“Darius, don’t you think you’ve taken this far enough? This coin business has got out of control.”
“When I want your advice, I’ll ask you,” Van Simson snapped back. “I’ll have taken it far enough when I have those coins.”
Van Simson stabbed the off button on the phone and stuffed it angrily into his trouser pocket.
“Damn!” he muttered to himself.
Ahead of him, two men were holding up an architectural drawing, one at each end. A large cement mixer behind them was pouring cement into a deep trench that had been cut into the soil.
“Legrand?” Van Simson called over the clatter of the mixer’s revolving drum. One of the men dropped his end of the plan and it scrolled shut as if on a spring.
“Monsieur Van Simson. I wasn’t expecting you until—”
“I know, I know.” Van Simson interrupted him with a wave. “Are you still on schedule?”
“Ahead, even,” Legrand said proudly. “We’ll have completed phase one by the end of the month. By Christmas, we’ll be ready to start erecting the steelwork.”
“And that other thing?”
“Taken care of.” Legrand nodded toward the trench.
Van Simson walked toward it, the concrete oozing against the brown earth, steel rods surging out of the glutinous gray mass. He stood at the edge for a few seconds, then bent down and scooped up a handful of soil. He paused, then scattered it onto the wet concrete, the dark earth speckling the surface.
“Well, he did say he wanted to be buried here with his ancestors.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
People walked past them, their footsteps echoing down the brightly lit basement corridor like a long, slow handclap. Important-looking people with badges and passes and files walking to and from secret meetings with secret people discussing secret things.
Jennifer knew she should feel nervous. After all, they had both spent the whole of the previous day and most of the night since she got back from Kentucky preparing for this meeting and she was stepping right into the firing line. But in a strange way she was actually looking forward to it. They had some answers. For the first time since this had all begun, they actually had some answers.
“Okay, now remember what I told you.” Corbett broke the silence. “Keep it short and stick to the script. No heroics.” He spoke quickly and quietly, his voice slightly anxious.
“Don’t worry,” she said, smiling. “I got it.”
While Jennifer had been down in Kentucky, Corbett had had a team down at Fort Knox itself going over every scrap of paper and every inch of the security system. Rigby, still in a state of shock, had let them in, unplugged his phone, locked his office door and left them to it. Their time had been well spent, since what they had discovered tied into Jennifer’s own findings.
“Do you mind?”
“What?”
She reached forward and smoothed his collar down where it had bent back on itself.
“Thanks.” He smiled. “This is going to be a tough crowd. I just want you to put in as good a show as I know you can, that’s all. These people, they don’t do excuses, just results.”
“Oh, shit!” Jennifer rolled her eyes. “Come on, you might as well tell me. What are we dealing with here? Major league assholes or minor league bureaucrats?”
“As far as I know, a bit of both. FBI Director Green, Mint Director Brady, and apparently that two-faced son of a bitch John Piper from the NSA.”
“The NSA?” Jennifer was startled. This was way below their normal radar. “What’s it got to do with them?”
“I guess we’ll find out,” said Corbett grimly. “You come across Piper before?” Jennifer shook her head. “He’s a real piece of work. Twenty years with the Agency going nowhere. Then his family donated five million bucks to the new president’s election campaign, and suddenly he’s rubbing shoulders with the Pentagon top brass and making up for lost time.”
“Do you think they want to muscle in?”
Corbett gave her a reassuring look.
“No. They just want to hear what we know. Did you get some sleep last night?”
“A bit.”
Corbett’s eyes softened just a fraction.
“You know, if this is all too much I can always reassign someone to help.”
She shot him an indignant look.
“No way. I’m doing just fine on my own. When I need a chaperone, I’ll let you know.”
He smiled.
“Just checking.”
The door opposite them opened and a man appeared, his brown hair slicked into a vertical salute, his eyes squinting out from a sunken, pallid face. He was in shirtsleeves, his charcoal pants pulled too high around his waist so that his nylon-clad ankles could be seen peeking out between his shoes and trouser legs. He smiled thinly at Bob and ignored Jennifer.
“Corbett.”
“Piper.” Corbett nodded back.
“Looks like you’re on, sport.”
Swapping a look, they both plunged into the room behind him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It was not a large room, but at fifty feet underground, it was one of the most secure in the building. The soundproofing gave it a strange, deadened feel, while the acrid smell of industrial disinfectant caught in the back of Jennifer’s throat and immediately brought back graphic memories of Dr. Finch’s mortuary down in Louisville.
Four people were sitting around three sides of a rectangular glass table, from where they had a clear view of the white projector screen that took up most of the farthest wall. Two vinyl-and-steel chairs had been set aside for them next to Director Green. The lights had been dimmed, giving everyone’s face a slightly haunted look.
“We have just been joined by Special Agents Corbett and Browne,” said Green. “As you know, Bob heads up our Major Theft and Transportation Crimes Unit. He and Agent Browne have been working this case from day one.”
Piper flashed Jennifer an uninterested look as Green said her name.
“Okay, now we’re all here, let’s get started.” A bald man with a thick neck and a boxer’s hard, worn, and squashed face was clearly in charge. He stood up and leaned across the table on his fists, the sleeves of his striped shirt rolled up above his elbows, his biceps bulging, the catch of his gold Rolex straining. He was chewing a piece of gum as he talked, pausing every so often as he spoke to work his jaws around it.
“For those of you who don’t know me,” he continued in his lazy Texas drawl, looking directly at Jennifer and Corbett as he spoke, “Ah’m Treasury Secretary Scott Young.”
Jennifer had recognized him immediately, of course. A recent presidential appointee, Young had moved from the boardroom of one of Wall Street’s most aggressive investment banks to his new position, his plain-speaking, no-holds-barred reputation going with him.
“The president has personally asked me to chair this meeting,” he continued. “To put it politely, he is mighty pissed.”
Jennifer looked at the silent faces around the table. Green was sitting on Young’s left-hand side, stuffed as normal into an ill-fitting three-piece suit, sausage fingers twirling a pen, dyed brown hair over a round red face.
Piper was to Young’s right and although Jennifer didn’t recognize the person sitting next to him, she assumed that he must be Mint Director Chris Brady. He had a wide, oval face with hollow cheeks and sagging skin and wore an ill-fitting wig. His staring brown eyes were sheltered behind thick tortoiseshell glasses. He, too, had removed his suit jacket and his dark blue polyester tie ballooned over a paler blue shirt.