.

“You got some ideas on who that might be?”