The veteran clapped Bianci on the shoulder with his left hand while the right clenched and unclenched in its own set of unconscious loosening exercises. “No sweat, boss,” Kelly said. “You’re a good enough friend to ask me a bigger favor’n that.” He grinned; and though he saw his employer cringe away from the expression, Kelly didn’t broaden the grin into something that might have been socially acceptable.
The two men walked into the front office, moving with tight, precise steps and resolutely looking at desks instead of each other. The door to the private office was covered in dark blue leather tacked down by brass studs corroded to a dull similarity. The chemicals used to tan leather were hard on brass, so you should never keep cartridges in leather belt loops for any length of time. …
Wrong thing to think about.
“Carlo,” said Tom Kelly as they stepped around the receptionist’s desk. Everyone was gone from the office but the pair of them and whoever was beyond the blue door. “I can lock up. Probably just as well if you went home and got some sleep yourself.”
“I can go in with you, you know,” Bianci said, pausing and touching Kelly to bring the younger man’s eyes to meet his.
There was sound of a sort, maybe voices, coming from the inner office. Kelly laughed, a barking sound because of the circumstances, but a gesture of real amusement nonetheless. “With all due respect, boss,” he said, “I doubt you’re cleared for whatever it is. Of course” – the feral grin came back and all humor fled – “the last time I checked, I had a negative security clearance, so it’s hard to tell. …”
He gripped the congressman by both shoulders, continuing to hold their eyes locked. “Go on home, Carlo; it can’t be too heavy if they only came with two of ’em,” Kelly said. A part of him hated the operative portion of his mind for the care with which it examined Bianci’s face, looking for a reaction to “only two of them” that would imply there was a full team behind the leather door.
Nothing of the sort. “Right, Tom,” said Representative Bianci as he strode out of his office. He added over his shoulder, “And thanks. You know I appreciate it.”
Everybody’s got a handle, thought Kelly as he closed and locked the outer door behind his employer. Carlo had fewer than most; but everybody’s got things they don’t want to lose if somebody thinks it’s worthwhile to dig and to push.
Kelly shrugged again to loosen the cling of his jacket. Then he opened the door to the private office, using his left hand.
The sound within the office came from the television monitor facing Kelly above the desk, rather than the man and woman kitty-corner to it at the far end of the room. Gunfire, flattened and compressed by the signal, rasped from the set for a moment before the waiting man touched the remote control of the videocassette recorder. Sound and picture faded almost instantly, but Tom Kelly’s mind was bright with echoes and afterimages.
The man strode forward with his hand out and a professional smile on his face. He was a good-looking fellow in his early thirties, too young for his beefiness to become real fat. The dark blond hair was nicely styled, and the cotton shirt beneath his pin-striped three-piece suit had probably cost as much as Kelly had spent on his own sportcoat. The fellow stood six feet three inches, with shoulders to match – which made them as broad as Kelly’s. “Glad to see you at last, Mr. Kelly,” he said. “I’m Doug Blakeley, and this is Elaine Tuttle.”
“Right,” said Kelly as he accepted the other’s hand, “and I’m John Patrick Monaghan.” That was the cover name he’d been issued when he trained Kurdish guerrillas outside Diyarbakir in another life. He was very ready for what would come next, might as well get it over with, he’d warned them. . . .
“Doug!” said the woman very sharply. Her companion relaxed the hand he had been tensing to crush that of Tom Kelly, to prove that he was tougher than this aging cowboy whose file he had read. Doug’s handshake became just that, perfunctory and as professional as his smile or the names he had given.