Third Strike

“I don’t know, Richard. It’s never come up,” Sean said deliberately. He checked his watch, a wholly dismissive gesture, and started to turn away. “But if it ever does, I’ll be sure to let you know … .”

Sean, Parker, and I formed a three-man detail to get them out of the building and into the Navigator that Joe McGregor had waiting by the curb. This time, we took no chances, but whoever had been behind the wheel of the rogue cab did not spring out at us for a second attempt.

Nothing happened on the journey to their hotel, where McGregor took station. He had nothing to report when Sean and I arrived to relieve him in the morning, and nothing untoward happened the following day, either. Unless you counted the excruciating politeness with which Sean and my father treated each other. It screeched at my nerves like a tone-deaf child with their first violin.

We spent the day shopping for a replacement suitcase for my mother, and new clothes to fill it. She picked out another hard-shell case just like the last one. Where previously I might have tried to talk her into something lighter, now I voiced no such objections. Structural suitcases, I decided, were my friend.

Parker, meanwhile, was working furiously behind the scenes and providing us with regular updates on progress—or lack of it.

He’d sent to his various contacts Sean’s rudimentary photos of the couple we’d found baby-sitting my mother back in England. Apart from the fact that everyone seemed to think Blondie’s pic had been taken post mortem, nobody initially offered any clues as to their background.

Then Parker got a possible hit on Don, last name Kaminski. It turned out he was an ex-marine with a disciplinary record, who’d been spat out by the military machine two years previously and disappeared into the private contractors’ market. In other words, he was either a bodyguard or a mercenary.

Parker had uncovered the firm Don apparently worked for. Unfortunately, due to delusions of grandeur on their part, they seemed to think they were equal to—and therefore direct rivals of—Parker’s outfit. The result was that they refused to tell him anything about what their guy might or might not have been up to.

They wouldn’t even confirm Don was outside the mainland U.S., which I felt was a bit pointless, given the circumstances. But, Parker did at least manage to pick up a useful little snippet from an unguarded comment. From that, he deduced that Don Kaminski’s employers were growing increasingly alarmed by the fact they’d lost contact with their man. I thought of May and her shotgun, and the aggressive porcine guards around his temporary prison, and decided that it was probably going to be awhile yet before he got in touch.

It took longer to get any information on the woman I knew only as Blondie, although I admit that the state of her face probably didn’t make her any easier to identify.

We were just coming out of Macy’s department store when Parker called on Sean’s mobile. Sean let the answering machine pick up and didn’t make any attempt to respond to the call until we were back in our vehicle and on the move again. I returned Parker’s call while Sean dealt with the lunchtime traffic.

“Are you all together and close by?” Parker demanded.

“Yes,” I said, being cagey over the phone. “About ten minutes, give or take traffic. Trouble?”

“Nothing desperate,” Parker said. Yes, it could be trouble. “Just get back to the office as soon as it’s convenient, would you?” And yes, it’s urgent. And he ended the call before I could satisfy my curiosity any better than that.

By dint of only a small number of minor moving-vehicle violations, Sean made it back to base inside my ten- minute estimate. We rode the elevator in silence and Bill Rendelson intercepted us before we’d taken more than three steps out into the lobby.

“The boss wants to see you two alone first,” he said quietly to me, not giving away any clues. He turned to my parents. “If you’d come with me, sir, ma’am?” I saw a flicker of impatience cross my father’s face, but he allowed the pair of them to be ushered into one of the conference rooms. Bill promised to be back soon with refreshments, then shut the door on them smartly and hurried across towards Parker’s office, jerking his head much less deferentially that we should follow.

Inside, Parker Armstrong was sitting in his usual position behind the desk. Opposite him, in one of the client chairs, sat a nondescript little man in a badly cut gray suit. He looked like a second-rate salesman or a clerical drone who has trudged the same furrow for so long he’s worn a groove deep enough to bury himself.

The man looked up quickly as Sean and I entered. He had a mournful, rumpled face, with baggy eyes that were slightly bloodshot, but they didn’t miss a trick. I knew before the door had closed behind us that he’d pinpointed the fact we were carrying, and we weren’t exactly being obvious about it.

A pro, then. But what kind?

“This is Mr. Collingwood,” Parker said as both men rose for the introductions. “He’s with—”

“Er, let’s just say I’m with one of the lesser-known agencies of the U.S. government and leave it at that, shall we?” the man said, glancing at Parker almost with mild reproof. He offered us both a perfunctory handshake, letting go almost before he’d gripped.

Parker stared back, unintimidated. “I like to keep my people fully informed,” he said.

Collingwood ducked his head, smiling apologetically. “I’d be a whole lot happier, at this stage, if we kept this whole thing as low-key as possible, Mr. Armstrong. I’m sure you can understand our … concerns.”

I was getting better at placing regional American accents. Not quite Deep South enough to be Alabama or Georgia. Maybe one of the Carolinas.

Parker nodded reluctantly and waved us to sit down. Sean and I took the chairs on either side of him, positions of support and solidarity that weren’t lost on the government man. Those heavy-lidded eyes gleamed a little as they regarded us.

Despite his observant gaze, Collingwood struck me as an official rather than an agent—the kind who’d once been in the field, but was now firmly anchored behind a desk. His suit had the bagged knees to prove it. He had a briefcase lying closed on the low table near his right hand and a buff-coloured folder, also closed, in front of him, which he fiddled with while he waited for us to settle, fussily lining it up with the edge of the table.

His hands were misshapen across the backs, I noticed, like he’d spent his youth bare-knuckle fighting or suffered from premature arthritis. Perhaps that explained the lackluster handshake.

“Why don’t you bring everybody up to speed,” Parker suggested.

The little man ducked his head again and smiled at us. His hair was very thick, its glossy blackness at odds with his lived-in face. It couldn’t have looked more like a wig unless it actually had a chin strap.

“This business came to our attention because Mr. Armstrong was attempting to identify, ah … this woman,” he said, opening the folder just far enough to peer inside and lifting out a blowup print, which he spun the right way up and slid across the table towards us.

“Yes,” Sean said, barely glancing at the picture. He didn’t need to. It was the one he’d taken of Blondie lying on the floor in my parents’ garage with her eyes closed. The blood from her obviously broken nose formed a mustachelike stain on her upper lip.

Collingwood sat back and rested his elbows on the arms of the chair, steepling his fingers and tapping the ends together so his nails clicked.

“What can you tell me about this photograph?” he said carefully. “First off, where did you, ah, obtain it?”

He looked from one of us to the other. We stared right back, giving him nothing. Collingwood cleared his throat, trying to hide his desperation behind a nervous laugh. “I mean to say, we know when it was taken. That’s the beauty of digital these days—there’s a time code embedded in the image. But we don’t know where. Or under what, ah, circumstances.”

“Perhaps it might help if we knew why you need to know this,” Sean said, pleasant but noncommittal. “Who is she?”

Collingwood’s gaze swung across him, then he gave a weary sigh, raising his hands a little.

“Okay. Her name is Vonda Blaylock,” he said, eyes still on the photo, lying untouched on the tabletop. “And she’s one of ours.” He looked up, his face ever more sorrowful. “Or, leastways, she was … .”

Oh shit.

I glanced back at the photo, as if knowing Blondie’s real name and status as a government agent might change my memory of her in some way. No, I decided, it didn’t. She and her heavy-duty sidekick had still conned