Free Allegiance: A Jackson Quick Adventure by Tom Abrahams Page A

his mouth full of another wad of bread, looks puzzled. Of course he is. I’m burying the lead.
    “Over the past six months, I’ve traveled the world delivering iPods.” I take a sip of water, slip a cube of ice between my teeth, and chew as I continue to tell him about what I’ve done on behalf of the Governor. I can feel my hand trembling almost imperceptibly when I put the glass back on the table. Townsend doesn’t see it.
    “What was on the iPods?’ He’s entranced, as though I’m telling him the plot of some fictional political thriller.
    “I don’t know,” I lie. Sort of. Despite what I’ve been telling myself, I do have a hint what was on those iPods...
     
    ***
     
    My trip to Anchorage was the last one on the Governor’s agenda. Like the other trips, it was short. When I landed at the Ted Stevens International Airport, I caught a cab to Elderberry Park. It was short ride along the shore of Cook Inlet. In the distance I could see Mt. McKinley and Mt. Foraker. It was beautiful. The sky was crayon blue and cloudless.
    “That’s it,” the cabbie said as he pulled over on M Street in front of a brown and yellow wooden house in the center of the park. “That’s the Anderson house.”
    I thanked him, gave him the fare, and got out of the cab. I stood on the sidewalk with my bags for a moment to stretch my right knee and to look at the Oscar Anderson House, a historic landmark built by one of the city’s first settlers. The exterior of the house was yellow on its main floor. It was painted brown on both the top floor and on the exterior of the basement that extends above ground. There was a tall evergreen nestled against the left side of the house and an American flag flying on the right. I walked slowly up the cobblestone ramp to the small brown front door, a bag slung over each shoulder.
    My instructions were to take the guided tour of the home. At some point during the 45-minute history lesson, my contact would find me.
    I was standing on a large rug, admiring the red brick fireplace, when “Mary Brown” approached me and asked me what music I had downloaded on my iPod. Apparently, that was the cryptic, cloak and dagger clue to who she was and what she wanted.
    “A little bit of everything,” I answered. She nodded toward the front door and led me out of the house.
    Once I clumsily slugged my bags down the hall and through the narrow front door, I saw her standing at the end of the cobblestone ramp. She was in a button down chambray shirt with dark denim jeans and a heavy brown blazer. She had her jeans tucked into knee high brown suede boots. Her blonde hair was cut short like the 1970s ice skater, Dorothy Hamill. She was attractive if a little harsh. Her features were angular, her nose long and thin.
    “Let’s take a walk in the park,” she suggested and continued to walk ahead of me. I shifted the bags on my shoulders. She turned around and saw me struggling but didn’t seem to care. She walked past a swing set and stepped on a hike/bike path that ran along the water.
    After a couple of minutes on the path, she came to a small garden dotted with boulders. Brown stopped at one of them and sat, placing her palms flat on the rock and inching herself up onto it. She crossed her boots and folded her arms, waiting for me to catch up. I could imagine myself running along the path, getting in a couple of miles along the coast. What a view.
    I finally caught up to her and lay down my bags on the ground next to the rock.
    “This is called Hannah Cove Garden,” she said. “It’s a memorial to children who died young.” She looked out onto the water and toward the Alaska Mountain range in the distance.
    I followed her gaze. I didn’t follow her point.
    “Let’s get to it,” she said, abruptly shifting gears and pulling her focus from the mountains and back to me. “You have something for me.” She was direct. No small talk with her as there was with almost everyone else I’d met and handed