Dragonfly

They were heading south on rain-washed Interstate 95, more than thirty miles from Washington and forty miles from the point at which they had begun to follow Robert McAlister. Traffic was moderately heavy. Hundreds of big trucks were working down toward Richmond and Norfolk. McAlister's white Mercedes was one mile ahead of them, as it had been ever since they'd begun to tail it. They couldn't see it at this distance, of course. But thanks to the electronic gear, there was no need for them to keep the other car in sight.

“Close in on him,” the passenger said. He was a heavy-set man with a dour face and a hard, no-nonsense voice.

Dodson depressed the accelerator, swung the Thunderbird into the passing lane, and swept around a chemical tank truck.

The light was nearly to the edge of the screen.

“Faster,” said the fat man.

Dodson jammed the accelerator all the way to the floor. The speedometer needle rose from sixty to seventy to eighty and hovered just below the ninety mark. Wind screamed along the car's streamlined flanks, and raindrops like gelatinous bullets snapped against the windshield. They passed another truck, two cars, and a motor home. The Thunderbird began to shimmy and float on the film of rain that covered the pavement. Dodson pulled out of the passing lane, then left the highway altogether, braking just as they shot into the exit ramp. The single lane curved farther to the right; the blip of green light eased back toward the center of the screen — then continued away to the left. At the foot of the ramp, not even pausing for the stop sign, Dodson turned left on the secondary road and stepped on the accelerator again. The green signal returned to the center of the monitor: the Mercedes was now directly in front of them, still out of sight beyond a low hill.

“Slow down,” the fat man said.

Dodson did as he was told. Malloy, the fat man's previous aide, had been a twenty-eight-year-old veteran of the CIA's West German office, and Malloy had not always done as he was told. Poor Malloy had not been able to understand why the fat man, who had never worked for the agency, should be in charge of the extremely important and extremely secret Committee. Malloy could see why there was a need to cooperate with wealthy and powerful civilians who were in sympathy with their goals. But having a civilian in charge of the operations was more than Malloy could stand. To become the top man's aide, he had been required to resign from the agency himself, so that no government investigation of the CIA would ever zero in on him and then move from him to his boss and to the core of the apple. Before he became the fat man's aide, Malloy had not known who was in charge, but he had thought that it was a man high in the agency or at least a former agency executive. When he learned the truth he was sullen, brusque, and rude to the very man who had brought him into the center circle of the organization. Eventually, the fat man saw that Malloy's dissatisfaction with his boss might metamorphose into total disaffection with The Committee's, program itself; therefore, Malloy was killed in an accident when his car apparently skidded on a perfectly dry roadbed and collided with a telephone pole outside of Alexandria, Virginia. Roy Dod-son knew precisely what had happened to his predecessor and why; his boss had told him all about it the first day that Dodson had come to work. No matter what he might think of the fat man, Dodson did as he was told, always had and always would.

Just before they reached the crest of the hill, the green blip moved sharply to the right on the monitor. Then it disappeared past the edge, although the dark screen continued to produce a faint beep-beep- beep.

Topping the hill they saw a large truck stop — twenty gasoline pumps on five widely spaced concrete islands, a service garage, three automatic truck-washing bays, a truckers' motel, and restaurant — on the right side of the road. The huge parking lot contained sixty or seventy tractor-trailer rigs.

“No Mercedes,” Dodson said.

“He might have driven behind the buildings or in among all those trucks.”

They drove through the nearest entrance and past the fueling stations where a dozen pump jockeys in bright yellow hooded rain slickers were tending to half a dozen trucks. Following the chain-link fence that encircled the property, they went around to the rear of the restaurant and the small, rather shabby motel. The beep-beep-beep, in counterpoint to the thumping windshield wipers, grew somewhat louder, and the light returned to the edge of the monitor — but there was no Mercedes here. On the south side of the complex, they cruised slowly down an aisle between the two rows of parked trucks — dull gray tailgates on both sides — which loomed like parading elephants. The signal was getting stronger by the second; the light edged back into the center of the screen. The beeping became so loud that it hurt their ears. Halfway down the aisle Dodson stopped the car and said, “We're almost on top of it.”

There was nothing around them except trucks.

Barely able to control his anger, the fat man said, “Which one is it?”

Putting the car in gear and letting it drift forward, Dodson studied the monitor on the console. Then he slipped the car into reverse and let it roll backward while he watched the green blip. At last he stopped again and pointed at a tractor-trailer that had sea-train painted on the rear door. “McAlister must have found the gimmick on his Mercedes and switched it to this truck. We've been following a decoy.”

Suddenly, without warning, the fat man raised his arms and leaned slightly forward and slammed both heavy fists into the top of the padded dashboard. Inside the closed car the blow reverberated like a note from a bass drum: and then a whole rhythm, a series of solid thumps. The fat man had gone berserk. His arms were like windmill blades. He hammered, hammered, cursed, hammered, growled wordlessly, his voice like an animal's snarl, and hammered some more. His face was an apoplectic red, and hundreds of beads of sweat popped out on his brow. His eyes bulged as if they were being pushed out of him by some incredible inner pressure. The blood vessels at his temples stood up like ropes. He pounded the dashboard again and again, harder and harder… Beneath the padding the thin sheet metal began to bend. The fat man had tremendous strength in his thick arms. The dash sagged under the furious blows. Then, as suddenly as he had begun, he quit. He leaned back in his seat, breathing heavily, and stared out at the gray rain and the gray trucks and the wet black macadam.

Stunned, Dodson said, “Sir?”

“Get us the hell out of here.”

Dodson hesitated.

“Now, damn you!”

Most of the way back to Washington, the fat man said nothing. He wasn't embarrassed, and he wasn't angry with Dodson. He was angry with himself. He'd had these rages before. Quite a few times, in fact. This was the first time, however, that anyone had seen him lose control. Always before, when he had felt that overpowering need to smash something with his fists, he had been able to wait until he was alone. Or with some whore. Over the last several days he had been under unbearable pressure. He never knew what that damned McAlister might do next. Keeping one step ahead of the bastard had been horribly difficult. And now he seemed to be one step behind. So this time he hadn't been able to go off by himself and work off his frustrations unobserved. He'd exploded, much to his own surprise, in front of Dodson. It was frightening. He simply could not let go like that when anyone was around, not again, not even for an instant.

As they entered the Washington suburbs, the fat man said, “Well, we know he's got someone he trusts to send to Peking.”

Dodson glanced nervously at his boss. “We do?”

“Yes. We can deduce that much from his switching the transmitter to the truck. If he hadn't been rendezvousing with an agent, he'd have let us waste time and manpower following him.”

“That makes sense, I guess.”

“I'll find out who his man is. Before the day's over. One way or another, I'll find out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It's just that if we could have learned his name now, this morning, we'd have more time to — eliminate him.”

Dodson licked his lips. Hesitantly, he said, “If we can't find out who he's sending to China — what then?”

“Then, somehow we've got to activate Dragonfly immediately.”

The rain had let up. Dodson put the windshield wipers on the lowest speed. “I've never been told what Dragonfly is.”

“I know,” the fat man said.