Death Echo

pistol was in its usual place, and picked it up. He checked the load and flicked the safety off. Holding the weapon more or less out of sight along his right leg, he went to the security screen at the end of the foyer leading to the front door.
    The surveillance camera showed Duke standing at the front door, but far enough back to make ID easy. What everyone hoped would be the final heat wave of the year had left Duke’s expensive suit wrinkled and his bald head sweating in the porch light.
    He was alone. Even his driver-bodyguard wasn’t in sight. Suddenly the Scotch looked more likely to Harrow than a hookup. With a subdued curse, he opened the door and let his boss into the mechanically cooled air of the house.
    â€œYou look like you could use a drink,” Harrow said.
    Duke ran a palm over his head. “You alone?”
    â€œYes.” Harrow put the safety on his pistol and led the way to the living room.
    â€œNice place,” Duke said.
    â€œIt will be Pam’s in a few weeks.” The end table drawer shut with emphasis.
    Duke grunted. “Yeah, she’s a shark.”
    â€œAnd a bitch. You want some bourbon?”
    â€œNo time.”
    â€œWhat’s up?” Meaning: What’s too hot to talk about over the phone?
    â€œI don’t know.”
    Harrow didn’t ask any more. Whether Duke didn’t, wouldn’t, or couldn’t share wasn’t the point. The point was that something had sent a jolt through intelligence networks, a shot hot enough to burn some very important butts.
    â€œHow can I help?” Harrow asked.
    It was the question that had taken him very near the top of thepyramid at an age when most people were still wondering what they would do when they grew up.
    â€œOne of Shurik Temuri’s aliases entered Canada through Blaine,” Duke said. “That’s on the northern border of Washington State.”
    Harrow made a sound that said he was paying attention.
    â€œBy the time we got someone on Temuri, he’d ditched the rental. We’re going through the records of nearby car rentals as fast as we can get to them, but it will take time. We don’t have time.”
    The Scotch looked more like nectar with every word Harrow’s boss spoke.
    â€œIs there anything I’ve missed in Temuri’s file?” Harrow asked carefully.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œBut we’re upset that he’s in Canada.”
    â€œYes. He’s on our ticket, now,” Duke said.
    Says who? Harrow thought. Nobody told me about an op, especially good old Duke.
    Harrow didn’t say anything out loud, just waited, hoping his boss would say something useful.
    Duke was an old hand at the silence game.
    Harrow gave up and asked, “What’s the op?”
    â€œIt’s an old sting that went south,” Duke said. “A few years back, a political golden-boy decided that it would be useful to catch a well-connected Russian dirty in the U.S.”
    It was a time-honored way to recruit double agents. Nothing new. Certainly nothing to send Harrow’s boss roaming wealthy D.C. suburbs when he should be home having a drink.
    â€œWhat was the contraband?” Harrow asked.
    â€œA hundred million in counterfeit cash.”
    Harrow didn’t bother to hide his surprise. “That’s a lot of dirty to set someone up with. A million would have been more than enough.”
    Duke shrugged. “It wasn’t my op. It was political from the get-go. Politicians don’t notice a million here or there. Not anymore.To make a splash in the headlines you need a splashy amount of money, plus the threat of levering a corner of the U.S. economy off the rails, which would yank the rest of the economy down into the train wreck, one financial sector at a time. People are still goosey about 2008.”
    â€œOld news.”
    â€œNot to the politicians who were voted out and went back to mowing lawns for a living,” Duke said. “They won’t forget until they die. Neither will their children. Hell, the last thing my grandpa said to me was ‘Don’t trust banks or the stock market. Don’t forget the Great Depression.’ Turns out he had wads of cash buried in the rose garden.”
    Harrow’s interest in Scotch turned into the stabbing of a migraine beginning behind his right eye.
    â€œAnyway,” Duke said, “Temuri somehow made off with the really good-looking bad cash our side had used to set