Read Online Last Days of the Condor by James Grady - Free Book Online Page A

widow’s peak to brush a sigh of breasts under her form-fitting business black dress. Navy blue trench coat slung through her shoulder purse strap. She’s thicker round the waist than she can change, black-stockinged legs yoga-muscled past trim, metronome-swinging arms and black shoes. Her face is softly lean, rectangular, tan skin that pulls sunlight. Smile lines scar her wide, thick-lipped unpainted mouth. Her eyes stare straight ahead and not at you.
    She marches past the open doorway. Out of sight.
    Heels click on the hallway floor. The elevator whirs.
    There you sit.
    Again.
    Still.
    Find out or fail forever.
    Vin whirled from behind his desk. Charged out of the Grave Cave in time to see the elevator close. His fingers woodpeckered the brass call button. Magnets pulled his eyes above the elevator to its floor indicator bar: “G” lit up.
    The parallel elevator whirred open.
    Vin jumped into that cage, pushed the button labeled “G.” Got—
    There she is! Clearing security. Slipping into her navy blue trench coat.
    Once Vin walked behind her and her coworkers as she said: “I hate the cold.”
    She’s going out the tall shaft back door.
    Condor made it outside to the cool spring air in time to watch her turn right at the end of the Adams Building’s U-shaped driveway.
    No white car parked across the street.
    You don’t see the Oppo because they’re street smart.
    She’s walking toward Pennsylvania Avenue with its wall of cafes and bars.
    Vin tried not to run, knew he was born to this no matter what he could remember.
    Get closer behind her. She’s got the light, the WALK sign with its white stick man flaunting his freedom and for you turning orange fuck him scurry across the street. Call it twenty, call it fifteen steps from the drift of curly blond hair on her navy blue coat as she crosses Pennsylvania Avenue, opens the dinging-bell door of a Starbucks.
    Coffee, thought Vin. She’s going for coffee.
    The world flowed around him. A silver-haired man standing still on the sidewalk as tourists and troopers used their time to walk past him. He made a perfect target.
    Opened the tinkling-bell door of the Starbucks.
    Ten o’clock, coffee hour, but it’s only her standing in the line at the counter.
    Sapphire blue eyes lightning-bolted him.
    She said: “Sometimes you go crazy if you don’t get outside the walls.”
    â€œScreaming doesn’t help,” said Vin.
    â€œYou’ve been hawking me for five months and that’s the best you’ve got?”
    The espresso steamer hissed.
    He said: “You give what you can.”
    â€œAnd get what you get.” Her smile seemed sad. “Not bad.”
    â€œWhat do you see in those old movies you catalog for the Library?”
    Words whispered through her thick, soft lips: “It’s what you don’t see.”
    Walking toward them on the other side of the counter with a green apron over her white blouse came the young barista whose parents had fled El Salvador’s right-wing death squads. Their daughter dreaded the refugee-spawned, international MS 13 gang that now ruled her family’s suburban turf five miles away from this Capitol Hill Starbucks. The gang used its Web sites and Facebook tattoos to stalk for victims and volunteers and you never knew until . The barista told the gringa who spent drugstore dollars to stay blond: “Here’s your cappuccino, ma’am.”
    The “ ma’am ” brought a different smile to the blond woman. She took the steaming white paper cup from the barista, walked to the Starbucks door.
    Turned back, looked at the man watching her go, said: “So who are you?”
    â€œHow ’bout Vin?”
    â€œHow about Vin.”
    He shrugged. “I wasn’t … all the way right with what I said before.”
    â€œConfessions don’t impress me anymore,” she told him.
    â€œIt’s not about