Hot Pursuit

24

Millie was getting dressed to go back to work when her cell rang. “Hello?”

“It’s Quentin.”

“That was fast. Have you solved my problem?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“In what manner of speaking?”

“I took your problem to my ultimate boss, the assistant director of counterintelligence.”

“Did you tell him my name?”

“Not only did I not tell him your name, I told him you were a guy.”

“Well, that was insulting.”

“He knows nothing but the vague outline of what you want. The thing is, he was stationed in the San Francisco office at the time you’re interested in, and after some thought, he thinks he might have something for you.”

“Okay, shoot. What is it?”

“Hang on, he won’t tell me, then let me tell you. He wants to meet you face-to-face.”

“If I do that, then I’m working outside the boundaries of my assignment, and there will be hell to pay.”

“It’s the only way he’ll tell you what he knows.”

“I’ll call you back in an hour,” Millicent said, and hung up. She finished dressing and drove to the White House; five minutes later she was seated in Holly Barker’s office. “I’ve got something on the third man, but I don’t know what it is.”

“Millie,” Holly said, feigning patience, “that puts us at yesterday.”

“I’m sorry, what I meant to say is... Oh, shit, here’s what’s happened.” She told Holly of her two conversations with Quentin Phillips while Holly nodded along with her.

“I’ve done business with Lev Epstein before,” Holly said when Millie had finished. “He’s very smart — so much so that you can’t let him outsmart you.”

“How do you want me to handle him?” Millie asked.

Holly pressed a button on her phone. “Please get me Lev Epstein at the Bureau.” A minute later, Epstein came on.

“Aha, it’s you, Holly!” he said.

“I know,” Holly said. “I’ve always known.”

“But now I know,” he said triumphantly.

“How are you, Lev?”

“Just great, thanks.”

“And the wife and kids?”

“Just great.”

“Are you still eating your noon meals out of your six-year-old’s Mickey Mouse lunchbox?”

“Only every day. So it’s your minion that’s got my young agent’s knickers in a twist?”

“I haven’t explored their relationship to that point,” Holly said.

“So why do you need to know what I know?”

“So that I can see that some very bad people don’t harm our nation.”

“Okay, you show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.”

“In your dreams. I know it’s been a long time since anyone told you this, Lev, but what I know is above your pay grade.”

“Oh, come on, Holly, I’m the assistant director for counterintelligence — nothing is above my pay grade.”

“If you like, I can have the president call your director, then he can explain it to you.”

“Oh, come now, Holly.”

“This is what we’re going to do: you and Mr. Phillips are going to have a nice lunch with my assistant, Millicent Martindale — not at our mess nor at yours, but at a cozy McDonald’s somewhere, and you’re buying.”

“Why should I buy?”

“I can arrange for your director to explain that to you, as well, if you like. Now I’m going to put Millie on the phone with you, and the two of you will arrange a lunch date.”

“Oh, all right.”

“And, Lev, don’t show up with the Mickey Mouse lunchbox.” She handed the phone to Millie. “He’s all yours.”

Millie found the McDonald’s in Arlington and sat in the parking lot until she saw Quentin Phillips get out of a car with a companion. The companion was short, thickly built, and looked more like how she thought an agent of the Mossad would look, rather than an FBI executive. She followed them into the restaurant and gave Quentin her order, then commandeered a booth and waited for them to join her.

“Millie, this is Lev Epstein, assistant director of counterintelligence. Lev, this is Millicent Martindale.”

“Hi,” Epstein said, digging into a Quarter Pounder with cheese.

“Hi, yourself,” Millie said, following Holly’s advice not to try to charm him. “I’m all ears.”

Quentin flinched.

“Tell me what you know, first,” Epstein said.

“Agent Phillips has already told you what I know.”

“Oh, come on, you know more than that.”

“I’m here for no other reason than to find out what you know, Lev. I believe Holly Barker already explained that to you.”

“Okay. About a year before nine-eleven I got assigned to the San Francisco office,” he said, “and then I got assigned to mingle with students — I was pretty young at the time. My orders were to detect dissident students who might become a problem for us. I did not hang out at Hillel House.”

“So where did you hang out?”

“I adopted the pseudonym of Ali — I had spent two years in the Israeli army, and I’m very good with languages — so I spoke Arabic, which gave me some street cred with the Middle Eastern students, of which there were several dozen. I started going to discussion group meetings, which were informally organized and held at a different place every week or so. There were three people whose obvious assignment was to winkle out people like me, but I took them on and won their trust.” He paused.

“Did someone in that group resemble the parameters I outlined to Quentin yesterday?”

“No. There was no one in the group who could pass as a non-Arab. They were too angry, mostly. However, after a dozen meetings or so, an observer appeared. He was young — not much older than I — handsome, and wore expensive clothes. He came to only one meeting, and he never spoke, but he made an impression on everybody. When the meeting showed signs of breaking up, he left immediately, without speaking to anyone. I made a point of not asking anyone about him, but I overheard two other students talking about him, and one of them said that he was an assistant professor in the economics department who had specialized knowledge of the Middle Eastern oil industry, and that he taught some sort of course that dealt with the subject.”

“And you never learned his name?”

“No. And there was no point in asking about him, because nobody in the group seemed to know anything else about him, either, except that he was thought to be important.”

“Did you pursue identifying him?”

“I wanted to, but about that time we lost an agent to a firefight with a bank robber, and I was promoted into his position. I wrote a one-page memo for my files before starting the new job, saying what I just told you. No one was appointed to fill my slot, so I suppose my memo went the way of all paper. It’s probably in a file box in a salt mine somewhere out West.”

“Describe him thoroughly, please.”

Epstein closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. “Six feet, one-seventy, dark hair, fashionably cut, a permanent five-o’clock shadow, excellent teeth, skin on the pale side. If he’s your boy, then he probably had a European parent.” Epstein took another chomp of his Quarter Pounder. “Now tell me what you know.”

“I know what you just told me,” Millie replied. “That’s all.”

Epstein sighed. “All right, then this is what I want from you: if you’re able to put what I told you with information from somewhere else and you start a hunt for this guy, I want dibs on the search. Got it?”

“I’ll pass that on to Holly Barker,” Millie said. She wiped the fry grease off her fingers with a couple of paper napkins and offered him a hand. “Neither you nor Quentin is to speak about this with anyone anywhere. Thank you so much for a marvelous lunch. I’ll tell all my friends about this place.”

He shook her hand, she leaned over and whispered to Quentin, “Call me. I owe you dinner.”

Then she left the two of them to their sumptuous lunch.