Hard Fall (23 page)

“He's patient,” Levin said between serves.

Daggett allowed the serve to bounce away from the corner without even swinging for it, which won Levin's attention. “Patient to the point of being cool. Even chilly. Fucking stone cold, is more like it.”

“Brass balls.”

Daggett added, “That's a long time stuck on a train, well aware the body you left behind has probably been found. It would drive
me
crazy, I can tell you that. If I thought someone might be after me, a train is the last place I would want to be.”

“Maybe he didn't have any choice. Maybe his acrophobia is so bad he can't fly at all.”

“Maybe.” The next few points went to Levin as well. Daggett won one finally and then served several winners. “What do you make of all the trace evidence we just heard about?”

“Make of it?” Levin asked, looking for some guidance.

“Yes,” Daggett replied, giving none.

After the point Levin answered. “The brown hair on the driver's headrest was from a healthy woman. Oil content indicates it's real hair which is nice for us because our Miss Lyttle is a brunette, and that fits. Red hairs in the back were from a wig. Probably him. Dougherty remembered him as a redhead. Because smart operatives seldom do the driving, she'd be in the driver's seat, and the operative in the shotgun or in the back. We have the cigarette ash in the seat fabric to support that. Same chemical composition as the ash from the cigarette butts you found in that parking lot. Pullman wants evidence … there's a match. No pun intended.”

“And there's the Anbesol,” Daggett reminded. “The fact that those were fresh spills helps us.”

“Which further supports
my
theory that he made a mess of the extraction and that tooth is still bothering him.”

“Agreed. Score a point for you.”

At the mention of points they went back to the game. Levin won by a considerable margin. “Chalk up one for Ohio State,” he crowed. Goaded to a frenzy, Daggett jumped to an early and commanding lead in the following game. For the glory of Big Blue. He fought hard, but to his dismay Levin staged an exasperating comeback and won.

“Another?” Daggett asked.

“I'll play if that's what you want. What is it about you Michigan guys? You never know when to quit.”

Just right. Cocky. Defiant. Independent within the framework of loyalty. Daggett handed Levin the ball, raised his racquet, and stepped into the corner ready for the younger man's best shot.

Daggett won the next three games straight.

Monday noon, he was summoned to Mumford's office. “What exactly are you after, Michigan? Maybe I can help you.” It was an unusual but not unexpected opening to a meeting, given that it came from the mouth of Richard Mumford, Special-Agent-in-Charge of the Washington Metropolitan Field Office. The SAC lorded over 640 special agents, second in size only to New York City. Much of WMFO's work extended into the territory of the FBI's other fifty-five field offices, and so Mumford's power and authority was in some ways like that of the Director's. Daggett thought of him more as a general than a director, perhaps because of his substantial size, or the way he kept himself in shape; perhaps because of his intimidating confidence, or his strong voice, or his habit of looking inside you as he spoke. His eyes were a relentless Mediterranean blue. His face had the hard bones of a boxer. He carried a golfer's deep tan and a full head of hair, belying his fifty-odd years.

“I'm after Bernard's detonators, sir,” Daggett replied carefully. “That's my present ticket.”

Mumford's corner office was large enough for a three-hole chip-and-putt and looked out over the Anacostia River. It held two large brown leather couches, a dark wood coffee table, and an enormous nineteenth-century desk that dominated the center of the room like an island in a sea of carpet. Photos and old dark oil paintings in gilded frames adorned the walls. It didn't fit with the rest of Buzzard Point's bleakness, but it fit Mumford. He was comfortable here, arms spread wide on the couch behind him, making it look more like an oversized chair. Mumford had a favorite-uncle quality about him. Daggett knew most of the stories about the man were true, though guys like this took on mythical proportions after a while and you had to be careful what you believed. What was important to Daggett was that Mumford would stand up for anyone, anything, he believed in; would confront anyone. If he had fears, he never showed them. The rumors were that he was loud and opinionated, whether in the Director's office or in a closed-door meeting of a Senate subcommittee. He was famous for once telling the president that his fly was down by saying: “You're about to lose some votes, sir.”

Mumford could grant him carte blanche or pull him from this assignment with a snap of his fingers. Daggett kept that thought foremost in his mind.

“This new guy, Levin, has been making a bunch of phone calls,” Mumford stated. “He's working with you, isn't he? Tell me about these itineraries you've requested.”

“We're looking for linkage to sixty-four. That's all.”

“The vote on the AmAirXpress crash isn't in yet. Am I right? The investigation isn't ours; it belongs to the NTSB. Besides, you shouldn't be working on sixty-four anyway. It's not your ticket and, to my knowledge, there has been no positive linkage to
Der Grund
. The Office of Origin on that one is Los Angeles. Don't fuck around with me, Michigan. I'm told the tenth-floor fax machine has been spitting out itineraries all afternoon. Just what exactly is your—
our
—interest there? I
am
supposed to know what's going on around here. I asked Paul Pullman; he didn't know. So now I'm asking you.”

“Because of
Der Grund
's possible involvement, and because a lot of circumstantial evidence points here to Washington, we're looking for a possible chemical industry target that might be coming here to Washington.”

“But no
hard
evidence linking
Der Grund
. Am I right?”

“The evidence is limited to circumstantial at the moment,” Daggett acknowledged. “But there's a growing amount of it and it points here, so it only followed, logically, to determine which executives of which companies have trips planned here to Washington.”

Silence. Mumford, deep in thought, lifted himself out of the couch, approached his desk, yanked open a drawer and fished out a half-empty bag of potato chips. He didn't offer any to Daggett. He sunk his hand into the bag as he sat back down. After eating for a minute he said, “What happens in our line of work, Michigan, with as many investigative agencies as there are here in Washington, is we end up opening the other guy's can of worms by mistake. When this happens, it usually only requires a couple of phone calls to straighten it out.” He ate a few more chips. “If there are priority or national security considerations at play, then—depending on circumstances—secrets will, or will not, be shared.”

Daggett said, “And in this case?”

“There was a meeting to be held here in Washington. Top-level people. We weren't supposed to know about it. But I'm told it's going to be pretty damn clear from those itineraries what's going on, and the people who called don't want
anyone
knowing about this meeting, so they've had to change the date. All because of you.”

“All we did—”

“Without knowing it, by going after these itineraries, you pointed out a chink in the armor. It has people worried that someone else could have done the same thing, and they don't like the thought of that. This thing was—
is
—supposed to be very quiet,” he said, whispering for effect. He finished the bag of chips, crumpled it up, and tossed it across the room, missing the wastebasket, which clearly disappointed him.

“Now, because you stepped in it, it's ours. Cute, huh? No one wants responsibility for the safety of these executives, and since we're counterterrorism for this city, guess who gets it? There are six bigwigs coming to this thing. Coming
and
going. Some by private carrier, some by commercial. We have a detonator that remains unaccounted for. Yes,” he said, answering Daggett's surprised look, “I read my agents' memos.” He huffed. “It's a fucking security nightmare, and now, thanks to this itinerary business, thanks to
you
, it's all ours.
Yours
. We're the ones now responsible for the safety of those executives while they're in transit. I'm giving it to you, partly because of the secrecy involved, partly because I suspect Bernard's detonators are involved. Mostly because I don't want anything to do with it. Technically it's domestic, it should be C-one, not C-three, but I'm overlooking that. You're the one who opened the can of worms; you're the one who gets to eat its contents.

“You're one of the best agents who has ever worked for me, Michigan. I'm not fucking kidding. That's why I overlook that stupid letter jacket, and half the other rules you break. Linking Bernard to
Der Grund
took nothing short of genius. You should have had a medal for that one. I've let you ride on that success for longer than I should have because you have a nose for this shit. I've left you alone. You think I didn't know Backman stole that file from you?” Daggett sat there stunned, unable to answer. “Fact is, Backman—and I liked the man—was safer for all of us behind a desk. I gave Bob the promotion and I told him to leave you alone. And alone you have been left. Now the goons on the Hill want me to stick you behind a desk for a couple weeks so you can explain how it was that Bob opened that suitcase and blew himself and our prime suspect to hell and gone. I've held them off because I've wanted you in the field. But this time, because of who is involved, I'm out of luck.
You're
out of luck.

“The safety of these business people is now your prime responsibility, your absolute
first priority
.” He cautioned, “Don't mix up your priorities.”

“No, sir.”

“Bernard, the crash of flight sixty-four, this stiff in Seattle—forget about them all. You've got bigger fish to fry. And let me pass along a little insight of my own: The people I'm talking about don't give something like this away. It's their meeting—Top Secret—and yet they get me on the horn and hand this thing off to me before I can think how to duck it. You got to ask yourself why.

“It's because they're afraid of it, Michigan. That's the
only
explanation. Now, if this thing goes south, if they lose one of these guys to whoever has Bernard's other trigger, they can point the finger over at us.

“You brought us into this by requesting those itineraries. Now it's
my
ass on the line, and I don't like that. Stay focused. Those planes—the well-being of those executives—come
first
.”

The SAC stood and walked Daggett to the door where he handed him a red file folder and waited as Daggett signed off for it. “For God's sake, keep this on you at all times,” he said. “These are the
new
itineraries. Who's coming to town, how they're getting here, how they're getting home. As long as they're in the air or on the runway, they're your ticket. You can't do this alone. Take the new guy from Drugs—I'll do the paperwork. But no one else. That,” he said, pointing to the folder, “is our only copy of the specifics. No photocopying. No eyes, other than yours. Understood?”

Daggett nodded.

Mumford eased his office door shut, closing out Daggett, who looked up to see one of the executive suite's three secretaries staring at him. He had that strange sensation she had violated his privacy. He wondered if that was how women felt when he imagined them without their clothes on. She forced a smile and went back to her work. She wasn't all that bad-looking and he realized he had never seen her before.

Holding on to the red file, Daggett felt naked himself. He broke into a quick walk, headed straight to the bullpen, and locked the file away in his briefcase, where it belonged.

He had lived in agony for the last eighteen hours; he had no choice but to seek the help of a professional.

The dentist's office, chosen at random from the Yellow Pages, occupied the second story of a contemporary red brick building off N Street. Kort approached the officious-looking receptionist and introduced himself as Albert Kotch. He touched his jaw where it glowed an infectious red, apologized for not phoning ahead, and in the same breath explained that he was more than willing to wait out the entire day if necessary, if there was any hope—any hope at all—of seeing Dr. Rosen. After a quick check in the back room, the receptionist smiled and pointed to the waiting room. Kort sat back with the copy of
People
magazine he had bought at a newsstand. How could he resist a cover story on the downing of AmAirXpress flight 64?

The article was titled “Sifting Through the Wreckage.” It focused on Lynn Greene, a good-looking explosives expert running the FAA's investigation. And whereas the eyes of the average reader would certainly have remained on the shapely Ms. Greene, his did not. Instead, he studied the bits and pieces of 64's debris scattered over the smoking background. Other magazines had carried other pictures, but she was standing right among the wreckage; this was good stuff. He saw the wires, the bulkhead, the scraps of fuselage, and, only incidentally, the paramedics, the firemen, the stretchers, and the ambulances.

The article itself was a letdown—it concentrated too much on her and too little on the crash. Over the course of his crosscountry train ride, Kort had read several newspaper pieces on the crash. These had been long on content, but short on visuals. This
People
piece proved much the opposite. As he reached the end, one photograph stood out. He knew the face because there had been a one-hour television special comparing Lockerbie to 1023. During this show, Special Agent Cameron Daggett had been pointed out to Kort by Michael Sharpe, who knew him by face because of his own police work, and Daggett's close association with the Frankfurt bomb squad during the 1023 investigation. Now, here, at the end of Kort's well-filed and exceptionally clean fingernail, the same face looked out from the pages. He stood well in the background, slightly blurred but clearly visible, turning to avert his face from the camera. Caught, nonetheless.