“Tell me, is Nina playing Little Drummer Girl a promotion or a step down?”
“Very funny. Look, Kit was onstage for less than five minutes. Nina wasn’t packing, but we had five guns outside that bar when it went down.”
“I only see two of you so far.”
“We had three more in a surveillance van.” Jane paused, then added in a dry voice, “They peeled off for now.”
“Sounds serious. Too serious to put my daughter in the way.”
“We disagree. But it’s moot. She’s out of it now.”
The phone rang. Jane moved to it swiftly. “This is Jane.” Pause. “Good, c’mon down. We’ll make the call.” She turned to Broker. “There’s somebody you got to talk to.” She smiled again. “What did you think? Kit just got lost between the cracks in some half-assed scramble and needed a ride home? There’s a plan. Kit had a part. And so do you.”
“Yeah. There’s something Nina needs you to do.”
There was a knock on the door. Jane squinted through the security peep and opened the door. Hawaiian Shirt shuffled in.
“Broker, meet Holly,” Jane said.
Broker shook hands cautiously, circling slightly, sniffing Holly out. Too much sun and too much accelerated living had leached away all his excess body weight and emotions. About 180 pounds of callus and scar tissue remained. His pale bemused eyes impressed Broker, the way the dead spots and the live spots comingled.
Jane watched them do their signifying, amused. “Back before Cro-Magnon walked the earth…”
Holly had a voice to match his eyes, soft over steel. “She means back in the Nam.”
“They called him Hollywood because he was showy,” Jane said.
Holly smiled.
“Now we call him Turner Classic Movies,” Jane said, returning the smile.
“Eat your heart out, slit. You’re never gonna do twenty pull-ups, ever,” Holly said.
“And you’re never going to have a multiple orgasm,” Jane said.
“That’s ‘You’re never going to have a multiple orgasm,
Kit came out of the bathroom. She had one towel wrapped around her waist and another, turban fashion, around her head.
“Sorry, Little Bit, grown-ups gotta talk shop. Back in the tub,” Jane ordered. She handed Kit a Rubik’s Cube to play with.
Kit knit her brows at her dad. “Do I have to?”
“Just for a while,” Broker said.
Kit put the cube under her arm and held out her hands. “I’m gonna be wrinkled like a prune.” She returned to the bathroom.
There was a table and two chairs in the corner. Retro etiquette bred into Broker’s bones prompted him to offer one of the chairs to Jane. She rolled her eyes. Broker and Holly sat.
“So what do you have in mind?” Broker asked.
Holly gave a perfect Gallic shrug and said, “Wait one.”
Broker waited while Jane punched in numbers on her cell phone. Holly said, “It’s easy. All you got to do is get mad at your wife for leaving home and deserting your kid in the middle of nowhere. Think you can handle that?”
“Oh yeah, but why should I?”
Jane held out the cell phone. Broker put it to his ear. A voice he hadn’t heard in more than a year said, “Hey, Broker, how you doing?”
Broker took a moment to focus. Then he said, “Lorn Garrison?” Several years ago Broker had helped Garrison, then an FBI agent, penetrate the Russian Mafia. Garrison had left the bureau and was now a sheriff in Kentucky. If they could casually phone up Lorn and get him on board, then Broker was being seriously handled-which meant that Holly, Jane, and Nina were into something big-time real. He relaxed his voice but his mind raced. “Not bad. How’s yourself?”
“Can’t complain. Down here tight as a tick in all the good things Kentucky’s famous for: whiskey, tobacco, racehorses, and hot browns.”
“This ain’t a social call, is it, Lorn?”
“Nope. All about street cred. Some real serious folks you’re with. They’re hanging way out there ’cause they might have caught a piece of The Big One.”
“Are you mixed up in this scene in North Dakota?” Broker asked.
“Uh-uh, just some heavy people in D.C. wanted me to give you a heads-up.”
“What heavy people?”
“You heard how CIA took off the gloves and is putting covert operations back together? Well, Pentagon doesn’t trust CIA
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s who you’re running with. Some bunch from Delta. Put together real fast. The operation is called Northern Route.”
“Do I get to know what they’re after?”
“Sure. Your wife is trying to go undercover and get next to a guy they think is a contract courier for Al Qaeda. The intell says this guy’s bringing something into the country. Hold on to your ass, Broker-they think it could be one of those fucking suitcases we were so worried about.”
Broker paused to let the word cycle through his brain.
“A tactical nuke. No bullshit?” he said. Maybe he didn’t hear right.
“No bullshit. So they want you to perform one small service and then get out of Dodge. Naturally, the usual threats are implied-you don’t help these guys, I suspect the feds will start messing with your bottom line. You know, all that bullion you and Nina pirated from Vietnam.”
“You know me, nothing but public-spirited,” Broker said, staring at Jane and Holly.
“You got it?” Lorn asked.
“I got it,” Broker said. “Check you later.” End of phone call.
Holly handed him a black-and-white photo that showed a man holding up an open briefcase. The inside of the briefcase was cleaned out to make room for a metal cylinder and a bunch of gadgetry, computer boards, wires. “Worst-case scenario,” Holly said, “they really have got their hands on a Russian KGB suitcase. A one-kiloton, 105 tactical nuke round, configured in a suitcase. Put it in midtown Manhattan, it’ll kill a hundred thousand people, easy.”
Jane stepped forward. “Two days ago we acted on a tip from one of our squirrels in Lahore, Pakistan. We took down an Al Qaeda financial officer in Detroit. He talked. He gave us the name of a courier for something nuclear. And a location. Shuster in North Dakota. We ran ‘Shuster slash North Dakota’ in every computer we could think of.”
Holly held up a mug shot of a young blond guy with chiseled features. His hair was on the long side. The date was 1992.
“This is the target. Ace Shuster is a second-generation smuggler-”
Broker held up his hand. “I talked to the sheriff. He’s got you figured out, up to a point. He already told me about this guy.”
Holly scowled. Broker ignored him, got up, went to the desk, opened a drawer, took out the local phone directory, thumbed to the S’s and read: “Gene and Ellen Shuster; Asa Shuster, Dale Shuster. I come up with three, four counting Ellen.”
“Okay, smart-ass,” Holly said. “What about this?” He handed Broker another photograph that showed a muddy road, parked cars, and a crowd of two dozen peoples, mostly men, standing around, low rolling scrub in the background. Two faces in the gathering were circled. Jane tapped one of them. “Ring any bells?”
