The Kill Room

CHAPTER 93

At nine on Saturday morning Lincoln Rhyme was maneuvering through the lab and dictating the evidence report to back up the Walker trial and the Swann plea agreement.

He noted too his calendar, up on a big monitor.

He smiled at the second line, Thom’s entry.

The town house was quiet. His aide was in the kitchen and Sachs was in her apartment in Brooklyn. She’d had basement problems and was waiting for the contractor. She would also be seeing Nance Laurel later today — getting together for drinks and dinner.

And dish on men too…

Rhyme was pleased the women had, against all odds, become friends. Sachs didn’t have many.

The sound of a doorbell echoed and Rhyme heard Thom’s footfalls making for the portal. A moment later he returned with a tall figure in a brown suit, white shirt and green tie whose hue he couldn’t begin to describe.

NYPD Captain Bill Myers. Special Services Division. Whatever that might be.

Greetings were exchanged and the man fell into an effusive tone, with Myers complimenting Rhyme on the resolution of the case.

“Never in a million years would have seen that potentiality,” the captain said.

“Was surprised at how it turned out.”

“I’ll say. Some pretty decent deductions on your part.”

The word “decent” only describes that which is socially proper or non-obscene; it doesn’t mean fair or good. But you can’t change a jargonist so Rhyme kept mum. He realized that silence had descended as Myers took in the gas chromatograph with an intensity that circumstances — and the equipment itself — didn’t warrant.

Then the captain looked around the lab and observed that they were alone.

And Rhyme knew.

“This’s about Amelia, right, Bill?”

Wishing he hadn’t used her first name. Neither of them was the least superstitious, except in this tradition. They never referred to each other by their givens.

“Yes. Lon talked to you? About my problems with her health issues?”

“He did.”

“Let me unpack it further,” Myers said. “I allowed her some time to finish this case and then have her take a medical. But I’m not going that route. I read the report of the take-down in Glen Cove, when she and Officer Pulaski collared Jacob Swann. The medic’s report said that her knee gave out completely after the suspect noticed she was in pain and kicked or hit it. If Officer Pulaski hadn’t been there she would have been killed. And Spencer Boston too, and maybe a few of the tactical officers as they did a dynamic entry.”

Rhyme said bluntly, “She took down the perp, Bill.”

“She was lucky. The report said afterward she could hardly walk.”

“She’s fine now.”

“Is she?”

No, she wasn’t. Rhyme said nothing.

“It’s the elephant in the room, Lincoln. Nobody wants to talk about it but it’s a problematic circumstance. She’s putting herself and other people at risk. I wanted to talk to you alone about this. We huddled and conjured up a decision. I’m promoting her out of the field. She’ll be a supervisor in Major Cases. And we’ll rank her. Sergeant. But I know there’ll be pushback from her.”

Rhyme was furious. This was his Sachs the captain was talking about in the cheapest of clichés.

But he kept silent.

The captain continued, “I need you to talk her into it, Lincoln. We don’t want to lose her; she’s too good. But the department can’t keep her if she insists on being in the field. Desking her’s the only option.”

And what would she do post-NYPD? Become a freelance consultant, like him? But that wasn’t Sachs’s way. She was a brilliant crime scene searcher, with her natural empathy and dogged nature. But she had to be a cop in the field, not lab-bound, like he was. And forensics wasn’t her only specialty, of course; if she couldn’t speed to a hostage taking or robbery in progress to engage the perp, she’d wither.

“Will you talk to her, Lincoln?”

Finally he said, “I’ll talk to her.”

“Thank you. It’s for her own good, you know. We really do want the best. It’ll be a three-sixty for everybody.”

The captain shook his hand and departed.

Rhyme stared at the table where Sachs had recently been sitting to work the Moreno case. He believed he could smell some of the gardenia soap she favored though possibly that was just a fragrance memory.

I’ll talk to her…

Then he turned his wheelchair and motored back to the whiteboards, examining them closely. Taking, as always, comfort in the elegance and intrigue of evidence.

CHAPTER 94

The 110-foot general cargo vessel, chugging under diesel power, plowed through the Caribbean Sea, a massive stretch of turquoise water once home to pirates and noble men-of-war and now the highway of tourists and the playground of the One Percent.

The ship was under a Dominican flag and was thirty years old. A Detroit 16-149 powered her through the water at a respectable thirteen knots, via a single screw. Her draft was fifteen feet but she rode high today, thanks to her light cargo.

A tall mast, forward, dominated the superstructure and the bridge was spacious but cluttered, filled with secondhand navigation equipment bolted, glued or tied down. The wheel was an old-fashioned wooden ring with spokes.

Pirates…

At the helm was squat, fifty-two-year-old Enrico Cruz. This was his real name, though most people knew him by his pseudonym, Henry Cross, a New Yorker who ran several nonprofit organizations, the largest and most prominent of which was Classrooms for the Americas.

Cruz was alone on the deck today because the man who was to have accompanied him today had been murdered by the U.S. government in suite 1200 of the South Cove Inn in the Bahamas. A single shot to the chest had guaranteed that Roberto Moreno would not make this voyage with his friend.

Cruz and Moreno had known each other for decades, ever since Moreno’s best friend, Cruz’s brother, José, had been murdered too — yes, that was the right word — by a U.S. helicopter gunship in Panama during the invasion in 1989.

Since that time the two men had worked together to wage a war on the nation that had descended blithely into Panama, his country, and decided that, oh, sorry, the dictator we’ve been supporting all these years is a bad man after all.

In their campaign against the United States these men differed only in approach. Moreno was outspoken and publicly anti-American, while Cruz remained anonymous, which allowed him to set up the attacks and get the weapons and money where they would do the most good. But together Cruz and Moreno were the backbone of the unnamed movement.

They had engineered the deaths of close to three hundred U.S. citizens and foreigners who kowtowed to Western values: businessmen, professors, politicians, drug enforcement officials, diplomats and their families.

These attacks had been isolated and small, so authorities wouldn’t make any connections among them. But what was planned today was just the opposite: a massive strike against the political, social and corporate heart of America. Moreno had prepared for months — renouncing his citizenship, severing all ties to the United States, moving his money from the States to the Cayman Islands, buying a house in the wilderness of Venezuela — all in anticipation of what was about to happen.

And the weapon at the heart of the attack? The ship that now was plowing through the waves.

Cruz, as a native of Panama, had been steeped in the shipping trade for much of his early life; he knew how to drive vessels this size. Besides, nowadays one didn’t really need to be more than functional at the helm. A competent crew in the engine room, GPS and autopilot on the bridge were all you needed. That was about it. The computer was doing the donkey’s work of getting her to the destination. They were plodding north-by-northwest through the three-foot seas. The day was brilliantly blue, the wind persistent, the spray kaleidoscopic.

The vessel had no name, or did no longer, having been purchased through a series of real but obscure corporations, and was known only by her registration number. There had once been a file on her in a computer in the Dominican Republic, along with a corresponding entry into a registration book, regarding her vital statistics, but they had been, respectively, digitally erased and physically excised.

She was anonymous.

Cruz had thought about informally christening her before they set sail from Nassau—Roberta, after his friend, suitably feminized. But then decided it was better to refer to her simply as the ship. She was faded black and gray and streaked with rust. But to him, beautiful.

He now gazed at their destination, the black dot some kilometers away. The GPS tweaked the navigation system to compensate for the wind; new directions went automatically to the rudder. He felt the ship respond. He enjoyed the sensation of such a large creature obeying commands.

The door opened and a man joined him. He had black skin, a bullet-shaped head, shaved shiny, a lean body. Bobby Cheval wore jeans, a denim shirt with sleeves cut off so that it resembled a vest. He was barefoot. He glanced to the horizon. He said, “Too bad, don’t you think? He won’t see it happen. That is sad.”

Cheval had been Robert Moreno’s main contact in the Bahamas.

“Maybe he will,” Cruz said. He didn’t believe this but he said it to reassure Cheval, who wore a horsehair cross around his neck. Cruz didn’t accept the afterlife and knew his dear friend Robert Moreno was as dead as the heart of the government that had killed him.

Cheval, who would lead the Local Empowerment Movement in the Bahamas once it was up and running, had been instrumental in putting together today’s plan.

“Any ships? Signs of surveillance?” Cruz asked.

“No, no. Nothing.”

Cruz was sure no one suspected what was going to happen. They had been so very careful. His only moment of concern had been earlier in the week when that sexy redheaded policewoman had shown up in the Chambers Street office of Classrooms for the Americas to ask about Roberto’s visit on May 1. He’d been surprised at first but Cruz had dealt with some truly despicable people — al-Qaeda operatives, for instance, and Shining Path rebels — and didn’t get rattled easily. He’d distracted Detective Sachs with the true story of the “white guy” who’d tailed Roberto, from NIOS undoubtedly. And distracted her further with some fiction about a mysterious private jet.

A red herring about a blue plane, he thought to himself now and smiled. Roberto would have liked that.

“Is the skiff ready?” Cruz asked Cheval.

“Yes, it is. How close will we get? Before we abandon, I mean.”

“Two kilometers will be fine.”

At that point the five crewmen would climb into a high-speed cigarette boat and head in the opposite direction. They’d follow the ship’s progress on the computer. They could steer remotely if the GPS and autopilot broke down; there was a webcam mounted on the bridge of the vessel and they’d be able to watch the ship approach its destination.

At which the men now gazed.

The Miami Rover was American Petroleum Drilling and Refining’s only oil rig in the area, located about thirty miles off the coast of Miami. (And named rather ironically; it didn’t rove anywhere anymore and its journey here had been straight from Texas, at the meandering rate of four knots.)

Months ago Moreno and Cruz had decided that the oil company would be the target for their biggest “message” to date; American Petroleum had stolen huge tracts of land in South America and displaced thousands of people, offering them a pathetic settlement in return for their signatures on deeds of transfer that most of them couldn’t read. Moreno had organized a series of protests in the United States and elsewhere over the past month or so. The protests had served two purposes. First, they’d brought to light the crimes of AmPet. But, second, they lent credence to the proposition that Moreno was all talk. Once the authorities saw that mere protesting was what he had in mind they largely lost interest in him.

And so nobody followed up on leads that might have exposed what was going to happen today: ramming the ship into the Miami Rover. Once it hit, the fifty-five-gallon drums containing a poignant mixture of diesel fuel, fertilizer and nitromethane would detonate, destroying the rig.

But that in itself, while a blow for the cause, wasn’t enough, Moreno and Cruz had decided. Killing sixty or so workers, ruining the biggest oil rig in the Southeast? That was like that pathetic fellow who suicide-crashed his private plane into the building housing the IRS in Austin, Texas. He killed a few people. Caused some damage, snarled traffic.

And soon, back to business as usual in the Lone Star State’s capital.

What would happen today was considerably worse.

After the initial explosion destroyed the rig, the ship would sink fast. In the stern was a second bomb that would descend to the seafloor near the wellhead. A depth-gauge detonator would set off another explosion, which would destroy both the well’s ram and annular blowout preventers. Without any BOPs to stop the flow, oil would gush into the ocean at the rate of 120,000 barrels a day, more than twice what escaped in the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf.

The surface currents and wind would speed the oil slick on its mission to destroy much of the eastern coast of Florida and Georgia. And might even spread to the Carolinas. Ports would close, shipping and tourism would stop indefinitely, millions of people would take a huge economic hit.

Roberto had said, “Americans want oil for their cars and their air-conditioning and their capitalist companies. Well, I’ll give it to them. They can drown in all the oil we’ll deliver!”

Forty minutes later the ship was three kilometers away from the Miami Rover.

Enrico Cruz checked the GPS one last time and he and Cheval left the bridge. Cruz said, “Everybody in the speedboat.”

Cruz hurried to the gamy forward hold, in which slimy water sloshed, and checked the main bomb. Everything fine. He armed it. He did the same with the second, the device that would destroy the blowout preventer.

Then he hurried back to the rocking deck. A glance over the bow. Yes, she was making right for the rig. He scanned the massive deck of the structure — easily a hundred feet above the surface. No workers were visible. This was typical. Nobody on oil rigs wasted time lounging on the fiercely hot iron superstructure, taking in the non-view. They were hard at work in the interior of the unit, mostly in the drill house, or asleep, waiting for the next shift.

Cruz hurried to the side of the vessel and climbed down the rope ladder and dropped into the speedboat with Cheval and the others of the crew.

The motor started.

But before they pulled away, Cruz opened his palm and kissed the pads of his fingers. He then touched it to a rusty patch of hull and whispered, “This is for you, Roberto.”

CHAPTER 95

The cluster of passengers on the cruise ship’s forward deck was being photographed by Jim from New Jersey, as opposed to Jim from Cleveland or Jim from London (all right, the Brit preferred “James” but since he was on holiday, he was happy to play along with the others).

The group had become friendly in the days since the ocean liner left Hamilton, in Bermuda, and had spent the first tipsy cocktail hour noting coincidences of career and number of children…and given names.

Four Jims, two Sallys.

Jim from California was below, neither the patch nor Dramamine working well, and so he would not be included in the picture.

Jim from New Jersey lined everyone up against what he said was a gunwale, though nobody knew exactly what that was — he didn’t either — but it seemed very nautical and fun to say.

“Nobody sing the Titanic song.”

There’d been a lot of that, especially as the bars remained open late into the night, but the truth was that very few people, men or women, could bring off the treacly song like Celine Dion.

“Is that Florida?” somebody asked. One of the Sallys, Jim from New Jersey believed.

He saw a dim line on the horizon but that was probably just a layer of clouds.

“Not yet, I don’t think.”

“But what’s that? It’s a building.”

“Oh, that’s the oil rig. The first one in this part of the Atlantic. Didn’t you see the news? A year ago or so. They found some oil between Nassau and Florida.”

“They? Who’s they? Everybody always says ‘they.’ Are you going to take the picture? My margarita’s melting.”

“U.S. Petroleum. American Petroleum Drilling. I don’t remember.”

“I hate those things,” Sally from Chicago muttered. “Did you see the birds in the Gulf? All covered with oil. It was terrible. I cried.”

“And we couldn’t get good shrimp for months.”

The photog marshaled his subjects into line against the gunwale and tapped down on the Canon shutter.

Click, click, click, click, click…

Enough to make sure that there’d be no blinks.

The proof of vacation burned into a silicon chip, the tourists turned to gaze at the sea and conversation meandered to dinner and shopping in Miami and the Fontainebleau hotel and was Versace’s mansion still open to the public?

“I heard he had an eight-person shower,” said Jim from London.

Claire disputed that.

“Holy shit,” Jim from New Jersey gasped.

“Honey!” chided his wife.

But the camera was up once more and by the time the sound of the explosion reached them, everyone had turned and was focused on the massive mushroom cloud rising perhaps a thousand feet in the air.

“Oh, Jesus. It’s the oil rig!”

“No, no!”

“Oh, my God. Somebody call somebody.”

Click, click, click, click…

CHAPTER 96

“What’s the damage assessment?”

Shreve Metzger, in blue jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt that was partly untucked amidships, was leaning over a computer monitor, staring, staring at the smoke and haze hovering over the Caribbean Sea, a thousand miles away.

“Gone completely,” said a NIOS communications specialist at a control panel beside him, a young woman with hair pulled back in a bun that looked painfully tight. The comspec’s voice was unemotional.

The scene on the monitor revealed clearly that, no, there was nothing left, other than an oil slick, some debris.

And smoke. A lot of smoke.

Gone completely…

Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, along with Metzger and the comspec, were in the outer office of NIOS’s Ground Control Station trailer, on Rector Street in lower Manhattan. In the parking lot.

Rhyme squinted at the bits of wood and plastic and rocking sheen of oil, which had until thirty seconds ago been the 110-foot Dominican cargo ship that Robert Moreno’s friend, Henry Cross, aka Enrico Cruz, had guided toward the Miami Rover, the American Petroleum Drilling and Refining oil rig off the coast of Florida.

The comspec touched her earphones. “Reports of a second detonation, underwater, Director. About eight or nine hundred feet depth.”

A moment later, they could see on the high-resolution monitor a slight bubbling up of the water on the surface. That was all. Rhyme supposed that however large the second bomb had been, intended to destroy the rig’s wellhead, he guessed, so much water had quite a mitigating effect.

Rhyme looked through the glass wall dividing the trailer in half: the Kill Room of the GCS. He noted in the dim light the man who had just caused the devastation — and saved the lives of the people on board the rig, as well as much of the east coast of Florida.

Oblivious to those observing him, Barry Shales was at the drone operations station. To Rhyme it seemed like a freestanding airplane cockpit. Shales was sitting forward, apparently quite relaxed, in a comfortable tan leather chair, facing five flat-screen monitors.

The NIOS officer’s hands gripped joysticks, though he would occasionally twist or tap one of the other hundred or so knobs, dials, switches and computer keys.

Rhyme noted that somebody had affixed a seat belt to the chair. It dangled to the floor unlatched. A joke, surely.

Shales was alone in the dim room, which was soundproofed, it seemed, presumably so that he wouldn’t be distracted by noises from associates — or visitors like Rhyme and Sachs today. Delivering deadly messages from on high undoubtedly required supreme concentration.

The comspec, who also had a live link to the American Petroleum security people on board the oil rig, tapped buttons herself, asked some questions and announced to Metzger, Rhyme and Sachs, “Confirm no damage to Miami Rover or blowout preventer. No injuries, except a few earaches.”

Not unexpected when a massive fertilizer bomb detonates a half mile from you.

As he’d been reviewing the evidence a half hour ago, Rhyme had suddenly realized that some things didn’t add up. He’d made a half dozen calls and deduced that an attack might be imminent. He’d contacted Metzger. Feverish debate in Washington and at NIOS ensued. Scrambling air force fighters required too much authorization from the Pentagon on up; hours would be wasted getting the approval.

Metzger, of course, had a solution. He’d appealed to Barry Shales, who was en route to headquarters anyway to collect his personal belongings — Metzger explained that the pilot had decided to leave NIOS.

Given the horrific consequences if the pending attack was successful and the approaching deadline — a matter of minutes — the former air force officer had reluctantly agreed to help. He’d flown the drone from Homestead to a spot just over the cargo ship and hovered. The ship was apparently abandoned; they’d seen the crew get into a speedboat and flee. When the radio hails, ordering the cargo ship to come about, were ignored, Shales had launched a Hellfire, which struck the forward hold, where Rhyme speculated the fertilizer bomb had been placed.

Bull’s-eye.

Shales was now turning the drone in a different direction and began following the small boat that contained the crew, who had abandoned the vessel twenty minutes earlier. Into view on the monitor came the black, long-nosed speedboat, crashing over the waves away from the rig and the explosion.

Rhyme heard Barry Shales’s voice over a ceiling-mounted speaker. “UAV Four Eight One to Florida Center. I’ve got secondary target in range and acquiring lock. Distance from target eighteen hundred yards.”

“Copy, Four Eight One. Close DFT to one thousand yards.”

“Roger, Florida Center. Four Eight One.”

On the monitor, Rhyme could see Henry Cross and the sailors who’d abandoned the vessel and were speeding away to safety. You couldn’t quite catch the facial expressions but their body language suggested confusion and concern. They wouldn’t have heard the drone or seen the missile, most likely, and would think that some malfunction in the bomb had caused it to detonate prematurely. Perhaps they were thinking, Lord, that could’ve happened while we were on board.

“Four Eight One to Florida Center. I’m DFT one thousand. Locked on secondary vessel. At their speed they’ll be under cover of Harrogate Cay in ten minutes. Please advise.”

“Roger. We’re hailing now on general frequencies. No response yet.”

Shales replied evenly, “Copy. Four Eight One.”

Rhyme now glanced at Sachs, whose face revealed the concern he himself felt. Were they about to witness the summary execution of six people?

They’d been caught in an act of terrorism. But that risk had been neutralized. Besides, Rhyme now thought, were they all terrorists? What if one or two were innocent sailors that had no idea what the cargo and mission were?

Suddenly the conflict between Shreve Metzger and Nance Laurel came into stark, wrenching focus.

“Four Eight One, this is Florida Center. No response to the hail. Payload launch is authorized.”

Rhyme could see Barry Shales stiffen.

He sat absolutely still for a moment and reached forward, flipped up the cover of a button on a panel in front of him.

Shreve Metzger said into a stalk mike on the desk in front of him, “Barry. Fire the rifle across their bow.”

Over the speaker Shales said, “UAV Four Eight One to Florida Center. Negative on payload launch. Switching to LRR mode.”

“Copy, Four Eight One.”

In the Kill Room, Barry Shales juggled a joystick and squinted at the video image of the speeding ship. He touched a black panel in front of him. A brief delay and, in eerie silence, three sequential plumes of water shot into the air a few feet in front of the speeding boat.

The slim vessel kept going, though everyone on board was looking around. Several of the sailors seemed very young, no more than teenagers.

“Florida Center to Four Eight One. We copy no change in target velocity. Payload launch is still authorized.”

“Copy. Four Eight One.”

Nothing happened for a moment. But then, with a lurch, the speedboat slowed and stopped in the water. Two of the sailors were pointing to the sky, nowhere near the camera, though. They couldn’t see the drone but they all now understood where their enemy was.

Almost in unison they raised their hands.

What followed was comical. The water was choppy and the boat small. They were trying to maintain balance but afraid if they lowered their arms, death from on high would find them. Two fell over and scrabbled quickly to their feet, shooting their hands into the air. They seemed like drunks trying to dance.

“Florida Center to UAV Four Eight One. Copy surrender. Navy advises Cyclone-class patrol ship, the Firebrand, one mile away, making thirty knots. Keep secondary target dead in the water until it arrives.”

“Copy. Four Eight One.”

CHAPTER 97

Barry Shales closed the door to the Kill Room and, ignoring Shreve Metzger, walked to Rhyme and Sachs. He nodded.

The policewoman told him what a good job he’d done at the commands of the drone. “Sorry, I mean UAV.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said unemotionally, his bright blue eyes averted. Some of this reserve was perhaps because he was facing two people who’d intended to hang a murder charge on him. On reflection, though, Rhyme thought not. He simply seemed to be a very private person.

Maybe when you have his particular skill you’re mentally and emotionally in a different place much of the time.

Shales then turned to Rhyme. “We had to move pretty fast, sir. I never got the chance to ask how you figured it out — that there was going to be an attack on the rig, I mean.”

The criminalist said, “There was some evidence unaccounted for.”

“Oh, that’s right, sir. You’re the evidence tsar, someone was saying.”

Rhyme decided he liked that pithy phrase quite a bit. He’d remember it. “Specifically paraffin with a branched-chain molecule, an aromatic, a cycloalkane…oh, and some alkenes.”

Shales blinked twice.

“Or to put it in more common parlance: crude oil.”

“Crude oil?”

“Exactly. Trace amounts were found on Moreno’s and his guard’s shoes and clothes. They had to pick that up at some point before your attack on May ninth when they were out of the South Cove Inn, at meetings. Now, I didn’t think much of it — there are some refineries and oil storage facilities in the Bahamas. But then I realized something else: The morning he died Moreno met with some businesspeople about starting up transportation and agriculture operations there as part of his Local Empowerment Movement. But we’d also learned that fertilizer, diesel oil and nitromethane had been shipped weeks ago to his LEM companies. If those companies hadn’t even been formed yet, why buy the chemicals?”

“You put together crude oil and possible bomb.”

“We’d known about the rig from the initial intelligence about Moreno’s plans for May tenth. Since Moreno was so vocal against American Petroleum Drilling maybe the company was a target, after all — for a real attack, not just a protest. I think on Sunday or Monday he went to meet rig workers — maybe to get up-to-date information about security. Oh, and there was one other thing that didn’t make sense. Sachs here figured that out.”

She said, “When Moreno came to New York earlier in the month, the one meeting he had that he didn’t invite his interpreter to was with Henry Cross at the Classrooms for the Americas Foundation. Why not? Most of his meetings were innocent — Moreno wouldn’t let her interpret for him if the meeting was about something illegal. But what about the Cross meeting? If it was innocent, what was wrong with Lydia Foster being here, even if she didn’t have to interpret? Which told me maybe it wasn’t so innocent. And Cross told me about this mysterious blue jet that Moreno kept seeing. Well, we couldn’t find anything about any blue jets with travel patterns that seemed to match Moreno’s. That was the specific sort of thing somebody would tell a cop to lead them off.”

Rhyme picked up again: “Now, Classrooms for the Americas had offices in Nicaragua — which is where the diesel fuel, fertilizer and nitromethane were shipped from. There was too much to be coincidental. We looked into Cross and found out that he was really Cruz and that he and Moreno had a history together. It was Cruz’s brother who was Moreno’s best friend, killed in Panama during the invasion. That’s what turned him against the United States. We datamined Cruz’s travel records and credit cards and found he left New York for Nassau yesterday.

“My contact at the Bahamian police found that he and Moreno had chartered a cargo ship a month ago. It left port this morning. The police raided a warehouse where the ship had been docked and found traces of the explosive chemicals. That was good enough for me. I called Shreve. He called you.”

“So, Moreno wasn’t innocent after all,” Shales whispered, glancing at Metzger.

Sachs said, “No. You took out a bad guy, Airman.”

The officer looked at his boss. The expression in his blue eyes was complex. And conflicted. One way to read it was: You were right, Shreve. You were right.

Rhyme added, “And this wasn’t going to be his only project.” He told both men about the intercept Nance Laurel had read to them in their first meeting on Monday.

I have a lot more messages like this one planned…

“Barry,” Metzger said. “I’m going to see our visitors out. Then, could I talk to you in my office? Please.”

A pause worthy of Nance Laurel. Finally the airman nodded.

Metzger escorted them to the exit, across the parking lot, thanked them warmly.

Outside the security gate, Rhyme took the accessible cutaway in the sidewalk to cross the street to where the van waited, Thom at the wheel. Sachs stepped off the curb. As she did, Rhyme saw her wince, gasp slightly in pain.

She offered a furtive glance his way, as if to see if he’d caught her frown, and then looked ahead quickly.

This cut him. It was as if she’d just lied to him.

And he lied right back; he pretended he hadn’t noticed.

Across the street they continued to the van for a moment. Then Rhyme braked the Merits chair to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk.

She turned.

“What is it, Rhyme?”

“Sachs, there’s something we need to talk about.”

CHAPTER 98

The phone rang on schedule.

Whatever else you could say about him, the Wizard was prompt.

Shreve Metzger, at his desk in a somewhat deserted NIOS this Saturday afternoon, looked at the blinking light of his magic red phone and listened attentively to the trill of the ringer, like a bird, he’d decided. He debated about not picking up.

And never taking a call from the man ever again.

“Metzger here.”

“Shreve! How are you doing? Heard about those interesting developments up there, I understand. Long Island. I used to belong to Meadowbrook, did you know that? You don’t golf, do you?”

“No.”

And squashed a “sir” dead.

The voice grew wizardly once again, low, raspy: “We’ve been talking about charges against Spencer.”

Metzger replied, “We could make a case work…if we wanted to.” He removed his bland glasses, polished the lenses and replaced them. Unlike in the United Kingdom, it was not necessarily a crime to release classified material in this country, unless you were spying for another nation.

“Yes, well, we’ll have to consider our priorities, of course.”

The Wizard was referring undoubtedly to the public relations issues. It might make more sense not to pursue the matter, lest the press get their hands on the story.

Yes, well…

Metzger took out the nail clippers. But there was nothing left to clip. He spun them absently on his desktop. Put them back.

“And good job with that incident in Florida. Interesting that that bad intel turned good. Like magic. David Copperfield, Houdini.”

“They’re in custody, all of them.”

“Delighted to hear it.” As if he were sharing Hollywood gossip, the Wizard said, “Now I have to tell you something, Shreve. You there?”

How cheerfully he delivers my death sentence.

“Yes. Go on.”

“Got a call from a friend in Langley. A certain individual who was recently in Mexico.”

May-hi-co.

“A certain party,” the Wizard repeated. “You remember him?”

“In Reynosa,” Metzger said.

“That’s the place. Well, guess what? He’s vacationing outside Santa Rosa, near Tijuana.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes indeed. And apparently he still plans on making some deliveries of his specialty products in the near future. The very near future.”

So al-Barani Rashid had moved to the West Coast to hide out.

“He was just spotted with some associates but his friends’ll be leaving in the morning. And our friend will be all alone in a pleasant little cottage all day tomorrow. And the good news is that the local tourist board is absolutely fine about a visit from us. So, wondering if you could draw up some revised travel plans for our approval. Details are on their way.”

A new STO?

But aren’t I being fired? he wondered.

“Of course. I’ll get right on it. But…?”

“Yes?” the Wizard asked.

Metzger asked, “Those meetings? The budgetary issues?”

A pause. “Oh, the committee moved on to other matters.” After a beat the Wizard said sternly, “If there had been issues, I would’ve mentioned them to you, don’t you think?”

“Sure, you would have. Of course.”

“Of course.”

Click.