“There are about a dozen of them,” Crewes said, pointing to the smoking man. “The generalissimos of tomorrow. Supposedly the course they’re on is something to do with logistics, but you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that’s just a euphemism for counterinsurgency. And get this: none of them have last names. It’s just Juan and Pedro and Carlo and Jaime and Jesus. That one there is César-they pronounce it say-czar-so I reckon he’s the boss man.”
“Maybe that’s just his name.”
“Maybe,” he said. “They don’t wear their own uniforms, either. We have guests on base all the time-those West Germans, for example-but they don’t wear BDUs from the PX, Lieutenant. These boys are special.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning they’re from some Latin American banana republic, and they’re not here to learn how to service their country’s newly purchased helicopters. They’re learning how to throw Marxist rebels out of them.”
I gazed down at the man leaning against the Buick. From this distance it was hard to tell, but he seemed to be conscious of my presence. He flicked his cigar away and said something to the approaching Magnum, who paused to glance in my direction. Magnum smiled, then ditched the sodden newspaper and got behind the wheel of the Buick. Before joining him, the generalissimo of tomorrow aimed a mock salute at my office window.
“All right, then,” I said. “So what does that make Magnum?”
“What else?” Crewes said. “CIA.”
CHAPTER 4
In front of the shaving mirror, over weak coffee of my own making, weaving through early morning traffic on my way downtown, I keep trying to convince myself that a summons from Special Agent Bea Kuykendahl might be a good thing. Maybe my case is already in the air, arcing toward the end zone, and all I have to do is make the catch. Bascombe’s already waiting for me in the garage, and I imagine he’s going through a similar thought process in his mind.
“I’ll drive,” he says, motioning me toward the passenger door of his car.
“This might turn out to be positive, you know.”
Bascombe’s long arms and six-foot-four frame hunch behind the wheel. His knees barely fit under the console. He sighs. “Anything can happen.”
The reality is, I’ve never put a request into the system and gotten a phone call from the FBI. That’s not how it works.
What I’m anticipating is something like this: a bunch of Feds in dark suits lined up on one side of a conference table, a lot of bureaucratic doublespeak passing for interagency cooperation leading up to an assertion of jurisdiction. Bridger’s hunch about the Mexican mafia comes back to me, along with what Lorenz said about al-Qaeda cells.
“This is a homicide,” I say. “The body’s on our patch. If they have something to offer, fine, but that’s where I’m drawing the line.”
“Hey, if we could unload this on ’em, I’d be more than happy to. It’s not like we’re making any progress. Unfortunately.”
“Yeah, I know.”
To reach the field office, we have to take I-10 to the Loop, then drive up the Northwest Freeway to 1 Justice Park Drive. As we approach, there’s a run-down looking donut shop on W. 43rd, so I suggest stopping off to pick up a box for our FBI colleagues. The lieutenant just shakes his head. “You’re always trying to win friends and influence people, aren’t you?”
Bascombe uncoils himself and we check through security, joining a crowd of arriving government workers at the elevators. My stomach rumbles-donuts don’t sound half bad at the moment-but thanks to a random assortment of over-the-counter painkillers I found in the medicine cabinet this morning, my bum leg feels pleasantly numb. The doors slide open and we shoulder our way in. Just as the elevator closes, a voice calls from outside.
“Lieutenant Bascombe, is that you?”
“Hold the door,” he says.
We push our way back out, ignoring grunts of frustration from our fellow passengers. Outside, a serious-looking blonde, maybe five-foot-two without her heels, in jeans and a fatigue jacket, extends a hand to the lieutenant. Her rolled-up sleeve reveals a man’s diver watch, worn backward with the face inside the wrist. FBI credentials dangle around her neck.
“I’m Bea Kuykendahl,” she says.
The lieutenant introduces himself, then turns to me.
“I’m familiar with your work,” she tells me. “I did a little digging when your name cropped up.”
“Okay.”
She pats my arm. “Don’t worry, it was mostly good.”
“That’s a relief. Should we go up?”
She looks us both over, as if making a decision. “No, actually, we’re heading somewhere else. I have something to show you.”
Bascombe and I exchange a look.
“Lead the way,” he tells her.
At first it looks like she’s taking us back outside, but before we reach the security scrim, Bea Kuykendahl guides me toward a secure door, using a key card to pass through. A flight of concrete stairs leads down to another door, then into a long, bare corridor. She keeps a few feet ahead, her heels clicking on the hard tile. My stereotype of FBI women includes pinstripes, pearls, and law degrees. They’re well put together, with a bit of attitude to go with it. To be honest, my wife Charlotte fits the mold.
Bea Kuykendahl, by contrast, has a short-haired, gamine look-half butch, half kid-her side arm jutting incongruously from her hip. Pale skin, fair hair, blue-gray eyes, and broad cheeks. She has more earrings in her ear than I thought the G-Man rulebook allows. She can’t be much older than thirty, and she dresses like an undercover agent on TV.
“Where exactly are you taking us, Agent Kuykendahl?” I ask.
“You’ve never been down in the basement before? This is where they keep the troublemakers. And call me Bea.”
We round a corner into another hallway, this one lined with doors. Bea uses her card again, ushering through an unmarked entry into a separate office suite.
“This is the bullpen,” she says, waving her hand to encompass a large open space with a long table at the center. On the walls, banks of computer terminals, maps, and a couple of whiteboards covered in scrawls of various colors. “We coordinate operations from here. You won’t be meeting the rest of the team, I’m afraid. I thought it would be better to keep things simple.”
She takes us through the open room pretty quick, like she doesn’t want us paying too much attention to the papers lying around. In back, there are several glass partition walls separating individual offices from the main area. She shoves open the one on the end, motioning us inside. The lights come on automatically, motion sensitive.
Bascombe sits in the available guest chair and I move to the corner. Bea grabs a rolling chair from outside and scoots it my way, then goes around the desk. In front of her, there’s an inch-thick stack of paper hidden inside a report cover. She drops it into a drawer, then edges her chair forward, clasping her hands in the empty space where the papers had been.
“Well,” she says. “Thanks for coming.”
Bascombe nods.
“You’re probably wondering what this is all about.”
Neither of us replies.
“Okay, let’s get the tough stuff out of the way first. As you can see, I’m not making you jump through any hoops. I could’ve made this hard, but that’s not my style. There aren’t any supervisors here to get in the way. No liaison officers or anything like that. I could’ve done this the usual way, but to be honest, I don’t think there’s time. I wanted to talk face-to-face, to lay all my cards out on the table. This seemed like the best way.”
She waits for a reply.
“Maybe you should start by putting us in the picture,” I say.
“All right.”
She opens another drawer, pauses, then shuts it. Then she rolls her chair to the side like she’s going to reach for something in the stack of files on her credenza. But she doesn’t.