Last Chance to Die
Last Chance to Die
Noah Boyd
The gripping action thriller from New York Times bestselling author and former FBI agent Noah Boyd. Steve Vail has brains, brawn and balls – and is back for his latest mission.Steve Vail visits Kate Bannon, Assistant Director of the FBI, for a well-earned and romantic New Years Eve in Washington, DC, but he suddenly finds himself knee-deep in a very complicated and unusual case.A man known simply as Calculus, an intelligence officer at the Russian embassy, approaches the FBI claiming he knows of several Americans who are supplying confidential government information to the Russian secret service. In exchange for this list, he asks for $250,000 for each traitor the FBI arrests. But when Calculus is suddenly recalled to Moscow, the Bureau suspects the worst. The Russians have probably captured Calculus, and might have access to his list – which means they'll soon track down the informants and murder them.That is, unless the FBI can find them first, but without knowing exactly who is on the list, they must keep the operation quiet. Once again, Vail is their man. He's the ideal candidate for this kind of stealth recon mission. It soon becomes clear that finding Calculus and his list of traitors isn't going to be quick or quiet. In fact, it's going to be downright deadly…
Last Chance to Die
Noah Boyd
For my wife, Patti,
who has always grown stronger the more impossible things become
Contents
Before
KATE BANNON THOUGHT SHE WAS HAVING A NIGHTMARE, BUT ACTUALLY…
One
KATE BANNON OPENED HER DOOR. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”
Two
THE BLACK TOWN CAR PULLED UP TO THE CURB IN…
Three
AFTER KATE HAD WALKED THE DIRECTOR OUT, SHE CAME BACK…
Four
WHEN THEY GOT TO THE CAR, VAIL SAID, “YOU KNOW…
Five
KATE LISTENED TO VAIL’S SHALLOW BREATHING AND FOUND IT REMARKABLE…
Six
IT WAS ALMOST 11 P.M. BY THE TIME VAIL CHANGED CLOTHES,…
Seven
KATE FOUND A PARKING SPACE NEAR THE MAIN ENTRANCE OF…
Eight
THE TALL, SLENDER MAN WITH THE SPLAYED NOSE SAT BEHIND…
Nine
WHEN THEY WALKED INTO THE OBSERVATION ROOM AT THE SIXTEENTH…
Ten
VAIL WAS SITTING AT THE KITCHEN TABLE WITH HIS INJURED…
Eleven
LUKE, DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND IGNORE THE STUFF ON…
Twelve
VAIL AND BURSAW SAT IN THE FRONT SEAT OF THE…
Thirteen
IT WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON WHEN VAIL…
Fourteen
VAIL HAD GOTTEN IN ABOUT FOUR HOURS EARLIER, AFTER A…
Fifteen
SITTING IN THE BACKSEAT, KATE LISTENED TO KALIX AND LANGSTON.
Sixteen
THE THREE UNIT AND SECTION CHIEFS WERE ALREADY SEATED IN…
Seventeen
ONCE VAIL REACHED THE HIGHWAY, HE STAYED IN THE RIGHT…
Eighteen
THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT ASKED VAIL IF HE WANTED ANYTHING TO…
Nineteen
AT A FEW MINUTES BEFORE EIGHT THE NEXT MORNING, VAIL…
Twenty
JOHN KALIX WATCHED VAIL COME THROUGH THE GATE AFTER THE…
Twenty-One
AFTER MORE THAN THREE HOURS OF INTERROGATION BY THE ANNANDALE…
Twenty-Two
WHEN THEY GOT TO THE OFF-SITE, JOHN KALIX WAS PARKED…
Twenty-Three
AS BURSAW DROVE CAUTIOUSLY THROUGH THE CITY’S STREETS, VAIL ASKED…
Twenty-Four
THE PHONE RANG. BURSAW PICKED IT UP AND PUSHED THE…
Twenty-Five
THE FIRST GRAY LIGHT OF MORNING SEEPED INTO THE BEDROOM,…
Twenty-Six
BURSAW PARKED THE BUREAU CAR IN HIS SISTER’S GUEST PARKING…
Twenty-Seven
AS SOON AS VAIL REACHED THE OTHER SIDE, HE TOOK…
Twenty-Eight
KATE WAS THE LAST TO ARRIVE AT THE DIRECTOR’S OFFICE.
Twenty-Nine
IT WAS DARK WHEN KATE GOT BACK FROM THE PENTAGON.
Thirty
WHEN KATE CAME IN THE NEXT MORNING, SHE FOUND VAIL…
Thirty-One
WHAT!”
Thirty-Two
UNSURE WHERE IT WOULD TAKE THEM—AND NOT SURE SHE CARED—KATE…
Thirty-Three
AS THEY NEARED THE ADDRESS FOR MASTER SERGEANT LONGMEADOW’S APARTMENT,…
Thirty-Four
THE NEXT MORNING KATE PICKED UP AN ORDER OF STEAK…
Thirty-Five
THE SURVEILLANCE SQUAD’S OFF-SITE HAD BEEN CAREFULLY EELECTED. THE NEIGHBORHOOD…
Thirty-Six
AN HOUR AND A HALF LATER, THE TWO MEN THAT…
Thirty-Seven
THE BLURRY LIGHT OF DAWN HAD COME UP JUST AS…
Thirty-Eight
IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, AND KATE COULDN’T…
After
VAIL WALKED UP TO THE FRONT DOOR OF THE SIX TEENTH…
About the Author
Other Books by Noah Boyd
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
BEFORE
KATE BANNON THOUGHT SHE WAS HAVING A NIGHTMARE, BUT ACTUALLY SHE WAS dying.
Only her nagging self-awareness, even in this somnolent state, was forcing her to remember that she didn’t have nightmares. The frightening images had always been there—people shooting at her, falling endlessly from towering buildings, running through thicker and thicker sand to escape something unknown—but her reaction to them had always been as an indifferent observer, curious and analytical. If the “danger” persisted, she would simply tell herself it was a dream and wake up. And that’s what she had to do now, wake up and find out what was causing the chaotic images in her head.
She sat up and felt dizzy, the blood pounding in the top of her head. It hurt too much to be a dream. She felt nauseous and remembered driving home after the Thanksgiving Eve get-together at one of the local FBI watering holes with a large group of people from headquarters. She remembered having a glass of wine, and then a good-looking guy she didn’t know brought her a small glass of—what did he say it was?—Drambuie. She had never tasted it before and took a mouthful. Finding it too bitter for her liking, she set it down and didn’t touch it again. It must have been strong, because she soon started feeling woozy and decided to leave.
Throwing her legs over the side of the bed, she worked her feet into slippers and stood up. As soon as she was fully upright, she felt light-headed and had trouble balancing herself. With a hand on the wall, she started toward the kitchen. Walking left her short of breath. That couldn’t be from alcohol. That’s when she heard the low rumbling. She continued to the kitchen and saw that the door to the garage was open. Now she could clearly hear her car running.
Without warning, her knees started to buckle, and she realized that she was not suffering from what she had drunk but from carbon monoxide poisoning. Carefully, she stepped down the three stairs into the garage, which was filled with the haze of exhaust fumes. The car door was locked, and she could see the keys in the ignition.
The garage’s outside door was only a few feet away, and she lurched to it. Taking hold of the knob, she tried to turn it, but her grip failed her. She pushed on the door clumsily with her body weight but couldn’t rotate the knob far enough to open it. Even using both hands, she couldn’t get it to release. Next to the door, in a holder fastened to the wall, was a remote-control unit for the overhead door. She pressed the button, but nothing happened.
Beginning to panic now, she pressed it repeatedly, but still the door didn’t rise. She tried to remember the last time she had changed the battery, but her mind refused to focus on anything requiring memory. All at once she crashed to the floor, knocking over her small gardening caddy and scattering tools in every direction.
She tried to get up but could only manage to roll over on her back. Is this it? she asked herself. After all she’d been through as an agent, this was how she was going to die? Then she saw a white light coming from the six-inch-square window in the door and wondered if it was what so many people who approached death had reported. She fell back and let her eyes slide shut. Even with her mouth closed, she could taste the thick fumes in her throat.
The actual source of the light was a small flashlight held by a man standing outside, dressed in black. When she collapsed, he turned it off and pulled the two wedges from under the door that had jammed it closed against her efforts. Then he went to the front door of the residence and removed two more. Calmly, he put his hands in his pockets and walked back to a waiting SUV.
Lying there felt pleasant, euphoric, but then it occurred to Kate that the light was gone. Shouldn’t it be inside her head, too? She opened her eyes, and it was still gone. Did that mean the death sentence had been revoked, or at least delayed? Whatever it meant, she decided that she was going down swinging.
Next to her was a rake, its wooden handle thick and straight. Pushing up on all fours, she crawled to the rear of the car, dragging the rake behind her. The fumes were completely suffocating. She peeled off one of her slippers with its thin rubber sole and crammed it into the tailpipe. She was familiar enough with cars to know that the obstruction alone wouldn’t stop the engine as the movies depicted but would eventually be blown out by mounting pressure. So she stuck the rake’s handle into the tailpipe, forcing the slipper even farther into the exhaust.
Then she maneuvered the wooden shaft, finally wedging the steel raking tines against one of the patterned grooves in the overhead garage door, which was a foot and a half away. One of two things would happen now: Either the pressure would build up and kill the engine or the rake would blow a hole in the door and provide fresh air. One or the other could save her. Of course, it was more likely that the handle of the rake would simply snap. She reached up and held the rake in place before crumpling to the floor to wait.
Something with a sharp edge was underneath her. She realized it was a gardening trowel that had been knocked across the floor when she first fell. Inching closer to the garage door, she shoved it under the rubber cleat that sealed the entire length of the door and, using both hands, turned it up on edge to make a small triangular opening. Placing her mouth as close to it as possible, she breathed in the sweet, cold, late-autumn air.
Just before she passed out, her hand slipped off the rake and she thought she heard the car’s engine sputter and die.
AFTER CLIMBING INTO THE BACKSEAT OF THE SUV, the man in black nodded to the two men in the front that it was done.
The driver, in his early fifties, was tall and slender, his suit expensive and American. His hair was full and carefully cut. His face might have been described as elegant if it weren’t for the splayed, crooked nose, which gave his appearance a vague warning of violence. He looked over at the man sitting next to him to see if he was satisfied.
The passenger reached over and turned off the radio-signal device that had jammed Kate’s remote-control door opener, the limited markings on it written in Cyrillic. He, too, was tall but powerfully built, and his age was difficult to estimate; he could have been in his fifties or in his sixties. His hands were thick and crisscrossed with dozens of thin white scars. His face was drawn and slightly exhausted, his eyes irreparably sad. Although his skin appeared a permanent gray, his lips were thick and an unusual shade of dark red. He looked back at the driver with eyes that never seemed to move from side to side. It was as if they were frozen in their sockets, making whomever he was talking to feel that turning away would be perceived as evasive, even when telling the truth. He searched the driver’s face for any indication that he and his man hadn’t been successful and then leaned his head back on the head-rest and closed his eyes. The SUV pulled away from the curb.
KATE BANNON OPENED HER EYES and wondered if she was dreaming again. Bob Lasker, the director of the FBI, sat next to her hospital bed. Struggling to recall what had happened, she wasn’t sure she really could. “Am I dreaming?” she asked loudly, almost as if trying to determine if she was actually awake. She went to scratch her nose but then realized that an oxygen tube was pinching her nostrils.
“This is real, Kate.” The director smiled warmly. “You gave us a scare, though. But you’re going to be all right.”
“I remember being in the garage and not being able to get out.”
“One of your neighbors was taking his dog for a late-night walk, and I guess in the cool air he smelled the exhaust from the opening you made. He dragged his owner closer, and then the guy broke in, dragged you out, and called 911. Any idea how you left your car on?”
She told him about being bought a drink and not feeling well, then waking up to find her car running and not being able to get out of the garage. “I can’t imagine doing that. And then locking the car door with the keys in the ignition? Who locks a car that’s in a locked garage?”
“And this guy who bought you the drink, you never saw him before.”
“Not that I remember. I would have remembered him from headquarters. He was nice-looking.”
“Maybe he was just someone at the bar and saw a pretty girl.”
“Maybe,” she said vaguely, her mind searching for other possibilities.
Lasker stared at her as though there were some question he wasn’t asking.
“What?” she demanded.
“Kate, don’t take this the wrong way, but have you been feeling okay lately?”
She gave a short laugh. “Wait a minute—are you asking me if I’ve been depressed?”
“Yes.”
She thought for a moment. “You think I tried to kill myself?”
The question was asked with such self-assurance that Lasker couldn’t help but say, “No, I don’t.”
“But others do?”
“A deputy assistant director almost dies, there are questions that have to be considered.”
“Meaning what?”
“OPR is going to look into it. Very routine, very low-key.”
“I didn’t try to commit suicide.”
“You know I can’t call off procedure. I wouldn’t for any other agent, and since everyone knows how much I think of you, I can’t in this instance either.” He smiled. “Please cooperate and try not to shoot any of them. As soon as you feel well enough to get out of here, you’ll be returned to full duty while they conduct their investigation.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“I know it is. If it does get to be too much, come and see me.” Lasker patted her on the arm. “For now, get well. Everything else will take care of itself.”
She was staring down at her hands but finally looked at him. “I guess I should be thanking you instead of arguing.”
“Just get better, Kate.”
Soon after the director left the room, an agent whom Kate recognized as being from the Office of Professional Responsibility came in. “Hi, Kate. I’m Roger Daniels from OPR. How are you feeling?”
“Nonsuicidal.”
He laughed. “I know this is a lot coming at you all at once. I can wait to take your statement.”
Kate sat up and took a sip of water from a cup on the table next to her bed. “Don’t be too offended, but the sooner we get started, the sooner I’ll have OPR out of my life.”
The agent chuckled. “Well, that carbon monoxide didn’t damage your sense of humor.”
“Who said I was trying to be funny? Roger, I’m sure you’re a very capable agent, and maybe even a nice guy, but I did a stint at OPR, so please don’t waste any of the artificial sweeteners on me. Just ask me your questions, and I’ll give you my best answers.”
“Fair enough, Kate.” He opened his notebook. “Did you attempt suicide?” His tone was noticeably less friendly.
“I’m the one who stopped the car engine and wedged a trowel under the door to save myself. Does that sound like I was trying to commit suicide?”
“It’s not uncommon during a suicide attempt for people to have a change of heart. They take pills and then call 911. Move the gun at the last moment and just wound themselves. It happens more frequently than you think.”
“Yeah, well, I happen to like my life quite a bit.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but some people do it for attention.”
“How could I possibly take that the wrong way?” she said, sounding more than a little sarcastic. She took a moment and then said, “If you knew me, you’d know I really don’t care what people think. Why would I want to get their attention?”
“Not people—person,” he said.
“Person? Who?”
The agent flipped back to another page in his notes. “Steve Vail?”
“Where did you get that?”
“Answers, Kate, remember?”
“Okay, what do you know about him? And me?”
“We know that he was fired as an agent more than five years ago. That the director brought him back to work on the Rubaco Pentad case in Los Angeles—with you—and that you guys have dated. Recently it ended abruptly.”
“Sounds like you got a running start on this while I was still unconscious. Okay, I’ll tell you about Vail on one condition—that you don’t contact him.”
“If you’re forthcoming, there’ll be no need to.”
“One of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my life was tell him I didn’t want him in it. If you’ve read the Pentad file, you know he was responsible for solving that case almost single-handedly. He would be an incredible agent, but he cannot conform to anything, and that includes a relationship with me. We’ve seen each other three times since L.A. The first time was—I hate to use the word, but it was—pretty much perfect. The last two were absolutely awful. So I told him it would be best if we didn’t see each other again. And that was a week ago. So no, I wasn’t trying to get his attention.”
“Trying to find out exactly who he was, I ran his name through some of our contacts at other agencies and got a hit with the State Department. Seems you and he are going to the Irish ambassador’s reception on New Year’s Eve.”
“Boy, you have been busy. But you’d better check with them again. It should show that my escort is now Eamon Walsh.”
“So you changed it.”
“What’s today?”
“Wednesday.”
“I spoke with him Monday. He’s with the Irish embassy and was the one who called me originally with the invitation. When I phoned him back to tell him Vail wasn’t coming, he asked if I’d do him the honor. I didn’t want to go alone, so I said yes. Maybe he hasn’t gotten around to changing it officially yet. You can call him.”
Daniels was making notes. “So it’s definitely over between you and Vail. You told him not to come for New Year’s Eve.”
“Not in so many words, but I think ‘We shouldn’t see each other again’ carries that assumption.”
“That’s helpful about Vail. It gives you one less reason to … you know.”
“Off myself.”
“Tell me what you remember about the night that this happened to you,” Daniels said.
She repeated what she’d told the director about the stranger’s buying her a drink that didn’t settle well with her, then her coming home and going to bed. Then waking up and trying to get out of the garage.
He asked, “You said he told you it was Drambuie?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm,” Daniels said more to himself than to her.
“What?”
“I’ve had Drambuie, and it has a definite strong sweetness to it.”
The OPR agent started making additional notes that she guessed were more than just about Kate’s response. As she watched him, she remembered her time in OPR, how investigations were not about the incident but about the employee’s involvement in it. They weren’t criminal investigators, they were personnel investigators. As Daniels looked up from his pad ready to ask the next question, she knew that he was not going to get to the bottom of this. If anyone was going to find out what had happened, it would have to be her. “If that guy did put something in the drink, maybe he had some other intentions, and when he saw I drank only one sip of it, he got scared and took off.”
“Your blood didn’t show any kind of drug in it, but if you didn’t drink much, maybe it dissipated before you got here.”
“Are you going to try to track him down?” she asked, trying to judge just how far he was going to pursue what had happened to her.
“I’ll have to see where everything takes me.”
Right, she said to herself, becoming lost in thought. There was just something about a near-death experience that brought Vail to mind. And she couldn’t decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. She knew that he would never just “see where everything takes me.” A small smile creased her lips.
“What is it, Kate?”
“Oh, no, nothing. Did you need anything else?”
“That’s enough for now.” Daniels stood up. “Take care.”
He closed the door, and after a moment her smile disappeared.
She was sure she was never going to see Vail again.
ONE
KATE BANNON OPENED HER DOOR. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”
With mock surprise on his face, Steve Vail recoiled slightly at the level of protest in her voice. He stepped inside, setting down his suitcase and, for the briefest moment, allowed his eyes to trace the flawless symmetry of her face. “I’ve got the right day, don’t I? This is New Year’s Eve. Is it the wrong year?”
“After that last time, when I told you this wasn’t going to work, I assumed you understood that included tonight.”
He smiled crookedly. “Come on, Kate, it’s the twenty-first century. What woman wants to have to admit that she’s never been stalked? It’s become an accoutrement, like Italian shoes or one of those little purse-size dogs.”
“We tried, Steve. Three times. And the last two, if you remember, were not pretty.”
“That means statistically we’re due.”
Kate shook her head slowly. She really couldn’t believe he was standing there. “You know as well as I do that we’re a disaster. We’re too different. Or too much alike. I don’t know. Every time we try to get close, we wind up driving each other crazy. You don’t know how much I wanted it to work, but it can’t.”
Vail looked at her dress. “I guess you were planning to go to whatever this was tonight without me. Why don’t we go together and see what happens? What’s the worst that can happen? So I ruin your career. That would probably be the best thing that could happen to us.”
“I have to go to this. It’s a command performance. And you know exactly what it is—an ambassador’s reception. Why else would you have a suit on? Even though the proper dress is a tuxedo. Which I’m going to guess was your way of letting all the phonies in the room know that you’re a lowly bricklayer.”
“A man has to seek amusement wherever he can.”
“I’ll never understand you. You could be whatever you want. You have advanced degrees. The director has offered you complete autonomy if you’ll come back to the Bureau, but instead you choose physical labor just so you won’t have to take orders. If that’s who you are, fine, but you don’t get to rub everyone else’s face in it simply because they’re not like you.” She looked at him sternly. “It’s called hypocrisy.” She could see that her words had stung him, but she couldn’t find anything inaccurate in what she’d said.
He reached up and traced the small L-shaped scar high on her cheekbone and then smiled gently. “You don’t have to wonder anymore, Kate, whether we’re too much alike. There was a time, and not very long ago, that you would have thought they were phonies, too,” he said. “But you’re right, I’ve been a phony myself. The only defense I can offer is that you make my compass go haywire. The only reason I’m doing any of this is you.”
He turned and opened the door. “Like you said, we gave it a shot,” he said. “When it was right, it was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. That’s why I had to try one last time.”
“You can’t just walk out like that. Not after everything we’ve been through.”
“This is the best way to leave it. Then we won’t have any lingering doubts.”
“At least let me drive you to the airport. It’s freezing out.”
“I live in Chicago, remember? This isn’t cold.”
“I’ll feel better about this if I can take you. It’ll give us a chance to talk a little more. Right now I feel like we’re supposed to hate each other.”
“It’ll be fine, Kate. I’ll get a taxi.”
“It’s New Year’s Eve—you’ll never find one.”
“You’re probably right.” He picked up his suitcase. “Okay, I’ll take a ride, but only if we don’t talk. I don’t want to say anything that’ll make this worse.”
For the briefest moment, she considered telling him about the night before Thanksgiving and asking him what he thought about the guy in the bar. The day she got home from the hospital, she’d gone into her garage to change the battery in the remote for the overhead door. But it had worked fine. She thought that maybe she’d just pushed the wrong part of it in her semiconscious state. But three days ago she’d realized that it had been over a month and she hadn’t heard anything from OPR. So she’d gone back into the garage and retraced the events from that night as best she could. That’s when she realized that she couldn’t have opened the inside door to her condominium if her keys were locked in the car.
Then she’d bought a bottle of Drambuie and tasted it. It had a honey-sweet taste to it, nothing like what she remembered from the bar.
The next day she’d checked with the Metropolitan Police, and they’d said they hadn’t had any recent drug-facilitated rapes reported. Since she was sneaking around behind OPR’s back, she didn’t want to start asking questions of people who were at the bar and have it get back to Daniels. Vail, who saw these things on a different level, would have been the perfect person to ask. But under the circumstances, giving him a reason to stay would be counterproductive.
“If that’s the way you want to leave this,” she said.
The phone rang. “You’d better get that,” he said. “The Bureau probably thought we actually had a date and needed to ruin it one last time.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“Probably not, but you can’t say it’s inaccurate.”
“This is exactly why it would never work between us. Not everyone who takes orders for a living is a mortal enemy of Steven Vail.”
Vail held up his hands in apology. “I told you I’d say something that would make it worse.”
As she walked to the phone, she decided to lighten the mood and try to initiate some sort of interim peace. “I know it’s been a while since the FBI fired you, but nobody gets called out on Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year’s Eve. It’s in our latest contract.” She picked up the receiver. “Kate Bannon. Oh, hi, Tim. Happy New Year.” She listened and after a few seconds turned her back to Vail.
He sat down on his suitcase and waited for the inevitable change of plans.
She hung up and said, “A seven-year-old boy was abducted in Reston, Virginia, which is two towns over from here.”
When she didn’t offer any other details, he said, “The FBI doesn’t have jurisdiction for twenty-four hours in an abduction. Why did they call you?”
“The Reston chief is a retired agent from the Washington Field Office. We go back a lot of years. He’s a good guy, but something like this, he’s probably in over his head. His entire career was working applicant cases, asking the same handful of questions about character and loyalty. Would you mind if we stopped there on the way? It shouldn’t take long. He just needs some reassurance—you know, what help the Bureau can give him. Maybe a little direction.”
In a cryptic tone, Vail said, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“You wouldn’t miss what?” she asked suspiciously.
“You pretending not to get involved to prove to me, and yourself, that your career isn’t what’s come between us.”
“If you’re trying to ensure that there’ll be no talking on the way, congratulations.” She handed him her keys. “There’s one more call I have to make, would you mind warming up the car?”
Vail gave her an inquiring look and then started laughing. “No wonder you’re able to resist my charms. You have a date.”
“It’s not actually a—”
Vail held up his hands. “Kate, it’s fine. I was hoping you weren’t serious about it being over. That’s why I came. Obviously I was wrong. I’ll go start the car.”
Five minutes later Kate walked into the garage and climbed behind the wheel. As soon as they pulled out, Vail asked, “How long has the boy been gone?”
“So we are going to talk.”
“I’m just trying to establish the parameters of your momentary detour.”
“Why?”
“So I’ll be able to mark the exact second you violated the estimate of your involvement.”
“You really think you’ve got me figured out, don’t you?”
“Not that it matters anymore, but oh yeah,” Vail answered.
She turned to him, wanting to look indignant but knowing she couldn’t pull it off. Then she told him, “Tim said about five hours.”
“You do understand that the chances of him being found alive are not good.”
“Then I guess you do understand that’s why I have to go.”
Vail stared straight ahead for a moment. “I do.”
KATE FLASHED HER CREDENTIALS at the police officer behind the glass, and he opened the door for her and Vail. They were led to a small conference room where more than a dozen police officers and detectives sat crowded around a conference table designed for half that number.
The chief, Tim Mallon, rose anxiously and shook hands with her. She introduced him to Vail. One of the officers got up so Kate could sit down and Vail backed up against the closest wall.
Mallon handed Kate a sheet of paper and a photo. “That’s the boy, Joey Walton, and the BOLO we put out along with the Amber Alert. He and his parents were at a local New Year’s Eve 5K run. It also had a half-mile race for the kids. The parents watched the start, and by the time they got to the finish line, he was gone. No one’s seen him since.”
Kate said, “Okay, Tim, what can the Bureau do for you?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. Obviously, we could use a profiler and anything else along those lines you can think of.”
“As soon as we’re done here, I’ll make some calls. I assume you’re looking into registered sex offenders in the area.”
The chief nodded at a detective sitting halfway around the table, who said, “I’m expecting a list any minute.”
“I guess that’s going to be the best lead for now.”
“What else?” Mallon asked.
“Put out a plea to the media, along with the boy’s photo.”
“That’s been done, Kate. And we have the parents doing interviews, trying to personalize the boy for whoever took him,” Mallon said. “Isn’t there anything else we can do?”
“Sometimes you just have to give the public some time to respond. There’s a chance somebody knows who did this.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t want to sit and wait. There must be something we can do to be more proactive. What would you do if it were a Bureau case?”
She hesitated a moment, glancing back at Vail. “Tim, I’m sorry. I’ve never worked kidnappings, but I can make some calls and see if we can get someone out here from the Washington Field Office.”
Mallon looked confused. “Kate, I spent twenty years at WFO. If I thought someone there had the answer, I wouldn’t have called you.” He looked around the men at the table, hoping someone would offer an idea of what to do next.
Kate said, “I misjudged what you needed, Tim.” Then she got up and, with an apologetic grin to him, handed Vail the photo and the BOLO. “How about it, Steve? Can you give them a hand?”
Somewhat surprised, the chief said, “I’m sorry, Steve, are you with the Bureau?”
“Actually, I’m a bricklayer. From Chicago.” He handed the items back to Kate. “In fact, I’m on my way back there now.”
Mallon shot a confused look at Kate. “Steve’s a former agent who has helped us in the past. Take my word, right now you want him in the room.”
“Sorry, Steve,” Mallon said. “You’re both dressed up. I thought you were just Kate’s date.”
Vail smiled disarmingly. “Funny how easy it is to make that assumption.”
Sensing some rift between the two of them, the chief said, “Steve, if you can help, we’d be grateful. This is a seven-year-old boy’s life we’re talking about.”
Vail pushed himself off the wall with obvious reluctance, his eyes locked onto Kate’s, purposely without emotion. “Sure.” Vail looked around the table. “Any of you ever work a child kidnapping by a stranger before?” One older uniformed officer raised his hand unconvincingly. Vail took a moment to consider something. “Chief, I’d recontact all the media outlets and have them put out a plea for help from anyone at the race. It being a kids’ run, a lot of people are going to be taking pictures with both their cameras and their cell phones. Ask everyone to immediately e-mail all their photos to the station. Every one of them, whether they think they’re connected or not.” Kate watched as Vail became silent, lost in some other thought. “I assume that race officials also took photos. Have them do the same, including those from the adult race. Have you gotten a list of runners from them?”
The chief pointed at one of the detectives, who said, “They’re supposed to be forwarding it.”
“You’ll want that right now. Also from the kids’ race,” Vail said. “That it’s a holiday and twice as hard for the police to get anything done may not be a coincidence. Whoever’s responsible for this may have learned by past mistakes. As in convicted child molester. Which, as Kate suggested, makes the sex-offenders list a top priority.”
“What else?” Mallon asked.
Vail stepped forward to better engage the men around the table. “I know everybody is trying to think positive, but after this amount of time, statistically, there’s only a slightly better-than-even chance that the boy is still alive. Not a pleasant thought, but you’re police officers—you’re paid to approach things from a clinical and, maybe more important, a cynical perspective. There’s also a fifty-percent chance the boy’s been sexually assaulted. And the longer this goes, the worse those odds become. So if cars are stopped or your instinct tells you to search someplace, don’t get it in your mind that you’re going to hear the victim pounding on doors or walls to be freed. Assume you’re looking for a body. And remember, in a situation like this—I’m sorry, Chief—it’s better to do something that’s wrong than it is to do nothing at all. If someone won’t allow you access, politely search anyway. Just remember: Be polite and explain the situation. Whoever took the boy is one of the few people who won’t cooperate in an instance like this.”
Mallon stood up and addressed his officers. “Don’t any of you worry about liability. Like Steve said, explain, be polite, and then do what you have to do. All the heat is on me.” To Kate and Vail, he said, “We’ve already got more than thirty tips. The media has been running the story every half hour. Each time they do, we get more. We’re going to start chasing them down.” He turned back to the officers and detectives around the table. “Any questions?” There were none. “Okay, I’ll be here. If you run into anyone who’s reluctant to help, and there’s time, call me and I’ll make the decision.” The officers got up and started filing out. “Kate, you can use my office to make those calls.”
“Okay.”
“Steve, can I ask you to give us a hand with the tips? Sounds like you know what to look for. Maybe you’ll see something we’re missing.”
“If I can get one of your people to run me to the airport when we’re through. Kate’s already late for something she needs to get to.”
“Sure.” Mallon glanced at her. “Kate, if you need to go, I’ll understand.”
Kate could tell that Vail hadn’t said it maliciously. “It’s nothing that can’t wait, Tim. And if I don’t make it, it’s not a big deal. I’m here because we’re friends. I’ll stay until you don’t need me any longer.”
Vail said, “Chief, if you have a desk somewhere with a computer, I’ll start on those tips. And a map of the area if you have one.”
“Great. And I’ll make sure you get copies of anything new that comes in.”
Kate said, “Tim, could you give us a minute?”
“Sure.” Mallon walked out and shut the door.
She put her hand on his arm. “I appreciate your keeping me from looking like a fool.”
“No use both of us feeling that way.”
She started to say something, and he placed his hand over hers. “It’s okay, Bannon.” He leaned forward and whispered in her ear. “I really do hate New Year’s Eve parties.”
He turned to go, and she said, “And don’t think you can sneak out of here without saying good-bye.”
Vail gave her a silent but formal salute.
While Kate started making phone calls, trying to track down agents from the Behavioral Science Unit and the Washington Field Office, the chief led Vail to a detective’s desk and showed him how to access the department’s different databases. He settled in and started reading the tips.
Unlike the officers and detectives, Vail had the luxury of looking at them from a different perspective. The Reston Police Department had to investigate all the tips offered. Vail didn’t. So he was able to start making judgments about the callers and the individuals they were reporting on.
He checked each suspect’s name in the computer to see if there were any previous contacts with the department. He also checked the callers’ names—if they gave one—to see if they were chronic complaint makers, which could lessen the priority of their information. After reading all the tips, he hadn’t found any he considered worthwhile. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Tips were a double-edged sword. While they frequently solved a case, a false lead that looked promising could be distracting, take the entire department in the wrong direction, and burn precious time. A uniformed officer walked in and asked, “You Vail?”
He stood up and shook hands. “Steve, yes.”
The policeman put three more tips on the pile. “These are from the last half hour. We’re also starting to get photos from the races e-mailed in. Do you want me to forward them to this computer?”
“I’d appreciate it.” Vail picked up the newest tips. “Anything interesting?”
“Nothing we’ll need lights and sirens for.”
Vail continued searching the names through the computer. Still nothing jumped out at him. When he finished, he got up and wandered around until he found someone who directed him to a coffeepot. He filled two cups and went looking for Kate.
The chief’s office was small but well ordered. Bureau memorabilia neatly lined the wall behind the desk. Kate was on the phone, so Vail placed the cup in front of her and sat down.
She rolled her eyes as she listened to the latest excuse as to why nothing could be done tonight, taking a sip of coffee. He watched her and was reminded of one of the things that he liked most about her: She thrived on work. The more difficult the case, the more focused she became. He listened as she urged cooperation. Her tone was compelling, and Vail couldn’t tell whether it was actually cajoling or threatening or both. Finally she hung up midsentence. “Come January second, there’ll be a number of Bureau employees who are going to be at least as unhappy as I am right now.”
“Makes me almost sorry I won’t be here.”
She gave him a small, sad smile through pursed lips and leaned back in her chair. “Anything in the tips?”
“Not so far. The photos are starting to come in, though.”
“Do you actually think we’d get that lucky?”
“I just thought it would be better to have them than not. You never know, something could come up later that a photo might help with,” Vail said. “And the pendulum is due to swing the other way.”
“What pendulum?”
“What most people call luck. To me it’s nothing more than a temporary statistical aberration. So far tonight I’ve had an unbelievable amount of bad luck, so maybe I’m due.”
“Sorry.” She stared at him for a moment before taking another sip of coffee. “Do you know what I find to be the most confounding thing about you, Steve?”
“That doesn’t sound like a question a judicious person would want to hear the answer to.”
“That you’re so good at this and refuse to do it for a living.”
“Don’t start.”
The chief knocked on the door and came in. “Sorry. We may have something. From the sex-offenders list, there’s one, a Frank Dillon, who kidnapped and molested a six-year-old boy twelve years ago. He was paroled in September, and he lives in Vienna, which is fairly close. We got ahold of his parole officer, who said Dillon recently changed his residence and stopped reporting. As far as the PO is concerned, he’s AWOL, and he’ll violate him if we want. We just made a call to his last employment, and he was at work until noon today, when he just up and quit. He did leave a cell-phone number so they could call him when his last check was ready. We’re going to try to put the grab on him. You guys want to come along?”
“Sure,” Kate said. She looked at Vail.
“You won’t need me, Chief. I’m a civilian. If something happened, my being there would just give some defense attorney a little more smoke to blind a jury with. Besides, somebody should stay here and keep checking on the tips in case this guy doesn’t work out.”
Kate turned to the chief. “Tim, I’m coming with you. I’ll be there in a minute.” Once Mallon left, she said, “I seem to remember something about you always keeping the best lead for yourself. That’s not what this is, is it?”
“Like the chief said before, we’re talking about a child’s life.”
“Sorry.” She took out her car keys. “When’s the last time you ate?”
“Ah … breakfast.”
“Please go get something. Those tips won’t miss you for fifteen minutes. And I really do appreciate this, Steve,” she said. “Hopefully, this won’t take long. Hopefully, this is our guy.”
When Vail got back to the detective’s desk, there were four new tip sheets. He checked the e-mails and was surprised to see that the department had already received eleven messages with photos attached. The lists of runners for both races had also been forwarded. He opened the first set of pictures; they were all of the adult race. He scanned the faces, looking for the Walton boy. There was a subtle difference in quality between the phone pictures and those taken with cameras. As long as they didn’t have to be blown up to provide detail, it really didn’t matter.
Because of the cold weather, most of the runners were bundled up, especially the children. The kids’ race seemed more crowded, with all those parents waiting at the finish line. Vail went through them three times, trying to spot Joey Walton. According to the runners’ list, the sandy-haired seven-year-old was number 034. There were a couple of possibilities that looked like him physically, but the numbers pinned to their chests indicated otherwise.
An angry knot of frustration turned in Vail’s stomach, and he started to regret not going with Kate. The fugitive pedophile sounded like a decent lead. If it wasn’t him, Frank Dillon had certainly picked an odd time to stop reporting to his parole officer and disappear. By staying behind, Vail knew he was trying to make something happen, create some insightful discovery. Apparently he did miss the chase, but at the moment it seemed little more than useless self-indulgence. Or maybe he just wanted to impress Kate.
He started to get up to refill his coffee when the e-mail tone sounded again. There were three new messages, which had eight additional photographs attached. He took his time and looked through them twice. Then, realizing that he had no idea what he was looking for, he got to his feet and waved at the monitor in disgust. He was trying to look at the case from too many angles, a sure way to not find anything.
Outside the department’s front door, he stood without a coat, trying to use the cold to redirect his thoughts. He stayed there until he could feel the bite of the wind, letting the discomfort distract him from his failing approach to the investigation.
Then one of the latest photos flashed through his mind. But the image did not last long enough for him to figure out why it had risen out of his subconscious. He hurried back to the desk and pulled the picture up on the screen. After studying every little detail, he still couldn’t see anything. He closed his eyes and then slammed his fist on the desk.
The image was that of a boy, about eleven years old, breaking the tape at the children’s race. There were a number of adults standing on the sidelines looking back up the course, trying to find their children in the onrushing pack. It was crowded, and people were walking in all directions. Vail could see how easy it would be to lure a seven-year-old away without anyone’s noticing. By the race numbers pinned to their chests, Vail could see that some of the adults had competed in the 5K run, while the rest were apparently just observers. Then he saw what he had missed.
One of the adult runners seemed to be looking at the camera as if he were measuring its danger. His arm was in front of his number so it couldn’t be read. Vail couldn’t tell if he was blocking it intentionally. But what he’d initially missed was that there was a smaller square of paper attached to the lower left corner of the man’s race number. It had been safety-pinned on so it could be collected at the end of the 3.1-mile race to document finish place and time. Unfortunately, because of the angle, Vail couldn’t make it out either. The man was dark-complected and burly, not a runner’s build. Most people who would run in the cold air of New Year’s Eve were probably not novices. That the number tag was still there suggested he had not run the adult race. His registering could have been a ruse calculated to get him close to the children without seeming suspicious.
The e-mail tone sounded again, and Vail glanced at the monitor. It was from the race officials. Attached were all of their photos. Still lost in thought, Vail ignored it, trying to find a way to determine if the individual in the photo was involved in the boy’s disappearance. Then it hit him. The photo was taken the moment the race’s winner was crossing the finish line. Logically, the official pictures would cover that moment and then beyond.
Quickly, he opened the e-mail and began studying the images. The first twenty or so were of the adult race. He looked for that same individual, thinking the man might have initially been in that area. Vail couldn’t find him. Then the chronologically sequenced photos started documenting the beginning of the children’s run. Vail carefully searched each of them. He knew what the man was wearing and was hoping for a clear shot of his number, which he could match to the runners’ list. There was another one of the young man winning, but Vail’s suspect was not in it.
A half-dozen photographs later, there was one of a man in the distance who appeared to be the right size and with the same clothing as in the earlier photo. He had his back to the camera and stood next to a van. Vail couldn’t tell whether he was stopped there or walking by. The van’s plate was visible, but it was too distant to make out.
Vail found the computer’s Photoshop program and opened it, pulling up the picture. Because the image had been taken with a quality camera, the pixel density was high and allowed him to blow up the license plate to where it could be read. He made a note of it and then centered the photo on the individual. In the space between the man’s legs, unseen before, was what looked like the leg of a child wearing red pants. Vail called the dispatcher and had her run the van’s plate.
While he waited, he shuffled through the growing stack of pages on the desk until he found the BOLO that had been sent out originally. Joey Walton was last seen wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and red sweatpants. The dispatcher came back on the line and advised that the plate came back to a George Hillstrand with a Herndon, Virginia, address.
Vail found Hillstrand’s name on the adult race roster and then checked him in the Reston PD computer. Four years earlier, he had evidently worked in Reston, because the department had gotten a call about him from the Maryland State Police, who were conducting an investigation of a child who had disappeared in Colesville, Maryland. They had called to see if Reston had had any previous contact with Hillstrand. They hadn’t.
The seven-year-old, Edward Stanton, had disappeared during a party at one of those pizza-and-game places that specialized in letting the kids run all over while the parents drank pitcher beer and doled out tokens to keep them busy. Hillstrand’s name had somehow come up in their investigation, but no specifics were listed.
Vail called the dispatcher again and had her run Edward Stanton’s name to see if the boy, or his body, had ever been found. After a short wait, she told him that the missing-person notice in NCIC was still active. Vail asked for the boy’s description. It was not unusual for serial offenders to seek victims who were physically similar. The two boys’ ages when kidnapped were close. She said, “At the time of incident, he was seven years old, four feet one inch tall, and weighed sixty pounds. Medium-brown hair, blue eyes. Under distinguishing marks, he has a crescent-shaped scar on the crown of his head.” A lot of things were matching up, but Vail had seen it before. “Proof positive” that turned out to be a series of impossible coincidences but were in fact just that.
With time so critical, the lead had to be checked out now. He found the dispatcher’s office and went in. “Hi, I’m Steve Vail. How’re they doing?”
Before she could answer, a request to run a plate came over the air. She turned to the computer to type it in and said, “They’re sitting on three places right now, waiting for this guy to come back. Did you want me to tell them something?”
“No, they’ve got their hands full. I’ll catch up with them later.” Vail also knew that if he waited for them, investigative protocol would have to be followed. First, the Maryland State Police would have to be contacted to see if Hillstrand was actually a suspect in the case or, instead, if his name had come up as the result of some other “shotgun” approach, which was not unusual in that kind of case. Hundreds, even thousands of names could be generated and never be fully investigated because of sheer volume. The fact that the state police had never followed up with a more detailed query indicated that Hillstrand was probably not a strong suspect at the time. And in all likelihood, due to the holiday, specific details from the MSP probably wouldn’t be available until sometime tomorrow at the earliest. Then, if Hillstrand had been a suspect in the Maryland abduction and somehow could be shown to be involved in the Walton boy’s disappearance, a prosecutor would have to be contacted for a search warrant while the police went out to surveil Hillstrand’s residence. And finally, finding an accommodating judge on New Year’s Day might prove to be a small miracle in itself. By then, in all probability, it would be too late.
Or Vail could just go there now and have a look for himself.
He opened the drawers to the desk he’d been working at to see if the detective kept a backup weapon. The only thing he found was an extra badge with a clip-on backing. He snapped it onto his belt and left Kate a note, telling her he’d gone to check out Hillstrand, along with the address and how Hillstrand’s name had surfaced. Although the information should prevent her from accusing him of hiding leads, he knew how she would interpret it. He added a P.S.: “This is a long shot, so I didn’t want to bother you with it.” He reread it and shook his head. The only way that he wasn’t going to be accused of deception was if Hillstrand was one of those false leads in which only Vail’s time had been wasted.
In the parking lot, Vail opened the trunk, hoping that Kate’s Bureau car might have been equipped with a shotgun. It wasn’t. He got in, started the engine, and pulled out into the light traffic.
There was an advantage to not involving Kate or any of the Reston PD. As long as he acted on his own, as a non-law-enforcement citizen, he had greater latitude for gathering evidence without a search warrant than sworn officers did, especially if the police didn’t know what he was doing. If they did, then he could be legally considered an agent of the department. In fact, under these circumstances his room to maneuver was almost limitless. While the exigent circumstances of a young boy’s life could mitigate violations of the Fourth Amendment, Vail was still worried that a pedophile might escape justice because the drafters of the Constitution hadn’t foreseen the downward-spiraling depravity at the fringes of the American male population. At least that would have been his explanation if it weren’t for Kate. She’d heard all his rhetoric for working alone before. In fact, it had created an almost irreparable rift between them the only other time they’d worked together. But at the moment it looked like she was, at best, his ride to the airport, so why not?
Glancing at the map again, he turned down a street and watched as the houses became more and more isolated. It then became an unpaved road that disappeared into the woods.
Vail came to a stop and lifted his foot from the brake, allowing the vehicle to advance at idle speed. It was another fifty yards before he saw any lights. He stopped again and switched off the engine. The car was still hidden by the thick evergreen woods. He got out and walked quietly toward the house. It was a single-level dwelling and bigger than Vail thought would be built in such a remote location.
He walked around the tree line at the edge of the clearing, trying to determine the exact size and layout of the structure. There were no outbuildings on the property, so if Hillstrand did have the boy, he had to be inside the house. As quietly as possible, Vail hurried back to the car, started it, and drove up to the house. The older paneled van from the photo was parked in front. Enough lights were on inside to indicate that someone was home.
Vail got out, walked directly to the front door, and knocked. The exterior of the house needed paint, but the property immediately around it seemed fairly well maintained. A bright light overhead came on, and the man in the race photo opened the door. His eyes were dark like his hair—possibly Mediterranean, Vail thought. His stare never left Vail’s as the two men sized each other up. Finally Hillstrand said, “Can I help you?”
Vail pulled the detective badge from his belt and held it up. “I’m with the Reston Police. Detective Vail. We’re investigating a missing child. Do you have a minute?”
“Sure,” he answered, and stepped back, inviting Vail in. Once he was inside, Hillstrand shut the door. “That’s an awfully nice suit for a detective.” His voice had a trace of suspicion in it. “Do you mind if I ask to see your photo ID?”
Vail patted his chest pockets as if looking for his identification. He then reached under his coat and searched his pants pockets. “Sorry, I don’t have it with me. I’m afraid you caught me, Mr. Hillstrand. I was on my way to a party when I got the call. Didn’t even get to go into the station. They just gave me some people to go and interview. The people who were at the race tonight where the boy disappeared. I don’t know if you heard about it. We’re hoping someone saw something.”
“You must have been caught short. I can see you’re not carrying a gun either.”
“That’s why they gave me just the people who were in the race, I guess. The friendlies. Any chance you saw anything?” Vail could hear the television on in another room. “I’m assuming you’ve seen it on TV.”
Hillstrand didn’t answer right away but instead stared at Vail as though contemplating something he’d said. “Yes, it’s hard not to have. If I had any photographs, I would have sent them. And I’m sorry, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Not that I can remember.”
“How’d you do on the run? Three miles is a fair distance.”
Hillstrand smiled uneasily. “I finished. I’m not an avid runner, so my goals are modest.”
“I don’t know how modest three miles is. I don’t think I could make it. Did you get over to see the children’s run?”
Hillstrand hesitated, and Vail suspected that he remembered looking into the camera that had taken his photo. “It was on the way to where my van was parked, so I stopped and watched the winner finish.”
The voice of a young boy came from another room. “Dad, who is it?”
“That your son?” Vail asked.
“Yes, it is.” Hillstrand led the way into the living room. A boy whose age Vail guessed at ten or eleven sat on the couch watching TV. He had medium-brown hair and was at least a foot taller than Joey Walton was reported to be.
“David, this is Detective Vail from the Reston Police Department. He’s investigating that missing boy from the race they keep talking about.”
The boy stood up and offered his hand. “How do you do, sir.”
Vail took it and looked into his pale blue eyes. “Your parents letting you stay up to bring in the New Year?”
“My dad is. My mom passed away when I was born, during child-birth.” Vail noted that he pronounced the words mechanically, without any sadness, his language a little too mature to be his own. The boy pointed to a nearby shelf. “That’s a picture of her with my dad.” Again the words seemed practiced.
Vail looked at the obviously pregnant woman in the photo standing next to George Hillstrand. Her coloring was even darker than her husband’s was, her eyes almost pitch-black. “I’m sorry, David. That’s really tough. I lost my mom early in my life, too. I know how hard that can be.” Vail reached up and tousled the boy’s hair.
He pulled his hand back carefully so as to not reveal what he had discovered. It is genetically improbable that couples with brown eyes will have a child with blue eyes, and David’s hair and skin were nowhere close to the darkness of his “parents’.” When Vail ruffled the boy’s hair, he felt the crescent-shaped scar on the crown of his head. Unbelievably, David had to be Edward Stanton, the child abducted four years earlier in Maryland. Which meant that, in all likelihood, Joey Walton was somewhere in the house. Talk about the luck pendulum swinging in the other direction.
The boy started to sit down in front of the TV again when Hillstrand said, “That’s enough for tonight, son. It’s time for bed.” Without any argument, the boy got up and said, “Good night, sir.”
“Good night, David,” Vail answered.
“Let me get him tucked in, Detective. I’ll be right back. Please make yourself comfortable.”
Vail went over to the photograph of Hillstrand and his wife and carefully examined it, trying to determine how old it was. By the clothing and the faded color of the picture, he guessed it was at least ten years old.
Suddenly Vail felt Hillstrand’s presence behind him. He turned around and found Hillstrand holding a .45 automatic on him. “Four years and you’re the first one to notice that his coloring didn’t fit. I guess I should put away that picture of my wife. I keep it there for my son. It took a while, but now he remembers her as his mother.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t notice me noticing.”
“It’s something I’ve always been afraid of. When you ran your hand through his hair, I knew.”
“And Joey?”
“He’s fine. Downstairs in a locked room. He’ll be restricted until he learns he’s better off here.”
“Than with his parents?”
“Since I’m the one with the gun, you don’t get to be judgmental,” Hillstrand said. “Besides, if they were good parents, they wouldn’t have left him alone in a crowd like that.”
“You mean with the pedophiles and all.”
Hillstrand raised the gun and pointed it at Vail’s face. “I am not a pedophile.”
Vail took a closer look at the gun and said, “That thing looks pretty old. Sure it still works?”
“It was my grandfather’s and it works just fine.”
“That particular model is military. It has a number of safeties. Are you sure it’s set to fire?”
Hillstrand smiled. “I’ve shot it enough times since my father left it to me to be positive.”
Vail was trying to determine how familiar Hillstrand was with the weapon. Because it had been designed for the military, it had four separate safeties. Not many people knew about the disconnector safety. If the end of the barrel could be pushed back a fraction of an inch toward the person holding the weapon, the hammer wouldn’t release. Since Hillstrand didn’t seem to know all that much about the mechanics of the gun, Vail thought if he could get into position and push it toward him—with the body’s natural tendency to push back—it would keep the safety engaged for the split second it would take to disarm him.
But right now Hillstrand was standing just far enough away to prevent that. “Can you at least let me see the boy, then?” Vail asked.
“Sure. With the carpeting and all up here, it’ll be less messy downstairs.”
“Call me cynical, but that doesn’t sound like a very happy New Year to me.”
Hillstrand’s only response was to wave the gun toward the basement door. Once they were downstairs, he pointed to a heavy steel door with a thick lock and hasp. “He’s in there.” Carefully he tossed Vail the keys. Vail opened the lock and turned back to Hillstrand, holding the keys in his outstretched right hand. Hillstrand took a cautious step closer. Vail knew that this was it.
As Hillstrand reached for the key ring, Vail half turned back to the door and, appearing distracted, drew the key ring back about six inches. Hillstrand leaned slightly forward to get it. Vail spun quickly and stepped into him, placing his hand over the muzzle of the gun and pushing it into Hillstrand.
For a split second, Hillstrand pushed back against Vail’s hand, pulling at the frozen trigger frantically. But as Vail turned to get a better grip on the weapon, Hillstrand drew it back and pulled the trigger. The .45’s explosion echoed slowly through the basement.
KATE AND THE RESTON CHIEF, Tim Mallon, sat behind his desk watching the interrogation of their sex-offender suspect, Frank Dillon, on a closed-circuit monitor. “What do you think, Kate, is it him?”
She watched the suspect’s body language closely. “It’s hard to tell with these sociopaths. And I’m certainly no expert. I promise you that someone from Behavioral Sciences will be up here tomorrow. This detective seems to know what he’s doing, though. As soon as Vail gets back, he may be able to figure it out.”
“Where is he? The desk officer said he went out.”
“I think he went to get something to eat.”
There was a knock at the door. A uniformed officer stepped in. “Chief, the parents are here.”
“Bring them back.” Mallon turned off the monitor.
“You want me to leave, Tim?” Kate asked.
“God, no. That the FBI is involved is the most reassuring thing I can tell them right now.”
The door opened again, and Mr. and Mrs. Walton walked in. Mallon introduced them both to Kate, and everyone sat down. Confusion and grief distorted Mrs. Walton’s face. Her makeup and hair were disheveled. Her husband, whose eyes were slightly red, tried to strike a calmer pose, more to keep his wife’s teetering hysteria in check than as a reflection of his own feelings. “Any news?” he asked.
“I’m sorry, not yet. But we’ve got the entire force following up on leads. We have brought someone in, and he’s being interrogated right now.”
“Is he the one? Is there something you’re not telling us?” Mrs. Walton asked anxiously.
“No, no, nothing like that.”
“Well, who is he?” the husband asked. “Why him?”
Mallon knew that there would be no comfort in the answer. Kate said, “He’s a convicted sex offender. This is routine. There’s nothing to indicate that he has anything to do with Joey being missing.”
“Oh, no,” Mrs. Walton said, and collapsed onto her husband’s shoulder.
There was another knock at the door, and the desk officer leaned his head in again. “Chief, there’s someone here that you’re going to want to—”
“We’re busy right now, Nelson,” Mallon all but snarled.
The officer got a strange look on his face and opened the door fully, smiling as he stepped aside.
Mrs. Walton looked up and bolted to her feet, her mouth gaping in a soundless scream.
In the doorway stood Steve Vail. In one arm he held Joey Walton wrapped in his topcoat. His other hand was gently cradled around the back of Edward Stanton’s neck.
Joey’s mother rushed to him, pulling him into her arms. His father hugged them both, no longer hiding his tears. The chief sat dumb-founded, and Kate just looked at Vail, shaking her head.
Mrs. Walton asked Vail, “Was Joey … Is he all right?”
Vail nodded at her knowingly. “He’s fine.”
She tightened her arms around the child.
Vail turned the Stanton boy toward them so he could get the full impact of the reunion. Then he squatted down and looked into his eyes. “Now do you see why it’s important to go back to your real parents? This mom and dad have only been separated from their son for a couple of hours, and look how they feel. Your parents have been without you for four years.” The boy nodded dutifully, but Vail could see it still wasn’t registering fully.
Kate came over to them and smiled. “And who is this good-looking young man?”
“This is Edward Stanton,” Vail said. “He was taken in Maryland four years ago.”
Kate’s head snapped toward Vail. It took her a few seconds to comprehend that this boy was another kidnapping victim. “The same guy had him? How’d you find him?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
Kate sensed that her questions were interfering with Vail’s attempt to have the Stanton boy realize that he belonged with his real parents, but, like Mrs. Walton, she couldn’t help but ask about his well-being. “And he didn’t …” She bobbed her head back and forth euphemistically so the boy wouldn’t know what she was talking about.
Vail pulled Kate back away from the eleven-year-old. “Apparently not. This guy who abducted them, George Hillstrand, his wife and son died in childbirth just before he took Edward, here. He just wanted some part of his family back. As far as I can tell, Edward’s been raised well. He’s having a little trouble comprehending it all, figuring out where his loyalties lie, but otherwise he seems okay.”
Kate watched the boy carefully. She knew that it was not unusual for long-held kidnapping victims to identify with their abductor rather than their family.
For the first time, Kate noticed that Vail’s hand was wrapped in a white handkerchief and was damp with blood. “Are you all right?”
“That depends. Do you believe in sympathy dates?”
“Obviously you’re fine.” She looked closely at him and then back at his hand, as if putting off some argument until they could be alone.
The chief came over and asked Vail how he’d found the boys. Vail explained about the race photos and how Hillstrand’s name had come up in the Maryland investigation. “Where is Hillstrand?” Mallon asked.
Vail took Kate’s car keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Mallon. “I didn’t have any cuffs, so I duct-taped him and put him in the trunk.”
“What happened to your hand?”
“In all the excitement, I must have cut it.”
The phone rang, and Mallon picked it up, listening for a moment. “Okay, give us a few minutes.” He hung up. “The media is on the way. Straighten your tie, Steve, you’re about to be a hero.” The chief nodded at the Stanton boy. “And wait till they hear about this young man also being safe and sound after all this time.”
Kate looked at Vail and knew what he was thinking. “Tim, we appreciate it, but this is your time. Just mention that the FBI assisted in the investigation.”
“Are you kidding me? I can’t take credit for this.”
Kate cleared her throat, signaling Vail that she was about to tell a lie. She nodded for Mallon to follow her and Vail out of the room. In the hallway she said, “Tim, I’m sorry, but I wasn’t being straight with you when I said Steve wasn’t with the Bureau. This is classified. You’ll have to tell your people and the Waltons not to say anything about his involvement. He’s been working a major municipal corruption case undercover in Chicago as a bricklayer. His name or face in the news will blow two years of hard work. Just tell the media what I told you: An undercover agent found them and is involved in an ongoing investigation. Except lie about Chicago. Since Edward was taken in Maryland, tell them it was Baltimore. That’ll keep them running around in circles until this calms down. And don’t be too modest—you are the one who called us.”
“Kate, I may have worked applicants my whole career, but I was in the same FBI as you. Plus, I know what a terrible liar you are. I don’t understand why Steve wants to duck this, but I’m too indebted to you both to question it. I’ll just assume it’s necessary.” He gingerly shook Vail’s hand, just interlocking fingertips to avoid the wound. “Whether you’re an agent or not, Steve, I am most grateful.” Mallon hugged Kate. Then he walked back into his office and said to the Stanton boy, “Edward, what do you say we go call your parents?”
“Yes, sir,” the boy answered, his voice starting to gain some enthusiasm.
Kate unwrapped Vail’s hand, revealing the grazing wound. Fortunately, the round had hit only the fleshy edge. “You’re going to need some stitches.”
Vail tightened the handkerchief back around his hand. “I’ve been here less than four hours and you’ve already gotten me shot.”
“Me? You’re the one going off on your own. Again. How is this my fault?”
“I don’t know. Every time I get near you, something like this happens. It’s like you’re crime’s version of Typhoid Mary.”
On their way out, Vail remembered something and detoured back through the detective bureau. He picked up the note he’d left on the desk and handed it to her. “Before we have an argument, I just wanted you to know that I wasn’t cutting you out. When I left here, I was cursing myself for not going with you, because your lead looked so much better.”
Kate glanced at the note. “You’re getting a lot better at covering your tracks.”
“From your tone, apparently not good enough. Just remember who unleashed the hounds. I am a simple mason who was looking forward to free liquor and unsuspecting maidens.” Vail checked the clock on the wall. “Happy New Year, Deputy Assistant Director Bannon.” He kissed her lightly on the cheek, trying to determine if they were back on a date. Her response was disappointingly neutral. “Pace yourself, woman, we’ve got the whole night in front of us.”
This was how it was with Vail, she thought. If there was a mystery in front of them, he was amazing, but once it was over, difficulties between them were inevitable. “Just because you rescued a couple of kids and got a little shot up, don’t think that I’m waving you in for a landing, Vail.”
When she called him “Vail,” it was a good sign. She used it only when she wasn’t mad. As they walked out into the parking lot, she took his arm, her touch sending electricity through him.
By the time they left the emergency room less than an hour later, dawn was coming up. Vail had taken four stitches in his hand, and the doctor had told him there shouldn’t be any permanent problems.
“Well, what’s your poison?” Kate asked. “I guess I owe you some sack time—on the couch. I can get you to the airport later.”
“Why don’t you just drop me there now.”
“If you’ll let me buy you breakfast first.”
Then Kate noticed a familiar black Lincoln Town Car idling in the parking lot, its white-gray exhaust disappearing into the icy air. It belonged to the director of the FBI. As they approached the vehicle, the driver got out.
Kate said, “Hello, Mike. What’s up?”
“The director sent me to get you.”
Kate looked at Vail with a mixture of apology and apprehension.
One corner of his mouth lifted sardonically. “Ever notice how seldom the really good dates start out in the emergency room?”
The driver turned to Vail. “He sent me to get both of you.”
TWO
THE BLACK TOWN CAR PULLED UP TO THE CURB IN THE 1100 BLOCK OF SIXTEENTH Street in northwest D.C. They parked in front of an old mansion that had a tall wrought-iron fence surrounding it. “Where are we, Mike?” Kate asked the driver.
Vail pointed across the street to a large tan and gray four-story residence. “That’s the old Russian embassy over there.”
“They’re waiting inside for you,” the driver said, ignoring Kate’s question and Vail’s observation.
As they got out, Vail pointed at the building they were about to enter and said, “This is the old observation post where the Bureau used to monitor who came and went across the street, but then the Russians built that big compound up on Tunlaw Road, so this place was no longer necessary. Apparently they’ve found some new use for it.”
When Kate and Vail walked up to the entrance of the huge old dwelling, an agent who was not wearing his suit coat opened one of its heavy, ten-foot-tall oak doors. Along with his sidearm, two magazine pouches were clipped to his belt. He studied both of their faces briefly and then, in a voice that was neither welcoming nor overly official, said, “The director is waiting for you upstairs.”
THEY FOLLOWED A CURVED STAIRCASE to the second floor, and Vail took a moment to appreciate the craftsmanship of the elegant structure, which he estimated to be at least seventy-five years old. The staircase was constructed of Spanish black marble that was almost without any impurities to distort its ebony gloss. A large but delicate glass chandelier hung down through the helix of stairs. “Okay, I’ll ask first,” he said to Kate. “What’s going on?”
“Not a clue,” she said. “But considering that today’s a holiday, the smart money is that it’s not going to be good news.”
“Next time I’m planning the date. Someplace without telephones or emergency rooms. Or FBI directors.”
“Do you think if you use the word ‘date’ enough times, we’ll actually be on one?”
“I’m hoping you’ll admire me for my perseverance.”
“Isn’t that the stalker’s official mantra?”
On the second floor, they could hear low voices coming from a room that faced the street. They walked in, and Vail could see that it had once been an oversize bedroom but was now filled with equipment that looked dated. Metal tables, recording equipment, a small telescope on a long table at the window—which was covered with what he recognized as a one-way shade. A second telescope stood on a smaller table at an adjoining window, also shaded.
Aside from the director, there were five other men in the room sitting on a couch and chairs. As they entered, Vail was surprised that most of their curiosity seemed to be directed toward him. A room full of men invariably turned their attention to Kate when she entered, even if they already knew her.
Bob Lasker got to his feet and shook hands with Vail. “Steve, how’s the hand?”
“It’s fine.”
The director nodded to one of the men, who got up and closed the door. “Good morning, Kate,” Lasker said.
She looked at the faces of the other men. “Is it a good morning, sir?”
“We’re about to find out. Please, both of you, have a seat. Kate, I think you know everybody here.” The director then introduced the others to Vail. “Bill Langston is the assistant director in charge of the Counterintelligence Division. His deputy, John Kalix. Tony Battly, Jake Canton, and Mark Brogdon are unit and section chiefs within the division.”
The director watched as Vail gave them each a snapshot evaluation. It was something Lasker wanted him to do, something that would help convince Vail to grant the request Lasker was about to make, that these men, while adequate administrators, were unqualified to do fieldwork.
The three unit and section chiefs were startlingly nondescript, reminding Vail that at FBI headquarters individuality was rewarded only with suspicion. Each of the men was overweight, as if even that shortcoming also met some sort of Bureau standard. Their suits varied little in color or quality and had become too small due to burgeoning waistlines. The sleeves on Battly’s jacket were too long, covering half of his thumbs. Judging by the wear on the elbows, it had fit him that way since its purchase years before, and he’d never felt the need to have the minor tailoring done, probably because he took it off at his desk.
Brogdon’s suit was equally fatigued, the pant cuffs frayed, the lapels wilted and beginning to curl up. Canton’s shirt collar was too tight and had been left unbuttoned. Dusty spots dotted his tie where he had apparently scraped away food particles. The apprehensive expressions on all three faces, aside from their momentary curiosity about Vail, were those of men who were much closer to retirement than to taking on anything remotely associated with the unpredictable rigors of the street.
John Kalix, although not overweight, had a round, doughy face that was aged prematurely by a receding hairline that he made more prominent by combing over what was left of his mousy brown hair. Sitting to his boss’s right, he somehow managed to mimic the assistant director’s slightest movements. He wore the ageless uniform of an FBI manager: gray slacks, navy blazer, white shirt, and a striped tie that had been knotted too many times between cleanings.
On the other hand, Bill Langston, the assistant director in charge, looked like the second most important man in the room. In his mid-fifties, he was trim, even thin. He had a full head of brown hair that was going gray at the temples. His suit was moderately expensive, and he sat with his legs carefully crossed so as to not wrinkle the sharp creases along the front of his trousers. His posture was unusually erect, as though he were waiting for an “unexpected” photo. The expression on his face, somehow inappropriate for the moment, was one of patrician stoicism. Vail guessed that it was an effort on his part not to be easily read.
“Steve, I never did get a chance, face-to-face, to thank you for what you did during the Pentad investigation in L.A.,” the director said. “I’ve told everyone here about your involvement in the case.”
Waving his hand in the direction of Kate, Vail said, “As a result you offered this one a promotion—some thank-you.”
Lasker smiled. “Speaking of which, nice work last night on those abductions, Kate. We’re getting a ton of good press for a change.”
“Since your driver knew to pick us up at the emergency room, I assume you talked to the chief in Reston. To be honest, sir, the only thing I had to do with finding those boys was driving Steve there.”
“Looks like you were going somewhere nice before you got sidetracked.”
Vail spoke first so that Kate wouldn’t have to be embarrassed by trying to explain the circumstances of their failed date. “The Irish ambassador’s reception. Just as well. I don’t speak the language.”
The director laughed. “You and Washington’s elite in the same room, Steve? That would have been worth the price of admission.”
“You might have been disappointed. I was under strict orders to keep my shirt on and not arm-wrestle anyone for beer.” Vail cocked his head to one side to let the director know that he was becoming suspicious of the small talk. “But then I doubt we’re here to catch up on my lack of social breeding.”
“Sorry,” Lasker said. The single word seemed genuine. “We’ve got a major problem. There’s no way to make this sound like it’s not hyper-bole, but it is legitimately a matter of national security. The people in this room are the only ones who know what I’m going to tell you.”
“Classified, I got it.”
“I’ve been through your old personnel file again, so I know you’ve been trained in counterintelligence.” Because of a master’s degree in Soviet history, Vail had originally been hired to work the Russians. Out of training school, he’d been sent to Detroit to work general criminal cases in order to develop broader investigative skills, but he was frequently sent back to Quantico for in-service training. That’s how he knew about the old embassy across the street and the building they were now in. “Other than the technology, not much has changed. It’s still pretty much cloak-and-dagger. Actually, more cloaks than daggers. Have you followed any of the recent cases?”
“I’ve always been interested in anything American-Russian, so I read a lot of what’s published.”
“Good, then we won’t have to waste time explaining every nuance of how all this works. Bill, can you fill him in?”
The assistant director stood up, went over to a laptop computer, and tapped a key. The wall above the fireplace, which was being used as a makeshift screen, lit up. A photograph of grainy surveillance quality appeared, showing a man with the flat, pale features of an Eastern European, his sideburns and mustache a little too bushy to be stylish in the United States. “A month ago this individual contacted our Washington Field Office and requested a meeting. He was guarded in the information he supplied but said that he was an intelligence officer with the Russian embassy here in Washington. He would not identify himself by name but instead used the code name Calculus. At this meeting, to qualify himself as legitimate, he turned over five classified documents. When we asked him what he wanted from us, he said he had a list of Americans, some employed by the government and some by corporations with defense contracts, who were supplying information to the SVR, which if you’ve been keeping up, know is the new KGB. He wouldn’t say how many were on the list or where they worked. However, one of the individuals, he was certain, worked in the U.S. intelligence community. He didn’t know which agency.”
“The documents he turned over—how critical was the information?” Vail asked.
“Nothing earth-shattering, but enough to convince us that he could have access to what he claimed. Why do you ask that?”
“Just curious.”
Kate watched Vail carefully. She detected a note of discovery in his voice.
“I assume he wants money,” Vail said.
“Why else would someone betray Mother Russia and risk the executioner?” Langston said. “The way he set it up was quite clever. He would give us, in his words, the ‘smallest fish first, the largest, last,’ which we assume is the intelligence agent. Once we identified the first one, we were to wire-transfer a quarter of a million dollars to a Chicago bank, for which he provided an account number. He said it’s a large bank and that the account, which was opened by one of his relatives who works there, is in a dummy name. He warned that if the Bureau tried to find out who it was or trace the funds, the relative would be alerted and all contact with us would be severed, because if he couldn’t trust us, he was as good as dead. Once the relative notified him that the money had been deposited, we would get the next name. He wanted a quarter of a million for each of them and a half million for the last one, because according to him it’s a highly placed intelligence agent.”
“Did he say how quickly after payment you would get the next name?”
“In fact, he made that quite clear. We would get it, in his words, ‘immediately if not sooner,’ because he felt the longer this dragged out, the better the chances of his being exposed. He said the SVR had been given strict orders by Moscow that it must never become public knowledge that the Russians were spying on the United States again. Although their agents are extremely cautious to start with, apparently that directive has made them completely paranoid. Even the faintest hint of disloyalty launches an all-out probe.”
Vail said, “So he gives you a name, you arrest that person, and then wire a quarter of a million dollars to the Chicago account. Once it’s deposited, you get the next name, and so on until the intelligence agent is caught, and then you send a half million.”
“Right.”
“Does that mean he’s given you the first name?”
“More or less,” the assistant director said.
“As far as spycraft goes,” Vail said to the director, “this sounds pretty paint-by-the-numbers. Why am I here?”
“A couple of reasons,” Langston said. “Two days ago we got a short, cryptic text message from him. He has been recalled to Moscow unexpectedly.”
“Uh-oh,” Vail said.
“What?” Kate asked.
“When someone is suspected of spying, the Russians find some routine excuse to get them back to Moscow. Once there, they’re interrogated, for months if necessary. Should they confess or if the SVR develops any proof, the suspected individual is usually executed for treason. And since it’s not something the Russians are likely to make public, you’d never know,” Vail said.
Langston continued, “Since the first letter, we’ve been trying to identify Calculus. And now we think we know who he is. The CIA has a fairly high-level source in the Russian embassy. In a rare act of cooperation, they’ve identified an individual for us. If they’ve given us the right name, he’s an electrical engineer by training and is extremely cautious, even obsessive, which in the spy business is a good thing. His job is what we call a technical agent. He’s sent all over the United States to their safe houses to wire them for sound and video and record meetings in case any of their double agents should get cold feet. Then they could be threatened with exposure, a foolproof way of keeping an asset’s attention. The rest of it we’re guessing at. We think, after meetings between American sources and their Russian handlers, he would collect the recordings and store them at the embassy. We think that with his financial future in mind, he started making a list of their identities. Maybe even keeping copies of the documents they turned over or other information we could use as corroborating evidence.”
Vail said, “You got to love a communist who appreciates capitalism more than we do.”
“Exactly.”
Vail asked, “Well, let me ask you—hopefully for the last time—why me?”
“The only ones who know about this are the people in this room. If we gave this to any of our agents, I guarantee it would leak out. Your discretion has been established more than once. You have a certain reputation for getting things done despite obstacles that our agents would find … well, procedurally insurmountable.”
Vail laughed. “You mean none of you want to get caught.”
The director said, “The rest of us here are not exactly street-ready, and this has the potential to get challenging. The men in this room haven’t been out there in decades.” Lasker glanced around to see if anyone objected. “Sorry, guys.”
Vail glanced at Kate and then back at the director. “When you offered me this kind of arrangement before, I said no.”
The director pursed his lips. “That was because I thought your not being an agent was a waste of talent and I was hoping you’d eventually realize it. When you were vehement, I accepted it. But this is different. This is vital.”
Vail got up and walked over to the window. He raised the shade and stared at the old Russian embassy across the street. “Funny, five years ago I thought this was exactly what I’d be doing right now. Instead I’m a bricklayer.” He turned back and looked at the men. “While you may find that ironic, I find it unjust.”
“Steve, we have to assume that Calculus is being interrogated in Moscow right now. If the Russians break him, there will be no list and all those spies will go on selling our secrets.”
“I’m sorry. I’m going home.”
Everyone in the room was silent. Finally the director said, “Could you come with me for a minute? There’s something you need to see.”
Vail followed him downstairs and then through a series of small, unfurnished rooms.
Once Lasker was satisfied they were completely out of earshot of the others, he said, “Did Kate tell you what happened to her just before Thanksgiving?”
“No.”
“She almost died.”
“What?”
“She left her car running at her place as well as the door to the garage open. She’d been drinking. Wound up in the hospital for a couple of days.”
“You think it was a suicide attempt?” Vail’s voice was accusatory.
“No, I don’t. But it was a couple of days after she’d gone to see you in Chicago, which OPR tells me did not go well.”
“Kate’s way too strong for anything like that. And as up and down as we’ve been, I’ve never seen her depressed for a second.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“She dumped me. I’m the one who’s supposed to be suicidal.”
“I thought you guys made up. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“That was a lie. She didn’t know I was coming. I was trying to patch things up. She was driving me back to the airport when she got the kidnapping call.”
“Like I said, I know it wasn’t a suicide attempt, but I can’t call off the OPR investigation just because I think so. I’m sure you can remember how petty people can be in this organization when it comes to someone else’s problems. When somebody is as successful as Kate is, they want to believe it. She’s got people looking at her like she’s a time bomb. I want her to work with you on this Calculus thing. If you two did half the job you did in L.A., all that petty whispering would come to a screeching halt.”
Vail laughed. “Are you blowing this out of proportion to hook me?”
“When you and she walked into that room upstairs, did you notice that none of those men would look at her? When’s the last time you saw that happen?”
Vail took a moment to consider what Lasker had said. “I’d be a fool to say yes to this.” There was something in Vail’s tone that told the director that was exactly what he was about to do. “Fortunately for you, it’s not exactly construction weather in Chicago.”
Lasker clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks.”
When they walked back into the upstairs room, the director said, “Steve’s decided to give us a hand, and Kate will work with him.”
Kate’s eyes locked onto Vail. She had heard the surety in his tone when he’d said no to the director. She’d never seen him change his mind once it was so firmly set.
Vail looked back at her. “However, this time, if you’re going to saddle me with Deputy Assistant Director Bannon, she has to understand that I am working with and not for her?”
Kate took a moment to recover and then said, “Yes, those were the two big disruptions in L.A., me giving orders and you following them.”
The director looked slightly distracted by what he was about to say, missing the humor in Kate’s response. “I know how you feel about answering to anyone, Steve, but because this is so potentially explosive, I’m going to need you or Kate to report to Bill at least once a day so he can keep me advised.”
“Define ‘report to,’” Vail said.
“This is extremely complicated, so I need everyone to work together. Whatever other intelligence agency might be involved, add in the Russians and our own State Department and it’s going to be a diplomatic high-wire act. The potential for disaster is incalculable. You have to keep Bill advised.”
“Is that actually what you want us to do, or are you giving me one of those orders that when you’re called in front of some congressional subcommittee, you can say I disregarded your instructions? If it’s the second, I have no problem with it.”
“I’m sorry, Steve, I need you to report daily. I wouldn’t be much of a director if I didn’t keep a very close eye on this one.”
Vail knew that because of Kate he had no choice. “You do realize how this is going to end.”
“I’m hoping it doesn’t.”
“Which means you can see exactly how it’s going to end,” Vail said. “Kate, I’ve got to tell you that this is the worst date I’ve ever been on.” She just shook her head. “Guys, consider yourselves warned: This is not who I am, but I’ll do what I can.”
“Thank you,” Lasker said.
Vail turned to the assistant director. “Bill, I don’t know you at all. What I’m about to say is based on my personal history with Bureau bosses. If it doesn’t apply, ignore it.”
His face expressionless, Langston said, “Go ahead.”
“If you try to obstruct me simply because of your ego, I’ll be on the first available flight to Chicago, and I’m going to guess that won’t make the director happy.” Langston still showed no reaction. Vail turned to the others. “Okay, then, does anybody have any ideas where to start?”
The deputy assistant director, John Kalix, said, “The second time we met with Calculus, we had finished analyzing the documents that he had turned over to us and knew that he was legit, so we gave him a special phone. He was supposed to use it only to contact us. It’s a miniaturized satellite phone, very ordinary-looking. That’s all we told him about it. It had other capabilities, one of which was to constantly track his position, even when it was supposedly turned off. He used it only once, to text us about being recalled to Moscow. Six words, that’s all. That was the last time we heard from him.” Kalix got up and tapped the computer keyboard. A photograph of the message appeared.
To Moscow unexpectedly. Find CDP now!
“We’re guessing ‘CDP’ are the initials of the first person on his list,” Kalix continued. “We’ve checked them through every available database, most of which don’t have middle initials, and have no clue who it is. Not everyone lists a middle initial. There could be hundreds, even thousands of them across the country. It’s not much to go on. The only other thing we have is where he traveled. It’s all documented in the dark blue file on the table there.”
Vail took a moment to process what he’d been told and then looked over at the folder and nodded. “And where is the phone now?”
“As soon as that message was sent, we could no longer determine where it was. Somehow the GPS must have been disabled.”
“The last location?”
“Inside the Russian embassy.”
“That doesn’t sound promising. Anything else that might help us?”
“That’s it. Like I said, it’s not much to go on.”
The director stood up. “Thank you, guys.” The men understood that the meeting was at an end and they were to leave.
After everyone filed out, the director closed the door behind them. “Steve, you two should probably work out of here. It’s secure, and there’s some equipment you might be able to use. The computers are current and have complete Bureau access. The building is alarmed, and there’s a stocked kitchen, a shower, and some cots for sleeping. The briefcase on the table is for you. Gun, credentials, credit card, cell phone are all inside. Parked out front is a blue Chevy sedan. The keys are in the case, too.” He took out a blank business-size card and wrote down a number on it. “If you need anything else—anything—call this number.”
Vail said, “Any objections if I move in here?”
The director glanced at Kate. “If that’s what you prefer, sure.”
“It’ll eliminate travel time from the hotel,” Vail said, and Kate understood that he had offered the reason so she wouldn’t be embarrassed at whatever way the director interpreted their relationship.
“And I’m only about fifteen minutes away,” she said.
Vail said, “If we round up any of these people, aren’t you afraid it’ll point the Russians in Calculus’s direction? If they’re not already onto him.”
“We do have an obligation to try to protect him as best we can, but we have a greater duty to protect this country. Actually, we have discussed our options for keeping this quiet as long as possible. Through legal and bureaucratic foot-dragging, we figure the whole thing could be kept quiet for about ten days. So if you do bring someone in, that ten-day clock will start ticking. After that, I’m afraid Calculus’s anonymity could become tenuous.”
Kate said, “Ten days isn’t much time to get from A to Z. Especially since we’re not sure where A is or how many letters there are in the alphabet.”
“No, it’s not. And to compound the problem, we don’t know if we’ll get any more information from Calculus. Steve, you have no idea how much I appreciate this. Between keeping everything secret and the idea of a bunch of traitors running around Washington, it was an impossible challenge. But now we have you. I’m sorry about handcuffing you with reporting daily, but this is a completely different situation from Los Angeles. If you have any problems, you’ve got my number.”
“‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!’”
The director smiled. “Dante, right?”
“Rather than who wrote it, it’s more important to know where it was posted.”
“Which is?”
“It was the inscription at the gate to hell.”
THREE
AFTER KATE HAD WALKED THE DIRECTOR OUT, SHE CAME BACK UPSTAIRS. “Thank you for doing this. And for protecting my reputation with the director.”
“Oh, how I wish your reputation actually needed protection.”
“Me, too, Vail.”
He stared at her for a few seconds and then went back to the window, again staring at the old embassy across the street.
She said, “What exactly did the director show you downstairs that changed your mind?”
“A large sum of money.”
“Vail.”
“Okay, he played ‘America the Beautiful.’” She scowled at him. “Metaphorically. He knew that if he got me out of that room, and away from all that management, my decision would be less knee-jerk. For being the big boss, he gets a pretty good read on people.”
Kate studied Vail’s face for a few seconds, looking for deception. “I wish I could get a good read on you.”
“That’s the other reason we have trouble getting along. You think I always have a secret agenda.”
“Where would anyone get an idea like that?”
“See, that’s why I think there’s hope for us. If our relationship didn’t have a healthy foundation, you would’ve taken a cheap shot right there.”
Kate smiled and shook her head. “Where do you want to start?”
“It’s been thirty-six hours since either of us slept. I’m going to get a few hours’ sleep. I suggest you do the same.”
“I need to change, too. I’ll take the car back to my place. I’ll bring up your suitcase when I come back.”
“I’m starving. Let’s see how we’re set for food first.”
As he started for the kitchen, she said, “This time I need to be on the inside of the investigation, Steve.”
“Okay, but just remember it comes with a lot of liability.”
“Have I ever denied you when you wanted to commit a felony?”
“I said you’re in, Deputy Assistant Director Bannon.”
“Then explain your question about the classified documents Calculus gave up. What was that about? And don’t give me that ‘curious’ stuff. I’ve seen that look before.”
“Well, isn’t this getting off to a familiar start?” Vail said, laughing for a moment. “Sometimes in the spy business, your opponents will run a game on you. They’ll salt the mines with borderline information to convince you that they’re on your side. It’s just something to be wary of. And if they’re good, they can wind up getting more information from you than you get from them.”
She stared at him for a few seconds. “That sounds like a reasonable explanation, but it always does—and then suddenly I’m being shot at.”
“There are worse things than being shot at.”
“Like …?”
“Living a life where you’re never shot at.” He went into the kitchen and yelled out to her. “These are spies. They don’t shoot at people. But I’d be careful what I ate.” The refrigerator was stocked with food, including a carton of eggs. He took them out and checked the date. “These eggs are fresh. How about I make some breakfast?”
“I assume that you have no desire to poison me.”
“Sure, we’ll say that.”
“Do you want me to do that?” she asked.
“I’m just going to scramble some eggs. Why don’t you have a look through those files they left us.”
Ten minutes later he walked out with two plates loaded with eggs and toast balanced on top. She looked at the plate he set in front of her. “Make enough?”
“With you I never know when I’m going to get to eat again.” He picked up his fork. “Anything in the files?”
She took a bite of toast and pulled a photograph from the back of the file. “Here’s that shot of Calculus’s message.”
She watched him carefully as he laid it on the table next to his plate and studied it while he continued to eat.
To Moscow unexpectedly. Find CDP now!
Finally she said, “Do you think CDP is our ‘little fish’?”
Vail continued to eat, staring at the message. “It has to be. He uses only three words to notify us of his possible impending death: ‘To Moscow unexpectedly.’ Someone that economical wouldn’t waste the last three words on something meaningless. He used exactly the same number of words to indicate that they’re as important as the first three.”
“Why would he care whether we found the spies if he knew he was going to be taken back there and tortured, and probably worse?”
Again Vail was lost in thought. She took a mouthful of eggs and watched him as he ate absentmindedly. Finally he said, “This is good. Very, very good.”
“The eggs?”
“Your question about him caring. It could be the key to unlocking this. He shouldn’t care. Yet he sent us the first mole’s initials. Why?”
“Maybe he figured since he was being sent back to Moscow, he’d give us the first name hoping we’d send the money to the Chicago bank and it would get to his family or whoever.”
“That’s a possibility. Here’s another one: What if he planned for this contingency? He knew that if the Russians get it out of him about the list and recover what he’s hidden for us, they’ll have all they need to convict him of treason and execute him. But if he can get us to whatever evidence he left for us, before the Russians can recover it, they won’t be able to prove a thing. Maybe he’s in Moscow right now enduring torture to give us whatever head start he can.”
“It’s urgent, I get it. But first we have to find this CPD. How do we do that? Like Kalix said, there’s got to be a lot of people with those initials.”
“Another good question. Unfortunately, one that is going to require a little sleep to answer. I hate to waste the time sleeping, but it’ll be a good investment.” Vail picked up his plate and asked her, “Are you done?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“Can you be back here in four hours?”
“Seeing how the alternative is to let you go wandering off with a new set of credentials and a gun, and then having to answer to the director, I guess I’ll have to.”
ALMOST TO THE MINUTE, four hours after leaving him, Kate pulled up in front of the old Bureau observation post. It was midafternoon, but the temperature was still near freezing. She took his suitcase out of the trunk and carried it upstairs. He was in the room where the meeting with the director had taken place. He had shaved and showered and was reading one of the files that had been provided.
“It didn’t take you long to get back at it. Anything in there?” she asked.
“There is one interesting thing. The cell phone they gave Calculus, it tracked him twenty-four hours a day. We have detailed coordinate charts telling us where he went and when.”
“Nothing else?”
“Not yet, but I’m already getting the feeling I’m missing something.” He stood up and went over to a computer that was on. “Take a look at this. You’ve probably seen it before.”
She peered over his shoulder. “Sure, that’s a spy satellite we have access to. How’d you know about it?”
“I kept reading in the file about transverse tracking. When I turned on the computer, I saw the icon on the desktop.” She sat down in a chair next to him. “I looked through those cell-phone GPS logs. I think they’re important.”
“Important how?”
“Take a look at his message again.” He handed her the file. “How do the last three words differ from the first three?”
To Moscow unexpectedly. Find CDP now!
“The exclamation point?”
“And …?”
She looked for a few seconds and then shook her head in frustration. “I don’t know, what?”
“Look at my hand,” he said, holding it with the fingers spread as wide as possible. “Now look at the message again.”
She did and then said, “It looks like there’s an extra space between the ‘CPD’ and the word ‘now.’” She thought about it a little longer. “I still don’t get it.”
“I made some coffee. Would you mind getting me a cup?” His voice was more instructional than demanding.
Her face shortened into a knot of confusion. “Oooo-kay.” She went into the kitchen and started pouring coffee into a mug. “Black?” she called out to him. Before he could answer, she yelled, “The last sentence contains a message within a message!” Forgetting the coffee, she hurried back into the room. “If he didn’t mean anything by it, the exclamation point would been after ‘To Moscow unexpectedly,’ to emphasize the danger he was in. But using it with ‘now’ and isolating it with an extra space indicates that there are two messages within those last three words: Find CDP and an instruction to do it now, at that exact moment.” She grinned, realizing that Vail had sent her to get coffee so she would stop staring at the forest and be able to isolate one of the trees.
“And what are we in possession of that can quantify ‘now’?” he asked.
This time Kate let her mind go blank before trying to figure out the answer. “The exact time he sent the message.”
Vail said, “And since we have his exact longitude and latitude when he sent it, he might have been giving us a clue to who CDP is.”
“But he would have to know that the phone we gave him was capable of tracking his movements.”
“First of all, he’s an engineer, an engineer in the spy business—don’t you think he would assume that? Why would we give him just an ordinary satellite phone? Plus, the phone was turned on. He’d have to know we could track him then.” Vail handed her the file; it was opened to the GPS charts. He turned back to the computer and the satellite imaging. “The call was made on December twenty-ninth at 4:18 p.m. Give me the coordinates listed for that time.”
As she read them, Vail maneuvered the mouse over a map of the United States until the digits in the small display windows were the same as those she had given him. He locked them in and then used the on-screen control to zoom down to the location, which could be seen with incredible detail, close enough to capture the address from an adjoining map on the screen. “It’s some sort of business. There are dozens of cars in that front parking lot alone.”
“Here, let me,” Kate said.
Vail got up, and Kate sat down at the computer. She went to a different search engine and typed in the address. A corporate profile popped up on the screen. “Alliant Industries in Calverton, Virginia.” She clicked on another icon and was shifted into Bureau indices and searched the name. “There it is, Alliant Industries. They’re in our files because we’ve done quite a few background investigations on their employees for security clearances. Evidently they have some defense contracts.”
“Can you pull up the list of names that we’ve investigated?”
“Hold on.” She typed some more, waited until the results came up on the screen, and then started scrolling through the alphabetical list. “Believe it or not, there are two with the first initial C and last initial P: Claudia Prinzon and Charles Pollock. Let me see if I can find middle initials.”
She started to open the background report on the woman when Vail said, “Don’t bother. It’s Pollock.”
“How do you know?”
“Pollock is a North Atlantic food fish. Our little fish.”
She shook her head and laughed. “This isn’t going to make the Counterintelligence Division very happy.”
“Why not?”
“How do you think they’re going to take it when I tell them that you found the first mole in less than four hours, not counting sleeping, showering, and shaving time? I know you’re not trying to make them look like idiots, but …”
Vail laughed. “Maybe that’s why I keep getting fired.”
“Maybe?”
“Then let’s not tell them.”
“You know that’s not possible. Now that we know who Pollock is, we’ll have to start twenty-four-hour surveillance and get up on his phones and computer ASAP. And eventually search warrants. Are you going to do all that by yourself?”
“Okay, we’ll wait a couple of days before we tell anyone. That way it’ll look like it was a lot more difficult.”
“Hi, I’m Kate Bannon. We met last year. Apparently you don’t remember me because you’re trying to run the same scam on me as you did then. You’re still trying to end-run everyone. And in case you’re counting, ‘everyone’ includes me.”
“It doesn’t include you. Wherever this takes me, it takes us. It’s just that the more they get involved, the farther away the answer always seems to get. They’re like moths.”
“Moths?”
“They keep flying into the light simply because it’s the brightest thing in front of them, even though they’re slowly beating themselves—and any chance to solve this case—to death.”
“Give it up, Vail. At some point even you are going to need Bureau help.”
“As clever as Calculus has been with this, maybe he’s hidden evidence somewhere out there, and if we’re equally smart, we can find it without wasting all that time and manpower.”
“You’re not worried about wasting Bureau resources. If anything, you like burning them. You’re just dreaming up excuses to cover up whatever you really have in mind.”
“Come on, Kate, we’re ahead of schedule. Let’s poke around a little and see what we can find. It’s New Year’s Day. There are hangovers to nurse, there’s football to watch, resolutions to fake. Nobody wants to hear from us.”
“Define ‘poke around,’” she said, with even more caution than usual.
“It’s a holiday. We have a car, a credit card, and all of Calculus’s locations for the last two weeks he was here. Let’s take a ride and see if he left anything else to find.”
She shook her head with mild self-contempt. “You make it sound so simple, so right, and even though I know it’s neither, I’m going to go along with it.”
“Am I a good time or what?”
“I’ll admit that it always seems like it’s going to be a good time, but it usually turns out to be ‘or what.’”
FOUR
WHEN THEY GOT TO THE CAR, VAIL SAID, “YOU KNOW YOUR WAY AROUND HERE A lot better than I do, so why don’t I drive?”
While he drove, Kate made a list of everywhere Calculus had traveled on the day he sent his last message. “Okay, but you’ve got your work cut out for you. He drove over two hundred miles outside the D.C. area.”
“In one day? That seems like a lot, but then maybe he wanted us to notice.”
“Where do we start?”
“How about at his clue, Alliant Industries in Calverton.”
She found the address in her notes and entered it into the GPS unit on the dashboard. “Do you have any idea what we’re looking for?”
“What we always look for, those wonderful little failed attempts to hide the truth—anomalies.”
When he offered no further specifics, she said, “These anomalies, any idea what form they might take?”
“Not a clue. I was just hoping that being philosophically vague would impress you into quiet contemplation.”
“I’m a little surprised that you’re still trying to impress me.”
Vail couldn’t tell whether the comment was meant to be sarcastic or whether she was offering some sort of truce. “Just because I can be an idiot, that doesn’t mean you’re not worth impressing. Who knows, maybe I could change.”
“If you did, you’d probably bore me to death.”
“Do you know why male moths fly so close to the flame of a candle?” he said mischievously, knowing she would object to any more moth references.
“Oh, so you are trying to bore me to death.”
“The flame gives off a vibrational frequency similar to the female moth’s pheromone. The male moth is powerfully attracted to it, even though it’s extremely dangerous.”
“In other words, even setting yourselves on fire won’t deter you guys.”
“I’m here, driving into who-knows-what, if that answers your question.”
“You want me to tell you what I think? I think you’re bored right now and hoping you’ll drive into exactly ‘who-knows-what.’”
For the next three hours, they traced the route the Russian engineer had taken through Virginia, stopping where he had, according to the Bureau charts. Each time, Kate would get out and take photos of everything in sight, making notes about the corresponding locations. Halfway back, they found a diner and he pulled in.
Inside, they sat in a booth, and after the waitress had taken their orders, Kate asked, “Well, any anomalies?”
“Not yet. But I want to spend some time with everything back at the off-site. Kind of let it all percolate a little.”
“It sounds like you want to be alone.”
“You’re welcome to stick around, but a lot of it is going to be just busywork—printing out photos, matching them with the maps and timelines. I’m not sure you want to spend your evening like that. By morning I’ll have everything a little more organized and we’ll be able to figure out what our next move is.”
“So in the morning there won’t be an article in the paper about you breaking into the Russian embassy or involved in a shooting somewhere?”
“I can’t make any promises about the embassy, but you have my word I’ll never get involved in a shoot-out without you.”
“In that case I’m going to go home, get out a pad of paper and a pencil, and retrace my life as far back as I have to, to try to determine what seemingly innocuous, small turn in my life caused it to intersect with yours.”
“You know, there’s an old Chinese proverb that says if you try to learn the source of your good fortune, you will destroy it.”
“What I know is that if the Chinese actually do believe that, it’s because they’ve never met you.”
THE NEXT MORNING Kate let herself into the off-site and could smell coffee brewing as she started up the stairs. She found that Vail had pushed all the furniture away from the longest wall in the room and had taped up all the photos from the day before. Below them were the time-place maps that had guided their trip.
“Did you get any sleep?” she asked.
“Enough. Did you eat?”
“I just need some coffee.”
“I think it’s done. Grab a cup and let’s go.”
“Where to?”
“Pollock’s bank in Calverton.”
“For?”
“I want to look at his account records.”
“For?”
Vail pointed at the wall. “Remember where we stopped in Denton?”
“I’d have to look at the photos.” She stepped closer to the wall.
“It’s a small intersection. There’s nothing there but that house.”
She looked at the photo of a small, white wood-frame structure pinned to the wall.
“According to the map, Calculus was there for about two and a half hours at night. None of his other stops were anywhere near that long.”
“Wait a minute. How do you know which bank is Pollock’s?”
“It’s in his security-clearance investigation.”
“And how do his bank records tie in?”
“If he visited his bank within twenty-four hours of Calculus’s stop at that house, then I think there’s a good chance that Pollock made an exchange with his handler there and Calculus recorded it. So the next day Pollock would have to deposit the money, unless he keeps it under his mattress.”
“Does that mean we’re going to let the assistant director—or anyone else—in on this?”
“Not yet.”
“Then how are you going to get bank records without some sort of court order?”
“With this.” Vail held up a standard information-release form filled out and signed by Pollock.
“Where did you get that?”
“We did a background investigation on him, didn’t we? And isn’t part of that process for him to sign information releases?”
“How did you get into his file?”
“You let me watch your hands when you logged into the Bureau database yesterday, so I thought you were giving me your password.”
She just shook her head. “But Pollock’s background was almost five years ago. Those forms would be out of date.” She looked closer. “It’s dated a week ago.”
“A little Wite-Out, a copying machine, and everything’s up to date in Kansas City.”
“You’ll have to excuse me if I seem a little slow. I’ve been back here for six months, you know, following the law and stuff. Throws a girl off.”
AN HOUR LATER Vail pulled up to the Denton Savings and Loan. “Since you’re apparently too chicken to violate both the national banking laws and the Privacy Act, you can wait here.” He got out and walked inside.
In another twenty minutes, he came out, and Kate said, “Well?”
“The morning after Calculus’s stop at the little white house, Pollock deposited eighty-nine hundred dollars into his checking account.”
“Eighty-nine hundred is a nice number. It keeps it under ten thousand so the IRS isn’t notified, but not as noticeable as ninety-nine hundred, which is a bigger flag than if he had deposited the entire ten thousand.”
Vail started the car and pulled out. “I think I know what that house is now.”
“What?”
“For Calculus to be there and record the exchange, it has to be a Russian safe house. Maybe he left something there for us.”
“So now we’re going to Langston with this, right?” And then, pretending to be talking to herself, she said, “Oh, Kate, you are cute but so naïve. That’s Steve Vail sitting next to you, and you’re asking him about going to the AD?”
Vail laughed. “If you were the assistant director in charge of counterterrorism, what would you do?” When she didn’t say anything, he said, “Come on, Kate, that was almost your job. What do you do now?”
“I’d probably black-bag it.”
“And how long would that take?”
“To line up all the techs and the lock guys, do the site work, I suppose a couple of days.”
“Minimum. We don’t have a couple of days. The Russians have a big advantage over us—torture.”
Vail turned left, and she realized he wasn’t heading back to Washington. “Please tell me you’re not going to break into a Russian safe house.”
“You’re the one who demanded to be inside the investigation this time. Now come the liabilities that you were warned about. You can’t have it both ways.”
“Here’s four words I’m going to assume you’ve heard before: You can’t do that. It belongs to the Russians.”
“First of all, the correct pronoun is ‘we.’ And I can foresee only one possible problem. I noticed in the photo you took that there’s an alarm-company warning sticker in the front window.”
“That’s why we need our tech and lock people to get inside.”
“Who do you suppose was the last person out of the house that night?”
“If he was doing the technical stuff, I suppose Calculus?”
“If he left evidence for us in there, do you think he would have set the alarm?”
Kate let her head fall to her chest as if surrendering all hope. “You know, it’s being exposed to guys like you that makes online dating seem so promising. The only thing a girl has to worry about there is the occasional serial killer.”
FIVE
KATE LISTENED TO VAIL’S SHALLOW BREATHING AND FOUND IT REMARKABLE that he could sleep anywhere, and apparently under any circumstances. They had been watching the suspected safe house for a couple of hours, waiting for dark, and Vail, after giving her a nod that he was going to do so, had drifted off. She wondered how much sleep he’d actually had in the past two days. For the last half year, she had been back in Washington, away from him. Back to the daily dictates of organization and rules. Beyond all else, rules. So many, in fact, that following every one of them left not the slightest opportunity to get anything else done. But Vail was an outsider, someone who couldn’t exist in such an inertial state. He was about to commit a burglary that carried with it the potential of international consequences. It scared the hell out of her. She looked over at him sleeping and wondered why she couldn’t wait to be part of it.
As if sensing that the sun had finally set, Vail opened his eyes. He looked at the small house and said, “No lights. So far so good.”
“What if someone from the embassy came back out here and reset the alarm? If it was turned off in the first place?”
“Then I would assume we’ll hear some sort of loud noise or see flashing lights. There’s only one way to find out.”
“Did it ever occur to you that the Russians might have some sort of sensor that goes right into the embassy and isn’t connected to this alarm system?”
“That’s more than an hour away.”
“They could call the local police.”
“We’re FBI agents. We saw someone breaking in and went in after them. They must have heard us and gone out the back.”
“I don’t know how I could ever question you. Apparently this is another foolproof plan. I’m psyched. Dibs on the crowbar.”
“That’s what I like to see, Kate, some genuine enthusiasm.” Vail glanced at her feet. “I guess I should have told you to wear more sensible shoes.” He manipulated the map on the dashboard GPS to search the surrounding areas.
“Sensible shoes? At this moment my footwear choice is what you think may not have been well thought out?”
He pointed to the GPS screen. “I want to go through the woods behind the place and get in through a rear window or door.”
She reached over and removed the keys from the ignition. “Fortunately, I have my gym clothes in the trunk.” She got out and retrieved her running shoes.
As she put them on, Vail drove past the house and, then a quarter of a mile farther, turned onto a dirt road. A hundred yards later, he found a place on the shoulder wide enough to pull over and park. After taking a last look at the map on the screen, he asked, “Ready?”
“Let’s burgle.”
Grabbing a flashlight from the glove compartment, Vail led the way through the woods, which although heavily treed had little underbrush to navigate through. Ten minutes later they stood at the edge of a tree line looking at the back of the house. It was completely dark. The rear of the structure had no doors, but there were three identical windows. “Go knock on the door.”
“Of a Russian safe house. Shouldn’t I have a stack of Girl Scout cookies or be wearing a Brownie uniform?”
“This is no time for sexual fantasies. Tell them your car broke down and you need to call the auto club.”
“And why would someone as together as I am—discounting my shoes—not have a cell phone?” she asked. “Is that fantasy about me or Thin Mints?”
“Tell them it’s dead. You know, act like a ditz.”
“There are some subtle rewards to working with you, but I think my favorite part is the Taliban-level degradation.”
“I told you, save the dirty talk for later.”
Kate walked to the side door and knocked. When there was no answer, she pounded her fist on it loudly, glancing back at Vail. After a minute he stepped out of the cover of the trees and waved at her to come to the rear of the house. “Start trying all the windows. If he was going to leave the alarm off, maybe he left us a way in.”
The second window Kate tried slid open. “Over here.”
Vail came to her and lifted himself through the window. “Hold on while I look around.” She watched anxiously as the beam of his flashlight swept the room and then disappeared. When he came back, he offered her his hand. “All clear.”
Once inside, Kate asked, “What are we looking for?”
“Anything locked. Doors, cabinets, anything where Calculus could have secured whatever he left.”
“If he left anything. If we’re burglarizing the right place.”
Vail walked over to a window shade that was pulled down. He put his hand behind it and then stepped to the side so Kate could see. “One-way shades, just like at the observation post. We’re in the right place.”
“Then since we have only one flashlight, how about we pull all the shades down and turn on some lights?”
Vail flashed the beam around the room, trying to determine what kind of lighting the house was equipped with and if it could be seen from outside. He turned his flashlight up to the ceiling, examining the fixtures.
“What kind of bulbs are those?” Kate asked.
“Good question.” He pulled over a table and got up on it. He unscrewed the bulb. It was heavy and appeared to be filled with something black. He turned it upside down and felt the granules inside shift. He screwed it back in carefully.
When he got down, Kate said, “What is it?”
“I can’t be sure, but I think they were filled with gunpowder and then reassembled.”
“Gunpowder?”
“If you turn on the light switch, the electricity going through the element will set them off.”
“Why would they do that?”
“My guess is that Calculus did it.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. For now just stay close to me.”
Kate and Vail moved from room to room, and he scanned each section of the ceiling with his flashlight. “The Russians spent some money upgrading this house.” He pointed with the beam of the flashlight. “See, they’ve got a sprinkler-system head in every room. Probably because their embassy is so far away. They didn’t want someone to be able to come in here and burn it down.”
“Like an ‘accidental’ fire started by a rival agency?”
“Pretty silly, huh? Can you imagine being that paranoid?” Vail walked along a short hallway into a room that looked like it was furnished and set up for meetings. He examined one wall closely, slowly sweeping his light across it. “There,” he said. “Do you see it?”
Kate stepped closer. “A pinhole camera.”
Vail patted the wall the camera was embedded in. “Did you notice how thick this wall is?”
“No.”
He led the way back into the room on the other side, and Kate said, “Now I see what you mean. It’s got to be four feet wide.”
Vail started checking the narrow panels that covered it. He tapped along the wall, looking for an access point. Using both hands, he pushed against each panel. The third one clicked open an inch or so. Behind it was a four-by-six-foot room that had been soundproofed. On a shelf were a series of audio and video recorders.
He could now see the pinhole camera attached to the interior of the wall, a lead running to a video recorder and then to a small monitor, so that the asset being paid off could be carefully watched and recorded as the event was occurring.
On the sidewall was a circuit-breaker box for the entire house. Vail guessed that it had existed before they built the narrow room around it. He turned on the DVD recorder and pressed the Eject button, but the carousel was empty. On top of the monitor was a plastic kitchen bowl that seemed out of place. Inside it was a sealed paper packet. Directly above it was another sprinkler head, presumably to protect the equipment should anything happen. Instead of taking the packet out, Vail picked up the bowl and examined the paper envelope without touching it.
“What’s that?” Kate asked.
Handwritten in the bottom right corner was the name “Ariadne.” Vail bent closer to it and held the flashlight at an angle so he could see the paper around the writing. He looked up at the sprinkler head again. “It’s good news and bad news. See if you can find a plastic bag somewhere, something big enough to carry this packet in.”
Kate wanted to ask Vail what he thought was inside the envelope, but she also wanted to spend as little time as possible inside the house. She hurried to the back, and Vail could hear her opening and closing drawers. She returned and handed him a torn plastic grocery bag. “This is all I could find. What is that?”
He picked up the packet, using the bag to grip it. “Something I suspect I don’t want touching my skin.” He flexed the packet. “It feels like a disc packed in powder.”
“Do you think Calculus left it?”
“I know he did.”
“How?”
Just then they heard a car pull up next to the house. “Go see what that is,” he told her while he carefully wrapped the envelope in the bag. Cautiously, Kate went to the window and peeked outside. “This can’t be good,” she said in a strained whisper.
“Who is it?”
“Best guess is the Russian embassy’s SWAT team. Three guys in cheap suits and bad haircuts, pulling down ski masks and carrying large black automatics.”
Vail reached over to the circuit-breaker box and threw all the switches to the “off” position. “Quick, go turn on all the light switches.”
“What?” Kate asked in an incredulous whisper.
“I’ve cut the power. Go!”
Vail headed in the opposite direction, flipping up wall switches. Just as the house door opened, they both had made it back to the concealed room, and Vail closed the panel door quietly. Kate drew her weapon and eased back the slide far enough to confirm that a round was in the chamber.
Even though the small room was soundproofed, they could hear the three men moving roughly through the house, occasionally calling out to one another in a foreign language. Their footsteps eventually slowed, and they started talking in lower tones. It sounded like they were now just outside the hidden room. Kate knew that if they were from the embassy, they would be aware of the room and would check it before leaving. A set of footsteps started toward them, and Vail wrapped his arms around Kate, pulling her over to the wall where the circuit breakers were located. He held her a little tighter and then flipped all the circuit breakers as fast as he could.
Instantly there was a series of explosions, and fire flashed under the panel door briefly. The men screamed and ran for the front door. Still holding Kate, Vail punched open the panel entrance and said, “Out the back window.” Suddenly the overhead sprinklers kicked on and soaked both of them as they ran to the rear of the house.
Kate reached the window, pulled it open, and climbed out. Vail followed her and closed it behind them. They hurried into the cover of the woods. The night air seemed twice as cold now that their hair and clothing were wet. As soon as they got into the car, Vail started it, revving the engine to boost the temperature. He went to the trunk and retrieved Kate’s sweat suit and then waited outside while she changed. When he finally climbed back in, he was shaking. Kate said, “Tell me that part again about how nothing can go wrong.”
“They got there fifteen minutes after us, so they didn’t come from D.C. That leaves a distinct possibility that Calculus is talking. They must have come here to retrieve the disc.” Vail turned the car around and headed back toward the highway.
“Then why would they come with ski masks and guns drawn?” she asked.
“If Calculus talked, he had to tell them that he’d left a clue for us. Maybe they were just being overly cautious in case we were there.”
“Well, they’ll know we were there now that we tried to blow up the place.”
“Especially when they don’t find the disc,” Vail said. “That’s why we have to get this package processed as quickly as possible. I assume you can have someone from the lab meet us as soon as we get back.”
“What kind of examination are you talking about?”
“Chemical.”
They pulled onto the highway, and Kate adjusted the heater. “Okay, now that we have time, what’s with the packet? ‘Good news and bad.’ What did you mean? And how did you know that Calculus left it?”
“The first clue was the gunpowder in the lights. Since he’s an engineer, Calculus would have known that as an antipersonnel mine it would inflict just minor wounds, because the only projectiles would have been the bulb’s glass, which would have broken into very small fragments.”
“Then why would he rig them?”
“Besides the explosion and the flying glass, what else happened?”
“The fireball from the explosion, which would probably have caught some things on fire if it hadn’t been for the sprinklers.”
“Exactly, the sprinklers. That was his purpose. When I saw the bowl directly under the heads in that hidden room, it didn’t seem right. The ink on the outside of the packet had caused the paper to deteriorate slightly. I think it’s made of water-soluble paper, so when it got wet, it would expose whatever powder is inside to more water. I think his intention was for us to destroy the disc.”
“Why would he direct us to the disc and then want to destroy it?”
“If he was still here to work with us on the list, he would have told us about the booby-trapped lights and the powder. But he put them in place so if the Russians somehow got onto him, we would hopefully beat them to the disc and unwittingly destroy it so they would have no proof against him. And if the Russians got there first, and he didn’t tell them about the lights, they would destroy it.”
“How’s a plastic disc going to be destroyed by water?”
“There’s also the powder. Did you have high-school chemistry?”
“No.”
“I think it’s potassium, which when exposed to water has a violent chemical reaction. It would have turned the disc into liquid plastic. That was the bad news, but since we got it without any damage, that leaves the good news.”
“Which is?” she asked.
“That he wrote the name ‘Ariadne’ on it.”
“Who’s that?”
“It’s from Greek mythology. She was the lover of Theseus, who volunteered to kill the Minotaur, a creature that was part man and part bull. It was kept in this complex maze from which it would have been impossible for Theseus to escape after killing it. So Ariadne gave him a golden cord to find his way out. In Logic, there’s a process referred to as Ariadne’s thread. It’s used to describe the solving of a problem that has a number of ways to proceed.”
“So that means what?”
“I’m hoping Calculus’s choice of ‘Ariadne’ means there’s a subtle set of clues for us to follow from mole to mole.”
“But he wanted to sell each name to us, one at a time. Why would he link them all together with the possibility of our being able to find them on our own?”
“Let’s not forget he tried to get us to destroy the first clue and any others that might have evolved from it so the Russians couldn’t retrieve them to use against him. We weren’t supposed to come out of that house with the disc unless he was controlling the situation. Again, it’s like the maze: Even if you killed the Minotaur, your punishment was that you’d never be able to find your way out. And as far as why he would provide a link from one to the others, he’s a smart guy, probably smarter than his pay grade.
“Most spies have one thing in common,” he continued. “They believe they’re underpromoted and underappreciated. They have contempt for everyone around them. Maybe he put the link in there to prove how much smarter he is than everyone else—the Russians because he’s selling their secrets under their noses and the FBI because we had the answer and didn’t realize it. Probably after he’d led us to the moles one by one, he would have exposed how they were all linked together, thereby proving how inept we are. It’s like some serial killers. They’re compelled to send solid but subtle clues to the newspaper and the authorities as to their real identity. And when they’re caught by some other means, the media will look at the clues and say, ‘How could the police not have figured it out?’ Then, even after they’re caught, they have eternal revenge against the legal system by letting everyone second-guess the cops’ inability to decode the ‘obvious.’ It’s all about control and ego.”
“Maybe he was hoping that if something went wrong and we were able to follow the string on our own, we’d do the honorable thing and send the money off to Chicago?” Kate said.
“Actually, that’s a more pragmatic analysis than mine. This is America—maybe he thought we would do the right thing.”
“So if there is a cord, not only will we have evidence on that disc of Pollock’s spying, there’ll also be a lead to the next mole.”
“Unless I’m wrong.”
She adjusted the heat vent so the air blew directly on her soaking hair and started running her fingers through it, trying to dry it. “Don’t be absurd. You, wrong? That hasn’t happened, for … what? Almost fifteen minutes?”
SIX
IT WAS ALMOST 11 P.M. BY THE TIME VAIL CHANGED CLOTHES, AND HE AND KATE drove back to FBI headquarters. At the lab Nate Wilhelm introduced himself as being from the Chemical Unit. Vail took out the plastic-bag-wrapped packet and handed it to him. “We think there’s a disc inside the envelope and that it’s covered with some water-catalyst powder, possibly potassium, meant to destroy it,” Kate said. “The envelope appears to be water-soluble, too.”
Wilhelm pulled on a pair of thick latex gloves. “Do you need to preserve the package for prints or handwriting?”
Vail looked at Kate. She said, “Just to be on the safe side, you’d better try.”
The examiner put on a pair of safety glasses and a dust mask. Then, with an X-Acto knife, he slit open the end of the envelope. Careful not to drag out any more powder than necessary, he used a pair of padded forceps to remove the disc from the paper container. He took the packet to another workstation and shook out all the powder he could. Then he put a small amount of it into a test tube. Using a pipette, he dripped a couple ounces of water into the tube. The powder bubbled furiously. “It looks like potassium, and it reacts to water like potassium.”
He pulled off the gloves and put on a fresh pair, going back to the disc. He dusted it off with a large fingerprint brush, then held it up to the light. “No latents.” Out of a box that dispensed them, he took a sterile cloth and wiped the disc off on both sides. He did it twice more with fresh cloths and then took off his mask, glasses, and gloves. “That should do it.”
Vail took it by the edges and touched his fingertip to the non-play side of the disc, testing it for any reaction to the moisture from his hand. There was none. He asked Wilhelm for a plastic protective sleeve and dropped it into his side jacket pocket.
Kate said, “Nate, we don’t want this to show up on any paperwork. Will that cause you any problems?”
“Less paperwork is never a problem, Kate.”
“Thanks.”
As Kate and Vail started toward the elevator, he said, “Should we wait until tomorrow to see what’s on this?”
“Like you could wait.”
He laughed. “I was just trying to see how tired you were.”
When the elevator door opened, the only passenger, a black man, said, “Steve Vail?”
It was Luke Bursaw, an agent Vail had worked with in Detroit more than five years earlier. “Luke,” Vail said, shaking hands with him. “What are you doing here?”
“I finally got my ‘office of preference’ transfer. I’m at the Washington Field Office now, working general criminal. Are you back with the Bureau?”
Vail looked at Kate. “I’m sorry. This is Kate Bannon. She’s—”
“Sure, I remember Kate from Detroit. And now she’s a deputy assistant director. We get most of the memos over at WFO. How are you, Kate?” He extended his hand.
Kate took it. She remembered him because he was the only agent Vail had worked with in Detroit, usually when a difficult arrest needed to be made. The most memorable one was where Vail and Bursaw came barging into the office with four bank robbers handcuffed together early one morning. One of them, also wanted for murder, had been on Michigan’s ten-most-wanted list. It happened shortly after she’d arrived in Detroit, and the thing that had always stuck with her was that no one seemed to think it was out of the ordinary, at least not for Vail.
Bursaw had gone to Penn on a wrestling scholarship and majored in philosophy. He’d gained a couple of pounds since she’d last seen him, but he still seemed to move with an athlete’s ease. “And I remember you, Luke. What brings a WFO agent here at this time of night?”
“I caught a couple of shifts as night supervisor that nobody wanted—you know, holiday pay. And I had some evidence to drop off at the lab on the way home.” Bursaw turned back to Vail. “One thing I do know about you, Steve, is how good you were at ducking questions. So what are you doing here?”
“Actually, I am back with the Bureau, sort of as an independent contractor, working with Kate.”
Bursaw glanced at him carefully, letting Vail know that there were still holes in his story that would be queried later. “Small world. Where are you staying?”
“Over on Sixteenth Street.”
“Any chance we could get together? Share some lies over a beer?”
“Sure. I’ll give you a call.”
“Actually, I’ve got a problem, and you’re the perfect person to run it by.”
“What kind of problem?”
“A woman from headquarters, an intelligence analyst, went missing a few months back, and I wound up with the case. So far I’m getting nowhere.”
Vail took the DVD out of his jacket and handed it to Kate. “Any reason this can’t wait until morning?” he asked her.
“It can wait. Besides, I am beat.”
“We’ll get a running start at it first thing tomorrow.”
“Sure.” The elevator opened onto the first floor, and the two men got out. “Nice seeing you, Luke.”
“You too, Kate.”
As they walked toward the street exit, Bursaw said, “Any idea how long you’re going to be here?”
“To tell you the truth, it’s starting to look like the minute I stepped off the plane, I’d already been here too long.”
VAIL AND BURSAW found a bar that wasn’t far from headquarters. Since it was relatively empty, they went to the far end and climbed onto a couple of stools. After the bartender had brought them beer, Bursaw asked, “So what could possibly have brought you back to the Bureau after the way they treated you?”
“You know you’re one of the few people I ever trusted.”
“I can’t really remember you trusting anyone. Sounds like you’re about to tell me that you can’t tell me.”
“If you knew what this was about, you’d thank me for not involving you, especially when they start hooking people up to the polygraph.”
“That serious?”
“I think you know I wouldn’t be keeping it from you if it weren’t.”
Bursaw nodded and then took a sip of beer. “You’re right, I don’t want to know. But how did you get involved in it?”
“I did some work for the director six months ago, in L.A.”
“That Pentad thing, that was you?”
“More Kate than me. I was just looking for a change of pace.”
“From the little I heard, you got it—and then some.” Bursaw looked at him for some reaction, but Vail just shrugged. “You never did like a lot of noise.” Bursaw chuckled salaciously. “But you and Kate, huh? That’s got to be a major factor in you being dragged back in.”
Vail snorted. “It was supposed to be, but unfortunately we don’t seem to be a good fit.”
“You know what Nietzsche said—‘Woman was God’s second blunder.’”
“Is that a shot at me or at Kate?”
Bursaw took a scholarly tone. “Philosophy is not a discipline of answers but one of contemplation.”
“Great, things aren’t surreal enough around here. Now I’ve got a black guy quoting Hitler’s favorite philosopher.”
“Whether it’s working or not, that’s still a good-looking woman,” Bursaw said.
“She is that,” Vail said. “But enough about my blundering celibacy. What’s the story on the missing employee?”
“Her name is Sundra Boston. She’s an intelligence analyst at headquarters, or at least she was. I didn’t know her. She disappeared about three months before I was transferred back here. I’ve got this cousin, Eden. Nice gal, but she married a loser. Actually, ‘drunk’ would be a more accurate description. They got a couple of kids, and he’s always going off on these drinking binges, leaving her with nothing to get by on. Anyway, she met Sundra at church, and they became friends. My cousin may have made a couple of bad choices in her life, but she’s not a complainer. When her husband takes off, she sucks it up and doesn’t say anything to anyone. I suppose it’s as much out of embarrassment as anything else. She said that somehow Sundra always seemed to know when she was going through those times, and she would show up unannounced at Eden’s with a carload of groceries. She’d been doing it for over a year. When I got back here, Eden pulled me aside at a family get-together and asked me if I could find out what happened to her. She thought Sundra had been transferred to some secret assignment or something.
“So I checked indices and found that we had a case on her disappearance, and that it was being handled on my squad. I’d been back in D.C. less than two weeks, knew nothing about the case, and I hadn’t caught on to my supervisor yet. So I went in and asked him about it.” Bursaw shook his head and took a long pull on his beer. “Steve, this guy is everything that is wrong with the new Bureau. He actually grew up in Beverly Hills—that’s right, my brother, 90210—and couldn’t get through an hour of the day without performing some affectation. He calls the bad guys ‘thugs’ and ‘hoodlums.’ When I asked him about Sundra, he gave me the rundown and told me that the investigation was at a standstill. Then he cocks his head to the side in thought and says, ‘You know, she’s an African-American, too. You could probably find her, because these people would talk to you.’ And you think the leadership was bad when you were in. Then he reassigns the case to me as if he had just had some sort of movie-of-the-week life-altering epiphany.”
“I take it you haven’t had any luck getting those African-Americans to tell you where she is?”
Bursaw grinned. “Don’t start,” he said. “So I pull the file and find out that very little had been done after the first thirty days. I made up my mind right there to jump on it with both feet.”
“Not to belittle your altruism, but what does she look like?”
“You’re right, she is good-looking. Which doesn’t hurt. But I figure with what she did for my cousin, she must be a good person and deserves to have someone searching for her for real.”
“A Bureau employee disappears and no one is making it a priority?”
“At first they did have the full-court press on it, but when they found that she was in major debt … well, like you always said, they prefer the theory that requires the least amount of work. So they decided that she probably just took off for parts unknown and changed her name or got married or both so she could wipe the slate clean.”
“Define ‘major debt.’”
“Almost fifty K on credit cards alone.”
“Isn’t it hard to run up a bill that big without enjoying some of society’s moral taboos?”
“You don’t spend much money, do you, Steve? Even though you won’t read it in the file, I think that’s what they thought,” Bursaw said. “It wasn’t drugs. She’d just had a physical and been screened. And all her phone records and credit-card receipts have been checked, so it’s unlikely that she had a gambling problem. But she did like nice things. She’d recently bought a house and had a nice car. From what I’ve been told, she always dressed much better than the rest of us government humps. With that kind of taste, fifty thousand isn’t such a big leap.”
“So they’re trying to put it to sleep, and you’re going to make them pay for it by embarrassing them with their ineptness.”
“I would like nothing better, but I’m not sure anyone will notice.”
“You haven’t changed much, Luke.”
Bursaw smiled slowly. “As if I have to explain the joys of belittling management to you. The good news is that I’m not getting any pressure to solve it. The bad news is, there’s something wrong with it that I can’t figure out.”
“Wrong how?”
“Okay, let’s assume she took off to get out from under that debt. The search-warrant inventory at her house showed that she left everything there, and I mean everything. She had a fairly new laptop computer. It was still there. Seven-hundred-dollar shoes that hadn’t been worn. And for me, maybe the toughest thing to explain, her designer suitcases were still there. The price tags still on them.”
“Have you called the locals to see if there’ve been any other incidents of women missing under similar circumstances?”
“Some sort of serial thing, yeah, I thought of that, but you know what a mess that can start. I do have some feelers out, though.”
“When did you last check her credit cards?” Vail said.
“I look at them once a week. Nary a blip anywhere.” Bursaw took another sip of his beer. “I’d like you to look at it.”
“What is it that you think I can do? I didn’t go to an Ivy League school.”
“I don’t know, maybe I’m on tilt with this. Maybe I’m trying too hard to show the world how smart I am or, more likely, what a moron my supervisor is. I don’t know. You were always good at finding things no one else could. Maybe take a look at the file. See if I’m missing anything.”
“Right now my days are pretty full.”
Bursaw gave him an easy grin. “How are your nights?”
“With everything I’ve got going on, I would have to be a blithering idiot to say yes.”
Bursaw drained his beer. “Then let’s go take a look at the file.”
IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER NINE when Kate got to the off-site the next morning. She was surprised when she heard the shower going. Evidently Vail had slept in. She made a pot of coffee and, when it was ready, poured herself a cup. In the observation room, she started reviewing the information Vail had pinned to the wall. A few minutes later, he walked out of the kitchen and held up his cup. “Thanks.”
“You and Luke reminiscing over too many beers last night?”
“Actually we were at WFO until about four a.m. reviewing the case file on his missing analyst.”
“I thought you didn’t like this work.”
“I like the work just fine. In fact, it’s the reason I dislike the people who keep getting in the way of it.”
“That sounds more like a rationalization than a defense, Vail.”
“Of all the times Luke helped me in Detroit—and some of them were pretty touch and go—the guy never once asked me for a favor. Until last night.”
“Sorry. It’s just that I would have thought you had enough to do.”
“I guess that’s when you find out if someone is truly worth your friendship.”
“Were you able to help him?”
“I gave him a few suggestions. I’m not sure he needed them. He’s not the guy I’d want after me,” Vail said. “You ready to watch that disc? Or did you peek last night, Katie?”
“No.” She took it out of her briefcase. “But I was a little surprised you trusted me with it.”
“It wasn’t me trusting you that was the problem—it was me trusting me if I held on to it.”
She laughed cynically. “Oh, honesty. Is that your latest tactic to deceive me?”
“I figured if anything would keep you off balance, it would be telling the truth. Apparently that’s not going to work either.”
She set the disc in the DVD player. On the monitor screen, they recognized the meeting room at the Denton safe house. It was followed by a couple of seconds of static and then by someone holding a hand-printed sign in front of the camera. On it were written the date, the time, and the name Charles Dennis Pollock. “That should eliminate any guesswork about who’s starring in this little production.”
Another few seconds of static were followed by two men sitting in the room. Pollock, recognizable from his security-background photo, was unknowingly facing the camera. He opened a briefcase that was on the floor next to him and handed a sheaf of papers to the other man. In turn, the man, who carefully never let any of his face be exposed, handed Pollock three bundles of bills and then in heavily accented English demanded, more than requested, that it be counted. While Pollock obliged, the handler deliberately held up the documents he had received and slowly paged through them so they could be captured on video. Several had classified stamped across them. Pollock then placed the money in his briefcase. A brief discussion ensued about what other material Pollock could provide. The screen again went to static. Vail fast-forwarded it until the end. There was nothing else on it.
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Noah Boyd
The gripping action thriller from New York Times bestselling author and former FBI agent Noah Boyd. Steve Vail has brains, brawn and balls – and is back for his latest mission.Steve Vail visits Kate Bannon, Assistant Director of the FBI, for a well-earned and romantic New Years Eve in Washington, DC, but he suddenly finds himself knee-deep in a very complicated and unusual case.A man known simply as Calculus, an intelligence officer at the Russian embassy, approaches the FBI claiming he knows of several Americans who are supplying confidential government information to the Russian secret service. In exchange for this list, he asks for $250,000 for each traitor the FBI arrests. But when Calculus is suddenly recalled to Moscow, the Bureau suspects the worst. The Russians have probably captured Calculus, and might have access to his list – which means they'll soon track down the informants and murder them.That is, unless the FBI can find them first, but without knowing exactly who is on the list, they must keep the operation quiet. Once again, Vail is their man. He's the ideal candidate for this kind of stealth recon mission. It soon becomes clear that finding Calculus and his list of traitors isn't going to be quick or quiet. In fact, it's going to be downright deadly…
Last Chance to Die
Noah Boyd
For my wife, Patti,
who has always grown stronger the more impossible things become
Contents
Before
KATE BANNON THOUGHT SHE WAS HAVING A NIGHTMARE, BUT ACTUALLY…
One
KATE BANNON OPENED HER DOOR. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”
Two
THE BLACK TOWN CAR PULLED UP TO THE CURB IN…
Three
AFTER KATE HAD WALKED THE DIRECTOR OUT, SHE CAME BACK…
Four
WHEN THEY GOT TO THE CAR, VAIL SAID, “YOU KNOW…
Five
KATE LISTENED TO VAIL’S SHALLOW BREATHING AND FOUND IT REMARKABLE…
Six
IT WAS ALMOST 11 P.M. BY THE TIME VAIL CHANGED CLOTHES,…
Seven
KATE FOUND A PARKING SPACE NEAR THE MAIN ENTRANCE OF…
Eight
THE TALL, SLENDER MAN WITH THE SPLAYED NOSE SAT BEHIND…
Nine
WHEN THEY WALKED INTO THE OBSERVATION ROOM AT THE SIXTEENTH…
Ten
VAIL WAS SITTING AT THE KITCHEN TABLE WITH HIS INJURED…
Eleven
LUKE, DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND IGNORE THE STUFF ON…
Twelve
VAIL AND BURSAW SAT IN THE FRONT SEAT OF THE…
Thirteen
IT WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON WHEN VAIL…
Fourteen
VAIL HAD GOTTEN IN ABOUT FOUR HOURS EARLIER, AFTER A…
Fifteen
SITTING IN THE BACKSEAT, KATE LISTENED TO KALIX AND LANGSTON.
Sixteen
THE THREE UNIT AND SECTION CHIEFS WERE ALREADY SEATED IN…
Seventeen
ONCE VAIL REACHED THE HIGHWAY, HE STAYED IN THE RIGHT…
Eighteen
THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT ASKED VAIL IF HE WANTED ANYTHING TO…
Nineteen
AT A FEW MINUTES BEFORE EIGHT THE NEXT MORNING, VAIL…
Twenty
JOHN KALIX WATCHED VAIL COME THROUGH THE GATE AFTER THE…
Twenty-One
AFTER MORE THAN THREE HOURS OF INTERROGATION BY THE ANNANDALE…
Twenty-Two
WHEN THEY GOT TO THE OFF-SITE, JOHN KALIX WAS PARKED…
Twenty-Three
AS BURSAW DROVE CAUTIOUSLY THROUGH THE CITY’S STREETS, VAIL ASKED…
Twenty-Four
THE PHONE RANG. BURSAW PICKED IT UP AND PUSHED THE…
Twenty-Five
THE FIRST GRAY LIGHT OF MORNING SEEPED INTO THE BEDROOM,…
Twenty-Six
BURSAW PARKED THE BUREAU CAR IN HIS SISTER’S GUEST PARKING…
Twenty-Seven
AS SOON AS VAIL REACHED THE OTHER SIDE, HE TOOK…
Twenty-Eight
KATE WAS THE LAST TO ARRIVE AT THE DIRECTOR’S OFFICE.
Twenty-Nine
IT WAS DARK WHEN KATE GOT BACK FROM THE PENTAGON.
Thirty
WHEN KATE CAME IN THE NEXT MORNING, SHE FOUND VAIL…
Thirty-One
WHAT!”
Thirty-Two
UNSURE WHERE IT WOULD TAKE THEM—AND NOT SURE SHE CARED—KATE…
Thirty-Three
AS THEY NEARED THE ADDRESS FOR MASTER SERGEANT LONGMEADOW’S APARTMENT,…
Thirty-Four
THE NEXT MORNING KATE PICKED UP AN ORDER OF STEAK…
Thirty-Five
THE SURVEILLANCE SQUAD’S OFF-SITE HAD BEEN CAREFULLY EELECTED. THE NEIGHBORHOOD…
Thirty-Six
AN HOUR AND A HALF LATER, THE TWO MEN THAT…
Thirty-Seven
THE BLURRY LIGHT OF DAWN HAD COME UP JUST AS…
Thirty-Eight
IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, AND KATE COULDN’T…
After
VAIL WALKED UP TO THE FRONT DOOR OF THE SIX TEENTH…
About the Author
Other Books by Noah Boyd
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
BEFORE
KATE BANNON THOUGHT SHE WAS HAVING A NIGHTMARE, BUT ACTUALLY SHE WAS dying.
Only her nagging self-awareness, even in this somnolent state, was forcing her to remember that she didn’t have nightmares. The frightening images had always been there—people shooting at her, falling endlessly from towering buildings, running through thicker and thicker sand to escape something unknown—but her reaction to them had always been as an indifferent observer, curious and analytical. If the “danger” persisted, she would simply tell herself it was a dream and wake up. And that’s what she had to do now, wake up and find out what was causing the chaotic images in her head.
She sat up and felt dizzy, the blood pounding in the top of her head. It hurt too much to be a dream. She felt nauseous and remembered driving home after the Thanksgiving Eve get-together at one of the local FBI watering holes with a large group of people from headquarters. She remembered having a glass of wine, and then a good-looking guy she didn’t know brought her a small glass of—what did he say it was?—Drambuie. She had never tasted it before and took a mouthful. Finding it too bitter for her liking, she set it down and didn’t touch it again. It must have been strong, because she soon started feeling woozy and decided to leave.
Throwing her legs over the side of the bed, she worked her feet into slippers and stood up. As soon as she was fully upright, she felt light-headed and had trouble balancing herself. With a hand on the wall, she started toward the kitchen. Walking left her short of breath. That couldn’t be from alcohol. That’s when she heard the low rumbling. She continued to the kitchen and saw that the door to the garage was open. Now she could clearly hear her car running.
Without warning, her knees started to buckle, and she realized that she was not suffering from what she had drunk but from carbon monoxide poisoning. Carefully, she stepped down the three stairs into the garage, which was filled with the haze of exhaust fumes. The car door was locked, and she could see the keys in the ignition.
The garage’s outside door was only a few feet away, and she lurched to it. Taking hold of the knob, she tried to turn it, but her grip failed her. She pushed on the door clumsily with her body weight but couldn’t rotate the knob far enough to open it. Even using both hands, she couldn’t get it to release. Next to the door, in a holder fastened to the wall, was a remote-control unit for the overhead door. She pressed the button, but nothing happened.
Beginning to panic now, she pressed it repeatedly, but still the door didn’t rise. She tried to remember the last time she had changed the battery, but her mind refused to focus on anything requiring memory. All at once she crashed to the floor, knocking over her small gardening caddy and scattering tools in every direction.
She tried to get up but could only manage to roll over on her back. Is this it? she asked herself. After all she’d been through as an agent, this was how she was going to die? Then she saw a white light coming from the six-inch-square window in the door and wondered if it was what so many people who approached death had reported. She fell back and let her eyes slide shut. Even with her mouth closed, she could taste the thick fumes in her throat.
The actual source of the light was a small flashlight held by a man standing outside, dressed in black. When she collapsed, he turned it off and pulled the two wedges from under the door that had jammed it closed against her efforts. Then he went to the front door of the residence and removed two more. Calmly, he put his hands in his pockets and walked back to a waiting SUV.
Lying there felt pleasant, euphoric, but then it occurred to Kate that the light was gone. Shouldn’t it be inside her head, too? She opened her eyes, and it was still gone. Did that mean the death sentence had been revoked, or at least delayed? Whatever it meant, she decided that she was going down swinging.
Next to her was a rake, its wooden handle thick and straight. Pushing up on all fours, she crawled to the rear of the car, dragging the rake behind her. The fumes were completely suffocating. She peeled off one of her slippers with its thin rubber sole and crammed it into the tailpipe. She was familiar enough with cars to know that the obstruction alone wouldn’t stop the engine as the movies depicted but would eventually be blown out by mounting pressure. So she stuck the rake’s handle into the tailpipe, forcing the slipper even farther into the exhaust.
Then she maneuvered the wooden shaft, finally wedging the steel raking tines against one of the patterned grooves in the overhead garage door, which was a foot and a half away. One of two things would happen now: Either the pressure would build up and kill the engine or the rake would blow a hole in the door and provide fresh air. One or the other could save her. Of course, it was more likely that the handle of the rake would simply snap. She reached up and held the rake in place before crumpling to the floor to wait.
Something with a sharp edge was underneath her. She realized it was a gardening trowel that had been knocked across the floor when she first fell. Inching closer to the garage door, she shoved it under the rubber cleat that sealed the entire length of the door and, using both hands, turned it up on edge to make a small triangular opening. Placing her mouth as close to it as possible, she breathed in the sweet, cold, late-autumn air.
Just before she passed out, her hand slipped off the rake and she thought she heard the car’s engine sputter and die.
AFTER CLIMBING INTO THE BACKSEAT OF THE SUV, the man in black nodded to the two men in the front that it was done.
The driver, in his early fifties, was tall and slender, his suit expensive and American. His hair was full and carefully cut. His face might have been described as elegant if it weren’t for the splayed, crooked nose, which gave his appearance a vague warning of violence. He looked over at the man sitting next to him to see if he was satisfied.
The passenger reached over and turned off the radio-signal device that had jammed Kate’s remote-control door opener, the limited markings on it written in Cyrillic. He, too, was tall but powerfully built, and his age was difficult to estimate; he could have been in his fifties or in his sixties. His hands were thick and crisscrossed with dozens of thin white scars. His face was drawn and slightly exhausted, his eyes irreparably sad. Although his skin appeared a permanent gray, his lips were thick and an unusual shade of dark red. He looked back at the driver with eyes that never seemed to move from side to side. It was as if they were frozen in their sockets, making whomever he was talking to feel that turning away would be perceived as evasive, even when telling the truth. He searched the driver’s face for any indication that he and his man hadn’t been successful and then leaned his head back on the head-rest and closed his eyes. The SUV pulled away from the curb.
KATE BANNON OPENED HER EYES and wondered if she was dreaming again. Bob Lasker, the director of the FBI, sat next to her hospital bed. Struggling to recall what had happened, she wasn’t sure she really could. “Am I dreaming?” she asked loudly, almost as if trying to determine if she was actually awake. She went to scratch her nose but then realized that an oxygen tube was pinching her nostrils.
“This is real, Kate.” The director smiled warmly. “You gave us a scare, though. But you’re going to be all right.”
“I remember being in the garage and not being able to get out.”
“One of your neighbors was taking his dog for a late-night walk, and I guess in the cool air he smelled the exhaust from the opening you made. He dragged his owner closer, and then the guy broke in, dragged you out, and called 911. Any idea how you left your car on?”
She told him about being bought a drink and not feeling well, then waking up to find her car running and not being able to get out of the garage. “I can’t imagine doing that. And then locking the car door with the keys in the ignition? Who locks a car that’s in a locked garage?”
“And this guy who bought you the drink, you never saw him before.”
“Not that I remember. I would have remembered him from headquarters. He was nice-looking.”
“Maybe he was just someone at the bar and saw a pretty girl.”
“Maybe,” she said vaguely, her mind searching for other possibilities.
Lasker stared at her as though there were some question he wasn’t asking.
“What?” she demanded.
“Kate, don’t take this the wrong way, but have you been feeling okay lately?”
She gave a short laugh. “Wait a minute—are you asking me if I’ve been depressed?”
“Yes.”
She thought for a moment. “You think I tried to kill myself?”
The question was asked with such self-assurance that Lasker couldn’t help but say, “No, I don’t.”
“But others do?”
“A deputy assistant director almost dies, there are questions that have to be considered.”
“Meaning what?”
“OPR is going to look into it. Very routine, very low-key.”
“I didn’t try to commit suicide.”
“You know I can’t call off procedure. I wouldn’t for any other agent, and since everyone knows how much I think of you, I can’t in this instance either.” He smiled. “Please cooperate and try not to shoot any of them. As soon as you feel well enough to get out of here, you’ll be returned to full duty while they conduct their investigation.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“I know it is. If it does get to be too much, come and see me.” Lasker patted her on the arm. “For now, get well. Everything else will take care of itself.”
She was staring down at her hands but finally looked at him. “I guess I should be thanking you instead of arguing.”
“Just get better, Kate.”
Soon after the director left the room, an agent whom Kate recognized as being from the Office of Professional Responsibility came in. “Hi, Kate. I’m Roger Daniels from OPR. How are you feeling?”
“Nonsuicidal.”
He laughed. “I know this is a lot coming at you all at once. I can wait to take your statement.”
Kate sat up and took a sip of water from a cup on the table next to her bed. “Don’t be too offended, but the sooner we get started, the sooner I’ll have OPR out of my life.”
The agent chuckled. “Well, that carbon monoxide didn’t damage your sense of humor.”
“Who said I was trying to be funny? Roger, I’m sure you’re a very capable agent, and maybe even a nice guy, but I did a stint at OPR, so please don’t waste any of the artificial sweeteners on me. Just ask me your questions, and I’ll give you my best answers.”
“Fair enough, Kate.” He opened his notebook. “Did you attempt suicide?” His tone was noticeably less friendly.
“I’m the one who stopped the car engine and wedged a trowel under the door to save myself. Does that sound like I was trying to commit suicide?”
“It’s not uncommon during a suicide attempt for people to have a change of heart. They take pills and then call 911. Move the gun at the last moment and just wound themselves. It happens more frequently than you think.”
“Yeah, well, I happen to like my life quite a bit.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but some people do it for attention.”
“How could I possibly take that the wrong way?” she said, sounding more than a little sarcastic. She took a moment and then said, “If you knew me, you’d know I really don’t care what people think. Why would I want to get their attention?”
“Not people—person,” he said.
“Person? Who?”
The agent flipped back to another page in his notes. “Steve Vail?”
“Where did you get that?”
“Answers, Kate, remember?”
“Okay, what do you know about him? And me?”
“We know that he was fired as an agent more than five years ago. That the director brought him back to work on the Rubaco Pentad case in Los Angeles—with you—and that you guys have dated. Recently it ended abruptly.”
“Sounds like you got a running start on this while I was still unconscious. Okay, I’ll tell you about Vail on one condition—that you don’t contact him.”
“If you’re forthcoming, there’ll be no need to.”
“One of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my life was tell him I didn’t want him in it. If you’ve read the Pentad file, you know he was responsible for solving that case almost single-handedly. He would be an incredible agent, but he cannot conform to anything, and that includes a relationship with me. We’ve seen each other three times since L.A. The first time was—I hate to use the word, but it was—pretty much perfect. The last two were absolutely awful. So I told him it would be best if we didn’t see each other again. And that was a week ago. So no, I wasn’t trying to get his attention.”
“Trying to find out exactly who he was, I ran his name through some of our contacts at other agencies and got a hit with the State Department. Seems you and he are going to the Irish ambassador’s reception on New Year’s Eve.”
“Boy, you have been busy. But you’d better check with them again. It should show that my escort is now Eamon Walsh.”
“So you changed it.”
“What’s today?”
“Wednesday.”
“I spoke with him Monday. He’s with the Irish embassy and was the one who called me originally with the invitation. When I phoned him back to tell him Vail wasn’t coming, he asked if I’d do him the honor. I didn’t want to go alone, so I said yes. Maybe he hasn’t gotten around to changing it officially yet. You can call him.”
Daniels was making notes. “So it’s definitely over between you and Vail. You told him not to come for New Year’s Eve.”
“Not in so many words, but I think ‘We shouldn’t see each other again’ carries that assumption.”
“That’s helpful about Vail. It gives you one less reason to … you know.”
“Off myself.”
“Tell me what you remember about the night that this happened to you,” Daniels said.
She repeated what she’d told the director about the stranger’s buying her a drink that didn’t settle well with her, then her coming home and going to bed. Then waking up and trying to get out of the garage.
He asked, “You said he told you it was Drambuie?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm,” Daniels said more to himself than to her.
“What?”
“I’ve had Drambuie, and it has a definite strong sweetness to it.”
The OPR agent started making additional notes that she guessed were more than just about Kate’s response. As she watched him, she remembered her time in OPR, how investigations were not about the incident but about the employee’s involvement in it. They weren’t criminal investigators, they were personnel investigators. As Daniels looked up from his pad ready to ask the next question, she knew that he was not going to get to the bottom of this. If anyone was going to find out what had happened, it would have to be her. “If that guy did put something in the drink, maybe he had some other intentions, and when he saw I drank only one sip of it, he got scared and took off.”
“Your blood didn’t show any kind of drug in it, but if you didn’t drink much, maybe it dissipated before you got here.”
“Are you going to try to track him down?” she asked, trying to judge just how far he was going to pursue what had happened to her.
“I’ll have to see where everything takes me.”
Right, she said to herself, becoming lost in thought. There was just something about a near-death experience that brought Vail to mind. And she couldn’t decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. She knew that he would never just “see where everything takes me.” A small smile creased her lips.
“What is it, Kate?”
“Oh, no, nothing. Did you need anything else?”
“That’s enough for now.” Daniels stood up. “Take care.”
He closed the door, and after a moment her smile disappeared.
She was sure she was never going to see Vail again.
ONE
KATE BANNON OPENED HER DOOR. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”
With mock surprise on his face, Steve Vail recoiled slightly at the level of protest in her voice. He stepped inside, setting down his suitcase and, for the briefest moment, allowed his eyes to trace the flawless symmetry of her face. “I’ve got the right day, don’t I? This is New Year’s Eve. Is it the wrong year?”
“After that last time, when I told you this wasn’t going to work, I assumed you understood that included tonight.”
He smiled crookedly. “Come on, Kate, it’s the twenty-first century. What woman wants to have to admit that she’s never been stalked? It’s become an accoutrement, like Italian shoes or one of those little purse-size dogs.”
“We tried, Steve. Three times. And the last two, if you remember, were not pretty.”
“That means statistically we’re due.”
Kate shook her head slowly. She really couldn’t believe he was standing there. “You know as well as I do that we’re a disaster. We’re too different. Or too much alike. I don’t know. Every time we try to get close, we wind up driving each other crazy. You don’t know how much I wanted it to work, but it can’t.”
Vail looked at her dress. “I guess you were planning to go to whatever this was tonight without me. Why don’t we go together and see what happens? What’s the worst that can happen? So I ruin your career. That would probably be the best thing that could happen to us.”
“I have to go to this. It’s a command performance. And you know exactly what it is—an ambassador’s reception. Why else would you have a suit on? Even though the proper dress is a tuxedo. Which I’m going to guess was your way of letting all the phonies in the room know that you’re a lowly bricklayer.”
“A man has to seek amusement wherever he can.”
“I’ll never understand you. You could be whatever you want. You have advanced degrees. The director has offered you complete autonomy if you’ll come back to the Bureau, but instead you choose physical labor just so you won’t have to take orders. If that’s who you are, fine, but you don’t get to rub everyone else’s face in it simply because they’re not like you.” She looked at him sternly. “It’s called hypocrisy.” She could see that her words had stung him, but she couldn’t find anything inaccurate in what she’d said.
He reached up and traced the small L-shaped scar high on her cheekbone and then smiled gently. “You don’t have to wonder anymore, Kate, whether we’re too much alike. There was a time, and not very long ago, that you would have thought they were phonies, too,” he said. “But you’re right, I’ve been a phony myself. The only defense I can offer is that you make my compass go haywire. The only reason I’m doing any of this is you.”
He turned and opened the door. “Like you said, we gave it a shot,” he said. “When it was right, it was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. That’s why I had to try one last time.”
“You can’t just walk out like that. Not after everything we’ve been through.”
“This is the best way to leave it. Then we won’t have any lingering doubts.”
“At least let me drive you to the airport. It’s freezing out.”
“I live in Chicago, remember? This isn’t cold.”
“I’ll feel better about this if I can take you. It’ll give us a chance to talk a little more. Right now I feel like we’re supposed to hate each other.”
“It’ll be fine, Kate. I’ll get a taxi.”
“It’s New Year’s Eve—you’ll never find one.”
“You’re probably right.” He picked up his suitcase. “Okay, I’ll take a ride, but only if we don’t talk. I don’t want to say anything that’ll make this worse.”
For the briefest moment, she considered telling him about the night before Thanksgiving and asking him what he thought about the guy in the bar. The day she got home from the hospital, she’d gone into her garage to change the battery in the remote for the overhead door. But it had worked fine. She thought that maybe she’d just pushed the wrong part of it in her semiconscious state. But three days ago she’d realized that it had been over a month and she hadn’t heard anything from OPR. So she’d gone back into the garage and retraced the events from that night as best she could. That’s when she realized that she couldn’t have opened the inside door to her condominium if her keys were locked in the car.
Then she’d bought a bottle of Drambuie and tasted it. It had a honey-sweet taste to it, nothing like what she remembered from the bar.
The next day she’d checked with the Metropolitan Police, and they’d said they hadn’t had any recent drug-facilitated rapes reported. Since she was sneaking around behind OPR’s back, she didn’t want to start asking questions of people who were at the bar and have it get back to Daniels. Vail, who saw these things on a different level, would have been the perfect person to ask. But under the circumstances, giving him a reason to stay would be counterproductive.
“If that’s the way you want to leave this,” she said.
The phone rang. “You’d better get that,” he said. “The Bureau probably thought we actually had a date and needed to ruin it one last time.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“Probably not, but you can’t say it’s inaccurate.”
“This is exactly why it would never work between us. Not everyone who takes orders for a living is a mortal enemy of Steven Vail.”
Vail held up his hands in apology. “I told you I’d say something that would make it worse.”
As she walked to the phone, she decided to lighten the mood and try to initiate some sort of interim peace. “I know it’s been a while since the FBI fired you, but nobody gets called out on Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year’s Eve. It’s in our latest contract.” She picked up the receiver. “Kate Bannon. Oh, hi, Tim. Happy New Year.” She listened and after a few seconds turned her back to Vail.
He sat down on his suitcase and waited for the inevitable change of plans.
She hung up and said, “A seven-year-old boy was abducted in Reston, Virginia, which is two towns over from here.”
When she didn’t offer any other details, he said, “The FBI doesn’t have jurisdiction for twenty-four hours in an abduction. Why did they call you?”
“The Reston chief is a retired agent from the Washington Field Office. We go back a lot of years. He’s a good guy, but something like this, he’s probably in over his head. His entire career was working applicant cases, asking the same handful of questions about character and loyalty. Would you mind if we stopped there on the way? It shouldn’t take long. He just needs some reassurance—you know, what help the Bureau can give him. Maybe a little direction.”
In a cryptic tone, Vail said, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“You wouldn’t miss what?” she asked suspiciously.
“You pretending not to get involved to prove to me, and yourself, that your career isn’t what’s come between us.”
“If you’re trying to ensure that there’ll be no talking on the way, congratulations.” She handed him her keys. “There’s one more call I have to make, would you mind warming up the car?”
Vail gave her an inquiring look and then started laughing. “No wonder you’re able to resist my charms. You have a date.”
“It’s not actually a—”
Vail held up his hands. “Kate, it’s fine. I was hoping you weren’t serious about it being over. That’s why I came. Obviously I was wrong. I’ll go start the car.”
Five minutes later Kate walked into the garage and climbed behind the wheel. As soon as they pulled out, Vail asked, “How long has the boy been gone?”
“So we are going to talk.”
“I’m just trying to establish the parameters of your momentary detour.”
“Why?”
“So I’ll be able to mark the exact second you violated the estimate of your involvement.”
“You really think you’ve got me figured out, don’t you?”
“Not that it matters anymore, but oh yeah,” Vail answered.
She turned to him, wanting to look indignant but knowing she couldn’t pull it off. Then she told him, “Tim said about five hours.”
“You do understand that the chances of him being found alive are not good.”
“Then I guess you do understand that’s why I have to go.”
Vail stared straight ahead for a moment. “I do.”
KATE FLASHED HER CREDENTIALS at the police officer behind the glass, and he opened the door for her and Vail. They were led to a small conference room where more than a dozen police officers and detectives sat crowded around a conference table designed for half that number.
The chief, Tim Mallon, rose anxiously and shook hands with her. She introduced him to Vail. One of the officers got up so Kate could sit down and Vail backed up against the closest wall.
Mallon handed Kate a sheet of paper and a photo. “That’s the boy, Joey Walton, and the BOLO we put out along with the Amber Alert. He and his parents were at a local New Year’s Eve 5K run. It also had a half-mile race for the kids. The parents watched the start, and by the time they got to the finish line, he was gone. No one’s seen him since.”
Kate said, “Okay, Tim, what can the Bureau do for you?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. Obviously, we could use a profiler and anything else along those lines you can think of.”
“As soon as we’re done here, I’ll make some calls. I assume you’re looking into registered sex offenders in the area.”
The chief nodded at a detective sitting halfway around the table, who said, “I’m expecting a list any minute.”
“I guess that’s going to be the best lead for now.”
“What else?” Mallon asked.
“Put out a plea to the media, along with the boy’s photo.”
“That’s been done, Kate. And we have the parents doing interviews, trying to personalize the boy for whoever took him,” Mallon said. “Isn’t there anything else we can do?”
“Sometimes you just have to give the public some time to respond. There’s a chance somebody knows who did this.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t want to sit and wait. There must be something we can do to be more proactive. What would you do if it were a Bureau case?”
She hesitated a moment, glancing back at Vail. “Tim, I’m sorry. I’ve never worked kidnappings, but I can make some calls and see if we can get someone out here from the Washington Field Office.”
Mallon looked confused. “Kate, I spent twenty years at WFO. If I thought someone there had the answer, I wouldn’t have called you.” He looked around the men at the table, hoping someone would offer an idea of what to do next.
Kate said, “I misjudged what you needed, Tim.” Then she got up and, with an apologetic grin to him, handed Vail the photo and the BOLO. “How about it, Steve? Can you give them a hand?”
Somewhat surprised, the chief said, “I’m sorry, Steve, are you with the Bureau?”
“Actually, I’m a bricklayer. From Chicago.” He handed the items back to Kate. “In fact, I’m on my way back there now.”
Mallon shot a confused look at Kate. “Steve’s a former agent who has helped us in the past. Take my word, right now you want him in the room.”
“Sorry, Steve,” Mallon said. “You’re both dressed up. I thought you were just Kate’s date.”
Vail smiled disarmingly. “Funny how easy it is to make that assumption.”
Sensing some rift between the two of them, the chief said, “Steve, if you can help, we’d be grateful. This is a seven-year-old boy’s life we’re talking about.”
Vail pushed himself off the wall with obvious reluctance, his eyes locked onto Kate’s, purposely without emotion. “Sure.” Vail looked around the table. “Any of you ever work a child kidnapping by a stranger before?” One older uniformed officer raised his hand unconvincingly. Vail took a moment to consider something. “Chief, I’d recontact all the media outlets and have them put out a plea for help from anyone at the race. It being a kids’ run, a lot of people are going to be taking pictures with both their cameras and their cell phones. Ask everyone to immediately e-mail all their photos to the station. Every one of them, whether they think they’re connected or not.” Kate watched as Vail became silent, lost in some other thought. “I assume that race officials also took photos. Have them do the same, including those from the adult race. Have you gotten a list of runners from them?”
The chief pointed at one of the detectives, who said, “They’re supposed to be forwarding it.”
“You’ll want that right now. Also from the kids’ race,” Vail said. “That it’s a holiday and twice as hard for the police to get anything done may not be a coincidence. Whoever’s responsible for this may have learned by past mistakes. As in convicted child molester. Which, as Kate suggested, makes the sex-offenders list a top priority.”
“What else?” Mallon asked.
Vail stepped forward to better engage the men around the table. “I know everybody is trying to think positive, but after this amount of time, statistically, there’s only a slightly better-than-even chance that the boy is still alive. Not a pleasant thought, but you’re police officers—you’re paid to approach things from a clinical and, maybe more important, a cynical perspective. There’s also a fifty-percent chance the boy’s been sexually assaulted. And the longer this goes, the worse those odds become. So if cars are stopped or your instinct tells you to search someplace, don’t get it in your mind that you’re going to hear the victim pounding on doors or walls to be freed. Assume you’re looking for a body. And remember, in a situation like this—I’m sorry, Chief—it’s better to do something that’s wrong than it is to do nothing at all. If someone won’t allow you access, politely search anyway. Just remember: Be polite and explain the situation. Whoever took the boy is one of the few people who won’t cooperate in an instance like this.”
Mallon stood up and addressed his officers. “Don’t any of you worry about liability. Like Steve said, explain, be polite, and then do what you have to do. All the heat is on me.” To Kate and Vail, he said, “We’ve already got more than thirty tips. The media has been running the story every half hour. Each time they do, we get more. We’re going to start chasing them down.” He turned back to the officers and detectives around the table. “Any questions?” There were none. “Okay, I’ll be here. If you run into anyone who’s reluctant to help, and there’s time, call me and I’ll make the decision.” The officers got up and started filing out. “Kate, you can use my office to make those calls.”
“Okay.”
“Steve, can I ask you to give us a hand with the tips? Sounds like you know what to look for. Maybe you’ll see something we’re missing.”
“If I can get one of your people to run me to the airport when we’re through. Kate’s already late for something she needs to get to.”
“Sure.” Mallon glanced at her. “Kate, if you need to go, I’ll understand.”
Kate could tell that Vail hadn’t said it maliciously. “It’s nothing that can’t wait, Tim. And if I don’t make it, it’s not a big deal. I’m here because we’re friends. I’ll stay until you don’t need me any longer.”
Vail said, “Chief, if you have a desk somewhere with a computer, I’ll start on those tips. And a map of the area if you have one.”
“Great. And I’ll make sure you get copies of anything new that comes in.”
Kate said, “Tim, could you give us a minute?”
“Sure.” Mallon walked out and shut the door.
She put her hand on his arm. “I appreciate your keeping me from looking like a fool.”
“No use both of us feeling that way.”
She started to say something, and he placed his hand over hers. “It’s okay, Bannon.” He leaned forward and whispered in her ear. “I really do hate New Year’s Eve parties.”
He turned to go, and she said, “And don’t think you can sneak out of here without saying good-bye.”
Vail gave her a silent but formal salute.
While Kate started making phone calls, trying to track down agents from the Behavioral Science Unit and the Washington Field Office, the chief led Vail to a detective’s desk and showed him how to access the department’s different databases. He settled in and started reading the tips.
Unlike the officers and detectives, Vail had the luxury of looking at them from a different perspective. The Reston Police Department had to investigate all the tips offered. Vail didn’t. So he was able to start making judgments about the callers and the individuals they were reporting on.
He checked each suspect’s name in the computer to see if there were any previous contacts with the department. He also checked the callers’ names—if they gave one—to see if they were chronic complaint makers, which could lessen the priority of their information. After reading all the tips, he hadn’t found any he considered worthwhile. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Tips were a double-edged sword. While they frequently solved a case, a false lead that looked promising could be distracting, take the entire department in the wrong direction, and burn precious time. A uniformed officer walked in and asked, “You Vail?”
He stood up and shook hands. “Steve, yes.”
The policeman put three more tips on the pile. “These are from the last half hour. We’re also starting to get photos from the races e-mailed in. Do you want me to forward them to this computer?”
“I’d appreciate it.” Vail picked up the newest tips. “Anything interesting?”
“Nothing we’ll need lights and sirens for.”
Vail continued searching the names through the computer. Still nothing jumped out at him. When he finished, he got up and wandered around until he found someone who directed him to a coffeepot. He filled two cups and went looking for Kate.
The chief’s office was small but well ordered. Bureau memorabilia neatly lined the wall behind the desk. Kate was on the phone, so Vail placed the cup in front of her and sat down.
She rolled her eyes as she listened to the latest excuse as to why nothing could be done tonight, taking a sip of coffee. He watched her and was reminded of one of the things that he liked most about her: She thrived on work. The more difficult the case, the more focused she became. He listened as she urged cooperation. Her tone was compelling, and Vail couldn’t tell whether it was actually cajoling or threatening or both. Finally she hung up midsentence. “Come January second, there’ll be a number of Bureau employees who are going to be at least as unhappy as I am right now.”
“Makes me almost sorry I won’t be here.”
She gave him a small, sad smile through pursed lips and leaned back in her chair. “Anything in the tips?”
“Not so far. The photos are starting to come in, though.”
“Do you actually think we’d get that lucky?”
“I just thought it would be better to have them than not. You never know, something could come up later that a photo might help with,” Vail said. “And the pendulum is due to swing the other way.”
“What pendulum?”
“What most people call luck. To me it’s nothing more than a temporary statistical aberration. So far tonight I’ve had an unbelievable amount of bad luck, so maybe I’m due.”
“Sorry.” She stared at him for a moment before taking another sip of coffee. “Do you know what I find to be the most confounding thing about you, Steve?”
“That doesn’t sound like a question a judicious person would want to hear the answer to.”
“That you’re so good at this and refuse to do it for a living.”
“Don’t start.”
The chief knocked on the door and came in. “Sorry. We may have something. From the sex-offenders list, there’s one, a Frank Dillon, who kidnapped and molested a six-year-old boy twelve years ago. He was paroled in September, and he lives in Vienna, which is fairly close. We got ahold of his parole officer, who said Dillon recently changed his residence and stopped reporting. As far as the PO is concerned, he’s AWOL, and he’ll violate him if we want. We just made a call to his last employment, and he was at work until noon today, when he just up and quit. He did leave a cell-phone number so they could call him when his last check was ready. We’re going to try to put the grab on him. You guys want to come along?”
“Sure,” Kate said. She looked at Vail.
“You won’t need me, Chief. I’m a civilian. If something happened, my being there would just give some defense attorney a little more smoke to blind a jury with. Besides, somebody should stay here and keep checking on the tips in case this guy doesn’t work out.”
Kate turned to the chief. “Tim, I’m coming with you. I’ll be there in a minute.” Once Mallon left, she said, “I seem to remember something about you always keeping the best lead for yourself. That’s not what this is, is it?”
“Like the chief said before, we’re talking about a child’s life.”
“Sorry.” She took out her car keys. “When’s the last time you ate?”
“Ah … breakfast.”
“Please go get something. Those tips won’t miss you for fifteen minutes. And I really do appreciate this, Steve,” she said. “Hopefully, this won’t take long. Hopefully, this is our guy.”
When Vail got back to the detective’s desk, there were four new tip sheets. He checked the e-mails and was surprised to see that the department had already received eleven messages with photos attached. The lists of runners for both races had also been forwarded. He opened the first set of pictures; they were all of the adult race. He scanned the faces, looking for the Walton boy. There was a subtle difference in quality between the phone pictures and those taken with cameras. As long as they didn’t have to be blown up to provide detail, it really didn’t matter.
Because of the cold weather, most of the runners were bundled up, especially the children. The kids’ race seemed more crowded, with all those parents waiting at the finish line. Vail went through them three times, trying to spot Joey Walton. According to the runners’ list, the sandy-haired seven-year-old was number 034. There were a couple of possibilities that looked like him physically, but the numbers pinned to their chests indicated otherwise.
An angry knot of frustration turned in Vail’s stomach, and he started to regret not going with Kate. The fugitive pedophile sounded like a decent lead. If it wasn’t him, Frank Dillon had certainly picked an odd time to stop reporting to his parole officer and disappear. By staying behind, Vail knew he was trying to make something happen, create some insightful discovery. Apparently he did miss the chase, but at the moment it seemed little more than useless self-indulgence. Or maybe he just wanted to impress Kate.
He started to get up to refill his coffee when the e-mail tone sounded again. There were three new messages, which had eight additional photographs attached. He took his time and looked through them twice. Then, realizing that he had no idea what he was looking for, he got to his feet and waved at the monitor in disgust. He was trying to look at the case from too many angles, a sure way to not find anything.
Outside the department’s front door, he stood without a coat, trying to use the cold to redirect his thoughts. He stayed there until he could feel the bite of the wind, letting the discomfort distract him from his failing approach to the investigation.
Then one of the latest photos flashed through his mind. But the image did not last long enough for him to figure out why it had risen out of his subconscious. He hurried back to the desk and pulled the picture up on the screen. After studying every little detail, he still couldn’t see anything. He closed his eyes and then slammed his fist on the desk.
The image was that of a boy, about eleven years old, breaking the tape at the children’s race. There were a number of adults standing on the sidelines looking back up the course, trying to find their children in the onrushing pack. It was crowded, and people were walking in all directions. Vail could see how easy it would be to lure a seven-year-old away without anyone’s noticing. By the race numbers pinned to their chests, Vail could see that some of the adults had competed in the 5K run, while the rest were apparently just observers. Then he saw what he had missed.
One of the adult runners seemed to be looking at the camera as if he were measuring its danger. His arm was in front of his number so it couldn’t be read. Vail couldn’t tell if he was blocking it intentionally. But what he’d initially missed was that there was a smaller square of paper attached to the lower left corner of the man’s race number. It had been safety-pinned on so it could be collected at the end of the 3.1-mile race to document finish place and time. Unfortunately, because of the angle, Vail couldn’t make it out either. The man was dark-complected and burly, not a runner’s build. Most people who would run in the cold air of New Year’s Eve were probably not novices. That the number tag was still there suggested he had not run the adult race. His registering could have been a ruse calculated to get him close to the children without seeming suspicious.
The e-mail tone sounded again, and Vail glanced at the monitor. It was from the race officials. Attached were all of their photos. Still lost in thought, Vail ignored it, trying to find a way to determine if the individual in the photo was involved in the boy’s disappearance. Then it hit him. The photo was taken the moment the race’s winner was crossing the finish line. Logically, the official pictures would cover that moment and then beyond.
Quickly, he opened the e-mail and began studying the images. The first twenty or so were of the adult race. He looked for that same individual, thinking the man might have initially been in that area. Vail couldn’t find him. Then the chronologically sequenced photos started documenting the beginning of the children’s run. Vail carefully searched each of them. He knew what the man was wearing and was hoping for a clear shot of his number, which he could match to the runners’ list. There was another one of the young man winning, but Vail’s suspect was not in it.
A half-dozen photographs later, there was one of a man in the distance who appeared to be the right size and with the same clothing as in the earlier photo. He had his back to the camera and stood next to a van. Vail couldn’t tell whether he was stopped there or walking by. The van’s plate was visible, but it was too distant to make out.
Vail found the computer’s Photoshop program and opened it, pulling up the picture. Because the image had been taken with a quality camera, the pixel density was high and allowed him to blow up the license plate to where it could be read. He made a note of it and then centered the photo on the individual. In the space between the man’s legs, unseen before, was what looked like the leg of a child wearing red pants. Vail called the dispatcher and had her run the van’s plate.
While he waited, he shuffled through the growing stack of pages on the desk until he found the BOLO that had been sent out originally. Joey Walton was last seen wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and red sweatpants. The dispatcher came back on the line and advised that the plate came back to a George Hillstrand with a Herndon, Virginia, address.
Vail found Hillstrand’s name on the adult race roster and then checked him in the Reston PD computer. Four years earlier, he had evidently worked in Reston, because the department had gotten a call about him from the Maryland State Police, who were conducting an investigation of a child who had disappeared in Colesville, Maryland. They had called to see if Reston had had any previous contact with Hillstrand. They hadn’t.
The seven-year-old, Edward Stanton, had disappeared during a party at one of those pizza-and-game places that specialized in letting the kids run all over while the parents drank pitcher beer and doled out tokens to keep them busy. Hillstrand’s name had somehow come up in their investigation, but no specifics were listed.
Vail called the dispatcher again and had her run Edward Stanton’s name to see if the boy, or his body, had ever been found. After a short wait, she told him that the missing-person notice in NCIC was still active. Vail asked for the boy’s description. It was not unusual for serial offenders to seek victims who were physically similar. The two boys’ ages when kidnapped were close. She said, “At the time of incident, he was seven years old, four feet one inch tall, and weighed sixty pounds. Medium-brown hair, blue eyes. Under distinguishing marks, he has a crescent-shaped scar on the crown of his head.” A lot of things were matching up, but Vail had seen it before. “Proof positive” that turned out to be a series of impossible coincidences but were in fact just that.
With time so critical, the lead had to be checked out now. He found the dispatcher’s office and went in. “Hi, I’m Steve Vail. How’re they doing?”
Before she could answer, a request to run a plate came over the air. She turned to the computer to type it in and said, “They’re sitting on three places right now, waiting for this guy to come back. Did you want me to tell them something?”
“No, they’ve got their hands full. I’ll catch up with them later.” Vail also knew that if he waited for them, investigative protocol would have to be followed. First, the Maryland State Police would have to be contacted to see if Hillstrand was actually a suspect in the case or, instead, if his name had come up as the result of some other “shotgun” approach, which was not unusual in that kind of case. Hundreds, even thousands of names could be generated and never be fully investigated because of sheer volume. The fact that the state police had never followed up with a more detailed query indicated that Hillstrand was probably not a strong suspect at the time. And in all likelihood, due to the holiday, specific details from the MSP probably wouldn’t be available until sometime tomorrow at the earliest. Then, if Hillstrand had been a suspect in the Maryland abduction and somehow could be shown to be involved in the Walton boy’s disappearance, a prosecutor would have to be contacted for a search warrant while the police went out to surveil Hillstrand’s residence. And finally, finding an accommodating judge on New Year’s Day might prove to be a small miracle in itself. By then, in all probability, it would be too late.
Or Vail could just go there now and have a look for himself.
He opened the drawers to the desk he’d been working at to see if the detective kept a backup weapon. The only thing he found was an extra badge with a clip-on backing. He snapped it onto his belt and left Kate a note, telling her he’d gone to check out Hillstrand, along with the address and how Hillstrand’s name had surfaced. Although the information should prevent her from accusing him of hiding leads, he knew how she would interpret it. He added a P.S.: “This is a long shot, so I didn’t want to bother you with it.” He reread it and shook his head. The only way that he wasn’t going to be accused of deception was if Hillstrand was one of those false leads in which only Vail’s time had been wasted.
In the parking lot, Vail opened the trunk, hoping that Kate’s Bureau car might have been equipped with a shotgun. It wasn’t. He got in, started the engine, and pulled out into the light traffic.
There was an advantage to not involving Kate or any of the Reston PD. As long as he acted on his own, as a non-law-enforcement citizen, he had greater latitude for gathering evidence without a search warrant than sworn officers did, especially if the police didn’t know what he was doing. If they did, then he could be legally considered an agent of the department. In fact, under these circumstances his room to maneuver was almost limitless. While the exigent circumstances of a young boy’s life could mitigate violations of the Fourth Amendment, Vail was still worried that a pedophile might escape justice because the drafters of the Constitution hadn’t foreseen the downward-spiraling depravity at the fringes of the American male population. At least that would have been his explanation if it weren’t for Kate. She’d heard all his rhetoric for working alone before. In fact, it had created an almost irreparable rift between them the only other time they’d worked together. But at the moment it looked like she was, at best, his ride to the airport, so why not?
Glancing at the map again, he turned down a street and watched as the houses became more and more isolated. It then became an unpaved road that disappeared into the woods.
Vail came to a stop and lifted his foot from the brake, allowing the vehicle to advance at idle speed. It was another fifty yards before he saw any lights. He stopped again and switched off the engine. The car was still hidden by the thick evergreen woods. He got out and walked quietly toward the house. It was a single-level dwelling and bigger than Vail thought would be built in such a remote location.
He walked around the tree line at the edge of the clearing, trying to determine the exact size and layout of the structure. There were no outbuildings on the property, so if Hillstrand did have the boy, he had to be inside the house. As quietly as possible, Vail hurried back to the car, started it, and drove up to the house. The older paneled van from the photo was parked in front. Enough lights were on inside to indicate that someone was home.
Vail got out, walked directly to the front door, and knocked. The exterior of the house needed paint, but the property immediately around it seemed fairly well maintained. A bright light overhead came on, and the man in the race photo opened the door. His eyes were dark like his hair—possibly Mediterranean, Vail thought. His stare never left Vail’s as the two men sized each other up. Finally Hillstrand said, “Can I help you?”
Vail pulled the detective badge from his belt and held it up. “I’m with the Reston Police. Detective Vail. We’re investigating a missing child. Do you have a minute?”
“Sure,” he answered, and stepped back, inviting Vail in. Once he was inside, Hillstrand shut the door. “That’s an awfully nice suit for a detective.” His voice had a trace of suspicion in it. “Do you mind if I ask to see your photo ID?”
Vail patted his chest pockets as if looking for his identification. He then reached under his coat and searched his pants pockets. “Sorry, I don’t have it with me. I’m afraid you caught me, Mr. Hillstrand. I was on my way to a party when I got the call. Didn’t even get to go into the station. They just gave me some people to go and interview. The people who were at the race tonight where the boy disappeared. I don’t know if you heard about it. We’re hoping someone saw something.”
“You must have been caught short. I can see you’re not carrying a gun either.”
“That’s why they gave me just the people who were in the race, I guess. The friendlies. Any chance you saw anything?” Vail could hear the television on in another room. “I’m assuming you’ve seen it on TV.”
Hillstrand didn’t answer right away but instead stared at Vail as though contemplating something he’d said. “Yes, it’s hard not to have. If I had any photographs, I would have sent them. And I’m sorry, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Not that I can remember.”
“How’d you do on the run? Three miles is a fair distance.”
Hillstrand smiled uneasily. “I finished. I’m not an avid runner, so my goals are modest.”
“I don’t know how modest three miles is. I don’t think I could make it. Did you get over to see the children’s run?”
Hillstrand hesitated, and Vail suspected that he remembered looking into the camera that had taken his photo. “It was on the way to where my van was parked, so I stopped and watched the winner finish.”
The voice of a young boy came from another room. “Dad, who is it?”
“That your son?” Vail asked.
“Yes, it is.” Hillstrand led the way into the living room. A boy whose age Vail guessed at ten or eleven sat on the couch watching TV. He had medium-brown hair and was at least a foot taller than Joey Walton was reported to be.
“David, this is Detective Vail from the Reston Police Department. He’s investigating that missing boy from the race they keep talking about.”
The boy stood up and offered his hand. “How do you do, sir.”
Vail took it and looked into his pale blue eyes. “Your parents letting you stay up to bring in the New Year?”
“My dad is. My mom passed away when I was born, during child-birth.” Vail noted that he pronounced the words mechanically, without any sadness, his language a little too mature to be his own. The boy pointed to a nearby shelf. “That’s a picture of her with my dad.” Again the words seemed practiced.
Vail looked at the obviously pregnant woman in the photo standing next to George Hillstrand. Her coloring was even darker than her husband’s was, her eyes almost pitch-black. “I’m sorry, David. That’s really tough. I lost my mom early in my life, too. I know how hard that can be.” Vail reached up and tousled the boy’s hair.
He pulled his hand back carefully so as to not reveal what he had discovered. It is genetically improbable that couples with brown eyes will have a child with blue eyes, and David’s hair and skin were nowhere close to the darkness of his “parents’.” When Vail ruffled the boy’s hair, he felt the crescent-shaped scar on the crown of his head. Unbelievably, David had to be Edward Stanton, the child abducted four years earlier in Maryland. Which meant that, in all likelihood, Joey Walton was somewhere in the house. Talk about the luck pendulum swinging in the other direction.
The boy started to sit down in front of the TV again when Hillstrand said, “That’s enough for tonight, son. It’s time for bed.” Without any argument, the boy got up and said, “Good night, sir.”
“Good night, David,” Vail answered.
“Let me get him tucked in, Detective. I’ll be right back. Please make yourself comfortable.”
Vail went over to the photograph of Hillstrand and his wife and carefully examined it, trying to determine how old it was. By the clothing and the faded color of the picture, he guessed it was at least ten years old.
Suddenly Vail felt Hillstrand’s presence behind him. He turned around and found Hillstrand holding a .45 automatic on him. “Four years and you’re the first one to notice that his coloring didn’t fit. I guess I should put away that picture of my wife. I keep it there for my son. It took a while, but now he remembers her as his mother.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t notice me noticing.”
“It’s something I’ve always been afraid of. When you ran your hand through his hair, I knew.”
“And Joey?”
“He’s fine. Downstairs in a locked room. He’ll be restricted until he learns he’s better off here.”
“Than with his parents?”
“Since I’m the one with the gun, you don’t get to be judgmental,” Hillstrand said. “Besides, if they were good parents, they wouldn’t have left him alone in a crowd like that.”
“You mean with the pedophiles and all.”
Hillstrand raised the gun and pointed it at Vail’s face. “I am not a pedophile.”
Vail took a closer look at the gun and said, “That thing looks pretty old. Sure it still works?”
“It was my grandfather’s and it works just fine.”
“That particular model is military. It has a number of safeties. Are you sure it’s set to fire?”
Hillstrand smiled. “I’ve shot it enough times since my father left it to me to be positive.”
Vail was trying to determine how familiar Hillstrand was with the weapon. Because it had been designed for the military, it had four separate safeties. Not many people knew about the disconnector safety. If the end of the barrel could be pushed back a fraction of an inch toward the person holding the weapon, the hammer wouldn’t release. Since Hillstrand didn’t seem to know all that much about the mechanics of the gun, Vail thought if he could get into position and push it toward him—with the body’s natural tendency to push back—it would keep the safety engaged for the split second it would take to disarm him.
But right now Hillstrand was standing just far enough away to prevent that. “Can you at least let me see the boy, then?” Vail asked.
“Sure. With the carpeting and all up here, it’ll be less messy downstairs.”
“Call me cynical, but that doesn’t sound like a very happy New Year to me.”
Hillstrand’s only response was to wave the gun toward the basement door. Once they were downstairs, he pointed to a heavy steel door with a thick lock and hasp. “He’s in there.” Carefully he tossed Vail the keys. Vail opened the lock and turned back to Hillstrand, holding the keys in his outstretched right hand. Hillstrand took a cautious step closer. Vail knew that this was it.
As Hillstrand reached for the key ring, Vail half turned back to the door and, appearing distracted, drew the key ring back about six inches. Hillstrand leaned slightly forward to get it. Vail spun quickly and stepped into him, placing his hand over the muzzle of the gun and pushing it into Hillstrand.
For a split second, Hillstrand pushed back against Vail’s hand, pulling at the frozen trigger frantically. But as Vail turned to get a better grip on the weapon, Hillstrand drew it back and pulled the trigger. The .45’s explosion echoed slowly through the basement.
KATE AND THE RESTON CHIEF, Tim Mallon, sat behind his desk watching the interrogation of their sex-offender suspect, Frank Dillon, on a closed-circuit monitor. “What do you think, Kate, is it him?”
She watched the suspect’s body language closely. “It’s hard to tell with these sociopaths. And I’m certainly no expert. I promise you that someone from Behavioral Sciences will be up here tomorrow. This detective seems to know what he’s doing, though. As soon as Vail gets back, he may be able to figure it out.”
“Where is he? The desk officer said he went out.”
“I think he went to get something to eat.”
There was a knock at the door. A uniformed officer stepped in. “Chief, the parents are here.”
“Bring them back.” Mallon turned off the monitor.
“You want me to leave, Tim?” Kate asked.
“God, no. That the FBI is involved is the most reassuring thing I can tell them right now.”
The door opened again, and Mr. and Mrs. Walton walked in. Mallon introduced them both to Kate, and everyone sat down. Confusion and grief distorted Mrs. Walton’s face. Her makeup and hair were disheveled. Her husband, whose eyes were slightly red, tried to strike a calmer pose, more to keep his wife’s teetering hysteria in check than as a reflection of his own feelings. “Any news?” he asked.
“I’m sorry, not yet. But we’ve got the entire force following up on leads. We have brought someone in, and he’s being interrogated right now.”
“Is he the one? Is there something you’re not telling us?” Mrs. Walton asked anxiously.
“No, no, nothing like that.”
“Well, who is he?” the husband asked. “Why him?”
Mallon knew that there would be no comfort in the answer. Kate said, “He’s a convicted sex offender. This is routine. There’s nothing to indicate that he has anything to do with Joey being missing.”
“Oh, no,” Mrs. Walton said, and collapsed onto her husband’s shoulder.
There was another knock at the door, and the desk officer leaned his head in again. “Chief, there’s someone here that you’re going to want to—”
“We’re busy right now, Nelson,” Mallon all but snarled.
The officer got a strange look on his face and opened the door fully, smiling as he stepped aside.
Mrs. Walton looked up and bolted to her feet, her mouth gaping in a soundless scream.
In the doorway stood Steve Vail. In one arm he held Joey Walton wrapped in his topcoat. His other hand was gently cradled around the back of Edward Stanton’s neck.
Joey’s mother rushed to him, pulling him into her arms. His father hugged them both, no longer hiding his tears. The chief sat dumb-founded, and Kate just looked at Vail, shaking her head.
Mrs. Walton asked Vail, “Was Joey … Is he all right?”
Vail nodded at her knowingly. “He’s fine.”
She tightened her arms around the child.
Vail turned the Stanton boy toward them so he could get the full impact of the reunion. Then he squatted down and looked into his eyes. “Now do you see why it’s important to go back to your real parents? This mom and dad have only been separated from their son for a couple of hours, and look how they feel. Your parents have been without you for four years.” The boy nodded dutifully, but Vail could see it still wasn’t registering fully.
Kate came over to them and smiled. “And who is this good-looking young man?”
“This is Edward Stanton,” Vail said. “He was taken in Maryland four years ago.”
Kate’s head snapped toward Vail. It took her a few seconds to comprehend that this boy was another kidnapping victim. “The same guy had him? How’d you find him?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
Kate sensed that her questions were interfering with Vail’s attempt to have the Stanton boy realize that he belonged with his real parents, but, like Mrs. Walton, she couldn’t help but ask about his well-being. “And he didn’t …” She bobbed her head back and forth euphemistically so the boy wouldn’t know what she was talking about.
Vail pulled Kate back away from the eleven-year-old. “Apparently not. This guy who abducted them, George Hillstrand, his wife and son died in childbirth just before he took Edward, here. He just wanted some part of his family back. As far as I can tell, Edward’s been raised well. He’s having a little trouble comprehending it all, figuring out where his loyalties lie, but otherwise he seems okay.”
Kate watched the boy carefully. She knew that it was not unusual for long-held kidnapping victims to identify with their abductor rather than their family.
For the first time, Kate noticed that Vail’s hand was wrapped in a white handkerchief and was damp with blood. “Are you all right?”
“That depends. Do you believe in sympathy dates?”
“Obviously you’re fine.” She looked closely at him and then back at his hand, as if putting off some argument until they could be alone.
The chief came over and asked Vail how he’d found the boys. Vail explained about the race photos and how Hillstrand’s name had come up in the Maryland investigation. “Where is Hillstrand?” Mallon asked.
Vail took Kate’s car keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Mallon. “I didn’t have any cuffs, so I duct-taped him and put him in the trunk.”
“What happened to your hand?”
“In all the excitement, I must have cut it.”
The phone rang, and Mallon picked it up, listening for a moment. “Okay, give us a few minutes.” He hung up. “The media is on the way. Straighten your tie, Steve, you’re about to be a hero.” The chief nodded at the Stanton boy. “And wait till they hear about this young man also being safe and sound after all this time.”
Kate looked at Vail and knew what he was thinking. “Tim, we appreciate it, but this is your time. Just mention that the FBI assisted in the investigation.”
“Are you kidding me? I can’t take credit for this.”
Kate cleared her throat, signaling Vail that she was about to tell a lie. She nodded for Mallon to follow her and Vail out of the room. In the hallway she said, “Tim, I’m sorry, but I wasn’t being straight with you when I said Steve wasn’t with the Bureau. This is classified. You’ll have to tell your people and the Waltons not to say anything about his involvement. He’s been working a major municipal corruption case undercover in Chicago as a bricklayer. His name or face in the news will blow two years of hard work. Just tell the media what I told you: An undercover agent found them and is involved in an ongoing investigation. Except lie about Chicago. Since Edward was taken in Maryland, tell them it was Baltimore. That’ll keep them running around in circles until this calms down. And don’t be too modest—you are the one who called us.”
“Kate, I may have worked applicants my whole career, but I was in the same FBI as you. Plus, I know what a terrible liar you are. I don’t understand why Steve wants to duck this, but I’m too indebted to you both to question it. I’ll just assume it’s necessary.” He gingerly shook Vail’s hand, just interlocking fingertips to avoid the wound. “Whether you’re an agent or not, Steve, I am most grateful.” Mallon hugged Kate. Then he walked back into his office and said to the Stanton boy, “Edward, what do you say we go call your parents?”
“Yes, sir,” the boy answered, his voice starting to gain some enthusiasm.
Kate unwrapped Vail’s hand, revealing the grazing wound. Fortunately, the round had hit only the fleshy edge. “You’re going to need some stitches.”
Vail tightened the handkerchief back around his hand. “I’ve been here less than four hours and you’ve already gotten me shot.”
“Me? You’re the one going off on your own. Again. How is this my fault?”
“I don’t know. Every time I get near you, something like this happens. It’s like you’re crime’s version of Typhoid Mary.”
On their way out, Vail remembered something and detoured back through the detective bureau. He picked up the note he’d left on the desk and handed it to her. “Before we have an argument, I just wanted you to know that I wasn’t cutting you out. When I left here, I was cursing myself for not going with you, because your lead looked so much better.”
Kate glanced at the note. “You’re getting a lot better at covering your tracks.”
“From your tone, apparently not good enough. Just remember who unleashed the hounds. I am a simple mason who was looking forward to free liquor and unsuspecting maidens.” Vail checked the clock on the wall. “Happy New Year, Deputy Assistant Director Bannon.” He kissed her lightly on the cheek, trying to determine if they were back on a date. Her response was disappointingly neutral. “Pace yourself, woman, we’ve got the whole night in front of us.”
This was how it was with Vail, she thought. If there was a mystery in front of them, he was amazing, but once it was over, difficulties between them were inevitable. “Just because you rescued a couple of kids and got a little shot up, don’t think that I’m waving you in for a landing, Vail.”
When she called him “Vail,” it was a good sign. She used it only when she wasn’t mad. As they walked out into the parking lot, she took his arm, her touch sending electricity through him.
By the time they left the emergency room less than an hour later, dawn was coming up. Vail had taken four stitches in his hand, and the doctor had told him there shouldn’t be any permanent problems.
“Well, what’s your poison?” Kate asked. “I guess I owe you some sack time—on the couch. I can get you to the airport later.”
“Why don’t you just drop me there now.”
“If you’ll let me buy you breakfast first.”
Then Kate noticed a familiar black Lincoln Town Car idling in the parking lot, its white-gray exhaust disappearing into the icy air. It belonged to the director of the FBI. As they approached the vehicle, the driver got out.
Kate said, “Hello, Mike. What’s up?”
“The director sent me to get you.”
Kate looked at Vail with a mixture of apology and apprehension.
One corner of his mouth lifted sardonically. “Ever notice how seldom the really good dates start out in the emergency room?”
The driver turned to Vail. “He sent me to get both of you.”
TWO
THE BLACK TOWN CAR PULLED UP TO THE CURB IN THE 1100 BLOCK OF SIXTEENTH Street in northwest D.C. They parked in front of an old mansion that had a tall wrought-iron fence surrounding it. “Where are we, Mike?” Kate asked the driver.
Vail pointed across the street to a large tan and gray four-story residence. “That’s the old Russian embassy over there.”
“They’re waiting inside for you,” the driver said, ignoring Kate’s question and Vail’s observation.
As they got out, Vail pointed at the building they were about to enter and said, “This is the old observation post where the Bureau used to monitor who came and went across the street, but then the Russians built that big compound up on Tunlaw Road, so this place was no longer necessary. Apparently they’ve found some new use for it.”
When Kate and Vail walked up to the entrance of the huge old dwelling, an agent who was not wearing his suit coat opened one of its heavy, ten-foot-tall oak doors. Along with his sidearm, two magazine pouches were clipped to his belt. He studied both of their faces briefly and then, in a voice that was neither welcoming nor overly official, said, “The director is waiting for you upstairs.”
THEY FOLLOWED A CURVED STAIRCASE to the second floor, and Vail took a moment to appreciate the craftsmanship of the elegant structure, which he estimated to be at least seventy-five years old. The staircase was constructed of Spanish black marble that was almost without any impurities to distort its ebony gloss. A large but delicate glass chandelier hung down through the helix of stairs. “Okay, I’ll ask first,” he said to Kate. “What’s going on?”
“Not a clue,” she said. “But considering that today’s a holiday, the smart money is that it’s not going to be good news.”
“Next time I’m planning the date. Someplace without telephones or emergency rooms. Or FBI directors.”
“Do you think if you use the word ‘date’ enough times, we’ll actually be on one?”
“I’m hoping you’ll admire me for my perseverance.”
“Isn’t that the stalker’s official mantra?”
On the second floor, they could hear low voices coming from a room that faced the street. They walked in, and Vail could see that it had once been an oversize bedroom but was now filled with equipment that looked dated. Metal tables, recording equipment, a small telescope on a long table at the window—which was covered with what he recognized as a one-way shade. A second telescope stood on a smaller table at an adjoining window, also shaded.
Aside from the director, there were five other men in the room sitting on a couch and chairs. As they entered, Vail was surprised that most of their curiosity seemed to be directed toward him. A room full of men invariably turned their attention to Kate when she entered, even if they already knew her.
Bob Lasker got to his feet and shook hands with Vail. “Steve, how’s the hand?”
“It’s fine.”
The director nodded to one of the men, who got up and closed the door. “Good morning, Kate,” Lasker said.
She looked at the faces of the other men. “Is it a good morning, sir?”
“We’re about to find out. Please, both of you, have a seat. Kate, I think you know everybody here.” The director then introduced the others to Vail. “Bill Langston is the assistant director in charge of the Counterintelligence Division. His deputy, John Kalix. Tony Battly, Jake Canton, and Mark Brogdon are unit and section chiefs within the division.”
The director watched as Vail gave them each a snapshot evaluation. It was something Lasker wanted him to do, something that would help convince Vail to grant the request Lasker was about to make, that these men, while adequate administrators, were unqualified to do fieldwork.
The three unit and section chiefs were startlingly nondescript, reminding Vail that at FBI headquarters individuality was rewarded only with suspicion. Each of the men was overweight, as if even that shortcoming also met some sort of Bureau standard. Their suits varied little in color or quality and had become too small due to burgeoning waistlines. The sleeves on Battly’s jacket were too long, covering half of his thumbs. Judging by the wear on the elbows, it had fit him that way since its purchase years before, and he’d never felt the need to have the minor tailoring done, probably because he took it off at his desk.
Brogdon’s suit was equally fatigued, the pant cuffs frayed, the lapels wilted and beginning to curl up. Canton’s shirt collar was too tight and had been left unbuttoned. Dusty spots dotted his tie where he had apparently scraped away food particles. The apprehensive expressions on all three faces, aside from their momentary curiosity about Vail, were those of men who were much closer to retirement than to taking on anything remotely associated with the unpredictable rigors of the street.
John Kalix, although not overweight, had a round, doughy face that was aged prematurely by a receding hairline that he made more prominent by combing over what was left of his mousy brown hair. Sitting to his boss’s right, he somehow managed to mimic the assistant director’s slightest movements. He wore the ageless uniform of an FBI manager: gray slacks, navy blazer, white shirt, and a striped tie that had been knotted too many times between cleanings.
On the other hand, Bill Langston, the assistant director in charge, looked like the second most important man in the room. In his mid-fifties, he was trim, even thin. He had a full head of brown hair that was going gray at the temples. His suit was moderately expensive, and he sat with his legs carefully crossed so as to not wrinkle the sharp creases along the front of his trousers. His posture was unusually erect, as though he were waiting for an “unexpected” photo. The expression on his face, somehow inappropriate for the moment, was one of patrician stoicism. Vail guessed that it was an effort on his part not to be easily read.
“Steve, I never did get a chance, face-to-face, to thank you for what you did during the Pentad investigation in L.A.,” the director said. “I’ve told everyone here about your involvement in the case.”
Waving his hand in the direction of Kate, Vail said, “As a result you offered this one a promotion—some thank-you.”
Lasker smiled. “Speaking of which, nice work last night on those abductions, Kate. We’re getting a ton of good press for a change.”
“Since your driver knew to pick us up at the emergency room, I assume you talked to the chief in Reston. To be honest, sir, the only thing I had to do with finding those boys was driving Steve there.”
“Looks like you were going somewhere nice before you got sidetracked.”
Vail spoke first so that Kate wouldn’t have to be embarrassed by trying to explain the circumstances of their failed date. “The Irish ambassador’s reception. Just as well. I don’t speak the language.”
The director laughed. “You and Washington’s elite in the same room, Steve? That would have been worth the price of admission.”
“You might have been disappointed. I was under strict orders to keep my shirt on and not arm-wrestle anyone for beer.” Vail cocked his head to one side to let the director know that he was becoming suspicious of the small talk. “But then I doubt we’re here to catch up on my lack of social breeding.”
“Sorry,” Lasker said. The single word seemed genuine. “We’ve got a major problem. There’s no way to make this sound like it’s not hyper-bole, but it is legitimately a matter of national security. The people in this room are the only ones who know what I’m going to tell you.”
“Classified, I got it.”
“I’ve been through your old personnel file again, so I know you’ve been trained in counterintelligence.” Because of a master’s degree in Soviet history, Vail had originally been hired to work the Russians. Out of training school, he’d been sent to Detroit to work general criminal cases in order to develop broader investigative skills, but he was frequently sent back to Quantico for in-service training. That’s how he knew about the old embassy across the street and the building they were now in. “Other than the technology, not much has changed. It’s still pretty much cloak-and-dagger. Actually, more cloaks than daggers. Have you followed any of the recent cases?”
“I’ve always been interested in anything American-Russian, so I read a lot of what’s published.”
“Good, then we won’t have to waste time explaining every nuance of how all this works. Bill, can you fill him in?”
The assistant director stood up, went over to a laptop computer, and tapped a key. The wall above the fireplace, which was being used as a makeshift screen, lit up. A photograph of grainy surveillance quality appeared, showing a man with the flat, pale features of an Eastern European, his sideburns and mustache a little too bushy to be stylish in the United States. “A month ago this individual contacted our Washington Field Office and requested a meeting. He was guarded in the information he supplied but said that he was an intelligence officer with the Russian embassy here in Washington. He would not identify himself by name but instead used the code name Calculus. At this meeting, to qualify himself as legitimate, he turned over five classified documents. When we asked him what he wanted from us, he said he had a list of Americans, some employed by the government and some by corporations with defense contracts, who were supplying information to the SVR, which if you’ve been keeping up, know is the new KGB. He wouldn’t say how many were on the list or where they worked. However, one of the individuals, he was certain, worked in the U.S. intelligence community. He didn’t know which agency.”
“The documents he turned over—how critical was the information?” Vail asked.
“Nothing earth-shattering, but enough to convince us that he could have access to what he claimed. Why do you ask that?”
“Just curious.”
Kate watched Vail carefully. She detected a note of discovery in his voice.
“I assume he wants money,” Vail said.
“Why else would someone betray Mother Russia and risk the executioner?” Langston said. “The way he set it up was quite clever. He would give us, in his words, the ‘smallest fish first, the largest, last,’ which we assume is the intelligence agent. Once we identified the first one, we were to wire-transfer a quarter of a million dollars to a Chicago bank, for which he provided an account number. He said it’s a large bank and that the account, which was opened by one of his relatives who works there, is in a dummy name. He warned that if the Bureau tried to find out who it was or trace the funds, the relative would be alerted and all contact with us would be severed, because if he couldn’t trust us, he was as good as dead. Once the relative notified him that the money had been deposited, we would get the next name. He wanted a quarter of a million for each of them and a half million for the last one, because according to him it’s a highly placed intelligence agent.”
“Did he say how quickly after payment you would get the next name?”
“In fact, he made that quite clear. We would get it, in his words, ‘immediately if not sooner,’ because he felt the longer this dragged out, the better the chances of his being exposed. He said the SVR had been given strict orders by Moscow that it must never become public knowledge that the Russians were spying on the United States again. Although their agents are extremely cautious to start with, apparently that directive has made them completely paranoid. Even the faintest hint of disloyalty launches an all-out probe.”
Vail said, “So he gives you a name, you arrest that person, and then wire a quarter of a million dollars to the Chicago account. Once it’s deposited, you get the next name, and so on until the intelligence agent is caught, and then you send a half million.”
“Right.”
“Does that mean he’s given you the first name?”
“More or less,” the assistant director said.
“As far as spycraft goes,” Vail said to the director, “this sounds pretty paint-by-the-numbers. Why am I here?”
“A couple of reasons,” Langston said. “Two days ago we got a short, cryptic text message from him. He has been recalled to Moscow unexpectedly.”
“Uh-oh,” Vail said.
“What?” Kate asked.
“When someone is suspected of spying, the Russians find some routine excuse to get them back to Moscow. Once there, they’re interrogated, for months if necessary. Should they confess or if the SVR develops any proof, the suspected individual is usually executed for treason. And since it’s not something the Russians are likely to make public, you’d never know,” Vail said.
Langston continued, “Since the first letter, we’ve been trying to identify Calculus. And now we think we know who he is. The CIA has a fairly high-level source in the Russian embassy. In a rare act of cooperation, they’ve identified an individual for us. If they’ve given us the right name, he’s an electrical engineer by training and is extremely cautious, even obsessive, which in the spy business is a good thing. His job is what we call a technical agent. He’s sent all over the United States to their safe houses to wire them for sound and video and record meetings in case any of their double agents should get cold feet. Then they could be threatened with exposure, a foolproof way of keeping an asset’s attention. The rest of it we’re guessing at. We think, after meetings between American sources and their Russian handlers, he would collect the recordings and store them at the embassy. We think that with his financial future in mind, he started making a list of their identities. Maybe even keeping copies of the documents they turned over or other information we could use as corroborating evidence.”
Vail said, “You got to love a communist who appreciates capitalism more than we do.”
“Exactly.”
Vail asked, “Well, let me ask you—hopefully for the last time—why me?”
“The only ones who know about this are the people in this room. If we gave this to any of our agents, I guarantee it would leak out. Your discretion has been established more than once. You have a certain reputation for getting things done despite obstacles that our agents would find … well, procedurally insurmountable.”
Vail laughed. “You mean none of you want to get caught.”
The director said, “The rest of us here are not exactly street-ready, and this has the potential to get challenging. The men in this room haven’t been out there in decades.” Lasker glanced around to see if anyone objected. “Sorry, guys.”
Vail glanced at Kate and then back at the director. “When you offered me this kind of arrangement before, I said no.”
The director pursed his lips. “That was because I thought your not being an agent was a waste of talent and I was hoping you’d eventually realize it. When you were vehement, I accepted it. But this is different. This is vital.”
Vail got up and walked over to the window. He raised the shade and stared at the old Russian embassy across the street. “Funny, five years ago I thought this was exactly what I’d be doing right now. Instead I’m a bricklayer.” He turned back and looked at the men. “While you may find that ironic, I find it unjust.”
“Steve, we have to assume that Calculus is being interrogated in Moscow right now. If the Russians break him, there will be no list and all those spies will go on selling our secrets.”
“I’m sorry. I’m going home.”
Everyone in the room was silent. Finally the director said, “Could you come with me for a minute? There’s something you need to see.”
Vail followed him downstairs and then through a series of small, unfurnished rooms.
Once Lasker was satisfied they were completely out of earshot of the others, he said, “Did Kate tell you what happened to her just before Thanksgiving?”
“No.”
“She almost died.”
“What?”
“She left her car running at her place as well as the door to the garage open. She’d been drinking. Wound up in the hospital for a couple of days.”
“You think it was a suicide attempt?” Vail’s voice was accusatory.
“No, I don’t. But it was a couple of days after she’d gone to see you in Chicago, which OPR tells me did not go well.”
“Kate’s way too strong for anything like that. And as up and down as we’ve been, I’ve never seen her depressed for a second.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“She dumped me. I’m the one who’s supposed to be suicidal.”
“I thought you guys made up. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“That was a lie. She didn’t know I was coming. I was trying to patch things up. She was driving me back to the airport when she got the kidnapping call.”
“Like I said, I know it wasn’t a suicide attempt, but I can’t call off the OPR investigation just because I think so. I’m sure you can remember how petty people can be in this organization when it comes to someone else’s problems. When somebody is as successful as Kate is, they want to believe it. She’s got people looking at her like she’s a time bomb. I want her to work with you on this Calculus thing. If you two did half the job you did in L.A., all that petty whispering would come to a screeching halt.”
Vail laughed. “Are you blowing this out of proportion to hook me?”
“When you and she walked into that room upstairs, did you notice that none of those men would look at her? When’s the last time you saw that happen?”
Vail took a moment to consider what Lasker had said. “I’d be a fool to say yes to this.” There was something in Vail’s tone that told the director that was exactly what he was about to do. “Fortunately for you, it’s not exactly construction weather in Chicago.”
Lasker clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks.”
When they walked back into the upstairs room, the director said, “Steve’s decided to give us a hand, and Kate will work with him.”
Kate’s eyes locked onto Vail. She had heard the surety in his tone when he’d said no to the director. She’d never seen him change his mind once it was so firmly set.
Vail looked back at her. “However, this time, if you’re going to saddle me with Deputy Assistant Director Bannon, she has to understand that I am working with and not for her?”
Kate took a moment to recover and then said, “Yes, those were the two big disruptions in L.A., me giving orders and you following them.”
The director looked slightly distracted by what he was about to say, missing the humor in Kate’s response. “I know how you feel about answering to anyone, Steve, but because this is so potentially explosive, I’m going to need you or Kate to report to Bill at least once a day so he can keep me advised.”
“Define ‘report to,’” Vail said.
“This is extremely complicated, so I need everyone to work together. Whatever other intelligence agency might be involved, add in the Russians and our own State Department and it’s going to be a diplomatic high-wire act. The potential for disaster is incalculable. You have to keep Bill advised.”
“Is that actually what you want us to do, or are you giving me one of those orders that when you’re called in front of some congressional subcommittee, you can say I disregarded your instructions? If it’s the second, I have no problem with it.”
“I’m sorry, Steve, I need you to report daily. I wouldn’t be much of a director if I didn’t keep a very close eye on this one.”
Vail knew that because of Kate he had no choice. “You do realize how this is going to end.”
“I’m hoping it doesn’t.”
“Which means you can see exactly how it’s going to end,” Vail said. “Kate, I’ve got to tell you that this is the worst date I’ve ever been on.” She just shook her head. “Guys, consider yourselves warned: This is not who I am, but I’ll do what I can.”
“Thank you,” Lasker said.
Vail turned to the assistant director. “Bill, I don’t know you at all. What I’m about to say is based on my personal history with Bureau bosses. If it doesn’t apply, ignore it.”
His face expressionless, Langston said, “Go ahead.”
“If you try to obstruct me simply because of your ego, I’ll be on the first available flight to Chicago, and I’m going to guess that won’t make the director happy.” Langston still showed no reaction. Vail turned to the others. “Okay, then, does anybody have any ideas where to start?”
The deputy assistant director, John Kalix, said, “The second time we met with Calculus, we had finished analyzing the documents that he had turned over to us and knew that he was legit, so we gave him a special phone. He was supposed to use it only to contact us. It’s a miniaturized satellite phone, very ordinary-looking. That’s all we told him about it. It had other capabilities, one of which was to constantly track his position, even when it was supposedly turned off. He used it only once, to text us about being recalled to Moscow. Six words, that’s all. That was the last time we heard from him.” Kalix got up and tapped the computer keyboard. A photograph of the message appeared.
To Moscow unexpectedly. Find CDP now!
“We’re guessing ‘CDP’ are the initials of the first person on his list,” Kalix continued. “We’ve checked them through every available database, most of which don’t have middle initials, and have no clue who it is. Not everyone lists a middle initial. There could be hundreds, even thousands of them across the country. It’s not much to go on. The only other thing we have is where he traveled. It’s all documented in the dark blue file on the table there.”
Vail took a moment to process what he’d been told and then looked over at the folder and nodded. “And where is the phone now?”
“As soon as that message was sent, we could no longer determine where it was. Somehow the GPS must have been disabled.”
“The last location?”
“Inside the Russian embassy.”
“That doesn’t sound promising. Anything else that might help us?”
“That’s it. Like I said, it’s not much to go on.”
The director stood up. “Thank you, guys.” The men understood that the meeting was at an end and they were to leave.
After everyone filed out, the director closed the door behind them. “Steve, you two should probably work out of here. It’s secure, and there’s some equipment you might be able to use. The computers are current and have complete Bureau access. The building is alarmed, and there’s a stocked kitchen, a shower, and some cots for sleeping. The briefcase on the table is for you. Gun, credentials, credit card, cell phone are all inside. Parked out front is a blue Chevy sedan. The keys are in the case, too.” He took out a blank business-size card and wrote down a number on it. “If you need anything else—anything—call this number.”
Vail said, “Any objections if I move in here?”
The director glanced at Kate. “If that’s what you prefer, sure.”
“It’ll eliminate travel time from the hotel,” Vail said, and Kate understood that he had offered the reason so she wouldn’t be embarrassed at whatever way the director interpreted their relationship.
“And I’m only about fifteen minutes away,” she said.
Vail said, “If we round up any of these people, aren’t you afraid it’ll point the Russians in Calculus’s direction? If they’re not already onto him.”
“We do have an obligation to try to protect him as best we can, but we have a greater duty to protect this country. Actually, we have discussed our options for keeping this quiet as long as possible. Through legal and bureaucratic foot-dragging, we figure the whole thing could be kept quiet for about ten days. So if you do bring someone in, that ten-day clock will start ticking. After that, I’m afraid Calculus’s anonymity could become tenuous.”
Kate said, “Ten days isn’t much time to get from A to Z. Especially since we’re not sure where A is or how many letters there are in the alphabet.”
“No, it’s not. And to compound the problem, we don’t know if we’ll get any more information from Calculus. Steve, you have no idea how much I appreciate this. Between keeping everything secret and the idea of a bunch of traitors running around Washington, it was an impossible challenge. But now we have you. I’m sorry about handcuffing you with reporting daily, but this is a completely different situation from Los Angeles. If you have any problems, you’ve got my number.”
“‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!’”
The director smiled. “Dante, right?”
“Rather than who wrote it, it’s more important to know where it was posted.”
“Which is?”
“It was the inscription at the gate to hell.”
THREE
AFTER KATE HAD WALKED THE DIRECTOR OUT, SHE CAME BACK UPSTAIRS. “Thank you for doing this. And for protecting my reputation with the director.”
“Oh, how I wish your reputation actually needed protection.”
“Me, too, Vail.”
He stared at her for a few seconds and then went back to the window, again staring at the old embassy across the street.
She said, “What exactly did the director show you downstairs that changed your mind?”
“A large sum of money.”
“Vail.”
“Okay, he played ‘America the Beautiful.’” She scowled at him. “Metaphorically. He knew that if he got me out of that room, and away from all that management, my decision would be less knee-jerk. For being the big boss, he gets a pretty good read on people.”
Kate studied Vail’s face for a few seconds, looking for deception. “I wish I could get a good read on you.”
“That’s the other reason we have trouble getting along. You think I always have a secret agenda.”
“Where would anyone get an idea like that?”
“See, that’s why I think there’s hope for us. If our relationship didn’t have a healthy foundation, you would’ve taken a cheap shot right there.”
Kate smiled and shook her head. “Where do you want to start?”
“It’s been thirty-six hours since either of us slept. I’m going to get a few hours’ sleep. I suggest you do the same.”
“I need to change, too. I’ll take the car back to my place. I’ll bring up your suitcase when I come back.”
“I’m starving. Let’s see how we’re set for food first.”
As he started for the kitchen, she said, “This time I need to be on the inside of the investigation, Steve.”
“Okay, but just remember it comes with a lot of liability.”
“Have I ever denied you when you wanted to commit a felony?”
“I said you’re in, Deputy Assistant Director Bannon.”
“Then explain your question about the classified documents Calculus gave up. What was that about? And don’t give me that ‘curious’ stuff. I’ve seen that look before.”
“Well, isn’t this getting off to a familiar start?” Vail said, laughing for a moment. “Sometimes in the spy business, your opponents will run a game on you. They’ll salt the mines with borderline information to convince you that they’re on your side. It’s just something to be wary of. And if they’re good, they can wind up getting more information from you than you get from them.”
She stared at him for a few seconds. “That sounds like a reasonable explanation, but it always does—and then suddenly I’m being shot at.”
“There are worse things than being shot at.”
“Like …?”
“Living a life where you’re never shot at.” He went into the kitchen and yelled out to her. “These are spies. They don’t shoot at people. But I’d be careful what I ate.” The refrigerator was stocked with food, including a carton of eggs. He took them out and checked the date. “These eggs are fresh. How about I make some breakfast?”
“I assume that you have no desire to poison me.”
“Sure, we’ll say that.”
“Do you want me to do that?” she asked.
“I’m just going to scramble some eggs. Why don’t you have a look through those files they left us.”
Ten minutes later he walked out with two plates loaded with eggs and toast balanced on top. She looked at the plate he set in front of her. “Make enough?”
“With you I never know when I’m going to get to eat again.” He picked up his fork. “Anything in the files?”
She took a bite of toast and pulled a photograph from the back of the file. “Here’s that shot of Calculus’s message.”
She watched him carefully as he laid it on the table next to his plate and studied it while he continued to eat.
To Moscow unexpectedly. Find CDP now!
Finally she said, “Do you think CDP is our ‘little fish’?”
Vail continued to eat, staring at the message. “It has to be. He uses only three words to notify us of his possible impending death: ‘To Moscow unexpectedly.’ Someone that economical wouldn’t waste the last three words on something meaningless. He used exactly the same number of words to indicate that they’re as important as the first three.”
“Why would he care whether we found the spies if he knew he was going to be taken back there and tortured, and probably worse?”
Again Vail was lost in thought. She took a mouthful of eggs and watched him as he ate absentmindedly. Finally he said, “This is good. Very, very good.”
“The eggs?”
“Your question about him caring. It could be the key to unlocking this. He shouldn’t care. Yet he sent us the first mole’s initials. Why?”
“Maybe he figured since he was being sent back to Moscow, he’d give us the first name hoping we’d send the money to the Chicago bank and it would get to his family or whoever.”
“That’s a possibility. Here’s another one: What if he planned for this contingency? He knew that if the Russians get it out of him about the list and recover what he’s hidden for us, they’ll have all they need to convict him of treason and execute him. But if he can get us to whatever evidence he left for us, before the Russians can recover it, they won’t be able to prove a thing. Maybe he’s in Moscow right now enduring torture to give us whatever head start he can.”
“It’s urgent, I get it. But first we have to find this CPD. How do we do that? Like Kalix said, there’s got to be a lot of people with those initials.”
“Another good question. Unfortunately, one that is going to require a little sleep to answer. I hate to waste the time sleeping, but it’ll be a good investment.” Vail picked up his plate and asked her, “Are you done?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“Can you be back here in four hours?”
“Seeing how the alternative is to let you go wandering off with a new set of credentials and a gun, and then having to answer to the director, I guess I’ll have to.”
ALMOST TO THE MINUTE, four hours after leaving him, Kate pulled up in front of the old Bureau observation post. It was midafternoon, but the temperature was still near freezing. She took his suitcase out of the trunk and carried it upstairs. He was in the room where the meeting with the director had taken place. He had shaved and showered and was reading one of the files that had been provided.
“It didn’t take you long to get back at it. Anything in there?” she asked.
“There is one interesting thing. The cell phone they gave Calculus, it tracked him twenty-four hours a day. We have detailed coordinate charts telling us where he went and when.”
“Nothing else?”
“Not yet, but I’m already getting the feeling I’m missing something.” He stood up and went over to a computer that was on. “Take a look at this. You’ve probably seen it before.”
She peered over his shoulder. “Sure, that’s a spy satellite we have access to. How’d you know about it?”
“I kept reading in the file about transverse tracking. When I turned on the computer, I saw the icon on the desktop.” She sat down in a chair next to him. “I looked through those cell-phone GPS logs. I think they’re important.”
“Important how?”
“Take a look at his message again.” He handed her the file. “How do the last three words differ from the first three?”
To Moscow unexpectedly. Find CDP now!
“The exclamation point?”
“And …?”
She looked for a few seconds and then shook her head in frustration. “I don’t know, what?”
“Look at my hand,” he said, holding it with the fingers spread as wide as possible. “Now look at the message again.”
She did and then said, “It looks like there’s an extra space between the ‘CPD’ and the word ‘now.’” She thought about it a little longer. “I still don’t get it.”
“I made some coffee. Would you mind getting me a cup?” His voice was more instructional than demanding.
Her face shortened into a knot of confusion. “Oooo-kay.” She went into the kitchen and started pouring coffee into a mug. “Black?” she called out to him. Before he could answer, she yelled, “The last sentence contains a message within a message!” Forgetting the coffee, she hurried back into the room. “If he didn’t mean anything by it, the exclamation point would been after ‘To Moscow unexpectedly,’ to emphasize the danger he was in. But using it with ‘now’ and isolating it with an extra space indicates that there are two messages within those last three words: Find CDP and an instruction to do it now, at that exact moment.” She grinned, realizing that Vail had sent her to get coffee so she would stop staring at the forest and be able to isolate one of the trees.
“And what are we in possession of that can quantify ‘now’?” he asked.
This time Kate let her mind go blank before trying to figure out the answer. “The exact time he sent the message.”
Vail said, “And since we have his exact longitude and latitude when he sent it, he might have been giving us a clue to who CDP is.”
“But he would have to know that the phone we gave him was capable of tracking his movements.”
“First of all, he’s an engineer, an engineer in the spy business—don’t you think he would assume that? Why would we give him just an ordinary satellite phone? Plus, the phone was turned on. He’d have to know we could track him then.” Vail handed her the file; it was opened to the GPS charts. He turned back to the computer and the satellite imaging. “The call was made on December twenty-ninth at 4:18 p.m. Give me the coordinates listed for that time.”
As she read them, Vail maneuvered the mouse over a map of the United States until the digits in the small display windows were the same as those she had given him. He locked them in and then used the on-screen control to zoom down to the location, which could be seen with incredible detail, close enough to capture the address from an adjoining map on the screen. “It’s some sort of business. There are dozens of cars in that front parking lot alone.”
“Here, let me,” Kate said.
Vail got up, and Kate sat down at the computer. She went to a different search engine and typed in the address. A corporate profile popped up on the screen. “Alliant Industries in Calverton, Virginia.” She clicked on another icon and was shifted into Bureau indices and searched the name. “There it is, Alliant Industries. They’re in our files because we’ve done quite a few background investigations on their employees for security clearances. Evidently they have some defense contracts.”
“Can you pull up the list of names that we’ve investigated?”
“Hold on.” She typed some more, waited until the results came up on the screen, and then started scrolling through the alphabetical list. “Believe it or not, there are two with the first initial C and last initial P: Claudia Prinzon and Charles Pollock. Let me see if I can find middle initials.”
She started to open the background report on the woman when Vail said, “Don’t bother. It’s Pollock.”
“How do you know?”
“Pollock is a North Atlantic food fish. Our little fish.”
She shook her head and laughed. “This isn’t going to make the Counterintelligence Division very happy.”
“Why not?”
“How do you think they’re going to take it when I tell them that you found the first mole in less than four hours, not counting sleeping, showering, and shaving time? I know you’re not trying to make them look like idiots, but …”
Vail laughed. “Maybe that’s why I keep getting fired.”
“Maybe?”
“Then let’s not tell them.”
“You know that’s not possible. Now that we know who Pollock is, we’ll have to start twenty-four-hour surveillance and get up on his phones and computer ASAP. And eventually search warrants. Are you going to do all that by yourself?”
“Okay, we’ll wait a couple of days before we tell anyone. That way it’ll look like it was a lot more difficult.”
“Hi, I’m Kate Bannon. We met last year. Apparently you don’t remember me because you’re trying to run the same scam on me as you did then. You’re still trying to end-run everyone. And in case you’re counting, ‘everyone’ includes me.”
“It doesn’t include you. Wherever this takes me, it takes us. It’s just that the more they get involved, the farther away the answer always seems to get. They’re like moths.”
“Moths?”
“They keep flying into the light simply because it’s the brightest thing in front of them, even though they’re slowly beating themselves—and any chance to solve this case—to death.”
“Give it up, Vail. At some point even you are going to need Bureau help.”
“As clever as Calculus has been with this, maybe he’s hidden evidence somewhere out there, and if we’re equally smart, we can find it without wasting all that time and manpower.”
“You’re not worried about wasting Bureau resources. If anything, you like burning them. You’re just dreaming up excuses to cover up whatever you really have in mind.”
“Come on, Kate, we’re ahead of schedule. Let’s poke around a little and see what we can find. It’s New Year’s Day. There are hangovers to nurse, there’s football to watch, resolutions to fake. Nobody wants to hear from us.”
“Define ‘poke around,’” she said, with even more caution than usual.
“It’s a holiday. We have a car, a credit card, and all of Calculus’s locations for the last two weeks he was here. Let’s take a ride and see if he left anything else to find.”
She shook her head with mild self-contempt. “You make it sound so simple, so right, and even though I know it’s neither, I’m going to go along with it.”
“Am I a good time or what?”
“I’ll admit that it always seems like it’s going to be a good time, but it usually turns out to be ‘or what.’”
FOUR
WHEN THEY GOT TO THE CAR, VAIL SAID, “YOU KNOW YOUR WAY AROUND HERE A lot better than I do, so why don’t I drive?”
While he drove, Kate made a list of everywhere Calculus had traveled on the day he sent his last message. “Okay, but you’ve got your work cut out for you. He drove over two hundred miles outside the D.C. area.”
“In one day? That seems like a lot, but then maybe he wanted us to notice.”
“Where do we start?”
“How about at his clue, Alliant Industries in Calverton.”
She found the address in her notes and entered it into the GPS unit on the dashboard. “Do you have any idea what we’re looking for?”
“What we always look for, those wonderful little failed attempts to hide the truth—anomalies.”
When he offered no further specifics, she said, “These anomalies, any idea what form they might take?”
“Not a clue. I was just hoping that being philosophically vague would impress you into quiet contemplation.”
“I’m a little surprised that you’re still trying to impress me.”
Vail couldn’t tell whether the comment was meant to be sarcastic or whether she was offering some sort of truce. “Just because I can be an idiot, that doesn’t mean you’re not worth impressing. Who knows, maybe I could change.”
“If you did, you’d probably bore me to death.”
“Do you know why male moths fly so close to the flame of a candle?” he said mischievously, knowing she would object to any more moth references.
“Oh, so you are trying to bore me to death.”
“The flame gives off a vibrational frequency similar to the female moth’s pheromone. The male moth is powerfully attracted to it, even though it’s extremely dangerous.”
“In other words, even setting yourselves on fire won’t deter you guys.”
“I’m here, driving into who-knows-what, if that answers your question.”
“You want me to tell you what I think? I think you’re bored right now and hoping you’ll drive into exactly ‘who-knows-what.’”
For the next three hours, they traced the route the Russian engineer had taken through Virginia, stopping where he had, according to the Bureau charts. Each time, Kate would get out and take photos of everything in sight, making notes about the corresponding locations. Halfway back, they found a diner and he pulled in.
Inside, they sat in a booth, and after the waitress had taken their orders, Kate asked, “Well, any anomalies?”
“Not yet. But I want to spend some time with everything back at the off-site. Kind of let it all percolate a little.”
“It sounds like you want to be alone.”
“You’re welcome to stick around, but a lot of it is going to be just busywork—printing out photos, matching them with the maps and timelines. I’m not sure you want to spend your evening like that. By morning I’ll have everything a little more organized and we’ll be able to figure out what our next move is.”
“So in the morning there won’t be an article in the paper about you breaking into the Russian embassy or involved in a shooting somewhere?”
“I can’t make any promises about the embassy, but you have my word I’ll never get involved in a shoot-out without you.”
“In that case I’m going to go home, get out a pad of paper and a pencil, and retrace my life as far back as I have to, to try to determine what seemingly innocuous, small turn in my life caused it to intersect with yours.”
“You know, there’s an old Chinese proverb that says if you try to learn the source of your good fortune, you will destroy it.”
“What I know is that if the Chinese actually do believe that, it’s because they’ve never met you.”
THE NEXT MORNING Kate let herself into the off-site and could smell coffee brewing as she started up the stairs. She found that Vail had pushed all the furniture away from the longest wall in the room and had taped up all the photos from the day before. Below them were the time-place maps that had guided their trip.
“Did you get any sleep?” she asked.
“Enough. Did you eat?”
“I just need some coffee.”
“I think it’s done. Grab a cup and let’s go.”
“Where to?”
“Pollock’s bank in Calverton.”
“For?”
“I want to look at his account records.”
“For?”
Vail pointed at the wall. “Remember where we stopped in Denton?”
“I’d have to look at the photos.” She stepped closer to the wall.
“It’s a small intersection. There’s nothing there but that house.”
She looked at the photo of a small, white wood-frame structure pinned to the wall.
“According to the map, Calculus was there for about two and a half hours at night. None of his other stops were anywhere near that long.”
“Wait a minute. How do you know which bank is Pollock’s?”
“It’s in his security-clearance investigation.”
“And how do his bank records tie in?”
“If he visited his bank within twenty-four hours of Calculus’s stop at that house, then I think there’s a good chance that Pollock made an exchange with his handler there and Calculus recorded it. So the next day Pollock would have to deposit the money, unless he keeps it under his mattress.”
“Does that mean we’re going to let the assistant director—or anyone else—in on this?”
“Not yet.”
“Then how are you going to get bank records without some sort of court order?”
“With this.” Vail held up a standard information-release form filled out and signed by Pollock.
“Where did you get that?”
“We did a background investigation on him, didn’t we? And isn’t part of that process for him to sign information releases?”
“How did you get into his file?”
“You let me watch your hands when you logged into the Bureau database yesterday, so I thought you were giving me your password.”
She just shook her head. “But Pollock’s background was almost five years ago. Those forms would be out of date.” She looked closer. “It’s dated a week ago.”
“A little Wite-Out, a copying machine, and everything’s up to date in Kansas City.”
“You’ll have to excuse me if I seem a little slow. I’ve been back here for six months, you know, following the law and stuff. Throws a girl off.”
AN HOUR LATER Vail pulled up to the Denton Savings and Loan. “Since you’re apparently too chicken to violate both the national banking laws and the Privacy Act, you can wait here.” He got out and walked inside.
In another twenty minutes, he came out, and Kate said, “Well?”
“The morning after Calculus’s stop at the little white house, Pollock deposited eighty-nine hundred dollars into his checking account.”
“Eighty-nine hundred is a nice number. It keeps it under ten thousand so the IRS isn’t notified, but not as noticeable as ninety-nine hundred, which is a bigger flag than if he had deposited the entire ten thousand.”
Vail started the car and pulled out. “I think I know what that house is now.”
“What?”
“For Calculus to be there and record the exchange, it has to be a Russian safe house. Maybe he left something there for us.”
“So now we’re going to Langston with this, right?” And then, pretending to be talking to herself, she said, “Oh, Kate, you are cute but so naïve. That’s Steve Vail sitting next to you, and you’re asking him about going to the AD?”
Vail laughed. “If you were the assistant director in charge of counterterrorism, what would you do?” When she didn’t say anything, he said, “Come on, Kate, that was almost your job. What do you do now?”
“I’d probably black-bag it.”
“And how long would that take?”
“To line up all the techs and the lock guys, do the site work, I suppose a couple of days.”
“Minimum. We don’t have a couple of days. The Russians have a big advantage over us—torture.”
Vail turned left, and she realized he wasn’t heading back to Washington. “Please tell me you’re not going to break into a Russian safe house.”
“You’re the one who demanded to be inside the investigation this time. Now come the liabilities that you were warned about. You can’t have it both ways.”
“Here’s four words I’m going to assume you’ve heard before: You can’t do that. It belongs to the Russians.”
“First of all, the correct pronoun is ‘we.’ And I can foresee only one possible problem. I noticed in the photo you took that there’s an alarm-company warning sticker in the front window.”
“That’s why we need our tech and lock people to get inside.”
“Who do you suppose was the last person out of the house that night?”
“If he was doing the technical stuff, I suppose Calculus?”
“If he left evidence for us in there, do you think he would have set the alarm?”
Kate let her head fall to her chest as if surrendering all hope. “You know, it’s being exposed to guys like you that makes online dating seem so promising. The only thing a girl has to worry about there is the occasional serial killer.”
FIVE
KATE LISTENED TO VAIL’S SHALLOW BREATHING AND FOUND IT REMARKABLE that he could sleep anywhere, and apparently under any circumstances. They had been watching the suspected safe house for a couple of hours, waiting for dark, and Vail, after giving her a nod that he was going to do so, had drifted off. She wondered how much sleep he’d actually had in the past two days. For the last half year, she had been back in Washington, away from him. Back to the daily dictates of organization and rules. Beyond all else, rules. So many, in fact, that following every one of them left not the slightest opportunity to get anything else done. But Vail was an outsider, someone who couldn’t exist in such an inertial state. He was about to commit a burglary that carried with it the potential of international consequences. It scared the hell out of her. She looked over at him sleeping and wondered why she couldn’t wait to be part of it.
As if sensing that the sun had finally set, Vail opened his eyes. He looked at the small house and said, “No lights. So far so good.”
“What if someone from the embassy came back out here and reset the alarm? If it was turned off in the first place?”
“Then I would assume we’ll hear some sort of loud noise or see flashing lights. There’s only one way to find out.”
“Did it ever occur to you that the Russians might have some sort of sensor that goes right into the embassy and isn’t connected to this alarm system?”
“That’s more than an hour away.”
“They could call the local police.”
“We’re FBI agents. We saw someone breaking in and went in after them. They must have heard us and gone out the back.”
“I don’t know how I could ever question you. Apparently this is another foolproof plan. I’m psyched. Dibs on the crowbar.”
“That’s what I like to see, Kate, some genuine enthusiasm.” Vail glanced at her feet. “I guess I should have told you to wear more sensible shoes.” He manipulated the map on the dashboard GPS to search the surrounding areas.
“Sensible shoes? At this moment my footwear choice is what you think may not have been well thought out?”
He pointed to the GPS screen. “I want to go through the woods behind the place and get in through a rear window or door.”
She reached over and removed the keys from the ignition. “Fortunately, I have my gym clothes in the trunk.” She got out and retrieved her running shoes.
As she put them on, Vail drove past the house and, then a quarter of a mile farther, turned onto a dirt road. A hundred yards later, he found a place on the shoulder wide enough to pull over and park. After taking a last look at the map on the screen, he asked, “Ready?”
“Let’s burgle.”
Grabbing a flashlight from the glove compartment, Vail led the way through the woods, which although heavily treed had little underbrush to navigate through. Ten minutes later they stood at the edge of a tree line looking at the back of the house. It was completely dark. The rear of the structure had no doors, but there were three identical windows. “Go knock on the door.”
“Of a Russian safe house. Shouldn’t I have a stack of Girl Scout cookies or be wearing a Brownie uniform?”
“This is no time for sexual fantasies. Tell them your car broke down and you need to call the auto club.”
“And why would someone as together as I am—discounting my shoes—not have a cell phone?” she asked. “Is that fantasy about me or Thin Mints?”
“Tell them it’s dead. You know, act like a ditz.”
“There are some subtle rewards to working with you, but I think my favorite part is the Taliban-level degradation.”
“I told you, save the dirty talk for later.”
Kate walked to the side door and knocked. When there was no answer, she pounded her fist on it loudly, glancing back at Vail. After a minute he stepped out of the cover of the trees and waved at her to come to the rear of the house. “Start trying all the windows. If he was going to leave the alarm off, maybe he left us a way in.”
The second window Kate tried slid open. “Over here.”
Vail came to her and lifted himself through the window. “Hold on while I look around.” She watched anxiously as the beam of his flashlight swept the room and then disappeared. When he came back, he offered her his hand. “All clear.”
Once inside, Kate asked, “What are we looking for?”
“Anything locked. Doors, cabinets, anything where Calculus could have secured whatever he left.”
“If he left anything. If we’re burglarizing the right place.”
Vail walked over to a window shade that was pulled down. He put his hand behind it and then stepped to the side so Kate could see. “One-way shades, just like at the observation post. We’re in the right place.”
“Then since we have only one flashlight, how about we pull all the shades down and turn on some lights?”
Vail flashed the beam around the room, trying to determine what kind of lighting the house was equipped with and if it could be seen from outside. He turned his flashlight up to the ceiling, examining the fixtures.
“What kind of bulbs are those?” Kate asked.
“Good question.” He pulled over a table and got up on it. He unscrewed the bulb. It was heavy and appeared to be filled with something black. He turned it upside down and felt the granules inside shift. He screwed it back in carefully.
When he got down, Kate said, “What is it?”
“I can’t be sure, but I think they were filled with gunpowder and then reassembled.”
“Gunpowder?”
“If you turn on the light switch, the electricity going through the element will set them off.”
“Why would they do that?”
“My guess is that Calculus did it.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. For now just stay close to me.”
Kate and Vail moved from room to room, and he scanned each section of the ceiling with his flashlight. “The Russians spent some money upgrading this house.” He pointed with the beam of the flashlight. “See, they’ve got a sprinkler-system head in every room. Probably because their embassy is so far away. They didn’t want someone to be able to come in here and burn it down.”
“Like an ‘accidental’ fire started by a rival agency?”
“Pretty silly, huh? Can you imagine being that paranoid?” Vail walked along a short hallway into a room that looked like it was furnished and set up for meetings. He examined one wall closely, slowly sweeping his light across it. “There,” he said. “Do you see it?”
Kate stepped closer. “A pinhole camera.”
Vail patted the wall the camera was embedded in. “Did you notice how thick this wall is?”
“No.”
He led the way back into the room on the other side, and Kate said, “Now I see what you mean. It’s got to be four feet wide.”
Vail started checking the narrow panels that covered it. He tapped along the wall, looking for an access point. Using both hands, he pushed against each panel. The third one clicked open an inch or so. Behind it was a four-by-six-foot room that had been soundproofed. On a shelf were a series of audio and video recorders.
He could now see the pinhole camera attached to the interior of the wall, a lead running to a video recorder and then to a small monitor, so that the asset being paid off could be carefully watched and recorded as the event was occurring.
On the sidewall was a circuit-breaker box for the entire house. Vail guessed that it had existed before they built the narrow room around it. He turned on the DVD recorder and pressed the Eject button, but the carousel was empty. On top of the monitor was a plastic kitchen bowl that seemed out of place. Inside it was a sealed paper packet. Directly above it was another sprinkler head, presumably to protect the equipment should anything happen. Instead of taking the packet out, Vail picked up the bowl and examined the paper envelope without touching it.
“What’s that?” Kate asked.
Handwritten in the bottom right corner was the name “Ariadne.” Vail bent closer to it and held the flashlight at an angle so he could see the paper around the writing. He looked up at the sprinkler head again. “It’s good news and bad news. See if you can find a plastic bag somewhere, something big enough to carry this packet in.”
Kate wanted to ask Vail what he thought was inside the envelope, but she also wanted to spend as little time as possible inside the house. She hurried to the back, and Vail could hear her opening and closing drawers. She returned and handed him a torn plastic grocery bag. “This is all I could find. What is that?”
He picked up the packet, using the bag to grip it. “Something I suspect I don’t want touching my skin.” He flexed the packet. “It feels like a disc packed in powder.”
“Do you think Calculus left it?”
“I know he did.”
“How?”
Just then they heard a car pull up next to the house. “Go see what that is,” he told her while he carefully wrapped the envelope in the bag. Cautiously, Kate went to the window and peeked outside. “This can’t be good,” she said in a strained whisper.
“Who is it?”
“Best guess is the Russian embassy’s SWAT team. Three guys in cheap suits and bad haircuts, pulling down ski masks and carrying large black automatics.”
Vail reached over to the circuit-breaker box and threw all the switches to the “off” position. “Quick, go turn on all the light switches.”
“What?” Kate asked in an incredulous whisper.
“I’ve cut the power. Go!”
Vail headed in the opposite direction, flipping up wall switches. Just as the house door opened, they both had made it back to the concealed room, and Vail closed the panel door quietly. Kate drew her weapon and eased back the slide far enough to confirm that a round was in the chamber.
Even though the small room was soundproofed, they could hear the three men moving roughly through the house, occasionally calling out to one another in a foreign language. Their footsteps eventually slowed, and they started talking in lower tones. It sounded like they were now just outside the hidden room. Kate knew that if they were from the embassy, they would be aware of the room and would check it before leaving. A set of footsteps started toward them, and Vail wrapped his arms around Kate, pulling her over to the wall where the circuit breakers were located. He held her a little tighter and then flipped all the circuit breakers as fast as he could.
Instantly there was a series of explosions, and fire flashed under the panel door briefly. The men screamed and ran for the front door. Still holding Kate, Vail punched open the panel entrance and said, “Out the back window.” Suddenly the overhead sprinklers kicked on and soaked both of them as they ran to the rear of the house.
Kate reached the window, pulled it open, and climbed out. Vail followed her and closed it behind them. They hurried into the cover of the woods. The night air seemed twice as cold now that their hair and clothing were wet. As soon as they got into the car, Vail started it, revving the engine to boost the temperature. He went to the trunk and retrieved Kate’s sweat suit and then waited outside while she changed. When he finally climbed back in, he was shaking. Kate said, “Tell me that part again about how nothing can go wrong.”
“They got there fifteen minutes after us, so they didn’t come from D.C. That leaves a distinct possibility that Calculus is talking. They must have come here to retrieve the disc.” Vail turned the car around and headed back toward the highway.
“Then why would they come with ski masks and guns drawn?” she asked.
“If Calculus talked, he had to tell them that he’d left a clue for us. Maybe they were just being overly cautious in case we were there.”
“Well, they’ll know we were there now that we tried to blow up the place.”
“Especially when they don’t find the disc,” Vail said. “That’s why we have to get this package processed as quickly as possible. I assume you can have someone from the lab meet us as soon as we get back.”
“What kind of examination are you talking about?”
“Chemical.”
They pulled onto the highway, and Kate adjusted the heater. “Okay, now that we have time, what’s with the packet? ‘Good news and bad.’ What did you mean? And how did you know that Calculus left it?”
“The first clue was the gunpowder in the lights. Since he’s an engineer, Calculus would have known that as an antipersonnel mine it would inflict just minor wounds, because the only projectiles would have been the bulb’s glass, which would have broken into very small fragments.”
“Then why would he rig them?”
“Besides the explosion and the flying glass, what else happened?”
“The fireball from the explosion, which would probably have caught some things on fire if it hadn’t been for the sprinklers.”
“Exactly, the sprinklers. That was his purpose. When I saw the bowl directly under the heads in that hidden room, it didn’t seem right. The ink on the outside of the packet had caused the paper to deteriorate slightly. I think it’s made of water-soluble paper, so when it got wet, it would expose whatever powder is inside to more water. I think his intention was for us to destroy the disc.”
“Why would he direct us to the disc and then want to destroy it?”
“If he was still here to work with us on the list, he would have told us about the booby-trapped lights and the powder. But he put them in place so if the Russians somehow got onto him, we would hopefully beat them to the disc and unwittingly destroy it so they would have no proof against him. And if the Russians got there first, and he didn’t tell them about the lights, they would destroy it.”
“How’s a plastic disc going to be destroyed by water?”
“There’s also the powder. Did you have high-school chemistry?”
“No.”
“I think it’s potassium, which when exposed to water has a violent chemical reaction. It would have turned the disc into liquid plastic. That was the bad news, but since we got it without any damage, that leaves the good news.”
“Which is?” she asked.
“That he wrote the name ‘Ariadne’ on it.”
“Who’s that?”
“It’s from Greek mythology. She was the lover of Theseus, who volunteered to kill the Minotaur, a creature that was part man and part bull. It was kept in this complex maze from which it would have been impossible for Theseus to escape after killing it. So Ariadne gave him a golden cord to find his way out. In Logic, there’s a process referred to as Ariadne’s thread. It’s used to describe the solving of a problem that has a number of ways to proceed.”
“So that means what?”
“I’m hoping Calculus’s choice of ‘Ariadne’ means there’s a subtle set of clues for us to follow from mole to mole.”
“But he wanted to sell each name to us, one at a time. Why would he link them all together with the possibility of our being able to find them on our own?”
“Let’s not forget he tried to get us to destroy the first clue and any others that might have evolved from it so the Russians couldn’t retrieve them to use against him. We weren’t supposed to come out of that house with the disc unless he was controlling the situation. Again, it’s like the maze: Even if you killed the Minotaur, your punishment was that you’d never be able to find your way out. And as far as why he would provide a link from one to the others, he’s a smart guy, probably smarter than his pay grade.
“Most spies have one thing in common,” he continued. “They believe they’re underpromoted and underappreciated. They have contempt for everyone around them. Maybe he put the link in there to prove how much smarter he is than everyone else—the Russians because he’s selling their secrets under their noses and the FBI because we had the answer and didn’t realize it. Probably after he’d led us to the moles one by one, he would have exposed how they were all linked together, thereby proving how inept we are. It’s like some serial killers. They’re compelled to send solid but subtle clues to the newspaper and the authorities as to their real identity. And when they’re caught by some other means, the media will look at the clues and say, ‘How could the police not have figured it out?’ Then, even after they’re caught, they have eternal revenge against the legal system by letting everyone second-guess the cops’ inability to decode the ‘obvious.’ It’s all about control and ego.”
“Maybe he was hoping that if something went wrong and we were able to follow the string on our own, we’d do the honorable thing and send the money off to Chicago?” Kate said.
“Actually, that’s a more pragmatic analysis than mine. This is America—maybe he thought we would do the right thing.”
“So if there is a cord, not only will we have evidence on that disc of Pollock’s spying, there’ll also be a lead to the next mole.”
“Unless I’m wrong.”
She adjusted the heat vent so the air blew directly on her soaking hair and started running her fingers through it, trying to dry it. “Don’t be absurd. You, wrong? That hasn’t happened, for … what? Almost fifteen minutes?”
SIX
IT WAS ALMOST 11 P.M. BY THE TIME VAIL CHANGED CLOTHES, AND HE AND KATE drove back to FBI headquarters. At the lab Nate Wilhelm introduced himself as being from the Chemical Unit. Vail took out the plastic-bag-wrapped packet and handed it to him. “We think there’s a disc inside the envelope and that it’s covered with some water-catalyst powder, possibly potassium, meant to destroy it,” Kate said. “The envelope appears to be water-soluble, too.”
Wilhelm pulled on a pair of thick latex gloves. “Do you need to preserve the package for prints or handwriting?”
Vail looked at Kate. She said, “Just to be on the safe side, you’d better try.”
The examiner put on a pair of safety glasses and a dust mask. Then, with an X-Acto knife, he slit open the end of the envelope. Careful not to drag out any more powder than necessary, he used a pair of padded forceps to remove the disc from the paper container. He took the packet to another workstation and shook out all the powder he could. Then he put a small amount of it into a test tube. Using a pipette, he dripped a couple ounces of water into the tube. The powder bubbled furiously. “It looks like potassium, and it reacts to water like potassium.”
He pulled off the gloves and put on a fresh pair, going back to the disc. He dusted it off with a large fingerprint brush, then held it up to the light. “No latents.” Out of a box that dispensed them, he took a sterile cloth and wiped the disc off on both sides. He did it twice more with fresh cloths and then took off his mask, glasses, and gloves. “That should do it.”
Vail took it by the edges and touched his fingertip to the non-play side of the disc, testing it for any reaction to the moisture from his hand. There was none. He asked Wilhelm for a plastic protective sleeve and dropped it into his side jacket pocket.
Kate said, “Nate, we don’t want this to show up on any paperwork. Will that cause you any problems?”
“Less paperwork is never a problem, Kate.”
“Thanks.”
As Kate and Vail started toward the elevator, he said, “Should we wait until tomorrow to see what’s on this?”
“Like you could wait.”
He laughed. “I was just trying to see how tired you were.”
When the elevator door opened, the only passenger, a black man, said, “Steve Vail?”
It was Luke Bursaw, an agent Vail had worked with in Detroit more than five years earlier. “Luke,” Vail said, shaking hands with him. “What are you doing here?”
“I finally got my ‘office of preference’ transfer. I’m at the Washington Field Office now, working general criminal. Are you back with the Bureau?”
Vail looked at Kate. “I’m sorry. This is Kate Bannon. She’s—”
“Sure, I remember Kate from Detroit. And now she’s a deputy assistant director. We get most of the memos over at WFO. How are you, Kate?” He extended his hand.
Kate took it. She remembered him because he was the only agent Vail had worked with in Detroit, usually when a difficult arrest needed to be made. The most memorable one was where Vail and Bursaw came barging into the office with four bank robbers handcuffed together early one morning. One of them, also wanted for murder, had been on Michigan’s ten-most-wanted list. It happened shortly after she’d arrived in Detroit, and the thing that had always stuck with her was that no one seemed to think it was out of the ordinary, at least not for Vail.
Bursaw had gone to Penn on a wrestling scholarship and majored in philosophy. He’d gained a couple of pounds since she’d last seen him, but he still seemed to move with an athlete’s ease. “And I remember you, Luke. What brings a WFO agent here at this time of night?”
“I caught a couple of shifts as night supervisor that nobody wanted—you know, holiday pay. And I had some evidence to drop off at the lab on the way home.” Bursaw turned back to Vail. “One thing I do know about you, Steve, is how good you were at ducking questions. So what are you doing here?”
“Actually, I am back with the Bureau, sort of as an independent contractor, working with Kate.”
Bursaw glanced at him carefully, letting Vail know that there were still holes in his story that would be queried later. “Small world. Where are you staying?”
“Over on Sixteenth Street.”
“Any chance we could get together? Share some lies over a beer?”
“Sure. I’ll give you a call.”
“Actually, I’ve got a problem, and you’re the perfect person to run it by.”
“What kind of problem?”
“A woman from headquarters, an intelligence analyst, went missing a few months back, and I wound up with the case. So far I’m getting nowhere.”
Vail took the DVD out of his jacket and handed it to Kate. “Any reason this can’t wait until morning?” he asked her.
“It can wait. Besides, I am beat.”
“We’ll get a running start at it first thing tomorrow.”
“Sure.” The elevator opened onto the first floor, and the two men got out. “Nice seeing you, Luke.”
“You too, Kate.”
As they walked toward the street exit, Bursaw said, “Any idea how long you’re going to be here?”
“To tell you the truth, it’s starting to look like the minute I stepped off the plane, I’d already been here too long.”
VAIL AND BURSAW found a bar that wasn’t far from headquarters. Since it was relatively empty, they went to the far end and climbed onto a couple of stools. After the bartender had brought them beer, Bursaw asked, “So what could possibly have brought you back to the Bureau after the way they treated you?”
“You know you’re one of the few people I ever trusted.”
“I can’t really remember you trusting anyone. Sounds like you’re about to tell me that you can’t tell me.”
“If you knew what this was about, you’d thank me for not involving you, especially when they start hooking people up to the polygraph.”
“That serious?”
“I think you know I wouldn’t be keeping it from you if it weren’t.”
Bursaw nodded and then took a sip of beer. “You’re right, I don’t want to know. But how did you get involved in it?”
“I did some work for the director six months ago, in L.A.”
“That Pentad thing, that was you?”
“More Kate than me. I was just looking for a change of pace.”
“From the little I heard, you got it—and then some.” Bursaw looked at him for some reaction, but Vail just shrugged. “You never did like a lot of noise.” Bursaw chuckled salaciously. “But you and Kate, huh? That’s got to be a major factor in you being dragged back in.”
Vail snorted. “It was supposed to be, but unfortunately we don’t seem to be a good fit.”
“You know what Nietzsche said—‘Woman was God’s second blunder.’”
“Is that a shot at me or at Kate?”
Bursaw took a scholarly tone. “Philosophy is not a discipline of answers but one of contemplation.”
“Great, things aren’t surreal enough around here. Now I’ve got a black guy quoting Hitler’s favorite philosopher.”
“Whether it’s working or not, that’s still a good-looking woman,” Bursaw said.
“She is that,” Vail said. “But enough about my blundering celibacy. What’s the story on the missing employee?”
“Her name is Sundra Boston. She’s an intelligence analyst at headquarters, or at least she was. I didn’t know her. She disappeared about three months before I was transferred back here. I’ve got this cousin, Eden. Nice gal, but she married a loser. Actually, ‘drunk’ would be a more accurate description. They got a couple of kids, and he’s always going off on these drinking binges, leaving her with nothing to get by on. Anyway, she met Sundra at church, and they became friends. My cousin may have made a couple of bad choices in her life, but she’s not a complainer. When her husband takes off, she sucks it up and doesn’t say anything to anyone. I suppose it’s as much out of embarrassment as anything else. She said that somehow Sundra always seemed to know when she was going through those times, and she would show up unannounced at Eden’s with a carload of groceries. She’d been doing it for over a year. When I got back here, Eden pulled me aside at a family get-together and asked me if I could find out what happened to her. She thought Sundra had been transferred to some secret assignment or something.
“So I checked indices and found that we had a case on her disappearance, and that it was being handled on my squad. I’d been back in D.C. less than two weeks, knew nothing about the case, and I hadn’t caught on to my supervisor yet. So I went in and asked him about it.” Bursaw shook his head and took a long pull on his beer. “Steve, this guy is everything that is wrong with the new Bureau. He actually grew up in Beverly Hills—that’s right, my brother, 90210—and couldn’t get through an hour of the day without performing some affectation. He calls the bad guys ‘thugs’ and ‘hoodlums.’ When I asked him about Sundra, he gave me the rundown and told me that the investigation was at a standstill. Then he cocks his head to the side in thought and says, ‘You know, she’s an African-American, too. You could probably find her, because these people would talk to you.’ And you think the leadership was bad when you were in. Then he reassigns the case to me as if he had just had some sort of movie-of-the-week life-altering epiphany.”
“I take it you haven’t had any luck getting those African-Americans to tell you where she is?”
Bursaw grinned. “Don’t start,” he said. “So I pull the file and find out that very little had been done after the first thirty days. I made up my mind right there to jump on it with both feet.”
“Not to belittle your altruism, but what does she look like?”
“You’re right, she is good-looking. Which doesn’t hurt. But I figure with what she did for my cousin, she must be a good person and deserves to have someone searching for her for real.”
“A Bureau employee disappears and no one is making it a priority?”
“At first they did have the full-court press on it, but when they found that she was in major debt … well, like you always said, they prefer the theory that requires the least amount of work. So they decided that she probably just took off for parts unknown and changed her name or got married or both so she could wipe the slate clean.”
“Define ‘major debt.’”
“Almost fifty K on credit cards alone.”
“Isn’t it hard to run up a bill that big without enjoying some of society’s moral taboos?”
“You don’t spend much money, do you, Steve? Even though you won’t read it in the file, I think that’s what they thought,” Bursaw said. “It wasn’t drugs. She’d just had a physical and been screened. And all her phone records and credit-card receipts have been checked, so it’s unlikely that she had a gambling problem. But she did like nice things. She’d recently bought a house and had a nice car. From what I’ve been told, she always dressed much better than the rest of us government humps. With that kind of taste, fifty thousand isn’t such a big leap.”
“So they’re trying to put it to sleep, and you’re going to make them pay for it by embarrassing them with their ineptness.”
“I would like nothing better, but I’m not sure anyone will notice.”
“You haven’t changed much, Luke.”
Bursaw smiled slowly. “As if I have to explain the joys of belittling management to you. The good news is that I’m not getting any pressure to solve it. The bad news is, there’s something wrong with it that I can’t figure out.”
“Wrong how?”
“Okay, let’s assume she took off to get out from under that debt. The search-warrant inventory at her house showed that she left everything there, and I mean everything. She had a fairly new laptop computer. It was still there. Seven-hundred-dollar shoes that hadn’t been worn. And for me, maybe the toughest thing to explain, her designer suitcases were still there. The price tags still on them.”
“Have you called the locals to see if there’ve been any other incidents of women missing under similar circumstances?”
“Some sort of serial thing, yeah, I thought of that, but you know what a mess that can start. I do have some feelers out, though.”
“When did you last check her credit cards?” Vail said.
“I look at them once a week. Nary a blip anywhere.” Bursaw took another sip of his beer. “I’d like you to look at it.”
“What is it that you think I can do? I didn’t go to an Ivy League school.”
“I don’t know, maybe I’m on tilt with this. Maybe I’m trying too hard to show the world how smart I am or, more likely, what a moron my supervisor is. I don’t know. You were always good at finding things no one else could. Maybe take a look at the file. See if I’m missing anything.”
“Right now my days are pretty full.”
Bursaw gave him an easy grin. “How are your nights?”
“With everything I’ve got going on, I would have to be a blithering idiot to say yes.”
Bursaw drained his beer. “Then let’s go take a look at the file.”
IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER NINE when Kate got to the off-site the next morning. She was surprised when she heard the shower going. Evidently Vail had slept in. She made a pot of coffee and, when it was ready, poured herself a cup. In the observation room, she started reviewing the information Vail had pinned to the wall. A few minutes later, he walked out of the kitchen and held up his cup. “Thanks.”
“You and Luke reminiscing over too many beers last night?”
“Actually we were at WFO until about four a.m. reviewing the case file on his missing analyst.”
“I thought you didn’t like this work.”
“I like the work just fine. In fact, it’s the reason I dislike the people who keep getting in the way of it.”
“That sounds more like a rationalization than a defense, Vail.”
“Of all the times Luke helped me in Detroit—and some of them were pretty touch and go—the guy never once asked me for a favor. Until last night.”
“Sorry. It’s just that I would have thought you had enough to do.”
“I guess that’s when you find out if someone is truly worth your friendship.”
“Were you able to help him?”
“I gave him a few suggestions. I’m not sure he needed them. He’s not the guy I’d want after me,” Vail said. “You ready to watch that disc? Or did you peek last night, Katie?”
“No.” She took it out of her briefcase. “But I was a little surprised you trusted me with it.”
“It wasn’t me trusting you that was the problem—it was me trusting me if I held on to it.”
She laughed cynically. “Oh, honesty. Is that your latest tactic to deceive me?”
“I figured if anything would keep you off balance, it would be telling the truth. Apparently that’s not going to work either.”
She set the disc in the DVD player. On the monitor screen, they recognized the meeting room at the Denton safe house. It was followed by a couple of seconds of static and then by someone holding a hand-printed sign in front of the camera. On it were written the date, the time, and the name Charles Dennis Pollock. “That should eliminate any guesswork about who’s starring in this little production.”
Another few seconds of static were followed by two men sitting in the room. Pollock, recognizable from his security-background photo, was unknowingly facing the camera. He opened a briefcase that was on the floor next to him and handed a sheaf of papers to the other man. In turn, the man, who carefully never let any of his face be exposed, handed Pollock three bundles of bills and then in heavily accented English demanded, more than requested, that it be counted. While Pollock obliged, the handler deliberately held up the documents he had received and slowly paged through them so they could be captured on video. Several had classified stamped across them. Pollock then placed the money in his briefcase. A brief discussion ensued about what other material Pollock could provide. The screen again went to static. Vail fast-forwarded it until the end. There was nothing else on it.
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Noah Boyd
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Триллеры
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: The gripping action thriller from New York Times bestselling author and former FBI agent Noah Boyd. Steve Vail has brains, brawn and balls – and is back for his latest mission.Steve Vail visits Kate Bannon, Assistant Director of the FBI, for a well-earned and romantic New Years Eve in Washington, DC, but he suddenly finds himself knee-deep in a very complicated and unusual case.A man known simply as Calculus, an intelligence officer at the Russian embassy, approaches the FBI claiming he knows of several Americans who are supplying confidential government information to the Russian secret service. In exchange for this list, he asks for $250,000 for each traitor the FBI arrests. But when Calculus is suddenly recalled to Moscow, the Bureau suspects the worst. The Russians have probably captured Calculus, and might have access to his list – which means they′ll soon track down the informants and murder them.That is, unless the FBI can find them first, but without knowing exactly who is on the list, they must keep the operation quiet. Once again, Vail is their man. He′s the ideal candidate for this kind of stealth recon mission. It soon becomes clear that finding Calculus and his list of traitors isn′t going to be quick or quiet. In fact, it′s going to be downright deadly…