Willis was perfectly obedient. He did everything exactly as instructed. Within a minute they were in the darkness of the trees. Gideon switched on an LED lamp and walked Willis out past the hole in the fence and through the half mile of woods to where he had dug the grave.
When they arrived, Willis saw the grave in the light of the lamp and immediately staggered with fear. Gideon had to physically hold the man up. He made a muffled moan through the tape.
Gideon reached around and ripped it from the man’s mouth. Willis gasped, staggered again. He was beyond frightened.
“Go lie down in the grave.”
“No. Oh my God. No—”
“ In the grave.”
“Why? Why in the grave—?”
“Because I’m going to kill you and bury you. Get in there.”
Willis fell to his knees, blubbering, the tears streaming down his face. “No, please. Don’t do this. Don’t do it, don’t, don’t…” His voice choked up. He was coming apart before Gideon’s eyes.
Gideon shoved him back and he fell, slipping into the hole, scrambling quickly out again in terror. Gideon took a step forward with the gun.
“Open your mouth.”
“No. Please please pleaseplease please, no, no, no—”
“Then I’ll just shoot you and roll your body in.”
“But why, why? I’ll do anything, anything, just tell me what you want!” His voice dissolved into a choking wail, his frame racked with sobs, a dark stain spreading from his crotch. And then he puked, once, twice, heaving and choking.
“I’ll do anything…” he managed to squeak out, heavy drool hanging from his mouth.
It was time.
“Tell me about the nuke,” Gideon said.
A silence, accompanied by a blank stare.
“The nuke,” said Gideon. “Tell me your plans for the nuke. The nuke you plan to detonate in DC. Tell me about that and I’ll let you go.”
“Nuke?” Willis looked at him with utterly uncomprehending eyes. “ What nuke?”
“Don’t play stupid. Tell me about it and you’re a free man. Otherwise…” And Gideon gestured toward the grave with the gun.
“What…what are you talking about? Please, I don’t understand…” Willis stared at the gun, wide-eyed, his pleas turning into incoherent babbling.
Gideon looked at him, an awful realization dawning: this man knew nothing. He might be the leader of a cult, an egocentric and paranoid man with delusions of grandeur, but he was patently innocent of nuclear terror. Gideon had made a terrible mistake.
“I’m sorry.” Gideon reached down, grasped Willis, and pulled him up. “I’m sorry. My God, I’m so sorry.”
He cut off the ties and holstered the gun. “Go.”
Willis stared blankly.
“You heard me, get out of here! Go!”
Still the man wouldn’t run. He just stared blankly, dazed, still paralyzed with fear. With a curse of self-disgust, Gideon turned, walked into the bushes, got in the Jeep, started it up, and drove away, skidding through the dirt, slewing around, and gunning the engine, wanting nothing more than to get away as quickly as possible.
51
By the time Stone Fordyce arrived back at Los Alamos from an inspection of the teams dragging the lake and combing the banks of the river, it was past midnight. Midnight: it marked the turn of another day. One day to N-Day.
He was dead tired but that thought woke him up fast. As he approached the Tech Area, he was directed to the new command and control center being set up in a disused warehouse just outside the security perimeter. It amazed him how fast things had moved in his absence.
As he flashed his badge at the entrance, the guard said: “Stone Fordyce? The boss wants to see you. In the back.”
“The boss? Who’s that?”
“Millard. The new guy.”
The boss wants to see you.Fordyce didn’t like the sound of that.
He brushed past the guard, walked by the acres of cheap desks, each with its own computer and phone, to a cubicle hastily erected in the back corner, occupying one of the few areas of the warehouse with a window. The door was open, revealing a small, lean man in a suit standing behind a desk, back turned, speaking into the phone.
Fordyce gave a polite tap on the open door. All his professional instincts told him that this was not going to be a good meeting.
The man turned, held up a finger, kept talking. Fordyce waited. He didn’t know Millard, hadn’t even heard the man’s name before, but that didn’t surprise him in an investigation like this, with everyone jockeying for inches of turf. And someone had to take charge on a local level—things had become increasingly chaotic, with many people in charge and no clear lines of command.
He studied Millard while waiting for him to get off the phone. He was a good-looking man in a WASPy sort of way: high cheekbones, fine green eyes, mid-fifties, a distinguished shock of gray hair at the temples, athletic and lean. He had an easygoing face and a mild-mannered voice. Fordyce hoped it would extend to his personality. But he doubted it.
Millard remained on the phone for a few more minutes, hung up, then gave Fordyce a smile. “Can I help you?”
“Agent Fordyce. I was told you wished to see me.”
“Ah, yes. Name’s Millard. Please, sit down.”
They shook hands. Fordyce sat in the only other chair in the cubicle.
“This is a unique investigation,” Millard said, his voice pleasant, even melodious. “We’ve got something like twenty-two law enforcement and intelligence agencies directly involved, along with sub-agencies and black agencies. Things get confusing.”
Fordyce nodded in a noncommittal way.
“I think you would be the first to admit that things have gone seriously off-track in the New Mexico branch of the investigation. But now Sonnenberg’s been sent back east, and I’ve been appointed by Dart to take charge of all aspects of the investigation. No more confusion.”
A pleasant smile.
Fordyce smiled back, waited.
Millard leaned forward, clasping his hands. “I’m not going to beat around the bush. Your involvement in this case has been less than successful. You failed to identify your former partner as a suspect until it was pointed out to you, you failed to arrest him at the movie set, failed to locate him in the mountains, failed to apprehend him when he entered Los Alamos, and then allowed him to escape down to the river. Your people can’t find his dead body—if in fact he did drown. You’ve been in law enforcement long enough to know that this is not an acceptable record, especially in a case like this, with a city at risk, the entire country in a panic, the president and Congress having a fit, and most of Washington shut down.”
He paused, folding his hands. His voice had remained quiet and pleasant. Fordyce said nothing. There was, in fact, nothing to say. It was all true.
“I’m going to move you out of the field and into the office, here, where your new responsibilities will be R and A.”
R&A. Research and analysis.That was the fancy term the FBI used for that most odious of jobs, given to new agents as a sort of rite of passage. Research and analysis. He thought back to his own early days in the Bureau, one of a hundred agents parked in a windowless basement room, loaded up with stacks of gray metal cabinets full of files to read, search, and summarize. An investigation like this generated literally tons of paper every day—wiretap transcripts, financial records, emails by the bushel, interrogations, and much more—all of which had to be digested and summarized, with the relevant facts plucked out of the mass of useless information like poppy seeds tweezered out of a soggy cake…
“But before you assume your new responsibilities, take the weekend off,” Millard said, breaking Fordyce’s chain of thought. “You’ve been killing yourself. Frankly, you look like hell.”
Another friendly smile and then Millard rose, extended his hand. “Are we okay?”