Reflex (10 page)

Anders said carefully, "She knows that Davy was one of ours and was kidnapped. She doesn't know what Davy
did
for us."

Becca was watching this interchange with interest. When it didn't go any further, she leaned across and pulled the mouse to her end of the narrow counter running under the monitors. "Here. We've got a short clip of your exit from the Gallery." She clicked a control and video-in-a-window began running on the right-most monitor.

Millie watched herself exit the building and run up the sidewalk, the bag held over her head, splashing through puddles she didn't remember. The camera must've been in a car on the street for she angled past it, but the view stayed on the Gallery stairs. The first person exiting the Gallery after her was the heavily made-up brunette in the knee-high boots who'd sat with her in the room with the Goyas. She started down the stairs at a good clip, then stopped suddenly and took out a phone. The camera zoomed on her. The woman said something on the phone, then retreated back into the shelter of the overhang, still holding the phone to her head. A man entered the frame, coming from the street, but paused there, in the shelter, clutching his tweed jacket together at the neck.

"He's the one who held the cab for me."

"Yes," said Becca. "What about the woman?"

"She was in the Goya gallery with me, but that's the only time I saw her. However, it was after the Monk found me, so I think he passed me to her."

"The Monk?" asked Anders.

"Blond man, blue windbreaker, large bald spot." She used her finger to draw its size and placement on her own head. "Like a tonsured monk. I lost him once and doubled back close enough to overhear a phone conversation." She closed her eyes for a moment. "He said, 'We picked her up at her hotel. She dropped the black woman on Columbia then came to the National Gallery. Hyacinth followed her into the East Building and her team is staking out the ground floor exits while I'm covering that underground walkway to the other building.' " Millie opened her eyes and shrugged. "Then he saw me and cut the call."

Becca blinked and turned to Anders. "You didn't say she was in the game."

Anders looked mad. "She's
not.
Why'd you do that? Sneak up on him, I mean."

Millie cheeks warmed. "I had to know if they were really following me."

Anders kept staring at her as if he wanted more.

She bit her lip. "This has been stressful enough. I wanted—I needed—to rule out paranoid delusions."

Becca opened her mouth—a silent "ah." "You
are
a mental health professional, aren't you. And the black woman?"

"She's pretty much a mental health professional, too, in her own way." Millie smiled to herself. "She's a homeless mental patient who knows Davy. He's helped her several times in the past few months. She's asking the street people she knows if they saw anything the night of the abduction." She gestured at the screen. "Did your man hear anything?"

"No, she finished as he came up. But Becca recognized her," Anders said.

"You're kidding."

"I've been in Counter-intelligence my entire career." Becca was fiddling with the mouse again. She enlarged another video window. It was the same scene, with the woman still waiting, but the window title said
Live Feed A.
"She was a freelancer—a deniable asset. I worked with her once, fifteen years ago. Her name—her full name—is Hyacinth Pope. Couldn't forget a name like that. She had just started doing some contract work for the CIA then, but the wall came down, and most of her career since has been in the private sector."

"What does that mean?"

"Corporate security and espionage."

"And kidnapping?"

Becca shrugged. "Or worse, but she's never been indicted, much less picked up. But this affair may be compartmentalized."

"You guys don't like English very much, do you?"

Anders said, "Means that her group could be involved but that a different cell did the snatch."

On the screen Hyacinth Pope left the shelter of the overhang again. The camera tracked her to the street where she got into a late model Dodge Caravan. The camera zoomed on the driver.

"That's the Monk," Millie said.

Anders leaned forward. "Ah. Padgett. Well, that tells us something."

"And that is?"

"Padgett was with Executive Outcomes, but now he works for the BAd boys."

Becca whistled. "Bochstettler and Associates." To Millie, she added, "They're a 'consulting' firm."

"What do they do?"

Becca said, "Well, ostensibly they're international commerce specialists, helping to develop and maintain markets in foreign countries."

"And is that what they do?"

"It's exactly what they do," said Anders, with a grim face.

Millie must've looked puzzled, because Becca added, "They aren't too picky about how. Like Executive Outcomes, before the South African government shut them down, we suspect the BAd boys of toppling whole governments to arrange a more favorable business 'climate.' That's rare. There's also a couple of questionable deaths. Usually, though, they tend to work through bribery and blackmail."

"Who do they work for?"

Becca shrugged. "That's harder to figure out. There's usually multiple benefactors to their various operations. Whenever a big business project goes through, no matter who it hurts, it usually benefits multiple parties—is it the primary company? One of the junior partners? The local vendors? The international vendors? Specific local politicians?

"Their overt client is the World Trade Study Group here in D.C., a PAC funded by several multinationals. WTSG promotes 'streamlining' international business practices, but the overt work the BAd boys do for them is legit—simple PR stuff, pushing the benefits of international trade to foreign governments."

Millie nodded slowly. "WTSG I've heard of. Streamlining means removing as many regulations and laws as possible, right?"

Anders nodded. "Right."

"Why aren't they in prison? BA, I mean."

Anders looked uncomfortable. Becca laughed, but there was no humor in it.

Anders said, "Primarily, evidence. There's circumstantial links but nothing incontrovertible."

Becca added, "However, there's also no pressure to go get harder evidence. 'It's about the economy, stupid.' Big international deals benefit our economy. That's been the bottom line for the past several administrations. In fact, past attempts have been actively discouraged and in the post nine-eleven economy, it's even more so."

Again, Anders looked uncomfortable, but he didn't gainsay this.

Millie frowned. "And now they may have kidnapped my husband—wait... let me put it another way. They've stolen a U.S. Intelligence Asset. Isn't that worth getting concerned about? Seems like they've gone from illegal actions against foreign governments to illegal actions against their own, doesn't it?"

Anders held his hand out palm down and wiggled it. "We still don't know if the BAd boys did the snatch. As Becca said, it might be compartmentalized. But there's some sort of connection, all right."

Millie pushed. "And you're going to follow up on it?"

Becca and Anders both nodded.

"Oh, yeah," said Becca.

The rain had stopped by the time the white cab dropped her at Martha's Table, the famous soup kitchen on Fourteenth Street Northwest. She walked past the yellow building face, past the long line of people waiting to be fed, and found Sojee right where she'd said she'd be, near the corner at the end of the block, sheltered in the doorway of a boarded-up store. She seemed relieved to see Millie. "What took you so long?"

"Sorry." Becca and Anders hadn't wanted her to go at all, but they'd really insisted that she wait until they'd put "support in the environment." Millie was trying hard not to examine every face she passed. At least she hadn't seen the Monk yet.

Doesn't mean he isn't here, though.

"This way," Sojee said, heading south. "I found someone who saw my angel the night he disappeared."

Millie's skin itched. She felt like hostile eyes surrounded her. "Are they sure it was Davy?"

"Matthew, chapter seven, verse twenty: By their works shall you know them."

"What works?"

"Well, they said,
'Un ángel nos dio el dinero.'
"

Millie forgot about the eyes for a moment and tried to switch mental gears. Finally she managed, "An angel gave them the money?"

Sojee's smile was twisted, overlaid by something dark. "Yeah. Looks like seeing angels is contagious."

"How much money?"

"She didn't say. My friend, Porfiro, says her and her two kids went from living in a refrigerator carton in an alley off Nineteenth to subletting a room from a family in his building. They've agreed to meet us at The Burro. The one down on Pennsylvania." She looked sideways at Millie. "You're buying."

Millie smiled briefly. "Of course. My Spanish isn't very good, though. Are you up to translating?"

Sojee shook her head. "No. Porfiro is coming, though. He'll do the job. Smartest crazy person I know."

"Uh, and Porfiro is...?" She looked away. The gyrations of Sojee's face were making it hard for Millie to concentrate.

"Porfiro was in St. Elizabeth's with me. Bipolar—but lithium's got him smoothed down. He's the super in the building this family moved into."

"And what's their name?"

"Ruiz."

Sojee swung west on T Street and Millie, caught by surprise, scrambled to catch up. Her phone rang.

"Yes?" She kept walking.

It was Anders's voice. "They're up to something. They're moving in force, but so are we. We'll be right there if... if they do anything."

Millie felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She struggled hard to keep her voice calm, neutral. "You want them to, don't you?"

Anders hesitated for the briefest interval. "Do you want to find Davy?"

"Ah... all right." Millie licked her lips. "Bring it on." She disconnected.

She started to look around, then stopped herself.
What about Sojee?
Was it fair to involve her in this? "Sojee, there's something I should tell—"

The Dodge van from the Museum made a hard right into the mouth of the alley some twenty feet in front of them and stopped abruptly, blocking the sidewalk. The driver reached back and slid the side door open. It was the Monk.

At the same time, Millie heard footsteps on the pavement and turned her head. Two men rushed from the open door of a bodega and there was a screech of brakes on the street. Two more men were crossing the street at a run. A cabby, who'd had to brake for them, was shaking his fist and cursing in Farsi.

The two men from the store reached them first, walking fast, their arms coming out from their sides, palms forward.
Like someone herding sheep.

Millie started to move forward, to put herself between the men and Sojee, when Sojee pulled Millie back and stepped forward, instead. Sojee held her fist out, thumb up, and waved it back and forth at the two men, who swore and recoiled from a sudden cloud of red mist.

Pepper spray,
Millie realized. The two men's faces were streaked with an orangish red.
Dyed pepper spray.

Sojee pivoted, moving toward the two men who were threading their way through a narrow gap between two parked cars. The one in the lead had seen what happened, and he was hesitating, but his partner bumped him from behind, forcing him forward. He ducked below Sojee's spray and charged forward, going for her legs. The cloud caught the second man full in the face.

Sojee went over backwards onto the wet sidewalk as the first man grabbed her legs.

She's trying to protect me.
Millie took a step forward. The man was scooting quickly up Sojee's body in a horrid parody of sexual assault, trying to get up to her arms, to get the pepper spray away from her, Millie's fear, predominate, gave way to sudden rage. She took another step and kicked him full in the face with the toe of her Merrell hiking boots.

He fell to the side, his nose a sudden red fountain, and Sojee, cursing loudly, emptied the last of her pepper spray into his face. The man rolled over, clutching his eyes and wheezing.

One of the men who'd come from the store had dropped to his knees, his breath coming in wheezes, but his partner was rushing back at Millie, his red-streaked face contorted with rage, blinking water from his eyes. He came at a rush, to propel her toward the open door of the van, but suddenly dropped to the pavement.

Sojee had hooked his ankle and held it now with both hands. He hit the pavement hard, only partially breaking his fall with his arms. Sojee, screaming and cursing, pulled her way up the back of his legs. He tried to get back up, but she grabbed his belt at the small of his back and heaved him down again. He balanced on one hand and raised the other, to swing a hammer fist back at Sojee, so Millie slammed her boot down on the outspread fingers of his supporting hand.

He screamed and Millie felt bones crunch under her boot.

Millie heard racing engines and screeching tires followed by the sound of pounding feet.

Not more of them?

In the van, the Monk looked wildly around, then accelerated the vehicle into the alley, disappearing between the buildings.

The running figures wore FBI baseball caps and windbreakers. They focused on their attackers, instead of the two women.

Not
more of them.

Sojee was pounding her opponent with the empty pepper spray container, punctuating each blow with, "You! Got! My! Coat! Dirty!"

Millie caught her hand. "That'll do, girlfriend. That'll do."

Sojee stared up at Millie, her eyes wide. Then her face twisted and her tongue stuck out of her mouth to the side and she had a blepharospasm, a prolonged blink. "Oh. Right." She pushed off the back of her opponent and stood awkwardly. Millie pulled her to the side, out of the way of the large and healthy-looking men with the shotguns.

There was the sound of distant screeching tires from the alleyway followed immediately by a loud crash. Millie, seeing that the four men in her immediate vicinity were under control, poked her head cautiously around the corner.