command. It will be waiting for you at Boiling. Fully equipped with onboard secure radio, secure cellular, secure network access from anywhere, all that technology crap.”
“Which you will bug.”
“Correct. Also you get temporary credentials with your old rank back and a renewed security clearance. Full-time Agency librarian. Four squeaky-clean credit cards, one in each flavor. Twenty grand in walking-around money.”
Charlie glanced over his shoulder. Jason and Molly had their faces pressed to the window. Carly, hands on her hips, stood at the screen door. “All in twenties and fifties. I presume it will be marked.”
“Of course. If you cut and run, I want a way to track you down.”
“Don’t you wish.”
Sam shrugged, continuing to read from Charlie’s neatly printed shopping list. “A Steyr sniper rifle with a Trijicon scope… whatever that may be… and two FBI-accurized .40 calibers. That’s everything you asked for. Anything else you want?”
Sam’s Marine Corps pilot had fired up the helicopter’s engine. Its blades were high above both men’s head’s. Neither Sam nor Charlie could keep himself from instinctively ducking.
“The father.”
“Excuse me? What father?”
“The girl’s. The Russian navy guy. I want his full dossier. Digitize it, and send it to me once I’m in my Gulfstream.”
“It’s been looked at. There’s nothing useful in it.”
“Send it to me anyway.”
“It’s your ballgame, Charlie. Ask, and you shall receive.” Sam lumbered toward the helicopter’s boarding steps. He did not, Charlie observed, offer to shake hands again.
“One other thing, Sam. I want your promise that you won’t be bringing anyone else into this business.”
“Of course I won’t, Charlie.”
“No hired guns at all.”
“You have my word on that.”
It was in his eyes, pure deceit, Charlie read it like a book. Samuel, you are a vile lying yellow dog. Stepping back, he gave a friendly wave as the helicopter lifted off his lawn. The gesture cost him nothing and was bound to make Sam feel good.
But not as good as Charlie felt now that he had compliments of an outdated video camera so low-tech that the NSA’s high-tech whiz kids ignored it Sam’s full confession on videotape.
-3 Introducing Mr. Schmidt
Tuesday, July 21. 0930 Hours Central Time
Irina read him. Within seconds she cold-read who and what he was.
They’d taught her well at the Institute, spicing the course with old American movies. Hollywood knew better than any intelligence agency how garb and gesture subliminally communicate persona to an audience. Posture, intonation, and expression transform the servile butler from The Remains of the Day into Hannibal Lecter, cannibal epicure. A red-robed cancan dolly in Moulin Rouge! applies putty to her nose, and dressed in stark austerity incarnates neurotic Bloomsbury’s most neurotic novelist.
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players …. Who then, she asked herself, was the actor who’d found her breaking into his truck?
A cowboy sidekick. Never the leading man, but always a good one. He would be Slim Pickens, Ward Bond, Ben Johnson. Sitting in a darkened classroom she had seen him in a dozen films.
Walking with an ill-disguised limp, he was compact and muscular, although with an unbecoming bulge around his waist. The corners of his eyes were engraved with squint lines sure sign that he worked outdoors. Yet his complexion was sallow; he had not been beneath the sun for months.
His dress told a simple story inexpensive clothing recently bought off the rack at a discount clothier. New chinos purchased for a newly ballooned stomach. A white shirt bearing the creases of a garment fresh from a store, freshly put on. However, his elaborately stitched cowboy boots were expensive, and probably custom-made. One other costly thing: a heavy silver belt buckle decorated with turquoise and lapis. Words she could not make out were embossed around its
“Which you will bug.”
“Correct. Also you get temporary credentials with your old rank back and a renewed security clearance. Full-time Agency librarian. Four squeaky-clean credit cards, one in each flavor. Twenty grand in walking-around money.”
Charlie glanced over his shoulder. Jason and Molly had their faces pressed to the window. Carly, hands on her hips, stood at the screen door. “All in twenties and fifties. I presume it will be marked.”
“Of course. If you cut and run, I want a way to track you down.”
“Don’t you wish.”
Sam shrugged, continuing to read from Charlie’s neatly printed shopping list. “A Steyr sniper rifle with a Trijicon scope… whatever that may be… and two FBI-accurized .40 calibers. That’s everything you asked for. Anything else you want?”
Sam’s Marine Corps pilot had fired up the helicopter’s engine. Its blades were high above both men’s head’s. Neither Sam nor Charlie could keep himself from instinctively ducking.
“The father.”
“Excuse me? What father?”
“The girl’s. The Russian navy guy. I want his full dossier. Digitize it, and send it to me once I’m in my Gulfstream.”
“It’s been looked at. There’s nothing useful in it.”
“Send it to me anyway.”
“It’s your ballgame, Charlie. Ask, and you shall receive.” Sam lumbered toward the helicopter’s boarding steps. He did not, Charlie observed, offer to shake hands again.
“One other thing, Sam. I want your promise that you won’t be bringing anyone else into this business.”
“Of course I won’t, Charlie.”
“No hired guns at all.”
“You have my word on that.”
It was in his eyes, pure deceit, Charlie read it like a book. Samuel, you are a vile lying yellow dog. Stepping back, he gave a friendly wave as the helicopter lifted off his lawn. The gesture cost him nothing and was bound to make Sam feel good.
But not as good as Charlie felt now that he had compliments of an outdated video camera so low-tech that the NSA’s high-tech whiz kids ignored it Sam’s full confession on videotape.
-3 Introducing Mr. Schmidt
Tuesday, July 21. 0930 Hours Central Time
Irina read him. Within seconds she cold-read who and what he was.
They’d taught her well at the Institute, spicing the course with old American movies. Hollywood knew better than any intelligence agency how garb and gesture subliminally communicate persona to an audience. Posture, intonation, and expression transform the servile butler from The Remains of the Day into Hannibal Lecter, cannibal epicure. A red-robed cancan dolly in Moulin Rouge! applies putty to her nose, and dressed in stark austerity incarnates neurotic Bloomsbury’s most neurotic novelist.
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players …. Who then, she asked herself, was the actor who’d found her breaking into his truck?
A cowboy sidekick. Never the leading man, but always a good one. He would be Slim Pickens, Ward Bond, Ben Johnson. Sitting in a darkened classroom she had seen him in a dozen films.
Walking with an ill-disguised limp, he was compact and muscular, although with an unbecoming bulge around his waist. The corners of his eyes were engraved with squint lines sure sign that he worked outdoors. Yet his complexion was sallow; he had not been beneath the sun for months.
His dress told a simple story inexpensive clothing recently bought off the rack at a discount clothier. New chinos purchased for a newly ballooned stomach. A white shirt bearing the creases of a garment fresh from a store, freshly put on. However, his elaborately stitched cowboy boots were expensive, and probably custom-made. One other costly thing: a heavy silver belt buckle decorated with turquoise and lapis. Words she could not make out were embossed around its
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