Shockwave (27 page)

I didn’t know if the FBI routinely polygraphed every agent like the CIA does, but the prospect didn’t worry me. Two reasons: they’d only be polygraphing field agents, and this guy was way above that level now; and that CIA spy, who’d been
selling to the other side for years, he’d passed a bunch of polygraphs. By now, every agency would know that certain people would pass any kind of “guilty knowledge” detector.

Maybe all this “profiling” stuff was as silly as it looked on TV, but even the FBI would know there’s people who don’t
feel
guilty. About anything. It just wasn’t in them.

You couldn’t bluff such people, either. Tell them they’d just failed a polygraph and they might do any number of things—laugh in your face, tell you the machine was fucked up and demand a retest, get angry—just about anything
except
break down and confess.

If I’d been alone, I would have tried to clear my mind so I could see the field mapped out before I went in. I wasn’t trained as a strategist. But Mack was there with me. And whatever we were going to do, it’d have to wait for nightfall anyway. So …

“We’ve got to turn him,” I said.

“The FBI man?”

“Yeah. But the only handle we’ve got to turn him with is that he gave a hunting license to at least one of those three who took out that Jordan guy. We don’t know which one. Far as we know, he could have issued the license to that whole team.

“All I’ve been able to find out is
how
they reach him. They’d have to do it over a line if it was a tip he’d have to act on fast. But data banks aren’t any more useful than the data they hold. He’d know that, so there isn’t a chance in hell that he’d have
any
of their names or contact info written down on a piece of paper, never mind put into his agency’s computer system.”

“You’re thinking we could—what?—make him talk?”

“No. That’s a myth, torture. It makes people talk, all right, but it doesn’t make them tell the truth.”

Mack just nodded, as if everybody knew that. But I didn’t miss the relief on his face—his eyes didn’t change, but his facial muscles relaxed just enough for the tell.

“And even if we did get him to give up the killer, so what?” I said. “We’d still be right here.”

“Right here?”

“In the same place. Even if he drew us a map, we’d still be working through a maze. Say we knew the name of the guy who killed the Nazi. So what? First, we’d have to find him. That could take way more time than we have. But let’s say we got lucky. Say we
do
find him, now what? He’s going to confess?”

“I get it.”

Those three words from Mack triggered a memory: I’d emptied my weapon in a jungle-dark firefight. I was groping around in the dark, desperation and the need to be careful at war with each other in my head, when my fingers suddenly touched that extra magazine I knew I’d put somewhere close to hand.

T
hat memory: “Killing all the guards won’t move
that
boulder,” this guy who looked like a university professor was telling me.

A long time ago, when I was still working.

We were in his office. At least, that’s what he called it—I figured the only thing that was actually his was the little brass nameplate on the outside door, and he’d be taking that with him when he left. “The boulder’s not only too big, it’s planted too deeply. There’s only one way to move something like that. You know what that would be?”

“A lever. A fulcrum and a lever.”

“Very good,” he said, drawing on his meerschaum pipe. The scent of the tobacco was a kind of cherry. Bitter cherry. “Do you know where we could get such a combination?”

I just shook my head. People giving lectures don’t like to be interrupted, and I was getting paid to listen, anyway.

“The only leverage—the only
true
leverage—always comes
down to the same thing. Information. That’s why the people who know always get paid much more than the people who pull on that lever.”

Or pull the trigger
, I thought. But all I said was “The difference between you and me, you’re saying?”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

I just looked at him. Waiting.

“He has a daughter.”

I knew what the man wanted then, but I just sat there. If anyone was going to say it out loud, it would have to be him.

“Three years old. Her mother’s nineteen. He’s at least seventy years old. Maybe he got injections, maybe he’s still … capable. Maybe he used his own sperm, frozen years ago. It doesn’t matter.

“Here’s what
does
matter.
Information
matters. We know that child is his ultimate trophy. The child’s existence proves he can cheat Time itself.”

I just kept waiting.

“He keeps her in a separate house inside his compound. She is only brought out—taken down from the trophy case, if you will—when he wants to exhibit his … prowess, perhaps one might say.”

There was still nothing for
me
to say.

“The mother stays with the child. But when her … services are required, the child is tended by an amah. You know what that is?”

“Nursemaid.”

“Yes,” he said, approvingly. “However, for the purposes of this endeavor, it doesn’t matter who is tending to the child—the house is guarded individually, you see?”

“That house has its own guards. Not the ones who guard the compound itself, guards
inside
the compound.”

“Correct.”

“They wouldn’t be the only ones.”

“Of course not. He has his own personal bodyguards that go wherever he goes. And those are always very close. His personal dwelling—that, too, is guarded.”

“And you have the diagrams,” I said. If there was any question about that, there was no point in asking it.

He took several rolls of paper from a drawer in the desk he was sitting behind and spread them out, anchoring each end with a heavy brass ruler. The rulers were triangle-shaped, so you could measure in inches or centimeters, or whatever else you needed.

I studied the diagrams, taking my time. Not once did he interrupt my examination. For the moment, our roles were reversed. But those
were
roles, and I wasn’t fool enough to think otherwise. He wasn’t just the star or the director, he was the author of this play. And its producer, too.

“It would have to be silent,” I finally said. “Or else a full-on, all-sides assault.”

“And the difference between those alternatives?”

“One takes a much smaller group, but they would have to be
very
highly skilled. The other, it would be a war—and wars take troops.”

“One is preferable to the other?”

“A war means you don’t pick your targets. The safety of neither this man nor the child could be assured. And you need them
both
alive, one to make certain the other will turn over whatever it is you want.”

He nodded, telling me he already knew this—he was just satisfying himself that
I
did, too. And confirming that what he wanted was some kind of
information
, the commodity he prized above all else.

“But no matter which method is used, the task is impossible,” I said, very calm in the truth of what I was going to
say. “There is a key element missing. Without it, any invaders would be going in blind. Electronic sensors? No-bark attack dogs? Who knows? And if there is
any
alert sounded, the invaders become targets. If one of those targets had the job of extracting the child, then this would all be for nothing. A dead child will not serve your purposes.”

“What is this ‘key element’ you believe is missing?”

“A traitor,” I told him.

That’s when I understood why that memory had surfaced, unbidden.

A
lmost 2:00 a.m.

We were at the highest point we could find for what we needed—privacy, and where a cheap cell phone would have the best chance of working.

“Seven nineteen,” a voice said.

“I don’t know the code you gave your boy,” I said. “But that worm has turned. He’s still at large, but he’s been located. You know how it works once they have him: if he gives you up, he walks; if he doesn’t, he never sees the sky at night again. Which choice you think he’s gonna make?”

“Who is—?”

“Don’t be stupid. He doesn’t know your people have got him targeted for takedown. Want proof?
You
didn’t. Where do you think I got
your
number? I’m in the worm-removal business. Pick a spot you can get to in an hour. I’ll meet you, we’ll agree on a price, and I’ll take it from there.”

“I don’t know who you—”

“You get this one chance,” I cut him short. “This one chance
only
. Now name a spot and be there in an hour. Or you’re on your own.”

“T
hink he’ll come alone?”

“Who’s he going to get to work backup? He doesn’t have time to reach out to a hired gun. The only men he could round up would be agents who work under him. He can’t tell
them
to go in shooting. And he can’t risk any of them finding out what he already knows
I
do.”

“I’m just supposed to sit here, on the fender of the car?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll be … somewhere close?”

“Right.”

“You’re the one who has to talk to him, so why—?”

“I can cover you,” I told him, moving the night-scoped jungle rifle a little to make it clear. “You can’t cover me.”

“Okay.”

“You understand, the minute he shows, we switch places?” I said, repeating myself. When he nodded, I handed him a Sig P226. “There’s no safety on this—just pull steady and firm the first time, then keep pulling; the trigger lightens after the first round.”

“I get it.”

“Let’s be sure, okay? He walks toward you; I start walking when he does. You see him, you move
away
from the direction I’ll be coming from. You move to
your
left. As you move, I’ll be moving, too. By the time he’s close enough, I’ll be where you
were
. And you’ll be over to your left … where it’s dark.”

“How many times do you want to tell me?”

“Until I’m sure you’ll pull that trigger if you have to.”

H
e was cute, I’ll give him that.

A red Corvette is as close to generic as you can get in Seattle,
and the spot he’d picked was probably a lot closer to his house than an hour’s drive.

He’d been playing the same game, the same way, for a long time. Probably thought he still had it under control. He wasn’t driving an agency car, and he wouldn’t be wired … but he’d want to be sure whoever called him wasn’t, either.

He pulled in right next to Mack, and came out of his car
fast
. I was close enough to grab a single eyeball with the scope, but I’d lensed it full-wide, knowing I’d only have a few seconds to gather data.

Mid-forties, with a spiky haircut that would have looked right on a guy half his age. Gym muscles, biceps on display in a short-sleeved black shirt. No gun in sight, but that shirt was long-tailed enough to belt-conceal.

“Move over, kid,” I said as I slid up on Mack’s right. “It’s time for the grown-ups to talk.”

SAC Alan Brigham turned his head just far enough to realize he couldn’t keep Mack and me in his field of vision at the same time. I shifted the rifle to one hand, pointed it at the ground, held it loosely. Telling him I
could
have taken him, if that’s what I’d been there to do.

He just watched me, waiting.

“Your man is facing a hard choice. So are you,” I said.

“My man?”

“You want to hear ‘Gomes,’ that make you feel better?” I said, gambling that he’d only licensed one man—one man’s name was all I had.

“I don’t know what—”

“
That’s
your best? Can’t be. So maybe you’re thinking Gomes
already
turned, and it’s my job to get you to spill.”

“You know who I am?” he said, making the question a threat.

“You want your name on a tape, is that it? Or maybe you need to hear that if you act stupid my partner will shred you where you stand? Act your age, okay?”

He stood frozen for a ten-count. Then he said, “Lay it out.”

“You made a devil’s bargain. Gomes gets a license to kill. Every kill ups his status. That gives him access to more and more info. He turns the cream of that over to you, and you keep renewing that license.

“Your agency didn’t go public with that last takedown, but you got credited, right? And nobody ever asks you how you’re always getting such heavy intel on the White Power guys, do they? At least, not anymore, they don’t. Domestic terrorism, that’s their key to the treasure chest.”

“Is that it?”

“It’s more than enough. A devil’s bargain—that means only the devil
gets
the bargain. You issued a license you can’t cancel. Not now, you can’t—it’s been used too much. All you can do is cancel the guy who’s holding it.”

“Spell it out.”

“I’ll tell you this much, no more: the people who have Gomes on their radar, they have him
good
. Not for anything to do with you. Gomes, he’s what they call a ‘boy-lover,’ and they’ve got enough to put him all the way down. One of the little boys he was playing with ended up dead, and the whole thing’s on video. How do I know that? Because it got sold. For a lot of money.

“The people who want Gomes work for the same outfit you do. But they’re not your friends—they’ve got ambitions of their own. Too bad for you the wrong guy won the last election.

“So forget Gomes, he’s getting wrapped up. And soon. But there’s one string still dangling, and the other side can’t pull it. You know why? Because they don’t know it’s there.”

“Come on!” He wasn’t shouting, just the opposite. But his voice was vibrating with tension.

“Your guy doesn’t work alone. He’s the boss of a three-man team. I take him out, you let the other two in on the deal. You
understand what I’m saying? They
—your
people, I’m talking about—they only know about Gomes. And they only lucked into that. Maybe Gomes didn’t plan on the kid dying, just wanted the tape for his collection. But he’s like all of those sickos—he couldn’t bring himself to dump the tapes, not even that one.