Fear itself

2

From the highway, the unremarkable three-story building on the lightly wooded rise looked like just about every other new office building in the Virginia suburbs west of Washington.

Which was exactly the point, noted FBI Investigative Specialist Linda Abruzzi, formerly Special Agent Abruzzi, as she pulled up to the guard kiosk in her ’93 Geo Prizm. If all government architecture can be divided into two periods, before Oklahoma City and after Oklahoma City, the Department of Justice’s recently opened auxiliary office building, though small, was definitively post-O.C. in design and construction, and its first, cheapest, and most effective line of defense was anonymity. No signs, no visitors, no press, no exceptions.

It was only when you got closer that you began noticing a few subtle distinctions. The kiosk, for instance, anchored two reinforced steel gates and was situated at the bottom of the approach road, a hundred yards distant from the building, while the parking lot was another fifty yards to the west: no one would ever get a car bomb near this federal building.

Add to those precautions reinforced roof and outer walls, acrylic windows thick enough to withstand a direct hit from one of the smaller handheld mortars, additional load-bearing interior walls to keep the whole building from collapsing in case a larger rocket did make it through, and a self-contained environment that could be sealed off floor by floor in the event of a chemical weapons attack, and you had a facility that was as close to impervious as was practicable for an aboveground structure.

When she flashed her credentials, which included an access pass entitling her to park in the garage under the building rather than the distant outdoor lot, Linda expected to be summarily waved through. Instead the guard painstakingly compared her face to the photo on her ID, which he then compared to the picture on a computer terminal inside the kiosk. Next he had her press her forefinger to a touch-screen pad, both so the computer could match it digitally to her file prints, and also to have it on file in case she turned out not to be Investigative Specialist Abruzzi.

“Thank you,” said the guard, handing her badge case back to her. “Can you open the trunk for me, please?”

“Not from in here,” said Linda, taking the key out of the ignition and handing it over to him. “This wasn’t exactly the bells-and-whistles model.” Linda had been a rookie SA working out of the San Francisco field office when she bought the Prizm six years earlier. Given the climate, there hadn’t seemed to be any pressing need for air-conditioning, so she’d passed on the deluxe package, which included a remote trunk opener, and saved herself a few grand. Three months later, naturally, the Bureau transferred her to the resident agency in San Antonio, where AC was all but a necessity; she’d kept the car only out of sheer stubbornness.

After checking the trunk for explosives, the guard used a long-handled mirror to inspect the undercarriage, then stepped back into the kiosk and pushed the button to raise the right-hand gate. “Drive directly up to the building without stopping. There’s a keypad at the garage door. Code today is three-two-zero-four-don’t write it down. Take the ramp to the subbasement-space nine is reserved for you.”

“Three-two-zero-four, subbasement, space nine. Got it, thanks.”

“No problem.” Then, under his breath, as the blue Prizm rolled through the gate and started up the hill: “Who’d you have to blow to park up there?”

Inside, the security precautions were no less stringent. A guard met Linda in the subbasement garage and escorted her to an elevator that communicated only with the lobby, where he turned her over to Cynthia Pool, an efficient, perfectly preserved clerk-secretary in her late fifties wearing a dress-for-success outfit from the early eighties-tailored navy pantsuit, white blouse with a ruffled bow, black Naturalizers with stacked heels.

“Very impressive security,” remarked Linda, as Miss Pool led her to a second elevator, which, to Linda’s surprise, had buttons for six floors-three of them turned out to be underground.

“None of it’s for us, hon. We’re only here because they needed our office space at headquarters.”

The elevator doors slid silently open; Linda followed her guide down a series of white corridors remarkable for their featurelessness. No nameplates on the doors, all of which were blue, all of which were closed. No art on the walls, and the only signs were for fire exits.

“Now, pay attention to the route,” warned Miss Pool, turning right, then left, then right again. “If you lose your way and wind up somewhere you’re not supposed to be, you could find yourself up in Counterintelligence being interrogated with a rubber hose.” She stopped abruptly and slipped the picture ID hanging on a chain from her neck into a slot mounted outside yet another anonymous-looking blue door.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Only about the rubber hose-they’re a little sensitive in Counterintelligence, these days. After you.”

Exhausted from her long walk, Linda felt her legs start to weaken as she crossed the threshold, and sent up a quick prayer: Please God, not here, not on my first day. He’d screwed her over enough lately; she figured he owed her a favor.

And her prayer was answered, after a fashion: just inside the door stood a file cabinet tall enough for Linda to lean against casually while her legs recovered. It struck her as an odd place to put a file cabinet-then she saw that the little anteroom was so crammed with free-standing metal cabinets, white cardboard record boxes, precarious stacks of perforated computer printouts, and collapsing slag heaps of overflowing red, brown, or buff accordion file folders that there was scarcely room left over for the secretary’s desk and chair.

Miss Pool edged past Linda without comment and rapped with sharp knuckles on the interior door of the suite. “Linda Abruzzi is here.”

“Already? Jesus H. Christ, the body isn’t even cold yet.” The voice was a little too hearty for nine o’clock in the morning, which fit the stories Linda had heard about her predecessor’s drinking, part of his legend by now, along with his size, his eccentric wardrobe, his mastery of the Affective Interview, his heroism in the Maxwell case, and his open contempt for the Bureau-cracy. “Come on in.”

Linda let go of the file cabinet, found to her relief that her legs had regained their strength, picked her way across the crowded anteroom, and opened the door to see an enormous bald man in a plaid sport coat on his knees in front of yet another file cabinet.

“One question,” said Special Agent E. L. Pender, FBI, soon to be Ret., marking his place in the roll-out bottom file drawer with his left hand, reaching up to shake Linda’s hand with his right. “How bad did you have to fuck up to get sent here?”

“I take it you haven’t read my personnel file,” she replied. Even kneeling, he was so tall that Linda didn’t have to stoop to shake his hand, which was roughly the size of a waffle iron.

Pender glanced pointedly around the windowless office-if anything, it was even more cluttered with printouts, file folders, record boxes, and file cabinets than the anteroom-and shrugged. “It’s around here someplace. But I don’t pay much attention to personnel records-and if you’d ever seen mine, you’d understand why.”

“I heard you had your own coffee cup hanging on the rack over at OPR,” joked Linda. The Office of Professional Responsibility was the Justice Department’s equivalent of an internal affairs division.

“Only a rumor. But they do know I take it black. Have a seat, take a load off.”

Linda hesitated-the only chair in the room was behind the desk, which was buried under yet another slag heap of computer printouts and file folders.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Pender, reading her mind. “That’s your chair, that’s your desk, this is your office now.” He took the file folder he’d been looking at and turned it sideways in the drawer before standing up.

“What about you?” Linda tested the stability of the desk chair, then lowered herself into it carefully, using both hands on the arms for balance the way the physical therapist in San Antone had taught her.

“I’m gone, I’m history. The eagle flies until the end of the month, but I had some vacation saved up, and it was use it or lose it. I only came in today to finish going through these old files, refresh what’s left of my memory-some idiot publisher’s paying me a shitload for my memoirs. They’re also paying somebody else a shitload to write them, thank God.”

“But aren’t you supposed to be training me or something?”

“For what? They’re shutting down Liaison Support at the end of the year, when Steve McDougal retires. It’s outlived its function-everybody’s on-line with everybody nowadays. That’s why I asked how bad you fucked up-no offense intended.”

“None taken. I was afraid it was something like that.”

“Now that I’ve seen you motorvatin’, though, I’m guessing it has more to do with that.” Pender cleared off a space and perched one enormous cheek on the edge of the desk-his thigh was nearly as wide around as Linda’s waist. “What’s the story?”

Linda took a long, deep breath, let it out slowly. Might as well get this over. “MS,” she said. “MS is the story-I was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis a few months ago.”

Pender didn’t miss a beat. “Dang,” he said. “I hate it when that happens.”

Not quite the reaction she’d been expecting-Linda let out a startled laugh. “Yeah, me too,” she said after a moment, then quickly changed the subject. “So what’s my job exactly? What is it I’m supposed to do around here?”

“Do?” Pender snorted derisively. “Frankly, my dear, nobody gives a toasted fart.”