Sympathy For the Devil (8 page)

He had OMNI scan Abrar’s cell phone records, ATM, and credit card accounts. His cellphone hadn’t been on since noon the day before and had last been located at the cab stand. He sent out a ping to turn it on, but the battery had either been removed or was dead. There’d been no cell signal coming from the vehicle while OMNI was tracking it, so chances were, he didn’t have a cellphone on him either. And there’d been no sign of him anywhere since the car had been parked in Washington Heights.

Hicks flicked his cigar ash in the ashtray and thought about going to bed. It was only going on eleven, but he was tired and knew Jason would be ruthless during the meeting in the morning. He loved finding inconsistencies between written reports and verbal summaries even in the best of times. Now that an Asset had been killed, he’d be relentless.

Hicks decided he’d better write up a summary of what had happened in the park and make sure he went through his last report to Jason for anything he could use to hang him. Sleep suddenly dropped way down the priority list.

Then the search icon on his monitor blinked, showing OMNI had identified all three men he’d searched for. But when he clicked on the icon to retrieve the results, he saw the following message:

PLEASE CONTACT YOUR DEPARTMENT CHAIR FOR MORE INFORMATION.

Son of a bitch. Jason had blocked him from seeing the results.

Hicks felt his temper beginning to spiral again, so he sat back in his chair and took a long drag on his cigar instead. An agent in the morgue, two dead hostiles and a third on the loose and Jason was playing parlor games with information.

Hicks knew he’d better review every one of Colin’s status reports for the last six months before his debrief with Jason. He poured himself another cup of coffee. He knew there was a damned good chance he’d need to make another pot.

T
HE NEXT
morning was like most New York mornings following a bad storm: brisk with blue skies almost too bright to look at. It was as if the city was trying to make up for the miserable weather. The snow was still mostly white because the pollution and dogs hadn’t gotten to it yet. Large chunks of the sidewalk still hadn’t been shoveled and wouldn’t be for some time, but there’d been enough foot traffic along Bleecker Street by then to have beaten down something of a path.

Hicks navigated through the snow; avoiding the stumbling pedestrians coming from both directions while balancing the two cups in the Styrofoam coffee carrier. One cup was a large black coffee for himself and a soy vanilla chai latte for Jason. Because Jason was a soy vanilla chai latte kind of guy.

Most of the cars on the street had been parked in the same spaces since before the storm began and were buried under several inches of drifted snow. Hicks didn’t know how Jason had managed to park his black Ranger Rover in the same spot where it always was, midblock close to Sullivan Street. Maryland plates.

Hicks hadn’t expected Jason to get out of his warm SUV to help him with the coffee and Jason didn’t let him down. He simply watched Hicks go all the way to the corner and walk back in the street as cars crawled through the thickening slush. But he was kind enough to unlock the doors and take his latte from the carrier as Hicks climbed into the SUV.

“Thanks for the help.” Hicks pulled the door closed. The inside of the SUV was warm and spotless. He took special joy in grinding the snow and rock salt from his boot treads into the passenger side carpet.

“Thanks for making me drive up here in this shit.” Jason took the lid off the cup and blew on it, even though Hicks knew it wasn’t that hot. “Traffic into the city was a nightmare.”

Hicks drank his coffee the way it was. He liked it hot. “You’re the one who decided to come up here, ace. We could’ve had this discussion over the phone and saved a lot of trouble.”

“That’s not how I work and you know it. You lost an agent yesterday and University protocol says that requires a field visit from your Department Chair. And, as much as you might hate that fact, I am your Department Chair.”

“And I already told you it’s being handled.”

“I find your definition of ‘being handled’ troubling to say the least. Do you call three dead men in Central Park ‘handled?’ Do you think allowing a suspected accomplice to escape ‘handled?’ Do you call having to bring in the Varsity to clean up your mess ‘handled?’ Looks like a Grade-A catastrophe to me.”

Hicks looked at Jason for the first time since getting in the car. He was as equally nondescript as Hicks, though his coloring was much fairer and his features more delicate. His penchant for J. Crew sweaters and Lindberg frames led people to believe he was a computer programmer or a high school swimming coach or an accountant. Anything but what he was. The Dean liked his people to appear innocuous and Jason succeeded. In Hicks’ opinion, it was the only thing he was good at. “I don’t think blocking me from seeing the identities of the men I killed being ‘handled’ either.”

“Do you honestly expect me to allow you to see sensitive information less then an hour after what happened in Central Park? Without even being able to survey the situation or your status first hand? You must be out of your fucking mind.”

Hicks smiled as he sipped his coffee. “Don’t curse. It doesn’t go well with the latte.”

“You really think this is just one big joke, don’t you? That you can handle everything with just a few keystrokes and a few emails?”

“I think one of us has almost twenty years of field experience, ace, and it sure as hell ain’t you. You’ve been on the job six months, and I don’t know what you were doing before that, so forgive me if I don’t take rebuke from a rookie.”

“The Dean gave me this assignment for a reason.”

“Yes he did,” Hicks said, “just like he put me in charge of the New York Office for a reason, too. Field operations aren’t easy. They go to shit all the time and almost never go according to plan. Surprise is part of the job, even when a good man like Colin is involved. People snap. They make mistakes. Things go south and, when they do, it’s professionals like me who know how to handle it. And you holding back information from me makes all the bad shit that went down that much worse.”

“I don’t see how three dead men in the park could get any worse.”

“Which is exactly why you’re riding a desk,” Hicks said. “You see three dead bodies. I see two threats neutralized and a suspect pinged by OMNI as he escaped, not to mention the images we were able to pull off the SD card.”

Jason looked like he wanted to say more. He looked out the window instead. “Sounds like a man who fucked up and is doing his best to put a positive spin on a bad situation.”

“This job isn’t about spin. It’s about taking effective action on the information we gather. It’s about getting as much information as you can when you can get it. You’d know that if you had any idea about how to do your job.”

Jason slowly slid his latte in the beverage holder near the gear shift. Hicks knew he’d already pulled the chain of command as tight as he dared. He just didn’t care. He half hoped Jason took a swing at him. He’d like a legitimate reason to break Jason’s arm.

Instead, Jason said, “You don’t know the first thing about me or what I’ve done, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to justify my credentials to you. I’ll release the identities of the men you killed when I’m convinced you’re capable of running this operation according to University protocol. And right now, you haven’t convinced me.”

“Let me try to enlighten your thinking, then. I’ve got a hot investigation that’s getting colder each second I waste sitting here kissing your ass. Who gives a shit? All I care about is finding out why my agent is dead.”

“You were there when he was killed,” Jason said. “You already know
why
he’s dead. You need to know what caused them to catch on to Colin.”

“And it’s exactly because of that semantic bullshit that I need you to stay out of my way and let me do my job.”

Hicks watched Jason trace the inside of his mouth with his tongue. “And if I don’t, you’ll call the Dean directly, won’t you? Go right over my head.”

“No,” Hicks admitted, “because he probably already knows what you’re doing. You wouldn’t have the balls to hold back those identities without his support. So you’ve got his blessing for now, but how long until I start leaning on him about you?”

Jason looked at the steering wheel; then back out the window. “The Dean not only knows I embargoed your searches, he also knows why I did it. I told him I think you were too close to Colin and have lost all of your objectivity in this case. I think there’s a good chance you missed something in your recent debriefing session and I’m not comfortable with your ability to see things clearly.”

Hicks figured that’s how he saw things. He didn’t agree with it, but it still stung. “You’ve probably been through every report I’ve filed from Colin. I spent half the night going through them myself. Twice. And I know I didn’t miss a damned anything, I know you know it, too.”

“We both know a report is only as thorough as the person who wrote it. I’d think a man with your extensive amount of field experience would know that. I think your objectivity here is clouded by your long friendship and working relationship with Colin. And I’m afraid that lack of objectivity will pose a serious hindrance in your ongoing pursuit of Omar. Revenge has no place in our line of work, James. You’ve said so many times, according to your file.”

“You read it in my file, but do you have any idea what it actually means?” Hicks realized he was grabbing the paper coffee cup tight enough to buckle it and placed it in the beverage holder instead. “When the Dean assigned me here, this office was one step above a glass-to-the-wall operation. Now it’s the best network in the entire University system.”

“No one’s interested in listening to you narrate your own highlight reel, James. That was then. This is now.”

“Then let’s talk about now. Now, I’ve got an office with over a hundred sources and field personnel who turn over solid, actionable intelligence to me every single week. No other office in the System has that kind of output.”

“Not every week,” Jason said. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“Then let’s talk money. I’ve got a revenue stream that not only keeps the New York Office off the University’s grid, but it keeps the University’s bursar account fat and happy. That same money keeps your candy ass in Ranger Rovers and lattes and Izod shirts. You don’t trust me?” Hicks laughed. “Junior, I don’t give a shit because the Dean knows that if I go, the whole operation goes with me.”

“Pride goes before the fall,” Jason said. “We know more about what you do here than you think.”

“You only know what I share with you. So, either you release the identities of the three men or this thing gets a lot nastier than it has to be.”

Jason slowly lifted his latte out of the cup holder. “I could be forgiven for taking that as a threat.”

“I don’t make threats. I just tell it like it is.”

Jason sipped his latte as he watched New Yorkers of all ages toddling through the heavy snow. The city had closed the schools thanks to the blizzard and it seemed like every kid in the world was out on the street; letting themselves fall into the snow banks while their fathers or mothers or nannies told them to stop.

Hicks noticed the manicured nails on Jason’s right hand and the wedding ring on his left. He wondered if the ring was real or just cover. He wondered if Jason had children and what kind of father he’d be. Was he an asshole in every aspect of his life or only with him?

Jason took another sip of his latte and licked his lips clean. “You’re right. We don’t have to like each other. We don’t even have to respect each other, but we do have to work together. Under other circumstances, I’d probably ask the Dean for another posting because I don’t enjoy working with people I despise and, believe it or not, I despise you.”

Hicks toasted him with his coffee. “Feeling’s mutual, Ace.”