Jake Grafton looked at the gunman, then at the back of the driver’s head. Toad sat rigid, staring straight ahead.
The car went out onto Independence Avenue and crept west in stop-and-go traffic. Jake eased the briefcase on his lap and felt the gun dig into his side. He sat very still and eventually the gun went away.
Okay, so he wasn’t going to whack this guy with the briefcase and bail out of the car. That stuff only works in movies. He was going to sit very still and hope this guy didn’t blow his brains out, or Tarkington’s.
In spite of the air conditioning, Jake was perspiring profusely — He felt the moisture form rivulets on his face.
He tried to think. Here he was in the backseat of a navy Ford Fairmont sedan rolling through the streets of Washington. At the curbs buses were loading and unloading tourists, hordes of people from Nashville and Little Rock and Tokyo. People in cars with plates from the Midwest and South rubbernecked, and the drivers ignored the traffic signs, seeming to delight in suicidal lane changes and illegal turns onto one-way streets. Kids were running and shoving and demanding pop, mothers were calming squealing in- fants. and everyone was waiting in line or looking for a restroom. Yet in the middle of it all Jake Grafton and Toad Tarkington had guns in their ribs.
Maybe this guy was X. Maybe he was an Ivy League political appointee who had sold out for some reason only a psychi- atrist would understand. Yet the way he handled that pistol — Jake knew competence with a weapon when he saw it.
The driver swung left on Fourteenth Street and began to acceler- ate as he jockeyed with traffic. He crossed the Potomac on the George Mason Memorial Bridge and took the ramp down onto George Washington Parkway northbound.
“You can drop us anywhere along here,” Toad said, “and we’ll walk back to the office.”
Jake winced at the sound of his voice. The gunman beside him paid no attention.
“Glad we could give you guys a—” The driver’s right hand flicked into Toad’s face with a sickening smack, which knocked his hat off. The car didn’t even swerve.
Toad sagged against the window, then slowly raised his head.
The car continued up the parkway. The river was visible be- tween the trees on the right. They passed the entrance to the CIA complex at Langley and continued on at fifty-five miles per hour, the traffic flowing around them at least ten miles over the speed limit
Traffic on the beltway was thickening as the first surge of rush hour emptied from the city. The man at the wheel kept the car in the middle lane. On and on they rolled, past the Frederick cutoff, east now across the northern edges of the city.
Jake Grafton was bitterly regretting the impulse that had made him mail two letters to when the driver finally edged into a gap in the right lane and took the ramp down to New Hampshire Avenue, where he caught the green light and turned left, northward. They passed the Naval Surface Weapons Center and turned left, into a residential area. After four or five turns down shady streets with cars parked at the curbs and in driveways, the man at the wheel slowed. From a pocket he produced a garage- door opener. He aimed it as he swung left into a driveway. The door rose obediently. The car coasted to a stop inside the garage and the driver triggered the remote-control device again. The ga- rage got very dark as the closing door shut out the light.
“Okay, gentlemen- We are here. We will sit here very quiet and still while the driver checks out the house.” The driver was already out of the car. He fiddled with the knob on the inside door, used a key or pick, and had it open in a few seconds. Before he entered he took out his pistol. In about a minute he was back. He nodded.
Toad went first, walking around the car while the driver in the doorway held a pistol on him.
Then it was Jake’s turn. From the garage he entered a kitchen. Through the sliding glass door he could see a backyard swing.
“The basement.”
Jake went down the stairs. The slanted ceiling was so low he had to tilt his head.
The older of the two men, the man who had ridden in the back- seat with Jake, held out his hand toward Toad. “The handcuff key.”
Toad extracted it from his pocket and passed it across. The man used it to unlock the briefcase from Jake’s wrist and cuff him to a chair. The driver produced a set of cuffs from a trouser pocket and cuffed Tarkington to a table. ”
As the driver sat on the couch with his pistol on his lap and lit a cigarette, the older man examined the lock on the briefcase. He glanced at Jake. “The combination?”
“Fuck you.”
“Ah, Captain. Do you honestly think I couldn’t open the case without it? I merely wished to save myself several minutes of ef- fort.”
Jake told him the combination. The man had it open in thirty seconds, scooped out the documents, and after glancing at his watch, sat down on the couch to read them.
“Who are you?” Toad asked.
“Does it matter?” the reader asked without looking up.
“Not right now. But I’d like a name to give to the FBI.”
The man just chuckled dryly and continued reading.
After a while — Jake wasn’t sure how long, since he couldn’t see his watch — the man said, “This Athena device, a superconductive computer with multiple CPUs, do you think it can be successfully produced in three years?”
Jake said nothing- His stomach felt like he had swallowed a stone.
“Oh well, I don’t have the time to get the answers, and I doubt that you would be forthright in any event. But it certainly is an interesting technological development. You Americans! A nation of tinkerers. What will you think of next?”
He went back through the documents slowly, taking his time, studying them. His pistol lay on the table beside him, within easy reach. Twice he glanced at his watch.
Jake looked around the room. The driver kept his eyes”on him or Toad all the time. His pistol lay in his lap. Toad had both wrists cuffed together around the leg of a rather large table. Still, given a few seconds, he could lift the leg and be free of the table. Obviously that possibility did not concern the two gunmen very much. If Toad tried it. he would be shot or pistol-whipped within seconds.
Jake’s cuffs went through the arm of a chair. Beside the chair sat a floor lamp, but to reach it with his right hand, he would need to stick his left hand under this chair arm. It was temptingly close, but he would need an opportunity. And if he got it, what then?
What did those instructors always say at SERE — Survival, Eva- sion, Resistance, and Escape — school? Never give up. Stay ready. Your chance will come.
These guys were waiting for someone. That much was obvious. Who??
They had been in the basement for almost an hour when the stocky man spoke to the driver. ‘Upstairs now, I think. Be sure to unplug the garage-door opener.”
“Yes, sir.” The driver went.
“Are you X?” Toad asked.
The stocky man threw back his head and laughed. “That is good. Very good. You are a real comedian.”
“He’s not X,” Jake said.
“Ah, Captain. What makes you say that?”
Jake didn’t answer.
“A captain in the U.S. Navy knows the identity of X. Or at least knows who he is not. Interesting. Instructive. Ill bet you are a fount of interesting information. Captain. No doubt we’ll have time later this evening to elicit some of it”
He walked toward Jake with his back toward Toad. Jake tried to keep his eyes on the gunman, yet still he saw Toad bend down and grasp the table leg. It came off the floor. Even as it did the gunman whirled with his pistol at arm’s length, leveled in both hands, pointed straight at Toad’s face. “What makes you think,” he asked easily, “that I need you alive?”
Toad let the table leg go back down to the floor. “Oh,” he said lightly, trying to smile and not succeeding, “I thought you liked my witty repartee.”
“I do like you. With a mouth like yours you should be in Holly- wood in the movies, not pushing paper at the
