When he realized they were heading for the airport after about twenty minutes, Mike sat up and began to take notice. And when they pulled out of the main traffic stream into the public terminals at Logan and headed toward a gate with a checkpoint and barrier, the sleep seemed to fall away. “What is this?” he hissed at Pete.
The van barely stopped moving as whatever magic charm the driver had got him waved straight through a series of checkpoints and onto the air side of the terminal. “Look, I don’t know either,” Pete whispered. “Tony said to go with these guys.” He sounded worried.
“Not long now,” the woman in the front passenger seat said apologetically.
They drove past a row of parked executive jets, then pulled in next to a big Gulfstream, painted Air Force gray. “Okay, change of transport,” called their shepherd. “Everybody out!”
“Wow.” Mike looked up at the jet. “They’re serious.”
“Whoever they are,” Pete said apprehensively. “Somehow I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more, Toto.”
A blue-suiter checked their ID cards again at the foot of the stairs and double-checked them using a sheet of photos. Mike climbed aboard warily. The government executive jet wasn’t anything like as luxuriously fitted as the ones you saw in the movies, but that was hardly a surprise—it was a working plane, used for shifting small teams about. Mike strapped himself into a window seat and lay back as the attendant closed the door, checked to see that everyone was strapped in, and ducked inside the cockpit for a quiet conference. The plane began to taxi, louder than any airliner he’d been on in years. Minutes later they were airborne, climbing steeply into the evening sky. In all, just over an hour had elapsed since he answered the phone.
The seat belt lights barely had time to blink out before the woman was on her feet, her back to the cockpit door, facing Mike and Pete. (A couple of the other guys had to crane their heads round to see her.) “Okay, you’re wondering where you’re going and why,” she said matter-of-factly. “We’re going to a small field in Maryland. From there you’re going by bus to a secure office in Fort Meade where we wait for another planeload of agents to converge from the left coast. Refreshments will be served,” she added dryly, “although I can’t tell you just why you’re needed at this meeting because our hosts haven’t told me.”
One of the other passengers, a black man with the build of a middleweight boxer, frowned. “Can you tell us who you are?” he asked in a deep voice. “Or is that secret, too?”
“Sure. I’m Judith Herz. Boston headquarters staff, FBI, agent responsible for ANSIR coordination. If you guys want to identify yourselves, be my guest.”
“I’m Bob Patterson,” said the black man, after a momentary pause. “I work for DOE,” he added, in tones that said and I can’t tell you any more than that.
“Rich Wall, FBI.” The thin guy with curly brown hair and a neat goatee flashed a brief grin at Herz. Undercover? Mike wondered. Or specialist? He didn’t look like a special agent, that was for sure, not wearing combat pants and a nose-stud.
“Mike Fleming and Pete Garfinkle, Drug Enforcement Agency, Boston SpecOps division,” Mike volunteered.
They all turned to face the last passenger, a portly middle-aged guy with a bushy beard and a florid complexion who wore a pin-striped suit. “Hey, don’t all look at me!” he protested. “Name’s Frank Milford, County Surveyor’s Office.” A worried frown crossed his face. “Just what is this, anyway? There’s got to be some mistake, here. I don’t belong—”
“We’ll see,” said Herz. Mike looked at her sharply. Five assorted cops and spooks, and a guy from the County Surveyor’s Office? What in hell’s name is going on here? “I’m sure all will be revealed when we arrive.”
A minivan with a close-lipped driver met them at the airport. At first it had looked as if he was heading for Baltimore, but then they turned off the parkway, taking an unmarked feeder road that twisted behind a wooded berm and around a slalom course of huge stone blocks, razor-wire fences, and a gauntlet of surveillance cameras on masts. They came to a halt in front of a gatehouse set in a high fence surrounding a complex so vast that Mike couldn’t take it in. Members of a municipal police force he’d never heard of carefully checked everyone’s ID against a prepared list, then issued red-bordered ID badges with the letters PV emblazoned on them. Then the van drove on. The compound was so big there were road signs inside it—and three more checkpoints to stop and present ID at before they finally drew up outside an enormous black glass tower block. “Follow me, and do exactly as I say,” their driver told them. The entrance was a separate building, with secured turnstiles and guards who watched inscrutably as Mike followed his temporary companions along a passageway and then out into a huge atrium, dominated by a black marble slab bearing a coat of arms in a golden triangle.
“I’ve read about this place,” Pete muttered in a slightly overawed tone.
“So when do you think they bring out the dancing girls?” Mike replied.
“When—” Lift doors opened and closed. Pete caught Herz watching him and clammed up.
“Rule one: no questions,” Herz told him, when she was sure she’d got his attention. She glanced at Mike as well. “Yes?”
“Rule two: no turf wars.” Mike crossed his arms, trying to look self-confident. You worked for the DOJ for years, mucking out the public stables, then suddenly someone sent a car for you and drove you round to the grand palace entrance . . .
“No turf wars.” Herz nodded at him with weary irony. Suddenly he got the picture.
“Whose rules are we playing by?” he asked.
“Probably these guys, NSA. At least for now.” Her eyes flickered at one corner of the ceiling as the elevator came to a halt on the eighth floor. “I assure you, this is as new to me as it is to you.”
Their escort led them along a carpeted, sound-deadening corridor, through fire doors and then into a reception room. “Wait here,” he said, and left them under the gaze of a secretary and a security guard. Mike blinked at the huge framed photographs on the walls. What are they doing, trying to grow the world’s biggest puffball mushroom? All the buildings seemed to have razor-wire fences around them and gigantic white domes sprouting from their roofs.
A head popped out from around a corner. “This way, please.” Herz led the group as they filed through the door, informatively labeled ROOM 2B8020. Behind the door, Mike blinked with a moment of déjà vu, a flashback to the movie Dr. Strangelove. A doughnut-shaped conference table surrounded by rose-colored chairs filled the floor at the near end of the room, but at the other end a series of raised platforms supported a small lecture theater of seats for an audience. Large multimedia screens filled the wall opposite. “If you’d all take seats in the auditorium, please?” called their guide.
“The film you’re about to see is classified. You’re not to make notes, or talk about it outside your group. After it’s been screened, an officer will brief you in person then take you through a team setup exercise so that you know why you’re all here and what’s expected of you.”
Pete stuck his hand in the air.
“Yes?” asked the staffer.
“Should I understand that I’m being seconded to some kind of joint operation?” Pete asked quietly. “Because if so, this is one hell of an odd way to go about it. My superior officer either didn’t know or didn’t tell. What’s going on?”