Firestarter(23)

LONGMONT, VIRGINIA: THE SHOP

1

Two handsome Southern plantation homes faced each other across a long and rolling grass lawn that was crisscrossed by a few gracefully looping bike paths and a two-lane crushed-gravel drive that came over the hill from the main road. Off to one side of one of these houses was a large barn, painted a bright red and trimmed a spotless white. Near the other was a long stable, done in the same handsome red with white trim. Some of the best horseflesh in the South was quartered here. Between the barn and the stable was a wide, shallow duckpond, calmly reflecting the sky.

In the 1860s, the original owners of these two homes had gone off and got themselves killed in the war, and all survivors of both families were dead now. The two estates had been consolidated into one piece of government property in 1954. It was Shop headquarters.

At ten minutes past nine on, a sunny October day-the day after Andy and Charlie left New York, for Albany in a taxicab-an elderly man with kindly, sparkling eyes and wearing a woolen British driving cap on his head biked toward one of the houses. Behind him, over the second knoll, was the checkpoint he had come through after a computer ID system had okayed his thumbprint. The checkpoint was inside a double run of barbed wire. The outer run, seven feet high, was marked every sixty feet by signs that read CAUTION! GOVERNMENT PROPERTY LOW ELECTRIC CHARGE RUNS THROUGH THIS FENCE! During the day, the charge was indeed low. At night, the on-property generator boosted it to a lethal voltage, and each morning a squad of five groundskeepers circled it in little electric golf carts, picking up the bodies of crisped rabbits, moles, birds, groundhogs, an occasional skunk lying in a pool of smell, sometimes a deer. And twice, human beings, equally cooked. The space between the outer and inner runs of barbed wire was ten feet. Day and night, guard dogs circled the installation in this run. The guard dogs were Dobermans, and they had been trained to stay away from the electrified wire. At each corner of the installation there were guard towers, also built of spanking-red barnboard and trimmed in white. They were manned by personnel who were expert in the use of various items of death-dealing hardware. The whole place was monitored by TV cameras, and the views these various cameras presented were constantly scanned by computer. The Longmont facility was secure.

The elderly man biked on, with a smile for the people he passed. An old, baldheaded man in a baseball cap was walking a thin-ankled filly. He raised his hand and called, "Hi, Cap! Ain't this some kind of a day!"

"Knock your eye out," the man on the bike agreed. "Have a good one, Henry."

He reached the front of the northernmost of the two homes, dismounted his bike, and put down its kickstand. He breathed deeply of the mild morning air, then trotted spryly up the wide porch steps and between the broad Doric columns.

He opened the door and stepped into the wide receiving hall. A young woman with red hair sat behind a desk, a statistics-analysis book open in front of her. One hand was holding her place in the book. The other was in her desk drawer, lightly touching a.38

Smith amp; Wesson.

"Good morning, Josie," the elderly gent said.

"Hi, Cap. You're running a little behind, aren't you?" Pretty girls could get away with this; if it had been Duane's day on the front desk, he could not have done. Cap was not a supporter of women's liberation.

"My top gear's sticking, darlin." He put his thumb in the proper slot. Something in the console thudded heavily, and a green light fluttered and then remained steady on Josie's board. "You be good, now."

"Well, I'll be careful," she said archly, and crossed her legs.

Cap roared laughter and walked down the hall. She watched him go, wondering for a moment if she should have told him that creepy old man Wanless had come in some twenty minutes ago. He'd know soon enough, she supposed, and sighed. What a way to screw up the start of a perfectly fine day, having to talk to an old spook like that. But she supposed that a person like Cap, who held a position of great responsibility, had to take the sour with the sweet.

2

Cap's office was at the back of the house. A large bay window gave a magnificent view of the back lawn, the barn, and the duckpond, which was partially screened with alders. Rich McKeon was halfway down the lawn, sitting astride a miniature tractor-lawnmower. Cap stood looking at him with his arms crossed behind his back for a moment and then went over to the Mr. Coffee in the corner. He poured some coffee in his U.S.N. cup, added Cremora and then sat down and thumbed the intercom.

"Hi, Rachel," he said.

"Hello, Cap. Dr. Wanless is-"

"I knew it," Cap said, "I knew it. I could smell that old whore the minute I came in."

"Shall I tell him you're just too busy today?"

"Don't tell him any such thing," Cap said stoutly. "Just let him sit out there in the yellow parlor the whole frigging morning. If he doesn't decide to go home, I suppose I can see him before lunch."

"All right, sir." Problem solved-for Rachel, anyway, Cap thought with a touch of resentment. Wanless wasn't really her problem at all. And the fact was, Wanless was getting to be an embarrassment. He had outlived both his usefulness and his influence. Well, there was always the Maui compound. And then there was Rainbird.

Cap felt a little inward shudder at that... and he wasn't a man who shuddered easily.

He held down the intercom toggle again. "I'll want the entire McGee file again, Rachel. And at ten-thirty I want to see Al Steinowitz. If Wanless is still here when I finish with Al, you can send him in."