Стюарт Вудс - Choppy Water

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Enjoying the night air.”

“You’ll freeze your ass off out here.”

“When I get cold, I’ll come inside. What are you doing up?”

“I felt like one of Elroy’s biscuits,” he said. “I’ll sleep better now.”

“Good night, then.”

“Good night.” He went back inside and closed the door behind him.

She waited ten minutes, shivering in the dark, before she went up the hill to see if she’d had any e-mails. She had none, but she typed out one to the e-mail address with her father’s name in it.

Dad, it read. Thank you for your kind gifts of the beautiful china pieces. I’ve put them in just the right spot in my living room. Love, Bess.

If anybody cared to look, there was a pair of china pieces on a bookcase in her apartment’s living room.

Tom Blake sat down at his office desk and checked his iPhone for messages. The one from Bess stood out, and he was relieved to receive it. He switched on his computer and loaded the new tracking software, typing in the serial numbers of each of the trackers.

The map on the screen was of the continental forty-eight states, and at the press of a button, the software zoomed in closer, first to the state of Virginia, then to the location of the two trackers. He keyed in tight on the vehicles until he could see the symbols for the trackers. “Good,” he said aloud to himself.

Then, as he watched, the SUV image began to move. He zoomed out half a mile or so and watched the car’s progress as it drove toward the main road, then made a left turn toward the village a couple of miles away. He watched as the car drove into town and parked. He consulted a map to see that it was in front of a little grocery store. It stayed there for ten minutes or so, then began to move again.

The symbol for the SUV suddenly disappeared from the screen. Something was wrong. He zoomed out to a one-mile scale but could not recover the image. He superimposed the map of the village onto the tracking software and searched the main streets for the tracking symbol. Then, suddenly, it appeared in the lower, left-hand corner of the screen. It seemed to be leaving a gas station. That was it: he had stopped for gas and had been under a canopy for several minutes while he filled his tank.

Tom breathed a sigh of relief and went on with his work, but he left the tracking software on-screen until the vehicle was back in its usual parking spot at Sykes’s compound.

Bess slept fairly late for her, making up the time lost in last evening’s excursion. She missed breakfast, then after lunch climbed the hill again and perched on her favorite rock. Sykes came out of the house once with a pair of binoculars and trained them on her. She smiled and waved at him, then he went back inside.

At dinner, she was alone with Sykes; the others were apparently away from the compound. He turned on the TV for the evening news, and they both watched a story from the network’s White House correspondent.

“The kerfuffle over the broken window at the White House is apparently over. The window has been replaced, and the staffer, who had minor cuts from the glass, is back at work.” She returned the audience to the anchorwoman in the studio.

The anchorwoman continued, “President-elect Holly Barker has been spotted shopping on Madison Avenue in New York. A reporter who caught up with her got this comment.”

They switched to a medium shot of Holly carrying shopping bags, and someone shouted a question at her from off camera.

“It’s hard to campaign and shop at the same time, so I’m making it up today,” Holly said, smiling at the camera.

Sykes switched off the television. He seemed annoyed.

“Had enough of the president-elect?” she asked Sykes.

“Not nearly enough,” Sykes replied grumpily, and then changed the subject.

Tom Blake was at his desk when his secretary buzzed. “Yes?”

“Peg Parsons, on one.”

Tom pressed the button. “Hi, Peg.”

“You sound wary,” she said.

“No, I don’t. I may sound sleepy. I’ve been reading a very boring report.”

“You don’t have to be wary of me, Tom,” she said. “I don’t mind being an occasional piece of ass, but I’m not a home-wrecker.”

“Not intentionally,” he said, “but you have no idea how suspicious Amanda is when your name comes up.”

“Then don’t bring it up,” she said.

“I make a point of not doing that.”

“All right, all right. I have a tip for you. By the way, did your plan work when I published my piece?”

“It seemed to. I can’t really go beyond that.”

“Well, I have something new for you.”

“Shoot.”

“I can’t shoot on the phone. Buy me lunch.”

“That’s dangerous, Peg, for both my case and my ass.”

“Then cover them both, please, but we’ve had word that some of our lines at the paper are tapped, and we’ve been told to be careful what we say.”

“Okay, lunch. But somewhere we won’t be talked about if we’re seen together.”

“All right, we’ll meet in my car at the same spot at Rock Creek Park — at the far end of the parking lot, away from the buildings. One o’clock?”

“Okay, at one.”

“I’ll bring lunch.”

“See you then.” He hung up and buzzed his secretary.

“Yes, sir?”

“I’m supposed to have lunch with Assistant Director Taylor today. Reschedule, will you? Tell him I have to see a source.”

“Is Peg Parsons a source?”

“Don’t you ever mention that name to anyone, understand?”

“Understood. I’ll reschedule with Taylor.” She hung up.

Tom arrived at Rock Creek Park first and parked where he had been told. She was right; that part of the lot was empty.

He switched off the ignition and waited. Two minutes later her little Mercedes parked alongside him, and she got out, carrying a wicker picnic basket. She didn’t approach his car, she just walked into the woods, and he scurried after her.

There was no path, but the forest floor was covered in pine needles, so it was easy going. He began to hear the sound of flowing water, then he found her on a flat rock near the creek, and she was spreading a blanket.

“Hi, there,” she said, opening the hamper and producing sandwiches, coleslaw, and a bottle of chardonnay. She handed him a corkscrew. “The wine is your job.” She waved a hand: “Is this private enough?”

“It would seem so.” He got the bottle open and filled the waxed paper cups she had brought.

She raised her cup. “Bon appétit. This is delicious, if I do say so.”

He took a bite of his sandwich and drank some wine. “So, Peg, what have you got to tell me?”

“You know the group down in Virginia, the white-supremacy guys?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, I now have a source on the inside, one who knows a lot about them.”

“What has he told you?”

“I didn’t say it was a ‘he.’ But for purposes of conversation, we’ll assume the masculine pronoun.”

“Sure.”

“He hasn’t been with them for all that long, but they’re coming to trust him.”

“How did he establish contact?”

“He got a call from a guy named Sykes, then they met.”

“Is he participating in their, ah, adventures?”

“Not yet, but he believes he will be invited along soon. There was an incident with a cell phone, and that slowed things down, but he thinks they’re back on track now. Apparently, the incident at the White House — broken window, injured staffer — was something to do with the group. He said that Sykes apparently thought they had killed Holly Barker, and when he saw her on TV, shopping in New York, he was upset to find she was still alive.”