“Move down the street about fifty yards and wait for me,” he said.
I went inside the store, cleaned myself up in the men’s room, and bought a bottle of water. Fifty yards down the street was a hardware store with a van parked beside it. I sat down between the van and the building to wait. It was completely dark by then so I was difficult to see.
I was massaging my sore wrists six minutes later when a police cruiser drove by. The officer slowed to a crawl passing the convenience store, then turned right and went up the street into the subdivision I had walked out of a few minutes earlier.
CHAPTER SIX TEEN
When Jake Grafton rolled up, I walked briskly to his car. As we left the area we passed another cop on the way in. I motormouthed, told Grafton everything I could think of about the death of the traffic cop and the two men I killed. When I ran down, he asked for the cell phone I had taken from the car. I passed it over and he pocketed it.
“They must have had a beacon in the car you were driving,” he mused. “When you went to the airport, they didn’t have enough people to keep you under constant observation. They must have been pulling in people while we put Dorsey on the plane.”
“If they had made you,” I remarked, “they would have left me dead beside that cop and be on their way to the beach house.”
“Or my apartment in Rosslyn,” Grafton muttered darkly.
I could tell by the way he gripped the wheel that he was really pissed. Which made me feel better. Honestly. I knew Jake Grafton. He had been the military’s go-to guy for a lot of years. I had seen him in action a couple of times myself, and let me tell you, he was the very first man I’d pick when we were choosing sides for anything, be it softball, hand grenades, or World War III.
I must have fallen asleep — in fact, I was exhausted — because I awoke with a start when the car stopped. We were sitting in front of his beach house.
“I want you to go inside and get something to eat, then get some sleep. I’ll keep an eye on things tonight.”
I opened the car door and lifted a leg out. It took effort. I was stiff and sore. “Aren’t you coming in?”
“In a little while. I have some telephone calls to make.”
He drove off while I climbed the steps.
Callie Grafton and Kelly Erlanger looked shocked when they saw me. They were alone in the house — the admiral had dropped his mother at the nursing home where she resided on his way to the airport with Dorsey. Tonight Callie made me a bowl of soup and a sandwich while I took a shower. When I undressed, glass pebbles cascaded onto the floor.
Looking in the mirror, I had to admit, I was a sight. I had two red, swollen, inflamed welts on my face where that guy had smacked me with his pistol. The one along my jaw had bled some. My hands, face, and neck were scratched in dozens of places from flying glass. I also raked some tiny glass fragments from my hair. No wonder I had itched.
Erlanger sat beside me while I ate. Callie hovered nearby. I summarized my adventures, omitting the parts I didn’t even want to think about.
The admiral returned later and took the downstairs couch. He had an old 1911 Colt, which he put on the floor by the couch. The MP-5 was gone — it was in the trunk of the car I had abandoned on the freeway. I inherited the little .38 Dorsey had used to defend her castle. I made sure it was loaded and put it in my pocket. I was getting stiffer by the minute and had to work to climb the stairs to the guest room.
Erlanger was already in the bed with the lights out.
I undressed and crawled between the sheets. She snuggled right up to me. She was warm, smelled good, and settled right in with her head on my shoulder.
I thought the romantic side of our relationship could use some work, but I was too tired that evening. That must have been the last thought I had before I dropped off to sleep.
When I awoke the next morning the sky was gray. Kelly was still asleep, curled up against me, so I started to get out of bed. She wrapped her arms around me and gave me a big hug, then let me go.
I wasn’t sure what it all meant. Maybe we were working up to something, or maybe I was a substitute for the teddy bear she had left at home.
Jake Grafton already had coffee made when I came downstairs. He was sitting at the kitchen table, his Colt lying beside his coffee cup, watching a cable news show.
“You’re making quite a splash in law enforcement circles,” he said, eyeing me to gauge my reaction. “Somehow you’re the bad guy who killed all those folks at the safe house, murdered those guys at Willie Varner’s, and, I have no doubt, killed that cop and those two other guys last night.”
What a way to start a morning! “Well, I figured that,” I admitted. “Death row, here I come. I’m going to have to get a hobby, something I can do in a small room.” At least the coffee was hot. “Sarah Houston tell you all that?”
He nodded. “She was full of information. One of the tidbits I thought would interest you is the fact that Mikhail Goncharov may still be alive.”
I decided the coffee needed milk and got some from the refrigerator. Then I sat down across the table from him.
“The safe house is in Pocahontas County, West Virginia. The county sheriff passed a set of prints to the FBI that they have been unable to identify,” he continued. “The powers that be haven’t made the connection between these prints and the people at the CIA safe house, but Sarah thought it curious. The prints of every person the CIA had there last Monday were on file. Goncharov’s prints weren’t, of course, because he has never been fingerprinted by any American agency.”
“Where is this person?”
“You’ll need to see the sheriff.”
“Have they put me in the crime computer?”
“Yes. On a national security warrant, arrest and hold. No charges listed.”
“Terrific.” I thought about that for a moment, then said, “If it is Goncharov, he only speaks Russian.”
“Take Erlanger with you.”
We discussed it. He agreed to rent a car this morning for me so it wouldn’t appear in my name if anyone ran a computer check at the car rental companies.
“What about the phone number on that cell phone I gave you last night?”
“Belongs to a Dell Royston.”
I wasn’t as stiff this morning as I was last night, but I still felt as if I had been run over by something big. I worked on the soreness in my shoulders as I tried to recall where I had heard Royston’s name.
“Wasn’t he some big weenie at the White House?”
Grafton nodded a fraction of a millimeter. “He was chief of staff,” he said. “Left three months ago. He’s running the president’s reelection campaign, I think.”
“He was the asshole I shouted at on the telephone last night?”
“Perhaps.”
“Those numbers I gave you from those other two phones?”
“Don’t think you’d recognize the names. Sarah is working them.”
“So what’s going down?”
Grafton got up and went to the window. He looked out, then turned to face me and leaned against the sink. “Something was in those files. Six of the seven suitcases may be ashes, yet Goncharov may remember something.”
“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not quite following you.”
“Something that connects someone at the White House with the KGB or the foreign intelligence service.”
I stared. “Naw.”
“Someone really high up in government,” Jake Grafton said, tugging at his nose. “Someone with the power to make things happen.”