The Firefly

8

At eleven o'clock on Monday morning, Jake Cullen, driving an unmarked Crown Vic, picked up Swamp at the Eighteenth Street entrance of the OEOB, while Gary White got into the car behind Cullen's, driven by Detective Howell. The snowstorm that had blanketed the West Virginia mountains had changed to sleet down along the Potomac River basin, fatally snarling the Monday-morning commute. As of noon, it had turned to just cold rain, making January in Washington live up to its miserable reputation.

"Great day for ducks," Swamp said, getting in and taking off his dripping hat. "You know where this bank is?"

"Yeah," Jake said. "Up on Fifteenth and P Street. A couple of blocks away from the Saudi embassy. I called. We're gonna see the managing director, a Mr. Mutaib."

"Not a prince," Swamp said. "How unique."

Jake stopped at a yellow light so as not to lose Howell. "His real title is Emir Mutaib abd Allah, supposedly, but he goes by Mr. Mutaib here in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Appreciate your coming along."

"Wouldn't miss it. So that may have been our guy, the one driving that black Suburban?"

"It's possible. Salesman remembers him being interested in Connie's Shelby."

"Description?"

"Medium build, dark oversized sunglasses, hat, gloves, Jewish nose — our politically correct salesman's term for it — oh, and a European accent. Never took the sunglasses off, not even inside."

"Essentially faceless, then."

"Guy had a preauthorized bank draft on the Royal Kingdom Bank— that's one of the Saudi banks here in Washington. Dealership called the bank, got immediate verification, and that was that. Gave his name as Erich Hodler."

"Damn, I was hoping for Heismann."

"Nope, Hodler. Had an international driver's license, passport, work visa, and the equivalent of cold cash. Keys and half a tank of gas, and — boom— like a rock, he's an owner."

"This dealership know they have to report cash transactions from a foreigner like that to the IRS?"

"Yep, and they say they did. By mail, naturally."

Swamp thought about it. The dealer hadn't done anything illegal, as long as the individual's papers were in order. "Address?"

"Well, that was interesting — title and registration to be sent to said bank."

"Oh?"

"Well, bank fronts the money, bank gets the title. The registration would normally go to the buyer. At his address. Which he gave as the bank."

"Which is why we're going to the bank."

"Yeah. Hell, right now, it's all we've got."

"How's Ms. Wall?"

Construction in the next block had even the sparse traffic gridlocked. "Cut three ways, as they say in certain quarters — long, deep, and often. Actually, it was a single stab wound, but deep and in a bad area for that kind of wound. I made contact with her twice. One time for a finger squeeze. The second time, she opened her eyes, recognized me. At least I think so. The ICU docs said she'd be like that for a while. They've got her on morphine, so I came back down to Fun City here. The other reason was that Cat Ballard's funeral is this afternoon."

Behind them, Howell plopped a bubblegum light on the roof of his car and honked at Jake, who looked in the mirror, reached under the seat, and put his own light up top. Blooping his siren, he eased out into the other lane of traffic and they circumvented the traffic jam. "Does Ballard's wife know the real deal?" Swamp asked.

"If she does, she's not letting on. There has been a line-of-duty determination. He was on a call in connection with an 'ongoing investigation.'"

"Right."

"Well, she did call him, after all," Jake said, rolling his eyes. "We told Lynn that the woman left town and then got herself knifed in West Virginia. Adds a little depth and color to the fable, I guess. Tough scene all around, though. Two kids and all."

"You gonna go?"

"Oh, yes. Whole crew's going, plus a lot of bosses. Which is why I want to face up Ahab the Ay-rab here, see what he can tell us. I desperately need something to report back. Oh, and did I mention that the milk container contained a nerve agent?"

Swamp drew a blank, so Jake refreshed his memory about Wall's cat.

"A lot?" Swamp asked.

"Enough to have paralyzed anyone who drank that milk."

"Nice. So this guy comes packing bio?"

"Lab says it was probably ant poison, which in soluble powder form is based on a cholinesterase inhibitor. Nerve agent, in English. Get it at any home-supply store."

"Wouldn't you taste or smell that shit?"

"Not, apparently, if you boil it first."

"Our boy's been to some interesting schools, then," Swamp said. "So how do you want to play this at the bank?"

"We're on the Ballard homicide. I'll tell him you're along because it's international. Mention of the Secret Service tends to make foreigners straighten right up. Plus, in Saudi Arabia, that term has a totally different connotation, if you follow me."

Swamp smiled. It surely did. "More like gestapo," he said. "And above all, we want a description, plus anything they can tell us about who this guy is and why they gave him money?"

"Right," Jake said. "This looks like the place."

They pulled up in front of an elegant stone building with a circular driveway. A pair of security types were sitting in a large Mercedes parked at one end of the arc. Jake turned into the driveway, followed by Howell. The security guards were out of their car to meet them as soon as the cops got out of their respective cars. Swamp halfway expected some guff, but the guards, large men who looked like Germans to him, told them in excellent English that the managing director was expecting them. One of them began mumbling into a small radio.

Inside, the lobby was unlike any bank Swamp had ever been in. It looked more like someone's gracious town house, with gorgeous carpets on marble floors and a huge vaulted ceiling. There were three service desks at one end of the lobby, all manned by men. Two very handsome young men in glistening Armani suits appeared to escort them back through ten-foot-high rosewood double doors to Emir Mutaib's office. When the four of them were seated on sofas in an anteroom, two servants dressed in white uniforms brought out a coffee service on a silver tray. Once everyone had coffee, the servants withdrew, the doors to the inner office opened, and Mutaib made his grand entrance. Swamp had been expecting a dark-skinned, bearded, beefy individual in white robes and headdress, but instead, a slim man of medium height with professionally styled dark hair appeared. His face was long and narrow, with delicately arched eyebrows, dark brown eyes, bright white teeth, and taut olive skin descending into a carefully groomed pointed black beard. He was wearing an elegant double-breasted tweed suit, a white shirt with a regimental tie and a tie pin, and dark cordovan wing tips. He greeted them in what Swamp recognized as an upper-class British accent, Oxbridge-anointed, complete with a hint of the softened r's affectation. Mutaib sat down in a large chair, shot his French cuffs, crossed his legs, and beamed at them expectantly. The two young men, one of them holding a small folder, hovered attentively just behind him.

Jake made introductions, and Mutaib formally recognized each man there, repeating their names but not shaking hands. He gave Swamp's face an extra second of inspection when he heard mention of the Secret Service. Or maybe it's just my lovely mug, Swamp thought. People often looked twice, or even three times, furtively, though, as if afraid of being turned to stone.

"Gentlemen. How may the Royal Kingdom Bank be of assistance to you today?" he asked.

Jake took the lead, explaining the circumstances of the investigation in very broad terms, then described the purchasing of the Suburban. "Basically, as I said on the phone, we want to know who this individual is, and we're curious why the Royal Kingdom Bank would cut him a preauthorized check like that."

Mutaib raised his right hand, and one of the young men sprang forward to deliver the slim folder to his outstretched hand. He opened it and read for one or two seconds.

"This individual was named Erich Hodler," Mutaib began, still reading from the folder. "He is a German national with a valid passport. He came into the bank with twenty thousand Euros in cash and requested a preauthorized bank draft, made out to the automobile merchant in question. He said he had found the automobile he wanted to buy, and he requested that we send the bank draft via messenger service to the merchant."

"And you just did it?"

"Well, of course, Detective Sergeant. Why not? His identity papers were in order. The Euros were genuine. He was willing to pay our fee for such services."

"But he's a foreigner," Howell said.

"And so are we, Detective Sergeant," Mutaib said with a faintly patronizing smile. "We reported the transaction to the appropriate authorities here in Washington, of course, because of the cash, but I must say it was an entirely routine transaction. Has this individual done something wrong? Is he a criminal?"

"We don't know," Swamp said, speaking for the first time. "But we want to speak to him. Can anyone here give a description of this man?"

"A description?" Mutaib looked perplexed for a moment.

"Yes," Jake said. "What'd he look like?"

Mutaib looked pained. He turned his head in the direction of one of his attendants and muttered something in Arabic. The young man left the room immediately, punching numbers into a tiny cell phone as he hurried through a door.

"We shall see if anyone remembers," Mutaib announced. "Although it's hardly likely."

"Are there security tapes? A video system for your service desks?"

Mutaib nodded. "Yes, of course. But they are — what is the term? Ah, yes, they are 'looped,' I'm told. One day's recording is made right over the top of the previous day's recording, unless, of course, the nightly audit surfaces a problem of some kind. Bad check, a forgery. Then we would keep them. The tapes, I mean."

"Do you have the tapes from, the day all this happened?"

Mutaib consulted the folder. "Thursday last. The twelfth. Yes. The transaction in question occurred on the twelfth. But no, we would not have kept that day's tape. There were simply no incidents." He beamed at them. "There rarely are, you see. We have excellent and visible security."

The young man came back in and shook his head once. "I am so sorry, gentlemen, but we do not have a description for Herr Hodler. We do have his passport number and your American visa numbers, of course, and we have the serial numbers of the Euros."

"So you do not know this individual, Mr. Mutaib?" Jake asked.

"Me? Of course not."

"Because he asked that both the title and the registration for this vehicle be sent here to the bank. Now we can understand the title — that's your collateral. But the registration?"

Mutaib was shaking his head. "There is no collateral, Detective Cullen. This was not a loan. It was currency conversion. Euros for dollars, the dollars being in the form of a preauthorized bank draft. Any balance after price, taxes, and fees to be refunded by the dealer to the buyer in dollars."

"So why would he have the papers sent here?"

"I have no idea, sir. I assume he means to come back here to pick them up. P'raps he does not yet have a permanent address in this country." Mutaib looked back at his assistants for ideas, but they were equally baffled.

Jake looked at Swamp, but Swamp couldn't think of anything but the obvious. "Well, if he does come back to pick them up," he said, "we would still like to talk to him. He left no address on any of your bank forms? No way to contact him?"

Mutaib shook his head. "None at all. The only address we needed was that of the automobile merchant. He brought in cash, you see. Now, if he had brought in a letter of credit, or another bank draft… well, that would have been quite different. But cash?" He shrugged elaborately.

"And you have no other information on this individual?"

"None at all, sir. But didn't your government issue this man a visa? Surely the appropriate department would have information."

And that would be the Immigration and Naturalization Service, in my very own Department of Homeland Security, Swamp thought, his face flushing slightly. The original bureaucratic black hole. "It was a travel visa," he said, lying. "A list of destinations, but no addresses."

Mutaib shrugged again. Obviously not his problem. He raised his eyebrows, as if to ask, Is there anything else?

Swamp realized they were stymied. The bank had been nothing more than a fancy money changer in this little deal. He was a little suspicious of that story about the security tapes, but then, why would they keep them if there'd been no trouble? He shot Jake a look, stood up, and everyone else did, too. "Thank you for seeing us, Mr. Mutaib," Swamp said. "If we have follow-up questions, may we call you?"

Mutaib got up gracefully and handed Jake the folder. One of the assistants raced to open the door. "But of course, my dear fellow," Mutaib said. "Anything at all, to be sure."

Heismann stood in the woman's kitchen and listened. He had heard and watched her leave for work earlier that morning, bustling down the sidewalk with a large fabric bag full of books and papers, a clear plastic trash bag wrapped over the top to keep out the icy rain. As soon as she was gone, he'd begun smashing down the wall between the two town houses. He'd first gone into the basement, but the foundation was made of limestone, which would take much too long to penetrate. There was a hall closet just outside the upstairs master bathroom. He knew its twin should be on the other side of the fire wall. He'd gone in there, ripped the plaster and lathe down to expose the brick, and then, using a small sledgehammer, knocked out all the brickwork on his side of the fire wall. Then he punched a four-foot-high, three-foot-wide hole through the partition, exposing the brickwork on her side of the fire wall. He'd battered through that until he had the plaster wall exposed. He then made a hole low in the plaster and shined a flashlight through. There appeared to be a stack of cardboard boxes in the totally dark space on the other side. He'd then used a handsaw to cut a duplicate square hole in her plaster wall, pulling that ragged square of plaster and lathe through into his closet.

Moving some of the boxes to one side, he'd squeezed through the hole and opened the closet door, its position in front of the bathroom the mirror image of his closet. The closet being full of boxes was good — it wasn't likely that she would be moving them. Then he went through her entire house, taking care to pull shades down so he could not be seen from the street while he examined the place. He spent a half hour going through her clothes, slipping a couple of dresses over his head to see how close the fit was. The dresses, all below the knee in length, were too large, but not too long, so they would do, depending on which costume he chose. Her underwear drawer had a collection of slips, so he was set in that department as well, although he still had the nurse's. His best find was a box of wigs. He had seen his neighbor emptying a bag of trash into the alley containers, and her dark hair had been quite short. But this morning, it had been of medium length. He patted his own stubbled bald head and smiled. This would be perfect. He'd come back the night before the attack to get what he needed. He made a mental note to acquire some more gasoline containers, so that he could get a fire going in this half of the duplex at the same time as his half.

He went back through the house, adjusting shades to their original positions, turning off any lights he'd turned on, and ensuring drawers and closet doors were all as he had found them. He made a mental note of where floorboards squeaked. He took a bottle of cooking oil and went around the house, putting a drop or two on the hinges on every interior door in the house. Then he reset the stack of boxes to present a blank cardboard wall to her closet door, while still allowing enough room for him to get into and through her closet without making noise. He crawled around them, then stepped back across the two holes. He retrieved the square of plaster and lathe and positioned it back into its hole on her side. He knew it wouldn't bear close inspection, but the stack of boxes would hide most of it, and he'd unscrewed the closet's lightbulb just in case she happened to open the closet to look for something. It had to stand up for just three more days.

As he stepped back out into his own hallway, he saw the white footprints his shoes had left on the rug. He swore at himself. Plaster dust. Were there white footprints over there, too? He took the square of plaster back down and laboriously retraced his route. And there were indeed two faint white footprints out on the rug in front of the closet. He took off his shoes and then went through the house a second time, finding a couple of white smears here and there on her bedroom rug. He cleaned them all up before returning to his house again.

Details, he reminded himself. As the attack draws near, details will increasingly matter. He went back down to his kitchen and consulted his lists. Lumber supplies to reinforce the bedroom floor. Gasoline for starting the fire. He added a note to get extra gasoline containers. The television— no, he had that. The materials to modify the skylight. He felt a moment of panic — was there enough time to do all this? The newspaper was full of the preparations for the inauguration and all the constraints on local movement that were coming. Streets physically blocked with something called Jersey barriers. Dense police patrols. Dogs. Helicopters. Television and all other media coverage of the Capitol area and the ceremonies restricted to four networks, one being CNN. Airports closed. Union Station closed. No Metro trains running. "The vacuum-sealed inauguration," as one newspaper called it.

He looked at his watch. Three and a half days left to prepare. He decided to call Lady Mutaib and get some logistical help. He wondered if the poncey princeling had his own collection of female clothes, or if all those robes did it for him.

The cops dropped Swamp and Gary off near the OEOB, and they stopped in a sandwich shop for lunch before going back to the office. Afterward, Swamp went straight to McNamara's office, but the boss was at a departmental briefing in preparation for an upcoming National Intelligence Committee meeting. When he returned to his cubicle, at 1:30, Gary was waiting for him.

"Check this out," he said, handing Swamp a classified communiqué. "It's from Interpol — their file on Heismann. Look at the alias list."

Swamp scanned clown the message until he found it. "Hodler. Erich Hodler. I'll be damned. We should relay this to Jake Cullen." And now I need to call Lucy, he thought. The rest of the report paralleled what they'd received from his friend Bertie. He wondered aloud why the CIA report did not have the list of aliases.

"No idea, sir," Gary said. "No mention of that. The Interpol photo's pretty close to what we got from the Agency, though. And I talked to Immigration — they did issue E. Hodler a visa, but it was eighteen months ago."

"For God's sake!" Swamp exclaimed. "Who gets an eighteen-month visa when he's in the Interpol database?"

"Anyone who asks?" Gary said. "Anyway, I faxed them Interpol's photo, and they say it's a match from his passport scan. I think we can say Hodler is Heismann."

"They fax back their file on Hodler?"

"Negative. Said they couldn't do that without a court order."

"Goddamn it," Swamp said. "I thought we were past all that crap. We're in the same damned department!" He studied the photograph. A Hollywood Nazi. Plastered blond hair. Pronounced cheekbones. Long, straight Nordic-looking nose over flat, sneering lips. Ice blue eyes, approving the latest oven improvements in his death camp, no doubt. "But what's he look like now? I wonder," Swamp said.

"Second item," Gary said. "Remember the warrants you wanted so we could search the Pakistani doctors' homes?"

"Yeah?"

"I took a call for you from your friend Mr. Walker. Wanted to know how it was going?"

"Yeah, I was supposed to keep him in the loop. I need to call him."

"Well, I took the liberty of filling him in, but then I asked him why they didn't have the same alias list for Heismann that Interpol had. He sorta waffled on that, but he had a useful suggestion — that I should check with our own Immigration people in DHS, because foreigners running a business in this country have to register yearly. And foreign doctors also have to requalify their medical licenses with HHS once a year."

"And?"

"The visa people sent me to Immigration's business records section. And guess what? Those doctors did not entirely own that business. A certain foreign bank had a major piece of their action." He raised his eyebrows dramatically.

"You're shitting me."

"Not a pound, boss. The Royal Kingdom Bank owned a stake in that clinic. That Pakistani doc ran it, but the RKB held some major purse strings. The American docs did own their piece of it and the building."

"Well, now we have something. Can you find out from Cullen if Ms. Wall is back among the living?"

After Gary went off to contact Cullen, Swamp sat down at his desk and reorganized his notes for his brief to McNamara. Gary came back almost immediately. "I forgot — the cops're all at the funeral. I'll try that hospital up in Garrison Gap."

Swamp put a call into Lucy. He would have preferred to wait until he'd had time to brief his own boss, but now that they had a second link between the Interpol name and the likely pursuer of Connie Wall, and probable killer of Lieutenant Ballard, he really wanted some Bureau resources put on to the problem of reconstructing a working physical description. If nothing else, Heismann/Hodler had some questions to answer about the death of the police lieutenant, even if their own theories about a bomb plot were all wrong.

In the event, Lucy VanMetre was not available. When Swamp tried to pursue it, the PRU receptionist stonewalled him. She told him Ms. Van-Metre was not available, then asked if he wanted her voice mail. When he said no, she told him he could leave name and phone number. No idea when she would be available.

Defeated, he gave up. Previously, they would have told him that she was in a meeting, out of the office, at lunch, whatever, but this was as if he'd been put on an "I don't want to talk to this guy ever" list. Had she gone in to see Hallory prematurely? He thought about sending her an E-mail, then wondered where their "agreement" stood just now.

Gary came by and told him that Connie Wall was still not "consistently conscious."

"What the hell does that mean?" Swamp asked.

"She drifts in and out. Doesn't say anything, recognizes a couple of the nurses, and then submerges again. The ICU supervisor did say they're purposefully keeping her down to facilitate the healing process."

"Anything from the Crass County sheriff's office?"

Gary looked at his notebook. "No signs of the woman who did the cutting. They did a forensics sweep of both bathrooms, but they're public bathrooms and it was a busy hotel on Saturday night…. Possible indications of someone going out the men's room window, but their forensics unit isn't exactly equipped like the big city units."

"So they got a ton of stuff that means nothing."

Gary shrugged. "We get a female suspect in custody, I guess they could do a match comparison. But what with the snowstorm that night, other accidents to contend with, they never even got an effective roadblock set up. According to Sheriff McComb, the cutter had plenty of time to make her creep."

Swamp shook his head in frustration. "We've got a German guy going to that garage, asking questions about Wall and her car, and being told she was going to Garrison Gap. We've got what sounds like the same German buying a black Suburban with tinted windows for cash, right across the street, and noticing the car. The next day, we've got a black Suburban with tinted windows two minutes behind her on the same road. That night, she is once again attacked and almost killed."

"We don't know for a fact that the guy who bought the Suburban was the same guy following her," Gary said. "I've seen three black Suburbans go by my office window this morning."

Swamp nodded. "True, we don't. Hell, there was one on my tail coming out of—"

"What?" Gary said, seeing Swamp's expression.

"When I left Garrison Gap Sunday morning, there was a black Suburban right behind me all the way to Route Eighty-one. With tinted windows."

"Wow."

"Except the state cop said he had a light bar and whip antennas. The one following Wall, I mean. This one was a plain Jane."

"You can get a light bar at just about any auto-parts store. You know, all the volunteer firemen and EMTs get 'em there. This Suburban have a luggage rack?"

"I'm not sure. I wasn't paying any attention to him, and he passed me on the first straightaway we came to, near the interstate." Swamp shut his eyes and concentrated. "Yes, I think it did."

"Well, it'd be no big deal to bolt and unbolt a light bar if there's a luggage rack. And a Suburban's plenty big enough to throw the damn thing in the back when you don't want it up there."

"Or it could have been just another damn black Suburban, up in ski country for the weekend."

Gary nodded. Swamp's phone rang. It was Mary, McNamara's secretary. The boss wanted to see him — alone. In other words, Don't bring your sidekick.

He asked Gary to assemble some data on the scope of the record screen— how much stuff someone would have to paw through, and some guesstimate of how long it would take for one person to do it by himself. Then he asked him to update that dossier on Heismann/Hodler with what they had now from Immigration. "And see if you can find someone who could build you a list of surgical procedures that would be involved in a total makeover of this guy's face."

Gary gave him a look. "And when I'm done with all that?"

Swamp waited.

"Right," Gary said, "I can take the rest of the day off. I knew that."

Heismann made the call to Mutaib from a phone booth down in the Air and Space Museum on Independence Avenue. Fifty feet from where he stood, there was a German V-2 rocket from World War II standing on its steel nozzle ring next to a scale model of the first successful American satellite-launching rocket, which was strikingly similar. In the afternoon light, he could just make out the swastika showing through the paint on the V-2's now age-dimpled side. Apparently, someone in the museum had decided to paint over the symbol of Nazi Germany so as not to offend any visitors. Heismann was willing to bet he knew what group of visitors they'd had in mind. Lots more of them over here than there are in Germany these days, he reflected with satisfaction. Mutaib came on the line.

"I have a list of materials, and I do not want to take that large vehicle out on the streets just now," Heismann announced.

"Very well, wait one moment, please."

Heismann waited, then heard one of the assistants pick up an extension. He read the list out aloud, trying to did keep his voice low. The list, which included heavy timbers, some sheets of plywood, fasteners, curtain material, power tools, extension cords, and gasoline cans might have sounded a bit strange to any tourists standing nearby. When he was finished, Mutaib had news.

"We had callers today," he said. He described the visit from the Secret Service and the local police. He said the Secret Service agent in charge looked like a bloody Neanderthal.

"And this was about the purchase of the vehicle?"

"Yes. It was about the money. I explained it as a money-changing transaction, nothing more. Euros to dollars."

"Did they believe it?"

"I'm not sure. From some of the things they said, I think Interpol has been queried," he said. "We will check that, but I think the Americans have connected the Heismann name and the Hodler name."

Heismann blinked. Hodler? Interpol had Hodler? This was a surprise. He really had believed that Interpol did not have that name; he had paid some good money to get it out of their database.

"And of course you used Hodler to purchase that automobile."

"Yes, I did," Heismann snapped, looking around the crowded lobby of the museum to see if anyone was watching him. "What of it?"

"Well, I'm not sure about the local police, but the federal police might put a flag on that name here in the city. The vehicle registration will be in that name."

"But no address — I had all the paperwork sent to the bank, as you directed. Besides, they told me that will take weeks — the salesman warned me about this. How slowly such things are done in this city."

"Even so. They were curious about that, too."

"Well then, this is about the bait," Heismann said. "Which was your idea."

Mutaib didn't say anything.

"What is the matter?" Heismann asked.

"Nothing. I was just surprised that Interpol had the Hodler name. You told us they did not."

Not as surprised as I am, he thought, but you are right to be concerned, princess. Because now that vehicle ties the name Hodler to you and your Saudi money. "As long as you did not use that name or the Heismann name in the apartment lease," Heismann said, "we will be fine. I will be in Hong Kong by the time those automobile papers come through."

"It's not in the lease, but there was some discussion about the famous artist," Mutaib said. "Let's hope no one remembers. I will have the materials sent around this afternoon. The neighbor is no problem?"

"No problem at all," Heismann said. "In fact, she is going to be part of the final solution. We've been getting acquainted. Or I have anyway."

"Do I want to know anything about that 'final solution'?"

"You do not," Heismann said.

"That's a rather precarious choice of words you're using," Mutaib said. "It is just an expression, no matter what some people think," Heismann said. "It speaks to efficiency, nothing more."

"Come in, Swamp, and shut the door," McNamara said. "I have about ten minutes, and then I've got to go back and murder-board the revised NIC briefing. God, I hate these eternal committees!"

Swamp entered the office, shutting the door behind him, and sat down. He'd brought a legal pad filled with his notes, but McNamara waved him off. "Look," he said. "Mary said you wanted to brief me on this PRU firefly. But given PRU's position, why do we still want to pursue it?"

Hell, Swamp thought, he's forgotten already. "Uh, you'll remember that I subsequently talked to Lucy VanMetre and—"

"Yes, yes, I remember, but this memo apparently came in this morning."

Swamp drew a blank. Based on his conversation with Lucy last night, they were still collaborating, albeit on a loose leash. Was this a new memo? McNamara caught his surprise. "Your interlocutor over there in PRU lead you astray?"

Swamp shook his head. "I don't know what's going on here. We spoke as recently as last night. But now that you mention it, I tried to call her earlier, got stonewalled big-time. Is this a second memo?"

McNamara nodded and then read it aloud. "He references the previous memo. Then this is what he says: 'With regard to the matter of the transcript recovered from the fire at the cosmetic surgery clinic, the Secret Service/PRU wishes to reiterate that a determination has been made that no threat to presidential security exists and that no further official action is contemplated in regard to this matter. It is further and strongly recommended that no further action should be taken on this matter by any other office within the national security system.' Love and kisses, C. Hallory, Director, et cetera."

"That's clear as a bell," Swamp said. "But hear me out — let me tell you what's happened since we last spoke, because I think there is a very definite threat to presidential security."

"Can you do it in five minutes?" McNamara asked.

When Swamp was finished, it was McNamara's turn to be baffled. "Something's sure as hell going on," he said. "There has to be a reason why some guy is so determined to kill the last surviving member of that clinic team. But maybe—"

"What?" Swamp said, but McNamara was already shaking his head.

"No, that doesn't work. I was about to say maybe he's trying to kill her because she can ID him from the cop killing. But you say it's the other way around, that the lieutenant got whacked just because he was there."

Swamp nodded. "And the killer came back, remember? Tasered those patrol cops and shot at the house to spook her. Which worked. Now she's hanging on a morphine drip out in West Virginia."

"And the Royal Kingdom Bank provided the money for this guy to buy a Suburban?"

"Sort of, yes, sir. He brought in the Euros. But don't forget that they owned a piece of that clinic business."

"Yeah. Shit. What a can of worms."

"Now we're definitely making some assumptions here," Swamp said. "I'm hardly ready for court. But bottom line? I'm hearing 'bomb, bomb, bomb,' an identity-change shop, a German's version of 'State of the Union,' Saudi money, a determined effort to kill a potential witness, one face with at least two names from the German terrorist underground. I mean, shit, think of that laundry list appearing after the fact in the Washington Post."

"Be a shit storm. 'You mean you guys had all this and you did nothing?'"

"Exactly. Can you give Hallory a WTF call?"

"I guess I'm going to have to," McNamara said, looking at his watch.

"Or—" Swamp said, then stopped and looked at his boss.

"Or?"

"Or we haven't had this discussion. I just keep trucking. The Secret Service doesn't drive OSI. Committee of equals and all that. This outfit can still make its own decisions, can't it?"

"Yes and no," McNamara said with a sigh. "It's partly a budget issue: Our director might challenge any additional resources in light of this love note from PRU."

"How's about this: I work for you, not Hallory. I'll keep going here until you tell me unequivocally to shut it off. Make no decisions now. That way, I'm the runaway train if they call you out on it."

McNamara smiled. "Old habits die hard, huh?"

Swamp shrugged. "I've got my teeth in this one, boss."

"And we all know what that means," McNamara said. "Okay — I'm going to exercise some executive oversight. Meaning, because of some oversight, this executive never saw this memo." He waved Hallory's new memo. "But pretty soon, we'll have to sort this out. Hallory may be getting some guidance we don't know about." He looked at his watch again and stood up.

Swamp got up, too. "Thanks, boss. With your permission, I'll work my old web, see if I can get some help for that forensic screen I need on all those clinic records. If we can get a new face on this guy, even a composite, it will help a lot in finding him."

McNamara was already headed out the door. "What guy?" he said over his shoulder.

Heismann had the delivery people put all the building materials right in the front rooms of the town house. He wore a minimal facial disguise, because the deliverymen could have cared less what he looked like. He set to work as soon as they left.

The first order of business was to reinforce the floor under the "studio." He got up on a ladder in the dining room and began tapping finishing nails into the ceiling plaster to locate the floor joists in the center of the ceiling. When he'd found three adjacent joists, he chiseled out the plaster to reveal the actual wood. Then, leaving the rug in place, he cut out eight one-foot squares of three-quarter-inch plywood. He measured the distance between the first floor and the bottom of the exposed joists, then cut four of the four-by-four timbers to that length. He tacked the plywood plates on each end and then erected the timbers to form four closely spaced columns. The rug provided the necessary clearance to squeeze the timbers into vertical position. Then he screwed the upper and lower plywood plates into the ceiling joists and the floor itself to keep the four-by-fours from moving. Right now, they just sat there. Once the weapon was brought in, they would support almost all of its dead weight.

Then he had to reinforce the upstairs floor so it could support a dynamic load. For this, he used four more four-by-fours, braced at a sixty-degree angle and meeting at the top of the column arrangement he'd built earlier. After tacking on some more plywood plates along the baseboards, he jammed the bottom of these four-by-fours up against the first-floor walls. He stepped back to examine his handiwork. From the front entrance, it looked like he had the beginnings of an oil-drilling rig erected. The air was full of plaster dust and the floor was covered in it. Then he began hauling materials upstairs.

The location for the weapon would be determined by the trajectory angle between the floor and that skylight in the master bedroom. He had acquired a handheld GPS navigation device at a marina down on the Washington waterfront. The GPS device gave him the grid coordinates of this room in the house. Now what he needed was the grid coordinates of the target. For that, he was going to have to take a walk, probably in broad daylight. He'd go tomorrow, during the lunch hour, when there would be more people wandering the Mall and the Capitol grounds. He didn't think he'd be able to get up to the West Portico itself, not this close to the inauguration. But he could extrapolate from a map showing the grid coordinates and thereby refine the azimuth of fire. Mutaib had promised him precise coordinates in time for the attack.

The master bedroom was empty, and the rugs had been taken up, as well. The old tongue-and-groove pine floors were in good condition, considering their age. Once he had his materials upstairs, he went downstairs and measured the center of the column structure from the side and back walls of the house. Translating those measurements to the floor of the master bedroom, he located the center of the column support and marked it. He cut three more sheets of three-quarter-inch plywood in half and then began screwing these four-by-four-foot sections down onto the floor, centered on his mark, one on top of the other. When he had six sections stacked and screwed down, he located the center of the stack and marked that. Getting on a ladder, he climbed up into the ceiling dormer, which contained the skylight structure. The skylight was rectangular, with the long axis running parallel to the slope of the roof. The window aperture was six feet long by four feet wide. He had thought the grillwork in the glass contained individual panes of glass, but he found that the grillwork had been glued on to one solid piece of glass. He snorted in contempt. In Germany, of course, they would have been individual panes. The day's dreary rain ran down the outside of the glass in cold-looking rivulets. He checked the edges of the glass to make sure there were no hinges, but it was all set down into heavy putty of some kind.

He could do no more until he had the coordinates and could work out the fire-control problem. He needed to remind Mutaib to get him the precise target coordinates. Tomorrow, he would take his walk, once again a Washington office worker out for a noonday stroll. He would get as close as he could, feigning interest in the preparations up at the Capitol, record the readings, and then compute a preliminary solution. With that, he could make absolutely sure the skylight was going to provide the necessary firing aperture, because if it didn't, he might have to do some surgery on the roof itself. The marble would arrive tomorrow, no he had to be back in time for that. Which reminded him: He had to construct the ramp over the stairs so that the heavy blocks and ultimately the weapon itself could be moved upstairs. He looked at his watch. Much to do in the three days remaining.

Swamp spent the rest of the afternoon making phone calls to his old contacts in the Forensics divisions of the FBI and BATF, as well as the one out at NIH. In every case, the people he'd known had either been reassigned or had retired. Just for the hell of it, he put a call into Cullen's office a little after five o'clock, but a lonely-sounding desk officer told him everyone was still out. That funeral has to be over by now, he thought, but then he remembered that there would be a racket going on somewhere. He left a message for Cullen to call him in the morning, as there'd be no point in talking to anyone in Homicide tonight. He called Gary over and took a look at the preliminary dossier on Heismann/Hodler.

"The Interpol report says he was a tank gunner in the East German army," Gary said. "And then served as the sergeant of a mortar crew. Went from army conscript directly into the Stasi."

"Makes sense. In those days, the Soviets, the military, and the secret police ran East Germany. And he would have gotten some good operational and field training from the Soviets if he stayed in East Berlin."

"They list English as a second language."

"Right. Germans take English almost from day one in school. The Eastern Germans had to learn Russian, as well. Smart bastards. You get any better physical description?"

"Yes, sir. Not a big guy, actually. Five eight, one forty. Blond and blue-eyed. You saw the picture."

"Right. I was looking for the SS insignia."

Gary nodded and flipped to the second page of the report. "If the Nazis came back, he'd definitely be there for them. Supposedly collects Hitler memorabilia. Big on racial purity. His father was in the Hitler Youth and his grandfather was a member of something called an Einsatzgruppe, whatever that is."

"Really," Swamp murmured. He looked outside. The rain had become heavier as the tail end of the storm stalled over Washington. The streetlights were amber blurs through their window.

"What is that?" Gary asked.

"World War Two death squads. They went into the eastern front in 1942, right behind the regular Wehrmacht units. Did what today we'd call 'ethnic cleansing.' Jews, so-called Gypsies, and a hell of a lot of Russian civilians. Take 'em out behind the farmhouse and machine-gun the whole family. I take back what I said about the Soviets training this guy."

"Unless they didn't know about those connections."

Swamp nodded. "That's possible. It might explain this Heismann/Hodler business. Although the hard-core Stasi guys were typically ready and willing to revisit the eastern front. Remember, the Soviets were an occupying power until the Berlin Wall came down."

"Well, so were we."

"Not like the Russians, who lost a million civilians in that war. They crushed the Germans at the end, especially in Berlin, and then sat on the wreckage for forty years. You should see the Soviet war memorial in East Berlin. It's right out of Roman times. Their theory was that a divided Germany let everyone breathe easier for almost forty years."

"What was our theory?"

"Not too different from theirs, I suspect. Okay — I'm nowhere with getting help with that record screen. We're going to have to go through channels after all."

"I've got the dossier as up-to-date as I can get it. I also put a page in there on his weapons use — arson, Taser, a Walther nine, nerve agent, and the fact that he could hire some woman to knife Connie Wall."

"A hitter for all seasons," Swamp said. "And well funded."

"Yes, sir."

A burst of rain drummed against the windows as the wind shifted more to the north. Swamp could see a cluster of blue strobe lights three blocks away at an intersection. The traffic tonight was going to be horrendous. Gary was eyeing the weather, too.

"I need some time to think," Swamp said finally. "Keep that dossier file going. Maybe contact the Bureau in the morning, go talk to one of their reconstruction wizards. You know, the ones who can take skull fragments and produce a mannequin head?"

"But we have his picture."

"Right. You take that, and ask them if it's possible to go the other way— first get them to build a computer model of that head and face from the picture, then, as we discover surgical procedures, get them to modify their model. Surgical record says they took two centimeters off his nose. What would that look like now?"

Gary made some notes. "Will they do it if we ask?"

"You go establish liaison with the appropriate office. I'll see what I can do."

Connie was jolted awake by a lance of pain deep inside her back, as if something had torn loose. She tried to sit up but couldn't, and she couldn't cry out because her mouth was as dry as cotton. She moaned a couple of times, and that brought the ICU nurse. When she saw the tears in Connie's eyes, she gave her some water, rubbed a little Vaseline on her lips, and then checked the pain meds.

"They've backed you off morphine, dear," the nurse said. "That's why it hurts."

"Put it back," Connie mumbled. Her breath was coming in hot little spurts, each inhalation a little bit harder. Something was trying to smother her. She wanted to sit up but still couldn't. She felt panic rising.

The nurse checked the chart, looking for orders, which apparently weren't there. She looked at Connie's face. "I'll call the doctor right away," she said. "We'll get something going PDQ. Just hang in there."

Connie closed her eyes as the waves of pain washed up inside her chest in time with her heartbeat. She felt the first twinges of nausea, and realized that if she vomited, she'd tear her insides apart. She tried deep breathing, and that helped a little. A very little. How could they forget the order for the pain meds. Idiots. Or maybe the attending was one of those guys who was freaked-out about addiction. Screw that. This hurt.

The pain delivered one advantage: Her brain was much clearer. She could remember Carla. Who she was pretty sure was not a Carla at all, but maybe a Carl. She knew she'd seen those eyes before, just once, flashing at her through her dining room window, illuminated by a flashlight. Cat Ballard's killer, dressing up as a woman, and doing a fine job of it. She recalled the face and knew now that it had been painted on. The only jarring feature had been her nose, which had been a too long for her face. What am I saying here. His face. And I, a surgical nurse in a plastic surgeon's office, flat-assed missed it.

The nurse came back with a clear plastic bag, which she proceeded to hang on the IV stand. "Here now, this will help," she said as she connected the tubes.

"Need to talk to Cullen," Connie whispered. "Detective. Washington."

"Yes, yes, I remember him. Nice man, for a policeman. We'll make sure he knows. Now, how's that? Better?"

Connie took a deep breath, and this time her insides didn't demand revenge for it.

"Yes, better. When… Oh well. Never mind."

And then she felt the plane of her existence once again tilt forward and down. She was feeling slightly guilty for not talking to Jake first, but then she simply didn't care. Whoever was driving this plane was doing much better.

"There now, dear," the nurse said. "There now. Lazy damned doctors."

Mario got up from the waiter's table and escorted Swamp to a corner booth in the empty restaurant. Caruso's was on the second floor of a residential hotel, which was why it was open even on a rainy Monday night. Swamp could hear the sounds of an argument coming from the kitchen, which was at the other end of the room. Mario took his dripping raincoat.

Twenty minutes later, Mario produced a platter of sausages, peppers, eggplant, and onions in a marinara sauce over perciatelli. I'm gonna die, Swamp thought as he tucked a large napkin into this shirt collar and dug in. He was just finishing up when he sensed there was someone standing next to his shoulder. He looked up to find Lucy VanMetre.

"May I join you?" she asked. She was wearing a stylish full-length black raincoat, but he noticed it was not wet at all.

"By all means," he replied, starting to get up. She put a hand on his shoulder for a moment before sliding into the booth. Her hair was once again coiled in an elaborate coif, and it, too, bore no sign of the weather outside. So tonight she had a driver, Swamp realized. He took the napkin out of his shirt. Mario appeared and she asked for a glass of Lacrima Cristi.

"I was just finishing," Swamp said. "Mario can—"

"That's all right," she said. "I had a late lunch today. It's been a total Monday."

Swamp nodded. "I remember those. Your own minders had the shields up pretty high today."

"By direction," she said. Mario brought her wine, and raised his eyebrows questioningly, but she shook her head, so he took Swamp's plates and went away. "Did you know you are becoming radioactive?"

"Moi? What have I done?"

"Persist?" she said. "Mr. Hallory is increasingly annoyed."

"Well, Tad McNamara showed me the latest hate mail, but after I briefed him, he decided we're going ahead, whether PRU likes it or not." Or words to that effect, he told himself, feeling a slight twinge of guilt.

"Have you spoken to Mr. McNamara since he got back from the murder board for the NIC briefing?" She sipped some wine and regarded him with those blue eyes.

"No. I left before he got back. Why?"

"Because Mr. Hallory went over there to the briefing room, called him out of the board, and — how shall I put this? — shared his thinking with him."

Swamp finished his own wine and Mario appeared with his coffee. "What's Hallory getting so spun up about?" he asked. "If OSI wants to waste time on a firefly, what's it to him?"

"Because he sees OSI's decision to proceed with it as a direct criticism of PRU. This isn't about the firefly anymore. It's all about an infringement of PRU's charter within DHS, which is the protection of the presidents— plural in this case — from external threats. If OSI says there is a threat and PRU says there isn't, it makes PRU look bad."

"Lotta alphabet soup showing there, Lucy," Swamp replied. "OSI hasn't said anything critical of anybody. We're continuing an internal investigation, that's all. And as I've said before, if we find a bad guy in the shadows, we call in the United States Secret Service."

"But why are you going on with this? Are you any closer to your 'bad guy in the shadows'?"

"Did you know we've identified a Saudi connection?" Swamp asked.

"Connection to what?"

"To the guy we're hunting. He got the money to buy a vehicle from the Saudi bank here in town."

"Really!"

"Well, let me qualify that," Swamp said. He described the transaction, noting that all the documents were to be sent to the Royal Kingdom Bank.

She dismissed it immediately. "That's not funding; that was a money-changing transaction. It's a bank."

"Then why send the registration papers back to the bank?"

"Because he didn't have an address here in the city yet?"

"He's been in this country for over eighteen months," Swamp said, and then told her about the purchaser's name being Hodler, and that a Mr. Hodler had come across the street and found out where Connie Wall was going, after which a female hitter had appeared out of nowhere out in West Virginia. That Heismann, the original name, was linked to the alias Hodler by Interpol.

"This all sounds very circumstantial to me, Mr. Morgan. You think all these things are true, but you cannot prove any one connecting element. Can you?"

"McNamara and I gave it the Washington Post test this morning. We'd be fools not to pursue it."

"And has Ms. Wall spoken yet?"

"Nope."

"So you're no closer with a description. There's no way to find this 'bad guy' of yours, is there?"

"Certainly not if we don't look," Swamp said impatiently.

She started to answer but then sipped some wine. "You cannot appreciate," she said slowly, "the degree of stress PRU is under right now."

"Sure I can. You've got the inauguration. The ultimate terrorist target in the United States."

"Yes, it is. The old president and the new one. The outgoing government and the incoming one. The entire executive and policy base of the United States, all assembled in one public place. So, yes, we're taking extraordinary measures. Did you know, for instance, that all cell and landline phone service in Washington will be turned off for the entire workday on Friday?"

"What? Why?"

"So no one can trigger a preplanted bomb with a phone call, as they've been doing in Israel for the last four years. In case you've forgotten, cell phones are radios."

"Okay, I can see that, but—"

"There will be four — count them — just four television channels allowed within the security zone. Each cameraman will have a Secret Service agent standing behind him with a gun. We will have direct control of all their transmission facilities. Every image you see on television that day will be thirty seconds behind real time. So no one can give a signal or send out an 'initiate' message. There's more."

"Do tell."

"We will have control over all radio frequencies, police, fire, EMT units, data, radar-link, microwave, you name it. We will own the entire spectrum."

"That'll put a crimp in business all right."

"There won't be any business. The markets in New York will be shut down. All government workers furloughed with pay for the day. Airports and train stations closed until Friday night."

"The vacuum-packed inauguration," Swamp said. "The First Amendment wienies must be going snakeshit."

"Yes, I know that's what they're calling it. And as you say, there is the teeniest bit of opposition. The media corporations are already suing. The Congress is very unhappy, because they have this quaint notion that the Capitol is their building. And the District Police Department is… well, there aren't really words for it. They're completely overwhelmed, and the lockdown hasn't even begun yet."

"So why worry about one recalled retiree chasing after a firefly, maybe even a phantom firefly? This doesn't affect the inauguration. This deal's about something that's almost a month away."

"As I told you, it's being seen by Hallory and people senior to him as a direct challenge to PRU's exclusive purview in these matters."

"Well hell, Lucy, tell him to get over it. It's not like we're going out to the press and throwing stones."

"You made calls all over Washington today, looking for help with your records screen. That got back to Hallory. Along with the 'why.'"

Oops, Swamp thought. "But it was still all inside federal LE. We're both in the same department. Individual offices disagree within cabinet departments all the time. And, by the way, I got zilch in the way of help."

"You got nowhere because I made some calls after you first called into the Bureau."

"Oh," he said, surprised. "So you're saying we're on our own with this one?"

She gave him a long look. "I'm saying you need to cease and desist, or you're probably going back to your little bed-and-breakfast or whatever it is out there in Harpers Ferry."

Lucy wasn't smiling now, and for the first time in his conversations with La Mamba, Swamp felt anger. "Now that sounds like a threat, Lucy," he said evenly. "And it also sounds like perfect fodder for a quick little spot on the Today Show."

"You even try to do that, and you'll join some well-known guests of the government down in Guantanamo Bay," she said, leaning forward. "Are you aware that we've already picked up over three hundred individuals right here in Washington, D.C., for protective custody?"

"Protective custody? Protective of whom?"

"You figure it out, Mr. Morgan. But I strongly suggest you stop this little crusade of yours, and now would be nice."

Swamp pushed back from the table and stood up. "You know, Lucy, I think it's time we stopped having these little meetings. I'll talk to my boss; you talk to yours. That's what they get paid for." As he reached into the pocket of his suit jacket for his wallet, two men in suits stepped into view in the restaurant's main doorway. Both of them were staring at him and had their hands in the draw position under their suit jackets. Swamp recognized them as Secret Service agents. He stopped moving.

"What the fuck?" he growled. Then he took out his wallet — slowly.

Lucy stood up and looked at him. "PRU will brook no interference in the security arrangements for this inauguration," she said firmly. "By all means, talk to your boss in the morning. I suspect he will have been properly calibrated by then. Good night, Mr. Morgan."

Lucy strode out of the dining room, her blond hair flashing in the subdued light, followed by the two agents. Mario, who had been watching all this from his waiter's station, came over to Swamp's table and asked if he was okay.

"You need a gun?" he asked. "Those guys, they had guns, no?"

Swamp smiled. He had a quick vision of Mario producing a Sicilian lupara from the restaurant's linen closet. "Thanks, Mario, but I don't think so. Maybe just the check for right now."

"Watch out for the beautiful woman," Mario warned. "They are always the dangerous ones."

Got that right, Swamp thought.

Heismann had walked three blocks to the little pizza shop as soon as real darkness fell over Capitol Hill. Now he was walking back up Fifth Street, which paralleled First Street four blocks over from the Capitol itself. The rain was steady, but he was well bundled up in the loden overcoat and hat, and he carried a large umbrella over his head. He had plastered on a dark beard, thick eyebrows, and the Coke-bottle eyeglasses.

Fifth Street was apparently outside of the security zone for the inauguration, because the Jersey barriers began on Third Street, which ran north-south behind and to the east of the Folger Library. Right now, the concrete sections were stacked on either side of the street, but the newspaper said they would start being assembled as barriers on Wednesday night. Thursday would be used to sort out any residual traffic problems and stranded vehicles until noon, and from then until Friday evening, no civilian vehicle would be allowed to approach or move inside the security zone. The southern boundary of the zone would be D Street, between Second Street, SW and Third Street, SE. The northern boundary was a triangle consisting of Louisiana Avenue, Union Station, and the tail end of Massachusetts Avenue.

Fortunately, his own town house was three blocks outside the zone. There was little traffic at this hour, and only an occasional police car came swishing by in the rain. He was careful not to go near the security zone, because he had seen some television cameras being installed on streetlights and telephone poles that afternoon. When he got to Independence Avenue, he turned around and started back toward his own town house. He paused for a moment under a tree on the corner, read the street signs, looked both ways for oncoming traffic, and then pulled the lapel of his coat aside and examined the tiny glowing square of the GPS unit. It displayed the streets on a scale that contained three city blocks, and showed him standing right where the signs said he was. The image was clear one moment and then it would fade. So, he thought, this works, even in the rain. Tomorrow, he would make his noontime walk. Then he needed to acquire a smaller-scale touring map of the downtown area and record his calculations on it.

He'd talked to Mutaib at 6:00 p.m., using a pay phone in the Eastern Market Metro station. The marble blocks were coming at 3:00 p.m. tomorrow. Mutaib had promised the refined coordinates would be delivered by courier on Wednesday. The weapon would be delivered sometime on Thursday morning, and the warheads sometime after that. Heismann had questioned so many deliveries so close to the period of intense security awareness in the area, but Mutaib had told him the truck shipments were being assembled in Baltimore and that the timing was deliberately being kept vague for security purposes. In his view, multiple deliveries would make them seem more routine to the police, and, in any event, the arrangements could not be changed now.

Heismann pulled the umbrella closer to his face as another police car went by, then resumed walking back toward his town house. The one remaining element of the plan he had to focus on was his escape. He'd picked a route on the map, but now he needed to walk the route a few times to make sure it wasn't going to be blocked. And then he needed to walk through the time and motion requirements of the final identity change, setting the fires, and getting away from the house. He also had to position the big Suburban in a likely location, and dispose of the minivan. He'd seen a Catholic church parking lot three blocks away that ought to work for that purpose.

The rain rattled steadily on the umbrella. It had better not rain on der Tag, he thought, or they'll all be inside and this thing won't work. He had three full days to do all the walk-throughs. And he still had to figure out how to get to the bank after the attack. He smiled at the thought of what was going to happen there.

At 9:00 p.m., Swamp, who'd been pacing in his apartment ever since getting back, decided to call Bertie. He'd been stewing about the confrontation with Lucy, and he badly wanted a second opinion. Swamp told him about the developments in his own investigation, the general outline of his previous understanding with Lucy VanMetre, and what had happened in the restaurant.

"Like I told you, Swamp," Bertie said, "dangerous serpent."

"But why would she do that?" Swamp asked. "Everything up to that moment had been cooperation: I fed her information on what I was doing, and she… she—"

"She pocketed all that and kept you in the mushroom mode, didn't she?" Bertie said.

"Well, I guess, but I wasn't asking anything from her except some support when our own investigation coughed up something solid. If it did."

"I also told you Lucy runs her own agenda, all the time," Bertie said. "I'm guessing she may have been sincere right up to the point where Hallory told her to quit playing games with you or he'd shitcan her. Grab our Lucy by the career, you'll get a handful of teeth every time."

Swamp shook his head as a blast of wind and rain shook his windows. On the fourteenth floor, the weather was often more vigorous than down in the street. "And that's another thing I don't get — why in the hell would Hallory care what I'm doing? He has to know OSI isn't really challenging PRU."

Swamp heard some ice cubes clinking in a glass. "Hallory's close to losing it, from what my people are telling me," Bertie said. "In over his head from the git-go, and the way they're trying to seal up this inauguration, he's sinking deeper and deeper every day. I've pulled my people out of their counter-intelligence effort. We feed him intel reports, but the director has told me to get out to arm's length and stay there."

"Be that as it may, I'm gonna talk to Tad McNamara tomorrow morning. Tell him what happened. Something's not right here."

"You be careful, Swamp Morgan," Bertie said. "Don't get too visible this close to the big deal. She threatened to send your ass to GitMo, she can probably make that happen in this threat climate. And they have their reasons, which I can't discuss on a clear phone."

"I suppose," Swamp said. He thought he heard something click on the line, and he glanced outside to see if there was lightning. There wasn't. "But I'm going to keep looking for this Heismann, or Hodler, or whatever he's calling himself."

"Just make it an office exercise for the rest of this week, okay? No nighttime excursions to Capitol Hill. No canvassing of all the really offices in town to see if the Royal Kingdom Bank's been renting places. No late-afternoon social calls on the director of the Secret Service. Just cool it for this week."

"And then?"

"And then a new crew's gonna work security for the joint session, and they might care about your firefly. Right now, in Hallory's view, you're crank-dancing. You're retired, remember?"

Swamp gave up. "All right, Bertie, and thanks for listening."

"No problem, buddy. But Swamp?"

"Yeah?"

"My phone's a lot different from yours. Even here in this apartment. And right now, mine's telling me I might not have been the only one listening."

Bertie hung up. Swamp kept the receiver to his ear, but he heard only silence, and then the dial tone. He hung up and sat back in his chair.

What the hell is going on here? he wondered. Had Lucy gotten a wiretap order on his home phone? That quickly? And then he realized she might have done it a long time ago. Shit.

He got up, went out into the hallway, and looked out a front window. There was a semicircular drive out front, where parking was supposedly reserved for short-term evolutions, such as loading and unloading, taxis, or prospective tenants. At this time of night, there were rarely any cars out there, but tonight there was a large dark Suburban with a light rack and some whip antennas parked right out front. Because of the building's front spots, he could see two whitish blurs shimmering through the rain-swept windshield. Then what looked like a hand came up and waved at him once. Swamp just stared for a moment, resisting an impulse to give whoever it was the finger.

He went back into his apartment. This had to be Lucy's doing. Okay, let them play their games. Bertie had, perhaps unwittingly, given him an idea— canvass realty offices in the city. See if any of them had done any business with that Royal Kingdom Bank. And better yet, he'd say he was calling from the U.S. Secret Service.