Hunting Season (65 page)

He continued to scan right, up into the tree line where the road from the main gate came out into the industrial area. That’s where the bulk of the backup team would be, he figured. And probably at the other entrances to the arsenal. He rolled over on his back, looked into the sky, and listened. No airplanes, or not yet anyway. The empty bright sky made his eyes water. It was tempting to close his eyes and just relax there, safe in the pine needles among all these silent trees. The birds had quit worrying about him. So what was he waiting for? He rolled back over. Two things:

Farnsworth’s question about where he was, exactly, and that van. The RA had probably just been trying to figure out where to deploy his backup team. In any event, he couldn’t do anything about Farnsworth. The van was something else. It might be FBI, aTF, or even local law.

Or it might be Misty.

Why would she be here at the arsenal? She could hide anywhere, and, unlike McGarand, she had not had that much time to prepare a place here. More likely, he thought, she had a source inside the Bureau and knew why Carter was here. Her mission was to bring him in. A straight retrieval. That was the only logical explanation for her taking Lynn hostage: They didn’t want Lynn. They wanted him. And Misty would trade. If she was here, and watching, he would have to be very damned careful about getting to Carter’s car. He began sliding back into the woods, and then he stopped as it hit him.

Ford, full-sized, tan. My God, he thought. Was that the van he’d rented in Washington and left at the strip mall? Wasn’t that his van?

Janet acknowledged a second station poll on the tactical net, confirming again that she was in position. It was getting warm in the car, especially in

the vest, and she was tempted to move into the tiny bit of shade of the admin building, on the other side from where she was parked now. But that would put the building between her and her backup, and her instincts told her not to do that. Farnsworth came up and asked if she saw anything going on. She reported that there was nothing moving. Then she asked if the aTF Crime Scene people had been backed out during the pickup window.

“What aTF Crime Scene people?” Farnsworth asked. She told him about the van down by the power plant. Farnsworth told her to stand by, then, a few minutes later, came back.

“aTF does not have any people or vehicles on the installation. Describe the van.”

Janet asked him to wait and then got out of the car. She put binoculars on the van and described it to the RA. She could not get a license plate.

She asked if he wanted her to go down there. He told her to stand by. She knew that he didn’t want to reveal the scope of the backup forces, in case Kreiss was watching and got spooked. She also didn’t think he would want her to approach an unknown vehicle on her own. He came back on the net.

“Move your vehicle to a position where you can get a license plate on that van,” he instructed.

“Do not get out of your vehicle.”

She acknowledged, got back in, and started the car. She rolled up the windows, switched on the AC, and then drove around the admin building and onto the main street. She had to go very slowly as she threaded her way through chunks of concrete and piles of other debris in the street.

The toppled overhead pipe racks obstructed her way, so when she reached the first side street, she went left, down around the pushed-over remains of the wooden sheds, and then up a small rise where a water tower lay on its side like a smashed pumpkin. From this vantage, she could get the binocs on the van’s back plate. She called it in to Farnsworth. He acknowledged and told her to hold her position and reiterated his instruction to stay in her car.

She looked around the area where she had parked. Behind her was the line of pine trees, and behind that, she was pretty sure, there was a creek, just over that hill. In front of her, the full scale of the blast was evident, highlighted by the bare concrete swath where the power plant had been, surrounded by a nearly perfect circle of rubble and boiler parts. The two enormous turbo generators wrecked and shifted off their foundations, leaned to one side in mute testimony to the force of the explosion. The shredded insulation and shattered

flanges on the scattered steam pipes made them look like giant broken bones. Big black holes gaped beneath each turbo generator and she wondered if they led down into the water chamber at the end of the Ditch. She put the car in park, shut it down, and rolled her window down. A small building whose roof was gone provided a patch of shadow for the car, for which she was duly grateful.

“It’s a rental,” Farnsworth reported.

“Rented two days ago in northern Virginia, along with a cell phone. We’re waiting now for headquarters to get the info on the drivers license. The contract is in the name of a John Smith, who paid cash.”

“I’ll bet that’s Kreiss’s vehicle,” she said.

“And you’d be right,” a voice behind her said softly. She turned and found Kreiss crouching by her door, a finger to his lips.

“Hold your position and report any movement,” Farnsworth was saying.

She acknowledged, while Kreiss walked around the back to the other side and let himself into the front seat. He asked her to roll the window down on his side. He was dressed in a camo jumpsuit, head hood, a pack front and back, and a heavy equipment belt, not unlike her own, which was strapped around his waist. A large automatic, probably a .45, was slung under the left side of his chest pack, ready for a cross-draw. He smelled of pine needles and wet mud.

“Well, Special Agent,” he said in a tired voice, “here we are.”

She didn’t say anything as he took off the hood. His face was gaunt with fatigue, and his normally well-trimmed beard was a little ragged around the edges. His eyes were red-rimmed, but alert, looking at her while keeping a watchful eye on their surroundings, as if he were expecting something dangerous to spring out of the rubble.

“Do you think she’s here?” Janet asked.

“Not Lynn. That woman?”

“It’s possible,” he said.

“That van down there? I left it in a shopping center parking lot last night,” He patted his front pack.

“I still have the keys.”

“So how did it get here?”

“Beats the shit out of me, but someone with the right resources could manage it. I thought maybe you guys had moved it here.”

“Nope,” she said.

“Bad sign,” he said as he scanned the area again.

“So what happens now?”

“I tell them you’re here and then we leave,” she said, getting a little anxious about the possible presence of Misty.

“Sooner rather then later, okay?”

“What about Lynn?”

“You give headquarters what they need, they pressure the Agency to get that woman to release Lynn.”

“And what if she doesn’t?” he asked, echoing her own earlier question.

Then the vehicle’s cell phone rang. Kreiss looked at her. She shook her head.

“Moot point now, I suspect,” he said with a wintry smile. Janet had no idea of who might be calling her vehicle’s cell phone when there was a tactical radio net up. She picked it up.

“Carter,” she said. Her voice cracked and she cleared it.

“Let me talk to him,” the woman’s voice said.

“No,” Janet said.

“Don’t be an ass, Carter. How do you think I knew when to make this call?”

“I don’t care,” Janet said.

“Yes, you do. I’m looking at you through a sniper scope. Want proof?”

“Tell me what you want.”

“You know exactly what I want. Kreiss.”

Then Kreiss was reaching for the phone. Janet didn’t want to hand it over, but something in his eyes made her yield. Then he slid across the seat so she could listen to both sides of the conversation. She was suddenly very aware of him as the front seat dipped under his weight. She hadn’t realized how large he was.

“Speak,” he said.

“I have your daughter. I will release her, now, as long as you get out of that car and go back into the woods until the feebs leave.”

Kreiss was trying to scan the area outside the car without turning his head.

“I’ve had a better offer,” he said.

“I’m going to give these people something, and then they’re going to make your people an offer they can’t refuse.”

“And then what happens to you?”

“What?”

“I said, what happens to you?”

“I get to live in peace.”

“And you believe that?”

“Why not? They get the smoking gun and a lock on Justice that even Hoover would love. And your people basically shouldn’t care. Your traitor blew his brains out five years ago up in Millwood.”

“Palace games, Edwin,” she said.

“You’ve never cared for palace games.

And you think you can come in from the cold once you’ve done this, do you? A grateful Bureau welcoming the exiled hero back into the family, right? Listen to this.”

There was a pause, and then, to Janet’s shocked amazement, Farnsworth’s conversation with Howell Greer was playing back to them. She cringed when she heard Greer’s words about Kreiss being expendable.

She stared rigidly out the windshield, holding her breath, unable to meet his eyes when it was over. That damned woman had someone in the Roanoke office. Someone who had had access to secure communications, while they were being transmitted. Oh shit, Billyh Farnsworth’s voice came over her collar radio. Kreiss, not letting go of the phone, ripped the mike off her shoulder and threw it out the window.

“Edwin,” the woman said.

“I’ve been sent to retrieve you. I’m not leaving until I do. Here’s the real deal: You get out of that car and walk back up into the woods. If you don’t, I’ll drop your daughter down one of these deep holes I keep finding here.”

Janet saw Kreiss’s hand close on the phone handset so hard that it began to crack.

“Edwin,” the woman continued.

“You get out of the car and she gets to walk away. You have my word, which you now know is a lot more reliable than your precious Bureau’s word, isn’t it? Then I’ll give you an hour or two. Let’s wait until dark. Then we’ll work it out, you and me. Sound and light, like old times. You can even try to stop me. But this way, what happens to your daughter is up to you, not some faceless bureaucrat in Washington.”

Kreiss said nothing, staring straight ahead.

“It’s a no-brainer, Edwin.”

He hesitated, then said, “I need a minute.”

“Take a lot. Take two. I know where to find you.”

The phone subsided into a hissing noise. Janet was paralyzed: She absolutely did not know what to do. Kreiss closed his eyes and then the handset shattered in his white-knuckled grip. Janet tried to think of an argument, a reason, any reason for him not to take the woman’s deal, but she knew there wasn’t one. Not after what he’d heard Assistant Director Greer say. Son of a bitch} “I’m trying to think of an argument not to do what she wants,” she said.

“For the life of me, I can’t.”

“There isn’t one,” he said, dropping the broken handset onto the seat and moving back to his side of the front seat, his hand opening and closing.

“Can you tell me what it is the bosses want so badly?” she asked.

“A graphic file. A picture of a letter. Signed by the deputy AG. Garrette himself. Sent to Ephraim Glower. Telling him that Justice was attaching one of his bank accounts.”

Janet didn’t understand.

“Why is that important?”

He rubbed the sides of his face with his hands. Then he turned to look at her, his eyes hollow. His expression scared her.

“Glower didn’t kill himself and his family because he was going to be uncovered as a servant of the Chinese government. He killed himself because they took the money back.”

“What money? And who is ‘they’?”

“The money he’d been paid to derail the espionage investigation for all those years. He’d run through the family fortune, but this Chinese money was going to save his ass. When they got caught taking the illegal campaign contributions—you know, the Hong Kong connection money—the reelection committee opted to give it all back. Some of that, a couple of million, had been used to pay off Glower. So they used Justice to get the IRS to attach Glower’s bank accounts. That meant Glower was now broke again. That’s why he did it.”

“The reelection committee knew about Glower? My God! That means’ Yeah he said, scanning the area around the car again.

“Anyone who has that letter can tie the Chinese campaign contributions to a quid pro quo: a fee paid for services rendered. Access to our nuclear weapons secrets in return for several millions in campaign contributions. Not directly, of course. Through the Hong Kong cutout. Basically, anyone who knows the case would recognize the letter as the smoking gun. Only problem was, the political side lost their nerve. What a surprise.”

She took a deep breath and tried to get her mind around all this.

“What was your deal?” she asked.

“When you were terminated?”

“Glower called Agency security to have me thrown out of his house that day I went to confront him. But I went back a few hours later. Found him and his entire family slaughtered. Very obvious suicide. Maybe too obvious, now that I think about it. Like that White House lawyer? Anyhow, he had a wall safe. I broke into it, found the letter.”

“They found the safe, they knew somebody knew too much.”

“Something like that. Initially, they didn’t know who, or what. Later, after the investigation, they began to figure it out. They knew it had to be me, so they threatened the only remaining thing of value I had: Lynn.

The threat was pretty clear. If I agreed to remain silent, they agreed to leave her alone.”

“Why didn’t they just move against you?”

“Because by then, I had a lock on them: AD Marchand was part of it.

He’d been taking care of the FBI end. I let Marchand know that I had documentary evidence on the real reason Glower killed himself. Anything happened to me or Lynn, there was a mechanism in place that would guarantee that information would get to the appropriate congressional committee chairmen. When I told Marchand what it was, he just about fainted. Basically, I had a gun to the administration’s head. They had a gun to Lynn’s head. A lock.”