“Why not now?”
Half a minute later they were kneeling in front of the fireplace, the bag between them. Using some kindling and a few pieces of wood from the holder on the hearth, Daeng got a fire going. Misty then pulled out a file, opened it, and began feeding sheets of paper one by one into the flames.
Daeng considered helping, but he could tell that for her, this was more than a simple task of getting rid of unwanted documents. This was an act of finality—a cleansing, even—one of the last things she would ever do for Peter. There was a respect to the way she placed each page into the blaze—gently, a pause as the fire caught, then the next sheet.
After a file was empty, the folder itself was burned before Misty moved on to the next. When she finished the last, she stared at the flames until the final bit of paper curled into black ash.
“Thank you,” she said.
Daeng dipped his head in acknowledgment.
He gave her another moment before he stood and grabbed the bag. The heft of the bag caused him to pause. He reached inside and pulled out the wooden box. He opened the top, expecting to see the metal canister, but it wasn’t there.
“Do you have the microfilm?” he asked.
“It’s not in there?”
He turned the box so she could see.
“Quinn must have taken it with him,” she said. “He had it last, didn’t he?”
“Must have,” Daeng said. Not wanting to take a chance, he sent a text asking Quinn if he took the microfilm, and then carried the bag and the box to the table.
The reply came quickly: YES.
That was a relief. Daeng had no desire to retrace their steps in hopes of locating the spool of film. He started to shove the box back into the bag, but stopped. He took his new role as the main support member of Nate and Quinn’s teams seriously, and had learned to always be an asset rather than a liability. One of the things Nate had stressed was details. These were the backbone of a cleaner’s job. Missing a detail could blow a whole mission and quite possibly get someone imprisoned or even killed.
He’d almost missed such a detail. It had been right there in front of his eyes as he’d looked inside the box. The black foam that had held the canister in place had not been level with the plane of the box. Rather, it was tilted, albeit just a fraction of an inch.
He opened the box again and double-checked to make sure he’d seen it right. He stuck a finger into the hole where the canister had been, and pulled up. As he’d suspected, the foam wasn’t glued in place. Once it cleared the opening, he could see something underneath.
A stack of photos. Different sizes, maybe a dozen or more.
He pulled them out.
“Misty,” he said after he perused them. “Take a look at this.”
“What is it?” she asked, rising off the floor.
He showed her what he was holding.
She held out her hand. “Let me see.” She shuffled quickly through the photos. “Where were these?”
“In the bottom of the box. That’s her, isn’t it?”
She said nothing until she’d looked at each one. “Yes. These were the ones in Peter’s missing file. It’s his wife, Miranda.”
CHAPTER 21
WASHINGTON, DC
AS SOON AS Griffin felt a drop of water hit the back of his hand, he turned and looked up at the sky. Dark gray clouds hung heavily over the city, the leading edge of a tropical storm that, not long before, had been an early season, category-two hurricane. According to the news, rainfall in the DC area was predicted to reach an inch and a half before the storm passed further inland.
But he wasn’t about to let the weather bother him. He had work to do, actual fieldwork, which was rare these days. He had started out as Morten’s field enforcer years ago, but had gradually become, more and more, the coordinator of other efforts. While he was good at it, sitting in an office dealing with morons like those at O & O was at times maddening. Getting out, doing the work himself—he needed that every once in a while.
Several more raindrops hit him as he opened his car door and climbed in. Instead of starting the engine, he pulled out his phone. His first call went to voice mail after ringing five times. He disconnected and hit the number again. Same result. On the third try, the call was answered after the first ring.
“Hello?” The voice was male and half asleep.
“Good morning, Michael.”
“Who is…” A pause. “Griffin?” The last was almost a whisper.
“Long time no chat.”
In the hush that followed, Griffin imagined Michael Dima’s heart rate increasing as he quickly considered his options, but coming up with only the final, inevitable—
“What can I do for you?”
Part of Griffin’s job had been to cultivate contacts in agencies who could be potentially useful at some point. His preferred method was not one of faux friendship and cash, but of legitimate threat and blackmail. When people’s carefully constructed lives were in danger of crashing down around them, ninety-nine out of a hundred would choose the path of least resistance. In other words, cooperation. The other one percent? That’s where the legitimate part of the threat came in.
Dima’s flaw was a violent streak in his past that he’d been able to hide from all but the most vigorous investigator—Griffin. While a young man, Dima had put someone in a permanent vegetative state by using an iron pipe. The authorities had never learned the perpetrator’s name. Griffin, on the other hand, had discovered the truth, and it proved to be the leverage he needed to obtain Dima’s attention.
It had been a while since Griffin had needed to use the man, but the moment O & O had gone silent, Griffin knew he and Dima would soon become reacquainted.
“Your organization was tasked with keeping tabs on a certain apartment in Georgetown. You know the one I mean.”
“How did you…I can’t talk about that.”
“Please, Michael. Don’t insult me. Who do you think your client was?”
The pause that followed was thick with tension. “You?”
“Of course. So are you familiar with the apartment I’m talking about or not?”
“Yes,” Dima said quickly.
Griffin never doubted Dima would be aware of what O & O had been up to. Dima was one of the people at O & O who served as Central, coordinating the agency’s active projects, so any answer but yes would have been a lie.
“According to the reports I received, your people found nothing that would identify the intruders at the apartment. Is that correct?”
The hesitation was slight. “That’s correct. The team that responded to the incursion found nothing.”
Griffin’s eyes narrowed. The team that responded to the incursion…It was a very specific reference. “Think very carefully before you answer this question, Michael.” He fell silent for several seconds, giving Dima time to worry. “How many teams did you send out?”
“Well, the response team, and—I assume you know about the safe house?”
“The one in Arlington Ridge. Yes, I’m familiar.”
“Um, right. So there was the team that went there, but the place was empty.” He paused. “Oh, and then the follow-up recon to the Arlington Ridge home to check for anything that might have been left behind. Again, nothing.”
Dima was doing it again, only this time trying to confuse things by overexplaining. “Was that it? Or were there more?” Griffin asked.
The pause was long. “One more.”
This was new. “Where did they go?”
“The…the apartment.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. Midday.”
“And?”
“Well…um…”
“Don’t make me pull it out of you.”
It only took another second before the dam broke and Dima spilled everything—the chase, the two men, the woman, the accident.
“Why didn’t I receive a report about this?” Griffin asked.
“You…you didn’t?”<
br />
“Now you’re just trying to piss me off. Why didn’t I get the damn report?”
“T-That decision came from higher up.”
“Who higher up?”
“I’m…not sure.”
Griffin let Dima drown in silence.
Finally Dima said, “Director Cho, I think. She now oversees O & O.”
Griffin had heard of Cho, but their paths had never crossed as far as he could remember. He filed her name away to look into later. “Was O & O able to ID the two men and the woman?”
“Well, there’s the car left behind at the accident, but that’s a dead end.”
“Explain.”
Dima told him what they’d found, which was basically nothing.
Griffin frowned. “You’re holding something back.”
“No, I’m—”
“Why are you making me remind you that there’s no statute of limitation on attempted murder?”
Dima stopped breathing. “The…the…the recon team…they were able to get pictures of all three.”
Well, that was interesting. “So you were able to identify them?”
“It was taken out of our hands. We didn’t have a chance.”
“By Director Cho?”
Dima did not respond.
“I want the pictures,” Griffin said.
“I’m at home. I don’t have access to them.”
“Get access.”
“They’ve probably been purged from the system by now.”
“I want the pictures.”
“I’ll, um, see what I can do.”
“Do more than just see.”
Dima’s response was more a whine than a word.
“One more thing,” Griffin said, before the other man could hang up.
“Yes?”
“Where’s the BMW from the accident?”
__________
MOST OF THE space at the city impound yard was taken up by fully functional vehicles, sitting side by side as they waited for their owners to spring them from jail for parking violations.
The group off to the left, behind a separate chain-link fence, though, was different. Many of these would only see the open road again on the back of a truck hauling them to a wrecking yard. They were leftovers of recent accidents—the bent, the broken, the totaled—kept there only as long as the police needed them.
That’s where the BMW and O & O’s Audi were.
Griffin stopped first at the office, and flashed the FBI badge he always brought with him. It was fake, of course, but even the most knowledgeable authority wouldn’t be able to tell.
“What can I do for you, Agent?” the impound employee asked.
“I need to take a look at a vehicle in your accident lot,” Griffin said, donning his well-honed, bored-investigator persona.
“Which one?”
He made a show of pulling a small notebook from his pocket and shuffling through the pages. “It’s a…BMW.” He gave the license number Dima had provided him.
The man looked it up on the list. “Still here. And I see you’ve already been okayed by Detective Marsh.”
“Good. Wasn’t sure if he’d contacted you yet.” The real Detective Marsh had not contacted the yard. It had been Dima using O & O’s system to e-mail the appropriate clearance from what appeared to be the detective’s account.
“Sign here,” the clerk said.
Griffin scribbled an illegible signature on the sheet.
“You know the way?”
The enforcer flashed a smile. “I do.”
As he stepped outside, he pulled his collar tight to his neck, and popped open his umbrella to ward off the now steady rain. Slogging between the rows of parking violators, he made his way over to the open gate of the accident area and passed inside. It took less than a minute to locate the two vehicles from the crash. From the way the Audi’s side was smashed in, Griffin could now see why the man who’d been sitting in the passenger seat hadn’t died. The BMW had hit the back half of the car, containing most of the wreckage to the rear passenger area. As for the BMW, its damage was mostly limited to the front end—buckled hood, crunched fenders, and, by the way the vehicle was skewed, a bent frame.
If there had been any prints on the outside of the BMW, the storm had washed them away. So Griffin opened the back door on the passenger side, scooted onto the seat, and shut himself in.
The sound of the rain hitting the roof was almost relaxing, its intensity fluctuating in waves that could have easily lulled Griffin to sleep if he’d been in the mood. It was almost like music, something John Coltrane might play. An endless, intoxicating melody.
Griffin leaned between the front seats and scanned the driver area. An expelled airbag hung loosely over the steering wheel, but everything else looked almost normal. On the passenger’s side, the glove compartment hung open, and whatever had been inside was gone, confiscated by Metro Police or O & O.
What Griffin was looking for, though, was not registration papers or discarded receipts or stray fingerprints. In fact, he wasn’t hunting for anything a search of all the normal places would turn up. He was looking for things not easily found, things that would clearly indicate these intruders were pros.
He ran his fingers across the carpet covering the rear footwells, and checked under the front seats. Both were clean. The ceiling liner was next. There he made his first discovery, above the front passenger’s door. Evenly spaced, and situated so that he almost thought it was part of the vehicle’s frame, was a four-piece set of lock picks.
He continued his search.
Tucked under the front dash where only his fingertips could reach, and held in place by pressure brackets, was a collapsible, four-inch hunting knife. Not far from it was an extendable baton. There was no question now. Pros for sure.
He checked the air-con vents, the radio speakers, and the door panels, but the three items he’d already found were apparently all that was hidden in the cab. He stuffed his discoveries into the pockets of his overcoat, and climbed back out of the car.
The crunched hood of the BMW had been turned into an inverted V, creating a gap that allowed him to look inside the engine compartment. Nothing jumped out at him, but he knew any thorough inspection would necessitate using equipment to rip the hood off first. He had neither the time nor the inclination for that.
He moved around to the back of the car. From the scratch marks along the lip of the trunk, it was clear the police had used a crowbar to dislodge it. He gave the lid a test, and was happy to see it rise.
The trunk was messier than the car had been. There was no cargo to speak of, but the carpet that had covered the cargo area had been ripped away and pushed to the back. He revised his earlier thought and decided it probably wasn’t the police who had searched the vehicle, but O & O. At least they saved him having to rip the damn carpet out himself.
Leaning inside, he studied the metal surface, his hand darting out on occasion so that he could rub his fingertips over anything he found suspect. It was along the wall on the driver’s side that he discovered a trap—a vehicle hidey-hole.
The seam delineating it was nearly imperceptible—the paint and molding jobs top-notch. He moved his fingers along it, hoping the release would be in the same area, but knowing it wasn’t likely, given the quality of the workmanship. He finally discovered the release several feet away, right below the taillight, disguised as a rubber electrical system cap.
To be sure he was right, he turned it so he could see the backside. Embedded into the rubber was the thick, braided wire he knew from experience would be connected to the latch holding the trap closed. He was about to give it a pull when he spotted something else. Another wire had been braided into the main one, clinging to it like a remora on a shark. Together they disappeared behind one of the metal brackets.
Griffin frowned. There was no reason for them both to go to the latch.
He pulled his mini flashlight out of his pocket, closed the umbrella, and crawled all the way int
o the trunk. Moving as close as he could to the inside wall, he followed the wires around the corner by the taillights to the sidewall. There they split—the bigger wire continuing toward the trap, the smaller wire heading down into a metal tube that ran along the junction of the wall and the trunk floor. The tube was welded into place and painted to look like it was standard issue. It had even fooled Griffin when he first saw it, but now he was sure it hadn’t been manufacturer installed.
He traced the tube all the way to the back of the trunk, where it disappeared behind a metal plate and didn’t reappear again. Either the wire stopped there, or went through the wall into the back of the car.
With extreme care, he slid two fingers along the tube where it ducked under the plate. He didn’t get far before he hit an obstruction. He pulled his fingers out and tried again from the other sides. He closed his eyes as he traced the shape and drew a mental picture. It was some kind of junction, or relay, or…
Son of a bitch, he thought as he pulled his fingers out.
A fail-safe switch. If he had pulled the trap’s release cable, it would have triggered some kind of self-destruct system, destroying anything that was hidden inside. Okay, so how would the owner open the compartment without losing the contents? There had to be a bypass somewhere.
He searched around, his fingers hunting in the spaces he couldn’t see into.
It took him twenty minutes to finally locate it. Thank God for the rain. If it had been a clear day, one of the yard employees would have probably wandered by and wondered what he was doing.
The bypass switch was hidden under an inspection sticker along the edge of the trunk’s lid. It was a tiny, two-position switch. He moved it into the opposite position, and crawled out of the trunk, hoping he’d disarmed it instead of arming it. The only way to find out was to pull the release.
Not one to waste time contemplating the unknowable, he grabbed the rubber cap and yanked. At first it resisted, as if it were rooted in place, then there was a thunk, and the cap moved away, bringing the wires with it. There was no sudden burst of flames or smell of dissolving chemical, only a second thunk as the top of the trap door swung open.
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