by M. A. Lawson
“Okay,” he said. Then he looked away from her and she thought for a minute he was going to cry. “If only I’d been there. I could have—”
“This wasn’t your fault, Henry.”
“Maybe not, but . . .”
Kay didn’t have time to make Henry feel better. “After you call everybody, we need to get the identities of the two men who were killed. That might give us a lead to whoever planned this.”
“Do you think the cops will tell us?”
“No way. Right now the detective in charge is treating me like I’m a suspect. Do you have any contacts on the force?”
Henry nodded. “Two guys I served with in Iraq.”
This didn’t surprise Kay. If Henry’s friends were hometown boys and veterans, they’d be at the top of Metro P.D.’s hiring list.
“But my buddies work patrol,” Henry said. “They’re not detectives. They’re not big shots.”
“Talk to them anyway, and ask them to help. We need those guys’ names and we need them fast.”
“Okay. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to do the same thing, try to identify the men who were killed. I’ll call some of my old DEA pals to see if they can help.”
That was a lie. Kay was going to go see Olivia Prescott. Maybe she should have told Henry about her, but she wanted to know more about Prescott before she shared the information.
• • •
KAY LEFT THE STARBUCKS but didn’t return to her car. Instead, she walked around trying to find a quiet place that had a pay phone. It’s easier to find unicorns than pay phones these days, and it’s even harder to find one in a place that’s quiet. She finally found one in the Dupont Circle Hotel. She wanted to talk to her lover—who also worked for Callahan. He was in New York.
She called Eli Dolan’s cell phone. “It’s me,” she said.
“Have you heard what happened?”
“Yeah, I was there.”
“You were?”
“Look, I’m calling from a pay phone. Go find one near you and call me back.” She gave him the number of the phone she was using. Kay didn’t like to talk about anything important on cell phones; they’re basically radios.
As she waited in the phone booth for Eli to return her call, a fat guy in a suit walked up looking sweaty and flustered. “Hey,” he said, “I gotta use the phone. My cell’s dead and I gotta check in with my office right away. It’s a big deal.”
Kay opened her blazer and showed him Eloise Voss’s Beretta. “Go away before I shoot you,” she said, and the fat man left.
A moment later the phone rang. “What happened?” Eli said.
She told Eli the same things she’d told Henry. “Do you have any idea what Callahan could have had in his safe that would be a motive for this? I mean, I know he kept cash in there, but unless he kept millions, I don’t think this was about money.”
“I don’t know what was in his safe. I do know he was ultracareful about not keeping paperwork about missions in his office. Maybe there was something in there about an op he was planning, but I don’t know how anyone else would have known. I mean anyone outside the Group.”
But someone had known. And one possibility was the people who were really controlling Callahan—and maybe they had shared the information with the wrong people.
“Eli, if you know who Callahan really works for, this is the time to tell me.”
Eli, sounding exasperated—because Kay had asked this question before—said, “Kay, I’m telling you, I don’t know who he works for. He’s always denied working for anyone other than the president.”
“But the way Callahan gets the money to finance his operations must give you some idea,” Kay said.
“Kay, I’m going to tell you something now that will make you an accessory to a crime. Are you okay with that?”
Kay didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, I’m okay with that. Now quit stalling.”
“The government buys services from many private-sector companies. And I’m talking about services as opposed to goods. Goods are tangible. For example, tires for military vehicles. If you buy tires, then somebody should be able to find those tires.
“Services are different and, as I said, the government buys services from many different outfits. It hires experts and lawyers and consultants. It hires scientists and professors and engineers. It hires researchers and pollsters and—”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Kay said. “It hires people who don’t produce anything but a pile of paper.”
“That’s right. And what I do for Callahan is set up dummy corporations that provide nonexistent services. These companies often have strange names that don’t tell you what they really do, and someone in the government funnels money to these companies. A portion of the money is then funneled back to the government in the form of taxes to make the companies appear legitimate. But I don’t know who is moving the money into the accounts. Somewhere, in some computer, are phony contracts with my phony companies to justify the money being spent. And whoever controls the money is able to keep folks like the GAO from auditing these contracts.”
“Could it be someone like the NSA?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“I don’t mean the NSA specifically,” Kay said, rapidly backtracking, “but any intelligence agency. Could the intelligence community be the source of Callahan’s money?”
“I suppose. The NSA has a massive budget and is continually buying private-sector services for encryption and eavesdropping technology. But since the intelligence agencies are part of the executive branch, the White House could also be involved in some way, as Callahan claims. Plus, the operating budget for the White House is about one and a half billion a year, and some of that money could be vectored Callahan’s way.”
Kay still didn’t believe the White House was involved—but there was no point continuing to debate this with Eli. Not now. She started to ask him if he’d ever heard of an Olivia Prescott associated in any way with the Callahan Group—then stopped. She trusted Eli, but knowing Prescott’s name could put him in danger.
There was also another reason she didn’t tell him, one not quite so noble. If she told him, he would try to interfere with whatever she might do next. Eli would want to deliberate, consider the upside and the downside, do background research, develop contingency plans, and so forth—and Kay didn’t operate that way. She followed her instincts, and when her instincts told her it was time to act, she acted. She wasn’t exactly reckless but . . . Okay, she could be reckless, but Eli’s tendency for moving slowly and cautiously usually frustrated her.
She’d tell him about Prescott later, when she knew more. Maybe.
“What are you planning to do?” Eli asked.
“Try to get the names of the guys Callahan and I shot.” That wasn’t a lie—it just wasn’t the complete truth. “If I can get their names, it’ll give me a starting point for finding who was behind the attack.”
“Is that all you’re planning to do?” he said—and she could tell he was suspicious that she wasn’t telling him everything. Sheesh. You’d think a girl’s boyfriend would be more trusting. She was glad she wasn’t in the same room with him so he could study her face, like a poker player looking for an opponent’s tells.
“Yeah, that’s all,” she said. Then she added, “For now.”
He was silent for a moment, apparently still thinking she was holding out on him. “Kay, whoever is behind this is obviously willing to kill. You need to be very careful because you have no idea where the threat could be coming from.”
“I’ll be careful,” she said. And that wasn’t a lie.
• • •
AS KAY DROVE TOWARD LAUREL, MARYLAND, she thought about Eli. She’d been thinking about him a lot lately, wondering what was going to happen to their relationship if she moved out of D.C. after she parted ways
with Callahan. He knew she was dissatisfied with Callahan, but she hadn’t told Eli she was quitting; maybe she should have, but she wanted to tell Callahan first. All she knew was that, after she quit, there was a good chance things wouldn’t stay the same.
She met Eli two months after she came to work for Callahan because Eli was involved in the disastrous Afghan op—and it was a case of lust at first sight. He was almost forty, had a slim yet muscular build, sandy-brown hair, blue-gray eyes, and was as handsome as any man Kay had ever known. He had a subtle sense of humor and, in spite of his accomplishments, didn’t take himself too seriously. He was generous and fun to be with—and he was filthy rich. Like Kay, he’d been married once and was now divorced. Unlike Kay, he had no children.
It sometimes seemed as if they had very little in common, other than the Callahan Group and sex, that is. Kay came from a middle-class family. Her father had been a cop, which was one of the reasons why Kay had gone to work for the DEA: Having a job where you packed a weapon was part of her DNA. Eli, on the other hand, was born to a couple of trust fund babies with a silver spoon in his mouth, and thanks to intelligence and hard work, he increased the size of the spoon. His net worth was in the millions.
Before going to work for Thomas Callahan, he’d worked for Goldman Sachs—that’s where some of his millions came from—and during the financial meltdown in 2008, he migrated to D.C. with a few other Goldman people and took a low-paying job at the Treasury Department. In other words, he came to Treasury to help the country recover from all the things that Goldman Sachs and similar institutions had done to create the financial meltdown. Someplace along the way, he crossed paths with Thomas Callahan and became Callahan’s money guy—but that was a part of his past he refused to share with Kay.
Eli spent more than half his time in New York, not only because he preferred to live there, but because New York was where he had to be to do his job, New York being the financial center of the universe. He had a penthouse apartment in Manhattan with a view of skyscrapers and polluted rivers, but because he spent so much time in D.C., he also owned a small town house in Georgetown—small meaning it was only worth a couple of million. Kay was currently living in a two-bedroom apartment on Connecticut Avenue near the National Zoo and the only view she had was the apartment building across the street. Kay’s idea of a home was a place with a backyard where you had to mow the grass on Sundays. Eli Dolan had never owned, much less operated, a lawn mower.
Their roles in the Callahan Group were also completely different. In addition to managing—and hiding—the money Callahan needed to fund his covert operations, Eli also identified individuals who were financially supporting terrorists or otherwise engaged in enterprises that were a threat to the United States. With the help of a couple of handpicked hackers, he sometimes intercepted money going to the bad actors and diverted it into Callahan’s coffers. Almost everything he did was done with a computer and a telephone. Kay, by comparison, was one of the people Callahan sent into the field to deal with people face-to-face. Eli was a financial assassin; Kay was the real thing.
But there was one thing they had in common. They both liked playing dangerous, high-risk games. When Kay had worked for the DEA, the game had been catching drug dealers—and she’d enjoyed it immensely. The rules of the game—meaning the law—was something you either had to work with or work around. Working for Callahan was a different kind of game and the stakes were considerably higher—and no one worried about the rules. Kay liked that there was no net to catch you if you fell, and Eli was the same way. He liked the intellectual challenge of outwitting the government’s bean counters, and he liked even more the challenge of beating the money guys who played for the other team. He also knew that if he was caught, he might go to jail or become a target for those he was playing against. He once told Kay that, because he’d never served in the military and had spent most of his adult life selfishly making money, working for Callahan was his idea of a public service. He wasn’t being facetious.
As for their personal relationship, the word marriage had never come up—and Kay wasn’t sure what she’d do if it did. They were monogamous—at least as far as Kay knew—but at this point in her life, she wasn’t sure she was ready for another marriage. She liked having her own space and didn’t want a full-time, live-in partner. Maybe one day she would, but not now. And the arrangement they had seemed to suit Eli as well.
When they were together, they enjoyed each other’s company and had a marvelous time. Sometimes they’d just spend a quiet weekend sitting around Eli’s town house, reading and watching movies when they weren’t in bed. Other times, they sampled more exotic locales, like the week they spent in Paris and another in Jamaica, just because Eli had an urge for sunshine in January. It was nice having a rich lover.
But she didn’t know what was going to happen after she quit working for Callahan. She had no intention of moving to New York unless someone—and she couldn’t imagine who—offered her a job there. And since Eli appeared to have no desire to leave the Big Apple . . .
Aw, enough. This wasn’t the time to worry about the future. After this was all over, she’d figure out what to do.
6
DAY 2—12 P.M.
Olivia Prescott lived in a sand-colored high-rise. The apartments had large balconies and the grounds were manicured. It looked expensive. Not a place where multimillionaires would live, but the condos were probably in the six-to-eight-hundred-thousand-dollar range, which made Kay wonder if she had the right Olivia Prescott. If Prescott worked at the NSA as Kay was guessing—or hoping—she probably couldn’t afford the place on a civil servant’s salary. Well, maybe that wasn’t true. If Prescott had some rank—if she was a GS-15 or higher—and had held that rank for a long time, then maybe she could afford it.
Kay walked up to the front door, which was locked of course. But outside, in a covered recess, were doorbell buttons and an intercom screen. O. Prescott lived in 5A. There was an S. Terrance in 5B. But there was no 5C or 5D or 5E, which Kay assumed meant Prescott occupied half the fifth floor. She pressed the doorbell button but no one answered, which didn’t surprise her. It was only noon; if Prescott worked, she probably wouldn’t be home for at least another five or six hours.
She went back to her car to wait—and Kay hated waiting. She’d hated stakeouts when she was with the DEA; she hated any situation where she was forced to sit and do nothing. But what other option did she have?
She called the hospital to check on Callahan’s condition, but the nurse said she wasn’t permitted to divulge any information over the phone and that Kay would have to talk to her in person and prove that she was related to Callahan. Kay pointed out that she’d been to see Callahan earlier, and at that time she hadn’t been required to show ID or any other document proving she was his daughter. The nurse said, “Well, things have changed.” Kay thanked the unhelpful nurse and hung up. She figured the cops had probably told the nurses not to talk about Callahan to anyone they didn’t know, as they might be talking to the people who shot him—and who might come back and try to finish the job.
Kay was hungry. She hadn’t eaten since six that morning, but there weren’t any convenience stores or restaurants near Prescott’s apartment. She thought about driving somewhere and stocking up on Coke and sandwiches, but before she could make a decision, her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number on her caller ID, just that it was a 202 area code.
“Hamilton,” she said.
“This is Detective Mary Platt. I want to see you in my office. Immediately.”
Kay restrained herself from telling Platt the many reasons why she didn’t give a shit what she wanted.
“Why do you want to see me?” Kay said.
“Because I have more questions.”
“I’m sorry, but this isn’t a good time for me.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m not going to tell you. I don’t
want you to send a couple cops over to pick me up.”
“You don’t seem to understand the seriousness of this situation. I can arrest you for homicide.”
“Oh, bullshit. By now you’ve gotten back ballistic results, and you know that the only guy who had a bullet from my gun in him was wearing a ski mask.”
“Be that as it may,” Platt said, “I don’t really know that you didn’t shoot those other people. What I do know is that I can arrest you and keep you in a cell until some smart-ass attorney is able to get you out. And that might not be as easy as you think. A massacre occurred in that building and you’re withholding information. I think the DA might even be able to convince a judge that you shouldn’t be granted bail. I want you in my office now.”
The Big Bad Wolf was huffing and puffing, but Kay had dealt with much bigger bad wolves. “Sorry,” she said. “Not now. I’m busy. But I can spare you a few minutes. So if you have questions, ask them.”
Platt didn’t say anything and Kay could imagine her squeezing her phone with one of her big hands, stopping herself from screaming into it.
“We can’t figure out who else works for Callahan except for you and the two dead guys,” Platt said. “We can’t find a personnel directory and we can’t get into any of Callahan’s computers. They’re protected by a system that’s too good for our geeks to crack. So far.”
“Well, I can’t help you with that,” Kay said. “I don’t know anything about computers.”
“I need the names of Callahan’s employees. Maybe one of them will know what was in his safe that was so important to these people.”
“Let me think about that,” Kay said.
