Either way, Don Orr won.
Either way, he was still an American.
FIVE
When is a postal carrier not a postal carrier? That was what Ed March had asked his old friend Darrell McCaskey to help him find out.
The two men had been college roommates at the University of Miami. While McCaskey was recruited by the FBI, March was asked to become a police officer with the U.S. Postal Service. For over ten years, March’s beat had been child pornography. Then the Internet virtually ended that use of the mails. He was shifted to Homeland Security activities where most of his time was spent doing the ABCs — alien background checks — of individuals who regularly sent packages to nations that sponsored terrorism. March was currently involved in a stakeout involving a postal carrier who was suspected of helping a certain individual bypass the ABC system by collecting packages from a specific drop box and bringing them directly to the overseas pouches. These were believed to contain materials that could not be sent via E-mail attachments: stolen documents, currency, and possibly computer components.
Right now, March did not want the mailer. He wanted the carrier so he could confiscate the truck before the package could be off-loaded. If the address on the parcel inside was the same that had been found in a terrorist hut in Gunong Tahan, the carrier would be persuaded to turn future packages over to the CIA before they were sent overseas.
March had backup a block away in an unmarked car, but he needed McCaskey to tell him whether he was being watched while he watched the mailbox and carrier. March had been in this location for several days, waiting for another drop-off. It was not uncommon for spies and terrorists to work in partnership with observers. These persons kept a careful eye on nationals in their employ. As often as not, nationals turned out to be double agents. Especially when they had been found out.
Posing as a flag vendor with a small white cart, March was standing on the corner of Constitution Avenue. Mailboxes were potential receptacles for bombs, and this was one of the few locations the USPS had left operational. The postal service police believed that the mailer came over the Potomac from Arlington and dropped it off on his way to work at the Embassy of Malaysia on Massachusetts Avenue. That was ascertained by following the staff members home and seeing who passed this way. There were two potential targets.
One of them had mailed a package at the box forty minutes earlier.
McCaskey was sitting cross-legged on a small bench closer to the Lincoln Memorial. Early-morning tourists and joggers moved by in all directions. McCaskey noticed them all to see if any came by again. That could mean they were watching the mailbox, looking for enemy recon. McCaskey also watched for the glint of binoculars or anyone who had a good eye line with the box.
In McCaskey’s hand was one of the greatest surveillance props ever invented: the cell phone. A user had to concentrate in order to hear, so passers-by assumed the caller did not see them. Pickpockets loved cell phones for that reason. McCaskey missed nothing, even as he pretended to talk to his wife, Maria. In fact, former Interpol agent Maria Corneja-McCaskey was sitting beside him on the bench. That irony was not lost on either of them. McCaskey had always feared that Maria was too wedded to intelligence work to have time for a marriage. That was the problem with McCaskey’s first marriage. He had married a fellow FBI agent, Bonnie Edwards, and had three kids with her. Bonnie quit to be a full-time mother, and McCaskey took a promotion to unit chief in Dallas to pick up the financial slack. A subsequent promotion took him to D.C., which was good for McCaskey but not for the family. In the end, after eight years of marriage, the McCaskeys agreed to a divorce. The children visited their father during school vacations, and McCaskey went to see them whenever he could get away. They lived outside of Dallas, where Bonnie had married an oil executive with three kids. She seemed to like her very Brady life.
The dueling careers had come between McCaskey and Maria once, when they first met in her native Spain. They had reconnected when McCaskey was on a mission in Madrid. Maria had agreed to give it up and move to Washington.
Now his beautiful, dark-haired wife was helping him with a stakeout. She woke up smirking. Though Maria was in character now, pretending to be an artist sketching the Memorial in pastel, the bemused look was still there.
“Honey, I am so incredibly bad at having these fake conversations,” he said into the deactivated phone. “Pausing and pretending to listen to someone.” He paused and pretended to listen. “Then laughing disarmingly.” He chuckled. “I’d rather be in a firefight.”
“You may have an opportunity,” Maria said from the side of her mouth. “Three o’clock, nanny with a stroller.”
McCaskey glanced over as the young woman passed. She had Asian features. She was dressed in a Georgetown University sweatshirt and jeans and was absently rocking a charcoal-colored Maclaren stroller with a hood.
“I don’t think so,” McCaskey said.
“Darrell, there’s no baby in the stroller,” Maria said. She put the ivory-colored chalk back in the wooden carrying case.
“I know,” he replied, still pretending to talk in the phone. “There’s a shopping bag in the stroller. It’s probably got everything she owns. Look at the laces of her Adidas. Broken and knotted, hole on one side. The foam handle of the stroller is torn. It was probably discarded. She’s homeless.”
“Or pretending to be,” Maria said as she selected a navy blue stick to lay in shadows.
“It’s possible,” McCaskey agreed. He looked toward the lawn beyond the path. “I’m more concerned about the guy sitting on the grass with the laptop.”
“The man in the windbreaker?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Maria asked. “His back is to the mailbox.”
“But the web cam is not,” McCaskey said. “He could be teleconferencing, or he could be watching the mailbox.”
Just then the mail carrier pulled up in his small local-haul truck. A lanky, blond-haired young man emerged carrying a white plastic bin and stepped over to the mailbox. McCaskey continued to talk on the phone as March moved his cart so he was closer to the mail truck. The carrier did not seem to notice. He knelt, opened the front panel with a key from the ring on his belt, and slowly scooped the contents into the container. He appeared to be looking for something. When he found it, he swept the rest of the mail in quickly and shut the box. Evidently, that was all March needed. He stepped from his cart and intercepted the mail carrier. McCaskey saw March show the carrier his badge, but he could not hear what was being said. The carrier made a disbelieving, then angry face and shook his head. March was insistent as he got on his cell phone and made a call. He was summoning his backup.
The mail carrier moved toward the truck, still holding the bin. March grabbed his arm and said something.
“Hey, will someone call a cop!” the carrier shouted.
The man with the laptop turned. So did the homeless woman. The two of them started to rise.
“Are both of them in on this?” Maria said.
“I don’t know,” her husband said. “Stay here.” He got up and walked toward them. He was still holding the phone to his ear.
The man with the laptop had folded it away, slipped it into a shoulder bag, and also walked toward the mail truck. The woman was quickly pushing her stroller toward March. Other people stopped and watched from a distance.