A Knife Edge

TWELVE

I sat on the bed and flicked through a pamphlet left on the pillow, something about a low-fat breakfast special for Christmas Day — tomorrow. The pamphlet informed me that if I ticked the box I could enjoy it upon waking in my room. I gave some thought to calling Anna in Germany to give her season's greetings, but it would be 5 A.M. where she was based and I didn't want to shoot any remaining goodwill between us in the foot. So I called Chip Schaeffer in D.C. instead.

Ordinarily, I'd have said the chances of finding Chip at his desk at eleven P.M. on Christmas Eve were somewhere between zero and none, but the events in San Francisco made the times unusual. So I wasn't entirely surprised when he picked up.

“Captain Schaeffer,” he said.

“Sir, Special Agent Cooper.”

“Cooper. How's it going?”

Chip sounded tired. I knew from past experience that the military would have moved to a higher state of readiness and nerves would be frayed.

“Pretty grim, sir,” I said.

“Yeah, Washington has broken out in hives. Word is it was a hit-on-a-wise-guy thing?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do you think?” he asked.

I told him what I thought, which was that I didn't buy it. Mainly because if it proved to be true it would turn every federal and state law-enforcement agency into an instrument focused almost solely on dismantling organized crime. Carrying out a terrorist act such as the one here — no matter what kind of beans the informant was likely to spill — was just plain bad for business, and my reading of organized crime was that anything compromising the bottom line was to be avoided at all costs. Chip agreed. I told him I believed Metzler was sticking to it as a theory only because he had nothing else to offer, and that the world was on his back to do something.

“You got any theories of your own, Cooper?” Schaeffer asked.

“Not yet, sir.” That wasn't accurate. I did have a theory, only I wasn't ready to share.

“But you feel one coming on?”

I gave him a clue. “Professor Boyle's wallet was found beneath burned human remains.”

“Those remains been positively identified?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Because the CIA has taken over on the ground here.”

Schaeffer grunted. “Yeah, I know. That's the way the wind's blowing.”

I could still see the smug satisfaction on Chalmers's face as he carried away the evidence bag containing Boyle's wallet, prancing out of the morgue, his middle fuck-you finger raised high and proud. War had been declared.

Chip asked me other questions relating to the written case report I had yet to submit on the death of Dr. Tanaka. Unlike the last time he asked me these questions, I told him what I really thought had happened to the man, rather than what the hard evidence outlined. I told him I believed Boyle had a hand in his partner's death. I decided on this course because of a couple of factors that had come to light since my last debrief on the inquiry, most notably the verbal account given to me by Al Cooke, the Natusima's cook. There was also the uneasy feeling I had after the interview with Dr. Spears at Moreton Genetics. I thought my conclusions would take Schaeffer by surprise, but I got nothing back from the captain other than the tone and direction of his questions, which, the more I thought about it, only added to my suspicions that the case was less about a straightforward investigation into an accidental death and more about something I still hadn't been briefed on. There was just too much official and specific interest in Tanaka's demise coming at me, and now in Boyle's. But I could hardly tell Schaeffer that his interest in the case was one of the reasons I suspected there might be more to the business than an accidental death.

“Well,” said Schaeffer after a little small talk, “with the Company taking over, there's no point you hanging around. In fact, I want you back here as soon as you can get on a plane. Your orders have come through. You're being transferred back to your old unit — OSI at Andrews. Something has come up and they're short-handed.”

I was stunned. Off the case, ordered back to D.C., and transferred, almost all in the one sentence. Was I being rapped over the knuckles for something?

Schaeffer wished me Merry Christmas and a pleasant flight home. I stared at the handset for a few moments before I hung up, and tried to persuade myself that I'd had enough experience with command decisions over the years to know that reason didn't always follow rhyme in the military. The problem was, I was slightly more able to convince myself that flying reindeer could deliver presents to millions of children all over the world in a single night.

Then I surprised myself by having a long, uninterrupted sleep, waking at just after seven A.M. with the thought of a plate of low-fat Christmas bacon and pancakes on the brain.

I lay in bed thinking about what to do next. There wouldn't be a next — at least, not on progressing this case. As I was officially removed from the investigation, standard operating procedure said that all my case notes, reports, phone logs, and evidence would have to be turned over. That meant that as the SAC, Bradley Chalmers would be the recipient. Galling was the first word that came to mind. Fuck was the second.

I peeled back the covers and headed for the shower. The firm water pressure meant I had to stay in there at least twenty minutes. The bacon and pancakes would wait. I got out and toweled off. The light spilled from the bathroom directly onto the door to the hotel room. A large white envelope lay on the chocolate brown carpet. This being Christmas morning, it could only be two things: evidence of a visit from the fat guy in a red suit, or the express checkout bill.

I turned on the lights, dressed, and threw back the curtains to let in the natural light. There wasn't much of it — the windows were streaked with heavy rain falling from a gray sky as solid and heavy as armor plate. I got down on all fours and examined the envelope. It wasn't the bill. Grabbing a hotel laundry bag and a couple of forks to use as tongs, I turned it over. Nothing obvious on the flip side. Not even “Attn Vin Cooper” written on it. I carried it across to the dinner-table-for-one and placed it on the laundry bag. The weight of it and the way it bent indicated the envelope carried something more substantial than a letter. Keeping my fingers off it, I slit the envelope open with a bread knife and tipped it up. Out slid a disk. I picked it up using the plastic laundry bag as a glove. The top side was blank; the underside was green, which meant it was a DVD. Both sides appeared to be free of scratches or prints. I checked the inside of the envelope. Empty. There was a player on the bedside table. I turned it on, placed the disk in the machine, and pressed “play.”