'What about the stuff?'
'We can leave one guy here to guard it. We get muscle in here to go after that bastard, and we finish business, okay?' It was a viable plan, Piaggi thought. The other guy didn't hold all the cards. He couldn't shoot through the walls. They had water, coffee, and time on their side.
The three stories were as close to word-for-word identical as anything he might have hoped for under the circumstances. They'd interviewed them separately, as soon as they'd recovered enough from their pills to speak, and their agitated state only made things better. Names, the place it had happened, how this Tucker bastard was dealing his heroin out-of-town now, something Billy had said about the way the bags stank - confirmed by the 'lab' busted on the Eastern Shore. They now had a driver's license number and possible address on Tucker. The address might be bogus - not an unlikely situation - but they also had a car make, from which they'd gotten a tag number. He had it all, or at least was close enough that he could treat the investigation as something with an end to it. It was a time for him to stand back and let things happen. The all-points was just now going on the air. At the next series of squad-room briefings, the name Henry Tucker, and his car, and his tag number would be made known to the patrol officers who were the real eyes of the police force. They could get very lucky, very fast, bring him in, arraign him, indict him, try him, and put his ass away forever even if the Supreme Court had the bad grace to deny him the end his life had earned. Ryan was going to bag that inhuman bastard.
And yet.
And yet Ryan knew he was one step behind someone else. The Invisible Man was using a.45 now - not his silencer; he had changed tactics, was going for quick, sure kills... didn't care about noise anymore... and he'd talked to others before killing them, and probably knew even more than he did. That dangerous cat Farber had described to him was out on the street, hunting in the light now, probably, and Ryan didn't know where.
John T. Kelly, Chief Boatswain's Mate, US Navy SEALs. Where the hell are you? If I were you... where would I be? Where would I go?
'Still there?' Kelly asked when Piaggi lifted the phone.
'Yeah, man, we're having a late lunch. Wanna come over and join us?'
'I had calamari at your place the other night. Not bad. Your mother cook it up?' Kelly inquired softly, wondering about the reply he'd get.
'That's right,' Tony replied pleasantly. 'Old family recipe, my great-grandmother brought it over from the Old Country, y'know?'
'You know, you surprise me.'
'How's that, Mr Kelly?' the man asked politely, his voice more relaxed now. He was wondering what effect it would have on the other end of the phone line.
'I expected you to try and cut a deal. Your people did, but I wasn't buying,' Kelly told him, allowing irritation to show in his voice.
'Like I said, come on over and we can talk over lunch.' The line clicked off.
Excellent.
'There, that ought to give the fucker something to think about.' Piaggi poured himself another cup of coffee. The brew was old and thick and rancid now, but it was so heavily laced with caffeine that his hands remained still only with concerted effort. But he was fully awake and alert, Piaggi told himself. He looked at the other two, smiling and nodding confidently.
'Sad about Cas,' the Superintendent observed to his friend.
Maxwell nodded. 'What can I say, Will? He wasn't exactly a good candidate for retirement, was he? Family gone, here and there both. This was his life, and it was coming to an end one way or another.' Neither man wanted to discuss what his wife had done. Perhaps after a year or so they might see the poetic symmetry in the loss of two friends, but not now.
'I hear, you put your papers in, too, Dutch.' The Superintendent of the United States Naval Academy didn't quite understand it. Talk was about that Dutch was a sure thing for a fleet command in the spring. The talk had died only days before, and he didn't know why.
'That's right.' Maxwell couldn't say why. The orders - couched as a 'suggestion' - had come from the White House, through the CNO. 'Long enough, Will. Time for some new blood. Us World War Two guys... well, time to make room, I guess.'
'Sonny doing okay?'
'I'm a grandfather.'
'Good for them!' At least there was some good news in the room when Admiral Greer entered it, wearing his uniform for once.
'James!'
'Nice principal's office,' Greer observed. 'Hiya, Dutch.'
'So, to what do I owe all this high-level attention?'
'Will, we're going to steal one of your sailboats. You have something nice and comfortable that two admirals can handle?'
'Wide selection. You want one of the twenty-sixes?'
'That's about right.'
'Well, I'll call the Seamanship Department and have them chop one loose for you.' It made sense, the Admiral thought. They'd both been close with Cas, and when you said goodbye to a sailor, you did it at sea. He placed his call, and they took their leave.
'Run outa ideas?' Piaggi asked. His voice showed defiant confidence now. The momentum had passed across the street, the man thought. Why not reinforce that?
'I don't see that you have any to speak of. You bastards afraid of the sunlight. I'll give you some!' Kelly snarled. 'Watch.'
He set the phone down and lifted the rifle, taking aim at the window.
Pop.
Crash.
'You dumb fuck!' Tony said into the phone, even though he knew it to be disconnected. 'You see? He knows he can't get us. He knows time's on our side.'
Two panes were shattered, then the shooting stopped again. The phone rang. Tony let it ring a while before he answered.
'Missed, you jerk!'
'I don't see you going anywhere, asshole!' The shout was loud enough that Tucker and Charon beard the buzz from ten feet away.
'I think it's time for you to start runnin', Mr Kelly. Who knows, maybe we won't catch you. Maybe the cops will. They're after you too, I hear.'
'You're still the ones in the trap, remember.'
'You say so, man.' Piaggi hung up on him again, showing who had the upper hand.
'And how are you, Colonel?' Voloshin asked.
'It has been an interesting trip.' Ritter and Grishanov were sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, just two tourists tired after a hot day, joined by a third friend, under the watchful eyes of a security guard ten yards away.
'And your Vietnamese friend?'
'What?' Kolya asked in some surprise. 'What friend?'
Ritter grinned. 'That was just a little ploy on my part. We had to identify the leak, you see.'
'I thought that was your doing,' the KGB general observed sourly. It was such an obvious trap and he'd fallen right into it. Almost. Fortune had smiled on him, and probably Ritter didn't know that.
'The game goes on, Sergey. Will you weep for a traitor?'
'For a traitor, no. For a believer in the cause of a peaceful world, yes. You are very clever, Bob. You have done well.' Perhaps not, Voloshin thought, perhapsnotas far into the trap as you believe, my young American friend. You moved too fast. You managed to kill this Hicks boy, but not Cassius. Impetuous, my young friend. You miscalculated and you really don't know it, do you?
Time for business. 'What about our people?'
'As agreed, they are with the others. Rokossovskiy confirms. Do you accept my word, Mr Ritter?'
'Yes, I will. Very well, there's a PanAm flight from Dulles to Paris tonight at eight-fifteen. I'll deliver him there if you wish to see him off. You can have him met at Orly.'
'Agreed.' Voloshin walked away.
'Why did he leave me?' Grishanov asked, more surprised than alarmed.
'Colonel, that's because he believes my word, just like I believe his.' Ritter stood. 'We have a few hours to kill -'
'Kill?'
'Excuse me, that's an idiom. We have a few hours of private time. Would you like to walk around Washington? There's a moon rock in the Smithsonian. People love to touch it for some reason.'