Dead Watch (6 page)

When he left, she shook his hand. Her hands were harder and rougher than he’d expected, probably from riding, or working around the farm, he thought. He turned on the stoop and said, “I’ll talk to the governor about you—get you back to your farm, make sure you’re not harassed. If I need more information, can I come back?”

“Yes, you may, anytime,” she said. “If we don’t find Linc pretty soon, he’s gone. We’ll never find him.”

Black, standing behind her, said, “And hey, take it easy, huh? Listen to what Maddy’s saying about the Watchmen. From what I hear, you were always a little too quick to jump out of the airplane.”

When Jake was gone, Madison said to Johnson Black, “The Virginia state police and the FBI are looking for Linc. They’re not getting anywhere, so the president sends some bureaucrat to look for him? This is going to help? Am I going crazy?”

“He’s not exactly a bureaucrat,” Black said.

“That
forensic bureaucracy
thing was cute,” she said, as they idled back into the living room. “But what does it mean?”

“Jake fixes things,” Black said. “If there’s some really screwed-up problem, that nobody can fix, and that
must
be fixed, Jake fixes it. He makes lists of people who need to be fired, who need to be promoted. He has ears all over the bureaucracy . . . he scares the heck out of those people. And that’s what’s got to be done if you want to find Linc.”

“We need to scare bureaucrats?”

“That’s right. People are looking for him, they’re paying attention because of all the media coverage, but they’re not
desperate
to find him. Jake can make people desperate. He can make them feel that their careers are on the line if they don’t—and sometimes, they are.”

“Hmmp.” She settled back on the couch. “I suppose it’s better than nothing.”

“He used to be married to Nikki Lange, you know.”

Her eyebrows went up: “You’re kidding me. He’s the guy?”

“He’s the guy. Couldn’t last, of course. Nikki’s too deeply involved with herself.”

“And her money,” Madison said. “Did he get alimony?”

“No. He told the judge that all he was asking for was his life. The judge almost fell on the floor laughing—she knew Nikki, too. Besides, Jake’s pretty well fixed. Inherited a Montana ranch. Sold to a movie star for big bucks.”

“Maybe he rides,” she said.

“I’m sure he does.” Black smiled. “I was watching you two talk—you got sort of
engaged.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, then said, “He’s not entirely unattractive.”

Black snorted. “Just . . . take it easy. Jake is a little strong for most people. As I understand it, he pretty much held his own with Nikki.”

“He jumps out of airplanes?”

“Jake was in Afghanistan for years. He killed people—that was his job. So. You can toy with him, but I wouldn’t annoy him.”

“Mmm,” she said again. “Maybe he can do something. Maybe we need somebody who’ll jump out of an airplane.”

Jump out of an airplane.

He dreamed of jumping out of airplanes that night, jumping all mixed up with the face and figure of Madison Bowe; but mostly jumping. Other jumpers talked about their best moment; popping the chute, flying . . . but for Jake, it had always been that instant when he hit the wind, hit the slipstream, the slap and tickle, the moment of commitment.

He’d liked Afghanistan, the fighting, the comradeship, the countryside, the Afghanis. In Washington ex-military circles, the fashion called for a grudging, manly acknowledgment of having been there, of the toughness of it, but nobody was supposed to have actually
liked
it, to have loved the exhilaration of combat.

But he did. He’d liked the night runs, he’d liked the ambushes, he’d liked the assaults. He hadn’t minded, too much, the occasional pain, right up until the time he took the bad one. He hadn’t even minded that pain, though he hated the disability that came with it.

He didn’t dream of the disability, though: he dreamed of the airplane door, of the helicopter rope, of the night-vision stalks through the rocky ravines . . .

He didn’t wake up smiling, but he didn’t wake up unhappy, either.

In the morning, after his usual four and a half hours of sleep, he cleaned up and went downstairs, ate toast and eggs, then spent an hour with online newspapers, catching up. When he’d finished with the papers, he went out on the government networks, going deeper on Lincoln Bowe and Arlo Goodman. By seven-thirty, he had their biographies down. He made a call to the FBI, then called a cab.

The day would be warm, he thought, as he locked the door. It must have rained sometime overnight, because the gardens and sidewalks were still wet, but now the skies were clearing again, and sun slanted down through the trees along the street. Because of the torn-up sidewalk, and construction equipment in the street, he walked out to the end of the block to wait for the taxi.

The driver was maybe twenty-one, silent, sullen even, wearing an old tweed coat over a T-shirt, and a flat tweed hat.

“Hard night?” Jake asked.

The driver’s eyes went up to the mirror. “They’re all hard, buddy.”

Jake suppressed a smile: the cabbie was living in a movie, delivering movie lines.

The FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover Building was a bland outcrop of bureaucratic rock on Pennsylvania Avenue, halfway between the White House and the Capitol. Jake checked through security, got an elevator. He didn’t need directions.

Mavis Sanders was the FBI’s assistant deputy director for counterterrorism. She met him at the door to her inner office. “Another headache,” she said. She was smiling, but her voice wasn’t.

“How have you been, Mavis?” Jake asked. He kissed her on the cheek.

“My day wasn’t too bad until seven-thirty
A
.
M
., when I got the note that said you were coming over,” she said.

“C’mon, we’re old chums.”

“Yeah. Sit down, old chum.” She was a slender fine-boned black woman who’d made her reputation tracking Iranian-based jihadists. She dropped into her chair, looked at a piece of paper, set it aside, knitted her fingers on top of her desk, and asked, “What’s up?”

“The president and the chief of staff have decided that I should find Lincoln Bowe. I need access to your investigative files, and then I need you—somebody, but preferably you—to make this thing a priority and get it settled.”

“It
is
a priority.”

“Bull. Everybody’s playing pass-the-hanky, hoping for the best,” Jake said. “Your Richmond guys are doing liaison, you’ve got nobody really senior involved, except in PR.”

“Jake, I really don’t know anything about it.”

“I’d like to get Novatny working on it.”

“Why us?” she asked, with exasperation. “We don’t do murders, and we’ve got a full plate.”

“Because you can talk privately to the director and tell him that the president is serious about this and that he’s pissed. Tell him that bureaucratic asses are going to be hanged, that careers are going to end. Okay?”

“Okay . . .”

“And because you’re the smartest people I know over here. And because, even though you don’t do murders, you do work counterterrorism, and this has got the flavor of a conspiracy. That’s what we need to penetrate: the ring of guys who picked up Lincoln Bowe. And finally, you’ve got guys who might possibly keep their mouths shut. We don’t want this to become a bigger deal than it already is. We want it to end.”

Her mouth turned down and she said, “It can’t get much bigger. Did you see Madison Bowe on television?”

“Yes. I talked to her last night.”

She looked at him for a moment, sighed, and said, “All right. I’ll talk to the director.”

“And he’ll go along.”

“Yeah. If you stand him in a half-mile-an-hour wind, he can tell you which way it’s blowing.”

“And we get Novatny.”

“Something can be worked,” she agreed.

“Terrific,” Jake said. He pushed himself out of the chair. “I won’t bother you any longer.”

“You’ll mention my name to the guy?”

“Absolutely,” Jake said. “You’ll be an ambassador in two weeks. What country do you want?”

“Fuck you.”

“Thanks, Mavis. Who do I talk to about the files?”

She found an empty conference room for him, and a clerk brought him a short stack of paper, computer printouts. Too short, he thought, when he saw it. The federal investigation was being run out of the FBI’s Richmond office, but the feds hadn’t actually taken control of it. Most of the work was being done by the Virginia Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which was treating Bowe’s disappearance as a missing-persons incident.

But not a routine one.

From paperwork copied from the state cops to the FBI, Jake understood that the cops thought they were on a murder hunt, or possibly some kind of fraud. The police had interviewed the last few friends who’d spoken to Bowe, the people who’d attended the speech he’d given at the law school, and had collected a half dozen interviews done by the NYPD, including the maid who’d found that the cats had gone hungry.

One comment had been repeated a couple of times: Bowe had been drunk in public on at least two occasions before he disappeared. Personal problems? Another woman he was hiding from Madison? But would that have him drinking during the day, on the way to public appearances? He’d have to be a far-gone alky to do that.