Executive Order (Reeder and Rogers Thriller)

by Max Allan Collins

  “Do I get a vote?” came Nichols’ voice from across the loft.

  Barefoot, a square bandage on her head wound, she had slipped into a pair of DeMarcus’s jeans that came mid-calf, belt cinched tight, and a Georgetown T-shirt knotted under her breasts.

  “Anne,” Reeder said, “it’s not a democracy. But come join us.”

  She did, finding room on the couch. “Joe, you may be in charge, but you really don’t have much choice. I’ve heard most of this discussion, and it’s clear this is the big game and you can’t afford to keep me on the bench.”

  He raised a hand in a “patience” gesture.

  Then he said, “Patti, you’ll recall the cabin where we met up with my daughter Amy and her boyfriend, at the windup of the Supreme Court investigation?”

  “Of course,” Rogers said.

  Reeder’s late friend Gabriel Sloan—Rogers’ onetime FBI partner—had left the family cabin in the Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains to his goddaughter.

  “Miggie, Patti will help you pull that location up on a map. You and Anne take Lawrence there. You three should be safe . . . but take plenty of firepower.”

  “So I’m on guard duty?” Nichols asked, frowning.

  “Come on, Joe,” Miggie said, almost whining, “I’m more than just the fastest computer in the East, you know.”

  “Anne, our prisoner is the only proof we have right now of this conspiracy. Mig, I need you on call for whatever we might need on the information side. Not that you both won’t still be in the line of fire. We have no way of knowing how on top of us these people might be . . . Everybody cool?”

  Both agents nodded. They didn’t look cool, but they nodded.

  Reeder wandered over to the prisoner. He said, “Lawrence, buddy, you need to give us something. We’re going to make every effort to keep you alive, but if something goes wrong . . . in which case we’ll have lost these two fine agents in addition to your sorry-ass self . . . we need a way to verify without you. Give us something we can use.”

  “If I’m dead,” he said, with a ghastly smile, “I no longer have any skin in the game. Good luck to you, though.”

  “Sometimes you’re a hard man to like, Lawrence.”

  “If I give you something now, they’ll track me down and kill me—with the rest of you.”

  “Not if we take them down first.”

  Morris began to laugh, tears quickly flowing. “You just don’t get it, do you? Even if you knew every name on the board, and arrested them, the movement would go on. Those chairs will always be filled. Joe McCarthy, Barry Goldwater, various media moguls, Gregory Bennett post-White House, the Blount dynasty, there’s always a board of directors for the Alliance.”

  “Turn a bright enough light on, Lawrence, and watch the roaches scatter.”

  “To their hiding place. And you don’t really get rid of them at all, do you?”

  “Hey!” Miggie called from across the room.

  Reeder rejoined the team in the home theater area. Miggie said, “I just got an e-mail from Ivanek.”

  “How did you manage that?” Rogers asked, frowning. “He’s out of the burner loop.”

  “I’ve been hacking my work e-mail every hour or so, remember. Mostly I’m seeing Fisk memos saying come in toot sweet. But now here’s Ivanek.”

  Rogers asked, “He’s at work?”

  “Think so,” Miggie said. “Anyway, the e-mail is from his office account. He says Fisk has gone ballistic and he would ‘respectfully like to know what the hell is going on?’”

  Reeder said, “If I call him, how fast can it be traced if we’re on the move?”

  Miggie said, “Maybe two minutes, tops. Keep it under a minute and you should be safe enough.”

  “Okay. Lucas, you and Reg help get Miggie loaded up in your car.”

  “You got it,” Hardesy said, and he and Wade followed Miggie to the computer area to start packing up gear.

  Reeder said to Rogers, “You and I, plus Reggie and Lucas, will investigate the Alliance as best we can. In that history lesson he blurted, Lawrence mentioned some current players.”

  “Ex-President Bennett,” Rogers said, nodding, “and the Blounts. And young Nicky is on that presidential succession list.”

  Wade, hands on his hips, towering over them, said, “We’re maybe five minutes from our pictures being on TV with a BOLO warning sayin’ we’re armed and dangerous. You think we can get close to any of the Blounts or Bennett without getting arrested or maybe shot down?”

  Reeder shook his head. “We don’t talk to them. They’re already on red alert, you can bet.”

  “Who, then?” Hardesy asked.

  “We talk with people who know them, people who study them.”

  Rogers said, “Journalists, you mean?”

  “Well, we’ll start in-house . . . with our own profiler—Trevor Ivanek.”

  “Peace, above all things, is to be desired, but blood must sometimes be spilled to obtain it on equable and lasting terms.”

  Andrew Jackson, seventh President of the United States of America. Served 1829–1837. Defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812.

  SIXTEEN

  Trevor Ivanek, bony and brooding in a black suit with no tie, sat at his desk in the bullpen of the Special Situations Task Force at the J. Edgar Hoover Building, feeling very alone.

  The room was already more than the team needed, the big open space more than accommodating their desks and, at the rear, the private offices for Altuve, Rogers, and sometimes Reeder. But it had never felt this big, or this empty, to him before.

  Night was peeking through the blinds—how long had he been here? Three hours? No, four.

  Not so long ago, with everyone here, Rogers had used a whiteboard to suggest, out of security-cam eyeshot, that a possible rogue element in government meant that paranoia was a fact not a condition. There had been talk of burner cell phones being distributed. But he hadn’t received one.

  Possibly that was his fault. He’d made himself scarce last night and this morning, troubled by what Rogers had outlined and wondering where he fit into it. His work as an FBI profiler, for going on ten years now, had taken a toll. He’d never been able to sustain a relationship with the opposite sex, or any sex for that matter—the nightmares of his days made his evenings nothing worth sharing.

  Finally, after dealing with some of the worst monsters on the planet as part of an FBI Behavioral Science unit, he’d requested a transfer to something less . . . intense.

  The Special Situations Task Force, however, had proven anything but a less intense environment. Serial killers seemed like pikers compared to those who had sought, last year, to arrange a coup by outlandishly murderous means. And now Rogers was saying that a shadow government, with similar intent, might be attempting to manipulate world events with federal employees used as cannon fodder.

  While he waited to hear from Rogers or anyone else on the team, he sat reading, on his tablet, A Brief History of Secret Societies by Barrett; taking a crash course on what they might be dealing with.

  He’d spent the morning wandering the National Gallery of Art, one of many local museums where he could drift along and chill. It wasn’t that he was hiding from Rogers and the rest—more that he wanted to decide if he was up to being part of this, this . . . intense task.

  Beneath his cool, rather scholarly manner a jumble of nerves hid how well he understood his own psychology and that of others. He imagined he could rival Joe Reeder in people-reading skills, though that had never been put to the test.

  Night was here, and now what? Back to his Dumfries apartment maybe, where Rogers or other team members might be more comfortable getting in contact with him, should a government facility like the Hoover Building seem too likely to have been compromised.

  He’d just decided to gather his things and his thoughts and leave for home when something remarkable happened: Assistant Director Margery Fisk herself walked in the door.

  In the
year-plus the Special Sit Task Force had been on the job, he could remember only once before when AD Fisk had descended from the heavens, several floors above, for a direct visit.

  In a black business suit and a white silk blouse, her short curly hair as perfect this time of day as at the start, Fisk granted him a nod and a thin smile. She glanced around at the otherwise empty bullpen. He was just about to ask her where the hell his team was when she spoke.

  “Where the hell is your team?” she asked.

  She was standing before him now, a teacher looking down at a questionable pupil.

  “They’re in the field, Director. I haven’t heard from Agent Rogers or any of the others. And I admit I’m concerned.”

  She came around, borrowed a chair from the desk next door, and sat beside him. Leaning forward a little, staring past him, her hands knitted in her lap, Fisk had already moved from stern taskmaster to worried boss . . . or even worried fellow agent.

  “I’m concerned, too, Trevor . . .”

  Calling him Trevor was clearly an attempt to put him at ease, and encourage a sense of familiarity between them. And he did have a history with Fisk, a positive one—she’d allowed him to transfer here from the Behavioral unit.

  She was saying, “I’ve left message after message, e-mail, text, voice mail, and no one has checked in. What do you make of that?”

  He tilted his head. “Frankly, I know Agent Rogers is concerned about security.”

  Fisk frowned and smiled at once. “You mean this notion she has that there’s a ‘rogue element’ in the government? That seems highly unlikely, don’t you think?”

  Considering the subject of the book he was reading, Ivanek wasn’t sure. But he told her what she wanted to hear: “Most unlikely.”

  “But I do understand what her concern might be—she made a most convincing case for Secretary Yellich’s death to’ve been murder. And considering Yellich’s high position, that murder might well be considered a political assassination.”

  “I can see that, ma’am.”

  “I have the utmost respect for the Special Sit Unit. It is, in a way, my baby. I’ve been working hand in hand with Patti Rogers to keep you folks funded, which is no small trick in these lean times.”

  “I can imagine.”

  She smiled in a chin-crinkling way, patted him on the shoulder, and rose. “Let’s make a pact.”

  “A pact, ma’am?”

  “Make me the first person you call when you hear from Patti, and I’ll do the same.”

  Then she was gone, heels clicking down the corridor.

  Was she sincere? Should he suspect her? He wasn’t sure.

  He sat thinking about that for a good ten minutes and was about to finally leave when his cell vibrated. He checked the caller ID.

  Rogers.

  In the loft, Rogers met Hardesy and Wade at the door—Lucas had waved her over, as they stepped back inside after a trip hauling Miggie’s gear out and down.

  “Feds,” Hardesy said. “I even know one of the guys. Two blocks down across from that rental of Reeder’s.”

  “Damn,” she said. “Did they see you?”

  Wade shook his head. “No. And I didn’t make any others. Course if they bust the door down any second, I reserve the right to change my opinion.”

  Rogers felt a little sick. This left them in a nearly indefensible position. They had the high ground, but nothing else—certainly not enough firepower, the six of them against the rest of the FBI. Not great odds.

  “So,” Reeder said, joining them, “they’re closing in but they don’t know where we are, exactly.”

  Rogers asked, “Are we sure of that?”

  Reeder nodded, confident. “No one in the government is aware of my relationship with DeMarcus, and I sent him and his girlfriend away with off-the-books cash.”

  “Guy I recognized,” Hardesy said, “is Bureau. So this is Fisk.”

  Rogers said, “Do you blame her? Far as she knows, we’re MIA.”

  Reeder raised a hand. “Let’s not assume that Fisk is the only one looking for us. The Alliance likely has access to the same assets as Fisk, and they don’t want to save or arrest us.”

  “We can’t wait them out,” Miggie said, from his nearby computer post. “Sooner or later they’ll probably canvass the neighborhood, and even if they don’t, and just pack up and go at some point, we’re kept out of the game, till then.”

  “And,” Rogers said, “we can’t afford that.”

  Reeder said, “So we get in the game now.”

  All eyes were on him.

  He said, “All of our personal vehicles are out. Fisk has the makes and licenses and so, almost certainly, does the Alliance. So let’s discuss alternate transportation. Sooner we change rides the better. Thoughts?”

  Wade said, “I can get a car for Hardesy and me. I’ve got a friend out of government I can trust.”

  Miggie said, “I’ve got a vato owes me a favor. He’ll get me a ride.”

  Rogers clamped eyes with Reeder. “You have somebody in mind for us?”

  Reeder shrugged. “What about Pete Woods? He’s a cop, with no love for feds, and he seemed trustworthy enough when we worked with him last year.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re feds, remember?”

  “He likes you.”

  “I have a guy.”

  “But not a ride. I’ll get you the number. Also, we need to protect Morris in case Alliance guns are out there—they’d probably kill him on sight. So we disguise him a little. No glasses.”

  “That’s not enough,” Rogers said.

  Wade grinned. “How about I shave his head Hardesy-style?”

  “What?” came a voice from the kitchenette.

  That gave everybody a needed laugh.

  “We can’t use the side stairway,” Reeder said. “Too exposed. We take the rear stairwell to the back of the tailor shop and out into the alley. We need to stagger the times. Don’t want all three vehicles back there at once, and Lucas, you and Wade will have to transfer Miggie’s gear.”

  “This is when I wish I were hourly,” Hardesy said, “not salaried. Think of the overtime.”

  “And,” Wade said, “the lack of anybody tryin’ to kill us.”

  Reeder took Rogers’ phone, punched in Woods’ number, and handed it back. She stepped away. Meanwhile Wade went over and started unwrapping their prisoner, who was moaning and groaning about the new hairstyle awaiting him.

  After three rings came: “Woods.”

  “Pete, Patti Rogers. Remember me?”

  “I remember you and your charming partner. Is this call because I gave that Bureau guy crap at that hit-and-run at Arlington?”

  “No. Your instincts were correct.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Joe and I need a ride. We’ve got the Bureau on our tails, because we’re looking into a government scandal, and dodging assorted bad guys who want us dead.”

  “. . . Sounds dangerous.”

  “It is. Wouldn’t blame you saying no. If you say yes, bring your umbrella, ’cause it’s a shit storm.”

  “. . . My helping you would really rub the Bureau raw?”

  “It would,” she admitted.

  “Count me in,” Woods said. “Where and when?”

  She told him where, then clicked off. Wade was hauling Morris toward the bathroom, the man’s hands still duct-taped together. Morris was swearing at Wade, whose laughter echoed.

  Turning back to the rest of her team, she said, “Our ride will be meeting Joe and me in one hour, three blocks over. Mig, arrange for your ride to pick you up at Eleventh and M, just a block away, which gives you less exposure with our buddy Lawrence. Call your friends and see if they can pick you up in that same one-hour window. Lucas, you and Reggie have your ride pick you up right out back, so you can transfer Mig’s stuff.”

  Hardesy said, “It’s Reggie’s guy. I’ll go interrupt his barber-college lesson so he can make the call.”

  Hardesy did that, and Mig made h
is call, too. Within ten minutes both confirmed their rides were set. Within twenty minutes, Wade was hauling out a bald-headed Morris, who looked near tears, some shaving-cream splotches here and there, like the last of melting snow. Now everybody’s laughter echoed.

  Except Morris.

  Who was given Washington Wizards sweats from the DeMarcus Collection, and some Air Jordans that required several extra pairs of socks to make fit. With his newly shaved noggin and no wire-frames, he looked nothing like the Men’s Wearhouse–wearing accountant.

  While they waited, Reeder, Rogers, and her team helped themselves to extra nine millimeters and handfuls of magazines. The laughter generated by Morris had faded, as everyone knew that these weapons could very well have to be used against others like themselves—government agents on the side of the angels, or anyway Uncle Sam.

  Wade and Reggie went first, out the back way. When no sounds came of gunshots or struggle, Miggie, Nichols, and the Daddy Warbucks-ish Lawrence Morris went out that same way. Again, no sound of trouble followed. Five minutes later, Reeder and Rogers took the side stairs and left the Batcave behind.

  She fell into step next to him as they took off toward L Street at a fast walk, hugging the buildings and avoiding the glow of the streetlights. At Tenth and L, they turned east and Rogers glanced over her shoulder. A male figure stepped out from under a tree in the block between Ninth and Tenth.

  “Bogie on our six,” she said, “block back.”

  “Could just be out for smokes or snacks,” Reeder said. “Bodega across the block.”

  “We could stop and ask him.”

  Reeder picked up the pace a little. “Or not.”

  Behind them, a male voice called, “Hey!”

  Like he’d seen a friend or maybe needed directions. Reeder whispered, “Just keep going. Don’t look back.”

  She obeyed, but building footfalls behind them said their new friend was running now.

  “Hey!” he called again. Then, abandoning pretense, he yelled, “Halt! Federal agent!”

  “Go!” Reeder said, and they went, running, with him just a step ahead.