LITMIR.BIZ

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he said to the woman.

      ‘Did you see the line at the cabstand?’ she answered. She looked behind her. ‘Damnit, they had a car waiting.’

      DeMarco checked his rearview mirror. The two men were getting into a black Mercedes sedan.

      ‘What’s going—’

      ‘Just get me to the Pentagon,’ the woman said. ‘And if a cop tries to pull you over, don’t stop.’

      ‘Wait a—’

      ‘You’ll get the cop killed. Now drive. Fast.’

      The woman checked the traffic behind them. The Mercedes was gaining on them. She pulled a cell phone out of her purse.

      ‘It’s me,’ she said into the phone. ‘I just got in from Cairo. I’ve got the sample but they were waiting for me at baggage claim. That wasn’t supposed to happen, you moron!’ She was silent for a moment. ‘No, I don’t have a gun. How the hell was I supposed to get a gun on the plane? Look … Shut up. Listen to me. I’m with a civilian. We’re in a 19 …’ She looked over at DeMarco.

      ‘Ninety-four,’ he said.

      ‘A 1994 Volvo, maroon in color. We’re just leaving National and headed for the GW Parkway. You’ll be able to tell it’s us because we’ll be going a hundred miles an hour with a Mercedes on our tail. Now scramble someone. Fast!’ She closed the cell phone.

      ‘What’s your name?’ she said to DeMarco.

      ‘Joe,’ he said.

      ‘Well, Joe, you need to put the pedal to the metal. A wreck is the least of your problems at this point.’

      The Mercedes was directly behind them now but it wasn’t trying to pass or cut them off.

      The woman glanced back at the other car. ‘They’re going to wait until you’re on the parkway, then I’m guessing one of those guys is going to pull out an automatic weapon and shred your tires.’

      ‘Jesus!’ DeMarco said. ‘Why don’t you just throw whatever the fuck they want outta the window?’

      The woman laughed, apparently not realizing that DeMarco hadn’t been joking.

      DeMarco reached the George Washington Parkway with the Mercedes fifty yards behind him. He was soon going ninety miles an hour and was thankful that traffic was light. He looked in his rearview mirror and saw one of the guys in the Mercedes stick half his body out the passenger-side window. Then he saw flashes of orange light erupt from the end of the man’s arm – he didn’t hear any shots being fired – then he saw sparks, about a dozen of them, fly up from the asphalt next to the Volvo.

      ‘Son of a bitch!’ DeMarco screamed. He jammed his foot down on the gas pedal, but it didn’t move. The Volvo couldn’t go any faster.

      Then it was over.

      A helicopter, a big black one, was suddenly above the Mercedes shining a spotlight down on it and DeMarco could see a guy hanging out of the helicopter holding a rifle. Where the helicopter came from, DeMarco didn’t know. The Mercedes slowed down slightly, apparently looking for an exit or a turnaround. DeMarco didn’t slow down; he kept the gas pedal jammed to the floor. A minute later he saw red-and-blue lights from five or six cars flashing in his rearview mirror and the Mercedes was surrounded.

      ‘You can pull over now,’ the woman said.

      DeMarco kept going.

      ‘It’s okay,’ the woman said. ‘Calm down. Pull over.’

      DeMarco did and when the car stopped he put his head on the steering wheel for a moment and closed his eyes. Without raising his head he said, ‘Would you mind telling me—’

      ‘Sorry, Joe, but I can’t.’

      The damn woman would never let him finish a sentence.

      A white van with government plates pulled up behind DeMarco’s Volvo. The woman got out but before she closed the door she said, ‘By the way, I’m Emma. And thank you.’ Then she got back into the van and took off.

      The next morning DeMarco was sitting in his office, flipping through the paper to see if last night’s incident had made the news. It hadn’t. A moment later there was a knock on his door, which surprised him as people rarely visited his office. He opened the door. It was Emma.

      ‘How did you …’

      DeMarco had started to say ‘How did you find me,’ then realized that would have been a very silly question.

      ‘I just wanted to thank you properly for what you did last night,’ Emma said. She entered DeMarco’s office without being asked, raised an eyebrow at the decor, then handed DeMarco an envelope. ‘Two seats for the Wizards for tomorrow night, right behind the players’ bench. I’ve heard you’re a sports fan.’

      ‘Jeez, thanks,’ DeMarco said. The tickets must have cost about five hundred bucks. ‘I appreciate the tickets but I’d still like to know what happened last night.’

      ‘I’m sorry, Joe, I can’t tell you. But as they say in the funnies, you have the thanks of a grateful nation. And, Joe, here’s my phone number.’ She handed DeMarco a card that had nothing on it but a phone number with a 703 area code.

      ‘If you ever need help – with anything – give me a call,’ Emma said.

      ‘Well,’ DeMarco said, thinking about his current assignment from Mahoney, ‘you wouldn’t by any chance know a guy who can crack a safe, would you?’

      That had been the beginning of a long, often bizarre, relationship which DeMarco had never regretted.

      DeMarco did know one small thing about Emma. He had asked the Speaker to run a background check on her shortly after he met her. DeMarco was guessing she was CIA, something Mahoney should be able to confirm easily. Or so DeMarco had thought.

      When the Speaker got back to DeMarco, he was as flustered as DeMarco had ever seen him.

      ‘She’s ex-DIA,’ Mahoney said.

      The Defense Intelligence Agency was formed by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara after the debacle at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Some said it was the organization the CIA wanted to be when it grew up. Not only was it so competent that it rarely made the papers but it was involved in military operations so sensitive and so vital that even ranking politicians feared to challenge them.

      ‘When I asked about her, my buddy said he’d get back to me. Next thing I know I got two guys in my office so fuckin’ scary I almost soiled my britches. They wanted to know how I knew her name and why I was askin’. Me. The Speaker. Anyway, after I do a song-and-dance routine like goddamn Fred and Ginger, they finally tell me she’s ex-DIA – and I think the ex part might even be bullshit.’

      No kiddin’, DeMarco had thought.

      ‘But that’s all they’d tell me, Joe,’ Mahoney said. ‘Whatever she used to do for them is something they wanna keep buried until the Potomac dries up.’

      But that was enough for DeMarco: to know the one thing about Emma that explained why Emma never explained.

      The sound of a dump truck landing on the bar next to DeMarco’s right elbow startled him from his reverie. It turned out not to be a dump truck but Alice’s purse, fifteen cubic feet of fake leather filled, apparently, with everything she owned.

      Without acknowledging DeMarco, Alice signaled to Mr William. He approached tentatively. Mr William was a gregarious person who enjoyed his patrons; Alice was the rare exception.

      ‘Black Jack on the rocks, string bean, and make it snappy,’ Alice said.

      ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Mr William said. It’s difficult for a man six foot six to cower but Mr William managed.

      ‘You know,’ Alice said to DeMarco, ‘since you knew I was coming

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