Twice a Spy_ A Novel - Keith Thomson [86]
Sergeant King, Flint’s graying superior officer, came bounding around a corner, an assault rifle in hand. He slowed, leveling the weapon at Drummond’s door.
“Go ahead,” he told Flint.
Kneeling to the side of the door, the younger marine inserted a key, twisted the bolt free of the lock, and tried to push the door inward. When it barely moved, Flint peered through the crack between it and the jamb. “He’s just lying there, sir. Doesn’t look like he’s breathing.”
Charlie held his breath. A cold perspiration coated him. Protocol surely dictated that Private Arnold shut the door to his room, but deferring to basic humanity, perhaps, the marine allowed Charlie to remain in the doorway.
They both watched King move closer to Drummond’s room and Flint throw a shoulder at the door, grab an edge with his free hand, and drive Drummond’s body back. An orange Croc rolled from the room and into the corridor, coming to rest upside down.
With King covering him, Flint ducked into the room.
“I don’t feel a pulse,” he called out.
“Roger that,” the sergeant said. He squatted, disappearing into the room. “Let’s get him to the infirmary.”
The two men picked up Drummond then backed into the corridor, King holding him by the shoulders, Flint by legs that were now white to the point of translucence.
Charlie launched himself toward his father until the barrel of Arnold’s gun lowered like a gate arm.
“Sorry,” the marine said, backing Charlie into the small room and jerking the door shut.
Charlie was pummeled by horror and sorrow, and, at a hundred times the intensity, anger that a hero like Drummond Clark could come to such an inglorious end with proof of his innocence just a few computer keystrokes away.
Alice reached Geneva by midnight. To get travel documents, she had to pay a visit to Russ Augenblick, the forger, who did a lot of his business out of a nightclub on the rue de la Rôtisserie, L’Alhambar, known for jazz.
She parked the Mercedes on a sleepy residential side street three blocks away, then walked. Her route, with the usual strategic left turns, added four blocks.
Tonight L’Alhambar featured a brass quartet with a predilection for volume. Among its throng of early-twentysomethings, she spotted the slight, fair-haired forger, in a Red Sox T-shirt. He stood by the curlicue bar, part of a small crowd vying to order drinks.
“I need one too,” Alice said, sidling up to him. “Big-time.”
At twenty-five, Russ Augenblick could pass for a choirboy, his wispy attempts at a mustache and beard, paradoxically, highlighting his youthfulness. He regarded Alice as if she were insane. “Dude, you’re hotter than Satan.”
“Oh, you like my new jacket?” Frank’s gray overcoat gave her the form of a traffic cone. “Thanks.”
“I mean, showing up here. This place has more cameras than a camera store. What kind of super-crazy-desperate trouble are you in?”
“The usual kind. I need your ‘full suite,’ tout de suite.”
He looked down at his sneakers. “I can’t. Not now. Sorry, man.”
“By all means, go ahead and have your beer. My treat, in fact—if the bartender can break a hundred-euro bill …”
“I can’t take you to the workshop while you’re listed as shoot-on-sight. Not even you would take that risk.”
“Yes you can, Stew.”
Despite himself, he blanched. Russ Augenblick was an alias.
“I know about California,” she continued. “But there’s no reason to tell tales out of school, is there?”
While at the NSA, Alice had learned the truth about “Russ,” but she allowed him to continue operating in case he might be of use at some point. Like now. She was prepared to tell what she knew of Stewart Fleishman’s freshman year at Berkeley, where making the scene at off-campus bars was mandatory, the drinking age was twenty-one, and his Massachusetts driver’s license showed his true age. The fake California license he’d bought proved useless because the bouncers ran licenses through magnetic strip scanners—a flashing red light resulted in a long and expensive night with Berkeley’s finest.