SNEAK PEEK - First Chapter of Courier

Chapter 1

Tuesday 12/19/1972

It felt like the motorcycle had become a part of his body—a
part that made him whole. The back wheel of the BMW R50/2 had started to lose traction
on the crusted ice—ice that hung around for months in the shadowed parts of the
alley where the sun never reached. It was spinning now and drifting left, the
back end approaching a ninety-degree angle to the front, but Rick Putnam
realized with a bit of surprise that he wasn't concerned.

He saw the patch of dry concrete coming up and blipped the
throttle just a bit as he crossed it. Dropping his weight back on the bench
seat made the rear wheel grab on the concrete and pop back into alignment. It
was all reflex action—as automatic as walking down the sidewalk.

At the end of the alley, he flicked his eyes to the right,
saw a space in the traffic, downshifted, and slammed across the sidewalk. Entering
19th Street, he locked the rear wheel, threw his weight to break the big bike
to the right, and skidded smoothly into the moving line of cars. He heard the
screech of brakes, and an angry horn went off behind him, but the bike was
already picking up speed, flicking past the two- and three-story brick row
houses.

He liked Washington. It was as if the city had exploded
during World War 2 and then stopped, exhausted from the effort. The town houses
were low and usually a bit crooked, the brick painted every color imaginable,
and the stores, restaurants, and bars on the first floors varied and eccentric.

The relatively few large office buildings stood out like
Stalinist mistakes—square and featureless, built to the exact millimeter of the
height limitations. Alleys cut through the center of most blocks, often just cobblestones
or a bumpy mixture of asphalt and concrete patches.

A century ago, these alleys had held a entire separate city
of poor whites and freed slaves. Rick had learned that from the same rider
who’d showed him that, to a courier, they were the secret to the city, a way to
evade traffic lights and bypass commuters. The alleys may not have held a
separate city these days but they were still more than just urban driveways. Hidden
from sight were bars, restaurants, nightclubs, and little food stores—a Washington
that tourists would never see.

He took the right onto K Street and all thoughts of the city­—and
everything else—were lost in the crystalline concentration of the dance.

***

15 miles ahead of the courier, a specialist in the
restoration of silence began his latest assignment.

In a quiet Virginia suburb, his black Chevy Impala was parked
against the curb on Fairfield Street some fifty feet from where Fairfield met
Fairmount in a T intersection. Taking off his hat to lower his profile, he sat
perfectly still and watched the single-story brick Colonial straight ahead of
him—it’s perfectly white shutters and clipped shrubbery indicating an a precise,
even obsessive, owner . A white AMC Jeep Wagoneer with a strip of fake wood running
down the side sat at the curb, partially blocking his view of the lawn but
still revealing a wooden Santa and wicker reindeer.  

Looking through the Wagoneer's windows, he could see large, heavy-looking
equipment cases that had clearly been pulled from the Jeep's cargo area. One
case was open, revealing shiny metal rods and bits of colored cellophane. He
assumed it was lighting gear for the television crew now inside the house. They
were probably filming their interview and almost certainly did not know they were
being observed.

He scanned the street in front of him, then, without moving
his head, methodically checked behind him in the rearview mirror. Catching a
glimpse of himself—something unusual since he never sought out mirrors—his
startling blue eyes under deep brows stared back. Women might find them
mesmerizing, but he regretted how they made him so easy to remember. Usually he
wore dark sunglasses, but in today's gray afternoon light, sunglasses might
result in one of those curious second looks that occasionally proved so
inconvenient.

He had spent many years making sure he wasn't neither noticed
nor remembered. His name—which a long time ago had been Ed Jarvis—had faded
under a succession of false identities, leaving him defined by his occupation:
an operative, an agent, a useful tool to get things done, a restorer of
silence. Stroking his mustache down, making it just a bit less noticeable, he
resumed his watch.

Fairfield Street was tree-lined, quiet. No one was walking a dog
or scraping the last bits of ice off their driveways. It had begun to warm in
the past few days, and there wasn’t much ice left anyway. That was good; he’d
seen enough ice for a lifetime. When he thought about it, which was far too
often, he could feel the searing cold of a Korean winter still sleeping deep
inside him.

His careful survey of went on for a full fifteen minutes. Nothing
set off his internal alarms. He got out of the car, took a beige parka from the
backseat, and put it on over his gray suit. Then he began to walk down
Fairfield Street, away from the T intersection. There were no sidewalks, so he
walked in the road— just far enough away from the curb to stay out of the
puddles of snowmelt. Keeping a steady pace gave him the appearance of a man out
for a little exercise to break up an afternoon at home.

He made three left turns, circling the block, and approached
the Colonial from the opposite direction, his deliberate pace giving him time
to check that no one was in any of the backyards.  Without changing his pace, he walked past the
left side of the Wagoneer, reaching down slightly and placing a small box into
the top of both wheel wells. He could hear the faint chunks as their magnets pulled them tight against the metal.

He continued back to his car, feeling confident that—even if
anyone were watching—no one would have noticed such a slight change in his
stride. Back in his car, he sat for a long moment to be certain that no one had
appeared on the street or come to look out any nearby windows. Then he put the
car in Drive.

Moving at a smooth, unhurried speed, he turned to the left on
Fairmount, away from the house, and made three right turns to circle around the
block behind the house. Now, he could be sure that there were no other
surveillance teams watching the Colonial. He didn’t think any other team—even
from the FBI or CIA— would be a problem but it always nice to know that he
could work free of distractions.

He came slowly down Fairmount from the same direction he had
just approached on foot and stopped as soon as he had a good view of the
Wagoneer. He was safely hidden behind a Dodge station wagon and, after looking
up, he reversed a couple of feet into the deep shade of an oak tree—he knew the
shadows would only deepen as the short December day waned.

Then he sat and waited.

Waited to do his work.

To stop the voices.

To restore silence.

To kill.

***

The left lane was clear, and Rick came up through the gears,
hearing the solid ka-chunk each time
the transmission engaged. The BMW might not be slick, but it was steady,
dependable, and fast enough if you gave the engine the time and torque to reach
its full power. It didn't have a tachometer, so he listened to the exhaust
sound and shifted a couple of seconds after the engine's normal throaty putter rose
to a shout.

By the time he hit the elevated freeway that cut past
Georgetown, he was in top gear and running fast. The wide handlebars felt solid
and secure under his thick gloves. Even the winter wind that was numbing his
face and slicing through the zipper of his leather jacket felt good—a sharp,
cold bite after the steam of the overheated news bureau.

That would change in just a few miles, the zipper stream
becoming a shard of ice impaling his heart, his face stiffening, hands cramping
into claws, only his eyes behind the heavy glasses safe from the wind's sharp
whip.

There were cars lined up at M Street, but hell, why ride a
motorcycle if you couldn't dance? He kicked down to second, slid between cars
on the centerline, cut in front of a Dodge waiting patiently for the light to
turn, and swung up onto Key Bridge.

Halfway across the Potomac River, he was back in top gear,
and he cut the turn hard when he reached the Virginia side—almost grinding the
big side-mounted cylinder on the asphalt—and let the bike fly down the entrance
ramp to the GW Parkway.

Traffic clotted the parkway—commuters and, undoubtedly,
police cars up ahead. None of that mattered. He was dancing now, carving
graceful curves right down the centerline in top gear with the throttle nailed.
Cars flashed by on both sides as he wove between them.

He couldn't look at the speedometer, couldn't take his eyes
off the road, couldn't spare a second of concentration from the delicate ballet
of shifting weight, tire grip, and wide-open throttle, rejoicing in each deep
dip into a turn and the swooping acceleration coming out.

He jolted back to reality when the exit to Chain Bridge Road
came up on the right. Unable to bleed off enough speed before the exit, he took
the curve way too fast, jamming the bike down on its side, twisting the
handgrips against the turn—fighting to keep his wheels from drifting into the
treacherous gravel on the outside. He knew that if he touched the brakes, the
tires would lose all adhesion and fly out from under him.

He kept his eyes looking straight ahead—searching for the end
of the turn—and the BMW held like it was locked on rails as it carved a perfect
line through the curve. The back end had just begun to drift slightly when he
spotted the stop sign and straightened up. Now he could use the brakes and he quickly
wrestled the bike under control.

As he stopped, he felt the strange upward lift that the
old-fashioned Earles front suspension always gave when he put on the front
brake. Any other bike would plunge the front down into the telescoping front
forks, the triangular links of the BMW floated the stress up and forwards.

For just a second, he kept the clean clarity of the dance in
his mind, and then it was gone. Memories came flooding back. Blood, and stench,
and screaming, the terrible beauty as napalm set the tall grass on fire and the
flowers of light bursting from snipers in the trees. Only the dance could fill
up his head—speed and real danger frightening him enough to keep the phantom
terrors away, if only for a few precious moments.

Rick sighed, then kicked the gearshift down into first and turned
right—heading for the pickup.
 

Terry Irving Author of "Courier"