“Because, Special Agent, she might kill my daughter.”
“Might? Mr. Kreiss, she already set fire to a hospital. What makes you think she won’t hurt Lynn now? I told you what happened in the cave, remember?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we’re pretty sure now those were her people. They were not aTF assets. In fact, the local head of the aTF has been in here all morning, yelling at Mr. Farnsworth here to find you. aTF hasn’t been conducting any operations down here other than out at that arsenal, after the McGarand thing. So those had to be her people in the cave.”
He felt the world constrict. Misty had suffered losses. Would she take that out on Lynn? He had given his word. To leave the Bureau. To admit culpability for precipitating the Glower debacle. To maintain his silence.
To submerge completely. In return, they would leave Lynn alone. Every fiber of his being was crying out for him to hunt that woman down, to destroy her. But he knew Carter and Farnsworth were right. The only realistic fix was in Washington, where the fix was the holy grail of modern government. It wasn’t about tradecraft anymore, or personal competence.
It was about information and evidence. The director had been demonized by his enemies at Justice ever since the campaign contributions scandal had erupted. Now he’d discovered that there might be a way to destroy those enemies. If he could believe Farnsworth, the director himself was willing to use what he, Kreiss, knew, to strike back. And, not coincidentally, to strike at the heart of the corruption that most people in the Bureau believed had consumed the Justice Department. These were monumental issues: How would one college student fare when federal law enforcement went to war with itself?
“If I do this, how can you guarantee that Lynn remains safe?”
“We can’t,” Farnsworth said. The words resounded down the phone line.
“I want to say something different, but that’s probably the truth of it.”
Kreiss found himself nodding in agreement. At least Farnsworth was shooting straight.
“But you can’t, either, Mr. Kreiss. From what Janet tells me, Lynn knows more about this than I think you would expect. If she reveals that to them, she becomes expendable, too. The only way this works is if we have information that forces them to let her go. She’s a pawn, and that’s how you want to keep it. You have to come in. You don’t have any workable alternatives.”
“All right,” he said, almost whispering it.
“I’m at the Ramsey Arsenal.”
There was an instant of silence, as if Farnsworth was surprised by that.
“Where, exactly?” Farnsworth asked.
Kreiss’s eyes snapped open at that question. It didn’t fit with everything else Farnsworth had been saying. It was too… tactical.
“Have Carter come alone to the industrial area,” Kreiss said.
“I’ll find her.”
There was another pause on the line. Then Farnsworth said, “Three hours. And not alone—she has to have backup.”
“Distant backup.”
“Agreed.”
“Three hours,” Kreiss repeated, and switched the phone off. He leaned sideways and let himself settle back into the pine straw, his eyes staring up into the treetops, unseeing. He did, in fact, have what the Bureau wanted.
Much more than they needed. Direct corroborating evidence of a deliberate policy to suppress and impede the investigation at the nuclear labs.
Not derived from any investigation, but from Ephraim Glower’s safe, which he, Kreiss, had rifled after discovering the bodies. He had felt more than a little guilt when he beheld that blood bath, but that guilt vanished when he read what was in Glower’s safe. He smiled for the first time that day, or maybe even that week. They would be expecting him to take them to a safety-deposit box somewhere and produce an envelope. They would positively howl when they found out where it was. And what it was.
Then he remembered that ventilator, spinning quietly in the still air of morning. He looked at his watch. He had three hours. Why not go see?
Farnsworth took Janet with him down to the secure-communications area of the office. To her surprise, Billy Smith was manning the communication console. He winked at her as Farnsworth ordered him to get Assistant Director Greer’s office on the line. The operator on the Washington end told him to stand by.
“This is the biggest thing that you’ll ever be involved in,” he told Janet.
“If we can prove that the Chinese campaign contributions bought breathing room for their spies in the Energy Department, and that someone at Justice helped it happen, the Bureau will be invincible.”
“But according to Lynn Kreiss, that ‘someone’ injustice had some help in the Bureau,” Janet pointed out. This comment elicited a gas-pain expression from Farnsworth. Then Assistant Director Greer himself was on the secure link.
Farnsworth briefed him on what had been agreed. Greer immediately overruled the RAs plan to send just Carter and some backup agents to pick Kreiss up.
“You go yourself, and take along every swinging dick in the office,” he ordered.
“I want nothing going wrong here. The last time you sent people to that goddamned arsenal, it blew up in your faces, literally.”
“Sir, Kreiss is nervous,” Farnsworth said.
“He sees a crowd, he may change his mind.”
“Then make sure he doesn’t see a goddamned crowd. Now, you think he has evidence? Real evidence? Not just opinions?”
“I think if all he had were opinions, he wouldn’t have been hammered the way he was five years ago. I think he has something, and now that all that shit about the labs has resurfaced, those people are scared of it. But first and foremost, we must get the daughter back, or nothing good happens.
Kreiss without the daughter is useless.”
“Then make it happen. Pick him up and get him up here, with his evidence.
Quickly, before our dear friends down at Justice figure out what’s happening. Once the director evaluates the situation, we’ll make the appropriate calls and get the daughter back.”
“What if they won’t?”
“Won’t what?”
“Give the daughter back. What if they insist we give them Kreiss before they’ll let the daughter go?”
“Once he gives us his evidence, I don’t give a shit about what happens to Kreiss. He embarrassed the Bureau. The spooks can have him. Believe me, we don’t have to go public with what we know to achieve the desired effect.”
Farnsworth opened his mouth to say something but then closed it.
Janet was staring at the secure phone in disbelief. Greer told them to get moving and hung up. Farnsworth put the phone down slowly, as if it were very fragile.
“Son of a bitch,” he said softly.
“Amen to that,” Janet said, sitting down in a chair by the phone console.
“I never agreed to anything like that with Kreiss,” he said.
“He shows his evidence, we send it up the line, and they force those people to recall their operative and get the girl back. That’s the fucking deal. I never agreed to turn Kreiss over to anybody.”
“But in a way, you just did,” she pointed out.
“No, I did not,” the RA said, his jaw jutting out.
“Kreiss used to be one of us. It wasn’t like he went dirty. I don’t
care what he knows or what he did up there in D.C.; I’m not going to be part of just handing him over to some bunch of out-of-control spooks.”
“Let’s take it one step at a time,” she said.
“Let’s get to Kreiss. See his so-called evidence. I also want to know what happened with Jared McGarand; I think that his getting killed may have been an accident. And what he did up there in that car? Well, considering where they were taking him, I’d have tried the same thing, only I’d have probably screwed it up. But first, let’s get Kreiss. Nothing happens until we have him.”