Loose Cannon: The Tom Kelly Novels Read Online Free Page B

were in themselves so ill-fitting as to be virtually a uniform for low-ranking Russians. The escorts watched the six pale men with angry determination. In general, the passengers bustling through the barrier in either direction ignored the scene, lost in their own meetings and farewells. If the crowd seemed to be edging someone too close to the men under escort, one of the guards would interpose with as little ceremony as a linebacker going for the ball. Squawks of protest from buffeted travelers were ignored with flat-eyed disdain.
    The last of the six charges passed through the arch. The steel zipper in one’s trouser fly had set off the alarm; there had been no other incident. The two escorts in the rear shouldered past the barrier in turn, waving passports without bothering to speak to or even look at the attendants.
    The whole group tramped down the hallway toward the Aeroflot gates. Even a note from the Russian Ambassador would not have gotten armed men around the security check had they not been traveling on their own national airline. The charges shambled in a column of twos, with their escorts half a pace out at each corner. One of the latter gave Kelly a hard look as he passed. The American smiled back and nodded. Not a real bright thing to do, but he wasn’t a surveillance agent. The Lord knew he wasn’t that.
    Tom Kelly was five-foot nine and stocky. In bad light he could have been any age; in the combination of sunlight and the fluorescents over the security barrier, he looked all of his 38 years. His face was broad and tan and deeply wrinkled. Black hair was beginning to thin over his pate. Though he was clean-shaven, an overnight growth of whiskers gave him a seedy look that his rumpled blazer did nothing to dispel. Sighing, he picked up his AWOL bag and his radio, then walked to the impatient lieutenant across the barrier.
    “The general is, ah, anxious to see you, sir,” the lieutenant said. “If you don’t mind, we’ll leave your luggage to be claimed later. There’s need for haste.”
    “Here, carry my clothes, then,” Kelly said, thrusting his AWOL bag at the officer. “Well, don’t look so surprised. For Christ’s sake, I was just over in Basel. Train would have made a lot more sense than buying me a ticket on Swissair.”
    “Er,” said the lieutenant. “Well, we have a car and driver waiting at the front entrance.” He began striding off through the concourse, glancing back over his shoulder at Kelly. The civilian paced him, moving with an ease surprising in a man so squat. He held his short-wave receiver out in front of him nonchalantly enough to belie its twelve-pound weight.
    The car was there, all right, though the driver with Spec 5 chevrons on his greens was arguing with a pair of airport security men and a gendarme. “That’s all right,” the lieutenant called in English. He tossed Kelly’s bag on the hood of the sedan and fumbled out—for Christ’s sake!—his own black passport which he waved in the policeman’s face. Must be great to work in an airport the dips use a lot, Kelly thought. He opened the door of the sedan and flipped the seat down.
    The lieutenant swung back to the car, but he hesitated when he saw that Kelly was gesturing him into the back seat. “Go ahead,” the civilian said. He peered at the lieutenant’s name-plate. “Morley. I figure if I rate a chauffeured limousine”—it was an AMC Concord, olive drab, with motor pool registration numbers stenciled on the doors—“I can choose where I sit in it.”
    Lieutenant Morley ducked into the back. Kelly retrieved his AWOL bag from the hood and handed it ceremoniously in to the lieutenant. Only then did he set his radio on the seat beside the driver and get in himself. “The Embassy, as fast as you can make it,” Morley muttered.
    “Which is probably less fast than a local taxi would get us there,” Kelly said, watching traffic as the driver eased into the stream of vehicles. “But then, it’s