Twice a Spy (40 page)

In the chrome frame of a one-armed bandit, he caught the reflection of a curly-haired young man in a peacoat and fatigue pants. The thick-framed glasses would probably have thrown Charlie. But although the young man was playing a slot machine, he was looking at something other than the wheel, possibly a chrome band enabling him to view Charlie, and enabling Charlie to recognize him as the lanky custodian from the State Line, Mississippi, McDonald’s.

Charlie felt as if he’d hit a jackpot.

Turning away, he searched for the VIP credit lounge. It would have been hard not to find. Its golden letters were almost as big as those outside.

But would they admit him? A VIP, in the gaming industry, was someone with assets. Does a person have a credit card, a debit card, even a library card that can advance cash now against overdue fees later? Then he’s a VIP.

Charlie waltzed into the lounge, and with little effort obtained a $5,000 cash advance—it was nice to be able to draw on the family numbered account without fear that the transaction would incite an Interpol SWAT team. He also put $5,000 on the casino platinum card he’d been handed upon entry, bringing its balance to $5,020—all new arrivals began with a balance of $20. A taste.

He needed appropriate clothes, which were readily available a few steps off the casino floor. Among other tuxes for sale at a store called Golden Man was the “High Roller” line; Charlie bought a size 42R along with a matching dress shirt, shoes, and a bow tie. He also tossed onto the counter a Golden Sun baseball cap and a windbreaker, as if on impulse.
The total was $2,111. He paid in cash, hoping the lack of a paper trail in this instance would obfuscate his planned exit.

He checked into a hotel room, opting for a Chief’s Suite at an extra fifteen dollars per night. The lofty space was furnished in an Ancient Rome theme, the walls and marble floor flecked with silver and gold. The bed was almost as big as a swimming pool. He wished Alice were here, if only to share his grin.

He called room service and ordered the “executive” surf and turf. While waiting, he changed into his tux, which was almost identical to those worn by the staff he’d seen carrying drink trays and pushing the linen-draped room service trolleys.

A few minutes later, at the sound of a gong, he answered his door and admitted a waiter who not only wore a tux like his, but was close to his height and weight. Their principal differences were twenty years in age, a slight hunch, and an overbite. Lucky, Charlie thought. He could mimic those.

He asked, “Sir, how would you like to make a thousand dollars?”

The man, who probably heard an equally unusual question at least once a week, didn’t hesitate. “Depends what for.”

“For reasons I’m sure I won’t need to explain to you, I need to get out of this building without being seen by my wife, who unexpectedly just showed up.”

Stooping so as to resemble the waiter and to keep his face from the view of security cameras, Charlie heaved the trolley down a service corridor, his planned change of clothes hidden in a food compartment.

He came to an exit leading onto a dark dining patio, evidently used during warmer months. Abandoning the trolley, he crossed the patio, reaching an unlit spiral stairwell that took him down to a curb lined with six or seven buses rumbling at idle. Their exhaust created a fog laced with diesel fumes. His plan had been to make his way to the parking lot and find someone leaving the casino who would thank Jesus for the crazy Yankee who gave him three grand for a clunker pickup truck. But this was better.

Charlie fell into step with the grumbling and otherwise downtrodden
crowd exiting the casino and boarding the buses. Throwing the windbreaker over his tuxedo coat and zipping it to the neck, he wove through shadows and climbed aboard the first bus in line, a sixty-foot-long Golden Sun coach destined for Hattiesburg, Mississippi’s YMCA, according to the marquee.

He found a seat, the three dozen passengers scattered around the cabin paying him passing notice at most. The lone exception, a buzzard of around eighty lowering himself into the seat across the aisle. The old man locked eyes with Charlie and said, “Fun, but no money,” then readied his blanket and tubular “snuggle pillow” for the trip home.

The bus driver, a fiftyish man with the look of a commandant, took his place behind the wheel, snapped the door shut, and propelled the coach toward the highway—all without a glance at the passengers. The Golden Sun’s management cared much more about gamblers on the way in than those who’d left.

The Brig
reminded Bream of a utility shed. Decorated, barely, with a pair of model ships, a dartboard, and three beer company posters, it smelled of low tide even though the tide was now high—because the jukebox was out of order and the six solitary patrons weren’t speaking to one another, Bream could hear the waves slapping the top of the pier.

Glad of the opportunity to be alone with his thoughts, he climbed onto a stool at the warped bar and ordered his Bud.

He found himself stealing glances at the young woman in a Princeton sweatshirt at the other end of the bar, as exquisite a specimen as he’d ever seen. Aphrodite with green eyes and a damned good attendance record at the gym.

What the hell, he wondered, was someone like her doing in a place like this?

Cliché be damned, he wandered over and asked.

“Waiting for you to come to this side of the bar.” She flashed two fingers to the bartender. “But just because you’re the only man here who wouldn’t be a shoo-in for the cast of a zombie movie, don’t think I’m going to be easy.”

“That makes two of us,” Bream said. “I’ve already got an old lady.”

“But you want a young one, don’t you?”

Bream didn’t say no. Maybe what he really needed was to take his mind off work. Settling on the stool next to hers, he asked, “So you got a story?”

At twenty-three, she said, she was over the hill as a fashion model. Tonight she was drinking herself into grudging acceptance that she
would start law school in the fall. She had eschewed the Ivies for the University of Alabama so that she could help take care of her grandma, who lived nearby.

He was charmed. Three beers later and it was probably clear to everyone in the bar, even the guy facedown at the table beneath the dartboard, where this was heading.

Everyone except Bream. He was haunted by the thought that, as a consequence of the washing machine aboard his cabin cruiser, this latter-day Aphrodite would be transformed into red mist tomorrow.

He thought back to the conference in Miami in March 2005. He was a round peg then, trying to act square enough to work for Air Force Intelligence. And he was succeeding. He’d received a spate of plum assignments, the latest of which was an appointment to an interagency force to protect America from weapons of mass destruction smuggled aboard small oceangoing vessels.

The October 2000 al-Qaeda small vessel assault on the USS
Cole
had made it clear that waterborne attacks were high on bad guys’ to-do lists. Such an operation in the United States wouldn’t even have to be “successful” insofar as taking out a target. If it just shut down a single port, anxiety would spread through the global financial marketplace. For starters.

The director of the interagency force was a pompous Pentagon bureaucrat in desperate need, in Bream’s opinion, of a punch in the face. And that was before the ignoramus hypothesized that modern surveillance technology rendered human intelligence obsolete. His measures mollified a naive public and Congress, but utterly failed to safeguard American ports and waterways. The rest of the committee proved a bunch of bobbleheads. Or, viewed another way, proficient bureaucrats: All reaped career laurels. All except Bream, who, after one long and excruciating day of meetings in Miami, finally punched the boss in the face.

The washing machine would deliver an invaluable lesson—a costly one, but Mobile was not Manhattan. More lives had been lost in single battles in Vietnam than would be tomorrow. It didn’t hurt that Bream would nearly become a billionaire in the process. The money was of little consequence compared to the vindication, though. Imagining the
expression on the Pentagon man’s face when he had to answer for what had happened, Bream worked himself into fine spirits.

“Another round?” Aphrodite offered.

“I’d love to, sugar.” He slid off his bar stool. “Thing is, I’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

The sun
sliced through the vinyl curtains of room 12 at the Country Inn, just down the main drag from the Hattiesburg Y. The light woke the man who’d registered late last night as Miller, paying in cash. The clock radio read 9:01. Charlie, who as a boy had admired scrappy Mets infielder Keith Miller, thought the five hours of uninterrupted sleep well worth the thirty-nine dollars. Unless the CIA had used the time to locate him.

He peeled back one of the curtains, half expecting to look into the barrel of a howitzer. The day was blindingly white. Three vehicles were parked in the thirty or so spaces, a pair of big rigs and a rusted Buick Skylark that looked as if it would have a hard time cranking up, let alone following the casino bus on the interstate. On the four-lane road fronting the parking lot, a handful of cars and pickup trucks waited at a red light.

Charlie found the Country Inn lobby empty. The middle-aged Pakistani man behind the reception desk, embroiled in a phone conversation that could only be spousal, didn’t look up as Charlie exited.

The Dollar Store was a treasure trove. The shaggy blond wig Charlie selected, though probably intended for a woman, appeared fake only on close scrutiny—a man could wear it and pass for a biker. The horn-rimmed sunglasses, likely sitting on the spinning rack since the Dollar Store was the Quarter Store, might be taken as retro-chic and would certainly alter the contours of his face. He also picked out several sweatshirts and a camouflage-print coat. If Eskridge’s people were to ask
young Mysti at the register what Charlie had purchased, they would net a dozen possible descriptions.

Getting into the spirit of obfuscation, Charlie bought three more wigs, a fisherman’s hat, and a purple poncho.

“School play,” he said with affected sheepishness as he set everything onto the conveyor belt.

Behind the counter, Mysti smiled reflexively. Her gaze was fixed on the round security mirror overhead. Charlie saw the reflection of an elderly woman sliding a Christmas ornament—three for a dollar—into her blouse.

Leaving the store, Charlie started back across the street to the Avis two buildings down. He noticed security cameras on three of the car rental agency’s walls. Even with the big blond wig and sunglasses, he would thwart decent facial recognition software for only a few seconds, if that.

Farther up the block, Hattiesburg Rent-A-Car, a spruced-up shed with a hand-painted sign and three dusty Chryslers in its unpaved front lot, looked more promising.

Closer inspection revealed that it too had a security camera in a plastic dome the size of a salad bowl suspended from the ceiling.

Charlie cursed car thieves if only as an outlet for his frustration.

Then he considered joining them. He had watched his father hot-wire cars often enough. Of course, he’d also watched Darryl Strawberry hit 450-foot home runs.

Necessity won. He returned to the motel parking lot, stopping to tie his shoe between one of the big rigs and the old Buick, a two-toner with beige side panels.

The easiest way to gain access to a vehicle, his father had said, is by opening a door. People left them unlocked far too often. Charlie reached tentatively for the handle on the driver’s door of the Buick, bracing for the car’s owner to burst out of the motel.

The lobby door remained shut.

Odds were the Buick belonged to the man behind the reception desk. And odds also said a place like this didn’t pay for security cameras in the parking lot.

Gingerly, Charlie pulled up the handle. The door opened, hinges croaking. The dome light flickered on. Still no one seemed to notice.

He darted into the driver’s footwell, pulling the door shut behind him. Careful to keep his head below the window line, he smashed his wounded shoulder into the radio. It stung, but he quickly stretched out across the floor, flipped onto his back, and studied the ignition barrel.