destabilized by the successful theft of a Russian submarine or by a thwarted attempt. And our relationship has been quite successful — we hope it continues to our mutual profit into the future.
The possibility that you had other plans for the Blackbeard team did not occur to us. I think I see your hand in subsequent events. So does Admiral Grafton, who I suspect is closer to the truth than he realizes. Certainly closer than you thought possible.
My government does not want the SuperAegis satellite to end up in foreign hands. I think your most likely customer is EuroSpace. It must not happen. Russia and the United States have similar interests in this matter. Frankly, do not rely on your relationship with us to protect you in a matter of such gravity.
Zelda Hudson read the message through again, then deleted it and the matrices that had decoded it. Then she purged the trash file and reformatted the disk segment she had used.
Peter Kerr, the fool! His disappearance must have incited Grafton's suspicions.
Like many of Washington's power elite, Avery Edmond DeGarmo lived in the Watergate apartment complex near the Kennedy Center. And like many of his fellow residents, he had decamped during the power crisis. When Jake, Toad, and Tommy Carmellini arrived the following morning, the building was deserted. There were two guards at the desk in the lobby but not a resident in sight. Not even a doorman. Jake and his friends sat in the front seat of the van looking things over.
'You'd think for all that money the tenants would get a doorman,' Toad said.
'Where'd DeGarmo go, anyway?' Carmellini asked Toad, who carried around a surprising store of useless, unimportant facts.
'Bunking with the marines at Quantico, I heard. The grunts deliver him and a bunch of others to Washington every morning by helicopter.'
'Simplifies commuting, I suppose.'
'They may never move back to town.'
'You think you can get into this place?' Jake asked dubiously. He was in the passenger seat of the carpet company van, Carmellini was behind the wheel, and Toad sat between them.
'Just watch the master at work,' Carmellini said. From the hip pocket of his coveralls he removed a pack of chewing tobacco, broke the seal, and helped himself to a man-sized plug, which made his unshaved cheek bulge nicely. Then he got out of the van and headed for the main entrance.
Carmellini was wearing a one-piece coverall with the carpet company's name and logo across the back. So were Toad and Jake, who remained in the vehicle. Last night Carmellini called a fellow he knew, and the man rented him the van and uniforms for the day for the magnificent sum of one hundred dollars.
'Are you sure? That doesn't sound like a lot of money.'
'You aren't going to get caught, are you? Nothing will come back on mer
'You'll hear not a peep from anyone. Guaranteed.'
'A hundred is enough, and I'm glad to get it. With the power mess and all, our business has dried up to nothing.'
Outside the Watergate, Tommy Carmellini spit on the sidewalk, adjusted his chew, and went in. He went up to the security desk, where the guards had supplemented the light coming through the glass door with a small kerosene lantern. There were two of them, in uniform, a man and a woman.
'Got a carpet delivery for… for…' Carmellini removed an invoice from his hip pocket and scrutinized it. 'DeGarmo. Apartment 821.'
The male guard consulted a list on a clipboard. 'He's not in today.'
'By God, I hope not. Gonna have to pull up the bedroom and living room carpet and lay new. Not many customers want to watch us do it.' He glanced at the closed-circuit camera mounted above the guards' desk and at the dark monitor behind them.
'You got a key to his apartment?'
'Why, hell no, I ain't got no key. He said you people'd let me in.'
'You're not on the tradesman list.' The guard gestured toward the clipboard.
'Umm, you got a place I could spit?'
With a look of disgust, the guard nodded toward a trash can at the end of his desk. Carmellini relieved himself and returned.
'Much obliged.'
'Talk about a filthy habit!' That was the woman.
'Yeah. So how'm I gonna get this carpet in there?'
'I can't let you in unless you're on the tradesman list,' the male guard said.
'Just curious, but without phones, how is he gonna tell you to put me on that list? Not being smart or nothin', I hear that this guy is some big weenie in government. He supposed to just tell the president to sit tight while he makes a personal trip down here to talk to you about the carpet in his pad?' After delivering himself of this speech, Carmellini took two steps to the trash can to spit again.
He worked his chew into position while he waved the invoice. 'Here's his signature on this. Men who buy forty-five hundred dollars' worth of carpeting don't usually like to lay it themselves. But if you don't let me in, he's gonna. We'll offload it right here in the lobby and you can let him have it the next time he wanders by.'
'Tell you what,' said the male guard, who did take a cursory look at DeGarmo's forged signature. 'We'll let you in downstairs. Miss McCarthy will take you up to the apartment and wait while you do your thing.'
'Much obliged,' said Tommy Carmellini, and gave them both a big tobacco grin. Out on the sidewalk he spit a stream of brown juice over his shoulder, then climbed into the driver's seat of the van.
'We're in,' he said to Jake and Toad. 'Just let me do the talking.'
As they rolled around the building, Carmellini said, 'We lucked out. Got a female who thinks tobacco chewing is a filthy habit. After she unlocks the place, I'll fart and spit a bit and she'll find something else to do somewhere else.'
And that was the way it worked out. The men put on cotton gloves, then unloaded a roll of carpet from the back of the van and hoisted it onto their shoulders. Miss McCarthy led them to the freight elevator.
The apartment was stifling. 'Must be eighty degrees in here,' Carmellini complained.
The guard lady took it personally. 'We crank and crank on that air-conditioner in the basement and the cool air just never gets up this far. We need some real muscle men to do the cranking.'
'I'll bet,' Carmellini replied, then spit into a Styrofoam coffee cup that he had brought up from the van.
The men were moving furniture in DeGarmo's bedroom when Miss McCarthy told Carmellini, 'Be sure and stop by the desk on your way out.'
'This is gonna take awhile. Gotta do it right, I always say. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. That's why people buy their carpet from us.'
They waited for a count of ten after she closed the door behind her, then Jake said, 'Very well done.'
Carmellini spit his chew into his hand and nodded. He dashed for a bathroom to wash out his mouth.
They began searching, carefully, meticulously, not trashing the place but searching it as thoroughly as possible.
'What do you hope to find, Admiral?' Toad had asked that morning on their way over in the carpet van.
'Anything at all that shouldn't be there. Occasionally people leading secret lives keep little tidbits or artifacts of that secret life tucked away. Or so I've heard.'
'I certainly do,' Carmellini said, nodding a vigorous assent. 'You oughta see my collection.'
'We're looking for something,' Jake continued, 'anything that we can use to unravel Avery DeGarmo's secret life.'
'How do you know he has a secret life?' 1 don t.
'Probably got a wife and kids in L.A. that he hasn't told a soul about,' Toad told Carmellini and winked.
They found that DeGarmo, a lifelong bachelor, had a collection of paper matches bearing the logos of restaurants in which he had eaten. Hotels he had visited. Businesses. Golf courses. All kinds of matches. Drawers full, boxes full.
He kept a loaded nine-millimeter pistol in the drawer beside his bed, he used toothpaste with baking powder, soft toothbrushes, and disposable razors. He had a prescription for an anticholesterol medication, ten pills still in the bottle. He threw socks away one at a time, so he had a nice collection of singles. He wore Jockey shorts and tailored wool suits.
