The two federal agents who met Gertrude at the next door led her down a long hallway and then a shorter one on the right, stopping to punch an illuminated elevator call button. It turned red, but she noticed the lack of floor indicator lights. If this whole episode hadn’t been so surreal, she might have thought that odd.
As the elevator doors whisked open, the taller of the two men, the one who’d introduced himself as agent Sampson, stepped in beside her, pressing the topmost of five unmarked buttons. The doors closed and the elevator accelerated upward. When it stopped, the doors remained closed.
Agent Sampson extended his hand. “Dr. Sigmund. You’ve done your country a great service.”
“Have I?”
“And I’m sure I don’t need to remind you not to mention your visit here, subject to severe punishments specified under the Patriot Act.”
Gertrude ignored the hand and Agent Sampson withdrew it.
“May I go now?”
He pressed the middle button and the door slid open. Walking her to the guard desk, Agent Sampson waited as she turned in her temporary security badge and signed out.
As Gertrude stepped out of the building into the underground parking garage, she let her gaze wander to the waiting government sedan. Agent Sampson let her slide into the backseat and closed the door, slapping the roof to signal the driver he was clear to go.
As the black sedan drove out through the gates of Fort Meade, Gertrude cast one more glance over her shoulder.
“Would you like to stop for something to eat or should I take you directly to the airport?”
Gertrude shook her head.
“Just take me to BWI.”
She hadn’t eaten today, but a wave of nausea wiped away all traces of hunger. All she wanted to do was get on her airplane, take an antidepressant, go to sleep, and hope she didn’t still hate herself when she awakened.
If there was a US airport that moved at a slower pace than Baltimore Washington International, Freddy Hagerman hadn’t been there. But what could you expect from a union town? Just getting to the security checkpoint was a nightmare that forced you to fight your way down an endless hallway barely wide enough for one person, just to turn around and join the end of the line of people coming back the other direction.
On his trip out, Freddy had fought that fight for thirty-seven minutes before finally making it to the TSA screeners. Then, just when he thought that hell was over, he’d been forced to wait at the damned machine while one TSA woman chatted to the one at the next machine about her cheating boyfriend and did Sheila think she should dump him or just beat the crap out of him. When Freddy decided he’d had enough and made that fact loudly known, he’d been singled out for a detailed pat-down that caused him to miss his flight.
Now he was back, waiting in the run-down baggage claim area along with about three hundred other people, trying to decide if today was a baggage delivery holiday. After all, it was Wednesday and who really worked on Wednesday, right? It reminded him of a line in one of the Lethal Weapon movies: “They screw you at the drive-through.”
Maybe so, but BWI screws you coming and going.
Not that it really mattered, the way he’d been spinning his wheels trying to follow up on the Dr. Jennings tip. Three days in Manhattan trying to shake some information out of his UN sources had been a total waste of time. Combine that with everything he’d been able to dig up in DC and he had a bag full of nada.
At that moment, the warning horn blared three sharp bleats and the baggage conveyer rumbled into motion. Five minutes later, Freddy pulled his spotted vinyl suitcase out the sliding glass doors, turning right toward the bus that would take him to the rental car center. He’d taken a half-dozen steps when he spotted the government sedan. The driver got out of the car and moved to the trunk to help a slender, dark-haired woman lift her computer case from the trunk.
Freddy stopped. Where had he seen her? He never forgot a face, but the fact that he was having difficulty remembering where he’d seen this one meant he’d only seen it in passing. Her driver was clearly some sort of federal agent. The way his jacket bunched along his left side as he hefted her bag meant he was packing more than her valise.
Setting the wheeled case on the sidewalk, the agent gave a curt nod, got back in the car, and pulled out into traffic. As Freddy redirected his attention to the woman, now pulling the lavender case through the same sliding glass doors Freddy had just exited, it came to him. Her hair, pulled back so tightly she’d never need a face lift, triggered his memory. She was the psychiatrist in the Newsweek article about the three missing high school kids from Los Alamos. Freddy had read the piece several months ago, while he was working on the Henderson House story.
So why was a small-town psychiatrist from Los Alamos being escorted around the DC area by the feds? She hadn’t looked too happy about it either. Come to think of it, why had they dropped her off at the baggage claim area instead of departures?
Fifty yards down the street, the rental car bus pulled away from the curb. Damn. He’d stood around so long trying to figure out where he’d seen the woman, he’d missed the bus. Now he’d have to wait for the next one and, this being BWI, that meant he’d be cooling his heels for another half hour.
Glancing back at baggage claim, Freddy spotted the psychiatrist standing in a line at the lost baggage counter. Well, that explained the drop-off location.
“Hey, buddy!” Freddy’s gaze shifted to the speaker. A fat white guy with a rumpled suit and two suitcases glared at him. “You gonna stand there blocking the sidewalk all day or you gonna move?”
Freddy returned the glare, but stepped back and let the wide load pass without comment.
Once again Freddy shifted his gaze back to the woman. She was clearly upset and Freddy didn’t think it had anything to do with her lost luggage. The McFarland girl had been her patient. And according to the news coverage of the raid on the Ripper’s Bolivian hideout, she and her two high school friends had died during that raid, along with fourteen special ops soldiers. That would certainly account for the anguish he read on the psychiatrist’s face.
But it didn’t account for her being here with federal agents, a dozen miles from NSA headquarters. Why would the feds want to talk to McFarland’s psychiatrist if she really was dead? The parents, maybe. Psychiatrist? He wasn’t buying it.
Standing on the sidewalk on what was destined to be Baltimore’s first hot day of the year, Freddy felt a hot lead tug at him, the first such feeling he’d had since his meeting with that NSA spook, Jennings. Maybe it wasn’t the same story, but it grabbed his attention.
Reaching for his cell phone, Freddy speed-dialed his admin assistant.
“It’s me. Listen, Lisa. Change of plan. Book me on the first available flight from BWI to Albuquerque. Yeah. Rental car in Albuquerque, hotel room in Los Alamos. I’m not sure how long. Better make it for a week.”
Ending the call, Freddy slid his iPhone back in his pocket and grabbed his bag. Feeling a scowl tug at the corners of his mouth, Freddy trundled back toward ticketing. The military had an acronym for this. BOHICA: Bend Over, Here It Comes Again. It looked as if BWI was going to get one more go at him today after all.