The next few hours were some of the worst Alexander Scott could remember, his worst nightmares made real. From the moment two men accosted him in the parking lot as he made his few feeble steps closer to his burning sedan, he knew.
"I'm back in it…" he said quietly to himself as he sat in the back of the big car driven by men who wouldn't identify themselves to his satisfaction or tell him where they were going. "I'm back."
His words were more to make it real to himself than they were for any other purpose; it might almost have been amusing – if he didn't have that constant mental movie running in his head about what Emily would be going through when she heard about his car, when he didn't come home… when she didn't get her gray dress…
God… that dress saved my life. If it hadn't been for that stupid dress, which he had to admit he had never really liked on her anyway, he'd have been standing exactly where Kyle Markham had been when the car blew up – and everything would have been over right then and there. Scott knew he had much to be thankful for – but he was also angry as hell.
"Say, fellas…" he began one more time, directly his off-hand litany to the driver and front-seat passenger. "You know, if it's all the same to you, I'd rather book this trip myself. I've got a Frequent Flyer account at United, and I'd just as soon be racking up some bonus miles as sitting in the back of this reconditioned hearse of yours. Hello?"
No answer. The Plexiglas shield between the front and back seats was thick, yes, but Scott knew there were more microphones hidden in the back seat than there were Communists in China. And he was a little rusty, granted – but he'd bet he could find nine of ten of them before they passed the next mile marker on the dreary Interstate highway. If he put his mind to it.
Hours later, the sedan finally stopped in a Washington suburb boasting manicured lawns that hadn't been manicured by the residents of the large, expensive-looking townhouses. The driver stayed in the car; the front-seat passenger came around back and opened the rear door – a necessary gesture, not merely a polite one, since there were no door handles on the inside.
Scott got out and looked around. "Pretty nice, pretty nice," he nodded. "You guys got much trouble with rent control around here? No, I guess not."
"Would you come with me, please, Dr. Scott?" the young man asked stiffly – the first words he'd said to Scott during their entire drive from the University of Pennsylvania.
"Oh, you do talk. What do you know about that? Well, I think you owe me one before I do anything for you. Who the hell are you, and what am I doing here? Who blew up my car, and…"
The man gestured toward the front door of the townhouse they were parked in front of. "Inside, please, Dr. Scott. Someone will answer all of your questions inside."
"Someone better, or someone's gonna regret this long and hard." Scotty took a couple of steps in the indicated direction, then turned and dug in his jacket pocket. "Hey, before I forget…" He pulled out a handful of miniature microphones – seven, by exact count, some with monofilament wires still attached – and pressed them into the young man's hand. "You guys aren't any better at this than you used to be, you know that? Don't spend 'em all in one place." It had been a relief, actually, to find the mikes exactly where he'd expected to find them, in regulation by-the-book position; that meant the 'white hats' had him, not the bad guys. And Scott thought it highly unlikely that the CIA had blown up his car.
No, it was more likely there was a third party involved, and this was the Company's C.B. DeMille version of a rescue. He'd had plenty of time to think while dismantling the listening devices in the back seat, and had come to the conclusion that he was in no immediate danger.
On the other hand, the guy responsible for his abduction was in quite probable danger of having his entire anatomy rearranged – unless he could come up with some damn good explanations for his actions, damn fast.
The townhouse drawing room was sparsely, if tastefully, furnished – a Government decorating job, with hardly a personal effect anywhere. The man who led Scott into the room left him there alone, and Scott walked around slowly, waiting… for what, exactly, he wasn't sure, but he suspected it would involve a heated argument with some dense bureaucrat. He sighed heavily at the thought of Emily home alone, hundreds of miles away, with no idea where he was or even that he was all right. "Damn… welcome back, double-oh-seven…"
"You used to call it 'visiting the Batcave'."
"That was back when…" For the second time that day, Scott turned around on a dime; that voice was altogether too familiar… and he'd responded automatically to it, without it even registering for several seconds. "I don't believe it…"
But there he was, in the flesh, his former partner – older, grayer, but unmistakably Kelly Robinson. How long had it been? He looked fine, no extra weight, and the gray hair actually looked pretty good on him. It would have been great to see him – under any other circumstances.
Robinson took a deep breath of his own. "Dr. Scott… welcome to the humble abode of those of us still in the shackles of the Federal Government."
"You mean my taxes pay for this? They got you, too?"
"No, my friend. I've got you."
That also took a moment to sink in. "You? You engineered this whole thing? I spent five hours in the back seat of some rolling Quaker Meeting, imagining how I was gonna beat the living daylights out of the guy who did this… and you're the guy who did this?"
Robinson nodded, and gestured for Scott to take a seat. His 'guest' declined. "I understand you made quite a mess out of the audio monitoring devices in the limousine."
"Bugs. They're called 'bugs'. Remember? Or don't you guys in the suits talk any straighter now than they did when Russ was in charge? Kel, what did they do to you?"
His former partner shrugged, and took a seat. "They promoted me. Several times, in fact."
"Well, congratulations." Scott's words fairly pulsed with insincerity. "Listen, I'd really love to hang around your little party all day, but I've got a wife at home who thinks maybe I got blown up earlier today and I'd like to dispel that rumor before she goes selling off my golf clubs, not to mention that I recently saw a co-worker incinerated in my car."
"I'm sorry about Markham," Kelly said simply, almost flatly. "Friend of yours?"
"The guy was a shin splint in an argyle sweater, just a well-dressed, aggravating little pain… but he was a human being, and now he's dead."
"And I'm sorry about Emily, but I can't let you call her yet."
"For God's sake, Kel, I don't see you or hear from you for fifteen years, and when I finally do, we're back watching things explode and people die! Why couldn't we ever just sit around and watch the game on TV and eat fried food and get our cholesterol elevated like normal guys?"
Kelly had expected this; nobody had a more clear-cut right to be angry than Alexander Scott just at that moment, and he was willing to listen to him blow off some steam. "I don't know, Scotty," he admitted quietly, looking out a window at nothing in particular. "I'm sorry."
"Well, thanks; the fact that you're sorry makes everything just peachy." Stand-off: neither man said anything for what seemed like eons. Then finally: "Who did it?" Scott inquired in an expressionless monotone.
"We don't know. That's the truth. I wish it wasn't, but it is. That's why you're here. You're a target."
"Why?"
"We don't know that either."
"My tax dollars at work." Scott accepted the seat he'd been offered earlier. "I suppose we should find out."
"That would be prudent, yes."
"Who've you got on it? Not that puppy from the limo, that guy with the 'Our Gang' haircut?"
"Afraid so. Our leads, unfortunately, are few and far between at this point."
"But you knew something was up. Otherwise, you wouldn't have had Abbott and Costello right there to grab me and stuff me in the car."
"Recent events led us to believe that you were a likely target."
"What recent events?"
"That's…"
"Don't you dare tell me it's classified, Kelly, because if you do, I'm taking my football and I'm going home, and I'd like to see anybody… including you and all the king's men… try to stop me. You can't drag me all the way here and then keep me in the dark."
"It'd be safer for you if I did, you know."
"I thought I was safe driving to work this morning. I've got a right to know," Scott pressed. "What about my family? You can't just…"
"I don't know."
"Is there anything you do know?"
"I know we've got to get a lock on these guys fast, or a whole lot of people are likely to get hurt, and I couldn't really say whether Emily and the kids would be in the line of fire or not. I know you are, and if I let you go home right now, I can't guarantee that your house won't go up like a bottle rocket when you put your key in the lock. You're a magnet; they want you and they don't care who they have to go through to get you. Emily's safer if you stay right here."
That was true; much as Scotty hated to hear it, he knew it was true. He took a few seconds to digest that information, then looked back at Kelly. "So… how've you been?"
Kelly came as close to smiling as he had in days. "Younger."
"I know the feeling."
oo0oo
As Kelly and Scotty worked through the swirling fog of the past two decades, night fell on suburban Washington, and streetlights came on all over town. Outside the brick townhouse, two men in dark clothes made their way around the front of the building, deliberately trying to keep clear of the glare of the streetlamps. Light blazed inside, and the men were careful to stay away from the windows as well; their errand was not one to be witnessed… not directly, at any rate. They were fully aware of the security measures in effect, and had extensive knowledge of how to circumvent them. Limitless guile and vast experience were their allies.
Pure folly was on their side as well, since it was not their own. There was only one man watching the door of the townhouse, and his youth and inexperience both contributed greatly to his sudden, violent demise. The coded lock on the front entrance gave way, as expected, to the code tortured out of yet another operative some time earlier. As the front door swung open, the two shadowy figures dragged their grisly trophy inside and closed the door to the street behind them.
They could hear voices from beyond the double doors to the front parlor, and were confident their entry had not been noticed. The one who'd just committed a cold-blooded murder with all the panache and indifference of swatting a mosquito removed a micro-transmitter from the sleeve of his dark sweater and spoke into it with muted, measured tones.
"Domino Effect, phase one. Complete."
oo0oo
Miles away in an ornate gallery reminiscent of a Greek palace, the message was received by the man who'd set the wheels in motion in the first place. He pressed a button on his receiver and sent his reply. "Chain reaction."
Sorgi was a clever man. He always had been, with a style that was known and respected around the world. Years of plying the mercenary's trade, of dealing in the buying and selling of coveted top-secret information, had sharpened his wits to a razor edge. The men he pursued were not strangers; he knew them well. Once, they had nearly destroyed his empire. That was something he found difficult to forget – or forgive.
He'd invented the coded terminology himself, especially for this mission involving the two men who had once been known by the collective name 'Domino'. It was one of the most elementary laws of physics: knocking down one domino sent the rest of the chain into a helpless tailspin.
And that was his intention: implementing the chain reaction that would knock Domino down, until nothing was left standing. 'Chain reaction', indeed. Annihilation was a more accurate word.