Last Man Standing

by David Baldacci

  it came back down either. But whoever it was didn’t come out the lobby, I would have seen them.” He added, “Sorry, that’s all I know.”

  “No, that’s okay, Tommy, you’ve helped me a lot.” He looked at the kid at the desk. “And you too.”

  As Web hit the elevator button and headed back up, he had a lot to think about. Either it was coincidental that somebody had gone up about twenty minutes after Claire called down, perhaps just another tenant burning the midnight oil, or something else was going on. Under the circumstances, Web just had to assume it was the latter.

  When Web got to Claire’s offices, he asked the same woman who had helped him before if he could see the electrical closet.

  “It’s over there, I think,” she said uncertainly.

  “Thanks.”

  “Do you think something’s happened to Claire?” the woman asked nervously.

  “I’m sure she’s fine.”

  Web went to the closet and found it locked. He looked around, but the woman had gone back into her office. He pulled out his little picklock kit and soon had the closet open. He looked around. The first thing that struck him was that something had been pulled out of the wall. There was a clear gap on the power board and wire insulation and other bits of debris were on the floor. Web had no idea whether it had been done recently or long ago. He hoped it hadn’t happened last night. As he swung his head around, his experienced eyes picked up what Claire’s had missed: the wireless button trip on the inside of the doorjamb, similar to those installed in homes that would trigger an alarm if the door was opened and the contacts broken. Web had seen lots of these devices but never on an electrical closet in an office building. He walked to the front door of the office and opened it. There was no trip button there; in fact, he saw no security panel at all. Why have a security system on your electrical closet and not your office? A cold sense of dread hit Web as he looked at all the closed doors of this space. Claire had told him that a great number of FBI agents, spouses and other law enforcement types sought professional help here. A lot of intimate, confidential information was being revealed behind those portals.

  “Shit!” Web ran to Claire’s office. The door was locked. He picked it and went in. He saw the flashlight on the floor and was about to search her desk when he happened to look up and saw the smoke detector dangling there. He reached for it and drew back as his FBI training took over. Potential crime scene, fingerprints; don’t contaminate the evidence. He called Bates, explained the situation to him and the FBI put out an APB on Claire; and Bates and a tech team showed up thirty minutes later.

  Within three hours the entire office had been meticulously gone over and the people questioned. Web was sitting out in the waiting room the whole time. Bates came out, looking pale.

  “I don’t believe this, Web, I really don’t.”

  “The smoke detectors were listening devices, weren’t they?” Bates nodded. “And video. Pinhole cameras.”

  “PLC technology?”

  Bates nodded again. “Like the spooks use. Sophisticated stuff.” “Well, I guess we just found our leak.”

  Bates looked down at a list he held. “I guess, you look at it singly, and it’s like an agent here, a spouse there, no big deal. But we checked uptown, where they keep records on this because the Bureau’s insurance foots the bill. Can you believe that almost two hundred agents, spouses and other personnel connected with the Bureau are patients here? I’m talking people at the bottom all the way to people at the top. And who knows how many at other agencies like DEA, Secret Service, Capitol Police?”

  “Well, going to shrinks wasn’t real popular with agents before this. Now I guess you can just kiss it good-bye.”

  “O’Bannon had high-level clearances. Ex-Army, worked in-house at the Bureau as a counselor, solid as a rock. Or so we thought.”

  “An ocean of intelligence.” Web just shook his head. “Debbie Riner, Angie Romano and others. Guys aren’t supposed to really talk to their wives about work, but it happens. I mean, everybody’s human.”

  “That must be how they knew you guys were hitting the place that night and even which team was going to be where. It was a planned assault, lots of lead time. One of the guys could have told the missus and she lets it slip to O’Bannon and, bam, the bugs pick it up.” Bates covered his face with his hand. “Damn, how do I tell Debbie Riner she might have helped kill her husband?”

  “You don’t, Perce. You don’t,” Web said firmly.

  “But if I don’t, she’ll find out from some source. And, God, think of the blackmail potential. How do we know that hasn’t happened already?”

  “Face it, Perce, this is an octopus with tentacles that never stops growing.” Web looked around the office. “All personnel accounted for here?”

  “All except Claire Daniels.”

  “And O’Bannon?”

  Bates sat down. “It looks like he was definitely involved. His files have been cleared out. We checked his house. That’s been cleared out too. We’ve got APBs out, but if this all went down last night, he’s got a big head start. By private plane he could already be out of the country.” Bates rubbed his head. “This is a nightmare. Do you know what will happen when the media gets hold of this? The Bureau’s credibility will be wrecked.”

  “Well, if we can nail the people behind this, we might be able to get some of it back.”

  “O’Bannon’s not sticking around for us to come and arrest him, Web.”

  “I’m not talking about O’Bannon.”

  “Who, then?”

  “First of all, let me ask you a question that’ll probably make you wanta take a swing at me, but I need a straight answer if I’m going to be able to help you.”

  “Ask it, Web.”

  “Is there any possibility that O’Bannon was working with the Bureau to bug the offices so management would know what the foot soldiers’ problems were?”

  “That crossed my mind, actually. And the answer is no. Thing is, there are some real higher-ups who come here too, it’s not just rank-and-filers. And I’m talking the kind of heavyweights—and their wives, by the way—who could bring down just about everybody at the Bureau if that sort of crap was going on.”

  “Okay, then let’s assume that O’Bannon orchestrated this whole intelligence-gathering scheme. Why? Not for kicks. For profit. It always comes down to the bucks. He sells information to lots of different people and law enforcement operations everywhere get blown as a result. And maybe somebody bought info from O’Bannon to execute the hit on Charlie. Like you said, he could have gotten details from one of the wives he was seeing as a patient. Whoever’s behind that, I want them.”

  “Well, I thought we did know. The Frees. We already nailed them.”

  “Oh, you really think so?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “It seems to fit, almost too perfectly. Do we have any more information about what might have happened to Claire?”

  “Yeah, and it’s not good. Less than half an hour after the lights went out in Claire’s office, O’Bannon arrived at the garage. He used his keycard to get in and that gave us both his identity and the time of entry.”

  Web nodded and his spirits fell even more. “She trips the alarm, O’Bannon probably had a remote unit at his house and got the signal. He hightails it over here.”

  “And finds Claire.” “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry, Web.”

  Web drove back to East Winds, as depressed as he’d ever been in his life. As bad as things looked for the Bureau right now, he didn’t even care. All he cared about was finding Claire alive.

  Romano was cleaning one of his pistols and looked over when Web came up the stairs of the carriage house. “Man, you look bummed.”

  Web sat down across from him.

  “I screwed up, Paulie.”

  “Hell, it’s not the first time.” Romano smiled, but Web obviously wasn’t in the mood. Romano put down the gun and looked at his friend. “So talk to me.”