“I might if they don’t let me get away from this paperwork,” Maggie said. She grabbed a pencil from behind her ear and tossed it onto her desk. “Why not let me go out and do something?”
Steve tipped his chair again and thumped his head against the wall. “We work for the government, and you have to ask a question like that?” He paused, becoming serious. “I saw your resume. Somebody’s got to figure a way to coordinate all this information. You’re the right person.”
Maggie scowled. “Jenkins just doesn’t know what else to do with me.”
“Nope. You’re good,” Steve insisted.
“Rumor has it you are too,” Maggie said.
“I’m the best!” Steve gave her a wink. “But you’ve never seen me work.”
“You ever quit?”
“Not until you show me the Phantom Boyfriend.”
“You’re retarded.”
Kosinsky shook his head and gave her a rueful smile. “I want to meet the lucky sonofabitch.” He kicked his feet out and let the chair crash forward again.
“You break my chair, you’re going to pay for it.”
“On my massive salary? No problem.” Kosinsky stood, put his hand on the cubicle partition, and gave her a careful look. “Let me know if there’s anything I can help you with. I’m serious.”
As soon as he was gone, her thoughts swung back to Brent, and her mood darkened anew. She should do it right now—pick up the phone and turn him in. That was her sworn oath, her duty. Only the current situation went against all the rules. Part of it was the extraordinary amount of money and also the number of seemingly connected murders. Big thefts almost always avoided unnecessary violence, but not this time. Why? She thought yet again about the CIA’s warning. It was a wild connection, but weren’t the cost of the dirty weapons and the amount of Faisal’s stolen money awfully coincidental?
Maggie propped her elbows on the desk and put her chin in her hands. Would anyone else even consider the possibility that people in Brent’s company were involved with terrorists? What could be the motive?
She’d already pulled a listing of Genesis Advisors’ employees from the New York State Department of Commerce. Other than Brent, they’d all been there for years. According to the Social Security database, on the surface at least, none appeared to have a Middle Eastern or Muslim association. To the contrary, business articles suggested that most if not all of the partners were fundamentalist Christians.
She reached into her desk and brought out the stapled pages from the search she’d done on the name Brent had gotten from Owen Smythe. There were eighty-two Howard Turners in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut alone. There was no telling how many she would find if she widened the search area to Pennsylvania, say, or New England. No doubt there would be thousands if she looked nationwide. There was no time to follow up on such a huge number, but at least these names were something, maybe a chance for Brent to come up with another connection.
Tomorrow at the absolute latest she would call the FBI, but for now she’d give him a little more time.
After another minute she stood. Her mind was too distracted to negotiate the subtleties of data base architecture. As she turned toward the exit her thoughts returned to Jenkins. Her boss was intuitive, a player of hunches. Wasn’t there a possibility she’d think outside the box and agree that the coincidence between the stolen money and the price of the missiles was intriguing and that the murders made no apparent sense? Maybe she’d even be willing to ignore all the political reasons not to put the spotlight on Prescott Biddle and his rich partners.
Yeah, right, Maggie thought. Still, she had to give it a shot. She pulled the memo she’d written from her drawer and glanced over it once more. She’d laid out her case as well as she could and dropped it on Jenkins’ desk on her way out. It was at least worth a try.
THIRTY-EIGHT
MORRISTOWN, NJ, JUNE 30
THE MOMENT BRENT SNAPPED AWAKE he knew something was wrong. He was on the couch. It was early evening.
“Brent?”
Maggie stood in the doorway. He hadn’t heard her enter. If she’d been one of the killers coming to finish the job, he’d be dead. With his mouth full of cobwebs, he glanced down at the list he’d been going over when he’d fallen asleep. He’d made no progress.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” he said.
Maggie leaned against the wall and folded her arms beneath her breasts. “Where to?”
He shook his head, thoughts jumbled. “Just… away.”
He stood, hobbled into the bathroom, and brushed his teeth with his fingers. When he came out she was sitting at the kitchen table sipping a bottle of water. “You’re wanted for murder,” she said matter-of-factly. “If you’re recognized and you try to run, you’ll be shot.”
They locked eyes. “Why haven’t you turned me in?” he asked.
She said nothing for a time. Finally she looked away. “I’ve been asking myself the same question. Maybe I’m afraid you’ll go down for the crime, and whoever did it will go free.” She shrugged. “I have a wild hunch it may be related to something much bigger. It’s probably self-justification, but I’ve decided maybe it’s a good thing you’re still on the loose.”
He continued to stare at her. Her shirt was open at the top, and a vein pulsed near her collarbone. He wanted to put his arms around her, kiss her, feel the life inside her, smell her scent. “Maggie,” he began, looking for a place to start, his voice going soft. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot, and—”
Her eyes grew wide with sudden alarm. “I’ve got something here,” she said, cutting him off. She reached for her briefcase and removed several pieces of paper. “The Howard Turner list,” she said.
For several seconds Brent struggled to pull back from what he’d been about to confess. His words had taken him by surprise. Had he really been about to say that he loved her? True or not, what right did he have to say it? Finally, he managed to focus on what she held in her hand. “Why a list?”
“There are over eighty Howard Turners in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey.”
“What about the phone number? Can’t you get his address from that?”
She shook her head. “It’s a prepaid cell phone registered to a Richard Jones, supposedly from Philadelphia. Only problem is the address and social security number are bogus. Richard Jones doesn’t exist.”
She handed him the list. “Better look it over and see if anything stands out.”
He glanced at the names, struggling with what suddenly seemed the enormity of the task. As if it proved the impossibility of finding the truth, he told her about his computer search earlier that day for the house in West Orange. “Howard Turner could also be a phony name, or the one we’re looking for could live in California.”
Maggie gave him a cold look. “You want to do nothing? Would that make you feel better?”
“I didn’t say that.”
She stood. “I’m going upstairs to log into the Project Seahawk system,” she said. “You can check the list while I take a shower. Just type in the name and address and hit the search button.” She walked toward the stairs.
After a few seconds Brent followed. He felt a little more surefooted after his long nap, the cut on his stomach no longer hurting as much. He sat at the computer and started through the names. Connecticut came first, and he ran down the list checking the towns where each Howard Turner lived. He waited for something to trigger his subconscious, but all he saw was the same name over and over—Howard A. Turner in Hartford, Howard C. Turner in Watertown, Howard H. Turner in Meriden. He checked their occupations, but nothing differentiated them. The process seemed ridiculous.