Except one was moving. Right there, almost on the visible horizon, to the right of a large stand of trees. A bunker like all the rest, except that the helical cylinder on the back end of the bunker was turning very slowly.
Now why is that? he wondered.
He knew that the helical cowls could provide ventilation two ways. If there was a breeze, it would spin the helix, which in turn would draw warm air out of the bunker. But if there was no breeze, as was the
case today, it had to mean there was warm air inside the bunker, rising through the shaft to turn the helix. But the bunkers were supposedly all empty.
Empty, cold, manmade tombs.
He walked carefully down the full length of the bunker roof he was standing on to examine the distant cowl from a slightly different angle. It was definitely moving. It was nearly half a mile away; perhaps there was a breeze over there. But then both cowls ought to be moving. He swung around to scan the fence and the gates behind him, but there was still no one there, and no sound of any vehicles coming. He took a mental bearing on the distant bunker, slid down from the one he had climbed, and headed for the ridge, trotting purposefully down one of the lanes. It was full daylight now, so he tried to keep a line of bunkers between him and the main gate to the bunker farm. He was almost there, crossing into a line of trees from the gravel lane, when the tiny cellular phone in his backpack went off. He moved sideways into the tree line, stood with his back against a tree, opened the phone, and hit the send button.
“You called me,” he announced quietly.
“This is Janet Carter; where are you?”
“At the other end of this phone circuit, Special Agent,” he replied. She sounded upset.
“Where are you?”
“I’m in the office. In Roanoke. That woman—Misty, you called her?
She’s taken Lynn.”
He sat down abruptly, his back to the pine tree. A cold wave settled over his chest.
“Tell me,” he said.
She gave him a brief rundown of everything since the hospital, up to and including Misty’s attack with the carbon monoxide.
“My boss wants you to come in, preferably down here to Roanoke. He’s—wait a minute.”
Kreiss sat there with his eyes closed, trying not to think of anything.
He’d had Lynn, but now he didn’t. A man’s voice came on the phone.
“Mr. Kreiss, this is Ted Farnsworth, RA Roanoke. We have a warrant for your apprehension as a material witness regarding a homicide over in Montgomery County. We have a federal warrant for you regarding the little diversion you ran in Washington. The aTF wants to talk to you about the bombing of their headquarters. And a certain Agency apparently just plain wants your ass.”
“It’s nice to be wanted,” Kreiss said.
“But not very.”
“Yeah, well, you were in the business. You know the drill. There’s one more want, actually. My AD—that’s Mr. Greer, over at Criminal
Investigations—wants to know why another AD—that’s Mr. Marchand, over FCI—got someone very senior at Main Justice to activate the person who snatched your daughter and damn near killed two of my agents this mo ming
Three, if Janet hadn’t awakened and realized something was wrong.”
“Good question,” Kreiss said. He would have to figure out how to contact Misty. There was no sense in delaying the inevitable. Talking to the FBI was now a waste of time. He knew what Misty wanted: a straight trade. Himself for Lynn.
“Mr. Kreiss? Are you there?”
“Yes, but I don’t think we have anything to talk about, Mr. Farnsworth.”
He could just see the ventilator cowl. It was still moving.
“That’s not quite so, Mr. Kreiss. I have authority to deal on the Jared McGarand matter and what happened up on the G.W. Parkway. My chain of command feels that what Bellhouser and Foster set in motion is a hell of a lot more important than anything going on down here in Roanoke.
They also feel that this is all connected to something you know.”
More than you would ever understand, he thought as he focused on what Farnsworth was saying. And here he was again, facing the same choice he had been given five years ago: “your silence or your daughter.”
“Mr. Kreiss?”
“You can’t help me do the one thing I must do, Mr. Farnsworth,” Kreiss said.
“I need to free my daughter. And I don’t believe you or your boss or even his boss can fight what’s behind all this.”
“My SAC is telling me the director’s into this one, Mr. Kreiss.”
“I rest my case.”
“AD Greer says this is about the Chinese espionage case in the nuclear labs. Is he right?”
Kreiss was surprised, very surprised. He forced himself to focus.
Nobody knew this. Except them.
“Mr. Kreiss? Greer says you came back from your Agency assignment and the Glower incident with information that connects Chinese government campaign contributions to the way the nuclear labs investigations got derailed.”
“We are speaking on an open radio circuit,” Kreiss warned. He was aghast. Nobody could know this.
“They’re telling me you agreed to forced retirement and a vow of silence. What he doesn’t know or understand is why. The publicly stated reason was your role in the Glower mass suicides. But now he thinks it was something else.”
Kreiss sat on the ground in the pine straw, his mind reeling. He had kept his end of the bargain. He had not said a word. He had not done anything but come down here to be with and support his daughter while she finished school. If it hadn’t been for that total wild card, that lunatic McGarand and his mission of revenge, he’d still be sitting in his cabin watching the trees grow. They had broken the agreement. Unless…
“Mr. Kreiss? My chain of command desperately wants to know what you know, and what you can prove. They are willing to drop all the rest, all of it, in return for that. We think we can help you get your daughter back from those people, but only if we can apply the appropriate pressure at the seat of government. Agency to agency, director to director, if need be.”
“You don’t know her,” Kreiss said. A bird started up with a racket way up in the trees above his head.
“What’s that, Mr. Kreiss? Don’t know who?”
“You don’t know the woman who’s holding Lynn. Ask Carter; she knows her. This is personal now, between me and her. The only way I know I can get Lynn back safely is to trade myself for my daughter. You and the rest of the Bureau would only get in the way.”
“Not true, Mr. Kreiss. If you give my bosses what they need, they can get her controllers to turn your daughter over. Ephraim Glower’s dead, so the Agency can admit what he was doing now and shrug their shoulders:
He’s beyond prosecution, dead five years now. They won’t be the ones who’ll have the problem. It will be the people at Justice, and whomever they suborned here at the Bureau. The Agency will play ball when they realize our director is going to reveal the connection.”
Kreiss thought about it. Could he take on Misty? Could he even find Misty? And what would happen to Lynn if he did?
“You were a special agent of the FBI, Mr. Kreiss. You know how we do things. We’re the G. We’re big. We’re huge. We overwhelm. So do they.
If the Agency sets its mind to it, they can and will find you and grind you up. If you let them capture you, you’ll end up in solitary confinement in a federal pen somewhere, and not necessarily in this country.”
Then Janet Carter came on the line.
“The last time, when you went along, it was strictly about your daughter, wasn’t it?”
Kreiss didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
“Well, this time you have some leverage you didn’t have before. Last time, you traded her security for your silence. They broke the deal. So why not use what you’ve got?”