Glass Tiger by Joe Gores Page B

get back to you with anything he clears for your eyes,’ Crandall said.
    He nodded and left, Quarles scrambling to his feet behind him to leave also, with no mention of the promised Corwin background material. Doyle was still in his chair, looking hungover. Thorne went to the sideboard, refilled their cups.
    ‘They’re gonna give you jack-shit, you know,’ Doyle said.
    ‘I know.’ Then Thorne added, ‘I’m at the Mayflower.’
    It was a nice day, so Hatfield walked the half-dozen long downtown blocks to the White House. He would shape his report so it seemed he had suggested Thorne go to California, because the bastard actually had figured out how Corwin had eluded his men in the Delta and in King’s Canyon.
    He stopped so abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk that pedestrian traffic had to flow around his immobile form like running water around a boulder.
    He would have to authorize Crandall to give Thorne selected information on Corwin’s background. But no onthe phone records. Absolutely no on the .357 Magnum. There was too much about that night that he himself didn’t know, and wished he did.
    According to Dorst’s session notes, killing now supposedly was instant aversion therapy for Thorne because of his dead shackrat and their brat. Excellent intelligence to have. But what about those two dead shifta? Under pressure, Dorst would tell him how they fit into the equation. And tell him how best to use Thorne’s recurring nightmare to keep the man in line.
    He turned into the recently-opened Pennsylvania Avenue foot-traffic mall in front of the White House.
    Whatever Dorst came up with, he definitely would put people on Thorne here in D.C., and monitor him electronically out into the field. Keep him under control.
    He lengthened his stride, suddenly eager. He hadn’t told Thorne about today’s meeting, and would tell the President that Thorne had been reluctant to interrupt his work on Corwin for a talk session. Admirable.
    But he was sure that subconsciously, Wallberg would be pissed at Thorne for ignoring a presidential summons.

10
    Thorne did a quick circuit of the weight machines in the Mayflower’s fitness facility, showered, took fifty laps in the pool, had another shower because of the luxury of unlimited water.
    At the front desk was a sealed manila folder from Crandall, delivered by messenger. Something substantial? Or a brush-off? Suspecting the latter, he walked back to the only quiet place in D.C. he knew, the Georgetown Dock. He chose a table on the second level above the drinks kiosk, and ordered iced tea.
    To his left, traffic grumbled and complained on the Key Bridge leading to the Washington Parkway. A white tour boat with brown trim was just ducking under it, cringing as the flat awning over its superstructure barely cleared the bridge’s under-arch.
    He opened the folder on Corwin. As he had expected, a stripped file. Grade and high school – indifferent grades – a semester of junior college, Vietnam. Unsubstantiated speculation about a possible career as a merc, his wife’s death while he was gone, his retreat to the great north woods. But they’d forgotten to remove – or hadn’t thought it important – that Corwin’d had a drunken, abusive father, and a submissive mother. It could be assumed he’d be a kid heading for trouble. No phone records. No ballistics report. No crime scene evidence.
    The tour boat glided into a mooring spot at the end of the dock far to Thorne’s right, under a sign, ‘SeeAlexandria by Water.’ Tourists disembarked and wandered away as the four-person crew began preparing for the return trip.
    On his own, Thorne had ferreted out that Corwin had twice eluded pursuers by hiding in plain sight. But he needed to know how good a long-range sniper Corwin had been in ’Nam. During those purported mercenary years afterwards, what had he been doing? Where had he been doing it? In cities? In jungles? In deserts? Long-range kills with long guns, or