Edge

Chapter 22

“CORTE, YOU’RE ON speaker here with me and Chris Teasley.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve talked to the attorney general and he’s agreed to move the Kess-lers into a slammer in the District-Hansen Detention.”

All because I hadn’t returned his call? Seemed a little excessive. “I see. Why?”

Chris Teasley came on. She said, “Um, Agent Corte.”

“Officer Corte,” I corrected. My organization is an office, not a bureau or an agency. When Congress gave Abe the money that’s what he created.

“Officer Corte,” she continued. “I backgrounded you.” She sounded uneasy; I was close to twice her age.

I concentrated on driving and looking for a tail, which shepherds do automatically, all the time. Even when we go grocery shopping. But I didn’t expect to be followed and I saw nothing. “Go on.”

“It’s routine in cases like this,” she said quickly. So I wouldn’t think I was being persecuted. “One thing that came up: an operation you ran in Newport, Rhode Island. Two years ago.”

Ah, so that was it.

“I have the whole report of the investigation here.”

She kept pausing, as if giving me the chance to confirm or deny. I remained silent.

“The assignment involved you and two associates from your organization guarding several witnesses from the same man involved in this case, Henry Loving.”

She paused again. I wondered if Westerfield was testing her the way I test duBois and Ahmad and my other protégés. It’s easy to do research. It’s hard to aim it at somebody and pull the trigger.

Apparently Teasley wasn’t firing fast enough. Her boss took over. “Corte, let me read this: ‘It was alleged that Agent Corte-’”

The Justice Department’s Internal Affairs Division had gotten the job title wrong too. Not many people know about our organization.

“‘-had a conflict of interest in running the Kowalski protection assignment, endangering the two witnesses in his care. Although a half dozen personal security professionals within three government agencies stated that standard procedure would have been to secrete the two witnesses in protective custody in the Providence, Rhode Island, federal penitentiary, Agent Corte chose not to do so but to keep the witnesses first in a motel and then to transfer them to a safe house outside of Newport, Rhode Island.’”

“I’m familiar with the report,” I told him, braking hard for a lazy deer.

But he continued to read, “‘The result was that Henry Jonathan Loving, who’d been hired to kidnap and extract information from the witnesses, injured a local police officer and a bystander. He came close to successfully kidnapping at least one of the witnesses in question.

“‘During the investigation into the handling of said matter, it came to light that Loving was the same individual who had murdered Agent Corte’s superior, Abraham Fallow, the director of… ’ It’s redacted. ‘And a personal friend of Agent Corte’s. The conclusion of the investigating panel was that Agent Corte, motivated by personal revenge, chose not to put the witnesses in question into the federal detention center but rather kept them in public, with full knowledge that Loving would attempt to kidnap them there.

“‘He in effect used the witnesses as bait to capture or kill Loving. This is supported by the fact that the witnesses were convicted felons and, accordingly, Agent Corte would feel more at liberty to imperil them.’”

He concluded, “‘It was only through good fortune that the witnesses were not lost and the trial proceeded on schedule.’”

“Good fortune,” I repeated softly. Something I absolutely do not believe in.

“Well?”

The penitentiary in Providence was more dangerous than the worst parts of the city itself and that was saying something. My protégé at the time had learned that Henry Loving had done business with at least two people inside the slammer. As for the principals, yes, they were felons. But we shepherds never make moral judgments about the people we protect. The only quality in a principal that matters is a beating heart. Our job is to keep it that way.

But if I hadn’t justified myself to my boss, I sure wasn’t going to do so to Westerfield and his young assistant.

“It’s the same thing here, Corte. The motel in Providence, the Hillside Inn. The safe house there, the safe house here. From what we can reconstruct, back at the Hillside, after Loving showed up and was in pursuit, you could have escaped right away but you paused in the back of the motel. You engaged him, with the Kesslers in the vehicle with you.”

People who explain are weak, Corte. A shepherd can’t be weak. He can be wrong but he can’t be weak.

Abe’s words, of course. I realized that Westerfield must be upset; he hadn’t lapsed into French once during this conversation. I sped around a slow-moving Prius.

“So what happened is the trap in Rhode Island didn’t work out after all, and your fox shows up still alive yesterday. So you set out to nail him all over again, using the Kesslers. And now, I understand from Aaron there’s a terrorist component.”

“A… what?”

“Ali Pamuk, aka Clarence Brown.”

“We haven’t found any terrorist connections. His father’s Turkish, and he’s contributed money to a mosque here in Virginia. He’s also played with his identity. That’s all we know at this point. We’re investigating.”

“But it’s possible that a terror cell wants to kidnap Kessler and find out what he knows and who else might be involved in his investigation.”

“Like I said, Jason, we don’t know.”

“Look, Corte, I appreciate you’ve saved the Kesslers from two tight situations. You’re talented… and you were lucky. We can’t risk that the third time Loving’ll have more luck than you do.”

Luck…

“Kessler may be the only key to a serious terror threat. We can’t afford to have him jeopardized, like you’ve been doing. I have the attorney general’s okay. I want the Kesslers and the woman’s sister in a slammer now. The Hansen facility, we were talking about earlier. I’ve already contacted them.”

I pictured him looking at Teasley with an expression that said, See, that’s how it’s done.

“I want to talk to my boss.”

“This is coming from the attorney general.”

Everybody’s boss.

I found I was driving ten over the limit. I eased up on the gas.

Westerfield continued, speaking reasonably, “If this was some bullshit embezzlement or organized crime thing, I wouldn’t care so much. But now there’s a terror component, we can’t fool around. We need to make sure we do everything we can to identify a threat. We also don’t need any blowback.”

Even spending so much time inside the Beltway I could never quite get used to the lexicon.

“I want them in Hansen as soon as possible. You want to keep after Loving, be my guest. You want to keep tracking down the primary, fine. You just aren’t going to use my witness for cheese in your mousetrap.”

His witness… The famous hero cop.

Westerfield continued, “I’m ordering an armored van now.”

“No.”

“I’ll just call Aaron and find out where they are.”

“He doesn’t know.”

“What?”

“I haven’t told him.”

Need-to-know…

“Well, that’s…” Westerfield had trouble processing this, though I wasn’t sure why. I doubted people in his organization shared everything with one another.

“I hope this isn’t going to become a fight, Corte. Mon Dieu… that would not be good.”

Ah, the French. At last.

Finally I said, “Here’s what I’ll agree to do. I’ll call Aaron. If he confirms that the AG’s ordered them into a slammer”-I let that linger-“I’ll arrange for one of our armored transports to get them to the Hansen facility. But I’ll tell you… a District cop? Inside? Ryan’s not going to be happy at all. I don’t know how cooperative he’ll be after we move them.”

“You let me worry about that, Corte. This has to happen immediately. I can rely on you?”

Meaning he was going to call Aaron Ellis in about ten minutes to make sure I was doing what I’d said.

“Yes.”

“Thanks. It’s really for the best-for us, for them, for the country.”

I didn’t know if those words were directed toward me, toward Teasley or an invisible audience.

After I disconnected, I gave it a few minutes and, without bothering to call Aaron Ellis for the confirmation, dialed Billy to ask about an armored van.