Almost Home
Chapter 2
It was just a shade past 8:00 when Lee entered the Farland Commons address he was given by Billy to make his drop. It was built like most others on that block, two levels, brick, with green awnings over each doorway. He approached the door marked 'Suite 130' and opened the two sets of doors, the first into a tiny entryway, the second into a fluorescent lit corridor with four additional doors. The first one on the right was paneled wood with a small square window. He opened it to a clanging of bells from above. Inside was a spacious lobby with a half-dozen mauve-colored office chairs up against the walls, a short table with a small assortment of news magazines, and a potted ficus standing in a corner. There was a reception window at the back of the room and a door beside it leading to a cramped reception office behind the window. No one was in the room. It was Lee's first indication that this would be no simple drop. Frowning thoughtfully, he approached the window and rang the service bell on the counter once. Then he waited.
He checked his watch and scowled. His contact was not on time, not a good sign. A belated drop raised the inevitable question of whether the drop would be crashed or whether the agent had been detained…or worse. As Lee continued to stand at the counter, he peered into the little office. There was one desk directly under the counter, furnished with the typical assortment of office staples. A stack of blank letterhead paper sat in a wire bin, which identified the resident business as Alexander Life Insurance Ltd. Absently, Lee speculated what the State Department must have offered the real Mr. Alexander to convince him to vacate his premises for the morning. Probably a federal audit.
Against the back wall of the office hung a paint-splattered tarp to a height of around four feet, secured at the top with strips of blue painter's tape. Apparently Mr. Alexander was engaged in a remodeling project. The interior walls of the building couldn't have been thick, because behind the wall with the tarp, Lee could hear the chatter of voices, one low and one high.
He checked his watch again, and with a grunt of exasperation, left the counter and intended to return to the corridor. Perhaps the other occupants of the office building merited some investigation. His hand was on the doorknob when the door swung open in front of him, again jangling the bells on the jamb. He found himself looking down into the face of a young woman, much younger than himself, much shorter, standing directly in front of him. Her eyes widened and she jerked backward a step when she saw him, but she recovered quickly, drew a deep breath, and offered him a timid smile. She had a billow of curly blond hair pulled up at the sides and was dressed neatly in navy slacks and a cable knit sweater with geometric shapes and bold colors. After an awkward hesitation, she seemed to settle on her next course of action and extended her hand politely.
"Good morning. I'm so sorry I missed you coming in. You must be Mister…"
"Stetson," Lee replied warily, accepting the hand.
"Stetson," she repeated, pumping his hand with energy. "Can I help you?"
Lee smiled wryly at the young woman. She seemed harmless enough, and terrifically out of place for a top secret information drop. Perhaps this drop had been called off and he didn't know it. Lee decided to feel out the woman's knowledge of the situation. "I was hoping to speak with Mr. Alexander. Is he in?"
The woman shook her head. Her eyes darted around the room, making fleeting contact with Lee's probing gaze. "He isn't in right now, but I might be able to help you. I'm his secretary." Lee eyed her skeptically and she blushed. "Um, my name is Carolyn." She gave an apologetic shrug, as though she were sorry for her name, or perhaps for her flimsy lie. "I think Mr. Alexander will arrive shortly. Do you want to sit down and wait for him?"
"Ah-h," Lee began, glancing at his watch again. "Actually, I'm in a hurry. Maybe I'll come back another time." Intuition was telling him this drop was more than a bust. The girl might be as harmless as she seemed, but whoever must have sent her in as his feeler had Lee increasingly on edge. Where was his drop man?
He reached for the doorknob, but Carolyn stood her ground in the doorway, blocking his exit. Her eyes were round, her hands fidgeting together in front of her. By all appearances, her desire to dash out of the room exceeded her desire to detain Lee, but she rooted herself where she was. Her voice became urgent. "Mr. Stetson, wait. Isn't there anything I can do to help? I'm sure Mr. Alexander doesn't want you to have to make another trip. Maybe, if it's just a message, I could take it for him…" She trailed off and looked at him intently, expectantly, it seemed.
That did it. Suspicion hardened Lee's features and he studied the woman now with heightened alertness. She wasn't an agent, but she was more than a civilian bystander. Her demeanor still exuded innocent earnestness, but her expectation defied protocol. No affiliate of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research would suggest another intelligence agent leave a classified letter with an unauthorized recipient, and Carolyn clearly anticipated Lee had a letter to deliver. The woman was hiding something, or someone.
As if she read his thoughts, she hurried across the room to the door next to the reception window, pulled it open and darted inside. "I-I'm sorry, Mr. Stetson," she stammered, appearing in the window. "Of course you don't want…Just wait right here. If he's still in the building I can page him on my phone." Visibly flustered, Carolyn picked up the receiver, fumbling twice before she managed to balance it on her shoulder. She punched some numbers on the set with trembling fingers. Lee turned and watched her wordlessly. She looked up from the desk, dark blue eyes in a face now drawn with anxiety, but she was not looking at Lee. Rather, her eyes were locked on a place somewhere past him, toward the corridor entrance. She slowly set down the receiver.
Lee turned to peer over his shoulder in time to hear the bells jangling once again as a sandy-haired businessman not much older than Carolyn stepped into the room. He was tall and lean, with boyish facial features and close-cropped hair, well dressed in a suit and tie, and carried a briefcase in one hand, and a pistol in the other. To Carolyn, he said sharply, "It's time to go."
Lee lifted his chin knowingly. The other shoe had dropped. Without so much as a blink, he plastered on his best lazy grin and casually leaned against the reception counter. Gesturing toward the gun, he drawled, "Does this method get you much business, Mr. Alexander?"
"I'm not Alexander, and you know it. Now shut up and give me the letter," the man spat back. His pistol was trained on Lee, and he remained at a comfortable distance, directly in front of the door.
"What letter?"
The gun shook in his hand. "I'm not playing the game anymore. I know who you are. Just hand it over and get out of here."
Lee abandoned leaning on the counter and stood erect, but made no other move toward extracting the message. He set his jaw and smiled tightly. "You know me? Well, then let's make the introduction complete. You are…?"
"Someone who should have shot you by now." His eyes flickered toward Carolyn and returned to watch Lee again as Lee begin to make a move toward his jacket. "Slowly," the gunman barked. "And drop your gun right here." He indicated a spot on the floor between them with the toe of his shoe.
Feeling strangely optimistic for not having a firearm, Lee held open both sides of his jacket. Maybe Amanda's tenacity would prove fortunate. It wouldn't be the first time. "Hey, man, I'm unarmed. I'm just here for an 8:00 meeting with Mr. Alexander." He casually strode forward one step, then another. "It's about a job," he continued, removing his tri-folded résumé from the same inside pocket as the drop letter. "See?" He extended the papers toward the man with a smug smile.
The man hesitated, confused. He exchanged glances with Carolyn, who still stood wide-eyed and mute behind the counter, hands tightly gripping the back of the desk chair. He took the document from Lee's outstretched hand. "It is a résumé," he said wonderingly as he inspected it.
That distraction was all Lee needed. In one fluid motion, his left leg swiped upward and cleanly kicked the gun from his assailant's grip. Then Lee descended on him, fists flying. In the back of his mind, he was aware the woman was with the gunman, and he kept a mental tab on the location of the errant gun so it wouldn't wind up in her hands. Although he couldn't deny she didn't seem the type to know what to do with a gun even if it were placed in her hands for her.
Lee's adversary turned out to be more evenly matched to Lee's hand-to-hand combat skills than he would have wished. The man recovered almost instantly from his surprise at being disarmed, and deflected Lee's first left hook, countering with a straight to his jaw that send Lee reeling. He leapt onto Lee in a tackle, knocking him to the floor, and the two grappled there, alternately swinging punches and reaching for the gun, which had skittered across the floor under a chair. Lee's opponent stood up again, taking the time to bellow at the woman, "Get out, Carolyn!" She froze in shocked horror for an instant before she burst through the reception office door, bypassing the gun entirely, and ran out the lobby door, bells ringing tumultuously in her wake.
Lee and his opponent held each other off, staggering toward the reception window, where Lee ended up on the countertop with the unknown man on top of him, pinning him. An elbow came shooting down toward his gut. Lee twisted, narrowly missing the elbow, and braced his foot against the man's groin, effectively launching him away. It didn't quite achieve the desired effect. The man fell backwards, crab-walked to the chair and gained control of the gun again.
As the barrel came sweeping up in his direction, Lee pulled to an immediate halt, palms open, facing outward, bracing himself for the inescapable impact of bullet to flesh. "Oh come on, man!" he cried in a last ditch attempt to diffuse his assailant. "Stop while you're ahead. You haven't killed anyone yet." He mentally cursed himself for allowing the man to regain his weapon. It had been known to happen from time to time, and Lee profoundly detested the situation every time.
Against every reasonable expectation, the man held his fire. With gun and eyes fixed on Lee, he instead reached backward blindly and picked up the briefcase he had dropped at the beginning of their fight, clutching it tightly against his chest. He stumbled to his feet, eyes wild. "You want to end it? Fine. The letter for your life," he demanded in a shaking voice, breathing hard.
Lee had faced off against many a gunman in his work. This one would be sealed in his memory for one reason only. Humanity glistened in his eyes, the haunted look of a man horrified by his own violence. They lacked the coldness of most men long hardened by this covert game to the death called espionage that Lee knew and played so well. Perhaps the young man had never killed someone before. Perhaps he had and didn't want to repeat the experience. But at that moment, Lee knew this man did not want to shoot him.
Slowly, Lee reached back into his jacket for the letter, contemplating how to buy himself more time. "Then come and get it, if it's worth that much to you…"
A muffled cry from Carolyn, outside in the adjoining corridor, interrupted them. "Lenny, the ambulance is here!" she screamed, fear evident in the rising inflection of her voice.
To Lee's surprise, the man's interest in the letter, now held in Lee's outstretched hand, vanished. He swore an oath and his face went pale as he reeled away from Lee toward the corridor, jerking the door open as he reached it.
"What's going on?" Lee demanded with a scowl.
At the threshold, the gunman turned around once more and paused, hand gripping the door frame, eyes locked with Lee. He let out a breath and shook his head. "It's too late now. Just get out of here." There was resignation in his voice. Then, as an afterthought, he added, "I'll give you a five-count." And he dashed out the door and was gone.
For one frozen moment, Lee could only gape after him in dismay. A five count? He was talking about a bomb. A bomb! He sprang to his feet and made a sprint toward the exit, recalling as he ran the three separate doors to maneuver between himself and the street outside. No time. He needed a more direct route. Without stopping, he adjusted his course and seized the closest lobby chair with both hands, swinging it into the front picture window, launching it outdoors. Panes of glass shattered in a shimmering torrent of jagged confetti. He instantly followed suit. Shoulder first, head tucked, he lunged through the mangled blinds and the fragments of broken glass, and then the world stopped.
He felt the blast before he heard it. It hit him like a wall, the repercussion throwing him bodily against the pavement outside, knocking him breathless. He could hear more shattering glass and a cascading tumble of brick and mortar. Reacting on pure instinct, he wrapped his arms around his head and curled into a ball. A burst of pain erupted from somewhere between his back and his right shoulder, and for a moment, he was flying—no, falling—and he was in another place, a place of hazy memories of a dark-haired woman with a sweet smile and a lilting British accent calling his name, calling him home. A searing wave of heat intruded on the vision, descended on him, along with smoke, thick and acrid. It filled his lungs, choking him, but he couldn't move. His last thought, as oblivion overtook him, was whether this, perhaps, is what dying feels like.
Thick smoke was pouring out the blown-out door and windows of the bombed Suite 130, and part of the upper floor lay in a heap of rubble atop the ground floor like a fallen soufflé. Into the mess charged a pair of paramedics, wearing blue jumpers and gas masks, and dragging along a wheeled stretcher.
"Where is Albertson? Did he not come out?" shouted the younger man, the one called Markin, who pushed the stretcher from behind.
Lagunov's deep voice was a muffled bark behind his mask. "Damned smoke. Get closer. I did not see him coming out," he directed, leading the effort from in front of the stretcher. They crossed the street, entering into the blue-black haze, and had drawn near to what used to be the outer door of the suite, when Lagunov's boot struck against a stationary figure on the ground. "Here!" he cried, bending over the soot-stained man lying face down at his feet. He knelt down to inspect the man, pulling a substantial chunk of building rubble off of him. "He is breathing. Help me get him up here and strap him down. Keep an eye out for the briefcase."
They lowered the drop frame and together lifted the man and swung him onto the bed. "Damned hotshot," Lagunov swore to no one in particular as he arranged the flaccid arms of his patient straight down at his sides. "Who told you to use C-4? We wanted a little smoke and noise, not a demolition. Every news crew in the city is going to be here in…" As the two men moved to stabilize the injured man's neck with a foam and plastic brace, Lagunov trailed off his rant. He and Markin's eyes met and they stopped, reaching a shared conclusion simultaneously.
"This is not—"Markin began.
Lagunov nodded. "I see it. Perhaps this is the agent he was intercepting." He frowned with the puzzle of a tightly arranged mission gone awry. "But if all went according to plan, this one should have a bullet."
"What do we do?" Markin demanded, gesturing toward the unmoving man before them. "He is not Albertson. Where is Albertson?"
Lagunov stared into the rubble, pondering the chaos. "No time," he muttered to himself.
"What about the briefcase? Should we keep looking for it?"
"Keep moving," Lagunov decided, giving a jerk of his head in the indicated direction. "If Albertson is still inside, he may be lost. This one is alive. If we do not find Albertson now at least we have something to trade for him if his Bureau finds him first." He deftly applied an oxygen mask to his patient while building up momentum with the stretcher toward their waiting ambulance. "And if Albertson is dead, we have something to trade for another day, eh? I will get a needle in him when we are inside."
Markin looked at his partner quizzically. "Are you missing your former work as a medic, Yevgeny? Why do you need it?"
The man sniffed smugly. "Can you not see the oxygen is waking him up? I will give him something to keep him still until we get him to Sadovsky."
As they reached the ambulance, Markin threw open the rear doors and the two loaded the stretcher inside. In minutes, they were pulling away from the wrecked building, just one of several emergency vehicles, sirens wailing, responding to the scene of a disaster.