“We’ll find a way,” Emily said, trying to soothe his apologetic fears. “South and then east again. Just a different route.”
Traveling on back roads, without the aid of some form of navigation, or even paper maps, an entire day could be added to this leg of the trip. But there was no choice. Haste had to give way to prudence. Getting caught was not an option.
“We’ll rest here for a while, then get moving,” Emily told Simon. “Okay?”
“O—”
‘…physicist to genius…’
The snippet of Venn’s words to him popped up, cutting off what he was about to say.
“Simon, what is it?”
‘Let us talk…’
“Simon…”
Her voice finally pulled him free of the memory, its resurfacing at that instant inexplicable. Unless it wasn’t.
“What’s wrong?” Emily pressed him.
“I don’t know,” he told her. “I really don’t know.”
Thirty Seven
Frankie stood near the side of the space, a good hundred other Bureau agents crammed into the conference room on loan from the NSA. That they’d been forced to appropriate space from the National Security Agency told the Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles office all she needed to know about the reason for her being summoned to the environs of D.C.
Ostensibly it was in relation to the attack in Baltimore. Logic pointed to that. But the location they’d been summoned to, her in particular, pointed to something else. To someone else.
Simon Lynch.
“Special Agent Emily LaGrange is a fugitive and wanted for numerous federal felonies,” FBI Director Miriam Chase told the gathering.
Frankie recognized the two people standing next to her on the makeshift riser at the head of the room—Attorney General Angelo Breem and Director of Central Intelligence Fay Pressman. That this trio would be standing before a mix of supervisors and street agents only reinforced the sense of dread that had begun to build when the director had told her, in a late night call some six hours ago, to get her ass on a plane.
“Assault on federal officers,” Chase said, beginning a litany of offenses. “Violation of the secure facilities act. And kidnapping.”
Chase stepped aside, taking a position next to Breem, her boss. It wasn’t just by sight or title that Frankie knew the nation’s top law enforcement officer. He’d played a part in events when Simon Lynch had first come to the attention of the FBI, some twenty years ago. From Art Jefferson she’d learned, after the fact, that Breem, then a U.S. Attorney in Chicago, had led the effort to lock him up while he was on the run trying to protect the vulnerable sixteen-year-old savant. Only when presented with incontrovertible evidence that Art had been set up did the diminutive prosecutor back down. Even now, as one of the youngest Attorney Generals in the nation’s history, Angelo Breem seemed to be compensating. Seeking some stature through show. That was why, Frankie suspected, he did not speak immediately after Chase.
Instead, the nation’s top spy stepped forward and looked out over the crowded room.
“We’re here, in case you haven’t already guessed, because what I’m about to tell you can only be shared in a facility secured for dissemination of Top Secret SCI,” Pressman said.
SCI. Sensitive Compartmentalized Information. One step above a Top Secret clearance, which Frankie held. Presumably, she thought, all those in the room with her did as well. And, it seemed, they were being granted a higher clearance to hear what was about to be shared with them.
“While we are very interested in taking Agent LaGrange into custody, it is the person she is traveling with that is our real target,” the CIA Director said.
Frankie cringed inside at the use of that terminology—target.
“Simon Lynch is a National Security Asset who has been under the protection of the National Security Agency for the past twenty years,” Pressman explained. “He was taken from a federal facility by Agent LaGrange. There is evidence to support that Mr. Lynch was in contact with the Russian physicist Stanislaw Venn, who we believe died in an accident which validated the very weapon used to destroy the Markham Tower in Baltimore.”
In a room of sober professionals, Frankie saw glances exchanged. What the CIA Director had just shared might not have shaken the earth, but it shook many of those in the room.
“The device used was apparently small and nuclear based,” Pressman continued. “But the radioactive contamination was almost nonexistent. This is something new, and frightening. So you can understand why we need to get Lynch…get to Lynch as soon as possible.”
Get Lynch…
Frankie doubted it was a mere slip of the tongue. It might have even been meant to telegraph a message. There had likely already been discussions at places like the CIA and NSA as to just how much danger there was with a living, breathing Simon Lynch in the picture. Regardless, Pressman had made it loud and clear that the man with the golden mind could not be allowed to roam free.
They’re going to tie him to Venn, Frankie thought. More than just through whatever means his handlers had allowed. Without providing a full accounting of where and how Simon had existed for twenty years, and under whose control, the first seeds were being sowed which would, in many minds, justify any action which might lead to his demise.
Simon Lynch was living on borrowed time, Frankie knew. As was the woman who’d taken him.
Pressman stepped back, and the FBI director stood front and center again.
“You are all assigned to this task force,” Chase told the assembled agents. “Any information pertinent to the investigation of the Markham Tower attack will be passed to those investigative units who can exploit it. But let me be clear—this effort, and your activities, are to be shared with no one. Any leaks will be dealt with severely.”
Chase glanced over her shoulder to the Attorney General, the reason for his presence there for emphasis, it now seemed. But likely more, Frankie suspected.
“Get your assignments and bring this to a conclusion,” Chase ordered. “Fast.”
The knots of agents dispersed, moving toward tables where Bureau brass had lists and envelopes of relevant evidence to pass out. Frankie, though, made no move to join her colleagues. Not when she saw Miriam Chase and Angelo Breem leave the riser and head her way, Fay Pressman hanging back to discuss matters with a trio of officials.
“Francine,” Chase said as they reached her.
“Ma’am,” Frankie greeted the director. She gave a slight nod toward the AG. “Sir.”
“You gave Special Agent LaGrange access to the file on Jefferson’s suicide,” Chase said, getting right to the point, not of just this exchange, but of the reason for L.A. SAC’s presence. “Correct?”
“I did,” Frankie confirmed. “She…”
Her thoughts stumbled there, the director and the AG puzzling visibly at her hesitance. The bare truth of what Emily had requested was explainable, but it was not within the expected parameters of what she’d been tasked with.
“She what?” Chase pressed.
“She thought she might be able to relate to Simon better if she had a more full understanding of why Art might have taken his own life,” Frankie said, adopting the lie that Emily herself had hinted at.
“Well, Agent Aguirre-Welsh, she took that access and ran with it,” Breem told her.
“What do you mean?” Frankie asked, surprised and worried all at once.
“She pulled the original files on Simon Lynch,” Chase answered. “All of it.”
Shit…
Frankie hadn’t bothered giving the young agent a one-time password. Instead she’d handed over her own. It was both foolish and purposeful. Without specifying any reason, she’d hoped that Emily LaGrange, damaged goods that she was, would see the gesture as a nod of confidence. A signal that she was still trusted.
That had backfired grandly, Frankie now knew.
But it didn’t speak to the reason that Emily LaGrange would do such a thing. W
hy she would do any of this if she truly had taken Simon. Frankie didn’t see her as the type to snap, regardless of what some in the Bureau thought. The truth be told, in the situation she had faced as her undercover assignment came to a violent end, the young agent had been presented with a choice and had acted accordingly. She’d done the right thing.
What if that was what was unfolding now?
“Sir, this has happened before,” Frankie said. “Art went on the run with Simon to protect him.”
“Francine…”
Frankie ignored the director’s dismissive reaction. History might not always repeat itself, she knew. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t.
“People from all sides were coming at Simon,” Frankie reminded the bureaucrats openly doubting her suggestion. “Our side, included.”
Our side…
That was a generous assessment of G. Nicholas Kudrow. The man had run a secretive section of the NSA tasked with crafting an unbreakable code—a code which a young Simon Lynch had cracked with little more than a glance. He’d wanted the boy dead to protect his creation, while others wanted the savant alive to serve their own interests. Had the world changed so much that those very same motivations, with slight alterations, could not be in play yet again?
“What if she discovered that Simon is in danger?” Frankie challenged them.
“If that is the case, she should come to us,” Chase said.
“After what she knew Art went through?” Frankie countered. That time, when she was far from her old partner, her dear friend, came flooding back. “I had to watch from afar as the best agent I ever knew was hunted down. By people who knew him. Who were his friends. All because they were made to believe a lie.”
“There’s no indication of that here,” Breem assured her.
The words, though, held little assurance.
“Was there then?” Frankie challenged the AG.
“Francine…” Chase said, warning her agent that she was dangerously close to a line she should not cross.
Angelo Breem had been the driving force behind the attempt to discredit Art. He’d bought hook, line, and sinker the manufactured evidence of her old partner’s malfeasance. There was no love lost between them, from then until the day of Art’s passing.
“The bottom line is, we need Simon Lynch back in our care,” Pressman said. She’d joined the exchange after dispensing with whatever business had occupied her near the riser.
“Care?” Frankie parroted. “Is that what they call what’s been done to him. Art wasn’t happy with the so-called care Simon was getting. You know that. I know that.”
Breem looked away from Frankie, and directly at the Director of the FBI. His director.
“Francine, you’ll be working at headquarters until this is wrapped up,” Chase told her nearly insolent agent. “Understood?”
Frankie eyed the three people who were openly passing judgement on her. Others would soon, as well.
This is how careers end, she thought.
“I understand.”
The trio of officials left Frankie and made their way to an exit behind the riser at the front of the conference room.
“Hang back for a moment, Angelo,” Fay Pressman said as they left the conference room.
Miriam Chase continued on, glancing back once toward her boss and the Director of Central Intelligence before disappearing around a corner.
“What is it, Fay?”
Pressman crossed her arms and leaned against the wall behind her.
“Venn,” she said.
Attorney General Angelo Breem hardly reacted at all, his head cocking slightly at what she’d said. “What about him?”
“You granted him access to Lynch through the program,” Pressman said. “And he proceeds to blow up a chunk of some Russian city in Siberia. Then the same happens here. Coincidence?”
“I have no idea,” Breem said. “His research credentials were already in the book of approved contacts.”
“Approval doesn’t equate to access,” Pressman told the AG. “He was a Russian physicist, for God’s sake. He builds weapons.”
“Energy research,” Breem corrected her, using the terminology the Russians preferred.
“Good Lord, Angelo…”
Breem crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, too, mimicking the CIA Director’s posture. “I was given the authority to grant access. Just as you were. And the President.”
“The President doesn’t have a clue what’s happening out there,” Pressman said, straightening again as a rush of anger built. “You and I are supposed to be the gatekeepers to what we have. And you swing it open like you’re letting in trick or treaters on Halloween. Here, have some candy.”
Breem smiled as he bristled at the woman’s mockery. He wondered if she was worth it. Was facing off against her over this a pit of coals he was willing to walk across?
Hell yes…
“Fay,” Breem said, straightening again and taking a step toward the woman in the narrow hallway, “you have your turf, I have mine. And mine includes a whole trove of files on the shit your people have pulled over the years. I don’t know what congressional committees will think if they learn that waterboarding was a tickle session compared to some of what your best and brightest came up with.”
It was a clear threat. Not even obliquely delivered. No subtlety at all could be attached to his words. Angelo Breem, Attorney General of the United States, was throwing down with the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, saying, in no uncertain terms, that he would use the power of his office to lay waste to her, and her piece of the bureaucratic pie, if she pursued anything related to what she was implying.
It shouldn’t have worked, but it did.
“You’ll have to answer for this someday, Angelo,” Pressman warned him. “Someone else will connect the dots.”
“Let them try,” Breem said as he began to walk away. “I’ll even give them the fucking pen.”
Pressman watched the arrogant chief law enforcement officer of the United States of America disappear down the hallway and around a corner. She was certain that, someday, he would pay. But it pissed her off that she wouldn’t be party to making that happen.
* * *
Two hours after the conclusion of the task force meeting, Melvin Porter entered the bathroom of a sandwich shop ten miles from the Fort Meade headquarters of the National Security Agency and went straight to the sink, turning the water on and letting it run. In the mirror above the sink he saw the door to a stall open, Ezekiel Sanders stepping out to join him. He locked the door and faced the man from the CIA.
“And?” Sanders asked.
Porter doused his hands with water and brought his face down to them, rubbing the cooling liquid from his brow to his chin before turning the water off and facing the group’s leader. In silence.
“What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” Porter asked, half annoyed and half in shock. “Are you that obsessed with Lynch that you can’t acknowledge the obvious?”
Sanders didn’t respond. It was clear that Porter had something he wanted to get off his chest. He’d learned over time that it was best to just let that happen, lest an animus build and begin to fester.
“There’s a smoking hole in a city not far from here and the man responsible is in the States,” Porter said, forcing his voice down from the shout it wanted to reach. “Whatever Venn concocted in Russia is now here, and our group seems to be the only ones who can attach Damian Traeger to what happened.”
“There’s no suspicion of him from our side?” Sanders asked. “No one is making that connection?”
“He’s not even on any radar other than ours,” Porter said, still incredulous at Sanders’ seeming aloofness to the elephant in the room. “Ezekiel, maybe this is beyond us now. We can point the FBI to Traeger. They can tie him to Venn with our information.”
Again, Sanders offered no reaction to the suggestion. He’d briefed the group on Lane’s discovery t
hat Traeger had arrived in the U.S., and that he had disappeared in Baltimore, the site of the Markham Tower attack. Porter was understandably angry at what the man had done. At the scar he’d left on an American city. At the senseless loss of life.
But anger was an emotion. Sanders knew that what they faced in their effort to save Simon Lynch had just doubled in difficulty. And in danger. But to stray from the course they’d decided upon would be to surrender. They would, in effect, be abandoning Simon Lynch in the name of vengeance deserved by another.
“Are you not hearing me?” Porter pressed.
“I am,” Sanders finally said. “But we’re not turning our back on an extreme—”
“Fuck that goddamn extreme innocent bullshit!”
Sanders quieted for a moment, as did Porter, each glancing to the restroom door after the brief outburst. When they were satisfied that no one had been drawn toward them by the heated words, they looked to each other.
“Melvin, I promise you, Damian Traeger will pay for what he’s done,” Sanders said, putting a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “More than he would after a trial and a needle in the arm. I guarantee that. All right?”
Porter calmed, allowing himself to accept the man’s assurance with a nod.
“How the hell did he get a weapon like that into the country?” the man from the CIA wondered aloud.
“I don’t know,” Sanders said. That obvious question had confounded him, too, as he considered the what and the how of the act clearly perpetrated by Damian Traeger. But those questions were beyond secondary. He had to stay focused. They all did. “Now, you have information about the Los Angeles SAC.”
“My people have been on her since she left L.A. If she’s in contact with LaGrange, it’s through mental telepathy.”
Sanders shook his head. Another possible avenue to locate LaGrange and Lynch was coming up empty.
“What about Gant?” Porter asked.
“He slipped Harrison’s net,” Sanders answered.
“Aguirre-Welsh is a distraction,” Porter said. “If Gant is running, it’s to Emily LaGrange. Or for her.”
Sanders nodded. The man from the CIA made sense. That clarity in the murky mist of what they were facing was welcome, if unhelpful. It told them nothing about where Gant, or Emily, or Simon were heading.
Simon Sees (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 5) Page 34
