Free CIA Fall Guy by Phyllis Zimbler Miller Page B

you maddening enough to want to kill you.”
    David checked out the window. The plane had cleared the tree tops, they were circling out to sea. Good, very good.
    “I have no idea,” he said. “I thought you might know.”
    “Me? Let's hear what you've got to say.”
    “Ladies first.”
    Beth twisted away from him. “I'm not talking. Anything I say can — and probably will — be used against me. You're probably wearing a wire right now.”
    That comment didn't merit a response. He smiled. “I hope you didn't take the collision waiver for your car. It's going to be a little worse for wear.”
    The woman glared at him. He stared out the window.
    The intercom overhead cackled: “David, we're coming up on the Maine coast. Do we continue as planned?”
    “Yes,” he said, raising his voice to be heard through the cloth partition separating them from the cockpit. “All the way to Munich.”
    “Munich?” Beth said.
    Her face had changed — something about her eyes. “You lived there, didn't you?” he said.
    He saw her hands tremble. She clasped them together. “I was there from September '70 to May '72. I missed the Olympic massacre.”
    “And the bomb at the Frankfurt Officers Club.”
    Tears caught in the creases of her eyelids. “I did. My husband Stephen didn't.”
    **
    Lunch eaten at a hot dog stand on Capitol Mall. Charles splashed mustard on his all-beef hot dog and seated himself on a bench facing the oldest building of the Smithsonian. He munched to the oom-pah-pah of the miniature merry-go-round nearby, only one facet of the carnival atmosphere on the Mall from April to October, when Washington D.C. was overrun by tourists.
    As a teenager growing up in a privileged home in Boston, he'd been an avid reader of the memoirs of the early presidents and other statesmen. Whenever his family would visit Washington — his father, a patent attorney, often had cause to come — he and his younger sister, Allison, would dash to the red-brick Smithsonian building and its surrounding museums. Charles would vary the order of his visits, soaking up Americana as well as the natural history displays. Allison would dash to her all-time favorite, the First Ladies' hall, where mannequins of the presidents' wives and official hostesses modeled their inaugural gowns. Her second stop would be the gem collection, oohing and aahing at the Hope Diamond and the other magnificent precious stones. It had been a precious stone, housed in a private collection, that had cost Allison her life.
    A jogger slid to a halt in front of Charles. “Can you tell me where …?”
    “What is it, Matthew? Why did you signal again? I've been gone from the office so much today …”
    “We lost her. She got away and we couldn't pick up her trail.”
    Had they lost her due to Mark Haskell's efforts? Charles couldn't risk asking George. Nor could he warn Matthew about Mark. If Matthew took Mark out, George would know that Charles was the leak.
    “Look, why not leave her out of it and concentrate on Hans' objective?” Charles said.
    Matthew glanced over Charles' shoulder. What did he see there? Was Frederick nearby with a long-range listening device, checking out this conversation?
    “No can do. Can't afford any loose ends. So where is she?”
    “Over the Atlantic Ocean.”
    “How is it that you've been able to give me such exact locations each time I've asked?”
    “We have a tracking device inside her backpack. Its signal is picked up by satellite and transmitted back to Langley.”
    Of course, since the signal was transmitted through Langley, Mark Haskell could only follow Beth Parsons by getting updates from Langley. While the delay was not that long, it could interfere with his babysitting mission.
    “How'd you do that?”
    “George never leaves anything to chance. Had Mark insert it when Kathleen and Beth were eating in the cafeteria.”
    Matthew bent down to retie his shoe laces. “George suspected she'd take a powder?”
    “If he