Carruth had to hand it to Lewis, this was brilliant. This particular trophy would be worth its weight in gold to a hard-core fanatic—it was practically a holy relic. . . .
Carruth smiled as he left the office, the building, got into his car, and drove away. How easy was that?
It was criminal, that’s what it was. Fucking Army.
But the terrorist wannabe Lewis had on the line didn’t have to know how simple and easy it had been, now did he?
Just in case nobody noticed the substitution until after he was long gone, Carruth would make an anonymous call, once Lewis had things set up. Not to Colonel Reilly, who might be disposed to keep the theft to himself, but to the news media. Lewis’s buyer would pick up on that quick enough. And he’d fall all over himself to give Lewis money once he saw the Walther. . . .
Things were going along pretty good so far.
Kent pushed back a little from the table. “Best pasta I’ve ever had,” he said, smiling.
Nadine Howard returned the smile. “Uh huh, I’m sure.”
“Well, okay, best pasta I’ve had all week, then.”
“Better,” she said.
John Howard said, “I’ve got a couple of Cuban cigars left.” He looked at his wife. “Leave the dishes, hon, I’ll get them before I go to bed.”
“Go smoke your noxious weed,” she said. “I’ll clean up.”
Kent had given up cigarettes thirty-five years ago, and never gotten much into other forms of tobacco, but Cuban cigars two or three times a year probably weren’t going to kill him if they hadn’t yet. Plus he was living on borrowed time anyhow.
“Don’t light them until you get into the garage,” Nadine said. “I’m not having my new house stunk up by those nasty things.”
Howard and Kent both smiled.
It was cold out, but Howard had put a little space heater in the garage, which had room for two cars but only held one, and there was an old couch and a couple of end tables with ashtrays on them there, too. He cranked the heater up and handed Kent a sealed, clear-plastic tube with a fat cigar, maybe twelve or fourteen centimeters long, inside. Kent broke the seal, and there was a
“Inert gas to keep it from going stale,” Howard said. “Helium or argon, something like that. Better than vacuum, so they say.”
The aroma of the tobacco filled his nostrils.
“Hermoso Number Four,” Howard said. “Hand-rolled from Havana. Got them from a British diplomat who buys in quantity.”
“Thanks.”
Howard produced a cutter they both used, then a wooden match, scratching it and allowing it to burn for a second before he lit Kent’s cigar, then his own.
The two men stood there for a moment, puffing. The blue-gray smoke filled the air, wreathing their heads in the fragrant odor.
“It’s a nice house,” Kent offered. “Big yard.”
“We have to hire a gardener, come spring, to take care of it.”
“Tyrone can’t mow the lawn?”
Howard smiled. “When he comes home from Geneva. That exchange-student thing runs until June. If I wait until then to cut the grass, it’ll be knee-deep and full of weeds. I ain’t disposed to do it anyhow. I did enough of that as a boy. Easier on my back to hire somebody.”
“Civilian consulting pays pretty well,” Kent observed.
“Oh, boy, yes, it does. You want to chuck your jarhead job and get in the pool, the water is just fine. I can point you to some folks’d love to have an old warhorse like you educating them. Make two or three times what you make now.”
Kent smiled at his friend. “If I had a wife and teenaged son, I might find that appealing, but I don’t need a house, and I don’t spend the money I make now. How much room you figure an old Marine requires?”
Howard took another long drag from his cigar. He blew the smoke out in a big ring toward the ceiling. “You might get married again. Have some little ones running around to call you Daddy.”
Kent laughed, nearly choking on the smoke as he did. “Yeah, right. Have somebody to push my wheelchair around when he gets out of grade school?”
“You think you’ll make it that long, doing stuff like this?” Howard waved the cigar.
Both men chuckled.
“Nadine met this nice lady at church, just moved into the area. A widow, few years older than you, but a very nice personality, she says . . .”
Kent laughed yet again. “Tell your wife I don’t need any help in that department.”
Howard must have caught something in his tone. “Really? You dating somebody?”
“Not exactly. I am seeing a woman, but it’s more of a . . . professional relationship.”
Howard blinked.
Kent let him worry about that for a couple of seconds. Then he grinned. “It’s not what you’re thinking, John. She’s a guitar teacher. I’m learning how to play the thing—after a fashion.”
“No kidding?”
“Well, if you heard me fumbling at it, you’d think it was a joke, but I am taking lessons. Twice a week.”
“That’s not exactly the same as painting the town red, Abe.”
“At my age, partying tends to be a little more reserved. Sitting in a nice, sturdy chair strumming a guitar is about my speed.”
“You’re not that old.”
“Come back and see me in fifteen years and say that. Assuming I’m still around.”
“I will. Assuming I’m still around. You want a beer?”
“Sure.”
Howard leaned over the couch.
“You got a fridge out here?”
“Just a little one,” he said.
Kent shook his head.
Howard produced two bottles of beer. “How’s the thing going on the Army base attacks?”
Kent took one of the bottles, raised it in salute, and swigged from it. “How is it a civilian consultant knows about such things?”
It was a rhetorical question. The old-boy network worked as well in the military as it did anywhere else. Howard had retired a general in the Army—well, technically, the National Guard, which had been running Net Force before the DoD took it over—but you didn’t get to that rank without knowing a lot of people you could swap information with, to your benefit and theirs.
When Howard didn’t respond, Kent said, “Gridley is on their trail. He’s like the Royal Canadian Mounties—he always gets his man. Far as I can tell, anyhow.”
Howard drank from his own beer. He held his bottle up. “To our men in uniform, including yourself.”
“Hear, hear.”
They drank. “So, tell me about this guitar teacher.”
“Not much to tell. She’s about fifty. Divorced, plays well, teaches well. Says she has a cat.”
“Anything romantic?”
Kent shrugged. “She’s nice to look at.”
“But you’re interested?”
“I said I was old, not that I was dead.”
