Gordon Kent - Hostile Contact

He stopped on the street, lit a cigarette from a nifty gas lighter with a serious torchlight that he had picked up at the airport. You could solder with the damn thing, and that could have its uses. Or you could burn someone’s eyes out.

Two cab rides and three bars later, he was getting ready to make his phone call, on his way to start the process by which he would kill the men who had killed George Shreed.

One more stop, he told himself. For old time’s sake.

And, of course, for caution’s sake, because there always just might be that watcher who needed to be convinced that he was bar-crawling and not running an op.

Suburban Virginia.

Alan greeted his wife at the door with a kiss and a suddenly urgent embrace. She leaned back in his arms and looked at his eyes and saw something that made her grab him and squeeze him hard. They stood there, holding each other, rocking, and she said, “Something good happened, right?”

He laughed, a sound she hadn’t heard in a while, and he said, “I went to Mike’s office to do some work. He got a new case—it’s interesting, there’s something in it for me, maybe.”

She was still in her flight suit. She had been out at Pax River, putting in her hours in the T-84 as she transited from choppers to fixed-wing. Holding her, seeing the sudden brightness in her eyes, he understood her misery of the past two weeks, never knowing what she would come home to. “I’m so sorry,” he said.

“No, no—”

“Yes, yes.” The dog pushed between them then and they both laughed and he pulled her into the house. “I had to leave Dukas early to get Mikey at school; no problem, but Dukas has this case, this crate of stuff! A case, something they dumped on him from the Agency because they can’t hack it but I think we can; there’s this comm plan in it; it doesn’t make sense, but—I’m babbling, right?”

She laughed. “Right.” She kissed him. “Keep babbling; it’s nice.”

“I’m getting dinner.”

“I smell it. Risotto with white beans, garlic bread, frozen peas, and a salad, right?”

“I invited Mike for dinner.”

That took a beat for her to absorb, sobering her, and she smiled too brightly and said, “Great!”

“To talk about the case,” he said.

“Great!” She headed for the stairs. “I’ll just change into something glamorous.”

Half an hour later, Dukas was there with an attaché and a cell phone, which he dumped on the battered coffee table. He kissed Rose. “Hey, Gorgeous, you’re breathtaking.”

“Did you bring the comm plan?” Alan shouted from the kitchen.

“Like you asked, yes, yes, yes! I always do what I’m told.” He glanced toward the kitchen and lowered his voice still further. “This okay with you, babe?”

“If it makes him this cheerful, God, yes!”

“He’s a little manic,” Dukas murmured.

“I’ll take manic,” she said. “He’s so down when he’s not in things.”

Dukas looked toward the kitchen again. “I used to think it was just, you know, type A behavior. But now I realize he always has to be proving something. To himself.” He lowered himself into an upholstered chair. “You know the difference between you two? You’ve got a plan, an ambition—you’re going to be an astronaut. You’ve built a career around it. He doesn’t have a plan. He just has to— go. ” Dukas looked up at her. “What’s the matter with him?”

Alan shouted from the kitchen, “You talking about me out there?” He appeared in the doorway, grinning. “Speak up, or I’ll think you’re analyzing me.” They stared at him a little guiltily, and the dog got up and sat there looking at him, too, and they all began to laugh.

Jakarta.

“Hey, Meester?” the voice said. Jerry whirled; that hand was awfully close to his pistol.

“Back off, bud.” Jerry glared at the boy, but the boy, half Jerry’s size and weight, held his ground.

“You memba?” He pointed up at a large sign in Dutch and English, Dutch still first, because this place went way back. ANHANGER ENKEL, MEMBERS ONLY.

“I was a member here when your mom still worked here, bud.” Jerry leaned forward . “Asrama pekerja? ”

Malay was clearly not his mother tongue, but the boy smiled and nodded.

“Go get the missus, then, bud.” Jerry waved his hand, palm down, the fingers snapping open, like the locals—dismissed, the gesture meant. Then he turned and walked to the huge teak bar, forty-five feet long and carved from a single tree. He waved to the bartender, a slight youth in a clean white shirt. There weren’t many customers, at least in the bar; the rooms upstairs could be full to bursting and you’d never know. George Shreed had waited for him in the spy’s seat, there next to the alcove, a private booth invisible from the door.

“Meester?” It was the boy from the alcove.

“Hey, bud, we’re done, you and me.”

“You memba?” The boy was insistent, and it reminded Jerry of all the time and money he had spent here. He deserved better.

“Go get the missus. You hear me, sport? The missus? Before I bop you one, okay?” He wondered if they had gone to membership cards. Had it really been so long since he was here? Maybe they had fucking plastic IDs with your photo. He felt someone enter silently behind him, back by the alcove, and he turned to see Hilda, the handsomest of the western blondes of his own day, coming through the door in sensible business attire—not what she’d worn back then, but still attractive.

“Jerry, darling.”

“Hilda. Aren’t you still too young to be trusted with the keys?”

She laughed; she had natural lines at her eyes and mouth that meant she’d disdained surgery, but she looked good. Really good. “This man is a member. An old member who gets anything he wants, mengerti ?”

“ Yaas, majikan. ”

“Drink with me?”

“I can’t—I’m working.”

He looked at her and winked. “You were too good for that sort of thing when we were twenty years younger. The missus never made you oblige the customers.”

“But I’m the missus, now, and I have books to do. Come back—come back tomorrow and I’ll drink with you.”

“I might have to do that, Hilda.” He smiled, gulped the rest of his gin and tonic, disappointed at one level, happy to be on with the job at another.

Jerry gave her something like a salute. She had poise, like a runway model; maybe she had been a runway model before she crashed in Jakarta. He didn’t really know her, but he liked that she remembered him. Whores and spies; the oldest profession and the next oldest, or so the joke ran. He stopped in the alcove, still smiling because she had remembered him.

Aboard USS Thomas Jefferson.

Rafe Rafehausen pulled a stack of paper toward him, read again the paper on top, and then said, “Get me Admiral Pilchard at LantFleet. What the hell time is it there—? Yeah, you might catch him—try, try.” He took the next paper off the stack and started to read, rubbing his eyes and wondering if they’d last through the reams of reading on this cruise, thinking, Jesus, next I’ll need glasses, acutely aware again that his squadron years were over. He tried to concentrate on VF-105’s morale self-study and was relieved when a phone was shoved toward him and the lieutenant-commander said, “Admiral Pilchard.”

Rafehausen threw himself back in the chair. “Sir! Captain Rafehausen, CAG on the—Yes, sir.” He grinned. “Nice of you to remember. Unh, kind of a personal matter, sir. If I say the name ‘Al Craik,’ will you—? Yes, sir, that’s the one.” He nodded his head as he listened. Pilchard was Craik’s self-appointed “sea daddy,” a kind of naval mentor and enabler. He swung, Rafe knew, between thinking that Craik was God’s little crackerjack prize and that he was a dangerously loose cannon, but he’d concern himself with Craik’s welfare if it was threatened. Right now, he was in the loose-cannon phase, and Rafehausen winced at the admiral’s sour tone. When the admiral had finished reviewing Craik’s recent performance, Rafehausen said, “He’s going nuts onshore and he needs something. I can’t take him back here yet—med officers won’t allow it. If there’s something he could do—”