Page 18.

Chapter 10

Just before dusk, David drove toward Observatory Circle. He was in his own car, heading home to Alexandria, and the promised rendez-vous with Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Ibrahim Shoob was on his way. After six p.m., there was a faint sunshine in the air, a giant lie—as if it had been a sunny day. By the time David arrived at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and 34th Street, it was getting dark.

No sign of Shoob.

David sat in the car, parked at the south-bound curb on 34th Street, with the window half rolled down. He listened to soft radio music. He finished a sandwich and a carton of milk and wished he had coffee. Atop several buildings in the island of grass and trees were small domes, housing telescopes. The empty vice presidential mansion loomed darkly.

Massive tree crowns all around floated silently, and David wished he had not agreed to meet the old NCO here at this hour. In the darkness, fog rolled like a wall across the road, under the trees, up the lawns at Observatory Circle. It thickened as it went, and cars crawled past blinded by their own headlights. David found himself being studied for a minute by a prowling police car. Of all the dumb places to arrange a secret meeting! he thought. Where was Shoob?

After a half hour, David was ready to drive home. Thinking better of it, he got out of the car to stretch his legs. Traffic had died down, with only an occasional car passing. The street glistened wetly in the fog under street lights peering through leaves. David decided to give Shoob one more chance. He’d walk up to the NSSO building, look for him, and then return to his car. If Shoob hadn’t shown up by then, David would drive home. He crossed the street and walked up the central drive. A black car crept out of nowhere and rustled at his side. “How’s it going, Captain?” called a man’s voice. “Got a minute?”

David stopped, resisting the urge to loosen the holster of his service revolver. He saw two men in suits and raincoats eyeing him. One flashed a badge. “Secret Service. How are you tonight?” The speaker was a young looking man with steel rimmed glasses, prematurely balding, very pleasant. Preppy type. But there was an unmistakable tension in the air all around.

“Fine. Looking for someone.” David stepped close and, unbidden, opened his wallet to show his military I.D. card. The Secret Service man nodded, barely glanced at it. “A kind of heavy set Coast Guard NCO,” David said.

“Well, good luck,” the blond man said languidly. David heard a click as an assault rifle went back on safety inside the car. “Hope he shows up soon. Good luck.”

“Thanks.” David watched as the long black car rolled away toward Admiral’s House, and fog closed behind it. In five minutes, David reached the center of the circle. He passed around the main Observatory building, and approached the recently-built NSSO building. NSSO had most of its offices in three underground stories. The single story above ground story blended innocuously with its antique surroundings.

David found the front door locked. A dim bulb gleamed along a deserted corridor inside. “Chief!” David rapped on the door. “Chief!” He walked around the building, pausing under a light globe. “Chief?”

Nothing.

He started to return to his car, picking up stride. This place was spooking him, and he’d be glad to be home. Time for a hot bath, a drink, a good night’s sleep. Fog rolled thickly, and a chill moisture beaded on glass surfaces all around. In this pea-soup moisture, sounds carried well—too well; he heard a mix of muffled sounds, some of them nothing more than a volume of air blowing against a wall or swishing through trees. The fog itself seemed to stalk silently all around him, circling him like dim shark shapes.

He heard a man’s voice—or was it the cough of a starter turning in a car?—and whirled. Was that a bulky form lumbering down the path 100 yards away, or a glimpse of a moving pine bough, or a wall of fog behind another wall of fog?

“Shoob!” David cried out. “Shoob?” He peered into the mist, which alternately closed and opened, and David squinted desperately, wiping his eyes with his hands, to stare more intently. He drew his gun.

Wiping water out of his blinking eyes as he took one step closer, then another, he sensed that something was wrong.

He heard a muffled shout and started jogging. “Shoob!”

He inserted a clip from his web belt, and unlocked the safety. This sent a metallic clatter echoing through the damp complex, bounding off walls and returning to its source.

David called out: “Shoob? Are you okay?”

The fog closed in thickly, swirling.

There was a dragging sound, like heels in gravel.

David heard a sound of struggle—

—a fist whacking flesh—

—the sound of a door slamming.

David ran toward the sounds. His path took him around the central garden with its greenhouses, and back onto the main drive that led to where his car was parked.

David heard a car start up, saw twin red taillights...a van.

“Hey,” he called out, “wait! Stop!” He wanted to check the inside, prepared to be embarrassed if this were a mistake. Shoob’s paranoia seemed to be rubbing off on him.

Red taillights swam away toward the street. David made one desperate sprint, but he was too late. The van pulled out, turning smoothly, changing gears, and tooled away. Its engine noise grew faint in the mist.

David ran back to his car, holstering the gun and thinking—should he try to chase them? Would he miss Shoob if Shoob showed up here after all? Or had Shoob been nabbed? Dammit! As he jogged puffing toward his car, he knew the practical answer—he’d never find the van in this fog. He wouldn’t recognize the van if he saw it.

He drove to the Vice President’s House, hoping to alert the two Secret Service men, but, bafflingly, the house was dead still and David could not find a soul as he drove crawling around the house.

What am I doing? He asked himself as he waited in the main drive once more. He turned the engine off and waited, listening to the sound of his heartbeat, the whisper of an occasional car innocently and slowly crawling past on Observatory Circle.

He called the local police and spoke with a dispatcher, but felt awkward. What could he tell them? To check every van within a five state radius?

He called Jankowsky at home. “I’m sorry to bother you, Sir, but I think Shoob may have been abducted from under my nose.

“You think? Did you see it or not?”

“Not exactly, Sir. It’s very foggy, and he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. I heard noises, and a van drove off.”

Jankowski processed for a moment. “Go home.”

“Sir, I have to wait for the police.”

“Oh shit, you called the police?”

“Yessir, under the circumstances...” An alarm bell went off. Something wasn’t quite right about this conversation.

“Okay... okay...I understand. You did the right thing. Just go home, okay? We’ll handle it from here.”

“We, Sir?”

“Go home.”

“Yessir.”

At that moment, a police car with flashing lights slowed on 34th, started to turn into the driveway, and stopped. The lights stopped flashing. There was a brief pause, the twirling lights went dark, and the police car drove slowly away. Called off? By whom? Why?

As David drove home through the fog, he called Tory.

She sounded concerned, thoughtful, cautious. “Everything is so strange these days. Poor Ib—I’m worried. I could call his wife, see if he’s home.”

“Why don’t you do that and call me back?”

He felt thrilled to hear her voice. It was chilly and he turned the heater in the car on.

Minutes later, as he rolled by her house, she called. “David?”

“Hey, look out the window.” He slowed.

A figure appeared in a first floor window. A woman. She waved. “Is that you?”

“Do you always wave at strange cars?”

“Just certain strange cars.”

“How’s Ib?”

“Not home. I didn’t want to scare his wife, Hala, so I said it was something about work that could wait until tomorrow. She didn’t seem worried—said this is his night to meet with his book club; they sometimes meet until ten or eleven.”

David tooted twice.

“Want to stop by?”

“Wish I could. I’ve had a big day, and tomorrow will be more of the same. Tell me again that you’ll have lunch with me. It’s all I ask.” He glanced back and saw her still leaning out the window before her house receded among the trees.

“I give you my word, mon capitaine.”

“Ah oui, cette joie—je suis—how do you say happy in French?”

“—'Uppee.”

“Thank you. I am very 'uppee to be your friend, mademoiselle.”