Red Right Hand

43.

CHARLIE THOMPSON STOOD in an apartment full of boxes and wondered where the hell she’d put her keys.

Officially, she’d moved out of O’Brien’s house four days ago, once her transfer had come through. That’s when the movers picked up her boxes and drove them here. But unofficially, she’d been sleeping at a hotel every night since the shit went down in San Francisco. Hard to believe that less than three weeks ago, she and Kate were engaged. Now she was single, living in a condo with a partial view of Lake Michigan, and working out of the Milwaukee field office.

She’d never seen a transfer go through so quickly. But O’Brien had been motivated. “You’re lucky you’re keeping your badge,” she’d said. “If it were up to me, you’d be leaving here in chains.”

Thompson spotted her keys atop the mantel. Snatched them up and headed for the door. She was late. Halfway out, she doubled back and grabbed the manila folder on the counter. She’d brought it home from the office yesterday and needed it today. If she’d forgotten it, she would have had to turn around.

Once she was on the road, she let her car’s GPS guide her through the unfamiliar streets to I-43. She headed not south toward the field office, but north toward a small town called Grafton. Toward her new assignment.

The sky was clear and bright, the Saturday-morning traffic sparse. The September air was just crisp enough to remind her of summer’s passing. She drove with the windows down, the radio off, her hair blowing, enjoying the roar of the wind in her ears, and the sun’s warming glow through the windshield.

The drive was flat and green, the highway divided by a strip of grass and lined with trees on either side. Occasionally, the trees would fall away, and farmland would peek through.

She exited the highway and headed west on a commercial stretch. Best Buy, Costco, Home Depot. Eventually, a town sprung up around her.

Ever smaller streets, ever more residential, until finally she stopped outside a modest ranch in a nondescript suburban neighborhood. The house was white with red shingles. Arched windows and doorways lent it an almost Spanish air, making it something of an oddity on this block.

Thompson strode up the short walkway onto the porch and rapped twice on the front door. An agent peeked through the narrow window to the side of it. He unlocked the door-bolts clunking, chains rattling-and let her in. “Where is he?” she asked.

“Kitchen,” the agent replied.

He was eating breakfast when she walked in. Half a grapefruit. A cup of coffee. A pill organizer sat beside his plate, the kind with a compartment for every day of the week. A tan ball of fur snored quietly on his bony lap. “Agent Thompson,” he said, smiling.

“Morning, Frank,” she said.

She hadn’t liked Hendricks’s plan one bit when he’d called to read her in. It was too dangerous, she thought, and there were too many opportunities for it to go wrong.

Honestly, it had gone wrong. The deal had been that Yancey would be delivered alive and made to answer for what he’d done. But in the end, he’d given Segreti no choice. Thompson wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. Yancey was a bad man. The bomb blast that leveled Segreti’s safe house killed nine federal employees, some of them her friends. And then there was that poor bastard who Yancey shot dead in the parking garage-a case that officially remained unsolved because Cameron could never testify without compromising the Bureau’s case against the Council.

Thompson knew nothing about Yancey’s role in bringing the members of the True Islamic Caliphate into the country. Bellum made sure anything that could implicate them in the bombing of the Golden Gate was buried.

Segreti’s apparent suicide, which was supposed to happen once Yancey was safely neutralized and removed from the train car, was another sticking point for her. She thought it reckless and unnecessary. But Segreti refused to testify against the Council unless the world thought him dead-not to protect himself, he insisted, but because he couldn’t stand another Albuquerque on his conscience-so it was unavoidable.

Staging it had been easy enough. Every BART train is equipped with between eight and twelve cameras; they simply leaked the most convincing angle to the press and had Hendricks’s Bellum contact, Reyes, delete any footage that made it clear Segreti shot six inches past his own left ear.

Enlisting Reyes in the effort, however, had taken some work. Hendricks reached out to him a few hours before he was supposed to exchange Segreti for Cameron, using the number from the texts Cameron had intercepted. At first, Reyes was furious-Hendricks had assaulted him, after all, and put several of his men in the hospital. Hendricks let him vent. When Reyes finally ran out of steam, Hendricks told him what he knew of Yancey’s interest in Segreti.

“You really expect me to take your word for it that Yancey’s in the pocket of some vast criminal conspiracy?” Reyes had asked.

“No,” Hendricks had replied. “That’s why I need you to get in contact with Special Agent Charlotte Thompson of the FBI.”

Hendricks provided him with no contact information, instead insisting Reyes do the legwork, so he would know she wasn’t fake. In the time it took for him to track down her phone number, Hendricks filled her in on his exchange with Reyes and gave her a rough outline of his plan. Once Reyes was onboard, it was simply a matter of moving the pieces into place and everyone playing his or her respective part.

In a way, she thought, Segreti’s apparent demise was fitting. He’d been resurrected on camera and killed again the same way. This time, the FBI wasn’t leaving anything to chance-aside from Charlie and her handpicked detail, the only people in the Bureau who knew Segreti was still alive were O’Brien and the director himself.

“How’d your appointment with the doc go?” Thompson asked. Segreti looked like he’d lost weight since she’d last seen him-which seemed impossible, since it was only days ago-and he’d developed a sickly pallor.

“Good,” Segreti said. “He says the cancer’s responding to treatment. I might have another year in me after all. And he gave me something for the nausea, so food’s been staying down a little better.”

“Glad to hear it.”

The dog, Ella, stirred and looked at Thompson. Then she yawned and went back to sleep.

“How’s she been doing?” Thompson asked.

“A little better every day, but the agents tell me she still whines something fierce whenever I leave.” He smiled again. “Whatcha got there?”

Thompson opened the manila folder. Handed him the top page. When Segreti saw it, he laughed. It was a death certificate with his name on it.

“Thought you might get a kick out of that. In the eyes of the U.S. government, you’re officially a dead man.”

“Twice over now. You got anything else in there for me?”

She handed him the second document. “That’s a copy of your immunity agreement. Everything’s exactly as we discussed, and as you can see, the attorney general has signed off on it.”

Segreti read it carefully, nodding when he reached the section that ensured that Cameron and Hendricks could not be prosecuted for what went down in San Francisco. Then he set the document aside.

“So,” Thompson said, “what now?”

Segreti smiled. “Now you pull up a chair and I tell you everything I know about the Council.”