I stood and shook Frank’s hand while we both looked each other up and down. He was taller than me by at least four inches, and broader too. He squeezed my hand hard as if to make sure I knew that he was also stronger. He smiled down at me and I smiled back without a waver. If he wanted to play silly games, so be it, but I wouldn’t rise to his bait.
‘Frank will show you the ropes,’ Norman said. ‘Stick to him like glue.’
Frank didn’t look best pleased at the prospect but he was civil enough — just.
He showed me round the office and I met the other staff.
‘Bob Wade,’ one of them said, smiling warmly and offering his hand. ‘Welcome to the madhouse.’ He laughed with a distinctive rapid-fire guffaw.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
Steffi Dean sat at the desk next to his. Not conducive, I thought, to hard work. I also shook her hand and wondered what she saw in Special Agent Wade, who appeared somewhat older in the flesh than in his personnel-file mugshot.
‘Are you all special agents?’ I asked.
‘Sure are,’ Frank said. ‘All FACSA agents are special.’
I wasn’t sure if he was being facetious.
‘Ignore him,’ Steffi said. ‘But he’s right. Special agent is a rank and all FACSA agents are special agents. We’re all L-E-Os, just like the special agents in the FBI and DEA.’
‘L-E-Os?’
‘Law-enforcement officers.’
‘Does anyone have only regular agents?’ I asked.
‘Not here,’ Frank said loudly. ‘Nothing regular about this lot.’ He laughed expansively at his own joke while Bob and Steffi looked slightly embarrassed.
‘Does everyone carry a gun?’ I asked.
It was difficult not to notice the automatic pistols that each of them had in holsters either on their belts or under their shoulders. The Attorney General had clearly been busy with his authorisations.
‘Only the special agents,’ Steffi said. She patted the gun as if it were a family pet. ‘Never leaves my side. I even sleep with it under my pillow.’
I wondered if there were two guns under her pillow when she slept with Bob Wade.
‘Have you used yours much?’ I asked her.
‘Only on the range. We all have to pass a marksman test every year in order to keep our special-agent status. But I’ve never had to use my weapon in the field. Not yet, anyway.’
‘Is it loaded?’
She smiled at me as if I was an imbecile. ‘Of course it’s loaded. No point in having it otherwise.’ She removed the gun from the holster. ‘Glock twenty-two-C, point-four-zero-calibre automatic.’ She pushed a latch on the pistol grip and slid out the magazine, visibly full of shiny brass bullets. ‘Fifteen rounds per mag. Smith and Wesson hollow-nosed expanding ammunition. And I have a silencer plus two more full mags on my belt.’
‘A silencer?’
‘In case we need to be covert,’ she replied. ‘But we don’t use it as a general rule. It upsets the balance of the weapon in the hand. Tends to make the shots go high and right.’
She snapped the magazine back in and returned the pistol to its holster in a single movement. She clearly was completely at ease with such deadly apparatus.
‘I thought expanding bullets were illegal,’ I said. ‘Aren’t they against the Geneva Convention?’
Expanding bullets would flatten out or fragment on impact with anything hard, like human bone, causing serious trauma over a much wider area than a normal bullet. They had been much feared during the American Civil War due to the horrendous wounds they produced.
‘It was the Hague Convention,’ Bob Wade said. ‘But it only applies to warfare, not to law enforcement. All US police forces use them.’
I must have looked somewhat aghast that ammunition banned in war as being too brutal and cruel was standard issue on the streets of America.
‘Expanding bullets,’ Bob said in explanation, ‘are less likely to pass right through suspects and into innocent bystanders behind them. They also have more stopping power.’
Nevertheless, I was still not convinced that using them was ethical. No wonder more than a thousand members of the American public were shot dead by police each and every year.
Tony Andretti had said in the lay-by near Oxford that he couldn’t get his head round Brits and guns.
Well, I couldn’t get my head round Yanks and guns either. Statistics showed that, in all circumstances, you were seventy times more likely to be shot to death in the United States than in England. And that must have something to do with the number of guns at hand.
And what worried me most was that the section mole was likely to have a Glock 22C holstered on his hip with fifteen.40 expanding bullets in the magazine, plus a silencer and two more loaded mags on his belt.
I really would have to watch my back.
5
By the end of the day I had been round the whole office and met all the section staff except for the most junior admin assistant, who was away on maternity leave.
I had a good memory for faces and facts and I had been easily able to match the individuals to their life stories as outlined in the personnel files. The only difficult thing was not appearing to know something that I hadn’t been told. For example, I nearly asked one of the two intelligence analysts if he liked working for FACSA more than for a bank when he hadn’t actually mentioned his previous employment.
‘Monday is a good day for you to start,’ Frank Bannister said over coffee in the FACSA cafeteria at lunchtime. ‘It’s when all the special agents try to be in the office for meetings and such. Mondays and Tuesdays are usually dark at the major tracks, unless they’re public holidays.’
By ‘dark’, he meant there was no racing.
‘Do you go to the tracks a lot?’ I asked.
‘I usually go somewhere every week,’ he replied. ‘All of us do. It is as important for us to be seen as it is for us to see what’s going on. I tend to concentrate on the northeastern tracks but I love going to the smaller ones too, especially those that race only for a few days each year. Over the years I’ve been to almost all of them.’
‘It must do wonders for your frequent-flier miles.’
‘We don’t get them,’ he said. ‘We often travel on government jets. Even when we are on commercial flights, federal-service rates don’t earn you miles.’
‘Where are you going this week?’ I asked.
‘Highlight of the year,’ he said with a big smile. ‘Louisville for the Derby. You coming?’
‘You bet,’ I said.
For years I had wanted to go to the Kentucky Derby but it was run on the first Saturday in May, usually on the same day as the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket, and my presence had always been expected at one of the biggest days of the English racing season.
Now I was free of that obligation and the prospect of going to Churchill Downs thrilled me.
‘How do I get there?’ I asked.
‘The whole section is going Wednesday. Make sure the boss puts you on the manifest.’
‘I sure will.’
Overall, it was an interesting but somewhat frustrating day.
Whereas I was welcome to wander round and speak to the section staff throughout the morning, I was sidelined for much of the afternoon as all but three of them gathered in a room for a meeting on the second floor. A meeting from which I had been specifically excluded.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked one of the non-participants, one of the two intelligence analysts, who sat resolutely at his computer throughout.
‘Planning and briefing for an operation.’