But O’Hara pulled him down again.
“Obviously, we don’t think so. Now, listen to me, because here’s the deal. You don’t get any money for the file you stole and then tried to sell back to us. But you do get to walk away from all this. Of course, you leave the briefcase and the copies you made. We know who you are, Agent Viseltear. If you come at us again, or if any of this ever gets out, we take you down. And I mean down. That’s the deal. Not too bad, huh?”
O’Hara stared long and hard at the guy in the suit, Viseltear, who was an analyst at Quantico and a thief. “You follow all of this? You get it?”
Viseltear shook his head slowly. “You don’t want me in a court of law,” he said. “You can’t have this go to court. I get it.”
O’Hara shrugged. “If you come at us again, we take you down. That’s what I need you to get.”
And then he punched Viseltear squarely in the jaw. Almost put him out. “Just like you tried to take me down with your pizza delivery guy in Pleasantville. Now get the hell out of here. Leave the briefcase.”
Still rubbing his jaw, Viseltear stood up from the table.
He was a little wobbly but he walked away, and it was over.
Well, not exactly over, O’Hara couldn’t help thinking—because he knew too much about what had really happened, didn’t he?
He’d looked inside the suitcase, looked at the flash drive, read that little piece in the Style section of the Times. Put one and one together. Came up with 1.2 billion.
But maybe, just maybe, that could turn out to be a good thing for him.
And maybe not.
Things aren’t always as they appear.
Chapter 104
“O’HARA.”
“Susan. Nice to see you.”
“Even under the circumstances?”
“Always. Under any circumstances.”
We were on our way to Frank Walsh’s office on twelve in the FBI building in downtown Manhattan. Susan and I worked under Walsh’s supervision, though usually in separate divisions. Frank Walsh controlled several departments in the New York office.
“Susan. John,” he said, and showed his teeth when we arrived at his office. Walsh is an accomplished smiler, raconteur, and glad-hander, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t smart. He’s Susan’s and my boss after all.
We moved the conversation into his conference room. “I’d like to shoot the breeze with you two bullshit artists for a while, but I’m very tight on time today. Maybe dinner at Neary’s some night soon. Susan, you can’t come in here for this. Sorry.”
“Of course,” said Susan. She doesn’t think Frank is as smart as I do, but she tolerates him.
“So, let’s get down to business,” Walsh said as he and I walked into the next room. “This hearing is now called to order.”
The room had that uncomfortable, tight-collared, shame-on-you air to it. It was the kind that immediately announced loud and clear without a single word being spoken: You fucked up good, O’Hara.
I sat down in the lone chair facing the disciplinary panel. Since the night Nora disappeared, I’d gone from the hospital to the hot seat, with a week of recuperating time in between for my shoulder. Not to mention a little undercover work I’d finished out at La Guardia Airport. I was guessing the panel wanted me good and healthy before officially kicking my ass.
Frank Walsh got things started with a brief run-through of my background. The panel listened intently while a tape recorder in front of Frank recorded every word.
Agent John Michael O’Hara… former U.S. Army captain… former NYPD officer, decorated twice… Currently special agent with the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, specifically the Terrorist Financing Operations Section… Several important undercover assignments…
“Frank?” came a voice. It was an older man sitting at the far right end of the table. In addition to his involvement with the disciplinary committee, his day-to-day was the serial murder unit. His name was Edward Vointman.
“Could you please elaborate on how it is that Agent O’Hara was involved with the Sinclair investigation in the first place?”
I held back a smirk. Vointman’s question was the politically correct way of asking what he really wanted to know. Why the hell wasn’t I aware of this?
Walsh frowned. In most any company, let alone a government agency, the left hand rarely knows what the right hand is doing. In this situation, however, the breakdown in communication was a little more suspect. The right hand didn’t know what one of its own fingers was doing.
Walsh reached out and turned off the recorder. When the tape stopped, so did his stiffness.
“Here’s the story, Ed,” he began. “The Joint Terrorist Task Force here in New York has been working with the financing group from the Counterterrorism Division and Homeland Security on monitoring money trafficking in and out of the country.”
Vointman opened his mouth as if to say something—most likely, “What do you mean by monitoring?”—when Walsh stopped him.
“I can’t tell you anything more on that, Ed, so don’t bother.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, what happened was we got a red flag on a large transfer from a Connor Brown in Westchester a while back.
“Upon further investigation we turned up an odd coincidence. The guy’s fiancée, Nora Sinclair, was previously married to a doctor in New York who died the same way. Get this, he was a cardiologist. The good news is she probably wasn’t a terrorist. The bad news is she was probably involved with both deaths.”
Again, Vointman opened his mouth, his original question even more valid. As a section leader of the serial murder unit, the case definitely should’ve been thrown his way.
As before, Walsh cut him off. “Here’s the thing,” he said. “We couldn’t turn it over to your group, Ed, without being a hundred percent sure this Nora woman wasn’t a shill for someone or, unlikely as it may seem now, some sort of operative herself. Long story short, we went with O’Hara because he was experienced with both those scenarios. He worked undercover for four years with the NYPD, and his profile matched well with the mark. He was even working on another related assignment at the time.
“In other words, he had the right look and—at least, we thought—was good at using his head.” He turned to me with a steely glare. “Of course, we were thinking about the one above the waist.”
Walsh reached out again and hit the RECORD button. “But I disagree,” he said.
It was all downhill from there.
For the next hour I fielded questions on every aspect of my investigation into Nora Sinclair. Every decision I made, and those that I didn’t. Especially those that I didn’t. The panel was relentless. I became their human piñata, and everybody was sure to take their whacks.
When it was done, Walsh gave his thanks to everyone, then excused the room. I assumed I was free to go as well. That’s when he told me to stay put.
Chapter 105
THE REST OF THE disciplinary panel had filed out, and it was just the three of us. Walsh. Me. The tape machine. Everything was very still. For twenty, maybe thirty seconds, all he did was stare at me.
“Am I supposed to be saying something?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“Are you supposed to be saying something?”
“Probably not. But I’m going to ask the question anyway.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms tight against his chest. His eyes bore right into mine. “I’m going to get a phone call from upstairs, aren’t I?”
The man was uncanny. “What makes you say that?”
“Let’s say it’s a hunch,” he said with a slow nod. “You’re too smart to be this dumb.”
“I guess I’ve had worse compliments.”
He ignored the sarcasm. “You got caught with your pants down, literally, but something tells me you’ve still got your ass covered.”
I didn’t answer right away. I wanted to see if he’d keep talking, maybe reveal the source of his “hunch.” He di
dn’t.
“I’m impressed, Frank.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “It was written all over your face.”
“Remind me not to play poker with you.”
“I can still make this exceedingly tough for you.”
“I’m very aware of that, too.”
“Nothing changes what you did, how badly you screwed up.”
“I’m very aware of that.”
He closed his file. “You can go.”
I stood.
“Oh, one other thing, O’Hara.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I know all about your other assignment. I knew from the start. I’m in the loop. I know you’re the Tourist.”
Chapter 106
WHEN I WALKED into Susan’s office a few minutes later, she was standing at the window, staring out on what was a drizzly afternoon. It was hard not to notice the symbolism of her having her back to me.
“How bad was it?” she asked without turning around.
“It was really bad.”
“Scale of one to ten.”
“Eighteen, nineteen.”
“No, seriously.”
“A nine, maybe,” I said. “I won’t know anything for a week.”
“Until then?”
“They chain my ankles to my desk.”
“They really ought to chain something else.”
“For the record, that’s now the second dick joke I’ve gotten today.”
“What’d you expect?”
“I don’t know, but I’d appreciate it if I didn’t have this entire conversation with your back.”
Susan turned around. She was a tough cookie and almost always unflappable, though you’d never know it to see her face at that moment. The concern and disappointment were unmistakable.
“You made me look bad, John.”
“I know,” I said quickly. A little too quickly.
“No, I mean, really bad.”
I gave a good, long stare down at my feet. “I’m sorry,” I said softly.
“Hell, you knew that working this through my department was bending the rules to begin with.”
I said nothing. To know Susan as I did was to know she was trying to get it out of her system. The anger, the frustration, the letdown. I figured she probably had one more good primal scream left in her before she could move on.
“Damn it, John, how could you be so fucking stupid!”
And there it was.
When the foundation of the building stopped shaking, she resumed her calm, stoic demeanor. There was still the matter of a serial killer on the loose and the need to catch her. Unfortunately, the reports from the field continued to offer little cause for optimism. Even the media coverage yielded nothing. Nora seemed to have completely disappeared.
“What about our people in the Caymans?” I asked.
“Nothing,” said Susan. “The Caribbean, the entire town of Briarcliff Manor, her apartment here in the city, and all points in between; she hasn’t been spotted anywhere.”
“Christ, where is she?”
“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.” Susan glanced down at a piece of paper on her desk—scribbled on it was the amount of money frozen in Nora’s account. “Or should I say, the eighteen-million, four-hundred-and-twenty-six-thousand-dollar question?”
It was a staggering number.
“That reminds me,” I said. “What about the tax attorney, Keppler?”
“The one you strong-armed?”
“I prefer the term cajoled.”
“Either way, Nora hasn’t contacted his office.”
“Maybe I could pay another visit to the guy and—”
She stopped me. “You’re chained to your desk, remember? And who knows what’s going to happen after.” She managed a slight smile. “On the bright side, if you are suspended, perhaps you’ll have more time to spend with your boys.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “That all depends if their mother will let me.”
Susan turned around again and gazed out the window. “You know, if you were as good a husband as you are a father, we never would’ve split up.”
Chapter 107
I WAS ALWAYS lousy at sitting still. Now I was supposed to be doing it for an indefinite period. After two days of being chained to my desk, I was already stir-crazy. There was paperwork to be done, but I wasn’t doing it. All I could do was stare out the office window at the gray gloom of downtown New York. And wonder.
Where the hell is she?
The reports coming back from the field were short but hardly sweet. No sign of Nora anywhere. No trace of her. How the hell could she disappear?
The routine was maddening. The phone would ring in my office, I’d listen to the update, and then I’d slam the phone back down. I was being consumed by frustration. The sign on my back was clear for everyone: WARNING! CONTENTS UNDER EXTREME PRESSURE.
The phone rang again. I picked up and braced for more of the same. “O’Hara,” I said.
I heard nothing back.
“Hello?”
Still nothing.
“Is anyone there?”
“I’ve missed you,” she said softly.
I shot up in my chair.
“Well, aren’t you going to say something?” Nora asked. “Did you miss me? Not even the sex? Not even that?”
I was about to answer—I’d opened my mouth, prepared to unleash a venomous rant, but then I stopped myself. I needed to keep Nora on the line.
I hit the RECORD button on my phone, followed by the button next to it, which triggered a trace. Deep breath. “How are you, Nora?”
She laughed. “Oh, c’mon, at least yell at me. The man I knew wasn’t the type to hold back.”
“You mean Craig Reynolds?”
“You’re not going to hide behind the Insurance Man, are you?”
“He wasn’t real. None of it was real, Nora.”
“You wish that were true. Right now the only truth is, you can’t make up your mind. You don’t know if you want to fuck me or kill me.”
“I’m pretty clear on that,” I said.
“That’s your wounded ego talking,” she said. “Speaking of wounded, how are you feeling? You didn’t look too good that night.”
“No thanks to you.”
“I’ll tell you something, O’Hara. It hurts knowing we won’t see each other again.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I said through clenched teeth. “Trust me, I’ll find you.”
“That’s such a funny word, isn’t it? Trust. I’d imagine your wife doesn’t have much of it for you these days. Gee, I hate to think I broke up your marriage.”
“You can rest easy, your timing was a little off. She’s been my ex-wife for two years.”
“Really? So you are available, O’Hara?”
I looked at my watch. She’d been on for over a minute. Keep talking, O’Hara.
I shifted gears. “How are you managing without money?” I asked.
She snickered. “Plenty more where that came from. It’s everywhere.”
“Is that all this is about? Money?”
“You say it like it’s a bad thing. A girl needs to look out for her future, doesn’t she?”
“What you did goes a little beyond retirement planning.”
“Okay, so maybe there’s a little bit of sport, too. We’re angry, O’Hara. Most women are seething at men. Wake up and smell your bacon burning, sweetie.”
She was beginning to get worked up. Maybe I’d touched a nerve. Good for me.
“What do you have against men, Nora?”
“Do you have an hour? Several, actually.”
“I do. I have all the time you need.”
“But I’m afraid I don’t,” she said. “It’s time to go.”
“Wait!”
“Can’t wait, O’Hara. I’ll see you in your dreams.”
Click.
I flipped my wrist and locked in on the second hand of my
watch. “Please,” I whispered. I called down to the tech guys. “Tell me you got a location!”
The initial silence ripped through my ears. “Sorry,” I was told. “We missed her.”
I picked up the phone, base and all, and whipped it against the wall. It shattered into pieces.
I’ll see you in your dreams.
Chapter 108
THE GRAY-HAIRED GEEK installing my new phone the next morning gazed down at the scattered pieces of my old one. Then he looked at me with a knowing, seen-it-all smile. “It just fell off your desk, huh?”
“Stranger things have happened,” I said. “Trust me on that one.”
Minutes later the new phone was up and running. At least something was. I remained deskbound, tormented by boredom, not to mention self-doubt and a whole lot of guilt, truckloads of the stuff.
The new phone rang.
My first thought was that an encore was on its way—Nora wanted another conversation, another chance to turn the screws. On second thought, I knew better. Everything about her call the day before said it was a one-time-only event.
I picked up. Sure enough, it wasn’t Nora.
It was the other woman in my life who currently had it in for me. Needless to say, Susan and I weren’t exactly on the best of terms. Still, we remained professional.
“Any word yet from the audio lab?” I asked right away. The recording of my conversation with Nora was being analyzed for possible background noises that suggested her general, if not specific, location. An ocean wave; a foreign language being spoken by a passerby. Just because I couldn’t hear it didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
“Yeah, I got the report back,” said Susan. “Nothing they could pick up.”
Technically, it was more bad news, but the way she delivered it—as if it were irrelevant—told me something.
Susan knew something.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“What’s going on? You’re still incredibly fucking stupid, John. If you could hurt me, you would have broken my heart again.”
She was holding out on me.
“I know that, Susan. There’s something else.”
She chuckled at my intuitive grab. “How fast can you get to my office?”