The Library at Mount Char Part 21

"Oh...hi. I didn't realize anyone was here. I'm sorry to break in. Really. There are dogs-"

"Won't you come in?"

"I don't-" He stopped, squinted at her. He thought of how the mower guy kept pantomiming deafness, pointing at the mower over and over like it was the first time. His wife, maybe? They're perfect for each other.

"Won't you come in?" she said again. "How lovely to see you." The lion walked over, sniffed her. She looked down at the four-hundred-pound cat bleeding in her foyer and patted his thick, dusty mane. "May I take your coat?"

The lion looked over his shoulder at Steve and gave a dubious rumble.

Steve shook his head. "Beats the s.h.i.+t out of me, man."

The big cat swished his tail at Steve's words, agreeably enough, as if he understood-maybe not the words, but the gist of his thoughts, the sentiment. For some reason this struck Steve as funny. When the sound of his chuckle prompted the woman to ask again if she might take his coat, he laughed long and loud.

Maybe he was getting the hang of this weird-a.s.s day.

Chapter 8.

Cold Home

I.

The secretary was a middle-aged black lady with a friendly face and eyes like ice. She'd tracked Erwin's approach the way a panther might watch a goat sidle up to a water hole. Behind her, a tall window overlooked a perfectly manicured garden. Erwin looked out that window with real longing. It was clear and sunny, cool but not chilly, maybe the best day of the fall. Erwin wanted to be out hiking in the woods, kicking his way through crunchy leaves.

Instead he walked up and laid his visitor's badge on her desk. "I'm Erwin," he said. He jerked a thumb at the curved door to his right. "Got a call that he wants to see me."

"Erwin what?" the secretary said, running her finger down a printed list of names. Erwin didn't answer. His last name was on the badge. She was just being a b.i.t.c.h.

"Ma'am, that is Erwin Leffington," said a voice behind him. "The Erwin Leffington."

Erwin turned. A fit-looking middle-aged man in an Army general's uniform sat on the couch behind him. In his briefcase Erwin saw a number of file folders with black borders. Hmmm. He was aware that such cla.s.sifications existed, but he'd never been in the room with one before.

"Ah," the secretary said, thwarted. "I see. You're connected with...the emergency?"

"I guess," Erwin said.

The secretary pursed her lips. She consulted a different, shorter list, gave a curt nod. "He is expecting you," she admitted. "Have a seat, please."

Erwin nodded in return.

Behind him, the general had gathered up the papers he was looking at and put them away in a briefcase cuffed to his wrist. Then he stood, smiling broadly, and walked over to greet Erwin. "I'm Dan Thorpe," he said, holding out his hand to shake. "It's a real honor to meet you, Sergeant."

Out of habit, Erwin skimmed Thorpe's decorations-an Airborne patch, the crossed arrows of Special Operations, a whole bunch of campaign ribbons. He knew the Joint Special Operations commander by reputation, though they had never met. Supposedly he was a pretty good guy. Erwin shook his hand. "Meetcha," he said. "Sir."

"Captain Tanaka said to say h.e.l.lo," Thorpe said. "He wanted to come himself but he's...otherwise occupied. Mission planning. He insisted that I bring you down for a beer when all this is over."

Erwin warmed a little. "Yeah? You know Yo?" He and Yos.h.i.+taka had served together in Iraq. "Didn't realize he was with you guys."

"For about a year now. How come you never came out for selection?" Thorpe asked. "I know Clint invited-"

"The president will see you now," the secretary said. She stood up and walked over to the oddly shaped door and opened it for them.

The door wasn't very wide. Erwin, who'd retired as a command sergeant major, deferred to General Thorpe's rank, letting him go through first, then followed him into the Oval Office.

II.

It was Erwin's first time in the sanctum sanctorum. He'd been to the White House before, once as part of a tour group and once when he and a couple of other guys swung by to pick up some Distinguished Service Crosses. Erwin, who gave no f.u.c.ks about medals, had come close to skipping that last. At the time, though, he'd been remodeling his house. He was curious to see how the carpenters handled the baseboards and crown molding on the curved walls of the Oval Office. But it kinda sucked. The ceremony had been in the Rose Garden, not the Oval Office, and the president-not this guy, the one before last-turned out to be a douche. He showed up drunk and spent most of his time drooling over the niece of a Marine pilot. As soon as she made it clear she didn't love her country in that way, Scotchy McPolitics disappeared. Also he got the pilot's name wrong during the ceremony.

Anyway, nine years and two presidents later, here he was in the Room itself. It wasn't small, but it wasn't quite as big as he would have expected. But...really nice job on the baseboards. Perfectly molded plinth blocks, good clean shoe molding, and nearly invisible joins on the scalloping up above. He looked around. The rest of the room was fancy too. Regal blue carpeting, alternating gold-and-cream stripe pattern on the walls. His eye lingered on the president's desk, an elaborately carved teak thing that depicted some sort of naval battle. Nice detailing, he thought. And can you even get teak anymore? He considered. Probably it's a antique or some s.h.i.+t.

"-nd this is Erwin Leffington," Thorpe was saying. "Formerly with the Eighty-Second, now a special investigator with Homeland Security."

Erwin looked up. In front of the desk two gold couches faced each other, a coffee table between them. The president and a bunch of guys he vaguely recognized from the news were sprawled out on them. They looked tense. Mentally, Erwin rolled his eyes. Here we go.

"Why is he here?" asked an older woman, looking down at him over the top of her gla.s.ses. A cla.s.sified-doc.u.ments folder lay open in her lap. Another black border, Erwin saw. La-di-da. The label inside the jacket read COLD HOME.

"A number of reasons, Madam Secretary," Thorpe said. "Sergeant-sorry, Special Agent Leffington has proven to be well ahead of the curve on this one. Prior to yesterday's, ah, events, he was conducting an investigation of a related crime, a bank robbery. Leffington was also interrogating the escapee at the time of his prison break. He's the only person known to have seen the operatives and lived."

"It was just the one guy."

"Beg pardon?" said the lady in gla.s.ses.

Erwin jerked a thumb at Thorpe. "He said 'operatives.' But it was just the one guy. That I saw, anyway."

"Just one? What about the one who escaped custody?" He rustled papers in his black bordered folder. "Steve, ah...Hodgson? The one you were interviewing?"

"I wouldn't necessarily say 'escaped custody,'" Erwin said. "Looked more like 'kidnapped out of custody' to me."

"How so?"

Erwin shrugged. "Well, he was surprised as s.h.i.+t when the guy in the tutu showed up. We all were. Our jaws was all hanging open like we was morons." Erwin especially relished that last phrase. 'Like we was morons.' He only trotted it out on special occasions. "Plus the guy in the tutu had to knock the f.u.c.k out of Hodgson to get him to stop squirmin'."

"Excuse me," said a tall guy with coppery red hair. "Did you say tutu?"

Erwin dredged his memory and came up with a name. Bryan Hamann, he thought. White House chief of staff. "Yup. Purple tutu and a flak jacket. Israeli, I think. That and a knife. He was barefoot too." Erwin shook his head a little. "f.u.c.king weird."

"So...he was unarmed?" Thorpe said slowly.

"It was a pretty big knife. But no guns, if that's what you mean."

"And there were how many casualties?" the president asked, ruffling through papers.

"Thirty-seven," Erwin said, without looking at any notes.

"They were armed?"

"Lots of 'em were, yeah. Didn't seem to help much. One guy in the hall, he had a forty-caliber Glock stuffed up his a.s.s, way past the trigger guard. Only thing poking out was the b.u.t.t of the magazine."

The secretary of state paused with a china cup halfway to her mouth, then set it back down, coffee unsipped. "But he let you live," she said. "Why is that, do you think?"

Erwin shrugged. "Fanboy."

"Beg pardon?"

"It's kind of a long story." Erwin hated people who told long stories without an invitation. He scanned the room. The president made a come-on gesture. "So, like, the guy in the tutu kicks in the door of the chapel and kills the cop that brung him there pretty much straight off." Erwin took his Copenhagen out of his s.h.i.+rt pocket, thumped it a couple of times to settle the tobacco, and put in a dip. "Then, he asked which one of us was Steve." He imitated the big guy's voice: "'Eshteeeeeeve?' Like that. Hodgson's lawyer blabbed-he was a p.u.s.s.y-and the big guy killed him, too, with like a weight on the end of a chain." Erwin put the Copenhagen back in his pocket. "Man that guy was quick," he said, looking at Thorpe significantly. "I ain't never seen n.o.body that f.u.c.kin' fast in my life."

Thorpe nodded. Message received.

"Anyway, I figured I was next. So I started thinking fast. And I asked him if he knew a chick named Carolyn. He recognized the name. I think that almost got me off the hook."

"What made you think to do that?" the secretary of state asked.

Erwin shrugged. "Her and him both dressed weird."

They were all looking at him now.

"Weird how?" asked Hamann.

"Well, he was in the tutu." He scanned their faces. "And Hodgson had said that this chick Carolyn was going around in a wool sweater and bike pants, them Spandexy things, the night he met her. And leg warmers. That was weird too. So that had already reminded me how one of them ladies who robbed the bank did it in a bathrobe and cowboy hat. It wasn't so much a connection as they just kinda reminded me of each other. Kinda thin, but I figured if he was getting ready to kill me anyway it couldn't hurt to try. So I asked if he knew her."

"And that worked?"

Erwin shrugged. "Almost. Slowed him down for a second, anyway. He didn't speak English, but I could tell he knew the name."

"What did he speak?"

"Dunno. Funny accent. Couldn't place it. But when I said 'Carolyn,' he sat up and took notice. Then he said 'n.o.bununga'-or something like that. I pretended like I knew him, too."

"n.o.bunaga?" the president asked. "Where do I know that name?"

Erwin was surprised. Oh right, he thought. He was a history major. "Oda n.o.bunaga. Yeah, he was my first thought too."

The president snapped his fingers. "Right. That's it."

"Pardon me," said the secretary of state, "but who are we talking about?"

"Oda n.o.bunaga," Erwin explained. "In sixteenth-century j.a.pan he unified the shogunate. Mostly, anyways."

They were all staring at him now, the way dumb s.h.i.+ts sometimes did when you surprised them. All except the president himself. He was smiling a little. "Go on," he said.

"But I got it wrong," Erwin said. "It wasn't No-bu-na-ga. He said No-bu-nun-ga."

"Who the h.e.l.l's that?" Hamann asked.

Erwin shrugged. "Not a f.u.c.kin' clue. Maybe it was a code word, or some stupid s.h.i.+t like that." He nodded at the director of Central Intelligence. "No offense."

The DCI shook his head. None taken.

"Anyway, I f.u.c.ked up. When I said the wrong name, the guy in the tutu figured out I was trying to bulls.h.i.+t him. He was fixin' to kill me with that spear of his-or try, anyway. But it turned out he was a fanboy. I dunno who was more surprised, him or me."

"A 'fanboy'?" the secretary of state asked. "So...you two know each other? I don't understand."

"Nah. It's just sometimes-"

Thorpe's tone was cold. "Madam Secretary, Command Sergeant Major Leffington is well-known within military circles. 'Living legend' is probably a fair description of his status. At Natanz, while wounded, he singlehandedly-"

"Yeah, anyway," Erwin said, "he'd heard of me. You get to where you recognize the look."

"I see. And you think that's why he spared your life?"

"Well, I wasn't gonna just sit there and let him kill me. But yeah. After he recognized me he just grabbed the Hodgson kid and took off."

"Did you pursue him?"

"I gave it a shot." Erwin shook his head. "Man that guy was quick." He looked at the president. "Hey, you got a trash can or something? I gotta spit." He pointed at the wad of Copenhagen in his lip.

Thorpe looked at him, wide-eyed, then stifled a grin.

"Under the desk," the president said.

"Thanks." Erwin walked around behind the president's desk, retrieved his trash can, and spat a brown stream in it. He set the can on the desk. Might need it again in a minute. "Say, can I ask you a question?"

The president waggled his fingers in a come-on gesture.

"Why do you give a f.u.c.k?"