Twice a Spy_ A Novel - Keith Thomson [101]
Eskridge almost sneered. “The way horseplayers do?”
“The thrill of being right drives a lot of people to do stupid things.”
Doxstader looked up. “You know, the G-20 starts this weekend.”
“The G-20?” Charlie said.
“The Group of Twenty. Argentina, Brazil, China—”
Eskridge cut in. “And seventeen other countries, including ours, who send deputies to chat about economic issues. The reason you don’t know about it, Charlie, is the same reason terrorists wouldn’t be interested: no sex appeal. I couldn’t even tell you where they’re holding the G-20.”
“Mobile, Alabama.” Doxstader set down his stylus for the first time. “Gem of a city, precisely the sort of secondary target al-Qaeda’s been focusing on.”
He waited for a response from Eskridge, who focused on a cuff link.
Doxstader wasn’t deterred. “Sir, a number of the top French officials are attending the G-20, including the president—something having to do with Mobile’s French heritage. Also Mobile has close to a hundred miles of coast without anything near the level of security in a Miami or a Long Beach.”
“And wouldn’t the element of surprise be a selling point?” Charlie asked.
Doxstader nodded emphatically. Eskridge cleared his throat in an obvious effort to suppress his young colleague. “You probably don’t need to know this, but we have another source corroborating the India story,” Eskridge said. “A former intelligence operative, one of Alice Rutherford’s captors, tried to sell information to our people in Geneva. He said that Ms. Rutherford was to be traded for an ADM by the United Liberation Front of the Punjab. A couple of weeks ago, the very same United Liberation Front of the Punjab had sent men to Martinique to try to buy the ADM.”
“But suppose they didn’t buy it,” Charlie said.
“They didn’t.” Eskridge grumbled. “Not until yesterday.”
The implicit blame stung Charlie. “Why would Bream be foolish enough to let some hired thug in on his plans? Even I would have known to make up a cover story for Alice’s rendition.”
“This thug was a professional spy, or at least he had been,” Eskridge said. “He assumed he’d been false-flagged by Bream. Then he did some digging.”
“And found the fool’s gold Bream had left for him?” Charlie said. “Why would Bream have hired an untrustworthy ex-spy in the first place?”
Eskridge turned to Doxstader. “Share the company secret to catching bad guys.”
Doxstader nodded. “They always make mistakes.”
“The thing is, Bream knew enough to use the Indians as straw dogs,” Charlie said. Eskridge’s enthusiastic nod belied his growing impatience. “He could be trying to divert attention from Alabama, which, not incidentally, is to ribs what Switzerland is to cheese. Plus, I bet he really is a Southerner.”
“You bet?” Eskridge turned to Doxstader. “What do we know?”
“Only that the actual John Townsend Bream has been institutionalized in Mississippi for nine years.”
“That lends more credence to Southerner than if the institution were in New Hampshire,” Charlie said, but to blank faces. “And he certainly had the dialect down, and the accent—a lot better than the cast of Gone with the Wind, anyway.”
Eskridge rolled his eyes.
“You’d be amazed at the Russians’ linguistic training,” Doxstader said to Charlie.
Charlie wanted to hit something. “Why would Bream want us to think he’s a Southerner?”
“It’s an old spook trick.” Eskridge pushed back from the table. “So you don’t know who he really is.”
Charlie planned to spend the next couple of days in Laurel, Maryland, enjoying some R & R at Pimlico Race Course. Or so he told Corbitt as they returned to the airport, alleviating the base chief’s concern that Charlie would take his wild theory to the media.
In fact, Charlie drove a rented Ford Taurus 1,039 miles south. At Mobile’s city limits the sporadic shacks and farmhouses alongside the country road mushroomed into a collection of