Twice a Spy_ A Novel - Keith Thomson [106]
Probably not Bream, Charlie thought, given the Campodonicos’ ages.
Glenny strode ahead. “And of course there’s Mr. Clemmensen—Clem Clemmensen. Great guy. He just got in from Martinique.” She smiled at a relatively plain cabin cruiser. “Even when he goes on fishing trips ‘just to do some thinkin’,’ as he says, he comes back with yarns that involve either a girl or a barroom brawl, or a barroom brawl over a girl. Lately he’s been cruising around trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. He made a bundle in flight simulator software and basically retired last year at forty. Not bad, huh?”
“Sounds like a good story,” Charlie said, struggling to keep a lid on the high-voltage conviction surging through him that flight simulator software was a chapter in a cover story: Clemmensen was Bream.
Motion on the pier behind them seized their attention. Heading their way were two men in dark suits and sunglasses, one white and the other black, both athletic, clean-cut, and in their late twenties. Their stride was all business.
Once within hailing distance, the black man asked, “Charles Clark?”
Charlie tried to appear relaxed.
The men shared a nod. He’d failed.
“We’re Secret Service,” the white man said. “We were hoping to talk to you privately, sir.” For Glenny’s benefit, he added, “We have to interview everyone in the vicinity with out-of-state tags. Standard operating procedure.”
The Cavalry’s not as dead as they’re supposed to be, Charlie thought.
Because his hands were bound in front of him by plastic cuffs, each turn slammed him into the door or the window as the SUV sped away from the marina.
The black man drove. Washington, according to his ID. The Secret Service badge the white guy had flashed identified him as Madison. Either the names were flagrantly fake or a simple instance of truth being stranger than fiction.
As the sun fell into the woods lining the two-lane country road to the local police station, their purported destination, their SUV approached an identical black vehicle, which slowed as it drew near. Washington stopped so that he was even with the other driver. Both drivers’ windows glided down. In the burgeoning darkness, Charlie could make out only a thickset man in the other car.
“How’s it going, Wash?” the man asked.
“Can’t complain—no one would listen. You?”
“Another day, another advance team packed off to Dauphin Street. You heavy?”
Washington glanced at Charlie in the rearview. “A Class Three.”
The thickset man yawned. “You boys hitting happy hour?”
Leaning across the seat, Madison said, “We sure hope so.”
“I’ll be waiting. Wash here’s been ducking me at Miss Pac Man.”
With a round of Later’s, they were off.
Charlie was almost convinced that Washington and Madison were indeed who they said they were. The laptop computer, bracketed to the console between the front seats, had a Secret Service gold star as its screen saver. The muted chatter from the police radio continued to include “Grand Hotel” and “protectees.” And if these guys were Cavalry, he would either have been dead by now or on a waterboard.
But why would the Secret Service want him? Aside from the fact that he’d been exonerated—although it wouldn’t be the first time in government annals that paperwork was slow to be processed—how did they even know where to find him?
Bream might have told them. He could have seen Charlie through a porthole.
“So what are we supposed to talk about?” Charlie asked the agents.
Madison turned around in the passenger seat, no trace remaining of his happy-hour banter. “Mr. Clark, for a heads of state event prep, the Secret Service is required to conduct advance interviews of all Class Threes in a two-hundred-fifty-mile vicinity.”
“I’m guessing Class Three doesn’t mean VIP,” said Charlie.
“It’s an individual