The End Game

42

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

After a troubled night tossing around Gigi’s sofa bed I decided to make a very early start and it wasn’t even eight o’clock by the time I found myself standing outside the Criminal Justice Center on Filbert Street, waiting for Faye Devane, hoping she’d be willing to talk about someone who died more than thirty years ago, someone she may not want to think about, let alone discuss.

Courtesy of Kurt and Gigi, I had a recent photo of her and a solid idea of where she’d be at this time of morning. I didn’t feel great about Kurt having hacked her email account and credit card statements, but I couldn’t risk either the delay or the point-blank rejection that would, in all likelihood, accompany a polite request.

Faye Devane was a Philly native. She’d grown up in Glenwood and won a scholarship to George Washington where she’d spent nine years that culminated in a doctorate in Juridical Science. After that, she’d moved back home and joined the Philadelphia Bar. She lived alone in a Brewerytown apartment, having never married nor had children. Her persona appeared to be reflected totally in her professional life as an assistant defender working exclusively for the Philadelphia Defenders Association, a non-profit organization whose members are barred from both private practice and partisan politics. From the snapshot of her that my indefatigable, if quirky, support staff had put together, I suspected she’d be a formidable opponent, both in court and as an interview subject.

Kurt had been tracking her cell phone since she’d left her apartment at six forty-five and had messaged me that she’d be arriving at some point within the next five minutes, her routine being to get in at least an hour before she was due in court.

After several minutes scanning the pedestrian traffic in both directions, I saw her approaching, briefcase in hand. She looked much younger than her fifty-six years. She wore a navy blue pants suit, which I assumed would highlight the blue eyes I’d already seen in her photos, and polished black loafers. Her raven-dark hair was short-almost boyish-and it didn’t look like her slim figure had changed much over the past thirty years: easier to maintain given she’d never been at the mercy of pregnancy and childbirth and the hormones and physical changes that accompany them. It was still easy to guess how she would have looked when she knew my dad and just as easy to see why any man would have fallen for her. She had an agile grace and moved with total confidence-both regarding her professional status and her appearance.

As she approached, I intercepted her as gracefully and non-threateningly as I could managed.

“Faye?”

She paused and nodded, her face giving absolutely nothing away. I guess she’d had years to practice that skill.

“I’m Sean Reilly, Colin’s son.” I watched and saw her eyes fill with recognition, then surprise, before settling on a forced confusion. “Can we please talk? Just for a few minutes?”

She made a move to get past me. “I don’t know who that is.”

I put my arm out while giving her a relaxed, warm smile. “I hope you lie better in court.”

She fixed me with a firm, no-nonsense look. “I never lie in court. I leave that to the cops.” She scrutinized me more closely. “You’re a cop yourself, aren’t you?”

She tried to step around me again, but I blocked her. “Faye-”

“I’m expected in court.”

I knew I had only one chance to get through to her.

“I’m not a cop,” I told her. “I’m with the FBI. And from what I’ve read, you and I share something else with my dad. Your whole life is about fighting for justice in the face of huge odds. About the greater good rather than personal gain. He would have been proud of you. I hope he’d be proud of me, too.”

She was quiet for a moment. “What do you want?”

“Just to talk. Give me ten minutes. Please.”

Her eyes flicked down to her watch then back to me. She sighed. “OK. Ten minutes. This way.”

She gestured east along the street and we headed in that direction. She eyed me as we walked, sizing me up, but more than that-like she was looking for something in me. It made me wonder if, somewhere in her mind, she was twenty-four again and walking with my dad.

“You’re from here, aren’t you?”

“Look, I know you probably know more about me than I remember about myself. Just do me a favor and don’t tell me how, OK? ’Cause I’d really rather not know.”

We covered the block in silence. I thought about the fine line between how a tragedy can either define your life-make everything about that one moment-or give your life crystal-clear definition, as it seemed to have had with Faye. The jury was still out on which applied to me, because although my life had definition for many years, over the past few months everything had become defined by what had happened to Alex and by my father’s suicide. I just hoped there was a way to get back to the other side.

I followed her across Twelfth Street and into the Reading Terminal Market, which occupied the lower levels of a nineteenth-century train shed. She led me through the market stalls-most of them only just open for the day-till we arrived at Old City Coffee.

I asked her what she wanted and ordered, then carried our coffees over to an empty table at the edge of the seating area where we took seats opposite each other. She sat in silence for a moment, then turned toward me.

“You look like him,” she said as her gaze danced around my face. “Not just the eyes. The expression.”

I nodded, half-smiling. “So I hear.” I paused for a breath, then I asked her, “Were you together?”

Much as she tried to mask it, I could see her breath catch and her eyes flare. “You don’t mince words, do you?”

“I’m sorry, but-I wouldn’t be here if this wasn’t important. And I’m not some troubled soul looking for some kind of closure related to his parents, believe me. This has to do with an investigation.”

“Into what?”

“His death.”

This time, she didn’t try to hide her surprise. “What are you talking about? And why now, after all these years?”

“Tell me about you and him first,” I said.

A solemn sadness spread across her face. “We were together,” she said, averting my gaze. “Very much so.”

Even though I suspected as much, the stark, unabashed confirmation still hollowed out my stomach. The idea of my dad, a dad I hardly got to know, someone I’d idealized despite the way he died, maybe even more so because of it, the idea of him, leading a double life, cheating on my mom-it was a tough image to accept, even after all this time.

I asked, “How long were you together?”

“Just over a year,” she answered without hesitation. “I’m sorry if this is disappointing to you, but I feel you want the truth.”

“I do. And I appreciate your candor.”

She nodded and looked away, into the distance. “I never recovered, you know. He was very special. A big part of me died with him. I never forgave myself either.”

“For what?”

She took a strengthening sip of coffee. “Your dad was drifting through life when I met him, Sean. He and your mother… they loved each other, but they weren’t in love. Do you understand what that means? I mean, really understand?”

“Time affects all couples, married or not,” I countered. “It’s only human, right?”

“Yes, but your dad… he was a man of passion.” She visibly blushed, then shook her head. “I don’t mean it that way,” she said. “Not that he wasn’t-what I mean is, he expected a lot out of life. Big gulps of it. And, over time, his life with your mom had gone stale. A lot of it was her fault, he felt.” She paused a bit, hesitated, then added, “You know she had a miscarriage?”

And the hits keep on coming. I had no idea. “No.”

“I’m sorry… she did. A girl. Six months in. She would have been around four years younger than you.” She took a breath, watching me, clearly judging whether to keep going. “It was bad. Colin said she was never the same after that. He said there was a sadness in her that was always there. And Colin couldn’t blame her for it. It was just bad luck. But it took its toll on them. On him, too, first because of the miscarriage, then because of how your mom couldn’t come out of it. I mean, he understood she’d feel devastated. He was too. But, year after year, she stayed that way. He could see it in her eyes. He ended up morose, dour. His spark was gone.”

“And that changed when you came into his life?”

She seemed increasingly uncomfortable.

“Please, Faye,” I said. “It’s fine. I’m not judging you, not at all. I just need to know. It’s important.”

She nodded, willing herself to keep going. “He came back to life. He told me that’s how he felt, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave your mother. Or you. He said it was out of the question. He cared for you both too much. He couldn’t do it.”

“But you wanted him to?”

I watched as she allowed the memories to rise to the surface-feelings she maybe hadn’t allowed herself for over three decades. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want him all to myself. But, above all, I wanted him to be happy. And part of his appeal was about how good a person he was. I know it sounds perverse, but his firm commitment to you both-it just made me want him more. And then, a few weeks before he died, he told me he’d decided to leave your mom. He was worried about her-worried about you, even more-but he felt he only had one life to live and he’d done everything he could to try and make things better and that maybe she’d be happier having a fresh start with someone else, without that baggage. He asked if I’d wait for him to find the right moment to do it. I know, a lot of guys say that, right? It’s like Meg Ryan’s friend in When Harry Met Sally, the pathetic mistress who’s totally delusional about her guy leaving his wife for her and they keep reminding her, ‘He’s never going to leave her for you.’ But your dad wasn’t like that. He wasn’t lying about that. And I was in no rush.” She dropped her eyes, and her voice broke a touch. “Afterwards, I felt so guilty about what happened. I thought that maybe if nothing had happened between us he wouldn’t have… I never imagined it would make him do what he did.”

Only then did I see the true sense of loss in her eyes. Maybe still as raw as the moment she heard Colin was dead. A bottomless chasm that could never be filled.

Still, something wasn’t sitting right. “That’s why you feel guilty? You think he killed himself because he couldn’t handle his double life or the thought of leaving my mom?”

“Well, what else could I think? It was the only way I could make sense of it. I mean, he was a strong man. Clear-thinking. He seemed to be in control; he had two separate, parallel lives, and he seemed OK with how he was going to handle it. But I couldn’t see any other reason why he’d do it, and I could never talk about it, not to anyone. No one knew. Isn’t that why you’re asking me all this?”

“You think that was the cause of his depression?”

“What depression?”

“He was seeing a shrink in the months before he died. He was diagnosed with clinical depression. He was being treated for it.”

“Nonsense. Colin wasn’t depressed. Conflicted, yes. Torn, maybe. But depressed? No way. Not at all.” She said it with total conviction. “I would have known. He was at peace with it. I mean, he felt bad about what he was going to do and about me having to wait, but like I said, I was in no rush. I was very young. I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. Little did I know how deeply he’d already affected me.” She sat back, visibly relishing some lost memory. “He was happy when he was with me. We were happy.” Emphasis on the “we.”

Right then, I think she wished she’d been more tactful.

I looked away, gave her some space to recover her poise. “He certainly wasn’t seeing any therapist,” she added, her tone firm. “I would have known about it.”

“My mother didn’t know. I’m pretty sure she didn’t know about you either. The man could keep secrets.”

“Not from me, believe me. Not about something personal like that.”

“Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to tell the shrink about you, and since he couldn’t find a reason for his being depressed, the shrink ascribed it to clinical depression. It’s in the coroner’s report. My mom met the shrink. I mean, he did kill himself-or that’s what everyone accepted at the time.”

“But you think otherwise?”

“I’m not sure.”

Her eyes flared wide. “You think he was murdered?”

“I don’t know.”

I’d been thinking about this all night. If he had a lover and felt conflicted about it, it could explain a depression and maybe, maybe, the suicide. But if he’d been planning to leave my mom-and me-for her, then it underlined my suspicions. Someone with plans to make a new life with his lover doesn’t go blow his brains out. And from what Faye was telling me, he didn’t seem overly troubled by it. Certainly nowhere near enough to even begin to justify a suicide.

I asked, “What can you tell me about the days or weeks leading up to his death? Was there anything particular he was involved with?”

“Something that he’d kill himself about? Or that others would want to kill him for?”

“Maybe.”

She finished her cup as she thought about it. “He was very focused on all the big issues facing the country, and it wasn’t a good time,” she said. “We were in a deep recession. Inflation, interest rates, oil prices-they were big problems. And that was the year of the presidential election, Reagan against Carter, a big showdown… they had opposing ideals, you were too young to really know about it. They were troubled times. Abroad, there was the hostage crisis in Iran.”

“I remember watching it on the news on TV with him and my mom,” I said.

“Yeah, it was a big deal at the time.” A wistful look brightened her face. “I thought of him when I saw Argo, you know. Poor Colin. It was like the whole country was under his watch, he took so much to heart.”

“But nothing specific?”

“It was all on his radar. It was his nature.”

“There had to be something out of the ordinary? Something that struck home more than the rest?”

“You’ve got to understand, his work involved a lot of confidential meetings, things he couldn’t and wouldn’t talk to me about. I mean, a few weeks before he died, an old college buddy of his got in touch and he wanted me to meet him. It was like a fresh part of his life that he could involve me in, a part of his past he didn’t need to exclude me from. We could actually go out and socialize with him, he didn’t need to hide me with him since the guy didn’t even live in the US. And it was great to meet him, to be out with Colin openly. We went out for drinks. But it wasn’t just a social call, they were working on something together, and I couldn’t be part of that. Which was frustrating, because his friend was fun and I wanted to hear more about his life and his travels, especially with that accent. Then a couple of weeks later, Colin was dead. I didn’t understand it then and I still don’t understand it now, though it set me on a path. That’s how life works.”

Something about what she said pinged deep inside some crevasse in my brain. “What accent?”

“I’m sorry?”

“His friend. What accent did he have?”

“Oh,” she recalled. “Portuguese. He was from Portugal. And I love the accent, it’s like Brazilian, I’ve sung along to it for years without knowing what the words mean, salsa and bossa nova, Antonio Carlos Jobim and-”

The crevasse was lighting up like lava was about to burst out of it. “Portuguese? What was his name? Do you remember?”

Her nose crinkled under the effort of dredging her memory for a long-lost name, then I said, “Camacho? Octavio Camacho?”

Her face recoiled with surprise. “Yes, exactly. How do you know that?”

43

Camacho. The Portuguese investigative reporter whose name Kurt and Gigi had dug up in that Corrigan-linked CIA dossier and who died in a rock climbing accident the same year my dad did. I needed to check on the date of his death, but I was sure it was within weeks, if not days, of my dad’s death.

They knew each other. More than that-they were old college buddies.

I was having trouble controlling my internal expletives. What the hell had they been discussing? And why did they both die? My gut was telling me they were both killed to silence them, but ever since that night at Nick’s his warnings about finding out my dad was actually part of something bad were still gnawing at me.

Right now, though, I had to downplay it with Faye. I didn’t want to expose her to any danger and so I really didn’t need her getting all overzealous about finding out what really happened to my dad. One obsessed vigilante was enough.

“I just remember my parents talking about him,” I said. “It’s the kind of unusual name that stays with you.” Moving her away from that, I asked, “You don’t know what they were working on?”

“No. I just know it was grave. It consumed Colin for days, but he wouldn’t tell me what was going on. All I know is that he was struggling with a major decision. Why not ask Octavio? I’m sure you could track him down?”

I was surprised that she didn’t seem to know that Camacho was dead. Either he’d died after my dad did-and given that it wasn’t even noteworthy news in Portugal, she would have been oblivious to it here in the US. On the other hand, if he died before my dad, surely my dad would have known and told her about it? She would have known even if he hadn’t told her-unless he didn’t want her to know.

Nick’s words again, like stubborn fleas, scratching away at me.

There was nothing more to learn here. I drained my mug and we both got up to leave; I told her it was great to meet her, despite the circumstances and the bulk of our chat.

As we stepped outside, she asked, “Will you let me know what you find out?”

I wasn’t sure, but I still said, “Absolutely.”

As I walked away, I decided I would. I couldn’t help feeling like I was trying to learn the truth for her as much as for my mom and myself.

I checked the clock on the dash as I got in the BMW and called Gigi and Kurt. I asked them to redouble their efforts on Camacho. Clearly, he was key to figuring out what happened to my dad.

Kurt said he had some news for me: he’d managed to hack into the computer in the office of Rossetti’s boss and pull out his online search history for the days leading up to his death. There was a lot there, as you’d expect for a newspaper editor, one working for a top paper. I said we’d look at it together when I got back and I made myself comfortable as I set out on the two-and-a-half hour drive down to Bethesda, Maryland and the second ghost from a murky past that Kurt and Gigi had unearthed for me.

It was time to have a chat with Dr. Ralph Orford and see what he had to say about my dad’s state of mind.

Sandman arrived at Reagan National at twenty past nine in the morning. He’d slept for almost the entire two hours and twenty-five minutes, waking only as the jet touched down. There was a car waiting for him at Garage A, key in the usual place, a field kit locked in the trunk.

He hadn’t bothered waiting for the EMT, Fire Rescue and Miami PD to descend on the crash site, hadn’t needed confirmation that Siddle was dead. The building that now housed the Lamborghini was so damaged by the collision that the senior Fire Rescue officer had immediately declared it unsafe and evacuated the apartments on the second and third floors. In terms of collateral damage, it was a less than fitting tribute to a man who had killed so many without blinking.

By the time Sandman had driven back to Miami International it was after four in the morning. He used the two hours before check in to read the file on his next assignment.

He knew the psychiatrist by reputation, if not personally. As he always did, Sandman would get inside the head of his target, but in this case it would be quite impossible to achieve this at a level anywhere approaching the capabilities of the target himself.

44

Bethesda, Maryland

My early start was paying off and it wasn’t yet noon as I rode the ramp off I-495 and headed into Bethesda. Traffic was light and before long, I was rolling down Old Georgetown Road, which was where Ralph Orford had his office.

It was time for the third stop on my magical mystery tour of the past. Mother, lover, psychiatrist-it was like a three-card spread from the Woody Allen Tarot deck.

From what Kurt and Gigi had learnt, Orford’s life had barely altered across thirty years, the only adjustment being a reduction in the number of hours spent seeing patients, both at his office and across a short list of hospital psychiatric departments. As of five years ago Orford spent at least ten hours every Monday at Walter Reed where he took a strong interest in the more complex cases. Tuesday through Thursday he was at the office. He rotated around several private psychiatric hospitals on Fridays, keeping the weekend free for golf or hunting, a fact which sparked my interest in light of what Rossetti’s editor had tried so hard to conceal.

In fact, I was still unsure about what Orford would turn out to be. Was he my dad’s shrink, and had he genuinely diagnosed him as depressive and treated him before he died? Or was he a CIA plant who had been parachuted in after the fact to pad out the coroner’s report and lay any suspicions about my dad’s death to rest?

Of course, I was leaning toward the latter, and for someone I suspected of being a key part of whatever conspiracy I was starting to unravel, his public life had been an almost entirely open book-at least it was if you had a couple of talented hackers working with you who could follow the digital breadcrumbs and map out his movements as accurately as if he’d swallowed a tracker. There were gaps-sometimes lasting a few days-that were consistent with someone traveling under any number of cover identities, and Gigi hadn’t managed to pinpoint any of them. If he had been working for Corrigan, then this made sense, because he would have had the full resources of the CIA at his disposal when it came to creating watertight legends.

As it had been in the 80s, his practice’s client list included congressmen, lobbyists, journalists, Fortune 500 executives and university professors, and it struck me this was a source of confidential information that would just keep on giving. If Orford was indeed dirty, he and his handlers had clearly been careful about how they used what they discovered, evidenced by Orford not having so much as a question mark hanging over his entire professional life.

The small office building in which Orford’s office suite had been located for the last twelve years also housed two dentists, an OB-GYN, a family doctor and a dietary nutritionist-all on the first and second floors above a high-end travel agent, pretty much the only kind that had survived the almost total exodus of the business from the real world to online.

I passed the row of cars parked on either side of his street and pulled in around the corner, behind the building. I got out and headed back and I had just reached the corner when my eyes snared something that froze me in place.

A man in a baseball cap and gloves was walking up to the building.

Sandman was parked fifty yards down the street from Orford’s office. He’d been there since eleven, running over the plan in his head while he waited for the clock to hit something approaching an early lunch hour.

As he waited, he wondered where this crisis would take him next. If it all went according to plan, then only Roos and Tomblin would remain. Sandman wondered which of them would blink first-if indeed either of them did. They hadn’t survived more than seventy-five years in the secret world between them without knowing how to stare down a threat, but Sandman had a strong feeling this was perhaps one of the most potentially catastrophic situations they had faced. In Sandman’s experience, even the most battle-hardened soldier was capable of losing control when faced with something outside their operational experience, and although he trusted both men whose bidding he performed without question or complaint, he suspected that one of them was more likely to lose a game of chicken than the other.

He checked his watch-five to twelve-and pressed the dial button on his smartphone just as a white BMW drove past. He couldn’t see the driver’s head from the tinted windows and the fact that the driver had his head turned away from him, but it wasn’t something that registered as a threat on Sandman’s radar in any way.

After a couple of rings, Orford came on the line.

Sandman said, “The season’s over for sika deer, but a limited cull will continue. Considering our mutual interests, we should discuss this at the earliest opportunity.”

Sandman could hear Orford processing this in the silence that followed.

“I’ll send Violet out for an early lunch.” Orford’s voice was calm but focused.

“Good.”

Two minutes later, he watched as a young woman wearing a smart coat over a pencil skirt-hair, makeup and posture all perfect-exited the building and headed toward a strip of restaurants three blocks to the south.

Sandman checked his face in the mirror, climbed out and walked up the sidewalk toward Orford’s

It was the baseball cap and gloves that gave him away.

As I held back and watched him approach the building, an instinctive memory meshed with what my eyes were sending to my brain. Although the man was clean-shaven and no longer wearing glasses-his face was half-obscured by the turned-up collar of an old-style waist-length coat-I instantly recognized him as the bearded man from Kirby’s. And I figured the odds were pretty slim that he was here to buy an all-inclusive tour of Italy’s opera houses.

I quickly pulled out my phone to snap a picture of him, but I was too late as he reached the entrance to the building and turned away to ring the buzzer.

I muttered a curse, pocketed the phone, and watched. The killer pulled the steel-and-glass door open and disappeared inside. I charged down the street and got there just as the door closer was doing its job, and just managed to catch the big glass door before its lock clicked in. Behind the glass, I glimpsed Kirby’s killer before he disappeared through an internal fire door in one corner of the small lobby. It was no surprise he’d decided not to take the elevator, aiming to considerably reduce the risk of running into anyone.

I knew that if I followed him up the stairs, I’d be an easy target if he heard me, so I pressed the call button and waited for the elevator.

The bastard wasn’t getting away this time.

45

Sandman arrived on the second floor, checked the corridor was empty, then exited the stairwell and made his way past a dentist’s clinic toward Orford’s office. A shared kitchen stood opposite the door to the dentist’s suite. It was empty right now, but would surely start to get busy shortly.

Sandman only needed ten minutes, fifteen at the outside.

He found the door to the suite and entered, then locked the door behind him, crossed the reception area, and let himself into the psychiatrist’s office, closing the door behind him.

Ralph Orford was sitting in a large leather chair behind a polished oak desk on which sat an open laptop, a pen set, a blotter and several golf trophies. The office was tastefully decorated-mostly with large black-and-white photographs of Maryland’s national parks. A few personal photos sat on a lacquered filing cabinet beside a large window. There was an old-fashioned modular hi-fi on a side cabinet, with at least five hundred CDs arranged in tastefully designed wall shelves above. A leather sofa stood against the back wall beside a closet door.

Orford looked Sandman up and down. “This is completely against all protocol.”

“Not all,” Sandman replied. “We wouldn’t be talking right now otherwise.”

“But for you to come here? In broad daylight? That’s not how we work.”

Sandman sat in one of the two chairs facing the desk. He could see that the poor guy was trying to stay cool, but was clearly rattled.

“We need you,” he told Orford. “There was no time to set up a meet at the blind.”

The mere casual invocation caused a visible change in Orford’s attitude. He let out a ragged breath, then asked, “What do you need?”

“There’s a senator. He’s like a stray dog with a juicy bone he can’t stop chewing on. We need it to look like the guy’s gone bananas. Like everything he’s been doing for the past year is the delusion of an unhinged mind. It needs to be very public and as messy as possible. A total meltdown. Something that’s a shoo-in for the top of the six o’clock news.”

“Something like the Ukrainian ambassador?”

“Something exactly like that.”

Orford’s eyes widened. “You do know it’s highly unpredictable? It’s the nature of it. People react differently depending on what they’ve got tucked away in the folds of their brains.”

“That’ll be fine.”

“Delivery?”

“Injection. He’s diabetic, so the needle mark will be discounted as an insulin shot.”

After a moment’s consideration, Orford stood. “I have some in the fridge. You’ll need the right syringe.”

Sandman moved to one side as Orford walked over to a wall unit. He pulled out a key fob from his pocket and unlocked it. It led to a walk-in cupboard with a locked fridge, a fire safe, a set of golf clubs and floor-to-ceiling shelves of confidential patient notes.

“He’ll need zero-point-four milliliters per pound of bodyweight. Intramuscular.”

“The upper thigh. Yes, I know.”

“How much does he weigh?”

“About the same as you, I’d guess,” Sandman said.

Orford didn’t register the significance of the remark as he unlocked the fridge and pulled out a small vial. He then opened a shallow metal drawer in a standing unit and carefully selected a small syringe.

I had the door to Orford’s suite open in less than thirty seconds. There was no one at reception, but I could hear voices from inside Orford’s office. I drew one of the confiscated FBI Glocks from my coat pocket and edged toward the door.

“I still think I need to look at his medical file. He could be taking something that’ll react badly to the drug.” I assumed it was Orford talking.

“Oh, I’m sure that won’t be necessary.” That voice I recognized. And although the words were reassuring, his tone was full of thinly-veiled menace. “Tell me, doc, are you on any medication?”

The room went quiet for a moment, then I heard Orford, his voice clearly imbued with fear. “What are you-no, wait. You can’t!” Fear was quickly giving way to incredulity. “Dear God. Padley? That was you? You did that?”

“A fitting way for him to go, don’t you think?”

“But… why?” Orford pleaded.

“Think of it as a tribute to his work-and, in this case, to yours.”

“You’re going to make it look like I injected myself? No one’s going to believe it.”

“Why not?” the killer said. “Hoffman, Lilly, Bob Wilson. All the great warriors of consciousness have wanted to dive off the deep end. They wanted to know what was there before they sent anyone else. And you’re one of the greats, doc. You wouldn’t want to go out any other way, would you?”

“But why?” he asked again

“We’re just cleaning house. Think of it as the Janitors’ work coming full circle.”

“And Siddle?”

The killer didn’t answer. I guess he didn’t need to. Then it sounded like Orford knocked something over as he tried to back away. “No, please…”

“Come on, doc. Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.”

It was time to intervene. I turned the handle as quietly as possible, then shouldered the door open and burst in, my gun leading me.

The killer already had his left arm around Orford’s throat and the needle about to go into the doctor’s neck when I leveled the gun at him.

I yelled, “Let him go,” stepping in closer. “Let him go right now.”

Orford screamed “No!” as the killer pushed the needle into his neck, his finger tight on the plunger.

I figured I could put a round through the bastard’s hand before he got the drug into Orford’s bloodstream, but even as I was thinking it, the guy adjusted his position so his hand was shielded by the psychiatrist’s shoulder.

Involuntarily, I gave a micro-nod of appreciation.

This guy wasn’t just good. He was exceptional.

For a second, I didn’t move. Nor did he. I could see he was thinking fast about his next move. He looked right at me, his eyes, though they kept darting out from either side of Orford’s head so quickly that I could only catch brief glimpses of them, so dark they were almost black.

“Really?” he said. “You want to save this guy? After everything he did to your son?”

Confusion gripped Orford’s face, but all I saw was a solar flare of blinding truth. The logic of it was so unassailably elegant, yet so totally perverse. This was the guy who had programmed Alex. The same guy who maybe, somehow, drove my father to kill himself.

It only seemed right that I should be the one to refresh his memory.

“Alex Martinez,” I hissed at the doctor. “My four-year-old son, in San Diego. The job Corrigan asked you to do.”

Orford couldn’t hide his own flash of recognition.

The killer must have felt Orford’s body momentarily tense-a crystal-clear tell that he knew exactly what I was talking about.

I could feel my finger tightening around the trigger before my brain had even sent a message to my hand. And just as the part of me that was still a reasonably clear-thinking FBI agent waged a split-second Armageddon with my raw hunger for revenge, the killer pressed down on the plunger and shoved his screaming victim toward me before pulling out his handgun with lightning agility.

My aim was blocked by Orford who was staggering toward me, his hands reaching desperately for the syringe. I ducked around him and fired twice just as three bullets from the killer’s automatic cut through the space I’d occupied a split second earlier and drilled into the wall behind me in a perfect kill pattern. My own shots missed, though I didn’t think by much.

Jesus, the guy could move.

I ducked left as the bastard unleashed more shots before crashing out the window and dropping from view.

We were on the second floor-there was simply no way he was going to walk away from that, I thought as I bolted to the window, but there he was, on the damp soil and rising out of a perfect roll. He was already upright when I fired several rounds at him as he jagged one way, then the other, and sprinted off down the sidewalk.

“Fuck!”

I gritted my teeth so hard I could feel the roots grind into my jaw, and after an instant of raging frustration, I realized that Orford needed urgent medical attention if I was going to keep him alive long enough to answer my questions-but the door to his office was open and he’d vanished from sight.

Where the hell was he?

I rushed out into the suite’s reception. No one was there, but the door was open. Raising my gun, I edged toward the door and peered out into the corridor. Down and across the corridor from the suite, Orford was standing in the kitchen, a large kitchen knife in each of his hands.

I moved toward him. Thankfully, the area was otherwise empty. “Orford, we need to talk. About my dad, Colin Reilly. Then I’ll get you the help you need.”

He was staring at me with manic eyes, his pupils dilated like he was staring into the darkest black hole, his face was all sweaty, his knife arm moving jerkily from side to side.

“Stay back,” he hissed. “You’re not getting me too.”

My arms opened up in a calming gesture, my gun no longer aimed at him, my other palm wide open.

“Orford,” I said. “Put the knife down and talk to me. That’s all I need. Colin Reilly. 1981. I need to know what happened. I need to know what you did to him.”

He was just eyeing me with sheer terror. “I know what you are. I know what you really are inside-that,” he said with a mix of fear and disdain. “You don’t fool me. Just-stay away from me. You’re not getting inside me. Do you hear me? You’re not getting me too!”

Whatever he’d been injected with was taking over and messing with his mind, big time. I realized I might not have much time. “Orford, calm down. Just talk to me. What did you do to my father?”

“Your father? How the hell should I know? Your people-they probably took him too. Like they took everyone. Everyone!”

“Orford, put the knife down,” I said as I inched closer. “I’m with the FBI.” I tried to talk as unthreateningly and soothingly as I could, but he was backing away, riven with fear, his eyes manically darting left and right-then they registered the window.

Our eyes met-then he just freaked and yelled, “You’re not taking me, you fuckers!” and he threw the knife at me-a lousy throw, it just flew past harmlessly-before charging towards the window. I rushed after him but I couldn’t cover the ground in time to grab him before he flung it open and just threw himself out.

His landing wasn’t anywhere as graceful as the killer’s. He was sprawled on the ground, his neck and arms twisted at odd angles.

I hurtled down the stairs and out of the building and reached him just as a few gawkers were hesitantly approaching his prone body. Blood was oozing out of his mouth and his eyes were just staring into the distance, unfocused.

“Someone call 911! Get an ambulance here,” I yelled at the shocked faces as I tried to focus on what really mattered to me. I bent down, closer to Orford’s face. He was still breathing. “Orford. Do you remember? You must remember! Colin Reilly? He shot himself?”

His eyes flickered, then glanced sideways at me with the look of a soul so lost, so haunted it was hard for me to not look away. “That’s why you’re here, right? To set us free. Ralph, Marcus, me, Reilly…”

I couldn’t make sense of it. “What you do mean? Did you know my father? Did you know Colin Reilly?”

“Reilly… yes, he was… interesting.”

I knelt down and took hold of Orford’s head, knowing this was my very last chance. “Orford. Please. Tell me what happened.”

His eyes locked onto mine, but there was little light behind them. Then it flickered out and he was gone.

The sound of distant sirens edged into my awareness.

I have to get out of here.

I stood, pocketed the gun, pulled my badge and spoke in the most authoritative voice I could muster.

“I need to go after the man who did this. Tell the police they’ll find the murder weapon on the floor of Orford’s office. Tell them there was another man here, a man sent to kill him. He jumped out of Orford’s office window and escaped.”

I was about to run off when I remembered the open laptop on Orford’s desk. I decided I had to risk it. I raced back into the building and up the stairs to Orford’s office where I grabbed the laptop and stuffed it into his own shoulder bag.

I was almost back at the stairs by the time the sirens were right outside.

I stopped, stepped across to the window of the kitchen, which was on another side of the building, and looked out.

Two Montgomery County PD cars and an EMS vehicle had pulled up outside. Four cops and two paramedics were rushing towards Orford.

I watched as the EMTs got to work and waited for the cops to disappear inside, then swung the bag across my shoulder and rushed back to Orford’s office. I was going to have to follow the killer’s route out. I grabbed the neatly folded blanket from the leather sofa and laid it over the base of the window frame. No way was I jumping out. I’d try to hang off the frame and drop down, reducing the distance to around fifteen feet.

As I lifted one leg over the empty window, I noticed something for the first time. The photo at the back of the framed pictures sitting on a lacquered cabinet, only now visible because of the angle at which I was looking at it.

It showed three guys in their forties on a hunting trip-Orford on the left. Behind them was some kind of hunting blind.

I swung my leg back inside, grabbed the picture and stuffed into the laptop bag. Then I climbed out, took all my weight on both hands, hung for a moment, and dropped to the ground. A piercing shot of concentrated agony burst through my right ankle as I hit the sidewalk.

I pulled myself upright and hobbled away, parting a few rubberneckers as I picked up speed, ignoring the screaming pain accelerating up my right leg.

I climbed into the BMW, thankful that Gigi had explained the car’s registration was tied to a fake ID and a derelict address, and charged off.

46

Federal Plaza, Lower Manhattan

Sitting at Aparo’s desk, Deutsch was staring off into space, her mind and body so worn out that she was now totally dead to any emotion regarding what had happened over the past two days. Indeed, this impenetrable numbness was so oddly relaxing she feared what would happen once it wore off after she’d grabbed a good night’s sleep and eaten properly.

As she sat there, both unable and unwilling to move, a junior agent she’d vaguely seen around the office walked over to her. He was waving a letter-sized manila envelope.

“Agent Deutsch? This arrived this morning; it’s addressed to Agent Reilly. Since his calls are being rerouted to you, I figured you’d want to take care of this too?”

“Who’s it from?”

“There’s no name, no return address. Scan shows it’s only got paper in it.”

He held it out to her. She hesitated momentarily.

Who the hell got mail these days?

The thought was enough to pique her interest.

She levered herself out of her chair and reached for it. “I’ll take it.”

She did just that, waving the junior agent away, and glanced around her cubicle. Her immediate neighbors weren’t at their desks. She knew they were locked in the main meeting room, trawling through Reilly’s case files, looking for anyone he might go to for help. Satisfied she had a moment of privacy, she sat back down and examined the envelope.

As the junior agent had said, it bore no return address. It had Canadian stamps with an illegible postmark. Reilly’s full name and the field office address were written in neat but overly small block capitals with an old-fashioned ink pen.

She carefully tore it open. Inside was a single brown folder, in which were two sheets of drawing paper from a pretty decent artist’s sketchpad. On each sheet, portrait layout, someone had drawn the face of a male adult. Under the first face, written in the same block capitals, were the letters “FF”

At first, the letters under the second face, “RC,” didn’t mean anything to her either. Then it suddenly hit her, and she couldn’t help but gasp, though luckily there was no one around to hear her.

They were initials.

RC was Reed Corrigan.

The one guy who knew what the hell was going on. And why.

There was also a small note with them, written by the same hand, with the same pen. It said:

Hope these help. With eternal thanks, L+D

She put the note aside and laid out the drawings side by side and stared at them for a few seconds, then she pulled out her personal cell phone and took full resolution, sixteen megapixel shots of each portrait and of the note. She then pulled out a large blank envelope from her desk, put the three documents back in their folder and the folder in the envelope. Then she folded the original envelope in half, hiding Reilly’s name, and stuffed it at the bottom of a drawer in her desk.

Although it went against everything she’d said to Tess, everything she’d been tasked with by Gallo-along with every single shred of self-preservation and common sense-she’d already decided to find a way to get the drawings to Sean. He wasn’t around to see that she was finally thinking of him as Sean, now that she’d gone over to his side. The change felt irreversible.

Someone had to help him. With Aparo dead and Tess willing but at risk, she was all he had left-but she couldn’t tell anyone about it. She was fully aware that she’d be risking her career, not to mention potential prison time, if she contacted him without telling her superiors and passed on the drawings instead of handing them in. And even though it went against everything she believed in-the FBI, for her, staunchly stood for Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity, as it did for pretty much every agent she’d come across apart from Lendowski-and everything she fought for, she felt she had to do it. She sensed that his life, his career, even his family’s future, could all hinge on it.

She couldn’t hand the envelope over to Gallo. He’d either dismiss its contents, or he’d share it with Henriksson, who in turn would quickly ensure that the drawings ceased to exist.

There was one small problem. She had no way of contacting Reilly. Tess, however, could. She was sure of it. She’d need to involve her, at least to get through to him, however queasy that made her in terms of Tess’s wellbeing as well as that of the kids. But she had no choice. There was simply no other way she could think of to get the drawings to him, and she was convinced they would prove to be more than useful.

She grabbed her keys and, without bothering to inform anyone, hurried out.

47

Chelsea, New York City

It wasn’t just the image of Orford and his possessed, terrified look that was haunting me.

It was his words.

That’s why you’re here, right? To set us free. Ralph, Marcus, me, Reilly…

Us.

That damn word.

Two small letters that were driving me nuts.

And yet, and yet… yes, the guy was under the influence of some monster drug. The killer in the baseball cap had talked about the “great warriors of consciousness,” compared it to them pushing the envelope on mind trips. Who knew what was going through Orford’s brain at the time he said these things. But still-what if the drug had actually taken away his inhibitions. What if it was an “in vino veritas” moment-the notion that being loosened up with alcohol frees us to say what we really mean?

What if my dad was part of them?

What if he’d killed himself out of guilt and remorse, or they’d bumped him off because he was about to blow the whistle on their activities?

And what the hell were they?

It was around five in the afternoon and we were sitting around the big island in Gigi’s kitchen.

Orford’s laptop was on the counter, taunting me. I’d told Kurt and Gigi I needed them to crack it open. It could tell us exactly what Orford had done to Alex, which could help fine tune his recovery and make sure he gets the right therapy. They’d said it would take a bit of time for them to get past its password. Regardless, it wasn’t the priority. We had something more pressing to figure out.

“We’ve got three names,” I said to Kurt and Gigi as I finished telling them what had happened. “Ralph Orford, psychiatrist, killed off using some kind of psychoactive drug. Someone called ‘Ralph,’ who also died in some way that was a ‘fitting tribute to his work.’”

“Poetic,” Kurt said.

I shrugged. “We’ve got another guy, ‘Marcus,’ who was also recently bumped off. And they seem to be part of something called ‘the Janitors,’ and they’re being wiped out to ‘clean house.’”

Kurt flinched. “What did you say? ‘Janitors?’”

He hunched over his laptop and started punching away at the keys like he was living in fast forward, then he turned the screen to face me. “Janitors. It’s here. In the web history of Rossetti’s editor.”

I leaned in for a closer look.

“See, here,” he pointed out. “He searched for ‘janitors government secret,’ ‘CIA janitors,’ ‘janitors murder.’” Followed some links from them. I had a quick look at them. They all led nowhere. Just random sites that had the words scattered in them, but not directly relevant to the kind of thing we’re talking about.”

I asked, “What about Rossetti’s search history?”

“He worked from home, where he had a Version FiOS connection. They’re harder to crack.”

“We need to look at both their search histories more closely. And we need to ID these three Janitors,” I said. “Which shouldn’t be too hard. I mean, Marcus isn’t such a widely used name. Male, adult. Died recently. We also know their skill sets. They do accidents-Rossetti’s fire, the Portuguese reporter’s climbing accident. They do heart attacks-Rossetti’s editor, Nick. And they do mind games. My son Alex, Orford-”

“And maybe your dad,” Gigi added.

“Maybe,” I said.

Gigi had been studying the framed photo I’d snatched off Orford’s desk. She set it down on the island. “And we’ve got this. Three guys in full mid-life crisis who decided they’d rather play ‘Deer Hunter’ than ‘Deliverance.’”

“So these ‘Janitors,’ they clean things up by killing people?” Kurt asked while Gigi started tapping away at her keyboard. “You think the guy who called you was one of them?”

“I think so,” I said. “Either ‘Ralph’ or ‘Marcus.’ Maybe he was a whistleblower. He contacts Rossetti first. They find out. They kill Rossetti and his editor. For some reason, they weren’t able to figure out who he was. I guess neither Rossetti nor his editor knew who he was, and if they set a trap for him, he saw it and avoided it. He knows how they operate; he’s one of them. He knows what to look out for. So he tries to get his story out again, with me. Only this time, they get to him.”

“Before he could tell you what he knew or give you the evidence he said he had for you,” Kurt said.

“He kick-started all this,” I said. “And they decided to shut it all down. Clean house. Less people who know what was going on and who can talk about it if it all goes pear-shaped.”

“Here we go,” Gigi said as she looked up from her screen. She started reading off it. “Marcus Siddle. Fifty-nine years old. Died last night in Miami when his Lamborghini slammed into the side of a building. The guy owned and ran a high-end car shop. Souped-up all kinds of cars, a king of the road.” She looked up from her screen. “Then he drives into the side of a building?”

“A mechanic,” I said. “Maybe he’s good with house electrics.”

“And climbing gear,” Kurt added.

Things were falling into place. “OK, which means our Ralph might be a heart guy if they truly have that capability.” I turned to Gigi. “Look for-”

“Ralph Padley,” she said, way ahead of me already. “A top cardiologist at Harvard. Died of a heart attack in a swimming pool in Boston on Tuesday. Sixty-nine years old.”

“Jesus,” Kurt said. “How many others of them are out there?”

I asked Gigi, “Do you have headshots for them?”

She tapped some more keys, then swiveled her screen around to face me.

I got out of my chair and moved in for a closer look. She had two faces up, a bit grainy from her having enlarged them, but clear enough. I moved the framed photo I’d snatched off Orford’s desk closer to her screen and compared them.

They were all there. Orford, Padley and Siddle.

The three “Janitors.”

Three middle-aged civilians-a psychiatrist, a cardiologist, and an upscale car mechanic-who were part of what seemed to be some top secret CIA hit squad. A hit squad that, by the looks of it, was operating not just outside our borders-which was already illegal enough-but on home ground too. We knew they’d committed a murder in Portugal over thirty years ago. The question was, how many other people had they killed over the years? How many of those were Americans and on American soil? And was this unit still active?

And-the biggest question of all-had my dad been working with them?

“I’m starting to understand why they’re desperate to keep this under wraps,” Kurt said.

“Padley said he had proof to show me. Evidence he needed me to make public,” I said. “If it’s still out there somewhere, if he managed to hide it before they got to him… maybe we can find it.”

“Without ending up like the rest of them,” Gigi added as a sense of gloom settled over the room.

I had a lot of questions, but the only guys who could give me the answers had been either wiped out, or-in the case of my ever-elusive bête noire, Reed Corrigan-untraceable.

And then Tess called and the dam burst wide open.

Deutsch angled a nervous glance at the Bureau cars parked outside Tess’s house as she rang the doorbell.

She hadn’t had any problem getting to Tess’s front door. She just hadn’t mentioned her little jaunt to Gallo or anyone else at Federal Plaza, and she knew she’d have some explaining to do when she got back. She had some time to come up with an excuse and knew she’d find a way through it, but that would wait. Right now, she needed to act fast.

She ducked inside as soon as Tess opened the door, then ushered her discreetly through the house and out onto the rear deck while asking her mundane questions about how she was and whether or not she’d heard from Reilly yet.

Once they were outside, she looked around, making sure she hadn’t missed any part of the FBI’s surveillance net, then turned to Tess.

“I can’t stay long and it’s not safe talking inside. You’re under watch,” she told Tess in a low voice.

“I assumed, but-”

“Tess, everything is being monitored,” Deutsch told her. “Phones, emails, WiFi. Any connection you make with the world beyond this house or even within in for that matter, we’re on top of. Even what you say. So you’re going to have to be careful.”

“Be careful?” Tess asked, her face tight with tension. “About what?”

“I need you to connect me with Sean.”

“Annie, I told you-”

“Listen to me!” Deutsch interjected. “I know, I know-you don’t know how to get through to him, you haven’t heard from him. Tess, this is important. I know you can find a way to get in touch with him. He wouldn’t disappear without telling you how. Not when you’re under threat like this. And this is coming from me, personally-I’m sticking my neck out here for you. For him. Please.”

She watched as Tess ran a deep scan up and down her face, clearly trying to decide whether to believe her. “Why? What’s happened?”

Deutsch glanced around again, more out of paranoia then out of some credible threat, then leaned closer and dropped her voice even lower. “Someone sent Sean two drawings. Portraits, of two men. They were sent from Canada and just signed ‘L+D.’ I think they’re important. I think they might be the guys that Sean’s been trying to find.”

She fished out her phone, pulled up the pictures she’d taken of the drawings, and showed them to Tess. She watched as Tess studied them.

“I’ve never seen these guys before,” Tess said.

“Nor has he, I imagine. But I think they could help him zero in on them.” She put her phone away, then asked, “You know who L and D are, don’t you?”

Tess hesitated-it was enough of an answer for her.

“They’re important, aren’t they?” Deutsch asked. “You know they are. Come on, Tess.”

Tess finally nodded. “They’re a couple Reilly helped out. They owe him. A lot.”

“And this is them paying him back. Come on, Tess. He needs this.”

Tess hesitated some more, her face muscles tightening up visibly-then she nodded. “I have a phone number. A burner phone.” She looked intensely worried. “God, let this not be a mistake. You can’t lead them to him, Annie. How will you get them to him?”

“All I need is a smartphone number or an email address. Hell, even a Facebook account will do. I’ll send them to him from my personal phone.”

Tess held her gaze for a moment, then nodded.

Sandman knew his message would anger Roos and the others but, strictly speaking, he’d still achieved his immediate assignment. Orford was dead, even though it wasn’t as clean a kill as he’d been aiming for. Still, if it was going to be considered more of a murder than a suicide, Reilly would be on the wanted poster. All of which, coming on the back of the successful dispatch of Siddle in Miami, wasn’t too shabby.

Still, Roos’s tone wasn’t thrilled, even though from the sounds of it, he was calling with good news.

“We’ve had a hit,” Roos told him. “Unexpected, and lucky, but I’ll take it, given the recent fuck-ups.”

Sandman let it slide and said nothing.

“We picked up Reilly on a surveillance cam at a nightclub in Manhattan Saturday night. The DEA had a Serbian drug dealer in their crosshairs and the face-recognition trawl picked up Reilly it its sweep. It looks like he had company, two of them. A guy and a girl. Face recog hasn’t had a hit with them and the targets are in some weird get-up. They’re sending you the file. Sandman…”

“Yes,” he asked, knowing what was coming next.

“Finish this,” Roos said. “While we’re still young.”

48

Chelsea, New York City

“So what the hell do we do with them?”

I leant back against the back of the banquette, interlaced my fingers behind my head and blew out some of the frustration, anger and impatience festering inside of me.

The three of us were sitting around a corner table in the large brasserie-style restaurant across the street from Gigi’s apartment, printouts of the hand-drawn sketches of Frank Fullerton and Reed Corrigan that Deutsch had emailed Kurt staring implacably up at us.

I couldn’t take my eyes off Corrigan’s face. I couldn’t believe I finally knew what he looked like-well, thirty-odd years ago, but still. It was something. It was more than something.

It would lead me to him.

It had to.

Kurt and Gigi didn’t know where the portraits had come from. Kurt hadn’t been privy to that side of the story when I first roped him into helping me track down Corrigan. I had firewalled it off from him, just as I’d kept his involvement secret from all the others who’d been involved. Right now, though, given how much they’d stuck their necks out for me and how deeply enmeshed we were in everything that was going on, I felt I owed them the full story.

I told them “L+D” were Leo and Daphne Sokolov. Leo was a brilliant Russian scientist who’d invented a incredible, world-changing piece of technology while working for a secret lab in Russia back when the USSR was still intact. With commendable insight, he decided his invention was too dangerous to hand over to his Soviet minders. He contacted the CIA and arranged for his defection, promising to hand over his invention to our government instead. What he didn’t tell them was that he’d already decided he didn’t trust them with it any more than he did the Soviets. Once they’d whisked him and his wife Daphne safely out of the Russia and brought him onto US soil, he also gave his CIA minders the slip. Leo and Daphne had lived in Queens in anonymity for over thirty years until an unfortunate outburst at an anti-Russian demonstration outside the Russian Consulate in Manhattan a while back had blown Leo’s cover.

I had been instrumental in rescuing him and Daphne from the Russian agents who wanted him and his technology. I also agreed that the technology was too dangerous to hand over to any government, even ours, and I got my connections at the Vatican to help me set them up with a new life outside the US. For that, Leo and Daphne were immensely grateful, and they hadn’t failed in expressing it before we parted company. We had another connection, too. Their CIA minders had been none other than Reed Corrigan and Frank Fullerton.

Hence the drawings-portraits of what Corrigan and Fullerton looked like back in 1980, when Leo and Daphne last saw them. I didn’t know who had drawn them up, but they were good, clean sketches showing two clearly identifiable faces.

Kurt shook his head. “Well, the obvious thing would have been to digitize them, then compare key features with the CIA employee database. But they closed that door.”

“I doubt you could have got anywhere near the full roster anyway,” I said. “And these guys are probably off the books.”

Gigi threw up her hands. “I hate this. Ever since I got into their deep archive, they completely reconfigured the firewalls. I can’t clone a valid authorization; I can’t create a new one. I’ll get in eventually, but I need more time.”

“Which is not something we have,” I said.

It was supremely frustrating. I had him, had as good a forensic sketch artist’s rendition of a suspect I’d ever seen, but I had nothing against which to run it.

Kurt tapped the drawings with two fingers. “Why doesn’t your friend at the Bureau run with them?” he asked. “She could give them to your boss, get him to show them to the CIA, say they’re from a witness they’ve got in protective custody. That’ll get them worked up.”

“No,” I said, “they’ve stonewalled every request I put through from day one. The party line is that Reed Corrigan does not exist. Period.”

“Bastards.”

“Yep,” I said.

Gigi waved her favorite waiter over-Theo, an aspiring stand-up with a slightly psychotic gaze who, he gleefully informed us, was excited about an audition he’d just done for a part on Louie-and ordered us some fresh coffees and three slices of an apparently life-altering raspberry cheesecake.

I gave my face a good rub and looked across the restaurant. It was packed, as usual. Was there a single trendy eatery in Manhattan that wasn’t? The morning espressos and croissants had long given way to after-work beers and mojitos. Watching the constant tide of people gliding by outside the restaurant, on their way home from work, maybe tired, maybe fulfilled, maybe looking forward to a nice meal and a cuddle in front of the TV, maybe about to spend an evening alone trawling through social media apps on their phones while eating cereal out of a box, I couldn’t help but envy them, all of them. Normalcy of whatever kind felt like such an alien concept for me right now. This obsessive search had taken over my life and flipped it over and inside out.

I thought of my dad, of my mom and Faye, and of Tess. Whatever negative effects Dad’s death had on me, it had also ensured that I didn’t marry young. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more now felt like the right time to talk to Tess about tying the knot.

Though now would have to wait. Perhaps indefinitely.

As Theo brought the coffees and cake, I turned and noticed Gigi giving me a mischievous little self-satisfied grin. I looked at her curiously, but she just held my gaze and said, “Jake Daland.”

Which totally threw me, since I’d never mentioned him to her or to Kurt. I almost did the full Kramer double-take-eyes popping, electrocuted limbs, the works.

She grinned. “What? Did you really think we wouldn’t know about something like that?” Then, off my continuing surprise, she said, “Settle down, G-Boy, and lend me your ears. ’Cause Daland might just be the key to your salvation.”

The velvet rope outside the nightclub’s entrance had only just been set up and nobody was lining up as yet. It was still early for a Manhattan night spot, which suited Sandman fine. He wasn’t there to party. At least, not in the traditional sense, and only if he couldn’t avoid it.

There were two men milling around outside, two bouncers in black suits over black shirts and black ties to add a splash of black, the whole look accessorized with the ubiquitous clipboards and earbuds. One was beefy, the other supersized-easily two hundred and fifty pounds. Sandman was not in the least intimidated. Like any fighter worth his salt, he knew that size really didn’t matter.

He noted the security cam over the club’s entrance as he walked up to them and flicked a small gesture to the bigger of the two to come aside for a chat. The bouncer seemed put out and somewhat bemused by the request; he shuffled over on beefy, lumbering feet that couldn’t have moved with less interest.

Sandman flashed him a Homeland Security ID card-a real one-then pulled out his phone and showed him a screen grab of the two targets that seemed to be accompanying Reilly as he left the club.

“I’m trying to ID these two,” he told him. “They were here Saturday night. You know who they are?”

The bouncer tilted his face to one side and grimaced as he gave Sandman a once-over that was overflowing with disdain. “Dude, seriously. This club-it’s like a church. Sacred ground, sanctuary. People who come here, they know they can be who they want or what they want without anyone giving them a hard time. You understand what I’m saying, brother?”

Sandman shrugged with a bored roll of his eyes. “I think you’re saying you don’t plan to be helpful in this matter.”

The big man moved in closer and was suddenly right in his face. “I guess I’m saying you need to-”

His face froze on that syllable, then quickly morphed into a shock of wide eyes and round lips as he howled with pain from the testicle lock Sandman had him in. The assassin squeezed harder, almost sending the bouncer to his knees.

The big man tried to push Sandman off him, but Sandman had already calmly pocketed his phone and used his other hand to stab the bouncer’s throat with a quick jab using the outstretched tips of his fingers, causing the bouncer to gasp for air and eliminating all resistance.

The other bouncer saw this and darted toward them to help his buddy. Sandman didn’t react and waited until the man was within range before spinning around and whipping out a kick, catching him just above the knee. He didn’t intend to cripple the man, he just needed to tame him, which was why he spared his fragile cartilage and tendons. The bouncer fell to the ground without realizing how much long-term suffering he’d been spared.

“Let’s try this again, shall we?” Sandman asked. “I need to know if you and your friend here know these two. If you don’t, I’d appreciate a friendly introduction to the joint’s manager who might be able to help me with my enquiry. A copy of Saturday night’s CCTV footage would also be useful as I imagine they grabbed a cab and it would help to know which one it was. Does that sound doable to you?”

He really didn’t need him to reply.

“How do you know about Daland?” I asked, still stumped.

Gigi glanced at Kurt, then gave me a relaxed grin. “I like to know who I’m working with. And the CIA might have shut me out, but the FBI’s servers… pu-lease.”

I was still trying to process the relevance. “You know about this guy?”

Gigi glanced at Kurt again, this time a bit less comfortably, then turned back to me. “He came on to me once. At Comic-Con. Back in his Hidden Lynx days. The guy’s a total sleaze. I mean, he was dressed as Aquaman. Talk about lame. I had to pry his greasy claws off my hips.”

I appreciated Gigi’s honesty, but needed a cogent plan, not hacker crew reminiscences. “Again, Gigi-the point is?”

There was that grin again. “Oh, padawan, you still have so much to learn. You guys think you took him down? You only scratched the surface. They’re not called onion networks for nothing. The top layers might have been peeled away and dropped in the trash compactor, but there are deeper layers underneath it, built from an entirely different architecture, and they’re still fully functional. One of them’s called Erebus and that’s the one we need to get into.”

I knew a little about Erebus. The name was from Greek mythology, the god of darkness and shadows. It was a deep darknet site that had attained almost mythical status with our cyber geeks at the Bureau. As far as I knew, no one knew who’d built it or who ran it.

“Erebus?” I asked. “That’s Daland?”

“Yes. It’s the dark underbelly of Maxiplenty. The VIP area. We’re talking deep, deep darknet. But neither of us can access it. No one from the outside can. It’s so watertight it’s genius. You need a personal invitation from a site maven. On top of that, they use a three-stage access sequence. Each and every access permission is generated by multi-level cryptography starting with an asymmetric keyset based on a one-time algorithm. The unencrypted code is then used as the key for a symmetric cypher which, when combined with a separate code sent via text message, results in a single-use, time-sensitive password. The network is impossible to hack using a brute force attack. There are no back doors. The virtual server hubs are constantly moving around the world-Estonia, Chile, Lebanon, you name it-mirroring themselves without trace then overwriting the origin server’s code so it vanishes into thin air. Even if you could locate a server, the core code will have moved before you get a chance to clone it or get inside and upload a worm. It’s a thing of beauty, really. Daland is one hell of a programmer.”

I may have caught three words of it. Kurt didn’t exactly look overjoyed either, but-I’m sure-that was for entirely different reasons.

“Don’t worry, Snake. I appreciate relativity-in both its general and specific incarnations-but that doesn’t mean I want to screw Einstein’s brains out.”

I wasn’t following any of this. “Gigi, seriously. What the hell are you talking about? How does that help us?”

Gigi seemed to notice that Kurt’s eyes were now alive with possibility.

“I swear to God, Snake, I thought you were dead,” she told him, in a weird voice that I took to be some kind of fair approximation of one of the actors in that movie. Then, in her normal voice, she added, “Tell him, Sensei.”

Kurt smiled. “We need to speak to Daland. He can tell us how to get into Erebus. Then we can post the sketches and ask if anyone recognizes them. Maybe offer a reward. Or just see if there’s anyone there with a grudge against them. By the sounds of it, these assholes might have one or two out there.”

“Why would anyone on Erebus know them?” I asked.

“Seriously, G-boy,” Gigi said, “you don’t know who hangs out in the deep levels of the Darknet?”

“Drug dealers, hired guns, human traffickers, child porn sickos? Friends of yours?” I asked.

“Well, them too,” Kurt said. “But it’s also where you’ll find retired Eastern Bloc spies with shitty pensions, wet-work contractors, ex-Special Forces operatives looking to monetize their antisocial skill sets, drug cartel lieutenants with an eye on climbing up the food chain, gallant security consultants for noble African dictators… you name it. And if there’s one place where someone may have come across these two, it’s in Erebus.”

Gigi smiled. “That’s my Snake.”

I tried to let it all sink in. “You really think it’s worth a shot?”

“You want to find rats like that,” Gigi said, “where better than to look in the sewer?”

“OK, maybe,” I said, “but you seem to have forgotten a tiny detail.”

She deliberately played dumb. The girl really was enjoying this.

“Slight inconvenience,” I said. “Daland might not be able to meet us here for a latté as he’s currently in residence at the MCC while awaiting trial.”

The Metropolitan Correctional Center is New York City’s Federal jail, where prisoners are held pending, and during, trial, usually at the US District Court, which is directly opposite it. It’s been home to some of the worst criminals the country’s seen, some of whom have been there for years, awaiting a trial that would probably never happen.

Gigi leaned forward toward me. “So we go talk to him there.”

I had to laugh. “Great idea. Shouldn’t be a problem whatsoever that I’m a wanted man and that I’m not exactly a stranger to that building or that it’s a literal stone’s throw from FBI headquarters.”

“So?” she pressed.

“So there are guards in there who might recognize me. Lawyers. Judges. FBI agents going in and out of there. Not to mention maybe a dozen guys that I put there.”

“Fine. So we change your look.”

I shook my head. “What did you have in mind? One of the Avengers? How about Thor? I think I’d look cool with blond locks.”

I thought I was doing well by talking their lingo, but she wasn’t laughing. “We go in. Together. In disguise. You’re his ultra-slick defense attorney. You’re brash, brilliant and you tell it like it is, no matter who gets hurt. I’m the sexy paralegal who won’t let you get inside her panties.”

She was a couple of minutes from pitching the pilot.

Kurt’s voice was unusually forceful. “No fucking way.”

Gigi smiled, her voice gentle. “Down, tiger. Yes, way. And, in fact, only way.”

Kurt was glaring at me, willing me to shoot the idea down, eyes already filling with dread for a decision made without him.

Problem was, we had nothing else.

I sent Kurt a sideways look of apologetic resignation.

“OK. Tell me how we do it.”