The Third Coincidence Read online

  Near Sacramento he again veered north, taking I-5 toward Portland, Oregon. When the interstate angled eastward, the sunlight collided with his windshield. He slammed down the visor while, at the same time, cursing a woman driver who had sped down an on-ramp and cut in front of him. He honked his horn. Her arm snaked out her window to give him the finger. He stuck his head out, and with the wind rippling his cheeks, yelled, “Fuck You!”

  When he calmed down, he smiled. His life was right where he wanted it. No job. No identity. As loose a life as a yacht freed from its anchor. He had done his research, and he now had the time to do what he had long known was his reason for being.

  He parked facing east in a rest stop south of Grants Pass, Oregon, and slept behind the wheel. When the rising sun woke him, he got back on the road. Later, he turned off the interstate and pulled into the first gas station where he was told that, under Oregon law, drivers could not pump their own gas. A stupid law, but his mother would have loved it. She always hated to pump gas. Said it made her hands smell.

  While driving, he pictured the resort where he would meet up with Justice Breen and his new bride. He had not been there, but the resort’s Internet site was chock-full of pictures, including a map of the grounds. Even pictures taken inside the honeymoon cottage where he would join the newlywed’s celebration.

  Two hours later he stopped for lunch, then continued north until exiting to make a toll-free call from a pay phone at a rest stop near Salem, Oregon’s capital. The crunch of the gravel near the phone booth reminded him of the sound of Santee’s Jaguar skidding off the shoulder of the road just before smashing through the guardrail.

  “Resort at Depoe Bay, how may I direct your call?”

  “I’m interested in reserving your honeymoon cottage.” The receptionist put him on hold and his ears were instantly filled with the sounds of “Come Fly with Me,” sung by Steve Tyrell.

  The song stopped. “Reservations. This is Peggy. How may I help you?”

  Her voice had a smiley tone like the voice of his mother’s favorite singer, Doris Day. He moved close to the booth to shield out some of the road noise.

  “Peggy, my name is John Kimble. My fiance and I are considering your resort for our honeymoon.”

  “I’m sure your bride will love it here. Our honeymoon cottage is beautifully appointed and secluded near the rear of the property.”

  He imagined Peggy to be a woman who, through sitting all day, had a bottom three sizes bigger than her top.

  “It does sound special,” he said.

  “Thank you. What dates would you like?”

  “It’s a bit last minute, but June seventh, eighth, and ninth.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. As you said, it is short notice. Those nights have been booked. May I offer any other dates?”

  “I doubt any other dates would work, but if they will, I’ll call again after talking with my fiance.”

  Before leaving the Salem area he stopped at a chain discount store where he purchased a white long-sleeve shirt, a bow tie, a red baseball cap, and a roll of duct tape. At the checkout counter he threw in a Lou Rawls CD, paying cash for everything. A few minutes later he began drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and singing a duet with Rawls of “Fine Brown Frame.”

  In Portland he took the Burnside Street exit to a part of town where research indicated he could purchase a gun on the black market. For the buy he wore boots with higher heels, a hat, and thick-rimmed fake glasses that would not distort his contact lenses. A 9-mm Colt 2000 with a fifteen-round magazine and a noise suppressor, came high. The seller took him to a location where he could test fire the weapon.

  After completing the purchase, he returned to the interstate and went back the way he had come. At the junction for Highway 20 he turned west. This route would take him through lightly populated areas, bringing him out in the coastal town of Newport, Oregon, about ten miles south of Depoe Bay.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Apparently, Jack McCall was the choice of only one person: President Schroeder.”

  —Fox News, June 7

  After Colin Stewart left Defense Intelligence for the day, he stopped at the Best Way Supermarket. A raven landed on a grocery cart left in front of his parking space. The bird looked right at him, chirped, and flew directly over his head, rising fast until catching a supporting thermal that allowed the black bird to soar effortlessly. This act by the raven was an ancient Gaelic sign indicating that his life would soon turn in a new direction.

  The supermarket’s double doors whooshed open automatically, revealing an attractive woman of about thirty-five tugging a grocery cart free from its row. She wore tight black shorts and had her strawberry-blonde hair back in a ponytail. She glanced at him and smiled before turning her cart up the first aisle. He saw her again in the produce section and again they exchanged smiles. Later, in the vitamin section, he went up to her.

  “Will you please stop following me?”

  She placed the palm of her open hand on the chest of her yellow jersey and blinked innocently. “If anyone is being followed, sir, it is I.” Her laughter gently moved her.

  When Colin introduced himself, she extended her hand. “Nora Burke. It’s nice to meet you, Colin Stewart.”

  “After we check out, will you join me for a cup of coffee?”

  “I’d planned to go home to eat and watch the rest of the Dodgers and Diamondbacks game.” She grinned.

  “We do need time to figure out just who’s following whom,” Colin explained. “Join me across the street at the sports bar. I’ll have them put your game on one of their televisions. They also serve food.”

  She leaned on the side of his grocery cart and looked at its contents. “It appears you eat most of your meals out, Mr. Stewart.”

  “The six boxes of cereal gave me away, eh?” They laughed. “Are you ready?”

  She released her hair from its ponytail and shook her head. “I still need a few things. I’ll meet you across the street.”

  Maybe there was some truth to the old story of the raven.

  The sun had climbed just above the horizon when Colin returned to his apartment to shower and change before reporting to the base. Still holding last night’s groceries, the cell phone on his belt rang. He dropped the two bags on the counter, and opened his phone to hear Jack McCall’s voice.

  “I need to see you in two hours at the CIA,” Jack said.

  Colin flipped a box of cereal in the air, caught it, and put it in the cabinet. “I’ll need to clear it with DOD.”

  “Taken care of. The president spoke with General Crook.”

  “The president?” Colin set two more boxes of cereal on the shelf.

  “Yep. This time we’re working directly for our commander in chief. Keep it under your hat. No one else in military intel knows about this yet.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Let’s plow that ground later. I need to call Millet. We’ll go see him together.”

  “Jack?”

  “What?”

  “I’m glad we’ll be working together again,” Colin said.

  After their adventures in Kuwait, and being along with Jack on the operation in which Jack’s brother, Nick, had been killed, Colin knew that working with Jack meant cliffhanging excitement and plenty of it.

  CHAPTER 10

  “One minute the story is that McCall will have a small, quick force, then talk circulates about a new heavily staffed department being assembled within the CIA.”

  —MSNBC, June 7

  “What the hell does he want?” Harry Mandrake demanded after his secretary told him that FBI Director Fred Hampton was on the phone.

  “It is true I’ve achieved the high office of secretary to Washington, D.C.’s chief of police,” she replied, “but you don’t figure the FBI director explained his purpose to me, do you, Chief?”

  Mandrake admired his secretary’s competence, but she was a wiseacre. “Put him through,” he said before straightening his computer ke
yboard and picking up the phone.

  “Chief Mandrake.”

  “Good morning, Chief, Fred Hampton here. Can you meet me for coffee? It’s urgent.”

  “It always is with you feds. I feel like a cheap date. You only call when you’re already excited. Where?”

  “The Bakery Café. Sixth and Indiana. I’m half way there, talking to you on my cell.”

  Chief Mandrake removed his coat from a hanger suspended on the coat tree along the side wall, used his off hand to take the swing out of the now unoccupied hanger, and headed out the door of his fifth floor office in the Henry J. Daly building.

  At the café, he found Hampton sitting at a corner table.

  “Hello, Chief,” Hampton said, his perfunctory smile containing no joy. “It’s good of you to come on such short notice.”

  “Good morning, Fred. I delayed another meeting, so let’s get to it.” Mandrake sat across from Hampton, then took a moment to straighten the plastic spoon on the paper napkin in front of him.

  The waiter brought two coffees. The thin Mandrake sipped his black and watched the lumpy Hampton ruin a perfectly good cup of coffee with three packets of make-believe sugar and a generous measure of cream. After a small sip, he added one more packet and another splash of cream.

  “Chief, I need you to authorize Frank Wade and Nora Burke to work with a multiagency federal task force being headed by Jack McCall.”

  Mandrake stopped his cup before it got to his lips. “So CNN had it right about McCall?”

  “We’re not happy that got out.”

  A young couple came in and sat two tables from them. Director Hampton lowered his voice. “The president asked me to contact you. Officially, Wade and Burke will still be your homicide detectives. Unofficially, they’ll be part of McCall’s team. Any paperwork you feel is needed should be held at your desk, for now. The task force will eventually be acknowledged, but for now we don’t want this perp to think we’re saddled up.”

  Mandrake hated it when the feds came waltzing in to tell him what and how, even the director of the FBI. But Mandrake had learned it came with the job; Washington, D.C. had its own protocols.

  A bakery employee headed toward them with a tray of donuts. Mandrake waved him off while asking Director Hampton, “When?”

  “Have them meet McCall for lunch at noon at LaBamba’s. The backroom’s ours. Ask for the Harkness table.”

  “By noon?” Mandrake exclaimed. “Without any official records? That’s pretty fast.”

  Hampton grinned. “Hey, they don’t call you Mandrake the Magician for nothing.”

  “Yeah, right, you owe me, Fred.”

  “You know my door’s always open to the D.C. chief of police.”

  “Yeah, right, you owe me, Fred.”

  “You’re repeating yourself, Chief, and you’ve got another meeting, remember?”

  Mandrake grunted, gulped the last of his coffee, and used his napkin to wipe the lip of the cup. After refolding the napkin and replacing the spoon at its center, he dropped a five dollar bill on the table and walked out, cast in the late-morning shadow of the rotund FBI Director.

  It was just like the feds, Mandrake thought. Director Hampton had asked for the meeting, taken his two best detectives, and stuck him with paying for the coffee.

  Jack and Colin pulled up in front of the home of Millet Yorke, a modest one-story house east of Marion Park, shoehorned into a mixed cluster of painted and natural brick homes. Both sides of the porch cover sagged, giving the entry the look of a pouting mouth.

  “Holy Shit!” Millet’s voice reached out to them at the curb. “You never know what the dogs will leave on your stoop. How the hell are you two?” Before they stepped onto the porch, Yorke, who was wearing a striped shirt and plaid Bermudas, asked, “Is this visit about the deaths of the two Supremes and the big-money guy?”

  Jack grinned.

  The heels on Millet’s untied brown chukka boots slapped the floor as he led his visitors inside.

  Millet’s place looked as if everything had been left where Millet had last finished with it, including a pair of his Jockeys balled up on the cushion next to Jack. Millet himself looked unshaven and disheveled, with wisps of unruly hair that caught the light at odd angles.

  “Whoever’s doing these killings,” Colin said, “must be a madman. He’s literally attacking the United States government.”

  “In the dark ages,” Millet interjected, “the mad ones were considered the special children of God.”

  Colin rolled his eyes. “When do we start, Jack?”

  “We’ll meet at four this afternoon at the CIA. Millet, you’ll get all the computer goodies you’ll need and—”

  “No fucking way, Jack. I ain’t going into that den of death.”

  So nothing had changed, Jack told himself. As usual Millet preferred working at home where he could get loud and vulgar whenever he wished, and dress however he wanted. Hell, he did that anyway or so it seemed.

  “I know you prefer to work here at your own place,” Jack said, “and I usually go along with that. But this time I need more than your computer. I need your mind in the entire process.”

  “Jackman, you know I love ya, but my privacy’s important. It’s gonna cost you—big time. Double the usual?”

  “It’s great working with you two again,” Jack said.

  “Back at ya, boss,” Colin replied.

  Millet just shook his head. “We still got more negotiating to do. I’ll come to the meeting at four to hear more, but for now, I’m in just today.”

  Jack knew that Millet loved his country, just perhaps not as much as his privacy.

  “Anything I can do until four?” Colin asked.

  “Reach your best military intel sources here and abroad,” Jack told him. “Operatives at the grass roots, find out what they’ve heard. What they suspect. Keep it under the radar.”

  “What about me?” Millet pleaded. “Don’t leave me out.”

  Jack knew then that Millet was just playing hard to get. “Start your computer digging.”

  Millet grinned. “I’m on it.”

  “Millet. The president has authorized top-secret clearance for you.”

  “Well, super dickie do.” Millet dug his finger into his ear. “Don’t that beat all? Me with a secret clearance.”

  Jack frowned. “The president hesitated because you’re not a government employee and have never had clearance at any level. I assured him you were essential and no risk.”

  “I feel like a kid with the key to the candy store,” Millet said.

  If you embarrass me on this,” Jack said, “I’ll parachute your sorry ass onto The Island of Dr. Moreau.” After Millet smiled, Jack said, “This is not a challenge for you to prove the president wrong.”

  “Maybe just a little,” Millet said with his eyebrows raised. “It’s good for them politicos to get brought down a notch or two from time to time.

  Jack fixed Millet with a stare and spoke firmly. “I’m not fooling here. I had to speak up to get you that clearance.”

  “Jesus Christ. . . . Okay! . . . scouts’ honor.”

  A little of Millet’s eccentricities went a long way. He was a royal pain, but the man had delivered the goods in the past. Jack was hoping he could do it again.

  CHAPTER 11

  . . . from this point I beheld the grandest and most pleasing prospects which my eyes ever surveyed, in my front a boundless Ocean; . . . a most romantic appearance.

  —William Clark, January 08, 1806, Original Journal of

  Captains William Clark and Meriwether Lewis

  He stood ankle deep in the ocean, the legs of his pants rolled up above his knees. The sea speaking loudly enough to be the voices of all who had died within her. He looked down as the ebb tore the wet sand from around his heels, dragging it across his bare feet. He hated the look of his second toe being longer than his big toe.

  A hundred yards out into the surf, boulders, some as tall as three-story buildings, de
fied the violence of each crashing wave. He pictured himself as one of those boulders standing strong against the forces of evil.

  Before leaving his house, Jack opened the chess forum on the Internet. Two days ago he’d received his opponent Harry’s latest move: a castling of his white king to the king side, posted as 0–0. His opponent would not likely move his king again in the next few moves as the piece was under no immediate threat. So, Jack used his move to position his black knight and posted that move: Nba6, in the English algebraic notation system used in the U.S. Chess Federation tournament.

  • • •

  Thirty minutes later, Jack walked into the room at the CIA headquarters that would become their ops center. Millet had arrived, sitting alone, slouched at the only piece of furniture, a large conference table with five matching swivel chairs and five unmatched straight backs. The room looked to be about three thousand square feet but with just the table, the space had the feel that comes with empty.

  Millet had dressed for the meeting by putting on long pants with horizontal stripes and tying his chukka boots, but he still wore the same striped shirt he had worn at his house.

  “This is why I like working at home,” he barked, before getting up and standing near the window. “Its five minutes to four and some of your folks aren’t here yet. If we don’t start on time, I’m gone.”

  “You’re being paid, Millet, and rather well at that,” Jack reminded him.

  Rachel came in, her dark-green blouse shifting under her tan blazer, her arms crossed. She sat in one of the swivel chairs. Her arms remained crossed. Next, Colin came in, introduced himself to Rachel, took Millet by the arm and the two of them joined Rachel at the table.

  Jack had given the front desk a list of his squad with instructions to bring them back as they arrived. When the expected knock came, he ushered the two D.C. Metro homicide detectives in and made the necessary introductions. Jack noticed the change in Nora Burke’s expression when she saw Colin. They knew each other.