October's Ghost

CHAPTER TEN CONVERGENCE

“Bourbon, Ted.” Sullivan pushed the glass closer to the mirrored wall of beautiful bottles, some clear and others filled with the dirty brown liquid he craved.

“Still early, George,” the bartender said. “You gonna pace yourself this time?”

This time? Was he insinuating…? It wasn’t worth arguing, George knew. Ted was the guy with the liquor. Ted was his friend right now. Almost his best friend. “Nice and slow tonight.” Last one in this joint, you lousy, overprotective ass.

The sound was more than beautiful, a sweet, refreshing swish as the bourbon reached down from the neck of the bottle and filled the glass only to the point where the optimist/pessimist debate could ensue. Never enough, the naysayer in Sullivan decided, lifting the glass to his lips, taking in the first taste of the liquid that helped him to relax. Helped him to think. There was much to think about, much to plan. A story to get. His story. To hell with Bill.

“Yank my story,” Sullivan muttered, downing half of what remained in his glass.

“What?”

Sullivan lifted his head, eyeing the bartender. Not only was he a mother, he was a nosy mother. “Nothing. Trouble at work.”

Surprise, surprise. “Maybe you should change your line of work.”

“I like being a reporter,” George disagreed. “I’m good at it.”

“I was talking about your moonlighting,” the bartender said, looking at the glass that was nearing empty. Give it up, guy. Regulars were good for business, but he hated watching the pathetic ones drink their lives into a toilet.

“I’m good at that, too.” George looked away, back to his drink.

Too good, the bartender thought to himself, wondering if this regular put the same amount of effort into the job that paid his tab.

“Strike eight,” Frankie said, scratching the establishment known as the Tree House off of their list after getting back in the Chevy.

“Nice place,” Art commented. “Remind me never to go there unless I’m drunk first. That way it won’t look so bad.”

“It’s not the looks, partner,” Frankie said, wiping the tip of her nose. She looked up at the flashing sign as Art pulled away. “A urinal with neon.”

They were getting a good taste of what Sullivan required in a place to get shit-faced, namely “not much.” Bottles, bar stools, and a bathroom, sometimes all in one room, according to Aguirre’s discriminating nose. Art’s was less affected. His additional years in the Bureau, particularly his time working the OC hits in Chicago, had seen him observing many an autopsy, where the term “smell” took on meanings it was never intended to represent.

“West we go,” Art said without enthusiasm. “Where to?”

Frankie checked the list as her partner swung their car left onto Sunset from Rampart. “A place called Freddy’s. Fifty-nine-hundred block of Sunset”

Art finished his turn and slid over into the right lane, slowing as the staggered convoy of LAPD cars, their lights and sirens clearing the way, came at him from the opposite direction.

“Cavalry’s got work to do tonight,” he said, noticing just a second later that a helicopter was close behind the patrol cars, racing east on Sunset a few hundred feet in the air.

“Just another night in L.A.,” Frankie observed. She was wrong.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s jurisdiction is divided into four Bureaus — West, Valley, South, and Central — which are comprised of a total of eighteen divisions, not including the elite Metro Division. Each division monitors and maintains its own patrol function, with officers responding primarily to 911 calls dispatched from a central communications center. When things in one division heat up, as is common in a city whose criminal element does not follow the statistical laws of even population distribution, units from adjacent divisions can be called in to assist. Certain happenings mandate such cooperation to a higher degree. At the top of those is one radio call— “Officer needs help.”

Why such things happen is a question social theorists and criminologists have debated for decades, and to excess in the very recent past, but none could have predicted or explained the motivation for what began in the streets bounding Echo Park, a slab of green littered with bottles and drug paraphernalia located just inside Rampart Division’s area of responsibility.

A jet-black vintage Cadillac Seville, its compressed springs and low-aspect tires identifying it as the ride of choice for gang members, glided slowly up the street on the park’s north side, just yards from a group of young men hanging out on the hood of a vintage Monte Carlo parked along the curb. The first words from the Cadillac, which would be seen as benign to most people not familiar with the gang culture, challenged the allegiance of the boys on the Monte Carlo, questioning them as to “who they claimed.” The answer, which was as much a statement of pride in one’s gang as it was a truthful response, was all the occupants of the Cadillac needed.

Two sawed-off double-barrel shotguns poked through the open side window from the backseat, and a single semiautomatic pistol from the front. The weapons trained on the group of twelve young bangers. Understandably they started to scatter at the sight, but not fast enough.

The fire came quickly and violently, striking three members of the La Playa Flats gang in the back as their homies dove to the ground, pulling out their own hardware, mostly .22- and .25-caliber pistols. They were not as well armed as their rivals, the Madera Honchos, but did not hesitate to shoot back as soon as their guns were in hand.

On the east side of the park, sitting in their patrol car, two officers of the Rampart Division’s P.M. watch were finishing their dinners — Styrofoam bowls full of rice and teriyaki beef strips — when the repeated sounds of gunfire reached them. Immediately they radioed in that they were going to investigate “shots fired,” not an uncommon occurrence, and hurried to the north side of the park. They turned from Echo Park onto Park and instantly knew that this was more than an ordinary “shots fired.”

The driver of the Cadillac, upon seeing the police cruiser turn toward him, reflexively floored it and swung to the left, trying to make a U-turn in an area that would not permit such for the big four-door. His homies in the backseat, alternately trying to hit their rivals with wild blasts from the shotguns and ducking into the false safety behind the doors, didn’t see what the driver had, and, as the Caddie screeched to a stop in its abortive swing to get out of there, they fired again without looking, their shots traveling straight down Park and hitting the LAPD car in the windshield and grill.

“Two Adam Twenty-one! Officer needs help! Shots fired!”

It was as if a lightning bolt had reached down from above and struck every LAPD unit in Rampart, Northeast, and Hollywood divisions. The twelve other Rampart units on patrol that evening, upon hearing the ‘Two’ in the unit I.D. that denoted it as one of theirs, dropped what they were doing and raced toward the park. Six Northeast units, just north of the park in their own division, also sped off with lights and sirens even before central communications put out the call as a Code Three.

But it was from the west, from Hollywood Division, that the greatest outside response came. Eight units, including one of the LAPD’s helicopters that had been involved in a particularly nasty domestic-violence call, left the senior patrol officer of the watch, Sergeant Charlie Burns, to finish up the paperwork and witness statements and headed off to aid their brother law officers who had put out the call to the east of their location. It was a relatively quiet night in Hollywood otherwise, so the immediate loss of nearly all the division’s patrol force was not likely to cause a problem.

Sergeant Burns thought that as he climbed into his car near the intersection of Beachwood and Sunset, his ears tuned to the unfolding situation at Echo Park and his thoughts with the officers who were in need of assistance, unaware that he would soon be in a situation not dissimilar.

Sullivan walked out of Freddy’s onto Sunset, wondering if he’d be able to find a cab at this time of night. He took a few steps east on the brightly lit boulevard, his gait slow and measured so as not to test the limits of his coordination. Not a damn one in sigh—

“Get in!”

The hands grabbed him from behind, pushing him toward the curb. A second later a dark-colored car screeched to a stop in front of him, and the back door came open. The hands pushed hard, shoving his head downward just as the police did in the movies. Could it be?

Sullivan regained his senses as the back door closed to his right. He was facedown on the car seat and brought his head up as the sound of another door closing filled the car. Who was…?

“Don’t move!” Jorge emphasized the words with the barrel of the revolver, which he pressed against the reporter’s forehead as he reached over the seat back and held him by the lapels. “Don’t say nothing, don’t do nothing.”

Tomás eased out into traffic, not wanting to draw any attention. Sunset was a busy street, one that they had heard lots of sirens from in the past few minutes, so the automatic decision to get off of it was natural. It was also a mistake.

A car approaching is always cause for caution for a police officer, which made Sergeant Burns’s instinct to look up understandable. He saw the blue Chevy’s driver just as the man saw him, and there was the unmistakable mask of tension upon his face that most bad guys exhibited when confronted by the cops. That piqued the sergeant’s awareness, as did the man’s blatant attempt to continue looking straight ahead as he neared the patrol car. He was saying something out of the side of his mouth, Burns noted, probably trying to tell his buddy in the passenger seat…

Gun.

The sergeant’s head jerked fully to the left at the sight of the revolver pointing into the backseat. Beachwood was a residential street, and therefore not a wide one in the cramped confines of Los Angeles. The driver and his passenger passed ten feet to Burns’s left, then accelerated quickly south on Beachwood.

“Dammit!” Tomás swore, his eyes watching in his rearview mirror as the police car began a tight turn away from the curb.

Jorge was pressed back against the seat when Tomás stepped on the gas, and his eyes caught the sight of the car a hundred feet back just as its light bar came to life. He looked down at Sullivan, the gun pressing harder into his forehead. “I’ll blow your head off if you move.”

“He’s on us!” Tomás shouted above the noise of the Lumina downshifting for a quick burst of speed.

“Lose him,” Jorge said, knowing it was more hope than directive.

There was no mistaking it now for Burns. The car was rabbiting.

“Six L Fifty, I am in pursuit,” he said calmly, though the adrenaline was already beginning to flow into his veins in appreciable quantities. A veteran of many pursuits, he never found them enjoyable, a fact directly in opposition to the Hollywood portrayal of them. Get your cameras out, boys, the sergeant thought, wondering just how long this one would last through Tinseltown.

Next to an “Officer needs help” call, a pursuit takes priority. When both happen simultaneously, there is an expected bit of confusion, a situation that is amplified when the proximity of the two is as relatively close as these were.

“All units…” The dispatcher paused, juggling her multiple major calls. “All units stand by. Six L Fifty is in pursuit.”

Burns followed the car ahead of him through two hard right turns that had them going north toward Sunset. “Six L Fifty,” he said into the mic, referring to his division (Six), his unit type (L, or Lincoln, a one man car), and his individual unit number (Fifty, an even multiple of ten, which denoted a supervisor), “car is a late-model blue four-door Chevy, now heading north on Gower approaching Sunset. Two male occupants, one possible in the rear. Suspects are armed. License…” The newer white reflectorized California plates made reading at a distance easier. “…Four-Nora-Edward-X Ray-Two-Eight-Three. Now passing Sunset.”

The dispatcher repeated back the information and waited for available units to announce themselves for inclusion in the pursuit The silence surprised her, until she checked her status log. “Any Hollywood units in the vicinity of Sunset and Gower, Six L Fifty needs a secondary unit for the pursuit of a late-model blue Chevy.” Still silence. Her blood pressure notched up a bit. “Air Forty.”

Miles from the pursuit, hovering over the deteriorating situation at Echo Park, the helicopter heard the call. “Air Forty.”

“Air Forty, Six L Fifty is in pursuit, north on Gower past Sunset. Can you intercept?”

“Negative, we have continuing shots fired and multiple suspects.”

“Air Twenty,” the call came into dispatch from another helicopter that had picked up the pursuit call and was heading north from the South Bureau at top speed. “We’ll take it. ETA five minutes.”

“Roger, Air Twenty. Six L Fifty, your location?”

Burns was glad he had put his seatbelt on. This guy was driving as though he really didn’t want to get caught. “Gower at Franklin, going…going west on Franklin.”

The dispatcher checked her status log again. “Fifteen Adam Seven,” she said, calling a clear North Hollywood two-man unit. “Six L Fifty is in pursuit — can you respond as secondary unit? Location is westbound Franklin from Gower.”

“Roger. ETA is six or seven.”

There were now two additional units closing on the pursuit as the backup dispatcher entered the license number into the computer. The result of that would bring another welcome member to the chase. Another unwelcome one would, unfortunately, join in at the same time.

The bright white-and-blue Bell Jet Ranger lifted off from Hollywood-Burbank Airport just as the first “Officer needs help” call went out. Like all local television stations, KNTV Channel 3 monitored police broadcasts to find juicy bits of human drama that its viewers could eat up. Also like other local stations, KNTV had discovered that the helicopter was the perfect platform from which to get fast-breaking news events from the street to the viewer. To this end it had taken the very expensive step of purchasing its own helicopter outright, giving the station round-the-clock access to airborne pictures. In a business where budgets were tight, and where most stations simply leased the use of helicopters from respected aviation companies, KNTV had again lived up to its claim that it would do anything for the story and would pay the price that an aggressive TV news organization had to.

The news director had no sooner come to the monitor room where reports from Echo Park were coming in when the first call on the pursuit caught his attention. “Where’s the chopper?” he asked the control room.

“Coming south from Silverlake. LAPD has a bird up there, so he has to approach from due north.”

Damn the stupid regulations, the news director thought. For safety’s sake the LAPD had persuaded the FAA to issue stringent guidelines regarding aircraft separation at crime scenes, relegating the news choppers to higher altitudes. Some stations had just gone to more powerful, much steadier cameras that could get better pictures from a thousand feet than they could previously from three hundred. That sort of gear was expensive, however, and KNTV had spent its money on the chopper, postponing the inevitable upgrade of its standard camera setup.

“Any LAPD over the pursuit yet?”

“Not yet.”

The news director checked the clock. It was just a few minutes to the start of the eleven o’clock news. If he could get their chopper over the pursuit for a dramatic lead-in, it could take a bite out of the competition’s ratings for the important 11:00 P.M. broadcast.

“Send the chopper to the pursuit.” It was a smart decision, he knew. High-speed chases got ratings almost as good as airplane crashes.

“Left…south on Highland!” Burns said loudly, the wailing of the siren transmitted to dispatch as background noise. The pursuit thus far had reached speeds of seventy miles per hour, fast enough for the streets of Hollywood. As a supervisor, he had the authority to continue or end a pursuit based upon conditions such as traffic and danger to civilians. Another factor was what the suspects were wanted for. The sergeant, having seen the way the gun was being wielded, had formed an opinion that there might be someone in the back of the car who was an unwilling passenger.

And that had sealed it. Kidnapping, or suspected kidnapping, was a crime that deserved no slack. This chase was on for the duration.

“West on Hollywood!”

Art and Frankie were three blocks from Freddy’s when the radio call came.

“King Eight.” It was the office’s communication center.

Frankie snatched up the mic. “King Eight.”

“LAPD reports they are in pursuit of blue late-model Chevy. License Four-Nora-Edward-X Ray-Two-Eight-Three. It’s your warrant suspects. Presently westbound Hollywood Boulevard from Highland. Three occupants in vehicle.”

“Three?” Frankie said to her partner.

Art stepped on the gas and activated the Chevy’s blue and red grill lights and the under-hood siren. “Idiot!”

“King Eight, we’re on it.” Frankie slipped the mic back into its holder. She also surreptitiously undid the top strap on her holster. Get there, Art. Get there.

George Sullivan knew he was going to die. He was certain of it. These were the guys. They had killed Portero. Now they were going to kill him. Please, God.

The man hovering over him kept the gun jabbed hard into his face while he watched out the back window. Sullivan could do nothing. His body was wedged between the front and back seats, his upper body twisted painfully rearward. Only his eyes could move, and they could do little to stop what was certain to happen. He’d already searched the area he could see, but there was nothing. If there had been, what could he do? Fight the guys off?

Guys with guns! Not likely. All there was within reach was a set of keys in the coin tray between the front seats. Not much.

But it’s something, you wimp! George reached gingerly with his left hand and picked up the keys, actually just one large key on an equally large keytab. He gripped it tight in his hand, swearing to himself that if the guy even twitched on the trigger, he was going to jam the key home into his killer’s eye. I’m dead, you’re blind, he thought, feeling quite brave but having no idea why.

“South La Brea! Where’s the air unit?”

“Air Twenty. “

“Air Twenty, we’re a minute out.” The observer in the helicopter saw the flashing lights of the patrol car, and, quite a ways off, the lights of the North Hollywood unit racing to join the chase. “Six L Fifty, we’ve got you on visual.”

The pilot was going too fast. The pursuit was going to pass below them soon, so he started a turn to the left to set up on a following course. In the process he gained a hundred feet of altitude in a planned ascent.

“There!” Frankie yelled, pointing directly to their front through the windshield.

Art saw the pursuit pass from right to left a block from them, heading south on La Brea and passing Sunset. He slowed at the intersection, a red light causing him to interject caution when he wanted to drive like a bat out of hell.

“Clear!” Frankie said, her eyes sweeping traffic from the right. Lights and sirens weren’t some impenetrable shield.

Art floored it through the light, turning tight onto La Brea. Two blocks down he could see the pursuit passing Fountain. What he saw next was in the sky.

The KNTV chopper pilot was eyeballing the pursuit from a thousand feet, approaching it from the east. His cameraman was on the right side, and he knew he’d have to clear that side for a good shot. Plus, he’d have to get lower. He started the diving left turn and checked his airspace for any… SHIT!!!!

Air Twenty’s pilot, a veteran of the U.S. Army who had flown combat missions in Grenada, never saw what hit him. The KNTV chopper, traveling at 110 miles per hour, hit the LAPD helicopter from above and behind, disabling the tail rotor. That damage mattered not at all a split second later as Air Twenty’s main rotor sliced into the news chopper’s fuselage, killing both occupants instantly and turning the Bell Jet Ranger into a tumbling ball of fire that fell toward the earth.

Air Twenty’s crew didn’t suffer such a merciful death. They both were conscious as their million-dollar aircraft spun out of control and impacted in the center of La Brea, a block behind Six L Fifty, and exploded into a cloud of black and orange.

Burns saw the flash in his rearview, and it drew his attention long enough that he missed what was happening to his front until it was too late.

Tomás knew the light was red but had no choice. He kept on going, accelerating even, and didn’t see the compact car come through the intersection from his left. He clipped the back end, sending the smaller car spinning and a car following it crashing into its rear. The Lumina spun also, its rear end impacting a set of parked cars on the east side of La Brea and throwing Jorge to the left onto Tomás.

George felt the hit but didn’t know what had happened. Just a bright flash and the crashing of metal. It was his chance, maybe his last one. He pulled the latch on the right rear passenger door and rolled into the street, his survival instinct propelling his legs faster than he’d run in years east on Santa Monica Boulevard. A few seconds later he was nowhere to be seen.

Sergeant Burns saw the crash ahead too late to brake and maneuver around the second car. He hit it almost broadside, pushing it into the light pole at the southwest corner of La Brea and Santa Monica. He could see the suspect car a hundred feet down on La Brea and someone rolling out of the backseat, but couldn’t get out of his patrol car to do anything about it. Looking down, he saw the telltale signs of a compound fracture of his right femur, the bright white bone protruding grotesquely through his dark blue uniform pants.

He reached for the microphone just as the blue Chevy started to move again. “Six L Fifty. TC at Santa Monica and La Brea. Officer down.” He glanced into his side mirror and started to cry, but not from the pain. “Air Twenty is down. Jesus.”

Tomás got the Lumina moving again, his head searching for other cops as Jorge reached back for Su—

“He’s gone! Dammit!” He raised his head, feeling a sharp soreness in the back of his neck, and looked out the…open door. Fuck! He moved as much as he could as the vehicle’s motion closed the rear door, his eyes sweeping the area. Nothing. Sullivan was nowhere.

“What now?” Tomás yelled, blood spattering from a cut in his mouth as he talked.

“Get us out of here. Fast!”

Art laid down over a hundred feet of skid marks, the Chevy coming to a stop fifty feet from the inferno that had fallen from the sky. A second glowing column of smoke was rising into the dark sky about a block to the east. He threw the car into reverse as soon as it stopped and backed another hundred feet away, blocking traffic coming south on La Brea. The relay that the pursuing LAPD car had crashed came a second later.

“Call it in,” Art directed. He stepped from the car, the heat from the blaze half a football field away causing his cheeks to flush. He slammed the door and went to the trunk, pulling flares out and setting a barrier of small, bright fires across the wide boulevard.

Frankie reported to the communications center that which she was certain LAPD already knew of. More death. Dead cops. She got out of the car and walked a few yards toward the hot wall of orange that completely blocked La Brea. Her right hand came up and snapped the thumb-break strap shut. They’re on the other side of that. Just through the fire.

Art saw his partner standing alone fifty feet away, just staring into the flames. She was statue-like, unfazed by the heat or the thought of what had… Of course.

“Frankie,” Art said as he walked up from behind. “Frankie.”

A portion of the white-and-blue tail of the helicopter was protruding from the inferno, but it was soon consumed, changing from a once-beautiful craft to a blackened hunk of metal. Changed. Frankie watched it, her partner’s words eliciting no immediate response.

“You okay?”

Frankie turned around, facing her partner as the pulsating blaze silhouetted her from behind. “Fine.”

Art watched her walk past toward the car, knowing a lie when he heard it.

The DDI made some half-funny joke about burning the candle at both ends that Healy found no humor in. The mere possibility of a leak in Drummond’s directorate necessitated that he and the DDO do the grunt work on the new situation involving Cuba. CANDLE would have to wait.

“Our illustrious leader on his way down?” the DDO asked.

“In the air,” Drummond affirmed.

“Better than here.” Healy had even less respect for the DCI than Drummond did. That came more from his gut than from any overt knowledge. He was an Agency lifer with enough experience in the field that his ability to read people had picked up on Merriweather’s real makeup long before he was ever confirmed for the position. The man had been a nemesis on the Hill when he chaired the Oversight Committee, and now he was a more potent nemesis within the ranks. His trust of his subordinates was low, Healy had recognized, giving few of those “underlings” reason to reciprocate with acceptance. The DDO, five years older than his Intelligence counterpart, had seen a lot of changes and personalities in his years at Langley, but nothing on par with this. He had even found himself hoping that the President, if he didn’t come to his senses, would fall short in the election just two years off. It wasn’t a pleasant thing to contemplate, or very professional, but Mike Healy, like many at the Agency, was at the end of his rope.

And now, he hoped, so would be Anthony Merriweather’s career.

“Did Moscow acknowledge everything okay?”

“Yep,” Healy said. “Hopefully we’ll have something today. God, I hope it’s today.”

So did the DDI. All the coincidental data — the tape, Vishkov’s presence, disappearance of key Cubans — was leading directly to the conclusion that none of them truly wanted to accept, much less deal with. But that they would, regardless of their boss’s read on the situation.

“Now it’s back to desk days,” Drummond said, referring to his time as a “desk” in the Intelligence Directorate’s Soviet section. “You and me.”

Healy took one of the doughnuts from the box that had been picked up on a junk-food run by one of his night-watch people. He knew he didn’t need it. Neither did his waist. “So we’re assuming that it’s real.”

“Have to.” Drummond ignored the pastries and took a sip from his Diet Coke. “Now, two things to be done. Response is one, but that’s not ours to worry about right now.” He knew Bud would be doing enough of that. “Our thing is to find it.”

“Forget the old haystack comparison,” the DDO said, taking a big bite of the soft, sugary maple bar. “We’ve got forty-four thousand square miles to play with.”

Too true. Also too self-defeating to ponder for any length of time, Drummond reasoned. They had to go with what they could do. “What about Vishkov?”

“What about him? I agree that it’s a good bet he’s somewhere near the thing, but where is he?” The Agency had been unable to pinpoint the location of the apparently imprisoned physicist, mostly because to do such had not been a high priority until now.

There was a gentle knock at the door, which opened a second later. “Sir.”

“Hi, Sam. Late night,” Drummond said. “You can skip my office tonight.”

“Okay,” Garrity acknowledged. “What about Director Merriweather?”

Drummond looked down to the left of his desk to see if the security detail had come through already to take the burn bags. His basket was empty. “Yeah, you can do his.”

“Fine.” Great!

Healy waited for the soundproof door to close completely. “He sure isn’t old Harry,” he observed, passing judgment on the new man’s somewhat aloof demeanor. “Heard anything about him?”

“Enjoying retirement, I hear,” the DDI answered, recalling Langley’s former janitor of the seventh floor. King of it, some had said. The old guy had come with the building in ‘63, making him the longest continuously employed person on staff. That said something about longevity in a town where jobs were passed out and taken away depending on which way the political winds were blowing. “Just running his boat around.”

“That’s me in a few,” Healy said. He had done just a short stint in the Navy in the sixties, though he would say that was too long. The confinement of sea duty hadn’t agreed with him, but the open ocean did. A sixty-foot sloop had caught his eye a year back, and he was well on his way to procuring it for the day when he hung up his cloak and dagger.

“So where is Vishkov?” Drummond asked the air, bringing the conversation back on course.

“The only thing we have on the prison population comes from our exile contacts, and their folks on the island can’t be contacted now.”

Drummond frowned crookedly at that. “I don’t know if that would help anyway. Vishkov can’t be with a general prison population, even in one of the gulags.” The Communist regime, despite attempts to deny its existence, had operated several political prisons for decades. Only the media seemed to fall for the denials completely, particularly after Fidel himself gave a guided tour of what he said had once been a political reeducation facility. The Agency knew better. Soon the world would also, the DDI hoped.

“What about Paredes?” Healy asked and suggested at the same time.

“I don’t know. I thought of that, too, but the security…”

“If anyone knows, at least anyone we have access to, it would have to be Ojeda and his staff.”

The DDI rubbed his chin, a single finger reaching up to massage the stubble above his lip. “I chewed Anthony out about the reality of secure com links. This would push what he did into the minor infraction box on the scorecard.” It was part Murphy’s Law and part realization that the least opportune time for the worst to happen was likely the time it would. “But it may be our only way.”

Healy nodded. “I’ll get in touch with him. You going over to the White House?”

“Yep. Leaving in a few.”

“See you back here.”

The DDO left quickly. Time might be critical, or it might not. The problem really was that they had no idea what sort of schedule they were on to resolve this. It was still a possibility, even though they thought it probable, and that was somehow removing a sense of immediacy from the situation. A man standing with a loaded pistol in front of you got much more attention if you knew the gun was loaded. Is this one? the DDI wondered, almost afraid to accept it. Nukes were passé these days, at least to the press and the public. The Cold War was over. Pantex was taking bombs apart now, he knew, referring to the Department of Energy’s former weapons-fabrication plant in Texas. One weapon? Just one? Was one stray nuke, though potentially devastating, a real threat? Ask the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

He wondered if they really were taking this much too lightly. He wondered that, and he suddenly felt very much the way he had at the height of some of the more recent periods of tension between the former Soviet Union and his country. At those times he had decided that, knowing he’d never make it home to his wife and little boy if a first strike was launched from halfway around the world, he’d simply join the Agency’s bank of communications antennae on the roof and watch as man-made suns came to life in the heavens. Of course, he would never have time to register the visual images. He would simply not be. It was actually a very agreeable way to go, if one had to, akin to being shot in the back of the head. You never hear it coming, the DDI thought, afraid that the same reality on a grander scale might be but a breath away.

He pondered that all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, even though, just after entering the GW Parkway, the musing began to scare him half to death.

FBI Director Gordon Jones slipped his glasses off and tossed them haphazardly on his desk, letting his head fall back against his chair. Twenty hours, eighteen of those on the job, had been his day so far — and his night. Things were supposed to slow down once you reached fifty, he thought. Weren’t old people supposed to need less sleep? Now would be the perfect time for that benefit of aging to manifest itself.

It had been a bad couple of days in a generally bad year. The agent killed the previous day—Or was it two days ago? — had brought to three the number of his people killed so far that year. He hated himself for thinking of it in terms of “so far.” It was sheer lunacy. Good people dying for doing their job. The stress of that reality, combined with what was now partially on his plate, was pushing his endurance to the limit.

But he had to keep going. The tape from L.A. would be there within the hour, and there was a Bureau translator waiting to give it a close scrutiny. From there it would go to Technical Services for further analysis. Both written and verbal transcripts would then be given to the director so that he could deliver the same to the President in the morning.

Morning. That was just hours away. Jones had a spare change of clothes for occasions just like this, though he had only needed them once in his two years at the helm of the Bureau. They were definitely going to get a second use before the sun was fully up.

His head was swimming now. There’s no way. He had to get some rest. It would look great if the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation collapsed while briefing the President. Jones’s office had no place to he down; he had removed the couches to make room for some fine chairs given to the Bureau by Scotland Yard as a gesture of appreciation for assistance in a multiple-murder investigation some months before. There was a long, soft couch in the lounge a floor below. Great! The director sleeping in the coffee room!

But first he had to check on the status of the tape.

“Operations.” There would only be two agents on duty in the Bureau’s operations center at this time of the morning.

“This is the director. Any word on the delivery from L.A.?”

There was a delay while the agent checked his log. “Not yet. There is an OpRep from Miami.”

That would have to be the first operations report from the wiretap team. “Any flag on it?”

“No, sir.” A flag — nothing more than a UID (Urgent-Immediate Delivery) stamp on the report’s cover sheet — would indicate that the OpRep needed the director’s quick attention. Such a flag would also tell Jones that the tap team had gotten information directly related to the CIA leak they were hoping to identify. Without such, and considering that the tap was less than a day old, it was probably no more than an initial report of the operation’s beginning.

“I’ll grab that in the morning,” Jones said. “Secure it until then. I’ll be in the lounge.”

The director hung up and fiddled with the array of buttons on his watch, setting the alarm to go off in three-and-a-half hours. A full night for some old geezer, he thought, amused at the fact that his state of tiredness might somehow be indicative of his hidden youth.

His memory made him special.

At the age of six, he memorized the capital cities of all fifty states, and ten years later earned his summer money performing “mind magic” at the county fair in the rural Oklahoma town he grew up in. For Patrick Tunney it was second nature. People said things; he remembered them. People did things; he remembered what. People committed things to paper; he stored visual images for later recall.

The last aspect of his amazing talent had helped him get into the University of Oklahoma, and later the Central Intelligence Agency.

He had already burned the twenty-eight names into his brain, in both English and Cyrillic characters, though he was certain if he found them, they would be in the latter. After that simple exercise, which he accomplished using an indescribable form of numerical pneumonics he had somehow stumbled upon as a child, he joined his fellow archivists for the short trip from the embassy to the Defense Ministry annex north of the Moscow Ring Road.

It was a beautiful morning, the sun low in the southeastern sky, and the few wisps of clouds high enough to catch the light and turn it into shades of the rainbow only God could have imagined. Truly beautiful, Tunney observed, knowing he would remember this sight forever.

He closed the door behind as always. There was little need for obvious security. Anything of importance in the Director of Central Intelligence’s Office was alarmed. To accidentally trip one of the sensors would bring a contingent of armed security officers, and would result in a night of explaining and paperwork.

But Sam Garrity knew from the minute he entered the office that this time would be as simple as all the others. It was sitting right there, after all. For the taking. No effort at all. The spy in Garrity smiled at the simplicity of it. The criminal in him proceeded to do it.

He walked to the director’s desk, a generally neat workspace that was not his responsibility, and laid his clipboard down. Next he picked up the blank legal pad sitting square in the middle and tore the top three sheets off, which he then clipped under the stack of cleaning requests on his clipboard. With that, it was done, except for that which he would do later.

That and, of course, the spit-and-polish shine he would give the director’s office.