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“So I saw.”
“I don’t mean to sound like some judgmental prick, but you actually enjoy going to those kinds of places? What is it? Some kind of Peeping Tom jolt, look but don’t touch, the lonely guy’s masturbatory fantasy in living color?”
“I guess it beats sitting around watching sitcoms every night.”
“Suppose there was a time I did, too.” Evans grunted, Lyons thinking he could almost read the man’s thoughts regarding another chance encounter if he hadn’t been there ready to tear the place apart. Whatever he was chewing over, the anger faded from his eyes. “You, uh, you doing anything special the next couple of days?”
“You’re thinking you’d like me to pick up where you left off tonight.”
“That’s what I’m asking. Maybe you can make some inroads, talk to Susie, at least steer me in the right direction if you learn something. Right now, with a load on, and being too close to it, I’m no good to anybody.”
“I agree, but when I start something, I like to finish it my way, my terms.”
Lyons wished the night had turned out the way he’d originally envisioned, Evans’s world, safe and tucked in back in Idaho, but here he was, boxed in the spotlight. He debated the matter, wanted to tell the man he was on his own, but a combo of chivalry, guilt and a vague sense of being a good guy got the better of him.
“If I do,” he told Evans. “I can’t make any promises you’ll get whatever the end result you want. And, if I do, I have a couple of conditions, no questions, no tirades, no strings. You don’t like what I find, go off half cocked, you’re on your own. Don’t even call me for bail money.”
“Whatever they are, I’ll live with the terms. And I’ll pay you whatever you think is right for your time and trouble.”
“This isn’t the ‘Rockford Files.’ I don’t need your money. Consider this returning a favor for when you took a bullet for me.”
“Fair enough. So, you’ll help?”
“Give me a second,” Lyons said, juggling cell phone and the wheel as he turned them onto Key Bridge, a Volvo cutting him off with horn blasting and the middle-finger salute shot his way.
Seven, eight trills, Lyons gnashing his teeth over the delay. Then he heard Schwarz come on, his teammate forced to nearly shout over a background score for a shoot-’em-up he knew they’d been watching every time it came on Cinemax and HBO.
“This better be good, Carl.”
“I knew it! I can hear your five Elvis impersonators shooting up the Riviera Casino clear across goddamn Key Bridge. How many times you two clowns need to watch 3000 Miles to Graceland? Figure by now you must know every word of dialogue by heart. It’s becoming kind of obsessive-compulsive, don’t you think?”
“I’m partial to the Kurt Russell part. I see you as that psychopath, Murphy, especially when you go down in a hail of SWAT bullets at the end, bleeding out to ‘I Did It My Way.’”
“You’re going to see my foot up your ass if you don’t turn off the TV and look alive! I’m bringing up company.”
“I bet you’ve been out trolling the nudie bars. I sure hope you don’t come through the door with just one chippy, me and Pol—”
“It’s a cop I know from the L.A.P.D. We’re going to work—tonight—and I’ll buy you clowns the DVD for Christmas. You can watch 3000 Miles to Graceland all you want but only on your time.”
“You promise?”
Lyons punched off, found Evans treating him to a curious look. “Despite what you just heard, they are professionals.”
HAL BROGNOLA WAS no fan of spook games, intrigue or mystery. Just the same, he was moving in a shadow world this night, prepared to meet a faceless, nameless emissary shipped out by the President of the United States to get the particulars on a brewing but unnamed crisis.
Beyond his public role as a high-ranking federal agent in the United States Department of Justice, he did, however, lead a double life as director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm. Brognola was also the liaison to the President of the United States, the chief executive’s go-to man in the Farm’s world of high-stakes covert operations.
The Man sanctioned nearly all of the Farm’s missions, the dirtiest of wet work against enemies to national security, either of the foreign or homegrown variety. There was direct contact, usually by phone, between Brognola and the President before the starting flag was waved, the utmost protocol of secrecy maintained where it regarded Stony Man Farm and the Justice man’s netherworld role behind the public face.
So he had some reservations about the rendezvous, the normal channels bucked, unknown entities operating as cutouts. The Man had sounded terse, even abrupt, earlier when he’d called him at his Justice Department office on the secured line to begin casting shadows over what Brognola suspected would become a long night melding into even longer and tense days ahead. But if the President—who had everything to lose if the Farm was exposed—trusted the setup, who was he, Brognola figured, to question his judgment? The crisis was either so serious and the President too busy…
Brognola shut down his reservations, got a grip on what was actually normal professional anxiety and paranoia. In his business, reality was rarely as it appeared.
He proceeded across the Mall, vectoring for the Red Castle of the Smithsonian, flanked and dwarfed by the distant dome of the Capitol and the Washington Monument. It was a short walk from the Justice Department building in the Federal Triangle, and a check of his watch showed he was on time. At this late hour, the museums along Jefferson Drive were shut down to the public. No traffic, vehicular or human, in the area, but there had been a series of armed robberies around the Mall lately, which had thinned the herd of after-work walkers and joggers to virtual extinction. Briefcase in hand, Brognola was mindful of the weight of the Glock .45 shouldered beneath his suitcoat, figured there were enough rounds to split the difference between muggers or spooks with malice of heart.
He was unwrapping a cigar when he spotted the trio of black vehicles rolling his way. They parked curbside in front of the Smithsonian. Government plates, black-tinted windows all around, two unmarked sedans sandwiched a limousine. Doors opened and four suits with earpieces got out, scanned the street, the Mall, before one of them beckoned for Brognola to climb into the limo. The sunglasses were a little much, he supposed, figured the shades for intimidating intent.
The big Fed crossed Jefferson, squeezed through the doorway, claimed an empty section of cushy seat beside a minibar. The door closed and Brognola found another pair of sunglasses across the well. He had a full head of coiffed black hair, cashmere coat, but beyond that the guy was nondescript. Another civil servant. Yet there was something in his silence, the way Brognola found himself measured, wishing he could see the emissary’s eyes…
Sunglasses to wingtips, the guy was spook, Brognola concluded.
“Time is short on this one, Mr. Brognola,” Sunglasses said, producing a thick letter-size envelope stamped with Classified-Eyes only and the presidential seal, handing it to the big Fed. “The fate of the free world and a not-so-inconsequential matter of the possible extinction of the human race may have just fallen into your hands.”
“LOVE THE ‘Miami Vice’ look, but don’t you think the sunglasses are overdoing it?”
Lyons pushed the Blues Brothers shades snug up his nose. “What can I say? Your presence is blinding.”
Cop instincts flaring up, he could see her gears mesh, Susie-Candy wondering how to handle him, but already knowing what problem had walked into her life. All of three seconds looking at her, Lyons heard the bullshit radar in his head blipping off the screen, blond bogey at twelve o’clock.
She finally took a seat in the booth across from Lyons, blowing smoke his way, glancing around, then crossing a leg, the strap-on pump going back and forth like a piston. The damsel-in-distress look wasn’t about to aid his cause, but Lyons didn’t plan on staying any longer than it took to get the answers he wanted.
She sipped from a glass of watered-down champagne that Lyons had promised and paid twenty bucks for after slipping a fifty into her garter when she was on stage, shaking it for her coat-and-tie hyenas. A friendly chat, he’d told her, was all he wanted, nursing a beer while she took her sweet time getting over to him, working her platoon of admirers for a few dollars more. Now that she was his for the moment, Lyons felt the resentment and hostility from wannabes—more than likely on the lam from husband and father duties—boring into the side of his head. He wondered how much of her time he could commandeer before she either turned snippy during Q and A or the security kid with the mouth came over to tell Don Ho his money was no good here. He knew he was being watched, every fiber of instinct screaming the softer, kinder approach was probably just a dream.
Lyons gave it a few seconds before he cut to the chase, treated Candy to a smile that would have come from the heart under other circumstances. The frilly one-piece Roaring Twenties get-up did little to hide a package Lyons surmised lightened many a fat wallet, but the painted face was already showing wear and tear around the eyes from all-night shenanigans. He figured a few more years of life in the fast lane and she’d look every bit the jaded, used-up whore she was acting. Well, he was no one to judge character flaws, and so far he was unmolested by the security quartet. Still, something felt wrong, a lurking menace in the air, and he wondered who was about to do the fishing. A check of his six, and the guy he figured for either the manager or the owner still had the evil eye aimed his way, ready to march out the troops.
“Who’s the guy over there with the bad perm, looking all mean and surly?”
“The owner.”
The way she answered, sure she was in control, Lyons knew he was on the clock. He produced the photo Evans had given him, laid it on the table. It was a shot of the daughter in the saddle of her horse back at the ranch. She appeared relaxed, content enough in the photo, a beauty like Evans claimed, but there was something forced in the expression that told Lyons she wasn’t the happiest camper in Idaho. Chalk it up to youthful disillusionment maybe, but Lyons had seen something more than suppressed rebellion. The truth was, he knew if he discovered Evans had lied about any abuse, he was prepared to walk away. These days, he thought, there was an epidemic of children being savaged, scarred for life by adults, if they weren’t outright murdered. In all good conscience he knew he wouldn’t be a party to returning Evans’s daughter to a torture chamber of psychological and physical abuse if that happened to be the case.
“Tell me where I can find Dee-Dee.”
She laughed, nervous eyes darting around, body language a stone wall of defiance.
“You think this is funny, Susie? She’s sixteen, that by itself means I could get this place shut down, then you’d be out of a job, on the street, probably hooking, unless you’re working the johnson on someone’s husband, or pimping for some scumbag takes your money for crack.”
“Kiss my ass.”
“I’ll take a rain check.”
Lyons read the sudden fear in her eyes, but sensed it wasn’t about being unemployed as she made another roving search of the crowd.
“Look at me, Susie.”
She did, the cigarette trembling in her hand. “Maybe she doesn’t want to be found.”
“Maybe. If that’s true, why?”
She blew smoke in his face. “You’re a cop, like her old man. I can tell, all cops have this look…”
“Was a cop. I’m not interested in your psychoanalysis of a job I’m sure you’ve ever only been on the wrong side of.”
“Touché. So, you a friend of his? A private detective? What?”
“I’m just some guy he used to know and he asked a favor.”
She grunted, choosing her words. “Loneliness.”
“What?”
Lyons watched as she paused, thought about something, the tough-street act almost fading away. “Look, she’s a sweet kid, I like her, I’m her only real friend. All she needed was a friend, you know.”
“Who doesn’t.”
“You want some answers, Miami, listen.” Another look past Lyons, then she went on. “Dee-Dee was always kind of sad. She spent most of her time alone, but it was more than me feeling sorry for her. She has what I call a special heart, an innocence she deserves to keep, something I lost a long time ago.”
“Oh, I’m sure she’ll stay special working here.”
“It’s all an act, Miami. It isn’t some free-for-all whoring you might think, like hand jobs under the table.”
“Girl has to make a living, that it?”
“Dee-Dee deserves a lot more out of life than small-town Nowhere, U.S.A., and she knew it. How’s that for psychoanalysis?”
“And so you come along and offer her the Promised Land.”
She ignored the remark, went on, “She wrote poems, pretty good ones, and told me how her father didn’t like that. He actually tore them up one day in front of her, told her he wasn’t going to stand by and watch her dream her life away. Might as well called her a nobody. I’d say that’s reason to want to leave home—wouldn’t you?—someone reaches in and rips your soul out. She never wanted to leave Los Angeles in the first place.”
Lyons resisted the tug at his heartstrings, but knew he failed.
“Yeah, there’s a lot you don’t know.”
“Telling me she ran away with you, her mentor, because she missed the big-city lights?”
“If you’re asking did her old man sleep with her, the answer is no. But he’s a drunk, and he can be mean, and he’s a control freak. As far as I know, he never hit her, either.”
“I still have cop’s eyes, Susie. And I’m looking at someone holding back. Keep blowing smoke in my face, but everything about you tells me she’s in trouble. So cut the concerned-mother-hen act and tell me what you know. Now.”
“Listen to me,” she said, her voice lowering to a whisper, Lyons straining to make out her voice as it was drowned by the thunder of rock and roll. She pulled back, Lyons swearing he saw her eyes misting. “I—I made a mistake…you don’t want to know…”
“Wrong. I want to know now more than I did when I came in.”
“I can’t.”
Lyons could almost reach out and touch the wall of fear, her hand shaking as she ground out the smoke, uncrossed her legs. It was a bad move, as Lyons envisioned the cavalry en route, but he reached over, grabbed her arm.
“I’m not leaving until you answer my question.”
“You’re already gone, sport.”
She was breaking away as Lyons heard the voice he’d already put the face to tell her, “Get dressed, and take off. Your VIPs are here.”
“I wasn’t finished.”
“You’re finished, sport, but first me and you are going to have a conversation. Now,” he said, Lyons watching as the Perm settled into the booth, “we can handle this one of two ways…”
CHAPTER TWO
“I see I have your undivided attention.”
Brognola was glancing up from the first series of high-resolution satellite imagery when the cocky grin vanished off sunglasses. The remark, he supposed, was in reference to how intently the big Fed studied photos. Whoever the shadow emissary—CIA, NSA, DIA—Brognola found himself impatient to get on with the brief. He sensed, though, some undercurrent of resentment building the more Sunglasses dawdled, sitting here, inscrutably silent, the watchful Sphinx likewise desiring for a mere civil servant of the Justice Department to know how important he was, a spook holding the key to some divine riddle. A crisis was being dumped in his lap, requiring the immediate resources of the Farm, and Brognola didn’t have time or patience for spook nonsense, nor was he about to explain why he was the man of the hour and Sunglasses was designated the White House gofer. If that’s what he even was, and Brognola didn’t much care.
“I see HAZMAT suits,” Brognola said. “A jungle compound, Asian soldiers. I’ve got what I’m thinking look like poppy fields, fires all over the place, high-resolution photos of corpses, and which, I presume, are being incinerated, presumably killed by some biological or chemical agent. Clearly a contaminated, quarantined area.”
“Clearly. And you presume correct.”
“Do you think you can tell me what I’m looking at in ten words or less and skip the X-Files routine?”
“You are looking at the Kachin State in Burma.”
“Myanmar.”
“Burma, Thailand and Laos, of Golden Triangle infamy, produce over eighty percent of the world’s opium.”
“I’m aware of that. You’re here to talk about the scourge of dope?”
“Production of heroin in Burma alone has quadrupled the past five years, demand—so both the DEA and our intelligence community reports—rising exponentially as various terror organizations use funds from narcotics trafficking to expand their global jihad. Part of the dilemma from our standpoint is the State Law and Order Restoration Council—SLORC—has taken over heroin production from the rebels, making Burma an even more closed society than it previously was. Makes it tough to get operatives on the ground, infiltrate rebel groups sympathetic to the cause of freedom and justice.”
Whose freedom, whose justice? Brognola wondered, feeling his cynical meter shooting up the longer he sat in the presence of Sunglasses. If this was headed where he suspected—dumping his Stony Man warriors inside Myanmar for some protracted jungle war against SLORC-sponsored drug armies—he would send Sunglasses back to the Man, tail tucked between the crack of his silk slacks.
The spook had to have read his look, said, “I say something wrong?”
“I’m assuming you’re not here to enlist my services in the war against drugs?”
The spook cleared his throat, carried on in a voice that bordered condescending. “There are roughly thirty-five known major rebel groups, most of them fighting for independent chunks of real estate or to take back control of the poppy fields. The SLORC isn’t about to let that happen. It appears some form of high-tech genocide is being unleashed on the indigenous Burmese, but we know it wasn’t perpetrated by the SLORC.
“All drug roads may lead to Thailand and Laos, but the real gold at the end of the rainbow may lead to China, the lion that no longer needs to sleep. You have a major gas pipeline under construction in Burma, which may stretch all the way through Thailand to Vietnam, plans for an overseas pipeline reaching clear to Indonesia, the Chinese might even want to get into the act. The SLORC needs money for this task. They need more and bigger guns. Drug money is a fast and easy way to spread the corruption of their military junta around Southeast Asia. If certain situations can be corrected in Burma, the west has a great interest in helping to engineer this international pipeline.
“The SLORC and its drugs and this latest incident are the hurdles. Now, the Chinese have the weapons and the technology for delivering mass death, if the SLORC chooses to lie down with them. The fear is Yangon has either gone high-tech and is seeking, or has acquired weapons of mass destruction. There is a major principal, already known to our intelligence community, who has been looking to trade the technology for WMD but who are also interested in more money generated by narcotics trafficking. Shadows inside shadows, wolves coming to the table in sheep’s clothing, so to speak.”
So much for ten words or less, Brognola thought, perusing the horror show in his hands.
“What crashed in the Kachin was robotic spacecraft,” Sunglasses went on.
“A satellite?”
“The robotic spacecraft was in low earth orbit and was picked up and tracked by the NRO as it reentered Earth’s atmosphere. Deliberate deorbiting, the Kachin, it appears, was chosen as a laboratory, victims the test subjects. The flight path was controlled by computers on Earth, we greatly suspect, but sufficient heat was picked up to tell us it was also using boosters but in reverse thrust. It actually slowed to a near hover, unleashed its payload, by aerosol first then remote-controlled detonation, spreading the whole mess over several square miles. Depending on the weather, contamination could have reached as far as Yangon. From there, cross-border contamination, we don’t know.”
