“I thought this was a TRADOC facility,” Alex says. “Don’t you guys research new weapons systems and—”
“First,” Walczac says, cutting Alex off, “a fatal toxin is the stuff of Baldacci novels, not a weapons system. Second”—he sucks in a lungful of air—“we may be a TRADOC facility, but we only handle transportation and deployment. You were outside. Maybe you saw the few hundred helicopters, trucks, tanks, and jeeps. That’s the Fifty-Eighth Transportation Battalion. My point being, we’re too busy moving weapons to be inventing them.”
“It’s a pretty big base,” Alex says.
“It is,” Walczac agrees, but not in a friendly way.
“So big that maybe it’s possible you don’t know everything that’s going on here,” Alex offers as delicately as he can.
The canyon forming on Walczac’s brow deepens. “It’s my job to know, Mr. Garnett. Have a safe drive back to Langley.”
* * *
Alex makes his way to his car. He takes in the hive of activity around him, noticing the wide variety of vehicles coming and going for the first time. Now that he knows Fort Eustis’s purpose, it does seem ridiculous to think it houses some clandestine program to weaponize GHB. Alex trusts his gut more than any polygraph and he’s confident he would have sussed it out if Voytek had lied to him. Which means that someone lied to her.
Behind Alex, a Sikorsky MH-53J helicopter flies overhead, its rotors kicking up enough noise and dirt to derail his train of thought. His eyes follow the Sikorsky past a chain-link fence where a phalanx of soldiers load jeeps and equipment into a Douglas C-133A Cargomaster. All of the men, vehicles, and equipment sport pixelated shades of brown and gray.
A sign hangs from the chain-link fence:
7TH TRANSPORTATION GROUP
58th Transportation Battalion, 51st Transportation Company
An attractive female soldier, a private if Alex is reading her fatigue insignia right, jogs past. He flags her down. “Hey. Can I ask you a question?” The private turns around, stopping in front of him as she continues to jog in place. He flashes his CIA credentials and gestures over to the Seventh Transportation Group. “That doesn’t look like a training exercise.”
The private, still jogging in place to keep her heart rate up, nods. “It’s not. That’s a deployment.”
“Deployment to where?”
“I don’t know for sure.” She looks up to the sign. “Seventh of the Fifty-Eighth. They’re Middle East. Iran mainly.”
Alex points to all the soldiers. “That’s a lot of guys and gear. Did we go to war with Iran and I missed it?”
She shrugs. “Mine’s not to reason why, you know?”
* * *
By the time Alex returns to I-295, the sun is setting fire to the sky. After less than a mile, he spots a black Escalade looming in his rearview mirror, two car lengths behind him. It’s been following him for a while. Harling’s and Moreno’s deaths weren’t a paranoid delusion. And he was in the same conference room with them, working on the same case, privy to the same bank account information. He needs to find out the name of the stenographer and make sure she’s still alive. And what if she isn’t? What if she was in a car accident too? Or was clipped by an oncoming car—a black Escalade perhaps—while crossing the street on her way to work this morning?
He jerks his wheel hard to the right, crossing three lanes of traffic in a single move, cutting off cars and trucks on his way onto the shoulder. The Escalade flies past. Alex watches it disappear into traffic, along with any hope of confirming whether it was really following him.
EIGHT
NEW HAMPSHIRE AVENUE NW
WASHINGTON, DC
9:36 P.M. EDT
THERE’S A 1997 Napa Valley cabernet Alex has had lying down long enough for it to have had a bar mitzvah, and ’97 was a phenomenal year in Napa. Though Alex knows he should save the wine for an occasion, he’s spent the last forty minutes thinking about pouring himself a glass or four. It’s been that kind of day. Actually, that’s an understatement of epic proportions.
When he gets to the door, however, he’s surprised to find it unlocked. No, not just unlocked, ajar.
“Grace?”
No answer.
“Hello?”
Still no answer. His mouth goes dry. His heart gallops. It takes an eternity to reach the bedroom. The door is open and the lights are off in there too. The room is eerily quiet. All Alex can hear is the hum of traffic outside.
Something under the bed catches his eye: an errant piece of black cloth peeking out. Slowly, he crouches down, feeling a low tide of panic rise in his chest. Tentatively, he reaches toward it. His fingers start to graze the light fabric when he hears the noise. It’s as loud as an explosion going off and it shoots him to his feet. The primitive part of his brain knows that if he’s not alone in the apartment, he’s moving too slowly to save his life. He fully expects the next sound he hears to be his last.
Which makes it all the more ridiculous that it’s the unmistakable sound of his toilet flushing.
There’s an interval of hand-washing, and then the bathroom door opens and a distinguished man in a dark blue Zegna suit steps out. At seventy, although he looks as if he were still in his sixties, he’s older than your average hit man.
Not that Alex would ever mistake his father for a hit man.
Alex forgot about his father’s key to the condo, left over from when he’d bought the condo for him and Grace as a gift. That was the word his father had used, gift, as if cars and condominiums fell into the same category as books and clothing. Alex didn’t want to accept it, gift or not, didn’t want to be beholden to his father in any way. But Grace fell in love with the place, with its clean lines and postcard-perfect view of the Potomac, and she convinced Alex to capitulate. She didn’t grow up with the kind of privilege Alex took for granted and he couldn’t deny her something that would obviously give her such joy.
Alex pours some Glenlivet into two bar glasses until each is about a quarter full. The Glenlivet’s aged eighteen years and it’s not the cheapest scotch, but it’s still not the ’97 cab Alex was hoping to enjoy. No force on earth could compel him to waste that vintage on Simon Garnett.
“Missed you at my birthday,” Mr. Garnett is saying, sitting down.
“I figured the invite was perfunctory,” Alex replies, handing his father one of the scotches and quickly taking a large gulp of his own. He sits down and closes his eyes, feeling the medicinal-tasting liquor hit the back of his throat with a burn. The entire glass is polished off in that single gulp.
His father savors the scotch like a sommelier. “Between the two of us, Alex, I’m not the one with the problem.”
“Why are you here?” Alex asks, making a mental note to get the locks changed.
A grimace passes across Simon’s face. He takes another sip of scotch. “This afternoon, I received word from the Virginia Superior Court that my firm had filed an appearance in a drunk-driving case,” he explains in the most measured of tones. “On behalf of an Alan Miller. And that you were the attorney of record.” The way his father says Miller’s name, it doesn’t sound like he knows Miller died in custody. At least, Alex hopes that’s the case. But then, Simon Garnett is nothing if not inscrutable, particularly where his son is concerned. “I thought you were working for the CIA these days.”
“I am.”
“No need to thank me for the recommendation to Arthur Bryson, by the way.”
“Thanks.” Alex chokes the word out with as little gratitude as he can manage. “As for Miller, it’s not something I can talk about. It’s classified. CIA business. But I needed to make the appearance and I couldn’t do it as an attorney for the Agency. You being such a patriot, I figured you wouldn’t mind me using the firm’s name.”
“Alan Miller died in custody,” his father says. Alex can feel his father’s eyes burning into him, poring over his face for signs of whether this news has come as a shock. A litigator’s probing gaze, hunting for tell
s like a card player at a poker table. “The jail called the firm. You weren’t there, of course. So the call was forwarded to me.”
“I hope it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience.” But Alex really could not care less about inconveniencing his father. He’s just focused on maintaining his stoicism, keeping his poker face.
His father’s eyes, gunmetal blue and piercing, look him over, the litigator’s gaze giving way to a cross-examiner’s stare. It’s a look that says, I can tell if you’re lying. What Simon actually says is “Alex…is everything all right?”
His father’s tone surprises Alex. There’s something in it that he hasn’t heard since…childhood? Probably. He almost doesn’t recognize it: genuine concern.
“If you’re having some kind of problem,” his father ventures, “you know I have resources…”
“I don’t need your help. Everything’s fine.” Alex doesn’t intend for this to come out as defiant as it does, but frankly, he’d like to be free of his father’s resources for once in his life.
Fortunately, it appears Simon Garnett’s not in the mood to fight tonight. “That’s fine. I expected that. But don’t tell me everything’s fine. You’re pretending you still work for me, your client is dead, and you’re acting…” His voice trails off. “You don’t look well.”
Truth be told, Alex doesn’t feel well. He feels tired to his bones. He wants Grace. He wants to fall asleep in her arms. And all he can manage right now is to repeat “I don’t need your help.” This time, there’s no defiance in the words. Just exhaustion.
Simon Garnett has made a successful career out of knowing when to cut his losses. So he stands up, sets his empty glass on a nearby table, and offers up a nod that suggests surrender. He pauses at the door. “I understand you want to be your own man, Alex. Whether you believe it or not, I’ve always respected that about you. But a man knows when the water’s at his head. And a man knows it’s okay to ask for help when he needs it.”
Simon Garnett then shuts the door behind him. It’s not until the next morning that Alex notices he left his spare key behind.
* * *
OGC, NEW HEADQUARTERS BUILDING
9:15 A.M. EDT
After his father left, after Grace got home, after they made love, after Alex felt Grace’s body tremble and then fall asleep in his arms, he decided to let all thoughts of multiple homicide, conspiracy, and troop movement rest for twenty-four hours. The pause would give him some much-needed perspective. Problems are always clearer, puzzles more solvable, when they’re put aside for a while. And after yesterday’s unrelenting series of revelations, dealing with a routine evidentiary matter for The Hague, as he’s doing now, is as welcome as a cool drink in a desert.
Then his phone rings. “Hello?” There’s no response. “Hello?” Again, there’s nothing on the line but silence. Alex is about to hang up when he hears a modulated, mechanical voice that sounds like a robot underwater, neither male nor female, not even human. It says three words, lending inflection or importance to none of them: “Stop asking questions.”
His stomach dive-bombs into his intestines, but his mind remains razor sharp. He holds the phone’s receiver with one hand and opens a desk drawer with the other, grabbing for the cell phone he should have left in his car. Phones are prohibited within two miles of headquarters. But old habits are hard to break, and Alex, like most people, is accustomed to always having his phone—it’s like another appendage. Fortunately, Tom Ciampa is usually working security and gives him a pass. Alex offers a silent prayer of thanks for Tom as he find the phone, digs it out, turns it on, and thumbs one of the numbers stored in memory.
“Yes,” Gerald Jankovick answers. He’s doing his best impression of a radio DJ. “This is WCIA. Playing the best music from Mel Tormé, Neil Diamond, and Barry—”
“Gerald, it’s Alex,” he interrupts, hissing into the phone.
“Dude. Long time, zero speak. Which is odd, considering we’re now working for the same spook shop. What up?”
The modulated voice on the other end of Alex’s desk phone ticks off names: “Evelyn Moreno. Jim Harling. Alan Miller.”
“I’m getting a call right now at my desk. Right now. Can you trace it?”
“Brenda Zollitsch,” the voice says. Alex searches his memory for some association with the name but comes up empty. Who is Brenda Zollitsch? Is she alive? The caller certainly seems to be implying that Zollitsch was one of his—her? their?—victims, along with Harling and Moreno. The voice pauses for a few seconds before adding a fifth and final name: “Alex Garnett.”
“What do you need this for?” Gerald is asking on the cell.
“Just tell me.”
Alex can hear Gerald working his keyboard six floors underneath him at his workstation in the New Headquarters Building’s subbasement. It feels like an eternity is passing. Although his life has just been threatened, Alex ignores that, too focused on his silent prayer that his anonymous caller won’t hang up before Gerald completes the trace.
“Office G-eight,” Gerald reports, mercifully coming back on the line. “Seventh floor.”
“Of what? Seventh floor of what?”
“Of headquarters,” Gerald answers. “Your call is coming from inside the building, hoss.”
Reflexively, Alex looks around the bullpen surrounding his desk. Is he being watched? His head starts to swim. Without warning, the voice returns, bringing with it Alex’s clarity, shattering his disorientation with the force of a steel pipe barreling into the windshield of a ’65 Mustang. “Do you understand, Mr. Garnett?”
He drops the receiver on his desk without answering the question. The phone is useless to him now, anyway. But he needs to keep the connection alive so this mysterious caller won’t realize he isn’t on the line. That’s assuming the caller isn’t watching Alex sprint from his desk and run like a lunatic to the nearest elevator bank, still white-knuckling his cell phone.
“Is there any way you can tell if the caller’s still in that office?” Alex asks Gerald as he slides into the elevator, its doors mercifully open.
“Well, the computer node in the room’s still active,” Gerald answers.
“Computer node?” Alex punches the button for the seventh floor repeatedly, willing the elevator doors to shut.
“Somebody’s running spyware on your system,” Gerald tells him. “Every keystroke you make, every file on your drive. It’s elegant code, really.”
Alex is about to ask if this kind of cybermonitoring is normal in the CIA, but the elevator doors open—finally!—and he bounds out like a thoroughbred from the starting gate. He doesn’t get more than twenty feet before he realizes he’s never been to the seventh floor. Its warren of offices and cubicles might as well be a labyrinth. His eyes dart around for some signage or directory, but there’s nothing. He’s in the tall grass without a compass and his window of opportunity is closing. Fast. His mysterious caller won’t stay in G-8 for long. He presses the cell to his ear again. “I’m at the elevator bank on seven. Where’s the office?” He doesn’t hear anything, not Gerald’s voice or the telltale click-clack of his computer keys. Did Gerald get off the call? “Gerald! Where’s the fucking office?”
More silence. Alex is about to launch his cell down the hallway in aggravation.
“This takes time, y’know,” Gerald says, finally coming back on. “You don’t have to get pissy.”
“Gerald—”
“Again with the pissy. Go to your right.”
Alex bolts down the corridor to his right and finds that it T-bones at the end. A fork in the road. On the cell, Gerald tells him to hang a left, and Alex takes the turn in a sprint, disregarding the Restricted Area sign and promptly crashing into a wall of bulletproof Lexan glass. Pain shoots through his head and shoulder as he hears a siren that sounds like it heralds Armageddon. Then a flashing light bathes the entire corridor in red. Before Alex can react, a second wall of glass comes sliding down behind him.
Trapping him.
Alex barks into his cell phone—“Gerald!”—only to hear that Gerald, God bless the little geek, is already trying to fix the problem, judging by the sweet, reassuring click-clack of his keyboard.
“Working on it,” Gerald says, sounding surprisingly calm. The virtual world of computers is the one place in which Gerald Jankovick is a Zen master. “I’m working on it,” Gerald says again, “but security got wind of some nutbar tearing through the complex, and they’ve got the whole place on lockdown. Some coincidence, huh?”
The sound of footfalls, and Alex spins around to see three CIA security guards bearing down on him. They’re running fast and carrying M4A1 carbine assault rifles. Alex looks to his cell to push Gerald again, but the line’s gone dead. The cell’s LCD, glowing an eerie pink in the light of the security lamps, is no longer receiving a signal.
The trio of guards approaches the glass wall in front of Alex. One of them has his walkie out. Despite the thick glass and the din of the security-alert siren, Alex can hear the guard calling for the wall to be retracted upward. Once that happens, Alex’ll be taken into custody, and the guards won’t be gentle about it. Hoping to avoid that fate with a show of goodwill, Alex puts his phone in his jacket pocket and starts to raise his hands above his head just as…the wall behind him slides up. The first wall still separates him from the guards. Alex bolts.
He shoots down the corridor, counting off the numbers on the placards outside the ghetto of offices—five, six, seven—until he reaches the eighth. G-8. He grabs the handle, throws his shoulder against the door like a linebacker. By some rare stroke of good fortune, the door isn’t locked. Alex goes flying in, hoping to catch whoever’s inside off guard. With his enemy disoriented, he fantasizes, Alex’ll find the nearest heavy object and knock the guy out, and then when he wakes up, the guy can explain to Leah what the fuck he thought he was doing. In fact—fuck it—he’s bringing Arthur Bryson in for the explanation too.
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