An annoying ear worm of a jazz tune about Kansas City began to run on a loop in her mind. She frowned it away.
Jules heard a faint buzzing as the connection went through. A phone was ringing somewhere. She worried that she might be waking Miguel or the kids, but smiled at the prospect of Mariela waking up beside her husband and demanding to know the identity of this strange mujer he was talking to so late at night.
After standing there near naked under the air-conditioner for almost a minute, she began to suspect that no one was home. Jules was surprised at just how disappointed she felt. She had no good news for Miguel, just a warning. To watch out for Henry Cesky’s goons. But she’d been looking forward to the conversation. Now she was left hanging on the line in this shitty motel room, wondering whether maybe she’d ended up dialling the wrong number or something. When the call cut out, she tried again, without any great hope and, eventually, with the same non-result. She bit down on her frustration. Not even an answering machine.
‘Bugger.’
She accepted defeat, for now. Delving into the largest of the two carrier bags, Julianne pulled out the business suit and started getting dressed once more, hating the feel of the anonymous office clothes. There was nothing to be done about it, though. She wanted so much to see the Rhino, and if she wanted to see Rhino, she had to play along.
43
FORT HOOD, KILLEEN, TEXAS ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISION
Fingerprint lock.
McCutcheon’s office was protected by the same array of security measures as those guarding Blackstone’s, but with an additional tweak. Caitlin and Musso stood behind him as he laid his thumb on the glass plate of a Krupp Systems Dynalock TRS-5 fingerprint scanner. Reputed to be the best in the world. Released into the wild by Krupp only three months earlier. Beat that and you would gain access to the office within, where you could then trip the pressure pad just behind the door, the passive IR sensors mounted in the corner of the room, or the proximity alarm sitting atop his desk, next to a laptop that was disconnected from the building’s intranet.
‘If you wouldn’t mind averting your eyes for a second, folks.’
‘Of course, Ty,’ said the always cooperative, always security-conscious Colonel Katherine Murdoch.
‘Oh, so we are friends … Kate?’ he said, teasing her gently. ‘That’s how it works? I show you my nasties …’ - he held up the secured briefcase with the dossiers inside - ‘and you suddenly want to be friends again with old Tyrone McCutcheon?’
Caitlin smiled, conceding his point. ‘Perhaps just friendly colleagues,’ she volleyed back.
She then looked away so he could enter the PIN to deactivate two of the three security systems within the room. The pressure pad and the infra-red sensors. The proximity alarm, which sat on his desk looking like a stainless steel egg, he deactivated with an RFID tag on his key ring. She caught Musso’s concerned expression as they stood there with their backs turned. He was obviously thinking ahead, assuming she would want to gain entry to this office without the permission of its occupant. With McCutcheon standing a couple of feet away, Caitlin could hardly reassure Seattle’s main man in Texas that it wasn’t going to be a problem, so she let it slide.
‘All righty, we’re good to go,’ McCutcheon announced. ‘Secret trapdoor to the piranha pool has been closed. Laser-beam chainsaws deactivated. Hoo and aah!’
She had a momentary vision of Bret saying the same thing the last morning they had spent together.
This office was nearly as large as Blackstone’s, but with none of the triumphalist personal touches. A single framed photograph of an older woman who bore an unmistakable family resemblance to McCutcheon sat on his desk next to a signed baseball. A large Ansell Adams print of winter in Yellowstone Park hung from one wall in front of a nest of lounge chairs. Otherwise nothing. Not even a view. Ty McCutcheon’s office had no windows. It was cut off from the outside world. Caitlin felt … not so much the thrill of vindication. Rather, the cold comfort of a wager with herself that had just paid off. There may well have been other treasure troves in which she could dig for the secrets of Jackson Blackstone, but she’d almost certainly find buried treasure right here.
She took in every detail of the space as she followed the two men over to the lounge area, which reminded her of a display setting in a furniture store. As if it was meant to be admired rather than used. Unlike his boss’s desk, which looked like it might’ve come off one of Lord Nelson’s warships, McCutcheon worked on a glass-top table, to which there was nothing beyond the thick sandwich of opaque green glass and two Z-form metal trusses serving as legs. No networking cables ran to the laptop, not even a power cord. The computer was a stand-alone system, save for the ugly steel chain that secured it to one of the table legs.
There were no filing cabinets in the room. No bureau within which documents might be stored. The files they were about to read must have come from a repository elsewhere in the building, probably from TDF’s intelligence division. That was fine. What she wanted was access to the drive on that laptop.
What she got, for the moment, was an offer of more coffee and cake. McCutcheon confessed to a weakness for cake in the morning, a legacy, he said, of a German grandmother. Caitlin turned down both offers, but Musso surprised her by volunteering for a second breakfast.
‘Well, I like cake,’ he said, in response to her quizzical look.
‘I wouldn’t trust a man who didn’t, Tusk,’ said McCutcheon, who was making himself very comfortable again with everyone’s first names. ‘So, I’ll let you read up on the doings and the goings-on over in Florida. And then we can talk through any questions you might have. I imagine you’ll also want to expedite the rendition of the prisoners to Seattle, so that NIA and Defense Intelligence can have a piece of them.’
‘I imagine you’re correct,’ Musso replied.
For a second she thought McCutcheon might be about to leave them alone in his office while he tended to cake and coffee orders. Not that she would’ve been so foolish as to attempt to crack open his lappy and take a peak while he was doing that. McCutcheon didn’t make such a rookie error, or attempt such an obvious entrapment. Instead he simply used the phone to order up the refreshments.
‘Bathroom’s through there if and when you need it,’ he told them both, jerking his thumb over towards the far side of the room, where a door opened up onto a small kitchenette, and beyond that into a washroom.
‘I think I might, if you don’t mind,’ said Musso heading in that direction. ‘Too much damn coffee.’
Blackstone’s aide waited until the general had left before speaking again.
‘I’m sorry things haven’t worked out so well between us and Seattle, Kate,’ he said, while working through the same elaborate procedure as before for unlocking the briefcase. ‘The old man, you know, he was fairly cut up about what happened back there after the Wave. Particularly Kipper’s role. He thought they’d worked together pretty well to pull that city through, so it was a bit of a shock to turn around and find he’d been stabbed in the back like that. You can understand the man would have difficulties working with the President again.’