Free 3 - Buffalo Mountain: Ike Schwartz Mystery 3 by Frederick Ramsay

driver’s license. I’ll never pass. I can’t see any better’n a bat. I want to hire you to drive me around, help around the house and so on. What do you say?”
    “Aunt Rose said it’s okay?”
    “Yep, starting right now. She said I should pay you half and the rest is to go into an account she will set up for you at the bank. That suit you?”
    “Yes, sir, Colonel Bob.”
    T.J. let his considerable forehead fall into a frown.
    “Aunt Rose is who she is. You are Colonel Bob, and I’m just T.J. Shouldn’t I be something T.J.?”
    Colonel Robert Twelvetrees, once a very young soldier in the ranks with George S. Patton himself, a graduate of the Citadel, and decorated combat veteran of several wars, gazed at a boy who would never be any of those things and saluted.
    “Thomas Harkins,” he announced solemnly, “by the power invested in me as a colonel in the United States Army, I hereby promote you to the rank of master sergeant. From now on you will be Sergeant T.J. This is a field promotion, you understand, and subject to subsequent approval by CICUSA, that’s commander in chief of the United States Army. The paperwork may take some time. I’ve got some old stripes around here somewhere.”
    “Sergeant T.J.” the new non-com said, his face beaming. “Yes, sir, Colonel Bob.”

Chapter 11
    Sam swallowed her irritation at being left out of the loop or whatever Whaite and Ike had going. She felt like a fool. Something big had happened and she was being treated like some airhead prom queen instead of a colleague. When Whaite arrived she gave him a grunt for a greeting. He smiled, waved to everybody else in the office, and took her by the elbow. “Boss’ office. He wants to see us. Actually he wants to see you.”
    “This had better be good.”
    “Oh, it will. You’re going to love it. At least at first, then when you see the work ahead, you may want to change your mind.”
    ***
    Ike sat with his back to the glass panels that formed most of the wall that separated him from the world. His mind wandered over possibilities. He stared at Charlie’s secure cell phone and drummed his fingers. He jumped when Whaite rapped on his door, setting the glass panels rattling.
    “You ready for us, Ike?”
    He waved his two deputies in and asked them to sit. Whaite knew the general outline of the problem. What he had to say primarily concerned Sam. He spent the next fifteen minutes filling her in on the details. Sam listened at first with a frown on her face, then a look of amazement.
    “I still don’t see how this…Kamarov is connected to you. I know you were CIA but what has that got to do with this man?”
    “It’s enough to know that I left the Agency because my wife’s death was part of a cover-up in the Agency. Kamerov apparently found out the general outlines and tried to tell me, I think. He disappeared and we supposed he’d been eliminated. We were wrong.”
    “So now he’s part of a…what did you call it…a black program?”
    “He was part of a black program. The question is whose?”
    The three sat quietly, each absorbed in his or her thoughts.
    Sam shifted around in her chair. “So what do we do now?”
    “That’s the question, isn’t it? There’s an enormous amount of work ahead of us but I’m not sure we can do it.”
    “Why not?”
    “Sam, I have to ask you something and it’s personal.”
    “This is about Karl, isn’t it?”
    “More or less. Where is he now?”
    “Oh my God. He’s been reassigned. I thought he’d been assigned to another witness protection program dropout, but this could be Kamarov, couldn’t it?”
    “He’s part of a group looking for someone?”
    “I’m not sure now. I thought so. I mean, that’s what I heard.”
    Essie Falco at her desk and some clerk from the Town Council were the only occupants of the adjoining room. Whaite stood and closed Ike’s door, anyway. “Better safe than sorry. If it’s our man, it means the program is FBI.”
    “Back to