Abruptly, the nearest rear door opened and a broad-shouldered man with big, craggy features emerged to hold the door, gesture and say in accentless Standard American English, “your car may well be an hour getting here, Mr. Bedford, and it looks like it may rain. Won’t you share my car to your hotel?”
More and still more vehicles of all conceivable descriptions had joined the growing line behind the halted limo. Regardless of the almost solid line of traffic passing in fits and starts along the two outer lanes, vehicle after vehicle of the stalled lane was endeavoring to worm its way in among those still moving at all, their attempts accompanied by the sounds of still more screechings and honkings and shouts and the impacts of metal on metal now and then.
As Bedford stood and stared at his supposed benefactor, an utter stranger to him, he saw a bicycle messenger zip up between the halted line and the moving lane of vehicles. Obviously a young man who expected to die quite young, he thought.
A police traffic copter suddenly swooped in from somewhere behind; so low was the aircraft that only by dint of flattening himself against one of the flanking blocks of concrete did Bedford keep his feet in the powerful propwash.
The craft banked around and came back over, thankfully not so low on this pass, its loudspeaker booming, “DS Limo BU-20560-ND, you are blocking traffic. Resume forward movement at once, please. You must make another pass for your passengers. This is an urgent order. Move at once.”
Bedford felt a tentative touch on his elbow and a voice to his mar said, “Mr. Bedford, sir, you better get in; ’less you do, the car’ll have to go ’round agin.”
Turning slightly. Bedford said, “Sergeant, this is not Senator Bedford’s car, not the one he ordered for me, nor is this man any member of his staff.”
“Is that so, sir?” said the sergeant, stepping past him in the direction of the halted limo and standing man. “And it ain’t no car I recanize, either, come to think of it. A’right, mister, lets see some ID, and damn quick-like, too.”
Making a movement toward one of the breast pockets of his dark suit coat, the standing man, smiling affably all the while, suddenly snapped his fingers, nodded wordlessly, then bent as if he might be reaching for something inside the rear compartment of the limo. But then, abruptly, he had stepped fully inside and slammed the door behind him, and the long vehicle was moving as fast as the traffic conditions would allow.
Pulling a communicator unit from his belt, the sergeant read off the numbers and letters stenciled on the rear of the limo’s trunk as well as those on its license plate. After a moment, he thumbed up the screen protector, read what appeared on it, then whistled soundlessly.
“Mr. Bedford, sir, I’m goin’ to have to ask you to come back inside with me, to our headquarters, downstairs. I think you just was about to be snatched by somebody for some reason, ’cause them D.C. vehicle numbers is s’posed to be on a five-ton truck and them Diplomatic Corps license plates was not an hour ago stole from the Thai Embassy along of the Toyota car they was on.”
It all took some time. Senator Bedford was obliged to render his personal assurances in writing and seven copies worth of it to the effect that his bona fide blood nephew, James Bedford, was of sound mind, reliable judgment, and even temperament and was fully trained and proficient with firearms before the federal permit could be issued on a priority basis. Only when the card actually emerged from out of the machine in the building guardroom was he allowed to give James physical possession of the stainless PPK .380 caliber pistol and its two magazines of cartridges to stow in the shoulder harness under his coat.
With the guardroom officer’s permission, he and his nephew were allowed to use one of the “safe rooms” of the facility—a room completely unmonitored by any source or agency, fully shielded against any sort of outside intrusion and constantly checked around the clock, every day, lest it be rendered unsafe.
Inside, Taylor Bedford threw his arms about his nephew and fiercely hugged him, saying, “God damn, boy. I’m glad you didn’t just clamber into that dammed car like too many other trusting souls might’ve done. How good a look did you get at the man who got out, eh? Did he speak with an accent? Could you tell what kind of accent it was?”
James shook his head. “No, Uncle Taylor, I think that’s what made me suspicious, too; he had no accent at all, not even any regional patterns or inflections, he sounded just like a newscaster. How did he look? Oh, average height, but with broad, thick shoulders. The only things remarkable about his face were that he had big features and fairly wide cheekbones, a deep cleft in the chin and what looked like a short, sanded scar to the left side of it. He wore a dark suit, white shirt, tie of some subdued hue, shiny shoes; the clothes were American cut. I think his eyes were blue, his hair was brown and parted to the right, his face had a very light tan where glasses hadn’t covered it, and that’s about all I recall … oh, except that he was missing the first joint on the middle finger of his right hand. I told it all to that lieutenant out there before you got down here.”
He paused, then asked, “You really think someone was trying to kidnap me for ransom?”
The senator shrugged, rubbed his forehead furiously with the heels of both hands, then shook his mane back into place before answering with another shrug. “Oh, hell, boy, it’s possible, you know that as well as I do. But probable? No. In some backwater of another country, maybe, just maybe, but not smack in the middle of D.C., not in this day and time, no way.
“What did the man say, James, can you recall that?”
The younger Bedford closed his eyes, thought, then said slowly, “ ‘Mr. Bedford, your car may be as much as an hour getting here and it looks as if … no, it looks like it may rain. Please share my car as far as your hotel.’ Or something like that. I think.”
The senator nodded, grim-faced. “Clearly, then, the bastard was completely aware that I had rung up Sloan to come for you, knew what you looked like and knew that you would be bound for a hotel at which you had already booked a room. As I told you earlier, upstairs in my so-called private office, boy, every place in the whole district and beyond has become a fishbowl, a goddam sieve, every place except the few rooms like this one … and it is always just a matter of time before technology advances another notch or two and compromises even them. It—”
There was a knock on the outer door. The senator unlocked and opened the inner door, then unlocked the outer. There was a whisper that James could not hear, and without a word, his uncle went out, closing the outer door behind him, When he came back in, after four or five minutes absence, he carefully closed and locked both doors before saying a word.
“James, immediately I heard about this business. I rang up some people, and that was them, calling on one of the guardroom’s scrambler phones. James, your room and effects had been very professionally searched before they got there. Your room had had at least four surveillance devices recently installed in it, your luggage had been bugged and, as well, had been fined with devices by which its movements could be tracked by anyone with compatible equipment. They removed everything,of course, but … but, boy, just what the hell have you gotten yourself into?”
“Have you had time to go over the files I left you, Uncle Taylor?” asked James, trying to ignore the cold chills racing up and down his back.
“No.” The senator shook his leonine head. “I’ve got it stowed away in one of the few relatively safe places I know of around here—one of several special pockets I have my tailor put here and there inside my clothing.”
“Okay, then,” said James, “here’s the gist of it.” And once more he told the salient features of the story.