And I noted too the shoe box, the one he'd taken from his family house just before he'd burned it to the ground.
My heart thudded with anticipation as I walked over to one of the Bureau's Evidence Response Team agents and asked for a pair of latex gloves. I pulled them on and returned to the cache. I stood for a moment, then crouched over the box. Did it indeed contain more pictures? Or was it something else, something his sister had given him? His father or mother?
I peeled off several strips of yellowed tape and began to lift the lid.
Then I stopped.
Painfully I rose to my feet and left the box with the rest of the effects. Taking the gloves off and returning to my car, I reflected that whatever might be inside, it was nothing that I truly needed to know.
Chapter 67
I SAW MY Honda--the one Amanda had escaped in--approach. I waved to the driver, an FBI agent I knew. I couldn't see through the tinted glass but I knew the girl was in the backseat.
I hadn't, in fact, given her any directions about where to drive. There was no address in the vehicle. I figured that even if she didn't find anything she'd still drive as fast as she could to the nearest 7-Eleven or gas station to call 911. Giving her those instructions was the only way I could think of to keep myself alive long enough for Freddy to arrive with the troops and take Loving into custody. I'd made him believe that only I knew where she was going. I'd turned myself into the principal.
As it turned out, she hadn't gotten very far at all. At a gas station a few miles north on Route 15 she'd pulled in a little fast and taken out a rack of tires. The local police had been apprised of the situation and they got in touch with Freddy, who sent a car to protect her.
I didn't want Amanda to see the bodies. I also knew the primary was unaccounted for so I wanted to keep her out of sight. I climbed into the backseat with her and shut the door.
Breathlessly she said, "You're all right! I heard you were but I didn't know. What's wrong with your foot?"
"Stubbed my toe. Your dad's going to be okay."
"I know. I heard." The girl grew silent, looking at the compound. "That's the man we were fighting with, Loving?" A glance at the tarp covering the body.
"Yes."
"I'm glad he's dead." She said this firmly. She meant it.
Got some grit . . .
"Can I go see my dad?"
"Not quite yet. Somebody from my office's going to take you to a place to stay with your stepmother and aunt."
The Great Falls safe house was compromised, so I'd arranged for Ahmad to take Joanne and Maree to another one. The house was in Loudoun County, not too far away from here, also on an old estate. Though it wasn't as nice as the Great Falls one.
"Uncle Bill's all right too."
"He had a little problem with his foot too. But he'll be fine."
Her face was still. "I was really worried when they were shooting at him, by the roadside."
"You saved his life."
She didn't say anything but was looking at the compound. "All those guns . . . they're so loud. They don't sound like that in the movies. Or like the ones we shot at camp. That other man who was with you?"
I shook my head. "He didn't make it."
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "Did he have a family?"
"I don't know."
Amanda wiped tears.
I wished she hadn't attacked the minder but she wouldn't have known Pogue and I were there. I couldn't help but admire her courage. I told her, "That was good, the way you handled yourself in there. The pepper spray."
The girl's face, ruddy with subtle dots of acne, gave a wan smile. "Dad taught me to look out for myself. Before I left with Uncle Bill I kind of borrowed some Mace from Dad's dresser to take with me. I kept it hidden in my bear bag."
"Smart. You're sure you're just sixteen?"
"That's why I had it," she said matter-of-factly. "They didn't bother to search me. They were stupid."
"They were."
"Like, Agent Corte, I kind of messed up your car. I hit some tires. Like, I'm really, really sorry."
"We've got insurance."
She gave a weak smile.
I gritted my teeth from the toe pain and sat forward, taking a pad and pen from my pocket. "I need to ask you some questions."
"Sure."
"You know, we thought at first they wanted to kidnap you to get your father to tell them something about one of his cases."
"But it was me they wanted."
"Right. The people here were just hired--and we need to find out by who."
"So you can throw their ass in jail."
"Exactly. Now, did those men mention anything after they kidnapped you? Anything that might give us an idea of who hired them or why they wanted you."
She thought for a moment. "Like, after they got me in the truck and we were driving here, they were talking some. But it was like they didn't know anything about me. Or say anything about anybody else."
I asked her to tell me essentially everything she'd done for the past month. Amanda understood that her father had been shot and she nearly killed because of some occurrence or someone she'd come in contact with recently, and she took her assignment seriously, launching into a lengthy recitation of her activities. The girl led an astonishingly busy life. And had a very good memory. I took voluminous notes as she described time with friends and their parents, her high school classes, sporting events, concerts, trips to shopping malls, her involvement on the yearbook, a French Club outing to the embassy in D.C., a cooking class, a picture-taking expedition with her aunt in Rock Creek Park, reporting for her blog about AIDS awareness and the fellow student who'd killed herself despite seeking help in the school's self-harm clinic, her Facebook activities and friends (a lot of notes there), her college-level computer course in which her "weird and totally brilliant" Chinese professor let the students try out software programs and evaluate them. A dozen other entries.
Finally, I sat back, letting my mind consider possible reasons the girl had been targeted.
I noted an armored SUV arrive, driven by Geoff, the clone from our organization. I rolled down the window and waved. He pulled up.
I said to Amanda, "I think I have all I need. I'm going to have my associate here take you to your stepmother and aunt."
"Yeah, I kinda want to see them."
"I'm sure you do."
She surprised me by giving me a hug and we climbed out. She got into the SUV and, with a nod from me, Geoff eased the big vehicle away from the site.
I sat down on a log and read through my notes of my interview with Amanda a few minutes before. Closed my eyes. Partly from the sting, partly to help me concentrate. Then I sent Claire duBois an email asking her to do what she did best. The reply--seconds later--assured me that she'd get to the requests immediately.
I rose and walked stiffly to a fire truck, where I got a bottle of water from a cooler and drank most of it down.
Just as I'd finished, I heard a voice behind me gruffly ask, "You got another one of those?"
I turned and found myself staring at Jonny Pogue, who was examining the cloth and skin on his left forearm, more troubled, it seemed, by his scorched green jacket than the seared flesh.
Chapter 68
"POGUE . . . WHAT HAPPENED?" I was as delighted to see him as I was surprised he'd survived.
He said nothing and when I continued to look him over he repeated his request: "Water?"
"Sure. Sorry." I handed him a bottle. He drank about half and upended the rest over his head. He rubbed his eyes and looked past me at a med tech. "Any chance you could take a look at this?" A nod at his burned arm. He coughed hard and spat. Made a face at the taste of scorch in his mouth.
Two medics got him sitting. He refused requests both to lie down and to take a painkiller. A tech began to cut his sleeve. "Don't do that!" Pogue barked and unzipped then pulled off the jacket. "Why cut it?"
The burn looked bad but Pogue lost interest as the men went to work
.
"What happened?" I repeated. "How did you . . . ?"
"I got trapped in the corner, 'cause of the fire. Managed to make it up the stairs on the balcony but they tossed another phos grenade up there. I took the last hostile out but the flames were pretty intense by then. I went down an elevator shaft to the basement, conked my noggin. Came to about a half hour ago and didn't know what I'd find out front so I tracked down a back fire exit."
I told him that Loving had done much the same.
"Why're you limping?"
I explained.
"Ouch. You nailed his ass, though, I heard."
"Not me. Ryan Kessler."
A snicker. "Well now. How'd that happen?"
"Joanne."
Pogue grunted. "Hm . . . The wife sprung him. He going to be okay?"
"Seems so."
Pogue's face wrinkled up, maybe from the pain as the dressing went on his burned arm or maybe from seeing my smile that he was alive.
"That's one feisty girl. Pepper spray. Fucked up our plans. But it was good to see that prick hurt, have to say."
Grit . . .
"The primary?" he asked, looking over the expanse of fields, with a dozen highways beyond.
"Loving warned him off. But I've got some good leads. My associate's following them up right now." I thanked him again for everything and we agreed to stay in touch. If he ever wanted to leave his organization, I'd hire him in a minute. Though he didn't seem the sort to run away from a threat as a first impulse, which is what we shepherds are trained to do.
I pushed off from the fire truck, which I was leaning on for support, and put some weight on my foot with the raw toe.
Damn, it hurt. I exhaled softly. Thinking, if I actually had had information about Amanda's whereabouts, how long could I have held out before I talked? I would have talked, of course. There are differing opinions about whether torture leads to valid information. But one thing it definitely leads to is talking. People may be intent on remaining silent but in the face of pain they will talk.
I returned to my car and sat in the driver's seat, eyes closed, and let the tears from the stinging pepper spray flow, which for some reason eased the pain. Bottled water didn't do much but tears helped.
Fifteen minutes later I got an email. I wiped my face and, squinting, read what Claire duBois had sent in response to my request not long before.
As I read it I was thinking of the phenomenon of endgame.
Although the concept can apply to many games, it is most common in chess, which is where I study the subject exhaustively.
As the middle game draws to a close and the endgame approaches, a fundamental change occurs in the players' attitudes, and, I swear, a macabre eeriness descends over the board. The surviving pieces take on different roles and importance. For instance, pawns become vital; not only can they move to the opponent's first line and become queens but they provide important defensive barriers that limit the other player's moves. Similarly the king spends most of the game in hiding, protected by his minions. But in endgame, he often must go on the offensive himself.
Each move is intensified. The odds of a single error leading to defeat rise dramatically as the match draws to a close.
Endgame is rife with improvisation, desperation, flashes of brilliance and instances of fatal panic.
There are many surprises too.
I stared at my notes from Amanda and at Claire's email for some minutes. As Pogue had said earlier, I'd had all the bits of information as to why Amanda was the target; I just hadn't put them together . . . until now. I considered my endgame strategy and I composed another email that began with a stern warning to keep the contents absolutely secret. The subject had to do with the Saturday course that Amanda Kessler took at a local community college, taught by a part-time professor named Peter Yu. He worked during the week for a software developer, Global Software Innovations, and it was he who distributed to Amanda and the other students beta copies of software to try out--like the picture editing program that Amanda had given Maree.
But the most interesting fact about Yu was that GSI did more than create commercial and consumer software. The company--and Yu's specialty, as it turned out--happened to be developing military programs for cutting-edge battlefield imagery analysis. The software for those applications was classified at the highest level.
I finished my email and read through it once more.
My finger hovered for a moment. Then I clicked SEND and sent my words into the ozone.
TUESDAY
The object of the game is to discover the answer to these three questions:
1st. Who? Which one of the several suspects did it?
2nd. Where?
3rd. How?
--FROM THE INSTRUCTIONS TO THE BOARD GAME CLUE
Chapter 69
AT 9:00 A.M. my protegee and I were sitting in one of my organization's SUVs on a sedate street in Fair Oaks, Virginia, a section of Fairfax.
"And?" I asked Claire duBois, as she was moving her thumb to the DISCONNECT button on her BlackBerry. She'd been calling about Ryan Kessler.
"He's doing okay. The doctor said he was stable. I never understood those medical condition terms. Stable. Serious. Critical. They're like the Homeland Security threat warnings. Orange, yellow, green, taupe. Or whatever they are. Is that really helpful? I don't think so. Somebody sits in a room and thinks those up. Our taxpayer dollars." She tucked her trimmed, shiny brunette strands behind an ear. The gesture was silent; she wasn't wearing the jingling charm bracelet this morning. For safety's sake. Jewelry and tac ops don't mix.
Ryan was in a federal detention hospital. Amanda, Joanne and Maree were tucked away in the new safe house, with Ahmad and the clone who'd collected Amanda last night watching over them.
DuBois and I were on the trail of the primary.
I returned to our surveillance. The houses around us reminded me of Ryan Kessler's place. About every fifth one was, if not identical, then designed from the same mold. We were staring through bushes at a split-level colonial, on the other side of a dog-park-cum-playground. It was the house of Peter Yu, the part-time professor of computer science at Northern Virginia College and a software designer for Global Software Innovations. The company was headquartered along the Dulles "technology corridor," which was really just a dozen office buildings on the tollway, housing corporations whose claim to tech fame was mostly that they were listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange.
I was watching through binoculars, observing some ambiguous movement in the backyard of the house.
I lifted the Motorola and asked Freddy, who was parked nearby, "We ready to move in?"
"I'm not sure what I'm looking at."
I squinted. "It's him. I'm sure."
"You're younger than I am, son. The eyes are the first to go. Well, not the first, unfortunately, but pretty close. Hold on, our surveillance boys're calling. . . . Okay, there're two of them at the house."
"I see the second one," I told the agent.
"Some muscle, looks like. You in armor?"
I glanced toward Claire duBois's navy blue blazer, specifically her chest. It wasn't the first time, I had to admit, but the circumstances now were such that there was nothing remotely sexual about the look. I was checking that the thick nylon plates Velcroed around her were secure. I knew that my American Body Armor vest was.
"We're good," I told Freddy.
"All right. Let's go. My guys and gals tell me they have a visual on the evidence. Oh, and the muscle's armed. Autoloader. In a hip holster."
"We're moving." I disconnected.
I said to duBois, "You won't need it but keep your jacket unbuttoned."
"Okay."
The "it" was her Glock.
In fact, I was pretty sure she wouldn't need it. But I remembered the men in the old military facility in Leesburg. I remembered Henry Loving. I knew from my studies--history, not my other degrees--that people can behave unpredictably at desperate times. Besides, even though
we believed there were only two individuals here, this entire job had been fraught with surprise.
Our SUV and four other cars accelerated fast and skidded up over the grass on Professor Peter Yu's property, tearing up the lawn and destroying shrubs. I'm told that this dramatic entrance, which you'd think was made up by TV-movie directors, is in fact the most efficient way to approach a suspect. It's all about intimidation.
We tugged on door levers and jumped out, all our jackets fluttering in the wet breeze. I was limping--the toe still stung like crazy. DuBois and I moved in slowly, behind the eight armed tactical officers, who were sprinting into Yu's open garage, brandishing weapons.
"On the ground, FBI! FBI!"
Screaming is standard operating procedure too. Intimidation, again.
In a moment the two men were on their bellies, hands bound behind them with Monadnock restraints. Other agents entered the house, searched it and then returned, calling, "Clear."
Claire and I approached the two suspects, now being helped to their feet.
One of the men stared at me with a gaze of disbelief that immediately turned to pure hated. Sandy Alberts, Senator Lionel Stevenson's chief of staff, spat out, "Corte? I . . . Corte?"
His partner, the muscle, was a pro, probably connected with the same outfit as the people Pogue and I had engaged in the facility on Route 15. He simply grimaced and said nothing.
Freddy, the senior official law enforcer among us, said, "Mr. Alberts, you're under arrest for the kidnapping of a Fairfax County resident, Amanda Kessler, yesterday, and conspiracy counts, involving the homicide of a federal agent."
Alberts gasped. I don't think I'd ever heard anything other than a threatened animal make a noise like that. "But . . ."
Agents searched his partner's slacks and jacket but came up with no ID. "You going to tell me who you are?" Freddy asked him.
The man was completely silent.
The senior agent shrugged. He said to an associate, "We'll get his prints, track him down. Conspiracy for him too. We'll add more goodies later." Freddy then turned to Alberts, saying, "There'll be state charges too but those are Virginia's. You'll be hearing from the commonwealth's attorney about them."