The Lights of Tenth Street (67 page)

“I
think
I remember Maris talking to someone I took for a common street punk, outside the club a couple times. The first time I was worried for her safety, but she waved me off and said it was okay. I think this was the guy she was talking to. But he sure didn’t look like an FBI agent.”

“No, he was one of our best undercover operatives. He went by the moniker of Snoop and infiltrated the crime ring, acting as an informant. We gave him bits of information to pass along so he’d be more and more trusted by the higher-ups. And it worked. He eventually learned some big changes were coming; there were some major reshufflings going on. He learned that the leader of the entire national ring—a man known only as Proxy, who somehow directed the operations from afar—that Proxy was ready to do something very different. The higher-ups were clearly preparing for
something
. Snoop understood it to be a new business line, but felt it would be vastly different from one of the usual criminal sidelines of drugs or prostitution.”

Agent McKendrick turned back to the screen, not seeing the uncomfortable expressions that crossed the young dancers’ faces. He sighed. “Unfortunately, Snoop was trying to get more involved in the operations side of the ring, and he got caught in a botched op. Our communications with local police broke down, and since they didn’t get the message that we had an undercover agent trying to gain high-level trust, they conducted an unexpected raid. Snoop insisted on going back to business afterward, believing that the value of his information would keep him safe. Unfortunately, we never heard from him again. He was eliminated before he could learn and pass along the details of just what it was that the leadership was branching into. But Maris spent the next year on heightened alert because of his murder, and she gathered a great deal of good information.

“Over the course of the year, she became convinced that the people involved
were not normal criminal masterminds. In fact, based on conversations she overheard, and people who met with Marco at the club—and elsewhere, when she managed to tail them—she became convinced that there was planning going on for a number of breaches of homeland security. Of most concern, she believed they were arranging some sort of massive terrorist attack inside the United States.”

“You mean—are you saying that Marco was a
terrorist?
” Ronnie said.

“A terrorist, a helper of terrorists; I don’t know what you’d call it. But certainly, he appeared to be one of the top operatives of the group, and the group was planning something. We just don’t know
what.
”

“Well, can’t you get someone else to infiltrate the team again?” Tiffany asked. “I guess the club would be too risky, but what about like what this Snoop person did?”

“It’s too late for that. We believe there may already be an attack planned and set in motion. We don’t have much time to stop it. That’s frankly why we’re hoping that the information you brought with you—and what you carry in your heads—might be the key to unlocking the puzzle.”

“Why the urgency?” Doug asked. “I mean, I feel it, too—but if you don’t know what the plan is, why do you think it’s so urgent?”

“Because, Mr. Turner, Marco appears to have been taken out. We don’t know why—whether he knew too much, whether he was viewed as disloyal for some reason, we don’t know. But he was killed. In our experience, when a top-level operative is killed unexpectedly, it’s usually a signal that something major is about to happen, and happen quickly.

“Although it’s not quite the same, an infamous example of this was the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the opposition leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan just two days before the 9/11 attacks. The terrorist masterminds knew that the U.S. would respond militarily in Afghanistan and that Massoud was the one man able to unify the opposition troops and lead the country if the terrorist network was driven out. So he had to be taken out before the 9/11 attacks could proceed. When he was assassinated, our colleagues at the CIA knew that something must be coming, but they didn’t learn what, in time.

“So in this case, we can only move ahead with all speed and try to ascertain whatever we can about what may be coming, in the hopes that we can do something to stop it.”

Doug felt light-headed. No wonder the Lord had moved heaven and earth to get them all together in this room right now. He prayed that they would be able to put the pieces of the puzzle together in time.

“No, Jordan, I’m sorry.” Sherry stared at Doug’s boss, puzzled. “He’s not here. He had to go to an urgent meeting downtown.”

Sherry had offered Jordan a drink, had offered him a seat, but the man just stood in the middle of the foyer, a strange look in his eyes. Jo and Vance watched the exchange from the kitchen doorway.

“What meeting?” Jordan asked. “His phone is turned off. Where is he?”

Sherry started to open her mouth and felt almost as if she was being physically restrained. She smiled at Jordan and gave him an apologetic shrug.

“I wish I could tell you, but it’s a confidential matter. A personal thing … nothing related to work.”

She heard the chirp of Jordan’s cell phone at his belt, and Jordan checked the display.

“I’ll be right back.”

He walked out the still-open front door and down the path until he was out of earshot.

Sherry heard Vance come up behind her, his brows raised to the ceiling. “That was strange.”

“Yes.” Sherry shivered. “He’s not usually this … odd.”

Tyson was sending last-minute e-mails, checking in with his various lieutenants as he talked to Proxy. He relayed the welcome news about the shattered Palm Pilot, sure Proxy would be as relieved as he. Instead, he was met with stony silence.

“He had the file on his computer, you know. I checked.” Proxy’s voice was cold. “He could have made a copy.”

Tyson swore. “I didn’t know that, no. But what are the chances that he actually did make a copy? And even so, what are the chances that the Bureau can figure out anything critical in just a few hours? The Palm Pilot—and all the information Maris had stored there—are gone.”

“We can’t risk it.” Proxy’s voice went distant again. “We must ensure that nothing goes wrong.”

He explained what he had in mind, and Tyson allowed himself a cold smile. The man might be odd at times, but he was a strategic genius.

“Good,” Tyson said. “Of course, it won’t work unless you can get in touch with Doug.”

“He’s got to check his messages or answer his cell phone eventually. After all, he’s a good family man. And his family will be wondering about him.”

Doug watched as Agent McKendrick sat down beside Ronnie and Tiffany, a sheaf of papers at his side.

“It’s hard to know where to start digging, especially if time is short. So let’s start with the reports Maris filed over the past year. I’ll walk you through what she found and what she surmised, and see if you can provide more details that will crack open an area for further inquiry.”

He picked up the first piece of paper, but before he could open his mouth, the door burst open behind him and the young agent hurried back in with the disk.

Agent-in-Charge Jackson gestured the young man over.

“Sir, we cracked the file. It’s a basic audio file containing machine noise of some kind. We haven’t had time to analyze it, so we don’t have a guess as to its purpose.”

“Play it for us, would you … in case it means anything to any of us or our guests.”

The young man slipped the disk into his laptop and fiddled with the settings. After a few moments, a faint sound emanated from the laptop’s speakers. Machine noise, as he had said.

One of the men across the room spoke up. “Three years ago I worked at headquarters—the decoding department. There’s something … familiar about that, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

Agent Jackson barked at him. “Well, get out there and help them.” He turned to the young man. “Get a team of people together and get every brain working on what this could possibly be. Come back once you have some reasonable ideas, even if you’re not sure what the final answer is. We’ll run it by everyone in the room and see if it breaks something loose. Understand?”

“Yes, sir!”

The young man and the decoding expert hurried out, just as a female agent stuck her head back in, waving a file at Agent Jackson.

“Speak!” he growled at her. “Time is ticking. What’d you find?”

The woman rapidly described what she had found in Jordan’s file. In the military as a young man, served in intelligence with several technical specialties, including decryption, satellite development, and strategic security. Posted in Iran (before the fall of the Shah), then Japan, then the Pentagon before leaving the service. He was an early adopter of computer technology, understanding computers and programming before most people knew what computers were. After the service,
he worked in the security industry, regarded as not only a great technician but a strategic thinker and good businessman. Upright citizen, serving on many corporate and civic boards. Not a blemish, except for an odd note from his Iran days that he had taken too much time off, earning a reprimand for disappearing for weeks at a time to enjoy the countryside (he had said).

The woman flipped a page and kept reading. In recent years, Jordan started an information-technology company with his brother: the company—she nodded in Doug’s direction—where Mr. Turner now worked. After the death of his brother last year, Jordan took full control of the enterprise, and it appeared to be prospering, making a number of aggressive but apparently profitable acquisitions, partnerships, and other deals.

The woman set the file down on the table beside Doug.

Agent McKendrick sighed. “So nothing obvious.”

“Not right now, sir.”

Doug pulled the thin file toward him and looked at the picture stapled to the top. It was a digital photo from the company’s official website, Jordan smiling in his authoritative way and looking anything but a menace to society. There was just no way that Jordan was involved in this.

“What’s that?” Ronnie asked.

He lifted the file so she could see the photo. “That’s my boss.”

Her eyes widened. “But … that’s the mean guy from the boat party!”

“What?”

She drew Tiffany’s attention to the picture. “Remember that first boat party I did, when I was supposed to hook up with some finance big-shot? I told you about that guy on the boat who was furious when the man left because his son got hurt? This is that guy.”

Doug closed his eyes, disbelieving, then opened them again and looked at the girl beside him. “You were supposed to hook up with a finance big-shot that day?”

“Yeah, they told me just to keep him company, but I overheard Marco talking about him, and I think they wanted to compromise him somehow. But then his son got hurt and he left before I’d hardly met him.”

“That was me.”

“
What
?” Ronnie sat straight up in her chair, drawing curious stares from the others around the table. Agent McKendrick and the female agent broke off their conversation and looked toward them.

“That was me.” Doug tapped the photo, his mind whirring. “And what you’re saying is that my boss and your boss were trying to use you to compromise me that day. But Brandon broke his arm, and I never went on the boat.”

At Agent McKendrick’s curious look, Doug briefly relayed what they had just discovered. The female agent said she’d continue to dig into Jordan’s background, and left the room.

“Well.” Agent McKendrick turned to the rest of the room. “Since we don’t have anything on that end yet, let’s go through Maris’s reports and see if we break something loose. Quickly.”

Ronnie was getting tired, her voice raw from hours of talking, her mind blank from trying to remember the smallest details of her club life over the past year. It was after ten o’clock, and she desperately needed a cup of coffee. Beside her, Tiffany looked equally worn.

Agents McKendrick and Jackson had gone through the weekly—sometimes daily—reports Maris filed electronically, describing her findings, her theories. From the frustrated expressions on their faces, Ronnie knew they were still just dancing around the edges, hitting on nothing.

“Sorry to ruin your New Year’s Eve like this,” Agent Jackson said to the three visitors. “Let’s at least take a coffee break, get you some food, and we’ll continue in fifteen minutes. Okay?”

“I need to call my wife.” Doug spoke up for the first time in two hours. “She’s going to be worried.”

Agents Jackson and McKendrick looked at each other, hesitating.

“Come on, I won’t tell her anything. It’s almost ten-thirty and I’m missing our own New Year’s party.”

Agent McKendrick waved his permission. Doug turned on his cell phone as the agent turned away and began talking to someone about bringing food in.

Before Doug could dial, the phone rang in his hand. He didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Doug. You’re at the FBI, aren’t you?”

Doug looked around the bustling room, beginning to feel a strange knot in his stomach. “Yes.”

“I want you to leave the room—wherever you are—and go to the men’s room. Somewhere you can be alone. Somewhere we can talk.” The voice was eerily calm. “Go now, Doug.”