Tom Clancy's Op-center Novels 7-12 (9781101644591)

by Clancy, Tom

  “She is acting more offended than guilty,” Rodgers said. “If she is worried, she’s being very cool about it.”

  “An operation like this would not hitch its wagon to a bunch of Jittery Janes,” McCaskey said. “Mike, thanks for this. I’ll leave a message if we find anything. Meanwhile, watch your back.”

  “Never been good at that, Darrell,” Rodgers said. “Good or bad, the future’s in front of you.”

  Rodgers hung up, and McCaskey handed the phone to Maria. “Mike is getting philosophical,” McCaskey said. “That means he’s worried.”

  “Mike is always worried,” Maria said.

  “True,” her husband replied. “But most of that is usually on the surface. This is coming from inside.”

  McCaskey briefed his wife, who asked what he thought Rodgers might be worried about.

  “That Kat could be guilty,” McCaskey told her.

  “Of what? Does he think she could have masterminded it?”

  “I don’t know if he believes that,” McCaskey said. “My own feeling is that someone like Link had to be involved. Not only because of the sophistication and coordination of the kills, but because it would be difficult to execute without someone covering for them inside Orr’s office.”

  “Which brings me back to why,” Maria said. “Could this really be all about money, about Wilson’s plans for boosting European investments?”

  “It could,” her husband replied. “We’ll know that when we talk to the people who did it.”

  “Assuming we get them,” Maria said.

  “We will,” McCaskey said confidently.

  “At Interpol Madrid, our success rate solving homicides was a little over sixty percent.”

  “We did a little better than that at the Bureau, but not enough,” McCaskey said. “That was one reason I joined Op-Center. Results change when people like you, Mike, and Bob Herbert are added to the process.”

  “Your tactics also have changed,” Maria pointed out. “We just did a break and enter.”

  “That is true, though I look at it as exploratory surgery. It sounds more benevolent than criminal.”

  “Sweetheart, there is nothing criminal about what we are planning,” Maria said with absolute confidence. “We have a clear objective and will limit ourselves to that. Ms. Lockley will never know, unless we find something, in which case we will be in a position to step back and build a stronger case.”

  “We are still invading her privacy,” he said. “We are still ignoring the Bill of Rights.”

  “What we are planning is less of a crime than those committed against Mr. Wilson and Mr. Lawless,” Maria replied. “If we can stop a third homicide, then it is a risk worth taking.”

  “Obviously, I agree, or I would not be doing it,” McCaskey said as he turned onto N Street. “But I am not going to pretend it is legal.”

  “To me, legal is less important than moral,” Maria said. “My conscience is not going to bother me tonight, whatever we find.”

  There was no explaining to Maria the American idea of personal rights. That was as pointless as arguing against Maria’s logic. One was an absolute, the foundation of a national philosophy, the other was airtight. The only way to sidestep either was by embracing the other. McCaskey had made his choice.

  The apartment building was a three-story, white brick structure. There was an outside door with a lock, a foyer for mail, and an inside door that led to the apartments. They would have to go through two locks before they reached the apartment. That would not be a problem. McCaskey carried a magnetic snap gun in his car. The original snap gun was developed in the 1960s so that law officers who were not trained lockpicks could open doors using something other than traditional raking techniques—that is, inserting a pair of picks and searching for the proper combination to turn the lock. The snap gun generated torque that simply muscled the lock back. It also tended to bend or destroy the lock, evidence that someone had forced their way in. The magnetic gun generated a powerful magnetic force in whatever direction the user indicated. It popped the lock and any interior dead bolts in an instant.

  McCaskey and his wife approached the door. They had decided, if asked, that she was looking for an apartment and he was a broker. He put the point of the palm-size unit into the keyhole. He used his thumb to adjust the directional vector to the right. The lock opened immediately. The couple moved into the foyer, where they got a free pass. A resident was just coming out and opened the door. McCaskey dropped a pen and stooped to pick it up as the man passed. He did not want his face to be seen. Then McCaskey and Maria went inside. Since the elevator had a security camera, they took the stairs to Kat’s third-floor apartment. There were five other apartments on the floor. While Maria watched the doors, her husband took a palm-size disk from his jacket pocket. He put it against the doorjamb. It was an ampere detector. If the door were wired with a burglar alarm, this would show current. He watched the digital readout. There was nothing. Although there could still be a motion detector inside, most urban apartments, especially newer buildings such as this one, had been prewired for perimeter entry. McCaskey used the snap gun to open the knob lock and dead bolt. McCaskey put the snap gun in his jacket pocket and removed a pair of leather gloves. He pulled them on so he would not leave fingerprints. The couple went inside.

  The shades were drawn, and the apartment was dark. There was a small penlight attached to McCaskey’s key chain. He flicked it on. Neighbors might know that Kat was away. He did not want them seeing lights behind the shades.

  They were in a small corridor that led to the living room. McCaskey swung the light across the floor to look for pet hair. If Kat had a pet, she might also have a walker, someone to come by and take it out. He saw no traces of fur, nor did they hear anything. They started forward.

  “I do not smell a fireplace,” Maria said.

  “I know,” her husband replied.

  They entered the living room. There was no fireplace there or in the master bedroom. They searched Kat’s closets for the bag Rodgers had described.

  “That’s a good sign,” Maria said after they had finished looking in the kitchen cabinets.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Those are the kinds of bags women save,” she said. “They make good gift bags or tote bags. Ms. Lockley had other bags in the broom closet. She obviously got rid of this one.”

  “Intriguing but circumstantial,” her husband replied. He looked around. He went to the bookshelf and pulled down her college and high school yearbooks. He flipped through them, looking for a name that might have come up during the investigation, a possible collaborator. There was none.

  “We should have brought Matt to get into her computer,” Maria said, pointing to a desk near the window.

  “I’m sure that anything important is on a laptop, and I’m just as sure it is with her,” McCaskey said.

  He heard running water. It was coming from the kitchen. It was just the freezer. The ice maker was making ice.

  “That’s odd,” he said.

  “What is?” Maria asked, joining him.

  “Ice makers only fill up when they’re low.”

  He went to the stainless steel unit and opened the door. The engine was humming loudly, amplified by the close walls of the small kitchen. McCaskey flipped up the ice compartment. He dug through the new ice to the cubes below. He broke several chunks free and pulled them out.

  “Damn.”

  Maria moved closer. “What is it?”

  “There are blue stains in the ice,” he said, holding a cube up to the freezer light. “See them?”

  Maria nodded. “She had the dress in the ice compartment. That’s a very good hiding spot.”

  McCaskey nodded. He set the ice down carefully on a shelf and used his pocket knife to poke around inside, just in case the hypodermic was there as well. It was not. That was probably in the milk, he thought only half in jest.

  “If the dress was here this recently,” McCaskey went on, “it
means she may have taken it with her.”

  “Isn’t that risky to have evidence on your person?” Maria asked.

  “It would have been riskier to leave it here or to have destroyed it when you are on a short list of suspects,” McCaskey replied. “Think about it. Where would the garment be safer than in the hands of airport security? My guess is she will dispose of it as far from the crime scene as possible.”

  Maria went back to the freezer. She stopped. Her husband smiled and handed her a spoon from the dish rack. He had wrapped it in a dish towel so they would not leave prints. She stuck it through the handle and pulled the door open, so as not to leave, or smudge, any fingerprints. She looked in the ice compartment.

  “Why wouldn’t she have taken out all the ice as a precaution ?” Maria asked. “Dress fibers may have become stuck to them.”

  “That would have put them in plain view in the sink,” McCaskey remarked.

  “She could have washed them away.”

  “The FBI routinely checks drainpipes for evidence,” McCaskey replied. “Whoever was behind this would surely have known that.”

  Maria made a face and looked down. She crouched. Her husband shone the light on the tile floor.

  “Find something?” he asked.

  “Maybe. Look at this,” she said.

  McCaskey squatted beside her. Maria was pointing to several slightly off-color stains.

  “This limestone has no shine, which means it has not been sealed,” Maria said. “The tile is extremely porous. It soaks up water.”

  “Okay. Some of the ice fell and was not picked up. It melted. It stained the limestone—”

  “Darrell, the dampness stays in the tile for about an hour, then it evaporates,” Maria told him.

  “You’re saying that someone was here within the hour,” McCaskey said. He did not like the sound of that.

  “It seems so,” Maria said.

  “It could have been a housekeeper.”

  “I don’t smell any cleaning agent,” Maria said.

  “There’s pineapple smell—”

  “An air freshener,” Maria said, pointing back at the bathroom. “I saw it earlier when we looked in the bedroom.”

  Damn, she is good, McCaskey thought. But that still did not convince him. It was still a big leap from a few damp spots on the floor to someone having been here in the last hour. McCaskey looked up. The ice dispenser in the freezer door was directly overhead. He ran his gloved finger along the inside of the plastic lip. “It’s moist. The stains could have come from dripping condensation.”

  “That is possible,” Maria agreed. “It is also possible that Ms. Lockley is being framed.”

  The realization was like a punch in McCaskey’s gut. If it were true, it meant something else as well. Something that became clear when they heard movement in the hallway.

  They had been set up.

  FORTY-TWO

  San Diego, California Wednesday, 11:53 A.M.

  It had been a two hour flight from Salt Lake City. Kat did not talk to Rodgers the entire time. He was not surprised, but he was inconvenienced. If she were innocent of wrongdoing, they should be talking about who might be involved. Instead, she just worked on her laptop and shut him out.

  Rodgers checked his cell phone voice mail as soon as they deplaned. There was a long message from McCaskey. It was not very encouraging. McCaskey’s urgency was underscored by the fact that he was not being circumspect, even though this was an open line.

  “Mike, we found dye from what we believe to be the dress in Kat’s ice dispenser,” McCaskey said quickly. “We believe that someone was here in the last hour, perhaps to remove the dress. If they didn’t, Kat may have packed it in her luggage. You have to find out. Tell her what happened here. Make her tell you what she knows. If she really knows nothing, someone may be framing her. Meanwhile, we’ve been baited and bagged. I can hear the police in the corridor. They are waiting for the superintendent to let them in. If we’ve been picked off, that means the attack on Op-Center was almost certainly tied to this case. Three men have died so far because of this. Don’t underestimate these people. I’m going to leave Paul a message in the Tank. If you find out anything, coordinate through him. Take care, buddy.”

  Rodgers had stopped walking without realizing it. He stood near the gate as passengers rushed past him, as the world moved around him, as events unfolded that affected him. Yet he felt as though he were not a part of any of it. He put the phone away and looked around for Kat. She was well ahead of him. There was only one exit from Terminal One, and he rushed to catch up with her. They walked past the security checkpoint together.

  “We really have to talk,” Rodgers said.

  “I know.”

  “No. You don’t.”

  “This is not a good fit,” she said.

  “I agree. Where I come from, we follow the laws of the land.”

  She rolled her eyes. “That mantra is getting tired.”

  “How about a shot of caffeine, then,” he said. “Either you were involved in a couple of murders or someone may be trying to pin them on you.”

  “Yeah. Op-Center.”

  “No!” Rodgers exclaimed. “Just listen to this.”

  “To what? Another one of your convoluted theories?”

  “No!” Rodgers said. He pulled out his cell phone as they reached the baggage area. While they waited beside the nearest of the three carousels, Rodgers accessed McCaskey’s message. He handed her the phone. With an expression that was more contemptuous than interested, she listened to the message. When it was finished, she fired Rodgers a look.

  “Your people entered my apartment?” she said with a voice like sharp steel. “Did you know this was going down?”

  “I thought they might,” he admitted.

  Kat smiled tightly. “That’s worse,” she said. “Much worse. The fact that you knew and didn’t tell me.”

  “We can deal with that later,” Rodgers said.

  She shook her head. “You and I have nothing to deal with at all,” she said. The steel had superheated and turned molten. “I will take this entire matter up with our attorneys back East.” She turned away.

  “That is not going to work,” Rodgers said, grabbing her arm.

  She yanked it away. “If I get loud, airport security won’t give a red hot damn about your rank, General.”

  “You won’t do that,” Rodgers said. “The papers will want to know what it was all about. I’ll tell them.”

  She relaxed her body but not her expression. The carousel started to turn behind her. “What do you want?”

  “I need to convince them of your innocence.”

  “Them or yourself?”

  “Both,” he said.

  “Since my word is not good enough, what gets me an acquittal?”

  “First, what happened to the Groveburn bag?” he asked.

  “I left it at the office for Lucy.”

  “Why? The night you had it, you told me your Nikes were in it.”

  “They were,” Kat said. “I also told you it contained a gift. Lucy wanted me to hold it so her boyfriend didn’t find it. They live together.”

  Rodgers could not remember if she said it contained a gift. Maybe she had. “Is it still at the office?”

  “I’m in San Diego,” Kat said. “How the hell would I know?”

  “You can call,” Rodgers said.

  “Right now.”

  “Yeah.”

  Kat’s jawline tightened as she took out her cell phone. She called the senator’s receptionist and asked about the bag. A moment later, she hung up.

  “Lucy came by for it shortly before nine this morning,” Kat said.

  “After you left the apartment,” Rodgers said. “She could have put it inside.”

  “Right. She just flew in the window like Peter Pan,” Kat said. “Was there anything else?”

  “Yes. When we get to the hotel, I want to be there when you empty your luggage,” Rodgers said.


  “Boy, you’re pushing this.”

  “Sorry. I need to know that the dress is not here.”

  “I could have put it somewhere else, like a safe-deposit box.”

  “If necessary, we’ll get to that later.”

  “And when you don’t find anything anywhere, Op-Center will come up with some other idiotic notion to implicate me,” she said. “The admiral is right. Your people are good at that.”

  That was it. Now she had gone too far. “Our people? You don’t know us at all, Kat,” Rodgers said. “We’re good Americans, part of Senator Orr’s America. We have died so people like you can shoot off your mouth. I asked for your help before, and you didn’t want to give it. So, yes. We went behind your back. We found a problem, and I presented it to you. And by the way, it looks like someone ratted out ‘my people.’ The police apparently followed them into your apartment.”

  “Do you think the police were watching them?” Kat asked.

  “Doubtful,” Rodgers said. “They know McCaskey is former FBI and that he might have spotted a tail. More than likely they were watching your place.”

  “Why? How would they have known?”

  “I’m guessing that whoever may have put the dress in your freezer, then removed it, tipped them off. Presumably, that someone is Lucy.”

  “So Lucy O’Connor picked the bag up, put the dress in the ice compartment so it would stain the ice, then removed it,” Kat said. “Just so your guy would find the dye and blame me.”

  “It looks that way,” Rodgers said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Luggage started sliding down the ramp. Kat turned to the carousel. Her indignation was gone, replaced by introspection. Rodgers stepped beside her.

  “You really are puzzled by all this,” Rodgers said.

  “Puzzled, angry, distracted, and trying to get a bead on who is playing who,” Kat said. “I know someone is.”

  “That’s true. And accepting that there is a problem here is a start.”

  “I’ve known Lucy for years,” she said. “I cannot believe she would do this. Hell, I looked in that bag. There was a gift, all wrapped up.”

  “To make sure you wouldn’t open it,” Rodgers said.