“Lonny Forbes. I always liked Lonny.” She pressed her lips together and shook her head sadly. “Bill’s grown harder. More cynical. The last two times I saw him, something was really bothering him. It seemed to me it was about something he’s not proud of but won’t stop doing because of the way the world is.” She picked up her teacup, found it empty, and stared into it. “I’m just guessing about him, of course. I’ll never marry again. I see a nice man now and then, but that’s all it’ll ever be. Bill was my great love. But his great love was his work, and somehow it failed him. What I do know is he feels betrayed. He’s lost his faith, you could say.”
Smith understood. “In a world with no values except money, he wants his share. It’s happened to others. Scientists who sell out for big bucks. Put a monetary value on eradicating disease, curing ills, saving lives. Unconscionable.”
“But he can’t betray you,” Marjorie said. “So he’s torn apart by the conflict.”
“He’s already betrayed me. Sophia’s dead.”
As she opened her mouth to protest, Smith’s cell phone rang. Throughout the faculty lounge, annoyed heads turned.
Smith grabbed the phone from his pocket. “Yes?”
It was Marty, and he sounded both excited and terrified. “Jon, I always said the world was unsafe.” He paused and gasped. “Now I’ve proved it. Personally. There’s a whole group of intruders. Well, four actually. They’ve broken into my house. If they find me, they’ll kill me. This is your area of expertise. You’ve got to save me!”
Smith kept his voice low. “Where are you?”
“At my other house.” He gave the address. Suddenly his voice broke. It shook with terror. “Hurry!”
“I’m on my way.”
Smith apologized to Marjorie Griffin, scribbled his cell phone number for her, and asked her to call if Bill turned up again. He ran out of the lounge.
__________
As Smith drove worriedly past Marty’s house, he saw a gray van parked in the driveway. No one appeared to be in the van, and the high hedge and curtains hid the house’s interior. He surveyed all around and saw nothing suspicious. There were the usual traffic noises. Smith scanned constantly for trouble as he continued on around the block and pulled into the driveway of a bungalow that was directly behind Marty’s. In the front lawn stood a white metal FOR SALE sign rusting around the edges.
From the house’s front window, a shade peeled upward, and Marty’s frightened face peeked out just above the sill.
Smith ran to the front door.
Marty opened it, clutching a sheaf of papers and a remote control to his chest. “Come in. Hurry. Hurry.” He stared fearfully past. “If you were Florence Nightingale, I’d be dead by now. What took you so long?”
“If I were Florence Nightingale, I wouldn’t be here. We’d be in different centuries.” Smith locked the door and scanned the empty room as Marty checked the front window. “Fill me in. Tell me everything that happened.”
Marty dropped the window shade and described the four strangers, their weapons, and their attempts to break in. Meanwhile, Smith strode through the house, checking locks on doors and windows, and Marty followed in his rolling gait. The drapes and curtains were drawn, and the rooms were shadowy with sunlight and dust motes. The place was empty, and as secure as any ordinary house could be. Which was not very.
At last Marty finished his story with a stream of speculations.
“You’re right,” Smith said soberly, “they’ll start searching the neighborhood soon.”
“Swell. Just what I wanted to hear.” Marty grinned weakly. It came out as a macabre grimace, but it was a brave try.
Smith squeezed his friend’s shoulder, trying to keep the urgency from his voice. “How did they know about us, Marty? Did you tell anyone?”
“Not in a quadrillion years.”
“Then they had to have followed me, but I don’t see how.” He quickly went through all the precautions he had taken to shake pursuit since he had left Frederick. “They couldn’t have put a transmitter on the Triumph this time.”
That was when he heard it… a noise that rose above the ambient sounds of the city. At first he could not place it. Then he knew what it was, and how they had followed him. His throat tightened. He strode to the front window, raised the shade, and looked out and up.
“Damn!” He slammed his fist against the wall.
Marty joined him, staring up at the helicopter hovering low to the south on a straight line with the pair of bungalows. As they watched, it banked in a sweeping turn north and came back around toward the house where he and Marty hid. Smith remembered hearing a chopper earlier when he had driven away from Marty’s house.
He cursed and slammed the wall again. That was the answer— the Triumph. He knew he had shaken them before he pulled off the Interstate at Gaithersburg— there had been no way they could have bugged the Triumph that time. But how many restored— but battered from last night— ’68 Triumphs could there be in the area? Not many, and probably not another on the interstate from Frederick to Washington early this morning. One of those choppers he had seen while eating breakfast in Gaithersburg that he had thought was monitoring traffic could have easily been something else entirely. All they had had to do was guess he would go into Washington and watch the Interstate for a Triumph. A license check would confirm it.
Pick him up at Gaithersburg. Follow him into Washington.
His Triumph had nailed him. Dammit!
Marty’s voice was severe. “Okay, Jon. We don’t have time for your bouts of anger. Besides, I don’t want any holes in my walls unless I put them there. Tell me what you’ve figured out. Maybe I can help.”
“No time. This is my area of expertise, right? You used to have a car. Do you still have it?” He had been falsely secure in his Triumph. Now his enemies would be falsely secure in relying on it to track him. Everyone had blind spots.
Marty nodded. “I keep it at a garage near Massachusetts Avenue. But Jon, you know I never go out anymore.” He wandered into the next room and looked nervously out the window. He still carried his remote and the sheaf of papers as if they were talismans against danger.
“You do now,” Smith told him firmly. “We’re going to go out of here the front way, and—”
“J-J-Jon! Look!” Marty jabbed the remote like a pointer out the back window.
Instantly Smith was beside him, his Beretta in his hand. Two of the strangers had come through the hedge and now trotted toward the bungalow where Marty and Smith hid. The men were low to the ground, running with the careful urgency of men on the attack. And they were armed. Smith’s pulse pounded. Beside him, Marty was rigid with fear. He put a hand on Marty’s shoulder and squeezed as he crouched beside the window.
He let the pair get within fifteen feet. He slid up the window, aimed carefully, and fired the Beretta at each man’s legs. His brain was rusty with years of inaction, but his muscle memory overcame the rust as smoothly as an oiled machine.
The two pitched forward onto their faces, moaning with pain and shock. As they crawled for the cover of a pair of old buckeye trees, Smith hurried to the living room.
“Come on, Marty.”
Marty followed close behind, and they both looked out the window. As Smith had feared, the second pair was in front. One was the same burly man who had led the ambush two days ago in Georgetown. They had heard the shots, and the burly man had dived to the grass and pulled a Glock from his jacket. He landed hard on his chest, but held on to the Glock. The other man’s reaction was thirty seconds too slow. He still stood on the brick path, his big old U.S. Army Colt .45 halfway up toward the house.
Smith missed his leg. But before the man could stumble back for the safety of the street, Smith’s second shot drew blood from his shoulder and sent him sprawling.
Marty watched worriedly. “Good shooting, Jon.”
Smith thought fast. His unexpected shots had put the two in the backyard out of action. But in the front, the leader was uninjured, and the second man had been only nicked. They would be careful now that they knew they faced lethal opposition, but they would not go away.
And the helicopter would send reinforcements.
His voice tense, Smith asked quickly, “Does your tunnel work from this end?”
Marty looked up. He nodded, understanding. “Yes, Jon. It’d be illogical if it didn’t.”
“Let’s go!”
In the bedroom, Marty pressed his remote control. The box bed swung silently out of the way, exposing the trapdoor. Another electronic command opened it.