Vladimir felt his palms moisten. ‘We wait. Nothing has happened yet. We wait.’
So they waited.
Imad said, ‘He’s coming back.’
And Imad’s hand reached down for his pistol.
‘No, not for a moment,’ Vladimir said. ‘Leave it be.’
Imad said, ‘I will give you your moment, but I will not end up in Guantanamo, or in any American jail. Understand?’
Vladimir looked over again. The second policeman was still standing there.
The first one approached the open window. Imad turned awkwardly, still holding his right hand at his side, ready to reach for his pistol.
‘Here you go,’ the policeman said. ‘The reason I stopped you is that you have a taillight burned out on the right side.’
‘Oh,’ Imad said.
‘Here’s a chit, saying we stopped you. You’ve got twenty-four hours to get it fixed. All right?’
‘Sure,’ Imad said.
‘Have a good trip.’
‘Thank you.’
The policeman walked away. Vladimir closed his eyes and said, ‘All right. Leave. Nice and slow. Don’t give them any excuse to stop us again. All right?’
‘Sure,’ Imad said. ‘Stupid fuckers. Didn’t even ask to look in the trailer. What kind of country is this, when the police don’t want a payoff or a cut?’
‘Shut up and drive.’
Imad chuckled as he started shifting gears, and the truck lurched out onto the empty highway. He said, ‘I never thought I’d say what I’m about to say.’
‘Which is what?’
‘That you were right back there.’ Another laugh. ‘If it were up to me, they would both be dead.’
Vladimir folded his arms, closed his eyes. ‘Thankfully, it wasn’t up to you.’
Late morning, Memphis International Airport. Brian Doyle sat in a waiting area near his gate, legs stretched out, resisting an urge to scratch at his chest. It had been one long goddamn night. When the EMTs had gotten to him outside Mamma Garrity’s house, it had turned out to be not as bad as it had first looked. The two EMTs — professional young women who managed to ratchet down his tension with their soft voices — had wiped and cleaned the wound, which had only needed a few butterfly strips. No stitches necessary. They had suggested a trip to the ER but filled as he was with memories of how chaotic urban ERs could be on a busy night he had politely but firmly declined.
But Brian hadn’t declined a ride to the local precinct house, where he had spent several hours going through mugshots of local perps — although mugshots was now an obsolete term, for the head-on photos of criminals were stored on a computer system, which meant just clicking the mouse and watching the grim faces parade by. The exercise had been useless, of course, but it had been a joy to be back in a real police station for a while. The phone calls, the parade of suspects into the precinct house, the foul and fun language of the cops and detectives — it had been bracing, like having your first real drink after a six-month dry period. One of the cops had lent him a clean shirt that actually fit, and all in all it had been a good night, after that tight spot he had gotten in.
One of the detectives in the precinct had shaken his head after learning what had happened. ‘Goes to show you, man like you should always have a vest on, especially when traveling in strange places.’
Good advice. The detective — Joslynn had been his name — had also slipped him his business card and said he would dig up the report on the death of Adrianna’s aunt. ‘Strictly unofficially,’ the detective had said. ‘Paperwork is strangling us nowadays. I’ll give you a ring in a day or two.’
And Brian had said that would be fine. After an early breakfast at a diner outside the airport in Cincinnati he caught a flight back to Memphis to fetch his luggage and here he was, waiting to go back to DC. But that faint taste of police work hours earlier made him want to change his flight to JFK or LaGuardia or even Newark. Anyplace but back to the Tiger Team.
His cellphone started vibrating. Brian picked it up, saw the incoming number, recognized it right away. The Princess, no doubt calling in to see what was wrong with one of her squires. He had ignored all her pagings and her phone calls from yesterday. Today was no doubt payback time, and he could give a shit. With one hand he answered the phone; with the other, he finally scratched at his chest.
‘Yes?’
‘This is Adrianna.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘Are you all right?’
Good question. Any answer would be a lengthy one, and Brian didn’t have the energy or the inclination.
‘I’m fine. And you?’
She said, ‘I was asking because I was worried. You weren’t answering your phone or your pager.’
‘That’s right, I wasn’t.’
Adrianna started speaking faster. ‘What we did the other night was special, Brian. It meant a lot to me but I don’t have the time to handle something like that, not now. It may happen again. I hope it does. But the next few days… they are going to be crazy ones, Brian, and no offense to you, none at all, but I have all that I can handle right now. Do you understand?’
He scratched at the bandage again. ‘Sure. I understand.’
He could hear her take a breath. ‘I’m not sure that you do. But do know this… I do care for you. Care for you very much. And I hope you feel the same towards me.’
Another hell of a question. And he would like to ask her about her childhood: why did she bribe her neighbors to present a cover story, and what in hell really did happen to her aunt, all those years ago? But instead he said, ‘I do, Adrianna. And I wanted to leave yesterday on better terms… I’m sorry we didn’t.’
‘I’m sorry, too.’ Another deep breath.
‘I have something important to say to you.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘What you can do for us in the Tiger Team over the next several days… will be minimal, at best. And I say that while admiring and appreciating all that you’ve done for us so far.’
‘All right.’
‘So I’m putting you on leave, Brian. Right now. Go back home, go see your boy, get caught up on things. I don’t plan on seeing you for another week. All right?’
Talk about synchronicity. He’d just left the tender clutches of the Cincinnati Police Department, and now he was getting a Get Out of jail Free card from the Princess. Part of Brian knew that he should talk to her, debate the issue, find out what in hell was going on with her and the Tiger Team… but he was tired and his chest itched and he didn’t want to be in Memphis and he sure as hell didn’t want to be in that concrete bunker in Maryland.
So he said, ‘You got it,’ hung up, and walked across the terminal to an American Airlines ticket counter, where he paid an outrageous amount of money to change his flight from Baltimore to JFK.
The day was certainly looking up.
Adrianna hung up the phone from her office in Maryland. Nicely done. One down, three more to go.
Victor Palmer was standing in his kitchen, staring at the counter, when the phone began to ring. He had been doing that a lot lately, losing himself in thoughts and dark fantasies. He would open up the refrigerator door to find something to eat and would imagine that he was looking at a hospital refrigerator, at little vials of medicines or vaccines, and that would lead into what was going to happen over the next few days, when the vaccine spraying would begin, when the old and the sick and the very young would choke on their own fluids and die… Sometimes he would stand in the shower and stare at the near wall, letting the water run down his back, thinking of the fake showers in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and Birkenau, and how, in this world, he was now the one manning the showers for the innocents. But instead of being sprayed with Zyklon-B they were being sprayed with something
