Canning heard back while walking through Times Square to his hotel at ten thirty P.M., though he would never have guessed the time based upon the crowds and the neon conflagration. His buzzing phone, to anyone not in the know, signified the availability of an update for his stock market app.
He hurried to the hotel next door to his, parked himself at one of the public computer terminals in the busy lobby, and logged on to the Yahoo! account he’d created for this purpose. The in-box contained no e-mails. He would have been surprised if it had. His spam folder contained one, headed SUPER BUY VIAGRA. He clicked it open and scanned the message: Viagra 120mg x 650 pills = $95. He noted the second digit of each value: 2-5-5.
He crossed Seventh Avenue to a sports bar that was to giant television screens what Times Square was to billboards. The place was ablaze with game telecasts, mostly West Coast NHL and college basketball. Canning couldn’t hear any of it over the cheering crowd. He didn’t care. His objective was wireless Internet access for the laptop he’d bought for $400 in cash this morning at a no-name electronics shop on Canal Street.
Procuring a seat in a dark corner, he logged onto JamOnAndOn, “a site where musicians can commune, collaborate and critique.” Its 10,000 users, mostly aspiring musicians, found the critique hard to come by. Take this month’s entry number 255, Give it up, babe. The song had attracted a total of just three listeners since its posting last week. Each listener had given it three stars of a possible five, none of them bothering to write in the Constructive Comments box. Canning ignored the song itself but activated software that extracted and decrypted the text that was randomly distributed among the pixels representing sound waves. He came away with a list compiled by his CIA asset.
The first person on the list, Andrew M. Miller Jr., twenty-seven years old, worked as a systems analyst in the NSA’s Comprehensive National Cyber-Security Initiative Data Center at Camp Williams, Utah. He qualified for handicapped parking, probably disqualifying him from the fieldwork required on the Thornton case. Also he went not by Andy or even Andrew, but by his middle name, Mitchell.
Candidate number two was Stanford School of Engineering’s former dean, Andrew C. Miller, sixty-one. He now supervised the NSA’s Trailblazer program, a data-mining initiative in Milwaukee. A possibility, but not a good one given his lack of ops experience.
Langley had an operations officer at Moscow station née Andrea “Andi” Miller, a twenty-eight-year-old whose first job after college had been at Fort Meade. She had sent multiple cables from Moscow to CIA HQs each day for the past three weeks, signifying she was deep into a case there, in all likelihood eliminating her, too, as Thornton’s agency contact.
Canning’s eye fell to the eighth and final entry, a forty-six-year-old research analyst. This Andrew Miller’s CV concluded with the account of his recent death posted by Global Security Newswire.
Canning checked the Internet histories he’d hacked into and then imported to his laptop from the personal computer in the spare bedroom Thornton used as an office. And there it was: The blogger had read the Global Security Newswire report on the Beltway traffic accident.
“The blogger is bluffing,” Canning wrote in an encrypted text message to Dr. Simon Wade, the former Special Ops shrink who operated the interrogation and detention facility known as Black Islands.
Now—finally—Canning could traffic his E-bomb.
30
Lamont engaged a strong wind in a tug-of-war over a door before exiting 26 Federal Plaza. Hurrying into the night, he was belted by a cold sheet of rain. His lone defense, a Daily News, turned to pulp. He hadn’t looked at the sports section yet, but he’d read enough of the rest of the paper to determine there was no mention of his activity in Harlem the night before last. Good. No sense sending millions of New Yorkers into a panic over an assassination ring.
His overcoat was soaked through before he reached the end of the block, a wind tunnel lined by monolithic office towers. He forded the traffic jam on Broadway in order to take the shortest route to Kennedy’s. Tires spinning in both directions sprayed rainwater onto the parts of his suit that had somehow remained dry.
Entering the dark tavern, he was enveloped by toasty air and the pleasing aroma of steak and ale. If not for the neon brewery promotions tucked into the front window and a few modern conveniences behind the bar, James Joyce might well have entered and settled onto a barstool here without blinking. The usual postwork crush of Wall Streeters had dwindled to a smattering of patrons enjoying late dinners at elegant mahogany tables and drinks along the vast, copper-surfaced bar.
Gene Garrison, a member of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, waited in a high-backed booth offering privacy as well as a view of the entire establishment. “Joint” referred to agents, investigators, analysts, and various specialists from other law enforcement and intelligence agencies who worked alongside Bureau agents at 100 FBI field offices nationwide. Garrison had been the CIA station chief in Amsterdam before joining New York’s JTTF office — the nation’s first, established by the Bureau in 1980 in collaboration with the NYPD. He stood as Lamont approached, reaching out not just to shake hands but to clasp Lamont by the shoulders without regard to the dripping fabric.
“Corky, you’re a hero,” Garrison said. “You’ve earned any drink you’d like.”
Indicating the tumbler already on the table, Lamont told the waitress, “Whatever he’s having, please.” Based on Garrison’s reputation, it would be the finest single-malt scotch Lamont had ever had.
Lamont peeled off his overcoat, dropped it onto the sturdy brass hook branching from the booth’s frame, and sank onto the leather bench, all the while studying the man across the table for a clue: Why would the star JTTF agent invite a rank-and-file rookie for drinks? FBI agents didn’t drink on duty, and technically they were always on duty. Lamont had plans to return to the office tonight. Was this some kind of test?
In appearance Garrison was the prototypical middle-aged man. His height was average, his weight about right, and his dark brown hair had a moderate amount of gray. Other than the custom-tailored suit, there was nothing to mark him as either management or a member of the graveyard shift, no fierce look of determination, no aquiline nose, no Rolex.
They finished two rounds, mostly with Garrison asking about Lamont’s college pitching career and brief dalliance with the Houston Astros. Unsure why they were talking baseball, Lamont answered self-consciously.
Finally, the spy said, “Your captive has to escape.”
Lamont hoped he’d misunderstood. “Unless the marshals missed a jackhammer when they strip-searched him, I don’t see how that’s going to happen.”
“We’ll need to come up with something plausible, for the record.” Garrison signaled the waitress for another round. “Really, we’ll put him in WitSec.”
The rock anthem that had been playing in Lamont’s head in the two days since Ronny Brackman’s capture: It jerked to a halt. Despite murdering Peretti and O’Clair and nearly shooting Lamont’s head off in the bodega, Ralph Brackman’s twin brother stood to get a fresh identity, a house, and a new car — likely a Lincoln Navigator, the runaway favorite of cooperators entering witness protection. With a decent lawyer, he might also bag a numbered bank account with a balance in the mid — six figures.