The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [36]
"Unless you have something else to do."
"Yes, sir." Caruso stood, shook hands, and took his leave. At least it would be a pleasant drive into the Virginia horse country.
CHAPTER 4-BOOT CAMP
The drive back across the river to the Marriott allowed Dominic to collect his bags-with a twenty-dollar bill to the bellman-and then punch in his destination on the Mercedes's navigation computer. Soon he was southbound on Interstate 95, leaving Washington behind. The skyline of the national capital actually looked pretty good in his rearview mirror. The car drove well, about what you'd expect of a Mercedes; the local talk radio was pleasingly conservative-cops tended to be that way-and traffic wasn't too bad, though he found himself pitying the poor bastards who had to drive into D.C. every day to push paper in the Hoover Building and all the other government-grotesque buildings surrounding The Mall. At least FBI Headquarters had its own pistol range for stress management. Probably well used, Dominic thought.
Just before hitting Richmond, the female voice on his computer told him to take a right onto the Richmond Beltway, which presently delivered him to I-64 west toward the rolling, wooded hills. The countryside was pleasant, and green enough. Probably a lot of golf courses and horse farms. He'd heard that CIA had its safe houses here from back when they had to debrief Soviet defectors. He wondered what the places were used for now. Chinese, maybe? Frenchmen, perhaps. Certainly they hadn't been sold. The government didn't like letting go of things, except maybe to close down military bases. The clowns from the Northeast and Far West loved to do that. They didn't much like the Bureau either, though they were probably afraid of it. He didn't know what it was about cops and soldiers that bothered some politicians, but he didn't much worry about it. He had his rice bowl, and they had theirs.
After another hour and fifteen minutes or so, he started looking for his exit sign, but the computer didn't need him.
"PREPARE TO TURN RIGHT AT THE NEXT EXIT," the voice said, about two minutes ahead of time.
"Fine, honey," Special Agent Caruso replied, without getting an acknowledgment. A minute later, he took the suggested exit-without so much as a VERY GOOD from the computer, and then took some ordinary city streets through the pleasant little town and up some gentle hills to the north wall of this valley, until finally:
"TAKE THE NEXT LEFT AND YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT YOUR DESTINATION "
"That's nice, honey, thank you," he observed.
"YOUR DESTINATION" was the end of an entirely ordinary-looking country road, maybe a driveway, since it had no lines painted on it. A few hundred yards farther and he saw two red-brick abutments and a white-rail gate that was conveniently swung open. There was a house another three hundred yards off, with six white pillars holding up the front part of the roof. The roof appeared to be slate-rather old slate, at that-and the walls were weathered brick that hadn't been red in over a hundred years. This place had to be over a century old, maybe two. The driveway was recently raked pea-sized gravel. The grass-there was a lot of grass here-was a luscious golf-course green. Someone came out of a side door and waved him around to the left. He twisted the wheel to head behind the house, and got a surprise. The mansion-what did you call a house this big?-was larger than it first appeared, and had a fair-sized parking lot, which at the moment held a Chevy Suburban, a Buick SUV, and-another Mercedes C-class just like his, with North Carolina tags. The likelihood of this coincidence was too remote even to enter his imagina "Enzo!"
Dominic snapped his head around. "Aldo!"
People often remarked on their resemblance, though it was even more apparent when they were apart. Both had dark hair and fair skin. Brian was the taller by twenty-four millimeters. Dominic was perhaps ten pounds heavier. Whatever differences in mannerisms they'd had as boys had stayed with them as they'd grown up together. Since both were