Hostile Contact. Gordon Kent

away. No time to linger; this was the operational act itself, the very heart of the game. It didn’t matter if no one was watching; Jerry played for an invisible audience of fellow professionals he hoped weren’t ever there, breezing into the enormous lobby, walking past the desks to the central bar, where leather couches held the open space against a jungle of local potted plants. At each end of every couch sat a house phone, and Jerry knew how to use one to get an outside line in Jakarta. He ordered a gin and tonic from a waiter, sat, and looked at his watch.

      Two hours and ten minutes since the phone had rung in his room and he had hung it up. The last time he had worked in Jakarta, he’d been following orders from George Shreed. Now he would set up an operation to avenge him. It had an Asian air to it, like an episode in the tale of the Forty-Seven Ronin.

      He lifted the phone.

      

      Suburban Virginia.

      “Sleeping Dog was an NSA case, and then it was a Bureau case, and then it was a CIA case. And now it’s our case,” Dukas explained to Rose. They were eating in what was called the dining room, which barely had enough room for the table and three people. “Believe it or not, it’s nine years old.”

      “And it’s got this comm plan,” Alan said. “The first action item.”

      “Who says it’s an action item?” Dukas said.

      “Well, isn’t it? They should have moved on it when they got it, and they didn’t.”

      Dukas raised his eyebrows. “We’ve barely looked at the stuff. There could be tons of action items.”

      “Not according to the inventory.” Alan put his elbows on the table and turned to Rose. “The comm plan just leaps out at you; it’s the way a courier could meet with somebody else, and it was connected somehow with this Sleeping Dog—”

      “We don’t know that,” Dukas growled. He finished the risotto on his plate. “Who taught you to make risotto?” he said.

      “You did.”

      “Good for me.” He held up his plate. “I’ll have some more.” He watched the plate being heaped with the yellow grains and the dust-colored beans. “Next time, just a tad more saffron, okay?”

      Alan grinned at Rose and poured more red wine and said to Dukas, “I want to go to Jakarta.”

      “To do what, for Christ’s sake?”

      “To test the comm plan.”

      “Alan, read my lips: You’re not a spy! You’re an intel officer!”

      “Yeah, but I’m available. And you know you can trust me, which is a big deal for you right now because you think everybody’s on your back over George Shreed.” He leaned forward. “Mike, it’s three days—fly there, nice hotel, take a walk, leave a mark, have a nice dinner, go to the meeting place. Bang, that’s it.”

      “And what happens at the meeting place?” Rose said, scenting trouble.

      “Nothing. Ask Mike. He insists it’s a dead issue, because nobody’s done anything with it for years and there’s nobody at the other end. Right?”

      “Did I say that?”

      “You did. Just before I left this afternoon.”

      “Well—”

      Rose was looking at her husband with her head tipped to the side. “If it’s dead and nothing’s going to happen, why go?”

      He seemed to falter, then made an apologetic face. “Because it’s something to do,” he said softly.

      She changed the subject then by asking Dukas about Sally Baranowski, a question that embarrassed him and made him almost stammer. Dukas told them about the call on his answering machine that he hadn’t returned and then admitted his doubts about getting involved, and at last he was telling them both that he was still shaken by the shooting and he didn’t know what he wanted. “So what is this,” he growled, “post-traumatic stress syndrome?”

      Rose put a hand over one of his, then over Alan’s good one. “You guys,” she said. “You guys.”

      After dessert, when Alan had brought coffee into the living room, he raised the subject of Jakarta again. It was clear to them then that Alan had brought Dukas there that night because he was asking Rose’s permission as well as Dukas’s: he was trying to get a go-ahead from both of them. “Give Rose and the kids a rest from my bad temper, drink some good beer, do Mike and Uncle a favor.” He looked at Rose. “And in case you’re worried, this is a no-risk operation—a walk in the park.” The appeal in his voice was touching. “It’s a walk in the park!”

      Dukas snorted. “It’s a free trip to Jakarta, that’s what it is.” He stirred sugar and then cream into his coffee, even though all day long he drank it black. “Well—if you come back and tell me nothing happened, I can close out what you call ‘the action item,’ that’s true. Then I can bore myself stiff with the radio crap for six months and close out the whole file, and then I can go back to writing reports about why I should be reimbursed for ten grand I took on my personal responsibility when we were running after that shit George Shreed. That’s your view of it?”

      Alan looked at him, then at his injured hand, and then he reached out with his good hand to his wife. “You’re flying all day. I just sit here.”

      She squeezed his hand. To Dukas, she said, “Can he do it?”

      Dukas shrugged. “You don’t just ‘do’ a thing like this. You got to have a country clearance. Once we apply, the Agency gets notified, then they want to know what’s going on and why they’re not the ones to do it. Then we wrangle, on and on.”

      “They had their chance,” Alan said.

      “Not the way they’d see it.”

      “It’s your case now. You’ve got a number, what can they say?” He leaned forward. “Mike, let me go. I go, then you apply for the country clearance; it’s happening too fast for them to do anything.”

      “No—I don’t think so—”

      “Mike, goddamit,” Alan snapped, “you lost your nerve? Jesus, you can’t apply for a country clearance; you can’t even call an old girlfriend on the fucking phone!”

      Rose’s hand gripped Dukas’s. He looked into Alan’s suddenly angry face and looked away to keep things from escalating. He sighed. “And if something goes wrong?”

      “What can go wrong? You said yourself, it’s dead! It’s just crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s! What can go wrong with that?”

      Dukas sipped coffee. “Jakarta, that’s what.” He looked at Alan, and Alan winked. Another first since Pakistan. Dukas put down his cup. “Tell you what. Triffler’s back tomorrow. I’ll have him check Al out on the comm plan—walk him through it, lay it out on paper. Then it’ll be easy. Right?”

      He was talking to Rose. She made a face. “It’s still Jakarta,” she said.

      

      Jakarta.

      Just an old-fashioned spy, he thought. The idea delighted him. He was drunk, happy-drunk. I want a spy/Just like the spy that buggered dear old dad. He lifted the telephone and rang through, picturing the little man who would be waiting at the public telephone.

      “Yes?” The voice was tentative. Bobby Li, the agent at the other end, never seemed quite sure of himself. Well, people who were absolutely sure of themselves didn’t make good agents, right?

      “Wondering if you’ve read Green Eggs and Ham.”

      “Oh, yes, right. ‘Mister Brown is out of town/He came back with Mister Black.’ Hi!” Bobby sounded distant, but he had the recognition codes right. Good start.

      “Hey,