They got up, went over, and boarded the bus. “That’s us,” Suzy told him. “Want to see our IDs?”
The kid laughed. “Naw. Too much of that now. Just take a seat. I got a long run here.”
They wound up, down, around and through the woodlands, often picking up people and dropping others off. Once they passed a gatehouse and Sam whispered to Suzy, “Look! That’s Camp David!”
She stared at the sign and at the strange network of walls, fences, and sophisticated electronics detection gear atop them. It was Camp David; they were passing right by the getaway White House.
“Boy! How I’d like to spray some pixie dust in this neighborhood!” Suzy breathed. For once Sam agreed with her. If the President were in, he suspected, millions of Americans would applaud him for it.
They finally rolled into Thurmont, and the bus driver stopped near a small parking area now crowded with official cars.
“I was told to tell you that the keys were in it,” the kid said. They got off and he rumbled off. They stared after him for a minute. “Do you think he knew what the hell he was doing?” Suzy wondered.
“I doubt it,” Sam replied. “Just asked to do a favor, I think. We’ll never know for sure.”
They started looking over the dozen or so cars. Six were State Police cars and they found one, a brown plainclothes-type vehicle with a flasher that popped up through a roof opening. It had the keys in it.
They got in. Sam decided to drive, and he turned to her. “So where do we drive to?” he asked her.
She rooted around the glove compartment and other places but found nothing. She shrugged. “Start the car. Maybe there’s something…”
He started the car and the police radio sprang to life, startling them. They were now at a loss as to what to do next, and sat there for a minute or so, wondering. A uniformed man looking like state troopers of all states had looked since they were invented came out of a store, looked over, stared, then started running for them.
“Oh, oh,” Sam muttered. “Wrong car, maybe?”
Suzy looked around. There was a shotgun in a case in the door, and she reached for it. The trooper was there first, immediately saw her fumbling for the shotgun, and drew his revolver.
“Okay. Don’t make a move,” he told them. “Get out of the car and spread ’em!”
They had no choice. Sam had the sinking feeling that this was the ironic ending to their spy-novel odyssey. All this to get pinched in the wrong car. He cursed the spy-masters inwardly, remembering Joe’s admonition: keep it simple. They had gotten so cloak-and-dagger they’d gotten tripped up.
Suzy was different. “Wait a minute!” she told the trooper. “I’m Sergeant Fearing and this is Corporal Woods. We’re working for the same people you are. Check our IDs!”
The trooper looked dubious. He pulled Sam’s wallet from his hip pocket and flashed it open. Then he carefully got Suzy’s.
A police van pulled up, driven by a trooper who looked like the first’s brother. The side door was unlocked, pulled back, and revealed a bench seat and wrist and leg irons in an inset cast-iron cage. The two troopers had them exceptionally covered, and got help from a couple more. Despite Suzy’s protests they were both placed in the leg irons in the van and the door was slammed shut.
The van lurched into motion.
TWENTY
John Braden was nervous. He’d had to use his real ID to get Sandra O’Connell from the RCMP ahead of the Buffalo office; he was now very hot and he knew it. There had been very little choice in the matter, though; when the RCMP request for information had been transmitted to Washington, it went through a long series of chains of command and, at one point, came up on more than Edelman’s computer. Braden had gotten the call with very strict orders: get there ahead of the Buffalo office or else. With the aid of a helicopter and direct information, he’d managed it, but he had no sense of victory.
Just a hundred kilometers or so southwest of Buffalo were a series of small islands in Lake Erie. The helicopter put down on one long enough to get Braden and O’Connell off, then took off again.
Sandra O’Connell still had no idea that she hadn’t been rescued. She stood there on the island watching dawn come up and wondered why she was there.
“This is what, in the FBI, is known as a ‘safe’ house,” Braden explained, and it was the truth. “That means the place has a reputable non-government cover and an official owner who pays property taxes and uses it for recreation. Nothing odd or unusual, just an old family resort gone to seed. Nobody can be traced here, and only inspectors and above can even find out where it is, and then only on a need to know basis. No computer files, nothing. A small list. It’s the kind of place we take witnesses against big crime figures to hide ’em out, and to prepare them for new identities.”
She looked around. She was feeling much better, more in control. Things were coming easier for now, and she felt that she was working out the aftereffects of the drug.
“But why am I here?” she persisted.
He sighed. “Dr. O’Connell, somebody had you snatched. Somebody really high up. That somebody now knows that you’re alive, that you’ve escaped from Martha’s Lake VA Hospital, that your story is now on file with the RCMP. They didn’t want to kill you, you know. Just keep you out of the action until whatever they want to do gets done. Now they probably would.”
She accepted that, and they walked up to the house.
It looked old, semi-Victorian, and not in very good repair. It was sheltered from view from the lake, but you could tell it was there, the upper story roof peeking through the trees.
The place was a lot nicer inside. Nice rugs, early American furniture, a modern kitchen and a large number of neatly made bedrooms. The place had at one time been a resort; the kitchen and dining room were truly huge, and the living room could seat almost two dozen people.
There was a staff, too. An ordinary looking bunch of what appeared to be hotel-like personnel, except that they all obviously wore pistols. Sandra guessed that there were a half-dozen total, four big men and two women with strong, serious faces, all no more than in their late twenties.
“You’re the only guest at the moment,” Braden told her. “You go upstairs, take a shower, freshen up, whatever you want, before we have a big breakfast. Meg, there, is close to your size I think, at least for casual wear.” He called to the women. “Hey! Meg! See if you can find something to fit our guest.”
The woman smiled, nodded, and said, “Follow me,” to Sandra O’Connell. She followed the woman up the big old oaken staircase.
Braden walked back into the living room, then to the dining room, where he spotted one of the men. “Alton!” he said.
“Sir?”
“I’m going into the office and call in. You make sure she’s watched at all times.”
The big man nodded. “We’re well prepared. You know that.”
Braden should have felt secure and satisfied, but he couldn’t. This prisoner had gotten away from them once, and now his career was going up the creek because of her.
A small den was off the dining room. He entered, closed the door, and went to a phone on a desk there. He picked up the receiver and dialed. One-500-555-2323.
There was a click and a ring, then silence. “Braden,” he said into it, hung up the phone, and waited.
The phone rang inside of a minute. He picked it up anxiously.
“Braden? You have her?” asked a man’s voice on the other end.
“Oh, yes, sir. Tight as a drum. She still thinks she’s been rescued. Want us to just wipe her?”
There was silence for a moment, as if the man on the other end were thinking hard. Finally he said, “No, not exactly, anyway. We have the medical information from Diefenbaker, as much as they did, anyway. Is she improved?”