“Stomach cramps,” he responded with a grimace.
A look of concern came into her eyes. “Are you going to make it all right?”
“Yeah, just need to catch my breath. The doctor said I needed to run every morning and I’m going to do it if it kills me,” Harry joked.
“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” she replied, chuckling at his humor. “Good luck and enjoy your run.”
She seemed to pass on almost reluctantly, hitting her stride again only when she was twenty yards beyond him.
“I’ve been made,” she hissed into her lip mike once she was out of earshot of Nichols.
“You’re sure?”
“He had a case of stomach cramps and sat down by the edge of the road,” was her bitter retort. “Fine actor, but-”
“But fifteen-year spec-ops veterans don’t get stomach cramps from running three hundred yards,” the other man finished for her.
“Exactly. And he’s packing.”
“Vic, are you hearing this? Are you in?”
“Yes to both questions. Where is he now?”
“He just passed me, I’m laying here in the stubble of a corn field.”
“Be more careful next time.”
She was behind him again. He could feel her, a palpable presence there in the darkness and he pressed on. Just a couple hundred yards more.
A mailbox loomed ahead of him and he turned in, his feet pounding down a gravel driveway. The building at the end had started life as a barn until it had been renovated in the ‘60s as a country house by an enterprising lobbyist in the Johnson administration.
Harry went up to the front step and slid back a metal hinge on the door handle, exposing a biometric scanner. A quick scan of his thumbprint and he was in, closing the door carefully behind him.
The front rooms were nicely-furnished, giving the impression of middle-class occupancy. He didn’t spend much time there within view of the windows, making his way through the darkness to the basement door.
“He went into a house,” Vic heard the woman declare, giving his partner an address to run down.
“Stay there and stay out of sight,” she was instructed. Vic diverted his attention from the conversation in his ear, focusing instead on Nichols’ desk. A laptop computer sat closed in the top drawer of the desk and he took it out, doing a careful examination of it for any possible hazards.
His partner’s voice came back on the network. “The deed was registered in the name of Manuel Diaz in 2005.”
“And?” Terri asked.
“He’s not your average Joe Sixpack. Nichols served with this guy when he first joined the CIA.” There was a long pause, silence filling up the other end of the network. “We’re looking at something strange here-running cross-check now-Diaz died in 2003. Somebody used his identity to buy the house.”
“Nichols?”
Harry adjusted the night-vision goggles to his eyes as he made his way through the subterranean darkness. The tunnel was the second reason he had stayed in Cypress, in the old family house. Judging by a date chiseled into a limestone rock near the manor house entrance, the tunnel had been constructed in the early days of the Civil War, as a means of traveling unseen between the manor and the stables. When the barn had been renovated in the 1960s, the exit had been covered up by rubble and never uncovered during the lobbyist’s occupancy.
Harry had finally secured the second property following the death of the owner and used it as his own personal safehouse, registering the deed in the name of a close colleague at the Agency.
Wooden stairs appeared, their outline a dark green through the lens of the goggles. He paused at their bottom to unzip his jacket, withdrawing the.45 from its holster. Time to roll…
“Where are we at, Vic?”
Vic sighed in exasperation. “Do I have to answer that question every five minutes?”
“Just nervous, I guess. Nichols still hasn’t left this bogus property and no lights have been turned on. It’s like he’s waiting for something.”
“He’s a career operator. Cautious. Can you blame him? Believe me, that caution extends to his computer security. It’s one of the most thorough jobs I’ve ever seen.”
“Nice to know my work is appreciated,” a new voice cut in. Vic whirled on heel to find himself staring into the muzzle of a.45 Colt. The man behind the gun was tall, his height seemingly accentuated by a pair of NVGs perched atop his head. Cold blue eyes stared down the barrel of the Colt at Vic. But he knew the face well, from a dozen surveillance photos taken over the last week. Harold Nichols.
“Take off the wire and give it here,” Nichols instructed carefully, his voice even. Determined. The look on his face told Vic he would shoot without hesitation if his orders were not followed.
The CIA man took the microphone from him and crushed it against the floor, his gaze never wavering. “Now, I don’t need to know who you are. Names are irrelevant and I know you’re the man who was following us at the service station five days ago. What I want to know is who you’re working for.”
Vic took a deep breath. “My ID is in my wallet-may I?”
A smile crossed Nichols’ face and he cocked his head. “Left hand, and do it slowly. Very slowly.”
Harry watched the man as he reached into his back pocket, moving awkwardly with his left hand. The wallet came back out and fell open, disclosing a blue shield. The man smiled suddenly. “Special Agent Victor Caruso. I’m with the Federal Bureau of Investigation…”
Carter came bustling through the door of the op-center with his jacket over his arm, a cup of steaming coffee in his right hand and a bagel clenched firmly between his teeth.
“I’ve got a call for you, Ron,” Michelle announced, looking up from her terminal. “Harold Nichols, on your secure line.”
He rolled his eyes and gestured toward her with the cup of coffee. “I’ll transfer it to your workstation,” she replied.
He mumbled something that might have been “thanks” and hurried to his cubicle, punching the speaker button as he bit off a chunk of bagel and deposited his coffee beside the computer. “Good grief, Harry,” he began with his mouth full, “do you suppose you could have picked a busier time to call? I haven’t been here five minutes and we’re already running damage control on an international situation. Everything’s gotta be tight before the intelligence briefing in an hour. Is this important?”
“I’m sitting here in my den with a gun pointed at a burglar who claims to be working for the Bureau. So, no, to answer your question, it’s not important,” Harry retorted acidly. “Not important at all.”
Harry looked from the picture on his TACSAT’s screen to the handcuffed man sitting in front of him and back
