3 - Buffalo Mountain: Ike Schwartz Mystery 3 by Frederick Ramsay Read Free Book Online Page B

found Shenandoah Valley Airport and pulled onto its parking lot just as an unmarked helicopter settled on the ramp in a flurry of relocated snow. Ike made his way to the café and had a cappuccino and biscotti in hand when Charlie Garland burst through the door. Without looking at Ike, he led the way across the lobby to the Jack Martin Conference Room. “We have this room reserved,” he said.
    “Good to see you, too, Charlie…No, not much trouble getting here…Just two and a half hours of eyestrain and acid indigestion…So how was your trip?…Glad to hear it.”
    “What?” Charlie’s glasses had fogged up, not the disability it might have been for anyone else, as Charlie rarely cleaned, much less polished, his glasses.
    “I said hello.”
    “Close the door, Ike, we don’t have much time. I have to be back at Langley in two hours. Here, this is for you.” He shoved a leather case across the table at Ike.
    The room could be interchanged for any of a hundred like it across the country. It had a table that looked vaguely like a surfboard on steroids and a dozen black leather swivel chairs arranged around it. A white board adorned one wall and a large aeronautical chart of the valley another. Ike sat and stared at the case. “What is it?”
    “Cell phone.”
    “I already have a cell phone.”
    “Not like this one.”
    “What does this one do that mine can’t?”
    “It’s secure.”
    “How?”
    “I don’t know. The guys in tech say it is. There’re complete instructions in the case. The short course is, you call me…I have a new number, by the way, and when I answer, you push this button, and count to four or something, and then talk normally. It’s satellite and so there’s a delay sometimes. The electronics encrypt your transmission and then decode it at my end.”
    “This is like those James Bond movies. You don’t have a Rolex watch with a steel-cutting laser in it for me, too? How is Q, by the way?”
    “Not a joke, Ike. Now, I need to fill you in on what we’ve uncovered so far about Kamarov.”
    Ike opened the case and lifted out the phone. “This thing must weigh five pounds.”
    “Just over one. It’s the electronics and the battery, they tell me. Oh, and don’t hold it up to your ear. Use the hands-free gizmo.”
    “Because?”
    “It’s a little…no, make that a lot, more powerful than the usual thing you get at the phone store. Use it too much and it could fry your brain.”
    “I won’t use it at all.”
    “And don’t leave it in your lap either. Bad for the…you know.”
    “All the more reason not to use it. I won’t even turn it on.”
    “You’ve got to.”
    “Can’t. New town ordinance. I can’t use a cell phone while operating a motor vehicle. Amazing. I never thought I’d be happy about that. Irony, that’s what that is.”
    “Can’t use it while operating a…not even with the hands free?”
    “Well that would put it next to my heart—not good—or in my lap—worse.”
    “Ike, can we move along here? It’s just for emergencies and I hope we won’t need it. But you are conducting an investigation in the field and you are more likely to turn up something needing an urgent response than we are.”
    “You’ll have yours on all the time?”
    “All the time.”
    “But not in your lap. I would hate to think of Baltimore society being deprived of another generation of Garlands.”
    Charlie sighed and leaned forward in his chair and fiddled with an unused glass ashtray. “This is as far as we have gone. It’s delicate, Ike. You know we are in another round of reorganization talks to make the country’s intelligence community cooperate, blah, blah, blah.”
    “Yes, and good luck with that.”
    “Don’t be cynical. You’re probably right, but it’s best to stay hopeful.”
    “Absolutely.”
    “Anyway, that means another round of jockeying for position and power. Before the final configuration is set, everybody in all the agencies and the Bureau is