Scone Island Page 2

  The faculty had eventually sheathed their verbal daggers, curbed their egos, and resumed the activities they were paid to do. The board of directors stopped posturing for the evening news, settled down, and approved the budget and the elevation of the current dean for academic affairs to the vacant vice president’s slot. Its mutineers pacified, the ship, metaphorically speaking, was back on course. Ruth had had to endure all of this while recovering from the surgery attendant on an automobile wreck that put her into a three-week coma and gave her a fractured skull, a cracked cervical vertebra, a ruptured spleen, and a broken leg. She had done what needed doing and—mission accomplished, to quote another more famous president of different time and place—she now slept like a log in the next room. That is if logs could be thought to snore, an affliction she’d acquired as a side effect of the broken neck. The doc said he thought it would go away when she began sleeping on her side as she used to. Ike thought that was easy for him to say. He didn’t have to share her bed. But success in small things had extracted its price. To Ike, she looked about as worn out and beaten as he had ever seen anyone, and that included some pretty beat up folks from another time and another life.

  He settled in a camp chair and looked over the Shenandoah Valley nearly a thousand feet below him. His A-frame in the mountains, the retreat he’d established when he first returned to the valley running from the bad times, the BR times—Before Ruth times—now served as a place of refuge for both of them. He, from the burdens and annoyances that attached his job as sheriff of Picketsville, Virginia, and she from the similar but heavier ones borne by the presidency of Callend University. How much longer the cabin could serve as their weekend hiding place remained to be seen. Too many people insisted they needed twenty-four-seven access to one or the other of them. And privacy, especially for those who serve in the public sector, whether as educators or police, had been slowly eroded away by the nonsensical notions that emerged first from an obsessed media hungry for information and disinclined to dig it out the hard way. More recently they dealt with the semi-informed, semiliterate blogosphere that maintained the public’s “right to know” trumped any individual’s right to privacy.

  He wondered if the late Marlon Brando might not have had it right. Maybe he should follow his example and buy an inaccessible island out in the middle of the ocean somewhere and disappear from view forever.

  ***

  Charlie Garland had two telephones on his desk. One of them had a number that was accessible to the general public, if you knew where to start and looked for it hard enough. The other did not. The only calls he received on the latter were from the director of the CIA, and the rare calls forwarded to it from other venues that needed his attention. And then only after they’d been screened by an anonymous person sitting at a desk somewhere else in the labyrinthine corridors of the Company. It was the latter that chirped at him. It was distinguishable from the other by its array of buttons, or rather lack thereof. Where the first had the means of putting a caller on hold and the ability to forward calls, the later had only a single green button. Charlie did not like to use it.

  He picked up and listened. A hello would not be required.

  “Archie Whitlock is dead,” the director said.

  “How?”

  “He fell off a cliff in New England somewhere. An island in Maine I think. I’ll send you the details in a minute.”

  “It was an accident?”

  “What do you think?”

  “It’s possible, but as it’s Archie we’re discussing, not likely. I thought we had tucked him away from the bad guys with a new ID and a new life.”

  “We did and he was. He went away as we requested and the last anyone heard, he’d purchased an old ‘fixer upper’ in Maine and planned on turning it into a B and B or some such nonsense. Can you picture Archie as a Yankee innkeeper?”

  “He was crazy enough to try, by all accounts, but then I never thought I’d see an African-American as president in my lifetime. Do you remember Archie’s obsession with weather forecasting going back a few years? Maybe the location offered a chance to take up the hobby again.”

  “You think? Maybe. Anyway, we picked up the report of Archie’s death in a routine post from a county sheriff’s office. A couple of local fishermen apparently retrieved the body. I’m not sure what fishermen have to do with falling off a cliff but I suppose there is a connection. Anyway, we inserted the background documents we’d ponied up for Whitlock into the feedback to the sheriff including the new ID. His office is satisfied Whitlock was the guy we said he was and that he fell—accident.”

  “So, problem solved. Two problems solved, in fact. The Maine cops are happy and won’t press on with an investigation, and Archie is finally off the books.”

  “Yes, indeed, two down but still one to go.”

  “Sir?”

  “I am calling you, Garland. Why do you suppose I am calling you?”

  “Obviously, you don’t want me to find out who shoved Archie of the cliff, that’s for some other unit, I hope, and clearly not in my job description. Even if it were, and you wanted me to, I would need a task force and at least a year to do it.”

  “A task force?”

  “I can think of at least a half dozen people in various intelligence communities around the globe, along with a small army of very dangerous arms dealers, drug cartel jefes, and several smoothies in industrial complexes who had scores to settle with Archie. Oh, and don’t forget, he had four ex-wives and three times as many unhappy girlfriends, any one of whom would have been elated to send Archie to wherever dirty spooks go to die. No doubt there are others you can add to the list.”

  “I could. As you noted, it is not your job to figure that out. Maine cops say accident—it stays accident. What I want to know is how, Charlie? How did whoever, ex-wives, ex-spooks, gun runners, whoever…how did he/she/they find him? Who, besides the people in Identity and Relocation knew where he was? Someone leaked something. Find the hole in the fence and close it.”

  “It had to be inside? You’re sure?”

  “Not absolutely, but what are the chances of it coming from anywhere else?”

  “Wikileaks?”

  “Don’t get smart with me, Charlie, I haven’t had my breakfast yet.”

  “Okay, I’m on it. Any ideas where to start?”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking orange juice, then coffee, and pancakes.”

  “Thanks for that, Mr. Director, and a very good morning to you, too.”

  “I’ve sent you an encrypted file on the NTK net. Read it and get back to me this afternoon when you’ve had a chance to study it.”

  Need to Know File? Charlie hung up and drummed his fingers on the beat-up old oak desk he’d used for years. He’d been offered a new shiny steel one on several occasions but he’d refused the offer, said he had gotten attached to this one and in fact hoped they either let him keep it when he retired, or convert it to a coffin if death was the way he finally ended his government career.

  Chapter Three

  Ruth slumped against the rattan chair back and glowered at her scrambled eggs. She used her fork to push them around and then dropped it with a clank on her plate. She sipped her coffee and made a face. “Is it me or has the whole world gone nuts?”

  “A little of both, I think. If I had to choose, I’d go with the world, but that’s only my take. So, the problem is what? The eggs too cold, too runny? Coffee is…what? Too strong, too weak, too sour, too hot, what? Or is it the company? What’s the problem, Goldilocks?”

  “Not you, Schwartz, and not breakfast. Breakfast always smells good, even when it isn’t. The eggs are…yellow and the coffee is brown. What more could I possibly expect from a cop who cooks? I guess I woke up really bitchy this morning and I don’t know why.”

  “Bitchy…you think?”

  “Sorry, yeah. I’m on vacation and I can’t get into it. I keep waiting for the phone to ring and some stuck-up department chairperson to attem
pt academic blackmail in order to get me to assign him more space or full-time equivalents. Maybe some over-indulged fashionista, never ever previously challenged sophomore from Scarsdale or Tom’s River with a fifty-dollar manicure, will inform me that Daddy intends to file a law suit claiming the college abused his darling because she got a B on her genetics term paper when she thought she deserved an A and now her chances for going to Harvard Medical school have been ruined.”

  “Wow, you really are in a funk, Harris. I think they call what you have a grand funk—very rare in these parts. We generally manage with a major funk or a brown study, whatever that is. I guess I am not surprised, only amazed it took you six months to get there.”

  “What? Get where?”

  “You are obviously suffering from a very bad case of PT-ASS. That’s post-traumatic administrator’s stress syndrome. You have had a really bad year and it has finally caught up with you.”

  “What do you mean finally? I’ve been yelling at you for six months. I don’t know how you put up with me.”

  “There’s an answer for that but I generally don’t like to sound mushy before lunch.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since I almost went crazy sitting in the hospital last fall watching you do your comatose act. You were very convincing, by the way.”

  “That’s sweet. How’d I look—comatose?”

  “Terrible.”

  “Thank you for that. I would hate to think I was alluring while contemplating whether to wake up or not. So what are we going to do about my post-traumatic…whatever you said?”

  “It’s your vacation. For now, I say if the phone rings, we don’t answer it.”

  “And that helps how?”

  “We came up here to get away from the university and the office for peace and quiet. That’s how it helps.”

  “What if it’s for you? What if someone has taken an axe to their mother-in-law or something worse and they need good old Sheriff Ike to ride in on his white horse and collar the bad guy.”

  “In the first place, I don’t have a horse, white or otherwise but I do have an old gray Jeep. It’s not running at the moment but we live in hope. More importantly, I have very good deputies and they can handle axe murderers, speeding tickets, and their daily donut ration without my help. They do not need me. The bigger question is what if one of those prima donnas who play in your sand box calls and needs to have his a…nose wiped?”

  “Point taken. Oh, Ike it used to be so wonderfully easy. Before the merger with Carter-Union we were on our way to becoming another Scripps College or Wellesley. Now it looks like we couldn’t compete with a B-rated community college on a party weekend.”

  “That’s not true and you know it. Your faculty has always been prickly. It’s what the professional intelligentsia do. It’s in their DNA. It comes with a vellum certificate declaring them smarter than people.”

  “I guess you’re right, sort of. Remember, Ike, I used to be one of them before I became one of me.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You know what I mean. I don’t know, it’s not that bad, but it’s different and complicated. I must be heading to burn-out city.”

  “I’ve been there. It’s nice in the springtime but I wouldn’t want to live there. You know what? We need to get away. Not away like here, where everybody knows we hang out, but away, away. Some place where there are no phones, no TV, no Internet no—please God—no Twitter, Facebook, or, you should pardon the expression, social networks. Peace and quiet. Let someone else solve the case of the department chairman axe murders.”

  “We should go to Las Vegas. I’ve never been to Sin City. Who would ever think to find us there?”

  “Almost anyone with the will to do so. Vegas is busy, but private it is not, in spite of the slogan suggesting otherwise. We need someplace really remote.”

  “You know such a place?”

  Ike shrugged. “Short of Mauritius, no. Sorry. More coffee?”

  “No, thanks. I do.”

  “Do? Do what?”

  “Know such a place.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “My Great-aunt Margaret VanDeVeer left me a cottage in Maine on an island that’s, like, four miles off the coast or something, near Bass Harbor. It has no phone tower, no electricity, no…nothing. Strictly roughing it. Wood burning fire places and beds with fat duvets to keep you warm at night and all the fresh sea air you can manage. Is there more toast?”

  Ike slid the last of the wheat toast onto her plate. “How come I’m hearing about this for the first time?”

  “I received a letter from a Boston attorney three months ago. That was when I was up to my you-know-what in contentious board meetings, faculty focus groups, and all that other crap. I told the lawyer to go to probate for me. I sent him a POA and signed off. I said I’d contact him later. Then I pretty much forgot all about it.”

  “And this cottage is where again?”

  “Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine.”

  “Sounds cold.”

  “So? Don’t be such a wuss.”

  “Right. No wussiness for me. So, speaking about your you-know-what—”

  “Later, lover. First things first. How much leave time do you have left?”

  “A couple of weeks. If that’s not enough, I could always quit.”

  “Forget that. I plan to sleep safe with the law on my side, not some unemployed bum. I’m due for some compassionate leave, don’t you think?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “So, I’ll extend the week off and we’ll go to Scone Island, that’s the name of the place, and kick back for two weeks or so. What do you say? We deserve some R and R, right?”

  “Maine in May?”

  “Think about it…moonlight over the ocean, the previously mentioned wood burning fireplace, a fat duvet with my you-know-what under it. Is that sounding like Maine in May could be a go?”

  “Late May. Okay, you have yourself a deal. What about Las Vegas?”

  “If the island washes out, Vegas will be plan B.”

  “Check. I think we might want to clear this junket with a few folks first, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, yeah, and, hey, no calling Charlie Garland to tell him where you are. Every time that charmer calls, he gets you into trouble.”

  “I thought you said there were no phone towers.”

  “That’s right. No phone, so no Charlie. Okay, we’re good to go. Wait. He has access to all that CIA secret I-can-find-you-anywhere-in-the-world technology. You’ll have to scotch that.”

  “No problem there. It’s not like I have a chip implanted in my neck anymore—”

  “Anymore? You mean you did at one time?”

  “No, merely making sure you’re awake.”

  ***

  At that precise moment, Charlie Garland had a slightly related thought. He had scanned the encrypted file for an hour and one name in particular jumped off the pages. Archie Whitlock, CIA field agent, before he became Harmon Staley, bed-and-breakfast operator, had several ops that had gone pear shaped. In each case, Ike Schwartz, the Company’s best mop-up operative, had been called in to provide back-up and in at least one instance execute an extraction. Ike knew Whitlock back in the day. He might also know who Archie might contact in his new persona, if anyone. He needed to call Ike. More importantly, if Archie had in fact been pushed off the cliff, what were the chances that others associated with one or more of Archie’s ops weren’t also in line for an “accident?” He turned back to the reports scattered across his desk. The director did not want him to ferret out the killer, fine, but he still needed to know if any of the names were linked to those ops gone bad. Especially if agents like Ike might be at risk. Did Archie get nudged into free fall by a homicidal ex-wife, an angry former agent, one of the myriad nut jobs that haunted the Internet looking for conspiracies, or someone who had a problem with a particular operation? And would he now be in the hunt for other players?

  Charlie picked up his phone—th
at would be the one with the listing, however obscure—and punched in Ike’s number. He waited until Ike’s voice mail came on the line. He left a message and wondered why Ike did not pick up. Then he remembered it was Sunday and Ike would not answer unless convinced the call was an emergency. Charlie never figured out how he knew what was and what wasn’t an emergency without first asking. But he’d long ago concluded that Ike’s mental configuration did not match any known normal pattern.

  The call logger that recorded a time and date stamp for all calls in or out of the CIA, except on certain select phones, noted the time, duration, and number called. It would repeat the operation twice more that morning and only one of them would be made from Charlie’s phone.

  Chapter Four

  Ike walked into the sheriff’s office as the day shift rotated in and the night shift out. He nodded to the four or five deputies who were finishing their coffee and moving toward the door to start the day’s routine. Ike gestured for Frank Sutherlin, his chief deputy and usually second in command to come into his office. He wheeled and waved to Frank’s sister-in-law, Essie, who served as Dispatcher and general dogs-body, to do the same.

  “I thought you were on leave, Ike. What are you doing in here this morning?”

  “Not enough privacy up in the mountains anymore. You know where I am. Hell, everybody in town knows. Same for Ruth so we’re moving out.”

  “I guess you’re tired of hearing it every day, Ike, but how is Doctor Harris?”

  “And as always, Frank, she’s still recovering. It has been a very bad year for her, but you know all about that. The worst of the problems up at the university are over. It has taken its toll, however. She’s had no time to recuperate from the attempt on her life. She jumped right back in the snake pit. Right now she looks ragged and worn and edgy. I’m thinking that if I don’t take her away, far away, for a while, something might bump into her and she will shatter like expensive porcelain.”

  “So, is she taking some time off?”

  “She is and I am. Do you two think you can manage here for a few weeks?”