A Deadly Vineyard Holiday (19 page)

I wondered if I'd heard right. It sounded so weird that it might actually be true. “The Internal Revenue Service? You're kidding me!”

“Not that IRS, although I wouldn't put it past them.” He allowed himself a laugh. “I mean the International Research Service.”

I ran all the federal acronyms I could think of through my head, but I'm not good at such things in the best of circumstances, so I wasn't surprised that I'd never heard of the International Research Service. I said as much to Joe Begay.

His cigarette flared and faded. “If you read the annual budget reports, you'll see it right there, sort of buried between other agencies having to do with foreign
activities. It doesn't have much of a budget of its own, so it doesn't attract much attention, but it gets a lot of money from some big-budget outfits that don't like to tell Congress or anybody else just where all the money goes.”

“How does it manage that?”

“IRS gets contracts from those agencies to perform certain services. In turn, the IRS contracts with private businesses for them to do some of the work.”

“What kind of work?”

“Like helping our friends and undercutting our enemies. Finagling with currencies, maybe. Spreading information or disinformation. Buying people in powerful positions. Maybe an occasional unsociable act. All in the name of research, of course. All IRS agents are researchers.”

“What kind of unsociable acts?”

Joe Begay dropped his cigarette butt and ground it out under his foot. “Like helping a friendly political faction win an election with the help of high explosives.”

An image came uninvited into my mind. “The little girl with no face.”

“The very same. The bomb under your house is an echo of that other explosion, wouldn't you say? Poetic justice, as it were?”

Ye gods! “And these bugs we've found on the cars. They're the sort the IRS uses?”

“Indeed.” He hesitated.

“What?”

“Remember me mentioning that some people call this island Spook Haven? Well, they do. Because of all the retired intelligence types who live here or summer here. There are a lot of them. Rich old guys from the OSS days and the early days of the CIA, and some
younger rich and occasionally not so rich guys, lots of them married into families playing the same games, and all of them from those alphabet outfits down Washington way that do some work they'd just as soon not talk about in public. Black ops and gray ops, and like that. They do white ops, too, of course, though they probably don't count in this case. It's the black and gray operatives who might interest you.”

“Yeah?”

“Could be. Some of them are IRS people, and some of them are pretty pissed off by the way that operation turned out. They don't blame the guy in charge when the operation was planned, but they do blame the new guy. They figure it's his fault things got fucked up and they got a black eye. Some of them are really, and I mean really, mad.”

The new guy was the president of the United States, now vacationing on Martha's Vineyard. His daughter was my cousin Debby.

I stared through the darkness at Joe Begay's dim figure. “Do you mean to tell me that it's some pissed-off IRS guy right here on Martha's Vineyard who's out to get Cricket Callahan?”

His voice was touched with irony. “You don't sound surprised. Does that mean there aren't more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy?”

Actually there probably were. But my dreams of Martha's Vineyard didn't exclude vipers. Every Eden has its snakes, after all.

“Tell me more,” I said.

“Two of the rolled heads from the IRS have places here on the island,” said Begay. “One of them was the deputy director of operations when the girl lost her face. Name of Kenneth Eppers. An old-timer with fingers in a lot of pies. Known as ‘Horrors' to the troops because of some of the stuff he orchestrated. Lives in a big place in Chilmark. They say he can see both sides of the island from there.

“The other one was Horrors's favorite up-and-comer in operations. The very one who planned the operation that went wrong, in fact. A tough cookie who did a lot of good work overseas, then came in out of the cold to work in the head office. Woman named Barbara Miller.”

“Never heard of either one of them.”

“I don't think you travel in the same circles. Barbara's husband is an international banker and isn't quite as rich as Croesus, but almost. She used to travel with him or for him and that gave her the cover she needed. His name's Ben, by the way, in case you ever want to introduce him to anybody.”

“Ben and Barbara. Sound like good names for a couple of dolls.”

“They've got a house off Lambert's Cove Road, up on a hill with a view of the sound. They've got a few other houses, too, but that's the one they like during the summer.”

“You're a well of information. Where do you get it?”

“I'm a Native American. We're full of inherent wisdom.”

“Or something else.”

“Our little chat this morning whetted my curiosity, so after you left I made some more phone calls to Washington and a couple of other places.”

The wind rustled through the trees and bushes on either side of Joe's house, and I wished, not for the first time, that I had eyes like a cat, in case there was something in the darkness that had such eyes and was watching me when I couldn't watch back. Another desire from my childhood that had never gone away when I grew up. Or maybe I hadn't really grown up.

I thanked Joe for his information.

“What are you going to do with it?” he asked.

“I don't know, but I'm glad to have it.”

“If you need anything else, let me know.”

“I will.”

I climbed into the Land Cruiser and drove home, full of thoughts.

By the time I turned into my driveway, I realized that I felt better than I had been feeling lately, because I was finally going to do something instead of just having things done to me. The feeling was quickly modified.

The agents guarding the end of my driveway ID'd me; then, as one moved his car so I could drive down to the house, the other leaned over my window and said, “A guy came by looking for you. Mad as a hornet. Said something about you and his wife. Burned rubber getting out of here when we wouldn't let him in.” He looked at me without expression, and I knew what he was thinking.

“It's all a mistake,” I said. “You've seen my wife. Do you think I'm actually after somebody else's woman?”

He shrugged and stood back. In his line of work he'd probably met a lot of fools. He'd also probably met men who'd left gorgeous women for plain ones. For that matter, so had I, so it was no wonder that my protest might have sounded hollow to him.

I drove down and parked in the yard. There, I dug the flashlight out from under the seat and checked out my thread. No easy task in the starlit night, but worth it when I found no breaks. Back at the house, I found Karen on the darkened porch. She'd been watching my light dance around through the woods. I found a chair and sat down.

“Any breaks in your defensive perimeter?” she asked.

“No. Any sign of visitors?”

“No, but you got a call from some guy who left a message.”

I had a sinking feeling. “What was it?”

“It was about giving you a good beating so you'd stay away from other men's wives. He didn't leave his name.” Karen was more sympathetic than her colleague at the end of the driveway had been.

“Mike Qasim. He was up at the end of the drive, too. The agents wouldn't let him in.”

“You'd better keep an eye open for him. Sometimes these guys do foolish things. On Monday, you can tell him the truth, but you'd better be careful till then.”

Sometimes these guys do foolish things.
The words sent facts flipping through my brain. The letters were from somebody mad at the president because of the girl without a face. The bomb that had ruined her had gone off in the Middle East. “Mike” Mahmud ibn Qasim's people were from over there somewhere in the five-seas area, and Mike was a hothead who was quick to seek out his enemies.

Maybe there were others like him on the island.

I touched a hand to my forehead, as Zee tells me I do when I'm thinking. Why do I do that? I said, “Do you know if your people checked Mike out before the president came down?”

“I can find out. Why?”

I told her my thoughts.

After a moment, she said, “You're not just mad at him because of this wife thing, are you?”

“I don't think so.”

After another moment, she nodded. “All right. In the morning I'll find out if he's on our list or ought to be.”

“It'll be interesting if he is.” If he was, it was just one more reason for carrying out the plan I'd worked out. “Is Debby asleep?”

“Yes.”

“She a light sleeper?”

“Not a bit. Once she gets settled in, she's down for the count.”

“Good. She'll need to be rested.”

“Why?”

“In the early morning, I'm going to move her out of here.”

I could feel Karen's frown through the darkness. “What do you mean?”

“I mean there's too much going on that I don't know about, and I want Debby to be safe, so I want to move her away from here. I'll need your help.”

Karen's voice was firm. “She's as safe as she'll ever be. We're surrounded by security people. Besides, she can't just go off to who knows where. She's in my charge, remember?”

“I've got a stake in this, too,” I said. “Zee and I live in this house, and if Shadow makes another play, Zee could get hurt, along with Debby. I don't want that.”

“We have agents all around this place. Nobody is going to get through them.”

“You have a lot of confidence in your colleagues. Did you know that some of your fellow agents guarding the compound at night are keeping themselves awake by watching one of those little plug-into-the-cigarette-lighter TVs that they borrowed from one of the local cops? How much talent would it take to sneak past some guy watching the late-night show?”

“If that's how you feel,” she said, “I'll take her back to the compound right now.”

My eyes were getting used to the darkness, and I could see her stand up, a moving shadow against the starlight beyond the porch screens. She seemed to be looking out into the night.

“I can't keep you from doing that,” I said, “but that doesn't strike me as the world's best idea. I think Debby's here because Walt Pomerlieu doesn't want her there. I think he thinks here is safer than there, and he wants her here while he tracks down the mole who's there. The trouble is that here isn't safe anymore, either. We've got to take her somewhere else for a couple of days.”

“Like where?”

“How's your night vision?” I asked.

I thought she turned toward me. “Not as good as I wish it was. Why?”

“Can you see this pistol in my hand?”

She froze.

“I can see you against the starlight,” I said. “Don't move. Do you see this pistol?”

“What's going on?” Her voice was hard.

“Answer the question, Agent Lea. Do you see this pistol?”

“No. What are you doing?” Her hands began to shift position.

“Don't move,” I said, remembering how fast she could be.

The hands stopped. “Be careful,” she said in a soothing voice. “Don't do anything foolish. Remember, she's the president's daughter, and if you do anything to her, you'll never get away with it.”

I didn't think I had much time before she made her play, even though she thought I had the drop; but I didn't need more time. “Don't worry about Debby,” I said. “And don't worry about the pistol, either, because I don't have one with me. But I might have had. In fact, you thought I did.”

“Bastard!” The word came like a knife through the darkness.

“The point is that you and I don't really know each other,” I said. “None of us know one another. I don't know anything about you or Walt Pomerlieu or any of the other agents I've met, and none of them know about Zee and me, other than what they've been able to check out in the last couple of days.”

“We know more about you than you realize!” There was a tremor in her voice, as the need for controlling her fear had passed.

“You didn't know enough to doubt the gun in my hand.”

She was furious. “You could have gotten yourself killed! That was stupid! Your pistol may have been make-believe, but mine is real! In another minute I might have used it!”

“Yeah, I think you might have, even though you thought I had you cold and that I'd probably kill you before you could clear leather or nylon or whatever it is
you use for holsters these days. I think I told the truth just in time.”

“You're a fool! I can't believe you did that!”

She wasn't the first person to think me a fool, nor, probably, would she be the last.

My throat was very dry. “I'm going to have a beer,” I said. “Do you want one?”

“No!”

I went into the dark house, found the fridge by Braille and got a Sam Adams, and came back out onto the porch. The Sam Adams tasted cool and rich, as usual. Manna from heaven. It occurred to me that God might be a brewer, among other things.

I found my chair and sat down. “My problem,” I said, “is that I need to trust somebody, but I didn't know who that could be. Now, I'm pretty sure it's you.”

“Why? Because you think I was about to shoot you? What does that prove? What kind of person are you? My God!” I could see her turn and stare back out into the night.

“It's not just because you thought about shooting me, it's why you might have done it. You never mentioned any danger to yourself; you only mentioned danger to Debby.”