Chronic fear

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Scagnelli loved this kind of job, even if he’d rather be taking out the Cheese Guy.

The two CIA agents who had raided Dr. Morgan’s lab were relatively fresh-faced. Or, at least, clean-shaven. They’d finished off their food at Bella Bistro on Franklin Street, each with pasta dishes, a plate of sloppy bruschetta between them. They were drinking a deep burgundy wine that probably cost ten bucks a glass.

They were dark-skinned, and besides the alcohol consumption, they could easily be taken for Middle Easterners. Azim, the one on the left, had been an overseas operative until he’d been made, at which point he’d been reassigned to the States. Of course, his stereotypical appearance aroused suspicion and thus he could only work in major metropolitan areas where his ethnicity wouldn’t raise red flags.

Fortunately for him-at least up until tonight, when his fortune would go bad-Chapel Hill was one of the most international communities in the world.

Adrianus, the Greek sitting opposite, was also dark-skinned, and his radiant black hair and eyes also marked him as a foreigner. Scagnelli had actually met Adrianus once and had taken an instant dislike. Maybe it was genetic memory, dating all the way back to the Roman Empire, but Scagnelli had privately hung the nickname “Goatbreeder” on him.

Goatbreeder and Baby bin Laden symbolized all that was wrong with the nation’s security forces. It was part of the reason Scagnelli had abandoned agency work. He wasn’t a racist, naturally, but he saw the inherent flaw in using foreigners to preserve domestic policy.

“More water, sir,” the waiter said. He was a college kid with sleepy eyes who carried himself with a sense of insouciant entitlement.

Scagnelli felt like dashing the remaining half of his water in the kid’s face, but that most definitely would draw attention. Instead, he said, “What sort of wines are you serving tonight?”

The kid grinned, sensing a bigger tip, and hustled off to get a drink menu. Scagnelli, sitting outside on the patio at a small wrought-iron table, chanced another peek through the window to the restaurant’s interior. Goatbreeder was laughing, swirling his wine around and taking a sniff of it before sipping.

Scagnelli wanted to kill him just for that irritating, pompous gesture if nothing else.

But he realized he was getting too emotional. This was just a job.

When the waiter brought his wine, he imitated Goatbreeder’s gesture, trying to blend in with the well-to-do intellectual class that was sucking on the university tit and drawing taxpayer milk. He’d taken a second dose of amphetamines, and the speed was making his skin itch. He couldn’t afford to get wired just before the job, so he gulped the wine instead of sipped, intending to mellow out the speed buzz.

A woman at the next table curled her lip at his performance as though he’d farted. Scagnelli toasted her and took another gulp. Her husband, a miserable-looking man who probably faced a dozen more years of ball-busting before mustering up the nerve to get divorced, caught her gaze, glanced over, and turned his attention back to his salad.

Inside, Baby bin Laden waved for the check, the agents apparently deciding to skip dessert. Goatbreeder took a last messy bite of the bruschetta, causing them both to laugh when a chunk of tomato tumbled free and plopped into his wine glass. Baby bin Laden paid with his credit card, scrawling his tip with a flourish when the water brought the receipt.

Goatbreeder fished the tomato chunk out of his wine with his finger. Scagnelli looked over at the scowling woman, hoping she would notice and launch into a fit of apoplexy. But she was griping at her husband, who gave his bobblehead “Yes, dear” nod, a motion so rehearsed it had created wrinkles in his neck.

At last, the CIA duo stood, and Scagnelli hurriedly downed the dregs of his wine. He stood, dug into his wallet, and slipped a ten on the table. He was hurrying around to the front, where the two agents would emerge, when the waiter called to him.

“Sir? Sir?”

Scagnelli frowned, with several diners now watching him. “I left my tab on the table.”

“You left a ten, sir. Our Pinot Grigio is twelve dollars per glass.”

Scagnelli dug into his wallet again. He wanted to shove the five in the kid’s mouth, but instead made a small flourish of sticking the five in his vest pocket. He gave the kid’s red bow tie a tug and said, “Keep the change.”

By the time he got to the entrance, the two agents were gone. Scagnelli didn’t want them to separate. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have preferred to divide and conquer, but the job had to be finished tonight.

He hurried to the parking lot, a dimly lit patch of cracked asphalt that was hidden from the restaurant by high tangled shrubs and a Dumpster enclosure that didn’t smell any fancier than the garbage from a fast-food joint, Pinot Grigio or not. One of the agents was laughing, obviously in a good mood and secure in the belief that here in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, danger didn’t dwell in every shadow and gutter.

Scagnelli kept his head down and marched purposefully in their general direction, but not straight toward them. Goatbreeder was talking about the Tar Heels, the university’s basketball team that had apparently lost in something called “The Sweet Sixteen.”

As Baby bin Laden mimed taking a hook shot, Scagnelli veered toward them and extended a friendly hand in a wave. “Adrianus? Is that you?”

Baby bin Laden froze in mid-motion, awkwardly standing with his arm curved in the air. The Greek turned with narrowed eyes. “Excuse me?”

“It’s me. Dominic Scagnelli. We had that seminar together in the Pentagon.”

“Scagnelli.” Goatbreeder puckered his olive lips, his accent blowing any cover he might have used. “Maybe.”

“Called ‘Decoding the Obvious.’ Remember that fat bastard telling us that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a pigeon?”

Goatbreeder gave an uneasy laugh. “Yes, yes. Now I do. Are you still with the Bureau?”

“Yeah, you know how it is. This gig, we’re like monks, we’re in for life.” Scagnelli smiled to include Baby bin Laden in their brotherhood of government ineptitude, good guys trying to get through the day in a system that made no sense.

“Who’s your partner?” Scagnelli said.

“Azim.”

They shook hands. Baby bin Laden’s was greasy, probably from the butter rolls. “So, what brings you to Chapel Hill?” Goatbreeder asked, clearly expecting Scagnelli to deliver the kind of lie typical for the profession-visiting an aunt, business conference, medical tests.

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

Neither of them laughed. The joke was too old. Scagnelli continued. “I’m on this thing, some crazy shit. A researcher here is playing with a drug that opens people’s brains like stripping away the layers of an onion, getting down there to the primitive impulses. Sounds like horseshit to me, but you know how the Puzzle Palace gets when they smell a chance at mind control.”

Scagnelli knew he’d breached protocol. Even if they were all on the same case, a good agent never acknowledged that fact. The culture of subterfuge meant they all had to overlook the obvious.

“We’re actually on vacation,” Goatbreeder said.

“Golfing.” Baby bin Laden gave an awkward swing, clearly revealing he’d never held a nine-iron in his life.

“Lucky bastards. Me, I got this intercepted e-mail from this researcher, she’s working with a big-time drug dealer who cooks up his own poison. I don’t know where the e-mail came from. May have been leaked from another agency. The CIA does shit like that all the time, right?” Scagnelli gave Goatbreeder a conspiratorial nudge to the elbow, glancing around. The parking lot was empty except for a man sitting in a Lexus with a cell phone clamped to his ear.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Goatbreeder said. “Like I said, we’re on vacation.”

“Yeah, I understand. But I thought it might have been you guys, because somebody broke into the researcher’s lab. They didn’t find anything except for a laptop that had some copies of brain scans. And then those get leaked. The only agency I know that would deliberately let stuff get out is the CIA. Hell, even the Justice Department runs a tighter ship, and we all know how screwed they are.”

Goatbreeder bristled a little at the criticism, but apparently he was well trained in restraining himself. Baby bin Laden, though, fidgeted, moving his weight from one foot to the other.

“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Scagnelli said. “Why would the CIA want the Bureau to know about this particular researcher? I mean, we have different missions, right? Help me on this.”

“I don’t know,” Baby bin Laden said. “All I’m thinking about right now is Whitehurst.”

“Whitehurst?” Scagnelli said. “What the fuck is Whitehurst?”

“The golf course.”

“You mean Pinehurst? Where they hold PGA events?” Scagnelli couldn’t believe they let fucking foreigners traipse about on American soil like this, supposed defenders of democracy who hadn’t even bothered to get their cover stories straight.

“He’s newly assigned,” Goatbreeder said, as if that was an excuse for being a stupid Arabian shitheel.

“Here’s the weird part. My sources say it was two guys who raided the lab, and they were suspected terrorists. We all know what that means, right?”

Goatbreeder and Baby bin Laden looked at one another.

“I got nothing against people of any color or nationality, but even here in a college town, people have their preconceptions. I mean, they get cable here, right? Fox News? Brown people go boom boom?”

“What the hell do you want, Scagnelli?” Goatbreeder said. He didn’t have much of a Greek accent anymore. He sounded like a college kid, like the waiter.

Damn. I’m really getting too old for this. Time to buy myself a compound in Montana and be done with it.

“I want what we all want,” Scagnelli said. “Answers. The truth.”

He had to bite the tip of his tongue to keep from snickering. He shouldn’t have popped that second hit of speed. He was a little too buzzed for a job that required subtlety.

“The truth is a moving target,” Baby bin Laden said.

“Then let’s get moving.” Scagnelli had his gun out before either of them noticed, yet more proof of their incompetence. He’d added a suppressor to the Glock’s threaded barrel, which made it much longer and more difficult to conceal, but at least the agents would understand he meant business.

A couple had entered the parking lot and the woman was laughing like a sloppy prom date. Somebody was going to get lucky tonight.

Somebody including me.

“I need that laptop,” Scagnelli said. “And I need to know who’s pushing your buttons.”

Goatbreeder kept on a diplomatic tack, his voice low. “If the Bureau is in on this, it means big politics. We can’t compromise our mission of serving the president’s policy objectives.”

“Cut the rah-rah shit,” Scagnelli said. “Where’s the laptop?”

“You’re not seriously going to shoot two innocent bystanders in public, are you?”

“Don’t worry. No one will ever know. Or do you really think your regional director wouldn’t bury you? I mean, you’d be a terrible embarrassment to the agency.”

“Give him the laptop,” Baby bin Laden said, barely hiding his nervousness.

Scagnelli wasn’t surprised. He’d always figured Arabians had no grit, despite all the sand they’d eaten.

Scagnelli followed them to their car, already positive it was the silver Honda Civic, a car so painfully ordinary that it stood out even in a typical, middle-class parking lot. True to their nature, the agents had parked in the corner that was farthest from any streetlights.

He didn’t know which one would go for a gun first. He figured neither. These guys were foreigners. No way would they put their lives on the line for the good old red, white, and blue.

Goatbreeder was the driver, which wasn’t surprising. He slowly fished the keys out and was about to slide them into the driver’s-side door when Scagnelli said, “The trunk.”

Baby bin Laden waited without emotion while Goatbreeder opened the trunk. The laptop was lying there, along with a leather satchel bag.

“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Scagnelli said. “You guys had orders to leak the information. But it wasn’t leaked to me. I intercepted it fair and square. What I need to know is who you were trying to leak it to on purpose.”

They looked at one another. A car started, probably the laughing couple’s, and it backed out and exited the lot. The man with the cell phone was still in his car, not a big concern. The back door to the restaurant opened and a kid came out wheeling a gray trashcan, an orange dot marking the tip of his cigarette.

“We leak nothing,” said Baby bin Laden, accent reverting toward his native tongue in his anxiety.

“Ah, crap, we didn’t have to play it this way. But you’re leaking one way or another.”

When the restaurant worker banged open the Dumpster, Scagnelli squeezed the trigger twice. The agents slumped together for a moment before Goatbreeder slid against the side of the car and down to the cracked asphalt. Baby bin Laden flopped forward.

The restaurant worker wrestled with the garbage while Scagnelli flipped Goatbreeder into the small trunk. Baby bin Laden was a little less cooperative, still clinging to a faint pulse. There was no way to finesse a corpse into a trunk while out in public, so Scagnelli just shoved and rolled and folded, hoping he didn’t get any bloodstains on his suit.

“Enjoy the ride,” Scagnelli said, removing the laptop and satchel and slamming the trunk closed.

The man in the car with the cell phone must have heard the trunk’s closing, because he turned but didn’t pause in his conversation. Scagnelli ignored him, walking with purpose toward the restaurant as if he were a professor headed for a late martini. He continued down the sidewalk to his car parked along the street.

He was pleased to see in the glow of the streetlights that his suit was stain free. He popped a hit of speed in celebration. He felt like dancing, but on the sidewalks of the proud and free America, you didn’t dare show any hint of joy. These days, happiness brought suspicion.

But at least you still own what happens in your head, right?

He walked faster.

At least for now.