A Knife Edge

FIFTY-FIVE

When I got back home I spent a couple days relaxing in a hospital bed, if such a thing is possible, while various people in white coats sewed me up, stuck me with hypodermics, and generally poked and prodded me. I told them there was nothing wrong with me that a few days off and a few servings of Kim's bulgogi couldn't fix, and even managed to get a cute nurse to go pick me up some take out on my last night there.

Lying around with nothing to do except trouble the aforementioned nurse gave me time to put a few things together, and get some action happening on a few others. I needed to find out who Butler might have been referring to as “our mutual friend.”

I gave Bradley Chalmers a lot of thought too and decided to make good on an earlier promise I made to myself to put him, Wu, and De Silver together for their mutual benefit. Assigned to that Senate oversight committee, Lieutenant Colonel Wayne was uniquely placed to help with this, if he was inclined to.

When they released me from the medical center, I went straight over to OSI.

“Yo, Vin, ‘sup?” Arlen glanced up from his keyboard when I walked in. He came around his desk, wearing a big smile, holding out his hand.

I held up my right hand where he could see it, but not shake it. It was bruised and swollen, and that was the good one. The left was in plaster, those knuckles finally getting the attention they deserved. “OK with you if we also skip the friendly, welcome-home pat on the arm?”

“Oh, right. I forgot. How many stitches?”

“Enough to knit a scarf.”

“Shit… How's the CIA woman?”

“In bed with a drip.”

“She hitched to a Company man?” said Arlen with a grin.

I looked at him.

“I know, I know. Sorry, Vin. Poor-taste humor. Been around you too long, I guess.” His grin vanished as his eyes examined my face, taking in the damage. “You gotta stop putting your body on the line, buddy. You ain't gonna go the distance.”

“That's for damn sure,” I said.

“I kinda heard a little of what's been going on. You did an amazing job,” he said, shaking his head.

I gave him half a smile, which probably looked as uncomfortable as it felt. I'm not great with compliments.

Arlen brightened and took a seat on the edge of his desk. “Got a call from a Lieutenant Colonel Clare Selwyn a couple of days back.”

“Oh, yeah? Any message?”

“Sends her regards. Told me to tell you that local law enforcement have taken one of the suspects into custody.”

“Did she say who?”

Arlen checked a pad on his desk covered in graffiti and numbers. “A Juan Demelian. That's your Ruben Wright investigation, right?”

“Yeah. Selwyn say anything else?”

“Wants you to give her a call.”

“OK.” That was something I'd intended to do anyway.

“We've got all kinds of people from upstairs — starting with General Howerton — leaning on us for a written report.”

“It's coming.”

“How much time will you need?” he asked.

“Can you get me till the end of the week? Still got a loose end or two.”

“See what I can manage, but don't count on it. And I got the note you sent through about the security-camera footage at the cafeteria. The bank statements you asked me to get have come through, too. All that have anything to do with those loose ends?”

“That's them,” I said.

“Well, Pentagon Police's idea of security is not to let anyone look at anything, ever. Crude, but effective. I've been promised the disks will get here in about an hour. The proviso is that they're returned tomorrow oh-eight-hundred sharp, and that no copies are made. Can I ask what you're hoping to find?”

“Once and for all I'm going to nail the criminal responsible for the coffee in the Pentagon cafeteria.”

“ Vin…”

“If it turns out my hunch is right, you'll be the first to know, sir. Where've you set me up?”

“Your office.”

“Thanks.” I turned to go.

“And again, good job in Thailand,” he said.

I wasn't so sure. I'd helped stop that genie leaving its bottle, which was something. But it was a genie my tax dollars helped fund into existence in the first place. The realization reminded me of the World-According-To-Staff-Sergeant-Butler speech. Maybe, if I found what I hoped I'd find on those disks, I could prove Butler wrong.

“Before you go, those ass-lickers from the GAO, have been asking about you again and I don't think it's to see your vacation snaps. And here's that code you wanted. Took some doing.” He glanced conspiratorially left and right, then whispered, “You didn't get this from me, OK?” He handed me a folded sheet of paper laser-printed with a long line of numbers and letters on it. “Careful, Vin,” he warned. “That there's dynamite. Make sure it doesn't blow up in your face, or mine.”

I nodded. “Thanks, buddy.”

“The bank statements are on your desk. Also, like you asked, we sent someone over to the Sofitel to see if anyone recognized Sean Boyle. Your hunch was right. Only seems they knew Boyle by a different name. Makes for interesting reading. The report's on your desk, too.”

“A different name?”

He nodded.

I left his office and walked into mine down the hall. Fluorescent tubes hummed in the false ceiling. A few things had changed since I was last here. There was a fine layer of dust on the folders in my in-box. And on a small stand with wheels on its base there was a compact color monitor that looked like it had sat in a pawnshop for years. The shelf beneath it held an equally decrepit CD player.

The report Arlen mentioned lay waiting on the desk. I sat and read the three pages written by the special agent who'd paid the Sofitel a visit, then spent half an hour reviewing those bank statements. Everything was pointing me in the one direction and I shook my head at the audacity. I needed one more piece to be certain of the woman's involvement. That, I hoped to find on the Pentagon's security recordings.

The disks still hadn't arrived so I turned on my computer. There were forty-seven unread e-mails. I isolated the ones from the General Accounting Office — nine in all. I pulled up the expense form and filled it out, loading it with every possible expense and doubling a few while I was at it. While I was doing that, a brown package the size and shape of a shoebox arrived. The delivery guy, a cop in plainclothes, dropped it on my desk. I signed the form he waved under my nose, which sent him on his way. I ignored the package for the moment and returned to the expense form. I referred to the line of code Arlen had given me and copied the string of numbers and letters into the box. Then I hesitated. How much did I dislike Chalmers?

“This much,” I said softly, clicking send. The processor made a sound like a beetle scratching on a wooden floor and the e-mail scuttled on its way.

I trashed the rest of the e-mails, most of which were the usual banal office circulars pertaining to the proper requisition and use of stationery, which photocopier was down, et cetera. And then I gave Clare Selwyn a call. She answered on the fifth ring.

“Colonel Selwyn.”

“Clare. It's Vin.”

“Hey, stranger. Where you been?”

“Here and there. You?”

“Same.” There was a pause. “Vin, I heard through the grapevine a certain SAS sergeant went home in a box, and that you put him in it.”

I didn't say anything.

“And I heard you got yourself pretty banged up too. You OK?”

“I broke a couple of fingers but they've been glued back on.” I changed the subject. “Hey, listen, thanks for following through on all those things for me. Made a big difference.”

“That's OK — hope you didn't get it all too late.”

“No — worked out fine,” I said.

“Oh, did I tell you we found more of Ruben's drugs … no, I didn't. Agent Lyne found them.”

“Oh, yeah? Where were they?”

“He took Ruben's Harley for a ride. Got a flat. Found them stuffed in a tube clamped to the frame.”

“Was he looking for the spare tire?” I asked.

“Probably,” Clare said with a laugh.

“Will you give him a pat on the back from me?”

“Will do.”

“I got the news about Demelian being arrested,” I said. “He confessed? Should be able to get him on conspiracy to murder, and fraud too.”

“Vin, there's a problem.”

“What sort of problem?”

“Pensacola PD found Amy McDonough hanging from her kitchen ceiling two days ago.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“There was no foul play. She left a note.”

“What'd it say?”

“One word — Sorry.”

“Shit.”

“With McDonough and Butler dead, there's no damning physical evidence that ties Demelian to Ruben's murder,” she said. “He'll walk on this one.”

“So he gets off free as a bird.”

“Weeeell, maybe not quite. Pensacola PD checked him out thoroughly. Seems the guy's not really an attorney. Did two years of law school, then dropped out. Never passed the bar. Been taking people's money for years under false pretenses, and hasn't filled in a tax return for years, either. You know how cranky the IRS can get when you don't do that. The DA says even with a plea bargain, Demelian'll do time, and plenty of it.”

It wasn't quite conspiracy to murder, but it was better than nothing. “Clare, if you were here, I'd buy you a … a … chocolate sundae.”

“Vin, please — I don't do phone sex.”

We both laughed. It hurt my face.

After we hung up I sat back for a minute and thought about Amy McDonough. I felt bad for her, but I felt worse for Ruben.

I took my mind off that whole painful mess by turning on the CD player and monitor. There was a plastic take-out knife in a drawer and I used that to slit the packing tape sealing the box. Inside was a letter and floor plan showing the footprint of each security camera in the areas I was interested in.

I read the letter and examined the floor plan. There were thirty-three security cameras covering the Pentagon's main cafeteria area, including the entrances and exits servicing it. Somewhere here in this box, there'd be evidence of a particular meeting between two parties.

I knew the day in question and could guess at the hour, but that would still mean thirty-three hours of recording to sift through to find it — if it even existed. If I was smart about it, less. I pulled a disk from the box. On its sleeve was written the camera's number, which told me where it was positioned and the area it captured on the accompanying floor plan, along with the date and time of coverage. I fed the disk to the player.

I was smart about it, but maybe not smart enough, which could be why it still took five and a half hours of watching the tops of people's heads to get through it all. At the end, I knew two things for certain. The first was that there were a lot of bald men working at the Pentagon. The second put me on a plane to LaGuardia to see that mutual friend Butler and I shared — the one he'd said wanted me dead.

As everyone knows, John Lennon lived at the Dakota Apartments building on Seventy-second Street in Manhattan, before he got himself shot outside the front entrance. If the place was expensive before the killing, prices at the apartment block afterward were murderous. Those New Yorkers, they love a gimmick.

I flipped my badge at the doorman, a big guy with puffy cheeks and a soft, round belly that filled out his uniform like a full vacuum cleaner dustbag. He checked me over — MA-1 flying jacket, jeans, boots, the remnants of a badly battered face, and a plaster cast on my hand. Reluctance to let me in was written all over him, but he had no choice. The badge of mine told him so, as did the uniformed guys with their hands on their hips leaning against the two federal marshal Crown Vics parked in the street behind me.

“Who you wanna see?” he asked, not sure he heard it right the first time. He cocked his left ear at me. I saw the hearing aid.

I said it louder the second time.

“Does she know you're coming up?”

“Damn well hope not,” I said. “You follow me?”

He gave me another uncertain look, then waddled up the front steps. Hip problems. An old guy like this should be propping up a bar somewhere, telling lies about his youth, not opening doors for rich people. “How long you been doing this job?” I asked.

“Since a year after the battle of Chosin — that was a real war, son, not like this bull crap we're fighting today. I've been working this door since after I got out of repatriation. That's more'n fifty years.” His nose was red with cold, his top lip slick with clear, running mucus. He inserted a key into a security board and gave it a twist.

“Thanks for your cooperation,” I said. I couldn't afford the sympathy, but I dug the note out of my jacket pocket anyway and palmed it to him.

“Gee, ten dollars. Now I can retire,” he said, examining it closely before stuffing it in his pants. With the clientele in this building, the guy probably earned three times my salary in goddamn tips.

As I waited for the elevator to arrive, I checked out the foyer. Like the building's exterior, it reminded me of food with too much garnish. There were cameras in the corners of the ceiling. Like so much about the building, I figured the old guy was just for show. After the John Lennon thing, the Dakota Apartments' residents would have taken their security a little more seriously. No doubt somewhere close was a bunker with a couple of young, bored guys, pieces strapped to their hips and a direct line to NYPD, watching folks come and go.

“You got the apartment number?” the doorman asked.

I had it written on a separate page in my notebook, which I showed him.

“Fourth floor,” he said as he turned and waddled back into the brittle, cold air outside.

The ornate elevator door opened and I stepped inside. The air smelled of warmed rosewood. I pressed the button and rode it to the fourth floor. The doors slid back. An old couple stood in the doorway. The woman looked familiar, though I couldn't place her. A fifties movie star, perhaps. Whatever, they both looked at me disapprovingly then stood aside, allowing plenty of room to let me pass in case I had something they could catch — like poverty, maybe.

I stepped into the hallway. More cameras in the ceiling, and, like before, not too discreet. The carpet was thick enough to roll in. I walked up to the door number duplicating the one in my notebook, and pressed the button. There was no spy hole, no need — not with those guys in the bunker somewhere killing themselves slowly on coffee and doughnuts, eyeballing monitor screens.

The door opened.

“Mind if I come in?” I asked. I didn't wait for the answer, stepping inside. The woman's mouth dropped open wide enough to make a dental surgeon's day. The doorman hadn't phoned ahead, which made mine.

“Special Agent Cooper,” she said unnecessarily. I knew who I was. And I had a pretty good idea who the woman holding open the door was too, though she was a somewhat different woman from the one I thought I knew. “You look awful,” she added after a second look, once I'd walked past.

“I fell,” I said, eyeballing the room. “Nice place.” It was, if you went in for expensive junk sales. Crystal chandeliers, silver candelabra, couches with carved claw feet, ottomans, Persian rugs, clocks, quilts, and old paintings of English fox hunts slugged it out for attention. Heavy burgundy brocade drapes hung above two vast ceiling-to-floor windows framing multimillion-dollar views of Central Park.

“I was just about to fix myself a drink,” said Dr. Freddie Spears. “You care to join me? How's the mission going?”

I saw my favorite brand keeping company with a number of other bottles on a liquor cabinet beneath a painting that looked like the English countryside except that it wasn't — a group of Native Americans were handing over a few beads to a couple of European types. “Sure,” I said. “Glen Keith with rocks. And I guess you could say the mission is still in the planning phase.” I was relieved — not about getting a drink, but about the mission's integrity. Spears knew as much as the newspapers about what had happened in Thailand: nothing.

The doctor moved to the cabinet. She was dressed in beige slacks and a fitted white silk shirt. Her feet were bare, toenails carefully manicured and painted pink. She was looking relaxed, all things considered.

The rocks tinkled into the glasses. The sound was music to my ears — like Beethoven, only easier to play.

“So, what can I do for you today, Special Agent?” she asked, handing me the tumbler.

“You can tell me about the moment you decided to make a killing on something other than the stock market.”

“What?”

“You know, Doc, you're a smart businesswoman. No doubt about that. But, like a lot of smart businesspeople who go off the rails, you believe that the rules the rest of us follow don't apply to you.”

“I'm sorry?”

“Gotta hand it to you, you were convincing. When I first met you at Moreton Genetics, you had me believing you were concerned about your great friend Tanaka, the same Tanaka who got nauseous in your company unless you had gills.”

Spears's mouth was open again like a fish sucking air.

“And you were concerned about him, but not in the sense I thought you meant at the time. What you were concerned about was that he might actually make it back from that expedition — other than in a box with the lid screwed down.”

She swallowed. “I beg your pardon?”

“At first I thought perhaps you were just shaken up when you found out how Tanaka died. The whole shark thing — you weren't expecting it. Perhaps you were hoping for a simple drowning.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Spears put her drink on a side table and flopped on the couch beside it. She tucked her feet up beneath her, all relaxed like I was a friend about to spill some interesting society gossip, or maybe to give her my thoughts on interior decorating. She was getting good at this, more confident — practice makes perfect.

“Does the name Al Cooke ring any bells?”

“Cooke … Cooke …” She stroked her chin and glanced at the ceiling. The gesture looked self-conscious. I wondered if she'd practiced it in the mirror.

“He was a crew member of the Natusima.”

“Why would I know the—”

“He was the ship's cook. You knew him well enough to have thirty-six thousand dollars transferred into his bank account.”

“I don't think so.”

“I know so, Doc. Because of 9/11, banks these days are pretty cooperative when it comes to the transfer of large sums of money.” I silently thanked Arlen for his persistence on my behalf. “It's the sort of activity indulged in by drug dealers and terrorists. You live well, Doc. Large five-and six-figure sums like that appear and disappear in your accounts sometimes on a weekly basis. Your record of spending and saving is consistently extravagant, so you don't look like a drug dealer or a terrorist to the system, and the computers that monitor these things skip over you. Only this particular thirty-six thousand dollars went to an account registered in the Caymans to one Sean Boyle. From there it was transferred to Al Cooke's account, an account that has rarely, if ever, been out of the red. It arrived in two chunks — eighteen thousand dollars one month, eighteen thousand dollars the next. To me, that makes it look like a half-now-and-half-after-the-job-is-done kinda transfer, especially when the arrival of those deposits book-ended the day Dr. Tanaka got turned into fish food.”

Doc Spears was frowning like she wasn't following my logic. More acting. “Are you saying Professor Boyle used money I loaned him to have Dr. Tanaka murdered?”

“Nice try, Doc,” I said. “I don't believe you loaned Sean Boyle anything. I believe you conspired with him in the murder of Hideo Tanaka.”

Spears picked up her drink and took a delicate sip. The glass wasn't shaking. “This is ridiculous,” she said.

My turn to shrug. “When I first met you, you told me that you got on well with Tanaka, but not with Boyle. I've been doing a little fishing of my own, Doc. You'd been at MG sixteen months. Tanaka was twenty thousand feet under the water for much of that time, collecting specimens. You barely knew the guy. And while you did your best to keep it quiet, you got on real well with Sean Boyle — lovers first and then business partners. And you both wanted Tanaka a little closer to the surface, like only six feet under.”

The doctor sucked in her top lip, and tapped her chin with her index finger like she was considering her next move.

“We've had a team going over your expenses,” I said. This wasn't accurate. What I should have said was, we will have a team of experts going over your finances, shift it from the perfect tense to the certain future. But under the circumstances — the circumstances being that I wanted her rattled — I was sure even Chip Schaeffer back at the DoD would have approved of my grammatical license. “The bellhop at the Sofitel knew you by name. I could have believed the front desk or even the concierge might know the names of the hotel's paying guests, but the guy in the monkey suit who picks up the luggage? Unlikely. Unless of course you'd stayed there many times before. And that was certainly possible. On a hunch I had him shown photos of the professor. Seems I'm not the only one who never forgets a bad haircut. The bellhop figured Boyle was your husband. You always registered as Mr. and Mrs., didn't you? Except Boyle never signed the register, which meant he never had to show ID.”

I waited for an answer, a reaction, but Spears's face remained a mask. She said, “Is that all you've got, Special Agent?”

A challenge like that is the cop equivalent of smelling blood in the water. I suddenly knew how the shark that ate Tanaka felt. I said, “Do you want to know what I think, or what I can prove?”

“I think you should leave,” she replied, her plucked, arched eyebrows knitted in a scowl, the corners of her mouth pulled in the general direction of her manicured toenails.

“OK, if you insist, I'll go with what I know: Tanaka and Boyle's research came up with something interesting. Tanaka wanted to take it in one direction, perhaps as a sewage treatment; Boyle in another. Boyle came to you; you agreed with his point of view. You secured more funding from MG's old friend the DoD to develop the biotechnology for purely military purposes. Tanaka wasn't thrilled.

“I don't know yet where you and Boyle started banging each other's doors — the Sofitel was one of your favorite fuck pads. Maybe the close proximity to power, the White House being within spitting distance, turned you on. Somewhere along the way — perhaps right from the beginning — you both decided Tanaka had to be removed from the scene permanently. And then Boyle double-crossed you. You weren't a hundred percent sure about that until I showed up and started asking questions after the Transamerica/Four Winds explosions. At the time, I thought your distress was the normal concern one human being shows for another — the unfortunate and violent deaths of not just one but two of your employees, and so close together. But I read it wrong. At some point during our little chat at Moreton Genetics that day, you realized Boyle's death had been staged so that he could take his nasty little secrets to a new buyer — Pakistan — without having to split the profits with you. With scandal inevitable, and in order to protect the value of your stock, you resigned, but not before passing me a copy of the security-camera footage that showed Boyle stealing the technology — technology you helped him steal. That envelope the disk came in had your DNA all over it. By slipping me that disk, you were behaving just like the seemingly innocent who goes on television to beg the public for leads to a crime she herself has committed.”

Spears's nostrils flared as she breathed.

“But then you got a break. The DoD called you in to consult on the mission to snatch Boyle. That's when you met Staff Sergeant Chris Butler.”

“The British soldier?” Spears shook her head. “I had nothing to do with him. The only times I ever saw him were in those briefing sessions.”

“Security cameras are everywhere these days, Doc. You of all people should know that.” I pulled the small rented DVD player from my bag, flipped up the screen, and pressed play. The picture quality was poor, with lines and glitches. A code in the bottom right-hand corner identified the camera that had taken the footage, as well as a date and time. The subject matter was pretty dull — just a number of cafeteria-style tables occupied mostly by men of various ages, some in uniform, but most in business suits. Plenty of bald heads. In the top left of frame, Spears was clearly identifiable, sitting alone at a table for four, with a paper cup full of what I assumed was coffee, or at least what passed for it at the main Pentagon cafeteria. No sound accompanied the pictures. Suddenly, Spears got up and left, leaving her coffee behind. The picture jumped to footage from another camera. It showed Staff Sergeant Butler standing in a hallway. The date was identical to the first view, the time pushed barely seconds forward. Spears joined him. They shook hands. A third view — same day but two minutes later — captured them getting in a cab together. The Pentagon Police would trophy my nuts if they knew I'd copied their disks and edited this little show together.

Freddie Spears took some ice in her mouth and crunched it. “I'm calling my attorney,” she said.

“Relax, Doc, I can't arrest you. I'm OSI and you're not in the military. And even though you told Butler to kill me, I'm not the kind that bears a grudge.”

Spears leaned forward, elbows on her knees, fingers laced. She'd dropped the act. If I wasn't going to arrest her, that left only one other alternative, didn't it? “So, what do you want?” she asked, very casually.

I leaned back and crossed one leg on top of the other. Bingo. “Fifty percent of what you left Moreton Genetics with,” I replied. “According to my research, that makes my share worth around twenty mill.”

Spears's eyes narrowed. “That makes Chris Butler and me minority shareholders. What do we get for that?” Her fingers were still laced, only now she was wringing them.

“With any luck, around twenty years.”

“What?” she said, bewildered by the sudden change in direction.

Much of what I was saying was guesswork and gut instinct. No way could Boyle have pulled off the theft from Moreton Genetics without someone on the inside helping out. And then there was Butler. He was already a rotten apple, but someone had to have planted the seed in his head to turn the Phunal mission into an investment opportunity.

Spears was clever, and no doubt the team of lawyers she'd hire would be, too. All the evidence, even the bank transfers to Boyle and to Cooke, could conceivably be presented as something innocent. With Boyle and Butler both dead, there wouldn't be much of a case. The only way to nail her was to get an admission made freely to someone who wasn't an officer of the court — specifically, a civilian court. An admission made to someone like me.

The doorbell rang right on cue, making a sound like Big Ben.

I went to the door and opened it. I was surprised to see Chalmers standing there, leering with that stupid grin on his face, his crutches updated with a cane. Behind him were several FBI types; behind them my backup marshals; and behind them, the doorman with my ten bucks. “Special Agent Cooper,” said Chalmers, stepping inside. “Bumbling along as usual?”

“What are you doing here, Chalmers?”

“Come to help collect the latest addition to the FBI's witness protection program — mostly to make sure there are no problems with you. And maybe, well, maybe to gloat just a little …”

A half-dozen humorless types filed in behind Chalmers, filling the expensive room like a flood in a blue suit. Along with the old doorman, the marshals kept to the outside hallway, but peered in to satisfy their inquisitiveness.

I checked this invasion with Spears, glancing over my shoulder as a black guy the size of a locomotive put his hand under her arm and hoisted her to her feet. From the look of uncertainty on her face, this was all news to her.

“You planted that wallet at the Four Winds,” I said to Chalmers. “And then you used my presence on the scene to legitimize its discovery.”

He took a step toward Spears.

“We both know it couldn't have been the bombers, those Pakistani glass blowers; it had to have been someone who'd come along later,” I said. “I might actually have fallen for it if you'd had the thing properly deep-fried.”

Chalmers was still looking smug. If he'd had a nail file, he'd have pulled it out and used it. “The evidence could have been better prepared, I suppose,” he agreed.

“So you going to tell me why?” I asked.

“Why what?”

“Playing dumb comes naturally to you, Chalmers.”

I wanted to hit him, knock the supercilious smirk right off his face, but I resisted the temptation. “So now you've got Doc Spears over a barrel,” I told him. “She'll have to cooperate with you or go to prison for a very long time.” I wondered what Spears had that Langley wanted so badly. Then it hit me like a slap. “All the missing research on this bug. You people think Spears knows where it is.”

Chalmers shrugged eloquently.

“Who wants it upstairs, Chalmers? Norman? Your boss is determined to do a little empire building, is he?”

The smugness fell away. “I'm through playing twenty questions with you, Cooper.”

I'd hit a nerve. With Tanaka and Boyle dead, Doc Spears was the last link to technology the CIA wanted for reasons I didn't want to think about — a bargaining chip, or leverage, maybe. Or perhaps the intention was to sell it, like Boyle had tried to do. Hell, even as a sewage treatment it was potentially worth billions, wasn't it? The Company could support a whole portfolio of clandestine ops with that kind of money. And with Boyle dead and all evidence under their control, the CIA had Spears exactly where they wanted her. Basically, if she had nuts, they'd be in a vise.

“Did you have anything to do with putting Butler and me together on that mission to Phunal?”

He shook his head. “Can't take credit for that, I'm afraid, though I wish I could. Just a bit of good luck.”

Chalmers turned to the FBI types. He said, “Let's wrap it up here.”

Spears was on her feet and still bewildered, only now she was moving toward the front door as the filling in an FBI sandwich. There were no handcuffs.

“Before you go, Chalmers… that leg of yours. How'd you break it?”

“Leaving now, Cooper,” he said without looking over his shoulder.

“Al Cooke was a big man — past his prime but still powerful. Did he put up more of a struggle than you expected? Is that when you slipped on the Natusima's deck, on all those cigarette butts he'd been tossing?”

“Fuck you, Cooper,” said Chalmers, calling on his stock answer to questions he didn't like. He leaned on his cane as he limped toward the door.

I was left alone in the room and even though everyone had gone, it still felt crowded. A movement caught my eye. It was the old doorman, still hovering outside in the hallway. I hoped he wasn't expecting another tip. I called out, “I'll lock up when I leave.”

He nodded, tipped a finger to his cap, and disappeared.

My fingers closed around the small metal box in my jacket pocket, the digital recorder, the one Anna had given me. I took it out and held it up where I could see it, to make sure its beautiful red LED recording light was flashing. I clicked the off switch, picked up my glass of Glen Keith, and took a sip. The ice had melted. Watered-down Scotch reminded me of a bar I used to frequent back in my drinking days. I put the glass down and walked out, closing the door behind me.