To read this serial novel from the beginning, go here.

Land Lines

 
He couldn't sleep. Rove had let him and Marsha go "without prejudice," but something was not quite right. Cardinal sat up late thinking, but he couldn't figure out what was wrong. He reached for his cell phone, then stopped himself. With the new FISA laws, using a cell was about as safe as skywriting.

Instead he picked up his old fashioned land-line and dialed. His was a rotary phone, the model that hung in his grandma's house the day Ma Bell died. He recently installed it because an insider had told him the NSA computers had a bug that sometimes caused them to miss the old pulse dialing. The call went through, and a voice mumbled on the other end.

"Hello, Marsha?"

"Cardinal."

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything. You don't have someone with you tonight, do you?"

"You mean, am I sleeping with someone? No, Cardinal. In case you forgot, I was in Istanbul for the last 6 weeks trying to get you out of a Turkish prison. I've been in the U.S. for 12 hours and no, I haven't had time to hook up."

"Good. Anyway, I want to ask you something. Something bothers me about the way things went down today. I can't figure out what it is, though."

"You mean because Rove let us off so easily."

"That's it."

"Let's talk about it tomorrow. Remember, I am still your attorney, so our private conversations are protected. We can meet in my office. They won't bug us."

"You assume the Feds have ethics. Let's talk at a public place instead. I'll come to your office and we'll walk."

The next day, Cardinal picked Marsha up at her office and they headed over to the public library. "G-men don't read," he said. "At least not in this administration."

They sat at a desk in the card catalog room. No one under seventy in sight. "All right, here's the deal," Marsha said. "I think the government is using you as a pawn, a distraction."

"A distraction? From what?"

"I haven't figured that one out yet. They send you out on a dangerous mission, and you create all kinds of havoc. You did it twice, once with the hijacked plane, and then in Syria and Turkey. The noise you create allows them to do other things, without the public noticing. You take up all the public bandwidth, you might say."

"Marsha, the hijacking was an accident. We just happened to come across the ELFs --"

"You think so? I think the ELFs were a plant, to get you to do, well, you know, what you always do. Ever heard of the ELFs before, or since?"

"Well, no."

"Precisely. They were government. That's why we got out of the hijacking scot free. It is also how we got out of Turkey. The Feds let us create a distraction, and then when the distraction was no longer needed, they got us out."

"So you think Rove suckered us."

"I do. The question is, what was the distraction for? I've been checking the papers, looking for suspicious happenings while we were creating our diversions. During both times we got into trouble, two things happened. First, there was a major flood. Second, a blockbuster pharmaceutical was withdrawn from the market. Now, I can't see how the government could control a natural disaster, so I am thinking there is a connection with the drug withdrawals."

"Like what?"

"I haven't figured that out yet. Maybe terrorists are trying to poison people. Maybe the government has a shady deal going with the big pharmaceutical companies."

"Well, I guess we have some detective work to do."

"Yes. There is a major pharmaceutical convention going on in Las Vegas this week. I think we need to get over there and do a little investigating."

"I'm up for that. The place will be swarming with pharmaceutical reps. I hear those chicks are hot."

 

Pelted with Good Fortune 

 
To read this serial novel from the beginning, go here.

Rove stood up behind his desk. As Cardinal and Marsha were ushered in, his face furrowed in righteous anger. "Cardinal, this is the last time we will be using you for any purpose," he said. "You almost single-handedly destabilized the Middle East with your carelessness."

"Now I wouldn't go that far," Cardinal answered. "Everybody seems to have gotten out of this all right."

"All right? After you blew up a building in downtown Damascus, you slipped across the border and got caught in a Turkish airport with a trunk full of baby seal pelts. Do you know what it took to get you out of that prison? I would have left you to rot in there, but I thought eventually you might talk."

"Rove, I just want you to know that all the rumors about Turkish prisons are true. You should send me to Guantanamo immediately. I can give them a lot of pointers."

"This was supposed to be a secret mission," Rove roared. "Don't you know the meaning of secrecy? Or discretion? How about common sense!"

"Nobody knew who I was. In all the newspapers I was Fertus E. Patriot. Nobody said any different. The Fox cable network had a 6 week campaign called 'Free the Patriot.' I guess you had something to do with that, Rove?"

"Well, yes, Fox does take orders from me." He chortled, seeming to remember something that pleased him, then paused. "But that's beside the point. You risked national security. It could even have led to war!" His dander was rising again.

"Rove, you know some things are worth risking the lives of millions over. Like a seal skin coat for your wife to wear to the big Republican spring fund raiser. Think of the billionaires who will envy you."

Rove stopped. He mouth dropped slightly open. Cardinal could hear the burst of his salivary glands kicking in. "You . . . . you . . . you have the sealskin pelts? You have them? One of the rarest clothing items in the world? I thought the Turks took them!"

"No, no. What kind of fool do you take me for? The pelts they seized were fakes. I dropped the real pelts in a Federal Express box and mailed them to a friend here in the States."

"Jesus. I mean, I don't believe in Jesus, I just say I do for political purposes, but Jesus."

"Of course, if you jail us or kill us, those pelts are gone forever."

"Oh, Cardinal, I was just kidding about that cloak and dagger stuff," Rove said, as he practically skipped to Cardinal's side. "If you can deliver on those pelts, I think all can be forgiven. I'll talk to a few people."

"Great," Cardinal said slowly, obviously thinking of something else now. "If I wrote a book about my experiences in the Turkish prison, do you think you could get the Fox network to promote it?"

"Oh, no problem, no problem. Do you think you have enough pelts to make coats for my wife and the vice president's wife?"

"Hell yes," Cardinal said. "I have baby seal pelts to make floor-length coats for your wife and Mrs. Cheney both, and still enough left over for a pair of fur lined gloves for yourself. You should wear them next time you make an appearance at the ASPCA convention."

"Sweet."

Next episode: Land Lines

Delivered and Sealed 

To read this serial novel from the beginning, go here.

 
"Why is that guy wearing a parka?" the tallest of the three smugglers asked.

Tom and Ali turned and looked at Cardinal. Indeed, he was wearing a long, oversized coat.

"What's the problem, gentleman?" Cardinal asked innocently.

"The problem is," one of the smugglers said, "that we are here to make a sensitive transaction, and somebody shows up in a coat big enough to conceal an anti-aircraft gun."

"May I first compliment you on the quality of your English," Cardinal said, "but as for your question -- it is early in the morning, and I just caught a chill from the desert air."

"A chill? You are in the desert and it is thirty degrees outside."

"That's what I'm talking about, thirty degrees," Cardinal replied, smiling. "I checked the papers this morning. High of 36 degrees. So I brought my coat."

"In Syria we use the metric system, you imbecile," the tall smuggler said. "Thirty degrees Celsius."

Tom spoke up. "John, thirty degrees Celsius is well into the eighties. You might want to lose the coat. You're making our trading partners nervous."

Cardinal backed up a few steps. He couldn't lose the coat. He had two MAC-10 machine guns and about 15 grenades strapped to his chest.

There was a moment of silence, then the smuggler said, "Are you going to remove your coat, or is there going to be trouble?" All three of the smugglers moved their hands to their belts, where automatic pistols hung.

Uttering an expletive, Cardinal threw off his coat, slinging the pair of MAC-10s in front of him. He had used an old trick -- the arms of his coat were stuffed with newspaper (the same newspaper that forecast 40 degree highs, no doubt) and had stuffed the cuffs into his pockets. His real arms were inside the coat, fingering the triggers of his machine guns all the while. Tom and Ali leapt out of the way, and Cardinal let the ordnance fly.

"That's the thing about these damn terrorists," Cardinal said. "They talk all tough, but when you whip out the hardware, they run like rats." He listened to the pleasant tak-tak-tak of the guns. The sound would be intolerable in this closed space if he hadn't brought his earplugs.

Two of the smugglers got behind a concrete pillar and started firing back. Feeling he had overstayed his welcome, Cardinal backed towards the door, covering himself with a half dozen or so rounds per second. Tom and Ali had gotten out just ahead of him. As he eased out, he noticed a package on the floor. The seal pelts, he thought. I guess I'll be taking those.

He slung the package over his shoulder, wheeled around and lobbed a grenade over his shoulder. It's a rare gift, Cardinal knew, to be able pull the pin from a grenade and toss it with only one hand. Ah, yes, one of the few happy memories he had of his father.

As the grenade blew Cardinal broke into a dead run towards the car. Marsha had already started the engine, and her hand propped the passenger door open for him. "Three minutes until total mayhem," she said. 'You're lucky I waited. I only put enough change into the parking meter for two minutes."

Next Episode: Pelted with Good Fortune 

To read this serial novel from the beginning, go here.

The Drop

"Man, Damascus drivers are amazingly polite!"

"John, it's Friday, the Muslim holy day. Everybody is at home. This is like driving on Sunday morning."

"Well, that explains why the morning paper had so many sales fliers in it."

"Look," Marsha said, "Just keep up with Ali and Tom."

They were following Ali, the CIA agent, and Tom, the EPA agent to the site of the pelt drop off. Tom had showed up this morning in a silver hybrid. Good God, Cardinal had thought. These EPA guys believe in global warming after all. Now they were cutting across the cluttered streets of Damascus, to an abandoned warehouse where Tom had arranged to exchange seal pelts with a group of Arab collectors. The EPA had been making these deals for months in exchange for intelligence about oil production in Saudi Arabia. Now they knew they were over their heads and wanted out. "We'll bust 'em out," Cardinal had said.

"No, no, just look tough," Tom answered. "I will break it off verbally. You're just here to back me up in case things get complicated."

"You are making a mistake," Marsha said. "John Cardinal will make sure things get complicated."

Cardinal grunted in unconscious support.

As the hybrid darted back and forth through the streets, Cardinal jerked the wheel of their jeep, dodging pedestrians to keep up. The hybrid turned a corner and pulled up across the street from an abandoned building.

Cardinal turned to Marsha. "We're at the drop. You wait here. Seriously. If things go bad we are going to need a driver. Get behind the wheel and keep the engine running. If somebody comes by selling carpets, don't buy one, no matter how good a deal it is."

"Keep talking like that and I might drive off and leave you," Marsha said. "Don't worry, I'll stay out here. I am not interested in watching you butcher up a bunch of Arab smugglers."

"That's the spirit. Hugs and kisses, babe."

 Next episode: Delivered and Sealed

To read this serial novel from the beginning, go here.

A Night In Damascus 

 
Cardinal picked up the pen. "Mr. and Mrs. Fertus E. Patriot, Ypsilanti, Michigan." The hotel clerk collected the paperwork, then went into the back to retrieve the electronic key.

Marsha shifted from one foot to another, obviously annoyed. "Well, I'm proud of you," she said in a low voice. "You spelled Ypsilanti correctly, and on the first try."

"Now settle down," Cardinal said softly. "We're in love, remember, dearest?"

"Oh, of course," she said. "You have been the love of my life since I met you. I was a high school freshman and you were thirty-two."

"That's the spirit. Remember, we're Americans in Damascus. We will attract attention. You have to sell this all the way. That means keeping your loving husband happy, if you know what I mean."

Marsha looked the other way. "You know, I never would have thought Damascus would have a Super 8 motel. No better than the ones stateside, though I guess the housekeepers aren't Hispanic."

"Honey, you know how I feel about illegal immigrants. You wouldn't want to spoil the mood of your adoring husband."

"Any adoring husband of mine would do better than the Damascus Super 8."

They went up to the second floor to their room before she spoke again. "I'm not all that comfortable with this husband and wife thing."

"That's your doing, not mine," Cardinal said. "We are traveling in the Middle East. You wanted to come along, and you know a woman traveling alone would attract attention. This works better."

They sat in the room, arguing like that for fifteen minutes. The phone rang. It was Ali, a CIA operative and their contact in Damascus. "I don't suppose you speak Arabic, do you?" he asked.

"Arabic? Nah, can't help you with that. My specialty is mayhem. I'm a liability until the bullets fly, and then I'm in my game."

"The people we are dealing with have no problem killing either," Ali said. "I wouldn't assume courage is your clear advantage."

"Courage, no, that's not what it's all about. Amorality, that's the thing. I have no inhibitions. I operate solely through a system of pain and pleasure. Like a Pavlov dog."

"Yes, I've been briefed about you. We will see if this amorality is the advantage you think it is. I have my doubts. I warn you, Mr. Cardinal, that I will set up this deal with you, but I have no intention of risking my life on your prowess. Don't look for me to have your back."

"Gotcha," Cardinal said. "I know you CIA people work. You gather the information, then leave it to us paramilitary types to get the job done. Just get the hell over here so we can get started. And bring a half dozen grenades and a flamethrower with you. I'm feeling kinda naked."