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Pam’s new car, a black Mercedes S560, was more like a 4-star hotel than a regular automobile. In order to be polite, Tim had planned to ask Pam if she would like him to drive. Now, Tim was happy he had not. In all honesty, Tim didn’t believe that he could figure out how to drive the S560. At least not at first. The car did almost everything short of driving itself.
“I feel like a queen driving this car,” Pam explained as she turned right onto US Route 15 to Leesburg, and Tim knew that she was telling him the truth. Pam began to describe each of the car’s features. The ventilated and heated front seats, KEYLESS-GO, active parking assist... Yes, the car would park itself, and Pam even demonstrated this feature by stopping at the elementary school parking lot in Luckett, Virginia.
“Nothing like falling in love with a car, is there, Pam?” Tim said, but Pam freely admitted it to be true.
Tim had Googled Pam’s S560 to see that the MSRP was in the vicinity of eleven hundred thousand dollars. Where the hell did Pam come up with that kind of money? Tim wondered, but then he thought about it. Pam was probably pulling down somewhere around $140K to $150K a year at the Agency, and she did not have a house payment. Pam had also earned a fair amount of danger pay over the years, which she most likely put away. So sure, he guessed she could afford it and was not being paid off by the Russians.
The Aldrich Ames incident in the ‘90s really woke everyone up at Langley, and management started paying close attention to everyone’s lifestyle. Pam and Tim hadn’t known Ames personally, but they did know a lot of people who did. One friend of Pam’s who worked in the Russian section told her about how Ames would always come around to her desk and ask what she was working on. He apparently did that to many people. That in itself did not arouse any suspicion, but Pam’s friend felt that Ames must have used something that she had unintentionally revealed. People died because of Aldrich Ames, and Pam’s friend quit the Agency soon after Ames was convicted. She just couldn’t take it any longer.
Pam and Tim, on the other hand, had always lived rather cheaply. After they were married, they lived in an apartment in Falls Church. Next, they rented a house in Vienna, Virginia. They never considered buying because they were never at home. They never bothered to have children because neither Pam nor Tim would give up their jobs in order to be together. In the 1980s and ‘90s, married agents could not be assigned to the same overseas office. This was the reason why many of the women Pam had trained with gave up their careers. They married their Agency husbands and started families.
So not only were Pam and Tim never home, but when they were away, they were at different locations around the world. Management finally began to relax the married rule, but by then both Pam and Tim were working stateside. Pam and Tim did go on missions together, especially after 9/11, but they were never posted overseas again. Tim recalled thinking that running a safe house would be a great way of ending his career, but Pam thought it was a dead-end assignment. There was just one more job to do, something in China regarding intellectual property. That was the last thing Tim remembered.
Pam was still talking about the new Mercedes. “Look at this, Tim!” she called out as she let the car momentarily drift toward oncoming traffic. All sorts of bells and lights began to sound as Pam guided her vehicle back. “Now that’s what I call a safety feature,” Pam almost screamed with excitement. She was certainly having a good time, Tim thought.
As Tim and Pam drove closer to Leesburg, the two-lane Route 15 became a four-lane highway. Tim had observed that there were now many more new homes on each side of the road. Big 5,000 square foot houses that must cost at least $700,000 each. When Tim first started coming out to this part of Northern Virginia in the 1980s, there was maybe 50,000 people in Loudoun County. Now, there were 60,000 in Leesburg alone, and it was still growing.
Pam took the exit from the Route 15 bypass to Route 7 east. They were heading for Wegmans, a high-end grocery store. It was noon on a Saturday. The place would be packed.
Wegmans was similar to Whole Foods, except Wegmans carried more stuff. A lot more stuff. It was the kind of place where one could spend an entire day, and a few people actually did. You could shop there, eat there, and shop some more; and although items would be on sale from time to time, it was in no way cheap.
At one time, the entire DC area was dominated by basically two grocery stores: Safeway, which was headquartered in Oakland, California, and Giant Foods, which was once locally owned. That all began to change in the 1990s, as other grocery store chains from the South and Northeast expanded into the region. Not that the increased competition lowered food prices. To the contrary, food prices actually rose in the DC metro area, especially in the District of Columbia. This all made Tim feel that the price of food did not follow the normal rules of economics. It was not supply and demand pricing, it was “how much are they willing to pay” pricing, and the citizens of Leesburg and Loudoun County appeared to be willing to pay a lot.
They could pay a lot because they made a lot of money working for companies that contracted with the U.S. government. Defense contracting, to be precise. Many homes boasted incomes of over $200,000, which in turn gave Loudoun County the highest median household income in the United States. Yet, Loudoun was not the only county in the DC metro area. At least eight other counties in Maryland and Northern Virginia were in the top 20. The other counties with high median household incomes were clustered either around New York City or San Francisco, which included Silicon Valley.
However, it was not the amount of income that impressed Tim, but the contrast with the other places in the world that he’d visited. In some countries, a paved road was something to behold, and Tim often wondered what would happen if he could transport a group of citizens from one of these poor counties to Loudoun County for a day and bring them over to Wegmans. These people might first faint at seeing the quantity and quality of goods available, then ask why they didn’t have the same.
For decades, consumerism was part of the foundation of US foreign policy, with the US sending messages like, “Increasing consumption of goods is economically desirable,” or “If you behave yourself and reject your form of government, all of this can be yours.” But it never seemed to work out that way. The citizens of Cuba, for example (or at least the ones that were still holding on to the dream), appeared to love their leader Fidel until the day he died and apparently still embraced that particular brand of socialism. To Tim, it seemed like the Cubans were saying, “Sure, life sucks down here, but making life better is not our job, it’s the government’s job.”
Pam’s voice brought Tim back from his daydream about the economic inequities of the world. “Now watch this, Tim.” She had lined up to a parallel parking space. Although there were plenty of open parking spots where she could have simply just pulled in, Pam pressed a button, and the S560 dutifully began to park itself.
When the car had finished, it beeped as if to say, “all done.” “Thank you,” Pam answered.
“Have you given it a name yet?” Tim asked.
“Given who a name?”
“The car. Have you given the car a name?”
“It’s a car, Tim. It doesn’t need a name. Quit being silly,” Pam teased as she pressed the auto lock button.
The 560 made three different sounds as it was locking, but, to Tim, the car also sounded as if it were saying, “Quit being silly.”
Pam grabbed a discarded shopping cart and handed it over to Tim. “Take this. There probably won’t be any inside.” And she was right.
The first section they visited was produce, and Pam went right to work examining various fruits and vegetables. Tim thought about how casual she was. Have a meeting about assassinating the President the night before, do the week’s shopping the next day. Pam had an amazing ability to compartmentalize almost everything in her life.
For that matter, so did Mary Ann. Maybe that was the one thing that Pam and Mary Ann had in common. Maybe it was what had attracted Tim to these two women in the first place. Tim was what his late grandmother used to call a “worry wart.” As a child, Tim’s grandmother would often come over to watch Tim while his parents were at work. Tim would always be fretting about money, since it was the one thing, he heard his parents constantly discuss. These discussions would filter down to Tim, and he would then express his concerns to his grandmother by saying, “I hope we have enough money for the mortgage payment” or “I hope we have enough money for food.”
Tim’s grandmother never directly addressed her grandchild’s concerns; if she had, she might have solved what would become a lifelong problem. Instead, all she would say to Tim was, “Don’t be a worry wart,” or “You’re being a worry wart, Timmy.” She never simply said, “Tim, your parents make lots of money, so there’s no reason for you to worry about losing your house or having nothing to eat.”
Most adults did not have those kinds of discussions with their children back in the 1960s. If a child had concerns about the family income these days, on the other hand, some parents would probably arrange a meeting between their children and their accountants in order to allay any concerns. That was just how life seemed to roll...from one extreme to the other.
Pam had now entered the meat, chicken, and fish department and was trying to determine how fresh the precooked shrimp was. “Would you like some shrimp before dinner tonight?” she asked Tim.
“Sure, honey,” Tim replied.
“I think the flounder looks good. You like flounder, don’t you?”
Tim thought that most fish, including flounder, tasted about the same, but Pam seemed to be enjoying the whole shopping experience with him, so there was no reason to disrupt the vibe. “Yes, I love flounder. Are you planning on frying it?”
“Yes, with breadcrumbs,” Pam said but she had become interested in another kind of fish on the ice and began to ask the fish man questions about it.
Pam was behaving a lot like Mary Ann would if the two of them were to go grocery shopping, which Tim thought was rather peculiar. Speaking of Mary Ann, maybe this would be a good time to try calling her. Tim pushed the shopping cart over to Pam. “Where are the restrooms in this place, Pam?”
“Up front by the check-out lines,” Pam replied, pointing in the general direction.
“Okay, thanks,” Tim said as he began to walk to the front of the store.
“Tim?” Pam called after him. “I’ll be over by the frozen foods.”
Tim waved and began to walk. When he was sure that he was out of Pam’s sight, though, he pulled out his iPhone and told it to call Mary Ann.
She picked up on the first ring. “Where the fuck are you, Tim? You told me that you would be back by now!”
Ordinarily, Tim would have tried to say something funny in order to ease the tension, but there was no time to screw around. “Are you okay, Mary Ann? Where is Toby? Did he hurt you?”
“Well, the short answer is yes, I’m okay. Toby is out, and yes he did hurt me—but again, I am okay.”
Tim felt sick to his stomach. It was one thing for him to get into a jam, but he never intended to bring Mary Ann down with him. If he could have just kept his dick in his pants, she would probably be back in Las Vegas by now.
“You have to get away right now,” he told her. “Do whatever it takes, but just get away.”
“I would do that if I could, but I don’t know exactly where I am. I’m locked in a shipping crate.”
“A shipping crate. What kind of shipping crate?”
“Well, it’s more like a shipping container. The kind they put on ships.”
Tim now knew exactly what Mary Ann was in, and he knew that finding her would be a problem. Spies calling the police anywhere in the world was a big no-no and should be avoided, but this was an exception.
“Mary Ann, call 911 and tell them what’s going on. They should be able to locate you using the GPS in your phone.”
“Toby was able to deactivate that in my phone, but besides, GPS can only track you to a general area. There are thousands of these things, and Toby will see the cops long before they find me. If it’s the same to you, I would prefer not to be beaten and tied up again.”
Tim was at a loss for words. He was over 50 miles away from Baltimore, but even if he was there, he’d have no clue where to start looking for Mary Ann. She could be in several places.
Tim was about to say something to Mary Ann to comfort her, but she spoke first. “Tim? Now listen to me. I’ve been in tight spots before...even worse than this... but I’ve always gotten out of them. I can handle Toby, and he has no intention of leaving me here. So please don’t worry. I know what I’m doing. But you need to be careful. I’m not exactly sure what Sebastian, Toby, and your wife are up to, but I know it’s not good, so you need to just get along with everyone until we can figure something out.”
Tim was very surprised how calm and professional Mary Ann was sounding and acting, but he reminded himself that she was a private investigator and had dealt with some very bad people over the years, so it was silly to feel that she could not handle herself. Tim even considered telling Mary Ann about the plot, but that would be a sure way of getting her killed. No. It was better for her not to know about it.
“Okay, Mary Ann, yes, it does sound like you have everything under control, but you do need to get away from Toby and out of town as soon as you have the chance. This situation is more dangerous than you can imagine.”
“What’s going on?”
“I can’t tell you—but no matter what happens, I just want you to know that I love you.”
Tim’s last statement was met with a pause, and Tim heard what sounded like a metal door opening. Toby was back and coming in.
“I love you too, Tim,” Mary Ann said as she hung up the phone.
By the time Tim made it back to Pam, she had made it through the frozen food section and was now looking at the dry goods. Tim considered this section to be the weakest part of Wegmans. The aisles were short and didn’t seem to have the same large selection of items as an average grocery store, such as Harris Teeter.
“You took your time. Is everything okay?” Pam asked.
This was decision time for Tim. If he chose to lie and not tell Pam he’d been on the phone with Mary Ann, it could become problematic. It was very possible that Pam had someone in the store with eyes on him who would report to her later that he’d made a phone call. Getting caught in a lie would destroy any trust he had developed with Pam over the last two days, so Tim decided to be straight with her.
“I just called Mary Ann, and she told me that Toby has her locked in a shipping container somewhere at the Port of Baltimore. Do you know anything about that, Pam?”
Tim’s question seemed to catch Pam off guard. Pam had probably figured that Tim would lie about making any phone calls. Now, she had to address the Mary Ann and Toby situation.
“We should talk about this in the car, not in the middle of Wegmans,” she hissed.
“We can talk anywhere you fucking like, Pam, but if anything happens to that girl, then you are going to have to kill me too, because I will do everything in my power to take down you and your pal Sebastian.”
Tim was aware that he really did not have much to bargain with, but there was some reason that Pam and Sebastian were keeping him around. They must still need him for something, since Pam was going out of her way to be nice to him. Both needed Tim to be calm and cooperative, and right now he was anything but.
Pam began to speak in a low voice. “Tim, I’m sure Sebastian has every intention of sending Toby and Mary Ann back to Las Vegas safe and sound. However, since you decided to become romantically involved with Mary Ann, it has just complicated everything.” Pam paused and looked Tim in the eye to make sure she had his attention. “It has complicated our operation because you are behaving like some lovesick teenager.”
Pam was attempting to turn the argument around and make it Tim’s fault that Mary Ann was being held hostage. “Hey,” he answered with a glare, “back in January, I was a retired government employee who happened to ask a woman out on a date. Not a covert agent involved in a plot to—”
“Don’t say it!” Pam interrupted loudly enough to attract attention from a couple behind them.
She was right. They really should be discussing this in the car.
Pam and Tim both stopped speaking after that, and Tim wandered over to the candy aisles. Pam walked up behind him and whispered, “Would you like some candy, little boy?”
Making a joke out of the situation was one of the methods Pam and Tim always used to apologize to each other, but Tim was not going for it this time.
Pam began to look at the bins of candy sold in bulk. She soon started to speak again. “Sebastian and I hired that girl to engage you, Tim, not to fuck you. So as far as I am concerned, it’s her fault that she’s locked in a shipping container.” Pam paused to look at the Lemonhead candies, deciding to buy some. “But if it will make you feel better, I’ll call Sebastian and make sure she’s released.”
“And how will I know that, Pam? How will I know she’s okay?”
“How about I invite her and Toby over for dinner on Sunday?”
Tim turned and looked at Pam to see if she was serious. If Pam was wearing a big grin, he would know it was all a joke.
He couldn’t detect a hint of humor in her expression, though, which meant he’d have to ask. “You’re joking, right? You want to invite Mary Ann and Toby over for dinner?”
“Yes,” Pam agreed, “Mary Ann, Toby, and Sebastian. Sebastian will have to be there as well; there will be no way around that. Would that be satisfactory?”
Pam’s offer was certainly an unexpected move on her part, and Tim really wasn’t comfortable with the idea; but is would at least prove to him that Mary Ann was all right. Otherwise, Tim would just have to take Pam at her word.
“Yeah, that would be great,” he eventually replied.
Pam could obviously hear the reluctance in his voice. “Hey, it’s up to you, babe. If you want to make sure your girlfriend is okay, what better way than to see her in the flesh?”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Tim protested, although he knew he was lying.
“Okay, so she’s not you girlfriend, but do you want to see her or not?” Pam was really selling the deal now.
“Yes, yes. I would,” Tim finally said.
“Great. But one rule: if you say anything to Mary Ann or Toby about the operation, they will not leave the house alive.”
Pam made this statement so casually that it sent a chill down Tim’s spine. He had no doubt that she was 100% serious.
“So, what kind of food does Mary Ann like?” Pam asked.
“Italian,” Tim answered automatically, thinking back to their first date.
“Then she will love my lasagna. Now go away while I call Sebastian.”
Tim felt like he had been dismissed by his mother. He obeyed.