Tommy Carmellini 02 - The Traitor Read Online Free PDF

kill something, everyone was so goddamn polite, nauseatingly so. I snarled at the lady in front of me
    when she dragged a wheel or her suitcase across my toot and she looked deeply offended.
    The CIA had an office in Kensington on one of the side streets, a huge old mansion that sat in a row of similar houses, all of which had been converted to offices. The sign outside said the building housed an import-export company. As my taxi pulled up in front, I saw Sarah Houston get out of the cab ahead. I knew it! My luck had turned bad; it had gone sour and rotten and was beginning to stink. People were going to avoid me, give me odd looks, leave rooms when I entered. I've been through stretches like this before—and some woman usually triggered it.
    Houston went up the steps and was admitted to the building while I rescued my trash from the trunk of my hack and paid off the cabbie.
    The receptionist was a guy named Gator Zantz. I met him a couple of years back when I was bugging an embassy in London. He was a big, ugly guy with a flattop haircut; I figured he probably had the only flattop east of the Atlantic, but who knows—maybe there was a U.S. Army private somewhere in Germany more clueless than Gator.
    "Hey," Gator said when he took my passport. Mr. Personality.
    Sarah and I wound up in chairs on the opposite side of the reception room. We ignored each other. Sarah pretended to read a newspaper.
    When Gator returned our passports, he leered at Houston a while—she ignored him—and then, when he realized that relationship was not going to get off the ground, turned to me. "So how's it going?"
    "Okey dokey," I said.
    "The Patriots are going to win again tonight," he informed me. "I think like ten pounds' worth."
    "Who they playing?"
    "Pittsburgh."
    "You're on." Actually, this was a pretty safe bet for me. Gator's affection for a team was the kiss of death. Two years ago I won fifty pounds off this clown during football season. God help the Patriots.
    Gator went away and came back five minutes later. He crooked his finger at us, and we dutifully followed him.
    He led us along a hallway to a flight of stairs, then down to the basement, which was a "skiff"—a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF. This area had elaborate safeguards installed to prevent electronic eavesdropping. As a member of the tech support staff, I had helped do the work the fall that Gator kept me in beer. We had even driven long steel rods into the earth under the house and wired them to a seismograph so we could detect any tunneling activity.
    Since the new cell phones had the capability of taking photos and recording conversations without transmitting, all cell phones were banned in the SCIF. Sarah and I each dumped ours in the plastic box outside the door before we went in.
    We walked along a short hallway and stopped in front of a door, which Gator rapped on. A muffled voice was the reply. Gator opened the door, waited until I was in, then closed it behind me.
    It was a small office, perhaps ten by ten; most women have larger closets. Two folding chairs were arranged in front of one desk. Jake Grafton was seated behind the desk in a swivel chair.
    He smiled as us now, a solid, honest smile that made you feel comfortable, and stood to shake hands. "Tommy, Sarah, good to see you
    again."
    Grafton was about six feet tall, maybe an inch or so more, ropy and trim, with graying, thinning hair that he kept short and combed straight back. He had a square jaw and a nose that was a bit too large. On one temple he had an old faded scar, which someone once told me he got from a bullet years and years ago—you had to look
    hard to see it.
    "I thought you were retired, Admiral," Sarah said. Her path had crossed Grafton's in the past and he had taught her some hard lessons. She didn't carry a grudge, though. At least, I didn't think she did.
    Grafton sighed. "They caught up to me, offered me this job. I said no, and Callie said I ought to take it,