Peter Kittredge, Deputy Special Assistant to the US Ambassador to Venezuela and sometime-spy for Exel Oil, gazed absently out the large picture window of his eighth-floor DC flat. The view was spectacular, encompassing the Washington Monument and the Capital, but he barely noticed. He was busy trying to figure out what to do.
He hadn’t yet replied to Arturo Dibiaso’s text requesting another dead-drop. It was a problem for few tiny little reasons. First, the dead-drop location was in Caracas, Venezuela, and his boyfriend, Charley Arlinghaus, was lying in a coma in a DC hospital; second, the Central Intelligence Agency – or a couple of guys who did a damn convincing impersonation – were wise to his little moonlighting gig with Exel, and would undoubtedly want to play along in any Exel-related activities.
Third, he didn’t have any of the information that Dibiaso wanted. He would have to collect it from the embassy before making the drop. That would be tough to pull off without raising suspicions.
Kittredge had less than twenty-four hours to figure a way through all of those snags, then fly back down to Caracas to collect the information from the embassy servers and make the drop across town for Dibiaso.
So you’re saying there’s a chance, Kittredge mused glumly.
Kittredge had always believed that problems and challenges were often gifts that helped you think of new and better solutions, and you often ended up much better off for having dealt with them. But Peter Kittredge had never built himself a set of problems quite as prickly as this one.
So what to do from here?
He swilled his vodka. Fourth glass? Fifth? He couldn’t remember. He was getting hungry, and knew he would have to venture out for food before heading back to the hospital to sit with Charley. For the moment, though, he took comfort in the burn of the booze in his empty gut, and let his growing buzz buff a few of the jagged edges off of his fucked-up world.
He briefly considered playing along with Dibiaso without telling his new Agency handlers, but quickly dismissed the idea. After all, Fredericks and Quinn had made him their reluctant guest precisely because they knew what he was up to. It was stupid to think that he could do anything without their knowledge.
And what was Dibiaso’s rush, anyway? He had to know the situation with Charley, didn’t he? After all, they worked for the same damned company. Charley had given Dibiaso’s number to him way back at the beginning of this mess, eighteen lifetimes ago, so it wasn’t like they didn’t know each other at least a little bit.
So that meant that Dibiaso’s hurry had a strong chance of being related to the attack on Charley. Which made Kittredge want to follow the string and see where it led.
But he didn’t want to leave DC. Not with Charley lying in an intensive care ward with a smashed-in dome and a swollen brain. He wanted to be there when Charley woke up, to hold him, to hug him, to kiss his cheek. And to ask him what the flying fuck was going on.
His phone rang. The caller ID displayed a number that brought instant adrenaline. “What do you want, Quinn?”
“Hello to you too, Peter. Hitting the bottle a little hard, aren’t we?”
“I can’t imagine why,” Kittredge replied.
“Fredericks and I have an idea for what to do about the Dibiaso text.”
Kittredge made a dumb decision to play dumb. “What text?”
Of course the Agency knew about the text from Dibiaso, but Kittredge was hoping for some clue about how they knew about it. Did they read his phone display via the video cameras planted in his apartment? Or were they tapped directly into his phone account?
Quinn didn’t bite. “So anyway, as I was saying,” Quinn said, “we think you ought to scoot back down to Caracas for a while. Make the drop, pick up the payment. Bing, bang, business as usual.”
“Sure thing, Quinn. I’ll just leave Charley in a coma, fly home, breeze into my office to pick up a few secrets, then hustle on over to make the drop while you and Fat Bill lurk in the shadows. I’m sure nobody will figure anything out, right?”
Quinn laughed. “My, you’re a theatrical little gay guy when you’ve knocked back a few drinks, aren’t you? But yes, that actually sums it all up very nicely. We’ve taken the liberty of making plane reservations for you. Your flight leaves tonight.”
Kittredge slumped back down into a chair and noticed that the sky had started to grow dark. He let out a heavy breath. “Well, why the fuck not, then? I’ll do it. And you’ll pull me out of jail when I get caught during my little smash-and-grab at the embassy?”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Petunia.”
“My name is Peter.”
“How could I forget? Clean yourself up, pack a bag, and I’ll pick you up in ten minutes. Food, hospital, airport. That’s our plan.” Quinn hung up.
Kittredge cursed, gritted his teeth, balled his fists, and cursed again.
Then he did what he was told.
**********
The flight to Caracas lifted off thirty minutes behind schedule. Kittredge’s buzz was rapidly turning to a hangover. He’d had a double vodka with dinner to help fortify himself for the view of Charley’s black eye and swollen head, and he was relieved to discover that his strategy worked well. Mild drunkenness was a perfectly viable and largely painless way to endure life’s difficult moments.
Quinn had dropped him off at the airport, and handed him a slip of paper as he climbed out of the Range Rover. It was another telephone number. Kittredge rolled his eyes. Before he could stop himself, he had blurted, “What is it with you guys and your fucking notes? It’s like high school.”
Quinn looked at him a moment, then burst into laughter. “What’s so funny?” Kittredge asked.
“You. Thinking you could ever survive as a spy. It’s hilarious.” Quinn cackled. His features crinkled comically, and his huge shoulders shook up and down. “When your dick isn’t getting you into trouble, your boozing picks up the slack.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You just made a comment about people handing notes to you. I assume you mean the old Venezuelan guy in the red scarf on the park bench, right?”
Kittredge felt a little foolish, but not surprised. He had slowly resigned himself to the Agency having visibility into every one of his moments, and they had demonstrated their reach convincingly. Apparently his strange meeting with the old man on the park bench was no exception.
“I think it’s probably obvious to you now that it wouldn’t be a good idea to dial the number the old man gave you,” Quinn said.
Though the vodka placed a pleasant patina on Kittredge’s world, he couldn’t mistake the note of menace in Quinn’s voice. He bristled with alcohol-induced bravado. “Of course, Quinn. You and I. And Fucko Fredericks. All the way. There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team.’”
“That’s the spirit. And if you have any doubts about the right team to be on, Google ‘National Mall’ and see what pops up.”
After clearing security, Kittredge had done just that. Apparently, an elderly man was the victim of a stabbing. Punctured aorta, the news report said. The reporter wondered, when would the district toughen up on crimes against tourists?
Could this get any more fucked up? He had wanted to belly up to one of the over-priced bars at Reagan International, but his flight was boarding. He had hustled to the gate, plopped in his seat, and pushed the “call” button above his head the instant the captain turned off the seat belt sign as the jet turned south into the night.
“Two vodkas, please,” he asked the visibly annoyed stewardess when she found his seat. “And a cup of ice.”