The Night Crew (22 page)

She shrugged. “I’m sorry you had to come all this way in the dead of night.”

I stood and looked down at her. She didn’t look sorry, she looked relieved. “You’ve been very hospitable and helpful, Mrs. Ashad. Thank you.”

She also stood and began escorting me to the door, quite happy that this was over. But about halfway through the study I slapped my forehead and said, “Oh . . . one more question.”

She looked at me with an expression somewhere between annoyed and quizzical.

“Did your husband ever mention Kenny Waylon? Perhaps in conversation or in a letter?”

Again there was an interesting pause before she replied, “The name might ring a bell . . . I’m afraid, though, I don’t remember it.”

“They died together. Waylon was driving the Humvee and Amal was in the passenger seat.” And, actually they ended up blurred together in the same bloody mist, though it might be poor taste to mention that part. But I decided to take another throw of the dice and informed her, “Kenny and Amal worked in the same section at the CIA. There were partners in Iraq. I’m told they were quite close.”

It was her turn to feign a look of surprise. “Oh, you mean Ken?”

“Same guy.” I nodded. “Good ole Ken.”

“Amal always called him Ken, never Kenny. Yes, they were good friends. What about him?”

I did not really want to answer that question and I replied, “How tragic that they died together. How was the funeral, Mrs. Ashad?”

We were at the door, which she was holding open, no doubt intending this to be a strong hint to not let it hit me in the ass. “Sad . . . very sad. All of Amal’s friends were there, as was his family.”

“Where was he buried?”

“Why does it matter?”

“It doesn’t . . . if I’ve been too intrusive, I’m sorry.”

“No, I . . . Well, the funeral was in the town where Amal grew up . . . in California.”

She was obviously thinking on her feet—she chose the farthest location from here she could get—so I couldn’t just pop over and confirm the gravesite. Smart lady.

Well, maybe not that smart; according to Amal’s military records, which had, so far, checked out, Ashad’s home of record was Aberdeen, Maryland.

My right foot was wedged against the door, so she couldn’t shut it in my face. “Incidentally, what was his boss’s name?”

I produced a quick yawn to prove how exhausted I was and explained, “We spoke just a few hours ago . . . in fact, that’s how I got your address. I promised to call when I finished up here.”

She looked at me and said, “So much for your excellent memory.”

“I’m sure I said I have a
good
memory.”

She smiled back, a bit patronizingly. “I see . . . good, not excellent.”

“Well, I’d better get along . . . I have to make the hour drive back to the office and get the number from my Rolodex. I hate to wake his boss at two o’clock in the morning . . . but . . .”

She made no reply for a few seconds, but apparently more conflicted about interrupting the fitful sleep of Amal’s boss then inconveniencing me, she eventually informed me, “I suppose since you already know her, it won’t hurt anything. Margaret Martin.”

“Well, thank you again, Mrs. Ashad.”

“I hope I’ve been helpful.”

“More than you know,” I said—and meant it.

I waved farewell and walked back to my car.

I climbed into the Prius, pushed the starter button, turned off the automatic headlights, then turned on the radio and listened to the local news while I lingered and kept an eye the house. The kitchen light went out first, the front hallway lights next, then a bedroom light went on—and stayed on for the next thirty minutes. Interesting. What was keeping Mrs. Ashad awake at this late hour? For sure, she had acted and looked tired; but maybe I bored her. Anyway, I hoped she wasn’t on the phone making an alarming report about the strange man who had popped by to ask a lot of inconvenient questions.

Mrs. Ashad had lied about the box of personal belongings, and she lied about the location of her husband’s grave. She was not a natural dissembler, but neither had she engaged in any of the schoolbook giveaways: no shaking hands, no trembling lips, no outbreak of sweat, no eyeballs inverting to her left. Indeed, I thought, she looked and sounded rehearsed. But rehearsed by whom, and more importantly, why?

I put the car into gear, drove about five miles to a Dunkin’ Donuts in a worn-down strip mall, picked up a box of a dozen glazed, a large carry-away carton of coffee, and then returned to 38th Street, where I parked at the end of the block and settled in for a long vigil.

If I was going to engage in a stakeout like a cop, why not go all the way?

Chapter Twenty-Two

The home’s garage was located on the lower level, at the bottom of a steep driveway and, at 6:30, a silver Dodge minivan crested the rise, took a right, and drove at a slow speed past me. I was just stuffing the last of the donuts in my mouth, and was parked directly below a street light as she passed—I could see Mrs. Ashad staring straight ahead from behind the steering wheel, and I could see kids’ heads bobbing up and down in the back. And on the far side of the van, I thought I saw the vague outline of a male seated in the passenger seat.

Maybe Mrs. Ashad had moved fast and already found a replacement for her dearly departed hubbie, or maybe she had purchased one of those blow-up dolls carpool lane cheaters use.

I put the car in gear and followed. We drove up a big hill, then crossed Glebe Road, drove a few more blocks, took a left, and she pulled into the large circular driveway of Williamsburg Elementary School. The middle doors of the van flew open and three kids piled out, hauling their backpacks and mauling one another by the curb. I watched a man step out of the front seat. He pointed a finger like a dagger and said something sharp enough to make the kids quit the horseplay, he gave each kid a hug, then got back into the car.

Despite being thoroughly overcaffeinated and tripping on sugar-logged donuts, I was still running a little short on gas, but I definitely recognized the physique, and the face—Amal Ashad.

And to think I had thought he was dead and buried. Okay, I had sat in the car all night and was following them now because I hadn’t thought that at all; Mrs. Ashad had lied about the package, she had lied about the prayer beads, she had lied about the funeral, so the really big lie wasn’t all that hard to figure out.

As I watched, the kids skipped off in the direction of the school’s entrance, and mom and pop hit the gas and left. I waited half a beat, then followed them back to Glebe Road, where they took a sharp left, then they drove for a few more miles over Military Road, then through some more twisty roads and up a big hill until we were crawling through dense traffic down Route 123, in McLean, Virginia, about half a mile from CIA headquarters at Langley.

I watched them hang a right into the headquarters complex and decided to use my Agency pass and follow them inside. I don’t usually talk to corpses, but I was really looking forward to a lively conversation with Amal Ashad, who seemed to have rematerialized from a death-strewn street in Baghdad and transported himself here. I believe in resurrections, but only as the aftermath of an immaculate conception.

When I got to the gate, however, I realized I had made a big mistake. While the gate guard in the blue uniform walked toward my car, two dark sedans pulled in and came to a screeching halt behind me, totally blocking in my little Prius. I had been so preoccupied with tailing the Ashads that I never noticed the cars tailing me. The army has an astute technical term for this—rectal defilade, i.e., having your head up your ass.

A very tall man in a light gray suit with a narrow gray face, and a beak like a swollen cashew nut, walked to my door, bent over, and tapped on the window.

I pushed the button, brought the window down, but only a bit, so there was a large enough crack to speak through but not enough for him to get his big hands on me. I smiled at him and said, “Park it where it’ll get no scratches, or dings . . . or no tip.”

He did not appreciate my insouciance. “Unlock your doors now.”

“I don’t think so. I’ve seen everything I want to see.”

“You think you’re smart?”

“I know I’m smart. I’m just not certain about you.”

He seemed a little pissed off, and I don’t think my surly mouth was the cause, though it was not helping matters, nor was it meant to. Probably, like me, he had just spent a long, cold, boring night parked on a suburban street, and I was definitely the cause of that. He looked tired, with bloodshot eyes, and a little disheveled, and, as I said, very pissed off.

On the other hand, Sean Drummond was seated behind the wheel of a cute little yellow Prius, which I could not imagine James Bond being caught dead in.

He said, “Look, Drummond, if you want to be a pain in the ass, I can have a tow-truck up here in about five minutes, and make you.” He sort of snorted. “Now who’s the smart one?”

This guy had obviously not read the warning that when you argue with an idiot, you have to get down his level, where he has more experience. I said, “Hey, was that you parked on Thirty-Eighth Street all night?”

“You never saw us, Drummond. How does it feel to be caught with your pants down?”

I don’t think we were bonding. In fact, it was start-time at CIA headquarters and the traffic was really beginning to pile up behind us as this bully and I engaged in our juvenile taunting. I’m good at this. And I enjoy it. Or, as my army infantry buddies like to say about themselves, when you wrestle with a pig, everybody gets dirty but the pig actually has a ball. Anyway, it was a major intersection and a bunch of cars had shot through the green light toward the guard point, and were now backed up behind us and blocking the intersection. A few people were honking. The gate guard gave him a look and shouted, “Hey buddy, can you two cut the crap? I gotta get this moving.”

“In a minute,” he barked. Then, looking at me, he sort of opened his coat a little so I could observe the big black pistol hooked to his belt. He said in a low, authoritative tone, “Drive down to the building. Now, or else.”

“Or else what?”

“I’ll make you.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“Maybe.”

“Show me your police badge and your warrant, then I might come along peacefully.”

His face turned really red, and his right hand moved down to his holster.

Now I knew he wasn’t a cop, or an FBI agent, and he obviously didn’t have a warrant; even more obviously, he was not happy with the situation, or, I suppose, with me. It’s always a stupid idea to provoke a man with a gun, but I was pretty sure shooting me in the presence of so many inconvenient witnesses was not in his instructions. But his jaw was now very tight, and his hand looked shaky.

Two more men suddenly emerged from the government sedans to our rear, and walked toward my car. One, a short, chubby fellow in a nice blue suit that resembled a well-tailored tent, smiled nicely at me, and inquired, “What’s the problem here?”

“The problem,” I replied, not smiling in return, “is your Gestapo goon here, who keeps giving me orders and showing off his gun.”

Short guy said to tall guy, “That true?”

“Absolutely not,” tall guy insisted, quickly closing his coat. “I merely made a polite request for Drummond to accompany us down to the headquarters.”

“He’s lying,” I informed short guy. “He said I better get moving before the fat runt got here, or he’d shoot me.”

Short guy was apparently sensitive about his height and his weight, because his lips sort of became sucked into his mouth and then he turned back to the goon with the gun. “You’ve mishandled this. Go back to the car.”

Tall guy glowered at me and said, “This isn’t over,” then turned on his heels and stomped back to the car.

Short guy smiled at me. “I apologize for any misunderstanding.”

“Which misunderstanding are you referring to? Following me for the past ten hours, or blocking my car, or having that big idiot threaten me with a gun?”

We regarded each other a moment, sort of taking each other’s measure. I don’t think he liked what he saw. “All of it . . . whatever,” he replied, with a distinct note of impatience. “Please, Colonel Drummond, we need to talk.”

“Will Amal Ashad be present for this talk?”

“Well . . . maybe that could be arranged.”

I turned off the engine and leaned back in my seat. Route 123 was now a parking lot filled with very pissed off people.

We were at an impasse here. He wanted me to drive onto CIA property where I would be subject to arrest and possibly detained in the basement and forced to endure some mind control experiment that would turn me into one of
them
. I, on the other hand, wanted to get my hands around Amal Ashad’s throat and find out why he wasn’t nearly as dead as he was supposed to be.

But Ashad was obviously the hook, and he said, “All right, you’ll get your crack at Ashad. You have my word.”

I knew it was a bad idea to trust this guy, but I pushed the start button and drove down the hill into the parking lot in front of CIA headquarters. I pulled into an open parking space with a sign that claimed it was reserved for a deputy director—in the palace of lies and deception, you can’t trust a simple sign—put the car in park, and switched off the engine. I got out and stretched; inside a minute, short, fat guy and a few of his friends showed up, including tall guy who was looking at me like he was measuring a coffin.

Mr. Short approached me and, with his hand held out, put a name and a job to the body. “Mark Helner, internal security.”

I shook his hand and asked, “Why was I under the misimpression that the CIA is barred from operating inside the borders of the United States?”

He shrugged. “That is the law, yes.”

“So . . . ?”

“So . . . it appears we have a misunderstanding.” He then explained the nature of this mix-up. “You invaded the home of a CIA employee, which brought this matter under our jurisdiction.” He paused. “Mrs. Ashad called us late last night. She was distraught about an intruder who misrepresented his identity, impersonated an army investigator, lied his way inside, and began pressuring her to answer questions that violate our national security.”

This sounded, in fact, like a fairly accurate rendition of what I had done the night before, but, as a lawyer, of course, I wasn’t stupid enough to confirm this story. I relied, instead, on the old legal adage that when a sound defense is impossible, be offensive, or go on the offensive—I can never keep that straight—and replied, “And did she remember to mention she was hiding a corpse inside her home?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Unless she enjoys necrophilia, Amal Ashad is alive and was in her bed last night.”

He either did not know the meaning of this exotic word or chose to remain on the offense himself. He stuck out a finger. “You have a big problem, Drummond. You violated several federal statutes, not to mention sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“Fine, charge me. Let’s sort it out in court.”

“Good idea. I just might.”

“A good bluff has an odor of truth, Mr. Helner. All I smell is bullshit.”

Staying true to my olfactory theme, he replied, “Sniff again. Don’t underestimate me, Drummond, and don’t misjudge the seriousness of this situation.” He then put a finger against my chest and stated in language I could understand, “Your ass is in my hands.”

“In court, you get to explain the little mystery of how Ashad, who’s supposedly dead and buried, ended up in his home, back in Arlington.” I plucked his finger off my chest. “I’ll invite every reporter I know and be sure to raise my voice when I get to that part.”

“You’re mistaken . . . or mistaken again.” It looked like he was dying to tell me how mistaken I was, so I chose not to address that charge.

“The man you saw this morning is Mrs. Ashad’s brother-in-law.” In the event I wasn’t getting the message, he embellished on this lie. “Amal’s little brother, Rashid. I’ll admit the family resemblance is quite striking” He added a little more bullshit to the recipe and said, “He was worried about Mrs. Ashad and decided to spend the night.”

“Then bring him out and let me talk to him. We can clear up any confusion and I’ll go away.”

“I don’t think so, Drummond.”

“I’d like to see him now.”

“I’m afraid that’s not even a little possible.”

“Then I’ll go get a little subpoena and make it possible.”

“You better get it fast.” He smiled again—it was one of those smiles Snidely Whiplash would produce, if he had a plump, churlish face, and no mustache he could twirl. “He has a plane to catch. An international flight. I hear he plans to be away for a long time.”

I said, “What are you going to do? Arrange another unfortunate accident? Don’t you get tired of killing this guy? Doesn’t he get tired of it?”

His smile broadened. “You know, that’s an idea with possibilities. An accident . . . of course, it would be a terrible coincidence, both Amal and his brother killed. So much tragedy to befall one family, don’t you think?”

“You promised I could talk to him, and now you’re planning his funeral.”

“I’m with the federal government, Drummond—trust me is just another way of saying I’m lying.” The smile hardened. “You’ll never talk to him, Drummond. Never.”

I did my best to look disappointed and pissed off at this news. “Then I guess . . . I’m . . . well, I’m just wasting my time.”

“I couldn’t have said it better. Amal Ashad died two months ago. He’s not coming back to life.”

The tall guy with the hatchet face was smiling and found it impossible to resist saying, “Like I said, Drummond, who’s the smart guy now?”

I ignored that comment—and him—and said to Mr. Helner, “Now that everything’s cleared up, am I free to go?”

“First, I’ve got some news for you. As I said, you’ve violated any number of Agency regulations, not to mention several federal statutes, Drummond. Impersonating a military investigator is a serious offense. You should be aware that, early this morning, your security clearance was revoked. Also I’ll have to take your Agency passcard.”

“What if I want to keep it?”

“Won’t do you any good. Your passcode has also been erased from the system. It’s CIA property. I insist you give me the card.”

I pulled out my wallet, withdrew my card, and threw it on the ground. “Does this mean I won’t be coming back to the CIA when this case is over?”

This thought seemed to make him happy—but not nearly as happy as it made me. “I think that’s a good guess,” he informed me.

“Do I have time,” I asked, “for one farewell gesture?”

“If you wish.”

I raised my middle finger and pointed it at the Langley headquarters building, aiming specifically at the top floor, where the Lord of the Manor hung his hat, and I could swear I saw him looking down at me and waving back, a big goofy wave. But it’s possible I imagined that.