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

impressing you. It’s about being true.”
    He met her sapphire stare.
    Said: “Sometimes screaming lets you know you’re there.”
    Sapphire eyes blinked.
    She said: “Vin. Huh .”
    Turned and left the cafe with the tinkle of the bell above her exit.
    â€œCan I help you, sir?” The barista stayed a patient professional.
    â€œI’ll take whatever she had.” Vin did not chase the blonde who watched movies.
    Some foggy instinct told him too bold now might generate never .
    Plus if his cover team were active, he’d paint her with cross hairs.
    Standing outside the Starbucks window, shrouded in black Giselle presses her hands and face against the glass and screams.
    Waves of I don’t know what or why but I’m sorry! washed Vin back to work.
    The barista returned to the counter with a steaming white cup in her hand and before she realized she didn’t see him there said: “Here’s your coffee, sir.”
    All she ever knew about that and what came after was the strange man’s gone .
    All his empty sidewalks led him from the Starbucks back to the Grave Cave. He ate lunch in the library’s cafeteria hoping to spot her at her usual table but knowing he wouldn’t and being right. He sat in his office and stared at the open doorway. Come five o’clock, he stepped out onto the Adams Building stoop.
    No white car.
    No new ghosts.
    His gray wool sports jacket kept the cool of the evening away from his bones. Concrete pushed his black shoes toward the home he’d been allowed. Cars rushed past him on Independence Avenue, their headlights turning on to probe the coming dark. The air smelled like spring. No cover team, no brick boys on his tail, no snipers on the rooftops, no white car, there was no white car now but there was one yesterday.
    Of course there was. Sure there was.
    A green leaf fell from its protective wedge when he opened his turquoise door.
    As it should.
    As it would—if everything is safe.
    Condor stepped into his living room. Shut the door behind him. Thought he was merely hallucinating again as he saw the limits of safe.
    Bald secret agent Peter sat slumped on the floor in front of the fireplace.
    His arms spread wide across that place where Condor would burn wood.
    His hands nailed to the fireplace, blood flowing from his palms pierced and nailed to the mantel by knives from Condor’s kitchen carving set.
    Blood soaked the dead agent’s white shirt inside his sports jacket and tan raincoat.
    Probably before the killer nailed Bald Peter to the fireplace, he cut the man’s throat along that crimson gash above the knot of a dampened dark necktie.
    Probably the assassin gouged out Peter’s eyes after the crucifixion.
    Call him Vin, call him Condor, a man who came home from work on an ordinary Tuesday to find a blood-soaked American agent nailed to a fireplace with knives.
    Vin saw a crucified man, the corpse’s gaping mouth, his cheeks slickened red, eyes gouged to gory black holes.
    Condor saw the trickling of freshly freed crimson tears.

 
    8
    The slow parade of fears.
    â€”Jackson Browne, “Dr. My Eyes ”
    What a glorious Tuesday spring morning it was for Faye as she walked across the plaza toward Complex Zed. She didn’t know Condor was right then offering his heart in a Starbucks, but she knew she was going to rock the limbo’s floor and—
    Walking across the plaza toward her : a stocky, tan-skinned, black-haired man.
    â€œWhat are you doing here?” said Faye.
    They both knew that only Zed’s security cameras kept her from hugging him.
    â€œGood to see you, Faye,” said Sami. He gave her a fatherly smile. “I don’t want to hold you up, make you late.”
    â€œDon’t worry,” she said. “I’ll say my run took longer than usual.”
    â€œDid it?”
    â€œNo.” A forgivable lie of omission. She hadn’t run that morning.
    â€œYou